| IT is full Winter now: the trees are bare, | |
| Save where the cattle huddle from the cold | |
| Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear | |
| The Autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold | |
| Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true | 5 |
| To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew | |
| |
| From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay | |
| Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain | |
| Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day | |
| From the low meadows up the narrow lane; | 10 |
| Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep | |
| Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep | |
| |
| From the shut stable to the frozen stream | |
| And back again disconsolate, and miss | |
| The bawling shepherds and the noisy team; | 15 |
| And overhead in circling listlessness | |
| The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack, | |
| Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack | |
| |
| Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds | |
| And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck, | 20 |
| And hoots to see the moon; across the meads | |
| Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck; | |
| And a stray seamew with its fretful cry | |
| Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky. | |
| |
| Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings | 25 |
| His load of faggots from the chilly byre, | |
| And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings | |
| The sappy billets on the waning fire, | |
| And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare | |
| His children at their play; and yet,—the Spring is in the air, | 30 |
| |
| Already the slim crocus stirs the snow, | |
| And soon yon blanchèd fields will bloom again | |
| With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow, | |
| For with the first warm kisses of the rain | |
| The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears, | 35 |
| And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers | |
| |
| From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie, | |
| And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs | |
| Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly | |
| Across our path at evening, and the suns | 40 |
| Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see | |
| Grass-girdled Spring in all her joy of laughing greenery | |
| |
| Dance through the hedges till the early rose, | |
| (That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!) | |
| Burst from its sheathèd emerald and disclose | 45 |
| The little quivering disk of golden fire | |
| Which the bees know so well, for with it come | |
| Pale boys-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom. | |
| |
| Then up and down the field the sower goes, | |
| While close behind the laughing younker scares | 50 |
| With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows, | |
| And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears, | |
| And on the grass the creamy blossom falls | |
| In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals | |
| |
| Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons | 55 |
| Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine, | |
| That star of its own heaven, snapdragons | |
| With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine | |
| In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed | |
| And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed | 60 |
| |
| Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply, | |
| And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes, | |
| Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy | |
| Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise, | |
| And violets getting overbold withdraw | 65 |
| From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw. | |
| |
| O happy field! and O thrice happy tree! | |
| Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock | |
| And crown of flowre-de-luce trip down the lea, | |
| Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock | 70 |
| Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon | |
| Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon. | |
| |
| Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour, | |
| The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns | |
| Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture | 75 |
| Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations | |
| With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind, | |
| And straggling traveller’s joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind. | |
| |
| Dear Bride of Nature and most bounteous Spring! | |
| That can’st give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine, | 80 |
| And to the kid its little horns, and bring | |
| The soft and silky blossoms to the vine, | |
| Where is that old nepenthe which of yore | |
| Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore! | |
| |
| There was a time when any common bird | 85 |
| Could make me sing in unison, a time | |
| When all the strings of boyish life were stirred | |
| To quick response or more melodious rhyme | |
| By every forest idyll;—do I change? | |
| Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range? | 90 |
| |
| Nay, nay, thou art the same: ’tis I who seek | |
| To vex with sighs thy simple solitude, | |
| And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek | |
| Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood; | |
| Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare | 95 |
| To taint such wine with the salt poison of his own despair! | |
| |
| Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul | |
| Takes discontent to be its paramour, | |
| And gives its kingdom to the rude control | |
| Of what should be its servitor,—for sure | 100 |
| Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea | |
| Contain it not, and the huge deep answer “’Tis not in me.” | |
| |
| To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect | |
| In natural honour, not to bend the knee | |
| In profitless prostrations whose effect | 105 |
| Is by itself condemned, what alchemy | |
| Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed | |
| Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued? | |
| |
| The minor chord which ends the harmony, | |
| And for its answering brother waits in vain, | 110 |
| Sobbing for incompleted melody | |
| Dies a Swan’s death; but I the heir of pain | |
| A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes | |
| Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise. | |
| |
| The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom, | 115 |
| The little dust stored in the narrow urn, | |
| The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb,— | |
| Were not these better far than to return | |
| To my old fitful restless malady, | |
| Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery? | 120 |
| |
| Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd God | |
| Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bed | |
| Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod | |
| Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said, | |
| Death is too rude, too obvious a key | 125 |
| To solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy. | |
| |
| And Love! that noble madness, whose august | |
| And inextinguishable might can slay | |
| The soul with honied drugs,—alas! I must | |
| From such sweet ruin play the runaway, | 130 |
| Although too constant memory never can | |
| Forget the archèd splendour of those brows Olympian | |
| |
| Which for a little season made my youth | |
| So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence | |
| That all the chiding of more prudent Truth | 135 |
| Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,—O Hence | |
| Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis! | |
| Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss | |
| |
| My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,— | |
| Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow | 140 |
| Back to the troubled waters of this shore | |
| Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now | |
| The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near, | |
