, 
 
 I , I , 
 

THE VIOLET CROWN 
 
 AND 
 
 SONGS OF ENGLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 \&r*. REN NELL RODD .-&* 
 
 AUTHOR OF "FEDA," THE UNKNOWN MAOONNA," ETC. 
 \YIElJ -A FRONTISPIECE 
 
 BY 
 
 THE MARCHIONESS OF GRANBY 
 
 LONDON 
 DAVID STOTT, 370, OXFORD STREET, W 
 
 MDCCCXCI. 
 
Of the following poems, six have already appeared in 
 Murray's Magazine, three in Harper's Monthly, and 
 one in Macmillaris Magazine, to the respective Editors 
 of which I here make my acknowledgments for the 
 permission to reprint them. 
 
 R. R. 
 
 M83S83 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Triolet Crohm. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE VIOLET CROWN >...> ................ i 
 
 THITHER ........................ 3 
 
 THE KEY-NOTE ........ ............. 5 
 
 MISOLONGHI ........................ 7 
 
 AN ATTIC NIGHT ..................... 10 
 
 GENIUS Loci ..................... 14 
 
 ILISSUS' BANK ..................... 16 
 
 THERMOPYL.* ..................... 19 
 
 SUNSET IN ^LGIN T A .................. 21 
 
 DELOS ......................... 23 
 
 IN ARCADIA ........................ 26 
 
 THE !SIREN SONG ..................... 30 
 
 TtENARON ...... .................. 33 
 
 THE DREAM OF PHIDIAS ..... ... . ..... 39 
 
 TANAGRA ........................ 46 
 
 THE SONG OF THE KLEPHT ............... 49 
 
 ZALONGOS ........................ 53 
 
 THE LUTE OF ORPHEUS ... 62 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CALLISTE ... ... ... ............... 65 
 
 FOLK SONGS ........................ 67 
 
 CHRISTMAS IN THE /GEAN ............... 70 
 
 AKROTIRI OF CRETE * !.. ................ 72 
 
 THE CYCLADES ..................... 76 
 
 PENTELIKON ............... ... ... 80 
 
 HELLAS ........................ 84 
 
 of l 
 
 SPRING THOUGHTS .................. 89 
 
 A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA ............... 92 
 
 THOBAL ........................ 109 
 
 THE BURIAL OF DRAKE .................. 114 
 
 THE PASSING OF ODIN ...... . ........... 117 
 
 To BEATRICE ..................... 129 
 
 HERBSTGEFUHL ...... ............... 133 
 
 INVOCATION ........................ 135 
 
 THE PRINCESS AT THE WINDOW ............ 137 
 
 FOR A GRAVE ...... ... ............ 140 
 
 A PARTING .......... ~ ............ 141 
 
 NOTES ........................ 147 
 
THE VIOLET CROWN 
 
 A 
 
 MADAME MARY BAKHM&TEFF 
 
 (SOUVENIR DU FENTE'LIQUE). 
 
 1889. 
 
THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 WHEREFORE the " city of the violet crown " ? 
 One asked me, as the April sun went down 
 Behind the shadows of the Persian's mound, 
 The fretted crags of Salamis. 
 
 " Look round, 
 And see the question answered ! " 
 
 For we were 
 
 Upon the summit of that battled square, 
 The rock of ruin, in whose fallen shrine 
 The world still worships what it deems divine, 
 The maiden fane, that yet may boast the birth 
 
 Of half the immortalities of earth. 
 
 B 
 
2 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 ', -'The. last rayc light the portal, a gold wave 
 , c ' 'Runs up the columns to the architetrave, 
 Lingers about the gable and is gone : 
 Parnes, Hymettus, and Pentelicon 
 Show shadowy violet in the after-rose, 
 Cithaeron's ridge and all the islands close 
 The mountain ring, like sapphires o'er the sea 
 And from this circle's heart aetherially 
 Springs the white altar of the land's renown, 
 A marble lily in a violet crown. 
 
 And fairer crown had never queen than this 
 That girds thee round, far-famed Acropolis ! 
 So of these isles, these mountains, and this sea, 
 I wove a crown of song to dedicate to thee. 
 
 ATHENS, 1890. 
 
THITHER. 
 
 BEYOND Albania's headlands high, 
 The misted sun rose, struggled free, 
 Outblanched the roses of the sky, 
 And flashed upon an opal sea ; 
 Then, from their mythos-world of night, 
 The poet's islands swam in sight 
 That link between the east and west, 
 Phaeacia's pleasant land of rest ; 
 The land of men that loved the oar, 
 Which, in the morning light of yore, 
 .Poseidon to his kinsfoik gave, 
 And made them masters of the wave ; 
 And many an isle less known to fame, 
 Like floating leaves and flowers came ; 
 And many a shore by sea-nymphs ranged, 
 Ere gods and men became estranged ; 
 Till, through the hush of afternoon, 
 
 We sailed between the sun and moon, 
 
 B 2 
 
THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 By Leucas and the lovers' leap, 
 
 Where still the amorous breezes weep 
 
 The echoes of a Lesbian air 
 
 And Sappho's purple-shadowed hair ; 
 
 Then last, as bleak and barren still, 
 
 His home, the man of iron will, 
 
 Of many a wile and many a part, 
 
 Odysseus, of the stubborn heart, 
 
 Which never, never since he fared 
 
 On that mysterious voyage, dared 
 
 Explore the untried western deep, 
 
 Has broken through her trance of sleep. 
 
 The sunset flushed her capes and caves, 
 
 And lingered on the wine-red waves ; 
 
 Till late beyond our eastward prow 
 
 The moonlight blanched a mountain brow, 
 
 And shadows of the violet seas 
 
 Closed o'er the isles Echinades. 
 
 Then, as it were a giant bay, 
 
 The hills closed in on either hand, 
 
 To north the rough ^Etolia lay 
 
 And on the south was Pelops ? land. 
 
 1889. 
 
THE KEYNOTE. 
 
 A CYPRESS dark against the blue, 
 That deepens up to such a hue 
 As never painter dared and drew ; 
 
 A marble shaft that stands alone 
 Above a wreck of sculptured stone 
 With gray-green aloes overgrown ; 
 
 A hill-side scored with hollow veins 
 Through age-long wash of autumn rains, 
 As purple as with vintage stains ; 
 
 And rocks that while the hours run 
 Show all the jewels, one by one, 
 For pastime of the summer sun ; 
 
 A crescent sail upon the sea, 
 So calm and fair and ripple-free, 
 You wonder storms can ever be ; 
 
THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 A shore with deep indented bays, 
 And o'er the gleaming waterways 
 A glimpse of islands in the haze ; 
 
 A face bronzed dark to red and gold, 
 With mountain eyes that seem to hold 
 The freshness of the world of old \ 
 
 A shepherd's crook, a coat of fleece, 
 A grazing flock ; the sense of peace, 
 The long sweet silence, this is Greece ! 
 
 1890. 
 
MISOLONGHI. 
 
 THE rosy dawn broke from her ocean bed 
 A sailor pointed to the north, and said 
 The one word, " Misolonghi ! " Lifted high, 
 Between the mists of water and of sky, 
 In the mirage of sunrise, there it lay, 
 The heart of Hellas in her darkest day. 
 
 And there and then, across that morning sea, 
 The eager heart went throbbing back to thee, 
 For here, dead poet of my dreams of youth, 
 Thy long denial learned the one hard truth. 
 
 Oft with thee since, my poet, where the steep 
 Of Sunium sees red evening dye the deep, 
 Where broad Eurotas cleaves the garden lands 
 That knew no walls but Spartan hearts and hands, 
 Where snowy-crested into cloudless skies 
 The two throne-mountains of the muses rise ; 
 
8 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Mount up, oh poet, still they seem to say, 
 
 Pathless and lonely winds the starward way, 
 
 Look never back, thou hast thy song to sing, 
 
 Thy life is winter, so thy death be spring. 
 
 Oft with thee after, when the sun went down 
 
 Behind Morea, through the violet crown, 
 
 Seen from the broken temples, when the ray 
 
 Transforms Hymettus from noon's silver grey 
 
 To one rose jewel, when the islands be 
 
 Like broken sapphires on a milky sea, 
 
 And still thy mute voice echoes near, but most 
 
 A moment later when the light is lost, 
 
 And Athens sobers in the afterglow 
 
 Of such a spiritual twilight as I know 
 
 No other spot of sea and earth can show ; 
 
 Thou art grown one with these things, and thy fame 
 
 Links a new memory to each sacred name. 
 
 Oh formed for loving, and condemned by fate, 
 By some obstruction of the heart, to hate, 
 Cursed with the spirit of an evil doubt, 
 That would not open when love knocked without. 
 
MISOLONGHI. 
 
 Doomed to rebellion, and untimely born, 
 
 To mar high music with the note of scorn, 
 
 Appealing still against thyself in song, 
 
 How I had loved thee, erring, proud, and strong ! 
 
 Yet, let me think here by these haunted seas, 
 Too fair to need their dower of memories ; 
 Here, where the whisperings of spring-tide eve 
 Bring kinship with the infinite, and weave 
 Bright rosaries of stars, where never fails 
 Incense of thyme, and hymn of nightingales, 
 That oft the beauty of this fair world stole 
 Across the tumult of thy lonely soul, 
 Till the ice thawed, and the storm broke in spray, 
 The cold heart warmed, and knew the better way, 
 To see some hope in human things, to crave 
 That late remorse of love men lavished on thy grave. 
 
io THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 AN ATTIC NIGHT. 
 
 ABOVE Hymettus' long dark sundering ridge 
 Not cold and chaste as in my own far world, 
 But pale for passion and yet warm with love 
 Midsummer's moon bends earthward, and the stars 
 Pale at her advent ; through the cypress tops 
 A silent shiver of delight runs o'er, 
 And dreaming earth grows open-eyed once more. 
 
 These hill-side aloes pierce the sapphire night 
 Like some great battle struck into a trance 
 With all its sword-blades lifted, and above 
 An ivory stair climbs up the silver rocks 
 Through roofless columns of a marble gate ; 
 This is the rock of Athens, reared sublime, 
 Crowned with quick stars above the night of time. 
 
 Enter the door of silence ! Far away 
 The thousand twinkling little lights recede, 
 
AN ATTIC NIGHT. 11 
 
 And stars grow nearer, while the flitting owls 
 Repeat unseen the same shrill note in sound, 
 The nomad bells of flocks that move by night 
 Come from the distance : thou art all alone 
 With shadows haunting a dead world of stone, 
 
 Lo with a mystic radiance round its scars, 
 Hardly a ruin in this healing light, 
 The fairest pile that ever human hearts 
 Built to enshrine their young ideal mood ! 
 The moon is on one side the colonnade, 
 Steals through its rent of battle, seeks in vain 
 The sister goddess in her fallen fane. 
 
 Alas for dead ideals, and alas 
 Immortal moods are bounded by a day ! 
 Once only here such throbbing life upburst 
 To the full at every issue, snatched the fire 
 Quick from the life springs, dared and overcame 
 While still the childhood of the heart was free ; 
 There was but once one Athens, or could be \ 
 
12 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Here wrought the strong creator, and he laid 
 The marble on the limestone, in the crag 
 Morticed and sure foundations, line to line 
 And arc to arc repeating, as it grew ; 
 Veiling the secret of its strength in grace, 
 Till like a marble flower in blue Greek air 
 Perfect it rose, an afterworld's despair. 
 
 And here man made his most divine appeal 
 
 To the eternal in the heart of man, 
 
 The mute appeal of beauty, crying still 
 
 Dimly across the ages that are dumb. 
 
 And lo ! it lies a ruin, and the owls 
 
 Dwell in the splintered cornice, and the moon 
 
 Blanches the broken discords into tune. 
 
 Come from the ruin, this despairing note 
 
 Steals like a siren music on the soul 
 
 And the sweet way of sadness lures ; come forth ! 
 
 For now the moon has mounted, and yon sea 
 
 Is all a fire of jewels, far away 
 
 To dim ^Egina misty in the west 
 
 She takes the benediction on her breast. 
 
AN ATTIC NIGHT. 13 
 
 And all the mountains are a wonder world 
 
 Of untried promise, and the larger stars 
 
 Burn steadfast still, and from the south there comes 
 
 A breath like odours blown from Paradise 
 
 Scented and cool and soothing ; so we turn 
 
 From man's supremest to God's every day, 
 
 And dimly feel our solace lies that way. 
 
 Burn on bright stars ! gleam through the night 
 
 white sea ! 
 
 If I have loved the living world of men, 
 Their hopes and dreams the labour of their hands, 
 And trusted much and, doubting, trusted still, 
 Yet nature was my mother and my guide, 
 And ever nearest, and when all else failed, 
 Her arms were open still and her great love prevailed. 
 
 1890. 
 
14 THE VIOLET CROWN 
 
 GENIUS LOCI. 
 
 SCENT of the pine-tree and breath of the rose 
 Hang in the wake of the wind as it blows : 
 
 Songs in the coppice, and mingled with these 
 The murmur of insects from under the trees : 
 
 The sun's in the heaven, the lark's on the wing, 
 The fulness of summer grows out of the spring. 
 
 All these are round me, and you by my side, 
 You in the glory of youth at its pride ; 
 
 Cheeks that are roses, a rose for a mouth, 
 The wonderful lustre of eyes of the south ; 
 
 Soothe me with music, and sing to me, sing, 
 Conjure me back to the passion of spring ! 
 
GENIUS LOCI. 
 
 The sun on the rose, and the wind in the tree, 
 Are whispering love as you whisper to me ; 
 
 The wind on the tree, and the sun on the rose, 
 Will scourge them and scorch them when summer- 
 time goes ; 
 
 Dreams for the dreamer, and saws for the sage, 
 There is time to grow wise in the winter of age ! 
 
 Therefore, sweet Pagan, whose name is a song, 
 Love me as long as the summer is long ! 
 
 1889. 
 
16 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 ILISSUS' BANK. 
 
 A PLANE-TREE by Ilissus' bed, 
 A bank of shade to prop the head, 
 With scanty grass, and frequent stone 
 A summer noon to dream alone. 
 
 The hand of change has touched the scene, 
 
 No more are meads of pleasant green ; 
 
 The thin few trees have much ado 
 
 To leaf a little, and renew 
 
 The ravage of the autumn suns 
 
 By channels where no water runs. 
 
 But as of old the tettix trills, 
 
 The bee booms past to heather hills, 
 
 And in the mountain gulleys deep 
 
 The blue noon shadows lie asleep. 
 
 Yet not alone for by the stream 
 
 Were two that walked the path of dream ; 
 
ILISSUS' BANK. 17 
 
 The one, who seemed the type and flower 
 
 Of Athens in her golden hour, 
 
 When youth and strength were tuned to grace ; 
 
 And one, the plain, familiar face 
 
 The man that I would rather meet 
 
 Some evening in the tripod-street, 
 
 With gait uncouth and dome-shaped brow, 
 
 Than all the world of then or now : 
 
 The thick lips parted, and the hands 
 
 Close clasped behind his back, he stands, 
 
 With head thrust out, and starting eyes 
 
 That bear the glare of noonday skies. 
 
 And first the younger had his say, 
 That presence like a fresh spring day, 
 An eloquent impulsive strain, 
 While I sat quiet by the plane. 
 
