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

Home > Fantasy > Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) > Page 232
Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Page 232

by Homer

Lover of all things alive,

  Wonderer at all he meets, 25

  Wonderer chiefly at himself,

  Who can tell him what he is?

  Or how meet in human elf

  Coming and past eternities?

  And such I knew, a forest seer, 30

  A minstrel of the natural year,

  Foreteller of the vernal ides,

  Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,

  A lover true, who knew by heart

  Each joy the mountain dales impart; 35

  It seemed that Nature could not raise

  A plant in any secret place,

  In quaking bog, on snowy hill,

  Beneath the grass that shades the rill,

  Under the snow, between the rocks, 40

  In damp fields known to bird and fox,

  But he would come in the very hour

  It opened in its virgin bower,

  As if a sunbeam showed the place,

  And tell its long-descended race. 45

  It seemed as if the breezes brought him,

  It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;

  As if by secret sight he knew

  Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.

  Many haps fall in the field 50

  Seldom seen by wishful eyes,

  But all her shows did Nature yield,

  To please and win this pilgrim wise.

  He saw the partridge drum in the woods;

  He heard the woodcock’s evening hymn; 55

  He found the tawny thrushes’ broods;

  And the shy hawk did wait for him;

  What others did at distance hear,

  And guessed within the thicket’s gloom,

  Was shown to this philosopher, 60

  And at his bidding seemed to come.

  In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers’ gang

  Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;

  He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon

  The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; 65

  Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,

  And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.

  He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,

  The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,

  And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, 70

  Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.

  He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,

  With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls, —

  One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,

  Declares the close of its green century. 75

  Low lies the plant to whose creation went

  Sweet influence from every element;

  Whose living towers the years conspired to build,

  Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.

  Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed, 80

  He roamed, content alike with man and beast.

  Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;

  There the red morning touched him with its light.

  Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,

  So long he roved at will the boundless shade. 85

  The timid it concerns to ask their way,

  And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray,

  To make no step until the event is known,

  And ills to come as evils past bemoan.

  Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps 90

  To spy what danger on his pathway creeps;

  Go where he will, the wise man is at home,

  His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome;

  Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his road

  By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed. 95

  ’Twas one of the charmèd days

  When the genius of God doth flow;

  The wind may alter twenty ways,

  A tempest cannot blow;

  It may blow north, it still is warm; 100

  Or south, it still is clear;

  Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;

  Or west, no thunder fear.

  The musing peasant, lowly great,

  Beside the forest water sate; 105

  The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown

  Composed the network of his throne;

  The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,

  Was burnished to a floor of glass,

  Painted with shadows green and proud 110

  Of the tree and of the cloud.

  He was the heart of all the scene;

  On him the sun looked more serene;

  To hill and cloud his face was known, —

  It seemed the likeness of their own; 115

  They knew by secret sympathy

  The public child of earth and sky.

  ‘You ask,’ he said, ‘what guide

  Me through trackless thickets led,

  Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide, 120

  I found the water’s bed.

  The watercourses were my guide;

  I travelled grateful by their side,

  Or through their channel dry;

  They led me through the thicket damp, 125

  Through brake and fern, the beavers’ camp,

  Through beds of granite cut my road,

  And their resistless friendship showed.

  The falling waters led me,

  The foodful waters fed me, 130

  And brought me to the lowest land,

  Unerring to the ocean sand.

  The moss upon the forest bark

  Was pole-star when the night was dark;

  The purple berries in the wood 135

  Supplied me necessary food;

  For Nature ever faithful is

  To such as trust her faithfulness.

  When the forest shall mislead me,

  When the night and morning lie, 140

  When sea and land refuse to feed me,

  ‘Twill be time enough to die;

  Then will yet my mother yield

  A pillow in her greenest field,

  Nor the June flowers scorn to cover 145

  The clay of their departed lover.’

  WOODNOTES

  II

  As sunbeams stream through liberal space

  And nothing jostle or displace,

  So waved the pine-tree through my thought

  And fanned the dreams it never brought. 150

  ‘Whether is better, the gift or the donor?

  Come to me,’

  Quoth the pine-tree,

  ‘I am the giver of honor.

