P5V6 'lgil and V to Mwamiiymn m m:* m*?^ HHBBBBBOBBu .... - • ,/ John P n LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CAUFOHHIA RIVERSIDE VIGIL AND VISION. M N.I'.. For List of works by the same author^ see last page. VIGIL AND VISION. NEW SONNETS BY JOHN PAYNE Author of u The Masque of Shadows", ^Intaglios", "■Songs of Life and l)eatli\ a Lau/rec", "■New J'oems", &c. JJicum. Ouid dicunt: DicuntO. < Htl .V. c'tlii/l ■: L< INDI I III. VILLON SO( N I \ 191 TRsvr fSVCo PRINTED BY E. J. BRILL, LEYDEN (HOLLAND). CONTENTS. Page I. Signs and Seasons. The Months 3 Two Daybreaks 9 In the Hallerthal 10 Prophets of the Prime 10 Nature's Secret 12 In Winter 12 False February 13 Primula Veris 13 The Hills whence my Help cometh 14 The first of the Alps 15 Spring-Sadness 15 The Lark 16 Ver Salutiferum 16 Km, a Benedicts 17 The Death of the Wood-warbler 17 Lilies 18 Feathered Ingrates 18 Convallaria Majalis 19 A Mid-March Day 19 Autumn 20 Two Rivers 20 II. The Night-Watches. White Nights 25 Dream-Meetings 27 The Cushat 27 Animae Vigilium - s The foredawn Hour eel 3° 1 the beloi d D "1 ; 1 III. Musicalia. But foi M 35 May In ibert ■ ihn • • Berlioz VI CONTENTS. Page Liszt 37 Smetana 40 Wagneriana 41 The Pedigree of the Romantic School in Music. . 43 Mendelssohn 44 Merkel 45 La Course a l'Abime 45 Schubert 46 At the Piano 48 Field's Nocturn, n°. 16 in F 48 J. P. E. Hartmann 49 Vall6e d'Obermann 49 IV. Litteralia. Dante 55 Spencer 55 y Keats 56 Schopenhauer 56 Pars Poetae 57 Love and Song 58 Sursum Corda 58 Hafiz and Paul 59 Wordsworth 60 Herman Melville 62 Stephane Mallarme 63 Auguste Villiers de ITsle Adam 63 Theodore de Banville 64 E. J. W. Gibb 64 Leconte de Lisle 65 Trinitas Anglica 65 Willi a Copy of Sully Prudhomme's "Les Vaines Ten- dresses" 1 66 Popularity 66 V. Ut Pictura .... Pan im Gebiisch 69 Le Capuchon rouge 69 Medea 70 P.acchanal 70 Der Tod als Freund 71 Gotter im Walde 71 The Two Poles 72 Innoniinata 72 The Rape of Psyche 73 CONTENTS. VII Jesus on Lake tiennesaret 73 Edward Burne Tones 74 Valedictory (J. T. X.) 74 VI. Varia. ( >ur Dead 77 W,„k 78 In Memoriam "Rover", ob. July 2, 1902 78 Martyr- of History 79 Wo Cotter sind nicht 82 Mens Anglica 82 To Max Eberstadt in Willesden Cemetery .... 83 On the Limpopo. 1900 83 Trans Astra 84 Herculis Columnar 84 nepiteiitij,x 'EQvixdv 85 Love and Reason 85 "Sport" 86 Spes Crudelior 86 False Slavery and True 87 Catkind and Humankind 87 The Creation of Woman 88 Rights and Duties 88 Natura Naturans 89 On the South African Horse-Holocaust 89 Ilillfoot and Summit 90 Past, Present, Future 90 ni^ncv. vilain, il vous poindra 91 June II, 1903 91 England's God 92 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 93 Two Ways of Love 94 Conscript and Volunteer 95 - A mad World, my Ma ters! 95 LUX in Annua 96 My I.ady dead o<> Vedantasara 97 I n< I ad of Hi. , Eon 00 ^S The Return of the 1 1 Return to Barbari m 100 Education trm- and I , 101 101 I hi new Inv.i .1 the Bai bai ian •. . ... Superstition 102 VIII CONTENTS. Page Progress .... over the Cliff 103 Turk and Slav 103 I'ln- Lasl of the Gods 104 ^Thought and Truth 1 04 Personality 105 The God of the Past 105 The God of the Future 106 VII. The Silver Age. The Silver Age 109 Oculo Retorto m Et Ego 112 Lucus Deorum 112 Porto Invento 1 13 Hypnerotomachia 114 Life's Summing-up 114 Re Infecta 115 Nearing Port 116 Mors Janua Vitas 116 Mortuis Dilectis 117 I. SIGNS AND SEASONS. SIGNS AND SEASONS. THE MONTHS. JANUARY. THIS is the bitter birth-month of the year. The sun looms large against the leaden sky, Rayless and red, as 'twere a giant's eye, That through the mists of death abroad doth peer: The fettered earth is dumb for frosty cheer, Veiling its face to let the blast go by. Who said, "Spring cometh"? Out upon the lie! Spring's dead and buried: January^ here. Shut to the door; heap logs upon the fire. If in your heart there harbour yet some heat, Some sense of flowers and light and Summer-sweet, In some half-fabulous dream of days foregone Remembered, feed withal hope's funeral pyre, So you may live to look upon the dawn. I EBRUARY. HOW long, o Lord, how long the Winter's woes? I it to purge the world of sin and stain That in its winding-sheet it stands again For penance, pining in the shrouded snows? Methinks, I do remember of the rose To have heard fable in some far domain Of old fantastic dreams and fancies vain; But what in sooth it was, Ood only knows' Was ever aughl but Winter in the land Was e\er snow time pasl and Springtime come, To bless the brown earth with her flowerful hands? Well nigh the cuckoo's call, the wild bee's hum Have we forgot. Vet, through the chill snow-copi The kilidh I KX US blooms and bids us hope. S/GNS AND SEASONS. MARCH. MARCH comes at last, the labouring lands to free. Rude blusterer, with thy cloud-compelling blast, The pining plains from cark of Winter past That clear'st and carpetest each bush and tree With daffodil and wood-anemone, A voice from the illimitable Vast Of dreams thou art, the tale that doth forecast Of hope yet live and happiness to be. And hark, the robin fluting on the bough, The rough breeze tangling on his tender breast The ruddy plumes ! Yet sings he, unopprest, The awakening year, the blessed burgeoning In wood and weald, the Then becoming Now And all the pleasant presage of the Spring. APRIL. SWEET April, with thy mingling tears and smiles, Dear maid-child of the changing months that art, What wit so blunt, what breast with sorrow's smart So sore but must confess thy tender wiles? What woes but thy capricious charm beguiles? At thy sweet sight, the winter-thoughts depart And with glad lips men say and gleeful heart, "Belike we yet shall greet the Golden Isles". Pale as thy primrose, as thy violets sweet, Thy varying stint thou fill'st of dainty days; Yet, though thy bright prime passeth, still shall praise And blessing follow on thy flitting feet Nor Summer's sheen thy memory make less dear, That bring'st the first-fruits of the flowering year. SIGNS AND SEASONS. 5 MAY. THE wild bird carolled all the April night, Among the leafing limes, as who should say, "Lovers, have heed; here cometh in your May, "When you shall walk in woods and heart's delight "Have in the fresh-flowered fields and Spring's sweet sight !" And truly, with the breaking of the day, Came the glad month and all the world was gay With lilac-breath and blossoms red and white. Oh moon of love, how shall the snowtide do To wind the world again with winter-death, Whilst in our hearts the thought of thee is blent With memories more sweet than honey-dew Of all thy nights and days of ravishment, Thy birds, thy cowslips and thy hawthorn's breath? JUNE. THE empress of the year, the meadows' queen, Back from the East, with all her goodly train, Is come, to glorify the world again With length of light and middle Summer-sheen. In every plot, upon her throne of green, Bright blooms the rose; with birds and blossom-rain And perfume ecstasied are wood and plain And Winter is as if it ne'er had been. Oh June, liege lady of the flowering prime, Now that thrush, finch, lark, linnet, ousel, wren Thy praises pipe, to the Iranian bard ' How shall we hearken, who, the highwaymen Autumn and Winter, warns us, follow hard On th) fail feet and bide their baleful time? ' Hafiz. S/UNS AND SEASONS. JULY. THE meadows slumber in the golden shine; Full-mirrored in the river's glass serene, St irl ess, the blue sky sleeps; knee-deep in green, Nigh o'er-content for grazing are the kine. The russet hops hang ripening on the bine; The birds are mute; no clouds there are between The slumbering lands to come and the sun's sheen; The day is drowsed with Summer's wildering wine. Peace over all is writ: fought is the fight; From Winter for the nonce the field is won And the tired earth can slumber in the sun And dream her summer-dreams of still increase; Whilst, as the long rays lengthen to the night, The breeze o'er all the landscape murmurs "Peace !" AUGUST. AUGUST, thou monarch of the mellow noon, That with thy sceptre smit'st the teeming plain And gladd'nest all the world with golden grain, How oft have I, beneath thy harvest moon, Hearkened the cushat's soft insistent croon, As to the night she told her soul in pain, Or heard the corn-crake to his mate complain, When all things slept, beneath the sun aswoon ! The world with sun and sheen is overfed And the faint heart, its need once done away, Soon waxes weary of the summer-day And the sun blazing in the blue o'erhead, ••Would God that it were night!" is apt to say And "Would the summer-heats were oversped !" SIGNS AND SEASONS. SEPTEMBER. HOW is the world of Summer's splendours shorn ! The rose has had its day; from weald and wold Past is the blossom-pomp, the harvest-gold; The fields are orphaned of the ripened corn. The meads, of their lush livery forlorn, Lie bare and cheerless; Summer's tale is told And Autumn reigns; the world is waxing old, Its youth forspent in Plenty's heaped-up horn. Yet, though the leaves, September, sere and brown Show on thy time-awearied trees, in sign Of life burned low, retreating to the root, With jewels rich and rare, whose like no mine On earth might yield, bound are thy brows for crown, Purple and gold and red, of ripening fruit. OCTOBER. OCTOBER, May of the descending days, Mid-Spring of Autumn, on the shortening stair Of the year's eld abiding still and fair, A pause of peace, when all the world at gaze, 'Neath the mild mirage of thy sun tilled haze, Chewing the cud of Summer's sweets that were, Lingers, unmindful of the Winter' i ire, Yet in thy russet woods and li am ways; Sweet was the Summer, sweetei yel the Spring; But in these mi I attempered noons <>i thine, Hung with the clustering jewels ol the vine, And in thy ruddock's clear, contented lay, A charm of sola* e is, that in no thing 1 1 . Summei suns may yield 01 bio • i 8 S/GNS AND SEASONS. NOVEMBER. THE tale of wake is told; the stage is bare, The curtain falls upon the ended play; November's fogs arise, to hide away The withered wrack of that which was so fair: Summer is gone to be with things that were. The sun is fallen from his ancient sway; The night primaeval trenches on the day: Without the Winter waits upon the stair. Stern herald of the wintry wrath to come, The mist-month treads upon October's feet, Muting' the small birds' song, the insects' hum, And all involving in its winding-sheet, Graves on the frontal of the failing year, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here !" DECEMBER. THE roofs are dreary with the drifted rime And in the air a stillness as of death Th'approach of some portentousness foresaith. December comes, the tyrant of the time, Vaunt-courier of the cold hybernal clime. Mute is the world for misery; no breath Nor stir of sound there is, that welcometh The coming of the Winter's woeful prime. "Alack! Was ever such a thing as Spring?" We say, hand-holding to the hearths of Yule. "Did ever roses blow or throstles sing?" And in our ears the wild blast shrilleth; "Fool, "That, in this world of ruin and decay, "Thy heart's hopes buildedst on the Summer day!' S/GATS AND SEASONS. TWO DAYBREAKS. 1. WINTER. THE white light wakened me at morning-gray And to the window in the dawn I went. The dying night with the snow's sacrament New houseled was and stark the white world lay Under the grimness of the growing day, Its wan face lifting to the firmament, That, with its endless, ashen-colonred tent, From pole to pole space vaulted, aye to aye. Corpse of cold Nature, who might ever deem That thou again from Winter's deathly dream Shouldst wake, to wanton in the sunlight sweet And see the lark wing skyward through the cloud, Shouldst scent the roses in the Summer-heat And hear the thrush among the leafage loud? 2. SPRING. THE opal flush of dawn is in the sky; Already m the limes I hear begun The chirp of birds, awaking one by one; And yonder in the East the lark mounts high, Shrill-singing, looking, longing to espy The rosy-footed heralds that fore run The crimson standards of the coming sun: Gone is the night, the golden daj draws nigh. \ii Spring, what winter shall fordo th) sweet? How, in the sorry season of the snows, Shall we forget thy silver sandalled feet, Thai walked with us in April's primrose-w I low but remembei thai we smell t he rosi \ud i arolled in the i owslip m< ads ol May ? io S/GNS AND SEASONS. IN THE HALLERTHAL. (LUXEMBOURG). THE water wandered singing by my feet, As through the dells, with many a red-boled beech O'erarched, I went, that from the fiery reach The wood ways warded of the noontide heat. Through thronging ferns the silver stream did fleet, Past range on range of temples, each on each Ensuing still, without the tongue of speech That told the story of a time effete. Ah me, thou tiny, trotting, trickling thread, Mid age-bleached rock and maze of living green Thy little life that livest, never dead, How many a generation hast thou seen ! How many an age hath come and gone, whilst thou Thy careless ditty chantedst then as now! PROPHETS OF THE PRIME. I. CROCUSES. BUT yesterday the world without was white; And now the sap begins to stir anew. The grass is starred with cups of gold and blue, Lilac and silver, flakes of living light, As of a rainbow fallen in the night. The crocuses are up, a cheery crew : Weary of tarrying the Winter through, They might not wait till Spring for the sun's sight. Vaunt-couriers of the world's awakening, That quicken, in the middle Winter's woe, Our hearts with your kaleidoscopic show, Ye mind us of hope's seed in every thing, How Winter wan there's none but hath its Spring, Nor soul so sad but joy again may know. SIGNS AND SEASONS. 