% mw <>"' ^v ' ju j/Mim jii'! s I ic g s 1 in ik V K k o THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN AND OTHER POEMS THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN AND OTHER POEMS BY ALFRED AUSTIN POET LAUREATE ILontioix MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1897 All rights reserved ?K CONTENTS PAGE The Conversion of Winckelmann I A Soulless Singer . 58 To Ireland .... 62 Vis Medicatrix Naturae . 72 Another Spring Carol . 73 Who would not die for England ! 80 Sorrow's Importunity 88 A Reply to a Pessimist . 90 How Florence rings her Bells 100 A Dream of England 105 John Everett Millais 107 A Point of Honour . III A Florilegium .... 123 In Praise of England 129 BuRNs's Statue at Irvine 133 An Experiment in Translation 137 The Silent Muse 148 A Portrait .... 157 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN " Show me some other way, and I'll not do it ! " One sudden, solitary, sterile lie, With no false brood to follow, haply born Of feebleness, surprise, forbearing fear Lest the hard fact should hurt, were base enough ; — Too base for me, who, ever since my tongue Was fledged with language, straight unto the mark Sent sharp words flying, careless whom they hit, If friend or foe, and, least of all, myself. And now ! B 2 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN " Nay, if it be the last time to be brave, And slink a tortuous coward ever more, Look this colossal lie full in the face ! It is not sudden, solitary, barren, Feeble, surprised, a gift to tenderness, But a deliberate, procreative lie. Teeming with perjured progeny, swarm on swarm Of profitable falsehood, each fresh fraud Begetting a new litter : lie on he. With lies, and ever yet more lies to follow, A labyrinth of lying ! . . . Winckelmann ! Stand you upon the solid earth, or float Along some vague fantastic atmosphere, Unbounded, unconditioned, where there rules Nor truth, nor falsehood, only vaporous dreams Submissive to the will and the desire ? No ! Truth is truth, or here or otherwhere, THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 3 And at the Universe's furthest frontier God still must post his sentinels to challenge Apostasy of soul ! Infinity Hems in the conscience ! " Yet the alternative ! " Here to remain, and die ! Day after day, Week after week, year following upon year, Hopeless of better or of worse, and doomed With clowns and clods, triflers and dolts, to share The same reiterated nothingness ! To live as dead, and manacled to the dead, Who, since not coffined, deem themselves alive ! Oneself to be alive, and yet not live ! Be sensible of freedom, yet a slave ! 4 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN When but one word, did I but utter it, Would lift me from this darkness, and transport To Italy and light ! " He waits within, Ready to take profession of my Faith, That I believe whatever Rome believes, Say what Rome says, and do what Rome enjoins. There's but that door 'twixt me and happiness. Achinto, suave and smooth, with vowelled voice Soft as his Southern tongue, all si and smiles. And stooping grace, befitting one whose height Makes bending necessary, natural, And condescension part of dignity ; From brow to buckle, just the Cardinal. He waves aside one's scruples with a hand As white as is a woman's, and a shrug THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 5 So definitely doubtful, one can scarce Say if it pleads for faith or scepticism. Haply for both, as though he fain would mean, Without the hazard of the spoken word, ' Why boggle at one mystery more or less ? Think long enough, and all is mystery, Think longer still, and everything is doubt. Why not the sage solution, " I believe. Because it is impossible," and thus Profess your faith, and still retain your doubts ? Will disbelieving solve the mystery More than believing, think you ? Any way. Believe, and here's your passport straight for Rome, With ducats for the journey, and a home In Passionei's Library, then all The Gods of Greece and Art of Italy, 6 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Your dream arrayed in daylight ! Disbelieve, And here you stagnate until life ebbs out, The lettered lackey of unlettered lords. Drudge for mere meat and drink. Rome holds the keys Of both the Christian and the Pagan world. Speak ! She will open either.' " League after league of undulating sand, With nothing in its furrows, fallow still Through season after season, save when brimmed With the unsprouting snow, and in the mist Some stunted growth huddling round brackish pools. The landmarks of unloveliness that prop A leaden sky, the sun's sarcophagus. If but brute matter were thus blind and dumb ! THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 7 But here men's souls are sterile as the soil, Kindred to niggard Nature, stunted, starved, Monotonous, forgotten of the Gods, Disdained, and disinherited. And I, Imprisoned in their narrowness, am paid A scullion's wage for cataloguing books Not worth the binding ; fantasies of saints Or genealogies of fools from fools, A meaningless procession ! " And to think, As I sit shivering here, body and soul. And all around as dismal as my doubts. Are silvery fountains flashing in the sun Of Rome's blue spaciousness ! tall crystal columns, Self-buoyed and self-replenished, that upbear Lightly a wind-webbed water-woven dome, S THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN A fairy fretwork falling unimpaired Into white marble basins, curved and cool As the clear wave from chilly Samnite source That brims and laves them ! Thitherward there wend Majestic matrons with columnar throats, And brazen pitchers cushioned on the coils Of ebon tresses ; Caryatides Throbbing and warm, Olympus in their gaze. Born of the she-wolf and the Sabine rape, With bosoms moulded by the mother milk, Lips like the split pomegranate pulp, and teeth White as the tusks of the Hernician boar Snarling at huntsman's spear ; round, sinewy limbs, Supple as strong, and flexible alike To love or hate, and passion-purpled blood Quick to ferment, and then with thunderous brow THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 9 To flash the dagger from their hair and drive Its point implacable into the heart Of wayward lust ! not like the haggard herds I daily see around me, cringing, cowed, With foolish flaxen hair and empty eyes, Serfs suited to such masters ! " Thus, without. Within, in courtly corridors that lead Onward to halls of pure white spaciousness. On their pentelic pedestals the Gods, Throned on imperishable marble, stand, Abstract of power and passion purified By dominance of beauty, their aloft Unwrinkled foreheads rapt in starlike calm, Rebuking man's perplexity ! Pagan gods Robed in majestic nakedness, adored 10 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN By Christian Pontiffs ; 'mid remorseful Saints, Radiant and unrepentant in their joy : Gods, demigods, and heroes, pHant nymphs In grasp of sinewy satyrs, goddesses, Flowered from the brine, or fruited in the brain. Winsome or wise, for pleasure or for power, Teeming divinities ! all there ! there ! there ! In universal Rome ! " There, yes ! but reft Of half their godhead by ungodlike man, Careless, confusing, with disordered mind Confounding Jove with Bacchus, Faun with Pan, Antinoiis with Hermes, labelling Sarcophagus a puteal, at loss. From lack of proper study, to discern A bust of days Republican from head THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN ii Done in the sunset of the Antonines, Or Caryatid from Canephora. Why, think but of that frieze they lately found In musty wine-shop by the Latin Gate, Discoloured by long drippings from the vat It served for prop, and chipped by scullions' feet Staggering about in search of withied flasks Bellied with liquor to the very throat. They say it is Capaneus scaling Thebes, Full on the topmost ladder lightning-hit, Shrivelling to fall. 'Tis Agamemnon, plain, Adulterously murdered in his home. War-lord in vain for an unworthy wife. The wanton of Aegistheus. If it were Capaneus, where the chlamys, helmet, spear, And forward strain of battle on his face ? This man unarmed is that confiding thing, 12 THE CONVERSION OF IVINCKELMANN A husband unaware. Were I but there, I could convict them quick, would set aright Their jumble of Olympus, single out Original from copy, old from new. Splendid from spurious, — I, and T alone ! Since, though from actual vision still shut out Of those self-speaking images, I have On text and indication bent and pored, Until their inmost soul from outward garb I know, as one a tree from bark or leaf, And name them, never seen. Can one believe, If I were by, that Cavaceppi should, As now his wont is, chip a feature off, Then clap it on again, to make-believe The head's antique when but the body's so ? They're quick and subtle, these Italians, But triflers somewhat. THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 13 "Yet, if that were all, 'Twere much, but little matched with more and worse : Statues hke Morning, slumbering undisturbed In mud of Tiber, slime of centuries, And offal of oblivion ; toppled down From Senate-house and Temple, from the seats Of their serene supremacy dislodged ; Lowered from their dignity divine, since now Saviours of Rome no more, and grossly hurled On head of Vandal, Visigoth, and Hun, A futile sacrilege ! their deathless forms Buried alive, with none to disinter, In excrement of ages, breathing still In subterranean refuges : Rapine, rage Of multitudinous war, with wave on wave Of tawny inundation, have entombed 14 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Their monumental efifigies, withal Embalmed in still forgetfulness, and now Quick to come forth, to slough their sleep, and dawn Once more upon our sight ! I know the spot, — How often have I crept to it in my sleep ! — Midway the vineyard of the Convent propped On southern shoulder of the Aventine, Where, give me shovel and pick, and let me delve. And I will such a Juno disenshroud, As, seen, will straight repaganise mankind, Bring the swoon premature of Pan to end, Send Hamadryads wantoning through the wood, And with the wand of her clear loveliness Rejuvenate Olympus ! Now She sleeps In alabaster stillness, bedded deep In loamy rubble, rambling olive roots Knotted about the dimples of her knees. THE CONVERSION OF IVINCKELMANN 15 The newly-feeling fibres of the vine Fantastically filigree the curve Of her creased neck, and, thence meandering down Through the deep valley of her sloping breasts. Veil the chaste portal of her matron womb. The iron rust of many-wintered rain And sodden soil hath brimmed with seeming gold The fine-drawn furrows of her rippling hair, And, mindful of her rights, with golden crown Crested her brow. Gods ! let me go to her ! Achinto ! I am coming ! " If He knew, My austere Sire ! How plain I see him now ! His hand and eye intent upon his task. His heart with God : but Luther's God, not Rome's ! i6 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Too Straight and simple to do aught but deem His humble handicraft the highest Art, If finished faithfully. To cobble shoes, And be an honest man, or lie, and live A dainty dilettante, which is best. Which noblest, worthiest ? My dear Mother, too ! What would she say ? my Mother with a gaze Ever as though she just had come from prayer, Though housewife never bUther ; and she deemed That Rome is Antichrist. O, how they drudged, Day in day out, and far into the night, That I might be a scholar. Yes — but whose ? Not Jove's, but — ' Mother ! anything but that ! I am not fit to preach the word of God.' So they forbore, and I have laboured on. Mellowing my mind, but still, still harvestless, Till now, now, now ! when Rome exclaims "Tis ripe,' THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELAIANN 17 And puts the fruitful sickle in my hand. Both long are dead and resting in their graves, In dreary Stendhal with its grass-grown ways, Where everything's forgotten, and the wind Wails over sand and unremembered bones. They will not know. " But if they should ! and if There be, as they believed, a second life, A world where cobblers are as wise as kings, And haply higher seated, whence they scan Our nether doings with unclouded eyes : A Heaven, as they conceived it, denizened Not by lascivious Ganymedes, but thronged With saints and martyrs? Martyrs! — that's the point. I was not made for martyrdom ; and yet, c 1 8 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN I think that I could bear the tight stiff stake, The sudden blaze, the suffocating smoke, The fiendish fire, one's entrails all a hell, And every nerve a demon, but at most Just for one maddening minute, then no more, Rather than palter with the truth ; but not This long, slow, sullen, endless martyrdom Of a whole life, the martyrdom of mind. Which with the torture grows more sensitive. Nor perishes of the pain. I cannot bear it ! Meek souls, how should they know ? 