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 3 1924 013 471 010 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 3471 01 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
ORPHEUS IN 
 THRACE AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS: By 
 
 the late JOHN B. LEICESTER 
 WARREN, LORD DE TABLEY 
 
 LONDON : 
 Smith, Elder & Co., 15, Waterloo Place, 
 
 MANCHESTER : 
 
 Sherratt & Hughes, 27, St. Ann Street. 
 
 1901. 
 
 [all rights reserved.] 
 
 ?. ft 
 
.A,u^^ns\ 
 
TO THE FRIENDS 
 
 WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND SYMPATHY 
 
 INSPIRED THESE LAST VERSES 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED. 
 
 E. L. W. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 FAOE 
 
 ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 I 
 
 NAPOLEON THE GREAT — (FRANCE) 
 
 i6 
 
 „ —(MOSCOW) 
 
 19 
 
 „ „ — (WATERLOO) 
 
 21 
 
 „ „ —(ST. HELENA) 
 
 23 
 
 „ „ —(THE INVALIDBS) 
 
 26 
 
 A PARTING 
 
 28 
 
 THE stoic's creed - 
 
 31 
 
 THE LAMENT OF ECHO 
 
 34 
 
 THE SPEAR OF ACHILLES - 
 
 41 
 
 ON A queen's PALACE IN RUINS 
 
 43 
 
 WHAT THE BIRD SINGS 
 
 47 
 
 THE END OF A DELUSION 
 
 SI 
 
 A CRADLE SONG 
 
 S6 
 
 THE SICK FLOWER 
 
 S9 
 
 VII. 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 62 
 
 CARPB DIEM 71 
 
 THE WAKING SKYLARK 74 
 
 AN OLD man's CONSOLATION 76 
 
 SORROW INVINCIBLE 81 
 
 THE HEDGE 86 
 
 AT heaven's GATE - 9P 
 
 A SONG OF DESPAIR 96 
 
 LINES TO A LADY-BIRD IO3 
 
 THE BALLAD OF LIFE I08 ' 
 
 THE INVITATION II4 
 
 THE DIRGE OF DAY 121 
 
 A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE I26 
 
 APOLOGIA 156 
 
 VIII. 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE. 
 
 ^ M •> ' I ^ J ^ J " ^ 
 
 All breathing men jhave troiible ofl their day. 
 Fate and the gods abhor prosperity 
 For us who live the wasting of an hour. 
 Yet I, that Orpheus, whose sole craft is song, 
 The mortal son of the immortal muse, 
 Claim to have vanquished all competitors ; 
 In endless desolation held supreme, 
 I bear the palm of sorrow's thorny road. 
 Man's comr^on grief to my imperial pain 
 Seems like a puny ghat that pricks the skin, 
 Beside a python crushing in his coils 
 The very bones to pulp, a broken heap ; 
 Seems as a ripple to a cataract. 
 Seems as a dew-bead to a planet sphere. 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRAC) 
 
 miserable bard, whose grinding woes 
 Drive him to wander with an aching heart 
 Thro' mountain fields and Thracian solitudes, 
 Loathing his fellow men, a life apart ; 
 Scorn in my soul against man's shallow race, 
 In trivial jars consuming narrow days, 
 Wailing and laughter, spite and vanities, 
 And as a robe they are folded and put away. 
 
 From the first quivering dawn-point in the 
 
 gray 
 To the last purple foot-step in the cloud 
 Upon the road where Phoebus went to rest, 
 Thro' the long day and all its wasteful hours, 
 
 1 wander like a phantom of myself 
 
 Tale, hollow-eyed, immersed in utter gloom, 
 I peal my piteous passion to the crags. 
 And the pines hear me and the torrent-voice 
 Wails in with mine, concordant to my woe. 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 One theme the dawn, one theme the sunset 
 
 brings, 
 The fierce noon blazing on the mountain 
 
 walls 
 Explains noi other sorrow ; the fair moon 
 Floated in many a star and fleeting cloud . 
 Burns the same story on the brow of heaven. 
 One master-chord of grief is tyrannous, i 
 And, without pity stifling, sweeps aside 
 The feeble notes which whisper nascent 
 
 hope. 
 Soon turns the cadence back to grim despair; 
 Until the lyre and its seven brother strings 
 Sound each a vocal tear, distinct in woe : 
 As when the urns of heaven come pouring 
 
 down 
 Against the full-leaved heaving forest-sheets, 
 And the woods drip with quick perpetual 
 
 throb. 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 Mocking the semblance and the sound of 
 
 tears 
 And seem responsive to my streaming eyes. 
 My faltering hand in many a broken pause, 
 My heaving breast in many a gasping sob, 
 Divulge a loss, which tears have never 
 
 sounded, 
 Deep-welling from the fountains of my life, 
 An agony which words are dumb to tell, 
 Which only music, sovereign to express 
 The supreme desolation of despair. 
 Unveils by gleam and glimpse in ruinous 
 
 deeps, ' 
 
 A mind that crumbles like a wasted crag 
 Into a midnight of un fathomed chasm, 
 Ragged, abrupt, another Taenarus. 
 Why should I wither slowly, inch by inch ? 
 Where is this laggard Death ? No stranger he. 
 Familiar is his face, and day by day 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 I have burnt incense in his gloomy shrine. 
 He comes to those who prosper and fare well. 
 I am not worth the raising of his hand ; 
 The young, the good, the lovely are his prey. 
 
 I am become as some pale, rotten weed 
 Beside a stagnant marsh, whos^ matted floors 
 Reek up pdluted vapours ; leaf by leaf 
 I drop to dust, and round my sapless roots 
 The horror of a black and staining mire 
 Festers, and tho' the attributes of life 
 Survive, I perish piecemeal in my wane, f 
 As one long dead, forgotten out of mind 
 Among the dusty brethren of the gra/e. 
 I am withered' from my old identity, 
 O ! I am chajlged, for as no man believes 
 That this sere leaf which in October hangs 
 Can be the same with May's redundant shoot, 
 Can this same Orpheus of the grand attempt' 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 Be one with this weak palsied nerveless thing 
 Stumbling along the granite glens of Thrace, 
 Perplexed with aimless fear and girded round 
 With walls of apprehension, woebegone 
 And trembling at the movements of the trees, 
 When the wind gently stirs the stagnant 
 
 noon? 
 How can I be that greatly daring bard, 
 Armed with his lyre and armoured with his 
 
 love, 
 Who went among the torments of the dead, 
 Who saw calm-eyed, with visage well 
 
 composed, 
 Dire emanations, shapes intensely foul. 
 Worse than the dream of fever brings the 
 
 brain. 
 Horrors, abortions, lemures, vampii:es, ghosts? 
 I faced them all to save my well-beloved, 
 To bring her back to nature, whom the snake 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 Plucked down to Orcus. There stern Hades 
 
 sat, 
 His shaggy brow ridged in reluctant frown 
 At my request, glooming an angry nay, 
 Until I made the mighty Queen of Hell / 
 Weep like a maiden, and the fluttering ghosts, 
 Who had forgot emotion could recall 
 Some faded touches of their human heart, — 
 Love, Ire, and Sorrow that build up a soul. 
 So music won my wish. They gave her back,_ 
 And thro' the roads of torment we returned 
 Up to the light. Conditions Orcus made, 
 Easy conditions surely. Woe is me ! 
 And she behind me, trembling like a child. 
 Came closely, as a timid infant clings 
 Fast to the mother's skirt, whose homeward 
 
 steps 
 Lie o'er a darkling waste as eve shuts in. 
 And all went well till on the edge of light, 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 In sight of golden safety and love secured, 
 I faltered ; agony it seemed to wait 
 A moment longer ; such a flood of love 
 I Conquered my soul to see once more the light 
 Beam in those dearest eyes, to hear her 
 
 breathe, 
 To catch one glimmer of her glancing robes. 
 Fool to forego restraint, ere I had won 
 All with my patience, fool to falter then, 
 For mighty Love took part against himself, 
 And his intensity became a spear 
 To pierce his own true heart with pangs of 
 
 doom ; 
 ^And in an instant I had turned and gazed. 
 Then from the deeps of Orcus far below 
 Came up the muttered thunder, and the abyss 
 Trembled at my transgression. All was lost. I 
 She with a shriek cast upwards piteous arms 
 'And down the gloomy chasm slipt slowly back, 
 
 8 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 And as she faded dim in veils of gloom 
 To me were spread her ineffectual hands 
 For aidance from the wide engulfing void, 
 Fruitlessly spread, and as she faded, came 
 These piteous accents, and her voice was 
 
 changed 
 To thin and strange as might a shadow speak; 
 " O love, what madness slays thy heart and 
 
 mine? 
 I am torn from thee by relentless fate / 
 And Death is heavy on my drowsy eyes 
 Which see thee and which love thee while 
 
 they may 
 An instant, ere I fleet into the shades. 
 Veiled in a mantle of eternal night 
 And filmy staining of the wasteful grave. 
 And now farewell, my love, for thine no more 
 Towards thee I reach my ineffectual hands 
 Fruitlessly reached as slowly I recede, 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 Such drowsy sleep involves my hapless form. 
 Loving, I pass to that dim land, where Love 
 Comes not, nor any comfortable beam ; 
 Thy bride no more : oblivion plucks me down. 
 Hail ! Love, my weak hand wafts thee long 
 
 farewell. 
 Touching the lips that never shall be thine." 
 
 Then as a misty wreath of waterish haze 
 Melts in the sombre background of the woods 
 That make a midnight with their crowded 
 
 shafts 
 Where pines uprear a labyrinth of spears, — 
 She spake and faded piteous from my view ; 
 A whisper and a rustle and she was gone. 
 As some sere leaf drifts down the chasm dire, 
 And gone for aye, irrevocably gone. 
 Then all my love and all my perilous road 
 Seemed like a fruitless beating of the air. 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 And all my daring, all my lyric skill 
 Issued in this supreme calamity. 
 Ah, wasted toil, and valour thrown away ! 
 What could I do there at the cavern mouth, 
 But pore upon its depths in blank despair ? 
 No second ingress Taenarus allows. 
 The gloomy ferry-man, propitious once. 
 Refuses stern a second living freight. 
 What penalty could Hades not impose 
 If once again I fought my furious way 
 Back to the fiery throne ? 
 
 Hope faded fast, 
 And all my soul grew sick with giant grief; 
 Yet months I loitered near the pass of pain, 
 Sustaining life on roots and bramble fruit. 
 Hopeless at last, dead to the heart and dazed, 
 I wandered northwards to the Thracian wolds. 
 By gentle streams, deep vales and spacious 
 hills, 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 A region fair tilled by an evil race, 
 
 Who live as dogs live brutish wrangling 
 
 days, 
 And pasture beeves, and shear a patch of 
 
 maize. 
 And crush a grape sour-hearted into wine. 
 Herdsmen and thieves when chance arrives 
 
 to steal. 
 And their fierce matrons, they who rear this 
 
 race. 
 The very dregs and lees of womanhood. 
 Are Maenads stained by wind and tanned by 
 
 glare. 
 Crude faces furrowed by a hundred storms. 
 And harsher than the panic-screeching jay 
 Peals out each shrewish voice from field to 
 
 field. 
 With hideous laughters, foul, abominable. 
 And these dare offer to me their fierce love. 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 And, when repulsed with loathing, they 
 
 depart 
 With clamour and wild menace of revenge, 
 And when the grape-god's festal day arrives, 
 fThey indulge their thirsty humour, calling 
 
 this 
 Religion, and inflamed with new made wine 
 Bestial they rush with howlings o'er the hills 
 Maddened and fierce as tigers cub-bereaved. 
 Surely a wise god this, one worshipped well, 
 To tear and ruin, yell and soak and fling 
 Their limbs abroad and rend their scanty 
 
 robes ! 
 The inspiration of a noble cult ! 
 The holy priest of Bacchus hounds them on 
 With twinkling eye and shining hairless pate, 
 A bull-faced stunt Silenus spider-bellied. 
 Whose girdle- clasps scarce meet across his 
 
 paunch, 
 
 13 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 His exhortations what the Maenads rage. 
 He names them pious daughters ripe for 
 
 heaven, 
 He tells them, if they only drink enough. 
 Like Ariadne they will turn to stars 
 And beam their radiance on the nightly 
 
 world : 
 ' That the red ruin by a god inspired 
 Out-weighs a cold and barren rectitude. 
 On me the special fury of their scorn 
 /Descends, because my solitary days 
 Insult their love and, flout their vinous charms. 
 My grief disturbs their chorus to the grape. 
 Their orgies are a loathing to my soul ; 
 For all which slights they one day vow 
 
 revenge. 
 The vengeance of a maddened Maenad takes 
 A hundred forms : I know not which will 
 
 come. 
 
 14 
 
ORPHEUS IN THRACE 
 
 Perhaps to hale me like a tethered steer 
 
 In drunk procession to a drunken god, 
 
 And slay me with a sacrificial hymn. 
 
 A grievous ending ; yet my life has sunk 
 
 Lately to such a fathomless despair, « 
 
 That I should welcome even the flamen's 
 
 knife 
 To balm the edge of my calamity. 
 If death be slumber, I shall surely dream 
 That I am walking with Eurydice. 
 If death be wakeful, and I know it is, 
 I shall arise and joyous greet her there,' 
 And shade and shadow we will mix and 
 
 greet. 
 August nth, i8g5. 
 
 15 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT. 
 
 :t 
 
 While if0 happy fields repose 
 
 if 
 In a border of wild rose, 
 
 I And the meadow mantle glows 
 
 Like a flower. 
 
 As T pace this woodland glade 
 Visions come and visions fade 
 Of the wars Napoleon made 
 And his power. 
 
 France. 
 
 How from mean estate he came, 
 On the splendid plumes of Fame 
 To the Sun's imperial flame 
 Soaring proud, 
 
 i6 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 As a champion of romance, 
 He has breathed his soul on France, 
 And she started from her trance 
 And her shroud. 
 
 Soon the Consul's laurels fade 
 Into Caesar's purple shade ; 
 No such lord of battle blade 
 Came before. 
 
 With his foot on Fortune's wheel 
 Europe whimpers at his heel, 
 By the right of blood and steel 
 Emperor. 
 
 Scale o'er Alps and bridge the Rhine, 
 Burst thy barriers, Apennine ! 
 Shall such puny bounds confine 
 His renown ? 
 
 17 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 He has conquered south and east, 
 Kings attend him at his feast, 
 Of his Marshals yet the least 
 Wears a crown. 
 
 But the Ocean curbs his sail, 
 Tho' by land his sword prevail : 
 ' ' Brine- ward let his glory fail ! " 
 Fate decrees. 
 