  My garden is the cloven rock, 155

  And my manure the snow;

  And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock,

  In summer’s scorching glow.

  He is great who can live by me:

  The rough and bearded forester 160

  Is better than the lord;

  God fills the scrip and canister,

  Sin piles the loaded board.

  The lord is the peasant that was,

  The peasant the lord that shall be; 165

  The lord is hay, the peasant grass,

  One dry, and one the living tree.

  Who liveth by the ragged pine

  Foundeth a heroic line;

  Who liveth in the palace hall 170

  Waneth fast and spendeth all.

  He goes to my savage haunts,

  With his chariot and his care;

  My twilight realm he disenchants,

  And finds his prison there. 175

  ‘What prizes the town and the tower?

  Only what the pine-tree yields;

  Sinew that subdued the fields;

  The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods

  Chants his hymn to hills and floods, 180

  Whom the city’s poisoning spleen

  Made not pale, or fat, or lean;

  Whom the rain and the wind purgeth,

  Whom the dawn and the da
y-star urgeth,

  In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth, 185

  In whose feet the lion rusheth

  Iron arms, and iron mould,

  That know not fear, fatigue, or cold.

  I give my rafters to his boat,

  My billets to his boiler’s throat, 190

  And I will swim the ancient sea

  To float my child to victory,

  And grant to dwellers with the pine

  Dominion o’er the palm and vine.

  Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, 195

  Unnerves his strength, invites his end.

  Cut a bough from my parent stem,

  And dip it in thy porcelain vase;

  A little while each russet gem

  Will swell and rise with wonted grace; 200

  But when it seeks enlarged supplies,

  The orphan of the forest dies.

  Whose walks in solitude

  And inhabiteth the wood,

  Choosing light, wave, rock and bird, 205

  Before the money-loving herd,

  Into that forester shall pass,

  From these companions, power and grace.

  Clean shall he be, without, within,

  From the old adhering sin, 210

  All ill dissolving in the light

  Of his triumphant piercing sight:

  Not vain, sour, nor frivolous;

  Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous;

  Grave, chaste, contented, though retired, 215

  And of all other men desired.

  On him the light of star and moon

  Shall fall with purer radiance down;

  All constellations of the sky

  Shed their virtue through his eye. 220

  Him Nature giveth for defence

  His formidable innocence;

  The mountain sap, the shells, the sea,

  All spheres, all stones, his helpers be;

  He shall meet the speeding year, 225

  Without wailing, without fear;

  He shall be happy in his love,

  Like to like shall joyful prove;

  He shall be happy whilst he wooes,

  Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse. 230

  But if with gold she bind her hair,

  And deck her breast with diamond,

  Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear,

  Though thou lie alone on the ground.

  ‘Heed the old oracles, 235

  Ponder my spells;

  Song wakes in my pinnacles

  When the wind swells.

  Soundeth the prophetic wind,

  The shadows shake on the rock behind, 240

  And the countless leaves of the pine are strings

  Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.

  Hearken! Hearken!

  If thou wouldst know the mystic song

  Chanted when the sphere was young. 245

  Aloft, abroad, the pæan swells;

  O wise man! hear’st thou half it tells?

  O wise man! hear’st thou the least part?

  ’Tis the chronicle of art.

  To the open ear it sings 250

  Sweet the genesis of things,

  Of tendency through endless ages,

  Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,

  Of rounded worlds, of space and time,

  Of the old flood’s subsiding slime, 255

  Of chemic matter, force and form,

  Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm:

  The rushing metamorphosis

  Dissolving all that fixture is,

  Melts things that be to things that seem, 260

  And solid nature to a dream.

  O, listen to the undersong,

  The ever old, the ever young;

  And, far within those cadent pauses,

  The chorus of the ancient Causes! 265

  Delights the dreadful Destiny

  To fling his voice into the tree,

  And shock thy weak ear with a note

  Breathed from the everlasting throat.

  In music he repeats the pang 270

  Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang.

  O mortal! thy ears are stones;

  These echoes are laden with tones

  Which only the pure can hear;

  Thou canst not catch what they recite 275

  Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right,

  Of man to come, of human life,

  Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.’

  Once again the pine-tree sung: —

  ‘Speak not thy speech my boughs among: 280

  Put off thy years, wash in the breeze;

  My hours are peaceful centuries.

