FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST.
Returning from what
other seas
Dost thou renew thy murmuring,
Weak Tide, and hast thou aught of these
To tell, the shores where float and cling
My love, my hope, my memories?
Say does my lady wake to note
The gold light into silver die?
Or do thy waves make lullaby,
While dreams of hers, like angels, float
Through star-sown spaces of the sky?
Ah, would such angels came to me
That dreams of mine might speak with hers,
Nor wake the slumber of the sea
With words as low as winds that be
Awake among the gossamers!
LOVE THE VAMPIRE.
Ο ΕΡΩΤΑΣ ’Σ ΤΟΝ ΤΑΦΟ.
The level sands and grey,
Stretch leagues and leagues away,
Down to the border line of sky and foam,
A spark of sunset burns,
The grey tide-water turns,
Back, like a ghost from her forbidden home!
Here, without pyre or
bier,
Light Love was buried here,
Alas, his grave was wide and deep enough,
Thrice, with averted head,
We cast dust on the dead,
And left him to his rest. An end of Love.
“No stone to roll away,
No seal of snow or clay,
Only soft dust above his wearied eyes,
But though the sudden sound
Of Doom should shake the ground,
And graves give up their ghosts, he will not rise!”
So each to each we said!
Ah, but to either bed
Set far apart in lands of North and South,
Love as a Vampire came
With haggard eyes aflame,
And kissed us with the kisses of his mouth!
Thenceforth in dreams must
we
Each other’s shadow see
Wand’ring unsatisfied in empty lands,
Still the desirèd face
Fleets from the vain embrace,
And still the shape evades the longing hands.
BALLADE OF THE BOOK-MAN’S PARADISE.
There is a
Heaven, or here, or there,—
A Heaven there is, for me and you,
Where bargains meet for purses spare,
Like ours, are not so far and few.
Thuanus’ bees go humming through
The learned groves, ’neath rainless skies,
O’er volumes old and volumes new,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
There treasures bound for Longepierre
Keep brilliant their morocco blue,
There Hookes’ Amanda is not rare,
Nor early tracts upon Peru!
Racine is
common as Rotrou,
No Shakespeare Quarto search defies,
And Caxtons grow as blossoms grew,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
There’s Eve,—not our first mother
fair,—
But Clovis Eve, a binder true;
Thither does Bauzonnet repair,
Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup!
But never come the cropping crew
That dock a volume’s honest size,
Nor they that “letter” backs askew,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!
Envoy.
Friend, do not Heber and De Thou,
And Scott, and Southey, kind and wise,
La chasse au bouquin still pursue
Within that Book-man’s Paradise?
BALLADE OF A FRIAR.
(Clement Marot’s Frère Lubin, though translated by Longfellow and others, has not hitherto been rendered into the original measure, of ballade à double refrain.)
Some ten or twenty
times a day,
To bustle to the town with speed,
To dabble in what dirt he may,—
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
But any sober life to lead
Upon an exemplary plan,
Requires a Christian indeed,—
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!
Another’s wealth on his to lay,
With all the craft of guile and greed,
To leave you bare of pence or pay,—
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
But watch
him with the closest heed,
And dun him with what force you can,—
He’ll not refund, howe’er you plead,—
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!
An honest girl to lead astray,
With subtle saw and promised meed,
Requires no cunning crone and grey,—
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
He preaches an ascetic creed,
But,—try him with the water can—
A dog will drink, whate’er his breed,—
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!
Envoy.
In good to fail, in ill succeed,
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
In honest works to lead the van,
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!
BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT. [78]
I have scribbled in
verse and in prose,
I have painted “arrangements in greens,”
And my name is familiar to those
Who take in the high class magazines;
I compose; I’ve invented machines;
I have written an “Essay on Rhyme”;
For my county I played, in my teens,
But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”
I have lived, as a chief, with the Crows;
I have “interviewed” Princes and Queens;
I have climbed the Caucasian snows;
I abstain, like the ancients, from beans,—
I’ve
a guess what Pythagoras means,
When he says that to eat them’s a crime,—
I have lectured upon the Essenes,
But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”
I’ve a fancy as morbid as Poe’s,
I can tell what is meant by “Shebeens,”
I have breasted the river that flows
Through the land of the wild Gadarenes;
I can gossip with Burton on skenes,
I can imitate Irving (the Mime),
And my sketches are quainter than Keene’s,
But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”
Envoy.