 Useless fleets he builds in sight 
 Of the Forts on Dover's height, 
 Hated Albion rides in might 
 On the seas. 
 
 Sullen in his icy lair, 
 Bides the yet un vanquished Bear, 
 And he mocks at Caesar's chair, 
 Sown with bees. 
 
 i8 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 Interlude. 
 
 Here are lambs on frolic feet, 
 Here are miles of ripening wheat, 
 And the ploughboy carols sweet 
 To his team. 
 
 Safe inside our narrow seas, 
 Who invades our English peace ? 
 But the foes of Britain cease 
 Like a dream. 
 
 Moscow. 
 
 Let the roofs of Moscow burn, 
 Till the Czar of Moscow learn 
 Sheeted winter cannot turn 
 Back his fate. 
 
 Onward, on, the legions go ; 
 Shall Napoleon dread the snow ? 
 Let the chidden Cossack know 
 We are great. 
 
 19 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 Nay, but see the eagles there 
 Slow retreating in despair, 
 See the General, white with care, 
 Ride before. 
 
 Rime is on that rider bold, 
 Rime is on the eagles' gold. 
 Rime upon the standard's fold. 
 Crisp and hoar. 
 
 Interlude, 
 
 Miles of purple orchard fruit 
 Weigh the bough and strew the root. 
 From the vure one ringdoves lute 
 Wakes the shore. 
 
 Sheep bells tinkle far behind. 
 Like hushed echoes on the wind, 
 Breathing peace to human kind 
 Evermore. 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 Waterloo. 
 
 Then there rise upon my view 
 Those grey flats of Waterloo, 
 Where the red men met the blue 
 Like a wall ; 
 
 Legions flashing in the sun, 
 Sabre clash, and vollied gun, 
 Till the world our Wellesley won 
 From the Gaul. 
 
 Then the clarions gave their peal, 
 Then the wrestling squadrons reel, 
 Silent in their ranks of steel 
 Soldiers bled. 
 
 Then, as clouds of gathering night, 
 Blucher's morions massed the height, 
 And the tyrant at the sight 
 Turned and fled. 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 Over faces of the slain, 
 
 Through the cannon-cumbered plain, 
 
 Ah, he never turned again 
 
 To his dead ! 
 
 All his retinue of kings 
 Melt on panic-stricken wings, 
 While his dying trooper sings 
 Marseillaise. 
 
 Mighty Captain, King of Rome, 
 Mourn thine eagles stamped in loam, 
 Rifled barn and ruined home, 
 Ricks ablaze. 
 
 Fly by sacked and burning farms. 
 Fly by riddled windmills' arms. 
 In the nightmare and alarms. 
 Of thy pride. 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 By the endless poplar lines, 
 By the trampled corn and vines, 
 In the crash of great designs 
 Let him ride. 
 
 Interlude. 
 
 See, the hawkmoths in the wheat 
 Kiss the roses' faces sweet, 
 At the violefs sapphire feet, 
 Kneeling low. 
 
 Hark 1 the thirsty crickets cheep 
 To the poppy, queen of sleep. 
 Till the field mice peer and peep, 
 Soft as snow. 
 
 St, Helena. 
 
 He's thy captive, England, now ! 
 Ah! undiadem his brow. 
 Chain him to thy galley prow 
 Like a thief. 
 
 23 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 Let thy warship cleave its way 
 To the far meridian day, 
 Let the wild Atlantic spray 
 Guard the chief. 
 
 Soon I see the barren rock 
 Where the island breakers shock. 
 Here with arms that interlock 
 He looks down ; 
 
 As a broken eagle torn 
 On the whirlwind of the morn, 
 Comes to die and dies in scorn 
 With a frown ; 
 
 As that Titan, with the smart 
 Of the vulture at his heart, 
 Feels his limbs already part 
 Of the tomb, 
 
 24 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 Feels the slow sepulchral stain, 
 Inch by inch, on grinding pain, 
 March against his heart and brain. 
 In the gloom, 
 
 Scanned by grim and jealous foes. 
 Keen to chronicle his woes. 
 And to watch him as he goes 
 To his doom. 
 
 Interlude. 
 
 Merry school-girls thro' the woods 
 Scamper in their russet hoods, 
 Happy mothers watch their broods 
 In the nest. 
 
 Comes a robin without dread. 
 Piping on a cart-house shed. 
 Where a rowan ripens, red 
 As his breast. 
 
 25 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 The Invalides. 
 
 Last I see the pageant slow, 
 And all France in weeds of woe 
 Lays the laurel, bending low 
 To his car. 
 
 Now in death's imperial state 
 Once again this King is great 
 And beyond the reach of Fate 
 And of war. 
 
 So he sleeps upon his bed. 
 With the great enduring dead, 
 And the cannon round his head 
 Peal him home ; 
 
 As he heard them many a day 
 In his riding-coat of gray. 
 When the battle rolled away 
 Like the foam. 
 
 26 
 
NAPOLEON THE GREAT 
 
 Conclusion, 
 
 Thus I sat to meditate 
 And to muse upon the fate 
 Of Napoleon the Great 
 And his peers ; 
 
 Till I thought I heard the drum. 
 And the cannon seemed to come 
 With a long mysterious hum 
 Thro' the years. 
 
A PARTING. 
 
 Cold in the wintry gorges hangs the snow, 
 Keen through the withered woods the north 
 
 winds blow, 
 One rift of sun-ray falls with frigid beam, 
 And crisping ice makes sad the wimpling 
 
 stream, 
 While deep in drifts the devious roads are 
 
 dumb 
 Ere day has come. 
 
 Thy lips are colder than a wintry morn, 
 And as hate so is love that turns to scorn. 
 Time in the wreck of ages rolling by 
 Must teach the pretty puny god to die, 
 And for our parting, since our lips are dumb. 
 The day has come. 
 
 38 
 
A PARTING 
 
 O wasted love, whose bright and rosebud 
 
 bloom 
 Must turn to dusty chambers of the tomb ! 
 O ruined rose, that made the morning red, 
 Pass to the pallid precinct of the dead. 
 And for our parting, since our lips are dumb, 
 The end has come. 
 
 The sun is low ; the night draws in apace ; 
 And tear-like clouds hang on the sunset face. 
 Grief has pulled down our golden days, my 
 
 lass, 
 Like a green windfall in the orchard grass. 
 Of all love's banquet have we kept a crumb, 
 Now the end has come ? 
 
 Wasted and worn that passion must expire, 
 Which swept at sunrise like a sudden. fire 
 Across the whitened crest of happy waves. 
 Now lonely in a labyrinth of graves, 
 
 29 
 
A PARTING 
 
 His footsteps foiled, his spirit bound and 
 
 numb, 
 Gray Love sits dumb. 
 
 Shall we bewail in ashes, O my sweet, 
 How lame our youth where once he journeyed 
 
 fleet? 
 Shall we lament this love that comes and 
 
 goes ? 
 'Tis but the petal of a bramble-rose. 
 Of all our kisses sure the end has come. 
 Love's lute be dumb ! 
 
 30 
 
THE STOIC'S CREED. 
 
 Hoard not up the yellow dross, 
 Spurn the deadly discs of gold ; 
 
 Let the miser turn and toss 
 Sleepless on his wealth untold. 
 
 Life requires a crust of bread, 
 A bowl of wine, a dish of meat. 
 
 Wilt thou toil thyself half dead 
 
 To pile a heap thou canst not eat ? 
 
 Who would break his rest to guard 
 What a thief can steal away ? 
 
 Will thy ducats bring reward 
 To dim eyes or hair of gray ? 
 
 31 
 
THE STOIC S CREED 
 
 Of thy hoard what lust abides, 
 When to end thy selfish greed 
 
 Comes the bony knight who rides 
 Dark upon his steel-white steed ? 
 
 Will thy money-bags avail, 
 
 Speak him soft and gain reprieve ? 
 
 Then thy gold will melt and fail 
 As Danaid's water thro' the sieve. 
 
 Will thy bullion beam as bright 
 To palsied grasp and horny eye, 
 
 In the horror of the night, 
 
 When Croesus hears the doom to die ? 
 
 Honest work will bring enough ; 
 
 Work, and have no further heed. 
 Life is made of sterling stuff, 
 
 Love expands a nobler creed. 
 
 32 
 
THE STOIC'S CREED 
 
 Purple fleeces scare repose : 
 Slumber loves the cabin door : 
 
 To sleep exempt from care and foes,- 
 'Tis the treasure of the poor. 
 
 Fate with blameless mind defy ; 
 
 Rest and Labour, wisely blent, 
 Bring with happy usury 
 
 The increase of a fair content. 
 
 33 
 
THE LAMENT OF ECHO. 
 
 Sole in the vale, along the shelving crags 
 By lone reverberant quarries and deep scaurs, 
 Where the full river, coiling like a snake, 
 In loop and reach reverted on itself, 
 With long meandering desultory march, 
 Pushes its languid current towards the sea 
 And trifles with the flowers upon its rim, 
 Loosestrife and kex and spear grass, cliffs 
 
 above 
 Rearing their cumbrous woods o'er dark 
 
 ravines ; 
 There along shelf and gallery I pass 
 With foot as light as the dew-spider's thread. 
 And listen, listen, listen, ah ! for whom ? 
 I lean my ear against the rifted side 
 
 34 
 
THE LAMENT OF ECHO 
 
 Of granite chasms, porches of Acheron. 
 My feet fear not the crumbling gray defile, 
 They clamber where the mountain breaks in 
 
 shards 
 And tumbles all in weathered fragments down. 
 I wind, light-footed as the mountain goat, 
 By ^slippery tracks and sheep-cotes tenantless. 
 Once walledj now broken and ruined long ago, 
 Built by the herdsmen of the dawn, whose dust 
 Is scattered on the hills : primeval folds, 
 Whereat once bleated Sire Deucalion's sheep, 
 I thread them like the shadow of a dream. 
 I search the clefts and crannies of the rocks, 
 I search and yet I find not, woe is me ! 
 Hera has laid this curse upon my lips, 
 That I am dumb until one speaks to me. 
 I, Echo most forlorn and shadowy nymph, 
 Abiding in my whispering solitudes. 
 Lovelorn and broken with stern Hera's hate, 
 
 35 
 
THE LAMENT OF ECHO 
 
 Consume my barren prime, which bears no bud. 
 
 I pass, the glitter of a half-seen robe, 
 
 I pass, the whisper of a half-heard voice, 
 
 An ineffectual cuckoo of the rocks, 
 
 Here, there, close to, then half a vale away. 
 
 I pine and wane in my decrepitude, 
 
 Sick with a wasting flame that dries my soul, 
 
 Sick with the haunting face of the hill-boy, 
 
 Whom I pursue with yearning infinite, 
 
 And wither for his beauty and his grace. 
 
 He is beyond the hyacinth and rose 
 
 In loveliness : such clustered ringlets hang 
 
 Around his brow ambrosial : such a flush 
 
 Mantles the flower-like burnish of his cheek. 
 
 O my Narcissus, never to be mine ! 
 
 Immeasurably barriered from my love 
 
 By the half childish vengeance of this god. 
 
 Who plays with wreck and ruin, as a boy 
 
 Delights to break the plaything of an hour. 
 
 36 
 
THK LAMENT OF ECHO 
 
 And me the slow death of long love-despair 
 , Wastes with insidious poison to a shade, 
 And he disdains me and I pine disdained ; 
 For to the solstice beam of my desire 
 He is cold and wintry, as the turbid wave, 
 Wherein his sire Cephisus, king of floods. 
 Holds oozy state and sun-sequestered rule. 
 Under his palace roof of floating weeds. 
 Me such a net of vengeance Hera weaves, 
 And Fate has made Narcissus this award. 
 Lovely she made him with a lavish hand, 
 Loveless she made him with an iron heart. 
 His eyes are keen to track the hunted roe. 
 But to the colour of all love are blind. 
 Love may not whisper in his dullard ear. 
 And kisses wander from his perfect lips 
 In an eternal exile far aloof. ' 
 I hear thy horn thro' dewy valleys wound, 
 Far in the distant morn : I hear thy voice 
 
 37 
 
THE LAMENT OF ECHO 
 
 Calling thy hounds to breast the roe-buck's 
 
 trace. 
 I hear and I reply, for my sealed lips 
 Are given the power to mimic with their sound 
 Thy mountain music. O my hunter love, 
 The gods who grudge me much at least give 
 
 this, 
 And to the challenge of thy ringing shout, 
 The sudden-noted bugle at thy side 
 I can flute back a tender weird reply. 
 This is the only talk allowed my love ; 
 When other maids can interchange long vows, 
 And know the taste of kisses, I know none. 
 O ! were I but a fleet-foot hunting hound 
 To be thy patient comrade of the chase, 
 To dog thy active steps from dawn to dusk, 
 As thy poor shadow, and thou my Phoebus fair, 
 The darkness I, projected in the beam 
 Behind the splendid footsteps of my lord, 
 
 38 
 
THE LAMENT OF ECHO 
 
 Shade of thy path, hound — anything with thee, 
 
 To do thee humble service as a dog, 
 
 And watch thine eyes for fragments, till thou 
 
 toss 
 Some careless crumbs of favour to my mouth, 
 And I would guard thy worn and wearied 
 
 sleep, 
 Tired with the rapture of the long wet glades. 
 Beautiful love, breathe on my anguished 
 
 heart, 
 Which pines as droughty fallow for the rain, 
 As faint the larchwoods for ambrosial dews ; 
 Renew me with thy love so long withheld. 
 Why should stern Hera gloom with fateful 
 
 brows, 
 And curse me for Olympian jealousies ? 
 If Zeus grow weary of her hateful arms, 
 Why should I pay the forfeit, love-amerced ? 
 If thou wilt love me, all her anger fails, 
 
 39 
 
THE LAMENT OF ECHO 
 
 And rosy days replace her baffled ire. 
 If thou art obdurate and scorn me still, 
 Some Nemesis will seize thee in its toils ; 
 For not on me alone this bolt will fall. 
 And if I pine and wither and fade away, 
 If as a floating wreath I haunt these hills 
 And melt a phantom voice on eddying gale," — 
 Lo, I predict, for my great sorrow and dooni 
 Unveil the future's landscape partly clear, 
 And they who die speak with prophetic truth, 
 I can discern from dayspring realms remote 
 Drifted to thee a cloud of death so strange 
 As never ended love and lover yet. 
 Such Ate from my ashes will arise, 
 And all my beauty will be as a curse 
 To drag thee down to Acheroriian doors. 
 I know not how, yet surely this shall be. 
 
 July 2ist, i8g5. 
 
 40 
 
THE SPEAR OF ACHILLES. 
 