 Then might he hear who listened well 
 The tale I heard the elder tell : 
 Of love's ideal, which is truth, 
 The fluttering of the soul of youth 
 
THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Aspiring still to seek above 
 That far-off, dim-remembered love, 
 Till, gazing up to heavenly things, 
 It finds at last the long-lost wings. 
 
 The noon goes by, the even rose 
 Fades up Hymettus' side and goes, 
 A wind comes shoreward from the sea, 
 And wakes a rustle in the tree, 
 The shadows fall, and even so 
 The dream is done ; yet, ere I go, 
 I, too, may pray the prayer he prayed 
 To Pan and whatso Dryad maid 
 Possessed the soul of summer trees 
 And shed sweet influence over these, 
 If not to such, as best I know 
 The prayer he made long years ago, 
 For beauty in the inward soul 
 The path is changed but not the goal. 
 
 1890. 
 
THERMOPYLAE. 
 
 THIS is the place ; the mountain bay 
 
 Is wild, and stern, and grand, 
 As when the Lion held the way 
 
 That barred his mother-land. 
 Long years and change and earthquake shock 
 
 Have wrought upon the scene, 
 Where once the sea waves lapped the rock 
 
 Are meadow lands grown green ; 
 But Oeta still looms vast and grey 
 
 To hide the setting sun, 
 And still the mountains bar the way, 
 
 And every way but one : 
 The sulphur springs still fume and flow 
 
 Along the rough hill-side, 
 And far-off Othrys veiled in snow 
 
 Sees where the Spartan died. 
 
 There is a spirit haunts the place 
 Where mighty deeds were dared, 
 
 C 2 
 
20 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Though time and change have left no trace, 
 
 And not a grave be spared : 
 And climbing up the grassy hill 
 
 Where Sparta's lion stood ; 
 The heart still answers to the thrill, 
 
 That marks the hero mood. 
 And as I read the page again, 
 
 That quickens from the dust 
 The tale of those three hundred men 
 
 Who died to keep their trust, 
 I knew the fire was not yet lost 
 
 That nerved my younger age ; 
 The shadow of an eagle crossed, 
 
 And fell along my page ! 
 
21 
 
 SUNSET IN 
 
 THE light that is on sea and sky 
 
 This April eve of earth 
 Would touch the saddest heart to mirth, 
 
 Or reconcile the lightest mood 
 
 To kinship with a sigh : 
 The little cloud-flakes, evening's own, 
 
 Red with the dead day's blood, 
 Seem scattered rose leaves overblown 
 
 Upon a windless mere ; 
 The sapphire mountains fret the gold, 
 
 These more than mountains here 
 The dream-hills of the songs of old 
 
 Cut luminous and clear : 
 The glow is on the April green, 
 And every outline softly keen 
 
 Stands out against the sunset sheen. 
 The world is washed in such a flood of air 
 
 So rosy and so freshly fair, 
 
22 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 As though if God in heaven saw meet 
 
 To sweep all stains away, 
 And leave earth pure and virgin-sweet 
 
 As on creation-day. 
 Oh ship, with sails against the sun, 
 
 Dark on the amber deep, 
 Thou wilt not make beyond the west 
 A better island of the blest ! 
 
 The splendid day was past and done, 
 
 The day we could not keep, 
 The purple died along the slope, 
 
 The moon blanched in the blue, 
 And steadfast like a good man's hope 
 The star of evening grew. 
 
 /KGINA, 1890. 
 
DELOS. 
 
 WE came to an isle of flowers 
 That lay in a trance of sleep, 
 
 In a world forgotten of ours, 
 Far out on a sapphire deep. 
 
 Dwellers were none on the island, 
 And far as the eye could see 
 
 From the shore to the central highland 
 Was never a bush nor tree. 
 
 Long, long had her fields lain fallow, 
 And the drought had dried her rills, 
 
 But the vetch and the gourd and mallow 
 Ran riot on all her hills. 
 
 The length of her shoreward level, 
 High bank and terrace and quay, 
 
 Were red with a scarlet revel 
 Of poppies down to the sea; 
 
24 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Each bloom pressed close on its fellow, 
 The marigolds peeped between, 
 
 Till the scarlet and the yellow 
 Had hidden the under-green. 
 
 Was it here, that heart of a nation, 
 That first of the fanes of old ! 
 
 This garden of desolation, 
 This ruin of red, of gold ? 
 
 High up from the rock-cleft hollow, 
 Roofed over of Titan hands ; 
 
 The cradle of dead Apollo 
 Still looks to his silent lands. 
 
 The sacred lake lies solemn, 
 In a havoc of fallen shrines ; 
 
 Where the shaft of each broken column 
 Is tangled about with vines. 
 
 It lives in the dreams which haunt it, 
 This isle of the Sun-god's birth, 
 
 It lives in the songs which vaunt it 
 The holiest earth on earth. 
 
DELOS. 35 
 
 But the shrines without note or number 
 
 Lie wrecked on a barren shore, 
 And the dead ideals slumber 
 
 For ever and evermore. 
 
 So Spring in her pride of pity 
 
 Had hidden the marble wraith, 
 And shed on the holy city 
 
 The flower of sleep and death. 
 
26 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 IN ARCADIA. 
 To L. S. 
 
 I THINK we shall keep for ever in the heart of us, you 
 
 and I, 
 That first Arcadian evening, till the day we come to die. 
 
 We had crossed from the rugged border, through the 
 
 fierce Messenian hills, 
 And we came to the oak-wood pastures, to a ripple of 
 
 mountain rills. 
 
 The late noon waned to the eventide and the 
 
 gathering in of flocks, 
 The shepherd called with his uncouth cries to the 
 
 goats far up in the rocks ; 
 
 While the kids leaped down with their startled eyes, 
 and paused for a drink at the spring, 
 
 As he strode along in his kilted pride, with the gait of 
 a mountain king. 
 
IN ARCADIA. 27 
 
 The steep hills sloped to a narrow vale through 
 
 willow and oak and pear, 
 To the gold-green sage on the further side, and the 
 
 thyme that hung in the air ; 
 
 
 
 The corn-plots waved in the hollow, and the planes 
 
 were marvellous green, 
 Where the young nymph-haunted Neda was a luminous 
 
 thread between. 
 
 The day went over the westward ridge too soon in 
 
 the mountain world, 
 And the thousand frail sun-wearied convolvulus bells 
 
 were furled. 
 
 A turtle cooed on the farther side, and the scented air 
 
 of the vale 
 Was quick with tremulous throbbing of the song of 
 
 the nightingale. 
 
 A mist rose up from the waters and the stream-nymph 
 
 veiled her charms, 
 Where the mountain clasped her closest in the grasp 
 
 of his purple arms. 
 
28 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 It was red gold over the western peaks and pale gold 
 
 over the sky, 
 It was middle May in the full moon time, and the 
 
 land was Ardady ! 
 
 And the scent of the thyme and the song of the bird 
 
 drew a calm down over the breast, 
 The stream ran by with a soothing voice, and the 
 
 note of it all was rest. 
 
 Ah, well with you, happy valleys, where the roar of 
 
 the world is still, 
 Where the brain may pause in the battle of life, and 
 
 the eyes may drink their fill! 
 
 And well with you, fair green isles, in your girdle of 
 
 surf apart, 
 With never a rumour of march and change, Avalons 
 
 of the weary heart ! 
 
 The sunset over those gilded hills was more than an 
 
 earthly name, 
 The moon was brighter than glory, the stars seemed 
 
 better than fame. 
 
IN ARCADIA. 29 
 
 And we, we shall keep I know in the heart of us, you 
 
 and I, 
 That first Arcadian evening till the day we come to 
 
 die. 
 
 DRAGOI, 1890. 
 
30 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 THE SIREN SONG. 
 
 I HEARD it in the happy isles 
 Blown down the dying day, 
 The summer song whose lilt beguiles 
 The wanderer to stay : 
 
 It followed in the shorewind's breath, 
 The magic still was strong, 
 Although the note of change and death 
 Has touched the Sirens' song. 
 
 They do not lure to new delights 
 Beyond what life has known, 
 To happy days and happy nights 
 In summer's slumber-zone ; 
 
 But only, " who will rest awhile 
 From riot and from ruth, 
 Forget in such a sunny smile 
 The brazen eyes of truth ! 
 
THE SIREN SONG. 31 
 
 " Come hither, hither, come and dream 
 Of years dead long ago, 
 Until the earth and ocean seem 
 The world that poets know. 
 
 " Come back and dwell with hopes long dead 
 And what will never be ! 
 Avert thine eyes and turn thine head 
 From the world's way oversea ! 
 
 " For here are drowsy dreams to cheat 
 The eyes that else would weep, 
 And inland seas to bathe the feet, 
 And quiet vales for sleep." 
 
 But deadly is the Sirens' song 
 
 As ever in the ears, 
 
 And ropes of faith must bind him strong 
 
 Who bides it when he hears. 
 
 For some have hearkened, lain them down 
 And drunk a deadly thing, 
 And soon the storms of winter drown 
 The hollow hope of spring. 
 
THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Pass, phantom music, pass away ! 
 The purple isles grow dim ; 
 The glamour of the dying day 
 Fades on the ocean's rim. 
 
 Enchantress of the mossy caves 
 Sleep by thy drowsy streams ! 
 The cradle of the rocking waves 
 Is worth a world of dreams ! 
 
 Oh living love, my happy hills 
 Be wheresoe'er thou art ! 
 There is no help for human ills 
 But in the human heart ; 
 
 So be the haven near or far, 
 Blow winds and freshen sea, 
 The morrow's hope, the morning star, 
 The living world for me ! 
 
 1889. 
 
33 
 
 T^NARON. 
 
 Ne dolcezza di figlio, ne la pieta 
 Del vecchio padre, ne il debito amore 
 
 Lo qual dovea Penelope far lieta, 
 Vincer potero dentro a me 1'ardore 
 
 Ch'io ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto, 
 E degli vizj umani, e del valore. 
 
 Inferno, xxvi, 
 
 THE sun sank slowly through the purple waves, 
 Flashed yet a moment on bluff Matapan, 
 While up the crest a rosy glamour ran, 
 
 And shadows deepened in the gaps and caves. 
 
 I came that evening to a little creek, 
 
 After long travel through a stone-cursed land. 
 Rock only, rock above, on either hand 
 
 A barren wilderness, and what to seek ? 
 
 A race as wild as nature where they dwell 
 Nested in towers on the mountain crown, 
 Blood in their passions, murder their renown 
 
 An ancient race, since Lacedaemon fell 
 
 D 
 
34 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 And the war-flutes shrilled no longer, and strange folk 
 With alien voices thronged the land, and drank 
 From sacred fountains, Moslem, Sclave, or Frank 
 
 These stubborn mountains never felt their yoke 
 
 It was full summer in the Southern May, 
 And all day long I rode among the rocks, 
 Stumbled and clattered through the marble blocks, 
 
 Till even stayed me by a little bay, 
 
 Hid in the hollow of the sea-cliffs arm, 
 
 Half shelving shore and half a rock-wall sheer 
 Above whose rim one dim star rose to peer ; 
 
 The silence wrought upon me like a charm. 
 
 A summer peace lay on the sapphire deep, 
 Only close by a few late ripples played 
 O'er hues of coral, ambergris, and jade, 
 
 And darker madders where the oar-weeds sleep. 
 
 A little bark that dared not venture nigh 
 
 Showed through the sea-cliff's shadow; but no tree, 
 No herb, no living thing was there to see, 
 
 Only the rocks, the waters, and the sky. 
 
T&NARON. 35 
 
 The waves of years had smoothed a narrow ledge 
 With age long beating on the earth's rough bound, 
 And there I wandered from our camping ground, 
 
 And watched the ripple fretting at the edge. 
 
 Then I grew 'ware how by that twilight creek 
 An old man sat and stared across the seas, 
 Steadfast, with arms that rested on his knees, 
 
 And hollow hands that propped a hoary cheek ; 
 
 His hair was white, his beard was grizzled grey, 
 Yet was a fresh sea-keenness in his eyes 
 That rose not, fell not, nor betrayed surprise, 
 
 But ever watched the fading track of day. 
 
 His garb was strange, and stained, and rent, and old, 
 And I could see, for all the light was dim, 
 That he was great and strong, and stout of limb, 
 
 And surely fashioned in heroic mould. 
 
 And rather to himself I thought than me, 
 Softly and musingly he seemed to speak, 
 In rhythmic measure of the yore-world Greek 
 
 That has the cadence of the lapping sea. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 11 Lo, I am he that could not drink his fill 
 Of earthly knowledge in his little span, 
 Who craved a lot too great for common man, 
 I am Odysseus, and I wander still. 
 
 "The world, methinks, grows very old, the years 
 Write deeper furrows in the sea-cliff's face ; 
 Change ! change in all, save in the human race, 
 The same old passions and old loves and tears. 
 
 " They come and go the little dust and breath 
 Whose only knowledge is that all things pass, 
 And with that little dust at times, alas ! 
 A spirit nobler than its doom of death. 
 
 " Man cannot pass outside the common lot, 
 
 The worm that crawleth hath no use for wings ; 
 I might have taught them many strange new things, 
 Old things forgotten, but they hearkened not. 
 
 " Earth has no use for me, I go no more 
 Into the valleys and the tracks of men ; 
 And now the seas are crowded out of ken, 
 And alien faces throng along the shore. 
 
T&NARON. 37 
 
 " I think Athena is long dead, or sleeps, 
 
 Grown callous, but the grim Poseidon still 
 Lives on, and drives me at his wanton will 
 By barren shallows and by pathless deeps. 
 
 " For ever in some little lonely bay 
 
 I pass the friendless daylight, till the dark 
 Shows forth the beacons of the night that mark 
 My westward course towards the dying day ; 
 
 " Then on and on into the sunset track, 
 To where I have the blessed hope to die, 
 To where the islands of the heroes lie, 
 But he relentless ever beats me back. 
 
 " Thus once or twice I have descried from far, 
 A faint grey shadow in the morning haze, 
 The outlines of my native land, the bays, 
 The long sought hills, beneath a waning star. 
 
 " The land I won and knew not how to keep, 
 Wearying of ease, the altar and the loom, 
 The thralls, the banquet, weary to my doom, 
 For I am weary, weary of the deep. 
 
3S THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 " I am as old as the world's age, well nigh, 
 Too old for effort and too tired for strife, 
 For ever drifting round the fringe of life, 
 And worn with waiting for the day to die." 
 
 Thus while he spoke he rose to his full height, 
 Making a blank between the stars and me, 
 Waded a little space into the sea 
 
 And vanished in the shadow of the night. 
 
 But softly like the echo of a sigh 
 
 Came back as though upon a wind asleep, 
 " For I am weary, weary of the deep, 
 And worn with waiting for the day to die." 
 
 Then, in a little while across the bay, 
 
 I heard a plash like spirit oars, that broke 
 Upon the stillness with a measured stroke, 
 
 Fainter and fainter till it passed away. 
 
 IN MAIN A, 1890. 
 
39 
 
 THE DREAM OF PHIDIAS. 
 
 COME in and see these marble gods of mine, 
 
 Finished and fair now, fit to take their place ! 
 
 The hand's achievement, if not all the heart's, 
 
 As first it flashed forth in the fever glow. 
 
