POEMS D RAMATIC 
 AND LYRICAL 
 
 SECOND SERIES
 
 Uniform ivith this In Size and Binding 
 
 POEMS, DRAMATIC AND LYRICAL. 
 
 First Series. By Lord De Tabley. 
 
 "With Etched Illustrations by C. S. 
 
 RiCKETTs. Crown 8vo. ys. 6d. net. 
 
 [Second Edition. 
 
 Of this edition 550 copies have been printed for England
 
 POEMS 
 
 DRAMATIC AND 
 LYRICAL : By 
 
 LORD DE TABLEY 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 LONDON : JOHN LANE, at the Sign 
 of the BOD LET HEAD in Vigo Street 
 NEW YORK : MACMILLANtf;7^COMPANY 
 
 M DCCC XCV
 
 Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
 
 LIBI?ARY 
 
 UI^/ERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 With the exception of Orpheus in Hades, 
 nothing in this volume has ever been printed 
 or published before. Orpheus appeared in 
 The Nineteenth Century of November 1893, 
 and the poem is now reprinted with the 
 kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, the 
 editor of that Review.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 AN INVOCATION .... 
 
 I 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF EVEN 
 
 4 
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE .... 
 
 6 
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES .... 
 
 13 
 
 THE MARCH OF GLORY . 
 
 37 
 
 A HYMN TO APHRODITE . 
 
 41 
 
 AMARANTH ..... 
 
 45 
 
 CIRCE ...... 
 
 54 
 
 HELLAS AND ROME .... 
 
 . . e-j 
 
 A WINTER SKETCH .... 
 
 80 
 
 A SONG OF DUST .... 
 
 . . 83 
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 . . 89 
 
 ANTHEa's GARLAND .... 
 
 106 
 
 THE FIRST MADRIGAL 
 
 1 10 
 
 Vll
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 AN ODE TO A STAR 
 
 VENGEANCE 
 
 A SERENADE . 
 
 THE SECOND MADRIGAL 
 
 INFATUATION . 
 
 THE TOMB : AN ALLEGORY 
 
 ANTICIPATION 
 
 A CHURCHYARD YEW 
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY CONDEMNS 
 
 PASSION . 
 THE TRAGEDY OF CHILDHOOD 
 THE WINDMILL 
 ROLAND AT RONCESVALLES 
 THE ABSENT MARINER 
 A LAMENT 
 HODGE PROLOGIZES AT HIS PUBLIC 
 THE WINE OF LIFE . 
 
 LOVE 
 
 AND DESPISES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "3 
 
 ii6 
 ii8 
 izo 
 
 122 
 125 
 
 127 
 129 
 
 142 
 
 HS 
 149 
 
 150 
 
 152 
 
 153 
 157 
 
 Vlll
 
 AN INVOCATION 
 
 An invocation for the queenly one, 
 The ruler of my days and my desire : 
 
 A burning incense to my radiant sun, 
 A music mounting in a shaft of fire : 
 
 An adoration and a sacrifice, 
 
 An aureole outrayed upon her brow. 
 
 As in a silver saint of Paradise : 
 
 A pearly necklace round a throat of snow — 
 
 Turn not the splendour of thine eyes aside, 
 Though night and all her shadows are 
 deceased ; 
 
 Thy glance is as the morning's to divide 
 The pillared chambers of the glowing east. 
 
 A I
 
 AN INVOCATION 
 
 The clear blue heaven returns in all my 
 soul 
 
 Dim cloud and denseforebodings hasteaway: 
 I fear no hidden rock, no ragged shoal, 
 
 I ride at anchor in a glassy bay. 
 
 My life is as a wood, where owls and jays 
 Hoot in the heavy boughs, and magpies 
 rail. 
 
 Till I am weary. , Then, beyond all praise, 
 I hear thy rapture, O my nightingale. 
 
 My life is as a lonely woodland mere, 
 
 Whose sullen waters without sun repose : 
 
 And thou one ivory lily floating here. 
 
 Marble and white, flushed with a hint of 
 rose. 
 
 Thou art the silence of a mighty sea, 
 
 Thou art thetempestcleavingnightwithfire: 
 
 Thou art the fragrance of all spring to me, — 
 Mine, fated mine, as mine in my desire. 
 
 2
 
 AN INVOCATION 
 
 Before the world was builded, thou wert 
 mine, 
 Before the seas were laid, Fate drew thee 
 dumb 
 Out of the void abyss : my soul to thine, 
 Thro' myriad leagues of awful space has 
 come. — 
 
 Swing up the golden censer, acolyte, 
 Let fumes of stately frankincense arise. 
 
 As Pasan to my beautiful Delight, 
 
 And mingle cloud-like with the cloudy skies. 
 
 I breathe but in thy breath ; and, this with- 
 drawn, 
 My swan-like music dies upon its wing : 
 But smile upon me like incarnate Dawn, 
 And then this Memnon, mute before, can 
 sing.
 
 THE SPIRIT OF EVEN 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF EVEN 
 
 Gentle Queen, that dost control 
 Kingdoms pale of faded light : 
 
 Sphered star, that ridest sole 
 In between the day and night. 
 
 Silver-pulsing, planet queen. 
 
 Wrapt in robes of twilight sheen. 
 
 Loose the ox and lengthen shadows 
 Hive again the roving bee : 
 
 Still the lark o'er emerald meadows 
 Bring the fishers home from sea : 
 
 Spirit of the Eve unseen. 
 
 Shed thy influence, twilight Queen. 
 4
 
 THE SPIRIT OF EVEN 
 
 Shepherd, pipe thy plaintive lays, 
 Crown her brows with radiant mist 
 
 On her throne of purple rays 
 Seat her like an amethyst : 
 
 Beaming glow-worm, amber-green, 
 
 Fair and lovely twilight Queen. 
 
 Smite, O smite the chorded lyre, 
 All things praise her peaceful sway. 
 
 Poet, wake thy heart of fire. 
 Ere her beauty waste away. 
 
 Pass unsung and fade unseen, 
 
 Pearl of Even, twilight Queen.
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE 
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE 
 
 Demon or goddess, who dost sway 
 The changes of our mortal state : 
 
 Before whose footstep fades away. 
 As snow, the grandeur of the great. 
 
 To some thou bringest health and fame, 
 A happy love, a faithful friend, 
 
 To some the dungeon-doors of shame. 
 Gibbet and rope, a felon's end. 
 
 Thou art almighty in thy might, 
 
 Heaven fades before thy fiery breath. 
 
 The giant planets of the night 
 
 Fall, if thy hand decree their death. 
 6
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE 
 
 Wisdom is but a little child, 
 
 Before the breath of thy command 
 
 And Virtue, broken and beguiled. 
 Rests in the hollow of thy hand. 
 
 O'er heaven and ocean, crag and vale. 
 Thou waftest thy triumphant wings ; 
 
 Thou soarest on the golden gale 
 
 With incense from an hundred springs. 
 
 Thou canst unlock the secret deep, 
 And rend aside the mountain range ; 
 
 And, as the spheres thro' ether sweep, 
 Thou rollest round thy orb of change. 
 
 No bourn, no limit of delay. 
 No rest thy alternations know ; 
 
 We quail before thy dreadful way. 
 And at thy thunder step bend low. 
 7
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE 
 
 Thy deep eyes search the years unborn, 
 And mock the present with disdain ; 
 
 And measure with a smile of scorn 
 Each sceptred tyrant's fleeting reign. 
 
 How brief a record can they save. 
 If only in some marble bust 
 
 Survive those features, which the grave 
 Has crumbled to a pinch of dust. 
 
 And these white ashes of an urn 
 Once made a chidden world afraid ; 
 
 But Queens to common dust return. 
 And Kings of glory quickly fade. 
 
 So when proud Egypt in her fleet 
 Beat up, with canvas all unfurled. 
 
 Inflamed with Mareotic heat, 
 
 To wreck the realm and clutch the world: 
 8
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE 
 
 Drunk with the wine of prosperous hours. 
 Insane to hope the wildest good. 
 
 She, queenly crowned with lotus flowers. 
 Swept silken-sailed across the flood : 
 
 Came with musquito nets, and came 
 With eunuchs, a decrepit band, 
 
 While, doting at her apron, tame 
 The great triumvir gave command. 
 
 But when she saw her burning ships, 
 And heard the roaring of the fire. 
 
 The wanton paled her painted lips. 
 And fled the falcon Cassar's ire. 
 
 The destiny of Rome, of man, 
 
 Hung trembling on that awful day, 
 
 The ages and their coming plan 
 
 Were mapped in that Ambracian bay. 
 9
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE 
 
 There, Fortune, calm on Actian height. 
 Above the hurtling prows and sails. 
 
 Sat arbitress to watch the fight, 
 
 And weigh the world in battle scales. 
 
 And, when the haughty Rome was done, 
 She rolled her Goths in thunder down, 
 
 Thro' ice-blue vales she called the Hun, 
 She gave him Cassar's empty crown. 
 
 Dread Deity, supremely fair, 
 
 Daughter of heaven, serenely strong. 
 Smile on us, firstborn of despair. 
 
 Give respite to our ancient wrong. 
 
 The nations narrow and expand. 
 
 As tides that ebb, or tides that flow. 
 
 Their bounds and borders fear thy hand ; 
 It rears them high or wrecks them low. 
 
 10
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE 
 
 All men thy intercession crave ; 
 
 The happy lovers newly wed, 
 The widow bending o'er a grave. 
 
 The mother o'er a cradled head. 
 
 They perish as a robe outworn, 
 As faded leaves they float away : 
 
 But in the prime where thou wert born, 
 A hundred years are but a day. 
 
 Thou scatterest them like shade or sleep, 
 Thou slayest them and they are slain : 
 
 Anon, thou callest o'er the deep, 
 * Children of silence, come again.' 
 
 As oxen that to slaughter reel, 
 
 Thou drivest nations v^ith thy goad ; 
 
 They are as flies upon thy wheel. 
 They are as pebbles in thy road : 
 li
 
 ODE TO FORTUNE 
 
 As emmets, who have lost their way, 
 Between the ant-hill and the sheaf: 
 
 As coral insects in a bay. 
 
 That weave their little inch of reef 
 
 We last but while the day is new ; 
 
 The thirsty sunbeam dries us up. 
 Have mercy ! we are drops of dew 
 
 Shed for a moment in thy cup. 
 
 12
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 ORPHEUS, HAVING DESCENDED TO THE NETHER WORLD IN 
 SEARCH OF EURYDICE, THUS ADDRESSES PROSERPINE 
 
 Ruler and regent, to whose dread domain 
 The mighty flood of Hfe and human woe 
 Sends down the immeasurable drift of souls, 
 As silted sands are rolled to Neptune's deep, 
 I, even I, approach your awful realms, 
 Queen of oblivion, lady of Acheron, 
 To crave one captive. I alive descend, 
 A live man nourished still on human bread, 
 A man with limbs of flesh and veins of blood, 
 What right have I to tread the cheerless 
 
 field 
 Of the eternal exile ? What despair 
 Hath made me undertake so dire a road ; 
 13
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 A chasm, in whose mouth the tumbled 
 
 crags, 
 Tumbled and jumbled, as In Titan wars, 
 Lie fragmented in horror, block on block. 
 Torn and enormous boulders. On through 
 
 these 
 Undaunted down I went. I wished to die. 
 I held my poor life cheaply in one hand, 
 Cheaply and loosely, as a fluttering bird, 
 Whom any onward step may grant escape ; 
 And, at the base of the abyss, behold, 
 A level platform and an unknown land. 
 And at this point the ghostly realm begins, 
 And I had done with light and done with 
 
 men. 
 And the sweet sun was quenched and far away. 
 
 Soon, soon I saw the spectral vanguard come, 
 Coasting along, as swallows, beating low 
 Before a hint of rain. In buoyant air. 
 Circling they poise, and hardly move the wing. 
 And rather float than fly. Then other spirits, 
 H
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 Shrill and more fierce, came wailing down the 
 
 gale ; 
 As plaintive plovers come with swoop and 
 
 scream 
 To lure our footsteps from their furrowy nest, 
 So these, as lapwing guardians, sailed and 
 
 swung 
 To save the secrets of their gloomy lair, 
 And waved me back, impeding my advance. 
 Yet I persisted, tho' my veins ran cold 
 To catch the winnowing of their awful wings. 
 And feel the sweat-drops of their ghostly 
 
 flight 
 Drip on my neck and shoulder from above, 
 As ice-flakes from the mantle of some cloud 
 That overpasses, bearing in its breast 
 A core of thunder and the seeds of hail. 
 Ye spectral bats, with latticed cobweb sails. 
 Shall I, around whose cradle Muses sang, 
 Quail at your emanations weak as rain ^ 
 As mist I cleave your inefi^ectual files. 
 Love shall not shudder at your goblin eyes. 
 15
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 Yet have I weathered direr dread than these, 
 In winding from the frontier of thy realm, 
 Here to thy throne-step and thy sceptred 
 
 seat, 
 A piteous interval, a roadway grim. 
 And avenued with horrors ; thick as when 
 The Arcadian peasant plants the frequent 
 
 stem 
 Of rough-leaved, bramble-fruited mulberries. 
 Ranked on the causeways of the dusty roads 
 To feed the worm who weaves the stoles of 
 
 queens. 
 
 Thus on each hand has peril fringed my path. 
 Under the strong wing of the rose-wreathed 
 
 god: 
 Peril of waters, peril of the dunes. 
 The marsh, the fog, the whirlwind, and the 
 
 fire, 
 Malignant shores with reason-blasting sights. 
 And the dim dungeons of the eternal curse 
 I traversed, and in arduous passage scaled. 
 i6
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 Love, orbed in iris halo, step by step, 
 Went with me, mighty Love, who tunes my 
 
 lyre : 
 Unseen he went, and breathed into my ear 
 The consolations of his nectared lips. 
 And on the utter edge of horror gave 
 A whisper from the fair Thessalian fields, 
 A hint of rosebuds ripe in crystal dew, 
 And the clear morning summits, poised 
 
 above 
 The belt of vineyards and the zone of pines. 
 
 I, fed with vision, held securely on. 
 Nor heeded half the execrable sights 
 Which ripen in the forest of despair : 
 The thorn-encircled stem of human woe. 
 The leaves of agony's expanded rose 
 With glowing petals and a fiery heart. 
 
 Under the shelter of my master's plumes, 
 I did not turn my feet from any dread, 
 I took the woes full-breasted as they came ; 
 B 17
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 Then suddenly the dolorous thicket ceased. 
 And all the wailing of its woods retired, 
 Like voices of some dreadful nightingale. 
 And at my feet a turbid river came. 
 