'Twas kind of Nature With feignings of the Future thus to lull The living ache, and cozen them till death Reveals not the deception ! But that I Should of a doubtful promise be the dupe, Bide in a prison with an open door ! THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 19 Out on the thought ! One Hfe, if only one, Thus willed, thus wasted, when no fabled Heaven, But Rome, — Olympus, Paradise, in one, — In this clear world awaits me ! " But the price ? I had forgot the price. The Greek sage said, ' The Gods to men sell all things at a price,' And the divinities of Papal Rome Drive a hard bargain. They demand my soul, Or what they call such, better named my Self, My conscience, honour, fealty to truth. The very mark and manhood of my mind. What an exchange ! Will nothing less suffice them ? I must believe the unbelievable. Or piously asseverate I do. 20 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN They, with dissimulation not content, Claim simulation also. " Never to be an honest man again ! To creep to Lauds and Vespers at the heel Of punctual Monsignori, portly, sleek. Too princely to be sceptical, then kneel And keep a sidelong glance lest any watch To see one does one's praying properly ; To make pretence to pray, to patter psalms, With face convinced ; to swell my throat and join In canticles by eunuch voices shrilled. The unmanlier I ! to clasp my breviary. And wend with suitable and solemn gait To Mass, ' Impostor ! ' hissing in my ears : Dip finger in the holy-water stoup. Then cross myself on forehead, breast, and lips, THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 21 To show I know the trick ; to genuflect Just at the proper moment, proper place, And do it very noticeably lest Any should guess I burn to stand erect ; Make daily mock of the Great Sacrifice, And feign to deem it re-enacted there ; To bow my head to — nothing ! when a bell Tinkles, and, husht in incense, every sound A moment is suspended ! — Could I do it ? To sleep, wake, walk, sit, kneel, rise, live, a liar ! Kissing cold relics, mumbling litanies With sacristans and shavelings, — honest, they, A perjurer, I ! Then, the Confessional ! With nothing to confess, — for truly I Am not adulterer, murderer, backbiter, And any day as lief eat fish as flesh, — And so, 'tis plain, with nothing to confess 22 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Save the one sin I never could confess, The sin of sins that overtops the rest, And dwarfs them into virtues ! Comedy, With still the mask on ! Peter's self could not Absolve for such transgression. [An attendant enters, addresses Winckelmann, and retires.] "What did he say? ' His Eminence grows impatient.' So do I. Honour, dishonour, true, false, bitter, base, Grow to a maddening medley in my brain. Tell him I'm coming. Nuncio ! Confessor ! And you, attendant troop of acolytes. Now hear me make profession of my Faith ! There's nothing under Heaven I won't believe. I'd sooner be a priest of Cybele, Than bide imbrutcd here ! II Rome the villa albani " Had I but known, I might have spared my scruples. The dreaming mind makes nightmares for itself In broadest daylight, and mine well-nigh choked Just before waking. What fantastic fears ! Jove on the Capitol is templed still, Mars on his mount, and Venus everywhere. Unabdicating Gods, they take their seats Within the very shrines my fancy filled With gaze of keen inquisitors to watch 24 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN My thoughts, and if I verily beUeved. This clear-eyed, big-brained, pagan Papacy Is much too busy contemplating gems, And turning blurred intaglios to the light, To spare the time for canonising saints, Or worrying sinners : just the Rome for me, And I the very man for such a Rome. This flowang mantle, this black velvet robe, These snow-white bands, are pleasant to the limbs, The eye, the touch, and do, I think, become me. But if my kith in Stendhal were to deem That I am an Abate, save my cloak. They would but show their Northern simpleness. " In what a goodly company I sit ! There, Jupiter, with Empire on his brow, But calm in self-held counsel, undisturbed THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 25 By purposes participated, or The gusty misdirection of the crowd. There, Hermes, not yet dwarfed to Mercury, Winged at the head and sandalled at the heel, Heaven's messenger alert, whose stolen strings, Stretched deftly o'er the sluggish tortoise' shell, Make instant music : Virgin Artemis, Kept chaste by action and the brisk embrace Of Morning, bright and chilly as her spear. Her bare feet diamonded with meadow dew. And twin-leashed boarhounds baying at her side. Beating Arcadian covert : all the Gods Radiant around me ! No Madonnas here, Contorted martyrs, scranny confessors. To wean composure from the breast of joy. And not alone the deathless denizens Of Hades and Olympus drink the light 26 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Of these cool corridors, but mortal men, Almost as godlike as the gods themselves By marble will and majesty of mind, — The Macedonian with his manly tears At frontier of ambition ; Hannibal Unvanquished by his victors, 'spite defeat Foremost of those who tread the ways of war ; The Samian Sage, the vulgar travesty, Who made himself a garden, and enjoined, No carnal epicure, the goal of man Is still felicity, but that the road Lies along cleanly and imperial ways, Not swinish by-paths; Homer, with his gaze Surveying all, and therefore fixed on none, The Poet outside all things, he alone. The Reconciler, with his concords twain. Song and ensuing Silence ; — all are here, THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 27 Indulgent of my presence, claiming me Their servitor, if faithful then their friend, Their equal, by their grace and courtesy. Such will I strive to be, but not to-day. When, look ! upon the fountain's marble rim Rounding the plashing music, April doves, Just like to Pliny's in the Capitol, Sip and glance sideways, flutter, perch again, And preen their purple feathers in the sun, Ausonian sun that fills the chalices Of tulip and anemone with light Mellower than Montefiascone's wine. Along the coping of the stuccoed wall See Juno's pompous sentinels parade The jewels of their self-supporting train. Stirred by the very faintest breath that scarce Would rob the roundness of the thistledown. 28 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Flutters the olive, and with upturned leaves Silvers the golden sunlight. At the tips Of the pruned vine-stems glisten drops of dew, The promise of their shortly dawning shoots. Hark ! 'twas the hoopoe ! heralding the bird Who talks to Spring of nothing but himself. So likewise half an egoist, as is meet, Apeing his betters, but imperfectly. To fig-tree bole the green frog clings and croaks. And the lithe lizard squats along the wall. Fagged by its very restlessness, and takes Siesta in the sunshine, not the shade. Taught by the almond how to bloom, the peach Hath bettered now the lesson, and the pear, Forgoing useless rivalry, arrays Itself in whiteness. Every ruined wall Breaks into blossom, every shattered arch THE CONVERSION OF VVINCKELMANN 29 Its wrinkled baldness now festoons with flowers, To join the Saturnalia of the Spring. I hear the cask-piled wine-carts creaking slow O'er the Nomentan Way, hear them, but see not, Save with the sight responsive to the sound, In sweet confusion of the senses made Kindred. There is no iris now in Heaven, But, finding Earth yet heavenlier, it hath dropped In coils and jewelled fragments to the ground. And wavers over the Campagna wide. Days are there, like to this one, when 'tis well To lie supine in poppied vacancy, And, passionlessly passive, to conceive Those hovering intimations that alight On the lulled sense, impregnating the brain With embryonic fancies that mature In season unto shapeliness and fruit. 30 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN And so to-day I claim from Gods and men, And my loved Alessandro, a forenoon Of brooding lethargy, — to bask and purr Over my fixed felicity. "All is nought. All lived and loved elsewhere, when matched with Rome. I deemed myself a student amply armed ^Vith bookish preparation, and that here I should but see the treasures I surmised. The veriest catechumen, I have passed. With Passionei, Giacomelli, Mengs, Corsini, and Cantucci, most of all With Cardinal Albani, step by step. Into Art's inmost mysteries, and now, I live their equal, I the cobbler's son, THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 31 Spurned in the insolent and servile North, Where all are downs together. When I wake, My princely Master — Master, but because I love to call him so, — doth mount and sit Familiar in my chamber, to discuss The missing limbs of torso late unearthed By some unlettered spade, and bids me choose To-morrow's excavation, just as though I were the Cardinal, and he the clerk To register my wish. What men are these ! He but the first, the rest so like to him In loveliness and largeness of their lives, And speculations spacious as the dome That copes the Roman ether, and as free From matters' cloudy superfluities. The titled boors of Brandenburg that scorned My learning as my lineage, use their gold. 32 THE CONVERSION OF IVINCKELMANN Lords of unlovely luxury, to scoop Their swine-troughs deeper, grossly surfeiting Their nether nature. Prince and Cardinal, Whose veins are channels for the far-off blood Of Alba or Lanuvium, consume Their substance, as themselves, in marble Heavens For Gods to haunt, and all mankind to scan. Diviner for the seeing. Never here Is homage to the menial body paid. The mind alone is guest. No cushioned comfort Distracts from limbs of beauty, brows of thought. Nor is the ostentatious banquet spread, Circean. 