Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol

SILENTIUM AMORIS

As often-times the too resplendent sun   Hurries the pallid and reluctant moonBack to her sombre cave, ere she hath won   A single ballad from the nightingale,   So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,And all my sweetest singing out of tune.And as at dawn across the level mead   On wings impetuous some wind will come,And with its too harsh kisses break the reed   Which was its only instrument of song,   So my too stormy passions work me wrong,And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show   Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;Else it were better we should part, and go,   Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,   And I to nurse the barren memoryOf unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

HER VOICE

The wild bee reels from bough to bough   With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,Now in a lily-cup, and now   Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,         In his wandering;Sit closer love: it was here I trow         I made that vow,Swore that two lives should be like one   As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,As long as the sunflower sought the sun, —   It shall be, I said, for eternity         ’Twixt you and me!Dear friend, those times are over and done;         Love’s web is spun.Look upward where the poplar trees   Sway and sway in the summer air,Here in the valley never a breeze   Scatters the thistledown, but there         Great winds blow fairFrom the mighty murmuring mystical seas,         And the wave-lashed leas.Look upward where the white gull screams,   What does it see that we do not see?Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams   On some outward voyaging argosy, —         Ah! can it beWe have lived our lives in a land of dreams!         How sad it seems.Sweet, there is nothing left to say   But this, that love is never lost,Keen winter stabs the breasts of May   Whose crimson roses burst his frost,         Ships tempest-tossedWill find a harbour in some bay,         And so we may.And there is nothing left to do   But to kiss once again, and part,Nay, there is nothing we should rue,   I have my beauty, – you your Art,         Nay, do not start,One world was not enough for two         Like me and you.

MY VOICE

Within this restless, hurried, modern world   We took our hearts’ full pleasure – You and I,And now the white sails of our ship are furled,   And spent the lading of our argosy.Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,   For very weeping is my gladness fled,Sorrow has paled my young mouth’s vermilion,   And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.But all this crowded life has been to thee   No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spellOf viols, or the music of the sea   That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

TÆDIUM VITÆ

To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wearThis paltry age’s gaudy livery,To let each base hand filch my treasury,To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair,And be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom, – I swearI love it not! these things are less to meThan the thin foam that frets upon the sea,Less than the thistledown of summer airWhich hath no seed: better to stand aloofFar from these slanderous fools who mock my lifeKnowing me not, better the lowliest roofFit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strifeWhere my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