1 1 2. HYACINTHS. WHAT are these bright and glorious of array, An army as with banners, risen to break The Winter's rearward battle and to make High proclamation in each garden-way Of all the flowering witcheries of May, Myriads of summer-thoughts that overtake The land with sudden splendour and awake The dumb wan world unto the morrowing day? These are the visions of the slumbering earth, Amiddleward the weary winter night, Visions of sun and sheen and summer-mirth Dreamt out aloud unto the lightening sky, What time the world, ere yet the day wax white, Dreams that she dreams and knows the waking nigh. 3. TULIPS. I HE tulips are abroad beneath the sun. Like to a company of topers, fain, After long drouth, the goblet full to drain, O'er the brown earth, a-smile for winter done, With lips uplifted to the light, they run, Such draughts in-drinking of the golden rain, Before the blithe day pass and suinniei wane. There scarce would seem enough for ever) • What can be goodlier, tulips, 01 more sweet Than this your life, that, fol a blooming while, Mower out and flourish in the full sun Then, Summer over, to your bulbs retreat And snugly their the Wintei deep av» N01 wake to blossom till anothei May? 1 2 SIGNS AND SEASONS. NATURE'S SECRET. I went in woodlands when the leaves were sere: The watchet skies of Autumn, clear and cold, Peeped through their panoplies of red and gold; The wind went dirging to the dying year. Yet in the wan waste ways a subtle cheer There breathed; and as I sought to take and hold The spell of peace that hallowed wood and wold, "Content !" the robin carolled in mine ear. Yea, all that is on earth's alike content To die and in its like to live again, Save man, that, after seventy years of pain And strife, clings yet to personality And wearies heaven with his vain lament That others in his likeness live, not he. IN WINTER. METHINKS, in the dead season of the year, The very nakedness of Nature brings A keener sight into the soul of things, The heart to Nature's heart become more near, When 'gainst the sky the boughs are black and sere: And to the eye, with leaves and blossomings, With sky and sun undazed and flash of wings, The general scheme of all seems grown more clear. Nay, this I know; the spirit of delight Far franklier stirs my heart to songful cheer And my soul flowers in the Winter's night More freely than when Spring by mead and mere Leads her bright train or Summer to the height Runs up the gamut of the flowering year. SIGNS AND SEASONS. 13 FALSE FEBRUARY. NOT seldom, whilst the Winter yet is king, Whilst yet the meads are mute and boughs are bare, A stirring in the February air There comes, as with a faint foreshadowing, A passing prophecy of far-off Spring And distant days, when all the world shall wear The lovely liveries of Summer fair, That sets our wintry thought upon the wing. Well though we know the thing's a Winter's trick. To hold the soul with expectation sick, And he will soon resume his iron reign, Yet our fond hearts alone with hope in vain Swell not; for hark, the swallows in the eaves Rejoice as though the world were lush with leaves. PRIMULA VERIS. 1. I do remember whiles, when I have been Walking, where March went roaring to his end. In woods, with heart whose sadness did extend To all I met and looked on, to have seen A sudden primrose in the treefoot green, The which SO bright OH me did bend, Meseemed that I had found some long-lost friend, Whi pect did awa) m) w inter's spleen. There, in the rotting leaves, at the tree-foot, Its wax-pure whorl of emerald pale u spread And in corruption delving with its root, The leaden heavens outfaced with lifted head And infantile frank eyes, thai seemed to me The primal type ol taintless purit] . / i 4 S/GNS AND SEASONS. 2. Sweet soul of the resuscitated earth, That of the Springtide, tarrying yet afar, In the bare wood-ways, with thy pure pale star, Tellest and lightenest Life's night of dearth, Few things as thou, meseems, are worship-worth, That, when all creatures else with many a scar And wound of Winter mute and stricken are, Alone bear'st witness of the world's rebirth. Soon shall the hyacinth outblazon thee And daffodil and wood-anemone Broider the ways with wealthier blossoming, Cowslips and violets more perfume bring; Yet, primrose, still beloved shalt thou be O'er all, that art the morning-star of Spring. THE HILLS WHENCE MY HELP COMETH. MY thought still harbours where the silence fills The far majestic mountains, as they reign, Kings crowned with silver, o'er the subject plain. Whether, rose-vestured, in the morning's sills They stand or, with the sunset's flaming rills Imperial purple clad, they glow or stain With blue the distances of noon inane, My heart is with the everlasting hills. There, on those summits where the Immortals dwell, With clouds and fires and thunders fenced about 'Gainst the profane, as he of Israel That was the song-voice saith, still hope for me Of help abideth and I look thereout To have deliverance in days to be. SIGNS AND SEASONS. 15 THE FIRST OF THE ALPS. THE train fled, hurtling, through the summer-night, Across the still flat plains of slumbering France, And I, I waited, in a waking trance, For that which was to come with Coming light: And with the first faint streaks of morning-white, The plains began, meseemed, to heave and dance On either hand; it was the first advance Of the hill-host that soared upon my sight. Then, as the day drew on and light waxed wide, The hills to mountains swelled on every side And in the distance, like a giant ghost Of the world's morning, 'gainst the sapphire sky, The first fore-runner of the Titan host Of the snow-summits hove and towered high. SPRING-SADNESS. THE middle-sweet of Spring is come And everywhere the thorn is gray: The world has put its woes away, Forgot its Winter's martyrdom: The cuckoo, in the noon-tide hum, Answers the throstle on the spray. My heart is heedless of the May; The throstle in my throat is dumb. What ails thee, heart? But yesternighl It seems, when all the world was white, The seeds of 50ng in thee did spring And ripened up to flower and fruit; And now, when all with bio i And pipe Of birds is glad, thou'rt mute' 1 6 SIGNS AND SEASONS. THE LARK. "THE sun is up and up with it am I!" Thus, in a rain of golden melody, From th'empyrean wafted 'twas to me, And in the topmost blue I might espy The lark upmounting higher and more high, As, with his pinions spurning land and sea, Still singing, winging, sun-ward travelled he, As if new heavens he sought beyond the sky. Voice of the world's aspiring, as our soul Thou art, that with no earthly heaven or sun Contented is, but for its wish unwon Upstraineth still beyond the topmost pole, To where all wishes solved, all wills made one Are in the effulgence of the Undifferenced Whole. VER SALUTIFERUM. THE throstles wakened me at morning-red With such a wild melodious choral shout Of songful jubilance, I might not doubt .But Spring at last was come and Winter sped. And of a truth it was as they had said; For all the world with radiance new about Was raimented and in me, as without, Delight there stirred that long had lain for dead. For who was ever yet might still be sad, When all the world for Winter gone is glad And who, when all things bud and bloom and sing, But in the rathe sweet season had relief Of pain and offered up his Winter's grief Upon the Mower-bound altars of the Spring? SIGNS AND SEASONS. 1 7 ROSA BENEDICTA. WAS ever wonder rarer than the rose. That, with its gala-robes of green and red, In the mid-prime uprears its regal head, Hailing us glory in the winter's woes »ne and summer come in garden-close And meadow wide? With breath of balsam shed, It mindeth us that beauty is not dead And Love for lovers lives, if but for those. Small marvel if with us brief space it bide, If, of its heaven's eternal blossom-tide Remembering it, beneath our grey sky-dome, In this our world of winter and lament, It weary after its celestial home And pine and pass for very languishment ! THE DEATH OF THE WOOD-WARBLER. I read to-day how one, who loved birds well, Lit erst upon a little wild wood wren, That, old and solitary, in a glen Among the trees beside a spring did dwell; How friendship betwixt man and bird befell, Till it, at last, its tear forgot of men. Slept on his hand, contented, and how then II'- found it later dead beside the well. Ah, what a homily to humankind This preacheth, that had been joy's very spri And old and lonel) grown, no whit repu I nit lite fordone and daj lall'n night, Hut. poetdike, 'spite age and solitude. Piped on till death, m cheer and coui lod! is s/c;.vs .i.v/) s/<:.isojvs. LILIES. THIS middle summer morn, an angel band, Meseems, is lighted down upon the sward; In robes of light arrayed, with torch and sword, The airs of heaven they breathe on every hand. It is the lilies, in the grass that stand And o'er the July-prime keep watch and ward, Telling, with bells of frozen snow, fire-cored, Sweet Summer's triumph to the laughing land. Who would not, lilies, deem your lovely light O'er sweet to pass and like the prime, too fair For Death's unlovesome manage that you were? Yet must you die and day give place to night; For all that is must have its wax and wane And all that's fair must fade, to flower again. FEATHERED INGRATES. IN the March-morning all the world was bright: The thrushes and the blackbirds on the lawn Were busy ere the dark was wholly gone. There was their table spread from overnight With crumbs and all a songbird's appetite Might tempt: but thicker, there, than mushroom-spawn, Alack ! were crocuses, as flush of dawn Purple and golden, lilac, blue and white. What ailed you, feathered rogues, to make your prey Of these frail firstlings of the flowered year And mar their vernal pomp, in mischief pure, Churl-fashion? Manlike, more than bird-like, sure, 'Twas thus my hospitality to pay My lawn by spoiling of its Springtide cheer. S/GNS AND SEASONS. , 9 CONVALLARIA MAJALIS. I am the Lily of the Valley. Where in the woods the silence dwells, My tiny spire of silver bells I rear in every verdant alley, That, to the dance when elves did sally Anights, with chimings filled the dells: But, now, within its silver cells The music's mute, past power to rally. Yet in my soul the song-pulse tarries And from its proper port of sound Debarred, to other senses marries Itself; and so, where May is found, The wild wood breeze in perfume carries My heart's dumb yearning all around. A MID-MARCH DAY. MY heart is heavy on this mid -March day, When from the mouth of hell the East Wind blows, With menace of immeasurable woes Winnowing the air. Though Spring is on the waj And with its promise of the middle M In the rathe beds die tulip-ft • foreshows The tale of coming summer and the rose, The time is sadder than the Winter grey. D d season of the snows, is't nol i That thou should t fettei us foi half the year In chains of frost, but with tin counterbufl Of blood-encurdling blasts our infant Sprin Thou thus must poison and th\ phantom dn "l'wixt us intrude and Life's re<|uu kem; 20 SIGNS AND SEASONS. AUTUMN. GONE are the Gods; the time for new is near: Past is the Summer, past the harvesting: The meads are mute; the birds have ceased to sing; Dim is the sun, that yesterday was clear, And gray the heavens dull-mirrored in the mere. Yet in the woods the leaves' emblazoning Outglories all the gladness of the Spring, Decking the last days of the labouring year. How comes it, these, of all things new and old, Alone do glory in their own decay And garb themselves to die in red and gold, As if with stress of good and evil chance Forwearied and content to pass away, Accounting death to be deliverance? *6 TWO RIVERS. I. NILUS. MOTHER of waters, how shalt thou abide Man's inquest? Calm, unfathomable, broad, Thou wanderest from the solitudes untrod, A half-world measuring with majestic tide, Whose march nor day nor night hath e'er awried, Whilst, nation after nation, at Fate's nod, Hath past and God succeeded unto God And aeon after aeon risen and died. Laden with immemorial memories, Mysterious, mute, with fertilising hands, That scatter benison upon the lands And clothe the wastes with harvests and with trees, Thou lapsest through the immeasurable sands, To lose thyself in the eternal seas. SIGNS AND SEASONS. 21 2. THAMESIS. HOW shall I do thee honour, homely Thames, That, on thy silent breast of sober brown, Unto the mid-heart of the teeming town The world's wealth bring'st, in many a fleet that stems Thy waters, garnering in thy garment's hems The treasures of the East and West, laid down Our England's brows to circle with a crown Of harvests more of price than gold and gems? Thou art not fair, save to the spirit's eyes; Yet, in thy constancy of duty done And undespairing labour, reckoning none That makes of frowning or of smiling skies, For me a spiritual beauty lies, That is beyond the lapse of stars and sun. II. THE NIGHT- WA TCHES. THE NIGHT-WATCHES. WHITE NIGH'I-. i. HOW have I sinned against thy statutes. Sleep, That thou this many a year forsaken hast My sorry eyes, that, whilst, their cares offcast. All else are sunken in thy drowsy deep. I, only I, the weapon-watch must keep, Revolving still in thought the piteous Past, The laggard hours each heavier than the last. Till the chill dawn in at my casements peep? Oh, for an hour of antick Thessaly, That I might steep me, with Medean spells, M.mdragora and heavy haemon) And what herb else the assaining God compels. The cup that sets the imprisoned spirit free At will to wander in the dreamland's dells! 2. "Let me but perish in the face of light!" So >p;ikc the ancient Greek, and so sa\ I. How many a time, with dimmed and haggard eye Following the dull hours in their halting flight Along the aisles of aever-ending night, Old Aja\' prayer ['ve prayed, with man) a sij As one condemned, who longs, before lie die. To look once more upon the morning white' Nay, in the dreary fever-dreams oi \\ l] Not seldom I, despairing oi the Lai k, Deem that the blue da) never more shall break \<>i morning glimmei white noi henceforth rei But the blind t\\ in ■ "i blank disfeatui Ing 1 >ark And loi, etei till ( 'haos < i on. 26 THE NIGHT-WATCHES. 3. In my young days, for sleep I did not wait, But, rising up, when all the world slept sweet, Followed the Hying foe through square and street. Oft over hill and stream the dim white day \V;i\ have I watched to radiance, ray by ray, And seen the glistering morn, with golden feet Chasing the shadows from their each retreat, Awake and glorify the city gray. But now that with the years the youthful heat No more runs riot in each pulse and vein And the fierce fires, that in the blood had seat, For refuge now have gotten them to the brain, My feet are still and thought for them and me The wander-staff must wield by land and sea. 4. Love grows by longing, so the poets tell : And if, indeed, the saw not always sooth Be of the fitful loves of fickle youth, With age's wistfulness it fitteth well. And of all longings which the soul compel, That which the sleepless harbour for the ruth Of kindly slumber sharpest is of tooth And worst of woes which were since Adam fell. Yet, if wont wax by what it battens on And want by that whereon it fain would feed, Methinketh, an eternity or two From my tired eyes and my strained sense 'twill need The dust of wakefulness away to do With the sweet waters of oblivion. THE NIGHT- WA TCHES. 