The islands about which this legend is told are known as Jezírat Darzé and Jezírat Samhé, east of Cape Gardafui—one high and the other low.
Alastor
Alastor
’Tis said that a noble youth of old
Was to his native village lost,
And to his home, and agèd sire;
For he had wander’d (it is told)
Where, pinnacled in eternal frost,
Apollo leads his awful Choir.
Awful, for nought of human warms
The agony of their song sublime,
Which like the breath of ice is given
Ascending in vapour from all forms,
Where gods in clear alternate chime
Reveal their mystery-thoughts to Heaven.
Nor in those regions of windless cold
Is fiery the Sun, tho’ fierce in light;
But frozen-pale the numbèd Moon
Wanders along the ridges that fold
Enormous Peaks, what time the Night
Rivals with all her stars the Noon.
For there, not dimly as here, the Stars,
But globèd and azure and crimson tinct,
Climb up the windless wastes of snow,
Gold-footed, or thro’ the long-drawn bars
Of mountain mist, with eyes unblink’d
And scorn, gaze down on the World below;
Or high on the topmost peak and end
Of ranges stand with sudden blaze,
Like Angels born in spontaneous birth;
Or wrap themselves in flame and descend
Between black foreheads of rock in haze,
Slowly, like grievèd gods to earth.
And there for ever the patient Wind
Rakes up the crystals of dry snow,
And mourns for ever her work undone;
And there for ever, like Titans blind,
Their countenance lifting to Heaven’s glow,
The sightless Mountains yearn for the Sun.
There nightly the numbèd eagle quells
(Full-feather’d to his feet of horn)
His swooning eye, his eyrie won,
And slumbers, frozen by frosty spells
Fast to the pinnacle; but at Morn
Unfetter’d leaps toward the Sun.
. . . . .
He heard, he saw. Not to the air
Dared breathe a breath; but with his sight
Wreak’d on Immortals mortal wrong,
And dared to see them as they were—
The black Peaks blacken’d in their light,
The white Stars flashing with their song.
So fled. But when revealing Morn
Show’d him, descended, giant-grown,
Men ant-like, petty, mean and weak,
He rush’d, returning. Then in scorn
Th’ Immortals smote him to a Stone
That aches for ever on the Peak.
1888.
LABOURS
Sonnet
Sonnet
High Muse, who first, where to my opening sight,
New-born, the loftiest summits of the world,
Silent, with brows of ice and robes unfurl’d
Of motionless thunder, shone above the night,
Didst touch my infant eyes and fill with light
Of snow, and sleepless stars, and torrents hurl’d,
And fragrant pines of morning mist-empearl’d,
And music of great things and their delight:
Revisit me; resume my soul; inspire
With force and cold out of the north—not given
To sickly dwellers in these southern spots,
Where all day long the great Sun rolls his fire
Intol’rable in the dusty march of heaven,
And the heart shrivels and the spirit rots.
Madras, 1890.
Vision
Vision
A valley of far-fallen rocks,
Like bones of mouldering mountains, spread,
And ended by the barren blocks
Of mountains doom’d or dead:
No rivage there with green recess
Made music in that wilderness.
Despairing fell the sore-spent Sun,
And cried, ‘I die,’ and sank in fire;
Like conquering Death, the Night came on
And ran from spire to spire;
And swollen-pale ascended soon,
Like Death in Life, the leprous Moon.
On windy ledges lined with light,
Between the still Stars sparsely strewn,
Two Spirits grew from out the Night
Beneath the mistless Moon,
And held deep parley, making thought
With words sententious half distraught.
One full-robed; in his hand a book;
His lips, that labour’d for the word,
Scarce moved in utterance; and his look
Sought, not his face who heard,
But that Sad Star that sobs alway
Upon the breast of dying Day.
One, weary, with two-handed stress
Leant on his shoulder-touching spear
His beard blown o’er the hairiness
Of his great breast; and clear
His eyes shot speculation out
To catch the truth or quell the doubt.
1. ‘The dreams of Hope, of blue-eyed Hope,
Melt after morn and die in day;
Love’s golden dew-globe, lit aslope,
Dulls with a downward ray;
Canst thou with all thy thought renew
The flying dreams or drying dew?’