 1 knew the stream, I knew the flaccid roll 
 Of those accursed waves : sighing it ran. 
 Lethe thou art and worthy of thy name. 
 Will Love sustain me through this bitter 
 
 flood. 
 Where all things are forgot ? Maybe these 
 
 waves 
 Will wash away my sorrow. On, faint 
 
 heart, 
 And bear me up, sweet Love, and guide me 
 
 through. 
 And out I waded through the curdled wave 
 To the mid-channel : girdle-deep it grew. 
 Loathing I went, from waist to knee in wave. 
 From knee to heel in slime ; I moved as 
 
 one 
 In heavy chains advancing to his doom. 
 l8
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 But Eros found a ford and pushed me 
 
 through ; 
 And whispered, ' Fear not — see, it shallows 
 
 now.' 
 And when I found the hateful waves sub- 
 side, 
 And saw the nearness of the further shore. 
 My heart rejoiced. I cared not for the 
 
 slime : 
 Nor those Lethean reaches daunted then. 
 Not the long withered reed-beds, sad in 
 
 ooze. 
 Not the black bulrush bank, against whose 
 
 stems 
 The lap and washing of the sequent waves 
 Sough on for ever. Not the broken brows. 
 Steep at the river turn and undermined, 
 Wherefrom the snags of oak and tortured 
 
 boughs 
 Project, and latticed ribs in skeleton 
 Jut from the crumbling margin, hung with 
 
 weeds, 
 
 19
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 Trophies and wrecks of some old deluge 
 
 gone, 
 That rot and fester in the eddying creeks. 
 
 Evading then these foul and crumbling 
 
 brinks, 
 I planted footstep on a firmer soil. 
 Before me rose a great and gloomy plain. 
 Ridged into tracks by mighty chariot wheels, 
 And at its verge a formidable gate 
 With castled bastions like a mountain wall, 
 And adamantine portals smooth as ice. 
 And trembling I approached these Titan doors. 
 
 Then through the gate I entered Acheron, 
 Region of sorrow, citadel of pain. 
 The city with the sad-eyed citizens. 
 Coasts of remorse and colonies of sin 
 I traversed, sore of foot and sick of soul : 
 I saw the awful many-sided face 
 Of human agony. I found the dregs 
 Of anguish and the deepest deeps of woe. 
 20
 
 ORPHEUS IN HA DES 
 
 The bitter road is run. The goal is gained. 
 Here at thy throne my gloomy journey ends, 
 
 purple-mantled Queen, with slow grave 
 
 eyes, 
 And I unbind my sandals, stained in blood, 
 And make petition on adorant knee. 
 Forgive and grant n^ pardon that I come. 
 For great is Love, who gave me pilotage. 
 And mighty in the land without a rose. 
 
 1 come not as Alcides, sheathed in mail. 
 I have no shield but music and a lyre. 
 Seven piteous chords, strung on a tortoise 
 
 back. 
 Dare I approach the impenetrable doors. 
 Or batter at the famished gates of hell. 
 So feebly furnished for the dire assault ? 
 
 Can music build the stars or mould the moon. 
 Or wring assent from Hades' doubtful brows ? 
 Can I make weep the stern and lovely Queen, 
 Before whose feet the ripples of the dead 
 Pass like an endless sea, beating her throne ? 
 
 21
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 They move her not. In autumn's gusty 
 
 hour 
 Shall the innumerable broken leaves, 
 The aimless russet-sided rushing leaves, 
 Gain pity from the hatchet-handed boor. 
 Who shears the stubborn oak, an eagle's 
 
 throne ? 
 Doth pity sting the rugged fisher folk 
 For the blue tunnies snared inside their net ? 
 She will not hearken. I shall sing in vain. 
 
 Yet song is great. These pale dishevelled 
 
 ghosts 
 Crowd in to hear with dim pathetic eyes. 
 And quivering corners of their charnel lips. 
 They rustle in from all the coasts of hell. 
 As starlings mustering on their evening tree, 
 Some blasted oak full in the sunset's eye. 
 And over all the mead the vibrating 
 Hiss of their chatter deepens, I can move 
 These bat-like spectres. Can I move their 
 
 Queen ? 
 
 22
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 Yet song is great : and in the listed war 
 The hero, while some martial paean thrills, 
 Breathes out his soul upon the hostile spears, 
 And gains — a wreath to bind his temples 
 dead 1 
 
 Ay, song is great, and even an iron Queen, 
 Stern as her flinty judgment-seat of doom. 
 May see on music's golden plume arise 
 Ambrosial glimpses of a dawn divine, 
 And pearl-drops in the rose-red heaven of 
 youth. 
 
 THE INVOCATION 
 
 Queen, thou shalt hearken by the breath and 
 
 fragrance 
 Of those old lawns at Enna : by the gales 
 That woke the drooping sister-violets, 
 And mingled all the sward with musky 
 
 thyme : 
 By the trembling iris, by the speckled eye- 
 bright, 
 
 23
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 By the zoned orchis like a purple bee. 
 
 By the rich mountain-tulip's splendid wings 
 
 Dropt like a flame-tuft on the shelving crag : 
 
 By the grey headland o'er the crescent bay : 
 
 By the faint ripple of the island foam : 
 
 By the sails that swept so proudly up the 
 
 sea, 
 By the stern galleys, pulsing golden oars. 
 By every tuneful wind and wasted wave. 
 By virgin innocence and vestal tears, 
 And by thine own immortal maidenhood : — 
 Ah, by remembrance of those asphodels — 
 The lily of the Elysian heroes' rest — 
 The asphodels flung groundward in dismay 
 From thy faint trembling hands and fingers 
 
 pure. 
 What time the sudden chariot and wild 
 
 steeds 
 Rolled as a whirlwind, rushing up behind. 
 While on thy bare and ivoried shoulder 
 
 came 
 Their breathing like the bellows of a forge — 
 24
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 And he, the demon lover, from the car 
 Stept as a cloud of gloom, and in his folds 
 Wrapt thee, and night closed on thy radiant 
 eyes. 
 
 O, I adjure thee by that day's despair, 
 
 By those torn flowers thy lonely mother 
 
 found 
 In search for thee, scorched by the burning 
 
 wheels : 
 Ah, fallen flowers, have pity on them and 
 
 me ! 
 Bethink thee. Queen, how on that day one 
 
 rose 
 Fell, of all blooms that fell the sweetest 
 
 bud. 
 The mystic rose of girlhood ne'er rebloomed. 
 Its virgin curtain broken, its dewdrops 
 
 gone — 
 Ah, not of Orcus all the sceptred gloom, 
 The purple and the queendom and the gold, 
 Shall do away touch of those gracious days, 
 25
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 By the hum of iEtna, vineyard-clustered 
 
 ^tna. 
 Flushing its grapes with subterranean fire, 
 Girdled with gleaming cities round its sides, 
 And the hewn houses of great marble gods, 
 By the Sicilian ocean, cold and clear, 
 Whose deeps outpass in azure Hellas' seas. 
 Whose nights have mellower moons and 
 
 clearer stars. 
 Whose fountains gush from more enamelled 
 
 meads. 
 Whereby the halcyon flits, a tissued gleam. 
 Bird of the rainbow : and the lovely land 
 Is as one great and golden orchard plain. 
 And haunted by some Genius, dropping 
 
 balm, 
 Winged, as a nightjar wings o'er darkened 
 
 moors 
 With plumes of silent flight. 
 
 I make appeal 
 Beyond thy queendom and these nether 
 
 shades : 
 
 26
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 Out past the gloomy grandeur of thy throne 
 I rise to other regions, other realms ; 
 And my entreaty soars on eagle wing 
 Beyond the horizon barriers of the past. 
 I speak to one pale girl, who passed her hours 
 With wool and distaff at her mother's side 
 In the sweet long ago. Still beats thy heart 
 The same behind the ruby-cinctured stole ; 
 Although long years of judging guilty souls 
 Have given thy lips and brow a stony mask, 
 And changed thee in Medusa's loveliness 
 For Hebe's roseleaf dimples. In those 
 
 days 
 The dews of pity came in easy tears, 
 And slight occasion dimmed thy lucid eyes 
 And brimmed their fountains. If athwart 
 
 thy path. 
 Prone from the lofty nest, some callow bird 
 Lay shattered in unfeathered nakedness, 
 A sight for tears. And tears thou couldst 
 
 bestow. 
 If with the hunter's arrow in her flank, 
 27
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 With blood-drips, limping through the cork- 
 woods came 
 A mild and sobbing fawn. I half believe 
 That the shed glories of a wasted rose 
 Could make thee weeping-ripe for one dead 
 
 flower. 
 Ah ! what a change has come ! The wax 
 
 grows steel. 
 But in thy stern heart pity is not dead. 
 But on her lies the dust of cruel years. 
 Be once again the girl compassionate. 
 And lay aside the inexorable queen. 
 To hear my prayer, if only for an hour. 
 While I unroll the tragedy of love 
 In bleeding accents set to burning chords, 
 In agonies which thrill along my string. 
 Oh, for the language of a god to prove 
 The enormous desolation I endure ! 
 Had Phoebus half my pain, all hell would 
 
 weep. 
 Or if I had the mighty Sun-god's touch. 
 Then would I sweep the lyre with such a stress 
 28
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 And storm of passion, such supreme despair, 
 Such wailing emphasis, that I would make 
 The woods, the waves, the lonely mountains 
 
 weep, 
 And I would drown all Nature in remorse, 
 A Niobe of tears, that this should be. 
 Until the withered phantom, hungry Death, 
 Relenting latest of created things. 
 In utter pity sets his cage-door wide, 
 And lets my lark soar back to crystal heaven, 
 Regaining that clear region, where her nest. 
 Empty and orphan, waits Eurydice. 
 
 What scourge from heaven, what scorpion 
 
 whip of hell 
 Out-venoms my bereavement ? Surely none. 
 To lose her any way were giant woe : 
 To lose her thus, ineffable despair. 
 Torn from my lips upon her spousal morn. 
 In the climax of her utmost dearness slain : 
 Slain at love's loveliest moment, ere the cup 
 Of her sweet being had enriched my life. 
 29
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 The rites at Hymen's gate were barely done, 
 The incense smouldering yet, the wine 
 
 undried, 
 And trickling ruddy from the altar face 
 In our libations. Then the marriage train 
 Wound through the temple doors with 
 
 choral hymn. 
 She, like a meadow-rose in bridal robes. 
 Light-hearted trips along the pastoral hills. 
 Her maidens round her, roses near the rose. 
 Sweet as the blushing planet of the dawn. 
 She went with hurrying footsteps, light 
 
 and free, 
 In silken bents knee-deep and tufted thyme. 
 Nor knew within the sedge an adder coiled. 
 Nor saw she pressing death. But that ill 
 
 worm. 
 Evolving fanged and fiercely from the herb. 
 Mailed round in sapphire bars and speckled 
 
 scale. 
 Kissed once her rosy feet, and kissed no more : 
 But gave my darling sleep, measureless sleep ; 
 30
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 And we stood round, like nations changed 
 
 to rock, 
 With some new Gorgon horror frozen numb. 
 Then wild lament arose along the hills. 
 And dirges came where hymeneals rang. 
 Lord of his kingdom, Love sang pasan then ; 
 Reft of his empire, we sing dirges now. 
 And, sobbing cadence of funereal gloom, 
 We wind her in the raiment of the dead. 
 The shrouded mantle of eternal sleep. 
 Ay me, the dear one. Then as twilight 
 
 fell. 
 With torch and taper rounded, crowned with 
 
 yew. 
 Wailing we bore her to the cypress lines. 
 Sown with the urns and ash of fiery hearts 
 Of old-world lovers, cold and gone to 
 
 dust. 
 Thither we bore her pallid on her bier, 
 A silver moon cradled in ebon cloud ; 
 And over her we sprinkled marigolds. 
 Flowers of the dead, stars on the sable pall ; 
 31
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 And there was one more gravestone, one 
 
 more heart 
 Broken, and in the world no other change. 
 
 What right have I to live, so crushed with woe? 
 I dare not see the light now she is gone. 
 I hate to watch the flower set up its face. 
 I loathe the trembHng shimmer of the sea, 
 Its heaving roods of intertangled weed 
 And orange sea-wrack with its necklace fruit ; 
 The stale, insipid cadence of the dawn, 
 The ringdove, tedious harper on five tones. 
 The eternal havoc of the sodden leaves, 
 Rotting the floors of Autumn. I am weary, 
 Weary and incomplete and desolate. 
 To me Spring, sceptred with her daffodil. 
 Droops with a blight of dim mortality. 
 And the birds sing Death and Eurydice. 
 
 Ah, dear and unforgotten ! on the wind 
 Her voice comes often, low and sweet it 
 comes, 
 
 32
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 In such a sigh as draws the yearning soul 
 Out of my breast to follow and float away, 
 To lean upon the storm with falcon wing, 
 To overtake the laggard moaning blast, 
 And clasp her in the whirlwind, shade to 
 
 shade. 
 And ghost to ghost. Then let us interlock 
 Our spectral limbs, and so in mutual flight 
 Rush at the sun and burn remembrance out. 
 Be thou efl^ectual Lethe to our pangs, 
 O mighty fountain of primeval fire ; 
 Father of lesser lights, compassionate, 
 Burn out, abolish our two weary souls ! 
 Thou rollest on to rest the toiling stars. 
 The meteor of the morning doth untie 
 Her shining sandals on thy temple floor. 
 And fiery flakes fall from her golden locks. 
 
 Forsaken Orpheus, smite once more the lyre: 
 Sweep all thy echoing chords and make an 
 
 end. 
 Let sorrow quell the deep and vanquish Fate. 
 c 33
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 Let song and pity, winged with burning 
 
 words, 
 Prevail upon a storm of melody, 
 Melting the Queen's inexorable heart, 
 As wax before the furnace of my pain. 
 
 thou, most regal, arch and arbitress 
 Of doleful nations, with thy mural crown, 
 Rod of dominion, orb of adamant. 
 Robed in the ruddy stain of vintage lees. 
 With garments like the morning fiery red — 
 
 1 do adjure thee, lovely Proserpine, 
 Terrible Proserpine, and yet most lovely, 
 Release the viper-slain Eurydice, 
 Untimely taken and supremely loved : 
 Give her again to taste the gentle air. 
 Let me extort her from this rugged Hell. 
 
