Than sit the fire out and go starved to bed?
POEMS
1849–64
58
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
59
Why do I praise a peach
Not on my wall, no, nor within my reach?
Because I see the bloom
And scent the fragrance many steps from home.
Permit me still to praise
The higher Genius of departed days.
Some are there yet who, nurst
In the same clime, are vigorous as the first,
And never waste their hours
(Ardent for action) among meadow flowers.
Greece with calm eyes I see,
Her pure white marbles have not blinded me,
But breathe on me the love
Of earthly things as bright as things above:
There is (where is there not?)
In her fair regions many a desert spot;
Neither is Dircè clear,
Nor is Ilissus full throughout the year.
60
SEPARATION
There is a mountain and a wood between us,
Where the lone shepherd and late bird have seen us
Morning and noon and even-tide repass.
Between us now the mountain and the wood
Seem standing darker than last year they stood,
And say we must not cross, alas! alas!
61
IN MEMORY OF LADY BLESSINGTON
Again, perhaps and only once again,
I turn my steps to London. Few the scenes
And few the friends that there delighted me
Will now delight me: some indeed remain,
Tho’ changed in features … friend and scene …
both changed!
I shall not watch my lilac burst her bud
In that wide garden, that pure fount of air,
Where, risen ere the morns are warm and bright,
And stepping forth in very scant attire,
Timidly, as became her in such garb,
She hastened prompt to call up slumbering Spring.
White and dim-purple breath’d my favorite pair
Under thy terrace, hospitable heart,
Whom twenty summers more and more endear’d;
Part on the Arno, part where every clime
Sent its most graceful sons, to kiss thy hand,
To make the humble proud, the proud submiss,
Wiser the wisest, and the brave more brave.
Never, ah never now, shall we alight
Where the man-queen was born, or, higher up
The nobler region of a nobler soul,
Where breath’d his last the more than kingly man.
Thou sleepest, not forgotten, nor unmourn’d,
Beneath the chesnut shade by Saint Germain;
Meanwhile I wait the hour of my repose,
Not under Italy’s serener sky,
Where Fiesole beheld me from above
Devising how my head most pleasantly
Might rest ere long, and how with such intent
I smooth’d a platform for my villagers,
(Tho’ stood against me stubborn stony knoll
With cross-grain’d olives long confederate)
And brought together slender cypresses
And bridal myrtles, peering up between,
And bade the modest violet bear her part.
Dance, youths and maidens! tho’ around my grave
Ye dance not, as I wisht; bloom, myrtles! bend
Protecting arms about them, cypresses!
I must not come among you; fare ye well!
62
REMONSTRANCE AND REPLY
So then, I feel not deeply! if I did,
I should have seized the pen, and pierced therewith
The passive world! And thus thou reasonest?
Well hast thou known the lover’s, not so well
The poet’s heart. While that heart bleeds, the hand
Presses it close. Grief must run on, and pass
Into near Memory’s more quiet shade
Before it can compose itself in song.
He who is agonised, and turns to show
His agony to those who sit around
Seizes the pen in vain: thought, fancy, power,
Rush back into his bosom: all the strength
Of genius can not draw them into light
From under mastering Grief; but Memory,
The Muse’s mother, nurses, rears them up,
Informs, and keeps them with her all her days.
63
Lately our poets loiter’d in green lanes,
Content to catch the ballads of the plains;
I fancied I had strength enough to climb
A loftier station at no distant time,
And might securely from intrusion doze
Upon the flowers thro’ which Ilissus flows.
In those pale olive grounds all voices cease,
And from afar dust fills the paths of Greece.
My slumber broken and my doublet torn,
I find the laurel also bears a thorn.
64
There falls with every wedding chime
A feather from the wing of Time,
You pick it up, and say ‘How fair
To look upon its colours are!’
Another drops day after day
Unheeded; not one word you say.
When bright and dusky are blown past,
Upon the herse there nods the last.
65
A FUNERAL
A hearse is passing by in solemn state,
Within lies one whom people call the great.