'Tis the soul alone that feasts ; Unclouded by the cup. " But let none think The nimble spirit's sportiveness is numbed TFIE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 33 By Art's solemnity. On festal nights, Hither my splendid Cardinal convenes All the renown and jewelled grace of Rome To glisten through his Villa. Nymph and Faun, Persistent types, in modern modes disguised, Consort with their progenitors embalmed In unvoluptuous marble cold and calm. They dance before our gravity, and wit Sparkles like alabaster. Clement's self Hath with his presence sanctified the scene, Retiring scandalised, or seeming so To save his holiness, nor stayed to hear Battoni's lovely daughters, voice with voice, Like two waves wantoning to be one, awhile Eluding each the other, near, apart, Till merged at length in one smooth melody. D 34 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN " Gods ! what a feast was yesterday ! Behold What, 'twixt the noon and evening Angelus, We quarried in a vineyard near the Arch Of Gallienus. No cold copy, that ! But so authentic from Hellenic hands, That Phidias' self, or sure some touch like his, Ere Attic genius strained beyond the point Of absolute perfection, and so lost Its even balance, might have chiselled it. See ! the young Knight this very moment hath Sprung from his steed, that, lightened of the load, And biassed by the bridle leftways clutched. Rears foaming into air with incurved hoofs. Nostrils dilated, terror-shaken mane. Ruffling the marble. Gazing from the ground THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 35 At imminence of death, the fallen foe, Entangled in his chlamys, lifts his arm, Shield insufficient 'gainst the upward blade, Flashing to fall. And with what slight effects The chisel tells its tale ! The tightened lips Bespeak the victor's purpose, and the mouth. Half open with the coming cry of fear, The victim's fate. How little ! yet enough. Bernini, Buonarroti's bastard son, Might learn his trade, if copyists e'er could learn, By gazing on its simpleness. Pure Greek, No Roman replica. Behind the head Of the astonished steed, the background, see, Is deeply hollowed out, that we may feel The fulness of its terror, yet no line Project beyond the marble's proper plane. Where shall we find it fitting company ? 36 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN The very place ! 'Twill feel at home between Antinoiis crested with the lotus-flower, And the bronze statue by Praxiteles, The lizard-slaying Musagete. No hand Must maim its splendour, mending it. The mind, And not manipulation, can supply What Time hath taken. Let it keep its loss, Like yon divine sarcophagus that weds Peleus with Thetis, the fair Seasons four Tricked in their emblematic imagery, Hephaestus proffering the well-tempered sword, Pallas her spear, and tender Hesperus With sloping torch leading the way to love, That falters on the threshold of its joy. " O for one morning on the Acropolis ! THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 37 With Salamis afront me, and, around, The steeds of Hyperion, and the dark Unplunging coursers of deliberate Night Pacing the marble pediment unheard ; Recalcitrant Centaurs bridled by their manes By Lapithae implacable, and Fate With granite gaze watching the things foretold. And then the long procession, gods and men, Panathenaic, toward the Temple reared f]y the imperishable race that chose Wisdom for their Divinity, and, thus Initiated, found in faultless form, Or wrought or sung from mundane formlessness. The secret of serenity. Virile Rome, Intent on warfare till the world was won, Gave ageing Hellas hospitality. Guest not ungrateful. But the hasty hours 38 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN I spent at Paestum and Parthenope, Have made me live so that I must not die Till I have seen the violet sunset fade Along the friezes of the Parthenon. " Let me be just to Rome, even the Rome Of the Tiara and the Fisher's Ring, Tonsured and surpliced. The Hellenic mind Moulded to its conception matter and spirit, Marble and even thought, discarding all That clouds consummate harmony, aware Art is rejection. Comprehensive Rome Shaped concord from all discords, and, when worlds Fell to its sword, made Roman citizens Of their strange gods. And so it is to-day, Here where imperial piety confounds Venus with Virgin, Saturn with Saint John, THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 39 Persephone with Agnes, and adores Jove in Jehovah ! Though I can but kneel To the unnamed Divinity that haunts No human shrine, but hovers in the air With wings unseen, a vision not a voice, Rome hath rebuked my northern narrowness : And now with sympathetic gaze I watch The brown-skinned peasant fingering her beads Before the oil-lit shrine ; the hurrying nun Deep-cloistered in her wimple ; mobile maid, Her face alight with undefined desire. Of patron Saint enamoured till he send An earthly lover ; aye, and sandalled monks Mumbling their Aves, so they do but love What they recite ; flowers, candles, incense, all That brings to lowly and laborious hearts Comfort and tenderness. Rome understands. 40 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN At Seehaus I in church one day was shamed, A Homer being my Hymn-Book. Rightly read, Rome's Ritual is a poem, so I need No missal more humane ; and hence it lasts. Withal, at times, my fingers fondly turn The pages of the Lutheran book of prayer My mother gave me ; for the parent Past, Of all things the most potent, still enfolds Its far-off children. " Sometimes I wonder if these Cardinals, These Monsignori with minds full as free, Heaven save the mark ! as mine, are anchored fast To their deep dogmas. Giacomelli spits The Anti-Jansenists on pious pen, And then unto his pagan library, — No better Hellenist than he, — and shakes THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 41 His cassock, reading Aristophanes ; While Passionei with Voltaire corresponds, And gives his poems to Pope Benedict. His library he calls his wife, and laughs, ' Behold no jealous husband ! Take, enjoy, And then return ! ' Among the Alban hills, Now in a flowery dressing-gown, and now Booted and spurred, he stalks about his grounds. All things discussing, and with strident voice Outscreams the peacocks, with a hat more like A contadino's than a Cardinal's, From under dear Albani's purple peeps The Colonel of Pontifical Dragoons ; A soldier yet at heart, real soldier once Before his Uncle, Clement, grasped the keys, And then, of course, his Eminence ; but still Prepared to die, — for what ? For Art ? Or, 'chance. 42 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN For Countess Cheroffini : — best of men, Most loving and most lavish ; yet at prayer, Mass, Matins, Vespers, Lauds, punctilious As mid-day cannon of Sant' Angelo ; And did you doubt the difference between Contrition and Attrition, would be shocked At such a lack of breeding. " Every day, One hour before along the city sounds Ave Maria from the Capitol, I in his coach escort my Cardinal To the fair Countess : fair by courtesy, Since fair she was, uncertain years ago. When Alessandro in his virile prime Clanked sword and spur, and every breast in Rome Heaved at his coming ! Chuckling gossips add. THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 43 ' One daughter is his double.' On that theme The babbler, love, is as discreet as death, The cradle reticent as is the grave ; So whether friend or lover, Chi lo sa ? Believe which way you will. Who is it, says, ' Short-memoried lust and long-remembering love'.-* And he remembers : honour him for that. He never empty-handed climbs her stair. But either gem, antique intaglio, Etruscan lamp or tazza, to her feet — Belike it minds him of the bygone years When he was not sole giver, and consoles For grizzled embers, — tenders gallantly, And she rejects not ; for the Countess hath That foible of the facile, graceful greed, And thus the villa slowly strips of much My faithfulness begrudges. True, to give 44 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Is proof of nobleness, and only churls Feel richer by refusing. But he gives, She grasps, too heedlessly ; and so, when asked How to repair his gaping treasury, I answered laughingly, ' Your Eminence, But burn the Cherofifini Palace down And all within it, or alive or dead, You shall be rich as Sallust.' " Truly strange. This fetter of the flesh, that maketh bond Pontiff and bumpkin, clown and Emperor. Love, — yes of father, mother, country, friend, And most, of Art, — that I can understand. But whep they merrymake o'er Mengs's wife, — He first descrying her, wise man, exclaimed, ' Behold the very model that I want THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 45 For my Madonnas ! ' — and reproach me, ' See ! How Margherita smiles upon you ! ' Pheugh ! How little do they know me ! Love, like Art, Should live established in serenity ; A classic love, immortal because calm, Not like the riotous imaginings Of our Romantics, sprawling shapelessly In perishable passion. Let me live With fleshless forms voluptuously cold In unexacting marble. But, to Greece ! Their sepulchres are there, and, at a stroke. Ready to rend their cerements ! " At last ! the Camerlengo doth accept Visconti for my vicar while I sail For Sunium, and along the unfathomed soil 46 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Of Elis, Phocis, Attica, I sound For submerged treasures. If not sooner, blame The inconsiderate gods, who send us here So ill-provided ! First, to Brandenburg. Homesickness drives me thither, for the heart Is biassed in the womb, and yearneth back Toward the mother-land, grown greater now That Frederick steals what others stole before, Tracing his kingdom's boundary with his sword. And, not unmindful of that wider realm All sceptres can annex, would have me share. If scantily, his thalers, so I bide A minion at his Court. Impossible. But half the offer and all my liberty Haply I shall secure. Vienna too. Where the male Empress and Prince Kaunitz scan THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 47 A gem as shrewdly as a protocol, Perchance will plump my purse : — Then, then, to Greece ! But Romeward still returning. After Rome, Florence itself were exile ! " Ere I go, Let me once more, untended, wander where 'Mid prostrate columns, splintered capitals. The buffaloes in Sabine wine-carts crouch, Dreamily blinking, while their shaggy guides Drowse by the shafts, imperial pedestal The mid-day pillow of their peasant sleep. ^Vhere Caesar strode to triumph, bearded goats Browse on the myrtle of the Palatine, And all the sepulchred centuries lie around. Tumbled in tombs, without an epitaph ! 