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