Chapter V

Behold! the rain is over: on the wave
A new, a flashing light!
Lo, she arises calm,
The pale, the patient moon, and pours like balm
Through the wet wood’s wrecked aisle
Her own unutterably tender smile!

There is no calm like that when storm is done;
There is no pleasure keen as pain’s release;
There is no joy that lies so deep as peace,
No peace so deep as that by struggle won.

_Naught now remains, naught now remains but night--
Night peaceful, with the moon on field and wave!_

A MEMORY OF ELLEN TERRY’S BEATRICE

A wind of spring that whirls the feignéd snows
Of blossom-petals in the face, and flees:
Elusive, made of mirthful mockeries,
Yet tender with the prescience of the rose;
A strain desired, that through the memory goes,
Too subtle-slender for the voice to seize;
A flame dissembled, only lit to tease,
Whose touch were half a kiss, if one but knows.

She shows by Leonato’s dove-like daughter
A falcon, by a prince to be possessed,
Gay-graced with bells that ever chiming are;
In azure of the bright Sicilian water,
A billow that has rapt into its breast
The swayed reflection of a dancing star!

EMELIE

_O chaste goddesse of the wodes grene,
I am (thou wost) yet of thy compagnie,
A mayde, and love hunting and venerie,
And for to walken in the wodes wilde._

THE KNIGHTES TALE.

She greets the lily on the stalk;
She shakes the soft hair from her brows;
She wavers down the garden walk
Beneath the bloomy boughs.
She is the slenderest of maids;
Her fair face strikes you like a star;
The great stone tower her pathway shades--
The prison where the Princes are.
_Across the dewy pleasance falls,
All in the clear May morning light,
The shadow of those evil walls
That look so black by night._

She is so glad, so wild a thing,
Her heart sings like the lark all day;
The unhooded falcon on the wing
Is not more freely gay.
In sun and wind doth she rejoice,
And blithely drinks the airy blue,
Yet loves the solemn pines that voice
The grief she never knew.

In silence of the woods apart
Her sure swift step the Dryads know;
Full oft she speeds the bounding hart,
And draws the bending bow.
Fine gleams across her spirit dart,
And never living soul, saith she,
Could make her choose for aye to lose
Her own sweet company.

But sometimes, when the moon is bright,
So bright it almost drowns the stars,
She thinks how some have lost delight
Behind the prison bars.
It makes her sad a little space,
And casts a shadow on her look,
As branches in a woody place
Do flicker on a brook.

Last night she had a dream of men,
Dark faces strange with keen desire;
She heard the blaring trumpet then,
She saw the shields strike fire.
The pomp of plumes, the crack of spears,
Beyond her happy circle lie:
Thank Heaven! she has but eighteen years,
And loves the daisies and the sky.
_And yet across her garden falls,
All in the clear May morning light,
The shadow of the prison walls
That look so black by night._

ELSINORE

It is strange in Elsinore
Since the day King Hamlet died.

All the hearty sports of yore,
Sledge and skate, are laid aside;
Stilled the ancient mirth that rang,
Boisterous, down the fire-lit halls;
They forgot, at Yule, to hang
Berried holly on the walls.
Claudius lets the mead still flow
For the blue-eyed thanes that love it;
But they bend their brows above it,
And forever, to and fro,
Round the board dull murmurs go:
“It is strange in Elsinore
Since the day King Hamlet died.”

And a swarm of courtiers flit,
New in slashed and satined trim,
With their freshly-fashioned wit
And their littleness of limb,--
Flit about the stairways wide,
Till the pale Prince Hamlet smiles,
As he walks, at twilight tide,
Through the galleries and the aisles.

For to him the castle seems--
This old castle, Elsinore--
Like a thing built up of dreams;
And the king’s a mask, no more;
And the courtiers seem but flights
Of the painted butterflies;
And the arras, wrought with fights,
Grows alive before his eyes.
Lo, its giant shapes of Danes,
As without a wind it waves,
Live more nobly than his thanes,
Sullen carpers, ale-fed slaves!

In the flickering of the fires,
Through his sleep at night there pass
Gay conceits and young desires--
Faces out of memory’s glass,
Fragments of the actor’s art,
Student’s pleasures, college broils,
Poesies that caught his heart,
Chances with the fencing foils;
Then he listens oftentimes
With his boyhood’s simple glee,
To dead Yorick’s quips and rhymes,
Leaning on his father’s knee.
To that mighty hand he clings,
Tender love that stern face charms;
All at once the casement rings
As with strength of angry arms.
From the couch he lifts his head,
With a shudder and a start;
All the fires are embers red,
And a weight is on his heart.

It is strange in Elsinore:
Sure some marvel cometh soon!
Underneath the icy moon
Footsteps pat the icy floor;
Voices haunt the midnights bleak,
When the wind goes singing keen;
And the hound, once kept so sleek,
Slinks and whimpers and grows lean;
And the shivering sentinels,
Timorous, on their lonesome round,
Starting count the swinging bells,
Starting at the hollow sound;
And the pine-trees chafe and roar,
Though the snow would keep them still.
In the state there’s somewhat ill;
It is strange in Elsinore.

