A = — — cz I o 1 A I =X: CO I ___ o 1 m = X 1 1 XI 1 o I x 1 ^— — m 1 O 1 3 = =^^ O 1 = 1 6 i ^ 3> 1 j — 1 ^ — *—^— — 1 — ^5=T 33 I as > 1 1 Q — — — -n J |y = - -C 1 h i > 1 I 7 i — £ 1 -< 'a 1 4 THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL At Stratford Festival A POEM BY R. WARWICK BOND AUTHOR OF 'THE IMMORTALS AND OTHER POEMS,' *AN ODE TO THE SUN' AND OTHER POEMS ' LONDON LAWRENCE & BULLEN 16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 1S96 The major portion of the following poem appeared in Macmillaiis Magazine for April 1894 To IN LOVING ACKNOWLEDGMENT AS WELL OF AN EARLY TASTE INSPIRED AS OF HELP DERIVED FROM HIS EXAMPLE AND CRITICISM THE FOLLOWING POEM IS DEDICATED AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL APRIL 23, 1892 The ripple laps along the churchyard wall Where Avon's sleep is for a moment stirred By light oars passing downward to the mill ; A moment's noisier conference is heard Amongst the cawing colonies that fill The immemorial Dream of the elms with discord musical ; Anon each circling pinion finds a rest Above some twittering nest, And all things to the former stillness fall. 9 IO AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL Stillness which yet some gentle outrage knew From passing trumpet of the year's first bees, Heralds of summer on this sunlit morn, And, floating faintly hither with the breeze, A stir that tells no common day is born. Ere dawn her curtains drew Clashed out o'er river and town the summons flew : And Nature, conscious of the rare event, To grace her darling lent Flame to the light and sparkle to the dew. Night after night, this week of all the year, 1 Poet ! the listening theatre has paid Rapt homage to thine old immortal line : Wandered with Helen through the elfin glade, 1 The Poet's birthday, April 23, on which the Festival attends, fell in 1892 on a Saturday. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Ccesar, Twelfth Night, and Timon of Athens, had been performed by Mr. F. R. Benson's Company during the week — Timon for the first time since 1856, when it was given by Mr. Phelps at Sadler's Wells. AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL II Followed a crafty rhetoric's design And felt the Forum veer, Confessed what magic made Cesario dear, And greeting Timon, summoned from his grave Beside the bitter wave, Shook with applause tumultuous ! — did'st thou hear ? Vain thought ! To-day a thousand bosoms swell To each impassioned outburst that was thine ; The warm drops quiver in a thousand eyes Responsive to each sacrifice divine ; Familiar we unfold thy mysteries ; — Yes, every girl can spell The brooding Prince, and thy dark riddle tell ! But thou our grateful raptures can'st not hear, Careless of smile or tear Sleeping the dreamless sleep where all is well. 12 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL Or if indeed thy spirit is mighty yet, If sleep may not oppress that lucid eye, Nor Orcus quench that torch, thy mind, which flung Such radiance o'er our waste obscurity — Yet not for Earth thine energies are strung : Wholly thou dost forget Her narrower tasks ; nor all our fond regret Can guess what happy realms thy hest obey, What senates hail the ray That touched our days to glory, and is set. Our homage moves thee not ; and love bemoans, Helpless, the untimely loss of many a trace That might have set thee clearer in our ken : Thy fortunes, failings, friends, thy very face Uncertain ; and the limits of thy pen A doubt ! But naught atones One sacrilege, which yet this virtue owns — AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 1 3 But for a churl's mad folly we had ne'er Witnessed the touching care That hallows yet those few poor mouldering stones. 1 Ay, now indifference is counted shame. The idler's glance, the scholar's zest, explores The dusty records of a day forgot : The pilgrim thousands flock from other shores : The nation's self must guard the village cot Where thy young footsteps came ! 2 What needed it? when thought is but a flame From thee replenished, England's history-roll Thy monumental scroll, Each generous heart the temple of thy fame ! 1 The scanty remains of the foundations of New Place, discovered in 1862. Shakespeare's house, rebuilt on slightly different lines by Sir John Clopton (1700-2), passed in 1756 to the Rev. Francis Gastrell. who outraged popular feeling by cutting down the mulberry-tree planted by the Poet, and still more by razing the house to the ground in 1758, because it had been too highly assessed. 2 Anne Hathaway's cottage at Shottery was purchased for the nation, at a cost of ^3,000, by the Trustees of the Birthplace in April 1892. 