 "Cosl od' io, che soleva la lancia 
 
 D' Achille e del suo padre esser cagione 
 Prima di trista, e poi di buona mancia." 
 
 Inf. xxxL, 3 — 6, 
 
 He whom the spear of great Achilles tore 
 Lingered and pined in anguish from the 
 
 wound. 
 One remedy in all the world was found, 
 Rust from the mighty spear which stung so 
 
 sore. 
 Such mystic might the barb heroic bore, 
 That he who balmed with it the wound around 
 Rose in a week with body whole and soupd, 
 A better warrior than he was before. 
 
 41 
 
THE SPEAR OF ACHILLES 
 
 So thou beneath whose piercing word I pine, 
 Thou whose unkindness, keen as thrust of 
 
 spear, 
 Has giv'n me hopeless nights and weary days, 
 Let me find leechdom in thy smile divine, 
 And love for lingering hate and iron fear. 
 Then I shall strongly rise to sound thy praise. 
 
 42 
 
ON A QUEEN'S PALACE IN RUINS. 
 
 (Queen Joan of Naples, 1370 — 1435.) 
 
 Daughter of the silver foam, 
 Show me now thy ruined shell ! 
 
 Here was once thy radiant home, 
 Here thy palace citadel, 
 
 Glorious on thy brow with pride : 
 Gleaming limbs of rosy hue ; 
 
 Naked breasts too fair to hide, 
 Sweet as asphodelian dew. 
 
 Mighty captains came and quaffed 
 Deep the cups of thy desire. 
 
 Kings sat at thy feet and laughed : 
 Cupid watched and fanned the fire. 
 
 43 
 
ON A QUEEN'S PALACE IN RUINS 
 
 Time went merrily, my queen, 
 As a god they held thee then. 
 
 Ruling with disdainful mien 
 Circe-like thy droves of men. 
 
 Like a sunset flashing gems. 
 
 Fair thy orient couch was spread ; 
 
 But to kiss thy garment-hems 
 Drave thy lovers well-nigh dead. 
 
 Lying there, as Danae lay 
 
 Crushed in rain of rushing gold. 
 
 When the god's resistless way 
 In trec^sure on her bosom rolled ; 
 
 Like wan leaves in crisping bowers 
 Spreads thy wilderness of hair. 
 
 Near the faces of the flowers 
 
 Where thy regal footsteps were, — 
 
 44 
 
ON A QUEEN S PALAEE IN RUINS 
 
 Hair that drank the light and noon 
 With its multitude of threads ; 
 
 Thou wast as an amber moon 
 
 Which a cloud-fleece round her sheds. 
 
 Thou wast like a daffodil 
 
 Wreathed in veils of misty dawn, 
 When thy women at thy will 
 
 Wrapt thy limbs in gold and lawn, 
 
 Underneath the gray wych elms, 
 
 By the sobbing hungry sea. 
 Voyaging to twilight realms, 
 
 Crowding sail for love of thee. 
 
 As a heron with hoarse cries. 
 
 Came their white keels cleaving on, — 
 As thro' clear meridian skies 
 
 Southward sweeps the soaring swan. 
 
 45 
 
ON A QUEEN'S PALACE IN RUINS 
 
 Pirate kings that loved the brine, 
 
 Helmed with dragons o'er their brows, 
 
 Pledged thee in enchanted wine, 
 Sweeter than their northern spouse. 
 
 But thy feasting hall is gone, 
 And thy lovers quaff no more, 
 
 And the boats that bore them on 
 Rot on some sequestered shore. 
 
 All thy rippling tresses rust. 
 
 Silent are thy dove replies, 
 And immeasurable dust 
 
 Stains the glory of thine eyes. 
 
 Daughter of the ocean foam, 
 
 Broken is thy beauty's spell. 
 Fallen is thy golden home, 
 
 Ruined all thy citadel ! 
 
 46 
 
WHAT THE BIRD SINGS. 
 
 Summer bird why dost thou linger 
 In the blooming hawthorn spray ? 
 
 Thou the centre and the ^nger 
 Of the deep enamelled May ! 
 
 Carol out thy close of splendour — ^ 
 Climax of melodious sounds, 
 
 Till the marriage chorus tender 
 From a dozen nests resounds. 
 
 As the year grows crisp and crisper, 
 Blows the musk-rose most divine, 
 
 And there floats ambrosial whisper 
 From the ringdove in the pine. 
 
 47 
 
WHAT THE BIRD SINGS 
 
 Like a host in midnight shrouded 
 Labyrinths of pine advance, 
 
 Gloomy orders ranked and crowded 
 With innumerable lance. 
 
 Give me glimpses how thy meaning 
 To the listening woods is told, 
 
 Mighty tides of concord streaming 
 From a, pipe of liquid gold. 
 
 My dull ear can never capture 
 Half the import of thy strain, 
 
 Pathos widening into rapture, 
 Pleasure sharpening into pain, 
 
 Welcome to expanding nature, 
 When the balmy hours' caress 
 
 Fills with love each breathing creature. 
 Blessing as the angels bless. 
 
 48 
 
WHAT THE BIRD SINGS 
 
 Doth a moss-lined nest in lonely 
 Bough secluded, draw thy wing, 
 
 Where she waits, thy bird-love, only 
 Waiting thee in all the spring ? 
 
 Build the walls and thatch the cover 
 Where the richest roses hang : 
 
 She shall sit and watch her lover, 
 Singing as he never sang, 
 
 Singing how the balmy season 
 
 Sheds the dewdrop's pearly shower, 
 
 Telling Love the only reason 
 
 Which unsheathes the golden flower. 
 
 As the lapse of silver fountains 
 Chimes among the braes of fern, 
 
 When the flakes of snow-fed mountains 
 Melt and roll a louder burn. 
 
 E 49 
 
WHAT THE BIRD SINGS 
 
 Peace and pleasure, love and passion, 
 Joy in sun and zephyr's kiss, 
 
 Thou in no uncertain fashion 
 Canst, O Bird, interpret this. 
 
 I believe this powerful measure, 
 As the incarnate voice of spring, 
 
 Moves the blooms to ope their treasure 
 And expands each petal-wing. 
 
 I believe the buds in slumber 
 
 Hear thy voice and heed thy call. 
 
 And that bluebells without number 
 Pave the woods where thy notes fall. 
 
 Rear thy brood in safe seclusion. 
 Till beyond the nest they range, 
 
 Happy in thy bird delusion 
 
 That this spring-tide cannot change. 
 
 August 31st, i8g5. 
 
 5° 
 
THE END OF A DELUSION. 
 
 Steep, steep in Lethe's stream 
 Thy brows, thou barren Dream, 
 Delusion cease ! 
 The fibres of my heart 
 Ache, from thy poisoned dart 
 I claim release. 
 
 There is no sting so dire 
 
 As waking in the mire 
 
 Of passion past ; 
 
 When dripping woods decay. 
 
 And branch-leaves drift away 
 
 In frozen blast ; 
 
 When the crisp elmwood groans. 
 And the swift river moans, 
 Presaging doom. 
 
 SI 
 
THE END OF A DELUSION 
 
 And as the bough lies shed 
 In clay, our troth is dead 
 And laid in tomb. 
 
 There is no grief so loud 
 As winding in her shroud 
 Love dead, once dear ; 
 There is no mock of pain 
 So bitter as disdain. 
 Which shames its tear. 
 
 In wasted glen and grove, 
 Wild creek and wintry cove 
 There blooms no rose ; 
 And on the leafless bowers 
 Thorns are the only flowers 
 The season knows. 
 
 How came my hand to find 
 A bane so sweet, designed 
 To bring regret ? 
 
 52 
 
THE KND OF A DELUSION 
 
 What deep delusion wove 
 The toils of tangled Love 
 With red thorn set ? 
 
 Deep in the raptured May 
 I wound my careless way 
 By garden grove ; 
 There perfumed bowers disclose 
 The fresh and fragrant rose 
 Of heedless Love. 
 
 It seemed a wondrous thing, 
 This burnished bud of spring 
 So dainty fair ; 
 The vermeil gloss of morn, 
 The breath of scented thorn 
 Suffused it there. 
 
 To my supreme surprise. 
 It seemed a perfect prize. 
 And wholly mine : 
 
 S3 
 
THE END OF A DELUSION 
 
 I swept the chords of praise 
 In paean of Love's ways 
 And flower divine. 
 
 I kissed its petal-cheek, 
 I fondled, vain and weak, 
 A month — a moon ; 
 Yet o'er my halting lyre 
 Some note of false desire 
 Rang out of tune. 
 
 Beneath thy rose-leaf reign 
 The petals fell amain, 
 Until wind-torn, 
 The mirage, rolled away, 
 Disclosed thy feet were clay, 
 Thy lips foresworn. 
 
 The waking pang was strong : 
 The true-love of old song 
 Was never born : 
 
 54 
 
THE END OF A DELUSION 
 
 But we are mocked with glows 
 And hints of Anter6s, 
 Like spurious morn. 
 
 Lethe, balm of shame, 
 Wipe out this hateful flame, 
 This bane of breath, 
 Since for a pinch of dust 
 
 1 gave my soul in trust 
 To Siren Death. 
 
 September 14th, 18^5. 
 
 55 
 
A CRADLE SONG. 
 
 Sleep, my son, my baby sleep, 
 Mother watches by thy bed ; 
 
 Be thy slumbers sound and deep. 
 Softly rock the cradle head. 
 
 As I watch thy dreaming face, 
 I picture from thy tender span 
 
 How this rosy infant grace 
 
 Will harden to the perfect man. 
 
 I pray that heaven may send thee, dear, 
 The treasure of a loving wife. 
 
 The glory of a grand career. 
 The honour of a blameless life. 
 
 Thou shalt be a warrior good, 
 Strong of arm and keen of eye, 
 
 To the ruler of thy blood 
 Faithful to thy latest sigh. 
 
 56 
 
A CRADLE SONG 
 
 Thou shalt ride a gallant steed, 
 On thy shield the sun-ray glows, 
 
 As thy broadsword, good at need. 
 Deals around triumphant blows. 
 
 Or in senate thou art great, 
 
 Wise in tongue and cool in brain, — 
 A prop and pillar of the state, 
 
 In thy monarch's couficil-train. 
 
 Thine shall be the potent word 
 To bid the fretful factions cease ; 
 
 As, binding olive round the sword, 
 Thy hand revives the plenteous peace. 
 
 Guide of the wise, the true man's trust. 
 Captain and statist, loyal friend, 
 
 Thou wilt not let the silence rust 
 Thy fame, nor falter to the end. 
 
 I see thee bowed in honoured age, 
 With children's children at thy knee ; 
 
 57 
 
A CRADLE SONG 
 
 And thy renown a golden page 
 
 In the land's happy history. 
 I see, my son, thy crescent ray 
 
 Hereafter in the distant years, 
 When my warm mother-heart is clay, 
 
 And silence seals my hopes and fears. 
 'Twill be my sole and great reward 
 
 To have born a hero to my race : 
 Nor in this solace is it hard 
 
 To sleep below the daisy's face. 
 
 My vision ends : my darling wakes ; 
 
 I kiss to calm his wakeful wails. 
 Beyond the hill the morning breaks. 
 
 The waning taper flickering fails. 
 The noise of birds is just begun, 
 
 And mingles with the cradle cry — 
 O grarit me. Heaven, my infant son 
 
 May nobly live and nobly die ! 
 
 August igth, i8g5. 
 
 S8 
 
THE SICK FLOWER. 
 
 Hang thy head, O gaudy flower, 
 Droop thy petals, droop and fade ! 
 
 Winter sweeps the ruined bower, 
 Tempest rolls o'er glen and glade. 
 
 Born a bud in balmy May, 
 
 Broad and strong in sequent June, 
 Waning in October gray, 
 
 Like a dull and dying tune, 
 
 Sick thou art, thy prime is o'er ; 
 
 Never shall the roving bee 
 Come for nectar at thy door, 
 
 Thy cup will cease to load his knee. 
 
 Thy mantle fine of fairy leaves 
 
 To ruined lace the wire-worms drill ; 
 
 59 
 
THE SICK FLOWER 
 
 His liquid nest the froth-fly weaves, 
 The weevil bites his bitter fill. 
 
 O hadst thou gained a daisy's birth, 
 Or risen a globe of clover small, 
 
 Thou hadst not gone to mother earth 
 In such a tattered funeral ! 
 
 Thou hadst not soiled in woodland clay 
 
 The record of thy ampler hour, 
 O waning love, O setting day, 
 
 O last-drawn breath of dying flower ! 
 
 The homely cheek that bore no blush 
 Fades gently at the touch of pain ; 
 
 But now to mock thy roseate flush 
 Some harsh and tawdry tints remain. 
 
 Thy face is like some shipwrecked star, 
 Which looks from heaven with dim desire, 
 
 60 
 
THE SICK FLOWER 
 
 But cannot dart one beam afar, 
 For chill grows all her spheral fire. 
 
 O ruined blogsom ! pine and weep, 
 And let thy dewdrop tears rain fast ; 
 
 Pass gently to thy flowerless sleep, 
 Dirged by the bitter autumn blast. 
 
 September i6th, iSg^. 
 
 6i 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT. 
 Honey and milk and bread and wine, 
 The mystic chest unlades its store, 
 The needs of men and the life divine, 
 Honey and milk and wine and bread. 
 We touch our foreheads to the floor, 
 We from the cup libations pour, 
 We smite with steel the sacred swine, 
 We trebly bar the temple door. 
 For she sits, she sits in the inward shrine 
 In a garden gown and a wheaten crown. 
 Stand apart ! ye non-elect, 
 Ere our mysteries begin. 
 He only keeps his soul erect, 
 Who is clean from soil of sin. 
 As the garment, which ye wear. 
 Let your mind be pure as snow ; 
 
 62 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 
 
 To those who love and those -yvho dare 
 
 The mighty mother is not slow 
 
 To bring illumination near, 
 
 To melt the veil, unwrap the night 
 
 And flood upon the eye and ear 
 
 The sights of dread and sounds of might. 
 
 Ye alone shall gaze in fear 
 
 Whose eyes are ready for the sight ; 
 
 Ye alone shall trembling hear 
 
 Whose minds can fathom depth and height ; 
 
 And ye alone shall peep and peer 
 
 To astral circle, crystal sphere, 
 
 Till the deaf man shall hear 
 
 And the blind man gain light. 
 
 Let the priestly choir 
 Raise their droning song, 
 Voices scaling higher. 
 As the hymn grows strong, 
 
 63 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 
 
 Shawms and flute and lyre. 
 Let the augur's throng 
 Feed the sacred fire, 
 Beat the drum and gong ; 
 Let the cymbals ring, 
 Let the censer swing 
 Till it cloud the fane 
 Like the amethyst 
 Veils that floating wane 
 Above the hilly violet crest 
 That crowns the Attic plain. 
 But now the pipes refrain 
 And let the lyres desist 
 Their wailing strain. 
 
