One from the deep land, one from the height,
One from the light and the might of the town.
The lowlands laugh with delight of the highlands,
Whence May winds feed them with balm and breath
From hills that beheld in the years behind
A shape as of one from the blest souls’ islands,
Made fair by a soul too fair for death,
With eyes on the light that should smite them blind.
Vallombrosa remotely remembers,
Perchance, what still to us seems so near
That time not darkens it, change not mars,
The foot that she knew when her leaves were September’s,
The face lift up to the starblind seer,
That saw from his prison arisen his stars.
And Pisa broods on her dead, not mourning,
For love of her loveliness given them in fee;
And Prato gleams with the glad monk’s gift
Whose hand was there as the hand of morning;
And Siena, set in the sand’s red sea,
Lifts loftier her head than the red sand’s drift.
And far to the fair southwestward lightens,
Girdled and sandalled and plumed with flowers,
At sunset over the lovelit lands,
The hillside’s crown where the wild hill brightens,
Saint Fina’s town of the Beautiful Towers,
Hailing the sun with a hundred hands.
Land of us all that have loved thee dearliest,
Mother of men that were lords of man,
Whose name in the world’s heart works as a spell,
My last song’s light, and the star of mine earliest,
As we turn from thee, sweet, who wast ours for a span,
Fare well we may not who say farewell.
III
SUMMER IN AUVERGNE
The sundawn fills the land
Full as a feaster’s hand
Fills full with bloom of bland
Bright wine his cup;
Flows full to flood that fills
From the arch of air it thrills
Those rustred iron hills
With morning up.
Dawn, as a panther springs,
With fierce and firefledged wings
Leaps on the land that rings
From her bright feet
Through all its lavablack
Cones that cast answer back
And cliffs of footless track
Where thunders meet.
The light speaks wide and loud
From deeps blown clean of cloud
As though day’s heart were proud
And heaven’s were glad;
The towers brownstriped and grey
Take fire from heaven of day
As though the prayers they pray
Their answers had.
Higher in these high first hours
Wax all the keen church towers,
And higher all hearts of ours
Than the old hills’ crown,
Higher than the pillared height
Of that strange cliffside bright
With basalt towers whose might
Strong time bows down.
And the old fierce ruin there
Of the old wild princes’ lair
Whose blood in mine hath share
Gapes gaunt and great
Toward heaven that long ago
Watched all the wan land’s woe
Whereon the wind would blow
Of their bleak hate.
Dead are those deeds; but yet
Their memory seems to fret
Lands that might else forget
That old world’s brand;
Dead all their sins and days;
Yet in this red clime’s rays
Some fiery memory stays
That sears their land.
IV
AUTUMN IN CORNWALL
The year lies fallen and faded
On cliffs by clouds invaded,
With tongues of storms upbraided,
With wrath of waves bedinned;
And inland, wild with warning,
As in deaf ears or scorning,
The clarion even and morning
Rings of the southwest wind.
The wild bents wane and wither
In blasts whose breath bows hither
Their greygrown heads and thither,
Unblest of rain or sun;
The pale fierce heavens are crowded
With shapes like dreams beclouded,
As though the old year enshrouded
Lay, long ere life were done.
Fullcharged with oldworld wonders,
From dusk Tintagel thunders
A note that smites and sunders
The hard frore fields of air;
A trumpet stormiersounded
Than once from lists rebounded
When strong men senseconfounded
Fell thick in tourney there.
From scarce a duskier dwelling
Such notes of wail rose welling
Through the outer darkness, telling
In the awful singer’s ears
What souls the darkness covers,
What lovelost souls of lovers,
Whose cry still hangs and hovers
In each man’s born that hears.
For there by Hector’s brother
And yet some thousand other
He that had grief to mother
Passed pale from Dante’s sight;
With one fast linked as fearless,
Perchance, there only tearless;
Iseult and Tristram, peerless
And perfect queen and knight.
A shrillwinged sound comes flying
North, as of wild souls crying
The cry of things undying,
That know what life must be;
Or as the old year’s heart, stricken
Too sore for hope to quicken
By thoughts like thorns that thicken,
Broke, breaking with the sea.