 Not yet, Aspasia, has the fire of youth 
 
 Died out so wholly ; I still try to dream 
 
 The hand must answer to the heart some day, 
 
 Art compass my ideal. Vain, I know, 
 
 The thought, but I must cling to it. If aught 
 
 Of life and might and majesty illume 
 
 These marble shapes, bethink you how they moved 
 
 Divine and dreadful in the artist's soul ! 
 
 Not yet ! though years increase, and age, they say, 
 
 Reveals to man the measure of his might, 
 
 Restrains youth's wild ambitions, so we may 
 
 Grow perfect in the attainable, nor waste 
 
 The pith of manhood pining for the star. 
 
 But while I may I'll wrestle with my dream ! 
 
40 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Oh, there are times I madden at the thought 
 Of impotence to render what I know ; 
 Always this long laborious process, years 
 And pains that go to do one small thing well, 
 The poor and partial triumph at the best ; 
 And all the while new visions lure in vain. 
 So hears the poet in his soul the sounds 
 Mystic, divine, and awful ; on his lips 
 Only confused low murmuring of high things, 
 Not one untroubled echo of delight. 
 I can conceive a life let go in dreams 
 From sheer despair of saving what it sees. 
 Why are we made so to behold at times 
 The heavens open, feel the giant's soul 
 All capable, with man's weak wearying hand 
 To grope and struggle in its orb confined 
 After the shape that glorified the dream ? 
 
 Well, dreams are dreams. I had a dream one day; 
 I had gone up into the marble hill 
 To watch the quarrying, mark what blocks might be 
 Fair grained and flawless for this work of mine, 
 And it was sultry on the heights, and noon, 
 
THE DREAM OF PHIDIAS 41 
 
 When great Pan sleeps aweary from the chase, 
 Men say, and pause is on the summer world. 
 There is a little deep-cut rock ravine, 
 Cooled with fresh water of perennial springs, 
 Hidden and low under the burning slopes, 
 Where summer through the oleanders blow 
 Rose-red among the shadows, and the air 
 Is lightly scented with the myrtle bloom ; 
 And thither wandering as chance would, alone, 
 I made the thyme my pillow, and with face 
 Turned to Pentelikon, I fell asleep, 
 And sleeping dreamed. 
 
 There in my dream I saw 
 The mighty gable of the mountain brow 
 Gleam all one marble surface, smoothed and fair, 
 Huge and refulgent in the summer sun, 
 Shaped like the pediment of some vast shrine 
 For heroes' worship ; and I saw and felt, 
 Like a great sweep of music through my soul, 
 The artist's inspiration. Grandly grouped 
 Ranged the immortals in an awful line, 
 A revelation on an arc of sky. 
 
42 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 There in the midst arose the unconceived, 
 The vast and ancient Ouranos, o'erbowed 
 To snatch the laughing Earth into his breast, 
 Earth, the new mother, reaching forth her arms 
 And straining upward her surrendered lips, 
 Led on by Love, the oldest of all gods, 
 And evermore the youngest, Love, the life 
 Of all things living, wedding earth to sky. 
 And in the wake of Ouranos, the Winds, 
 An eager rout of lustiness and life, 
 The Season's sequence, and the dance of Hours, 
 The maiden keepers of the gate of heaven 
 Kissing the rosy fingers of the Dawn 
 All these sprang into being ; and beyond 
 Upreared the fiery coursers of the sun, 
 Spurning the aether with immortal feet, 
 Mounting and mounting. So in Earth's fair train 
 Followed her sons the mountains, and the brood 
 Earth-born that haunt the forests and the rills, 
 And all the streams that issue from her breast 
 A living ripple from the rock's white heart 
 And all the rivers of the world drew on 
 To Ocean rising on a marble wave 
 
THE DREAM OF PHIDIAS. 43 
 
 Throned on the car that shakes the rooted hills 
 And girdles round creation. After these 
 Was hoary Kronos, with the shadowy eyes 
 Bent down with weight of ages ; kneeling o'er 
 The form of Rhea, and for counterpart 
 Night sank at rest into the veiled embrace 
 Of Erebos, on the other side of day, 
 The night of time behind the life and light, 
 Bounding the term of knowledge, for beyond 
 Where Tartaros, the dim unfathomed void, 
 Should be, lay Death, and on the other side 
 His brother Sleep, with wings about his brow, 
 And drooping eyes that watch across a dream. 
 All these I saw, each in his proper place, 
 Huge and immortal, as a god should stand ; 
 And every metope showed a glorious form 
 Man, in the morning of his youth and strength, 
 Under the gods, but not a whit less fair ; 
 For all this meant the truce of God with man, 
 The miracle of life, the glory of the world. 
 
 Then a voice cried to me, " Arise, conform 
 The hand's achievement to the heart's desire ! " 
 
44 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 And I was lifted with a giant's strength, 
 
 A giant's arm against the gleaming wall 
 
 Moving about it on the wings of air ; 
 
 And the white marble rained to earth like snow 
 
 Freed by the spring winds as I hacked and hewed 
 
 Shaping the thoughts that billowed through my brain. 
 
 Time I knew not, nor effort, but the hand 
 
 .Answered the spirit as a ship the helm, 
 
 Till all the mountain grew instinct with life 
 
 As at my bidding. When I paused at last 
 
 The sun lay on the crags of Salamis, 
 
 And I surveyed my finished work, the glow 
 
 Gilding the marble forehead of the gods, 
 
 The realized conception. One great throb 
 
 Of gladness went up through the artist's soul, 
 
 And once on earth dreaming I was content. 
 
 Then lo, I saw how it was lifted up 
 
 On blue pilasters of the evening sky, 
 
 In the sun's face, crowned with the dawning stars, 
 
 Dwarfing mankind's achievement, vast, sublime 
 
 Worthy of God, and worthy that ideal 
 
 God spurs man ever vainly to pursue* 
 
THE DREAM OF PHIDIAS. 45 
 
 When I awoke it was all twilight round ; 
 The misted purple of the mountain-peak 
 Looked far ethereal, pointing to a star, 
 As though it yearned to reach it, and in vain ; 
 But near it broadened to the breast of earth 
 With long strong arms that gathered in the plain. 
 The silent pathos touched me, and I found 
 A solace for my vanished dream ; for while 
 The summit strained toward the unreached star, 
 Deep in the earth its strong foundations lay. 
 And so, Aspasia, will I keep my dreams 
 And still aspire, if vainly ! but no less 
 Perfect this hand within its lowlier sphere, 
 Be strong in my own strength, and compass here 
 Some part maybe of things attainable 
 Before the twilight closes to the night. 
 
 PENTELIKON, 1889. 
 
46 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 TANAGRA. 
 
 WE rode through mellowing cornlands, deep ravines, 
 By torrent beds where oleanders nod, 
 
 Up paths of arbutus and evergreens, 
 
 And flowery carpets that no feet have trod. 
 
 Yet all this lonely land is holy ground, 
 
 Strewn with dead dust of cities, such an one 
 
 You chance upon, a low wall ringing round 
 The wilderness of thistle, grass and stone. 
 
 There rose the citadel, these mounds were streets, 
 That crescent hill was where the actors played, 
 
 The lentisk bushes have usurped the seats 
 
 Where camps the Wallack goatherd in the shade. 
 
 And this was Tanagra, this waste of weed, 
 These hillocks with the buried life within, 
 
 A few rough gravestones keep their names to read 
 One broken fragment bore the name Corinne. 
 
TAN AGRA. 47 
 
 Ah ! scarcely hers whose flawless face and fame 
 The old world wondered at, a lordlier grave 
 
 Enshrined in death those lyric lips, whose name 
 Is all of her that after years might save. 
 
 Yet here, where once she saw the living light 
 And struck the chord of passion, there it lay, 
 
 And that mere word upon the stone had might, 
 A moment's space to flash the dark to-day. 
 
 To dreams of fanes bedecked with myrtle boughs, 
 Dreams of the Theban contest and the prize, 
 
 The laurel snatched from Pindar's throbbing brows, 
 And bound above a minstrel maiden's eyes. 
 
 Was it the music wholly or the grace 
 
 For which the swan of Dirce drooped his wing, 
 
 The fount of passion, or the fair, fair face, 
 
 While Thebes was mute to hear a woman sing ? 
 
 Ringed sit the priests, the judges of the song, 
 The maiden muse stands passion-pale between, 
 
 Loud for the Theban, louder and more long, 
 Break forth the plaudits for the Tanagrine. 
 
48 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 There winds the glad procession, the white row 
 
 Of virgin escort up the marble street, 
 The twin-pipes pealing shrilly as they go, 
 
 To lay the tripod at the song-god's feet ! 
 
 Such power the dead voice had ! long years have kept 
 No note of songs that filled the mouth of fame, 
 
 No record how she loved or laughed or wept, 
 Naught but the face, the triumph, and the name. 
 
 These and what dreams memorial lands still keep, 
 Where mighty presences have passed and been, 
 
 Where Leucas shows the Lesbian's lover-leap, 
 Where Tanagra still whispers of Corinne. 
 
 TAN AGRA, 1889. 
 
THE SONG OF THE KLEPHT. 
 
 The red fire flickered through the sea-bound cave, 
 A lamb was roasting on the spit the wave 
 Broke low and soothing round the sandy bay, 
 And on the sky-line hung the ghost of day. 
 Ringed round the fire we sat, the wine-cup passed 
 front each to other no one spoke at last. 
 
 Oldjanni in the linen kilt, with red 
 Rough-knotted kerchief round his grizzled head, 
 And mighty cloak of goaf s frieze, mused and rolled 
 The paper round Agrinion's weed ofgold. 
 Then snatched an ember from the thyme-root fire, 
 And blew the smoke in cloudy wreaths. 
 
 His Sire 
 
 Was with Odysseus on the mountain side 
 In the wild days before the land was free ; 
 Such war-songs rocked his cradle, when the bride 
 
 Would sling beneath the dark vallonea tree 
 Her infant's leather hammock : 
 
 So sang he. 
 
50 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 What has become of Dimos, the Dimos that we 
 
 knew, 
 Who never missed the mark he aimed, whose blade 
 
 was keen and true, 
 
 Who wore the silver pistols, the shoulder-bits of gold, 
 The golden braided jacket, and the kilt of treble 
 
 fold. 
 
 He left our high limeri, he drew the lot and went 
 To tell the rest in Agrapha our powder stores were 
 
 spent. 
 
 He was not gone an hour, an hour by the sun, 
 When a distant shot rang up the hills, and then another 
 
 one; 
 We sprang to foot and listened, held breath and 
 
 dropped the lyre, 
 
 We heard a hundred echoes take up the running fire ; 
 And through the" thymy boulders in cover of the 
 
 trees, 
 We slid along the broken ledge, and crawled upon 
 
 pur knees, 
 
 Until we saw the vultures come sailing up the blue, 
 And circle round the rocky gorge, his way went 
 winding through. 
 
THE SONG OF THE KLEPHT. 51 
 
 And there lay two Liapids, a hundred feet apart, 
 The first was stark and not quite cold, with a bullet 
 
 through his heart ; 
 And one had fallen headlong, from out the torrent 
 
 bed 
 His rigid eyes stared grimly, and he was not quite 
 
 dead; 
 The silent curse was on his lips, and round his 
 
 matted hair 
 A purple stain ran down the stones but Dimos was 
 
 not there. 
 The earth was dry, the rocks were bare, and track 
 
 was none to find, 
 Did they bear the living with them, and leave their 
 
 dead behind ? 
 
 His mother from the village comes like a thing bereft, 
 And wanders round the hollow hills through the 
 
 eyries of the Klepht, 
 And "have you seen my Dimos, have you seen my 
 
 bonny son, 
 Who wore the Aga's pistols and the silver-mounted 
 
 gun? 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 My curse on you black mountain, dark gorge and 
 
 river bed, 
 You took my Dimos living, and you hide him from 
 
 me dead ! " 
 
 There's an eagle 'lit on Pindus with dripping beak 
 and red, 
 
 Between his crimson talons, he holds a severed head, 
 
 He feasts upon the olive eyes that lack their lustre- 
 light, 
 
 And keener grows a hundredfold the orbit of his 
 sight. 
 
 He cracks the skull in pieces and picks the scattered 
 brain, 
 
 And fiercer grows his courage and more his might 
 and main, 
 
 He feels his pinions stronger and longer many spans, 
 
 With the strength and youth and hardihood that 
 were the murdered man's. 
 
 Oh, Ali, dog of Jannina, the headsman of the east, 
 
 Chimari well remembers who makes the eagles' feast ! 
 
53 
 
 ZALONGOS. 
 
 THE LAST FIGHT OF SULI. 
 
 ZALONGOS was the mountain hight 
 Where Suli's star went down in night, 
 The star that kindled as it fell 
 A flame on freedom's citadel ; 
 Which flashed across from sea to sea 
 The signal-fire of liberty. 
 
 Through twenty years of battle 
 
 They kept the dog at bay, 
 The dog that rules in Jannina, 
 
 And sends his sons to slay : 
 And never Suliote maiden, 
 
 And never captive wife, 
 Had sold to false Liapids 
 
 Her honour for her life ; 
 But the pharas of the mountain 
 
 Were ever thin and few, 
 
54 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 And traitors grow in every soil 
 When gold can find the clue. 
 
 He had promised peace to Suli, 
 
 The terms were meet and fair, 
 And when they trusted in his bond 
 
 Fell on them unaware. 
 There are none in Avarikos, 
 
 In Kako-Suli none, 
 Kiunghi's rafters smoulder yet, 
 
 Kiapha has not one. 
 In Jannina in the market place 
 
 Their heads are stacked in piles, 
 And Ali the dog in his palace 
 
 Counts over them and smiles. 
 But the last and best of Suli 
 
 Will never yield nor fly, 
 And these will keep Zalongos' steep, 
 
 Or show the way to die. 
 
 And deadly was the fusillade 
 Those roving mountain marksmen made ; 
 From clump to clump of lentisk green, 
 Through splintered rocks they glide unseen; 
 
ZALONGOS. 55 
 
 And flint and steel struck never spark 
 To speed the ball that missed its mark, 
 Yet on and on the Pasha's ranks 
 Drew slowly up the mountain flanks. 
 
 The rugged peaks are wild and sheer 
 As Suli's eagle eyries here, 
 With dark defiles of narrow span, 
 And boulder rocks that mask a man. 
 But what should those few hundreds do ! 
 For not one thousand came, nor two, 
 But five, and ten, and thousands more 
 Press on where these have gone before, 
 Till every mountain path and spur, 
 And every slope of stunted fir, 
 And every gorge and every glen 
 Is swarming with the kilted men. 
 
 From morn to noon the battle grew, 
 Till midday blazed from out the blue, 
 While hidden hands that never tire 
 Pour down the slope a dropping fire ; 
 And aye, as Suli's sons retreat 
 They burn the scrub beneath their feet, 
 
56 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Till higher, higher, bare and black, 
 A ring that narrowed marked their track ; 
 Yet on and on, through smoke and flame, 
 The hounds of Vizir Ali came. 
 