48 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN What was Evander's, Caesar's then, is now Evander's yet once more ; and if again Aeneas left the Latian shore to search For crib of future Rule, he still would find The white sow's farrow nosing fallen mast, The Tiber tawnily twisting past the sedge, Straw-wattled walls and wolfish wilderness. It is the Past that, from its crumbling tomb Unswathing lethal bandages, hath stretched Its shadowy sceptre o'er the vanished sway Of Tribune and Triumvirate, and crowned The seven-hilled desolation with the spell Of its own quietude. The Past is peace. Elsewhere let that confused amalgam, Man, Battle and wrangle ; here he broods and prays, Ready to go where Rome hath gone before, Down to the dust of ages. THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 49 " It is well I hence should go awhile. Achinto tripped In hurrying up Saint Peter's stair, and passed Was by Rezzonico, whereby I missed A Pope for patron. Though Albani buys As ardently as ever, buys and builds, The brightest torch burns itself out at last. And, if that light were once extinguished, ^V'hat darkness would be mine ! How great he is Who knows, till death shall focus him aright ? In life he is too near. But worst of all Is Mengs's treachery. Yes, Art is well ; But how about the artist ? There it stands, Writ plainly in my History ; and now. The Ganymede embraced by Jupiter I lauded as antique, is Mengs's own ! Out on these painted canvasses wherethrough E so THE CONVERSION OF WTNCKELMANN Deception filters ! Marble doth not lie : You cannot forge the Gods. Olympia ! Athens ! and Delphi ! In your fallen fanes, They bide untravestied ! Ill Trieste [Lying on a couch, mortally wounded.] " Not broken on the wheel ! For what? Why, then. Where is the rack for tiie ? He did no worse Than I have done these twenty years, and I Have had those years : he's empty-handed still. Give him the gem : no, not the gem ; that must Go to Albani, but with strict command, A dying man's, he do not part with it To Countess Cheroffini. Not the gem. Give him my gold, with Clement's head on it. 52 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN Mere modern dross, that yet will carry him To Grecian shores, where there lies rusted gold Richer than rubies. He hath an eye, 'tis sure. For hand of Hellas, otherwise he ne'er Had plunged his knife so deep into my breast When I withheld the gem. I clung to it As though salvation hung upon my grasp, And so I die a martyr, — after all ! But to which Heaven ? Olympus } Paradise ? That now seems not so clear as once it did. In lengthening days of Lent, a hirsute monk, Who fasted all the year, would come from out His frozen cell on topmost Apennine, To drag us Christian Sybarites along The Stations of the Cross that sanctify The Flavian Amphitheatre, and fright Our sunny souls with talk of mists of Death, THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 53 There is no mist upon Death's mirror now, Wherein I see my life reflected clear, Blurred and refracted hitherto. By what ? By love of Beauty ? That can hardly be ; For Beauty is the soul of all things good. Which Beauty, though ? Is there, then, more than one ? I know my father was an honest man. He would not call })ie so ; and honesty Is Beauty after all. I grow confused. But do not put Arcangeli on the wheel. Had he for lucre roped me by the neck, You should have broken him on a thousand racks. But 'twas the carven wonder made him ply The murderous noose. I almost think he might. With study, wax to be a connoisseur Expert as I ; and few there are who could : 54 THE CONVERSION OF IVINCKELMANN And there are herma, meta, puteal, By hundreds, waiting their interpreter. Whose deed was darker, think you, his or mine. If dark be either ? Instantaneous, — The artist's native impulse, the strong hands. Lured by the fascination of the gem, — Was his quick act. Mine was deliberate. Cold, calculated, the reward assured And long enjoyed, — to be enjoyed no more ! It now had been all one had I remained Still torpid in my drear integrity, And never basked in the insidious South, That undermines the conscience, where one learns Art for Art's sake, and finds scant room for Virtue. [A Capuchin Friar, with an Attendant, enters. How well I know that habit ! Am I, then. In Rome once more ? Could you not carry me THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 55 Under the colonnade that I may see Alban and Sabine mountains yet again, Fold after fold of smoothly sloping hill, Dimpled with dingles flashing to the sea ; Bare-headed Monte Cavo's learned brow, Rocca di Papa black above the woods Where I have gathered snowdrops in the Spring, And philosophic Tusculum ? I think That I should be more happy in my grave, If Roman sunshine-shadow stretched athwart it. What said you ? He has come to shrive my sins. Is then a Roman passport needed there, Whither I travel ? Oft have I confessed, But never told the dark confessional My sole transgression. Can you guess it, now ? What ! Margherita Guazzi ? Foolish Mengs, And may-be fooUsh wife ! But well I know, — 56 THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN What I have never made men understand, — To apprehend the glory and disdain Of that Pure Form which dwells within the mind, AVe should, like swallows, only skim the ground, Then soar into the ether. I have loved Chaste marble in cool corridors. If that Be sin, it is my only one, and I Can scarce repent of it. And now 'tis plain I never shall commit that sin again. If so there be another, even now I cannot tell it you ! You are very kind, And so is the Madonna, and the Saints. But if you'll read to me from out the book My mother gave me when I was a boy In the Old Mark, I think I should prefer it. They are wrong, tell dear Albani, when they deem 'Tis Aegeus showing unto Aethra where THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN 57 In Troizene are hid the shoes and sword For Theseus to unearth, when his Ump thews Are strained to manhood. It is Theseus' self, The huge rock rolled away ; and thus he takes Leave of his mother, bound for Attica. When am I going thither ? Ganymede ! Lift me aloft, that I may banquet where They chant the music of Cecilia ! Beauty is everywhere ! " [He dies. Attendant How still he looks ! Capuchin The homing soul goes quiet on the wing Unto its nest in Heaven ! A SOULLESS SINGER I Hail ! throstle, by thy ringing voice descried, Not by the wanderings of the tuneless wing ! Now once again where forked boughs divide, Lost in green leafage thou dost perch and sing Trilling, shrilling, far and wide, " It is Spring." II Thy matins peal long ere the rosy dawn Unfolds its hull and burgeons into light ; Nor cease thy vespers till from darkling lawn The silent shadows steal away in flight, And the star-lit tent is drawn Round the Night. A SOULLESS SLNGER 59 III Is it in Heaven, or mid-way of the Earth, Thou learn'st to outvoice, outnumber all the Nine ? What is the secret of thy madcap mirth ? Wilt thou not tell it me, and make it mine ? What is all my singing worth, Matched with thine ? IV If heedless mortals only understood What the prerogatives of real renown. Hearing thee warble in umbrageous wood, Or in the dingles of the rolling down, It is thou, not I, that should Wear the Crown. 6o A SOULLESS SINGER And yet perchance more deep and more divine The insufficiency of my poor strain. One single soHtary note is thine : Weak though they haply be, yet I have twain. Joy is all thy song ; of mine Half is pain. VI Thou with thy carol flatterest the Year But when it frolics into happy bloom : Only those notes hast thou, wild chanticleer, That with their thoughtlessness can banish gloom From its cradle \ I, a tear For its tomb. A SOULLESS SLNGEA' 6i vn Thou with the blossom and bud and baby leaf, Heartless of woe, dost revel and rejoice, But for sere sorrow and the pensive sheaf Lackest, for all thy minstrelsy, the voice : There are seasons when sweet grief Is our choice. VIII So, throstle, be the very voice of Spring, And bring back rapture to the wrinkled bole ! Of all life's chords joy is the leading string, And happiness is much, but not the whole. Leave it then to me to sing To the soul ! TO IRELAND " What ails you, Sister Erin, that your face Is, like your mountains, still bedewed with tears ? As though some ancient sorrow or disgrace. Some unforgettable wrong from far-off years, Done to your name or wreaked upon your race. Broods in your heart and shadows all your mind ; So that no change of Season, nor the voice Of hopeful Time, who bids the sad rejoice. Can lift your gloom, but you, to kind unkind, Keep moaning with the wave, and wailing with the wind. TO IRELAND 63 II " Come let us sit upon yon cliff, we twain, Whence we may gaze across your soft green Isle, Girt by the strong immeasurable main, That, see ! looks up, and sweetens to a smile ; And you shall talk to me of all your pain, Through deep blue eyes and dark unbraided tresses Hooded by wimple that your own hands weaved When you and Winter last together grieved, While far beneath our feet the fast foam presses Round bluff, and creek, and bay, and seabird-sung- to nesses." Ill Then half withholding, yielding half, her gaze. She smoothed her kirtle under her, and clasped Her hands about her knees, as one who prays, 64 TO IRELAND Watching the clambering billows as they grasped At slippery rocks where wild-goats may not graze, Then fell back foiled, shivered to spray and smoke. And I could see the warm blood of her race Crimson beneath her weather-beaten face : As though her heart would break, her voice would choke. In accents harsh with hate, and brimmed with sobs, she spoke. IV " They came across the sea with greed of spoil, And drove me hither and thither from fen to foam. Reaving and burning, till the blackened soil Waxed bitter-barren as the brine they clomb. Sterile to seed and thankless unto toil. Harried and hunted, fleeing through the land. TO IRELAND 65 I hid among the caves, the woods, the hills. Where the mist curdles and the blind gust shrills. Suckling my hate and sharpening my brand, My heart against their heart, my hand against their hand. V " And ever as I fled, they ever pursued. They drove away my cattle and my flocks, And left me, me a Mother ! to claw for food 'Mong ocean-boulders and the brackish rocks Where sea-hogs wallow and gorged corm.orants brood ; Unroofed my hut, set the sere thatch aflame, Scattered my hearth-fire to the wintry air. Made what was bare before stretch yet more bare, I waxing wilder more they strove to tame. To force and guile alike implacably the same. F 66 TO IRELAND VI "They would not suffer me to weep or pray: Upon the altar of my Saints they trod ; They banned my Faith, they took my Heaven away, And tried to rob me of my very God ! And, when I sued them leave me where I lay, And get them hence, still, still they would not go. They reft the spindle from my famished hands, My kith and kin they drove to other lands, Widowed and orphaned me ! And now you know Why all my face is wet, and all my voice is woe ! " VII I crept a little nearer, and I laid My hand on hers, and fondled it with mine ; And, " Listen, dear Sister Erin," soft I said, " Not to the moaning of the salt-sea brine, TO IRELAND 67 Nor to the melancholy crooning made By thoughts attuned to Sorrow's ancient song, But to the music of a mellower day. Forgive ! Forget ! lest harsher lips should say, Like your turf fire, your rancour smoulders long. Now let Oblivion strew Time's ashes o'er this wrong. VIII " The robber bands that filled the Isle with groans Were long since clamped and prisoned in their graves : The flesh hath dried and shrivelled from their bones, Their wild war-standards rotted from their staves ; Their name is nought. 