HUMANITAD

It is full winter now: the trees are bare,   Save where the cattle huddle from the coldBeneath the pine, for it doth never wear   The autumn’s gaudy livery whose goldHer jealous brother pilfers, but is trueTo the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blewFrom Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay   Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wainDragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day   From the low meadows up the narrow lane;Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheepPress close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creepFrom the shut stable to the frozen stream   And back again disconsolate, and missThe bawling shepherds and the noisy team;   And overhead in circling listlessnessThe cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crackWhere the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds   And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,And hoots to see the moon; across the meads   Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;And a stray seamew with its fretful cryFlits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings   His load of faggots from the chilly byre,And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings   The sappy billets on the waning fire,And laughs to see the sudden lightening scareHis children at their play, and yet, – the spring is in the air;Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,   And soon yon blanchèd fields will bloom againWith nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,   For with the first warm kisses of the rainThe winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears,And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peersFrom the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,   And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runsOver the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly   Across our path at evening, and the sunsStay longer with us; ah! how good to seeGrass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greeneryDance through the hedges till the early rose,   (That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)Burst from its sheathèd emerald and disclose   The little quivering disk of golden fireWhich the bees know so well, for with it comePale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.Then up and down the field the sower goes,   While close behind the laughing younker scaresWith shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,   And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,And on the grass the creamy blossom fallsIn odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigalsSteal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons   Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons   With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantineIn dusty velvets clad usurp the bedAnd woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shedRed leaf by leaf its folded panoply,   And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy   Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,And violets getting overbold withdrawFrom their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!   Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smockAnd crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,   Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flockBack to the pasture by the pool, and soonThrough the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon.Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,   The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nunsVale-lilies in their snowy vestiture   Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnationsWith mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,And straggling traveller’s-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind.Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring,   That canst give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine,And to the kid its little horns, and bring   The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,Where is that old nepenthe which of yoreMan got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!There was a time when any common bird   Could make me sing in unison, a timeWhen all the strings of boyish life were stirred   To quick response or more melodious rhymeBy every forest idyll; – do I change?Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?Nay, nay, thou art the same: ’tis I who seek   To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek   Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dareTo taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul   Takes discontent to be its paramour,And gives its kingdom to the rude control   Of what should be its servitor, – for sureWisdom is somewhere, though the stormy seaContain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect   In natural honour, not to bend the kneeIn profitless prostrations whose effect   Is by itself condemned, what alchemyCan teach me this? what herb Medea brewedWill bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?The minor chord which ends the harmony,   And for its answering brother waits in vainSobbing for incompleted melody,   Dies a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain,A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,   The little dust stored in the narrow urn,The gentle ΧΑΙΡΕ of the Attic tomb, —   Were not these better far than to returnTo my old fitful restless malady,Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd god   Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bedWho talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod   Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,Death is too rude, too obvious a keyTo solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy.And Love! that noble madness, whose august   And inextinguishable might can slayThe soul with honeyed drugs, – alas! I must   From such sweet ruin play the runaway,Although too constant memory never canForget the archèd splendour of those brows OlympianWhich for a little season made my youth   So soft a swoon of exquisite indolenceThat all the chiding of more prudent Truth   Seemed the thin voice of jealousy, – O henceThou huntress deadlier than Artemis!Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss.My lips have drunk enough, – no more, no more, —   Though Love himself should turn his gilded prowBack to the troubled waters of this shore   Where I am wrecked and stranded, even nowThe chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,Hence!  Hence!  I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.More barren – ay, those arms will never lean   Down through the trellised vines and draw my soulIn sweet reluctance through the tangled green;   Some other head must wear that aureole,For I am hers who loves not any manWhose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian.Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,   And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair,With net and spear and hunting equipage   Let young Adonis to his tryst repair,But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spellDelights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel.Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy   Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloudPass over Tenedos and lofty Troy   And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowedIn wonder at her feet, not for the sakeOf a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take.Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!   And, if my lips be musicless, inspireAt least my life: was not thy glory hymned   By One who gave to thee his sword and lyreLike Æschylos at well-fought Marathon,And died to show that Milton’s England still could bear a son!And yet I cannot tread the Portico   And live without desire, fear and pain,Or nurture that wise calm which long ago   The grave Athenian master taught to men,Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,To watch the world’s vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,   Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse   Hath come on Wisdom, and MnemosyneIs childless; in the night which she had madeFor lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself hath strayed.Nor much with Science do I care to climb,   Although by strange and subtle witcheryShe drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time   Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestryTo no less eager eyes; often indeedIn the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to readHow Asia sent her myriad hosts to war   Against a little town, and panopliedIn gilded mail with jewelled scimitar,   White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the MedeBetween the waving poplars and the seaWhich men call Artemisium, till he saw ThermopylæIts steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,   And on the nearer side a little broodOf careless lions holding festival!   And stood amazèd at such hardihood,And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore,And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’erSome unfrequented height, and coming down   The autumn forests treacherously slewWhat Sparta held most dear and was the crown   Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knewHow God had staked an evil net for himIn the small bay at Salamis, – and yet, the page grows dim,Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel   With such a goodly time too out of tuneTo love it much: for like the Dial’s wheel   That from its blinded darkness strikes the noonYet never sees the sun, so do my eyesRestlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies.O for one grand unselfish simple life   To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hillsOf lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife   Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,Where is that Spirit which living blamelesslyYet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he   Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soulWhose gracious days of uncrowned majesty   Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goalWhere love and duty mingle!  Him at leastThe most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast;But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote   The clarion watchword of each Grecian schoolAnd follow none, the flawless sword which smote   The pagan Hydra is an effete toolWhich we ourselves have blunted, what man nowShall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!   Gone is that last dear son of Italy,Who being man died for the sake of God,   And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower,Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lourOf the rude tempest vex his slumber, or   The Arno with its tawny troubled goldO’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror   Clomb the high Capitol in the days of oldWhen Rome was indeed Rome, for LibertyWalked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale MysteryFled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell   With an old man who grabbled rusty keys,Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell   With which oblivion buries dynastiesSwept like a wounded eagle on the blast,As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome,   He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair,And now lies dead by that empyreal dome   Which overtops Valdarno hung in airBy Brunelleschi – O MelpomeneBreathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies   That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the NineForget awhile their discreet emperies,   Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrineLit for men’s lives the light of Marathon,And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower!   Let some young Florentine each eventideBring coronals of that enchanted flower   Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide,And deck the marble tomb wherein he liesWhose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes;Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings,   Being tempest-driven to the farthest rimWhere Chaos meets Creation and the wings   Of the eternal chanting CherubimAre pavilioned on Nothing, passed awayInto a moonless void, – and yet, though he is dust and clay,He is not dead, the immemorial Fates   Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain.Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!   Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strainFor the vile thing he hated lurks withinIts sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.Still what avails it that she sought her cave   That murderous mother of red harlotries?At Munich on the marble architrave   The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seasWhich wash Ægina fret in lonelinessNot mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourlessFor lack of our ideals, if one star   Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjustSwift daylight kills it, and no trump of war   Can wake to passionate voice the silent dustWhich was Mazzini once! rich NiobeFor all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,What Easter Day shall make her children rise,   Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feetShall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes   Shall see them bodily?  O it were meetTo roll the stone from off the sepulchreAnd kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her,Our Italy! our mother visible!   Most blessed among nations and most sad,For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell   That day at Aspromonte and was gladThat in an age when God was bought and soldOne man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves   Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: PovertyCreeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives   Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,And no word said: – O we are wretched menUnworthy of our great inheritance! where is the penOf austere Milton? where the mighty sword   Which slew its master righteously? the yearsHave lost their ancient leader, and no word   Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears:While as a ruined mother in some spasmBears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasmGenders unlawful children, Anarchy   Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigalLicence who steals the gold of Liberty   And yet has nothing, Ignorance the realOne Fraticide since Cain, Envy the aspThat stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied graspIs in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed   For whose dull appetite men waste awayAmid the whirr of wheels and are the seed   Of things which slay their sower, these each daySees rife in England, and the gentle feetOf Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.What even Cromwell spared is desecrated   By weed and worm, left to the stormy playOf wind and beating snow, or renovated   By more destructful hands: Time’s worst decayWill wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing   Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the airSeems from such marble harmonies to ring   With sweeter song than common lips can dareTo draw from actual reed? ah! where is nowThe cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bowFor Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One   Who loved the lilies of the field with allOur dearest English flowers? the same sun   Rises for us: the seasons naturalWeave the same tapestry of green and grey:The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away.And yet perchance it may be better so,   For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,Murder her brother is her bedfellow,   And the Plague chambers with her: in obsceneAnd bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!For gentle brotherhood, the harmony   Of living in the healthful air, the swiftClean beauty of strong limbs when men are free   And women chaste, these are the things which liftOur souls up more than even Agnolo’sGaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes,Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair   White as her own sweet lily and as tall,Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair, —   Ah! somehow life is bigger after allThan any painted angel, could we seeThe God that is within us!  The old Greek serenityWhich curbs the passion of that level line   Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyesAnd chastened limbs ride round Athena’s shrine   And mirror her divine economies,And balanced symmetry of what in manWould else wage ceaseless warfare, – this at least within the spanBetween our mother’s kisses and the grave   Might so inform our lives, that we could winSuch mighty empires that from her cave   Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid SinWould walk ashamed of his adulteries,And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes.To make the body and the spirit one   With all right things, till no thing live in vainFrom morn to noon, but in sweet unison   With every pulse of flesh and throb of brainThe soul in flawless essence high enthroned,Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,Mark with serene impartiality   The strife of things, and yet be comforted,Knowing that by the chain causality   All separate existences are wedInto one supreme whole, whose utteranceIs joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governanceOf Life in most august omnipresence,   Through which the rational intellect would findIn passion its expression, and mere sense,   Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind,And being joined with it in harmonyMore mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,Strike from their several tones one octave chord   Whose cadence being measureless would flyThrough all the circling spheres, then to its Lord   Return refreshed with its new emperyAnd more exultant power, – this indeedCould we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed.Ah! it was easy when the world was young   To keep one’s life free and inviolate,From our sad lips another song is rung,   By our own hands our heads are desecrate,Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessedOf what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest.Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown,   And of all men we are most wretched whoMust live each other’s lives and not our own   For very pity’s sake and then undoAll that we lived for – it was otherwiseWhen soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies.But we have left those gentle haunts to pass   With weary feet to the new Calvary,Where we behold, as one who in a glass   Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity,And in the dumb reproach of that sad gazeLearn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise.O smitten mouth!  O forehead crowned with thorn!   O chalice of all common miseries!Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne   An agony of endless centuries,And we were vain and ignorant nor knewThat when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew.Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds,   The night that covers and the lights that fade,The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds,   The lips betraying and the life betrayed;The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but weLords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.Is this the end of all that primal force   Which, in its changes being still the same,From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course,   Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame,Till the suns met in heaven and beganTheir cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man!Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though   The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rainLoosen the nails – we shall come down I know,   Staunch the red wounds – we shall be whole again,No need have we of hyssop-laden rod,That which is purely human, that is godlike, that is God.

