Yet in life, to cheer
Hearts that held thy gentle heart
Dear.
Time and chance may sear
Hope with grief, and death may part
Hand from hand’s clasp here:
Memory, blind with tears that start,
Sees through every tear
All that made thee, as thou art,
Dear.
IV.
True and tender, single-souled,
What should memory do
Weeping o’er the trust we hold
True?
Known and loved of few,
But of these, though small their fold,
Loved how well were you!
Change, that makes of new things old,
Leaves one old thing new;
Love which promised truth, and told
True.
V.
Kind as heaven, while earth’s control
Still had leave to bind
Thee, thy heart was toward man’s whole
Kind.
Thee no shadows blind
Now: the change of hours that roll
Leaves thy sleep behind.
Love, that hears thy death-bell toll
Yet, may call to mind
Scarce a soul as thy sweet soul
Kind.
VI.
How should life, O friend, forget
Death, whose guest art thou?
Faith responds to love’s regret,
How?
Still, for us that bow
Sorrowing, still, though life be set,
Shines thy bright mild brow.
Yea, though death and thou be met,
Love may find thee now
Still, albeit we know not yet
How.
VII.
Past as music fades, that shone
While its life might last;
As a song-bird’s shadow flown
Past!
Death’s reverberate blast
Now for music’s lord has blown
Whom thy love held fast.
Dead thy king, and void his throne:
Yet for grief at last
Love makes music of his own
Past.
PAST DAYS
I.
Dead and gone, the days we had together,
Shadow-stricken all the lights that shone
Round them, flown as flies the blown foam’s feather,
Dead and gone.
Where we went, we twain, in time foregone,
Forth by land and sea, and cared not whether,
If I go again, I go alone.
Bound am I with time as with a tether;
Thee perchance death leads enfranchised on,
Far from deathlike life and changeful weather,
Dead and gone.
II.
Above the sea and sea-washed town we dwelt,
We twain together, two brief summers, free
From heed of hours as light as clouds that melt
Above the sea.
Free from all heed of aught at all were we,
Save chance of change that clouds or sunbeams dealt
And gleam of heaven to windward or to lee.
The Norman downs with bright grey waves for belt
Were more for us than inland ways might be;
A clearer sense of nearer heaven was felt
Above the sea.
III.
Cliffs and downs and headlands which the forward-hasting
Flight of dawn and eve empurples and embrowns,
Wings of wild sea-winds and stormy seasons wasting
Cliffs and downs,
These, or ever man was, were: the same sky frowns,
Laughs, and lightens, as before his soul, forecasting
Times to be, conceived such hopes as time discrowns.
These we loved of old: but now for me the blasting
Breath of death makes dull the bright small seaward towns,
Clothes with human change these all but everlasting
Cliffs and downs.
AUTUMN AND WINTER
I.
Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon
Between two dates of death, while men were fain
Yet of the living light that all too soon
Three months bade wane.
Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
That death smote silent when he smote again.
First went my friend, in life’s mid light of noon,
Who loved the lord of music: then the strain
Whence earth was kindled like as heaven in June
Three months bade wane.
II.
A herald soul before its master’s flying
Touched by some few moons first the darkling goal
Where shades rose up to greet the shade, espying
A herald soul;
Shades of dead lords of music, who control
Men living by the might of men undying,
With strength of strains that make delight of dole.
The deep dense dust on death’s dim threshold lying
Trembled with sense of kindling sound that stole
Through darkness, and the night gave ear, descrying
A herald soul.
III.
One went before, one after, but so fast
They seem gone hence together, from the shore
Whence we now gaze: yet ere the mightier passed
One went before;
One whose whole heart of love, being set of yore
On that high joy which music lends us, cast
Light round him forth of music’s radiant store.
Then went, while earth on winter glared aghast,
The mortal god he worshipped, through the door
Wherethrough so late, his lover to the last,
One went before.
IV.
A star had set an hour before the sun
Sank from the skies wherethrough his heart’s pulse yet
Thrills audibly: but few took heed, or none,
A star had set.
All heaven rings back, sonorous with regret,
The deep dirge of the sunset: how should one
Soft star be missed in all the concourse met?
But, O sweet single heart whose work is done,
Whose songs are silent, how should I forget
That ere the sunset’s fiery goal was won
A star had set?
THE DEATH OF RICHARD WAGNER
I.
Mourning on earth, as when dark hours descend,
Wide-winged with plagues, from heaven; when hope and mirth
Wane, and no lips rebuke or reprehend
Mourning on earth.
The soul wherein her songs of death and birth,
Darkness and light, were wont to sound and blend,
Now silent, leaves the whole world less in worth.
Winds that make moan and triumph, skies that bend,
Thunders, and sound of tides in gulf and firth,
Spake through his spirit of speech, whose death should send
Mourning on earth.
II.
The world’s great heart, whence all things strange and rare
Take form and sound, that each inseparate part
May bear its burden in all tuned thoughts that share
The world’s great heart -
The fountain forces, whence like steeds that start
Leap forth the powers of earth and fire and air,
Seas that revolve and rivers that depart -
Spake, and were turned to song: yea, all they were,
With all their works, found in his mastering art
Speech as of powers whose uttered word laid bare
The world’s great heart.
III.
From the depths of the sea, from the wellsprings of earth, fro
m the wastes of the midmost night, From the fountains of darkness and tempest and thunder, from heights where the soul would be, The spell of the mage of music evoked their sense, as an unknown light From the depths of the sea.
As a vision of heaven from the hollows of ocean, that none but a god
might see,
Rose out of the silence of things unknown of a presence, a form, a
might,
And we heard as a prophet that hears God’s message against him, and
may not flee.