'Tis thus that Time atones For all the griefs man fastens on his kind. The days were dire, his passions swift and fell : 68 TO IRELAND His very Heaven was but a sterner Hell. His love was thraldom, hatred black and blind, As headstrong as the wave, as wayward as the wind. IX " Nor did alone you suffer. You too dealt Full many a stroke, too fierce to be subdued Till you had made the fangs of vengeance felt. Mercy and truce you spurned, and fed the feud Of Celt with Saxon, Saxon against Celt, Till lust enforced whatever law forbade. Nay ! do not linger on that painful dream. But turn and smile ! as when a silvery gleam Dimples your loughs that whilom seemed so sad. And runs along the wave, and ghstens and is glad ! TO IRELAND 69 X "We own our fault the greater, so we now For balance of that wrong would make amends. Lift the low wimple from your clouded brow, Give me your gaze, and say that we are friends ; And be your mountains witness of that vow, Your dewy dingles white with blossoming sloe, Your tawny torrents tumbling to the sea : For You are far the fairest of the Three, And we can never, never, let you go. Long as your warm heart beats, long as your bright eyes glow. XI "The Triune Flag, none now save Tyrants dread, That with Imperial peace protects the world, Hath by the sinewy sons you bore and bred 70 TO IRELAND Round the wide globe been carried and unfurled. Where danger greatest, they it was who led, And stormed death rather than be backward driven. Now, gaze no more across the western main, Whose barren furrows hope still ploughs in vain. Turn Eastward, where, through clouds by sunrise riven, England holds out her hand, and craves to be for- given. XII " Live your own life, but ever at our side ! Have your own Heaven, but blend your prayer with ours ! Remain your own fair self, to bridegroom bride, Veiled in your mist and diamonded with showers. We twain love-linked whom nothing can divide ! TO IRELAND 71 Look up ! From Slievemore's brow to Dingle's shore, From Inagh's lake to Innisfallen's Isle And Garriffe's glen, the land is one green smile ! The dolphins gambol and the laverocks soar : Lift up your heart and live, enthralled to grief no more ! " DUGORT, ACHILL ISLAND, August 1895. VIS MEDICATRIX NATURAE When Faith turns false and Fancy grows unkind, And Fortune, more from fickleness than spite, Takes the keen savour out of all delight. And of sweet pulp leaves only bitter rind, Then I the load of living leave behind, Fleeing where, far from human sound and sight, Over brown furrows wheels the lapwing white. And whistles tunely with the winter wind. For Nature's frank indifference woundeth less Than Man's feigned smiles and simulated tears : She is at least the egoist she appears, Scorning to proffer or entice caress ; And, through the long reiterated years, Endures her doom with uncomplainingness. ANOTHER SPRING CAROL Now Winter hath drifted To bygone years, And the sod is uplifted By crocus spears ; And out of the hive the bee wings humming, And we know that the Spring, the Spring, is coming. II For the snow hath melted From sunless cleft. And the clouds that pelted Slant sleet have left The sky as blue as a child's gaze after Its tears have vanished and veered to laughter. 74 ANOTHER SPRING CAROL III See ! light is gleaming In primrose brakes, And out of its dreaming The speedwell wakes, And the tender tips of the timid clover Peep forth to see if the frost be over. IV The celandine gazes Straight at the sun ; The starlike daisies Peer one by one ; And, over the pool where the sallow glistens, The daffodil hangs its head and listens. ANOTHER SPRING CAROL 75 At first but single, And then in flocks, In dell and dingle The lady-smocks Make mist for the golden cowslip tapers To shine like sunrise through morning vapours. VI In fat-ribbed fallows The lapwings nest, And the home-coming swallows Seek out where best They may build, with a love that is sure and stable, Their cosy cribs under last year's gable. 76 ANOTHER SPRING CAROL VII The blackcaps treble A strain as sweet As stream o'er pebble, Or wind through wheat, While, like flickering light, the kinglet hovers Round woodbined haven of hiding lovers. viii The lark chants, soaring From moist brown heath, 'Twixt Heaven's high flooring And earth beneath, Like a true wise poet, in wavering weather. A carol to link the twain together. ANOTHER SPRING CAROL 77 IX The cuckoo, flaunting O'er glen and glade, Flies loudly vaunting New loves betrayed. Till we all of us echo the madcap saying, And laugh, and joyously wend a'maying. Then in mask and tabard The mummer trips. And out of its scabbard The iris slips. And calls to the lily and rose, " Why tarry, Now the nightingale under the silence starry. 78 ANOTHER SPRING CAROL XI " Keeps trilling, trilling, Its nest above, The descant thrilling Of straining love, That yearneth for more — more — more, — till glad- ness, Still winged with wanting, seems one with sadness." XII But once the roses And lilies blow. Our wilding posies P'ollow the snow, And, turning to greet the fair new comer. We find the face of the fearless Summer. ANOTHER SPRING CAROL 79 XIII But though sultry shimmer And panting heat Lure senses dimmer To deem them sweet, Who would not exchange their passionate thunder For May's moist blushes of maiden wonder ? XIV But Winter hath drifted To bygone years, And the sod is uplifted By crocus spears ; And out of the hive the bee wings humming, And we know that the Spring is coming, coming ! WHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND ! Whippingham — Sandringham, February 1 896 Who would not die for England ! This great thought, Through centuries of Glory handed down By storied vault in monumental fane, And homeless grave in lone barbaric lands. Homeless but not forgotten, so can thrill With its imperious call the hearts of men, WHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND! 81 That suddenly from dwarf ignoble lives They rise to heights of nobleness, and spurn The languid couch of safety, to embrace Duty and Death that evermore were twin. " Who would not die for England ! " Thus He said, Who at the holiest of all English hearths, The holiest and the highest, had been given A seat, an English Princess for his Bride, — Now at that hearth weeping her widowed tears, Bitter and barren as the winter rain. " It is not meet that I, whom this famed Isle, This generous, mighty, and majestic Land, Ennobled as her son, should not repay Her splendid gift of kinship. Let me go, Go where they go, Her world-researching race, G 82 IVHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND ! That slumber pillowed on the half-drawn sword, And wake at whisper of her will, to greet Duty and Death that evermore were twin." Who would not die for England ! And for Her He dies, who, whether in the fateful fight, Or in the marish jungle, where She bids, Far from encircling fondness, far from kiss Of clinging babes, hushes his human heart. And, stern to every voice but Hers, obeys Duty and Death that evermore were twin. So across the far-off foam, Bring him hither, bring him home. Over avenues of wave, — English ground, — to English grave ; WHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND ! 83 Where his soldier dust may rest, England's Flag above his breast, And, love-tended, long may bloom English flowers about his tomb. Who would not die for England, that can give A sepulture like this, 'mid hamlet crofts. And comely cottages with old-world flowers, And rustic seats for labour-palsied limbs, The pensioners of Peace ! I linger here. Pondering the dark inexplicable Night, Here by this river-girt sequestered shrine Whose vanished walls were reared anew by Him, Of Princes the most princely, if it be That Wisdom, Love, and Virtue more adorn Sarcophagus of Kings than dripping spears, Lone wailing hearths and hecatombs of slain. 84 IVHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND ! And He too died for England, He who lived Scorning all joy save that great joy of all, The love of one true woman, She a Queen, Empress and Queen, yet not the more revered. Not the more loved, for those resounding names. Than for the lowlier titles. Gracious, Good, The Worthiest of Women ever crowned. Sweetest Consort, sagest Prince ! Snows on snows have melted since England lost you 3 — late to learn Worth that never can return ; Learned to know you as you were, Known, till then, alone to Her ! Luminous as sun at noon, Tender as the midnight moon. Steadfast as the steered-by star, WHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND ! 85 Wise as Time and Silence are : Deaf to vain-belittling lie, Deaf to gibing jealousy ; Thinking only of the goal, And, like every lofty soul. Scanning with a far-off smile The revilings of the vile. Yes, He too died for England ! thence withdrawn Dim to that undiscoverable land Where our lost loved ones dwell with wistful eyes, And lips that look but speak not. . . . But away ! Away from these soft-whispering waves that make A dulcet dirge around the new-delved grave, To bluff East-Anglia, where on wind-swept lawns The sanguine crocus peeps from underground To feel the sun and only finds the snow ; 86 WHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND ! And, whinnying on the norland blast, the surge Leaps against iron coast with iron hoof, As though the hosts of Denmark foamed afresh, Caparisoned for ravin ! And I see A cradle, not a coffin, and therein Another Child to England ; and, veiled Fate Over it bent with deep-divining gaze, And with oracular lips, like nurse inspired, Foretelling the fair Future. " Another Albert shalt Thou be, so known, So known, so honoured, and His name shall stand The sponsor to your spotlessness, until Dawns the full day when, conscious of your soul. Your soul, your self, and that high mission laid On all of such begetting, you may seize The sceptre of your will, and, thus-wise armed WHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND I 87 Against the sirens of disloyal sense, Like to your pure progenitor abide In God's stern presence, and surrender never That last prerogative of all your race, To live and die for England ! " SORROW'S IMPORTUNITY When Sorrow first came wailing to my door, April rehearsed the madrigal of May ; And, as I ne'er had seen her face before, I kept on singing, and she went her way. II When next came Sorrow, life was winged with scent Of glistening laurel and full-blossoming bay : I asked, but understood not, what she meant. Offered her flowers, and she went her way. SORROIVS IMPORTUNITY 89 III When yet a third time Sorrow came, we met In the ripe silence of an Autumn day : I gave her fruit I had gathered, and she ate, Then seemed to go unwillingly away. IV When last came Sorrow, around barn and byre Wind-carven snow, the Year's white sepulchre, lay. " Come in," I said, " and warm you by the fire." And there she sits, and never goes away. A REPLY TO A PESSIMIST O BEAUTIFUL bright world ! for ever young, And now with Wisdom grafted on thy Spring, Why do they slander thee with wailing tongue, And lose the wealth of thy long harvesting ? Why do they say that thou art old and sad, When, each fresh April, nightingales are glad. And, each returning May, paired misselthrushes sing ? A REPL V TO A PESSIMIST 91 11 " Stripped of our dreams " ! It is the sleeper then, And not the shadowy corridors of night, Fair visions have deserted. Hill and glen As haunted are with wonder and delight As when Endymion felt his eyelids kissed By the moist moon, and through the morning mist Foam - sandalled Venus flowered, immaculately white. Ill " No deities in sky, or sun, or moon ! No nymphs in grove or hill, in sea or stream " ! Why, I saw Artemis, this very noon, Slip through the wood, a momentary gleam, { 92 A REPLY TO A PESSIMIST As satin as the sallow and as lithe, \ And heard her eager sleuth-hounds baying blithe Hard on the intruder's heels, then rent Actaeon's scream. IV " Dead " ! Hamadryads frisk in every wood, In every pool elusive Naiads dwell ; Neptune's dread voice, deep as when Troy still stood, Is stored for us in every murmuring shell. List ! you will hear. But look, and you will find Iris in rainbow, Hermes in the wind, Delphi's inspiring fount in every wayside well. A REPLY TO A PESSIMIS7' 93 " No God ! no Heaven " ! The Gods you cannot kill, Nor banish from their seats the sainted choirs. The deep-toned organ is Cecilia's still, Still lamb-like Agnes quencheth wanton fires ; Stephen still sanctifies the martyr's lot, And many a maiden, though believing not. Beholds Madonna's face, then chastens her desires. VI O beautiful bright world ! for ever young, With gifts for ever fresh. The seasons bring All that they ever brought, since flowers first sprung To deck the blushing consciousness of Spring. 