To the rimmed river, and the moon burnt blank.
But outward from the castle of King Ban
There blew a sound of trouble, and there clomb
A fire that thrust an arm across the air,
Shook a rent skirt of dragging flame, and blanched
The grey flats to such cruel white as shone
Iron against the shadow of the sky
Blurred out with its blind stars; for as the sea
Gathers to lengthen a bleached edge of foam
Whole weights of windy water, and the green
Brine flares and hisses as the heap makes up,
Till the gaunt wave writhes, trying to breathe,
Then turns, and all the whited rims of steel
Lean over, and the hollowed round roars in
And smites the pebble forward in the mud,
And grinds the shingle in cool whirls of white,
Clashed through and crossed with blank assault
of foam,
Filled with hard thunder and drenched dregs of sand —
So leant and leapt the many-mouthèd fire,
So curled upon the walls, dipt, crawled, smote, clung,
Caught like a beast that catches on the flesh,
Waxed hoar with sick default, shivered across,
Choked out, a snake unfed.
Thereat King Ban
Trembled for pain in all his blood, and death
Under the heart caught him and made his breath
Wince, as a worm does, wounded in the head;
And fear began upon his flesh, and shook
The chaste and inly sufferance of it
Almost to ruin; a small fire and keen
Eating in muscle and nerve and hinge of joint
Perilous way; so bitter was the blow
Made on his sense by treason and sharp loss.
Then he fell weeping tears, with blood in them,
Like that red sweat that stained Gethsemane
With witness, when the deadly kiss had put
Shame on the mouth of Judas; and he cried,
Crying on God, and made out words and said:
Fair lord, sweet lord, most pleasant to all men,
To me so pleasant in clean days of mine
That now are rained upon with heavy rain,
Soiled with grey grime and with the dusty years,
Because in all those tourneys and hot things
I had to do with, in all riding times
And noise of work, and on smooth holidays
Sitting to see the smiting of hard spears,
And spur-smiting of steeds and wrath of men,
And gracious measure of the rounded game,
I held you in true honour and kept white
The hands of my allegiance as a maid’s,
Being whole of faith and perfect in the will.
Therefore I pray you, O God marvellous,
See me how I am stricken among men,
And how the lip I fed with plenteousness
And cooled with wine of liberal courtesy
Turns a snake’s life to poison me and clings —
THE WHITE MAID’S WOOING
“How will you woo her,
This white maid of thine?
With breaking of wastel,
Or pouring of wine?”
Not with pouring of cups
Or with breaking of bread;
But with wood that is cloven,
And wine that is red.
With rings will I woo her,
With chains will I wed;
With ships that are broken,
With blood that is shed.
Not with gold for a ring,
Nor with kisses on lips,
But with slaying of sailors
And breaking of ships.
“And how will you tame her,
This mad maid of thine?
With kisses for seal,
Or with gold for a sign?”
With a bit for the mouth,
And a ring for the hand;
With a neck-chain of foam,
Or a waist-chain of sand.
With the wind for a seal,
And the sun for a sign;
And so I will wed her,
This white wife of mine.
LANDOR AT FLORENCE
THE stateliest singing mouth that speaks our
tongue,
The lordliest, and the brow of loftiest leaf
Worn after the great fashion close and brief,
Sounds and shines yet; to whom all braids
belong
Of plaited laurel that no weathers wrong,
All increase of the spring and of the sheaf,
All high delight and godliness of grief,
All bloom and fume of summer and of song.
The years are of his household; Fate and Fame
Observe him; and the things of pestilence
Die out of fear, that could not die of shame,
Before his heel he set on their offence:
Time’s hand shall hoard the gold of such a name
When death has blown the dust of base men
thence.
1864.
SONNET: AH, FACE AND HANDS AND BODY BEAUTIFUL
AH, face and hands and body beautiful,
Fair tender body, for my body’s sake
Are you made faultless without stain or break.
Locks close as weed in river-water cool,
A purer throat and softer than white wool,
Eyes where sleep always seems about to wake.
No dead man’s flesh but feels the strong sweet ache,
And that sharp amorous watch the years annul,
If his grave’s grass have felt you anywhere.
Rain and the summer shadow of the rain
Are not so gentle to the generous year
As your soft rapid kisses are to men,
Felt here about my face, yea here and here,
Caught on my lips and thrown you back again.