2. ‘Not I creator. Hour by hour
I labour without stress or strife
To gain more knowledge, greater power,
A nobler, longer life.
By thought alone we take our stand
Above the world and win command.’
1. ‘Know, Knowledge doth but clip our wings,
And worldly Wisdom weaken worth,
To make us lords of little things,
And worm-gods of the earth.
Were earth made Heaven by human wit,
Some wild star yet might shatter it.’
2. ‘The wings of Fancy are but frail,
And Virtue’s without Wisdom weak;
Better than Falsehood’s flowery vale,
The Truth, however bleak.
Tho’ she may bless not nor redeem,
The Truth is true, and reigns supreme.’
1. ‘Not all, but few, can plead and prove
And crown their brows with Truth and pass;
Their little labours cannot move
The mountain’s mighty mass.
To man in vain the Truth appeals,
Or Heav’n ordains, or Art reveals.’
2. ‘So self-consuming thought. But see
The standards of Advance unfurl’d;
The buds are breaking on the lea,
And Spring strikes thro’ the world.
Tho’ we may never reach the Peak,
God gave this great commandment, Seek.’
. . . . .
The ponderous bolts of Night were drawn;
The pale Day peer’d thro’ cloudy bars;
The Wind awoke; the sword of Dawn
Flasht thro’ the flying Stars;
The new-born Sun-Star smote the Gloom:
The Desert burst in endless Bloom.
Bangalore, 1890.
Thought and Action
Thought and Action
The Angel of the Left Hand spake. His speech
Fell as when on some shuddering arctic beach
The icy Northern creeps from reach to reach
And curdles motion and with thrilling spell
Fixes the falling ripple. ‘Peace and quell,’
He said, ‘the action not maturèd well.
What scorn to build with labour, round on round,
And lay the costly marbles, when ’tis found
The whole design at last inapt, unsound!
Beware the bitter moment when awake
We view the mischief that our visions make—
The good things broken in a mad mistake.
But rather use the thought that is divine;
And know that every moment of design
Will save an hour of action, point for line.
And leave to others loss or victory;
And like the stars of heaven seek to be
The wise man’s compass but beyond the sea.’
Then He upon the Right. His words came forth
Like the full Southern blowing to the north.
‘The time is come,’ he said, ‘to try thy worth.
For when Thought’s wasted candles wane and wink,
And meditations like the planets sink,
The sun of Action rushes from the brink.
Stand not for ever in the towers of Thought
To watch the watery dawning waste to nought
The distant stars deluding darkness brought.
Not timorous weak persuasion, but the brand
Of Action—not discussion, but command—
Can rouse the ranks of God and storm the land,
Where men who know the day still doze again;
Not walls of dust can dam th’ outrageous main,
Nor mitigation seize the world and reign.
Fear not. Unsheath the naked falchion. Try
The end. For in the end, who dares deny,
The utter truth shall slay the utter lie.’
Bangalore, 1890-3.
The Indian Mother
The Indian Mother
Full fed with thoughts and knowledges sublime,
And thundering oracles of the gods, that make
Man’s mind the flower of action and of time,
I was one day where beggars come to take
Doles ere they die. An Indian mother there,
Young, but so wretched that her staring eyes
Shone like the winter wolf’s with ravening glare
Of hunger, struck me. For to much surprise
A three-year child well nourish’d at her breast,
Wither’d with famine, still she fed and press’d—
For she was dying. ‘I am too poor,’ she said,
‘To feed him otherwise’; and with a kiss
Fell back and died. And the soul answeréd,
‘In spite of all the gods and prophets—this!’
Bangalore, 1890-3.
Ganges-Borne
Ganges-Borne
The fingers which had stray’d
Thro’ shining clusters of his children’s hair
Now lifeless moved, and play’d
With horrible tresses of the ripples there;
His eyes, as if he pray’d,
Were cast beneath long eyelids, wan and spare.
Rock’d by the roaring flood,
He seem’d to speak as in debate with doom,
Uplooking, while the flood
Bore him with thunder to the ocean foam.
God’s face, a luminous cloud,
Look’d thro’ the midnight, black, and horrible gloom.
Bangalore, 1890-3.
Indian Fevers
Indian Fevers
In this, O Nature, yield I pray to me.
