Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)
Page 12
Wherein a Naiad sends the water-bow
Thin from her tube; she smiles to see it rise.
What if I told her, it is just a thread
From that great river which the hills shut up,
And mock her with my leave to take the same?
The artificer has given her one small tube
Past power to widen or exchange – what boots
To know she might spout oceans if she could?
[260] She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread:
And so a man can use but a man’s joy
While he sees God’s. Is it for Zeus to boast,
‘See, man, how happy I live, and despair –
That I may be still happier – for thy use!’
If this were so, we could not thank our lord,
As hearts beat on to doing; ’tis not so –
Malice it is not. Is it carelessness?
Still, no. If care – where is the sign? I ask,
And get no answer, and agree in sum,
[270] O king, with thy profound discouragement,
Who seest the wider but to sigh the more.
Most progress is most failure: thou sayest well.
The last point now: – thou dost except a case –
Holding joy not impossible to one
With artist-gifts – to such a man as I
Who leave behind me living works indeed;
For, such a poem, such a painting lives.
What? dost thou verily trip upon a word,
Confound the accurate view of what joy is
[280] (Caught somewhat clearer by my eyes than thine)
With feeling joy? confound the knowing how
And showing how to live (my faculty)
With actually living? – Otherwise
Where is the artist’s vantage o’er the king?
Because in my great epos I display
How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act –
Is this as though I acted? if I paint,
Carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young?
Methinks I’m older that I bowed myself
[290] The many years of pain that taught me art!
Indeed, to know is something, and to prove
How all this beauty might be enjoyed, is more:
But, knowing naught, to enjoy is something too.
Yon rower, with the moulded muscles there,
Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I.
I can write love-odes: thy fair slave’s an ode.
I get to sing of love, when grown too grey
For being beloved: she turns to that young man,
The muscles all a-ripple on his back.
[300] I know the joy of kingship: well, thou art king!
‘But,’ sayest thou – (and I marvel, I repeat
To find thee trip on such a mere word) ‘what
Thou writest, paintest, stays; that does not die:
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs,
And Aeschylus, because we read his plays!’
Why, if they live still, let them come and take
Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup,
Speak in my place. Thou diest while I survive?
Say rather that my fate is deadlier still,
[310] In this, that every day my sense of joy
Grows more acute, my soul (intensified
By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen;
While every day my hairs fall more and more,
My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase –
The horror quickening still from year to year,
The consummation coming past escape
When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy –
When all my works wherein I prove my worth,
Being present still to mock me in men’s mouths,
[320] Alive still, in the praise of such as thou,
I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man,
The man who loved his life so over-much,
Sleep in my urn. It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,
Unlimited in capability
For joy, as this is in desire for joy,
– To seek which, the joy-hunger forces us:
That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait
[330] On purpose to make prized the life at large –
Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death,
We burst there as the worm into the fly,
Who, while a worm still, wants his wings. But no!
Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas,
He must have done so, were it possible!
Live long and happy, and in that thought die:
Glad for what was! Farewell. And for the rest,
I cannot tell thy messenger aright
Where to deliver what he bears of thine
[340] To one called Paulus; we have heard his fame
Indeed, if Christus be not one with him –
I know not, nor am troubled much to know.
Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew,
As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised,
Hath access to a secret shut from us?
Thou wrongest our philosophy, O king,
In stooping to inquire of such an one,
As if his answer could impose at all!
He writeth, doth he? well, and he may write.
[350] Oh, the Jew findeth scholars! certain slaves
Who touched on this same isle, preached him and Christ;
And (as I gathered from a bystander)
Their doctrine could be held by no sane man.
Two in the Campagna
I
I wonder do you feel today
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?
II
For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
[10] To catch at and let go.
III
Help me to hold it! First it left
The yellowing fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork’s cleft,
Some old tomb’s ruin: yonder weed
Took up the floating weft,
IV
Where one small orange cup amassed
Five beetles, – blind and green they grope
Among the honey-meal: and last,
Everywhere on the grassy slope
[20] I traced it. Hold it fast!
V
The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air –
Rome’s ghost since her decease.
VI
Such life here, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting nature have her way
[30] While heaven looks from its towers!
VII
How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?
VIII
I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more.
Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!
Where does the fault lie? What the core
[40] O’ the wound, since wound must be?
IX
I would I could adopt your will,
See with your eyes, and set my heart
Beating by yours, and drink my fill
At
your soul’s springs, – your part my part
In life, for good and ill.
X
No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,
Catch your soul’s warmth, – I pluck the rose
And love it more than tongue can speak –
[50] Then the good minute goes.
XI
Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star?
XII
Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!
The old trick! Only I discern –
Infinite passion, and the pain
[60] Of finite hearts that yearn.
A Grammarian’s Funeral
Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
[10] That’s the appropriate country; there, man’s thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
Crowded with culture!
