March 1882.
TO WILLIAM BELL SCOTT
The larks are loud above our leagues of whin
Now the sun’s perfume fills their glorious gold
With odour like the colour: all the wold
Is only light and song and wind wherein
These twain are blent in one with shining din.
And now your gift, a giver’s kingly-souled,
Dear old fast friend whose honours grow not old,
Bids memory’s note as loud and sweet begin.
Though all but we from life be now gone forth
Of that bright household in our joyous north
Where I, scarce clear of boyhood just at end,
First met your hand; yet under life’s clear dome,
Now seventy strenuous years have crowned my friend,
Shines no less bright his full-sheaved harvest-home.
April 20, 1882.
A DEATH ON EASTER DAY
The strong spring sun rejoicingly may rise,
Rise and make revel, as of old men said,
Like dancing hearts of lovers newly wed:
A light more bright than ever bathed the skies
Departs for all time out of all men’s eyes.
The crowns that girt last night a living head
Shine only now, though deathless, on the dead:
Art that mocks death, and Song that never dies.
Albeit the bright sweet mothlike wings be furled,
Hope sees, past all division and defection,
And higher than swims the mist of human breath,
The soul most radiant once in all the world
Requickened to regenerate resurrection
Out of the likeness of the shadow of death.
April 1882.
ON THE DEATHS OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND GEORGE ELIOT
Two souls diverse out of our human sight
Pass, followed one with love and each with wonder:
The stormy sophist with his mouth of thunder,
Clothed with loud words and mantled in the might
Of darkness and magnificence of night;
And one whose eye could smite the night in sunder,
Searching if light or no light were thereunder,
And found in love of loving-kindness light.
Duty divine and Thought with eyes of fire
Still following Righteousness with deep desire
Shone sole and stern before her and above,
Sure stars and sole to steer by; but more sweet
Shone lower the loveliest lamp for earthly feet,
The light of little children, and their love.
AFTER LOOKING INTO CARLYLE’S REMINISCENCES
I
Three men lived yet when this dead man was young
Whose names and words endure for ever: one
Whose eyes grew dim with straining toward the sun,
And his wings weakened, and his angel’s tongue
Lost half the sweetest song was ever sung,
But like the strain half uttered earth hears none,
Nor shall man hear till all men’s songs are done:
One whose clear spirit like an eagle hung
Between the mountains hallowed by his love
And the sky stainless as his soul above:
And one the sweetest heart that ever spake
The brightest words wherein sweet wisdom smiled.
These deathless names by this dead snake defiled
Bid memory spit upon him for their sake.
II
Sweet heart, forgive me for thine own sweet sake,
Whose kind blithe soul such seas of sorrow swam,
And for my love’s sake, powerless as I am
For love to praise thee, or like thee to make
Music of mirth where hearts less pure would break,
Less pure than thine, our life-unspotted Lamb.
Things hatefullest thou hadst not heart to damn,
Nor wouldst have set thine heel on this dead snake.
Let worms consume its memory with its tongue,
The fang that stabbed fair Truth, the lip that stung
Men’s memories uncorroded with its breath.
Forgive me, that with bitter words like his
I mix the gentlest English name that is,
The tenderest held of all that know not death.
A LAST LOOK
Sick of self-love, Malvolio, like an owl
That hoots the sun rerisen where starlight sank,
With German garters crossed athwart thy frank
Stout Scottish legs, men watched thee snarl and scowl,
And boys responsive with reverberate howl
Shrilled, hearing how to thee the springtime stank
And as thine own soul all the world smelt rank
And as thine own thoughts Liberty seemed foul.
Now, for all ill thoughts nursed and ill words given
Not all condemned, not utterly forgiven,
Son of the storm and darkness, pass in peace.
Peace upon earth thou knewest not: now, being dead,
Rest, with nor curse nor blessing on thine head,
Where high-strung hate and strenuous envy cease.
DICKENS
Chief in thy generation born of men
Whom English praise acclaimed as English-born,
With eyes that matched the worldwide eyes of morn
For gleam of tears or laughter, tenderest then
When thoughts of children warmed their light, or when
Reverence of age with love and labour worn,
Or godlike pity fired with godlike scorn,
Shot through them flame that winged thy swift live pen:
Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,
Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,
Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine
With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne
And Fielding’s kindliest might and Goldsmith’s grace;
Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine.
