Ballades and Verses Vain

THE BARBAROUS BIRD-GODS: A SAVAGE PARABASIS.

[The myth in the "Birds" of Aristophanes, which represents Birds as older
than the Gods, may have been a genuine Greek tradition. The following
lines show how prevalent is the myth among widely severed races. The
Mexican Bird-gods I omit; who can rhyme to Huitzilopochtli?]

The Birds Sing:

We would have you to wit, that on eggs though
we sit, and are spiked on the spit, and are baked
in the pan,
Birds are older by far than your ancestors are, and made
love and made war ere the making of Man!
For when all things were dark, not a glimmer nor spark,
and the world like a barque without rudder or sail
Floated on through the night, 't was a Bird struck a
light, 't was a flash from the bright feather'd Tonatiu's [3]
tail!
Then the Hawk [4] with some dry wood flew up in the
sky, and afar, safe and high, the Hawk lit Sun and
Moon,
And the Birds of the air they rejoiced everywhere, and
they recked not of care that should come on them
soon.
For the Hawk, so they tell, was then known as Pundjel,[5]
and a-musing he fell at the close of the day;
Then he went on the quest, as we thought, of a nest,
with some bark of the best, and a clawful of clay,[6]
And with these did he frame two birds lacking a name,
without feathers (his game was a puzzle to all);
Next around them he fluttered a-dancing, and muttered;
and, lastly, he uttered a magical call:
Then the figures of clay, as they featherless lay, they
leaped up, who but they, and embracing they fell,
And this was the baking of Man, and his making; but
now he's forsaking his Father, Pundjel!
Now these creatures of mire, they kept whining for fire,
and to crown their desire who was found but the
Wren?

To the high heaven he came, from the Sun stole he
flame, and for this has a name in the memory of
men![7]
And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men
brought it through without falter or fail?
Why the Hawk 't was again, and great Indra to men
would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail,
While the Thlinkeet's delight is the Bird of the Night,
the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl.[8]
And who for man's need brought the famed Suttung's
mead? why 't is told in the creed of the Sagamen
strong,
'T was the Eagle god who brought the drink from the
blue, and gave mortals the brew that's the fountain
of song.[9]
Next, who gave men their laws? and what reason or
cause the young brave overawes when in need of a
squaw,
Till he thinks it a shame to wed one of his name, and
his conduct you blame if he thus breaks the law?
For you still hold it wrong if a lubra[10] belong to the
self-same kobong[11] that is Father of you,
To take her as a bride to your ebony side; nay, you
give her a wide berth; quite right of you, too.
For her father, you know, is your father, the Crow, and
no blessing but woe from the wedding would spring.
Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gum
shade, and were strictly obeyed, when the Crow was
the King.[12]
Thus on Earth's little ball to the Birds you owe all, yet
your gratitude's small for the favours they've done,
And their feathers you pill, and you eat them at will,
yes, you plunder and kill the bright birds one by
one;
There 's a price on their head, and the Dodo is dead,
and the Moa has fled from the sight of the sun!

[1] Pronounced "Maudlin."

[2]

Vous y verrez, belle Julie,
Que ce chapeau tout maltraité
Fut, dans un instant de folie,
Par les Grâces même invente.

"À Julie." Essais en Prose et en Vers, par Joseph Lisle; Paris, An. V. de la République.

[3] Tonatiu, the Thunder Bird; well known to the Dacotahs and Zulus.

[4] The Hawk, in the myth of the Galinameros of Central California, lit up the Sun.

[5] Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, is the demiurge and "culture-hero" of several Australian tribes.

[6] The Creation of Man is thus described by the Australians.

[7] In Andaman, Thlinkeet, Melanesian, and other myths, a Bird is the Prometheus Purphoros; in Normandy this part is played by the Wren.

[8] Yehl: the Raven God of the Thlinkeets.

[9] Indra stole Soma as a Hawk and as a Quail. For Odin's feat as a Bird, see Bragi's Telling in the Younger Edda.

[10] Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, gave Australians their marriage laws.

[11] Lubra, a woman; kobong, "totem"; or, to please Mr. Max Müller, "otem."

[12] The Crow was the Hawk's rival.

POST HOMERICA.

HESPEROTHEN.