94 A REPLY TO A PESSIMIST Summer still makes us glad that we were born, Our musings mellow with the mellowing corn, And to our fireside loves wise Winter bids us cling. VII What is there we have lost while hearts still beat, While thought still burns ? You cannot Man dethrone, Time's Heir-Apparent, from his sovran seat. Assail his empire, or curtail its zone. What though fledged Science fearlessly explore New worlds of knowledge unsurmised of yore, These fresh-found realms the Muse annexes to its own. A REPL y TO A PESSIMIST 95 VIII Thus have we Eld's delights, our own as well : Science is but Imagination's slave ; Nor have " the antique fables " lost their spell, Because we pierce the sky and plumb the wave. For us the stars still sing, the moon still grieves, The Fauns still rustle in the fallen leaves, The Crucified is risen, and glorifies the grave. IX Is Love less sweet because men loved of yore ? No, sweeter, stronger, with the ages' growth. Love's long descent ennobles loving more. And Helen's falsehood fortifies one's troth. 96 A REPLY TO A PESSIMIST Bridging Time's stream with life's commanding span, We stand upon the Present, and we scan Future and Past, and seem to live along them both. What have we lost ? — we, who have gained so much : The mind of man, familiar afar. Hath upon sun, star, planet, laid its touch. Lassoed the lightning, yoked it to his car. Yet fear not lest that Knowledge should deflower The awe that veils the inviolable Power, Or that we e'er shall learn what, whence, and why we are. A REPLY TO A PESSIMIST 97 XI 'Tis Mystery lends a meaning unto Life, Never quite guessed ; and simple souls, mean- while. Find Paradise in mother, sister, wife, The far one's faithfulness, the near one's smile. So long as valour wins and beauty charms, And lovers throb into each other's arms. How can you rail at life, reproach it and revile ? XII " Woe, agony, despair " ! Woe, yes, there is, Despair there need not be. Meek wisdom tries To gain from grief an after-taste of bliss, And sees a rainbow through its streaming eyes. H 98 A REPLY TO A PESSIMIST Nor, if I could, would I quite part with pain. Lest pity die ; — a loss, and not a gain. 'Tis Pride alone despairs. Be humble, and be wise. XIII We bear no "burden of the bygone years." Their matter perishes, their soul survives, Widening our hopes and narrowing our fears ; Shedding a shadowy charm athwart our lives. Guiding our gropings, steadying our feet, Like to an aged nurse, that we may meet The Future without dread, whatever rue arrives. XIV What if there were no Heaven? there is the Earth. What if there were no goal } there is the race. A REPLY TO A PESSIMIST 99 'Tis unfulfilled desire that staves off dearth, Sustains the march and stimulates the pace. Where is the "prodigal waste of myriad lives" ? No life is wasted that loves, hopes, and strives, And wears an eastward glow upon its fading face. XV beautiful bright world ! Earth, Heaven, in one, 1 thank thee for thy gifts : the gift of birth, The unbought bounty of air, sky, sea, sun, Seed-time and shower, harvest and mellow mirth ; For privilege to think, to feel, to strive ; I thank thee for the boon of being alive, For Glory's deathless dream, and Virtue's match- less worth. HOW FLORENCE RINGS HER BELLS November 1494 — April 1893 With shimmer of steel and blare of brass, And Switzers marching with martial stride, And cavaliers trampling brown the grass, Came bow-legged Charles through the Apennine pass, With black 11 Moro for traitor guide ; HOW FLORENCE EINGS HER BELLS loi 11 And, passing by Pisa's ransomed towers, He swept up stream over Arno's plain, Where Florence garlands herself with flowers From burgeoning vineyards and olive bowers, And emerald furrows of sprouting grain ; in And, flying and flaunting his pennons proud, Crossed her bridges with naked sword, And sware he would flourish his trumpets loud And bristle his spears, save her beauty bowed Itself to his stirrup, and owned him lord. IV Then Savonarola's voice was heard Swelling as Arno, storm-flushed, swells, I02 HOW FLORENCE RINGS HER BELLS And, with threat for threat, and with gird for gird, Capponi flashed back the famous word, " Then blow your trumpets, we'll ring our bells !" And lo ! as he spake, into street and square Streamed Florentine burghers in grim array : Then Charles, and Sforza, and groom Beaucaire, Scared by the city they deemed but fair, Shouldered their pikes, and passed away. VI But now a Monarch more mighty far Than ever from Gallic or Teuton throne Swooped from the Alps upon wings of war, Comes welcome as April and west winds are, When Winter is over and mistral flown. HOW FLORENCE RINGS HER BELLS 103 VII The Fair City peacefully rings her bells, Rings her bells, and the loving peal In the lazuline ether ascends and swells, Till hoary turrets and convent cells Feel young once more as the young buds feel. VIII And iris gonfalons scale her walls, And rustic roses storm square and street ; In sound of her gates the cuckoo calls. And the slow-swaying ox-wain creaks and crawls 'Twixt blossoming bean and beardless wheat. IX In gabled pathway and shaded porch Men gather and wait to acclaim "The Queen" ; I04 HOW FLORENCE RINGS HER BELLS While over the wall, where the sunrays scorch And the lizard is lost, the silvery torch Of the fig is tipped with a flame of green. X And cypress spire and stonepine dome. And circling mountain look on and smile. Saying, " Hitherward evermore seek your home, When you traverse the furrows of fallow foam That nourish with glory your Northern Isle, XI And from weightier cares than a Caesar's brain Pondered of old, would crave release ; Wise Ruler whose long victorious Reign Imposes on love-loyal land and main The fetters of proud Imperial Peace." Careggi. A DREAM OF ENGLAND I HAD a dream of England. Wild and weird, The billows ravened round her, and the wrack, Darkening and dwindling, blotted out the track, Then flashed on her a bolt that scorched and seared. She, writhing in her ruin, rolled, and reared. Then headlonged unto doom, that drove her back To welter on the waters, blind and black, A homeless hulk, a derelict unsteered. Wailing I woke, and through the dawn descried. Throned on the waves that threatened to o'erwhelm. io6 A DREAM OF ENGLAND The England of my dream resplendent ride, And armoured Wisdom, sovran at the helm, Through foaming furrows of the future guide To wider empire a majestic Realm. JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS Now let no passing-bell be tolled, Wail now no dirge of gloom ; Nor around purple pall unfold The trappings of the tomb ! Dead ? No, the Artist doth not die ; Enduring as the air, the sky. He sees the mortal years roll by, Indifferent to their doom. 1 o8 JOHN E VERE TT MILL A IS II With the abiding He abides, Eternally the same ; From shore to shore Time's sounding tides Roll and repeat His name. Death, the kind pilot, from His home But speeds Him unto widening foam, Then leaves Him, sunk from sight, to roam The ocean of his Fame. Ill Nor thus himself alone He lives. But, by the magic known To His " so potent art," He gives Life lasting as His own. See, on the canvas, foiling Fate, With kindling gaze and flashing gait, JOHN E VERB TT MILLAIS 109 Dead Statesmen still defend the State, And vindicate the Throne. IV Stayed by His hand, the loved, the lost, Still keep their wonted place ; And, fondly fooled, our hearts accost The vanished form and face. Beauty, most frail of earthly shows, That fades as fleetly as it blows. By Him arrested, gleams and glows With never-waning grace. V His, too, the wizard power to bring, When city-pent we be, The matron Autumn, maiden Spring, Bracken and birchen-tree. 1 1 o JOHN E VERE TT MILLAIS Look, 'twixt gray boulders fringed with fern, The tawny torrents chafe and churn, And, lined with light, the amber burn Goes bounding to the sea. VI Toll then for Him no funeral knell, Nor around aisle and nave Let sorrow's farewell anthem swell, Nor solemn symbols wave. Your very brightest banners bring. Your gayest flowers ! Sing, voices, sing ! And let Fame's lofty joybells ring Their greeting at His grave ! A POINT OF HONOUR I " Tell me again ; I did not hear : It was wailing so sadly. Nay, Hush ! little one, for mother wants to know what they have to say. There ! At my breast be good and still ! What quiets you calms me too. They say that the source is poisoned; still, it seems pure enough for you ! II " I shall bring them to shame, aye one and all, my Father who loves me so, 112 A POINT OF HONOUR Dear Mother, a little severe at times, but with story as white as snow. And sister Effie, so trim and quick, so fair and betrothed so long, Who will wait for her lover for years and years, but would die at the thought of wrong. Ill " O don't ! For I know what my brother Ralph, if he knew it, would think and say. He would drive me across the lonely moor, and would curse me all the way ; Would call on the cold wet winds to whip, and the sunshine to pass me by, And vow that the ditch were too good a grave for a thing as foul as I. A POINT OF HONOUR 113 IV " And then there is grand-dad, worn and white, who can scarcely speak or see. But sits in the sun in his wicker chair, with the Bible upon his knee. To him 'twould but sound like a buzzing hive if they talked to him of my fall : Yet I almost think that I dread his face, turned heavenward, more than all. " We have never been either rich or poor, but a proud, stiff yeoman stock. And to think that I am the first to bring sin's scab on a cleanly flock ! The pet lamb, too, as they call me still, the dearest of all their dears ! 