FLOWER OF LOVE

ΓΛΥΚΥΠΙΚΡΟΣ ΕΡΩΣ

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault   was, had I not been made of common clayI had climbed the higher heights unclimbed   yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.From the wildness of my wasted passion I had   struck a better, clearer song,Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled   with some Hydra-headed wrong.Had my lips been smitten into music by the   kisses that but made them bleed,You had walked with Bice and the angels on   that verdant and enamelled mead.I had trod the road which Dante treading saw   the suns of seven circles shine,Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening,   as they opened to the Florentine.And the mighty nations would have crowned   me, who am crownless now and without name,And some orient dawn had found me kneeling   on the threshold of the House of Fame.I had sat within that marble circle where the   oldest bard is as the young,And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the   lyre’s strings are ever strung.Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out   the poppy-seeded wine,With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead,   clasped the hand of noble love in mine.And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush   the burnished bosom of the dove,Two young lovers lying in an orchard would   have read the story of our love.Would have read the legend of my passion,   known the bitter secret of my heart,Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as   we two are fated now to part.For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by   the cankerworm of truth,And no hand can gather up the fallen withered   petals of the rose of youth.Yet I am not sorry that I loved you – ah! what   else had I a boy to do, —For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the   silent-footed years pursue.Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and   when once the storm of youth is past,Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death   the silent pilot comes at last.And within the grave there is no pleasure, for   the blindworm battens on the root,And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of   Passion bears no fruit.Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God’s   own mother was less dear to me,And less dear the Cytheræan rising like an   argent lily from the sea.I have made my choice, have lived my poems,   and, though youth is gone in wasted days,I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better   than the poet’s crown of bays.