 Then noon went by, and up the ridge 
 
 The sun struck ruby red, 
 But redder on Zalongos' side 
 
 Was the blood of Ali's dead ; 
 Then the dark shadows deepened, 
 
 And the pale stars grew bright, 
 A mist rose up the gorges, 
 
 And sudden fell the night ; 
 But still those echoes rang with cries, 
 Of dying men in agonies, 
 Wild shrieks to those who answer not, 
 And rattle of the musket shot. 
 
 The night went by each volley's crash, 
 Revealed new foemen by the flash, 
 And every time the flash struck red 
 Some mountain bullet claimed its dead ; 
 Yet evermore the burning slope 
 Shut out another door of hope, 
 
7/ ; ? Z A LONG OS. 57 
 
 For close behind the moving flame 
 Fresh hordes of those Liapids came, 
 Till through the bloody mist and smoke 
 The second dawn of battle broke. 
 
 Upon a high rock platform 
 
 Hard by the summit's crest, 
 The Suliote mothers sat and watched 
 
 Their babies at the breast ; 
 The mountain rim dropped sheer and grim 
 
 From that high citadel 
 To where far down in murk and gloom 
 Deep furrowed runs the stream of doom 
 
 That has its source in hell. 
 They waited for the morning sun 
 They saw the heights were lost and won, 
 And Suli's star, long clouded o'er, 
 Had set in blood for evermore ; 
 And vain it were to suckle braves, 
 And end as demon Ali's slaves ! 
 
 What words were said, what grim debate, 
 No man will ever know : 
 
58 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 The firing still rang up the rocks, 
 
 And muttered back below. 
 They did not weep, nor tear the hair, 
 Betray one gesture of despair, 
 But with a seeming mute accord 
 
 They rose up in a row. 
 Men saw each mother snatch her child 
 
 To one long clinging kiss, 
 A kiss to keep, a kiss to sleep, 
 Then fling them down the horrid deep 
 
 Of Acheron's abyss. 
 Their lives the mountains cradled, 
 
 Freedom the mountains gave, 
 So in the mountains' hollow arms 
 
 Be the free Suliote's grave ! 
 
 Their foes shall see with bated breath 
 How Suli's women welcome death 
 
 Unshrived of living priest, 
 While round their feet the muskets peal, 
 And overhead the vultures wheel, 
 
 Impatient for the feast. 
 
Z A LONG OS. 59 
 
 Then linking hands one last time more 
 They trod the Syrtos dance of yore 
 The dance that oft on eves of spring 
 Would draw them round its magic ring 
 By Kako-Suli's frowning doors 
 Or Avariko's threshing-floors, 
 While weirdly chanted shrill and strong, 
 Defiant rose the dancing-song. 
 
 But ever as the ring wound round 
 Towards the bastion's outer bound, 
 The waving chain a moment stands, 
 The last unlinks her clinging hands, 
 And moving on in rhythmic grace 
 Leaps over into space. 
 Nor ever one looked down the edge 
 Of that sheer eagle-haunted ledge 
 To mark what trace along the steep 
 Of those who took the horrid leap, 
 But dancing to the dancing strain, 
 Shrill o'er the bullets' iron rain, 
 The last one still with tearless face 
 Shoots out in order from her place, 
 
60 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Till only ten, till five, and four 
 Are left to tread the measure o'er. 
 The foes draw near ; oh, haste ! make haste ! 
 Till three, and two, and one at last, 
 Who, like some Maenad god-possessed, 
 Shrieks the wild death-song o'er the rest, 
 . The dirge of Suli, and her own, 
 Then plunges headlong down, alone. 
 
 And what of those who still were left 
 To hold the eyrie of the Klepht ? 
 A few with Botzaris to guide 
 Shall breast and break the deathly tide, 
 And win to where the road is free, 
 Toward Parga.and the island sea ; 
 A few shall cleave a bloody path 
 
 Across the closing ring, 
 To venge as freedom's aftermath, 
 
 This carnage of the spring ; 
 To sit perhaps at Byron's door, 
 And tell this story o'er and o'er, 
 To still defy the horned moon, 
 By Misolonghi's wan lagoon, 
 
Z A LONG OS. 61 
 
 And yet may be in direr need 
 
 To man the breach and fight and bleed, 
 
 And dare another hero-deed. 
 
 But thus beneath Zalongos' side 
 The mothers and the children died, 
 That Suli ne'er might breed again 
 A race of less heroic men. 
 
 1891, 
 
62 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 THE LUTE OF ORPHEUS. 
 
 ORPHEUS dead, the Thracian Maenads left him lying 
 
 marble-pale, 
 Thrust the daggers through their hair-knots, shrieking, 
 
 fled along the vale. 
 
 But the still face in the rushes and the eyes that had 
 
 no sight 
 Stared with pitiful appealing through the shadows of 
 
 the night. 
 
 And the night-bird missed his answer, and a sadness 
 
 marred her song, 
 And the wind sighed in the willows, and the stream 
 
 bewailed his wrong. 
 
 And the clouds swept tears for sorrow, and the wan 
 
 moon veiled her eyes, 
 For the sob of stricken nature seemed to penetrate the 
 
 skies. 
 
THE LUTE OF ORPHEUS. 63 
 
 There one found him who had loved him, in the reed- 
 bed gashed and torn, 
 
 Where of old she heard him singing in the silence of 
 the morn ; 
 
 Found her hero far-off worshipped, dimly known and 
 
 deified, 
 Found the magic lute beside him and the lute-strings 
 
 all untied. 
 
 Bent a laurel bough to crown him, smoothed the 
 
 damp hair on his head, 
 Closed the startled eyes, and gently kissed the cold 
 
 lips of her dead. 
 
 And she decked the corse with rushes, hid the red and 
 
 horrid scars, 
 Said, " Oh, silent voice of music, re-awakened with the 
 
 stars, 
 
 When up there at Zeus' high feasting, crowned you 
 
 strike a louder lute, 
 Seeing all things, oh remember one whose love was 
 
 meek and mute. 
 
64 THE VIOLET CROWN, 
 
 Then the Muses came lamenting by the Strymon's 
 
 willowy shore, 
 Wept immortal tears bewailing, " Worship is on earth 
 
 no more. 
 
 " Thou that lovedst, thou that weepest, thine unsatis- 
 fied desire 
 
 Shall rewake the broken music of the silent singer's 
 lyre. 
 
 " Sing of love as he of beauty, sing of tears as he of 
 
 mirth, 
 Sing of peace as he of passion, sing the woman-song 
 
 of earth." 
 
 So they twined their hair for lute-strings, kissed unrest 
 
 into her eyes, 
 Bared her soul to human sorrow, tuned her lips to 
 
 human sighs. 
 
 And they sped her forth to wander, touching mortal 
 
 hearts to tears, 
 First on earth of maiden singers in the morning of the 
 
 years. 
 
CALLISTE. 
 
 IN May, when oleanders bloom, 
 What time the gold was on the broom, 
 Before the moon was full above, 
 A world that seemed but made for love, 
 When glow-worms lit the way we went 
 To bruise the hill thyme into scent, 
 The shadows of your raven hair, 
 The charm of movements free as air, 
 Your wild bird grace of shy replies, 
 The mischief in your sea-deep eyes, 
 Had tempted me to whisper you 
 The word world-old, but ever new, 
 The word that seemed so light to say 
 When oleanders bloomed in May. 
 
 But, ah, Calliste, over sea 
 
 The fickle wind sets where for me 
 
 Lie other ways and other cares ; 
 
66 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 For you the soft ^Egean airs, 
 The sails in yonder haven furled 
 To tell you of the outside world, 
 The starry nights, the spring's perfume 
 Returning with the orange bloom, 
 The simple prayer you know to pray, 
 The ready mirth, and then some day 
 Some sailor with the broad brown chest 
 To snatch the flower from your breast, 
 To knot his fingers in your hair, 
 Draw up your face and call it fair, 
 And say the word I dared not say 
 When oleanders bloomed in May. 
 
6 7 
 
 FOLK SONGS. 
 (From the Romaic.) 
 
 WHY are the mountains dark and the hills all 
 
 woebegone ? 
 Is it the wind at war there or the rain that blots the 
 
 sun? 
 It is not the wind at war there, it is not the driving 
 
 rain, 
 It is Charos passing over them, with the dead folk in 
 
 his train ; 
 The old men follow after, and before the young men 
 
 go, 
 And the children, the little children, are slung at his 
 
 saddle bow; 
 The old men beg a grace of him, and the young men 
 
 speak him fair ; 
 " Good Charos rest by the fountain, or halt in the 
 
 village square, 
 
 F 2 
 
68 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 That the lads may play at the stone throwing, and the 
 
 old men drink their fill, 
 That the children may go and gather the wild flowers 
 
 on the hill." 
 The old men beg a grace of him, and the young men 
 
 speak him fair : 
 "By never a fountain will I rest, nor halt in the 
 
 village square ; 
 The mothers would come for water, and would hear 
 
 their babes complain, 
 And the wedded folk would never part, if they once 
 
 were met again." 
 
 God made so many good things, but one thing made 
 
 not well ; 
 He made no bridge to cross the sea, no ladder down 
 
 to hell ; 
 That one might cross and find a way to get to the 
 
 dead folk there, 
 And see how the little children that have got no 
 
 mothers fare. 
 
FOLK SONGS. 69 
 
 On the stream of life, oh say, 
 Wherefore did you come my way ? 
 Since to meet was but to sever, 
 Wherefore did I meet you ever ? 
 Since you only taught me after 
 That a lover's sighs are deep, 
 Since my tears but move your laughter, 
 
 Though it be for you I weep. 
 Give me life, or pass my sentence, 
 
 Let it cease this weary breath ! 
 Haply then in late repentance, 
 
 You will soften touched by death. 
 Little grace I crave my pain 
 Will not turn your heart again 
 Only this, where fleeting fast, 
 These my days are told at last, 
 Breathe one farewell in a sigh, 
 Let one tear fall where I lie. 
 
70 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 CHRISTMAS IN THE AEGEAN. 
 
 IT is the eve of Christmas in the world, 
 But gentle as a morn of spring, the deep 
 One opal to the sky-line, as in sleep 
 
 Drifts past the seagull with her wide wings furled. 
 
 We floated on between the isles that lie 
 Like leaves of lilies in a summer mere, 
 And dreamed no storm wind ever ventured near 
 
 This zone of peace between the sea and sky. 
 
 We dreamed of golden galleys and of quays 
 Bright with their burden of long colonnades, 
 The shrines of Passion and the mystic glades, 
 
 The siren cities of the Cyclades. 
 
 Where are the island voices now ? The mirth 
 Is dead or silent ; no mad laughter thrills 
 The dance of Oreads in the happy hills 
 
 Where twilight settles on a sadder earth. 
 
CHRISTMAS IN THE &GEAN. 71 
 
 For here on that first Christmas eve, men said 
 They heard a sound like sobbing in the breeze, 
 A sound that scared the fisher from the seas, 
 
 A wail blown earthward, crying, " Pan is dead ! " 
 
 The feet of time have touched the rocky shore, 
 There is a change behind the changelessness, 
 The suns of summer warm the world no less, 
 
 But the light heart of morning, never more ! 
 
 So day went down behind the ocean rim, 
 
 While westward the sweet star of silence grew 
 Through yellow hazes melting into blue ; 
 
 The shadows deepened till the isles were dim. 
 
 Then like a soul forsaken, hushed in fright 
 
 The dark world seemed to pause, no ripple broke, 
 No wind, no voice of earth or ocean spoke, 
 
 While the stars watched from the great arch of night ; 
 
 Till faintly eastward flushed the hope of morn, 
 Pale with one star prevailing, till the grey 
 Lifted, the new sun triumphed, and strong day 
 
 Woke with a song voice, crying, " Christ is born ! " 
 
 1889. 
 
72 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 AKROTIRI OF CRETE. 
 
 THERE is a rocky half isle in the deep 
 
 With jagged peaks, with sea-walls bare and steep ; 
 
 With scanty pasture for the goats that climb 
 
 From ledge to ledge, and bruise the mountain thyme, 
 
 Only dwarf holly and low lentisk clings 
 
 In hollows sheltered from the north wind's wings, 
 
 Dark gullies where the mountain vultures sway 
 
 On poising pinions, watching for their prey, 
 
 For hunted beasts will find their way to die 
 
 In such a solitude 'twixt earth and sky. 
 
 A stony desert parts that land unkind 
 
 From green Cydonia's summer world behind, 
 
 Where ancient olives silver the rich plain, 
 
 Ringed in their fence of aloes, till again 
 
 The vine-slopes climb to Ida's mountain chain. 
 
 And yet there is a green spot in this waste, 
 A garden in the desert, man has placed 
 
AKROTIRI OF CRETE. 73 
 
 An altar in the solitude, come here to dwell 
 With contemplation in a hermit's cell. 
 Long years ago men counted this their good, 
 Fled from the world's way, chose the solitude, 
 Went out into the deserts, barefoot trod 
 The rocks that bruised them, agonized to God, 
 Welcomed the lash, the torture and the chain, 
 And dreamed of heaven in the pause of pain. 
 But now, dear God, has love not cast out fear ? 
 These lonely eremites, what do they here? 
 
 Enter thou in between the cypress rows, 
 Mount up the stair ; four terraced walls enclose 
 A court, the church, a citron by the well ; 
 Is it a fortress or a cloister cell ? 
 Speak with those hermits, have they thoughts to think 
 Worthy this deep seclusion ? Do they drink 
 A deeper well of knowledge ? Bearded cheek, 
 Locks like the Nazzarite, do they bespeak 
 Mystics, who commune oft with God below, 
 The priests of contemplation ? Surely, No ! 
 
 Ask, you will find them ignorant and poor 
 
 
 
 A few rude peasants in a cowl, no more ! 
 
74 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 What do they here, walled sullenly within, 
 Secure at ease while others toil and spin ? 
 What do they here, men stout and strong of limb, 
 Between the matin and the vesper hymn ? 
 Fasting or feasting, letting real life go, 
 While other men must dig and reap and sow, 
 Smiling their welcome to who comes their way 
 With half-remembered empty forms to pray ! 
 Is this man's portion, between earth and sky, 
 To crawl in indolence, to live and die ? 
 
 And yet not so ! Be patient, being wise, 
 Nay, proud, not patient ; learn to recognize 
 The dawnings of endeavour, the good seed 
 Sown in a land that knows its hunger's need. 
 Here, where the passions of her sons are rude, 
 And fierce as nature's in her wildest mood, 
 Where hate is painted with the blood she spills, 
 And murder harbours in the savage hills, 
 It was well thought to build this home of peace, 
 To watch the olives and the vines increase, 
 Where, unmolested in a world of strife, 
 Unlettered hermits lead the quiet life. 
 
AKROTIRI OF CRETE. 75 
 
 So slowly men mount upwards. Be their praise 
 This garden island in the stony ways, 
 Where flocks feed quietly, birds build and sing, 
 Men sleep unscared beneath the shadow of God's 
 wing. 
 
 CRETE, 1889. 
 
THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 THE CYCLADES. 
 
 THE summer seas lie smooth and fair, 
 The pause of sunrise holds the air, 
 The canvas woos the wind in vain 
 That chased the moon and dropped again ; 
 All round us on the pearly deep 
 Dim forms of islands seem to sleep, 
 For suns of morning hardly break 
 Their truce of silence when they wake, 
 Whom years of woes have taught to bless 
 The peace of sweet forgetfulness. 
 