FIAMMETTA

In dream I passed the Gate that bears in black,
“Here lies dead Hope.” The ineffable gold sky
I saw between the pillars, looking back,
And one young cloud, that slowly wandered by
As though it wondered. Downward, all was dark,
And through the dark I heard the sad souls cry.

Anon, although alone, I whispered, “Hark!
What lifeless laughter, crackling thorny-thin?”
Then grew to sight what first I failed to mark
When from the accustomed light I entered in,--
A group that pleasured by that barren wall
As Hell some delicate-blossomed close had been:
One, gesturing, spake; the rest attended all,
“Declare, ye circled shades, your home on earth!
Declare the names your kindred used to call!”
I cried, much marvelling at their mirthless mirth.
A woman wavered to the space half lit
By that lost sky: “In Florence had we birth;
That company thou seest, who chose to sit
Ten sunny days, a fountain’s flight beside,
Scattering the rose, and weaving tales of wit,
What time by Arno many cursing died.
Yes, Fiammetta am I. _Thou little flame_,
(Thus the grave Angel, to this Gate my guide,)
_With what vain flickering hast thou proved thy name!
Hast given to no chilled spirit aught of cheer;
Shalt now be fed and kept alight with shame,
And flicker evermore._”

Then did appear
Her set smile’s irony, and I discerned
Through those her long dark languid eyes, right clear
How far below her soul forever burned.
Her sleeves of scarlet hung in many a shred;
Her silver chains were all to tarnish turned,
And crisped were the laurels on her head.
“Alas! why camest thou to this place of pain,--
Why, Pampinea, Lauretta, why?” I said,
“Since many souls that bore the self-same stain
Tread the last ledge of Purgatory mount,
And trust, made pure, sweet Paradise to gain,
Where sings the grove, where flows the twofold fount.
Those, angels aid on fair green rustling wings;
Why then are these thus held to hard account?”

“Not such, O questioner, was the sin that brings
Us hither; but on earth so weak a part
We chose, that now no part in heavenly things
Is granted us, nor yet will Hell’s deep heart
Receive us, but in this dim borderland
We dwell, and follow here our hollow art
Of weaving tales, and are in semblance gay,
Moved by a might we never may withstand.
To our own dear delights we turned away;
Forgot the city full of tears, forgot
The tolling bells, abandoned even to pray;
But couched in some delectable safe spot
Saw breezy olives whiten like the sea,
And babbled, fools, of Love, and knew him not,
Who else had set us from the grim Gate free,
Being giant-strong to save the souls of men.
But Hate came to us, richly masked, and we
Esteemed him Love; and now among us ten
Sits very Hate. The life we prized is ours
For aye! Yet not so far, I deem, this den
From sound of suffering as our fields of flowers.”
With that weird smile, she turned as if to go.
Loud groaned the lurid City, the sullen fen
Of Styx, and all that grief that lies below.
“Farewell,” I sighed, “Fiammetta!” But she, “Not so!
What life is thine? Perchance we meet again!”

MARINA SINGS

(_Pericles_, Act V. Scene I)

This is the song Marina sang
To forlorn Pericles:
Silver the young voice rang.
The gray beard blew about his knees,
And the hair of his bowed head, like a veil,
Fell over his cheeks and blent with it:
He knew not anything.
Above him the Tyrian fold
Of the curtain billowed, fringed with gold,
As might beseem a king.
Sunset was rose on every sail
That did along the far sea flit,
And rose on the cedarn deck
Of the ship that at anchor swayed;
And the harbour was golden-lit.
He lifted not his neck
At the coming of the maid.
She swept him with her eyes,
As though some tender wing
Just touched a bleaching wreck
In sheeted sand that lies;
Then she began to sing.

THE SONG

Hush, ah hush! the sea is kind!
Lullaby is in the wind;
Grief the babe forgets to weep,
Lapped and spelled and laid to sleep:
His lip is wet with the milk of the spray;
He shall not wake till another day.
Ah hush! the sea is kind!

Who can tell, ah who can tell,
The cradling nurse’s croonèd spell?
While the slumber-web she weaves
Never nursling stirs or grieves:
The tears that drowned his sweet eye-beams
Are turned to mists of rainbow dreams.
Ah hush! she charms us well!

“All thy hurts I balm and bind;
All thy heart’s loves thou shalt find!”
Yea, this she murmurs, best of all:
“It was not loss that did befall!
All thy joys are put away;
They shall be thine another day!”
Ah hush! the sea is kind!