THE WHITE CZAR
[In an English magazine of 1877 there appeared a version of some insolent lines addressed by “A Russian Poet to the Empress of India.” To these the first of the two following sonnets was designed to serve by way of counterblast. The writer will scarcely be suspected of royalism or imperialism; but it seemed to him that an insult levelled by Muscovite lips at the ruler of England might perhaps be less unfitly than unofficially resented by an Englishman who was also a republican.]
I
Gehazi by the hue that chills thy cheek
And Pilate by the hue that sears thine hand
Whence all earth’s waters cannot wash the brand
That signs thy soul a manslayer’s though thou speak
All Christ, with lips most murderous and most meek —
Thou set thy foot where England’s used to stand!
Thou reach thy rod forth over Indian land!
Slave of the slaves that call thee lord, and weak
As their foul tongues who praise thee! son of them
Whose presence put the snows and stars to shame
In centuries dead and damned that reek below
Curseconsecrated, crowned with crime and flame,
To them that bare thee like them shalt thou go
Forth of man’s life — a leper white as snow.
II
Call for clear water, wash thine hands, be clean,
Cry, What is truth? O Pilate; thou shalt know
Haply too soon, and gnash thy teeth for woe
Ere the outer darkness take thee round unseen
That hides the red ghosts of thy race obscene
Bound nine times round with hell’s most dolorous flow,
And in its pools thy crownless head lie low
By his of Spain who dared an English queen
With half a world to hearten him for fight,
Till the wind gave his warriors and their might
To shipwreck and the corpseencumbered sea.
But thou, take heed, ere yet thy lips wax white,
Lest as it was with Philip so it be,
O white of name and red of hand, with thee.
RIZPAH
How many sons, how many generations,
For how long years hast thou bewept, and known
Nor end of torment nor surcease of moan,
Rachel or Rizpah, wofullest of nations,
Crowned with the crowning sign of desolations,
And couldst not even scare off with hand or groan
Those carrion birds devouring bone by bone
The children of thy thousand tribulations?
Thou wast our warrior once; thy sons long dead
Against a foe less foul than this made head,
Poland, in years that sound and shine afar;
Ere the east beheld in thy bright swordblade’s stead
The rotten corpselight of the Russian star
That lights towards hell his bondslaves and their Czar.
TO LOUIS KOSSUTH
1877
Light of our fathers’ eyes, and in our own
Star of the unsetting sunset! for thy name,
That on the front of noon was as a flame
In the great year nigh thirty years agone
When all the heavens of Europe shook and shone
With stormy wind and lightning, keeps its fame
And bears its witness all day through the same;
Not for past days and great deeds past alone,
Kossuth, we praise thee as our Landor praised,
But that now too we know thy voice upraised,
Thy voice, the trumpet of the truth of God,
Thine hand, the thunderbearer’s, raised to smite
As with heaven’s lightning for a sword and rod
Men’s heads abased before the Muscovite.
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH OF VILLON
THE COMPLAINT OF THE FAIR ARMOURESS
I
Meseemeth I heard cry and groan
That sweet who was the armourer’s maid;
For her young years she made sore moan,
And right upon this wise she said;
“Ah fierce old age with foul bald head,
To spoil fair things thou art over fain;
Who holdeth me? who? would God I were dead!
Would God I were well dead and slain!
II
“Lo, thou hast broken the sweet yoke
That my high beauty held above
All priests and clerks and merchantfolk;
There was not one but for my love
Would give me gold and gold enough,
Though sorrow his very heart had riven,
To win from me such wage thereof
As now no thief would take if given.
III
“I was right chary of the same,
God wot it was my great folly,
For love of one sly knave of them,
Good store of that same sweet had he;
For all my subtle wiles, perdie,
God wot I loved him well enow;
Right evilly he handled me,
But he loved well my gold, I trow.
IV
“Though I gat bruises green and black,
I loved him never the less a jot;
Though he bound burdens on my back,
If he said ‘Kiss me and heed it not’
Right little pain I felt, God wot,
When that foul thief’s mouth, found so sweet,
Kissed me — Much good thereof I got!
I keep the sin and the shame of it.
V
“And he died thirty year agone.
I am old now, no sweet thing to see;
By God, though, when I think thereon,
And of that good glad time, woe’s me,
And stare upon my changed body
Stark naked, that has been so sweet,
Lean, wizen, like a small dry tree,
I am nigh mad with the pain of it.