Its plumes seem nodding to the girls below
As they gaze upward at the raree-show,
Boys from the pavement snatch their tops, and run
To know what in the world can be the fun.
66
Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower,
Some in the chill, some in the warmer hour:
Alike they flourish and alike they fall
And Earth who nourisht them receives them all.
Should we, her wiser sons, be less content
To sink into her lap when life is spent?
67
THE GEORGES
George the First was always reckoned
Vile, but viler George the Second;
And what mortal ever heard
Any good of George the Third?
When from the earth the Fourth descended
(God be praised!) the Georges ended.
68
THE DULE OF YORK’S STATUE
Enduring is the bust of bronze,
And thine, O flower of George’s sons,
Stands high above all laws and duns.
As honest men as ever cart
Convey’d to Tyburn took thy part
And raised thee up to where thou art.
69
MARCH 24 1854
Sharp crocus wakes the forward year;
In their old haunts birds reappear;
From yonder elm, yet black with rain,
The cushat looks deep down for grain
Thrown on the gravel-walk; here comes
The redbreast to the sill for crumbs.
Fly off! fly off! I can not wait
To welcome ye, as she of late.
The earliest of my friends is gone.
Alas! almost my only one!
The few as dear, long wafted o’er
Await me on a sunnier shore.
70
All is not over while the shade
Of parting life, if now aslant,
Rests on the scene whereon it play’d
And taught a docile heart to pant.
Autumn is passing by; his day
Shines mildly yet on gather’d sheaves,
And, tho the grape be pluckt away
Its colour glows amid the leaves.
71
AGE
Death, tho I see him not, is near
And grudges me my eightieth year.
Now, I would give him all these last
For one that fifty have run past.
Ah! he strikes all things, all alike,
But bargains: those he will not strike.
72
DEATH OF THE DAY
My pictures blacken in their frames
As night comes on,
And youthful maids and wrinkled dames
Are now all one.
Death of the day! a sterner Death
Did worse before;
The fairest form, the sweetest breath
Away he bore.
73
ON CATULLUS
Tell me not what too well I know
About the bard of Sirmio …
Yes, in Thalia’s son
Such stains there are … as when a Grace
Sprinkles another’s laughing face
With nectar, and runs on.
74
DESTINY UNCERTAIN
Gracefully shy is yon gazelle;
And are those eyes, so clear, so mild,
Only to shine upon a wild,
Or be reflected in a shallow well?
Ah! who can tell?
If she grows tamer, who shall pat
Her neck? who wreathe the flowers around?
Who give the name? who fence the ground?
Pondering these things, a grave old dervish sat,
And sigh’d, ‘Ah who can tell?’
75
’Twas far beyond the midnight hour
And more than half the stars were falling,
And jovial friends, who lost the power
Of sitting, under chairs lay sprawling;
Not Porson so; his stronger pate
Could carry more of wine and Greek
Than Cambridge held; erect he sate;
He nodded, yet could somehow speak.
‘’Tis well, O Bacchus! they are gone,
Unworthy to approach thy altar!
The pious man prays best alone,
Nor shall thy servant ever falter.’
Then Bacchus too, like Porson, nodded,
Shaking the ivy on his brow,
And graciously replied the Godhead,
‘I have no votary staunch as thou.’
76
Ye who have toil’d uphill to reach the haunt
Of other men who lived in other days,
Whether the ruins of a citadel
Rais’d on the summit by Pelasgic hands,
Or chamber of the distaff and the song …
Ye will not tell what treasure there ye found,
But I will.
Ye found there the viper laid
Full-length, flat-headed, on a sunny slab,
Nor loth to hiss at ye while crawling down.
Ye saw the owl flap the loose ivy leaves
And, hooting, shake the berries on your heads.
Now, was it worth your while to mount so high
Merely to say ye did it, and to ask
If those about ye ever did the like?