 Oh summer isles, whose young desires 
 Were music once on living lyres, 
 What time the Teian made divine 
 His wreath of roses drenched in wine, 
 The Lesbian sang her woman's woe 
 In bars of passion we but know, 
 Across a void of silence drear 
 
THE CYC LADES. 77 
 
 From other hearts that throbbed to hear, 
 What ills untold make up the sum 
 That struck your soul of music dumb, 
 Through all the ages dark with crime 
 When earth was in her travail time ! 
 Her virgin youth was sunned with smiles 
 In these blue wave-engirdled isles, 
 But passion came, and youth went by, 
 The golden age was quick to die. 
 
 From west and east what white sails came 
 Whose only freight was sword and flame, 
 Beflagged with Crescent or with Cross, 
 Whose either gain was human loss ! 
 Oh fierce red years of ruth and wrong, 
 You" ill befit a summer song ! 
 The smoking homes, the parting cries, 
 The hell let loose on paradise, 
 The lonely lives in alien lands, 
 The wrenched embrace of clinging hands, 
 When men were slain and women slaved, 
 Who death in better boon had craved, 
 While dread o'ershadowed every morn, 
 
78 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 And night fell on a world forlorn, 
 The naked to the mountains fled, 
 And all the wells were choked with dead ! 
 
 Ah me, the fair things made for joy 
 
 It needed ages to destroy, 
 
 The colonnades on marble quays, 
 
 The valleys cool with waving trees, 
 
 The terraced orchards up the hill, 
 
 The shrines we might have worshipped still, 
 
 The statues in the myrtle glade ! 
 
 But man has marred what man had made, 
 
 What God and man had best combined, 
 
 And left the barren rocks behind. 
 
 The waves have washed the blood away 
 And ocean smiles her best to-day, 
 But will the voices wake once more 
 That made such music heretofore ? 
 It echoes still across the tears 
 Of twice a thousand silent years. 
 Ah, surely, world of summer isles, 
 For hearts are here and woman's smiles, 
 
THE CYC LADES. 79 
 
 And dreams to dream, and deeds to do, 
 And years of ruin to renew ; 
 The last wild storm has passed to peace, 
 It found you still the soul of Greece. 
 
 OFF Nios, 1890. 
 
So 7 HE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 PENTELIKON. 
 
 TO C. M. M. 
 
 I THINK the memory I love best 
 
 Is one of Attic stars 
 On old Pentele's marble breast 
 
 Among her quarried scars ; 
 When fierce day died a cooler breeze 
 Would steal across our poplar trees, 
 
 And westward bring the breath of seas. 
 
 And when the moons grew full and fair 
 
 They drew us forth to climb 
 The path that seemed a marble stair 
 
 Between the tufted thyme ; 
 Those stars hung down so large and nigh, 
 Far closer to the earth than sky, 
 
 And we were silent, you and I. 
 
 We scaled the rugged crest and lay 
 On nature's thymy bed, 
 
PENTELIKON. 81 
 
 To watch the meteors at their play 
 
 In sapphire deeps o'erhead, 
 To dream strange forms moved to and fro 
 The crescent plain that lay below, 
 
 The ghosts of battle long ago. 
 
 There earth and sea lay side by side 
 
 Beneath in summer sleep, 
 And shadowy islands dim descried 
 
 Showed o'er a shadowy deep : 
 And waves of mountain faintly white 
 Rose up from mist-worlds out of sight, 
 
 Like crowns of crystal in the night. 
 
 Then slowly east to watching eyes 
 
 A band of rainbow red 
 Grew o'er the bound of seas and skies, 
 
 And the stars paled and fled, 
 While through the flush, light aureoled, 
 Up sailed a sphere of molten gold, 
 
 And down the bay the glory rolled. 
 
 Isle after island rose to ken 
 Beneath that ruby band 
 
82 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 And amber waves came racing in 
 
 To tell the sleeping land, 
 The scattered mists wreathed up in smoke, 
 Through purple gorges morning broke, 
 
 And all the rugged mountain woke. 
 
 The hound that night through vigil kept 
 Gave one deep warning note, 
 
 The shepherd rose from where he slept, 
 And shook his white capote ; 
 
 Far down beneath the watch dogs bay, 
 
 The goats spring up the pasture way, 
 And in a moment all is day. 
 
 Ah, those were nights, those Attic nights, 
 
 On old Pentele's brow ! 
 Long days to me of keen delights, 
 
 Those summer days ! By now, 
 The myrtle sheds its bloom like snows, 
 The oleander buds unclose 
 
 New clusters of the ruddy rose ; 
 
 The fountain from the marble's breast 
 Leaps forth as fresh and fair, 
 
PENTELIRON. 83 
 
 The wind at eve still wanders west, 
 
 Though we be no more there ; 
 For us the suns of Greece have set, 
 But I at least remember yet, 
 
 And tune my music to regret. 
 
 ROME, 1891. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 HELLAS. 
 
 IT is not only that the sun 
 
 Loves best these southern lands, 
 It is not for the trophies won 
 
 Of old by hero hands, 
 That nature wreathed in softer smiles 
 
 Was here the bride of art ; 
 A closer kinship claims these isles, 
 
 The love-land of the heart. 
 It is because the poet's dream 
 
 Still haunts each happy vale, 
 That peopled every grove and stream 
 
 To fit his fairy tale. 
 
 There may be greener vales and hills 
 Less bare to shelter man ; 
 
 But still they want the naiad rills, 
 And miss the pipe of Pan. 
 
 There may be other isles as fair 
 
HELLAS. 85 
 
 And summer seas as blue, 
 But then Odysseus touched not there, 
 
 Nor Argo beached her crew. 
 For me the Nereid-haunted shore, 
 
 The Faun-frequented dell, 
 Can wake the note of wonder more 
 
 Than stones where Caesars fell : 
 And where the blooms of Zante blow 
 
 Their incense to the waves ; 
 Where Ithaca's dark headlands show 
 
 The legendary caves ; 
 Where in the deep of olive groves 
 
 The summer hardly dies ; 
 Where fair Phseacia's sun-brown maids 
 
 Still keep their siren eyes ; 
 Where Chalcis strains with loving lips 
 
 Towards the little bay, 
 The strand that held the thousand ships, 
 
 The Aulis of delay ; 
 Where GEta's ridge of granite bars, 
 
 The gate Thermopylae, 
 Where huge Orion crowned with stars 
 
 Looks down on Rhodope ; 
 
86 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Where once Apollo tended flocks 
 
 On Phera's lofty plain, 
 Where Peneus cleaves the stubborn rocks 
 
 To find the outer main ; 
 Where Argos and Mycenae sleep 
 
 With all the buried wrong, 
 And where Arcadian uplands keep 
 
 The antique shepherd song, 
 There is a spirit haunts the place 
 
 All other lands must lack, 
 A speaking voice, a living grace, 
 
 That beckons fancy back. 
 
 Dear isles and sea-indented shore, 
 
 Till songs be no more sung, 
 The souls of singers gone before 
 
 Shall keep your lovers young : 
 And men will hymn your haunted skies, 
 
 And seek your holy streams, 
 Until the soul of music dies, 
 
 And earth has done with dreams. 
 
SONGS OF ENGLAND 
 
 (FIRST SERIES). 
 
 TO MY FRIEND, 
 
 GEORGE CURZON. 
 
 Since you believe in that great work her sons have still to do, 
 Persuaded that her service means the world's best service too, 
 These first-fruits of my English songs I dedicate to you. " 
 
SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 SPRING THOUGHTS. 
 
 MY England, island England, such leagues and leagues 
 
 away, 
 It's years since I was with thee, when April wanes to 
 
 May : 
 
 Years since I saw the primrose, and watched the 
 
 brown hillside 
 Put on white crowns of blossom and blush like April's 
 
 bride ; 
 
 Years since I heard thy skylark, and caught the 
 
 throbbing note 
 Which all the soul of springtide sends through the 
 
 blackbird's throat. 
 
90 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Oh England, island England, if it has been my lot 
 To live long years in alien lands, with men who love 
 thee not, 
 
 I do but love thee better who know each wind that 
 
 blows, 
 The wind that slays the blossom, the wind that buds 
 
 the rose, 
 
 The wind that shakes the taper mast and keeps the 
 
 topsail furled, 
 The wind that braces nerve and arm to battle with the 
 
 world : 
 
 I love thy moss-deep grasses, thy great untortured 
 
 trees, 
 The cliffs that wall thy havens, the weed-scents of thy 
 
 seas, 
 
 The dreamy river reaches, the quiet English homes, 
 The milky path of sorel down which the springtide 
 comes. 
 
SPRING THOUGHTS. 91 
 
 Oh land so loved through length of years, so tended 
 
 and caressed, 
 The land that never stranger wronged nor foeman 
 
 dared to waste, 
 
 Remember those thou speedest forth round all the 
 
 world to be 
 Thy witness to the nations, thy warders on the sea ! 
 
 And keep for those who leave thee and find no better 
 place 
 
 The olden smile of welcome, the unchanged mother- 
 face ! 
 
 Athens, 1890. 
 
92 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 1588-1888. 
 
 THERE shall be so much forgotten of deeds beneath 
 
 the sun, 
 But not this deed of England's, till England's race be 
 
 run; 
 The fathers shall tell their children, and the children's 
 
 children know 
 How we fought the great sea-battle three hundred 
 
 years ago. 
 It was in the middle summer, and the wheat was full 
 
 in ear, 
 But men's hearts were dark and troubled, and 
 
 women's faint for fear : 
 The fleets of Spain set sail in May, but a storm had 
 
 warned them home, 
 The might of Spain had met again to do the will of 
 
 Rome. 
 
A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 93 
 
 The Pope's high benediction had sped them on their 
 
 way, 
 With monks and priests and bishops to teach us how 
 
 pray; 
 And all the Southland's knighthood, well proved in 
 
 many a field, 
 And all her great sea-captains had come to make us 
 
 yield ; 
 And thirty thousand seamen and soldiers lay 
 
 aboard ; 
 So England watched and waited, and trusted in the 
 
 Lord. 
 
 Then all along this southern coast there was 
 hurrying to and fro, 
 
 And the nation's eyes went seaward to watch the 
 coming foe ; 
 
 The shepherds left the pasture-hills, the yeomen left 
 their farms, 
 
 For all the squires in England were gathering men-at- 
 arms ; 
 
 And there was vigil through the night, and ever stir 
 and life, 
 
94 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 From the Foreland to the Landsend, before the 
 
 coming strife ; 
 The old sea-dogs of England were met on Plymouth 
 
 Hoe, 
 And the little fleet was anchored across the Sound 
 
 below ; 
 And rusty swords were furbished while yet the corn 
 
 was green, 
 For a mighty cry went through the land, for God and 
 
 for the Queen ! 
 
 It was a July evening, and in the waning day 
 
 The fairy woods of Edgcumbe hung rosy o'er the 
 bay, 
 
 When through the track of sun-set, full-sail and home- 
 ward bound, 
 
 A little bark came gliding in and anchored up the 
 Sound ; 
 
 And round the quays and through the streets a wild- 
 fire rumour ran, 
 
 A sea-league off the Lizard they've seen the Spanish 
 van. 
 
A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 95 
 
 They say the Lord High Admiral was bowling on the 
 
 green, 
 And round him sat the goodliest men the world has 
 
 ever seen ; 
 For there was Richard Grenville, the bravest of the 
 
 brave, 
 Who fought the greatest sea-fight that ever shook the 
 
 wave ; 
 And there sat old John Hawkins, and preached of loot 
 
 and prize, 
 And the grim battle-hunger flashed through his 
 
 grizzled eyes ; 
 And there was Martin Frobisher, who tried the 
 
 North-west way, 
 And saw the sunless noontide, and saw the midnight 
 
 day; 
 And Drake, the seaman's hero, whose sails were 
 
 never furled, 
 Whose bark had found the ocean-path that girdles 
 
 round the world ; 
 
 And Preston of La Guayra, and Fenner of the Azores, 
 Who shook the flag of England out on undiscovered 
 
 shores ; 
 
96 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 And Fenton, and John Davis, and many another one, 
 Whose keels had ploughed the Spanish Main behind 
 
 the setting sun. 
 Without one dark misgiving they sat and watched the 
 
 play, 
 And sipped their wine and laughed their jests like 
 
 boys on a holiday. 
 That night men fired the beacons and flared the 
 
 message forth, 
 From the southland to the midland, from the midland 
 
 to the north : 
 And there was mustering all night long, wild rumour 
 
 and unrest, 
 And mothers clasped their children the closer to their 
 
 breast ; 
 But calmly yet in Plymouth Sound the fleet of 
 
 England lay, 
 The gunners slept beside their guns and waited for 
 
 the day. 
 
 Then as the mists of morning cleared, up drew the 
 
 Spanish van, 
 
 And grimly off the Devon cliffs that ten days' fight 
 began. 
 
A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 97 
 
 Four giant galleons led the way like vultures to the 
 
 feast, 
 And the huge league-long crescent rolled on from 
 
 west to east : 
 But they will not stay for Plymouth, nor check the 
 
 late advance, 
 For Parma's armies wait and fret to cross the Strait 
 
 from France. 
 No grander fleet, no better foe, has ever crossed the 
 
 main, 
 No braver captains walked the deck than hold the 
 
 day for Spain. 
 There sailed Miguel d'Oquenda, our seamen knew 
 
 him well, 
 
 Recalde and Pietro Valdez, Mexia and Pimentel. 
 Oh, if ever, men of England, now brace your courage 
 
 high, 
 Make good your boast to rule the waves, and keep the 
 
 linstocks dry : 
 For the weeks of weary waiting, the long alert is 
 
 past, 
 The pent-up hate of nations meets face to face at 
 
 last. 
 
98 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 The giant ships held on their course, and as the last 
 
 was clear 
 The Plymouth fleet put out to sea and hung upon 
 
 their rear ; 
 And their war-drums beat to quarters, the bugles 
 
 blared alarms, 
 
 The stately ocean-castles were filled with men-at-arms. 
 All through that summer morn and noon, on till the 
 
 close of night, 
 We harried through the galleons and fought a 
 
 running fight ; 
 And far up Dartmoor highlands men heard the 
 
 booming gun, 
 And watched the clouds of battle beneath the summer 
 
 sun. 
 
 As o'er some dead sea-monster wheel round the white- 
 winged gulls, 
 Our little ships ran in and out between the giant 
 
 hulls ; 
 For fleetly through their clumsy lines we steered our 
 
 nimble craft, 
 And thundered in our broadsides, and raked them 
 
 fore and aft, 
 
A BALLAD OF 7WE ARMADA. 99 
 
 And broke their spars, and rammed their oars, till the 
 
 floating castles reeled, 
 While overhead their cannon flashed, their idle volleys 
 
 pealed. 
 And the sun went down behind us, but the sea was 
 
 ribbed with red, 
 For the greatest of the galleons was burning as she 
 
 fled. 
 Yet hard behind we followed and held on through the 
 
 night, 
 And kept the tossing lanterns of the Spanish fleet in 
 
 sight. 
 So past Torbay to Portland Bill they ran on even 
 
 keels, 
 And ever we hung behind them and gored their 
 
 flying heels ; 
 
 And many a mastless galley was left alone to lag, 
 To fall back in the hornets' nest, and, fighting, strike 
 
 her flag. 
 Then every port along the coast put out its 
 
 privateers, 
 And one by one our ships came in with ringing 
 
 cheers on cheers ; 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 So sailed Sir Walter Raleigh, the knight-errant of the 
 
 sea, 
 
 And all the best of Cornwall and Devon's chivalry ; 
 Northumberland and Cumberland and Oxford and 
 
 Carew, 
 -Till from every mast in England the red-cross banner 
 
 blew. 
 