2 7 DREAM-MEETINGS. WHILES, in the midnight hours, upon my bed, In dreams once more to me the old delight Returns and in the visions of the night, I look upon the faces of my dead. No thought there is of sorrow, no tears shed. No word of woe, but unto touch and sight All is as once it was, the eyes as bright, The hands as living warm, the Lips as red. But, in the morn, my dreams when I retrace, Remembrance rends me of the Might-have-been And to the house of grief I set my fa< Nay, were, methinks, less sad, if I had seen The dear-loved dead, in all sleep's marble sheen, Lie with closed lids the coffin-boards between. THE CUSHAT. THE wind was wailing in the trees all night, Before my sills, but in the middle noon Of night there came the mild mysterious moon, And with the wonder of her silver sight, The dim gray world was gladdened and waxed white; The shrill winds slackened from their wailing tunc And left uprise the soft complaining croon 01 iome straj cushat on the limes alight. Poor pilgrim, from the Summei woods astray, What < old commandment of unfavouring Fati Drove thee from th) warm lodging in the green, With mj 'lull heart to mourn th) hopes' dismay, In the gra) town, where sad are small and greal And pine for air and sunlight, hk<- the treen? 28 THE NIGHT-WATCHES. ANIMAE VIGILIUM. WHENAS the spirit's vigil,'in clear dream And solemn vision shrined, anights I keep, What while the world is sanctified with sleep, Thought, over all the troubled, surging stream Of darkling life casting its searching beam, Bids, with its ruthless radiance, from the deep Into full light the things eternal leap And strips from those the splendour which but seem. Then many a thing, which in men's sight is good And fair, unblest and foul to us is shown And many a God and many a Holy Rood In that dread hour resolves to wood and stone; Nay, when the sun returneth with the day, Meseems that light with night hath past away. THE FOREDAWN HOUR. i. BETWEEN the night-end and the break of day An hour there is that from the thither shore Of the dark river its enchantments frore And fearful borrows, when each churchyard-clay Breathes out its chills, when life unto a stay Seems come and pauses, shuddering, at Death's door, That stands ajar; of all the twenty-four Sternest and most of horror and affray. Here, for arraignment, all its sour and sweet, Its crimes, its wrongs, its errors, its tears shed, (For sorrows here for sins imputed are) The piteous Past unto Thought's judgment-bar Brings up; and here, where night and morning meet, The sea of memory gives up its dead. THE NIGHT-WATCHES. 29 2. Here, all alone, the soul before the ark (That ark whereto there is no mercy-seat) Of conscience stands and to the iron beat Of time, that all the wasted years doth mark And all the days in vain bygone, must hark, Mourning for done and undone, deeds unmeet And words ill-spoken; whilst, with faltering feet, The night slopes dawnward through the shallowing dark. Set, awful hour, when, in the grave-cold air, The moments fall like ages, when Life's breath Halts and the world lies blank and stark and bare Before thought's eyes, when love and life and light For ever sunken seem in seas of night And the soul pauses in the ports of Death. 3. Who to this dread diurnal judgment-hour, This everyday rehearsal-time of death, When life stands still and cold is Nature's breath. When all our sins bygone like mountains tower Before the thought and with its salving power, Alar the blessed daylight tarrieth, — Who is't can look with hope and cheer and faith? Who hut before its cold approach must cower? Then for a God, with blind hand, round about I '^ting, to succour it and finding none, The soul into the darkness crieth out For iOme twin soul, to share its hope and doubt. And meeting but the void, till night be done. Longeth and trembleth tor the assaining sun. 3 o THE NIGHT- 1 1 \\ TCHES. 4. Oft, in this darkling hour of doubt and dread, The Past, with all its ghosts, revisits me, Its wraiths of hope and joy and ecstasy: I feel the windy presence of the dead Stir in my hair and hear their spirit-tread, As dry leaves falling, nothing though I see : Again for my sad sense they live and be And stir and rustle round about my bed. Oh spirits of my dead, that may not rest, But needs must harbour where you loved of yore, Still, by the fetters of the grave opprest, Seeking to burst the bonds of nothingness, How shall I do to ease you of your stress? How shall I win to look on you once more? RETROSPECT. WHENAS the Past unto the stern assize Of middle night I summon and survey, With backward thought, the over-travelled way, Much for repentance, yea, and much for sighs And more for shamefast sorrow, to mine eyes There doth appear, and needs my head away Turn must I from the record for dismay Which graven there in fire eternal lies. But for a solace yet I have the thought, That none I willingly did ever wrong; And much, meseems, for duty hath he wrought Who ne'er the eternal things hath sold or bought And with his unsophisticated song, The healing tears to some sad eyes hath brought. THE X I GHT- WATCHES. 31 TO THE BELOVED DEAD. I call upon you "in the collied night," ' When all things sleep and only I, I wake, Beseeching you to come for pity's sake And my sad eyes to solace with your sight. How many a time I've watched the dark grow white, Expecting still to see the shadow take Your shape, to hear your voice the silence break, Your speech renew for me the dead delight ! I will not question you. I will not weep; I will not seek to strain you to my breast : Let me but look upon your face in sleep, But feel your touch, but hear you voice my name, And you shall go, returning whence you came, And have again your cold and senseless rest. 1 Midsummer-Night's Dream, I, I. III. MUSIC ALIA. MUSICALIA. BUT FOR MUSIC . "WERE music not, in this our world, well nigh "Might we avouch, the Beautiful is dead". So it of one who knew life well ! was said, Beauty of that which to the ear and eye Immediate is, which to the sense speaks high, Intending. Here for how were beauty bred, Where all fore-ordered is by count of head Of brute majorities, but born to die? Wherefore, thou darling spirit of delight, That to our souls, with toil and misery Forwearied, speak'st of lands of love and light, Of isles of rest beyond the sheer sun's sight, Whereas new heavens new earth o'erarch and sea, Blessed be thou to all eternity ! HAYDN. AS on one walking in the graves by night The glad May morning comes at unawares And the young day, with all its frolic airs And throstles' song and scent and flower-delight, Brims up his darkling soul with life and light, So, in our time, when vain Tchaikowskj tears Our still-vexed ears and dreary Dvorak shares With Brahms and Sullivan the dullard might, Haydn, thine unsophisticated strain. Wherein the fields flower and the small birds sing, Our saddened souls to life and love again lores and sets our laggard thought a wing To where May memories fill the heart's inane With all the happy auspices of Sprii 1 Disraeli. 36 MUSICAL/ A. SCHUBERT. DEATH, weary grown of monody and dirge, A singer sought to fill his funeral halls With strains of jubilation, such as Saul's Dark spirit in its frenzied hour did purge, And hearing from afar thy golden surge, Schubert, of song, straight from earth's echoing walls He bore thee off, with all its swells and falls, The tide of tune for him thenceforth to urge. Surely, such strains as thine might never die, But, here though mute, must otherwhere throb high: Surely, in heaven above thou dost prolong The measures of thine unaccomplished song And heark'nest, in some interstellar land, The sphere-harp answer to thy pulsing hand. MENDELSSOHN. THIS of the children of the bride-chamber Was, sure, who mourn not, for the bridegroom yet With them abideth. Pure of passion's fret, His song the springs of love and peace doth stir, Brimming with bliss unmingled heart and ear, As of the harps before the White Throne set, That, with their golden jubilance, unlet Of time, hymn on in heaven's eternal year. Whilst in this weary world yet hearts there be, Which forth unto sweet music fain must go, Still shall his glory fill the lands, though he, From fret of life and death delivered long, The rapturous tides of heaven ebb and flow Feeleth and hearkeneth to the angels' song. MUSICALIA. 37 BERLIOZ. WHAT didst thou here, proud spirit, sad and stern, In this stepmother world, where praise and fame But seldom wait upon his living name Whose high-plumed soul the accustomed ways doth spurn? To thee alive thy France deaf ears did turn And now, when all the world doth thee acclaim, Waking too late to her undying shame, Vain offerings pours upon thy funeral urn. Ah would the Gods beyond the grave may some Requital for thy life's long martyrdom Foreordered have ! May Shakspeare's mighty spright With Byron, Virgil, Goethe there unite With love to welcome thee and thanks and praise And bind thy brows with sempervernal bays! LISZT. I. CONCERTO IN e!>. WHERE art thou, art thou, King of Faerie? These be thy golden woods, where human foot Befalleth not nor noise of hounds nor bruit Of bugle echoing from tree to tree; No mortal thing i.s there to hear or see; Only thine ivory horn and Robin's flute, Mab's silver psaltery and TitaniaA bile, Answer m) call with elfin minstrel And lo! what splendours shimmer through the green? I I'-rr be the revels oi tli<- fair) queen. Yonder -.In- fareth on her milkwhite steed And in her train, with many a pipe and reed, The <-li rout sweeps tin' jewelled glade . along, Fluttering i he iilen< e \\ ith a fail \ long. 38 MUSI CA LI A. 2. CONCERTO IN A. WHERE hast thou hearkened to these strains, my soul ? Sure, in some realm beyond the stars it must Have been, some land where love is free from lust, Some plane of peace above the topmost pole, Where, quit of hope and passion, joy and dole, The unfettered spirit, not yet set to rust And wither in this raiment of the dust, Resteth serene upon the Eternal Whole. There, cradled on the Present's golden shore, No Past behind it, no To-be before, From love and memory and doubt and strife Absolved, it meditates the things that are, Or e'er it leave its own particular star And launch anew upon the storms of life. 3. CONSOLATION IN E. LOVE comes to us at morning, With hands fulfilled of flowers, Youth's path with sun and showers He fareth still adorning; But, when the West gives warning Of night and Life's sky lowers Toward the evening hours, He flees from us with scorning. Yet in his room he leaveth, For those who serve him well, One who more often grieveth Thau joyeth, but whose spell Salveth Love's loss's shame: Affection is his name. MUSIC A LI A. 39 4. LIEBESTRAUM. MEDREAMT I saw Love like a luteplayer Come carolling to me along the stream. Bound were his temples with the gla'd sun's beam And in his hand he held a dulcimer, Among whose strings a little wind did stir. And "Do I wake", to him I said, "or dream? "And dost thou live, indeed, or only seem? "Long have I lacked thee, many a weary year." But he, "Away ! I come not now for thee. "What would you rhymesters with my golden boon, "Who all things twist into an idle tune? "Forsooth, for those alone my favours be, "Who in this round do nothing but my will "And without thought the world's desire fulfil." 5. GLANES DE WORONINCE, N°. 3. THE wind about the mountain wandered sighing \ The autumn day with showers was sad and chill; No light from heaven there fell on field and rill, Save some faint gold-streaks on the cloud-line lying, Where in the Western sky the da) was dying: And in the ways that circled round the hill I wandered straying at the wild wind's will. oul for sadness with its sadness vying. But, as I came unto the topmost mountain, Out from tin' cloudwrack sudden burst the sun And ill tin- landscape with their flooding fountain ( )f rOSJ gold hi, r.i\ S 'hd overrun ; And .1 \ whispered me, "A inn. to ;orrow! "Belike, the sun shall shin-- igain to-morrow." 40 MUSICAL! A. 6. IMVINA COMMKDIA SYMPHONY. Andante con moto quasi Allegretto. THIS is the purging-place for things ill-done And things left undone. In the twilit air Of dawn, I mount Eld's purgatorial stair, Whilst all about my way thought's fires there run, Wherein Life's absolution must be won: And at the hill-foot, upward as I fare, For sign of hope and charm against despair, The waters tremble in the waxing sun. Here be no pangs of hell ; no fiends affright Our Constance, as we urge our pilgrim way, With eyes uplifted to the morrowing day; Only the fining-fires of age contrite, That, with their purging, purifying breath, Befit us for the sacrament of death. SMETANA. REVE IN E (AU SALON). ALL night through the dance and its mazes we swayed: The folk murmured round us, I knew not of what; A dream was upon me; I heeded them not, As I lay in the arms of that loveliest maid. The wind of the night in her tresses there played; The stars through the casements their rays on us shot, As we danced on together, the world all forgot, To the music the flutes and the violins made. Through orange-groves gleaming with tlowerage and fruit We floated, we twain, whilst, around and above, The horn-notes, that blent with the voice of the flute, Still mimicked the moan of the murmurous dove. Had the flute-notes not failed and the horns fallen mute, We had danced on for ever, myself and my love. MUSICAL! A. 41 WAGNERIAN A. I. SIEGLINDE. ALACK, Sieglinde, whither wilt thou flee? All things conspire against thee, old and new ; Fire, earth, air, water, all will thee undo. Why wast thou born, fair maid? Ah, woe is me! For in thy footsteps, over land and sea, Wherever earth is green and heaven blue, Fate and the hour, relentless, still pursue : There is no room in this wide world for thee. Nor yet, in all, thy death, sad loveling, may The vengeance of the Gods supernal sate And the red maw of unrelentins; Fate. Quick art thou with a seed, which, day by d Unto a flower of hate and grief shall grow And whelm the heavens and the earth with woe. 2. WOTAN. "REMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, slow!" Such are the names, o eldest of the Gods, That on thy head they heap, the crackbrain clotl^, For whom I-Y.uk <--< a and her Paolo Are but an idle tale of long ago, For whom Orestes with the Furies' rods Anil pale Prometheus on his rock at odds With ti ■ Fate re but a passing show. Heed thou them not; tiny fool their hour and | Some little fulsome honey filched from life, Back to their hell. Hut we, who love and know Thai which it is to suffei even I 00k with w< ' upon thy hie kless itrifi And oui hr. 11 1 , throb in answei to 1 h) w< 42 MUSICALIA. 