14 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL Yet 'tis well done : abides in many a breast Borne to this still backwater from the strain Of o'erwrought feeling and exhausted powers In Life's great river rushing past amain, A perfume from these consecrated hours. Remembering hearts attest Where fell the gracious benison of rest ; What time of haunts wholly devote to thee They proved the sanctity, Awhile of self unfevered, impossessed. Thy throne is set beyond the change of Fate ! Even 'mid the roar of this material time, — Traffic's rough speech, Toil's ever-deepening groan- When poets sigh for their neglected rhyme, And something we degenerate from the tone AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 1 5 That speaks a people great ; Yet never at such riches did we rate This thy bequest, nor in thy clear well steep Our weary sense so deep, Filled of that fountain, yet insatiate. For now the tale of all our summer's told ! The Muses' garden straggles into seed; The sad cloud settles on the mountain-height; The silly flocks on coarser herbage feed; The forest-glens are emptied of delight And doff their vest of gold ; Far from untender blasts and chidings bold The last sweet solace of our drearihed To other skies is fled, 1 Our nightingale! and all the year grows cold. 1 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, died October 6, 1892. 16 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL Come, come away ! leave all the barren fret Of aims and creeds, and jars that never cease. Come ! o'er the tideless Adriatic broods The consecration of an endless peace ; Listening the echoes in Athenian woods, Where still the dew lies wet, No heart-ache importunes us to forget ; By Sicily's strait, or in the enchanted Isle, Life keeps its vernal smile ; 'Neath Arden boughs the breeze blows kindly yet. Seer ! whom the midnight wakens on the keen Sense of a presence eyes interpret not — Tired souls ! who yearn for glimpse of the bright hues Your childhood knew, but life has long forgot — Hither ! but hist — tread soft , or they refuse AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 1 7 Their magic to your een : Tis but a step ; lift noiselessly the screen, And instantly your brain and heart o'envhelm With Darkness' peopled realm, Or moonlit paradise of the fair unseen. Ye, too, who pace absorbed Thought's glimmering land Or roam the paradise of Art, and earn The wonted guerdon, hate of little souls; Musing on Hamlet, Timon, Prospero, learn Happiness only his whom Will controls. Freshen the languid hand In simple duty— make men understand That the august commission they despise Includes the charities; And, where ye serve most fondly, still command. 1 8 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL And thou ! sole queen of our lorn earth, and shrine Whither unending pilgrimage is bent, With sacrifice that might replace thy dower Of wasted pearls and treasury misspent — Wilt leave the ungracious chase of wealth and power And look where, line by line, He bade thine inmost heaven of Woman shine? Oh ! teach us not 'twas but a poet's dream That touched these sweet supreme Heights of a nature only not divine. Not in this happier age the mists uprise To choke the better impulse ere it flower : Ignorance holds not yet the keys of fame ; Gold lifts not yet such arm of tyrannous power. Here goodness' self is worshipped, not the name AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 1 9 Virtue has purged her eyes, Doubts not her own, invokes no feigned allies ; Clear o'er the clamours that perplexed her choice She hears the inward voice, And holds serene her pathway to the skies. Not then the harmonies of life were drowned By the rude discords of our later day ; Faith asked no permit to behold her God, Nor leaned upon philosophy for stay ; Not on uncertainties the statesman trod — No minatory sound Of sullen thunder shook the hollow ground ! Not then were satisfied the claims of place With so constrained a grace, Nor faithful service then so rarely found. 20 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL Yet is the picture of no fabled land, Where bliss is fatally exempt from ill. Sin, sorrow, suffering, commingled here In all their sad variety, fulfil The storied canvas ; not a shape of fear In all the grisly band But owns allegiance to thy potent wand ; No crime, no folly that mankind pursues, None of Life's countless hues, Escapes the subtle mastery of thy hand. Ah ! vainly bards accuse our heated age, And vainly grudge Discovery her prize ! When Drake and Raleigh sailed the widening globe, And Galileo's lenses swept the skies, Calmly amid that fever thou didst probe Man ; thy serener page AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 21 Could deal with common life, and still engage ; Sane 'mid a rage of physics that ne'er stole Thine inquest from the soul, Exploring still that noblest heritage. Ye whose weak Muse each hostile murmur chills, Whose pipe grows silent if a care intrude, Question that life, if poesy depend On leisured ease or Alpine solitude ? Weigh those loud London years, and, after, wend 'Mong Stratford fields and hills ; What time their Genius silently instils This truth, — no place authenticates the lyre Apollo doth not fire, No strife untunes the voice That Godhead thrills. 