 Now come the rites of fire, — 
 The cleanser of the world, — 
 Rose-coloured flames mount higher. 
 In quivering spiral curled ; 
 
 64 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 
 
 Now the storax burns 
 And burns the resin slow, 
 Now the ember turns, 
 And gently breathing blow 
 Frankincense and myrrh, 
 Ambergris and gum. 
 Pray the while to her, 
 Whose ghostly garments come 
 Sweeping the marble floor. 
 O make the pavement sweet 
 As daffodils to bear 
 Touch of the holy feet ! 
 Now pause in silence dumb. 
 And hardly draw your breath. 
 Until the symbol come, 
 To mention which is death ; 
 The emblem of a vast 
 Application, mighty sign 
 Of awful chrism cast 
 
 F 65 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 
 
 Upon a brow divine, 
 And beads of sorrow fast 
 Falling from eyes that pine. 
 The weird of her we praise, 
 Who makes the harvest grow. 
 Approach and trembling gaze 
 Upon the mother's woe. 
 Who is she that sits 
 In long concluded days, 
 On a boulder stone, 
 By the bulrush pits ? 
 Who is she that weeps, 
 Weeping for her daughter, 
 Making grievous moan 
 By the Attic water, 
 Broken and alone ? 
 Hunger in the land, 
 Hope of harvest slain : 
 Mildew, smut and rust, 
 
 66 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 
 
 Ears of blighted grain, 
 Clouds of poisoned dust : 
 Kine that cannot graze, 
 Tainted herd and steer 
 Dying in the ways : 
 Shepherds pale with fear. 
 Goes a wail on high 
 From hamlets lacking bread. 
 The soil is parched and dry, 
 No seed will germinate 
 The germs of life are dead. 
 Some god with scathing hate 
 In this our Attic home, 
 Hath moved the wheels of Fate 
 And cursed it, glebe and loam. 
 Why hath this terror come ? 
 What trespass hath been ours 
 That the seasons lose their date. 
 That spring forgets her powers ? 
 
 67 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 
 
 Curse the cause of all this ill, 
 
 Curse Ascalaphus, the owl, 
 
 Blabbing tongue and bitter skill 
 
 To watch and pry, to peep and prowl : 
 
 With our sign we curse him — thus : — 
 
 Fowl of hell, Ascalaphus, 
 
 Feather-fledged, with large round eyes. 
 
 Perish thus officious spies ! 
 
 Sit aloft with snoring horn 
 
 And hoot the dim eclipsing morn ; 
 
 Shroud thy shame in owlet's plume, 
 
 Punished with a righteous doom ; 
 
 Thou, who saw the tiny seed 
 
 Tasted in the halls of gloom. 
 
 With bite nor sup her lips were wet. 
 
 One only grain the maiden ate 
 
 Of clear and rubied pomegranate 
 
 Taken at her utmost need, 
 
 Prompted by an evil fate : 
 
 68 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 
 
 A speck, a grain, and yet of power 
 To hold her in, sweet prisoned flower. 
 If she had tasted naught, Zeus said, 
 She should return from the halls of dread- 
 And this beast told it — thus and thus — 
 The trebly-cursed Ascalaphus ! 
 
 And lo, our mystic service ends 
 
 With symbol of the thrice-ploughed field, 
 
 A fearful weird that sign portends, 
 
 A root immortal, when the seed 
 
 Of awful harvest blends 
 
 A fallow ripe with mystic deed. 
 
 Fearful is the weird. 
 
 Drops of moisture quiver 
 
 On the pale priest's brow. 
 
 And waving like a river 
 
 The broken fallow bends, 
 
 As the thunder-shock is pealed 
 
 69 
 
AN ELEUSINIAN CHANT 
 
 O'er the upturned furrows of the field. 
 
 Blue the tapers burn 
 
 At the spirits overhead ; 
 
 The altar-candles turn 
 
 Pale blue from fiery red. 
 
 We feel them at the most, 
 
 But the flame perceives a ghost 
 
 And flickers dim with dread. 
 
 The pure flame quails to hear 
 
 The waft of the floating dead, 
 
 Which cannot reach our ear. 
 
 Extinguish now all light ; 
 
 Pray fervently each one. 
 
 Ye have known a strange delight, 
 
 Ye are wise in love of might ; 
 
 Ye see beyond the sight 
 
 Of a world of fleeting night. 
 
 Our mysteries are done. 
 
 7° 
 
CARPE DIEM. 
 
 The year flows on in bloom 
 
 To make lush Autumn room, 
 
 Time takes his mother by the hand to go ; 
 
 The little rippling Hours 
 
 Push tender feet in flowers, 
 
 And Amor, leaning film-eyed on his bow, 
 
 Hears the good rain alive 
 
 Tinkling and humming drive 
 
 The molten summer, petal, bloom and seed. 
 
 He lays the peony by ; 
 
 Her core of pride is dry. 
 
 And black her flaming heart as any weed. 
 
 71 
 
CARPE DIEM 
 
 Ah ! in no other wise 
 
 The yearning swallow cries : 
 
 " Sun-land out yonder, I am weak to go, 
 
 My plumes are hardly set, 
 
 I am a nestling yet, 
 
 And, lo ! I scent on northern hills the snow." 
 
 Where chiefly woods have laid 
 
 Their arms of twisted shade. 
 
 Thy footsteps falter in a depth of leaves ; 
 
 Thine eyes are very grey, 
 
 Thy raiment dim as they 
 
 Who stand afar in mist on leaden eves. 
 
 Among the wine-deep whin. 
 
 Where red-wings fluster in, 
 
 She sits among the larches that I know, 
 
 Crumbling in each wan hand 
 
 A heath-spike's bells like sand. 
 
 Smiling a little, but her lips are slow. 
 
 72 
 
CARPE DIEM 
 
 My lady waits me there, 
 
 A wilful maid right fair, 
 
 Not glad to see or glad to let me stay. 
 
 She knows not her sweet mind, 
 
 Nor kind nor yet unkind, 
 
 A little sorry if I kept away. 
 
 73 
 
THE WAKING SKYLARK. 
 
 Lark of May, alert and gay, 
 
 Why dost thou sing so loud, 
 To steep thy wings in the golden ray. 
 
 And bathe them in the beaming cloud ? 
 Flash to the zenith of burning day, 
 
 Burn to the under-world laid gray, 
 Veiled in a vapour shroud. 
 
 Till thy song, till thy song is shed. 
 
 Bird with throat and note of gold, 
 
 Sweet as a song in dream 
 Thy voice ascends, an anthem rolled 
 
 To Love who sits supreme. 
 What bird like thee of mortal mould 
 
 Such passion to the sunset told, 
 Till she blushed with a rosier beam, 
 
 As thy song, as thy song was shed ? 
 
 74 
 
THE WAKING SKYLARK 
 
 Soar and sing, soar and sing, 
 
 Fade in the blue frorri sight. 
 The sky-dew quivers on thy wing, 
 
 Thou quailest with delight 
 To sail so near the strong sun's ring 
 
 While the rushing wheels of his chariot 
 sting 
 The clouds to a rosier light 
 
 As thy song, as thy song is shed. 
 
 August 30th y i8g£. 
 
 75 
 
AN OLD MAN'S CONSOLATION. 
 
 Failure I know is poison to the young. 
 My lad, I share your sorrows ; in my day 
 I've suffered much, and mastered more like 
 
 these. 
 You see that I am old, but I am wise 
 In that peculiar wisdom, cheaply held, 
 To take the common incidents of life 
 At proper estimate, not overmuch 
 Exalted with the good, nor dashed ,with ill. 
 
 My days have borne no fruit as men account 
 The good of life, success, emoluments. 
 Respect in public print, and to.be noised 
 In feeble mouths, the bubble god of the hour. 
 I have not even gather'd store of coin 
 To make these few declining years of mine 
 
 76 
 
AN OLD MAN'S CONSOLATION 
 
 Repay the watching of my hungry heirs, 
 Or justify the generous hopes of those 
 That knew me at my best : poor have I been 
 Always, but never quite at starving point. 
 I have not blinded nature from my heart. 
 Refusing to the common fields and clouds 
 Their excellence of glory. Not in vain 
 For me the process of the months resumed 
 The cyclic renovation of their powers ; 
 And every flower that feeds on English air 
 In wilding pomp is my familiar friend ; 
 Familiar, too, the voice of every bird, 
 In summer's guarded greens and sounding 
 
 dales. 
 I know not these things as prim science 
 
 knows : 
 I never read a pompous monograph 
 To drowsy benches, and my naked name 
 Provokes not half the jumbled alphabet 
 
 77 
 
AN OLD MAN'S CONSOLATION 
 
 To jostle in its wake upon the page 
 
 Of scientific records. I have learned 
 
 To praise the simple things before my feet. 
 
 The birds and trees and herbs and animals 
 
 Are incidents enough, and each a world 
 
 Of large experience ; I have lived with these. 
 
 Oft with a town ward thought on summer 
 
 morns, 
 When all the birds are round and misted 
 
 lengths 
 Of branchy undulation, zone on zone, 
 I leave in spirit the divine excess 
 Of nature for the discord and the steam 
 Of yonder seething city, picture there 
 Its visible nature bounded to a strip 
 Of zenith sky, some lean and wisping cloud. 
 Thence shuddering back I find the scent of 
 
 fields. 
 And comprehend my full prosperity. 
 
 78 
 
AN OLD MAN S CONSOLATION 
 
 Ambition stings us in the narrow streets 
 To push and envy for the public prize. 
 Upon the mountain we forget ourselves 
 To greatness where no meaner thoughts 
 intrude. 
 
 You are a boy to me. When I was young 
 I too had dreams, as we must all have dreams 
 Of making notable this microcosm 
 Of self above the level of our peers : 
 Such self-opinion chiefly fault and bane 
 Of school-day reputation, where I slaved 
 When abler men were fallow till their time, 
 And where the trick of memory reaped me 
 
 praise, 
 That very essence of a school success. 
 In after life a mere accessory 
 To power of combination and the rare 
 And ruling gift, originality. 
 
 79 
 
AN OLD man's consolation 
 
 I found my level soon. Be witness, Heaven, 
 How bitter this reaction, when the boy 
 Beheld his crumbled idols and awoke 
 To scorn himself as much below his powers 
 As he was puffed erewhile. This was not 
 
 long. 
 There is a strong and natural health bestowed 
 On youth, prevailing over shocks and falls. 
 Beyond the reach of morbid taint or touch 
 Of vicious system, still a healthful core. 
 I righted swiftly, chose my life with heed 
 And lived it with contentment and delight, 
 Measuring still my wishes by the power 
 To make them deed, contented to resign 
 The fruit beyond my reaching. I have found 
 As sweet a flavour where before my feet 
 Some modest berry hardly clears the soil. 
 
 80 
 
SORROW INVINCIBLE. 
 
 Gray Morn with a tear in her eye, 
 
 Dim Night with a veil behind, 
 Soar on the rack of the billowy sky, 
 
 Float on the track of the rolling wind. 
 
 The Morn with her refluent hair. 
 The Night with her lustrous train. 
 
 Stand on the threshold, each of them fair-^- 
 She will come, she will come again. 
 
 For the beautiful wood-leaves are shed 
 And Angels have folded each wing — 
 
 So deep is her sleep that I fear she is dead : 
 My Rose might have waited for spring. 
 
 G 8i 
 
SORROW INVINCIBLE 
 
 Slow, Roses, unrivet your buds, 
 
 Ye drowsy great Angels arise ! 
 But I weep, but I weep, for I never saw sleep 
 
 So heavy on any one's eyes. 
 / 
 Could I only abundantly weep : 
 
 My tear-drops are stinted and slow, 
 I am mazed, I am dazed with the sight of 
 this thing, 
 The dread which I perfectly know. 
 
 Bright and light as a mystical bow. 
 Over seas a great iris expands, — 
 
 But I think I can certainly show 
 
 That the colour is gone from her hands. 
 
 She may sleep thro' it all, if she choose : 
 
 I shall see her again as I did, 
 They were cruel to drive in their screws, 
 
 They were foolish to fasten the lid. 
 
 82 
 
SORROW INVINCIBLE 
 
 I shall have her up out of the grass 
 Live and clean here in front of you all. 
 
 You are wrong ; I am right : she shall pass 
 To her chair and her work in the hall, 
 
 With a glad little serious sigh, 
 
 When the boys at her apron cling : 
 
 Perfectly quiet and joyfully 
 
 Righting the child's collar string : 
 
 Setting the cradle to swing 
 
 With a tender light touch of her feet : 
 Taking her knitting — no phantom thing — 
 
 But a pale mother, earthborn and sweet. 
 
 I know she must yearn to be back, 
 
 Too young are these children she leaves : 
 
 She will come, she will come tho' the stars 
 are dumb 
 And the dust to her eyelids cleaves. 
 
 83 
 
SORROW INVINCIBLE 
 
 For I saw her in moonlight gray, 
 
 Veiled round with a crescent of light ; 
 
 A ray at her hand, from her hand came a ray 
 Like a wave on a starry night. 
 
 I saw her again, near a wall 
 
 With peach blossoms, Hatefully June 
 Burnt on the brick, and the paths were sick 
 
 In the drought of the furnace noon. 
 
 I saw her as plain as my hand : 
 
 And still thro' her form, clear as glass, 
 
 I never could quite understand 
 
 How the sunbeams managed to pass. 
 
 Or how in that garden I gazed 
 
 Beyond her, to where on a bush 
 A small robin sat unamazed, 
 ^ And swelled out his notes like a thrush. 
 
 84 
 
SORROW INVINCIBLE 
 
 I shall see her again, when my head 
 Snaps sudden in death at one blow, 
 
 You won't keep me then in this bed, 
 Out of window my spirit will go. 
 
 Over seas, over seas to my Sweet, 
 
 Out into the great dawn there. 
 There her I shall certainly meet ; 
 
 Get the children up quick round my chair ! 
 
 Very soon I shall give you the slip, — 
 Put close their small palms into mine. 
 
 Raise them up, one by one, to my lip : — 
 Day breaks in a sphere red as wine. 
 
 God lives in that river of light. 
 
 She sits On the sward where it springs. 
 Certainly sits. She is waiting to-night. 
 
 My dove, I soon shall gain my wings. 
 
 85 
 
THE HEDGE. 
 
 There is a hedge, where round deep ivy root 
 The wren creeps darkling in her covert shy ; 
 
 The dunnock trills a hesitating flute, 
 
 And bramble-berries lure the burnished fly. 
 