3. BRUNNHILDE. LADY of Sorrows, sore of Love's wild will Undone, of love, indeed, transformed to hate, Yet love enough abiding with thy mate Thee, that didst slay him, in his death to kill, How wilt thou do? Walhalla's burnings fill The heavens inane with smoke: in Asgard's gate Wotan thy sire lies fall'n, the wise, the great; And the Gods' Twilight holds Gladheimr hill. Where wilt thou flee? Yet, though thy heavenly place No longer wait thee, thou, from Siegfried's pyre With him ascending on the wings of fire To heaven, Walhalla with a tripled grace Shalt find rebuilt and with thy hero stand By Balder in the new immortal band. 4. HAGEN. "GROWN old before my time, the glad I hate", Quoth haughty Hagen. I, that, hating none, Still in my heart Love harbour, as a sun, The winterward of life that doth abate, And do but scorn the glad, the fools of Fate, I cannot yet but hail thee, dreadful son Of Night and Hell, unconquerable one, In sin and shame that yet art grimly great. Stern fallen Angel of the old Norse day, Thou, as the Satan of our latter lay, The protest 'gainst triumphant dulness art And brute o'erweening force of the world's heart, That, when our Siegfrieds wax intolerable, Some Hagen sends to hurl them down to hell. MUSI CA LI A. 43 5. ISOLDE. ALONE, Isolde, is thy hero fled Unto the wild and darkling wastes of death, Whose road no traveller retravelleth, ' To tell the tale of how he there hath sped; Nor spared his henchman to the place of dread With him to carry where he journeyeth; Yet thee, his bride, awaited not a breath, That thou mightst follow him among the dead. How in Death's incommensurable halls Wilt thou discover where he doth abide? How wilt thou win to come unto his side ? "Love to love, spirit unto spirit calls; "And I, forbidden though to see his face, "Shall spend Eternity in his embrace". THE PEDIGREE OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN MUSIC. HAYDN, thy hand 'twas first from heaven that brought Promethean tire, fair music's failing light Anew to kindle. From thy slackening might The falling torch of song sweet Schubert caught And bore it onward with the speed of thought, Brightlier forever burning and more bright, Till all too soon, for Time's untimeous spite, lie too must pass and leave his work half-wrought, Then Berlioz took the 6er) cross again And bore it flamirj land and 'Spite dearth and doubt and -nun, triumphantly, Till t<> his su< < our othei < hampion \ twain, Wagnei and Liszt, there came: and who were fain I add .1 fourth unto the m l hunderers tie 44 MUSICALIA. MENDELSSOHN. I. QUARTETT . 12 IN E|? WHAT are these wild sweet voices, swelling, thronging About the wood-ways, with the frolic beams Of fancy oversunned, wherein, meseems, Shy Nature's very speech I hear prolonging A tale of realms of rapture, from Life's wronging Removed afar, of Paradisal dreams, Dreamt out by undiscovered meads and streams, That overfloods my soul with love and longing? Nought is there here of the affright and sadness Which haunt the traces of our toiling feet; But here the primal innocence and sweet Of life abide, in all content and gladness, Nor consolation from the hope need borrow Of some imaginary better morrow. 2. A MINOR SYMPHONY. — ADAGIO. ALL hail, thou holy, heaven-attempered soul, That, hither banished from thy native sky And in our dust-heap doomed to live and die, Unstirred by all its chances, joy and dole, With eyes fast fixed upon the constant pole, Through all Life's shifting scenes, smile, tear, frown, sigh, Earth's blandishments disdained, her lures put by, Farest unfaltering tow'rd thy heavenly goal ! Now, happy spright, is thy release at hand; Well nigh thy weary pilgrimage is o'er: For, hark, the harps and flutes of heaven resound, To welcome thee; its airs and flames around Breathing, the angels hover, to the shore To bear thee of the blue celestial land. MUSICALIA. 45 MERKEL. MAILIED, OP. l8, N°. I. TEN o'clock of a morn of May ! The air wells over with wilding rhyme; The throstle trills on the leafing lime : "The nest is built on the bending spray ; "The eggs are hatching" ; I hear him say. "The summer cometh ! With song 'tis time "To hail the heart of the pleasant prime, "The mid-Spring sweet of the dainty day." Come, throstle, trill me thy sweetest song ! God wot, we have languished over long For Winter-weariness, thou and I ! Our best and brightest behoveth sing, Whilst green the grass is and blue the sky; Alack! tor Summer is swift of wing. LA COURSE A L'ABIME. (berlioz's faust). MESEEMS, the World-Faust, through the ages' night, Upon the courier of the Will-to-be, Hurtling across Life's darkling plains I see. Deaf are his ears and blinded is his sight; He turneth not aside to left or right; Nay, through the shadows and the darkness, he. The Mephistophiles Democracy spurring, ensuetfa -'till his headlong flight. 1 1'- noteth not the spe< tres "I the I' That on his cither hand foi warning ri He heedeth not the snakes "I doom that hiss About him nor the portents in the skie Hut, at the demon's instance, hard and fast, !eth, unchecked, his course to the abyss. 46 MUSI CA LI A. SCHUBERT. Symphony in C major. I. ANDANTE — ALLEGRO. WHENCE come these golden horn-notes, waning, swelling, The soul with memories of the Past that stir? From India's hills and Scythia's deserts drear Afar they come, of ancient peoples telling, Beyond the Oxus and the Indus dwelling, And of the Wander-Lust, from year to year In them that waxed, until it grew a spur, Their feet into the wander-ways compelling. Of impulse old they tell and ancient longing, Unknowing that whereafter it did yearn, Of vague strange fancies on the spirit thronging, Of wishes wild that in the breast did burn, Till all the thought became a wandering fire, That needs must up and after its desire. 2. ANDANTE CON MOTO. THE hautboys of the stir of preparation Tell, of the gathering of the caravan, Of the departure, man ensuing man, Horde after horde and nation after nation, Till all the deserts, station unto station, With tribe on tribe are filled and clan on clan, The rear belike a year behind the van, All pouring Europe- ward without cessation. Onward they press, of obstacles uncounting, Hills over-climbing, crossing stream and sea, Armies out-warring, battlements affronting, Restless, resistless as fatality, Till, with a final flux, the Alps surmounting, They overflood the plains of Italy. MUSIC ALIA. 47 3. ALLEGRO VIVACE. DOWN-LAPSING from the hills, a human ocean, With shining arms and standards topped for foam, To the sheer heart the torrent surges home Of the old world: nor courage nor devotion Nor wit can stay its Fate-foreordered motion. No hope for her beneath the blue sky-dome, At the barbarians' hands Imperial Rome, Like Hannibal, must drink the deathly potion. To their sphinx Asia used, where nothing alters, Drunk with the wine of change they are: behold, How of queens' necklets they their horses' halters Make and kings' crowns cast in the pot for gold, Their weapon-dance about the ruined altars Of either faith wild urging, new and old. 4. ALLEGRO FINALE. THE stress is over, done the work of rending Present from Past and soul from body free; Accomplished is the appointed surgery, That must avail the rotten Past for ending. Now, with its healing salves, intent on mending Life's bleeding wounds, from War's subsiding sea Pi ice lifts its head and to the fair To-be All things which live and are again are tending. The world-leach Time, the Vssainei and Forgiver, \\ ,11' breai he heal ! ill town and plain and mart ; From every quarter How Lite's streams as dart Oil dart poured out they were from Natures quiver, — Together, as a mighty, placid river, 'I ow'rd the rebirth oi the old world in Art 4 8 ML 'SIC A LI A. AT THE PIANO. AS o'er the answering keys my fingers stray, The fluctuant fancies into music wooing And through the haunts of harmony pursuing The memories of many a bygone day, The curtain of the Present drawn away Is from my thought and with the veil's undoing, The dear dead Past arises, the renewing Seeking of that which moulders in the clay. The loves of old once more I see resurging, That long have slept beside the mouldered hates ; The olden joys and woes the dreamland's gates Give up again and I, as o'er the abyss Of thought I lean and watch the wraiths emerging, Feel on my lips once more my first love's kiss. FIELD'S NOCTURN, N°. 16 IN F. THE larks are up, abroad in heaven outflinging Their gladsome cadences of golden rhyme ; Upon the ground bass of the cuckoo's chime The wrens make descant; all the woods are ringing With the glad noise of thrush and linnet bringing Their happy homage to the pleasant prime: It is the early sweet of Summer-time And all the air is full of scent and singing. But hark ! Whence comes that minor cadence, breaking The sweet concent of happy harmony, As of some moaning surf, sad music making Upon the beach-bend of a sullen sea ? It is the thought of loves laid waste, awaking The surges of the sea of memory. MUSI CA LI A. 4 9 J. P. E. HARTMANN. ANDANTINO SOSTENUTO IN P>1\ SLEEP, sleep, sad memories, and in your sleep Be woven all into a dulcet dream. Wherein, regenerate by the salving stream Of fain forgetfulness, your sense shall steep In that afar unfathomable deep Of peace, that lies beyond the sunset-gleam And on its bosom bears the Hesperian beam To lands of rest, where hope in heaven shall reap. Look through the painted pane of Time's effacement, Life's sweets remembering and its sours forgetting, And fill my soul with light of consolation, Even as the sunlight of a stormful setting Shines through some many-hued cathedral casement, O'erflooding all with Faith's transfiguration. \ WLLEE D'OBERMANN. (a VERSE-TRANSCRIPTION ')i LISZT'S rONE-POEM). I. I wander o'er the hills in lonely leisure; Returning ever to the ancient ground, Thought in my head still runs its endless round. That which I prized of old no more I treasure; In that which oik. i loved I have no pleasure: Though still unchanged to touch and sight and sound. In all I find no more what once 1 found; Life's goods and ills I mete by other measure. Since that lor us, alas ' the li i rrtaiii. Since no unthinkable enchanted L, r ° a l For us there waits behind the future's curtain, Such as might rendei to oui shipwrecked soul That which lost life from us hath yeai by yeai ta'en, What tot tile loss shall of a world consoll 5o MUSIC A LI A. 2. The tempest in my soul hath long subsided; The winds have fallen calm, the waves are still; Yet no sun comes hope's auspice to fulfil. The light by which my spirit's bark I guided, In whose direction I of old confided, Whereby my way to steer 'twixt good and ill, Is blotted out, nor aught for ever will The hopes renew whereon I once abided. No faith is left me in the olden story, Which once my heart sufficed in every thing. The light is faded from its golden glory; Its holy memories have taken wing, To their long home gone back in limbos hoary : Doubt in the darkened soul of me is king. 3. Much have I wrought, yet nought with me remaineth ; Long have I sought, yet nothing have in hand; Far have I fared, yet never came to land. How shall I do, whilst yet Life's light obtaineth, The shores to reach where peace primaeval reigneth, As in some sea-pool on a summer-strand, Through whose bright waters, on the golden sand, A fairy scape of seaflowers waxeth, waneth ? Not one am I that from the Past can borrow, To gild to-day, the light of days fordone, Nor on some fair fallacious golden morrow False faith can stablish : nay, I am as one Yet living buried in a grave of sorrow, Who seeks no more to look upon the sun. MUSIC A LI A. 51 4. When Life's account I reckon, gains and losses, It sickens me its unrequited slain To count and see how many Christs in vain Through this our changeless world have borne their crosses, How many fighters perished in Life's fosses, Whilst, with the old indifferent disdain, Mankind upon its waves of strife and pain From peak to peak the world-storm's torrent tosses. Yet, as those bred and born in wars and slaughters That sleep their dreamless sleep through fire and fight. My consolation is that Lethe's waters Have not yet lost their salutary might The foolish hearts of Adam's sons and daughters To solace with oblivion's duket night. 5. Once consolation did I seek from Nature For my sick soul: but now, alas! 1 know That she no sympathy with man ran show. Heeds not his glee nor his distemperature, But, from the cold heights of her Titan stature, Indifferent down upon his |"\ and woe Looks, as upon the plains that spread below The snow-peaks gaze, with faces blank of feature. . t, in her summer woods, her wastes hvbernal, Quit is the spirit of men's idle prate: In her snow-death, in her renascence vernal, With the world's soul it holds communion strait td hears the throbbing pulse- of Time eternal Measure the man lies of foreordi red I ate. 52 MUSICAL/ A. 6. Since thought as Life is, fleeting as the wind, What bootcth it to drive one's barren furrow Through the dumb Past or in Time's grave to burrow For that which none this side of death to find May hope ? What saith the wisest of our kind, "Increase of knowledge brings increase of sorrow; "Availeth not thought-taking for the morrow; "Unto much wisdom is much grief assigned". Since all must perish for the All's renewing, Why waste for ever on thought's sterile fire? Hearken no more to hope's fallacious wooing; Cast stress and passion on life's funeral pyre. This only thing on earth is worth th'ensuing, Deliverance from the bondage of desire. 