114 A POINT OF HONOUR Hush, little one ! But you well may wail, suckled not upon milk, but tears. VI " He never will marry me now, that's sure. Who takes a wife with a stain ? How we used to sit in the bluebell wood, and roam through the primrose lane ! And I was thinking of some one else, while the nightingale trilled above. He alone, I think, will forgive me though, such a wonderful thing is Love. VII " Do you think I do not foresee it all ? — a mother and not a wife, A babe but without a father still, and the lack and the shame for life. A POINT OF HONOUR 115 The nudge and the sidelong sneer, in church, at market, year out, year in. But what would you have me do to escape the wages of my sin ? VIII " Give up the child ? To whom ? To what ? To honest and kindly folk Who have never a chit of their own and long for a wee thing to kiss and stroke, Who will call it their own, will rear as such, will teach it to lisp and pray : He will find the money for that and more. There is nothing he will not pay. IX " Pay ? Well, go on : I am listening hard, for the little one's now at rest. ii6 A POINT OF HONOUR Just look how it sucks and smiles in sleep on the pillow of mother's breast. Though I never thought — does Love ever think ? — that such was the end of all, It is wicked, but still for a joy like this I would almost repeat my fall. X "Yes, I understand. He has done his best. O, you make it perfectly clear. He is doing it all for me, no doubt ; he has nothing to face or fear. But 'tis strange that fathers with gold may pay for their guilt, and can then forget. And that lasting shame and a broken heart are the share of the mother's debt. A POINT OF HONOUR 117 XI " I have sometimes thought that Nature has against woman some lasting pique, For she makes us weak where we should be strong, and strong where we might be weak, Most good when a little badness pays, and bad when 'tis safe being good. To be always good, and nothing but good, 's the one hope for womanhood. XII " And I then should be good, or seem to be, which is pretty well much the same, Should hold up my head with the straightest then, and be shocked at a sister's shame. Ii8 A POINT OF HONOUR Be called by the Vicar his model maid, be kissed by the Vicar's wife, And may-be marry an honest man, and be happy and loved for life. XIII "The hollyhocks now up the garden walk are flowering strong and straight, The bees are out in the mignonette, and the moss- rose lingers late ; The orchard reddens, the acorn cups are thick 'neath the pollard oak, And up from the old red chimney-stack curls the first blue Autumn smoke. XIV The kine from the lowland are trailing home, and file betwixt shed and rick, A POINT OF HONOUR 119 In the wide brown bowls on the dairy shelf the cream lies smooth and thick \ 1 can hear the geese in the farmyard pond, I can see the neat new thatch. Now what if I went there brave and bold, and took courage to lift the latch ? XV " They never would know, they would cluster round, they would drag me in through the door, Would fondle and cuddle, and hug and kiss, and pull me down to the floor ; And who should kiss first, and who kiss last, would be all they would think of then : And at night we should all of us kneel and pray, and I too should say, " Amen 1 " I20 A POINT OF HONOUR XVI " They never would know; but /should know, and, when they were all asleep, I should lie awake through the long dark night, and wonder, and sob, and weep, Through the dear sweet bitter detested past would my wavering fancy roam, And at dawn I should learn to smile again, for at least I should be at home. XVII " And where would // be ? I must not ask — for I'm to be strong and wise, — If well or ailing, alive or dead, what colour its hair and eyes. Never knit a sock for its little feet, to the end never know its name. A POINT OF HONOUR 12 1 There's a shamelessness yet more shameful far than the worst abyss of shame ! XVIII " Well, you see I am going. And where ? Why, home ! Yes, straight unto Father's door, With this tell - tale thing in my warm weak arms, right over the windy moor. I shall tremble and stammer and halt, no doubt, and look like a thing accurst, And so double my fault by my helplessness ; and then I shall know the worst. XIX " If my Mother scolds, I will bow my head ; if my sister shrinks, I will weep ; 122 A POINT OF HONOUR If my brother smites, I will let him smite, for a sin so dark and deep. t But what if my Father rises up, and drives from ' the door, — what then ? I Well, then I will go to the Father of all \Vho pardoned Magdalen." A FLORILEGIUM All the seasons of the year, I have flowers for you, dear. When the ploughland's flecked with snow. And the blue-eyed scyllas blow, Gazing, through the wintry gale, Like your eyes when you are pale ; When in many a cloistered walk Droop upon their modest stalk Vestal snowdrops, one by one. White as is a wimpled nun ; 124 A FLORILEGIUM When, as sleet away doth sHp, And the thawing gables drip, The precocious crocus peers, — Childlike, sunshine half, half tears,— And from out the snug warm leaves Silent housewife Winter weaves, Scarlet windflowers, wide unfurled, Dazzle an awakened world ; These and more to you I bring. Bold outriders of the Spring. II When along the Northern skies Routed Winter shrieks and flies, And again the mavis shrills, Come the dauntless daffodils, A FLORILEGIUM 125 Laughing, as they sway and swing, At rude March's blustering. These I gather, and with these Rosy-white anemones, Like the coral-shells you wear Sometimes in your hazel hair ; Primroses loved none the less For their wilding lavishness ; Honeysuckle, like to you, To what's near it clinging true ; Violets, surprised in shade, By their own sweet breath betrayed ; Lagging hawthorn prized the more That it long was waited for ; These unto your bower I bring, Gifts of Summer lent to Spring. 126 A FLORILEGIUM III Which are loveliest, lilies dight In their stateliness of white, Safe against a touch too rude By their cold proud maidenhood, Or the unreserved rose. Careless where it gads or goes. So it be allowed to cling, Rioting and revelling ? Rose and lily both I cull, Iris scarce less beautiful, Mignonette more sweet than myrrh, Homely-smelling lavender, Pinks and pansies, golden whin, Constellated jessamine, A FLORILEGIUM 127 Bunches of the maiden's-bower, Tufts of gaudy gillyflower, Sprays of softening maidenhair ; With my posy mount your stair To the chamber where you sit, Tenderly awaiting it. IV Then, when gorgeous Summer wanes, Autumn woods and Winter lanes Do I haunt, that I may dress With their lingering loveliness Nook and ingle where you be Busy with your housewifery : Ripened reedmace' barren sheaves, Hardy hornbeam's russet leaves, 128 A FLORILEGIUM Jewels from the spindle-tree, Coral-fruited briony, Crimson haws and purple sloes, Rubies that were once the rose, Holly-berries warm in snow, Amber-beaded misletoe. Everything the waning year Spares, that I may bring you, dear. But should frost and rifling wind Leave not even these behind, And from out the leafless blast I must come to you at last Empty-handed, you would be More than all the flowers to me. IN PRAISE OF ENGLAND From tangled brake and trellised bower Bring every bud that blows, But never will you find the flower To match an English rose. It blooms with more than city grace, Though rustic and apart ; It has a smile upon its face, And a dewdrop in its heart. K I30 IN PRAISE OF ENGLAND II Though wide the goodly world around Your fancy may have strayed, Where was the woman ever found To match an English maid ? At work she smiles, through play she sings, She doubts not nor denies ; She'll cling to you as woodbine clings. And love you till she dies. Ill If you would put it to the proof, Then round the zodiac roam ; But never will you find the roof To match an English home. You hear the sound of children's feet Still pattering on the stair : IN PRAISE OF ENGLAND 131 'Tis made by loving labour sweet, And sanctified by prayer. IV Go traverse tracts sublime or sweet, Snow-peak or scorched ravine, But where will you the landscape meet To match an English scene ? The hamlet hallowed by its spire. The wildwood fresh with flowers, Garden and croft and thorp and byre Gleaming through silvery showers. Across the wave, along the wind, Flutter and plough your way. 132 IN PRAISE OF ENGLAND But where will you a Sceptre find To match the English Sway ? Its conscience holds the world in awe With blessing or with ban ; Its Freedom guards the Reign of Law, And majesty of Man ! BURNS'S STATUE AT IRVINE Yes ! let His place be there ! Where the lone moorland gazes on the sea, Not in the squalid street nor pompous square : So that he again may be From contamination free, His pedestal the plain, his canopy the air ! II There leave him all alone ! Too much, too long, he herded with his kind. 134 BURNS'S STA TUE A T IR VINE Lured by the frolic phantoms that dethrone Honest heart and homely mind, Phantoms that besot and blind, Then leave the troubled soul to suffer and atone. Ill From city stain and broil Hither his rustic memory reclaim, Leading him back, strayed suckling of the soil, Homeward, that forgiving Fame May around his shriven name A halo wind, shall Time nor Truth itself despoil. IV Quickly the Poet learns The little that the alien world can teach. Then he, if wise, to solitude returns. BC/AWS'S STA TUE A T IR VINE 135 Communing on brae and beach With old Ocean's rhythmic speech, Message of wandering winds, or lore of mountain burns. 'Tis there that Nature fills His brooding heart with all he needs to know, Moan of the main, and rapture of the rills ; So that, whether joy or woe Fire his verse, it still may glow Clear as her heaven-fed streams, and soaring as her hills. p. Vergili Maronis Georgicon Lib. ii. 458-538 O FORTUNATOS tiimium, sua si bona norint, Agricolas, quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis Fundit humo facilem victum iustissima tellus ! Si non ingentem foribus domiis alta superbis Mane salutantum totis vomit aedibus undam, Nee varies inhiant pulchra testudine postes, Inlusasque auro vestes Ephyre'iaque aera, Alba neque Assyrio fucatur lana veneno, Nee casia liquidi corrumpitur usus olivi ; At secura quies et nescia fallere vita, Dives opum variarum, at latis otia fundis, AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION Blest husbandmen ! if they but knew their bliss ! For whom, from war remote, fair-minded Earth Teems, to light toil, with ready sustenance. What though from splendid palace streams at dawn No servile train, gaping at inlaid gates, Corinthian bronzes, garments tricked with gold ; What though for them no snow-white wool be stained By Eastern dyes, nor oil be smeared with nard, Secure tranquillity is theirs, a life Of rural wealth, from galling failure free, Of ample leisure amid broad domains, 138 P. VERGILI MARONIS GEORG. II. Speluncae, vivique lacus, et frigida Tempe, Mugitusque bourn, mollesque sub arbore somni Non absunt ; illic saltus ac lustra ferarum, Et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus, Sacra deum, sanctique patres ; extrema per illos lustitia excedens terris vestigia fecit. Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore, Accipiant, caelique vias et sidera monstrent, Defectus solis varies lunaeque labores ; Unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant Obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant, Quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles Hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet. Sin, has ne possim naturae accedere partes, Frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis, AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION 139 Cool grots, and shimmering pools, and shady groves, Lowing of kine, and, after woodland chase. Delight of slumber under noonday boughs : Hard-working hinds to homely fare inured. Fear of the Gods, and reverence for age. Justice, deserting Earth, forsook them last. For me, enamoured of the darling Muse, Whose badge I bear, may she to me reveal The secret of the stars, the sun's eclipse. Moon's endless labour, earthquake, storm, and calm. Why winter suns subside into the sea So soon, and summer twilights stay so long. But if not mine the native fire and force To find my way to Nature's very heart. Leave me green vales and irrigating rills. And soothe my lack of fame with woods and streams. I40 P. VERGILI MARONIS GEORG. II. Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes, Flumina amem silvasque inglorius. O ubi campi Spercheosque et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis Taygeta, o qui me gelidis convallibus Haenii Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra ? Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari. Fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestes, Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores. Ilium non populi fasces, non purpura regum Flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres, Aut coniurato descendens Dacus ab Histro, Non res Romanae perituraque regna : neque ille Aut doluit miserans inopem aut invidit habenti. Quos rami fructus, quos ipsa volentia rura Sponte tulere sua, carpsit, nee ferrea iura AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION 141 Where are the braes and burns of Thessaly, And Spartan maidens wantoning in the woods ! O who will hence now wizard me away To Haemus' dewy dingles, and with dense Umbrageous branches curtain my retreat ! Thrice blest indeed is he that apprehends The root and real significance of things, Who tramples under foot both fear and fate, Nor dreads the roar of Acheron's yawning surge. Nor happy less, who knows the rustic gods, Pan, old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs. To menace of the mob or regal frown. To Dacian hosts and fratricidal strife, Future of Rome, and perishable realms, Insensible alike, his heart is spared Pain for the poor and envy of the rich. His wealth the harvest trunk and furrow yield. 142 p. VERGILI MARONIS GEOKG. IT. Insanumque forum aut populi tabularia vidit. Sollicitant alii remis freta caeca, ruuntque In ferrum, penetrant aulas et limina regum ; Hie petit excidiis urbem miserosque Penates, Ut gemma bibat et Sarrano dormiat ostro ; Condit opes alius defossoque incubat auro ; Hie stupet attonitus rostris ; hunc plausus hiantem Per cuneos geminatus enim plebisque patrumque Corripuit ; gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum, Exilio(]ue domos et dulcia limina mutant Atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole iacentem. Agricola incurvo terram dimovit aratro : Hinc anni labor, hinc patriam parvosque nepotes Sustinet, hinc armenta boum meritosque iuvencos. Nee requies, quin aut pomis exuberet annus Aut fetu pecorum aut Cerealis mergite culmi, Proventuque oneret sulcos atque horrea vincat. AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION 143 Nothing he recks of edicts cast in bronze, News of the hour, or Senate's wrangling strife. Some scour the seas in search of war, and storm The gates of Kings, put cities to the sword, To drain gemmed goblets, snore in Tyrian sheets ; Some gloat upon their golden hoards, while some Are dazed by sounding rhetoric or befooled By cheers repeated from patrician lips And plebs alike ; exult in brother's blood ; Or in sheer lust of exile quit their home To seek a roof beneath some other sky. With his curved share the wise swain stirs the soil, Source of his constant care, and sustenance Of country, kin, sleek kine, and generous steers. Respite is none ; for still the season teems With fruits, or lambing flocks ; or mellow sheaves Crest the long furrows, and restock the barns. 144 P- VERGILI MARONIS GEORG. II. Venit hiemps : teritur Sicyonia baca trapetis, Glande sues laeti redeunt, dant arbuta silvae ; Et varies ponit fetus autumnus, at alte Mitis in apricis coquitur vindemia saxis. Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati, Casta pudicitiam servat domus, ubera vaccae Lactea demittunt, pinguesque in gramine laeto Inter se adversis luctantur cornibus haedi. Ipse dies agitat festos fususque per herbam, Ignis ubi in medio et socii cratera coronant, Te libans, Lenaee, vocat, pecorisque niagistris Velocis iaculi certamina ponit in ulmo, Corporaque agresti nudant praedura palaestrae. Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini, Hanc Remus et frater, sic fortis Etruria crevit Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma, AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION 145 Then Winter comes ; the olives must be pressed, The hogs grunt homeward gorged with mast ; the grove Yields arbutus, the Autumn peach and pear, And the grapes ripen on the warm dry soil Meanwhile his children clamber to be kissed, His honour lives unstained, the foaming pail Brims with abounding milk, and on the sward Young kids do mimic battle with their horns. 'Tis he that leads the Feast ; and when his folk Have lit the altar-fire and wreathed the cup, Thee, Bacchus, with libation he invokes, and then Tests at the target his head-shepherds' skill. Or bids them strip and wrestle for the prize. Such was the life the Sabines led of old, Such Remus and his twin ; and thus it was Etruria throve ; thus seven-hilled Rome became L 146 P. VERGILI MARONIS GEORG. 11. Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces. Ante etiam sceptrum Dictaei regis et ante Inpia quam caesis gens est epulata iuvencis, Aureus banc vitam in terris Saturnus agebat. AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION I47 One with itself, the glory of the world. Such, too, ere yet unnatural Minos reigned, And impious mortals banqueted on flesh, The simple manners of the Golden Age. THE SILENT MUSE " Why have you silent been so long ? " In tones of mild rebuke you ask. Know you not, kindly friend, that Song Is the " Gay Science," not a task ? II It is but when it pleaseth God The blackthorn blows, the acorns fall ; The Muse ignores a mortal's nod, And will not come to beck and call. THE SILENT MUSE I49 III If I, to catch the ear of men, Should go on singing day by day, What other, better, were I then, Than screeching chough or scolding jay ? IV But save the unseen source be stirred, The happy numbers will not flow : Then one is like a songless bird That crouches in the drifted snow. Say, did you ever sit and dream, When summer clouds are white and still, Beside a slow unsounding stream That winds below some rustic mill ? ISO THE SILENT MUSE VI The languid current scarcely moves ; At times you almost doubt it flows ; Loitering in shallow sandy grooves, It makes no music as it goes. vii The sluice is down, the mill-race still, Nor in mid-stream nor water's edge Comes faintest ripple, tiniest rill. To stir the flag, or sway the sedge. VIII Beside the dozing stream you doze. For nothing wakes in air or sky : It feels as if Time's eyelids close. And 'tis the same to live or die \ THE SILENT MUSE 151 IX To be a passive part of all That rounds Heaven's universal plan, Of things that soar, of things that crawl, Of mindless matter, as of man. X When slowly through the noonday sleep A phantom something seems to stir. Like waves of dewy light that creep Along gray chords of gossamer. XI At first it is nor sight nor sound. But feeling only, inward sense Of motion slowly rising round. You know not where, you know not whence. 152 THE SILENT MUSE XII Then, noiseless still, but plain to see, The languid waters wake and wind ; The wave before now fears to be O'ertaken by the wave behind. XIII The race, long pent, from out the mill Comes rushing, rippling, gleam on gleam ; The runnels rise, the shallows fill. And deep and happy flows the stream. XIV The lazy sedges sway and swerve. The reedmace rocks its heavy head ; Past many a bend, and bay, and curve. The river revels through its bed. THE SILENT MUSE 153 XV And as it twists, and curls, and swells, From out its leaping heart there come Sounds sweet as far-off village bells, Or swarming bee-hive's honeyed hum. XVI Through quaking grass and waving weed Rises and falls the river-theme ; Vibrating rush and trembling reed Are but the harpstrings of the stream. XVII Once more the gold-ribbed gravel trills With quavering trebles clear and cool, Blent with the deeper note that fills The plunging weir and swirling pool. 154 THE SILENT MUSE XVIII Bed, bank and channel, chant and chime, And fall and freshet, as they run, Though ignorant of tune and time. Sing in melodious unison. XIX And so, if I be shaped to sing What kindly hearts are pleased to hear. And blissful were did Nature bring A rush of music all the year ; XX Seasons there are it doth not flow, When Fancy's freshets will not come. The springs of song seem shrunk and low, And all my being dry and dumb. THE SILENT MUSE I55 XXI When suddenly from far-off source, Unseen, unsounding, deep, immense, Something, with swift resistless force, Flushes the heart and floods the sense ; XXII And as though Heaven and Earth did drain Into that deep mysterious spring, Brims all the windings of the brain ; Then like replenished stream I sing. XXIII The will can not the stream control. Its currents are divinely sent, And thought and feeling, mind and soul. Are rapt in rhythmic ravishment. 156 THE SILENT MUSE XXIV And on they flow, when once they start, To some ordained but unguessed goal, Through all the channels of the heart, And all the reaches of the soul. XXV Then come the winged words that skim The surface of earth's discontent To soar up to the ether dim, Faint heard from far-off firmament. XXVI But, till the music stirs and swells Within my breast, forbearing be ; Nor lightly waken slumbering bells Above a silent sanctuary ! A PORTRAIT When friends grown faithless, or the fickle throng, Withdrawing from my life the love they lent, Breed in my heart disdainful discontent, And sadden sunshine with a sense of wrong. Then I, forgetting to be wise and strong. And on my own endearment too intent, Unto myself make musical lament, And lullaby my pain with plaintive song. But, when I gaze upon this face august, Her gift, who, seated on earth's loftiest throne, ISS A PORTRAIT For others' weal holds half the world in trust, Pondering on cares of Empire all alone, I, then rebuked, remember to be just, Think of her griefs, and quite forget my own. 1893. THE END Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. THE WORKS OF ALFRED AUSTIN, POET LAUREATE, A New Collected Edition of Poems, in sevefi vols. Crown ^vo. 5 J. each. I. The Tower of Babel. A Celestial Love Drama. IL Savonarola : A Tragedy. IIL Prince Lucifer. IV. The Human Tragedy. \'. Lyrical Poems. VL Narrative Poems. VIL Fortunatus the Pessimist. 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