22 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL And if this simple scene afford no clue To that divine outpouring, yet 'tis dear ! His impress lingers on it uneffaced, And an unwearied fondness year by year Returns to haunts imperishably graced. Our loving thoughts indue Each field and hedgerow with a tenderer hue. Here did he pass, perchance ! and here, like flowers 'Mid April sun and showers, Perdita, Imogen, Miranda, grew ! Was it not well that London's busy hum, — Maelstrom of thought, stern field of striving men, Bright heaven of hopes, black Tophet of despairs Should render up her fosterling again? That, turning on the last of Fortune's stairs, AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 23 Her favourite should come Back with a smile through childhood's haunts to roam, And prove that even to Genius' wayward heart Nature is more than art, More than success the unpurchased sweets of home? Oh happy heritage of breeze and bird And murmuring brook and innocent face of flowers ! Your undepleted treasury that could fill Rough Homer's heart, shy Virgil's sunniest hours, Chaucer's sweet matin-song, was open still ! Ay ! never was unheard Our tender Mother, grieving when we erred, Clasping the weary children to her breast, On life's dim palimpsest Retracing soft the lessons sin has blurred. 24 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL He too confessed the auroral sympathies : Afar through mist of triumph and of tears He caught their paradisal gleam, and saved A quiet remnant from his strenuous years : To Nature, wife, and child returning braved The petty calumnies, The peevish scorns, the looks precise that freeze A wandering heart come back to wonted ways. But witlessly ye raise, Dear fools ! your eyebrow of contempt, for these Do but enlarge their empire by your ban ! Think of these stormy spirits as reeds of choice Plucked by a Active Deity that wrought Tumultuous pipes for His great organ-voice, Teasing life's every fibre to the thought. AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 2$ Ye, whose mechanic plan Would mend the bungling of this Artisan, Con these last leaves; and, as bleared eyes discern The all-conquering sunshine, learn The poet yet may purify the man. Here then the Labourer, whose soil's increase Is a world's marvel, heard the curfew ring, And rested ; leaving, as of small account, To careless chance the rich sheaves' harvesting ! Nay, was it chance ? — that Spirit, whose rushing fount Swells evermore to bless The fields of Paradise, provides no less That man, Time's desert-traveller, shall save Each precious drop He gave, Each grain of truth, each pearl of loveliness. 26 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL Oh not for wisdom only, though the test Of brooding centuries leaves thee unassailed — Nor yet for fancy, though the hues of Heaven Might vie with thine and show them hardly paled- Is so much granted thee, so much forgiven ! Because thy life's unrest Spared the still chamber of an holier guest, Slew not God's sweet ambassador — here we set The illimitable debt Ages have felt but never half expressed. Oh wizard of the uncorrupted heart ! Thou cunning piece of great simplicities ! To thee as to a star through seasons' change, Or steady beacon seen o'er tossing seas, From forms uncouth and horrible and strange We turn : thy volume's chart AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 2J Warns off the perilous shallow that would part Beauty and truth; it points with saving hand From fogbanks to the land, From all the illusive masque to all thou art. Still age by age may heavy-footed care Shake off its burthen here a little while, And gravity and learning age by age Relax their solemn feature to a smile ; To the dear record of this charmed page Love's votary shall repair While youth is sweet and maid to manhood fair ; And age by age shall one impassioned scroll Acquaint the struggling soul With death whose very grandeur slays despair. 28 AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL If while thy greatness moved among us yet We knew thee not, this our neglect shall turn To kindness for young souls that climb the Mount About the awe of whose hid summit burn Heaven and the glory of thee ! Shall we account Of shame, or aught regret, Who hear the Earth's acclaiming thunders set On that calm brow its everlasting crown Of an undreamed renown, While England's heart is full, her eyelids wet? Well for the fame no envious years invade ! And well for us that, o'er the centuries' lapse, One fair world blossoms, a perpetual spring, Though here hope wither to a dim perhaps ! AT STRATFORD FESTIVAL 29 Well for our English hearts if, entering Within yon sacred shade, We mark, not all unmoved, where he is laid Who as God's steward bare the golden keys That keep His treasuries, And passed to the great Audit unafraid ! Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Form L f J-25//t