Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air;
But, when they came from bathing, thou wert gone. 100
At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills,
Where at her open door the housewife darns,
Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate
To watch the threshers in the mossy barns.
Children, who early range these slopes and late 105
For cresses from the rills,
Have known thee watching, all an April day,
The springing pastures and the feeding kine;
And mark’d thee, when the stars come out and shine,
Through the long dewy grass move slow away. 110
In Autumn, on the skirts of Bagley wood,
Where most the Gipsies by the turf-edg’d way
Pitch their smok’d tents, and every bush you see
With scarlet patches tagg’d and shreds of grey,
Above the forest ground call’d Thessaly — 115
The blackbird picking food
Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all;
So often has he known thee past him stray
Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither’d spray,
And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall. 120
And once, in winter, on the causeway chill
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,
Have I not pass’d thee on the wooden bridge
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,
Thy face towards Hinksey and its wintry ridge? 125
And thou hast climb’d the hill
And gain’d the white brow of the Cumner range,
Turn’d once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,
The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall —
Then sought thy straw in some sequester’d grange. 130
But what — I dream! Two hundred years are flown
Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls,
And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe
That thou wert wander’d from the studious walls
To learn strange arts, and join a Gipsy tribe: 135
And thou from earth art gone
Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid;
Some country nook, where o’er thy unknown grave
Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave —
Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree’s shade. 140
— No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours.
For what wears out the life of mortal men?
‘Tis that from change to change their being rolls:
‘Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,
Exhaust the energy of strongest souls, 145
And numb the elastic powers.
Till having us’d our nerves with bliss and teen,
And tir’d upon a thousand schemes our wit,
To the just-pausing Genius we remit
Our worn-out life, and are — what we have been. 150
Thou hast not liv’d, why should’st thou perish, so?
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire:
Else wert thou long since number’d with the dead —
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire.
The generations of thy peers are fled, 155
And we ourselves shall go;
But thou possessest an immortal lot,
And we imagine thee exempt from age
And living as thou liv’st on Glanvil’s page,
Because thou hadst — what we, alas, have not! 160
For early didst thou leave the world, with powers
Fresh, undiverted to the world without,
Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,
Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. 165
O Life unlike to ours!
Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,
Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
And each half lives a hundred different lives;
Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. 170
Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven: and we,
Vague half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose weak resolves never have been fulfill’d; 175
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day —
Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too? 180
Yes, we await it, but it still delays,
And then we suffer; and amongst us One,
Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne;
And all his store of sad experience he 185
Lays bare of wretched days;
Tells us his misery’s birth and growth and signs,
And how the dying spark of hope was fed,
And how the breast was sooth’d, and how the head,
And all his hourly varied anodynes. 190
This for our wisest: and we others pine,
And wish the long unhappy dream would end,
And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear,
With close-lipp’d Patience for our only friend,
Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair: 195
But none has hope like thine.
Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,
Roaming the country side, a truant boy,
Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,
And every doubt long blown by time away. 200
O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife — 205
Fly hence, our contact fear!
Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern
From her false friend’s approach in Hades turn,
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude. 210
Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade,
With a free onward impulse brushing through,
By night, the silver’d branches of the glade —
Far on the forest skirts, where none pursue, 215
On some mild pastoral slope
Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales,
Freshen thy flowers, as in former years,
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,
From the dark dingles, to the nightingales. 220
But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
For strong the infection of our mental strife,
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;
And we should win thee from thy own fair life,
Like us distracted, and like us unblest. 225
Soon, soon thy cheer would die,
Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix’d thy powers,
And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made:
And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,
Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours. 230
Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!