 On either side in rough disorder hang 
 
 Long straws and ears torn from the brush- 
 ing wain, 
 
 And the strong red thorned roses fix their fang 
 And toll, as gleaners toll, the passing grain. 
 
 There bindweed lilies cupped in roseate dew. 
 And bryony's polished leaves tuft-vine like 
 fruit. 
 
 And purple-stemmed the honeysuckle grew. 
 With intertwisted amatory shoot. 
 
 86 
 
THE HEDGE 
 
 And here the dragon-fly in glory is 
 
 Moving in mailed array a burning star, 
 
 And like a white-veiled nun the clematis 
 Peeps on the world behind her cloister bar. 
 
 And here are privet blossoms for the bees. 
 
 And many a poised enamelled butterfly 
 Comes to my hedge and sips the dew at ease, 
 
 Kissing the faces of the flowers thereby. 
 
 There, coarse and rank, the furrowy kexes 
 spired, 
 And wild hop curved in many a gay festoon. 
 And marestail in all nosegays undesired 
 Jostled the musk-rose, summer's sweetest 
 boon. 
 
 JSJow gaze across the arum's fiery head, 
 Which lights the inner hedge up like a torch, 
 
 87 
 
THE HEDGE 
 
 And lo, behold, not fifty yards ahead, 
 A gabled cottage with a bowery porch. 
 
 And here I feed on prospect fairer far 
 Than sight of flower or bird or any tree, 
 
 And here I watch the rising of that star 
 Whose ray is more than Hesperus to me. 
 
 The drifted petals of cape jessamine 
 
 Perfume the entrance with their falling 
 shower, 
 
 While high in air the crowded rose divine 
 Around that threshold weaves a royal bower. 
 
 Within the porch and shadowed from the heat, 
 In wicker cage a blackbird pipes his song, 
 
 Sighs for the dewy woods expanded sweet 
 And trills the rapture of his captive wrong, 
 
 88 
 
THE HEDGE 
 
 A spinning wheel beside the doorway stands ; 
 
 Some one will come and turn it by and bye, 
 And twist the slender thread with fairy hands, 
 
 And sit and sing, or sit and heave a sigh. 
 
 She weaves me days of smile and nights of 
 tear. 
 She winds me love and she unwinds despair. 
 She seems like Fortune, bending o'er her 
 sphere, 
 As pitiless as Fortune and as fair. 
 
 She weaves a wondrous web about my soul, 
 Until her wheel goes round, I watch and 
 wait, 
 
 For yonder spinning maiden must control 
 The thread of my existence like a Fate. 
 
 August 3 of k, i8g£. 
 
 89 
 
AT HEAVEN'S GATE. 
 
 The last of all the starry flock, 
 
 Red Phosphor fades in amber skies, 
 
 Hoarse in the farmstead crows the cock, 
 Harsh from the glen the owl replies. 
 
 Lovely and dim the star of morn, 
 A sphere of rayless ruby glows : 
 
 Until the Day divine is born 
 On cloudy bed of tinselled rose. 
 
 When long-divided zones of pearl 
 Announce the silken steps of Day, 
 
 I wake before the silent merle, 
 I waken and I soar away. 
 
 90 
 
AT HEAVEN'S GATE 
 
 The waves of heaven with cloudy crest 
 Come rippling eastward like a tide ; 
 
 No longer in my moss-lined nest 
 
 The minstrel bird of heaven will bide. 
 
 'Tis meet and right my lofty lyre 
 Shall greet Apollo's orient rays : 
 
 That I ascend, as stars retire, 
 
 And soaring trill my hymn of praise ; 
 
 That first of nature's wakening choir, 
 Sweet incense to the Lord I bring : 
 
 That my devotion wafts me higher 
 
 Than clouds which tire an eagle's wing, 
 
 The angel of the unrisen morn. 
 The herald bird with note of fire : 
 
 Within whose fervid breast are born 
 The longings of a world desire, 
 
 91 
 
AT HEAVENS GATE 
 
 The paean to the mighty power 
 
 Pervading heaven, pervading earth : 
 
 At whose command the genial hour 
 Breaks iris-tinted in its mirth. 
 
 Then I become a morning psalm, 
 And carol, where are never heard 
 
 In solitudes of astral calm 
 
 The twitter of a groundling bird. 
 
 Where heaven is near I sing alone ; 
 
 For other feeble warbling throats 
 Fail far below my seraph zone. 
 
 Nor dare intrude their earthborn notes. 
 
 Let Philomel's harmonious breath 
 Ring out her prelude of despair. 
 
 Can tales of turbid love and death 
 Pollute that pure and crystal air ? 
 
 92 
 
AT HEAVEN 'S GATE 
 
 L^et the false cuckoo tell the vale 
 His double-noted name unblest ; 
 
 Let greedy starlings rate and rail, 
 
 And jackdaws bicker round their nest. 
 
 Let robins in malignant strife 
 Pipe triumph o'er a rival slain, 
 
 The red-breast hypocrites, whose life 
 Is sequel to the deeds of Cain. 
 
 From Thames to Nile let swallows cross, 
 Let petrels sing the dirge of wrecks. 
 
 I envy not the ringdoves' gloss 
 
 Nor burnish of their tinselled necks. 
 
 I envy not the feather-eyes, 
 
 When Juno's fowl her train expands ; 
 Nor when the halcyon's rainbow dyes 
 
 Recall some bird of tropic lands. 
 
 93 
 
AT heaven's gate 
 
 I have no beauty : wingf and breast 
 Are dim, suffused' with speckled greys ; 
 
 A homely bird : yet from my nest 
 Ascends a strain of regal praise. 
 
 I am the clarion of the morn : 
 
 Between the clouds I fade from sight. 
 The mountains hear my elfin horn ; 
 
 I, singing, melt away in light. 
 
 I am all music, throat and breast, 
 And music from my trembling wing 
 
 Is shaken, as I poise at rest : 
 Soaring I never cease to sing. 
 
 I throb with full excess of song, 
 
 I quiver in melodious pain ; 
 And, as I flutter, sweet and strong 
 
 My strain descends in golden rain. 
 
 94 
 
AT heaven's gate 
 
 Mine is the glory of the praise 
 That does not seek itself to bless, 
 
 And mine the meed of blameless days, 
 Which heaven bends o'er with dove caress. 
 
 Mine is the soaring life afar, 
 
 Which, self-forgetting, heaven endears ; 
 Mine is the radiance of the star, 
 
 And mine the music of the spheres. 
 
 September sgtk, i8g^. 
 
 95 
 
A SONG OF DESPAIR. 
 
 The earth is dust, dust, dust, 
 Heaven is but empty air, 
 
 Faith falters in distrust, 
 The throne of "God is bare. 
 
 The saint has worshipped wind, 
 The seer has seen a lie. 
 
 The round globe deaf and blind 
 Rolls on eternally. 
 
 The priests in golden domes 
 With blood and fire entreat 
 
 The hand that never comes. 
 The long-delaying feet. 
 
 96 
 
A SONG OF DESPAIR 
 
 As feeble bells of foam, 
 
 The creeds are cracked and lost, 
 Like clouds without a home, 
 
 Like waves without a coast. 
 
 The foolish peoples tease 
 
 Fate — Nature — what you will. 
 
 Suns roll and moons decrease. 
 And men are evil still. 
 
 Who sins, by Nature sins. 
 The pure by birth are so. 
 
 The game Death always wins, 
 Tho' we play high or low. 
 
 The heart is nerve and flesh, 
 The brain a mere machine. 
 
 Some slave in sensual mesh, 
 Some virtue saves serene, 
 
 'h 97 
 
A S O^ G OF DESPAIR 
 
 The lecher and the saint 
 One equal dust awaits ; 
 
 The same sfepulchral taint, 
 The same tremendous Fates. 
 
 Whether thou diest at peace, 
 Slain in a noble cause : 
 
 Or, like this gutter, cease 
 
 Stabbed in some tavern brawl ; 
 
 Be thou a man of jest. 
 
 Thy mirth must soon be done ; 
 The threshold of thy west 
 
 Saves but an hour of sun ; 
 
 Be thou a toper brave, 
 
 Who firijds the vine juice good. 
 Who trolls a ribald stave 
 
 To jog his frozen blood. 
 
 98 
 
A SONG OF DESPAIR 
 
 Be thou some narrow soul 
 Who grubs in sordid pelf, 
 
 And lives merely to roll 
 More bags upon the shelf. 
 
 As warden of the church, 
 Thy farmyard corner sway ; 
 
 And from thy village perch 
 Proclaim the time of day. 
 
 And thou the meanest thing 
 Who draweth human breath ; 
 
 Whose mildewed features cling 
 To a skull-like mask of death, 
 
 Art thou some radiant queen, 
 Child of a golden clime, 
 
 Too lovely to be seen, 
 The rosebud of her time ? 
 
 99 
 
A SONG OF DESPAIR 
 
 Come, end this comic thing : 
 Down bid the curtain float. 
 
 Shift thyself, pasteboard king, 
 And peel thy spangled coat. 
 
 When Death as reaper mows, 
 A varied swath he seeks, 
 
 He garners in the rose, 
 He gathers up the leeks. 
 
 The burdock harsh and hard, 
 The hemlock's spotted breast, 
 
 Narcissus of the bard, 
 The lily's plumy crest, — 
 
 He rolls them in one sheaf. 
 Where the idle tares are curled 
 
 Round the stem and ear and leaf, 
 Whose grain sustains the world. 
 
A SONG OF DESPAIR 
 
 We hear his hand is Love, 
 And hold his rod benign ; 
 
 We seek in heaven above, 
 And in the deep a sign 
 
 Ascend thy bleak black tower, 
 Blind watchman, blear and grey, 
 
 And search the coming hour 
 That wings from far away. 
 
 The signals of the night 
 
 Are dim with haze and dread : 
 
 Dull shapes perplex the sight, 
 Pale phantoms of the dead. 
 
 What hope, when for reply 
 No sound his warden hears, 
 
 No cry, save his own cry. 
 No drip, save his own tears ? 
 
 lOI 
 
A SONG OF DESPAIR 
 
 They sent him up to hail 
 
 The laggard moonbeam back 
 
 He sees the vulture sail 
 Grim on the lurid track. 
 
 He finds no hint of morn, 
 But fears that on the plain 
 
 The royal flag is torn, 
 The gallant trooper slain. 
 
 For the winds are rocking loud 
 Across the burning heath, 
 
 And yonder fiery cloud 
 
 That mimics dawn is Death. 
 
 July 26th, 18(^4. 
 
LINES TO A LADY-BIRD. 
 
 Cow-lady, or sweet lady-bird, 
 Of thee a song is seldom heard. 
 What record of thy humble days, 
 Almost ignored in poets' lays. 
 Salutes thy advent ? Oversung 
 Is Philomel by many lyres ; 
 And how the lark to heaven aspires, 
 Is rumoured with abundant fame, 
 While dim oblivion wraps thy name. 
 Hail ! then, thou unpresuming thing, 
 A bright mosaic of the spring. 
 Enamelled brooch upon the breast 
 Of the rich-bosomed rose caressed. 
 Thy wings the balmy zephyrs bear 
 
 103 
 
LINES TO A LADY-BIRD 
 
 When woods unfold in vernal air, 
 
 When crumpled buds around expand, 
 
 Thou lightest on our very hand. 
 
 Red as a robin thou dost come, 
 
 Confiding, in entreaty dumb. 
 
 Who would impede thy harmless track. 
 
 Or crush thy wing or burnished back ? 
 
 'Tis said, thy lighting and thy stay 
 
 Bring luck : and few would brush away 
 
 The small unbidden crawling guest, 
 
 But let thee sheathe thy wings in rest, 
 
 And take thy voluntary flight 
 
 Uninjured to some flower's delight. 
 
 For there is nothing nature through, 
 
 Lovely and curious as you : 
 
 A little dome-shaped insect round, 
 
 With five black dots on a carmine ground. 
 
 What art thou ? I can hardly tell. 
 
 A little tortoise of the dell 
 
 104 
 
LINES TO A LADY-BIRD 
 
 With carapace or vaulted shell 
 
 Of shining crimson ? Or again, 
 
 I picture thee, in fancy plain, 
 
 A little spotted elfin cow, 
 
 Of whose sweet milk a milkmaid fairy 
 
 Makes syllabub in Oberon's dairy. 
 
 Thou hast a legend-pedigree 
 
 That gives thy race a high degree 
 
 From the shed blood of Venus sweet, 
 
 Thorn-wounded in her pearly feet, 
 
 As thro' the dewy woods she went, 
 
 Love-lorn, in utter discontent, 
 
 Listening afar the echoing horn 
 
 Of coy Adonis, in whose scorn 
 
 The Love-queen languished, love-forlorn. 
 
 He burned to hunt the boar at bay. 
 
 And loathed the lover's idle play ; 
 
 So Venus followed in the chase 
 
 And from her wounded heel a trace 
 
 105 
 
LINES TO A LADY-BIKD 
 
 Of blood-drip tinged the dewy mead, 
 And, from the ichor she did bleed, 
 From Aphrodite's precious blood, 
 Arose the lady-birds, a brood 
 As gentle as the hurt of love. 
 That gave them birth and parentage 
 In legends of the golden age. 
 But, coming to our modern day. 
 Thee peevish children scare away, 
 And speed thy flight with evil rhyme, 
 Waving an idle hand meantime, 
 To make thee spread thy wings in fear 
 With rumours of disaster near, 
 And tidings of thy home in flames, 
 And all thy burning children's names, 
 How all are scorched but Ann alone 
 Who safely crept inside a stone ; 
 With many an old unlettered fable 
 Of churlish lips inhospitable. 
 
 io6 ' 
 
LINES TO A LADY-BIRD 
 
 And when these fancies all are past, 
 I see thee as thou art at last, 
 A welcome sign of genial spring, 
 Awaited as a swallo\y's wing, 
 The cuckoo's call, the drone of bee. 
 The small gnat's dancing minstrelsy. 
 Ere hawthorn buds are sweetly stirred 
 I bid thee hail, bright lady-bird ! 
 
 August 2ist, i8g^. 
 
 :o7 
 
THE BALLAD OF LIFE. 
 
 I rode out in the morning, 
 The spring was in my blood. 
 
 I gave the devil scorning : 
 
 The world was ripe and good. 
 
 The throstle cock on every hedge 
 
 Sang madly with delight. 
 It was May within and May without, 
 
 And never a thought of night. 
 
 A fig for Fortune, break her wheel, 
 And tear the spokes away ! 
 
 A fig for death by shot or steel, 
 A fig for hairs of gray ! 
 