 Lo, on my brow the toil-drops start as rain. 
 Raised by the wrestling fervour of my prayer; 
 And all my blood beats in an agony 
 Of hope and expectation. Ah ! relent. 
 34
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 I see sweet pity dawning in thine eyes 
 Immortal. O my Queen, on thee returns 
 Breath of the ancient meads, thy mother's 
 
 smile, 
 The old, old days, the sweet, sweet times of 
 
 eld. 
 Thou shalt relent. O lady, is it much 
 To thin the frequence of thy crowded 
 
 realms 
 By losing one poor captive, dearly loved ? 
 She will return after a few brief years 
 To thine eternity. 'Tis but one crumb 
 Pinched from the side of thy great loaf of 
 
 death. 
 Daughter of Ceres ; but one grain of corn. 
 Which in this nether world all winter slept 
 To rise on wings of spring in glorious 
 
 birth ! 
 
 Clash, O my lyre, clash all thy golden chords! 
 For we have won ! I see the ghosts divide 
 To right and left a mighty lane of darkness 
 35
 
 ORPHEUS IN HADES 
 
 As from the utmost coasts of Acheron 
 
 Eurydice comes sailing like a star. 
 
 Dove of the cypress, come : my hungry 
 
 soul 
 Awaits thee trembling with expanded arms. 
 
 36
 
 THE MARCH OF GLORY 
 
 THE MARCH OF GLORY 
 
 I HEAR the nations march, 
 
 As sweeping autumn rain, 
 By laurel-garnished arch. 
 
 And trophies of the slain. 
 To music proud and high, 
 
 By Glory led, 
 The stern-eyed ranks go by, 
 To her battle-fields of dead. 
 Her heroes and her soldiers rush to die 
 Madly upon the spears with martial ecstasy. 
 
 The clash of battle's psalm 
 Dilates their veins to glow ; 
 
 As tempest rocks the calm 
 Grey surge to fleece of snow. 
 
 With iron in each palm. 
 Invincible they go. 
 37
 
 THE MARCH OF GLORY 
 
 I hear the nations march. 
 
 Their ample ensign's fold. 
 Spread as an eagle's wing, 
 
 Flaps out in heavy gold : 
 O'er sheeted targe and shield 
 
 The banners gaily swing : 
 On to their latest field 
 
 The advancing bugles ring. 
 
 Moving to victory with solemn voice. 
 With timbrels, and with drum-beat, and the 
 noise 
 Of myriads : each man listens 
 For the laughter of her joys, 
 To each man glistens 
 The glitter of her eyes, 
 The phantom Glory leads the proud array. 
 They follow, as she flies. 
 And without reck or fears 
 Right on the vale of tears 
 Go marching gay. 
 38
 
 THE MARCH OF GLORY 
 
 Love's music mingles with the martial hymn, 
 And all the pealing clarions breathe of him, 
 The mighty voice, that recks not time or 
 
 years, — 
 Love that no Death can dim, 
 
 Love that Death makes complete. 
 
 Whose glory is immense, 
 Whose laughter is passing sweet, 
 Beyond the reach of sense. 
 
 The laughter of one, who kisses well. The 
 
 laugh 
 Of a great king, who mows his foes as chaff, 
 The laugh of the feaster, who sings in his 
 
 pleasure. 
 The laugh of the miser, arm-deep in his 
 
 treasure. 
 The laugh of the lark, when the young beam 
 breaks 
 
 Its cloudy cover. 
 The laugh of the dreaming girl, who wakes 
 And finds her lover. 
 3^
 
 THE MARCH OF GLORY 
 
 Joy and Love and Triumph in their marching 
 
 Thou shalt hear, as sounds 
 Of tempest thro' the giant pinewood searching, 
 When the great clarion of the gale resounds. 
 March on with throbbing drums and bugle 
 sigh, 
 Let the flute peal, the royal trumpet swell ; 
 Hail ! we salute thee, Queen, about to die : 
 Hail, Glory, and farewell ! 
 
 40
 
 A HYMN TO APHRODITE 
 
 A HYMN TO APHRODITE 
 
 Uranian Aphrodite, fair 
 
 From ripples of the ocean spray : 
 
 Sweet as the sea-blooms in thy hair. 
 Rosed with the blush of early day, 
 
 O hear us from thy temple steep, 
 
 Where Eryx crowns the Dorian deep. 
 
 Unfold the rapture of thy face. 
 
 No more thy lustrous eyes conceal : 
 
 But from the rivers of thy grace 
 The rich abundant joys reveal 
 
 Give us the treasures of thy rest, 
 
 Take us as children to thy breast. 
 41
 
 A HYMN TO APHRODITE 
 
 Desired of all the ages long, 
 
 As Morning young, as old as Fate 
 The kneeling world with choral song 
 
 Has crowded round thy altar gate. 
 Thine are the seasons past and dumb. 
 And thine the unborn years to come. 
 
 We are not worthy to endure 
 
 The fervour of thy burning eyes, 
 
 Thy perfect lips, thy bosom pure. 
 Thy radiant aspect, sweetly wise. 
 
 Breathe balm upon our span of breath. 
 
 For thou art almost queen of death. 
 
 To thee, enwreathed with passion flowers, 
 Our unreluctant prayers are given : 
 
 Thou art so near, when other powers 
 Seem worlds away in frigid heaven : 
 
 They know not, for they live apart. 
 
 The craving tumult of the heart. 
 42
 
 A HYMN TO APHRODITE 
 
 Thy altar needs no victim slain : 
 
 It reeks not with the bleeding steer ; 
 
 Thy kingdom is no realm of pain, 
 Thy worship is no creature's fear. 
 
 Yet art thou trebly more divine, 
 
 Needing no hecatombs of kine. 
 
 The empires wane, the empires grow : 
 They prosper or they are dismayed : 
 
 Time lays their wrangling voices low, 
 The victors and the vanquished fade. 
 
 The foam-wreath on the crested spray 
 
 Lasts but an instant less than they. 
 
 But thou abidest, in thy might 
 Eternal, and a rainbow beam 
 
 Is round thy head ; and clusters bright 
 Of orbs among thy tresses gleam : 
 
 Clothed in the garment of the sun. 
 
 Sweet as the star of day begun. 
 43
 
 A HYMN TO APHRODITE 
 
 Parent of Nature, lovely queen. 
 Awake the frozen land's repose. 
 
 Until the perfumed buds are seen 
 With promise of the myriad rose. 
 
 Descend, and on thy halcyon wing 
 
 Unlock the fountains of the spring. 
 
 44
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 When I have done with hornet grief, 
 Nor fear the blind-worm, envy's sting, 
 
 When graveward Lethe brings rehef, 
 And calms the love-god's fretful wing. 
 
 When I am clear of human kind, 
 And slumber with the patient dead, 
 
 Will she, the cruel, care to find 
 
 Where they have laid my lonely head ? 
 
 And, once or twice, when spring is here, 
 Forego some trivial social tie. 
 
 To bring my grave a niggard tear. 
 The sequel of a scanty sigh ? 
 45
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 Weep ! just enough to give your eyes 
 A brightness, as of April rain : 
 
 One tear for all my thousand sighs. 
 And countless kisses given in vain. 
 
 Assign my solemn resting-place 
 Six moments of thy bustling day, 
 
 Between the drive, the mart, the race. 
 The rout, the concert, and the play. 
 
 Let worldlings and their world forget 
 To rule thee, darling, for an hour ; 
 
 Give me a fragment of regret. 
 
 Bring me some silly wayside flower. 
 
 And ask thy heart, that heart of steel. 
 How comes this man to sleep below ? 
 
 What phase of death was his to feel. 
 What shock of doom, what lethal blow ? 
 46
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 Speak in soft accents of thy friend ; 
 
 Dear heart, he cannot vex thee now. 
 For lovers' quarrels surely end, 
 
 When dust is on the lover's brow. 
 
 And let thy voice, I found so sweet. 
 Discuss my fate, appraise my deeds ; 
 
 And garner in thy heart my wheat, 
 And clean forget my idle weeds. 
 
 So let me feign and cheat my mind. 
 That thou wilt so rehearse my tale. 
 
 That I may fancy thou art kind, 
 When kindness is of small avail. 
 
 Say this — * I read, my ancient love. 
 The record of thy name and years. 
 
 Graved on the slab thy rest above : 
 'Tis brief — as brief as woman's tears.' 
 
 47
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 Say then — * The long and sweet desire, 
 The fearless Hope, the granite Trust, 
 
 The poet's lips, the lover's fire. 
 Are ended — in a little dust. 
 
 * My old dead love was good and kind, 
 But he was broken down with woes : 
 
 And doubts upon his deeper mind 
 Made havoc in my dreams of rose. 
 
 * I said, Ye ages, bring me then 
 A perfect lover, rich and great, 
 
 A captain and a king of men. 
 
 Unroll him, misty clouds of Fate. 
 
 ' But this poor love of homespun gray. 
 This honest heart, these faded eyes, 
 
 Come anywhen and any day — 
 
 My beauty claims a lordlier prize.' 
 48
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 * He trod the humbler fields of time : 
 How should he gain me gear or gold ? 
 
 How should this dullard hope to climb, 
 Who hardly knew how Faith is sold ? 
 
 ' He was no senate quack, who came 
 To nibble at the public purse, 
 
 And rise, a charlatan, to fame 
 By leaving bad a little worse. 
 
 * The balm of popular success 
 Ignored his inconspicuous head, 
 
 The unction of the daily press 
 In inky blessings ne'er was shed. 
 
 ' He spun no cotton, owned no banks, 
 He ran no racers, gave no balls, 
 
 He had no deer with dappled flanks 
 To trot around his stuccoed halls. 
 D 49
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 ' He came no king of beer to crowd 
 The jostling streets with barrelled drays. 
 
 No huckster, full of promise, loud 
 
 To sing the mighty Mammon's praise. 
 
 * Too proud to tell the rabble votes. 
 That all the mob demands is true : 
 
 Too dull to learn the parrot notes 
 Of Freedom from the last Review. 
 
 ' Too slow to feign a patriot fire, 
 Then clutch the prizes of the game ; 
 
 Or follow ankle-deep in mire 
 
 The beckoning smile of spurious Fame. 
 
 ' He did not trust some cherub black, 
 To ope the El Dorado gate, 
 
 Nor went with every lantern jack. 
 Who flickers o'er a festering State. 
 50
 
 A MAR ANTH 
 
 ' He stood aside and watched the strife, 
 Weary, and longing to depart : 
 
 He left, as assets of his life, 
 The record of a wasted heart. 
 
 ' At least he loved me : this concede : 
 But I entrenched my soul in pride. 
 
 So when I scorned and would not heed, 
 He drew Life's curtain down and died. 
 
 * Yet thro' the pleading of his vows 
 Ambition whispered, " Do not yield, 
 
 He is as poor as some church mouse, 
 I lead you to a golden field." 
 
 * Of all my lovers that remain. 
 
 None loved me with so firm a zeal. 
 
 My shallow fancy could not feign 
 A passion, which I dared not feel. 
 51
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 ^ He was too humble in his suit. 
 And I too proud in my disdain ; 
 
 And now, because his Hps are mute, 
 I fain would hear their love again. 
 
 ' I fain would have thee at my side, 
 
 When Spring is reaching out her hands, 
 
 When April, like a weeping bride. 
 Sails o'er the rosy orchard lands. 
 
 * When May winds bathe the reedy isles. 
 Where swans are nesting with their broods. 
 
 And sheets of sapphire pave for miles 
 The floors of hyacinthine woods. 
 
 ' When sweet field-roses fringe the lane. 
 And balmy hangs the incense thorn : 
 
 And, dreaming of ambrosial rain. 
 The violet wakens, morn by morn, 
 52
 
 AMARANTH 
 
 ' He will not wake, tho' snowdrops rise. 
 Nor greet the woodland bells of blue : — 
 
 I hail thee, love, with streaming eyes. 
 Adieu, my love ! my love, adieu ! 
 
 * Thou canst not breathe the morning breath. 
 
 Nor hear the bees about the bloom. 
 Nor see them settle on this wreath, 
 My trembling fingers bring thy tomb. 
 
 * I bring thee amaranth and rue. 
 
 I leave my garland and depart. 
 More bitter than the branch of yew 
 The anguish of my aching heart.' 
 
 53
 
 CIRCE 
 
 CIRCE 
 
 This is the fair witch Circe, queen divine. 
 The daughter of the Sun : her charming 
 
 wand 
 Rests on her ivory shoulder at command : 
 She holds a chalice of enchanted wine. 
 The sweet wine sweeter from the rosy hand. 
 She sits within a grove of gray wych-elms. 
 And sings across the waves with siren breath, 
 To call her lovers in from twilight realms, 
 To crowd their foolish sails for love and death. 
 And near the rocking breakers, drear and 
 
 dread. 
 She hath a lordly palace of delight. 
 And a rich chamber where her couch is spread 
 With gems like orient sunrise, flashing light ; 
 54
 
 CIRCE 
 
 Ruby and opal, sard and sardonyx 
 
 In soft effulgence mix ; 
 
 Beryl and chrysolite 
 
 Beam on her brow by night ; 
 
 Her drowsy lips are kissed 
 
 By rays of amethyst. 
 
 A loom is in her chamber, purple-flecked 
 A giant web expands, whereon is wrought 
 Nature in all her colours, fancy-caught ; 
 Above that web two Cupids rosy-necked. 
 Almost alive in tinted Parian rock, 
 Mingle their locks together, each gauzed wing 
 Trembles and fans with light aerial shock. 
 As when two bees within one peony swing. 
 These brother Loves embrace. 
 Rosed with the shadow of the rose's face. 
 With fragrant mouths they seem to inter- 
 breathe. 
 And there is passion in their lips of stone. 
 That gives the icy marble living grace. 
 And flushes underneath : 
 55
 
 CIRCE 
 
 As on the snow-cloud grows 
 The dawn's red undertone, 
 When lisphig zephyr blows. 
 
 And on each image from a flickering fire 
 Of cedar logs and bay-wood heaped behind 
 Reddens the flame and shimmers at its spire. 
 But of those Loves is neither sculptured blind. 
 One holds a rose — that means long love 
 
 desire : 
 One holds an asphodel — that means reward. 
 And on their brows is coral-berried yew, 
 An emblem harsh and hard, 
 That means — ah, well a day, — 
 For lovers false and lovers true. 
 Sleep and its cloudy pinions, silvering 
 The folded hands and sharpened faces gray, 
 Sleep on her raven wing : 
 Sleep that no magic flower can charm away, 
 Or make us rise again, 
 The ruined sons of Care : 
 The slain of Love, the slain 
 56
 
 CIRCE 
 
 Of the huge hooks and arrows of Despair. 
 