By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phæacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the Vanity of Melancholy. And by the land of Phæacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe's Isle, the places of bodily delights, whereof men, falling aweary attain to Eld, and to the darkness of that age. Which thing Master Françoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the Isle of the Macræones.

THE SEEKERS FOR PHÆACIA.

There is a land in the remotest day,
Where the soft night is born, and sunset dies;
The eastern shores see faint tides fade away,
That wash the lands where laughter, tears, and sighs,
Make life,—the lands beneath the blue of common, skies.

But in the west is a mysterious sea,
(What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?)
With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be,
With islands where a Goddess walks alone,
And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moan.

Eastward the human cares of house and home,
Cities, and ships, and unknown Gods, and loves;
Westward, strange maidens fairer than the foam,
And lawless lives of men, and haunted groves,
Wherein a God may dwell, and where the Dryad roves.

The Gods are careless of the days and death
Of toilsome men, beyond the western seas;
The Gods are heedless of their painful breath,
And love them not, for they are not as these;
But in the golden west they live and lie at ease.

Yet the Phæacians well they love, who live
At the light's limit, passing careless hours,
Most like the Gods; and they have gifts to give,
Even wine, and fountains musical, and flowers,
And song, and if they will, swift ships, and magic powers.

It is a quiet midland; in the cool
Of twilight comes the God, though no man prayed,
To watch the maids and young men beautiful
Dance, and they see him, and are not afraid,
For they are near of kin to Gods, and undismayed.

Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nigh
The dreamy isles that the Immortals keep!
But with a mist they hide them wondrously,
And far the path and dim to where they sleep,—
The loved, the shadowy lands along the shadowy deep.

THE DEPARTURE FROM PHÆACIA.

THE PHÆACIANS.

Why from the dreamy meadows,
More fair than any dream,
Why will you seek the shadows
Beyond the ocean stream?

Through straits of storm and peril,
Through firths unsailed before,
Why make you for the sterile,
The dark Kimmerian shore?

There no bright streams are flowing,
There day and night are one,
No harvest time, no sowing,
No sight of any sun;

No sound of song or tabor,
No dance shall greet you there;
No noise of mortal labour,
Breaks on the blind chill air.

Are ours not happy places,
Where Gods with mortals trod?
Saw not our sires the faces
Of many a present God?

THE SEEKERS.

Nay, now no God comes hither,
In shape that men may see;
They fare we know not whither,
We know not what they be.

Yea, though the sunset lingers
Far in your fairy glades,
Though yours the sweetest singers,
Though yours the kindest maids,

Yet here be the true shadows,
Here in the doubtful light;
Amid the dreamy meadows
No shadow haunts the night.

We seek a city splendid,
With light beyond the sun;
Or lands where dreams are ended,
And works and days are done.

A BALLAD OF DEPARTURE.[1]

Fair white bird, what song art thou singing
In wintry weather of lands o'er sea?
Dear white bird, what way art thou winging,
Where no grass grows, and no green tree ?

I looked at the far off fields and grey,
There grew no tree but the cypress tree,
That bears sad fruits with the flowers of May,
And whoso looks on it, woe is he.

And whoso eats of the fruit thereof
Has no more sorrow, and no more love;
And who sets the same in his garden stead,
In a little space he is waste and dead.

We seek a city splendid,
With light beyond the sun;
Or lands where dreams are ended,
And works and days are done.

THEY HEAR THE SIRENS FOR THE SECOND TIME.

The weary sails a moment slept,
The oars were silent for a space,
As past Hesperian shores we swept,
That were as a remembered face
Seen after lapse of hopeless years,
In Hades, when the shadows meet,
Dim through the mist of many tears,
And strange, and though a shadow, sweet.

So seemed the half-remembered shore,
That slumbered, mirrored in the blue,
With havens where we touched of yore,
And ports that over well we knew.
Then broke the calm before a breeze
That sought the secret of the west;
And listless all we swept the seas
Towards the Islands of the Blest.

Beside a golden sanded bay
We saw the Sirens, very fair
The flowery hill whereon they lay,
The flowers set upon their hair.
Their old sweet song came down the wind.
Remembered music waxing strong,
Ah now no need of cords to bind,
No need had we of Orphic song.

