Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, Extort her crimson secret from the rose, But ask not of the Muse that she disclose The meaning of the riddle of her might : Somewhat of all things sealed and recon dite,
Save the enigma of herself, she knows. The master could not tell, with all his lore,
Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped:
Even as the linnet sings, so I, he said ;Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, That held in trance the ancient Attic shore, And charms the ages with the notes that o'er
All woodland chants immortally prevail ! And now, from our vain plaudits greatly
He with diviner silence dwells instead,
And on no earthly sea with transient roar,
Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail,
But far beyond our vision and our hail
Is heard forever and is seen no more.
No more, O never now,
Lord of the lofty and the tranquil brow
Whereon nor snows of time
Have fallen, nor wintry rime,
Shall men behold thee, sage and mage sublime.
Once, in his youth obscure,
The maker of this verse, which shall endure
By splendor of its theme that cannot die,
Beheld thee eye to eye,
And touched through thee the hand
Of every hero of thy race divine,
Even to the sire of all the laurelled line,
The sightless wanderer on the Ionian strand,
With soul as healthful as the poignant
brine,
Wide as his skies and radiant as his seas,
Starry from haunts of his Familiars nine,
Glorious Mæonides.
Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet:
Thou hast forgotten, but can I forget?
The accents of thy pure and sovereign
I see the hands a nation's lyre that strung, The eyes that looked through life and gazed on God.
The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer;
The grass of yesteryear
Is dead; the birds depart, the groves de
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear: Song passes not away.
Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, And kings a dubious legend of their reign; The swords of Cæsars, they are less than rust:
The poet doth remain.
Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive ;
And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime,
Like Virgil shalt thy race and tongue survive,
Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time,
Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme, And rich with sweets from every Muse's hive;
While to the measure of the cosmic rune For purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune, And heed no more the hum of idle praise In that great calm our tumults cannot reach,
Master who crown'st our immelodious days With flower of perfect speech.
Two worlds hast thou to dwell in, Sweet,
The virginal, untroubled sky,
And this vexed region at my feet. -
Alas, but one have I!
To all my songs there clings the shade, The dulling shade, of mundane care; They amid mortal mists are made, — Thine, in immortal air.
My heart is dashed with griefs and fears; My song comes fluttering, and is gone. O high above the home of tears,
Eternal Joy, sing on!
Not loftiest bard, of mightiest mind,
Shall ever chant a note so pure,
Till he can cast this earth behind
And breathe in heaven secure.
We sing of Life, with stormy breath
That shakes the lute's distempered string:
We sing of Love, and loveless Death
Takes up the song we sing.
And born in toils of Fate's control,
Insurgent from the womb, we strive
With proud, unmanumitted soul
To burst the golden gyve.
Thy spirit knows nor bounds nor bars;
On thee no shreds of thraldom hang:
Not more enlarged, the morning stars
Their great Te Deum sang.
But I am fettered to the sod,
And but forget my bonds an hour;
In amplitude of dreams a god,
A slave in dearth of power.
And fruitless knowledge clouds my soul,
And fretful ignorance irks it more.
Thou sing'st as if thou knew'st the whole,
And lightly held'st thy lore!
Sing, for with rapturous throes of birth,
And arrowy labyrinthine sting,
There riots in the veins of Earth
The ichor of the Spring!
Sing, for the beldam Night is fled,
And Morn the bride is wreathed and gays
Sing, while her revelling lord o'erhead
Leads the wild dance of day!
The serpent Winter sleeps upcurled :
Sing, till I know not if there be
Aught else in the dissolving world
But melody and thee!
Sing, as thou drink'st of heaven thy fill,
All hope, all wonder, all desire
Creation's ancient canticle
To which the worlds conspire!
Somewhat as thou, Man once could sing,
In porches of the lucent morn,
Ere he had felt his lack of wing,
Or cursed his iron bourn.
The springtime bubbled in his throat, The sweet sky seemed not far above,
SWEETEST Sweets that time hath rifled
Live anew on lyric tongue-
Tresses with which Paris trifled,
Lips to Antony's that clung.
These surrender not their rose,
Nor their golden puissance those.
Vain the envious loam that covers
Her of Egypt, her of Troy :
Helen's, Cleopatra's lovers
Still desire them, still enjoy.
Fate but stole what Song restored :
Vain the aspic, vain the cord.