 1 08 
 
THE BALLAD OF LIFE 
 
 Let Fortune take or Fortune bring, 
 Come peace or rolling war, 
 
 I follow like an eastern king 
 The zenith of my star. 
 
 Old beldam of a Pagan birth, 
 
 To stern oblivion hurled ! 
 For boys are masters of the earth, 
 
 And youth directs the world. 
 
 The fruit of time is mine, right fair 
 
 Shed from a golden horn ; 
 And fragrant as this hawthorn air 
 
 To-morrow will be born. 
 
 The girl I wanted long is won : 
 
 I have ripe ale in store. 
 My heart is good and my road is good, 
 
 And my horse is swift and sure. 
 
 109 
 
THE BALLAD OF LIFE 
 
 Then ho ! my steed, for the flowery mead, 
 
 Where the amber currents run. 
 I ride, I ride in the royal pride 
 
 Of youth and the spring-tide sun. 
 
 I carol away in the sweet May day, 
 I am coming, my rose, to thee ; 
 
 In the garden of life a most exquisite flower 
 Is growing and blowing for me. 
 
 Then spur my steed, till his hot flanks bleed, 
 
 And rush like a torrent fall ; 
 Haste to the dove, who is waiting alone, 
 
 My love that is truest of all. 
 
 And I rode to the bower in a fatal hour ; 
 
 As black against the day, 
 A bitter cloud ran out like a shroud 
 
 And the rainbow melted away. 
 
THE BALLAD pF LIFE 
 
 The gates were barred as the gates of hell, 
 And I heard, by the mass ! I heard 
 
 My rival's voice, who strummed on a lute, 
 And wailed like a love-sick bird. 
 
 And when the music ended, 
 
 Began the kissing play, 
 And her happy laughter blended, 
 
 As she gave her lips away. 
 
 But the torture of their blisses 
 
 Burnt me like molten lead, 
 And that agony of kisses 
 
 Brought gray hairs on my head. 
 
 I crawled back in the gloaming 
 
 In the grip of a giant grief. 
 Thro' the bitter drench of the driving hail, 
 
 And the swirl of the rushing leaf. 
 
 Ill 
 
THE BALLAD OF LIFE 
 
 The storm-cloud onwards muttering came ; 
 
 I saw the fireballs glint. 
 My gallant horse he went dead lame 
 
 On a shard of pointed flint. 
 
 Then ho ! my steed, for a land of reed, 
 Where the banks of Lethe run 
 
 In the sickened ray of a waning day 
 And the gleam of a fading sun. 
 
 And I know that clap of thunder 
 Will sour my home-brewed beer, — 
 
 And I wonder, and I wonder 
 How love could turn so sere. 
 
 There is nothing new to say or do, 
 But to creep to a ditch and die. 
 
 There is no truth or faith or ruth 
 Beneath the barren sky. 
 
THE BALLAD OF LIFE 
 
 Then ho ! my steed, to the dead man's mead, 
 Where the lying Love is dumb. 
 
 Blind Fortune rules in a realm of fools 
 And the devil's kingdom is come. 
 
 July i6tk, i8g5. 
 
 "3 
 
THE INVITATION. 
 
 Come, my love, upon the mountains, 
 Amber day is almost done. 
 
 Like the drift of golden fountains 
 Gleam your ringlets in the sun. 
 
 For the pimpernel at even 
 
 Half shuts up her crimson eye, 
 
 Wide she stared at open heaven, 
 When the noon fell hot and dry. 
 
 At the zenith of their cluster 
 
 Bloom three sister flowers of heath. 
 
 Veiling hill with wine-deep lustre 
 In an amethystine wreath. 
 
THE INVITATION 
 
 First, the deep cinereous heather, 
 Next J the paler heath-bell springs 
 
 Nodding cream-rose heads together, 
 Last, the small-flowered lilac lings. 
 
 Here long fields of scarlet clover 
 
 With bright breadths of hawthorn blend : 
 Gently on the enamelled cover 
 
 Silver-crystal dews descend. 
 
 Swallows hang at eave and gable, 
 Some in wavering circles drift : 
 
 Like a rushing comet sable 
 
 Swings the wide-winged screaming swift. 
 
 Here are hedges where the hornbeams 
 Brownly hang all winter long : 
 
 Leaves that catch the slanting morn-beams, 
 Leaves that mask the linnet's song, 
 
 "5 
 
THE INVITATION 
 
 Come upon the hills, my darling, 
 
 Come where grass is sweet and deep. 
 
 We will watch the speckled starling 
 Perched upon the short-eared sheep. 
 
 Here the bents for many a go wan 
 Or slight harebell shalt thou search : 
 
 For thy lips are like the rowan, 
 And thy arms are like the birch. 
 
 Come, love, where the sundew glitters, 
 Four round leaves of dewy red. 
 
 Come, where shrill the skylark twitters 
 To a throbbing speck o'erhead. 
 
 In those hay fields, red with sorrel, 
 Ox-eye daisies wade abreast : 
 
 By that stile we had a quarrel 
 All about a chaffinch nest. 
 
 ii6 
 
THE INVITATION 
 
 Under that shock-headed teazel, 
 Like a ploughman among flowers, 
 
 You were startled by a weazel 
 Crept to shelter from the showers. 
 
 See, these hazel nuts I've found them, 
 Half are green and half are, rosed, 
 
 With the ragged frill around them 
 In a triple cluster closed. 
 
 There in yonder flowering privet, 
 While with clasping hands we kissed, 
 
 Snap it went, the golden rivet 
 Off the bracelet at your wrist. 
 
 Then we heard the goldfinch whistle 
 
 In his coat of gold and red, 
 Then we watched him tear the thistle 
 
 And the knapweed, head by head. 
 
 117 
 
THE INVITATION 
 
 There we saw the tutsan tarnish 
 Fragrant leaves of metal sheen, 
 
 Plump its waxy fruit and varnish 
 Eggs of coral frilled in green. 
 
 Many flowers I brought my treasure, 
 Blooms I showed my mountain bee, 
 
 Cones of wild rose, gold-of-pleasure. 
 Butcher's broom, anemone ; 
 
 Wrinkled oaks and plumy bracken, 
 Milkwort, skull-cup, sweet gale-bush. 
 
 Frog-pipe, more than you can reckon. 
 Cotton grass and flowering rush. 
 
 Rosy-stemmed the woodbine's tangle. 
 Rings of horn-like honied flowers. 
 
 Grape-like bryony clusters dangle 
 From the secret hazel bowers. 
 
 ii8 
 
THE INVITATION 
 
 There I'll clasp thee like a lover 
 And my arms around thee spread, 
 
 As the dodder wraps the clover 
 
 Round with tight-drawn ropes of red. 
 
 In my love I cannot waver, 
 
 Thou to me art Fate and Doom : 
 
 I should die to lose thy favor, 
 I am constant till the tomb. 
 
 If the petrel has no portal 
 
 Save the threshold of the foam, 
 
 Yet the' swallow loves the mortal. 
 Building nest upon his home. 
 
 None the thistledown can follow 
 In its flight for many miles. 
 
 Yet the house-leek, like a swallow. 
 Settles on the village tiles. 
 
 119 
 
THE INVITATION 
 
 O I am not light and fickle, 
 
 None such sweetness could betray ; 
 Time will weep upon his sickle 
 
 When he wrongs thy gold with gray. 
 
 August gtk, i8g^. 
 
THE DIRGE OF DAY. 
 
 This is the dirge of Day ! 
 
 She is gone her western way ; 
 
 The world sighs after her receding feet. 
 
 Wood-echoes mock their beat, 
 Thin leaves round dozing linnets gently shock. 
 The languid bells along the sheep-cotes rock, 
 
 Just rock, while their meek herds 
 
 Move with them, as to words 
 I seem to hear them say — 
 Farewell, thou faded Day ! 
 
 This is the dirge of Day ! 
 On the verge of some sea-bay, 
 Pale in a canopy of golden rain, 
 
THE DIRGE OF DAY 
 
 Whose Danae drops amain 
 Beat o'er her sleepy face and ardent hair, 
 Extinct from stress of fiery Phcebus there, 
 Slain on her bridal bed, 
 As Semele lay dead, 
 
 Scorched thro' with the numerous ray. 
 So lies, so dies the Day. 
 
 Mourn, Ocean, mourn the Day ! 
 Life ends as children's play, 
 Ephemeral pastime, then enduring sleep. 
 
 Sing music of the Deep ! 
 With voice in all thy ridges, mellowing sound, 
 As the gale moves some branchy mountain 
 ground — 
 Sing ; moon and star will fade, 
 And the world's dirge be made, 
 And heaven will pass awa.y 
 As the dirge of one fleet Day ! 
 
THE DIRGE OF DAY 
 
 Rain, rain to end the Day ! 
 
 Ye valley-winds convey 
 
 Sad showers along the stony-terraced rills, 
 
 Mist-mantles dn the hills, 
 Whose spectral boulders drip with human 
 
 tears, 
 Where mossy rocks seemed crushed with 
 crumbling years. 
 And yonder quarried scaur, 
 Like some slain swan afar, 
 Whose shining wings decay 
 Prone on the porch of Day ! 
 
 Die out and perish. Day ! 
 We deck thy bier in gray, 
 With gray-green pine and sad slate-coloured 
 rue, 
 And tufted rosemary, too ; 
 There lies her face as wan as winter cloud ; 
 
 123 
 
THE DIRGE OF DAY 
 
 These glen-leaves are one colour with her 
 shroud, 
 One colour with her hands 
 Which, crossed like ivory wands. 
 Seem folded each to pray. 
 A dirge, a dirge for Day ! 
 
 Thus shall we bring thee, Day, 
 
 A fair lamenting lay, 
 
 ' And spread pink-berried yew beside thy sleep 
 
 And cypress, as we weep, 
 That bough of mourning nourished on a grave, 
 And, singing with sad breath our funeral stave. 
 Say, let each forest thing. 
 Whose note is sorrowing, 
 
 Reed, wave and rocking spray. 
 Raise with us dirge o'er Day. 
 
 What sepulchre hath Day, 
 And where entomb her clay ? 
 
 124 
 
THE DIRGE OF DAY 
 
 Deck her in death-array, and lay her down 
 
 In wood-earth silver-brown : 
 And o'er her head beneath the iron sky 
 Let leaves in amber drifts go rustling by 
 With drop of chestnut ball, 
 And ash-keys for a pall, 
 
 And boughs that weeping sway 
 Across the grave of Day ! 
 
 izs 
 
A DAUGHTER OF, CIRCE.* 
 
 Eyes calm as heaven, hair with an amber 
 
 gleam : 
 Hands interlocked ; lips precious moist with 
 
 myrrh : 
 So soft her mouth-line is, to look on her 
 A man would say, this innocence doth seem 
 The child of Artemis, whose chastities 
 Are colder than the snow-flake on a grave ; 
 A mouth of dove replies and charities. 
 Musical as some silver-shadowed wave ; 
 Lips that refrain love's laughters and are mute 
 To the gross sighs and suit 
 Of earthly lovers, and the whispering lute, 
 Whined midst insidious darkness to decoy 
 Some bleating lamb into the wolfish pen. 
 This face would darken at such childish toy, 
 
 • Fragments of " A Daughter of Circe " appeared in the First and 
 Second Series of Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (John Lane, 1893, 
 1895). The ode is now published in its complete form, 
 
 126 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 These lips approach not Passion's lurid den : 
 
 Their silence i^ an interval of prayer 
 
 Away with God in air, 
 
 Their speech a prayer renewed to God again. 
 
 Nothing less sacred than a heavenly vow 
 
 Could ever break their tender-margined rose, 
 
 Or tune their silvery flow. 
 
 Or film those eyes' repose 
 
 With prayer's ecstatic pathos and suffuse 
 
 God's cups with pity's dews : 
 
 So her pure palms can have no other way 
 
 Than to be put together up to pray, 
 
 Tenderly pillowed, fervent, each on each, 
 
 Symphonious to the childish trickling speech, 
 
 With bird-like interruptions sweet and sharp 
 
 Asking, a little hungry sparrow in nest, 
 
 Her father bird to come 
 
 And find a crumb, 
 
 Till in his down her feathers be caressed. 
 
 127 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 A kind of beacon cauldron, poised on high, 
 
 Hooped round with ember-clasping iron bars, 
 
 Sways in her palace porch, and smoulderingly 
 
 Drips out in blots of fire and ruddy stars ; 
 
 But out behind that trembling furnace air 
 
 The lands are ripe and fair ; 
 
 Hushed are the hills, and quiet to the eye. 
 
 The river's reach goes by, 
 
 With lamb and holy tower and squares of 
 
 corn, 
 
 / 
 
 And shelving interspace 
 
 Of holly bush and thorn. 
 
 And hamlets happy in an Alpine morn, 
 
 And deep-bowered lanes with grace 
 
 Of woodbine newly born. 
 
 But inward, o'er the hearth a torch-head 
 
 stands 
 Inverted, slow green flames of fulvous hue, 
 
 128 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Echoed in wave-like shadows over her ; 
 A censer's swing-chain set in her fair hands 
 Dances up wreaths of intertwisted blue, 
 Each from its orifice in the thurifer. 
 And in the midmost of her chamber grew 
 A giant tulip-head, and two pale leaves 
 Grew in the midmost of her chamber there — 
 A flaunting bloom, naked and undivine, 
 Rigid, and bare, 
 
 Gaunt as a tawny bond-girl born to shame, 
 With freckled cheeks and splotched side 
 
 serpentine, 
 A gipsy among flo\(^ers, 
 Unmeet for bed or bowers 
 Virginal, where pure-handed, maidens sleep : 
 Let it not breathe a common air with them. 
 Lest, when the night is deep, 
 And all things have their quiet in the moon. 
 Some birth of poison from its leaning stem 
 
 L 129 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Waft in between their slumber-parted lips, 
 
 And they cry out or swoon, 
 
 Deeming some vampire sips, 
 
 Where riper Love may crave for nectar boon 1 
 
 And near this tulip, reared across a loom. 
 Hung a fair web of tapestry half done, 
 Crowding with folds and fancies half the 
 
 room — 
 Men eyed as gods and damsels still as stone. 
 Pressing their brows alone. 
 In amethystine robes, 
 
 Or reaching at the polished orchard globes, , 
 Or rubbing parted love-lips on their rind, 
 While the wind 
 Sows with sere apple leaves their breast and 
 
 hair. 
 And all the margin there 
 Was arabesqued and bordered intricate 
 
 130 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 With hairy spider things 
 
 That catch and clamber, 
 
 And salamander, in his dripping cave, 
 
 Satanic ebon-amber ; 
 
 Blindworm, and asp, and eft of cumbrous 
 gait, 
 
 And toads who love rank grasses near a 
 grave, 
 
 And the great goblin moth, who bears 
 
 Between his wings the ruined eyes of death ; 
 
 And the enamelled sails 
 
 Of butterflies, who watch the morning's 
 breath. 
 