I pace and pace, and think and think, and take
The fever’d hands, and note down all I see,
That some dim distant light may haply break.
. . . . . .
The painful faces ask, can we not cure?
We answer, No, not yet; we seek the laws.
O God, reveal thro’ all this thing obscure
The unseen, small, but million-murdering cause.
Bangalore, 1890-3.
The Star
The Star
Far across the Loneland, far across the Sea,
Far across the Sands, O silver shining
Sister of the Silence, Sister of the Dew,
Sister of the Twilight, lighten me.
Ever art thou beaming. I, with eyes upcast,
Gazing worn and weary from this Dark World,
Ask of thee thy Wisdom, steadfast Eye of God,
That I be as Thou art while I last.
1890-3.
Petition
Petition
Truth, whom I hold divine,
Thy wings are strong to bear
Thro’ day or desperate night;
For, ever those eyes of thine,
Fix’d upward full of prayer,
Are seeking for the light.
Guide me and bear. Descend
Into the sulphurous void—
Tho’ I so weak, thy wings
Stronger than him who, pen’d
In hell unmerited, buoy’d
Poets past infernal springs.
Take me and bear. Descend
Into these deeps of death,
Wherever the light may lead,
Wherever the way may wend;
And give to my failing breath,
O Spirit, thy words of deed.
1890-3.
IN EXILE
Desert
Not less the prunèd shoot,
Not less the barren year,
Which yields the perfect fruit,
Which makes the meaning clear.
For on this desert soil
A blessing comes unsought—
Space for a single toil,
Time for a single thought.
When in distractions tost,
Since oft distractions claim
For moments never lost
Of each its higher aim,
We live, we learn the wealth
The joyous hours may bring,
But jealous time by stealth
Puts all of it to wing;
Pursuing empty arts
We gain no noble goal,
And lose, in learning parts,
The grandeur of the whole.
If Patience, pouring tears—
She cannot but lament
The long unfruitful years
Of exile, idly spent—
Have patience, she will find
They were not all in vain,
But each has left behind
A little store of gain—
A wider wisdom bought
With labour; problems solved;
The themes of inner thought
More thoroughly revolved.
So one who entertain’d
The prosperous of the earth;
No good from any gain’d,
But lost his wealth and worth;
In wrath he gather’d round
The indigent and old;
Each wretch, amazed he found,
Had left a gift of gold.
So one who sought a land
Where all the earth is ore;
But had he sifted sand
He would have gather’d more.
II
The Sun arose and took
The lofty heav’ns of right;
From out the heav’ns he shook
The pestilence of his light.
He paced upon his path
And from his right hand hurl’d
The javelins of his wrath,
Contemptuous of the world.
Before his scornful lips
The forests fell down dead,
And scowling in eclipse
Disbanding thunders fled.
He fills the hills with fire
And blasts the barren plain;
He hath stript the stricken briar,
And slain the thorn again.
He cracks the rocks, and cakes
The quagmires into crust,
And slays the snake, and makes
The dead leaf writhe in dust.
He halts in heav’n half way
And blackens earth with light;
And the dark doom of day
Lies on us like the night.
A Land of clamorous cries;
Of everlasting light;
Of noises in the skies
And noises in the night.
There is no night; the Sun
Lives thro’ the night again;
The image of the Sun
Is burnt upon the brain.
O God! he still returns;
He slays us in the dust;
The brazen Death-Star burns
And stamps us into dust.
III
The air is thunder-still.
What motion is with us?
Deep shocks of thunder fill
The deep sky ruinous;
As if, down lumbering large
Upon these desert tracts,
He had fallen about the marge
In cloudy cataracts.
And spot by spot in dust
The writhing raindrops lie,
And turn like blood to rust—
Writhe, redden, shrink, and dry.
A Land where all day long,
Day-long descanting dirge,
The heavy thunders hang
And moan upon the verge;
Where all day long the kite
Her querulous question cries,
And circles lost in light
About the yellow skies;
And thou, O Heart, art husht
In the deep dead of day,
Half restless and half crusht,
Half soaring too away.
Day-long the querulous kite
Her querulous question cries,
And sails, a spot of night,
About the vasty skies.
The puff’d cheeks of typhoons
Blow thro’ the worthless clouds
That roll in writhing moons
In skies of many moods,
None fruitful; and the clouds
Take up the dust and dance
A dance of death and shrouds—
Mock, mow, retire, advance.