 A calm fell on the twenty fifth, it was St. Jago's 
 
 day, 
 
 And face to face off Weymouth cliffs the baffled war- 
 ships lay. 
 Now, bishops, read your masses, and, friars, chant 
 
 your psalm ! 
 Now, Spain, go up and prosper, for your saint hath 
 
 sent the calm ! 
 A thousand oars that move like one lash white the 
 
 glassy blue, 
 And down their three great galleons bore towards our 
 
 foremost few. 
 Then loud laughed Admiral Howard, and a cheer 
 
 went up the skies, 
 
A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 101 
 
 King Philip's three great galleons will be'-a- noble* prize 5 ?.' 
 So we towed out two of our six ships to meet each, ;', \ 
 
 floating fort, ,'"> < 
 
 And we laid one on the starboard side and we laid one 
 
 on the port ; 
 And all forenoon we pounded them ; they fought us 
 
 hard and well, 
 Till the sulphur-clouds along the calm hung like the 
 
 breath of hell : 
 But a fair wind rose at noontide and baulked us of 
 
 our prey, 
 The rescue came on wings of need and snatched the 
 
 prize away ; 
 So past the Needles, past Spithead, along the Sussex 
 
 shores, 
 The tide of battle eastward rolls, the cannon's thunder 
 
 roars ; 
 The pike-men on the Sussex Downs could see the 
 
 running fight, 
 And spread the rumour inland, the Dons were full in 
 
 flight : 
 The fishing-smacks put out to sea from many a white 
 
 chalk cove 
 
102 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 C C t ' *CC (i 
 
 To follow m the > battle's wake and glean the treasure- 
 
 ;', \ /'tro/o ; 
 
 Till night fell on the battle-scene, and under moon 
 
 and star 
 Men saw the English Channel all one long flame of 
 
 war. 
 
 So, harried like their hunted bulls before the 
 
 horsemen's goad, 
 They dropped on the eve of Sunday to their place in 
 
 Calais road : 
 And we, we ringed about them and dogged them to 
 
 their lair 
 
 Beneath the guns of Calais, to fight us if they dare ; 
 But afar they rode at anchor and rued their battered 
 
 pride, 
 As a wounded hound draws off alone to lick his gory 
 
 side ; / 
 
 And when the Sabbath morning broke, they had not 
 
 changed their line, 
 For Parma's host by Dunkirk town lay still and made 
 
 no sign. 
 
A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 103 
 
 So calm that Sabbath morning fell, men heard the 
 
 land-bells ring, 
 They heard the monks at masses, the Spanish soldiers 
 
 sing; 
 And as the moon grew sultry came other sounds of 
 
 mirth, 
 And when the sun set many had seen the last on 
 
 earth. 
 A breeze sprang up at even, and the clouds rolled up 
 
 the sky, 
 And dark and boding fell the night, that last night of 
 
 July. 
 
 But in the fleet of England was every soul awake, 
 For a pinnace ran from bark to bark and brought us 
 
 word from Drake ; 
 And we towed eight ships to leeward, and set their 
 
 bows to shore, 
 
 To send the dons a greeting they never had before ; 
 No traitor moon revealed us, there shone no summer 
 
 star 
 As we smeared the doomed hulls over with rosin 
 
 and with tar; 
 
104 - SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 And all their heavy ordnance was rammed with stone 
 
 and chain, 
 And they bore down on the night wind into the heart 
 
 of Spain. 
 It was Prowse and Young of Bideford who had the 
 
 charge to steer, 
 And a bow shot from the Spanish lines they fired 
 
 them with a cheer, 
 Dropped each into his pinnace it was deftly done 
 
 and well 
 And on the tide set shoreward they loosed the floating 
 
 hell! 
 Oh, then were cables severed, then rose a panic 
 
 cry 
 To every saint in heaven, that shook the reddened 
 
 sky! 
 And some to north and some to south, like a herd of 
 
 bulls set free, 
 With sails half set and cracking spars they staggered 
 
 out to sea : 
 
 But we lay still in order and ringed them as they came, 
 And scared the cloudy dawning with thunder and with 
 
 flame. 
 
A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 105 
 
 The North Sea fleet came sailing down, our ships grew 
 
 more and more, 
 As Winter charged their severed van and drove their 
 
 best on shore. 
 The Flemish boors came out to loot, and up the 
 
 Holland dykes 
 The windmills stopped, the burghers marched with 
 
 muskets and with pikes ; 
 So we chased them through the racing sea and banged 
 
 them as they went, 
 And some we sank, and boarded some, till all our shot 
 
 was spent ; 
 Till we had no food nor powder, but only the will to 
 
 fight, 
 And the shadows closed about us and we lost them in 
 
 the night. 
 The white sea-horses sniffed the gale and climbed our 
 
 sides for glee, 
 
 And rocked us and caressed us and danced away to lee. 
 Now rest you, men of England, for the fight is lost 
 
 and won, 
 The God of Storms will do the rest, and grimly it was 
 
 done; 
 
io6 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Far north, far north on wings of death those 
 
 scattered galleys steer 
 Towards the rock-bound islands, the Scottish headlands 
 
 drear ; 
 And the fishers of the Orkneys shall reap a golden 
 
 store, 
 And Irish kernes shall strip the dead tossed up their 
 
 rocky shore. 
 Long, long the maids of Aragon may watch and wait 
 
 in vain, 
 
 The boys they sent for dowries will never come again. 
 Deep, fathom deep their lovers sleep beneath an alien 
 
 wave, 
 
 And not a foot of English land, not even for a grave ! 
 But it's Ah for the childless mothers ! and Ah for the 
 
 widowed maids ! 
 And the sea-weed, not the myrtle, twined round their 
 
 rusting blades ! 
 
 But we sailed back in triumph, our banner floating 
 
 free, 
 Our lion-banner in the gale, the masters of the sea ! 
 
A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 107 
 
 The waves did battle for us, the winds were on our 
 
 side, 
 The God of the just and unjust hath humbled Philip's 
 
 pride. 
 Henceforth shall no man bind us : where'er the salt 
 
 tides flow 
 Our sails shall take the sea-breeze, the oaks of England 
 
 go! 
 And every isle shall know them, and every land that 
 
 lies 
 
 Beyond the bars of sunset, the shadows of sunrise. 
 Henceforth, oh Island England, be worthy of thy fate, 
 And let thy new-world children revere thee wise and 
 
 great ! 
 
 Sit throned on either ocean and watch thy sons increase, 
 And keep the seas for freedom and hold the lands for 
 
 peace ! 
 
 Thy fleets shall bear the harvest from all thy daughter- 
 lands, 
 And o'er thy blue sea-highways the continents join 
 
 hands. 
 But should some new intruder rise to bind the ocean's 
 
 bride, 
 
io8 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Should once thy wave-dominion be questioned or 
 
 denied, 
 Then rouse thee from thy happy dream, go forth and 
 
 be again 
 The England of our hero-sires who broke the might 
 
 of Spain. 
 
109 
 
 THOBAL. 
 
 THERE was bloody work in the border hills, as it drew 
 
 to Easter-tide, 
 And the flag that waved for England was humbled 
 
 there in its pride, 
 
 They were grim familiar tidings, those few dark words 
 
 of doom, 
 For the wide outposts of Empire are marked by the 
 
 lonely tomb j 
 
 There was no new phase in the story, but another 
 
 page writ red, 
 The ambush laid, and the few too few, and the roll of 
 
 English dead ! 
 
 And we doubted not of the duty done, we were sure 
 
 they had died like men, 
 And we knew that the flag of England would float on 
 
 its mast again. 
 
i io SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 But it chanced there were thirty Ghoorkas who were 
 
 marching on their way, 
 With fifty more of the Burman folk that have learned 
 
 the word "obey," 
 
 When the scouts brought in the tidings, and the blood 
 
 lust made them mad, 
 These eighty men of the loyal folk led on by an 
 
 English lad. 
 
 And he did not wait nor waver, he took no count of 
 
 the odds. 
 For he knew that he stood for England in the face of 
 
 the painted gods ; 
 
 Though the hills poured down their thousands, if the 
 
 sturdy pluck held true, 
 He would stand his ground and show them what an 
 
 English lad could do. 
 
 So a week went by in silence, and at last the message 
 
 came, 
 And the eighty men of Thobal had saved the English 
 
 name. 
 
THOBAL. ill 
 
 Then speak, oh mother island, for was it not well 
 
 done? 
 Be proud of thy step-children, and proudest of thy 
 
 son ! 
 
 Once more the world has seen it, far under alien 
 
 skies, 
 The beating heart of England is where the old flag 
 
 flies. 
 
 What though they deem thou sleepest, and smile to see 
 
 thee range, 
 And follow wandering voices on many a wind of 
 
 change ; 
 
 What though men say thy gospel is the counter and 
 
 the till, 
 The boys we send to the far world's end have the 
 
 heart of the lion still ; 
 
 The heart of Richard Grenville when he fought with 
 
 the fifty-three, 
 As he bled to death in the battered hull that was lost 
 
 in the Spanish sea ; 
 
112 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 The heart of Walter Raleigh, and the heart of Francis 
 
 Drake, 
 The heart of all the heroes who have lived for 
 
 England's sake ; 
 
 The heart of those who ventured on many a hopeless 
 
 quest, 
 Till their dear divine unreason had joined the east 
 
 and west. 
 
 You boys that man the warships that are the ocean 
 
 queens, 
 Come back and tell your fathers what that name 
 
 of England means. 
 
 Round all the world's wide girdle, in Asia's dark 
 defiles, 
 
 In the yellow sands of torrid lands, in tempest- 
 sundered isles, 
 
 O'er many a lonely station the trebled crosses 
 
 wave, 
 For justice to the weaker, and for freedom to the 
 
 slave ! 
 
THOBAL. 113 
 
 God send her rulers wisdom, the task to tame the 
 
 lands, 
 The peril path of Empire is safe in these young 
 
 hands. 
 
 Though the air be filled with strange new sound, and 
 
 perplexed with doubtful creeds, 
 The boys we send to the far world's end still know 
 
 what England needs. 
 
ii4 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 THE BURIAL OF DRAKE. 
 
 IN the roads off Nombre Dios 
 The last ship lay of ten, 
 
 Against a sullen sunset rose 
 The ridge of Darien : 
 
 For ten that sailed from Plymouth 
 Shall one sail home again, 
 
 For storm and death and sickness 
 Have done the work of Spain. 
 
 So, grave and heavy-hearted, 
 We watched the setting sun, 
 
 For we must leave untenanted 
 The islands that we won. 
 
 The sky was red and angry, 
 The heaving waves were red, 
 
 And in his shotted hammock lay 
 Our great sea-captain dead. 
 
THE BURIAL OF DRAKE. 115 
 
 Defeat nor failure had not cowed 
 
 The will they could not break, 
 But years and toil and fever 
 
 Had wrought on England's Drake. 
 
 His men stood ringed about him, 
 
 And every head was bowed, 
 St. George's red- cross banner 
 
 Shall be his ocean shroud. 
 
 His soul was wide as ocean 
 
 And boundless as the breeze, 
 He left us for inheritance 
 
 The freedom of the seas. 
 
 A faithful servant, serving man, 
 
 He served his Maker best, 
 And as his path was on the waves, 
 
 The waves shall guard his rest. 
 
 We said a brief prayer o'er him, 
 
 And gave him to the deep, 
 Far off by Nombre Dios 
 
 The billows rock his sleep. 
 
 I 2 
 
n6 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 And the clouds of heaven opened 
 For the tropic rain to fall, 
 
 The last day gleam went under, 
 And darkness spread his pall. 
 
THE PASSING OF ODIN. 
 (The Cradle of the Race.) 
 
 THIS song was borne on the north wind's wings, a grim 
 
 old riddle of rhyme, 
 From the edge of the outer silence, a song of the 
 
 night of time 
 
 A song unsung in the runes of old, for bards save 
 
 him there were none, 
 In the day of the passing of Odin, when his work in 
 
 the world was done. 
 
 He had led his folk from a ravished land, a nation 
 
 haggard and few, 
 With age-long battle and wandering years, to a shore 
 
 that no man knew ; 
 
 Where fenced by the shield of winter, and lit by a 
 
 frosty moon, 
 The passion of earth had left untried the land of the 
 
 sunless noon : y^' 
 
ii8 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 And there he had stayed his people, the rocks of 
 
 the fiords for home, 
 Braced strong by the battle of nature, and stern as the 
 
 wind and the foam. 
 
 So they tamed the wild for their portion, they slew the 
 
 seal in the wave, 
 They fought the wolf in his mountain lair, and they 
 
 tracked the bear to his cave ; 
 
 While he built them ships, and he forged them swords, 
 
 and there by the misty tide 
 In the simple shadow of Odin's law they grew and 
 
 they multiplied ; 
 
 And the light came back to their hungry eyes, their 
 
 lips were retuned to mirth, 
 And they prospered there in the sea-born world, as 
 
 the years rolled over the earth. 
 
 Now it fell at the death of autumn, when the suns 
 
 hung low in the skies, 
 That his word went forth to the people, and they came 
 
 to the Wise of the Wise. 
 
THE PASSING OF ODIN. 119 
 
 The clouds were big with the early snow and the bode 
 
 of a storm to be, 
 And he led them down when the short day died to 
 
 the edge of the throbbing sea : 
 
 A keen wind blew from the mountain land, it howled 
 
 through the clefts and caves, 
 It groaned in the fir, and it sighed in the birch, and 
 
 it died with a wail in the waves ; 
 
 And he took his stand in the dragon ship, on the deck 
 
 by the pine-stem mast, 
 While it strained on the twisted hawser, and shook in 
 
 the seaward blast ; 
 
 But the folk drew round in a circle, the flickering 
 
 torch struck red 
 On their strong lithe limbs, on the sea-blue eyes, on 
 
 the fur-capped fair-haired head : 
 
 Then over the wave and wind at war his voice rose 
 
 steady and strong, 
 Rose winged with a passion of earnest to the lilt of a 
 
 saga-song. 
 
120 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " It has come, it has come, my people, with the first 
 
 few flakes of the snow, 
 The snow of the seventy winters, and the day that I 
 
 must go ! 
 
 " Too long, too long, oh my people, the souls of my 
 
 swordsmen wait 
 Till I come to my home in Asgard, where they sit by 
 
 the waiting-gate : 
 
 " The task is done and the years are told I may bide 
 
 in the worldly ways, 
 And the laws are all recorded to last till the end of 
 
 days. 
 
 " But before I am gone, my people, give ear to the 
 
 word of sooth, 
 And treasure it up for the after-time if ever I told you 
 
 truth ! 
 
