Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50)

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Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Page 201

by Homer


  The passionate heart of the poet is whirl’d into folly and vice. 140

  I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain;

  For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more

  Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice.

  For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil.

  Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about? 145

  Our planet is one, the suns are many, the world is wide.

  Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail?

  Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout?

  I have not made the world, and He that made it will guide.

  Be mine a philosopher’s life in the quiet woodland ways, 150

  Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot,

  Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies;

  From the long-neck’d geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise

  Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not,

  Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies. 155

  And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,

  The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.

  Ah Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife.

  Your mother is mute in her grave as her image in marble above;

  Your father is ever in London, you wander about at your will; 160

  You have but fed on the roses, and lain in the lilies of life.

  V

  A VOICE by the cedar tree,

  In the meadow under the Hall!

  She is singing an air that is known to me,

  A passionate ballad gallant and gay, 165

  A martial song like a trumpet’s call!

  Singing alone in the morning of life,

  In the happy morning of life and of May,

  Singing of men that in battle array,

  Ready in heart and ready in hand, 170

  March with banner and bugle and fife

  To the death, for their native land.

  Maud with her exquisite face,

  And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky,

  And feet like sunny gems on an English green, 175

  Maud in the light of her youth and her grace,

  Singing of Death, and of Honour that cannot die,

  Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean,

  And myself so languid and base.

  Silence, beautiful voice! 180

  Be still, for you only trouble the mind

  With a joy in which I cannot rejoice,

  A glory I shall not find.

  Still! I will hear you no more,

  For your sweetness hardly leaves me a choice 185

  But to move to the meadow and fall before

  Her feet on the meadow grass, and adore,

  Not her, who is neither courtly nor kind

  Not her, not her, but a voice.

  VI

  MORNING arises stormy and pale, 190

  No sun, but a wannish glare

  In fold upon fold of hueless cloud,

  And the budded peaks of the wood are bow’d

  Caught and cuff’d by the gale:

  I had fancied it would be fair. 195

  Whom but Maud should I meet

  Last night, when the sunset burn’d

  On the blossom’d gable-ends

  At the head of the village street,

  Whom but Maud should I meet? 200

  And she touch’d my hand with a smile so sweet

  She made me divine amends

  For a courtesy not return’d.

  And thus a delicate spark

  Of glowing and growing light 205

  Thro’ the livelong hours of the dark

  Kept itself warm in the heart of my dreams,

  Ready to burst in a colour’d flame;

  Till at last when the morning came

  In a cloud, it faded, and seems 210

  But an ashen-gray delight.

  What if with her sunny hair,

  And smile as sunny as cold,

  She meant to weave me a snare

  Of some coquettish deceit, 215

  Cleopatra-like as of old

  To entangle me when we met,

  To have her lion roll in a silken net

  And fawn at a victor’s feet.

  Ah, what shall I be at fifty 220

  Should Nature keep me alive,

  If I find the world so bitter

  When I am but twenty-five?

  Yet, if she were not a cheat,

  If Maud were all that she seem’d, 225

  And her smile were all that I dream’d,

  Then the world were not so bitter

  But a smile could make it sweet.

  What if tho’ her eye seem’d full

  Of a kind intent to me, 230

  What if that dandy-despot, he,

  That jewell’d mass of millinery,

  That oil’d and curl’d Assyrian Bull

  Smelling of musk and of insolence,

  Her brother, from whom I keep aloof, 235

  Who wants the finer politic sense

  To mask, tho’ but in his own behoof,

  With a glassy smile his brutal scorn —

  What if he had told her yestermorn

  How prettily for his own sweet sake 240

  A face of tenderness might be feign’d,

  And a moist mirage in desert eyes,

  That so, when the rotten hustings shake

  In another month to his brazen lies,

  A wretched vote may be gain’d. 245

  For a raven ever croaks, at my side,

  Keep watch and ward, keep watch and ward,

  Or thou wilt prove their tool.

  Yea too, myself from myself I guard,

  For often a man’s own angry pride 250

  Is cap and bells for a fool.

  Perhaps the smile and tender tone

  Came out of her pitying womanhood,

  For am I not, am I not, here alone

  So many a summer since she died, 255

  My mother, who was so gentle and good?