Believe me, O my friends, ’twere better far
To stretch your limbs along the level sand
As they do, where small children scoop the drift,
Thinking it must be gold, where curlews soar
And scales drop glistening from the prey above.
77
TO AGE
Welcome, old friend! These many years
Have we lived door by door:
The Fates have laid aside their shears
Perhaps for some few more.
I was indocil at an age
When better boys were taught,
But thou at length hast made me sage,
If I am sage in aught.
Little I know from other men,
Too little they from me,
But thou hast pointed well the pen
That writes these lines to thee.
Thanks for expelling Fear and Hope,
One vile, the other vain;
One’s scourge, the other’s telescope
I shall not see again:
Rather what lies before my feet
My notice shall engage …
He who hath braved Youth’s dizzy heat
Dreads not the frost of Age.
78
The cattle in the common field
Toss their flat heads in vain,
And snort and stamp; weak creatures yield
And turn back home again.
My mansion stands beyond it, high
Above where rushes grow;
Its hedge of laurel dares defy
The heavy-hooft below.
79
Well I remember how you smiled
To see me write your name upon
The soft sea-sand …‘O! what a child!
You think you’re writing upon stone!
I have since written what no tide
Shall ever wash away, what men
Unborn shall read o’er ocean wide
And find Ianthe’s name agen.
80
from APPENDIX TO THE HELLENICS
If I extoll’d the virtuous and the wise,
The brave and beautiful, and well discern’d
Their features as they fixt their eyes on mine;
If I have won a kindness never wooed;
Could I foresee that … fallen among thieves,
Despoil’d, halt, wounded … tramping traffickers
Should throw their dirt upon me, not without
Some small sharp pebbles carefully inclosed?
However, from one crime they are exempt;
They do not strike a brother, striking me.
This breathes o’er me a cool serenity,
O’er me divided from old friends, in lands
Pleasant, if aught without old friends can please,
Where round their lowly turf-built terraces
Grey olives twinkle in this wintery sun,
And crimson light invests yon quarried cliff,
And central towers from distant villas peer
Until Arezzo’s ridges intervene.
81
from TO CUTHBERT SOUTHEY
I seek not many, many seek not me.
If there are few now seated at my board,
I pull no children’s hair because they munch
Gilt gingerbread, the figured and the sweet,
Or wallow in the innocence of whey;
Give me wild-boar, the buck’s stout haunch give me.
And wine that time has mellowed, even as time
Mellows the warrior hermit in his cell.
82
When the mad wolf hath bit the scatter’d sheep,
The madden’d flock their penfold overleap,
And, rushing blind with fury, trample down
The kindest master with the coarsest clown.
83
Death indiscriminately gathers
The flowering children and rough-rinded fathers:
His eyes are horny, thus he knows
No different color in the dock and rose.
84
The scentless laurel a broad leaf displays,
Few and by fewer gathere’d are the bays;
Yet these Apollo wore upon his brow …
The boughs are bare, the stem is twisted now.
85
A QUARRELSOME BISHOP
To hide her ordure, claws the cat;
You claw, but not to cover that.
Be decenter, and learn at least
One lesson from the cleanlier beast.
86
Here lies Landor
Whom they thought a goose,
But he proved a gander.<
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87
Come forth, old lion, from thy den,
Come, be the gaze of idle men,
Old lion, shake thy mane and growl,
Or they will take thee for an owl.
88
What bitter flowers surround the fount of Pleasure
And poison its bright waters as they fall!
89
A SENSIBLE GIRL’S REPLY TO TOM MOORE
‘Our couch shall be roses all spangled with dew’
It would give me rheumatics, and so it would you.
90
TO A FAIR MAIDEN
Fair maiden! when I look at thee
I wish I could be young and free;
But both at once, ah! who could be?
91
VERSES WHY BURNT
How many verses have I thrown
Into the fire, because the one
Peculiar word, the wanted most,
Was irrecoverably lost.
92
THE GRATEFUL HEART
The grateful heart for all things blesses;
Not only joy, but grief endears:
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