Eye might not endure it, but ear and heart with a rapture of dark
delight,
With a terror and wonder whose core was joy, and a passion of thought
set free,
Felt inly the rising of doom divine as a sundawn risen to sight
From the depths of the sea.
TWO PRELUDES
I.
LOHENGRIN
Love, out of the depth of things,
As a dewfall felt from above,
From the heaven whence only springs
Love,
Love, heard from the heights thereof,
The clouds and the watersprings,
Draws close as the clouds remove.
And the soul in it speaks and sings,
A swan sweet-souled as a dove,
An echo that only rings
Love.
II.
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
Fate, out of the deep sea’s gloom,
When a man’s heart’s pride grows great,
And nought seems now to foredoom
Fate,
Fate, laden with fears in wait,
Draws close through the clouds that loom,
Till the soul see, all too late,
More dark than a dead world’s tomb,
More high than the sheer dawn’s gate,
More deep than the wide sea’s womb,
Fate.
THE LUTE AND THE LYRE
Deep desire, that pierces heart and spirit to the root,
Finds reluctant voice in verse that yearns like soaring fire,
Takes exultant voice when music holds in high pursuit
Deep desire.
Keen as burns the passion of the rose whose buds respire,
Strong as grows the yearning of the blossom toward the fruit,
Sounds the secret half unspoken ere the deep tones tire.
Slow subsides the rapture that possessed love’s flower-soft lute,
Slow the palpitation of the triumph of the lyre:
Still the soul feels burn, a flame unslaked though these be mute,
Deep desire.
PLUS INTRA
I.
Soul within sense, immeasurable, obscure,
Insepulchred and deathless, through the dense
Deep elements may scarce be felt as pure
Soul within sense.
From depth and height by measurers left immense,
Through sound and shape and colour, comes the unsure
Vague utterance, fitful with supreme suspense.
All that may pass, and all that must endure,
Song speaks not, painting shews not: more intense
And keen than these, art wakes with music’s lure
Soul within sense.
CHANGE
But now life’s face beholden
Seemed bright as heaven’s bare brow
With hope of gifts withholden
But now.
From time’s full-flowering bough
Each bud spake bloom to embolden
Love’s heart, and seal his vow.
Joy’s eyes grew deep with olden
Dreams, born he wist not how;
Thought’s meanest garb was golden;
But now!
A BABY’S DEATH
I.
A little soul scarce fledged for earth
Takes wing with heaven again for goal
Even while we hailed as fresh from birth
A little soul.
Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll,
Not knowing beyond this blind world’s girth
What things are writ in heaven’s full scroll.
Our fruitfulness is there but dearth,
And all things held in time’s control
Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth
A little soul.
II.
The little feet that never trod
Earth, never strayed in field or street,
What hand leads upward back to God
The little feet?
A rose in June’s most honied heat,
When life makes keen the kindling sod,
Was not so soft and warm and sweet.
Their pilgrimage’s period
A few swift moons have seen complete
Since mother’s hands first clasped and shod
The little feet.
III.
The little hands that never sought
Earth’s prizes, worthless all as sands,
What gift has death, God’s servant, brought
The little hands?
We ask: but love’s self silent stands,
Love, that lends eyes and wings to thought
To search where death’s dim heaven expands.
Ere this, perchance, though love know nought,
Flowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands,
Where hands of guiding angels caught
The little hands.
IV.
The little eyes that never knew
Light other than of dawning skies,
What new life now lights up anew
The little eyes?
Who knows but on their sleep may rise
Such light as never heaven let through
To lighten earth from Paradise?
No storm, we know, may change the blue
Soft heaven that haply death descries
No tears, like these in ours, bedew
The little eyes.
V.
Was life so strange, so sad the sky,
So strait the wide world’s range,
He would not stay to wonder why
Was life so strange?
Was earth’s fair house a joyless grange
Beside that house on high
Whence Time that bore him failed to estrange?
That here at once his soul put by
All gifts of time and change,
And left us heavier hearts to sigh
’Was life so strange?’
VI.
Angel by name love called him, seeing so fair
The sweet small frame;
Meet to be called, if ever man’s child were,
Angel by name.
Rose-bright and warm from heaven’s own heart he came,
And might not bear
The cloud that covers earth’s wan face with shame.
His little light of life was all too rare
And soft a flame:
Heaven yearned for him till angels hailed him there
Angel by name.
VII.
The song that smiled upon his birthday here
Weeps on the grave that holds him undefiled
Whose loss makes bitterer than a soundless tear
The song that smiled.
His name crowned once the mightiest ever styled
Sovereign of arts, and angel: fate and fear
Knew then their master, and were reconciled.
But we saw born beneath some tenderer sphere
Michael, an angel and a little child,
Whose loss bows down to weep upon his bier
The song that smiled.
ONE OF TWAIN
I.
One of twain, twin-born with flowers that waken,
Now hath passed from sense of sun and rain:
Wind from off the flower-crowned branch hath shaken
One of twain.
One twin flower must pass, and one remain:
/>
One, the word said soothly, shall be taken,
And another left: can death refrain?
Two years since was love’s light song mistaken,
Blessing then both blossoms, half in vain?
Night outspeeding light hath overtaken
One of twain.
II.
Night and light? O thou of heart unwary,
Love, what knowest thou here at all aright,
Lured, abused, misled as men by fairy
Night and light?
Haply, where thine eyes behold but night,
Soft as o’er her babe the smile of Mary
Light breaks flowerwise into new-born sight.
What though night of light to thee be chary?
What though stars of hope like flowers take flight?
Seest thou all things here, where all see vary
Night and light?
DEATH AND BIRTH
Death and birth should dwell not near together:
Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth:
Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 120