  Living alone in an empty house,

  Here half-hid in the gleaming wood,

  Where I hear the dead at midday moan,

  And the shrieking rush of the wainscot mouse, 260

  And my own sad name in corners cried,

  When the shiver of dancing leaves is thrown

  About its echoing chambers wide,

  Till a morbid hate and horror have grown

  Of a world in which I have hardly mixt, 265

  And a morbid eating lichen fixt

  On a heart half-turn’d to stone.

  O heart of stone, are you flesh, and caught

  By that you swore to withstand?

  For what was it else within me wrought 270

  But, I fear, the new strong wine of love,

  That made my tongue so stammer and trip

  When I saw the treasured splendour, her hand,

  Come sliding out of her sacred glove,

  And the sunlight broke from her lip? 275

  I have play’d with her when a child;

  She remembers it now we meet.

  Ah well, well, well, I may be beguiled

  By some coquettish deceit.

  Yet, if she were not a cheat, 280

  If Maud were all that she seem’d,

  And her smile had all that I dream’d,

  Then the world were not so bitter

  But a smile could make it sweet.

  VII

  DID I hear it half in a doze 285

  Long since, I know not where?

  Did I dream it an hour ago,

  When asleep in this arm-chair?

  Men were drinking together,

  Drinking and talking of me; 290

  “W
ell, if it prove a girl, the boy

  Will have plenty: so let it be.”

  Is it an echo of something

  Read with a boy’s delight,

  Viziers nodding together 295

  In some Arabian night?

  Strange, that I hear two men,

  Somewhere, talking of me;

  “Well, if it prove a girl, my boy

  Will have plenty: so let it be.” 300

  VIII

  SHE came to the village church,

  And sat by a pillar alone;

  An angel watching an urn

  Wept over her, carved in stone;

  And once, but once, she lifted her eyes, 305

  And suddenly, sweet, strangely blush’d

  To find they were met by my own;

  And suddenly, sweetly, my heart beat stronger

  And thicker, until I heard no longer

  The snowy-banded, dilettante, 310

  Delicate-handed priest intone;

  And thought, is it pride, and mused and sigh’d

  “No surely, now it cannot be pride.”

  IX

  I WAS walking a mile,

  More than a mile from the shore, 315

  The sun look’d out with a smile

  Betwixt the cloud and the moor,

  And riding at set of day

  Over the dark moor land,

  Rapidly riding far away, 320

  She waved to me with her hand.

  There were two at her side,

  Something flash’d in the sun,

  Down by the hill I saw them ride,

  In a moment they were gone: 325

  Like a sudden spark

  Struck vainly in the night,

  Then returns the dark

  With no more hope of light.

  X

  SICK, am I sick of a jealous dread? 330

  Was not one of the two at her side

  This new-made lord, whose splendour plucks

  The slavish hat from the villager’s head?

  Whose old grandfather has lately died,

  Gone to a blacker pit, for whom 335

  Grimy nakedness dragging his trucks

  And laying his trams in a poison’d gloom

  Wrought, till he crept from a gutted mine

  Master of half a servile shire,

  And left his coal all turn’d into gold 340

  To a grandson, first of his noble line,

  Rich in the grace all women desire,

  Strong in the power that all men adore,

  And simper and set their voices lower,

  And soften as if to a girl, and hold 345

  Awe-stricken breaths at a work divine,

  Seeing his gewgaw castle shine,

  New as his title, built last year,

  There amid perky larches and pine,

  And over the sullen-purple moor 350

  (Look at it) pricking a cockney ear.

  What, has he found my jewel out?

  For one of the two that rode at her side

  Bound for the Hall, I am sure was he:

  Bound for the Hall, and I think for a bride. 355

  Blithe would her brother’s acceptance be.

  Maud could be gracious too, no doubt,

  To a lord, a captain, a padded shape,

  A bought commission, a waxen face,

  A rabbit mouth that is ever agape — 360

  Bought? what is it he cannot buy?

  And therefore splenetic, personal, base,

  A wounded thing with a rancorous cry,

  At war with myself and a wretched race,

  Sick, sick to the heart of life, am I. 365

  Last week came one to the county town,

  To preach our poor little army down,

  And play the game of the despot kings,

  Tho’ the state has done it and thrice as well:

  This broad-brimm’d hawker of holy things, 370

  Whose ear is stuff’d with his cotton, and rings

  Even in dreams to the chink of his pence,

  This huckster put down war! can he tell

  Whether war be a cause or a consequence?