IV
Where is the rain? We hear
The footsteps of the rain,
Walking in dust, and, near,
Dull thunders over the plain.
Cloud?—dust. The wind awakes;
The base dust we have trod
Smokes up to heaven and takes
The thunderings of God.
No rain. The angry dust
Cries out against the rain;
The clouds are backward thrust;
The monstrous Sun again.
We hoped the rain would fall
After the dreadful day,
For we heard the thunders call
Each other far away.
We hoped for rain because
After thunder rain is given;
And yet it only was
The mockery of heaven.
He is the lord of us;
He will unconquered sink,
Red, but victorious,
And smoking to the brink.
Shout, barren thunders, shout
And rattle and melt again!
So fall the fates about,
So melt the hopes of men.
Rattle aloft and wake
The sleepers on the roofs,
Wild steeds of heav’n, and shake
Heav’n with your echoing hoofs.
Awake the weary at night
Until they cry, “The rain!”—
Then take to tempestuous flight
And melt into air again.
V
This is the land of Death;
The sun his taper is
Wherewith he numbereth
The dead bones that are his.
He walks beside the deep
And counts the mouldering bones
In lands of tumbling steep
And cataracts of stones.
About his feet the hosts
Of dead leaves he hath slain
Awaken, shrieking ghosts
Demanding life again.
O silent Sepulchre,
Great East, disastrous clime;
O grave of things that were;
O catacombs of time;
O silent catacombs;
O blear’d memorial stones;
Where laughing in the tombs
Death plays with mouldering bones;
And through dead bones the stalk
Of the living herb is thrust;
And we, the living, walk
In wastes of human dust.
Dust—thou art dust. Thy Sun,
Thy lord, and lord of dust,
Doth stamp thee into one
Great plain of dust; and dust
Thy heav’ns, thy nights, thy days;
Thy temples and thy creeds;
Thy crumbling palaces;
Thy far forgotten deeds,—
Infinite dust. Half living,
We clothe ourselves in dust
And live, not to be living,
Thy winds are full of death;
Death comes we know not whence;
Thy forests have a breath
Of secret pestilence;
Thy rivers rolling large
Are blest with no sweet green,
But silent at the marge
The waiting monsters seen.
No scented silence, eve,
But night a noisy gloom;
And we thy captives live,
The derelicts of doom.
Vox Clamantis
Vox Clamantis
I
Long, long the barren years;
Long, long, O God, hast thou
Appointed for our tears
This term of exile. Lo,
Life is but nothing thus:
Old friendships perishèd;
Not hand in hand with us
The dying father dead;
Narrow’d the mind that should
Thro’ all experience range
And grow; in solitude
Unheard the wheels of change.
When sadly numbering
The wasted golden hours
Our fate hath put to wing,
That had perchance been ours
To have seen, to have known, to have trod
About from pole to girth
This heritage of God,
This wondrous sculptured earth,
Seeing that never again
The usurer Time gives back,
How should we not complain
This Present, barren-black?
We said, ‘We must not mourn;
The end is always good;
Well past the pain well borne.’
But Sorrow in her mood
Would not be comforted,
And cried, ‘I know the truth;
Where are the distant dead,
And where the wasted youth?
Let Wisdom take her ground
And Hope do what she can;
Ill heals the dreadful wound
That severs half a man.’
Sorrow, not so beguiled,
Would take my hand and lead,
But waiting Wisdom smiled
And took my hand instead,
And answered, ‘Well I rede
The shackled win the goal;
The body’s strengthener Need,
And Sorrow of the soul.
But mine the part be given
To guide and hers to follow,
And so win thro’ to heaven.’
And Sorrow said, ‘I follow.’
II
To sadness and to self
We should not enter in—
Sadness the shadow of self
And self the shadow of sin—
Unless because the whole
Of human life appears
Clear only when the soul
Is darken’d thro’ with tears.
The day too full of light
With light her own light mars;
But in the shading night
The shining host of stars.
That, leaving manhood, men
Should kiss the hands of grief
And, loving but the wen,
The wart, the wither’d leaf,
Amass a hoard of husks
When joy is in the corn
Nor ever evening dusks
Without the tints of morn,
Informs with doubt if good
Be, or omnipotent;
Since in the brightest blood
This idle discontent.
