Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Nay, if we seek we shall not find,
If we knock none openeth;
Nay, see, the sunset fades behind
The mountains, and the cold night wind
Blows from the house of Death.

ROMANCE.

My Love dwelt in a Northern land.
A grey tower in a forest green
Was his, and far on either hand
The long wash of the waves was seen,
And leagues on leagues of yellow sand,
The woven forest boughs between!

And through the clear faint Northern night
The sunset slowly died away,
And herds of strange deer, silver-white,
Stole forth among the branches grey;
About the coming of the light,
They fled like ghosts before the day!

I know not if the forest green
Still girdles round that castle grey;
I know not if the boughs between
The white deer vanish ere the day;
Above my Love the grass is green,
My heart is colder than the clay!

A SUNSET ON YARROW

The wind and the day had lived together,
They died together, and far away
Spoke farewell in the sultry weather,
Out of the sunset, over the heather,
The dying wind and the dying day.

Far in the south, the summer levin
Flushed, a flame in the grey soft air:
We seemed to look on the hills of heaven;
You saw within, but to me 'twas given
To see your face, as an angel's, there.

Never again, ah surely never,
Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood,
The low good-night of the hill and the river,
The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver,
Twain grown one in the solitude.

A PORTRAIT OF 1783.

Your hair and chin are like the hair
And chin Burne-Jones's ladies wear;
You were unfashionably fair
And sad you were when girls are gay,
You read a book about _Le vrai_
_Mérite de l'homme_, alone in May.
What _can_ it be,
_Le vrai mérite de l'homme?_ Not gold,
Not titles that are bought and sold,
Not wit that flashes and is cold,
But Virtue merely!
Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know),
You bade the crowd of foplings go,
You glanced severely,

Dreaming beneath the spreading shade
Of "that vast hat the Graces made";[2]
So Rouget sang--while yet he played
With courtly rhyme,
And hymned great Doisi's red perruque,
And Nice's eyes, and Zulmé's look,
And dead canaries, ere he shook
The sultry time
With strains like thunder. Loud and low
Methinks I hear the murmur grow,
The tramp of men that come and go
With fire and sword.
They war against the quick and dead,
Their flying feet are dashed with red,
As theirs the vintaging that tread
Before the Lord.
O head unfashionably fair,
What end was thine, for all thy care?
We only see thee dreaming there:
We cannot see
The breaking of thy vision, when
The Rights of Man were lords of men,
When virtue won her own again
In '93.

THE BARBAROUS BIRD-GODS: A SAVAGE PARABASIS.

[The myth in the "Birds" of Aristophanes, which represents Birds as
older than the Gods, may have been a genuine Greek tradition. The
following lines show how prevalent is the myth among widely severed
races. The Mexican Bird-gods I omit; who can rhyme to
Huitzilopochtli?]

_The Birds Sing_:

We would have you to wit, that on eggs though
we sit, and are spiked on the spit, and are baked
in the pan,
Birds are older by far than your ancestors are, and made
love and made war ere the making of Man!
For when all things were dark, not a glimmer nor spark,
and the world like a barque without rudder or sail
Floated on through the night, 't was a Bird struck a
light, 't was a flash from the bright feather'd Tonatiu's[3]
tail!
Then the Hawk[4] with some dry wood flew up in the
sky, and afar, safe and high, the Hawk lit Sun and
Moon,
And the Birds of the air they rejoiced everywhere, and
they recked not of care that should come on them
soon.
For the Hawk, so they tell, was then known as Pundjel,[5]
and a-musing he fell at the close of the day;
Then he went on the quest, as we thought, of a nest,
with some bark of the best, and a clawful of clay,[6]
And with these did he frame two birds lacking a name,
without feathers (his game was a puzzle to all);
Next around them he fluttered a-dancing, and muttered;
and, lastly, he uttered a magical call:
Then the figures of clay, as they featherless lay, they
leaped up, who but they, and embracing they fell,
And _this_ was the baking of Man, and his making; but
now he's forsaking his Father, Pundjel!
Now these creatures of mire, they kept whining for fire,
and to crown their desire who was found but the
Wren?

