Poems

Well hath he done who hath seized happiness!
For little do the all-containing hours,
Though opulent, freely give,—
Who, weighing that life well
Fortune presents unprayed,
Declines her ministry, and carves his own;
And, justice not infringed,
Makes his own welfare his unswerved-from law.

He does well too, who keeps that clew the mild
Birth-goddess and the austere Fates first gave.
For, from the day when these
Bring him, a weeping child,
First to the light, and mark
A country for him, kinsfolk, and a home,
Unguided he remains,
Till the Fates come again, this time with death.

In little companies,
And, our own place once left,
Ignorant where to stand, or whom to avoid,
By city and household grouped, we live; and many shocks
Our order heaven-ordained
Must every day endure,—
Voyages, exiles, hates, dissensions, wars.
Besides what waste he makes,
The all-hated, order-breaking,
Without friend, city, or home,—
Death, who dissevers all.

Him then I praise, who dares
To self-selected good
Prefer obedience to the primal law
Which consecrates the ties of blood; for these, indeed,
Are to the gods a care:
That touches but himself.
For every day man may be linked and loosed
With strangers; but the bond
Original, deep-inwound,
Of blood, can he not bind,
Nor, if fate binds, not bear.

But hush! Hæmon, whom Antigone,
Robbing herself of life in burying,
Against Creon’s law, Polynices,
Robs of a loved bride,—pale, imploring,
Waiting her passage,
Forth from the palace hitherward comes.

HÆMON.

No, no, old men, Creon I curse not!
I weep, Thebans,
One than Creon crueller far!
For he, he, at least, by slaying her,
August laws doth mightily vindicate;
But thou, too bold, headstrong, pitiless!—
Ah me!—honorest more than thy lover,
O Antigone!
A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse.

THE CHORUS.

Nor was the love untrue
Which the Dawn-Goddess bore
To that fair youth she erst,
Leaving the salt sea-beds,
And coming flushed over the stormy frith
Of loud Euripus, saw,—
Saw and snatched, wild with love,
From the pine-dotted spurs
Of Parnes, where thy waves,
Asopus! gleam rock-hemmed,—
The Hunter of the Tanagræan Field.[13]

But him, in his sweet prime,
By severance immature,
By Artemis’ soft shafts,
She, though a goddess born,
Saw in the rocky isle of Delos die.
Such end o’ertook that love.
For she desired to make
Immortal mortal man,
And blend his happy life,
Far from the gods, with hers;
To him postponing an eternal law.

HÆMON.

But like me, she, wroth, complaining,
Succumbed to the envy of unkind gods;
And, her beautiful arms unclasping,
Her fair youth unwillingly gave.

THE CHORUS.

Nor, though enthroned too high
To fear assault of envious gods,
His beloved Argive seer would Zeus retain
From his appointed end

In this our Thebes; but when
His flying steeds came near
To cross the steep Ismenian glen,
The broad earth opened, and whelmed them and him,
And through the void air sang
At large his enemy’s spear.

And fain would Zeus have saved his tired son,
Beholding him where the Two Pillars stand
O’er the sun-reddened western straits,[14]
Or at his work in that dim lower world.
Fain would he have recalled
The fraudulent oath which bound
To a much feebler wight the heroic man.

But he preferred fate to his strong desire.
Nor did there need less than the burning pile
Under the towering Trachis crags,
And the Spercheios vale, shaken with groans,
And the roused Maliac gulf,
And scared Œtæan snows,
To achieve his son’s deliverance, O my child!

FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A “DEJANEIRA.”

O frivolous mind of man,
Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts!
Though man bewails you not,
How I bewail you!

Little in your prosperity
Do you seek counsel of the gods.
Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.
In profound silence stern,
Among their savage gorges and cold springs,
Unvisited remain
The great oracular shrines.

Thither in your adversity
Do you betake yourselves for light,
But strangely misinterpret all you hear.
For you will not put on
New hearts with the inquirer’s holy robe,
And purged, considerate minds.

And him on whom, at the end
Of toil and dolour untold,
The gods have said that repose
At last shall descend undisturbed,—
Him you expect to behold
In an easy old age, in a happy home:
No end but this you praise.

But him on whom, in the prime
Of life, with vigor undimmed,
With unspent mind, and a soul
Unworn, undebased, undecayed,
Mournfully grating, the gates
Of the city of death have forever closed,—
Him, I count him, well-starred.

EARLY DEATH AND FAME.

For him who must see many years,
I praise the life which slips away
Out of the light, and mutely; which avoids
Fame, and her less fair followers, envy, strife,
Stupid detraction, jealousy, cabal,
Insincere praises; which descends
The quiet mossy track to age.