So the tower of mine eminence leans
Like the Pisan, and mud is its lime;
I’m acquainted with Dukes and with Deans,
But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”
BALLADE OF RAILWAY NOVELS.
Let others praise
analysis
And revel in a “cultured” style,
And follow the subjective Miss [80]
From Boston to the banks of Nile,
Rejoice in anti-British bile,
And weep for fickle hero’s woe,
These twain have shortened many a mile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.
These damsels of
“Democracy’s,”
How long they stop at every stile!
They
smile, and we are told, I wis,
Ten subtle reasons why they smile.
Give me your villains deeply vile,
Give me Lecoq, Jottrat, and Co.,
Great artists of the ruse and wile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!
Oh, novel readers, tell me this,
Can prose that’s polished by the file,
Like great Boisgobey’s mysteries,
Wet days and weary ways beguile,
And man to living reconcile,
Like these whose every trick we know?
The agony how high they pile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!
Envoy.
Ah, friend, how many and many a while
They’ve made the slow time fleetly flow,
And solaced pain and charmed exile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.
THE CLOUD CHORUS.
(FROM ARISTOPHANES.)
Socrates speaks.
Hither, come hither, ye Clouds renowned, and
unveil yourselves here;
Come, though ye dwell on the sacred crests of Olympian snow,
Or whether ye dance with the Nereid choir in the gardens
clear,
Or whether your golden urns are dipped in Nile’s
overflow,
Or whether you dwell by Mæotis mere
Or the snows of Mimas, arise! appear!
And hearken to us, and accept our gifts ere ye rise and go.
The Clouds sing.
Immortal Clouds from the echoing shore
Of the
father of streams, from the sounding sea,
Dewy and fleet, let us rise and soar.
Dewy and gleaming, and fleet are we!
Let us look on the tree-clad mountain crest,
On the sacred earth where the fruits rejoice,
On the waters that murmur east and west
On the tumbling sea with his moaning voice,
For unwearied glitters the Eye of the Air,
And the bright rays gleam;
Then cast we our shadows of mist, and fare
In our deathless shapes to glance everywhere
From the height of the heaven, on the land and
air,
And the Ocean stream.
Let us on, ye Maidens that bring the Rain,
Let us gaze on Pallas’ citadel,
In the country of Cecrops, fair
and dear
The mystic land of the holy
cell,
Where the Rites unspoken securely dwell,
And the gifts of the Gods that
know not stain
And a
people of mortals that know not fear.
For the temples tall, and the statues fair,
And the feasts of the Gods are holiest there,
The feasts of Immortals, the chaplets of flowers
And the Bromian mirth at the coming of spring,
And the musical voices that fill the hours,
And the dancing feet of the Maids that sing!
BALLADE OF LITERARY FAME.
“All these for Fourpence.”
Oh, where are the
endless Romances
Our grandmothers used to adore?
The Knights with their helms and their lances,
Their shields and the favours they wore?
And the Monks with their magical lore?
They have passed to Oblivion and Nox,
They have fled to the shadowy shore,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!
And where the poetical fancies
Our fathers rejoiced in, of yore?
The lyric’s melodious expanses,
The Epics in cantos a score?
They have
been and are not: no more
Shall the shepherds drive silvery flocks,
Nor the ladies their languors deplore,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!
And the Music! The songs and the
dances?
The tunes that Time may not restore?
And the tomes where Divinity prances?
And the pamphlets where Heretics roar?
They have ceased to be even a bore,—
The Divine, and the Sceptic who mocks,—
They are “cropped,” they are “foxed” to
the core,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!
Envoy.
Suns beat on them; tempests downpour,
On the chest without cover or locks,
Where they lie by the Bookseller’s door,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!