 And many an emerald lizard with quick ears 
 
 Asleep in rocky dales. 
 
 And for an outer fringe embroidered small, 
 
 A ring of many locusts, horny-coated, 
 
 A round of chirping tree-frogs, merry- 
 throated, 
 
 131 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 And sly, fat fishes sailing, watching all. 
 
 Above that web two Cupids, rosy-necked, 
 
 Almost alive in tinted Parian rock, 
 
 Mingle their locks together ; their gauzed 
 wings 
 
 Tremble and fan with light, aerial shock ; 
 
 As when two bees within one peony swing, 
 
 These brother Loves embrace. 
 
 Rosed with the shadow of the rose's face. 
 
 With fragrant mouths they seem to inter- 
 breathe, 
 
 And there is passion in their lips of stone 
 
 That moves the very marble into grace, 
 
 With flushes underneath 
 
 And fiery tone. 
 
 And on each image her enchanted fire 
 
 Reddens and shimmers at its daedal play. 
 
 One holds a rose — that means long love 
 desire : 
 
 132 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 One holds an asphodel — that means reward. 
 
 And on their brows is coral-berried yew, 
 
 An emblem harsh and hard, 
 
 That means — Ah, well-a-day ! — 
 
 For lovers false and lovers true, 
 
 Sleep and its cloudy pinions silvering 
 
 The folded hands and sharpened faces grey. 
 
 Sleep on her raven wing — 
 
 Sleep that no magic flower can charm away 
 
 Or make us rise again, 
 
 The slain of Love, the slain 
 
 Of the huge hooks and spearheads of 
 
 Despair. 
 O ! asphodel, Elysian asphodel. 
 Bedding Adonis in his wounded pain, 
 Flower of the heroes' dell, 
 Canst thou put breath between those wasted 
 
 lips 
 That hold the boatman's toll, 
 
 133 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 The coin and wage for which old Charon 
 
 ships 
 The Lethe-crossing soul ? 
 Thy might is ended where the grave begins, 
 And thine innocuous spells 
 Fall by the margin of the sea of sins, 
 Done with as empty shells. 
 But for a season men acclaim thee queen, 
 And for a little none disputes thy power ; 
 All nature lies before thee fresh and green, 
 My locust, to devour. 
 Lady of blood and tears, the road to thee 
 Is paved with bramble spines that tear the' 
 
 feet. 
 Thy firm, white breasts are beautiful to see. 
 Beyond all breath of roses thou are sweet. 
 Thy brows, more lovely than the moonlight, 
 
 are 
 Woven with many a star 
 
 134 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Of the delicious, deadly asphodel, 
 
 That in thy tresses braided, shines afar, 
 
 What time thou weavest a spell, 
 
 Stern as Medea in her dragon car, 
 
 And cruel as Medusa's sculptured face 
 
 Set on a targe of war. 
 
 Yet thou enticest men with childish grace 
 
 And hesitations, as some bashful flower 
 
 Fears to unfold her petals to the morn. 
 
 In rathe rude April born. 
 
 What blind one, wearing eyes and wanting 
 
 wit 
 Wilt thou, pale Circe, venture to allure. 
 Kissing the tender hands he deems so pure, 
 Ready and ripe for doom. 
 Enamoured of delight and hungry for the 
 
 tomb ? 
 A shrine of love indeed, more fell than hate, 
 A charnel masked with rose, 
 
 135 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 What serpents at thy cruel precinct wait, 
 
 Around the agate columns of thy door 
 
 In deadly coils repose ? 
 
 What pythons trail the polished altar floor ? 
 
 What toad unsanctified 
 
 Bedews with venom face 
 
 The slippery pavement side ? 
 
 And in thy golden chalice adders twine, 
 
 Wherein thou brewest for thy lovers wine, 
 
 A cup of consolation, healing all 
 
 And ending as a pall 
 
 Dropt slowlyi o'er the dead. 
 
 In saffron-coloured weed 
 Death, as a bridegroom clad ; 
 Thy comrade good at need 
 The red wine makes him glad. 
 A wreath is on his hair, 
 Poison his garlands breathe — 
 
 136 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Dwale, henbane, aconite, 
 
 Faint Acherontian flowers, 
 
 As many as there be, 
 
 When things less harmful blight. 
 
 From gardens of despair 
 
 And the long-weeping hell-queen's midnight 
 
 bowers. 
 Stolen Persephone. \ 
 
 Death shall divide his posies with thine own, 
 And spare the nightshade 'apples, and 
 
 monkshood 
 Whereat the adder sips, 
 And, as a bee, finds good 
 Its deadly honeyed lips. 
 O ! Circe, take them all — 
 Nightshade that mocks the ivy in its leaVes 
 To crown the Bacchus of thy festival. 
 And crown thee by his side 
 Death's consort queen and bride ; 
 
 137 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Tear up the mandrake trails and wind them 
 
 Proudly around thy glory ; 
 
 What though its leaves behind them 
 
 With fang-froth yet are hoary ? 
 
 'Tis but the cuckoo's kiss 
 
 Which bathes the cleniatis, 
 
 Or the ragged robin often 
 
 When east winds begin to soften ; 
 
 Drape it around thee — see, 
 
 What dewdrop pearls there be 
 
 Inside the pretty cups, and lower down 
 
 Bunches of little grapes just turning brown ; 
 
 The wild vine this, on Golgotha it grows, 
 
 Born in a place of woes, 
 
 Around thy beauty wear and wind its trails. 
 
 Thou wouldst not shudder much 
 
 In wreathing thee 
 
 To intertwist the father of this dew, 
 
 Some Python full of scales, 
 
 138 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Deadly to sight and touch, 
 
 Gorgbnian, in thy lengths of lustrous hair : 
 
 And let its flickering head and beaming eyes 
 
 Glitter like jewels there. 
 
 Thy spells of fear 
 
 Thou couldst not mutter worse 
 
 For such a prompter at thine ear, 
 
 Nor dread to cherish in thy bosom clear, 
 
 Or on thy shoulder fair, 
 
 This hissing serpent curse : 
 
 As an infant Eros wrestling 
 
 With a childish, hungry note. 
 
 With his nurse Dione, nestling 
 
 Head against her alabaster throat. 
 
 And having wreathed herself in snaky coils, 
 
 Tho' not for long, 
 
 She intermits her spells and muttered toils 
 
 To sing a bitter song : 
 
 A feigning parable of chastity, 
 
 139 
 
DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Nun-like, with eyes demure, 
 
 Full of hypocrisy, 
 
 To bait her trap more sure, 
 
 To seem what she is not and draw men in 
 
 Beneath her nets till they are slain with sin, 
 
 " False love, sweet love, false love, thy prim- 
 rose lands 
 Are bitten by a sea that gnaws and stains : 
 False love, thy river may have golden sands, 
 Yet rocks it sighing on thro' flinty plains. 
 The low, continuous forest hears of Love, 
 The cloud-crest tells the under-lake of him : 
 The March wind is his furious trumpeter : 
 The cuckoo is his clear remembrancer : 
 The glow-worm lights his torch, his herald 
 
 dim. 
 Yet will I nothing of this herdsman Love, 
 This god of bread and cheese, 
 
 140 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 This paragon of plough-girls ; at mine ease, 
 
 Saint and serene above 
 
 Their trivial kisses, with the stars I hear 
 
 The oracles of God 
 
 Sown on the windy pinnacles of night. 
 
 As some peak never trod, 
 
 Rosy and pure in rarest ether set, 
 
 But from the world's creation icebound yet. 
 
 Sweet as the morning, inaccessible ; — 
 
 That rock shall be my sign. The terrible 
 
 Sun shall not change my calm aerial snows, 
 
 Nor his most golden hour 
 
 Shall melt my Danae tower : 
 
 Nor his rich rain of beams 
 
 Unfreeze the frozen seams 
 
 Qf the gauze clouds that veil me in my 
 
 bower. 
 I am sealed and set away 
 From Love, that village play. 
 
 141 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Fool, bring me not his goblet or his rose. 
 
 I will not drink his chalice with these churls. 
 
 If I be fair — and you will have me so — 
 
 How should I know ? 
 
 I will not use my beauty like these girls, 
 
 Who give it up to men 
 
 For a few seasons to be mouthed and 
 
 mumbled, 
 Wintered with grief, or in the cere-cloth 
 
 crumbled, 
 Doll for a moon, and house-drudge for a 
 
 year, 
 With menial fret and tear 
 Stained, once a festal robe, now threadbare 
 
 weed 
 Fit but for vilest need. 
 Or thrown on shards or mixens of despair. 
 Such doom how should I bear, 
 That am Urania, 
 
 142 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Air-queen Titania, 
 
 The flower blush and the morning's fragrance 
 
 rare ? 
 Ah ! I will not let my curious flesh 
 Be tasted like an apple ; shall my bloom 
 As some sick wood-thing's in the hunter's 
 
 mesh 
 Make hound and vulture track me to my 
 
 , doom ? 
 I will not put my mouth up to some fool 
 And be unvirgined for the kiss of him. 
 I will remain damsel of God, and rule 
 My worst thought purer than the morning- 
 rim. 
 What is this peasant homespun web of Love, 
 Rank with the daily toil of hardened hands ? 
 What is this vineyard lodge, this red alcove, 
 Reed-roofed and latticed in with thorny- 
 wands ? 
 
 143 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 The floor is purple with the broken grape ; 
 The vats are foamed with ferment. Hand 
 
 in hand, 
 Red to the knee, each BacchanaHan shape 
 Tramples the rich blood of the vintage lands, 
 Or leaning to their lovers fling the strands 
 Of their wild hair adrift and breast to breast 
 Reel in the dance, caressing and caressed. 
 What time the year is younger 
 And oak leaves yet are small, 
 And nestlings gape with hunger, 
 And merry crow-boys call, 
 And o'er the purple fallows 
 The greedy rooks are swaying. 
 And, as the morning mellows, 
 The wenches troop a-maying, 
 Near by some croft, half hid by rustic eaves, 
 The milkmaid rests her pail among the leaves, 
 And the drawn cow begins to graze anew. 
 
 144 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Then if some shepherd fellows chance to pass, 
 One comes and sits him by this freckled lass 
 And puts his brows to hers and holds her hand, 
 Coarse-cheeked and stained with summer, 
 
 where the grass 
 Shoots up in timothies and ox-eyes too, 
 And in rathe sorrel, reddest of Spring's crew, 
 And pale green spikes are everywhere around. 
 And chirping things give sound. 
 Hid down within the fodder, birds too young 
 To fly, the twisted stems among. 
 Because the deep high math entangles such, 
 Who left the nest edge ere their plumes were 
 
 much, 
 But who will soar ere harvest- moon be here. 
 So deep in grass, as two hid birds, this pair 
 Smear their rude mouths with rustic kisses 
 
 there. 
 Love ! this is Love, the rustic clownish game, 
 M 145 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 The ploughboy Eros, with his face of shame, 
 His homespun coat, his sheep-hound at his 
 
 side — 
 For him shall I forego my heaven of pride ? 
 Avaunt, thou son of mire ! 
 No Temple gave thee birth ; 
 Ether I am and fire. 
 Queen of the spirit's immortalities, 
 I rise as flame, I rise. 
 And Pythoness aspire 
 Above the reek of earth, 
 Helmed with an angel's mirth. 
 With star-dew on my beaming front and hair, 
 Listening what music rare 
 The planets make in sphering, with what word 
 The morning star comes dripping back to God, 
 Out of the sea at early dawn he trod : 
 With what a clear and crystal evensong 
 Recurrent Vesper surges back among 
 
 146 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 The small pure rounded lights, which in the 
 
 rain 
 Of radiance round him, pale and dumb 
 
 remain. 
 Shall I, whose meteor beauty makes the plain 
 Of the blue night mute with amazement, deign 
 To lift a corner of an eye at Love ? " 
 
 And who art thou, maiden or serpent-queen. 
 
 Lamia, blaspheming him, 
 
 The ineffable, the crown 
 
 Of all things, in whose absence heaven is dim. 
 
 Love, in whose presence utmost earth is 
 green ? 
 
 Who art thou, glorious Gorgon, who dost 
 
 frown 
 
 And sneer upon his name, 
 
 Cursing the holy one 
 
 Whom no god signs with blame, 
 
 147 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Whose imprecating prayer 
 
 Mocks the sweet god of air ? 
 
 Thy origin is bitter thus to dare ; 
 
 Thy father haunts the gates of gloom and 
 
 shame. 
 The trebly-coiled world-dragon in his lair 
 Made thee a sorceress 
 To bring the world distress, 
 So venom-sweet, so execrably fair. 
 He, that snake-emperor, thy sire, hath thee 
 In dearest custody, 
 
 Since wildest psean shook the halls of night 
 Around thee newly born. 
 ' This child is mine,' the parent Python said, 
 ' And made for my delight 
 This baby star of Acherontian morn. 
 This ray of darkness on the coast of dread. 
 I seal her with a sign, 
 I kiss her cradle with a kiss divine. 
 
 148 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Lo, I will guide my daughter on her way ; 
 
 She shall be lovelier than all Paradise, 
 
 As a drop of God's own dew, 
 
 As a fragment of a rainbow ; mysteries 
 
 Which angels never knew 
 
 Shall film within her eyes and chain the world. 
 
 At her least tear shall kings 
 
 Fling sceptres in the dust. 
 
 If she sigh once, all things 
 
 Shall gather ruth and rust. 
 
 She shall seem pure, crystalline, virginal, 
 
 A field of snow unmired, 
 
 A lamb among new daisies marginal, — 
 
 Time's daiughter well desired. 
 
 She shall seem purer than the vestal band 
 
 Who feed the quenchless fire. 
 
 Passion shall seem as dust upon her hand, 
 
 Lust as the lute-string of a broken lyre. 
 
 Lo, this is she, my perfect child demurest, 
 
 149 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 My cold delicious darling, purest 
 
 Of all the woman-moulded spirit-births.' 
 