But when immature death
Beckons too early the guest
From the half-tried banquet of life,
Young, in the bloom of his days;
Leaves no leisure to press,
Slow and surely, the sweets
Of a tranquil life in the shade,—
Fuller for him be the hours!
Give him emotion, though pain!
Let him live, let him feel, I have lived.
Heap up his moments with life!
Triple his pulses with fame!

PHILOMELA.

Hark! ah, the nightingale—
The tawny-throated!
Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark! what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain
That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain,
Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy racked heart and brain
Afford no balm?

Dost thou to-night behold,
Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
Dost thou again peruse
With hot cheeks and seared eyes
The too clear web, and thy dumb sister’s shame?
Dost thou once more assay
Thy flight, and feel come over thee,
Poor fugitive, the feathery change.
Once more, and once more seem to make resound
With love and hate, triumph and agony,
Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?
Listen, Eugenia,—
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Again—thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!

And spell thy looks, and guess thy thoughts,
Mixed with the idlers on the pier.
Ah! might I always rest unseen,
So I might have thee always near!

To-morrow hurry through the fields
Of Flanders to the storied Rhine!
To-night those soft-fringed eyes shall close
Beneath one roof, my queen! with mine.

FADED LEAVES.

I. THE RIVER.

Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat
Under the rustling poplars’ shade;
Silent the swans beside us float:
None speaks, none heeds; ah, turn thy head!

Let those arch eyes now softly shine,
That mocking mouth grow sweetly bland;
Ah! let them rest, those eyes, on mine!
On mine let rest that lovely hand!

My pent-up tears oppress my brain,
My heart is swoln with love unsaid.
Ah! let me weep, and tell my pain,
And on thy shoulder rest my head!

Before I die,—before the soul,
Which now is mine, must re-attain
Immunity from my control,
And wander round the world again;
Before this teased, o’er-labored heart
Forever leaves its vain employ,
Dead to its deep habitual smart,
And dead to hopes of future joy.

II. TOO LATE

Each on his own strict line we move,
And some find death ere they find love;
So far apart their lives are thrown
From the twin soul that halves their own.

And sometimes, by still harder fate,
The lovers meet, but meet too late.
—Thy heart is mine! True, true! ah, true!
—Then, love, thy hand! Ah, no! adieu!

III. SEPARATION.

Stop! not to me, at this bitter departing,
Speak of the sure consolations of time!
Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime!

But if the steadfast commandment of Nature
Wills that remembrance should always decay;
If the loved form and the deep-cherished feature
Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away,—

Me let no half-effaced memories cumber;
Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee!
Deep be the darkness, and still be the slumber;
Dead be the past and its phantoms to me!

Then, when we meet, and thy look strays toward me,
Scanning my face and the changes wrought there;
Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me,
With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair?

IV. ON THE RHINE.

Vain is the effort to forget.
Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go;
But ah! not yet, not yet!

Vain is the agony of grief.
’Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot;
And, were it snapped—thou lov’st me not!
But is despair relief?

A while let me with thought have done.
And as this brimmed unwrinkled Rhine,
And that far purple mountain line,
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;

So let me lie, and, calm as they,
Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue,—
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be gray.

Ah, quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river’s flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tamed is their turbulent youthful glow;
Their joy is in their calm.

V. LONGING.

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

DESPONDENCY.

The thoughts that rain their steady glow
Like stars on life’s cold sea,
Which others know, or say they know,—
They never shone for me.

Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit’s sky,
But they will not remain.
They light me once, they hurry by,
And never come again.

SELF-DECEPTION.

Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory
Of possessing powers not our share?
—Since man woke on earth, he knows his story;
But, before we woke on earth, we were.

Long, long since, undowered yet, our spirit
Roamed, ere birth, the treasuries of God;
Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit,
Asked an outfit for its earthly road.

Then, as now, this tremulous, eager being
Strained and longed, and grasped each gift it saw;
Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing
Staved us back, and gave our choice the law.

Ah! whose hand that day through heaven guided
Man’s new spirit, since it was not we?
Ah! who swayed our choice, and who decided
What our gifts and what our wants should be?

For, alas! he left us each retaining
Shreds of gifts which he refused in full;
Still these waste us with their hopeless straining,
Still the attempt to use them proves them null.

And on earth we wander, groping, reeling;
Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.
Ah! and he, who placed our master-feeling,
Failed to place that master-feeling clear.

We but dream we have our wished-for powers;
Ends we seek, we never shall attain.
Ah! some power exists there, which is ours?
Some end is there, we indeed may gain?