To the high heaven he came, from the Sun stole he
flame, and for this has a name in the memory of
men![7]
And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men
brought it through without falter or fail?
Why the Hawk 't was again, and great Indra to men
would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail,
While the Thlinkeet's delight is the Bird of the Night,
the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl.[8]
And who for man's need brought the famed Suttung's
mead? why 't is told in the creed of the Sagamen
strong,
'T was the Eagle god who brought the drink from the
blue, and gave mortals the brew that's the fountain
of song.[9]
Next, who gave men their laws? and what reason or
cause the young brave overawes when in need of a
squaw,
Till he thinks it a shame to wed one of his name, and
his conduct you blame if he thus breaks the law?
For you still hold it wrong if a _lubra_[10] belong to the
self-same _kobong_[11] that is Father of you,
To take _her_ as a bride to your ebony side; nay, you
give her a wide berth; quite right of you, too.
For _her_ father, you know, is _your_ father, the Crow, and
no blessing but woe from the wedding would spring.
Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gum
shade, and were strictly obeyed, when the Crow was
the King.[12]
Thus on Earth's little ball to the Birds you owe all, yet
your gratitude's small for the favours they've done,
And their feathers you pill, and you eat them at will,
yes, you plunder and kill the bright birds one by
one;
There 's a price on their head, and the Dodo is dead,
and the Moa has fled from the sight of the sun!

[1] Pronounced "Maudlin."

[2]

Vous y verrez, belle Julie, Que ce chapeau tout maltraité Fut, dans un instant de folie, Par les Grâces même invente.

"À Julie." _Essais en Prose et en Vers_, par Joseph Lisle; Paris, An. V. de la République.

[3] Tonatiu, the Thunder Bird; well known to the Dacotahs and Zulus.

[4] The Hawk, in the myth of the Galinameros of Central California, lit up the Sun.

[5] Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, is the demiurge and "culture-hero" of several Australian tribes.

[6] The Creation of Man is thus described by the Australians.

[7] In Andaman, Thlinkeet, Melanesian, and other myths, a Bird is the Prometheus Purphoros; in Normandy this part is played by the Wren.

[8] Yehl: the Raven God of the Thlinkeets.

[9] Indra stole Soma as a Hawk and as a Quail. For Odin's feat as a Bird, see _Bragi's Telling_ in the Younger Edda.

[10] Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, gave Australians their marriage laws.

[11] _Lubra_, a woman; _kobong_, "totem"; or, to please Mr. Max Müller, "otem."

[12] The Crow was the Hawk's rival.

POST HOMERICA.

HESPEROTHEN.

By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phæacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the _Vanity of Melancholy_. And by the land of Phæacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe's Isle, the places of bodily delights, whereof men, falling aweary attain to Eld, and to the darkness of that age. Which thing Master Françoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the Isle of the Macræones.

THE SEEKERS FOR PHÆACIA.

There is a land in the remotest day,
Where the soft night is born, and sunset dies;
The eastern shores see faint tides fade away,
That wash the lands where laughter, tears, and sighs,
Make life,--the lands beneath the blue of common, skies.

But in the west is a mysterious sea,
(What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?)
With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be,
With islands where a Goddess walks alone,
And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moan.

Eastward the human cares of house and home,
Cities, and ships, and unknown Gods, and loves;
Westward, strange maidens fairer than the foam,
And lawless lives of men, and haunted groves,
Wherein a God may dwell, and where the Dryad roves.

The Gods are careless of the days and death
Of toilsome men, beyond the western seas;
The Gods are heedless of their painful breath,
And love them not, for they are not as these;
But in the golden west they live and lie at ease.

Yet the Phæacians well they love, who live
At the light's limit, passing careless hours,
Most like the Gods; and they have gifts to give,
Even wine, and fountains musical, and flowers,
And song, and if they will, swift ships, and magic powers.

It is a quiet midland; in the cool
Of twilight comes the God, though no man prayed,
To watch the maids and young men beautiful
Dance, and they see him, and are not afraid,
For they are near of kin to Gods, and undismayed.

Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nigh
The dreamy isles that the Immortals keep!
But with a mist they hide them wondrously,
And far the path and dim to where they sleep,--
The loved, the shadowy lands along the shadowy deep.

THE DEPARTURE FROM PHÆACIA.

THE PHÆACIANS.

Why from the dreamy meadows,
More fair than any dream,
Why will you seek the shadows
Beyond the ocean stream?

Through straits of storm and peril,
Through firths unsailed before,
Why make you for the sterile,
The dark Kimmerian shore?