| Hence! Hence! I pass unto a life more barren, more austere. | |
| |
| More barren—ay, those arms will never lean | 145 |
| Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul | |
| In sweet reluctance through the tangled green; | |
| Some other head must wear that aureole, | |
| For I am Hers who loves not any man | |
| Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian. | 150 |
| |
| Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page, | |
| And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair, | |
| With net and spear and hunting equipage | |
| Let young Adonis to his tryst repair, | |
| But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell | 155 |
| Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel. | |
| |
| Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy | |
| Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud | |
| Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy | |
| And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed | 160 |
| In wonder at her feet, not for the sake | |
| Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take. | |
| |
| Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed! | |
| And, if my lips be musicless, inspire | |
| At least my life: was not thy glory hymned | 165 |
| By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre | |
| Like Æschylus at well-fought Marathon, | |
| And died to show that Milton’s England still could bear a son! | |
| |
| And yet I cannot tread the Portico | |
| And live without desire, fear, and pain, | 170 |
| Or nurture that wise calm which long ago | |
| The grave Athenian master taught to men, | |
| Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted, | |
| To watch the world’s vain phantasies go by with unbowed head. | |
| |
| Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips, | 175 |
| Those eyes that mirrored all eternity, | |
| Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse | |
| Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne | |
| Is childless; in the night which she had made | |
| For lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself hath strayed. | 180 |
| |
| Nor much with Science do I care to climb, | |
| Although by strange and subtle witchery | |
| She draw the moon from heaven: the Muse of Time | |
| Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry | |
| To no less eager eyes; often indeed | 185 |
| In the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read | |
| |
| How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war | |
| Against a little town, and panoplied | |
| In gilded mail with jewelled scimetar, | |
| White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede | 190 |
| Between the waving poplars and the sea | |
| Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylæ | |
| |
| Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall, | |
| And on the nearer side a little brood | |
| Of careless lions holding festival! | 195 |
| And stood amazèd at such hardihood, | |
| And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore, | |
| And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’er | |
| |
| Some unfrequented height, and coming down | |
| The autumn forests treacherously slew | 200 |
| What Sparta held most dear and was the crown | |
| Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew | |
| How God had staked an evil net for him | |
| In the small bay of Salamis,—and yet, the page grows dim, | |
| |
| Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel | 205 |
| With such a goodly time too out of tune | |
| To love it much: for like the Dial’s wheel | |
| That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon | |
| Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes | |
| Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies. | 210 |
| |
| O for one grand unselfish simple life | |
| To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills | |
| Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife | |
| Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills, | |
| Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly | 215 |
| Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century! | |
| |
| Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is He | |
| Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul | |
| Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty | |
| Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal | 220 |
| Where Love and Duty mingle! Him at least | |
| The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast, | |
| |
| But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote | |
| The clarion watchword of each Grecian school | |
| And follow none, the flawless sword which smote | 225 |
| The pagan Hydra is an effete tool | |
| Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now | |
| Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow? | |
| |
| One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod! | |
| Gone is that last dear son of Italy, | 230 |
| Who being man died for the sake of God, | |
| And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully. | |
| O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower, | |
| Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour | |
| |
| Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or | 235 |
| The Arno with its tawny troubled gold | |
| O’erleap its marge, no mightier conqueror | |
| Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old | |
| When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty | |
| Walked like a Bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery | 240 |
| |
| Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell | |
| With an old man who grabbled rusty keys, | |
| Fled shuddering for that immemorial knell | |
| With which oblivion buries dynasties | |
| Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast, | 245 |
| As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed. | |
| |
| He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome, | |
| He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair, | |
| And now lies dead by that empyreal dome | |
| Which overtops Valdarno hung in air | 250 |
| By Brunelleschi—O Melpomene | |
| Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody! | |
| |
| Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies | |
| That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the Nine | |
| Forget a-while their discreet emperies, | 255 |
| Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine | |
| Lit for men’s lives the light of Marathon, | |
| And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun! | |
| |
| O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower, | |
| Let some young Florentine each eventide | 260 |
| Bring coronals of that enchanted flower | |
| Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide, | |
| And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies | |
| Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes. | |
| |
| Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings, | 265 |
| Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim | |
| Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings | |
| Of the eternal chanting Cherubim | |
| Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away | |
| Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and clay, | 270 |
| |
| He is not dead, the immemorial Fates | |
| Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain, | |
| Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates! | |
| Ye argent clarions sound a loftier strain! | |
| For the vile thing he hated lurks within | 275 |
| Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin. | |
| |
| Still what avails it that she sought her cave | |
| That murderous mother of red harlotries? | |
| At Munich on the marble architrave | |
| The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas | 280 |
| Which wash Ægina fret in loneliness | |
| Not mirroring their beauty, so our lives grow colourless | |
| |
| For lack of our ideals, if one star | |
| Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust | |
| Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war | 285 |
| Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust | |
| Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe | |
| For all her stony sorrows hath her sons, but Italy! | |