It once had seemed a little thing,
To lay our lives down at their feet,
That dying we might hear them sing,
And dying see their faces sweet;
But now, we glanced, and passing by,
No care had we to tarry long;
Faint hope, and rest, and memory
Were more than any Siren's song.

CIRCE'S ISLE REVISITED.

Ah, Circe, Circe! in the wood we cried;
Ah, Circe, Circe! but no voice replied;
No voice from bowers o'ergrown and ruinous
As fallen rocks upon the mountain side.

There was no sound of singing in the air;
Faded or fled the maidens that were fair,
No more for sorrow or joy were seen of us,
No light of laughing eyes, or floating hair.

The perfume, and the music, and the flame
Had passed away; the memory of shame
Alone abode, and stings of faint desire,
And pulses of vague quiet went and came.

Ah, Circe! in thy sad changed fairy place,
Our dead Youth came and looked on us a space,
With drooping wings, and eyes of faded fire,
And wasted hair about a weary face.

Why had we ever sought the magic isle
That seemed so happy in the days erewhile?
Why did we ever leave it, where we met
A world of happy wonders in one smile?

Back to the westward and the waning light
We turned, we fled; the solitude of night
Was better than the infinite regret,
In fallen places of our dead delight.

THE LIMIT OF LANDS.

Between the circling ocean sea
And the poplars of Persephone
There lies a strip of barren sand,
Flecked with the sea's last spray, and strown
With waste leaves of the poplars, blown
From gardens of the shadow land.

With altars of old sacrifice
The shore is set, in mournful wise
The mists upon the ocean brood;
Between the water and the air
The clouds are born that float and fare
Between the water and the wood.

Upon the grey sea never sail
Of mortals passed within our hail,
Where the last weak waves faint and flow;
We heard within the poplar pale
The murmur of a doubtful wail
Of voices loved so long ago.

We scarce had care to die or live,
We had no honey cake to give,
No wine of sacrifice to shed;
There lies no new path over sea,
And now we know how faint they be,
The feasts and voices of the Dead.

Ah, flowers and dance! ah, sun and snow!
Glad life, sad life we did forego
To dream of quietness and rest;
Ah, would the fleet sweet roses here
Poured light and perfume through the drear
Pale year, and wan land of the west.

Sad youth, that let the spring go by
Because the spring is swift to fly,
Sad youth, that feared to mourn or love,
Behold how sadder far is this,
To know that rest is nowise bliss,
And darkness is the end thereof.

THE SHADE OF HELEN.

Some say that Helen went never to Troy, but abode in
Egypt; for the Gods, having made in her semblance a
woman out of clouds and shadows, sent the same to be
wife to Paris. For this shadow then the Greeks and
Trojans slew each other.

(Written in the Pyrenees.)

Why from the quiet hollows of the hills,
And extreme meeting place of light and shade,
Wherein soft rains fell slowly, and became
Clouds among sister clouds, where fair spent beams
And dying glories of the sun would dwell,'
Why have they whom I know not, nor may know,
Strange hands, unseen and ruthless, fashioned me,
And borne me from the silent shadowy hills,
Hither, to noise and glow of alien life,
To harsh and clamorous swords, and sound of war?
One speaks unto me words that would be sweet,
Made harsh, made keen with love that knows me not,
And some strange force, within me or around,

Makes answer, kiss for kiss, and sigh for sigh,
And somewhere there is fever in the halls,
That troubles me, for no such trouble came
To vex the cool far hollows of the hills.

The foolish folk crowd round me, and they cry,
That house, and wife, and lands, and all Troy town,
Are little to lose, if they may hold me here,
And see me flit, a pale and silent shade,

Among the streets bereft, and helpless shrines.
At other hours another life seems mine,
Where one great river runs unswollen of rain,
By pyramids of unremembered kings,
And homes of men obedient to the Dead.
There dark and quiet faces come and go
Around me, then again the shriek of arms,
And all the turmoil of the Ilian men.
What are they? even shadows such as I.
What make they? Even this—the sport of Gods—
The sport of Gods, however free they seem.
Ah would the game were ended, and the light,
The blinding light, and all too mighty suns,
Withdrawn, and I once more with sister shades,
Unloved, forgotten, mingled with the mist,
Dwelt in the hollows of the shadowy hills.

PISIDICÊ.

The incident is from the Love Stories of Parthenius,
who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the
expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an island
allied with Troy.