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
Clouds overcome it;
[20] No! yonder sparkle is the citadel’s
Circling its summit.
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
Wait ye the warning?
Our low life was the level’s and the night’s;
He’s for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
’Ware the beholders!
This is our master, famous calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.
Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
[30] Safe from the weather!
He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
Singing together,
He was a man born with thy face and throat,
Lyric Apollo!
Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note
Winter would follow?
Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
Cramped and diminished,
[40] Moaned he, ‘New measures, other feet anon!
My dance is finished?’
No, that’s the world’s way: (keep the mountain-side,
Make for the city!)
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
Over men’s pity;
Left play for work, and grappled with the world
Bent on escaping:
‘What’s in the scroll,’ quoth he, ‘thou keepest furled?
Show me their shaping,
[50] Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, –
Give!’ – So, he gowned him,
Straight got by heart that book to its last page:
Learned, we found him.
Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,
Accents uncertain:
‘Time to taste life,’ another would have said,
‘Up with the curtain!’
This man said rather, ‘Actual life comes next?
Patience a moment!
[60] Grant I have mastered learning’s crabbed text,
Still there’s the comment.
Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
Painful or easy!
Even to the crumbs I’d fain eat up the feast,
Ay, nor feel queasy.’
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
When he had learned it,
When he had gathered all books had to give!
Sooner, he spurned it.
[70] Image the whole, then execute the parts –
Fancy the fabric
Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
Ere mortar dab brick!
(Here’s the town-gate reached: there’s the market-place
Gaping before us.)
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace
(Hearten our chorus!)
That before living he’d learn how to live –
No end to learning:
Earn the means first – God surely will contrive
[80] Use for our earning.
Others mistrust and say, ‘But time escapes:
Live now or never!’
He said, ‘What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever.’
Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head:
Calculus racked him:
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:
Tussis attacked him.
[90] ‘Now, master, take a little rest!’ – not he!
(Caution redoubled,
Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)
Not a whit troubled
Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
Fierce as a dragon
He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)
Sucked at the flagon.
Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
Heedless of far gain,
[100] Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
Bad is our bargain!
Was it not great? did not he throw on God,
(He loves the burthen) –
God’s task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen?
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
Just what it all meant?
He would not discount life, as fools do here,
Paid by instalment.
[110] He ventured neck or nothing – heaven’s success
Found, or earth’s failure:
‘Wilt thou trust death or not?’ He answered ‘Yes:
Hence with life’s pale lure!’
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred’s soon hit:
[120] This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That, has the world here – should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
While he could stammer
[130] He settled Hoti’s business – let it be! –
Properly based Oun –
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
Dead from the waist down.
Well, here’s the platform, here’s the proper place:
Hail to your purlieus,
All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
Swallows and curlews!
Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below
Live, for they can, there:
[140] This man decided not to Live but Know –
Bury this man there?
Here – here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects:
Loftily lying,
Leave him – still loftier than the wor
ld suspects,
Living and dying.
James Lee’s Wife
I James Lee’s Wife Speaks at the Window
I
Ah, Love, but a day
And the world has changed!
The sun’s away,
And the bird estranged;
The wind has dropped,
And the sky’s deranged:
Summer has stopped.
II
Look in my eyes!
[10] Wilt thou change too?
Should I fear surprise?
Shall I find aught new
In the old and dear,
In the good and true,
With the changing year?
III
Thou art a man,
But I am thy love.
For the lake, its swan;
For the dell, its dove;
And for thee – (oh, haste!)
[20] Me, to bend above,
Me, to hold embraced.
II By the Fireside
I
Is all our fire of shipwreck wood,
Oak and pine?
Oh, for the ills half-understood,
The dim dead woe
Long ago
Befallen this bitter coast of France!
Well, poor sailors took their chance;
[20] I take mine.
II
[30] A ruddy shaft our fire must shoot
O’er the sea:
Do sailors eye the casement – mute,
Drenched and stark,
From their bark –
And envy, gnash their teeth for hate
O’ the warm safe house and happy freight
– Thee and me?
III
God help you, sailors, at your need!
Spare the curse!
[40] For some ships, safe in port indeed,
Rot and rust,
Run to dust,
All through worms i’ the wood, which crept,
Gnawed our hearts out while we slept:
That is worse.
IV
Who lived here before us two?
Old-world pairs.
Did a woman ever – would I knew! –
Watch the man
[50] With whom began
Love’s voyage full-sail, – (now, gnash your teeth!)
When planks start, open hell beneath
Unawares?
III In the Doorway
I
The swallow has set her six young on the rail,
And looks sea-ward:
The water’s in stripes like a snake, olive-pale
To the leeward, –
On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind.
‘Good fortune departs, and disaster’s behind,’ –
[60] Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!
II
Our fig-tree, that leaned for the saltness, has furled