There no bright streams are flowing,
There day and night are one,
No harvest time, no sowing,
No sight of any sun;

No sound of song or tabor,
No dance shall greet you there;
No noise of mortal labour,
Breaks on the blind chill air.

Are ours not happy places,
Where Gods with mortals trod?
Saw not our sires the faces
Of many a present God?

THE SEEKERS.

Nay, now no God comes hither,
In shape that men may see;
They fare we know not whither,
We know not what they be.

Yea, though the sunset lingers
Far in your fairy glades,
Though yours the sweetest singers,
Though yours the kindest maids,

Yet here be the true shadows,
Here in the doubtful light;
Amid the dreamy meadows
No shadow haunts the night.

We seek a city splendid,
With light beyond the sun;
Or lands where dreams are ended,
And works and days are done.

A BALLAD OF DEPARTURE.[1]

Fair white bird, what song art thou singing
In wintry weather of lands o'er sea?
Dear white bird, what way art thou winging,
Where no grass grows, and no green tree?

I looked at the far off fields and grey,
There grew no tree but the cypress tree,
That bears sad fruits with the flowers of May,
And whoso looks on it, woe is he.

And whoso eats of the fruit thereof
Has no more sorrow, and no more love;
And who sets the same in his garden stead,
In a little space he is waste and dead.

We seek a city splendid,
With light beyond the sun;
Or lands where dreams are ended,
And works and days are done.

THEY HEAR THE SIRENS FOR THE SECOND TIME.

The weary sails a moment slept,
The oars were silent for a space,
As past Hesperian shores we swept,
That were as a remembered face
Seen after lapse of hopeless years,
In Hades, when the shadows meet,
Dim through the mist of many tears,
And strange, and though a shadow, sweet.

So seemed the half-remembered shore,
That slumbered, mirrored in the blue,
With havens where we touched of yore,
And ports that over well we knew.
Then broke the calm before a breeze
That sought the secret of the west;
And listless all we swept the seas
Towards the Islands of the Blest.

Beside a golden sanded bay
We saw the Sirens, very fair
The flowery hill whereon they lay,
The flowers set upon their hair.
Their old sweet song came down the wind.
Remembered music waxing strong,
Ah now no need of cords to bind,
No need had we of Orphic song.

It once had seemed a little thing,
To lay our lives down at their feet,
That dying we might hear them sing,
And dying see their faces sweet;
But now, we glanced, and passing by,
No care had we to tarry long;
Faint hope, and rest, and memory
Were more than any Siren's song.

CIRCE'S ISLE REVISITED.

Ah, Circe, Circe! in the wood we cried;
Ah, Circe, Circe! but no voice replied;
No voice from bowers o'ergrown and ruinous
As fallen rocks upon the mountain side.

There was no sound of singing in the air;
Faded or fled the maidens that were fair,
No more for sorrow or joy were seen of us,
No light of laughing eyes, or floating hair.

The perfume, and the music, and the flame
Had passed away; the memory of shame
Alone abode, and stings of faint desire,
And pulses of vague quiet went and came.

Ah, Circe! in thy sad changed fairy place,
Our dead Youth came and looked on us a space,
With drooping wings, and eyes of faded fire,
And wasted hair about a weary face.

Why had we ever sought the magic isle
That seemed so happy in the days erewhile?
Why did we ever leave it, where we met
A world of happy wonders in one smile?

Back to the westward and the waning light
We turned, we fled; the solitude of night
Was better than the infinite regret,
In fallen places of our dead delight.

THE LIMIT OF LANDS.

Between the circling ocean sea
And the poplars of Persephone
There lies a strip of barren sand,
Flecked with the sea's last spray, and strown
With waste leaves of the poplars, blown
From gardens of the shadow land.

With altars of old sacrifice
The shore is set, in mournful wise
The mists upon the ocean brood;
Between the water and the air
The clouds are born that float and fare
Between the water and the wood.

Upon the grey sea never sail
Of mortals passed within our hail,
Where the last weak waves faint and flow;
We heard within the poplar pale
The murmur of a doubtful wail
Of voices loved so long ago.

We scarce had care to die or live,
We had no honey cake to give,
No wine of sacrifice to shed;
There lies no new path over sea,
And now we know how faint they be,
The feasts and voices of the Dead.