Idly clanged the sullen portal,
Idly the sepulchral door:
Fame the mighty, Love the immortal,
These than foolish dust are more:
Nor may captive Death refuse
Homage to the conquering Muse.
WHEN you are dead some day, my dear,
Quite dead and under ground,
Where you will never see or hear
A summer sight or sound,
What shall remain of you in death,
When all our songs to you
Are silent as the bird whose breath
Has sung the summer through?
I wonder, will you ever wake,
And with tired eyes again
Live for your old life's little sake
An age of joy or pain?
Shall some stern destiny control
That perfect form, wherein
I hardly see enough of soul
To make your life a sin?
For, we have heard, for all men born
One harvest-day prepares
Its golden garners for the corn,
And fire to burn the tares;
But who shall gather into sheaves,
Or turn aside to blame
The poppies' puckered helpless leaves,
Blown bells of scarlet flame?
No hate so hard, no love so bold
To seek your bliss or woe;
You are too sweet for hell to hold,
And heaven would tire you so.
A little while your joy shall be,
And when you crave for rest
The earth shall take you utterly
Again into her breast.
And we will find a quiet place
For your still sepulchre,
And lay the flowers upon your face
Sweet as your kisses were,
And with hushed voices void of mirth
Spread the light turf above,
Soft as the silk you loved on earth
As much as you could love.
Few tears, but once, our eyes shall shed,
Nor will we sigh at all,
But come and look upon your bed
When the warm sunlights fall.
Upon that grave no tree of fruit
Shall grow, nor any grain,
Only one flower of shallow root
That will not spring again.
His rod-born fount and Castaly
Let the one rock bring forth for thee,
Renewing so from either spring
The songs which both thy countries sing:
Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long,
Thou shouldst forget thy native song,
And mar thy mortal melodies
With broken stammer of the skies.
Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord
With earth's waters make accord;
Teach how the crucifix may be
Carven from the laurel-tree,
Fruit of the Hesperides
Burnish take on Eden-trees,
The Muses' sacred grove be wet
With the red dew of Olivet,
And Sappho lay her burning brows
In white Cecilia's lap of snows!
Thy childhood must have felt the stings
Of too divine o'ershadowings;
Its odorous heart have been a blossom
That in darkness did unbosom,
Those fire-flies of God to invite,
Burning spirits, which by night
Bear upon their laden wing
To such hearts impregnating.
For flowers that night-wings fertilize
Mock down the stars' unsteady eyes,
And with a happy, sleepless glance
Gaze the moon out of countenance.
I think thy girlhood's watchers must
Have took thy folded songs on trust,
And felt them, as one feels the stir
Of still lightnings in the hair,
When conscious hush expects the cloud
To speak the golden secret loud
Which tacit air is privy to;
Flasked in the grape the wine they knew,
Ere thy poet-mouth was able
For its first young starry babble.
Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace?
Yea, in this silent interspace,
God sets His poems in thy face!
The loom which mortal verse affords,
Out of weak and mortal words,
Wovest thou thy singing-weed in,
To a rune of thy far Eden.
Vain are all disguises! ah,
Heavenly incognita!
Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong
The great Uranian House of Song!
As the vintages of earth
Taste of the sun that riped their birth,
We know what never cadent Sun
Thy lamped clusters throbbed upon,
What plumèd feet the winepress trod ;
Thy wine is flavorous of God.
Whatever singing-robe thou wear
Has the Paradisal air ;
And some gold feather it has kept
Shows what Floor it lately swept !
THE breaths of kissing night and day
Were mingled in the eastern Heaven :
Throbbing with unheard melody
Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven :
When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod
shy,
And dawn's gray eyes were troubled
gray;
And souls went palely up the sky,
And mine to Lucidé.
There was no change in her sweet eyes
Since last I saw those sweet eyes shine;
There was no change in her deep heart
Since last that deep heart knocked at
mine.
Her eyes were clear, her eyes were
Hope's,
Wherein did ever come and go
The sparkle of the fountain-drops
From her sweet soul below.
The chambers in the house of dreams
Are fed with so divine an air
That Time's hoar wings grow young
therein,
And they who walk there are most fair.
I joyed for me, I joyed for her,
Who with the Past meet girt about. Where our last kiss still warns the air, Nor can her eyes go out.
WHERE the thistle lifts a purple crown
Six foot out of the turf,
And the harebell shakes on the windy
O the breath of the distant surf !
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