GENTLE SPRING
WRITTEN FOR A PICTURE BY FREDERICK SANDYS
O VIRGIN Mother! of gentle days and nights,
Spring of fresh buds and spring of soft delights,
Come, with lips kissed of many an amorous
hour,
Come, with hands heavy from the fervent flower,
The fleet first flower that feels the wind and
sighs,
The tenderer leaf that draws the sun and dies;
Light butterflies like flowers alive in the air
Circling and crowning thy delicious hair,
And many a fruitful flower and floral fruit
Bom of thy breath and fragrant from thy foot.
Thee, Mother, all things born desire, and thee
Earth and the fruitless hollows of the sea
Praise, and thy tender winds of ungrown wing
Fill heaven with murmurs of the sudden spring.
CONSTANCE AND FREDERICK
Fred. Why should it hurt you that he goes
to Rome?
Now I am glad; I can sit close to you,
Feel my hand put away and lost in yours,
And the sweet smell of your long knotted hair
Laid on my face and mouth; can kiss you too
And not be smitten; that is good for me.
Con. Poor child, I love you; yea, keep close
by me
So am I safe. Ah! yet no woman here
Would pity; keep you closer to me, boy!
Fred. Is not this well? now I can touch your
sleeve,
Count over the thick rings and fair round stones
About your neck and forehead, and on mine
Lay down the soft palm of your smooth long
hand;
If I were as my father I would reach
Both hands up — so — to bow your head quite
down,
Pulled by the hair each side, till I could touch
Then I would kiss you, your lips would move to
cry
And I would make them quiet; ahl but now
I cannot reach your lips — not so! alas,
And then they shiver and curl sideways, see,
And your eyes cry too.
Con. — There — sit gravelier now I
Nay, child, you twist my finger in the ring.
Fred. I wonder if God means to leave us so?
If he forget us, and my father die,
How well that were for you! dear mother,
think
How we would praise him!
Con. — Child, no words of it,
Let us forget him. Come, I’ll spoil a tale,
With idle remembrance. There was a king once
Lived where the trees are great and green, with
leaves
The white midwinter keeps alive; there grew
All red fruit and all flowers full of gold
In the broad low grasses: from the poppy-root
Came lilies, and from lily-stems there clomb
Tall roses, with close petals, and the stalk
Was heavy gold, solid and smooth, the wind
Was full of soft rain gathered in the dusk
That fell with no clouds near; so this king
Grew past a child.
Fred. — Taller than I? so tall?
Con. Ay, where the sun divides the olive-
shade;
And on his head — Rise, here are men, I think.
Enter Massimo and Lucrezia.
Mas. What do these here? Hush! now,
Madam, I pray you,
Though we put on some outer show of man,
Think us no more than beast: What certainty
is there
Or in our faces, in our brows’ mould, or
In the clear shape and colour of our speech,
Sets this word man upon us? We, as you,
Are the king’s ware, his good necessities;
(I’ll teach you shortly what this babble means,
Fear we not there) good chattels of his use
For one to handle; I beseech you, let not
The outside of our speech condemn us; else
Had we kept mouth shut ever.
Con. — My fair lord,
I know not what ungracious day of mine
Hath given you tongue against me.
Fred. — What says he, mother?
May I not kill him? tho’ he speaks so high,
This is no father: I may kill him then?
Con. Hush, boy! this insolence has changed
you. Sir,
I pray you let me understand; you said
(I think) and there was a secret in your speech
I must unriddle. Lady Lucrezia,
What madness hurts our friend? he speaks awry
With a most broken action.
Fred. — Speak, sir: I
Stand for my mother.
Mas. — So you have set him words
To work out, to spell over, each as loud
As any threat the mouth makes like a blow?
Ay, must his father praise him too?
Luc. — My lord,
It seems that change can make the face of hope
Grey as his own thin hair; I loved you well,
Put honour on you, which you seemed to wear
With natural apprehension and keen grace
Past blame of any, over praise of me:
Now either my hurt sense is sick to death,
Or I conceive such meaning in your talk
As makes me faint with shame; I would fain be
angry;
But shame has left me bare of even will
To seem so angry, and to say this out
With your set eyes so fast upon my face
Grows like shame to me.
Mas. — Nathless I believe
Since you shook hands with shame’s last mes-
senger
And felt her hand’s mark hot long your cheek,
Some years have made it whiter.
Luc. — Pardon me!
I know not, Madam, what he speaks.
Mas. — Nor you?