 " The rocks shall be your cradle, ye shall ride unscared 
 
 on the waves, 
 The sword shall be your language, and the winds shall 
 
 be your slaves, 
 
THE PASSING OF ODIN. 121 
 
 " Till the sons of your sons grow round you like the 
 
 leaves of the forest tree, 
 Like the stars of the night in number, like the shingles 
 
 under the sea. 
 
 " Till the land grows straight for the tale of them, 
 
 then the sign is, ye shall know, 
 When they draw the sword on each other, and hunger 
 
 comes with the snow. 
 
 "Lo, I see far down in the future three blood-red 
 
 ships of the North, 
 With the men and the maids of my people put out 
 
 from the open forth ; 
 
 " Three ships that the wind shall sever, borne each to 
 
 a different strand, 
 One to the east, and one to the west, and one to the 
 
 middle-land. 
 
 " The tide of their might shall urge them, as the tide 
 
 sweeps up the fiord 
 They shall shriek my name for a battle-cry, and shall 
 
 write my name on the sword j 
 
122 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " For the lust of battle is on them, the sea's blue light 
 
 in their eyes, 
 As the blast of the snow-wind bears them away to the 
 
 gentler skies, 
 
 " There shall no man stand before them, when they 
 
 march in the might of strength, 
 And earth shall shudder and know them through the 
 
 whote of her breadth and length ; 
 
 '" Till for every rood of the land we lost she shall 
 
 yield them a hundred-fold : 
 For every head that was humbled once shall be ten 
 
 heads crowned with gold. 
 
 "The south shall bow before them, and the west 
 
 acclaim them lords, 
 The east shall quake at the painted ships and the men 
 
 of the wintry fiords ; 
 
 " They shall sway undreamed dominions by the salt of 
 
 an unknown wave, 
 And every shore that the ocean wets be the portion of 
 
 my brave. 
 
THE PASSING OF ODIN. 123 
 
 " Lo, this is the sooth of Odin, and the rest is dark 
 
 to show, 
 For the Norns spin on in silence, but the after-time 
 
 shall know. 
 
 " And now, farewell, oh my people, keep all my words 
 
 in your heart, 
 For the seventy years are numbered, and the time has 
 
 come to part ; 
 
 " Farewell, for the wind blows seaward, and the snow- 
 flakes fret and fall, 
 
 In the day foredoomed by the waiting-gate I will hear 
 my children call." 
 
 And when he had ended speaking, he clutched at his 
 
 battle brand 
 And waved it round in the torchlight, for the might 
 
 was still in his hand, 
 
 And swift through the lungs and breast-bone he drave 
 
 it with might and main, 
 And snatched it forth with a mystic cry to ravin it 
 
 through again ; 
 
124 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 While an awe fell over the people as they stared with 
 
 abated breath, 
 For the weird of words, and the wound he made, and 
 
 the riddle of life in death. 
 
 So nine times gashed he his breast and side, and every 
 
 wound was a span, 
 And the first, or the last, or the least of them had been 
 
 death to a common man ; 
 
 But erect stood he till the thrice-third stroke, then he 
 
 left the brand in his side, 
 And slipped the knot of the gathered sail as he fell on 
 
 the deck and died : 
 
 While a wail went up from a thousand lips, that hung 
 
 in the mountain cleft, 
 And shuddered away in the echoes, the wail of his 
 
 folk bereft ; 
 
 While ever the wave grew wilder, and ever the wind 
 
 more loud, 
 And the white snow-flakes came swirling, the stars 
 
 went out in the cloud ; 
 
THE PASSING OF ODIN. 125 
 
 While the stout ship strained at the twisted hemp, till 
 it snapped like a thread in the blast, 
 
 And away with a bound in the night and storm the 
 shadow of Odin passed. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 TO BEATRICE. 
 
 Incomminciai : Madonna, mia bisogna 
 Voi conoscete, e cio ch'adessa & buono. 
 
 Purg. xxxiii. 
 
 ANGEL and blessed spirit ! where thou art 
 
 In the far silence, for a little while 
 
 Turn back thine eyes upon our darkling sphere, 
 
 Forego the glory for a little while, 
 
 And see and hear and say if I do well. 
 
 Angel and blessed spirit ! lo, thine eyes 
 
 Are opened, seeing all things through and through. 
 
 Was not the longing of my whole life drawn 
 
 To one star's light so peerless and so pure 
 
 It might not linger with the world too long ? 
 
130 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 And in that star the worshipped and unwon 
 I had my earthly gladness, unallured 
 By meaner lusts and longings, till it passed 
 Back to the radiance by whose grace it grew 
 Beyond the gulf that severs life and death. 
 
 Yet, if his star went down behind the sea 
 
 And left the dark night poorer, shall he steer 
 
 Starless and guideless on a dreary deep, 
 
 Forego all solace for one star's eclipse, 
 
 Who needs must traverse the great wave of time ? 
 
 Angel and blessed spirit ! where thou art 
 Safe in the rose's heart of Paradise, 
 None thirsts for love or kinship any more, 
 But ever heart in heart as hand in hand 
 The saints are sistered in a loftier love. 
 
 But we, whose path is still to run below 
 By darker roads and stormy, dost thou say 
 Relenting to the human need ? must make 
 Best use of all earth's uses, and hold fast 
 What help we may of laughter and of love. 
 
TO BEATRICE. 131 
 
 I knew a summit that I might not climb, 
 A height too holy for a heart like mine, 
 Unreached indeed, but not unreachable, 
 An earthly linked to an ideal love, 
 A mountain tapering to a star. 
 
 Angel and blessed spirit ! bid me drink 
 The cup of life, and for the rest trust God, 
 That he who showed the blossom ere it blew 
 Keeps somewhere still the promised fruit, no less 
 That other leaves presumed upon the bough. 
 
 For there is that within me cries aloud, 
 
 For joy, for love, resents its solitude ; 
 
 The live man's blood within me will not freeze 
 
 Into the cold ideal, such excess 
 
 Of life He gave, who gives as best him seems. 
 
 How should I do without the human hope 
 Who have one life to venture, how renounce 
 The children's laughter and the clinging hands 
 The centred sympathy that heals a hurt, 
 
 The little things that make the great things prized ? 
 
 K 2 
 
132 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Oh you that taught the possible of God, 
 The soul's love soaring out of earthly reach, 
 Suffer the heart's love, that I may not lose 
 All in a vain high longing, and go down 
 With life's life frozen from its debt and due ! 
 
 So, since I take this jewel to my heart, 
 To fill the longing that I would not lack, 
 Bless thou the bond, and still, so blessing be, 
 Because my dream was higher than my hope, 
 An inspiration, and perchance a prayer. 
 
 1889. 
 
1 33 
 
 HERBSTGEFUHL. 
 
 You are his, his only, all through, and through, 
 
 And the rest was long ago, 
 There is nothing done that I would undo, 
 
 Who believe you happy so. 
 
 Your years are full, there is no beyond, 
 
 You drift on a gentle stream, 
 And the children's eyes are a better bond 
 
 Than the old uneasy dream. 
 
 But it may be at times when the sun goes down 
 
 In a certain dip to the west, 
 In the autumn time, when the fields are brown, 
 
 When the wind goes through the nest, 
 
 When the year is tired of its green display, 
 One wandering thought may be, 
 
 When the heart is tuned to the autumn grey, 
 Goes over the world to me ; 
 
134 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 And I think you muse, for a moment's space, 
 
 Had it all been otherwise, 
 Till a tender thought for a vanished face 
 
 Comes back on the dreaming eyes ; 
 
 And those are my moments, mine, in the hush 
 
 I win you a little while, 
 And now and again in the rosy blush 
 
 I have seen the olden smile. 
 
 Where I walk alone in the mist and doubt, 
 
 It was kind, dear heart, to dare 
 In the autumn eve, in the world 'with out, 
 
 To come and see how I fare ; 
 
 It was kind, dear heart, it was worthy of you, 
 When the lights burn bright within ! 
 
 For what has a face like yours to do 
 With trouble and life and sin ! 
 
 Turn back, sweet face, from the window-ledge, 
 Turn back, for the children call. 
 
 The sun goes down on the ocean's edge, 
 And once more the shadows fall. 
 
135 
 
 INVOCATION. 
 
 COME down to the spirit garden 
 That I made in my soul for you ! 
 
 By the path where the ghostly roses 
 Are wet with the moony dew. 
 
 Step over the sand of silver, 
 
 Close down to the waveless sea ! 
 
 Not yet, not yet is the white sail set 
 Of the ship that makes us free. 
 
 But I know you know I am waiting 
 With my face to the moonlit sea, 
 
 And your eyes are wan, for the soul is gone 
 To walk on the sands with me. 
 
 So far you are, yet by moon and star 
 I may stand with your hand in mine, 
 
 When none is aware of our meeting, 
 And the silence gives no sign, 
 
I 3 6 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 For it needs not a word or a whisper 
 When the voice is a beating heart, 
 
 And hand in hand on the ghostly sand 
 We smile at the seas that part. 
 
137 
 
 THE PRINCESS AT THE WINDOW. 
 
 (A Picture.) 
 1790. 
 
 I WISH just once I could lay aside 
 
 These robes, run down on my little feet 
 
 Through the palace gate, where the roads divide, 
 Quite unobserved to the crowded street, 
 
 Where the plain folk walk and the world is wide. 
 
 I wonder how much of their life I miss. 
 
 I think I never was quite a child, 
 As the children are that they bring to kiss ; 
 
 I wonder if I shall grow reconciled 
 To a life that is ever and only this. 
 
 Just seventeen, when they bade me wed I 
 
 My grave young Duke who has won the prize, 
 
 He is brave and honest, and all is said 
 But if this is the meaning of love, what lies 
 
 Are all the poems I ever read 1 
 
138 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 I have never in all my years run free 
 
 In the dear green woods, on the mountain side ; 
 I never have been alone with the sea, 
 
 There was only one day, when my mother died, 
 That I had my way, and they let me be. 
 
 But ever the bows and the bending dames ! 
 
 And my ladies who wait in the ante-room, 
 Where the grim forefathers stare from their frames, 
 
 And the glitter of light is full of gloom, 
 And the pomp and the pride of it only names. 
 
 When I walk to-night in the palace show, 
 And the world on : tip-toe crowds to see, 
 
 I shall muse to myself, could you only know, 
 I think you need none of you envy me, 
 
 As I watch the faces along the row. 
 
 My father the king, with his stately grace, 
 Will bend from the step of the throne above 
 
 To print a kiss on the upturned face ; 
 
 And the people will stare at the royal love, 
 
 And feel us near to their common-place. 
 
THE PRINCESS AT THE WINDOW. 139 
 
 But I shall sit in the right-hand seat, 
 
 And smile my welcome and play my part, 
 
 And words will mingle and eyes will meet, 
 But I shall not get near one human heart 
 
 To be quite quite sure of its beat. 
 
 Just now we drove through the public square, 
 There was one that played on a harp, and one, 
 
 A sweet young child with the wind in her hair, 
 And she sang as a bird sings out in the sun, 
 
 While the crowd forsook her for us to stare. 
 
 And I thought to myself as I heard her sing, 
 How never for her can the days be long, 
 
 Do the hours drag with a trailing wing, 
 
 Though the feet be weary and sad the song, 
 
 And I almost envied that homeless thing. 
 
 Oh you with the hate in your heart grown blind, 
 Who would strike us down from our place above, 
 
 I wish you could read what I have in my mind, 
 And how hungry I am for a little love 
 
 And the human touch with my kind ! 
 
1 4 o MISCELLANEOUS FOE MS. 
 
 FOR A GRAVE. 
 
 PANSIES first and violets blue, 
 While our thought is full of you, 
 While they name you soft and low, 
 Lest the heart should overflow. 
 
 Roses in a little while, 
 \Vhen we learn again to smile, 
 \Vhen our sorrow finds relief 
 In the sympathy of grief. 
 
 Lilies last in later years, 
 After time has dried our tears, 
 Such as brother Lippo paints 
 In the hands of happy saints. 
 
A PARTING. 
 
 THE light was dim, and she and I 
 Alone as in the days gone by ; 
 The firelight played about her hair, 
 And from the old familiar chair 
 I watched her sitting at my feet; 
 The rain was dripping in the street. 
 
 " Now let your hand rest in my hand, 
 
 The quicker so to understand, 
 
 And let your eyes look through and through 
 
 These eyes that look their last on you, 
 
 And tell me if I fail in aught 
 
 To read the fashion of your thought. 
 
 " Between the summer and the spring 
 Young birds begin to feel the wing, 
 And when the summer's in the sky 
 The little wings are strong to fly : 
 With you 'tis hardly summer yet, 
 I was at summer ere we met. 
 
142 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 " Your lot was cast in happy lines, 
 You had the instinct which divines 
 The music of the world, the mirth 
 Such eager hearts require of earth, 
 The ready tears for human things, 
 The dream, the hope, the want of wings. 
 
 " And yet your years were slow to find 
 The sunward path your soul divined ; 
 A tide of life was surging round, 
 Whose voice was but an empty sound, 
 And these would hardly realize 
 The vision of your dreaming eyes. 
 
 " And then I chanced to come your way, 
 
 To please some destiny at play; 
 
 And seemed like one who had the key 
 
 To dreamlands you had longed to see ; 
 
 You wanted what I had to give, 
 
 You longed to know, to feel, to live. 
 
 " So I became a whole year long 
 The echo of your morning song ; 
 
A PARTING. 143 
 
 With me you dipped in hidden lore 
 Of sage and singer gone before, 
 And, as a child, so hand in hand 
 I led you into fairyland. 
 
 " I told you all I hoped of men, 
 The task of heroes now, and then, 
 While step by step, as poets can, 
 I built you the ideal man, 
 And, building, taught you first to see 
 How far away he was from me." 
 
 And there I stopped a moment's space 
 And looked into the wistful face, 
 And something like a little sigh 
 Was all she gave me for reply ; 
 She did not draw away her hand, 
 I could not choose but understand. 
 
 " Child, what you most esteemed in me 
 Was never there in due degree ; 
 It was the faith in you constrained, 
 And either gave what either gained ; 
 Since you believed me pure and true, 
 I tried to be so, dear, for you. 
 
I 4 4 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 " But now that love has found you out, 
 Your heart is tortured with a doubt ; 
 Because at last you've learned to reach 
 A secret that I did not teach, 
 You tremble lest perchance you guess 
 The reason of my faithfulness. 
 
 " And so, because I go to-day 
 
 To lands and peoples far away, 
 
 And years might pass in doubt and pain 
 
 Before our footsteps meet again, 
 
 I came back to acquit you, dear, 
 Of any shade of doubt or fear : 
 
 II Because I found a kindred soul, 
 A straining for a common goal, 
 
 It was my joy to taste with you 
 Those heather scents and mountain dew, 
 To give the best I had to give, 
 And learn the better how to live : 
 
 " Another hand will guide you now, 
 But if you reach our mountain brow, 
 
A PARTING. 145 
 
 Still keep a corner in your mind 
 For one who, maybe, lags behind, 
 Who found it hard indeed to part, 
 But, still could leave you, whole of heart." 
 
 She rose, and bent her brow to kiss, 
 
 And there I sealed the truth of this, 
 
 One last look more, she turned and smiled, 
 
 It was the woman, not the child ; 
 
 The rain was falling fast outside : 
 
 God will forgive me if I lied ! 
 