 O asphodel, Elysian asphodel, 
 
 Bedding Adonis in his wounded pain. 
 
 Flower of the heroes' dell, — 
 
 Dead lovers these of thine. 
 
 My Circe fine. 
 
 They are beyond thy sway 
 
 Into a deeper day 
 
 Past, unremembered wrecks of vain desire. 
 
 And broken lutes of passion's golden lyre. 
 
 Thy might is ended where the grave begins, 
 
 And thy innocuous spells 
 
 Fall by the margin of the sea of sins. 
 
 Done with as empty shells. 
 
 Dead, ay, and done with, not thy beauty's 
 
 beam 
 Can make these men arise : 
 Their feet are tangled in the nets of dream, 
 They cross the stream of sighs. 
 Canst thou put breath between those wasted 
 
 lips 
 
 57
 
 CIRCE 
 
 That hold the boatman's toll. 
 
 The ferry-coin, where uncouth Charon ships 
 
 The Lethe-sailing soul ? 
 
 They end and thou abidest : in a shroud 
 
 They pass to dust. New victims find thee 
 
 fair : 
 Into thy net new shoals of tunnies crowd, 
 New moths fall burning from thy radiant hair. 
 These creatures of a day acclaim thee queen. 
 And for their span of time exalt thy power ; 
 All nature lies before thee, fresh and green. 
 My locust to devour. 
 Siren of blood and tears, the road to thee 
 Is paved with bramble hooks that rend the 
 
 feet, 
 Thy crystal breast is paradise to see, 
 Beyond all breath of roses thou art sweet. 
 Thy brows, more lovely than the rainbow, are 
 Woven with many a star 
 Of the delicious deadly asphodel. 
 That in thy tresses braided shines afar, 
 When thou dost weave thy spell : 
 58
 
 CIRCE 
 
 Stern as Medea in her dragon car, 
 
 Or as Canidia fell : 
 
 Or cruel as Medusa's sculptured face. 
 
 Set on a targe of war. 
 
 But other days thou wearest childish grace 
 
 By contrast to ensnare, 
 
 Aping the startled fawn, whom bugles scare. 
 
 Blown in the dewy glade. 
 
 Or in some new disguise, 
 
 To allure deluded eyes, 
 
 Thou art the shrinking violet, half afraid. 
 
 That, in rathe April born. 
 
 Where icy winds complain. 
 
 Hardly unfolds her petals to the morn 
 
 Between the rainbow and the weep of rain. 
 
 What blind one, wearing eyes and wanting 
 
 brain, 
 Wilt thou, pale Circe, conquer with thy 
 
 spell ? 
 To whom are kisses given, 
 Until he holds thee beautiful as heaven, 
 59
 
 CIRCE 
 
 Golden as gold, too sweet for words to 
 
 tell. 
 And all his soul is in thy roseleaf hands. 
 Where thou a queen dost sit in soft repose. 
 Watching the radiant lands. 
 Thy shrine of Love is there 
 A charnel masked with rose. 
 Love guards the entrance fair. 
 Ringed round with rainbow glows. 
 'Tis Love disguised as Death 
 Sits masked in iris ray, 
 And under his rose wreath 
 The scanty locks grow gray. 
 His eyes are hollow dim, 
 As a glow-worm on a grave. 
 He is great, O kneel to him : 
 Great to slay, and great to save. 
 Beneath the altar floors 
 The poisoned adder waits. 
 Behind the agate doors. 
 And round the burnished gates 
 The mighty pythons coil. 
 60
 
 CIRCE 
 
 And toads unsanctified 
 
 The precinct pavement soil, 
 
 And in the garlands hide. 
 
 The altar burns ; in rubied cup divine. 
 
 From perfumed chalice shed, 
 
 Pour out the glow of thy enchanted wine. 
 
 Wine for the lovers, who have loved thee 
 
 dear. 
 And come to wed : 
 A cup of consolation, deep and clear, 
 They need no second tasting : they are dead. 
 
 In saffron-coloured pride 
 For Hymen art thou clad. 
 My Circe, sweeter bride 
 Ne'er made a bridegroom glad. 
 Or draped in Fortune's robe. 
 Ruler of blood and breath. 
 Thy wheel directs the globe, 
 O Fortune, which art Death ! 
 Thy paradise embowers 
 Faint Acherusian flowers, 
 6i
 
 CIRCE 
 
 The warlock's charms of might, 
 
 Dwale, henbane, aconite 
 
 From gardens of despair, 
 
 To be as orange blossom in thy hair, 
 
 Sweet deadly rose ; 
 
 Altar of Love wrapt round with hemlock 
 
 band. 
 To whom exultant goes 
 Thy victim and thy bridegroom : to whose 
 
 hand 
 Death shall divide his posies, as the bride 
 Divides her kisses bland. 
 In maiden pride. 
 
 Death shall assign the coral apples small. 
 The blooms of violet hue 
 And central orange anther, whence bees fall 
 Drowsy with poisoned dew. 
 This is the nightshade, and its night is drear. 
 It apes the honest ivy in its leaves. 
 And in its grapelets mocks the clusters clear. 
 That shade the brow of Bacchus ; when he 
 
 weaves 
 
 62
 
 CIRCE 
 
 Some drowsy nymph in tendril curls of vine; 
 
 What better bloom divine 
 
 Could drape our Circe for her couch attired, 
 
 And veil her gentle breast. 
 
 An Ariadne of all men desired. 
 
 But only god-caressed : 
 
 As she lies sparkling in her nuptial glory : 
 
 What tho' its leaves behind 
 
 With fang-froth yet be hoary, 
 
 Are not all lovers blind ? 
 
 'Tis but the cuckoo's kiss. 
 
 Which bathes the clematis, 
 
 Or the ragged robin often. 
 
 When east winds begin to soften. 
 
 And who art thou, enchantress, serpent fell, 
 Lamia, whose dazzling eyes 
 Draw as with cords the nations to thy spell 
 To perish ? Thou, who slayest with love-sighs 
 Thy foolish lovers : fast as summer flies 
 Drop in a cup of mead or hydromel, 
 Or tangle in the web Arachne ties. 
 63
 
 CIRCE 
 
 O loveless vengeance, masked in Love's attire, 
 
 O hate, that stealest Passion's sweetest lyre. 
 
 Vampire, whose beauty ripens on much 
 death, 
 
 Siren, whose throne is built with bones be- 
 neath ; 
 
 Blaspheming, soiling, and degrading him 
 
 The ineffable, the crown, the ray 
 
 Of all things ; in whose absence heaven is 
 dim. 
 
 Love, at whose effluence utmost earth is gay. 
 
 And the gray fountains flow. 
 
 And the rathe lilies blow ; 
 
 Love lays his emerald mantle on the hills. 
 
 Love pours his rich blood in the mountain 
 rills : 
 
 He bathes in sunset colours the flushed sea. 
 
 Mighty and lord is he. 
 
 "What dire Plutonian birth 
 
 On this bewildered earth 
 
 Gave breath and empire, baleful queen, to 
 thee ? 
 
 64
 
 CIRCE 
 
 Wild paean shook the Eblis halls of fire, 
 When thou wert born : old woes, 
 Shadows and phantoms of outwept desire. 
 Long dead, from charnels rose. 
 Love on thy cradle smiled, a babe divine. 
 And watched thy infant breath, 
 Love bitter as Despair and sweet as wine. 
 Love bitter-sweet as Death. 
 Time guided thee a daughter of delight 
 Upon thy beaming way : 
 And hung thy hair with jewels, as the night 
 Is spangled with star-ray. 
 Time made thee lovelier than all paradise, 
 A drop of god's own dew. 
 Distilled into a rainbow from blue ice, 
 Where falcon never flew. 
 The vital pomp of may-time and of morn 
 Shall glitter in her eyes. 
 Princes shall sell their honour for her scorn. 
 And wreck their realms with sighs. 
 If she lament, the languid lilies stain. 
 If she deplore, rust gathers on the rose. 
 E 65
 
 CIRCE 
 
 If she bewail, in sympathetic pain 
 Night weeping rings with philomela's 
 
 woes. 
 The stars attend her dreams 
 And bathe her with repose, 
 She Res in silver beams 
 A flushed unopened rose. 
 
 66
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 Of Greece the Muse of Glory sings. 
 Of Greece in furious onset brave ; 
 
 Whose mighty fleets, on falcon wings. 
 To vengeance sweep across the wave. 
 
 There on the mounded flats of Troy 
 The hero captains of the morn 
 
 Come forth and conquer, tho' the boy 
 Of Thetis keeps his tent in scorn. 
 
 There in the sweet Ionian prime 
 The much-enduring sailor goes. 
 
 And from the thorny paths of time 
 He plucks adventure like a rose. 
 67
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 There sits Atrides, grave and great, 
 
 Grim king of blood and lust-deed done, 
 
 Caught in the iron wheels of Fate 
 To hand the curse from sire to son. 
 
 A fated race ! And who are these 
 With viper locks and scorpion rods. 
 
 Dim shades of ruin and disease, 
 
 Who float around his household Gods ? 
 
 Alas, for wife and children small : 
 
 Blood comes, as from the rosebush bloom ; 
 
 The very dogs about his hall 
 
 Are conscious of their master's doom. 
 
 Or see the fleet victorious steed 
 In Pindar's whirlwind sweep along, 
 
 To whom a more than mortal meed 
 Remains, the bard's eternal song. 
 68
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 What are the statues Phidias cast, 
 But dust between the palms of Fate ? 
 
 A thousand winters cannot blast 
 Their leaf ; if Pindar celebrate 
 
 Great Hiero, Lord of Syracuse, 
 Or Theron, chief of Acragas, 
 
 These despots wisely may refuse 
 Record in unenduring brass. 
 
 For Pindar sang the sinewy frame, 
 The nimble athlete's supple grip ; 
 
 He gave the gallant horse to fame. 
 Who passed the goal without a whip, 
 
 The coursers of the island kings 
 Jove-born, magnanimously calm : 
 
 When gathered Greece at Elis rings 
 In pasan of the victor's palm.
 
 HELI, AS AND ROME 
 
 Or hear the shepherd bard divine 
 Transfuse the music of his lay 
 
 With echoes from the mountain pine, 
 And wave-wash from the answering bay. 
 
 And all around in pasturing flocks 
 
 His goatherds flute with plaintive reeds. 
 
 His lovers whisper from the rocks. 
 His halcyons flit o'er flowery meads : 
 
 Where galingale with iris blends 
 In plumy fringe of lady fern; 
 
 And sweet the Dorian wave descends 
 From topmost ^Etna's snow-bright urn. 
 
 Or gentle Arethusa lies, 
 
 Beside her brimming fountain sweet, 
 With lovely brow and languid eyes. 
 
 And river lilies at her feet. 
 70
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 Or listen to the lordly hymn, 
 The weird Adonis, pealing new, 
 
 Full of the crimson twilight dim. 
 Bathed in Astarte's fiery dew. 
 
 In splendid shrine without a breath 
 The wounded lovely hunter hes : 
 
 And who has decked the couch of death ? 
 The sister-spouse of Ptolemies. 
 
 We seem to hear a god's lament, 
 The sobbing pathos of despair : 
 
 We seem to see her garments rent, 
 And ashes in ambrosial hair. 
 
 Clouds gather, where the mystic Nile, 
 Seven-headed, stains the ambient deep. 
 
 The chidden sun forgets to smile. 
 Where lilies on lake Moeris sleep. 
 7^
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 Slumber and Silence cloud the face 
 
 Of Isis in gold-ivory shrine : 
 And Silence seems to reach the race, 
 
 Whose youth was more than half divine. 
 
 'Tis gone — The chords no longer glow : 
 The Bards of Greece forget to sing ; 
 
 Their hands are numb, their hearts are slow 
 Their numbers creep without a wing. 
 
 Their ebbing Helicons refuse 
 The droplet of a droughty tide. 
 
 The fleeting footsteps of the Muse 
 We follow to the Tiber side. 
 
 The Dorian Muse with Cypris ends : 
 With Cypris wakes the Latian lyre : 
 
 And, sternly sweet, Lucretius blends 
 Her praise inspired with epic fire. 
 72
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 To thee, my Memmius, amply swells 
 Rich prelude to her genial power, 
 
 Her world-renewing force, which dwells 
 In man, herd, insect, fish, or flower. 
 
 Supremely fair, serenely sweet, 
 
 The wondering waves beheld her birth. 
 The power, whose regal pulses beat 
 
 Thro' every fibre of the earth. 
 
 Why should we tax the gods with woe. 
 They sit outside, they bear no part ? 
 
 They never wove the rainbow's glow, 
 They never built the human heart. 
 
 These careless idlers who can blame ? 
 
 If Chance and Nature govern men ; 
 The universe from atoms came. 
 
 And back to atoms rolls again. 
 73
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 As earthly kings they keep their state, 
 The cup of joy is in their hands; 
 
 The war-note deepens at their gate. 
 They hear a wail of hungry lands. 
 
 They feast, they let the turmoil drive. 
 And Nature scorns their fleeting sway 
 
 She ruled before they were alive. 
 
 She rules when they are passed away. 
 
 Before the poet's wistful face 
 
 The flaming walls of ether glow : 
 
 He sees the lurid brinks of Space, 
 Nor trembles at the gulfs below. 
 
 He feels himself a foundering bark. 
 Tossed on the tides of Time alone. 
 
 Blindly he rushes on the dark, 
 
 Nor waits his summons to be gone. 
 
 74
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 Wake, mighty Virgil, nor refuse 
 Some glimpses of thy laurelled face : 
 
 Sound westward, wise Ausonian Muse, 
 The epic of a martial race. 
 
 Grim warriors, whom the wolf-dug rears, 
 Strong legions, patient, steadfast, brave. 
 
 Who meet the shock of hostile spears. 
 As sea-walls meet the trivial wave. 
 
 Justice and Peace their highest good. 
 By sacred law they held their sway. 
 
 The ruler's instinct in their blood 
 Taught them to govern and obey. 
 
 They crushed the proud, the weak they spared. 
 They loosed the prostrate captive's chain : 
 
 And civic rights and birthright shared 
 Made him respect their equal reign. 
 75
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 They grappled in their nervous hands 
 The nations as a lump of dough : 
 
 To Calpe came their gleaming bands, 
 To Ister grinding reefs of snow. 
 
 And where the reedy Mincius rolled 
 By Manto's marsh the crystal swan, 
 
 There Maro smote his harp of gold. 
 And on the chords fierce glory shone. 
 
 The crested metre clomb and fell ; 
 
 The sounding word, the burnished phrase 
 Rocked on like ocean's tidal swell. 
 