7. Could we but look, indeed, in coming ages New hope in a new world of things to find, Yet might we live, to this our day resigned. Alas ! in all the Past's recurrent stages, In every word of poets, prophets, sages, We read the changeless future of our kind, What lies before us that which is behind, The Past rewritten in the Present's pages. Only the thought that life is not for ever, That at the last a time shall come to free Our hearts and brains from sterile thought's endeavour And hopeless hope, some solace hath for me. Hiding my face in thine all-sheltering Never, Eternity, be thou my sanctuary ! ' 1 Senancour's last words. IV. LITTERALIA. LITTERALIA. DANTE. WHEN I of poets dream, not Spenser sweet Nor Hafiz high it is that holds my thought; Nor Shakspeare, last for crowning wonder wrought; Nay, in my mind I see Ravenna street And there, head bowed beneath the noontide heat, A black-robed dreamer fare, austere and haught, With eyes turned inward, unregarding aught, Who no man greeteth and whom none doth greet: And as he goes, at him the passers-by Point with scared looks and murmur, "This is he "Who did hell-fire and purging pains aby. "Mark but how black his cheeks and temples be!" Fools, see ye not upon his brows hell's stress Not only writ, but Heaven's approof no less? SPENSER. SPENSER, thou first inspirer of my son-. That o'er the hills and meads of Arradv Thy radiant train of ladies sweet to see And mail-clad knights the woodways lead'st along, The eternal laws of honour, right and wrong Still hymning, who i^ there can vie with thee For dear delight and frolic fanta ( Hhers in sterner measures and more strong ( >f heaven and hell hav< rid to a In ighl O'ervaulting thine have stopped the tuneful iced. ( M love and war discoursing, hap and need: Yet from their thunder-tide the sated sprighl Still to thy tempered woodlands takes its \\a\ And inn. I'a ola< e to thj leisured la) . / 56 UTTER A LI A. KEATS. I F, in our English muster-roll of song, Our nightingale was Shakspeare, Nature's son, Milton our thrush, second (save him) to none, Shelley our skylark lilting loud and long, Thou wast the ousel of our tuneful throng, That, in the solemn setting of the sun, When all was silent else for day fordone, Wakedst the woods with music sweet and strong. Yet but brief time with us thou might'st abide: Alack ! Ea Belle Dame sans merci, The woodnymph wild and sweet, the April-eyed Strong sorceress, that men call Poesy, Unsparing whom she loves ', had thee in thrall And to her heaven too soon did thee recall. SCHOPENHAUER. THOU, that hast weighed the world and found it nil, That with the sword of thought hast rent apart The inmost veil from off its quivering heart, Meting the measure of its good and ill, And as the leach that seeks to cure or kill, Hast, to their eyes who shrink not from the smart Of Truth's untempered, life-offending dart, Bared all the workings of the wheels of Will; The butt of brainless witlings who outright All that's unflattering to their wit uncouth And gross dull sense reject, — the mere dismay Of those who fear to see the face of light, Still in their hearts thou dwellest, come what may, Who look for leading to the torch of Truth. 1 Cf. Kraszewski's Damon. LITTERALIA. 57 PARS POETAE. 1. I never could conceive why men should hold The poet bound to don the huckster's dress And tug and jostle in the motley press Of the uncooked, to let himself be sold, For gazing-stock, to idlers young and old, Or with the mammon of unrighteousness To truck and chaffer for a cheap success, W 'hich, gotten thus, were nought but flittergold. An if the approof, to his endeavour due, Be, as of right, vouchsafed by those (too few) For judgment apt, 'tis well. But, if spite still The voices of his peers, then those the wight Must wait who shall come after and who will, As without favour, judge without despite l . 2. Nor with religions hath the poet aught To meddle, whose religion is to do Justly and to love mercy and the True, Righteous and Fair still served to have and sought, As his observance is, in word and thought And action, from the world, as morning-dew. Himself to hold unspotted nor ensue The ways of men, where all is sold and bought. Tin- profane vulgar neither love nor hate Shall he nor hearken to the icoffers' prate Nor mingle with the vain uncaring < rowd, But with high thoughts his hungering soul shall feed And Nature's voices list by mount and mead, Thicket and waste, where l.nl. ind thrush are loud. 1 1 tian - omnibus tecum viventibus tilenttum livoi indi venient qui line ofl a< gratU judicent. 58 LITTERALIA. LOVE AND SONG. NEEDS must the poet early sing and late Of Love, that is Life's spring and fountain-head, Of Love, that dieth not, when all is dead, That wreathes with flowers the sullen steps of Fate; Nor, though the Fair he love and imprecate Confusion on the Foul, upon his head That evil doth no curse of him is said; No room there is within his heart for hate. Nay, since the most part of the poet's wit From Love, that moves the stars, he hath to boon, Still in the fair God's track his feet must run ; For song, that hath nor love nor faith in it, To nothing may be likened but a moon That unenlightened is of any sun. SURSUM CORDA. I. SHAKSPEARE. IN this our paltry day of dull pretence, When no mere wage for noble work well done Save by the Fates' sheer favour may be won And he who serves the highest those, when hence He's gone, who without favour or offence Shall come and judge, must wait and else for none To do him justice look beneath the sun, — 'Tis Shakspeare's self must give us confidence, In that grim drama of the soul's despair, Where Timon damns the inhuman human crew, The Sursum Corda, from this modern hell Our hearts that lifts into the upper air, Who speaks, — "There is no time so miserable "But that a man may yet in it be true." LITTERALIA. 2. RABELAIS. 59 UP hearts! Refit and sail again the seas! The soft mysterious pipe of birds at dawn, The opening of the crocus on the 'lawn, The April wind among the blossomed trees, The cowslips gathering on the grass-grown leas, These all, no less than Winter's woes bygone, Witness to us how Life from Death is drawn And how continuance Nature seeks, not ease. He most in tune with her is, who, when wrecked His hopes are, wastes no time in vain lament, But of the wreckage builds the raft Content, Wherewith to ride out the surge perilous Of Life, and Pantagruel-like, confect Is in contempt of things fortuitous. HAFIZ AND PAUL TWO m my thought still linked together be, II 6z, the singer of the clustering vine, And Paul, the mystic of the (Inostic shrine, As being, both alike, in ecstasy, ond the bounds of earth and sky and sea, In contemplation of the things divine Still rapt and drunken with the spirit's wine, Calenders of the soul's debauchery. And in this heaven 1 J03 of old and new, Where bard and prophel mingle good and ill, Where Antiorh Fars, where ll.ili/ |oins with I' As being both deceivers and set true, Both iorrowful and yel rejoi< ing still, Both h.i\ nig nothing, > et pi 'II. 6o L1TTRRALIA. WORDSWORTH. i. IN our loud times thy voice is little heard, Singer of homely things and humbleness; The roar of trade and strife, the battle's press Well nigh thy memory from men's thoughts have blurred. Yet, in life's pauses, like the mellow bird, That, when the storm hath spent its wailing stress, Sings in the setting from the wood-recess, There cometh to our ears thy quiet word; Thy quiet song, that tells of quiet days And peaceful nights, with Heaven and Nature spent, Far from Life's battle and the weary ways, Where men for sorrow strive and miscontent, And to our prisoned thought the worlds unbars, That lie beyond the ether and the stars. 2. Thy song is like the light of stars and moon, Austere and pale and cold, belike, that show To the hot blood: to others we must go For the sheer splendours of the summer-noon, The joys of May, the mellow nights of June, When heaven above consenting, earth below, With wine of rapture drunken, to and fro Sway to the nightingale's ecstatic tune. Too soft thou speak'st for youth's imperious ear; It craves another and a stormier song: But, when the leaves of life are falling sere, The sli filler songsters strike a note of wrong For the tired sense, and to thy strain austere It turns for still content and quiet cheer. LITTERALIA. 61 3. Thou lov'dst the lowly of this world of ours; The grazing herds, the flocks of sheep or geese, The sunlight falling on some snowy tleece, Thou sang'st, the wilder ways, the homelier flowers: In Nature's less intoxicating hours _ Most at thine ease thou wast; the slow increase Of morning in the East, the quiet cease Of daylight in the West, the evening showers, More than the stormful sunset's thunderous towers Or the sheer splendours of the Summer day Gladdened thy soul : more than the frontispiece The book thou lov'dst and from the heavenly powers Sought'st, for the solace of thy pilgrim way, The things that make for rapture less than peace. 4. Thou wast not glad; yet sorry wast thou not; The note of all thy being plain content, Peace without passion, as without lament, The golden mean was betwixt cold and hot. Enough for thee it was to know Life's what; Its How thou soughtest not nor its intent, But mad'st, amidst the days that came and went. Thy heaven in common things ami common lot. For us, whose lips have drained Life's cup <>t brine. Thine aim too humble is, thy speed) too cold; Yet, when the thought is purged by life's decline And good mhI ill show clear, as we grow old, We '"inn thy water more ill. hi others' wine, Thy silver more "i price than others' gold. 62 LITTERAUA. 5. Others have struck a stronger note than thou, With more ecstatic strains to hopes more high Our hearts have raised and to the topmost sky Have drawn our souls up from the worldly slough, With Pythian songs of Nature's Why and How; But thou alone hast taught us from things nigh And common help to seek and to rely, Not on what may be Then, but what is Now. So, when all other voices have their soul Of charm and healing lost, to thee we turn And from thy word in peace contentment learn To find and faith in Life's Eternal Whole And Duty, Past and Present and To-be Binding in chains of heavenly harmony. HERMAN MELVILLE. NONE of the sea that fables but must yield To Melville; whether with Whitejacket fain We are to share, or Redburn, joy and pain; Whether through Mardi's palaces, palm-ceiled, We stray or "wander in Omoo afield Or dream with Lshmael cradled at the main, High in the crow's-nest o'er the rocking plain, Few such enchantments o'er the soul can wield. But, over all the tale of Typee vale, O'er all his idylls of the life afloat, "The Whale" I prize, wherein, of all that wrote Of Ocean, none e'er voiced for us as he The cachalot's mad rush, the splintered boat, The terrors and the splendours of the sea. LITTERALIA. 63 STEPHANE MALLARME. FRIEND of my youth, with whom I shared the chance Of life for thirty years in joy and woe, That hand in hand and heart in heart didst go With me, though England's I and thou of France, Thou hast fared on before me, in advance, Into the mystic seas, to ebb and flow Of time that answer not nor to and fro Are shaken of the surge of circumstance. Brother, farewell! I shall not see thee more; I know that nevermore, for joy or pain Our eyes shall meet, our hands shall clasp again; Yet closelier, I doubt not, than of yore Our souls shall join in some translunar sphere, Where never Winter comes nor leaves are sere. AIGUSTE VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. VILLIERS, old friend, strange spirit, weird but true, Seeker of that which no man, new or old, Of woman bom might ever yet behold, What sad sardonic Fate, in days undue, Was it thy footsteps to the tomb that drew? What Parcae, lustres nine scarce overtold, Put thy fair lamp out, froze thy hot blood cold, Whilst yet the light of life in thee was new? 1 k, the abyss, by Fate's relentless law, Once gazed upon, the life to it doth draw. And thou, beyond the bounds ol nights and days ■ king, with Straining hands and eyes that yearn, t trespassed on the undi d ways And looked upon the hand oi No Return. 64 IJTTERALIA. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. A songbird thou, if ever was there one ! Pure 'midst corruption, fearless 'midst affray, Thou faredst still on thine unfaltering way, In that sad France of thine, the self-undone, Damned over self with victory never won. A lark that never doubted of the day, Thou sangest still, undaunted, on the spray And through hate's mists look'dst ever for Love's sun. Thou gav'st me love and comfort in the days When my heart fainted for my soul's amaze; Before mine eyes, bedimmed with sorrow's spell, Thy hand it was that held hope's shining sign; Nor ever shall I know thy parallel For songful cheer and kindliness divine. '& j E. J. W. GIBB. COMRADE, fare well, whose feet the untravelled East Long time in equal measure trod with me ! From that fair land of flowers, where strand and sea Shine with the sun of fable, last not least Of those who for us Westerns spread the feast Of Orient lore and Eastern poesy, I ne'er shall look upon the like of thee For love of song and care of bird and beast. The pen is fallen from thine eager hand, Death's finger laid upon the page undone: Yet, in some interstellar Morning-land, I doubt not but thy gentle soul shall find Its earthly dreams fulfilled in heavenly kind, Where Life and Death, where Love and Truth are one. LITTERALIA. 