Νήνεμος ’Αἰών
I would my days had
been in other times,
A moment in the long unnumbered years
That knew the sway of Horus and of hawk,
In peaceful lands that border on the Nile.
I would my days had been in other times,
Lulled by the sacrifice and mumbled hymn
Between the Five great Rivers, or in shade
And shelter of the cool Himâlayan hills.
I would my days had been in other times,
That I in some old abbey of Touraine
Had watched the rounding grapes, and lived my life,
Ere ever Luther came or Rabelais!
I would my days had been in other times,
When quiet life to death not terrible
Drifted, as ashes of the Santhal dead
Drift down the sacred Rivers to the Sea!
ART.
A VERY WOFUL BALLADE OF THE ART CRITIC.
(TO E. A. ABBEY.)
A spirit came to my
sad bed,
And weary sad that night was I,
Who’d tottered, since the dawn was red,
Through miles of Grosvenor Gallery,
Yea, leagues of long Academy
Awaited me when morn grew white,
’Twas then the Spirit whispered nigh,
“Take up the pen, my friend, and write!
“Of many a portrait grey as lead,
Of many a mustard-coloured sky,
Say much,
where little should be said,
Lay on thy censure dexterously,
With microscopic glances pry
At textures, Tadema’s delight,
Praise foreign swells they always sky,
Take up the pen, my friend, and write!”
I answered, “’Tis for daily
bread,
A sorry crust, I ween, and dry,
That still, with aching feet and head,
I push this lawful industry,
’Mid pictures hung or low, or high,
But, touching that which I indite,
Do artists hold me lovingly?
Take up the pen, my friend, and write.”
Envoy.
“They fain would black thy dexter eye,
They hate thee with a bitter spite,
But scribble since thou must, or die,
Take tip the pen, my friend, and write!”
ART’S MARTYR.
Telleth of a young man that fain would be fairly tattooed on his flesh, after the heathen manner, in devices of blue, and that, falling among the Dyacks, a folk of Borneo, was by them tattooed in modern fashion and device, and of his misery that fell upon him, and his outlawry.
He
said, The China on the shelf
Is very fair to view,
And wherefore should mine outer self,
Not correspond thereto?
In blue
My frame I must tattoo.
Where may tattooing men abound,
And ah, where might they be?
Nay, well I wot they are not found
In lands of Christentie,
(Quoth
he)
But I must cross the sea!
So forth he sailed to Borneo,
(A land that culture lacks,)
And there his money did bestow
To purchase pricks and hacks,
(Dyacks
Are famed tattooing blacks.)
But European commerce had
Debased the savage kind,
And they this most unhappy lad
Before (and eke behind)
Designed
In colours to their mind!
Such awful colours as are blent
On terrible placards
Where
flames the fierce advertisement
Yea, or on Christmas cards
(Not
Ward’s,
But common Christmas cards!)
Thus never more to Chelsea might
The luckless boy return,
He knew himself too dreadful, quite,
A thing his friends would spurn,
And turn
To praise some Grecian urn!
But still he dwells in Borneo,
A land that culture lacks,
And there they all admire him so,
They bring him heads in sacks,
Dyacks
Are not æsthetic blacks!
THE PALACE OF BRIC-À-BRAC.
Here, where old
Nankin glitters,
Here, where men’s tumult seems
As faint as feeble twitters
Of sparrows heard in dreams,
We watch Limoges enamel,
An old chased silver camel,
A shawl, the gift of Schamyl,
And manuscripts in reams.
Here, where the hawthorn pattern
On flawless cup and plate
Need fear no housemaid slattern,
Fell minister of fate,
’Mid webs divinely woven,
And helms and hauberks cloven,
On music of Beethoven
We dream and meditate.
We know not, and we need not
To know how mortals fare,
Of Bills that pass, or speed not,
Time finds us unaware,
Yea, creeds and codes may
crumble,
And Dilke and Gladstone
stumble,
And eat the pie that’s
humble,
We neither know nor care!
Can kings or clergies alter
The crackle on one plate?
Can creeds or systems palter
With what is truly great?
With Corots and with Millets,
With April daffodillies,
Or make the maiden lilies
Bloom early or bloom late?