  Put down the passions that make earth Hell! 375

  Down with ambition, avarice, pride,

  Jealousy, down! cut off from the mind

  The bitter springs of anger and fear;

  Down too, down at your own fireside,

  With the evil tongue, and the evil ear, 380

  For each is at war with mankind.

  I wish I could hear again

  The chivalrous battle-song

  That she warbled alone in her joy!

  I might persuade myself then 385

  She would not do herself this great wrong,

  To take a wanton dissolute boy

  For a man and leader of men.

  Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand,

  Like some of the simple great ones gone 390

  For ever and ever by,

  One still strong man in a blatant land,

  Whatever they call him, what care I,

  Aristocrat, democrat, plutocrat — one

  Who can rule and dare not lie. 395

  And ah for a man to rise in me,

  That the man I am may cease to be!

  XI

  O LET the solid ground

  Not fail beneath my feet

  Before my life has found 400

  What some have found so sweet;

  Then let come what come may,

  What matter if I go mad,

  I shall have had my day.

  Let the sweet heavens endure, 405

  Not close and darken above me

  Before I am quite sure

  That there is one to love me;

  Then let come what come may

  To a life that has been so sad, 410

  I shall have had my day.

  XII

  BIRDS in the high Hall-garden

  When twilight was falling,

  Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,

  They were crying and calling. 415

  Where was Maud? in our wood;

  And I, who else, was with her,

  Gathering woodland lilies,

  Myriads blow together.

  Birds in our wood sang 420

  Ringing thro’ the valleys,

  Maud is here, here, here

  In among the lilies.

  I kiss’d her slender hand,

  She took the kiss sedately; 425

  Maud is not seventeen,

  But she is tall and stately.

  I to cry out on pride

  Who have won her favour!

  O Maud were sure of Heaven 430

  If lowliness could save her.

  I know the way she went

  Home with her maiden posy,

  For her feet have touch’d the meadows

  And left the daisies rosy. 435

  Birds in the high Hall-garden

  Were crying and calling to her,

  Where is Maud, Maud, Maud?

  One is come to woo her.

  Look, a horse at the door, 440

  And little King Charles is snarling,

  Go back, my lord, across the moor,

  You are not her darling.

  XIII

  SCORN’D, to be scorn’d by one that I scorn,

  Is that a matter to make me fret? 445

  That a calamity hard to be borne?

  Well, he may live to hate me yet.

  Fool that I am to be vext with his pride!

  I past him, I was crossing his lands;

  He stood on the path a little aside; 450

  His face, as I grant, in spite of spite

  Has a broad-blown comeliness, red and white,

  And six feet two, as I think, he stands;

  But his essences turn’d the live air sick,

  And barbarous opulence jewel-thick 455

  Sunn’d itself on his breast and his hands.

  Who shall call me ungentle, u
nfair,

  I long’d so heartily then and there

  To give him the grasp of fellowship;

  But while I past he was humming an air, 460

  Stopt, and then with a riding whip

  Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,

  And curving a contumelious lip,

  Gorgonised me from head to foot

  With a stony British stare. 465

  Why sits he here in his father’s chair?

  That old man never comes to his place:

  Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen?

  For only once, in the village street,

  Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face, 470

  A gray old wolf and a lean.

  Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat:

  For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit,

  She might by a true descent be untrue;

  And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet: 475

  Tho’ I fancy her sweetness only due

  To the sweeter blood by the other side;

  Her mother has been a thing complete,

  However she came to be so allied.

  And fair without, faithful within, 480

  Maud to him is nothing akin:

  Some peculiar mystic grace

  Made her only the child of her mother,

  And heap’d the whole inherited sin

  On that huge scapegoat of the race, 485

  All, all upon the brother.

  Peace, angry spirit, and let him be!

  Has not his sister smiled on me?

  XIV

  MAUD has a garden of roses

  And lilies fair on a lawn; 490

  There she walks in her state

  And tends upon bed and bower,

  And thither I climb’d at dawn

  And stood by her garden-gate;

  A lion ramps at the top, 495

  He is claspt by a passion-flower.

  Maud’s own little oak-room

  (Which Maud, like a precious stone

  Set in the heart of the carven gloom,

  Lights with herself, when alone 500

  She sits by her music and books,

  And her brother lingers late

  With a roystering company) looks

  Upon Maud’s own garden gate:

  And I thought as I stood, if a hand, as white 505

 

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