| |
| What Easter Day shall make her children rise, | |
| Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet | 290 |
| Shall find their graveclothes folded? what clear eyes | |
| Shall see them bodily? O it were meet | |
| To roll the stone from off the sepulchre | |
| And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of Her | |
| |
| Our Italy! our mother visible! | 295 |
| Most blessed among nations and most sad, | |
| For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell | |
| That day at Aspromonte and was glad | |
| That in an age when God was bought and sold | |
| One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold, | 300 |
| |
| See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves | |
| Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty | |
| Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives | |
| Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily, | |
| And no word said:—O we are wretched men | 305 |
| Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen | |
| |
| Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword | |
| Which slew its master righteously? the years | |
| Have lost their ancient leader, and no word | |
| Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears: | 310 |
| While as a ruined mother in some spasm | |
| Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm | |
| |
| Genders unlawful children, Anarchy | |
| Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal | |
| Licence who steals the gold of Liberty | 315 |
| And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real | |
| One Fratricide since Cain, Envy the asp | |
| That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp | |
| |
| Is in its extent stiffened, monied Greed | |
| For whose dull appetite men waste away | 320 |
| Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed | |
| Of things which slay their sower, these each day | |
| Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet | |
| Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street. | |
| |
| What even Cromwell spared is desecrated | 325 |
| By weed and worm, left to the stormy play | |
| Of wind and beating snow, or renovated | |
| By more destructful hands: Time’s worst decay | |
| Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness, | |
| But these new Vandals can but make a rainproof barrenness. | 330 |
| |
| Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing | |
| Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air | |
| Seems from such marble harmonies to ring | |
| With sweeter song than common lips can dare | |
| To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now | 335 |
| The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow | |
| |
| For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One | |
| Who loved the lilies of the field with all | |
| Our dearest English flowers? the same sun | |
| Rises for us: the seasons natural | 340 |
| Weave the same tapestry of green and grey: | |
| The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away. | |
| |
| And yet perchance it may be better so, | |
| For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen, | |
| Murder her brother is her bedfellow, | 345 |
| And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene | |
| And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set; | |
| Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate! | |
| |
| For gentle brotherhood, the harmony | |
| Of living in the healthful air, the swift | 350 |
| Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free | |
| And women chaste, these are the things which lift | |
| Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s | |
| Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes, | |
| |
| Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair | 355 |
| White as her own sweet lily and as tall, | |
| Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,— | |
| Ah! somehow life is bigger after all | |
| Than any painted angel could we see | |
| The God that is within us! The old Greek serenity | 360 |
| |
| Which curbs the passion of that level line | |
| Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes | |
| And chastened limbs ride round Athena’s shrine | |
| And mirror her divine economies, | |
| And balanced symmetry of what in man | 365 |
| Would else wage ceaseless warfare,—this at least within the span | |
| |
| Between our mother’s kisses and the grave | |
| Might so inform our lives, that we could win | |
| Such mighty empires that from her cave | |
| Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin | 370 |
| Would walk ashamed of his adulteries, | |
| And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes. | |
| |
| To make the Body and the Spirit one | |
| With all right things, till no thing live in vain | |
| From morn to noon, but in sweet unison | 375 |
| With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain | |
| The Soul in flawless essence high enthroned, | |
| Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned, | |
| |
| Mark with serene impartiality | |
| The strife of things, and yet be comforted, | 380 |
| Knowing that by the chain causality | |
| All separate existences are wed | |
| Into one supreme whole, whose utterance | |
| Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance | |
| |
| Of Life in most august omnipresence, | 385 |
| Through which the rational intellect would find | |
| In passion its expression, and mere sense, | |
| Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind, | |
| And being joined with in harmony | |
| More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary, | 390 |
| |
| Strike from their several tones one octave chord | |
| Whose cadence being measureless would fly | |
| Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord | |
| Return refreshed with its new empery | |
| And more exultant power,—this indeed | 395 |
| Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed. | |
| |
| Ah! it was easy when the world was young | |
| To keep one’s life free and inviolate, | |
| From our sad lips another song is rung, | |
| By our own hands our heads are desecrate, | 400 |
| Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed | |
| Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest. | |
| |
| Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown, | |
| And of all men we are most wretched who | |
| Must live each other’s lives and not our own | 405 |
| For very pity’s sake and then undo | |
| All that we live for—it was otherwise | |
| When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies. | |
| |
| But we have left those gentle haunts to pass | |
| With weary feet to the new Calvary, | 410 |
| Where we behold, as one who in a glass | |
| Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity, | |
| And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze | |
| Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise. | |
| |
| O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn! | 415 |
| O chalice of all common miseries! | |
| Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne | |
| An agony of endless centuries, | |
| And we were vain and ignorant nor knew | |
| That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew. | 420 |
| |
| Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds, | |
| The night that covers and the lights that fade, | |
| The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds, | |
| The lips betraying and the life betrayed; | |
| The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we | 425 |
| Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy. | |
| |
| Is this the end of all that primal force | |
| Which, in its changes being still the same, | |
| From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course, | |
| Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame, | 430 |
| Till the suns met in heaven and began | |
| Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man! | |
| |
| Nay, nay, we are but crucified and though | |
| The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain, | |
| Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know, | 435 |
| Staunch the red wounds—we shall be whole again, | |
| No need have we of hyssop-laden rod, | |
| That which is purely human, that is Godlike, that is God. | |
|
|