VI
“Where is my faultless forehead’s white,
The lifted eyebrows, soft gold hair,
Eyes wide apart and keen of sight,
With subtle skill in the amorous air;
The straight nose, great nor small, but fair,
The small carved ears of shapeliest growth,
Chin dimpling, colour good to wear,
And sweet red splendid kissing mouth?
VII
“The shapely slender shoulders small,
Long arms, hands wrought in glorious wise,
Round little breasts, the hips withal
High, full of flesh, not scant of size,
Fit for all amorous masteries;
*** ***** *****, *** *** ****** **** ***
******* ***** ** **** ***** ******
** * ***** ****** ** **** *****?
VIII
“A writhled forehead, hair gone grey,
Fallen eyebrows, eyes gone blind and red,
Their laughs and looks all fled away,
Yea, all that smote men’s hearts are fled;
The bowed nose, fallen from goodlihead;
Foul flapping ears like waterflags;
Peaked chin, and cheeks all waste and dead,
And lips that are two skinny rags:
IX
“Thus endeth all the beauty of us.
The arms made short, the hands made lean,
The shoulders bowed and ruinous,
The breasts, alack! all fallen in;
The flanks too, like the breasts, grown thin;
** *** *** ***** *****, *** ** **!
For the lank thighs, no thighs but skin,
They are specked with spots like sausagemeat.
X
“So we make moan for the old sweet days,
Poor old light women, two or three
Squatting above the strawfire’s blaze,
The bosom crushed against the knee,
Like faggots on a heap we be,
Round fires soon lit, soon quenched and done;
And we were once so sweet, even we!
Thus fareth many and many an one.”
A DOUBLE BALLAD OF GOOD COUNSEL
Now take your fill of love and glee,
And after balls and banquets hie;
In the end ye’ll get no good for fee,
But just heads broken by and by;
Light loves make beasts of men that sigh;
They changed the faith of Solomon,
And left not Samson lights to spy;
Good luck has he that deals with none!
Sweet Orpheus, lord of minstrelsy,
For this with flute and pipe came nigh
The danger of the dog’s heads three
That ravening at hell’s door doth lie;
Fain was Narcissus, fair and shy,
For love’s love lightly lost and won,
In a deep well to drown and die;
Good luck has he that deals with none!
Sardana, flower of chivalry,
Who conquered Crete with horn and cry,
For this was fain a maid to be
And learn with girls the thread to ply;
King David, wise in prophecy,
Forgot the fear of God for one
Seen washing either shapely thigh;
Good luck has he that deals with none!
For this did Amnon, craftily
Feigning to eat of cakes of rye,
Deflower his sister fair to see,
Which was foul incest; and hereby
Was Herod moved, it is no lie,
To lop the head of Baptist John
For dance and jig and psaltery;
Good luck has he that deals with none!
Next of myself I tell, poor me,
How thrashed like clothes at wash was I
Stark n
aked, I must needs agree;
Who made me eat so sour a pie
But Katherine of Vaucelles? thereby,
Noé took third part of that fun;
Such weddinggloves are ill to buy;
Good luck has he that deals with none!
But for that young man fair and free
To pass those young maids lightly by,
Nay, would you burn him quick, not he;
Like broomhorsed witches though he fry,
They are sweet as civet in his eye;
But trust them, and you’re fooled anon;
For white or brown, and low or high,
Good luck has he that deals with none!
FRAGMENT ON DEATH
And Paris be it or Helen dying,
Who dies soever, dies with pain.
He that lacks breath and wind for sighing,
His gall bursts on his heart; and then
He sweats, God knows what sweat! — again,
No man may ease him of his grief;
Child, brother, sister, none were fain
To bail him thence for his relief.
Death makes him shudder, swoon, wax pale,
Nose bend, veins stretch, and breath surrender,
Neck swell, flesh soften, joints that fail
Crack their strained nerves and arteries slender.
O woman’s body found so tender,
Smooth, sweet, so precious in men’s eyes,
Must thou too bear such count to render?
Yes; or pass quick into the skies.
[In the original here follows Villon’s masterpiece, the matchless Ballad of the Ladies of Old Time, so incomparably rendered in the marvelous version of D. G. Rossetti; followed in its turn by the succeeding poem, as inferior to its companion as is my attempt at translation of it to his triumph in that higher and harder field. — A. C. S.]
BALLAD OF THE LORDS OF OLD TIME
(AFTER THE FORMER ARGUMENT)
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 67