Nay, here ’midst Rhodian roses,
’Midst tissues of Cashmere,
The Soul sublime reposes,
And knows not hope nor fear;
Here all she sees her own is,
And musical her moan is,
O’er Caxtons and Bodonis,
Aldine and Elzevir!
RONDEAUX OF THE GALLERIES.
Camelot.
In Camelot how grey
and green
The Damsels dwell, how sad their teen,
In Camelot how green and grey
The melancholy poplars sway.
I wis I wot not what they mean
Or wherefore, passionate and lean,
The maidens mope their loves between,
Not seeming to have much to say,
In Camelot.
Yet there hath armour goodly sheen
The blossoms in the apple treen,
(To spell the Camelotian way)
Show fragrant through the doubtful day,
And
Master’s work is often seen
In Camelot!
Philistia.
Philistia! Maids in muslin white
With flannelled oarsmen oft delight
To drift upon thy streams, and float
In Salter’s most luxurious boat;
In buff and boots the cheery knight
Returns (quite safe) from Naseby fight;
Thy humblest folk are clean and bright,
Thou still must win the public vote,
Philistia!
Observe the High Church curate’s coat,
The realistic hansom note!
Ah, happy land untouched of blight,
Smirks, Bishops, Babies, left and right,
We know thine every charm by rote,
Philistia!
SCIENCE.
THE BARBAROUS BIRD-GODS: A SAVAGE PARABASIS.
In the Aves of Aristophanes, the Bird Chorus declare that they are older than the Gods, and greater benefactors of men. This idea recurs in almost all savage mythologies, and I have made the savage Bird-gods state their own case.
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, ’twas a Bird struck a light,
’twas a flash from the bright feather’d
Tonatiu’s [105] tail!
Then the
Hawk [106a] 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, [106b] 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. [106c]
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! [107a]
And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men brought it
through without falter or fail?
Why the Hawk ’twas 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.[107b]
And who for man’s need brought the famed Suttung’s
mead? why ’tis told in the creed of the Sagamen strong,
’Twas the Eagle god who brought the drink from
the blue, and gave mortals the brew that’s the fountain of
song. [108a]
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 [108b] belong to the self-same kobong
[108c] 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. [108d]
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!
MAN AND THE ASCIDIAN.
A MORALITY.
“The Ancestor
remote of Man,”
Says Darwin, “is th’ Ascidian,”
A scanty sort of water-beast
That, ninety million years at least
Before Gorillas came to be,
Went swimming up and down the sea.
Their ancestors the pious praise,
And like to imitate their ways;
How, then, does our first parent live,
What lesson has his life to give?
Th’ Ascidian tadpole, young and gay,
Doth Life with one bright eye survey,
His
consciousness has easy play.
He’s sensitive to grief and pain,
Has tail, and spine, and bears a brain,
And everything that fits the state
Of creatures we call vertebrate.
But age comes on; with sudden shock
He sticks his head against a rock!
His tail drops off, his eye drops in,
His brain’s absorbed into his skin;
He does not move, nor feel, nor know
The tidal water’s ebb and flow,
But still abides, unstirred, alone,
A sucker sticking to a stone.
And we, his children, truly we
In youth are, like the Tadpole, free.
And where we would we blithely go,
Have brains and hearts, and feel and know.
Then Age comes on! To Habit we
Affix ourselves and are not free;
Th’ Ascidian’s rooted to a rock,
And we are bond-slaves of the clock;
Our rocks are Medicine—Letters—Law,
From these our heads we cannot draw:
Our loves drop off, our hearts drop in,
And daily thicker grows our skin.
Ah, scarce we live, we scarcely know
The wide world’s moving ebb and flow,
The clanging currents ring and shock,
But we are rooted to the rock.
And thus at ending of his span,
Blind, deaf, and indolent, does Man
Revert to the Ascidian.
BALLADE OF THE PRIMITIVE JEST.
“What did the dark-haired Iberian laugh at before the tall blonde Aryan drove him into the corners of Europe?”—Brander Matthews.
I am an ancient
Jest!