 1889. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 ',. 2 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Page 19. THERMOPYLAE. 
 
 The pass of Thermopylae, in the strict sense of the word, 
 exists no longer. The whole configuration of the land has 
 changed. The alluvial deposits of ihe Spercheius, which enters 
 the Maliac gulf from the valley dividing Oeta from Othrys, 
 have created a marshy plain of several square miles in extent, 
 where once the sea came up in shallows to the precipitous 
 mountain side, leaving only the narrow road, some fifty feet in 
 breadth, across which ran the wall whence the Greeks sallied 
 out for the first two days' battle. The sulphur springs, which 
 gave the place its name, have also evidently changed their 
 course repeatedly, and their spreading waters have covered with 
 a thick and ever-increasing saline deposit the exact spot where 
 the fighting took place. It is still a wild and desolate scene. 
 Crane and heron flap their dusky wings over miles of waving 
 rushes between the rock wall and the sea ; the peaks of 
 Callidromus break the blue sky, whence the fierce sun burns 
 down on the yellow crystal-crusted floor, over which the 
 shadows of the poising eagles pass. The only sign of human 
 habitation is a ruined mill, and the spirit of solitude seems to 
 haunt the place. From my Journal in Greece. 
 
ISO THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Page 23. DELOS. 
 
 The lesser Deios, the sacred island, is a granite rock rising to 
 a considerable elevation in the central height of Cynthus, which 
 gave its name to the two children of Latona. In the distance, it 
 appeared bare and treeless ; but as we approached, we discovered 
 that it was a very isle of flowers everywhere between the 
 granite boulders were innumerable marigolds and scarlet 
 poppies. Save for the solitary guardian in his hut among the 
 ruins, the island has no regular inhabitants, but a few shepherds 
 from the neighbouring Mykonos come over with their flocks 
 from time to time to pasture and to reap the scanty harvest. 
 .... Half-way up the slope of Cynthus stands the grotto, or 
 to be more exact, the primitive rock temple of the Sun God, 
 probably the oldest place of worship in Greece. Before it lies a 
 wilderness of ruin, the bases and substructions of what must 
 have formed as grand a group of buildings as the world could 
 show : fallen columns, broken cornices, masses of wrought and 
 carven stones piled one upon the other in formless, hopeless 
 confusion ..... The great temple of Apollo still admits of 
 identification, the rest of little more than conjecture. 
 
 From my Journal in Greece. 
 
 33- T/ENARON. 
 
 "A race as wild as nature where they dwell." 
 
 The Mainotes who occupy the rocky promontory, which is in 
 reality a prolongation of the range of Taygetus, terminating 
 in Cape Matapan, boast that in all the vicissitudes through 
 which the Morea has passed they alone have never submitted 
 to a foreign domination. They claim to be the descendants of 
 the Spartans of old, and are most probably the direct descendants 
 of the Perioeci of Lakonia, who occupied the poorer lands 
 round the coasts, and who were by origin Hellenes, settled there 
 
NOTES. 151 
 
 before the Dorian invasion. They are quite different in physical 
 type from their neighbours, and their language abounds in 
 Doricisms, and is closely akin to that spoken by the Dorian 
 Sphakiotes in the mountains of Crete. 
 
 It is certain that the various invaders of the Peloponnese have 
 always endeavoured to conciliate the dwellers in the wild 
 promontory, whose pathless mountains and barren plateau 
 would have been very difficult to occupy ; but, nevertheless, 
 they have always been the first to rise against the foreigner. 
 Their land is the bleakest and poorest conceivable, and not 
 calculated to tempt the invader. Nevertheless, they are 
 passionately attached to it, and ever ready to fight in its 
 behalf. Their villages are mere nests of towers loopholed for 
 defence; and the vendetta exists between family and family, 
 between village and village, and among them a greater number 
 of old - world usages are preserved than anywhere else in 
 Greece. They still enjoy exceptional privileges at the hands of the 
 government, such as immunity from taxation, which it would 
 be useless to attempt to collect, and hitherto comparatively few 
 foreigners have visited their desolate but romantic home. 
 
 From my Journal in Greece. 
 
 Page 46. TAN AGRA. 
 
 Of Korinna's poetry no fragment survives ; and all that is 
 known of her is drawn from the account Pausanias has given of 
 his visit to Tanagra. There he saw her portrait, the beauty of 
 which struck him so much that he suggests it was perhaps her 
 grace and charm which won the Theban judges to accord her 
 the prize in the contest of song over their own immortal Pindar. 
 In a little shed in a neighbouring village are a few fragments of 
 sculptured stone and a number of clay coffins from the site of 
 Tanagra. Among them is a gravestone which bears Korinna's 
 
152 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Page 49. THE SONG OF THE KLEPHT. 
 
 The popular poetry of Greece is very comprehensive and rich, 
 and among its most interesting features are the so-called 
 Klephtic ballads, celebrating the exploits of those outlawed 
 mountaineers who throughout the Turkish domination kept the 
 spirit of freedom alive in their rocky fastnesses, whence they 
 maintained an unceasing desultory warfare with the invader. The 
 origin and history of these marauding bands is still somewhat 
 obscure ; but it would appear that while those of the Greek 
 peasantry who submitted to the Mussulman yoke were allowed 
 considerable liberties, and permitted to form a sort of irregular 
 militia, known as the Armatoli, for the defence of privileges 
 originally conceded, others, rejecting all overtures of the 
 conqueror, took to the mountains, and formed themselves into 
 armed bands, carrying on a guerilla warfare against the Turkish 
 governors, and making raids upon the new settlers, not always 
 sparing those of their countrymen who had submitted to the 
 foreigner. These men were known by the appellation of 
 Klephts , a name which, signifying originally robber ; was ere 
 long regarded as a title of distinction. Later, when the Armatoli 
 came into conflict with the Mussulman militia, the distinction 
 between them and the Klephts practically passed away, and 
 it was from their ranks that the foremost fighters in the Hellenic 
 uprising were drawn. The ballads in which their exploits were 
 told were sung by blind beggars at the village fairs at the close 
 of the last and the commencement of the present century, and 
 thus these men of the mountain, whose lives were passed 
 entirely in the open air, moving from range to range where 
 plunder or revenge allured them, became the darling heroes of 
 the popular imagination, which credited them with almost 
 fabulous powers of strength and endurance. 
 
 The Klephts of the continent and the corsairs of the islands 
 
NOTES. 153 
 
 and the coasts were the protest of liberty against a foreign 
 domination, and the voice of the humbler people, glorying in 
 nobilities which other lands and times might question, has 
 painted them with sympathetic indulgence, perhaps not wholly 
 as they were, but rather as they would have had them be. 
 Their indifference to hardships, pain, and death, their loyalty of 
 comradeship, their physical courage, were beyond all question, 
 and the folk -ballads in which their names are preserved are the 
 note of ideality, rising above the actual brutalities and bloodshed 
 which characterized an era of struggle and rebellion. A full 
 account of the Klephts and Klephtic songs may be found in my 
 *' Customs and Lore of Modern Greece." 
 
 The poem included in this volume is not a translation. It 
 embodies the expression of one or two snatches of folk-song in 
 an attempt to convey the savage spirit and rugged picturesque- 
 ness of the popular muse of Greece a hundred years ago. 
 
 Limerly the name given to the mountain rendezvous of the 
 Klephts where they spent the day, setting forth on their raids 
 rather on moonless and cloudy nights in order to escape observa- 
 tion. The etymology of the word is 6\fj ij/jLtpa = the whole day. 
 In such meeting-places on the summits of well-nigh unscalable 
 rocks they would keep their stores of ammunition hidden in caves or 
 rock-fissures, and thither they would bring their plunder and camp 
 secure, spending the day in gymnastic exercises, in practising 
 their aim, or in singing to the sound of a rude mandoline known 
 as the lyra. 
 
 Lidpids. The Liapids are a tribe of Mussulman Albanians. 
 A great number of them took service under Ali, the notorious 
 Pacha of Jannina, and the name was applied by the Greeks and 
 Christian Albanians as a term of contempt to the Mussulman 
 militia generally. 
 
154 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Page 53. ZALONGOS. 
 
 There is no more romantic page in history than that which 
 tells the story of the little mountain commonwealth of Suli, 
 which for so many years defied the authority and repulsed the 
 trained armies of the notorious All Pacha of Jannina. The 
 origin of the Suliotes is somewhat obscure, though a chronicler 
 has professed to trace their history back into the I7th century. 
 The principal families undoubtedly derived their origin from 
 different districts, and although their language was Greek, they 
 seem to have consisted chiefly of Christian Albanians, with a 
 smaller admixture of Greeks, who, flying before the oppression 
 of the Moslem invader, had taken refuge in the almost inacces- 
 sible mountains of Chimari, where they established a patriarchal 
 community, governed by the heads of their families or clans, which 
 were known as pharas. They had neither laws nor law-courts, 
 but the heads of the families acted as arbiters in all disputes, 
 and met in a council, the matter for whose deliberations was 
 almost exclusively war. 
 
 At the time when they became conspicuous in history they 
 possessed four villages in the mountain of Suli, and seven in the 
 plain, the Tetrachorion and the Heptachorion. At one time 
 they also controlled between fifty and sixty subject villages, 
 which were, however, abandoned to their fate in war. The 
 inhabitants of the seven lower villages, on the other hand, 
 being regarded as genuine Suliotes, were allowed, on the com- 
 mencement of hostilities, to retire into the mountain, which is 
 approached by one of the wildest and deepest defiles in all 
 these rugged ranges. In places the way is only practicable on 
 foot along a perilous ledge, high up the vertical side of the 
 mountain of Suli, whence far below, in the gloom of the chasm, 
 the Acheron may be seen falling in cascades over the rocks, but 
 silently, owing to the depth and distance. 
 
NOTES. 155 
 
 The total number of the mountain community never exceeded 
 5,000 souls, and they could not put more than 1,500 fighting 
 men into the field ; and yet with this little force they kept the 
 armies of Ali at bay for a number of years, and inflicted several 
 signal defeats on his trained Albanian troops. They had brought 
 the tactics of the Klephtic warfare to perfection ; from childhood 
 they were trained marksmen, and moved over their wild 
 mountains with the agility of a chamois. The women often 
 fought beside the men, and the many folk-songs which record 
 the exploits of Suli are full of acts of heroism performed by the 
 wives and mothers of the mountaineers. Concealed among the 
 scrub, or hidden behind boulders of rock, they fought with com- 
 parative impunity, and so quick was their eye, that it is said 
 they could fire with deadly effect by night at the flash of their 
 enemies' guns. At the time when Ali, appointed " warden of the 
 passes," was attempting to put down the irregular bands which 
 infested the Pindus, and to consolidate his power in north- 
 western Greece, the Suliotes were led by an ascetic priest or 
 monk, Samuel, who believed himself to be, and was certainly 
 regarded by the mountaineers as an inspired prophet. By his 
 direction they built the fortress of Kiunghi, in the inmost recesses 
 of their mountain, as a store-house for their ammunition and 
 material. It was here in the church that the powder stores 
 were gathered, to which Samuel set fire, immolating himself 
 among the ruins at the close of their eventful story, rather than 
 surrender, to the emissaries of Ali, the keys with which he had 
 been entrusted. 
 
 Towards the close of the last century an expedition upon a 
 large scale was led by Ali in person, to reduce the defiant 
 Suliotes to subjection. But his 15,000 picked Albanians were 
 drawn on by the tactics of the mountaineers far into the rocky 
 defiles, and at a given moment attacked by the Suliote women 
 in front, and simultaneously by an ambush of the men under 
 
156 THE VIOLET CROWN. 
 
 Botzaris and Lambros Tzavellas in flank and rear. A wild panic 
 ensued ; Ali himself fled in terror back to Jannina, and was 
 forced to sue for peace, and yield important concessions. Eight 
 years later the unequal struggle began again. Ali had recourse 
 to every art of treachery and corruption to break up the solidarity 
 of the little commonwealth, and succeeded in gaining over one 
 or two of the more important families. His son Veli, isolating 
 their various strongholds, and attacking them in overwhelming 
 numbers, succeeded in overpowing them one by one after a 
 desperat'e resistance, under the leadership of the young Photos, 
 son of Lambros Tzavellas. The survivors, attacked once more 
 when marching into neutral territory under the capitulation they 
 had forced Ali to agree to, retired to fight a last battle on the 
 heights of Zalongos. It was then that the episode occurred 
 which forms the subject of this poem. 
 
 Kiapha, Avarikos, Samoniva, and Kako-Suli formed the 
 Tetrachorion, to which the fortress of Kiunghi was added later. 
 
 Lidpids see note to the " Song of the Klepht." 
 The Pharas of the Mountain^ the clans or families see 
 above. 
 
 To sit perchance at Byron's door. In the heroic story of 
 Misolonghi, another Botzaris and another Tzavellas will long be 
 remembered. The name of Suliote was still a terror when 
 Byron came for the last time to Greece, and the glorious death 
 of Marco Botzaris at Karpenisi recalled to interest the extra- 
 ordinary exploits of his countrymen some twenty years before. 
 
 Page 67. FOLK-SONGS. 
 
 Charos. Among the most curious survivals of ancient myth is 
 the reappearance of the ferryman of Styx as the angel of death, 
 or rather as the personification of an inexorable law of nature. 
 
NOTES. 157 
 
 The identification of Charon with Thanatos occurs in classical 
 authors more than once ; and as in Homer the father and foun- 
 tain of sacred myth, the boatmen of hell is unknown, it is not 
 impossible that the popular superstition has preserved the direct 
 inheritance of a still older and less complex idea. He is pictured 
 in the folk -poetry as an old man of sorrowful face, immovable to 
 prayer, crafty and jealous, taking swift vengeance on these who 
 defy his power, and glory unduly in their youth and strength. 
 Sometimes he is represented as the direct emissary of the Deity, 
 but he dwells and controls the dead in that dark undefined land 
 so often alluded to in the popular poetry, where the souls of the 
 departed regret the sun and the trees and the fountains, 
 that pagan land of nothingness which here still seems to 
 appeal to the popular mind more powerfully than the promise 
 of heaven or the menace of hell. This subject, with the various 
 aspects of the Charos myth as it exists to-day, is treated 
 exhaustively in my "Customs and Lore of Modern Greece,' 
 chap. iv. 
 
 Page 72. AKROTIRI OF CRETE. 
 
 This barren mountainous peninsula forms one side of Suda 
 Bay. 
 
 Page 80. PENTELIKON. 
 
 The Pentelic mountain was so called from the Attic deme of 
 Pentele, in which it was included. The ancients also spoke of 
 it under the name of Brilettus. On its slopes is the monastery 
 of Mendeli, a hospitable refuge in the great heats of summer. 
 
 The crescent plain. Marathon. 
 
158 SONGS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Page 92. A BALLAD OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 This poem, which was written on the occasion of the Ter- 
 centenary, is far from being put forward in emulation of Lord 
 Macaulay's famous fragment. It is rather meant as a continua- 
 tion of what he unfortunately left uncompleted, and deals with 
 the aspect of things at sea, whereas his poem only tells of what 
 took place on shore. 
 
 Page 129. To BEATRICE. 
 " And since I take \ti\sjewel to my heart." Gemma Donati. 
 
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