65 LECONTE DE LISLE. "HOPE infinite," saidst thou, "doth Death contain". When to Life's buttress-wall at the world's end A\ 'ith death thou wonnest, Master mine and friend, Whereas, Time's travel done, the soul full fain Unto the eternal rest returns again, What visions met thy view, what shapes did wend Before thy glances, where the grey beach-bend Of Life slopes down into Death's surgeless main? Master, thou never shalt return to show That which thou foundest in that shoreless sea; Thou mayst not come to us; but we, to thee O'erpassing, haply yet shall win to know If there thy hopes accomplished thou didst see Or the black night of blank Nonentity. TRINITAS ANGLICA. THREE names o'er all do glorify our land; First his, whilere in England's mightiest day Our stage illustrious over all for aye Who made to many an undiscovered strand: Next his, love, tears and laughter hand in hand l'n peered to lead: and last, not least, to say, His, on the canvas who in bright arra) Set the whole glorious scheme by Nature planned. Hereafterward, if anj question make Of thee what mm haw,- mosl of all the nun Writ down for great upon the roll oi fame,— For England's glory wrought with brush and pen, These three tor thine exemplars shall thou tal And Shakspeare, Dickens, Turner shall thou name. 5 66 LITTERALIA. WITH A COPY OF SULLY PRUDHOMME'S "LES VAINES TENDRESSES". HERE, for such as will, are roses; None of that bright host that flowers, At the beck of sun and showers, When the middle May uncloses All the rapture that reposes In earth's frost-enchanted bowers ; Such as in the shortening hours Blow are these for Autumn's posies. Yet, for some they have their featness, Gentle souls that from life's madness, From its cruel cold completeness, From its hot hysteric gladness Shrink, content from love and sadness Still to crush a curious sweetness. POPULARITY. TO him, who seeks what is not bought or sold, Who will not bow the neck in servitude Nor pander to the unthinking multitude, Approof comes seldom till his bones are cold, Or, at the least, until he waxeth old, Till hope is dead and may not be renewed And all that life can show of fair and good Dead leaves and ashes grown, like elfin gold. So to the poet popularity, Denied in youth and given when on the wane Are life and hope, is like the promised fee, So long withheld and paid at last in vain, That damned Mehmoud to all eternity, The gifts that crossed Firdausi's funeral train. V. UT PICTURA UT PICTURA .... PAN IM GEBUSCH. (A PICTURE BY HANS THOMa). WHAT pip'st thou in the twilit thicket, Pan? What dost thou here in this our day of June, Thou that, long shut from sight of sun and moon, Deforcing death's immitigable ban, Revisitest the haunts and hours of man And in our woodlands, where the ringdoves croon Songs sad as life, re-trillst the olden tune The blue bird fluted when the world began? Back to thy grave, gray ghost, in Paxos Isle! There, mid the moan of the Ionian main, Under the sapphires of the Grecian sky, All lapt and rounded with the warm sun's smile, There dream thy dreams of sunny days gone by, far from our sad wan world of strife and pain. LE CAPUCHON ROUGE. ( \ PICTURE BY GREUZ] ). WHEN all the world was young and fair, When all earth's rills ran honey-dew And all the firmament was blue, In Eden we together were. Two lovers on youth's golden stair, Love's only sweets, indeed, we knew And DOthing of his bitter brew . Noi ever heard the name r,i , ire, Vel fair and young art thou to da) : I "]>ou me from the canvas thee With thy red lips and artless an. Thou look' ,1 i . ii the world should n< i i < in iw old noi youth should pa is awaj And I, iI.k k ' rnj head i 7o UT PICTURA .... MEDEA. (A PICTURE BY F. SANDYS). VENGEANCK, ye (rods! For I am wild with wrong- Zeus, Here, Ares, ye celestial mates, And Phoebus, thou, that in the morning's gates Thronest, invincible of shafts and song, And Cypris. that, as thou art sweet, art strong, And ye, ye grim inexorable Fates, That over Gods and mortals hold your states, Help me, that have endured too long, too long ! Me of mine enemies but justify, That have no reverence for the most high Gods, No thought of justice or the Furies' rods: Then, ye Immortals, with your fiery cars, Come, snatch your maiden back unto the stars, To dwell with you forever in the sky ! BACCHANAL. (A PICTURE BY ARNOLD BOCKLIN). WHO loveth girls and golden song, Here let him come and have his will ! The sun above the heavenward hill Yet hangs, and all the meads along, The Winegod leads his winsome throng. The merry month is with us still; The world without a doubt of ill Is glad or thought of Winter's wrong. Alack ! What hath our grayness here With this glad Paynimrie to pass, Our Winter with its golden year, Wlni of Sileiius but his ass, Who know of Momus but his rod, Hi- tigers of the tipsy God? IT PTCTURA .... 71 DER TOD ALS FREUND. (A PICTURE BY ALFRED RETHEL). NEAR is the night of thy long day at hand. Past is the Past, with all its joy and dole; Life's mists are lifting from the appointed goal. The sunset sleeps upon the slumbering land, A mellow glory fall'n on sea and strand; And with his hand of bone, Friend Death doth toll The bell that parleys with the parting soul : Almost the hour-glass empty is of sand. Peace over all the landscape lies without And peace within upon thy quiet end, Life and its cares forgotten, hope and doubt, Its storms all fallen stirless. — Heaven send That, when my sands of life are running out, Death by my side, as thine, ma) stand as friend! GOTTER IM WALDE. (a picture by moritz schwind). I cannot heal me of the haunting care, The backward yearning for a bygone day, When things yet lived which live no lunger may, When the young world was, in a younger air, On Other wise than this our old world, fair, lielike, 'tis idle; yet, in this our gray Of modern lightlessness, mine eyes awa) 1 ii' .1 turn from the delights dial were. What boots the exile that 'twere wise to tell Tar from his fatherland < ontenl to dwell < h him, thai still in pine must li\ e and di< In this 0111 darl ling dulness, he were well I thi Gods with w horn, in dn .im . g< >ne b) . I [e lived and loved beneath .1 brightei skj ? 72 UT PICTURA .... THE TWO POLES. TWO poles of Art there be, the false, the true: One negative, to whose plenipotence Brute longing turns and sensual appetence And humour shifting still from old to new : The other, positive, the soul unto Speaks and with Beauty sheer to heavens far hence Above earth's mire uplifts the ennobled sense : And all things gravitate between these two. By this assay all spirits thou mayst test. The high-tuned soul, in this our world of Will, But Beauty follows, selfless and divine; Whilst that to seek, which doth but interest The Self, but stirs the ignoble sense, is still The stamp and hall-mark of the Philistine. INNOMINATA. (A PICTURE BY MARIANO FORTUNY V MADRAZO). A face upfloating through a shimmering sea Of dreams, resurgent whether from the Past Of Time, meknoweth not, or if forecast Upon the Present's glass, as yet to be, From the dim dreamland of Futurity. But this I know, of women, first and last, This only she from the Eternal Vast Of the World's Soul it is that speaks to me. These are her lips, whom I have sought in vain Through many a devious waste of nights and days; These are her starry eyes, whose wax and wane Still were my beacons in the dreamland's ways; And aever shall I take her by the hand, Until Death bring me to the Unknown Land. UT PICTURA .... 73 THE RAPE OF PSYCHE. (A PICTURE BY PRUDHOX). WHAT is yon slumbering maiden, wonder-white, That, like a gossamer, through heaven fares, Upborne and wafted of the frolic airs ? Psyche it is they bring, in brief delight To dwell with Eros in his land of light. Alack, poor maid, how many weary stairs Must thou o'erclimb of toils and doubts and cares, Ere full thy sense shall steep in thy lord's sight! Sweet soul of the world's joys and woes, the hand Of vengeful heaven is heavy upon thee. True, Love is strong; but Fate supreme command Hath over him nor suffereth him free Hi^ own, or e'er, in darkness and in cold, The appointed tale of sufferance be told. JESUS ON LAKE GENNESARET. (a PICTURE BY EUGENE DELACROIX). "MASTER, we perish !" was the cry. "Awake !" And he, the mystic, heaven-deputed guest, That slumbered, cradled on the billows' breast. And dreamed, untroubled of the Storm-tOSSed lake, Amid the winds' wail and the wild wave-break, Of realms of peace beyond the golden West, "Where is your faith?" said and the wool, from I Rising, that stilled the raging ivatei >. spake. Alack for unbeUi • ing humankind I How many a Hercules, without thru (are, Hath wrought and perished, on tin- mountain side I low many a high Prometheu i i 'i hath pined, I [ow man) a < !hri it, • ti I timing in di ip lir, "Where is youi faith ?" upon Life' ■ cross hath died ' 74 UT PICTURA .... EDWARD BURNE JONES. "NOUGHT is there better in this world than sleep," The Arabs say; "excepting death it be". Sweet sleep in death and happy dreams to thee, Fair soul, that still on earth didst vigil keep, Life all too short the lovely shapes to reap, That through thy brain went trooping ceaselessly, Pleading in colour and in form to be Bodied and rescued from the dreamland's deep ! The lovesome memories of a brighter day Thou limnedst, to thy pencil, as my pen, Dear, when more colour was in life and men Were simpler than beneath our skies of gray. Friend, may we meet in some serener land, Where our lost dreams shall take us by the hand ! VALEDICTORY. (j. T. N., OB. AUG. 31, I902). YOUR name, set down among the names unknown New-numbered of the innumerable rout, Wherewith Death rounds our little lives about, Falls on my heart, like the sepulchral stone. You loved me not; nay, for your thought alone You loved, your wayward thought, that would not out, That mured you lifelong in a mist of doubt And died with you, to blossom yet unblown. Yet I, I loved you, as I loved my youth, And with your death, though many a wave of days And nights hath welled between our lives, since last They met, yet somewhat of my Spring of sooth And dream, methinks, into the darkling haze Hath sunken of the insatiable Past. VI. VARIA. VARIA. OUR DEAD. i. OF those we've loved and lost too well we know That they are gone to come again ho more, That, in no future sky, no foreign shore, The lapsing years to us again shall show Their dear-beloved shapes of long ago : We know that none of those who're gone before Came ever back at Death's relentless door; And yet we cannot let our darlings go. Nor do we think that all in them we knew, Which made them dear, by which themselves they weir. Eyes, lips, hands, voice, breath, bosom, forehead, hair, Not only back to earth, fire, water, air, But, wrought in Nature's crucible anew, Are gone to make earth green and heaven blue. 2. If we could follow them where they are gone, How should our lips their lips press in the rose? How should oui- arms upon the wind wafts close, Our eyes with theirs in green oi wood and lawn, Our hands commingle in the flush of dawn? When we, as they, of life, it ^ joys and wot Are ti''-. fai cat ■ h breath thai blows, No longei held of flesh and blood in pawn, ed from the let of hope, joy, doubl and p I an of lis free to fare and blend With winds and watet \, flowei and sun and rain, Then ma) we look to be with them And nothing will it profit us till then But to endure with path the end. 7 8 VARIA. WORK. OFT have I marvelled, in my sadder mood, At reading, in the Scriptures of the Jew, -The race that never yet set hand to do That which of others done procure they could, Drawers of water hewers nor of wood, — Work worst set down of all that makes us rue, For primal curse that men is born unto Branded, for chiefest ill life's chiefest good. Yet that the dictum of the Therapeut, Of Paul, the Essenian doctor and adept, Whose speech for Christ, professing, we accept, In these our days of vain hysteric heat, I marvel more, hath borne such scanty fruit, "Who will not labour, neither let him eat !" ' IN MEMORIAM "ROVER", ob. july 2, 1902. MY little gentle cat, whose eyes no dove Might ever match for truth and tenderness, Whose life was one long effort to express, In thy mute speech, an overflowing love, The wavering love of women far above, I cannot think that death thy gentilesse Hath ended all or that thy fond excess In this thy ten years' span found scope enough. I cannot credit that no soul in bond, No thought there was behind those wistful eyes, That pleaded for thy dumbness, as one cries Out from Life's dusk into the dark beyond, Nor doubt somewhen beyond the stars to find The soul that lay those looks of thine behind. 1 EY tiq ob QeAei iftyx^e^ixt, py^l eedieTu. — 2 Thess., 3, 10. VARIA. 79 MARTYRS OF HISTORY. I. HANNIBAL. WHO on the page of history past doth pore There much for sorrow findeth which doth call ; The world-Christ, drinking of the cup of gall, Stretched through the ages on the cross of war, Whilst plague, death, flood and famine, vultures four, On his sad vitals prey : but, over all, For what the hostile Fates with Hannibal Wrought in the days bygone, my heart is sore ; Far Afric's godlike son, half Italy, Though foiled of succour by his foes at home, Twelve years who held against the might of Rome, And then, recalled and baffled oversea, Draining, for Carthage sake, the envenomed bowl, To the high Gods gave back his glorious soul. 2. CiESAR. NOR less for him 1 grieve of later ye That mightiest Julius, Rome's most goodly son. Of all Life's nurslings sure the noblest one That ever trod her stage of blood and tears. That Caesar who, by witness of his peers, E'er of free will endured to injure none, Who, in all lands which be beneath the sun, Came, saw and conquered hearts and eyes and ears. And at the last, by envious I reverse, Unto the foul assassin's bloody knife 1 ndemned to render up his noble In Nor imprecation utten d neithei cui but with his mantle \riled his mij ht) head And "Et In, Bmti bed and so was dead. 8o VARIA. 3. COLUMBUS. HE put off empire, like a worn-out wede, For hero's wearing waxen overmean, And as the Gods immortal and serene, That breathe an air above man's lust and greed Nor of the imperial purple stand in need, To show as Gods upon the worldly scene, With the bare grandeur of his soul beseen, Sun-crowned abode in his accomplished deed. When such as he their fetters wear for flowers And for chief honour hold the scorn of men, How should we lesser mortals, now as then, Here, in this meaner martyrdom of ours, But for sharp laurels Life's affronts espouse, The thorn-set crowns that bind the thinker's brows? 