 Scarce dares she breathe this atmosphere of 
 
 earth, 
 Scarce dare her holy limbs caress 
 Our passion-rooted flowers, 
 For fear of soilure, scarce her maiden hours 
 Dare gaze at Phcebus in his noonday stress. 
 Thou art an Artemis, whose trembling beams 
 Come nightly on some Alpine tarn, wherein 
 Thy chaste low crescent fluttering almost 
 
 seems 
 To shudder at itself, lest some deep wood, 
 Neighboured too near the flood, 
 Divulge Actaeon, and the night grow rude 
 With his hounds scenting blood, 
 Thou wouldst as queenly frown 
 
 The intruder dead, 
 
 My Dian-Circe of the adder crown, 
 
 15° 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Vestal unvanquished, 
 
 Thou, whose grey fatal eyes 
 
 Seem to discern no wish 
 
 Nearer than Death and some great Angel's 
 
 wings 
 Whose gaze with vast surmise 
 And solitary yearning 
 Searches the store-house of created things, 
 And all the sleepy palaces of dreams, 
 Whose domes are in the vast, 
 Soon to its lady desolate returning, 
 A dove-glance, with numb feet and weary 
 
 wings, 
 To tell her " I have past 
 Hither and thither over time's grey sea. 
 To the world's leaden bourn. 
 Here there is nothing worthy, sweet, of thee 
 And hungry I return." 
 So shall her feigning gaze entrance the world, 
 
 151 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 So shall the teeth of her strong gins snap in 
 Men of great honour ; captains crisped and 
 
 curled, 
 Caged in the pleasant gardens of her sin, 
 She shall entrap, demure in her disguise. 
 No giggling wench, whose mincing passion 
 
 snares 
 Only the dogday drones and carrion flies, 
 Which come at any carcase ; unawares 
 The wise and the heroic in her hell 
 Shall lie as broken ships. 
 The saint shall sell his god, the hero sell 
 His country for her lips. 
 She shall confuse all law with her desire. 
 Till by her hook she draw 
 Religion, like some brute leviathan 
 Snout-ringed with priestly gold. 
 And hale him from the deeps which are his 
 
 fold 
 
 152 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 To make her jest and play, 
 
 To lick her sandal strings, 
 
 To gambol in her royal way, 
 
 To sleek her shrine with wealthy offerings ; 
 
 While she, most exquisite, disdainfully 
 
 Withholds her frost-feigned limbs and smiles 
 
 a smile, 
 Like a proud music that draws men to die 
 Madly upon the spears in martial ecstacy, 
 A measure that sets heaven in all their veins 
 And iron in their hands. 
 I hear the nations march 
 Beneath her ensign as an eagle's wing ; 
 O'er shield and sheeted targe 
 The banners of my faith most gaily swing. 
 Moving to victory with solemn noise, 
 With worship and with conquest, and the 
 
 voice 
 Of myriads. Each man sees 
 
 153 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 Her eyes, each warrior hears 
 
 The laughter of her joys, 
 
 And stripped of reck or fears 
 
 Moves graveward without sighs. 
 
 That music lures him on, 
 
 With a laughter of all things sweet, — 
 
 The laugh of one that kisses well, the laugh 
 
 Of a great king who mows his foes like chaff, 
 
 The laugh of the feaster whose goblet is 
 
 crowned, 
 The laugh of the miser whose treasure is 
 
 sound, 
 The laugh of the lark when the morn sun 
 
 breaks 
 Its cloudy cover. 
 
 The laugh of the dreaming girl who wakes 
 And finds her lover ; 
 All these triumphs in her marching 
 Thou canst hear, — 
 
 154 
 
A DAUGHTER OF CIRCE 
 
 As when the storm the mountain pines is 
 
 searching, 
 Tambour and clarion clanging ecstacy. 
 Go forth, most fair Destruction, win the world 
 For mine and me ! 
 
 iSS 
 
APOLOGIA. 
 
 Why dost thou sing, poor bird of feeble song, 
 While all the coppice rings with nightingales 
 And the sweet thrush is vocal in the dales ? 
 To these the glories of the spring belong. 
 
 Thy note is neither clear nor sweet nor strong : 
 
 Be silent ; who will hear thy puny wails ? 
 
 Thy throat is weak, thy cadence sorely fails ; 
 
 Thou dost these more melodious songsters 
 wrong. 
 
 Then the poor bird replied, — "The daisy holds 
 Its right to summer with the lordliest tree, 
 The spring was made as much for meanest me 
 
 156 
 
APOLOGIA 
 
 As for thy queenly voice, which thrills the 
 
 wolds, 
 And random notes of mine may linger on 
 To cheer the traveller after thou art gone." 
 
 157 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 PHILOCTETES ; A Metrical Drama, after the Antique. 
 CrawDi Svo, 4a 6d. 
 
 Opinions of the Press. 
 
 " This is a fine poem, beautiful in detail, powerful as 
 a whole; leaving the same sort of impression of sad 
 majesty upon us as many of the finest Greek dramas 
 themselves ; combining the self-restrained and subdued 
 passion of the antique style, with here and there a touch 
 of that luxurianc© of conception, and everywhere that 
 wider range of emotions and deeper love of natural 
 beauty, characteristic of the modem. To whose pen we 
 owe it does not appear to be known. It might have been 
 taken for Mr. Matthew Arnold's but for a less supremely 
 intellectual, a profounder ethical and moral essence than 
 it usually pleases him to embody : and ' Philoctetes ' isi 
 certainly as far above ' Merope ' in success of execution as 
 Mr. Arnold's finest poems are above his poorest." — ^Thb 
 Spectator, June ZQth, 1866. 
 
 " In careful structure of plot, in classic chasteness of 
 style and language, in nice and exact interweaving of 
 part with part, in finish and completeness of the whole. 
 
' Philoctetea ' is worthy — and that is saying much — ^to be 
 named in the same day with ' Atalanta in Calydoo,' 
 although the latter is entitled to a marked precedence. 
 . . . Passing from the drift and scope of this new ' Pluloc- 
 tetes ' to its poetry, one is struck by abundant tokens of 
 grace and refinement, and discerns a fancy fed on loving 
 study of the ancient classics. The author has plied the 
 ' exemplaria Grseca ' to good purpose, and has leamt 
 from them to a creditable extent that completeness in 
 itself of each thought, image, and description which is 
 to be found in a Greek poet's composition. . . . The 
 classical field is open and unrifled. Let the author pursue 
 his researches amongst its treasures, aud go on to delight 
 his generation with fresh studies ' from, the antique ' as 
 truthfully conceived as his ' Philoctetea.' " — The Sattjb- 
 DAT Review, August 18<A, 1866. 
 
 " That desolate old Greek idea of the hopeless misery 
 of man is clothed by our anonymous poet in language of 
 great beauty and power." — ^London Review, July 2?>th, 
 1866. 
 
 " Every abatement, however, being made, ' Philoctetea' 
 is undoubtedly the work of a poetical mind, and may be 
 read with enjoyment. With pains and matured art, the 
 writer may produce what will endure." — The Athen^siiim, 
 May 26th, 1866. 
 
 " There is fine poetry in ' Pluloctetes,' but it is the song 
 of despair." — ^The Rbadbb, May 19th, 1866. 
 
 " An unknown writer who chooses as the subject of a 
 'metrical drama, after the antique,' the sufferings and 
 
d&liveranc© of Philoctetes, and so challenges comparison 
 with all but the noblest of the extant works of Sophocles 
 enters on a task of no common magnitude. . . . We may 
 add to that plea that the enterprise, bold as it undoubtedly 
 was, has issued not in failure but in success. The modem 
 ' Philoctetes ' will b« read with pleasure by those who 
 have loved and admired the old. It deserves toi the full 
 as high a place in the literature of our time aa Mr. Arnold's 
 ' Merope,' or Mr. Swinburne's ' Atalanta in C'alydon.' " — 
 
 CONTBMPORAET REVIEW, Junt, 1866. 
 
 KEHEARSALS ; a Book of Verses. Oown 8vo, 6s. 
 Opinions of the Press. 
 " The author has found his gift, and its presence is visible 
 more or less in every piece on which he has now tried 
 hia hand. This gift we take to be a compound of rich 
 fan.cy and imagination, fostered by a keen and loving 
 insight of nature, and kept in check by a sustained and 
 observant study of the antique models which, better than 
 any later examples, supply lessons of form and chasteness 
 to modem versenwriters. In ' Rehearsals ' the impress 
 of this may be traced throughout ; on some of the poems 
 it is so deeply and successfully set that, unless the taste 
 for poetry is extinct, they oannot fail to survive the 
 ephem.6ral notice which may b© drawn to them by magar 
 zines and reviews, and to hold their own amidst those 
 samples of the English muse of the nineteenth century 
 which are worthy to live." — Satuedat Review, December 
 10th, 1870. 
 
" Mr. Warren, whom we ma,y be allowed to congratulate 
 on claiming in his own person the honours which ho has 
 won under the name ol 'William Lancaster,' expresses 
 with uncommon energy and passion the spirit of ' revolt ' 
 which is so common among our young poets, w© may say, 
 among our young thinkers. . . . Mr. Warren has in no 
 small measure the gifts of the poet, but we cannot hop© 
 or even wish for him the highest success till he oan come 
 to believe in light." — Spectatob, February ith, 1871. 
 
 " ' Kehearsals ' not merely justifies all the praises which 
 have been bestowed upon the previous poems, but shows 
 that Mr. Warren is capable of still grea,ter aohievements. 
 His present volume reveals a sustained power of thought, 
 a ripeness of judgment, and an artistio beauty, for which) 
 we were quite unprepared." — Westminsthe Review, 
 January, 1871. 
 
 " Mr. Warren has an exquisite ear ; and his verse dwells 
 on the ear of the reader with a whisper as of eveining wind 
 stealing through woodbine, always too with a shade of 
 melancholy in its sweetness. What could be tenderer, 
 sweeter, more rapt in self-nursed despair than this from^ 
 ' The Children of the Gods ?'...' Pandora ' is an ex- 
 quisite restoration. It is instinct with the Greek spirit. 
 The severe simplicity and beauty of the old life speaks 
 through the swell of the rhythm, which pulses steady and 
 calm, like the wa,v©s of a summer sea round rooks." — 
 NoNCONFOBMiST, December lith, 1870. 
 
 " We cannot help recognizing in ' Rehearsals ' the 
 mature work of a rip© poet. The promisei of hia ' PhUoo- 
 
5 
 
 tetes ' and ' Orestes ' made us sore that, in the ooursei of 
 a few years, their author woiuld produce poetry worthy 
 to take its place amidst the more memorable outrpouring' 
 of contemporary verse-weavers." — Literary Churchman, 
 January 5th, 1871. 
 
 " Mr. Warren has a quick eye and ear for the sights 
 and sounds of external nature ; and a warm, sym.pathizing 
 heart with the meet tragic as well as the most tender 
 emotions of human nature. His genius takes many forms, 
 and is equally well sustained in its multiform versatility. 
 His chief poems in this collection are all written on sub- 
 jects as different and as distinct in their character as can 
 well be imagined, and yet they are all remarkable for 
 high finish, vigour, and poetical insight. ... Of all the 
 pieces in the volume, we give the palm of excellence to 
 ' Expostulation,' which is a passionate appeal of the God 
 of Israel to the people who have forsaken him. We have 
 space to quote only a few lines of this very beautiful 
 poem." — The Graphic, February 18th, 18ll. 
 
 " Mr. Warren's! ' Rehearsals ' consists of forty-four 
 poems, all of them short, many terse almost to abruptnesa 
 Nevertheless, each poem is pleasant to read, for they are 
 all carefully composed and well put together. . . . ' An 
 Ode ' is one of the finest poems in ' Rehearsals.' The 
 following as the three closing stanzas of it. ... A land 
 of a rest and sleep is here soi powerfully shown to be the 
 goal for which alone it is wis© to long. . . . It (' The Pro- 
 digal Son ') is a poem of only three verses, but it is power- 
 ful in its simplicity and terseness. With it we may close 
 
this short, review of Mr. Warren's book, butr not without 
 expressing a hope that before long he will give ws more 
 of his work, which, we have fair grounds for ^hop3%, will 
 fulfil the promise he has undoubtedly shgwn in these 
 poems and in ' Philoctetes.' " — Scotsmaij, Uay 25th, 
 1871. : ' 
 
 " His (the author's) descriptions of nature are remark- 
 ably faithful, and there is great finish in alLihat he 
 writes." — Weekly Kevibw, March 25th, 1871. 
 
 " We have already said that the music of the verse is 
 often exceedingly charming, and without close study in 
 several of the poems, .admiration of the technical skill of 
 the artist might induce the reader tO' overlook the strength 
 of the thought so elegantly and tersely expressed." — ^Man- 
 chester Examiner and Times, March 2'2'hd, 1871. 
 
 " There is no mistake whatever about the genius and 
 ability of Mr. Warren. ... It is possible that the intro- 
 duction which we proipose to give our readers to this 
 remarkably fine volume may as well begin with this 
 horribly beautiful poem. (The Strange Parable) .... 
 If Mr. Warren write a little slower he' will leave marks 
 behind him." — Daily Review, December \%th, 187-0. 
 
 " Soi long as poems like this can be written in the nine- 
 teenth century, so long may we say that the warmth and 
 spirit of the old classic religion did not §kpire with Goethe. 
 . . . The most biting sarcasm, and the tenderest feeling, 
 the keenest sensibility to natural beauty, the utmost 
 freedom, from coarse sensuousness, the "deepest inspiration 
 and the highest aspiration, the saddest undertone and the 
 
sweetest melody, all lie between the covers of this book." 
 — Tka Illttstrated Review, 1870. 
 
 ORESTES ; a Metrical Drama. Crown 8vo, 4a 6d. 
 Opinions of the Press. 
 "In ' Orestes,' he (the author) has at least proved himself 
 capable of producing an admirable piece of English coaaor 
 po'sition. Some of the blank verse in this poem is almost 
 Shakesperean in its forcible expression, in its power of 
 clearly realizing the subtleties of the thought of which 
 it is the vehicle, in its freedom from affectation, in its 
 freedom from weakness. . . . When we meet such poetry 
 as this book contains, the temptatiO'Q to quote is irre- 
 sistible." — ^London Review, July 20th. 
 
 " The present work, like its predecessor, ' PhHoctetes,' 
 contains many passages, especially in the ohorusee, the 
 force and beauty of which are not toi be denied. . . . 
 Viewed merely as a dramatic poem, it often demands 
 high praise for the force of its dialogue, and for the fervid 
 spirit and beauty of description evinced in the choruses. 
 There is the true throb of passion in the reproaches which 
 Orestes addresses toi his mother, whom he still believes 
 guilty of seeking his life." — Athbn^um, July 27th, 1867. 
 
 " Altogether, this ' Orestes ' is a fine conception, poiwer- 
 fully wrought out and calculated, unless we greatly err, 
 to sustain its author's well-won place among the foreimost 
 imitators of the ancient drama.." — Contbmporart Review, 
 October, 1867. 
 
 Steahan <fe Co., 56, Ludgate Hill, London.