Palæolithic man
In his arboreal nest
The sparks of fun would fan;
My outline did he plan,
And laughed like one possessed,
’Twas thus my course began,
I am a Merry Jest!
I am an early Jest!
Man delved, and built, and span;
Then wandered South and West
The peoples Aryan,
I
journeyed in their van;
The Semites, too, confessed,—
From Beersheba to Dan,—
I am a Merry Jest!
I am an ancient Jest,
Through all the human clan,
Red, black, white, free, oppressed,
Hilarious I ran!
I’m found in Lucian,
In Poggio, and the rest,
I’m dear to Moll and Nan!
I am a Merry Jest!
Envoy.
Prince, you may storm and ban—
Joe Millers are a pest,
Suppress me if you can!
I am a Merry Jest!
CAMEOS.
SONNETS FROM THE ANTIQUE.
These versions from classical passages are pretty close to the original, except where compression was needed, as in the sonnets from Pausanias and Apuleius, or where, as in the case of fragments of Æschylus and Sophocles, a little expansion was required.
CAMEOS.
The graver
by Apollo’s shrine,
Before the Gods had fled, would
stand,
A shell or onyx in his hand,
To copy there the face divine,
Till earnest touches, line by line,
Had wrought the wonder of the land
Within a beryl’s golden band,
Or on some fiery opal fine.
Ah! would that as some ancient ring
To us, on shell or stone, doth bring,
Art’s marvels perished long ago,
So I, within the sonnet’s space,
The large Hellenic lines might trace,
The statue in the cameo!
HELEN ON THE WALLS.
(Iliad, iii. 146.)
Fair Helen to the
Scæan portals came,
Where sat the elders, peers of Priamus,
Thymoetas, Hiketaon, Panthöus,
And many another of a noble name,
Famed warriors, now in council more of fame.
Always above the gates, in converse thus
They chattered like cicalas garrulous;
Who marking Helen, swore “it is no shame
That armed Achæan knights, and Ilian men
For such a woman’s sake should suffer long.
Fair as a deathless goddess seemeth she.
Nay, but aboard the red-prowed ships again
Home let her pass in peace, not working wrong
To us, and children’s children yet to be.”
THE ISLES OF THE BLESSED.
Pindar, Fr., 106, 107 (95): B. 4, 129–130, 109 (97): B. 4, 132.
Now the light of the
sun, in the night of the Earth, on the souls of the True
Shines, and their city is girt with the meadow where
reigneth the rose;
And deep is the shade of the woods, and the wind that flits
o’er them and through
Sings of the sea, and is sweet from the isles where
the frankincense blows:
Green is their garden and orchard, with rare fruits golden it
glows,
And the souls of the Blessed are glad in the
pleasures on Earth that they knew,
And in
chariots these have delight, and in dice and in minstrelsy
those,
And the savour of sacrifice clings to the altars and
rises anew.
But the Souls that Persephone cleanses from
ancient pollution and stain,
These at the end of the age be they prince, be they
singer, or seer;
These to the world, shall be born as of old, shall be sages
again;
These of their hands shall be hardy, shall live, and
shall die, and shall hear
Thanks of the people, and songs of the minstrels that praise them
amain,
And their glory shall dwell in the land where they
dwelt, while year calls unto year!
DEATH.
(Æsch., Fr., 156.)
Of all Gods Death
alone
Disdaineth sacrifice:
No man hath found or shown
The gift that Death would prize.
In vain are songs or sighs,
Pæan, or praise, or moan,
Alone beneath the skies
Hath Death no altar-stone!
There is no head so dear
That men would grudge to Death;
Let Death but ask, we give
All gifts that we may live;
But though Death dwells so near,
We know not what he saith.
NYSA.
(Soph., Fr., 235; Æsch., Fr., 56.)
On these
Nysæan shores divine
The clusters ripen in a day.
At dawn the blossom shreds away;
The berried grapes are green and fine
And full by noon; in day’s decline
They’re purple with a bloom of grey,
And e’er the twilight plucked are they,
And crushed, by nightfall, into wine.