The daughter of the Lesbian king
Within her bower she watched the war,
Far off she heard the arrows ring,
The smitten harness ring afar;
And, fighting from the foremost car,
Saw one that smote where all must flee;
More fair than the Immortals are
He seemed to fair Pisidicê!

She saw, she loved him, and her heart
Before Achilles, Peleus' son,
Threw all its guarded gates apart,
A maiden fortress lightly won!
And, ere that day of fight was done,
No more of land or faith recked she,
But joyed in her new life begun,—
Her life of love, Pisidicê!

She took a gift into her hand,
As one that had a boon to crave;
She stole across the ruined land
Where lay the dead without a grave,
And to Achilles' hand she gave
Her gift, the secret postern's key.
"To-morrow let me be thy slave!"
Moaned to her love Pisidicê.

Ere dawn the Argives' clarion call
Rang down Methymna's burning street;
They slew the sleeping warriors all,
They drove the women to the fleet,
Save one, that to Achilles' feet
Clung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he:
"For her no doom but death is meet."
And there men stoned Pisidicê.

In havens of that haunted coast,
Amid the myrtles of the shore,
The moon sees many a maiden ghost,—
Love's outcast now and evermore.
The silence hears the shades deplore
Their hour of dear-bought love; but thee
The waves lull, 'neath thine olives hoar,
To dreamless rest, Pisidicê!

[1] From the Romaic.

SONNETS.

THE ODYSSEY.

As one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine,
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,—
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

TWO SONNETS OF THE SIRENS.

"Les Sirènes estoient tant intimes amies et fidelles
compagnes de Proserpine, qu'elles estoient toujours
ensemble. Esmues du juste deuil de la perte de leur
chère compagne, et enuyées jusques au desespoir,
elles s'arrestèrent à la mer Sicilienne, où par leurs
chants elles attiroient les navigans, mais l'unique
fin de la volupté de leur musique est la Mort."
—Pontus de Tyard—1570.

I.

The Sirens once were maidens innocent
That through the water-meads with Proserpine
Plucked no fire-hearted flowers, but were content
Cool fritillaries and flag-flowers to twine,
With lilies woven and with wet woodbine;
Till forth to seek Ætnæan buds they went,
And their kind lady from their choir was rent
By Hades, down the irremeable decline.
And they have sought her all the wide world through,
Till many years, and wisdom, and much wrong,
Have filled and changed their song, and o'er the blue
Rings deadly sweet the magic of the song,
And whoso hears must listen till he die
Far on the flowery shores of Sicily.

II.

So is it with this singing art of ours,
That once with maids went, maidenlike, and played
With woven dances in the poplar-shade,
And all her song was but of lady's bowers
And the returning swallows, and spring-flowers,
Till forth to seek a shadow-queen she strayed,
A shadowy land; and now hath overweighed
Her singing chaplet with the snow and showers.
And running rivers for the bitter brine
She left, and by the margin of life's sea
Sings, and her song is full of the sea's moan,
And wild with dread, and love of Proserpine;
And whoso once has listened to her, he
His whole life long is slave to her alone.

LOVE'S EASTER.

SONNET.

Love died here
Long ago;
O'er his bier,
Lying low,
Poppies throw;
Shed no tear;
Year by year,
Roses blow!

Year by year,
Adon—dear
To Love's Queen—
Does not die!
Wakes when green
May is nigh!

TWILIGHT.

SONNET.

(AFTER RICHEPIN.)

Light has flown!
Through the grey
The wind's way
The sea's moan
Sound alone!
For the day
These repay
And atone!

Scarce I know,
Listening so
To the streams
Of the sea,
If old dreams
Sing to me!

BION.

The wail of Moschus on the mountains crying
The Muses heard, and loved it long ago;
They heard the hollows of the hills replying,
They heard the weeping water's overflow;
They winged the sacred strain—the song undying,
The song that all about the world must go,—
When poets for a poet dead are sighing,
The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.

And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping
For Adonais by the summer sea,
The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping
Far from "the forest ground called Thessaly"),—
These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping,
And are but echoes of the moan for thee.

SAN TERENZO.

(The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before the
wreck of the Don Juan.)