 With sunbeam on the water-ways. 
 
 He sang the armoured man of fate, 
 The father of eternal Rome, 
 
 The great begetter of the great. 
 Who piled the empire yet to come. 
 76
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 He sang of Daphnis, rapt to heaven, 
 At threshold of Olympian doors, 
 
 Who sees below the cloud rack driven, 
 And wonders at the gleaming floors. 
 
 He sang the babe, whose wondrous birth. 
 By Cumas's sibyl long foretold. 
 
 Should rule a renovated earth. 
 An empire and an age of gold. 
 
 He sang great Gallus, wrapt in woe. 
 When sweet Lycoris dared depart 
 
 To follow in the Rhineland snow 
 The soldier of her fickle heart. 
 
 The nectared lips that sang are mute, 
 And dust the pale Virgilian brows. 
 
 And dust the wonder of the lute. 
 And dust around the charnel-house.
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 Above the aloes spiring tall. 
 Among the oleander's bloom, 
 
 Urned in a craggy mountain hall, 
 The peasant points to Virgil's tomb. 
 
 The empire, which oppressed the world. 
 Has vanished like a bead of foam ; 
 
 And down the rugged Goths have hurled 
 The slender roseleaf sons of Rome. 
 
 For ages in some northern cave 
 
 The plaintive Muse of herdsmen slept, 
 
 Till, waking by the Cam's wise wave. 
 Once more her Lycid lost she wept. 
 
 As pilgrims to thy realm of death. 
 Great Maro, we are humbly come. 
 
 To breathe one hour thy native breath, 
 
 To scan the lordly wreck of Rome. 
 
 78
 
 HELLAS AND ROME 
 
 And, tho' thy Muses all are fled 
 To some uncouth Teutonic town, 
 
 Sleep, minstrel of the mighty dead, 
 Sleep in the fields of thy renown. 
 
 79
 
 A WINTER SKETCH 
 
 A WINTER SKETCH 
 
 When the snow begins to feather, 
 And the woods begin to roar, 
 
 Clashing angry boughs together. 
 As the breakers grind the shore. 
 
 Nature then a bankrupt goes. 
 
 Full of wreck and full of woes. 
 
 When the swan for warmer forelands 
 Leaves the sea-firth's icebound edge : 
 
 When the gray geese from the moorlands 
 Cleave the cloud in noisy wedge. 
 
 Woodlands stand in frozen chains. 
 
 Hung with ropes of solid rains. 
 80
 
 A WINTER SKETCH 
 
 Shepherds creep to byre and haven. 
 Sheep in drifts are nipped and numb 
 
 Some belated rook or raven 
 Rocks upon a sign-post dumb. 
 
 Mere-waves solid as a clod 
 
 Roar with skaters thunder-shod. 
 
 All the roofs and chimneys rumble, 
 
 Roads are ridged with slush and sleet ; 
 
 Down the orchard apples tumble, 
 Ploughboys stamp their frosty feet. 
 
 Millers, jolted down the lanes. 
 
 Hardly feel for cold their reins. 
 
 Snipes are calling from the trenches. 
 Frozen half and half at flow. 
 
 In the porches servant wenches 
 Work with shovels at the snow. 
 
 Rusty blackbirds, weak of wing, 
 
 Clean forget thpy once could sing. 
 F 8i
 
 A WINTER SKETCH 
 
 Dogs and boys fetch down the cattle, 
 Deep in mire and powdered pale : 
 
 Spinning wheels commence to rattle. 
 Landlords spice the smoking ale. 
 
 Hail, white winter, lady fine. 
 
 In a cup of elder wine. 
 
 82
 
 A SONG OF DUST 
 
 A SONG OF DUST 
 
 When we, my love, are gone to dust. 
 And nature, as of old, is fair : 
 
 When on thy rosy cheek is rust, 
 And stain sepulchral on thy hair. 
 
 When from the slab, that marks our sleep. 
 The raindrop eats our names away : 
 
 And cushioned li':hens gently creep 
 To make the beaming letters gray. 
 
 When March winds wake the silken palm, 
 And wave-worn wheatears skim the sea. 
 
 When merles begin their marriage psalm, 
 And doves are tender in the tree. 
 83
 
 A SONG OF DUST 
 
 When, year by year, the mosses bloom 
 Their little elfin caps of red : 
 
 And April dewdrops on thy tomb 
 Weep out in daisies o'er the dead ; 
 
 These tears, I weep upon thy hand, 
 Shall pass as leaves in autumn air. 
 
 And who unborn shall understand, 
 If thou wert sweet, if thou wert fair? 
 
 Who shall embalm thee in a song 
 A hundred years to cheat repose ? 
 
 Oblivion rolls its flood along. 
 
 Till Time forgets one wasted rose. 
 
 Who shall explain this lovely thing 
 To generations yet to be ? 
 
 Will evanescent beauty wing 
 Her flight to dim futurity ? 
 84
 
 A SONG OF DUST 
 
 No lease is hers of lengthened hours 
 Her love a momentary ray. 
 
 Crisping the calyx of the flowers, 
 Is sped before the lift of day. 
 
 A little while the whitethorn blows. 
 And all the grasses rarely spring. 
 
 Then crimsons out the wild field rose. 
 And swallows rest their travelled wing. 
 
 And fair are maidens in their prime ; 
 
 And lovers pledge eternal truth. 
 When for an hour the cup of Time 
 
 Is nectar on the lips of youth. 
 
 Love and the nest of birds are sweet ; 
 
 Till, like a broken hope, the flower, 
 Warm at the early sunbeam's feet, 
 
 Lies shattered cold at evening's hour. 
 85
 
 A SONG OF DUST 
 
 No perfect joy thy life endears. 
 
 What light is thine ? Some casual gleam, 
 Which, rising thro' a mist of tears. 
 
 Falls on the phantoms of thy dream. 
 
 All shall forget thee, as a breath 
 From clover meadows richly shed ; 
 
 Divine as coloured evening's death. 
 Thy cheek will lose its lustrous red. 
 
 Pale as a wreath of alpine snows, 
 She lies in marble silence sweet. 
 
 When rigid Death doth interpose 
 
 The stark and long-drawn winding sheet. 
 
 O region of the moonless grave. 
 Lonely and lurid is thy home. 
 
 Where Love, who came so fresh and brave, 
 Is narrowed in with shelving loam. 
 86
 
 A SONG OF DUST 
 
 Love old and gray and nearly blind 
 
 Among the mounds, whose bleeding feet 
 
 The fangs of winding brambles bind, 
 The hooks of bitter roses meet. 
 
 And Pride, with all her trophies torn. 
 Hangs o'er a funeral urn to weep 
 
 The devious night, the tardy morn, 
 Belated in the paths of sleep. 
 
 And eyes, that dim the violet made, 
 Forget to shed their gracious rays : 
 
 When, on each darkened eyelid's shade, 
 The midnight of oblivion weighs. 
 
 The ages in an endless tide 
 
 Advance their still encroaching feet : 
 The present, like a golden bride. 
 
 Is faultless for an hour and sweet. 
 87
 
 A SONG OF DUST 
 
 Time will not stay for thee, my love. 
 The clouds are coming and the snow ; 
 
 The thunder rocks the realms above — 
 One farewell kiss before we go. 
 
 A song of dust for waning years, 
 A solemn song in sackcloth clad : 
 
 Whose chords are wet with poignant tears. 
 And its pale singer's lips are sad.
 
 THE DEATF^ OF FHAETHON 
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 PHAETHON, HAVING PERSUADED HIS FATHER, HELIOS, TO 
 
 ALLOW HIM TO DRIVE THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN FOR 
 
 ONE DAY, STARTS ON HIS JOURNEY. 
 
 Before him the immeasurable heaven 
 Lay deep and boundless. The eternal stars, 
 Pulsing and throbbing in the blue profound, 
 Grew nearer. Slow revolving lights of 
 
 heaven. 
 Their golden spheres with moony clusters 
 
 mixed. 
 Made orbit ; and, beyond, as amber dust, 
 A sprinkling of innumerable globes, 
 Sown on the outward limits of the void : 
 Beyond all computation and account, 
 The seed and drift of undeveloped worlds. 
 In their bright millions rolling on their way. 
 89
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 The wonder of that wilderness of god 
 Flushed all his face, as swiftly rolled the car. 
 So slides some fleecy cloud along the dawn, 
 When the young east grows rosy, and wild 
 
 rain 
 Wrecks half the mountain woods and rends 
 
 the pines. 
 
 So in his brief and baleful hour of joy. 
 The boy exulted in the soaring rush 
 Of that celestial road : he joyed to feel 
 The mighty long-haired coursers of the sun 
 At his command, and all their speed his own. 
 The gleaming chariot his : the pomp of 
 
 heaven, 
 His : in his veins the ichor of a god 
 Seemed to dilate his pulse with spirit fire. 
 And with an easy rein his hand could guide 
 Time and Dominion: his to wake the 
 
 world. 
 His to refresh the flushed auroral light 
 In splendid waves and cloud of purple foam, 
 90
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 A glorious task, well worth a god's control, 
 To wake the dewy fields and oceans old, 
 And lift the veil from Morning's violet eyes. 
 
 Then the rash boy in arrogant disdain 
 Shook the bright reins and shouted impious 
 
 words 
 Behind the horses, nor the lash refrained ; 
 Vain-glorious, clouded with the madding 
 
 fume 
 Of ill-accustomed honour. He would climb 
 God with the godlike now. Too long withheld 
 He grasped his birthright : all the bitter past, 
 Sordid, obscure, the delving, rustic days. 
 The dark dim days with herds and vacant 
 
 boors. 
 End in the nectar cup and festal heaven. 
 
 As when the rathe and poignant spring divine 
 Sighs all too soon among the hoary woods. 
 And from the fleecy drifts of sodden snow 
 With promise and with perfume calls her buds, 
 91
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 And the buds open when they hear her feet, 
 And open but to perish. So his heart 
 Bloomed in a burst of immortality, 
 Nor feared the onward rolling vans of doom. 
 Yearning he had and hunger to ascend. 
 To sit at endless feast, with purple robes 
 To fold his limbs in sheer magnificence. 
 With rays of glory round his radiant hair, 
 And deity effulgent in his brows : 
 A dream divine, whose passionate desire 
 Flooded his soul, till in the golden car 
 He trembled at the vision : as a leaf 
 Moved by a gale of splendour, that comes on. 
 When, at the point of sunrise, the wind 
 
 sweeps 
 With sudden ray and music across the sea. 
 So in that rapture of presumptuous joy 
 He spake a dreadful and an impious word ; 
 That he was nature's lord and king of gods. 
 He cared not now for Zeus, how should he 
 
 care ? 
 Let the old dotard nod and doze above. 
 92
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 He rode the morning in unchecked career, 
 Apparelled in his sire's regalities. 
 The new Hyperion, greater than his sire ; 
 While the swift hooves beat music to his 
 
 dream : 
 And for a little while his heart was glad, 
 Throbbing Olympian ichors. For an hour 
 Elate, he bore an ecstasy too great 
 For mortal nerve, and knew the pride of 
 
 gods. 
 
 The rushing air came on his brows, the deep 
 Ether around him rustled in his ears. 
 Among those awful solitudes, on, on. 
 The headlong onset of his coursers swept. 
 Light and the speed drew dimness on his 
 
 eyes : 
 And, in the flakes and sparkles of the wheels, 
 He drove as in a fountain drift of fire, 
 Orbed in a splendid shower of lambent gold ; 
 He bore it not for long, an icy chill 
 Crept upwards inch by inch against his heart, 
 93
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 And formless horror deepened up behind ; 
 Unguessed as yet, more awful from the 
 
 shroud, 
 That hid its spectral features, creeping on. 
 Then impious exultation flared and fled. 
 And shuddering he beheld before his mind. 
 No nectar cup but Charon's charnel boat. 
 And the rose visions on his region clouds 
 Unpurpled all their gates, and gathered in 
 A core of thunder ripening ragged brows. 
 He saw and he despaired : an abject fear 
 Perplexed the demigod, who lately rode 
 Vaunting himself so proudly : now dismayed. 
 And horribly confounded in the toils 
 Of the great net his upstart pride had spread. 
 
 But when the horses guessed their driver's fear. 
 And felt the reins that shuddered in his 
 
 grasp, 
 A grievous panic dimmed their dauntless 
 
 mood, 
 In anger at the feeble charioteer. 
 94
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 Then with mad impulse and a headlong ire, 
 They scorned control, and swept resistless 
 
 on 
 
 Who shall assuage them now ? Not Her- 
 cules, 
 Not Atlas shoring up the beams of heaven. 
 And all the chariot rocked from side to side, 
 And he, who guided, quailed upon his bench ; 
 For these ethereal coursers, panic-wild. 
 Felt not his check and heeded not his rein 
 More than the pressure of a lighted fly. 
 He might as well pull back some granite 
 
 clifF, 
 Athos unroot, dislodge Pelorus huge : 
 Or drag some river python from his ooze. 
 As set his weakling hand to check or chain 
 The corded sinews of their iron necks. 
 How could he calm their nostrils, snorting 
 
 out 
 The cloudy vapour of resentful ire ? 
 He found no balm, no comfort, no resource : 
 And so with ineffectual fingers numb, 
 95
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 Gave them reluctant way and let them sweep. 
 Through splendid zones of flushing roseate 
 
 haze ; 
 He heeded not their splendour : he beheld 
 The glimmer of his last poor rushlight hope 
 Abolished, vanished, blotted out, extinct. 
 He saw the vengeance of the sire supreme 
 Reach in red anger at his armories. 
 To unlink the sleeping thunder. And he 
 
 knew. 
 That from the gloomy oracles of Jove 
 Doom had gone out on his presumptuous 
 
 head. 
 
 Then scorning curb at such a nerveless hand. 
 The mighty steeds, who bring the beam of 
 
 morn, 
 In furious speed, revolting, broke away, 
 Straining the reins and loosening on the void 
 Flakes of dim foam, shed off like little clouds : 
 Wide-eyed, dishevelled, tossing their lithe 
 
 heads, 
 
 96
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 And ruffling out the tangle of their manes, 
 Groaning and heaving, vapoured in a breath 
 Of effort, toiling as immortals toil : 
 And down their panting flanks the heat-drops 
 rolled. 
 