ON LAMB’S SPECIMENS OF DRAMATIC POETS
I
If all the flowers of all the fields on earth
By wonder-working summer were made one,
Its fragrance were not sweeter in the sun,
Its treasure-house of leaves were not more worth
Than those wherefrom thy light of musing mirth
Shone, till each leaf whereon thy pen would run
Breathed life, and all its breath was benison.
Beloved beyond all names of English birth,
More dear than mightier memories; gentlest name
That ever clothed itself with flower-sweet fame,
Or linked itself with loftiest names of old
By right and might of loving; I, that am
Less than the least of those within thy fold,
Give only thanks for them to thee, Charles Lamb.
II
So many a year had borne its own bright bees
And slain them since thy honey-bees were hived,
John Day, in cells of flower-sweet verse contrived
So well with craft of moulding melodies,
Thy soul perchance in amaranth fields at ease
Thought not to hear the sound on earth revived
Of summer music from the spring derived
When thy song sucked the flower of flowering trees.
But thine was not the chance of every day:
Time, after many a darkling hour, grew sunny,
And light between the clouds ere sunset swam,
Laughing, and kissed their darkness all away,
When, touched and tasted and approved, thy honey
Took subtler sweetness from the lips of Lamb.
TO JOHN NICHOL
I
Friend of the dead, and friend of all my days
Even since they cast off boyhood, I salute
The son
g saluting friends whose songs are mute
With full burnt-offerings of clear-spirited praise.
That since our old young years our several ways
Have led through fields diverse of flower and fruit,
Yet no cross wind has once relaxed the root
We set long since beneath the sundawn’s rays,
The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree,
Friendship — this only and duly might impel
My song to salutation of your own;
More even than praise of one unseen of me
And loved — the starry spirit of Dobell,
To mine by light and music only known.
II
But more than this what moves me most of all
To leave not all unworded and unsped
The whole heart’s greeting of my thanks unsaid
Scarce needs this sign, that from my tongue should fall
His name whom sorrow and reverent love recall,
The sign to friends on earth of that dear head
Alive, which now long since untimely dead
The wan grey waters covered for a pall.
Their trustless reaches dense with tangling stems
Took never life more taintless of rebuke,
More pure and perfect, more serene and kind,
Than when those clear eyes closed beneath the Thames,
And made the now more hallowed name of Luke
Memorial to us of morning left behind.
May 1881.
DYSTHANATOS
Ad generem Cereris sine cæde et vulnere pauci
Descendunt reges, aut siccâ morte tyranni.
By no dry death another king goes down
The way of kings. Yet may no free man’s voice,
For stern compassion and deep awe, rejoice
That one sign more is given against the crown,
That one more head those dark red waters drown
Which rise round thrones whose trembling equipoise
Is propped on sand and bloodshed and such toys
As human hearts that shrink at human frown.
The name writ red on Polish earth, the star
That was to outshine our England’s in the far
East heaven of empire — where is one that saith
Proud words now, prophesying of this White Czar?
“In bloodless pangs few kings yield up their breath,
Few tyrants perish by no violent death.”
March 14, 1881.
EUONYMOS
[Greek: eu mên hê timên edidou nikêphoros alkê
ek nikês onom’ esche phobou kear aien athiktos.]
A year ago red wrath and keen despair
Spake, and the sole word from their darkness sent
Laid low the lord not all omnipotent
Who stood most like a god of all that were
As gods for pride of power, till fire and air
Made earth of all his godhead. Lightning rent
The heart of empire’s lurid firmament,
And laid the mortal core of manhood bare.
But when the calm crowned head that all revere
For valour higher than that which casts out fear,
Since fear came near it never, comes near death,
Blind murder cowers before it, knowing that here
No braver soul drew bright and queenly breath
Since England wept upon Elizabeth.
March 8, 1882.
ON THE RUSSIAN PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS
O son of man, by lying tongues adored,
By slaughterous hands of slaves with feet red-shod
In carnage deep as ever Christian trod
Profaned with prayer and sacrifice abhorred
And incense from the trembling tyrant’s horde,
Brute worshippers or wielders of the rod,
Most murderous even of all that call thee God,
Most treacherous even that ever called thee Lord;
Face loved of little children long ago,
Head hated of the priests and rulers then,
If thou see this, or hear these hounds of thine
Run ravening as the Gadarean swine,
Say, was not this thy Passion, to foreknow
In death’s worst hour the works of Christian men?