— As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow
Lifting the cool-hair’d creepers stealthily,
The fringes of a southward-facing brow 235
Among the Aegean isles;
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
Green bursting figs, and tunnies steep’d in brine;
<
br /> And knew the intruders on his ancient home, 240
The young light-hearted Masters of the waves;
And snatch’d his rudder, and shook out more sail,
And day and night held on indignantly
O’er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, 245
To where the Atlantic raves
Outside the Western Straits, and unbent sails
There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,
Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;
And on the beach undid his corded bales. 250
Stanzas in Memory of the Late Edward Quillinan, Esq.
I SAW him sensitive in frame,
I knew his spirits low;
And wish’d him health, success, and fame:
I do not wish it now.
For these are all their own reward, 5
And leave no good behind;
They try us, oftenest make us hard,
Less modest, pure, and kind.
Alas! Yet to the suffering man,
In this his mortal state, 10
Friends could not give what Fortune can —
Health, ease, a heart elate.
But he is now by Fortune foil’d
No more; and we retain
The memory of a man unspoil’d, 15
Sweet, generous, and humane;
With all the fortunate have not —
With gentle voice and brow.
Alive, we would have chang’d his lot:
We would not change it now. 20
POEMS, SECOND AND THIRD SERIES, 1855
Arnold’s second edition of Poems includes the tragic narrative poem Balder Dead, first published in 1855. The poem draws upon Norse mythology, retelling the story of the murder of Odin’s son, Balder, due to the evil machinations of his half-brother Loki. The evil Loki was quickly punished for murdering Balder by being exiled from Asgard. Still, it remains for the gods - the Æsir and the Vanir dwelling in Asgard - to bury and to mourn their dead.
Caricature from Punch, 1881: “Admit that Homer sometimes nods, That poets do write trash, Our Bard has written “Balder Dead,” And also Balder-dash”
CONTENTS
Balder Dead. An Episode
Separation
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
Haworth Churchyard, April, 1855
To Marguerite I
To Marguerite II
Balder Dead. An Episode
I. Sending
SO on the floor lay Balder dead; and round
Lay thickly strewn swords axes darts and spears
Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown
At Balder, whom no weapon pierc’d or clove:
But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough 5
Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave
To Hoder, and unwitting Hoder threw:
‘Gainst that alone had Balder’s life no charm.
And all the Gods and all the Heroes came
And stood round Balder on the bloody floor 10
Weeping and wailing; and Valhalla rang
Up to its golden roof with sobs and cries:
And on the tables stood the untasted meats,
And in the horns and gold-rimm’d skulls the wine:
And now would Night have fall’n, and found them yet 15
Wailing; but otherwise was Odin’s will:
And thus the Father of the Ages spake: —
‘Enough of tears, ye Gods, enough of wail!
Not to lament in was Valhalla made.
If any here might weep for Balder’s death 20
I most might weep, his Father; such a son
I lose to-day, so bright, so lov’d a God.
But he has met that doom which long ago
The Nornies, when his mother bare him, spun,
And Fate set seal, that so his end must be. 25
Balder has met his death, and ye survive:
Weep him an hour; but what can grief avail?
For you yourselves, ye Gods, shall meet your doom,
All ye who hear me, and inhabit Heaven,
And I too, Odin too, the Lord of all; 30
But ours we shall not meet, when that day comes,
With woman’s tears and weak complaining cries —
Why should we meet another’s portion so?
Rather it fits you, having wept your hour,
With cold dry eyes, and hearts compos’d and stern, 35
To live, as erst, your daily life in Heaven:
By me shall vengeance on the murderer Lok,
The Foe, the Accuser, whom, though Gods, we hate,
Be strictly car’d for, in the appointed day.