Ah, flowers and dance! ah, sun and snow!
Glad life, sad life we did forego
To dream of quietness and rest;
Ah, would the fleet sweet roses here
Poured light and perfume through the drear
Pale year, and wan land of the west.

Sad youth, that let the spring go by
Because the spring is swift to fly,
Sad youth, that feared to mourn or love,
Behold how sadder far is this,
To know that rest is nowise bliss,
And darkness is the end thereof.

THE SHADE OF HELEN.

Some say that Helen went never to Troy, but abode in
Egypt; for the Gods, having made in her semblance a
woman out of clouds and shadows, sent the same to be
wife to Paris. For this shadow then the Greeks and
Trojans slew each other.

(_Written in the Pyrenees_.)

Why from the quiet hollows of the hills,
And extreme meeting place of light and shade,
Wherein soft rains fell slowly, and became
Clouds among sister clouds, where fair spent beams
And dying glories of the sun would dwell,'
Why have they whom I know not, nor may know,
Strange hands, unseen and ruthless, fashioned me,
And borne me from the silent shadowy hills,
Hither, to noise and glow of alien life,
To harsh and clamorous swords, and sound of war?
One speaks unto me words that would be sweet,
Made harsh, made keen with love that knows me not,
And some strange force, within me or around,

Makes answer, kiss for kiss, and sigh for sigh,
And somewhere there is fever in the halls,
That troubles me, for no such trouble came
To vex the cool far hollows of the hills.

The foolish folk crowd round me, and they cry,
That house, and wife, and lands, and all Troy town,
Are little to lose, if they may hold me here,
And see me flit, a pale and silent shade,

Among the streets bereft, and helpless shrines.
At other hours another life seems mine,
Where one great river runs unswollen of rain,
By pyramids of unremembered kings,
And homes of men obedient to the Dead.
There dark and quiet faces come and go
Around me, then again the shriek of arms,
And all the turmoil of the Ilian men.
What are they? even shadows such as I.
What make they? Even this--the sport of Gods--
The sport of Gods, however free they seem.
Ah would the game were ended, and the light,
The blinding light, and all too mighty suns,
Withdrawn, and I once more with sister shades,
Unloved, forgotten, mingled with the mist,
Dwelt in the hollows of the shadowy hills.

PISIDICÊ.

The incident is from the Love Stories of Parthenius,
who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the
expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an island
allied with Troy.

The daughter of the Lesbian king
Within her bower she watched the war,
Far off she heard the arrows ring,
The smitten harness ring afar;
And, fighting from the foremost car,
Saw one that smote where all must flee;
More fair than the Immortals are
He seemed to fair Pisidicê!

She saw, she loved him, and her heart
Before Achilles, Peleus' son,
Threw all its guarded gates apart,
A maiden fortress lightly won!
And, ere that day of fight was done,
No more of land or faith recked she,
But joyed in her new life begun,--
Her life of love, Pisidicê!

She took a gift into her hand,
As one that had a boon to crave;
She stole across the ruined land
Where lay the dead without a grave,
And to Achilles' hand she gave
Her gift, the secret postern's key.
"To-morrow let me be thy slave!"
Moaned to her love Pisidicê.

Ere dawn the Argives' clarion call
Rang down Methymna's burning street;
They slew the sleeping warriors all,
They drove the women to the fleet,
Save one, that to Achilles' feet
Clung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he:
"For her no doom but death is meet."
And there men stoned Pisidicê.

In havens of that haunted coast,
Amid the myrtles of the shore,
The moon sees many a maiden ghost,--
Love's outcast now and evermore.
The silence hears the shades deplore
Their hour of dear-bought love; but _thee_
The waves lull, 'neath thine olives hoar,
To dreamless rest, Pisidicê!

[1] From the Romaic.

SONNETS.

THE ODYSSEY.

As one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine,
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,--
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

TWO SONNETS OF THE SIRENS.

"Les Sirènes estoient tant intimes amies et fidelles
compagnes de Proserpine, qu'elles estoient toujours
ensemble. Esmues du juste deuil de la perte de leur
chère compagne, et enuyées jusques au desespoir,
elles s'arrestèrent à la mer Sicilienne, où par
leurs chants elles attiroient les navigans, mais
l'unique fin de la volupté de leur musique est la
Mort_."--Pontus de Tyard_
1570.