 Then those undaunted horses first knew fear. 
 And cloudy horror vexed their mighty hearts. 
 When they perceived. Fate, mother of sur- 
 prise. 
 Had made the sacred process of the sun 
 The plaything of a fool to steer or wreck. 
 With novice hand : an earthborn charioteer. 
 Usurping the Titanic chariot-bench. 
 To shatter on the void immense abyss 
 The fragments of the sun's triumphal march. 
 What time the fool himself, this spurious god. 
 Rocking and swaying in the chariot floor. 
 Clutched at the golden rail with palsied hand. 
 As some clown drunk with fumes of trodden 
 
 wine. 
 When the red vats unpurple all the hills, 
 G 97
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 And the must trickles down to pipe and song, 
 
 As the rude orgies of the wake begin. 
 
 So stood he dazed and heaved a painful 
 
 breath. 
 That caught and laboured harshly in his 
 
 throat. 
 Not less between his parched and livid lips 
 The torment of immeasurable thirst 
 Raged as a flame, and greatened as they flew. 
 While, matting his half-girlish forehead curls. 
 The dew of his distress lay beaded cold. 
 
 But far away beneath those burning wheels, 
 Came up a gentle whisper of sea waves, 
 Murmur and ripple of music dimly heard. 
 And pleasant shocks of foam : and shaken 
 
 bells 
 On the faint pastoral hills by curving shores. 
 And dim gray forelands steeped in roseate 
 
 haze : 
 And the white fisher cities, perched as birds. 
 In nooks and margins of the mighty seas 
 98
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 At rest : the reed-thatched homes of humble 
 
 men, 
 Who never cloudward soared, but in content 
 Lived on the fickle favour of the waves ; 
 And ploughed for harvest in the heaving 
 
 fields 
 Of rolling Neptune and his gray-green realms. 
 
 But neither restful peace nor human joy 
 Lived in the aspect of thy anguished eyes, 
 Sad son of Phoebus, on whose rash career 
 The inevitable silence crushing came 
 To numb thee round in huge Pythonian coils. 
 Then in one supreme effort for his life. 
 Fiercely he set his ebbing strength to stem 
 That awful chariot race, where Hades sat 
 As arbiter, adjudging wreaths of yew. 
 Yet vain his effort ; cut with leathern thongs, 
 He dropped his bleeding fingers, maimed and 
 
 torn. 
 And those wild coursers swept remorseless on, 
 Because a fool had teased and angered them, 
 99
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 To end rebuke and the rebuker there. 
 
 And wreck themselves, and shed this ape of 
 
 gods. 
 Prone upon ether like a flake of snow. 
 
 Then the sad wretch, seeing his hour was 
 
 come, 
 Called on his father in a hoarse wild cry, 
 Between a sigh and sob, most dire to hear : 
 And from his aching hands, relaxed with 
 
 toil. 
 He dropt the useless wrestle of the reins. 
 They, fluttering in a downward tangle, fell, 
 And caught among the traces and the hooves : 
 And snapt and cracked, and the fierce horses 
 
 plunged. 
 Jumbled in wreck, and rolled with frantic 
 
 feet. 
 Then came a crash, as when thro' sodden 
 
 clouds. 
 Tearing and hissing the blue bol descends ; 
 And on some towering temple's long fa9ade 
 
 100
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 Lights in red vengeance, hurling from the 
 
 frieze 
 Its marble god, the genius of the fane ; 
 So with a deafening peal of thunder shock, 
 The dazzling Delian car was overturned, 
 Wondrous, eternal, treasure-house of rays, — 
 Which even gods revere and men adore 
 With suppliant knee, as in itself a god — 
 Wrecked, ruined, drifted on the idle winds, 
 No better than an infant's broken toy : 
 Into the cloud abyss that racked below. 
 Shed as a dew-bead on a spider's raft. 
 And, headlong from the splintered chariot- 
 bench. 
 The charioteer fell like a fluttered leaf ; 
 Or as a feather shaken from the wing 
 Of some high-soaring eagle, when the hail 
 Falls in a whirlwind and the woods cry back. 
 
 So fell the doomed one, reaching to his sire 
 An ineffectual heap of yearning arms, 
 His father aidless at the pinch of need, 
 
 lOI
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 Remote and far away in idle heaven ; 
 Lapt in amaracus and asphodel, 
 Lotus and oleander and musk-rose : 
 Reclined at endless feast, and had no heed, 
 Purpling with nectar draughts his lip divine. 
 And thought not on his agonising son. 
 
 So helpless and so headlong didst thou fall. 
 Weak heart, unequal to the fiery helm, 
 A rush of heaving limb and fluttered robe. 
 Rolling and spinning like a plummet down 
 Into the spacious gulf of deep blue air : 
 Poor mortal fool, masked in a god's attire, 
 To die in borrowed trappings not thine own. 
 And as a diver, plunging down, divides 
 The columned wall of waters with his weight, 
 Which close in swift reunion, as he sinks. 
 Above his headlong passage to the pearl, — 
 Where the fell shark, that floating dragon, 
 
 guards 
 The rich Hesperian orchards of the main — 
 So, through the cloudy stories of the sky, 
 
 102
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 Long purple belts and blood-red vapour lines, 
 Fell Phaethon ; as falls some Pleiad lost. 
 Dead from the dance her starry sisters weave: 
 And, falling, in his horror he beheld 
 Merciless crag and angry precipice. 
 Waiting to rend him. Underneath, the 
 
 earth 
 Rushed up to meet him with incredible 
 
 speed. 
 Till one green field like lightning came at 
 
 him. 
 Struck his brow wildly and dashed him into 
 
 dead. 
 Shapeless and shattered, void of glory now, 
 Red clay to-day, to-morrow a little dust. 
 
 Ay me, ay me, now let the wail begin. 
 Where is the bright young god, the lovely 
 
 where ^ 
 The sweet limbs like a maiden's, very white. 
 The cheek one rose-leaf ? The young voice 
 
 like song ? 
 
 103
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 Crushed lies the hand that thought to guide 
 
 the sun : 
 Still the proud heart and cold the marble 
 
 lips. 
 Thirsting in vain the chalice of the 
 
 gods. 
 Ay me, ay me ; so must it always end, 
 When man, the mock of doom, this jfleeting 
 
 shade. 
 Disdains the narrow pinfold of his fate : 
 And breaks his heart in vain attempts to 
 
 scale 
 The rampart of the adamantine rocks, 
 Whereon the careless Zeus sits calm and 
 
 crowned. 
 Low art thou fallen, hapless Phaethon ; 
 Be merciful, ye flowers, and cover him : 
 Be silent, birds and bees : gray fountains 
 
 weep : 
 Let his fair sisters come with wild lament. 
 And in their fresh hands bring the cypress 
 
 bough, 
 
 104
 
 THE DEATH OF PHAETHON 
 
 And let the dirge begin. Thou shalt be 
 
 mourned, 
 More than Idaiia mourned her shepherd lost. 
 And softly on thy urn shall fall the tear 
 Of kindred maidens. They shall wrap thy 
 
 limbs 
 In costly cerements, as a monarch's son ; 
 And hide thy ashes in a marble tomb. 
 And give thee yearly rites and garlands due ; 
 As, in the train of each revolving spring, 
 This sad day lives again ; and men shall tell 
 Thy story thro' the never-ending years. 
 
 105
 
 ANTHEA S GARLAND 
 
 ANTHEA'S GARLAND 
 
 Roses, bright with tears of rain, 
 Which Anthea's tresses bind, 
 
 Proudly in her service slain, 
 
 Shed your blossoms on the wind. 
 
 Petals, pure as ocean shell. 
 Leaf by leaf must fall away : 
 
 As from raptured philomel, 
 
 Note by note, descends her lay, 
 
 Cadence shaken on the gale. 
 Fragments of divine desire. 
 
 When the enamoured nightingale 
 Breaks her heart against a brier. 
 io6
 
 ANTHEA S GARLAND 
 
 So let my Anthea's wreath 
 Perish with a royal doom. 
 
 Wasted by the May-god's breath, 
 Dirged by zephyrs to its tomb. 
 
 Die and break upon her breast, 
 Where the sister roses lie ; 
 
 Perish near the ambrosial nest. 
 Where a dove might come to die. 
 
 Till she turn her lustrous eyes 
 
 Downwards on each ruined flower. 
 
 Musing with a world of sighs — 
 ' Love is broken in an hour. 
 
 * Let me sing thy requiem. 
 
 Wasted wreath, which bound my hair, 
 Roses pleasant on the stem. 
 
 Sweetened in the crystal air. 
 107
 
 ANTHEA S GARLAND 
 
 ' Let me speak your epitaph, 
 Garland roses, soon to die. 
 
 On the maiden's heedless laugh, 
 Comes the mother's anxious sigh. 
 
 ' Gay to-day and gray to-morrow. 
 Sad at eve, at morning blithe, 
 
 Runs the burden of our sorrow. 
 
 While the Time-God whets his scythe. 
 
 ' Not in scorn or idle laughter 
 Empty solace will I seek ; 
 
 As this faded wreath, hereafter 
 Soon will fade my damask cheek. 
 
 * In Youth's iris-purpled spaces 
 Lovers join their lips in trust : 
 
 In the realm of faded faces 
 
 Youth and Love return to dust. 
 io8
 
 ANTHEAS GARLAND 
 
 * Hail, yc soon dismembered roses, 
 Hail, dishevelled wreath forlorn. 
 
 In the gracious garden closes 
 
 Noon repairs the wrecks of morn. 
 
 * Soon they blow and soon they perish, 
 Bud and bloom and melt as snows. 
 
 And this god, whom maidens cherish, 
 Love, is briefer than a rose.' 
 
 So she mused and so she ended, 
 
 First she laughed and then she frowned, 
 For the garland, once so splendid, 
 
 Lay in fragments on the ground. 
 
 109
 
 THE FIRST MADRIGAL 
 
 THE FIRST MADRIGAL 
 
 Come away, O gentle breast, 
 Who can tell if Love will stay ? 
 
 As the purple in the west, 
 Love at even fades away : 
 
 As the breaker's foam-wreath crest 
 Cannot keep its iris ray. 
 
 Bloom at ease, most radiant rose. 
 
 Spread thy splendour flushed with light ; 
 
 Will the cloudy verge disclose 
 Halcyon skies for ever bright ? 
 
 Who can tell, what drifted snows 
 
 Menace from the deep-browed night ? 
 no
 
 THE FIRST MADRIGAL 
 
 Fear the fiercely driving rack 
 With its drench of swollen hail ; 
 
 Who shall build thy petals back, 
 If they fall beneath its flail, 
 
 Shattered, in a whirlwind's track. 
 Ruined rosebud of the vale ? 
 
 Will the gnawing canker's hate 
 
 Blight the buds, the' tempest spare ? 
 
 Beauty has no certain date : 
 If one instant she is fair. 
 
 Lapsing Time and wheeling Fate 
 Change her grandeur to despair. 
 
 Love, who burning came at noon. 
 Coldly turns at eve to go. 
 
 When the golden hours of June 
 Change into the month of snow. 
 
 Weeping Love forgets too soon 
 Kisses, which he used to know. 
 Ill
 
 THE FIRST MADRIGAL 
 
 Pale his cheek, his eyes are dim. 
 Sick he lies and like to die. 
 
 Lute and harp, make dirge for him. 
 Where the yellowing wood-leaves lie 
 
 Colder grows each noble limb ; 
 Call, he cannot now reply. 
 
 Calm he lies in marble sleep. 
 
 Shrouded round with branching yew 
 His sad eyes in slumber deep. 
 
 Our sad eyes the tears bedew : 
 For the Love-Lord, weep, O weep, 
 
 Gather rosemary and rue. 
 
 1 12
 
 AN ODE TO A STAR 
 
 AN ODE TO A STAR 
 
 Sweet weary pilgrim of the heavenly places, 
 Star of the gray, pursuing rosy flight : 
 
 Roaming the vast secluded planet spaces 
 Among the spheres of night : 
 
 Thou art all silver-zoned, and radiant-breasted. 
 Veiled round with refluent hair : 
 
 Thy train is meteor dust, thy forehead 
 crested 
 With blue-gold beacon glare. 
 
 As beams, which from a leaden storm-rift 
 curtain 
 
 Silver the ocean gray : 
 As a ship-light, that wrestles in the uncertain 
 
 Furrows of shifting spray — 
 
 H 113
 
 AN ODE TO A STAR 
 
 Thou wendest on, and wilt not die, tho' 
 vapour 
 
 Eat at thy heart, and haze 
 Perplex thy dim refluctuant earnest taper, 
 
 And shake its tortured rays. 
 
 Till for its toil it touch deep rest as payment, 
 
 Queen of its devious way. 
 As some fair child, rose-cheeked, with 
 brightened raiment. 
 
 And fragrant-breathed as May. 
 
 Sweet shall it share then in its sisters' singing. 
 
 As a star only sings : 
 Where, round some palace, like bright swal- 
 lows clinging. 
 
 Hang clustered angel wings : 
 
 Calm shall ungird its sandal-strings of going, 
 Fold its worn plumes of flight, 
 
 And sleek its breast against the overflowing 
 Frondage of primal light. 
 114
 
 AN ODE TO A STAR 
 
 Thus is my song, a lone and wandering 
 meteor, 
 Roaming thro' cloud and breeze ; 
 As in a wild March morn the wave-worn 
 wheatear 
 Scents haven overseas. 
 
 Song of a star, as from some censer shaken, 
 
 Thy perfumed incense blows, 
 And, rolled aloft, while lights auroral waken, 
 
 Reflects their purple glows. 
 
 "5
 
 VENGEANCE 
 
 VENGEANCE 
 
 My lady came in mournful plight, 
 And told me, how some courtly knight 
 Had gabbled o'er her blameless name 
 The censure of a shameless shame. 
 
 And, as she told his hideous lies. 
 And rainy sorrow brimmed her eyes. 
 Upon my sword, beside her laid. 
 She wept three tears against the blade. 
 
 1 raised the hilt, and, nothing loth, 
 Upon its cross I sware an oath : 
 My lips impressed the holy spot. 
 The oath, then sworn, was not forgot. 
 ii6
 
 VENGEANCE 
 
 Next morn, the sacred tears reveal 
 Three rust-spots on the naked steel. 
 I^oWy there are other stains below, 
 They are the life-blood of her foe. 
 
 117
 
 A SERENADE 
 
 A SERENADE 
 
 Peace, where my love reposes, 
 
 A shrine of slumber gray ; 
 Let sleep repair her roses 
 
 Torn by the stress of day. 
 Sleep, till orient skies 
 
 Misty peaks discover, 
 Calling back thy lover, 
 Where afar he lies, 
 Thy lonely lover. 
 