4. SAUL. THY face we see but through the mists of hate Save by the chronicles of jealousy, Rancour and malice, nought we know of thee : Yet may the eye of thought discriminate, — Athwart the web, of lies and sorry Fate Woven, wherefrom thy strong simplicity In this waste world might never struggle free, — One simply great as few on earth are great. Nay, and methinks, thy mighty weary spright, Clogged in the mesh of priestcraft and of guile, So long on earth, when thou on Gilboa's height With the sharp steel lett'st out, I see a smile On thy stern face, as of a hero's soul, Of Life content to be at last made whole. VARIA. 8 1 5. PROMETHEUS. PRIMORDIAL Saviour, Prometheus, thou, That in the twilight of the morrowing earth, Compassionate of mortal dole and dearth, From thine immortal harbourage didst bow And to the waste world's service, then as now By the fierce Fates drained dry of joy and mirth And peace and all that makes life living-worth, Thyself by the fire's token didst avow; Thee still on Caucasus the vultures tear And still, eternal in the Eternal Aye, Type of world's wont with all that's good and fair, Skyward thy smile thou smil'st of sad disdain, As the Gods knowing puppets of a day And thee the true God on thy throne of pain. 6. ROBERT EDMUND LEE. MY thought, at this sweet season of the prime, When hope and life new blossom, bark to thee, My eager boyhood's hero, goeth, Lee. Near forty years, since that thy strife sublime Was sped, have passed and men well nigh thy time And thee forgotten have. Vet take from me This trilling tribute to thy memory, This word of love and of memorial rhyme. Alack, the wrong yet lives j the right is dead: And nothing it availeth 'gainst the flood Of Fate to fare: but this I know full well; When in the last red field tin free South fell And liberty with her, the teai l I in- from mine inmost heart, not tears, but bl I. 6 82 VARIA. \V() GOTTER SIND NIGHT .... "WHEREAS no Gods are, phantasms hold sway". Thus he who sang of how the Eates did fill To Wallenstein the cup of good and ill : And so say I, in this our meaner day, When all men worshipped once is passed away Into oblivion and the idol Will On our Olympus sole abideth still, The one base God to whom we bend and pray. Here, where, in darkness indisseverable, Love, honour, faith are sunken and no light Is left to guide us 'midst the utter gloom, Save that of levins hurtling through the night, The ways of phantasms of coming doom Are full; our lives the larvae haunt of hell. MENS ANGLICA. "YOU English have the passion of fair play", l Quoth France's daintiest living novelist. How oft hath England what with armoured fist From the embattled world she rent away For conscience' sake back given again and aye Bare thanks for magnanimity hath missed, Foul thanklessness and hate, that might not list But wax with benefits, but had to pay ! Yet she forbeareth; for forbearance still The token is of the superior race And magnanimity the mark of grace. Like the Third Henry of the Valois line, Betrayed she may be, often is, in fine, But deceived never, rendering good for ill. 1 Les Anglais ont le fanatisme de la loyaute. — paul kourget. VARIA. 83 TO MAX EBERSTADT IX WILLESDEX CEMETERY. MY thought to that sad January day Goes back of half a score of years ago, When underneath the newly melted snow The last of that bright wit was laid away, That eager thought, that with its sunny play Of love and humour held our hearts aglow, And we the last sad homage, here below That loved thee, standing by thy grave, must pay. Max, shall I never talk with thee again Of all we loved and none enough but we, Of Dickens, Dumas, Gautier, (peerless three!) Liszt, Wagner, Schopenhauer? Woe is me! How many a part of this sad heart and brain Of mine is buried in thy grave with thee ! OX THE LIMPOPO. 1900. "WE, that are Englishmen", he cried, "shall we "Run from these dirty Dutchland dogs?" Scarce might The little band that battled for the right Against the ambushed foemen, one to three, Make head, and some began to yield and llee ; When, with these words, into the middle fight Rushed valiant little Plumer and the flight Retrieving, of defeat made victory. Three years have past since this brave deed befell; Yet, trumpet-like, my heart the tale doth stir With the assurance that, though heaven and hell • imbine against her, all with England well Shall be, whilst yet su< h sons to succour her She hath as Plumer, Powell, Kitchener. 84 VARIA. TRANS ASTRA. BEYOND the stars! What is beyond the stars? We question still, — beyond those lamps of gold, That all things mortal, whether new or old, Shakspeare as Hafiz, England even as Fars, Ruin as happiness and peace as wars, With the like loveless constancy behold, Each as the other pensive, pale and cold, Venus as Mercury and Jove as Mars? No more, grown sadly wise for clearer sight, We look to find new heavens beyond the blue, . New Paradisal worlds of love and light; Ourselves resign yet cannot plain on plain But past the stars to seek of Space inane, Through Time and Silence stretching still anew. HERCULIS COLUMNS. BEYOND Gibraltar strait, the narrow seas 'Twixt Spain and Africa, on either hand, Guarding as 'twere, two mounds heaven-pointing stand Of stone o'erweathered of the briny breeze, The Pillars erst so-called of Hercules. Hither the hero won and having scanned Waters and skies nor sign of farther strand Perceiving, for world's end erected these. We of the Viking breed, for bound nowise Content illimitable seas and skies, As Hercules, to take, the world have gone About, from set of sun to break of dawn, And for new worlds to conquer still a-strive, Are like to die of wistfulness, like Clive. VARIA. 85 HEPIAEIMMA E0NIKON. HOW long shall we the pregnant words o'erhear, Unheeding, in the Hebrew Writ that stand, "The poor shall never cease out of the land" ? How long silk purse to fashion of sow's ear Strive and to cause the dregs of race run clear? How long with dulcet speech and usance bland Seek to tame rat and wolf, that understand No law but force, that know no faith but fear? When shall we learn that kindness cruelty Sheer is to him that is his passions' slave, That from himself there's nothing him can save, From Death's red furnace-mouth and ruin's maw, But discipline, enforcing Truth's decree, And stern fulfilment of an equal law? LOVE AND REASON. "A woman, at some time of year, 'tis true, "Is necessary; but no business make "Of her." Thus Fletcher's stout old soldier spake, In those plain times when all of what all do Were not ashamed to speak, nor that, from view B) hiding, thought to quell, for prudery's sake, Which from the very source its root doth take Of natural life in all things old and new. Could we but live bj 1 mtius' saw And in our loves unto attemperan< e hold And 1 keep and understanding's law, \\ hat tares had thriven, that fell to ruin red, \\ i,.,t heart •■• re warm, thai loi old, What faith i and hop,' 1 were live, that now are dead ' 86 VARIA. "SPORT". "BUT for amusements, life were tolerable", So said the sage; and certes, what in court And hall and street "amusement" men report Is weariness for those, past words to tell, To whom true pleasure is delectable And highest, noble work; whilst, what for "sport" Alas ! is holden of the baser sort, What for the nobler sense were direr hell Than our dumb fellows' pain to see, to hear The rabbit's scream, the hare's despairing cry, To meet the dying bird's fast-glazing eye, Reproachful for its life of harmless cheer Crushed out by fools, who nothing better know Than to find pleasure in another's woe? SPES CRUDELIOR. EXCEPT for hope, our lives at peace might be. Worst gift of the sardonic Gods to men, That of the Nine Beatitudes mak'st ten, For that of all creation blest is he Who nought expects, we should not, but for thee, NOW possible neglect for hopeless THEN; We should not wallow in the worldly fen, When with desire despair off-cast might we. Excepting thou into the fruitless fight Urgedst us back, we long aside had laid The hopeless stress toward the mocking light, That still, the more we follow, more doth fade. And an eternal harbour for the spright In Resignation's sanctuaries had made. VAR1A. 87 FALSE SLAVERY AND TRUE. MUCH in these prating times of ours hath been Of slavery discoursed and sung and writ, But mostly, as meseems, with little' wit. For if (as surely), slavery service mean, Who is there here but serveth? king and queen, Peasant and noble, all in service knit Each unto other, as is well and fit, So but the wage do to the work convene. One slaver)' but there is, of all that be, Intolerable, making Gods to weep, The slavery of the wise and passion-free To those that serve their lusts, of good to ill, Noble to base. From such a slavery still God of His grace our kindly England keep ! CATKIND AND HUMANKIND. MY rat, that sits am! sleeps upon my knee. For sheer intelligence, with men I know Not onl) can compare, but, high or low, Few reach his standard of morality. That which [do for him he renders me With low and faith such as lew humans show. Rejoices when I come ami when 1 go, ( Jnes at iu\ door nor < omforted will be His spreading ruff, Ins bush) tail and haii For vanity sum* ing him < ontenl : Ik- does not pine the power with me i" shar< Nor on the delegation is he bent, To hara i • me who pa) foi him and 1 i )t repre m ntativi to Parliament. 88 VARIA. THE CREATION OF WOMAN. WHEN God an end of making man had wrought, Flesh of His flesh and blood of His own blood, He looked upon His work and deemed it good; Then, overcasting in His pregnant thought That which in time yet unaccomplished brought To pass should be, how that His handwork should Himself defy and in his upstart mood, Vie with his maker, sighed and knew it naught: Yet that His glorious work might not undo; But, casting round for a device whereby He might forefend Him from His creature new, Bethought Him to his strivings to apply A check and woman made, to clog his wings And hinder him from over-venturings. RIGHTS AND DUTIES. LONG of their rights alone have we to men Enough discoursed; yea, overlong about To stir their souls to discontent and doubt Have gone, till all our world is as a fen, With exhalations foul and meteors' vain Of wish and will fulfilled, a rabble-rout Of sensual dreams wherein no grass will sprout, No flowers will blow, fruit ripen neither grain. Them of their duties, surely, to bespeak High time it is, of duty, — moon and sun Which holdeth in their course of day and night, Which is the star of life for strong and weak, — And that high prophet's speech, who said, "No right "Is but ariseth from a duty done." ' 1 Mazzini. VARIA. 89 NATURA NATURANS. NATURE concerns herself not much with man. So but the stream of race run full and free, All's well for her; the individual she Leaves for himself to shift as best he can. "Sleek men, that sleep o' nights", best fit her plan, (As Caesar's), such as unconrlictingly, Bound to the car-wheels of the Will-to-Be, Eat, drink and slumber out their little span. Of this it is that she, from birth to death, The human animal still pampereth, — Those, in whom soul place over body claims, Rebating, — and that women, who the tools Immediate are, by which she shapes her aims, Do for the most part love and tender fools. ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN HORSE-HOLOCAUST. OF all these grim three years of grief and gore, There's nought so stirs the source of tears in me As the sad myriads from oversea Of horses brought, to perish without store. Ah, England of my love, my heart is sore To think what load of penance laid on thee In the grim Future, what calamity, I tearth, famine, pe tilen< e, intestine war, Must for the wrongs of the true horse atone, Man's patient, loving slave, foi faith inbred And native virtue worth a world ol Boers, Forsaken on the arid \i> u mo ( mi< .1st to die, de ipaii ing and alon W ith the vile vultures hovering round his head. 90 VARIA. HILLFOOT AND SUMMIT. IF there's a good on earth, it is content. 'I never was content, i'faith, not I ! "No hillside was too steep, no peak too high, "But I must buckle to for the ascent. "So hath Fate fooled me to my topmost bent; "For Life is like an Alp; one peak past by, "Another towers higher 'gainst the sky, "Between the climber still and his intent." ' How better far to tarry in the vale And from the base the mountain-top to view! There, at the least, the sky's not gray, but blue; The sun is warm and bright, not chill and pale, As in the summit's over-subtle air; And one is spared the swink of getting there. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. HERE have we but the Present: with the Past Nor with the Future our concernments are. Past is the Past, the Future overfar. Since that which now is with us will not last, Why leave unjoyed the life that flits so fast, Why from the sight of sun and moon and star Hide in the dark, when all before us are The deserts of Eternity the vast? Why with the Past concern us, since Time's plough, Present and past, the selfsame soil doth ear And the same fruits of joy and pain doth rear? Why with the Future? Since foregoing men Were no wise happier when the Now was Then, How were we happier, if the Then were Now? 1 Ambitiosus loquitur. VARIA. 91 OIGNEZ VILAIN, IL VOUS POINDRA .... "CARESS a churl", the ancient adage says, "And he will cuff you. Cuff him till he yell, •And he'll caress you". If you've wit to spell The meaning of these words, in Life's wild ways Safe shall you walk and easance have and praise. But, if you use not as the saw doth tell And with the vulgar seek by doing well And love to commerce, you will reap amaze; Yea, for repentance cause you shall enough Have and your life long feed on bitter food Of hatred and contempt; for everywhen Of one consent 'twas holden of wise men That everywhere the base unthankful chuff 111 offices returneth still for good. JUNE n, 1903. SERVIA, thou name-devoted, sorry LAND OF SERES to their own lusts, how long with thee, In the sad name of lawless Liberty, Shall Gods and men endure? How long, unbanned, Unblasted of His thunders, shalt thou stand, In the sheer sight of heaven and earth and sea, Outraging all that right and truth decree, With ravin-reddened brows and bloody hand? Since men forbear thee, since the avenging Same Of heaven yet Laggeth, I, thai see and hear Midmosl mj dream and shudder, in the name < )f all whose hearts with love and pity stir, Ban su* h a - thou, thou woman 1 den 1 . Back to thai nethei hell from whi< li thej < ami . 