But through the night with torch in hand
Down the dusk hills the Mænads fare;
The bull-voiced mummers roar and blare,
The muffled timbrels swell and sound,
And drown the clamour of the band
Like thunder moaning underground.
COLONUS.
(Œd. Col., 667–705.)
I.
Here be the fairest
homes the land can show,
The silvery-cliffed Colonus; always here
The nightingale doth haunt and singeth clear,
For well the deep green gardens doth she know.
Groves of the God, where winds may never blow,
Nor men may tread, nor noontide sun may peer
Among the myriad-berried ivy dear,
Where Dionysus wanders to and fro.
For here he loves to dwell, and here resort
These Nymphs that are his nurses and his court,
And golden eyed beneath the dewy boughs
The crocus burns, and the narcissus fair
Clusters his blooms to crown thy clustered hair,
Demeter, and to wreathe the Maiden’s brows!
Yea, here the dew of
Heaven upon the grain
Fails never, nor the ceaseless water-spring,
Near neighbour of Cephisus wandering,
That day by day revisiteth the plain.
Nor do the Goddesses the grove disdain,
But chiefly here the Muses quire and sing,
And here they love to weave their dancing ring,
With Aphrodite of the golden rein.
And here there springs a plant that knoweth
not
The Asian mead, nor that great Dorian isle,
Unsown, untilled, within our garden plot
It dwells, the grey-leaved olive; ne’er shall
guile
Nor force of foemen root it from the spot:
Zeus and Athene guarding it the while!
THE PASSING OF ŒDIPOUS.
(Œd. Col., 1655–1666.)
How Œdipous
departed, who may tell
Save Theseus only? for there neither came
The burning bolt of thunder, and the flame
To blast him into nothing, nor the swell
Of sea-tide spurred by tempest on him fell.
But some diviner herald none may name
Called him, or inmost Earth’s abyss became
The painless place where such a soul might dwell.
Howe’er it chanced, untouched of
malady,
Unharmed by fear, unfollowed by lament,
With comfort on the twilight way he went,
Passing, if ever man did, wondrously;
From this world’s death to life divinely rent,
Unschooled in Time’s last lesson, how we
die.
THE TAMING OF TYRO.
(Soph., Fr., 587.)
(Sidero, the stepmother of Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, cruelly entreated her in all things, and chiefly in this, that she let sheer her beautiful hair.)
At fierce
Sidero’s word the thralls drew near,
And shore the locks of Tyro,—like ripe corn
They fell in golden harvest,—but forlorn
The maiden shuddered in her pain and fear,
Like some wild mare that cruel grooms in scorn
Hunt in the meadows, and her mane they sheer,
And drive her where, within the waters clear,
She spies her shadow, and her shame doth mourn.
Ah! hard were he and pitiless of heart
Who marking that wild thing made weak and tame,
Broken, and grieving for her glory
gone,
Could mock her grief; but scornfully apart
Sidero stood, and watched a wind that came
And tossed the curls like fire that flew and shone!
TO ARTEMIS.
(Hippol., Eurip., 73–87.)
For thee soft crowns
in thine untrampled mead
I wove, my lady, and to thee I bear;
Thither no shepherd drives his flocks to feed,
Nor scythe of steel has ever laboured there;
Nay, through the spring among the blossoms fair
The brown bee comes and goes, and with good heed
Thy maiden, Reverence, sweet streams doth lead
About the grassy close that is her care!
Souls only that are gracious and serene
By gift of God, in human lore unread,
May pluck these holy blooms and grasses green
That now I wreathe for thine immortal head,
I that may walk with thee, thyself unseen,
And by thy whispered voice am comforted.
CRITICISM OF LIFE.
(Hippol., Eurip., 252–266.)
Long life hath
taught me many things, and shown
That lukewarm loves for men who die are best,
Weak wine of liking let them mix alone,
Not Love, that stings the soul within the breast;
Happy, who wears his love-bonds lightliest,
Now cherished, now away at random thrown!
Grievous it is for other’s grief to moan,
Hard that my soul for thine should lose her rest!
Wise ruling this of life: but yet again
Perchance too rigid diet is not well;
He lives not best who dreads the coming pain
And shunneth each delight desirable:
Flee thou extremes, this word alone is plain,
Of all that God hath given to Man to spell!