Joy, jester at herself,
And happiness, of woe,
If self at peace with self
Know not, when shall he know?
So one, a prosperous man;
Nightly the people fill
His toast, and what he can
Is only what he will.
They shout; his name is wed
With thunders; torches flare;
Tost in a wretched bed
He chews a trifling care.
III
One says in scorn, ‘The strife
To live well keeps us well,
And ’tis the unworthy life
That makes the prison cell.’
And one, ‘An angel stood
On sands of withering heat;
The flowerless solitude
Grew green beneath his feet.’
A third, ‘Many would lief
Endure thy solitude
As else. Ascribe thy grief
To poison in the blood.’
And I, ‘O Soul, content
Yet in thine exile dwell,
And live up to thy bent.
Not more than well is well;
But take the sports divine,
The largesse of the earth;
Wind-drinking steeds be thine
And blowsèd chase—the mirth
Of those who wisely draw
Their lives in nature’s vein
And live in the large law,
Of slaying or being slain.
‘Or learn by looking round.
Lift up thine eyes. Avow
The gardener of thy ground
Doth worthier work than thou.
From his poor cot he wends
At early break of day;
His pretty charges tends
In his unskilful way.
Much wearied with his toil
He labours thro’ the hours,
And pours upon the soil
Refreshment for his flowers.
‘Tho’ bent with aged stoop,
To him no rest is given,
But the heads of those that droop
He raises up to heaven.
Half ready for the grave,
His weakness he forgets,
More scrupulous to save
The breath of violets.
But at the evening hour
When he shall seek repose,
The voice of every flower
Will bless him as he goes.’
Self-Sorrows
Self-Sorrows
I
These stones that idly make
An idle land and lie,
Fantastic forms, or break
Down crumbling hills not high
In arid cataracts
Where meagre cattle stray
To search the meagre tracts
Of bitter grass: for aye
They move not, live not, lie
Dull eyes that watch the world,
And exiles asking why
God brought them here or hurl’d.
We would we could have torn
This winding web of fate
Which round us barely born
Hath bought us to this state
Of being cast away
Among these tombs. The river
Of life here day by day
Runs downward slower ever
Into black washes. True
Yet holds our destiny—
To live a year or two,
Look round us once and die.
If we should try to trace
In portions, line by line,
The beauty of a face
To know why thus divine,
Seeing but many curves,
We miss the inner soul
And find no part deserves
That merit of the whole.
And so to analyse
Thy mournful spirit vain,
O Exile; but our sighs
Suffice to prove the pain.
To grow from much to more
In knowledge, and to put
A power to every power,
A foot before a foot,
Toward that goal of good
That glimmers thro’ the night
Above the time and mood,
A star of constant light;
At last to meet the dark,
The goal not reach’d indeed,
But full of hours and work,
Are, Exile, not thy creed.
And less to leap to catch
The spinning spokes of change;
In our brief life to snatch
All aspects and to range
Full-face with every view;
To sit with those who toil,
Great spirits, toiling too;
Still less to fan or foil
Those fires that, rushing fast
Thro’ all the people’s life,
Break roaring round the past
In renovating strife.
If in the energic West
Man ever grows more large,
Like ocean without rest
Exploring at the marge,
Here lower yet he turns
For ever downward thrust—
The baleful Sun-God burns
And breaks him into dust;
Or like his native plains
Where nothing new appears,
Or hath appeared, remains
Unchanged a thousand years.
II
Tho’ sorrows darkly veiled
At all men’s tables (nor
The guests make question, paled,
Nor children hush before
Those presences of grief)
Sit, yet to all men due
Due rights; the sweet relief
Of home; the friendship true;
The dying word; to feel
Their country in their keep;
To heave along the wheel,
And push against the steep.
But in this wilderness,
Wed to a rock or two,
What joys have we to bless?
Far, far, our friends and few;
And thou, O happy Land,
We dream of thee in vain—
One moment see, then stand
Within this waste again.
The great earth in her zones
Matureth day by day;
But we, like waiting stones,
Know time but by decay.
Grief hath a shadow, shame;
And manhood, meanly tost
In woes without a name
And sorrows that are lost,