92 VARIA. ENGLAND'S GOD. i. LORD, Thou, indeed, hast been our dwelling-place, From generation unto generation. The confluence of nation upon nation, The storm diluvian of race on race, That, since our Britain, on her island-base Throned, hath the world for her inhabitation Taken, have striven to shock us from our station, We had not, save with Thee, availed to face. "What is this God?" The envious nations question. "Sure none of those to whom we bend the knee "'Tis that this little people to the gestion "Of all the world hath brought from sea to sea, "That hath their governance ordained to be "Beyond opposing and above contestion?" 2. Our God is none of yours: no Baal uncouth, No Moloch, Allah, Jahveh, Adona'i, Such as, his thunder-summits of Sinai Forsaking in the world's unhistoried youth, Taught men the love of hate, the scorn of ruth, That burned and slew in Jericho and A'i; No earless Norns we serve, no eyeless Graiai; Our England's God is loyalty and truth. These are our Elohim, alone perduring ( )'er all Gods else, that are but for a day : Leant on their help, disdaining passion's luring, Built hath our Britain her imperial sway; Nor, whilst she standeth fast on their assuring, Her faith shall fail, her power shall pass away. VARIA. 93 LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY. (Three Sonnets on the Republican Formula). I. LIBERTY. NO one of woman born was ever free; The good to their own goodness and the ill To their own lusts and passions slaves were still And bondmen both to that which is to be. Grim Anarch of our lives, Necessity, Thou whose stern shade the halls of heaven doth fill, That bendest all unto thine iron will, To whom no Gods there are but bow the knee, How shall a worm like man his little day From thine enforcement study to withdraw? None is there free, beneath thine iron law, Save the sad sage, who, in the Lustra! fires Of lonely thought hath purged his lusts away. The world discarded and forsworn desires. 2. EQUALITY. EQUALITY! Another idle word, A phrase, wherewith the unflinching egoist Feeds fools and dupes the dullard at his list. In any age, since first Creation stirred With breath and life, when was it seen or heard That two in heart were equal, wit or fist? Set Shakspeare by the modern journalist, BritOIl by Burgher, lark by (anion bird, Aryan by negro? Was there ever drone So dull, though equal all in talk hold he. That shaped his practice b\ his theory, Chief AristOCral Nature but must own, Who, with eaI THE .1 •< >N. THE end of the old order draweth nigh; The air is thick with of coming chan Foreboding le through all men's fancies range, Dim clouds of doubt, that overcast the sky, And mists of fear, that darken ever) eye. In hut and hall, in town and tower and gran: Men's ouls an ick with visions void and strange, Delirious dreams oi tho e aboul to die. No faith there is but is a phantom grown < H its old self: tin Gods by doubt and F Axe frozen back to si ne. All eyes are fixed up< m the F uture's gate, For that which is to be, and all things wait To hail the 1 ominj Gods unknown. ioo VARIA. THE RETURN OF THE GODS. METHINKETH, yet, our time of toil and pain Shall pass and all the clouds of care and spleen, That, since the coming of the Nazarene, Over the blighted earth have brooding lain, Shall melt away and life grow glad again. The sun shall have its primal Pagan sheen And in a world new-ransomed and serene, The old frank friendly Gods return to reign. Back to Time's limbos heaven shall fare and hell ; Zeus shall smile down on us from sapphire skies And joy have leave once more with men to dwell : Phoebus shall cheer us with his cloudless sight And Cytherea with her starry eyes, And Eros have again his ancient right. THE RETURN TO BARBARISM. IN the world's youth, men rule by count of head; The ignoble many crush the finer few And all confusion is 'twixt false and true, Till certain of the wise, the state nigh dead Reviving, with much toil and much blood shed, Law's checks impose upon the unruly crew, And wholesome governance and order due Grow with the rule of those to ruling bred. But, in its second childhood, children like, Authority and discipline that spurn And in their appetites uncurbed will be, The world descends again into the dyke And wallows, swine-like, in the lewd return To barbarism of democracy. VARIA. 101 EDUCATION TRUE AND FALSE. THE cry in this our dear quack-ridden day For popular education is, and we, Whose backs already overburthened be, Must needs, to educate the castaway In French and Greek and freehand drawing, pay, And that each liege his leisures may at gree Charm with cat-consternating harmony, Banjo and mandoline must teach him play. Meanwhile, some minor matters, which of yore Not without weight and import holden were, Omitted are from our arbitrament, Nor to the commons teach we any more Such toys as reverence for good and fair, Truth, honour, manners, modesty, content. THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS. SMALL is our age for better and for worse: Small in its good, as in its wickedness ; Small in its aim, in its performance less: Small is its benison and small its curse; Its art is small and smaller yet its verse. Small are its men and women, strife and stress, And small its thoughts, hopes, fears, wish, carefulness; Nought hath it great, save \anit\ and purse. So, with its little sweets, its little strife, [1 little goods and ills, its little spell Shall it OUtfool : ami when the term a \< i omplished is, of this its paper life, ( > 1 1 « i flan d awa) in I ime' i unpitj ing wind, l ..■ hut a little a ih ind an ill smell. 102 VAKIA. THE NEW INVASION OF THE BARBARIANS. WHEN I consider this our modern whirl, Where all the links of life are rent apart And all things holy, honour, faith, love, art, Cower at the mercy of the invading churl, Meseems, the Huns once more I see unfurl Their banners on the heights, ere to the heart Of the old world they surge and town and mart And temple swamp with their resistless swirl ; Save that, to day, no saving streams there come, Fresh from Life's fountain-head, the world's repair To work; but from the abysses of Time's sea The rotting wrecks of race, the ages' scum, Float up upon the flood and fill the air With the miasmas of putrescency. SUPERSTITION. THOSE who at superstition use to rail Are blind and deaf to all that is of yore Recorded of the unrelenting war Waged by the ruthless Fates against the frail Sad sons of man, — who, that they might not fail, Must from sheer sufferance learn the spells that o'er Their foes unseen prevail; — nor know, this lore- Obscure, they scoff at as an idle tale, The sum, upon experience's page Deep-charactered, of thought, in many an age, Concentred on the endeavour is to find The natural magic which propitiates And of their dreadful purpose baulks the blind, Deaf Gods, the eyeless and the earless Fates. VARIA. 103 PROGRESS .... OVER THE CLIFF. MESEEMS, — in this our democratic day, When every wholesome check against abuse, All lawful reverence and kindly use, From wiser times inherited, away Are swept, to give men's lusts the freer play, When open stands Will's Revolution-sluice And every dunce full freedom to the deuce (None other!) has of going his own way, — The world is like to one that stands, blindfold, On a cliff-edge, above a raging deep, What while his fellows hearten him be bold Nor back a step for sake of safety go, But, in the name of Progress, o'er the steep Push on and plunge into the abyss below. TURK AND SLAV. NE'ER could I deem the Turk "unspeakable", treason foul he did in blood repress. Nor wherefore -Slav" should -angel" spell might gui ///. 1 folk have we, sober, honourable. True, clean, brave, honest, all that's fair and well, And there a race Dame-doomed, for drunkenness Theft, sloth, tilth, treacher) branded and do less Stained with a soil of lust indelible. ' I )ark are the daj dim To bi With murk of doubt o'ermisted is lor me: |< . I hop.- • 1 in ■ 1 in 1.. r urate, yet the di >1 Slavdom brii Bai k to the one sole I )uty in quiet done and \\ hole >< »me work. 1 1 1. the • t) mole- ical hi tor) "I the Dame - Bulg 104 VARIA. THE LAST OF THE GODS. OF all the Gods, for Love my heart is sore, For Love, that was so frank and fair a thing, That had so vague and sweet a voice to sing To our tired sense. Since to the unknown shore, With all his glamours, he is gone before, How shall the world again be glad in Spring, How shall the earth again with blossoming Be clad or have delight of Summer more ? And yet, and yet, sad heart, be comforted : Love, of a truth, is not for ever dead; He sleepeth but for weariness of woe And sheer despite of this our world of show And yet will lift again his lovesome head And take again his arrows and his bow. THOUGHT AND TRUTH. FEW for themselves there are who think and fewer Who an abstract idea can receive And follow, unconditioned, who can cleave, For their life's guidance, unto duty pure And natural truth, unqualified by lure Of heaven or threat of hell, but, to believe, Must clutch at some God's garments nor to leave Their mythologic crutches can endure. To harbour on the snow-clad heights of Truth, Alone with the bare soul, and in the thought To delve for knowledge of the Must and Ought, This is the portion of the few, forsooth, Who in those lands of light can breathe and bear The coldness of that interstellar air. VARIA. PERSONALITY. !°5 MOST of all things which threaten in Death's Must, We dread the loss of personality. Though, in our own despite, we know that we, Once dead, like all things else, must rot and rust And mingle with the everlasting dust, That is the stuff of earth and heaven and sea, Nor evermore return ourselves to be What once we were, the just as the unjust; Yet, to the thought of some vague power we cleave, Beyond the clouds, at will that can unweave The war]) and weft of Nature and of Fate, Nor can our selves abandon nor forswear The meeting at the Morning's golden gate With those who here of us beloved were. THE GOD OF THE PAST. A tyrant slave bound to the wheels of Fate, Forever forced to be all creatures' bane, The eternal spring of it be the portion oi the worm. 1 Daa Ding rich, 1 1 6 THE SIL VER A GE. NEARING PORT. HOPE and sorrow, smiles and sadness, Doubt and surety, glee and dole, Hast thou fed thy full, my soul : Grief galore and little gladness, Goodness hast thou known and badness. Pause and ponder now the whole, In the distance since thy goal Glimmers through Life's maze of madness. Now thy day is near its ending, Now thy travel home is tending, Now Life's night is near its morrow, Conscience clear and quiet mind, Duty done, 'spite pain and sorrow, Nothing else of worth thou'lt find. MORS JANUA VIT.E. A lapse into the surgeless sea of Night; Long devious wanderings in the darkling ways; Some little blinded pause of blank amaze, Of hands uplifted to the eternal height; Some little straining of the astonied spright For thought and cognizance, athwart the haze Of nothingness, wherewith Death overlays The deadened sense; and then a flood of light; A conscience of the at last accomplished goal, Of Past for ever past, of Present sole, Without To-be abiding, in a clime Of peace unchanging, quit of Space and Time, l){ all life's troubles ended for the soul, Of Self resolved into the Eternal Whole. THE SIL VER AGE. 117 MORTUIS DILECTIS. 1. YOU all, whom I have loved and who are dead, Leaving me here to face the end , alone, As one, who, in mid-battle, all his own Sees fall'n, and single, in the setting red, Stands, with war-wearied, if unbated head, These, that like flowers in me, unsought, unsown, By field and garden, street and shore, have blown, Or in the midnight hours upon my bed, On your cold ashes, for you loved me well And your hearts throbbed with mine in hopes and fears, This wreath I lay of mingling smiles and tears, A garland not alone of funeral flowers, In many a variance plucked of sun and showers, The tale of Love's rememorance to tell. 2. Nay, they are yours: what time they grew in me, Through many a glad and son)- day and night, Your thought was with me, in the morning-white, The evening-red; it was your harmony I hearkened for, your eyes that did o'ersee The growing line, your voice that bade me write; And gathered now upon this page of white, To you alone 1 be) dedi< ate shall be And those true hearts, thai musi< love and son 1 very song's alone and musi< ' 1 ake, Nor to the poet reckon it for wrong, On song-bird fashion music if he tnal As for the others, be they who they may, I h. . \\ hat say the) ? Marry, lei th< m »j ' BY THE SAME AUTHOR: Two Volumes, thick royal 8vo., exquisitely printed on handmade paper and bound in decorated vellum, after a design by the author, top edges gilt, price Two Guineas net. Two Hundred and Fifty Copies only printed. COLLECTED POEMS (1863— 1902). Villon Society's DEFINITIVE EDITION. "In the limited space at our disposal, it is a sheer impos- sibility to do even scant justice to two such volumes of "noble poetry as these. The time is not yet ripe for us to "hazard more than a guess as to the place Mr. John Payne "is destined to occupy on England's Parnassus. As a past- "master in the difficult and ungrateful art of translation "from widely differing languages, he stands alone; but, "when the history of nineteenth century poetry comes to "be written, we believe that posterity will place him between "Tennyson and Morris, side by side with Swinburne and "Rossetti." — The Westminster Review. Mr. PAYNE'S TRANSLATIONS. 1. The Poems of Francois Villon. 2 . The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Night. Nine Vols. 3. Tales from the Arabic. Three Vols. 4. Alaeddin and Zein ul Asnam. 5. The Decameron of Boccaccio. Three Vols. 6. The Novels of Matteo Bandello. Six Vols. 7. The Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam. 8. The Poems of Hafiz. Three Vols. Prospectuses and particulars of the Villon Society's issues can be obtained of the Hon. Secretary, Alfred Forman, Esq., 49 Comeragh Road, West Kensington, W., to whom all communications should be addressed. DATE DUE CAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 601 044 "Yi iV"irrr A 3 1210 01197 5438 '.