January 23, 1882.
BISMARCK AT CANOSSA
Not all disgraced, in that Italian town,
The imperial German cowered beneath thine hand,
Alone indeed imperial Hildebrand,
And felt thy foot and Rome’s, and felt her frown
And thine, more strong and sovereign than his crown,
Though iron forged its blood-encrusted band.
But now the princely wielder of his land,
For hatred’s sake toward freedom, so bows down,
No strength is in the foot to spurn: its tread
Can bruise not now the proud submitted head:
But how much more abased, much lower brought low,
And more intolerably humiliated,
The neck submissive of the prosperous foe,
Than his whom scorn saw shuddering in the snow!
December 31, 1881.
QUIA NOMINOR LEO
I
What part is left thee, lion? Ravenous beast,
Which hadst the world for pasture, and for scope
And compass of thine homicidal hope
The kingdom of the spirit of man, the feast
Of souls subdued from west to sunless east,
From blackening north to bloodred south aslope,
All servile; earth for footcloth of the pope,
And heaven for chancel-ceiling of the priest;
Thou that hadst earth by right of rack and rod,
Thou that hadst Rome because thy name was God,
And by thy creed’s gift heaven wherein to dwell;
Heaven laughs with all his light and might above
That earth has cast thee out of faith and love;
Thy part is but the hollow dream of hell.
II
The light of life has faded from thy cause,
High priest of heaven and hell and purgatory:
Thy lips are loud with strains of oldworld story,
But the red prey was rent out of thy paws
Long since: and they that dying brake down thy laws
Have with the fires of death-enkindled glory
Put out the flame that faltered on thy hoary
High altars, waning with the world’s applause.
This Italy was Dante’s: Bruno died
Here: Campanella, too sublime for pride,
Endured thy God’s worst here, and hence went home.
And what art thou, that time’s full tide should shrink
For thy sake downward? What art thou, to think
Thy God shall give thee back for birthright Rome?
January 1882.
THE CHANNEL TUNNEL
Not for less love, all glorious France, to thee,
“Sweet enemy” called in days long since at end,
Now found and hailed of England sweeter friend,
Bright sister of our freedom now, being free;
Not for less love or faith in friendship we
Whose love burnt ever toward thee reprehend
The vile vain greed whose pursy dreams portend
Between our shores suppression of the sea.
Not by dull toil of blind mechanic art
Shall these be linked for no man’s force to part
Nor length of years and changes to divide,
But union only of trust and loving heart
And perfect faith in freedom strong to abide
And spirit at one with spirit on either side.
April 3, 1882.
SIR WILLIAM GOMM
I
At threescore years and five aroused anew
To rule in India, forth a soldier went
On whose bright-f
ronted youth fierce war had spent
Its iron stress of storm, till glory grew
Full as the red sun waned on Waterloo.
Landing, he met the word from England sent
Which bade him yield up rule: and he, content,
Resigned it, as a mightier warrior’s due;
And wrote as one rejoicing to record
That “from the first” his royal heart was lord
Of its own pride or pain; that thought was none
Therein save this, that in her perilous strait
England, whose womb brings forth her sons so great,
Should choose to serve her first her mightiest son.
II
Glory beyond all flight of warlike fame
Go with the warrior’s memory who preferred
To praise of men whereby men’s hearts are stirred,
And acclamation of his own proud name
With blare of trumpet-blasts and sound and flame
Of pageant honour, and the titular word
That only wins men worship of the herd,
His country’s sovereign good; who overcame
Pride, wrath, and hope of all high chance on earth,
For this land’s love that gave his great heart birth.
O nursling of the sea-winds and the sea,
Immortal England, goddess ocean-born,
What shall thy children fear, what strengths not scorn,
While children of such mould are born to thee?
SONNETS ON ENGLISH DRAMATIC POETS (1590-1650)
CONTENTS
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
BEN JONSON
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER
PHILIP MASSINGER
JOHN FORD
JOHN WEBSTER
THOMAS DECKER
THOMAS MIDDLETON
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 110