I spoke to Tancred’s kinswoman, the queen
Who wears the blood of holy centuries
In her fair palms and forehead; their blue
curves
Royally written; nay this boy’s soft lip
So red and fair by that imperial sign,
By your most gracious warrant; else I’ll say
The name you had was bastarded, and you
Some wicked season’s error.
Luc. — Are you mad?
See, her mouth trembles, tears drop over it,
Her brows move: now, be silent!
Mas. — Then I’ll end!
I held this lady so past service, yea
Past man’s approval or the keenest feet
Of his obedience: You’re my kinswoman,
And the dear honour that I have of you
Hath borne some witness; now for her, I’ll say
I would forget you, and unclothe my soul
Of its strong reverence and opinion
That makes you to me as the music is
To the dead eithern there, as the live smell
To some quick flower midways the lily-row.
So I hold you — well, I’d forget all this
To serve her; that was Lady Constance here,
When she was no mere German ornament
Scrawled broad with some gold flourishes at top
Above some Austrian document to prove
Our lord a liar, some stale letter, says
To be just fingered by Pope Celestin
Before he tears it, tears her name and all,
No witness of that devil’s assurance made
Between our masters, that strong bond that holds
Treason each side — no empress of this mould,
But just the lady we had just to serve,
Live by or die for — oh, not when she bade
But when God thought she might have need of
him
Tancred’s own blood, the king’s own very flesh
Made for our sakes so beautiful and weak
That we might even help God by serving her —
The maiden face more gracious than was need
To keep it perfect — yea, more love in the lip
Than what sufficed us to accredit her
As only Constance, more repose i’ the eyes
Than had alone constrained her worship out —
For certes no man ever wondered much
Why she wants worship! (to complete her, say)
And what were love’s work? yea, thus verily
God wrought her with good cunning; and our
part
Was to be patient — some day this might end,
She might pray God to find us room, suppose —
So — many as we were, and such poor blood
As this might wash her floored palace clean —
I talk that old way! See how pale she is,
Her eyes more narrow, and with shallow lights
Filling them, broken hints of purposes,
How pain has worn the golden secret out
Some strange grand language wrote upon her
face.
All this more wasted than a flame that fails
On sick lamp lit at daybreak — more rebuked,
Chastened and beaten by the imperious time,
Than my words last year spoken!
Con. — Oh, not so:
Not the soul — let the body wear so thin
Each feature shows of it by this —
Mas. — I said
No man’s change that we are ruled by does much
harm,
God overlines it, shall not the queen live?
But this so ne
w and bitter thing to taste
That poisons me — this curse that changes her —
I saw not ever.
Con. — This —
Mas. — That you should turn
A woman none of those men pay to find
The costliness of such a golden sin
As loves by hire and loves not — no such thing
Would praise or pity, would despise or hate —
A shame familiar on the pander’s lip,
Smiled out by courtiers from their slippery mouth,
Laughed over, chattered over by the page
A groom might spit on — handled, breathed upon
By the spent breath in his mid office worn
As garb and badge of his necessity
On one permitted shoulder, by this king...
POPE CELESTIN AND GIORDANO
Gio. THESE matters are but shadows of the truth,
Mean indications; time will shew, my lord,
Our wrong lies deeper.
Cel. — Proofs — ay, proofs you say —
Let me see that, sir: I’ll believe your proof:
What must I do? what stirs you up to give
This dead dissension teeth to bite again?
And I am old; my body is no wall
For you to shoot behind at emperors:
Ay, the keen spirit eats the flesh like fire,
It’s mere slow poison, this my dignity,
Consumes me; ah, you’re just a man, my Count,
Cannot conceive how God’s will overcomes,
How the Church bears one’s very soul to hold
And stoops the shoulders; then, we’re set to pray
Save you your souls, gather you fruit of prayer,
Not whet you fresh blades when blood mars the old:
Ah, what must we do?
Gio. — But, your Holiness
Imagines not we seek your wrong in this:
Our words are meant to save God’s Church and you
From this man’s red and insolent hands, put forth
To pluck you out of kingdom, set you up
But as a dead thing, as a monument
That boys may spit at. Sir, if you speak of peace,
Best cover up the face of you and weep
Till he be here: it may be he will say
“Throw me that hoar scalp to the dogs,” or else
“Nay, find him some low cell not overbroad
And slip the chain’s knot close enough to press
The lean old wrist and elbow this may be.
Cel. This! Oh, God help me, but how cold it gets!
Why — but I think, by Venus, it’s no spring
But winter comes to pinch us by the chin.
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 163