 When will my love awaken, 
 And beam her light on me, 
 
 Like a mighty sunbeam shaken 
 On a dark and shuddering sea ? 
 ii8
 
 A SERENADE 
 
 Drifts of fiery cloud 
 
 Round the mountain smoulder 
 Veils of sleep enfold her, 
 Like a rosy shroud 
 
 Around a rosy shoulder. 
 
 Peace be thine and blessing, 
 
 A peace I cannot share, 
 In troubled dreams caressing 
 
 A phantom maid of air. 
 Melt out, old night, and pass, 
 
 And sow the mountain places 
 With tufted primrose faces ; 
 Then bring the real lass 
 To my embraces. 
 
 119
 
 THE SECOND MADRIGAL 
 
 THE SECOND MADRIGAL 
 
 Woo thy lass while May is here, 
 
 Winter vows are colder. 
 Have thy kiss when lips are near, 
 
 To-morrow you are older. 
 
 Think, if clear the throstle sing, 
 A month his note will thicken : 
 
 A throat of gold in a golden spring 
 At the edge of the snow will sicken. 
 
 Take thy cup and take thy girl, 
 While they come for asking. 
 
 In thy heyday melt the pearl. 
 At the love-ray basking. 
 
 120
 
 THE SECOND MADRIGAL 
 
 Ale is good for careless bards. 
 Wine for wayworn sinners. 
 
 They, who hold the strongest cards, 
 Rise from life as winners. 
 
 121
 
 INFATUATION 
 
 INFATUATION 
 
 To dote upon some silent star for years, 
 Shrined in remotest galaxies above, 
 
 Will bring thee less remorse and fewer tears, 
 Than her cold scorn, harsh echo to thy 
 love. 
 
 Rush to embrace the rainbow still retreating. 
 And at the fen-fire's flicker warm thy hand ; 
 
 Till marble-heart shall bring thee pleasant 
 greeting, 
 Go twist the sea-dunes into ropes of sand. 
 
 122
 
 INFATUATION 
 
 Why dost thou love this lumpish block of 
 stone ? 
 Why gauge the pulses in that shallow 
 breast ? 
 Why make thy fruitless suit, with such a 
 moan. 
 As turtles mourn their raven-plundered 
 nest ? 
 
 Ask pity sooner from the hail, the cloud ; 
 
 And bid the bitter wind spare sail and sea ; 
 The clay-cold maid shall waken in her 
 shroud. 
 And bring her lips, ere thou bring thine, 
 to me. 
 
 I may persuade the tiger from his hate. 
 
 And make the viper gentler than the dove, 
 And train a wolf as watch-dog at my gate, 
 Ere thy flint heart respond one note of 
 love. 
 
 123
 
 INFATUATION 
 
 Make, if thou canst, the ravening vulture 
 kind, 
 And call the kite to leave her carrion slain ; 
 'Twill waste thy pains and harass less thy 
 mind, 
 Than sottish love and obdurate disdain. 
 
 124
 
 THE TOMB : AN ALLEGORY 
 
 THE TOMB : AN ALLEGORY 
 
 I SAW a woman with an infant stand 
 Outside the portal of a vaulted tomb, 
 And on its door were written words of 
 doom, 
 And a vast silence deepened o'er the land. 
 Then, turning to that child, she gave com- 
 mand 
 To kneel beside her at the gate of gloom. 
 And lay before that charnel wreaths of 
 bloom. 
 And press those doors of death with kisses 
 bland. 
 
 125
 
 THE tomb: an allegory 
 
 ' I am the life that gave him to the grave : 
 And this poor child, the pledge of our 
 
 despair, 
 On whom a father's smile might never dwell — 
 Thou hero, whom immortals could not save, 
 Tho' Love was sweet and Time was very 
 
 fair, 
 Thine be the Hlies of the asphodel.' 
 
 126
 
 ANTICIPATION 
 
 ANTICIPATION 
 
 I SET my heart to sing of leaves. 
 
 Ere buds had felt the March wind blow 
 
 I laid my head and dreamt of sheaves, 
 Ere seedsmen had the heart to sow : 
 
 I fancied swallows at the eaves, 
 
 And found old nests in pendent snow. 
 
 I dreamt a scent of daffodils, 
 
 When frosty shone the village tiles : 
 
 Of flowery perfume from the hills. 
 
 When ice had bound the mere for miles 
 
 Of kingcups yellowing all the rills. 
 When snowdrift silted up the stiles. 
 127
 
 ANTICIPATION 
 
 I found a barren bush of thorn, 
 
 Where hung last year the sweet field-rose 
 I said, no hint of purple morn 
 
 The chambers of the east disclose : 
 Poor heart, poor song, poor pinions torn, 
 
 Flutter and perish in the snows. 
 
 I said, a winter, huge and deep. 
 
 Crawls on the bitter, hungry plain : 
 
 Why should I dream, who cannot sleep. 
 Or hope to understand the pain. 
 
 Which rolls the doleful tears I weep. 
 
 That Spring is dead, that Love is slain ? 
 
 128
 
 A CHURCHYARD YEW 
 
 A CHURCHYARD YEW 
 
 Bright levels of the wandering wave 
 Behind the russet sails, 
 How soon your burnish fails : 
 
 Soon die the damask-amber glows, 
 
 Isled on a galaxy of rose, 
 In splendid veils. 
 
 Sad yew-tree, sister of the grave, 
 Black upas nursed on death. 
 Thy root draws mandrake breath. 
 
 Thy windy branches creak, and tell 
 
 In what fat bitter soil they dwell, 
 Who sleep beneath. 
 
 I 129
 
 A CHURCHYARD YEW 
 
 Thy feet grim sloping gravestones pave : 
 
 Thy bole salt crystals smear 
 
 With scurf of briny tear : 
 Thy gnarled and torture-twisted form 
 Shrinks landward from the scathing storm. 
 
 Year after year. 
 
 But here are girls and soldiers brave 
 Beneath the sods at calm : 
 And lovers here, whose psalm 
 The dismal silence long hath dulled, 
 And here is Sorrow lapt and lulled 
 In slumber's balm. 
 
 The robin whistles on a grave. 
 His throat with song distended ; 
 A butterfly has wended 
 To some hie jacet, where he clings 
 To close and open shuddering wings 
 With borders splendid. 
 130
 
 A CHURCHYARD YEW 
 
 Thou heedest not the wild bird's stave, 
 
 Old bitter broken tree, 
 
 Thou feedest not the bee. 
 Thou drawest from thy soil of blight 
 A deadly apathy, and Night 
 
 Environs thee. 
 
 Here, as the wild green breakers rave, 
 Thy berry, fleshed in red. 
 Hangs down its poisoned head ; 
 There squeaking bats in gloom carouse. 
 And, roosted in thy charnel boughs, 
 The owl 's in bed. 
 
 The mole is working in her cave. 
 By glowworm taper shine, 
 She graveward drives her mine. 
 And, on a wreath of faded roses, 
 A lean old rat to these discloses 
 How he shall dine. 
 131
 
 A CHURCHYARD YEW 
 
 Cold Stars above their glimmer save : 
 And haggard is the moon 
 To hear the raven's tune — 
 How soon must Love and Glory rust. 
 And rosy lasses come to dust 
 And slumber soon. 
 
 132
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY CONDEMNS 
 LOVE AND DESPISES PASSION 
 
 False love, sweet love, false love, thy prim- 
 rose lands 
 Are bitten by a sea that gnaws and stains : 
 False love, thy river may have golden sands. 
 Yet rocks it sighing on thro' flinty plains. 
 The low continual forest hears of love : 
 The cloud-crest tells the under lake of him. 
 He wakes the plaint of rainbow-breasted 
 
 dove, 
 The glowworm lights her torch, his herald 
 
 dim, 
 The March wind is his furious trumpeter. 
 The cuckoo is his clear remembrancer. 
 133
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 Yet will I nothing of this herdsman Love, 
 
 This god of bread and cheese, 
 
 This paragon of ploughgirls : at mine ease. 
 
 Saint and serene above 
 
 Their trivial kisses, with the stars I write 
 
 The oracles of God, 
 
 Sown on the windy pinnacles of night. 
 
 My Life shall be 
 
 An Alpine morning o'er a tideless sea 
 
 Of avalanches bright. 
 
 As some peak never trod, 
 
 Rosy and pure in crystal ether set. 
 
 And from the world's foundation icebound yet: 
 
 Auroral, sweet, and inaccessible. 
 
 That rock shall be my sign. The terrible 
 
 Hand of the Sun shall fall in harmless glows. 
 
 Nor melt one wreath of calm aerial snows ; 
 
 Not Titan's golden hour 
 
 Can melt my Danae tower : 
 
 Nor rain of richest beams 
 
 Unfreeze the frozen seams 
 
 Of ice and cloud, that veil me in my bower.
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 Fate gives me beauty, God has given me 
 
 scorn. 
 I will be first or none : 
 To hew the wood of life I was not born ; 
 Flowers are my hands, my robe a tissue spun. 
 Shall I be jumbled up with market wives. 
 The herd and trash of maidens, who accept 
 Their long laborious lives. 
 Bewailing and bewept ? 
 
 And wear away their sordid household days. 
 Much as the steers, who pull the plough or 
 
 graze. 
 I will not put my mouth up to some fool, 
 And be unvirgined for the kiss of him. 
 I will remain damsel of God, and rule 
 My worst thought purer than the morning 
 
 rim. 
 I am locked up with God, and earthly yearn- 
 ing, 
 In eyes as unresponsive to desire. 
 Passes, as puppets in a peepshow turning. 
 Gestures of painted passion, wood and wire. 
 135
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 What is this homespun comedy of Love, 
 Rank with the furrow-cleaving herdsman's 
 
 toil ? 
 What is this vineyard lodge, this red alcove. 
 Reed-roofed among the orchards of the oil ? 
 The floor is purple with the broken grape : 
 The vats are foamed with ferment. Hand 
 
 in hand. 
 Red to the knee, each Bacchanalian shape 
 Tramples the rich blood of the vineyard 
 
 land. 
 Or in some croft, half hid by rustic eaves, 
 The milkmaid rests her pail among the 
 
 leaves, 
 And the pied stirk with comfortable sound 
 Crops the abounding ground. 
 There, if some uncouth Thyrsis chance to 
 
 pass. 
 He comes and sits him by this freckled 
 
 lass. 
 And puts his brows to hers, this cow-girl 
 queen, 
 
 136
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 Coarse-grained and stained with summer, as 
 
 some green 
 Crude orchard apple, striped abrupt in 
 
 hue ; 
 And takes her rough hand fondly, where 
 
 the grass 
 Shoots up in timothies and ox-eyes too, 
 And the rathe sorrel, reddest of spring's 
 
 crew ; 
 And heaven finds echoes in the speedwell's 
 
 blue : 
 And pale green spikes are everywhere 
 
 around, 
 And chirping things give sound. 
 Hid in the ambush of the hay ; the quail 
 Is darnel-tangled, and the water-rail 
 Cheeps from the mere befringed with galin- 
 
 gale: 
 And mighty Pan breathes o'er the vernal 
 
 ground. 
 So deep in grass, as two hid meadow 
 
 birds, 
 
 137
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 They sing again their threadbare song, 
 
 whose words 
 Are kisses : and in arrogance suppose 
 Their horny rushlight lantern can enclose 
 The radiant sun of demigod Desire. 
 What is this fen-fire, framed of mud and 
 
 mire ? 
 Love, what is Love, the solace of the 
 
 clown. 
 That makes the wise man frown ? 
 A ribbon in the milkmaid's frowsy hairs,. 
 A few dog-roses in a field of tares, 
 A little laughter and a long disdain ; 
 Blind and unfit to reign. 
 The deity of pain ; 
 Silenus of the swineherds is his name. 
 The ploughboy Eros with his face of 
 
 shame, 
 His woolly coat, his sheepdog at his side ; 
 Shall I unlock to such a mongrel god 
 The porches of my pride. 
 Or my serene abode ? 
 
 138
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 Throned on the cloud above such earthborn 
 
 coil, 
 I rule by right of beauty such as toil. 
 I am the lily without fleck or soil. 
 Avaunt, thou son of mire, 
 No Tempe gave thee birth ; 
 Ether I am and fire. 
 I rise as flame, I rise. 
 Above this atmosphere of sighs 
 Beyond the reek of earth : 
 And Pythoness aspire. 
 Helmed with an angel's mirth : 
 Where star-dew steeps my beaming crest 
 
 and hair. 
 Listening what cadence rare. 
 And on gross earth unheard. 
 The planets make in sphering. With what 
 
 word 
 The morning star comes dripping back to 
 
 God, 
 When he the sea at early morn has trod. 
 With what a beautiful clear even-song 
 139
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 Recurrent Vesper surges back among 
 
 The small pure rounded lights, which in the 
 
 rain 
 Of light around him, pale and dumb, refrain 
 Their sparkling throng. 
 Shall I, whose meteor beauty makes the 
 
 plain 
 Of the blue night mute with amazement, 
 
 deign 
 To drop the corner of an eye at Love, 
 From golden spheres above ? 
 
 Take my disdain, false Love, and hence 
 
 begone. 
 Stained with rude wreck and clay ; 
 Poor pipe of earthly passion, in whose 
 
 tone 
 There only lives the discord of a day. 
 Leave me my isolation, grand and calm. 
 While fond adoring nations bend the knee, 
 Exclaiming, she is worthy of the palm, 
 As Dryad fair or mermaid of the sea. 
 140
 
 THE HAUGHTY LADY 
 
 Let their triumphant psalm 
 
 Acclaim me loveliest of the things that be. 
 
 Let them adore afar ; 
 
 And worship, as they please : 
 
 Love, if they choose ; but I am as the star 
 
 Out of the reach of these. 
 
 141
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 Fairest leaves of autumn spread 
 To shroud with green these children dead ; 
 Their early fate, their cruel doom, 
 Might well require a nobler tomb : 
 Alabaster might explain, 
 Pompous verse rehearse their pain. 
 Cherubs weeping stony tears, 
 Time with scythe and Fate with shears. 
 Slab of lapis, jasper border, 
 Columns of Corinthian order ; 
 Let no meaner shrine be here 
 Than on the dust of cavalier. 
 142
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 Nay, they need no trophies high. 
 Grander in simpUcity ; 
 And their oft-repeated tale 
 Is never old and never stale. 
 All night long in evil case. 
 Thro' thorny green and forest space ; 
 Up and down, and far and wide. 
 They wandered till they sank and died. 
 Pitying on a hazel bough, 
 Robin saw them sinking low. 
 Came the wren, the whitethroat came. 
 Came the bird of evil name ; 
 Owl, and nuthatch, tit, and dove, 
 Singers of the dirge of love. 
 Will ye mourn them half as well 
 With the peal of muffled bell ? 
 With the organ march of Death, 
 With the floated incense wreath, 
 Chant and candle, cross and stole, 
 As the misereres roll ? 
 Here each tender baby lies 
 Shrined with richer obsequies : 
 143
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 Fairy leaves of aspen shed 
 Treasure round these children dead. 
 Leaves of oak, and sprays of rue. 
 Cypress branches, boughs of yew. 
 And they want no marble tomb, 
 Where we may inscribe their doom ; 
 Where the Frost with icy fetters 
 Tears away the golden letters. 
 Where the Rain rubs out the tale. 
 But their story shall not fail, 
 Shrined beyond the reach of chance 
 In golden childhood's first romance. 
 And on early Fancy's walls 
 Painted, where soft sunlight falls. 
 