Mid April seemed like some November day,
When through the glassy waters, dull as lead,
Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead,
Slipped down the curved shores of the Spezian bay,
Rounded a point,—and San Terenzo lay
Before us, that gay village, yellow and red,
With walls that covered Shelley's homeless head,—His
house, a place deserted, bleak and grey.

The waves broke on the door-step; fishermen
Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again.
Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free,
When suddenly the forest glades were stirred
With waving pinions, and a great sea bird
Flew forth, like Shelley's spirit, to the sea!

NATURAL THEOLOGY.

ἐπει καὶ τοῡτον ὀΐομαι ἀθανατοισιν
ἔυχεσται· Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ' ἄνθρωποι.
OD. III. 47.

"Once Cagn was like a father, kind and good,
But He was spoiled by fighting many things;
He wars upon the lions in the wood,
And breaks the Thunder-bird's tremendous wings;
But still we cry to Him,—We are thy brood—
O Cagn, be merciful! and us He brings
To herds of elands, and great store of food,
And in the desert opens water-springs."

So Qing, King Nqsha's Bushman hunter, spoke,
Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair,
When all were weary, and soft clouds of smoke
Were fading, fragrant, in the twilit air:
And suddenly in each man's heart there woke
A pang, a sacred memory of prayer.

HOMER.

Homer, thy song men liken to the sea,
With all the notes of music in its tone,
With tides that wash the dim dominion
Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee
Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me
Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown
That glasses Egypt's temples overthrown
In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.

No wiser we than men of heretofore
To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;
Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,
As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast
His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore
Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.

RONSARD.

Master, I see thee with the locks of grey,
Crowned by the Muses with the laurel-wreath;
I see the roses hiding underneath,
Cassandra's gift; she was less dear than they.
Thou, Master, first hast roused the lyric lay,
The sleeping song that the dead years bequeath,
Hast sung thine answer to the songs that breathe
Through ages, and through ages far away.

And thou hast heard the pulse of Pindar beat,
Known Horace by the fount Bardusian!
Their deathless line thy living strains repeat,
But ah, thy voice is sad, thy roses wan,
But ah, thy honey is not cloying sweet,
Thy bees have fed on yews Sardinian.

HOMEROC UNITY.

The sacred keep of Ilion is rent
With trench and shaft; foiled waters wander slow
Through plains where Simois and Scamander went
To war with Gods and heroes long ago.
Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low
In rich Mycenae, do the Fates relent:
The bones of Agamemnon are a show,
And ruined is his royal monument.

The dust and awful treasures of the Dead,
Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee,
Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead,
And strives to rend thy songs; too blind to see
The crown that burns on thine immortal head
Of indivisible supremacy!

IN ITHACA.

"And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left
my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst
promise me."—Letter of Odysseus to Calypso.
Luciani Vera Historia.

'Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o'er
With all the waves and wars, a weary while,
Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,
And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,
Go down the ways of gold, and evermore
His sad heart followed after, mile on mile,
Back to the Goddess of the magic wile,
Calypso, and the love that was of yore.

Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet
To look across the sad and stormy space,
Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,
Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet,
Because, within a fair forsaken place
The life that might have been is lost to thee.

DREAMS.

He spake not truth, however wise,[1] who said
"That happy, and that hapless men in sleep
Have equal fortune, fallen from care as deep
As countless, careless, races of the dead."
Not so, for alien paths of dreams we tread,
And one beholds the faces that he sighs
In vain to bring before his day lit eyes,
And waking, he remembers on his bed;

And one with fainting heart and feeble hand
Fights a dim battle in a doubtful land,
Where strength and courage were of no avail;
And one is borne on fairy breezes far
To the bright harbours of a golden star
Down fragrant fleeting waters rosy pale.

GÉRARD DE NERVAL.

Of all that were thy prisons—ah, untamed,
Ah, light and sacred soul!—none holds thee now;
No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou
Art free and happy in the lands unnamed,
Within whose gates, with weary wings and maimed,
Thou still would'st bear that mystic golden bough
The Sibyl doth to singing men allow,
Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed.
And they would smile and wonder, seeing where
Thou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind,
Dreamily murmuring a ballad air,
Caught from the Valois peasants; dost thou find
A new life gladder than the old times were,
A love as fair as Sylvie, and more kind?

Ballades and Verses Vain

About This Book

VERSES VAIN.

POST HOMERICA.

SONNETS.