Meanwhile, to-morrow, when the morning dawns, 40
Bring wood to the seashore to Balder’s ship,
And on the deck build high a funeral pile,
And on the top lay Balder’s corpse, and put
Fire to the wood, and send him out to sea
To burn; for that is what the dead desire.’ 45
So having spoke, the King of Gods arose
And mounted his horse Sleipner, whom he rode,
And from the hall of Heaven he rode away
To Lidskialf, and sate upon his throne,
The Mount, from whence his eye surveys the world. 50
And far from Heaven he turn’d his shining orbs
To look on Midgard, and the earth, and men:
And on the conjuring Lapps he bent his gaze
Whom antler’d reindeer pull over the snow;
And on the Finns, the gentlest of mankind, 55
Fair men, who live in holes under the ground:
Nor did he look once more to Ida’s plain,
Nor towards Valhalla, and the sorrowing Gods;
For well he knew the Gods would heed his word,
And cease to mourn, and think of Balder’s pyre. 60
But in Valhalla all the Gods went back
From around Balder, all the Heroes went;
And left his body stretch’d upon the floor.
And on their golden chairs they sate again,
Beside the tables, in the hall of Heaven; 65
And before each the cooks who serv’d them plac’d
New messes of the boar Serimner’s flesh,
And the Valkyries crown’d their horns with mead.
So they, with pent-up hearts and tearless eyes,
Wailing no more, in silence ate and drank, 70
While Twilight fell, and sacred Night came on.
But the blind Hoder left the feasting Gods
In Odin’s hall, and went through Asgard streets,
And past the haven where the Gods have moor’d
Their ships, and through the gate, beyond the wall. 75
Though sightless, yet his own mind led the God.
Down to the margin of the roaring sea
He came, and sadly went along the sand
Between the waves and black o’erhanging cliffs
Where in and out the screaming seafowl fly; 80
Until he came to where a gully breaks
Through the cliff wall, and a fresh stream runs down
From the high moors behind, and meets the sea.
There in the glen Fensaler stands, the house
Of Frea, honour’d Mother of the Gods, 85
And shows its lighted windows to the main.
There he went up, and pass’d the open doors:
And in the hall he found those women old,
The Prophetesses, who by rite eterne
On Frea’s hearth feed high the sacred fire 90
Both night and day; and by the inner wall
Upon her golden chair the Mother sate,
With folded hands, revolving things to come:
To her drew Hoder near, and spake, and said: —
‘Mother, a child of bale thou bar’st in me. 95
For, first, thou barest me with b
linded eyes,
Sightless and helpless, wandering weak in Heaven;
And, after that, of ignorant witless mind
Thou barest me, and unforeseeing soul:
That I alone must take the branch from Lok, 100
The Foe, the Accuser, whom, though Gods, we hate,
And cast it at the dear-lov’d Balder’s breast
At whom the Gods in sport their weapons threw —
‘Gainst that alone had Balder’s life no charm.
Now therefore what to attempt, or whither fly? 105
For who will bear my hateful sight in Heaven? —
Can I, O Mother, bring them Balder back?
Or — for thou know’st the Fates, and things allow’d —
Can I with Hela’s power a compact strike,
And make exchange, and give my life for his?’ 110
He spoke: the Mother of the Gods replied: —
‘Holder, ill-fated, child of bale, my son,
Sightless in soul and eye, what words are these?
That one, long portion’d with his doom of death,
Should change his lot, and fill another’s life, 115
And Hela yield to this, and let him go!
On Balder Death hath laid her hand, not thee;
Nor doth she count this life a price for that.
For many Gods in Heaven, not thou alone,
Would freely die to purchase Balder back, 120
And wend themselves to Hela’s gloomy realm.
For not so gladsome is that life in Heaven
Which Gods and Heroes lead, in feast and fray,
Waiting the darkness of the final times,
That one should grudge its loss for Balder’s sake, 125
Balder their joy, so bright, so lov’d a God.
But Fate withstands, and laws forbid this way.
Yet in my secret mind one way I know,
Nor do I judge if it shall win or fail:
But much must still be tried, which shall but fail.’ 130
And the blind Hoder answer’d her, and said: —
‘What way is this, O Mother, that thou show’st?
Is it a matter which a God might try?’
And straight the Mother of the Gods replied: —
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Page 21