AMARYLLIS.
(Theocritus, Idyll, iii.)
Fair Amaryllis, wilt
thou never peep
From forth the cave, and call me, and be mine?
Lo, apples ten I bear thee from the steep,
These didst thou long for, and all these are
thine.
Ah, would I were a honey-bee to sweep
Through ivy, and the bracken, and woodbine;
To watch thee waken, Love, and watch thee sleep,
Within thy grot below the shadowy pine.
Now know I Love, a cruel god is he,
The wild beast bare him in the wild wood drear;
And truly to the bone he burneth me.
But, black-browed Amaryllis, ne’er a tear,
Nor sigh, nor blush, nor aught have I from thee;
Nay, nor a kiss, a little gift and dear.
THE CANNIBAL ZEUS.
A.D. 160
Καὶ ἔθυσε τὸ βρέφος, καὶ ἔσπεισεν ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τὸ ‘αῖμχ—έπὶ τούτου
βωμοῦ τῷ Δὺ θύουσιν ἐν ἀποῤῥήτῳ.—Paus. viii. 38
None elder city doth
the Sun behold
Than ancient Lycosura; ’twas begun
Ere Zeus the meat of mortals learned to shun,
And here hath he a grove whose haunted fold
The driven deer seek and huntsmen dread: ’tis told
That whoso fares within that forest dun
Thenceforth shall cast no shadow in the Sun,
Ay, and within the year his life is cold!
Hard by dwelt he [130] who, while the
Gods deigned eat
At good men’s tables, gave them dreadful meat,
A child he slew:—his mountain altar green
Here
still hath Zeus, with rites untold of me,
Piteous, but as they are let these things be,
And as from the beginning they have been!
INVOCATION OF ISIS.
(Apuleius, Metamorph. XI.)
Thou that art
sandalled on immortal feet
With leaves of palm, the prize of Victory;
Thou that art crowned with snakes and blossoms sweet,
Queen of the silver dews and shadowy sky,
I pray thee by all names men name thee by!
Demeter, come, and leave the yellow wheat!
Or Aphrodite, let thy lovers sigh!
Or Dian, from thine Asian temple fleet!
Or, yet more dread, divine Persephone
From worlds of wailing spectres, ah, draw near;
Approach, Selene, from thy subject sea;
Come, Artemis, and this night spare the deer:
By all thy names and rites I summon thee;
By all thy rites and names, Our Lady, hear!
THE COMING OF ISIS.
So Lucius prayed,
and sudden, from afar,
Floated the locks of Isis, shone the bright
Crown that is tressed with berry, snake, and star;
She came in deep blue raiment of the night,
Above her robes that now were snowy white,
Now golden as the moons of harvest are,
Now red, now flecked with many a cloudy bay,
Now stained with all the lustre of the light.
Then he who saw her knew her, and he knew
The awful symbols borne in either hand;
The golden urn that laves Demeter’s dew,
The handles wreathed with asps, the mystic wand;
The shaken seistron’s music, tinkling through
The temples of that old Osirian land.
THE SPINET.
My heart
an old Spinet with strings
To laughter chiefly turned, but
some
That Fate has practised hard on,
dumb,
They answer not whoever sings.
The ghosts of half-forgotten things
Will touch the keys with fingers numb,
The little mocking spirits come
And thrill it with their fairy wings.
A jingling harmony it makes
My heart, my lyre, my old
Spinet,
And now a memory it wakes,
And now the music means
“forget,”
And little heed the player takes
Howe’er the thoughtful critic fret.
NOTES.
Page 3. The Fortunate Islands. This piece is a rhymed loose version of a passage in the Vera Historia of Lucian. The humorist was unable to resist the temptation to introduce passages of mockery, which are here omitted. Part of his description of the Isles of the Blest has a close and singular resemblance to the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. The clear River of Life and the prodigality of gold and of precious stones may especially be noticed.