DOVER BEACH.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery: we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

GROWING OLD.

What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
—Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength—
Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not,
Ah! ’tis not what in youth we dreamed ’twould be.
’Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,—
A golden day’s decline.

’Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more.

It is to spend long days,
And not once feel that we were ever young;
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion,—none.

It is—last stage of all—
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,
Which blamed the living man.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

A VARIATION.

Youth rambles on life’s arid mount,
And strikes the rock, and finds the vein,
And brings the water from the fount,—
The fount which shall not flow again.

The man mature with labor chops
For the bright stream a channel grand,
And sees not that the sacred drops
Ran off and vanished out of hand.

And then the old man totters nigh,
And feebly rakes among the stones.
The mount is mute, the channel dry;
And down he lays his weary bones.

PIS ALLER.

“Man is blind because of sin;
Revelation makes him sure:
Without that, who looks within
Looks in vain, for all’s obscure.”

Nay, look closer into man!
Tell me, can you find indeed
Nothing sure, no moral plan
Clear prescribed, without your creed?

“No, I nothing can perceive!
Without that, all’s dark for men.
That, or nothing, I believe.”—
For God’s sake, believe it, then!

THE LAST WORD.

Creep into thy narrow bed,—
Creep, and let no more be said.
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.

Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired: best be still.

They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot, and passed,
Hotly charged—and sank at last.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall!

A NAMELESS EPITAPH.

Ask not my name, O friend!
That Being only, which hath known each man
From the beginning, can
Remember each unto the end.

EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA.

A DRAMATIC POEM.

PERSONS.

Empedocles.
Pausanias, a Physician.
Callicles, a young Harp-player.

The Scene of the Poem is on Mount Etna; at first in the forest region, afterwards on the summit of the mountain.

ACT I.

Scene I.—Morning. A Pass in the forest region of Etna.

CALLICLES (alone, resting on a rock by the path).

The mules, I think, will not be here this hour:
They feel the cool wet turf under their feet
By the stream-side, after the dusty lanes
In which they have toiled all night from Catana,
And scarcely will they budge a yard. O Pan,
How gracious is the mountain at this hour!
A thousand times have I been here alone,
Or with the revellers from the mountain towns,
But never on so fair a morn. The sun
Is shining on the brilliant mountain crests,
And on the highest pines; but farther down,
Here in the valley, is in shade; the sward
Is dark, and on the stream the mist still hangs;
One sees one’s footprints crushed in the wet grass,
One’s breath curls in the air; and on these pines
That climb from the stream’s edge, the long gray tufts,
Which the goats love, are jewelled thick with dew.
Here will I stay till the slow litter comes.
I have my harp too: that is well.—Apollo!
What mortal could be sick or sorry here?
I know not in what mind Empedocles,
Whose mules I followed, may be coming up;
But if, as most men say, he is half mad
With exile, and with brooding on his wrongs,
Pausanias, his sage friend, who mounts with him,
Could scarce have lighted on a lovelier cure.
The mules must be below, far down. I hear
Their tinkling bells, mixed with the song of birds,
Rise faintly to me: now it stops!—Who’s here?
Pausanias! and on foot? alone?

PAUSANIAS.

And thou, then?
I left thee supping with Peisianax,
With thy head full of wine, and thy hair crowned,
Touching thy harp as the whim came on thee,
And praised and spoiled by master and by guests
Almost as much as the new dancing-girl.
Why hast thou followed us?

CALLICLES.

The night was hot,
And the feast past its prime: so we slipped out,
Some of us, to the portico to breathe,—
Peisianax, thou know’st, drinks late,—and then,
As I was lifting my soiled garland off,
I saw the mules and litter in the court,
And in the litter sate Empedocles;
Thou too wast with him. Straightway I sped home;
I saddled my white mule, and all night long
Through the cool lovely country followed you,
Passed you a little since as morning dawned,
And have this hour sate by the torrent here,
Till the slow mules should climb in sight again.
And now?

PAUSANIAS.

And now, back to the town with speed!
Crouch in the wood first, till the mules have passed;
They do but halt, they will be here anon.
Thou must be viewless to Empedocles;
Save mine, he must not meet a human eye.
One of his moods is on him that thou know’st;
I think, thou wouldst not vex him.

CALLICLES.