She sang; she trembled like a lyre;
Her pure eyes burned with azure fire;
About her lucent brow the hair
Played like light flames divine ones wear:
The maid was very fair.
But when she saw he gave no heed,--
Close-mantled up in ancient pain
As in some sad-wound weed,
Dumb as a shape of stone,
Being years past all moan,--
She tried no other strain,
But softly spake: “Most royal sir!”
He raised his head and looked at her.
So might a castaway, half dead,
Lift up his haggard head,
Waked by the swirl of sudden rain,
A cool, unhoped-for grace,
Against his tearless face:
And see, with happy-crazèd mind,
Upon his raft a Bright One stand,--
His love of youth, her grave long left behind
In some sweet-watered land.

THE KING’S DIAMOND

_This diamond he greets your wife withal
By the name of most kind hostess._

MACBETH, Act II. Sc. I.

Duncan the King,--Heaven rest his bier!--
Had a diamond icy-clear;
Clear as ice and fierce as flame,--
I wot not whence he had the same.
Its fellow was not in the land.
It shot keen shafts of every hue
On the old king’s trembling hand
Where the veins were large and blue.
A jewel of price was that indeed,
Fit to buy a prince’s life;
A royal gift for the lady wife
Of a kinsman bold and true
Who had served the king at need.
Who was he, but the Red Macbeth
That wrought the false Macdonwald’s death,
And drave the sea-wolf in dismay,
Sweyn the king of Norroway?
Being guest to that great thane,
Ere his limbs on couch had lain,
Duncan sent that frozen flame
To Lady Gruach, the gracious dame.
(Clear as ice was the lady’s fame,
A flawless jewel indeed!)

Duncan the king at Colmkill sleeps,
So sound he will not turn or moan;
His slumber-draught was deep, I ween,
Bitter-spiced with daggers keen.
It is the Red Macbeth that keeps
Stern state upon the throne,
With Gruach, his kind queen.
(“Most kind,” the old King Duncan said,
Before he lay in his last bed.)

The Lady Gruach wears the crown,
She wears the glistering golden gown,
But yet she has not worn the ring
That was the guerdon of the king.
In the dark the diamond lies,
Seen of no vassal’s eyes.

Nor any vassal’s tongue can tell
How,--when the spying Day is sped
And sleeps with the safe dead;
When Gruach loosens her long hair
Midnight-black on her shoulders bare,
And sinks to the comfort of despair;
At the witches’ hour, when the shadows swell
As the swinging cressets flare,
And the small swart crickets harp and harp
On the tune remembered, torturing-sharp,
And the sobbing owlets wake,--
The diamond in the dark
Draws, draws her, like the spark
In the head of a deadly snake.
Then will she sit, and dully stare
On the cold diamond’s serpent-glare;
Her lip is fallen, she does not stir,
Her life is sucked into the gem;
It is as though the Powers malign
Had made with mystery in the mine
A thing to be like the soul of her:
It was a jest to them!
All the light upgathered they
That might have been a sunshine day,
Broadcast blessing and heavenly boon,
Peace of even and power of noon;
Seized the rays with a spell unknown,
Forced them into a core of fire
Like the glede of a covetous desire,
Shut them fast in the heart of a stone.
And hard, and harder than the sword,
They made the crystal, fiery-cored;
On steel that oft had steel withstood
Might it grave the word it would.
A gem of beauty and of bale,
A prisoned force in narrow pale,
Evil-perfect, pure of good!
--So will she sit, till naked Morn
Peers at the world with visage white
Like a sleeper roused in fright,
Aghast and most forlorn.

What of the end? since end must be.
She knows a skilled artificer,
And he shall set in a dagger’s haft
The thing that is like the soul of her.
When first she thought thereon, she laughed,
And then she shuddered fearfully.
Ah, what if Heaven no end will grant,
Resolved in any heats of wrath,
To that which for its symbol hath
The unsubduable adamant?
Ah, what if like a falling jewel
The soul whose light was mocking-cruel,
Through gulfs of loss unplummeted
Should fall, and fall, forevermore,
Fire of torment at its core?
Oh, horrible and leaden dread!
The grace of God blot out our sins!
--The women knock at the chamber door,
The queen starts up, the day begins.

“AS THE CROW FLIES”

Buccaneer with blackest sails,
Steering home by compass true,
Now that all the rich West pales
From its ingot-hue!

Would that compass in thy breast
Thou couldst lend, for guiding me
Where my Hope hath made her nest--
In how far a tree!

Swerving not, nor stooping low,
To that dear, that distant mark
Could I undiverted go,
What were coming dark?

--Careless of the twilight ground,
O’er the wood and o’er the stream
Still he sails, with hollow sound
Strange, as in a dream!

THE WAYFARERS

I

Young man with the keen blue eyes,
Clear and bold!
Why, as thou dost fare,
With so searching air,
Scannest thou each face thou dost behold,
Each small flower, faint-coloured like the skies,
Growing by the way? Why gazest thou
O’er the round hill’s brow?

“Ah, in every bearded face,
Looking deep,
My heart’s friend seek I!
In each maiden shy
My heart’s dearest, dreamed upon in sleep;
And in each fair flower a hope I trace;
And the hill may hide the flashing sea
That doth call to me!”