Whoso doth taste the Dead Men’s bread, &.c. This belief that the living may visit, on occasion, the dwellings of the dead, but can never return to earth if they taste the food of the departed, is expressed in myths of worldwide distribution. Because she ate the pomegranate seed, Persephone became subject to the spell of Hades. In Apuleius, Psyche, when she visits the place of souls, is advised to abstain from food. Kohl found the myth among the Ojibbeways, Mr. Codrington among the Solomon Islanders; it occurs in Samoa, in the Finnish Kalewala (where Wainamoinen, in Pohjola, refrains from touching meat or drink), and the belief has left its mark on the mediæval ballad of Thomas of Ercildoune. When he is in Fairy Land, the Fairy Queen supplies him with the bread and wine of earth, and will not suffer him to touch the fruits which grow “in this countrie.” See also “Wandering Willie” in Redgauntlet.
Page 20. As now the hutted Eskimo. The Eskimo and the miserable Fuegians are almost the only Socialists who practise what European Anarchists preach. The Fuegians go so far as to tear up any piece of cloth which one of the tribe may receive, so that each member may have a rag. The Eskimo are scarcely such consistent walkers, and canoes show a tendency to accumulate in the hands of proprietors. Formerly no Eskimo was allowed to possess more than one canoe. Such was the wild justice of the Polar philosophers.
Page 36. The latest minstrel. “The sound of all others dearest to his ear, the gentle ripple of Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.”—Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vii., 394.
Page 45. Ronsard’s Grave. This version ventures to condense the original which, like most of the works of the Pleiad, is unnecessarily long.
Page 46. The snow, and wind, and hail. Ronsard’s rendering of the famous passage in Odyssey, vi., about the dwellings of the Olympians. The vision of a Paradise of learned lovers and poets constantly recurs in the poetry of Joachim du Bellay, and of Ronsard.
Page 50. Romance. Suggested by a passage in La Faustin, by M. E. de Goncourt, a curious moment of poetry in a repulsive piece of naturalisme.
Page 55. M. Boulmier, author of Les Villanelles, died shortly after this villanelle was written; he had not published a larger collection on which he had been at work.
Page 61. Edmund Gorliot. The bibliophile will not easily procure Gorliot’s book, which is not in the catalogues. Throughout The Last Maying there is reference to the Pervigilium Veneris.
Page 105. Bird-Gods. Apparently Aristophanes preserved, in a burlesque form, the remnants of a genuine myth. Almost all savage religions have their bird-gods, and it is probable that Aristophanes did not invent, but only used a surviving myth of which there are scarcely any other traces in Greek literature.
Page 134. Spinet. The accent is on the last foot, even when the word is written spinnet. Compare the remarkable Liberty which Pamela took with the 137th Psalm.
My Joys and Hopes all overthrown,
My Heartstrings almost broke,
Unfit my Mind for Melody,
Much more to bear a Joke.
But yet, if from my Innocence
I, even in Thought, should slide,
Then, let my fingers quite forget
The sweet Spinnet to guide!
Pamela, or
Virtue Rewarded, vol. i.,
p. 184., 1785.
FOOTNOTES.
[78] N.B. There is only one veracious statement in this ballade, which must not be accepted as autobiographical.
[80] These lines do not apply to Miss Annie P. (or Daisy) Miller, and her delightful sisters, Gades adituræ mecum, in the pocket edition of Mr. James’s novels, if ever I go to Gades.
[105] Tonatiu, the Thunder Bird; well known to the Dacotahs and Zulus.
[106a] The Hawk, in the myth of the Galinameros of Central California, lit up the Sun.
[106b] Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, is the demiurge and “culture-hero” of several Australian tribes.
[106c] The Creation of Man is thus described by the Australians.
[107a] In Andaman, Thlinkeet, Melanesian, and other myths, a Bird is the Prometheus Purphoros; in Normandy this part is played by the Wren.
[107b] Yehl: the Raven God of the Thlinkeets.
[108a] 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.
[108b] Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, gave Australians their marriage laws.
[108c] Lubra, a woman; kobong, “totem;” or, to please Mr. Max Müller, “otem.”
[108d] The Crow was the Hawk’s rival.
[130] Lycaon, the first werewolf.