No; and yet
I would fain stay, and help thee tend him. Once
He knew me well, and would oft notice me;
And still, I know not how, he draws me to him,
And I could watch him with his proud sad face,
His flowing locks and gold-encircled brow
And kingly gait, forever; such a spell
In his severe looks, such a majesty
As drew of old the people after him,
In Agrigentum and Olympia,
When his star reigned, before his banishment,
Is potent still on me in his decline.
But, O Pausanias, he is changed of late:
There is a settled trouble in his air
Admits no momentary brightening now;
And when he comes among his friends at feasts,
’Tis as an orphan among prosperous boys.
Thou know’st of old he loved this harp of mine,
When first he sojourned with Peisianax;
He is now always moody, and I fear him;
But I would serve him, soothe him, if I could,
Dared one but try.

PAUSANIAS.

Thou wast a kind child ever.
He loves thee, but he must not see thee now.
Thou hast indeed a rare touch on thy harp;
He loves that in thee, too; there was a time
(But that is past), he would have paid thy strain
With music to have drawn the stars from heaven.
He has his harp and laurel with him still;
But he has laid the use of music by,
And all which might relax his settled gloom.
Yet thou may’st try thy playing, if thou wilt,
But thou must keep unseen: follow us on,
But at a distance! in these solitudes,
In this clear mountain air, a voice will rise,
Though from afar, distinctly; it may soothe him.
Play when we halt; and when the evening comes,
And I must leave him (for his pleasure is
To be left musing these soft nights alone
In the high unfrequented mountain spots),
Then watch him, for he ranges swift and far,
Sometimes to Etna’s top, and to the cone;
But hide thee in the rocks a great way down,
And try thy noblest strains, my Callicles,
With the sweet night to help thy harmony!
Thou wilt earn my thanks sure, and perhaps his.

CALLICLES.

More than a day and night, Pausanias,
Of this fair summer-weather, on these hills,
Would I bestow to help Empedocles.
That needs no thanks: one is far better here
Than in the broiling city in these heats.
But tell me, how hast thou persuaded him
In this his present fierce, man-hating mood,
To bring thee out with him alone on Etna?

PAUSANIAS.

Thou hast heard all men speaking of Pantheia,
The woman who at Agrigentum lay
Thirty long days in a cold trance of death,
And whom Empedocles called back to life.
Thou art too young to note it, but his power
Swells with the swelling evil of this time,
And holds men mute to see where it will rise.
He could stay swift diseases in old days,
Chain madmen by the music of his lyre,
Cleanse to sweet airs the breath of poisonous streams,
And in the mountain chinks inter the winds.
This he could do of old; but now, since all
Clouds and grows daily worse in Sicily,
Since broils tear us in twain, since this new swarm
Of sophists has got empire in our schools
Where he was paramount, since he is banished,
And lives a lonely man in triple gloom,—
He grasps the very reins of life and death.
I asked him of Pantheia yesterday,
When we were gathered with Peisianax;
And he made answer, I should come at night
On Etna here, and be alone with him,
And he would tell me, as his old, tried friend,
Who still was faithful, what might profit me,—
That is, the secret of this miracle.

CALLICLES.

Bah! Thou a doctor! Thou art superstitious.
Simple Pausanias, ’twas no miracle!
Pantheia, for I know her kinsmen well,
Was subject to these trances from a girl.
Empedocles would say so, did he deign;
But he still lets the people, whom he scorns,
Gape and cry wizard at him, if they list.
But thou, thou art no company for him:
Thou art as cross, as soured as himself.
Thou hast some wrong from thine own citizens,
And then thy friend is banished; and on that,
Straightway thou fallest to arraign the times,
As if the sky was impious not to fall.
The sophists are no enemies of his;
I hear, Gorgias, their chief, speaks nobly of him,
As of his gifted master, and once friend.
He is too scornful, too high-wrought, too bitter.
’Tis not the times, ’tis not the sophists, vex him:
There is some root of suffering in himself,
Some secret and unfollowed vein of woe,
Which makes the time look black and sad to him.
Pester him not, in this his sombre mood,
With questionings about an idle tale,
But lead him through the lovely mountain paths,
And keep his mind from preying on itself,
And talk to him of things at hand and common,
Not miracles! thou art a learned man,
But credulous of fables as a girl.

PAUSANIAS.

And thou, a boy whose tongue outruns his knowledge,
And on whose lightness blame is thrown away.
Enough of this! I see the litter wind
Up by the torrent-side, under the pines.
I must rejoin Empedocles. Do thou
Crouch in the brushwood till the mules have passed;
Then play thy kind part well. Farewell till night!

Scene II.—Noon. A Glen on the highest skirts of the woody region of Etna.

EMPEDOCLES. PAUSANIAS.

About This Book

Scene I.—Morning. A Pass in the forest region of Etna.

Scene II.—Noon. A Glen on the highest skirts of the woody region of Etna.