 144
 
 THE WINDMILL 
 
 THE WINDMILL 
 
 Desolate windmill, eyelid of the distance, 
 Gaunt as a gibbet, ruled against the sky : 
 
 Rolling and rocking in the wind's persistence. 
 Thy black uplifted dome-house seems to 
 fly. 
 
 Writhing its wings, as eagle Promethean, 
 Who tears the Titan on Caucasian height. 
 
 While all the gentle gods above sing paean. 
 To see Jove's red-winged vengeance rend 
 and smite. 
 
 Emblem of Life, whose roots are torn asunder, 
 An isolated soul that hates its kind. 
 
 Who loves the region of the rolHng thunder. 
 And finds seclusion in the misty wind. 
 K 145
 
 THE WINDMILL 
 
 Type of a love, that wrecks itself to pieces 
 Against the barriers of relentless Fate, 
 
 And tears its lovely pinions on the breezes 
 Of just too early or of just too late. 
 
 The desolation of a moorland wasted. 
 
 An endless heath, half-tinged with redden- 
 ing ling : 
 Gray bitter tracts which ploughshare never 
 tasted. 
 Too sour to waken at the voice of spring. 
 
 These wiry roots revive not, when the 
 zephyrs 
 Unclasp the budded fragrance on the 
 thorn. 
 Not here shall come the sound of lowing 
 heifers. 
 Not here shall heave the rippling waves 
 of corn. 
 
 146
 
 THE WIN DMILL 
 
 In thee, old mill, I see Ixion quiver. 
 
 Chained on a wheel in Acherusian deep. 
 
 Upon whose weary eyelids not for ever 
 Descends the healing balm of angel sleep. 
 
 I see some dragon-fly with wings outshadow 
 The current-dancing midge, whose mur- 
 mur fails 
 Beneath the swooping tyrant of the meadow. 
 Bat-like and spectral, with loud latticed 
 sails. 
 
 At eve thou loomest like a one-eyed giant 
 To some poor crazy knight, who pricks 
 along, 
 
 And sees thee wave in haze thy arms defiant. 
 And growl the burden of thy grinding song. 
 
 Against thy russet sail-sheet slowly turning. 
 The raven beats belated in the blast : 
 
 Behind thee ghastly, bloodred Eve is burning, 
 Above, rose-feathered drifts are racking fast. 
 147
 
 THE WINDMILL 
 
 The curlews pipe around their plaintivedirges, 
 Thou art a Pharos to the sea-mews hoar. 
 
 Set sheer above the tumult of the surges, 
 As sea-mark on some spacious ocean floor. 
 
 My heart is sick with gazing on thy feature, 
 
 Old blackened sugar-loaf with fourfold 
 
 wings, 
 
 Thou seemest as some monstrous insect 
 
 creature. 
 
 Some mighty chafer armed with iron stings. 
 
 Emblem of man, who, after all his moaning. 
 And strain of dire immeasurable strife. 
 
 Has yet this consolation, all atoning, — 
 Life, as a windmill, grinds the bread of Life. 
 
 148
 
 ROLAND AT RONCESVALLES 
 
 ROLAND AT RONCESVALLES 
 
 Roll up thy tardy legions, Charlemagne, 
 Haste to my succour : red in glory ride 
 The heaving furrows of the battle tide : 
 Advance, wipe out this pagan horde of Spain, 
 Whose rabble myriads crush me. In disdain 
 Thy paladins, thy chivalry have died. 
 They sleep unbroken in their ranks of pride, 
 And where they nobly fought, lie nobly slain. 
 
 Farewell, my gallant bugle-horn, farewell. 
 Come, let me wind thy martial note once 
 
 more. 
 And peal one last, one loud despairing cry ; 
 Until the long reverberations swell. 
 To rock my death-dirge on the echoing shore, 
 And all the Fontarabian woods reply. 
 149
 
 THE ABSENT MARINER 
 
 THE ABSENT MARINER 
 
 Sailor of the hoary deep, 
 
 Thou art rolled from tide to tide. 
 I can watch the waves and weep : 
 
 Thou canst roam the ocean wide. 
 I tremble at the rising gale, 
 Yet in the calm I chide thy sail : 
 For not one ship on all the main 
 Can bring my true-love home again. 
 
 Over realms of restless foam. 
 
 Boundless breadths of heaving sea, 
 Rock, O wind, my rover home, 
 Zephyr, blow his sails to me. 
 Waft him on thy tender wing. 
 Like the long-delaying spring : 
 Till, safe in port, with anchor cast, 
 He folds me in his arms at last. 
 150
 
 THE ABSENT MARINER 
 
 Month on month, he sailed away, 
 
 A speck upon the ocean Hne, 
 Melting in the rainy gray, 
 
 Cloud-like on the utmost brine. 
 Autumn passed in discontent, 
 Winter came and winter went. 
 Day by day, I ponder dumb, 
 Spring is here — Ah ! will he come ? 
 
 151
 
 A LAMENT 
 
 A LAMENT 
 
 Ye waves that sweep the splendid deep, 
 
 And crest the ocean gray. 
 The voice of your eternal woe 
 Dilates in sorrow, to and fro. 
 
 With pulse of broken spray. 
 
 Upraise thy dirge, thou furrowy surge. 
 
 Whereon the stormlight glows. 
 Rock on the shining island side. 
 And break with foam the crimson pride 
 Of the half-opened rose. 
 
 From the grave gate a gust of Fate 
 
 Blew stern at Death's decree ; 
 And underneath its icy power 
 Lies withered, cold, the loveliest flower. 
 That used to comfort me. 
 152
 
 HODGE PROLOGIZES AT HIS PUBLIC 
 
 HODGE PROLOGIZES AT HIS 
 PUBLIC 
 
 SCENE : A VILLAGE ALEHOUSE, NEAR A CHURCH SURROUNDED 
 
 BY A CHURCHYARD. A WINDMILL TURNING 
 
 IN THE DISTANCE. 
 
 Sun and shine, 
 
 And ivy twine, 
 Thirst is bad on a midsummer day. 
 
 Sell thy flail 
 
 For a stoup of ale, 
 Shear thy lamb for a wisp of hay. 
 
 All over the church 
 
 The little birds perch, 
 And the graveyard is full as it well can be : 
 
 Headstone and mound. 
 
 And garden-like ground, 
 And plenty to pay for the vicar's fee. 
 153
 
 HODGE PROLOGIZES AT HIS PUBLIC 
 
 A buttermilk wench, 
 
 And an alehouse bench, 
 With plenty to drink and a little to see ; 
 
 With a song and a pipe, 
 
 Till we 're reeling ripe. 
 And let the blue ribbon go hang for me. 
 
 Sun and shine, 
 
 And ivy twine. 
 Honey is best from a mountain bee. 
 
 The old black swift. 
 
 He lives in a rift 
 Under a beam of the church roof-tree. 
 
 By the churchyard rail 
 
 Is the house of ale. 
 Settle and mugs and a sanded floor. 
 
 A trough, where a sign 
 
 (I wish it were mine) 
 Creaks in the winds like a rusty door. 
 154
 
 HODGE PROLOGIZES AT HIS PUBLIC 
 
 The sexton is nigh. 
 
 And his work is dry ; 
 And the chink of a glass is as good as a bell, 
 
 To draw him inside 
 
 And be quickly supplied, 
 For he digs all the better for drinking a spell. 
 
 Sleet and hail 
 
 On the windmill sail ; 
 Nobody grudges the rats their flour. 
 
 The mills of time 
 
 Grind girls in prime : 
 The wheels go round and the maid grows sour. 
 
 The red robin comes 
 To pick up the crumbs. 
 The wagtail runs nodding all over the lea. 
 A gun for a bird, 
 And a blow for a word, 
 And a measureless score at the Chequers for 
 me. 
 
 155
 
 HODGE PROLOGIZES AT HIS PUBLIC 
 
 So my song it may pass, 
 
 If you'll stand us a glass 
 To the Church and the Queen : and plenty 
 to eat. 
 
 Oceans of drink. 
 
 And never to think. 
 And a good stiff tax on the foreigners' wheat. 
 
 156
 
 THE WINE OF LIFE 
 
 THE WINE OF LIFE 
 
 He best can drink the wine of Life, 
 And sweetly crush the grape of Fate, 
 
 Who shuts the Janus doors of strife, 
 And binds an oHve on his gate. 
 
 Who needs no victim to atone 
 The record of his blameless hour; 
 
 Contentment is the corner stone 
 
 On which he builds his arch of power. 
 
 He best enjoys who can refrain. 
 He least is nimble Fortune's fool, 
 
 Who sees his honest Duty plain, 
 A scholar in her iron school. 
 ^57
 
 THE WINE OF LIFE 
 
 How idle for a spurious fame 
 To roll in thorn-beds of unrest : 
 
 What matter whom the mob acclaim, 
 If thou art master of thy breast ? 
 
 If sick thy soul with fear and doubt. 
 And weary with the rabble din, — 
 
 If thou wouldst scorn the herd without, 
 First make the discord calm within. 
 
 If we are lords in our disdain. 
 
 And rule our kingdoms of despair, 
 
 As fools we shall not plough the main 
 For halters made of syren's hair. 
 
 We need not traverse foreign earth 
 To seek an alien Sorrow's face. 
 
 She sits within thy central hearth, 
 And at thy table has her place. 
 
 So with this hour of push and pelf. 
 Where nought unsordid seems to last. 
 
 Vex not thy miserable self. 
 
 But search the fallows of the past. 
 158
 
 THE WINE OF LIFE 
 
 In Time's rich tract behind us lies 
 A soil replete with root and seed ; 
 
 There harvest wheat repays the wise. 
 While idiots find but charlock weed. 
 
 There we can hear the flute of Pan, 
 Bewailing down the reedy vales : 
 
 There see the tempest-beaten swan 
 Sail broken, down the moaning gales. 
 
 And larger heroes in that morn 
 
 Stride mist-like thro' the asphodel, 
 
 And hoary bards with cheeks unshorn 
 Invoke anew the lyric spell. 
 
 On me their burning helms they turn. 
 Their eagle banners awe the glen, 
 
 They, rising from each dusty urn. 
 Display their giant limbs again. 
 
 A broad cup brimmed with mxighty red 
 These silent years to us assign ; 
 
 From old Falernian vineyards shed. 
 The Roman sends the Teuton wine. 
 159
 
 THE WINE OF LIFE 
 
 Old Fauns have breathed against the grapes. 
 Old-world aromas haunt the bowl ; 
 
 Still music of forgotten shapes. 
 Dim pathos of a Pagan soul. 
 
 There from those dark and glimmering lands. 
 From altars wrecked with ivy trail. 
 
 Old Flaccus reaches out his hands, 
 And bids the mild barbarian hail. 
 
 1 60
 
 List of Books 
 
 in 
 
 Relies Jettres 
 
 1895 
 
 ALL BOOKS IN THIS CATALOGUE 
 ARE PUBLISHED AT NET PRICES 
 
 Telegraphic Address — 
 ' Bodleian, London
 
 '895. 
 
 List of Books 
 
 IN 
 
 BELLES LETT RES 
 
 {Including some Transfers') 
 
 Published by John Lane 
 
 VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. 
 
 N.B. — The Authors and Publisher reserve the right of reprinting 
 any book in this list if a new edition is called for, except in cases 
 where a stipulation has been made to the contrary, and of printing 
 a separate edition of any of the books for America irrespective of the 
 numbers to which the English editions are limited. The numbers 
 mentioned do not include copies sent to the public libraries, nor those 
 sent for review. 
 
 Most of the books are published simultaneously in England and 
 America, and in many instances the names of the American 
 Publishers are appended. 
 
 ADAMS (FRANCIS). 
 
 Essays in Modernity. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. [Shortly. 
 Chicago : Stone & Kimball. 
 
 A Child of the Age. {See Keynotes Series.)
 
 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 ALLEN (GRANT). 
 
 The Lower Slopes : A Volume of Verse. With Title- 
 page and Cover Design by J, ILLINGWORTH Kay. 
 600 copies. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 
 Chicago : Stone & Kimball. 
 The Woman Who Did. {&« Keynotes Series.) 
 
 BEARDSLEY (AUBREY). 
 
 The Story of Venus and Tannhauser, in which is set 
 forth an exact account of the Manner of State held by 
 Madam Venus, Goddess and Meretrix, under the 
 famous Horselberg, and containing the adventures of 
 Tannhauser in that place, his repentance, his jour- 
 neying to Rome, and return to the loving mountain. 
 By Aubrey Beardsley. With 20 full-page illus- 
 trations, numerous ornaments, and a cover from the 
 same hand. Sq. i6mo. ios.6d.net. [In preparation. 
 
 BEDDOES (T. L.). 
 
 See GossE (Edmund). 
 
 BEECHING (Rev. H. C). 
 
 In a Garden : Poems. With Title-page designed by 
 Roger Fry. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 New York : Macmillan & Co. 
 
 BENSON (ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER). 
 Lyrics. Fcap. 8vo. , buckram. 5s. net. 
 New York : Macmillan & Co. 
 
 BROTHERTON (MARY). 
 
 Rosemary for Remembrance. With Title-page and 
 Cover Design by Walter West. Fcap. 8vo. 3s.6d.net. 
 
 CAMPBELL (GERALD). 
 
 The Joneses and the Asterisks. Illustrated. Fcap. 
 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. [In preparation, 
 
 CASTLE (EGERTON). 
 
 See Stevenson (Robert Louis).
 
 THE PUBLICATIONS OF 
 
 DALMON (C. W.). 
 
 Song Favours. With a specially-designed Title-page. 
 Sq. l6mo. 4s. 6d. net. \^In preparation. 
 
 D'ARCY (ELLA). 
 
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