  Talk no more with feeble tongue;

  No more the fool of space and time,

  Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme. 285

  Only thy Americans

  Can read thy line, can meet thy glance,

  But the runes that I rehearse

  Understands the universe;

  The least breath my boughs which tossed 290

  Brings again the Pentecost;

  To every soul resounding clear

  In a voice of solemn cheer, —

  “Am I not thine? Are not these thine?”

  And they reply, “Forever mine!” 295

  My branches speak Italian,

  English, German, Basque, Castilian,

  Mountain speech to Highlanders,

  Ocean tongues to islanders,

  To Fin and Lap and swart Malay, 300

  To each his bosom-secret say.

  ‘Come learn with me the fatal song

  Which knits the world in music strong,

  Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,

  Of things with things, of times with times, 305

  Primal chimes of sun and shade,

  Of sound and echo, man and maid,

  The land reflected in the flood,

  Body with shadow still pursued.

  For Nature beats in perfect tune, 310

  And rounds with rhyme her every rune,

  Whether she work in land or sea,

  Or hide underground her alchemy.

  Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,

  Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 315

  But it carves the bow of beauty there,

  And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

  The wood is wiser far than thou;

  The wood and wave each other know

  Not unrelated, unaffied, 320

  But to each thought and thing allied,

  Is perfect Nature’s every part,

  Rooted in the mighty Heart.

  But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed,

  Whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed, 325

  Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded?

  Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded?

  Who thee divorced, deceived and left?

  Thee of thy faith who hath bereft,

  And torn the ensigns from thy brow, 330

  And sunk the immortal eye so low?

  Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender,

  Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender

  For royal man; — they thee confess

  An exile from the wilderness, — 335

  The hills where health with health agrees,

  And the wise soul expels disease.

  Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign

  By which thy hurt thou may’st divine.

  When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff, 340

  Or see the wide shore from thy skiff,

  To thee the horizon shall express

  But emptiness on emptiness;

  There lives no man of Nature’s worth

  In the circle of the earth; 345

  And to thine eye the vast skies fall,

  Dire and satirical,

  On clucking hens and prating fools,

  On thieves, on drudges and on dolls.

  And thou shalt say to the Most High, 350

&nb
sp; “Godhead! all this astronomy,

  And fate and practice and invention,

  Strong art and beautiful pretension,

  This radiant pomp of sun and star,

  Throes that were, and worlds that are, 355

  Behold! were in vain and in vain; —

  It cannot be, — I will look again.

  Surely now will the curtain rise,

  And earth’s fit tenant me surprise; —

  But the curtain doth not rise, 360

  And Nature has miscarried wholly

  Into failure, into folly.”

  ‘Alas! thine is the bankruptcy,

  Blessed Nature so to see.

  Come, lay thee in my soothing shade, 365

  And heal the hurts which sin has made.

  I see thee in the crowd alone;

  I will be thy companion.

  Quit thy friends as the dead in doom,

  And build to them a final tomb; 370

  Let the starred shade that nightly falls

  Still celebrate their funerals,

  And the bell of beetle and of bee

  Knell their melodious memory.

  Behind thee leave thy merchandise, 375

  Thy churches and thy charities;

  And leave thy peacock wit behind;

  Enough for thee the primal mind

  That flows in streams, that breathes in wind:

  Leave all thy pedant lore apart; 380

  God hid the whole world in thy heart.

  Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns,

  Gives all to them who all renounce.

  The rain comes when the wind calls;

  The river knows the way to the sea; 385

  Without a pilot it runs and falls,

  Blessing all lands with its charity;

  The sea tosses and foams to find

  Its way up to the cloud and wind;

  The shadow sits close to the flying ball; 390

  The date fails not on the palm-tree tall;

  And thou, — go burn thy wormy pages, —

  Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages.

  Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain

  To find what bird had piped the strain: — 395

  Seek not, and the little eremite

  Flies gayly forth and sings in sight.

  ‘Hearken once more!

  I will tell thee the mundane lore.

  Older am I than thy numbers wot, 400

  Change I may, but I pass not.

  Hitherto all things fast abide,

  And anchored in the tempest ride.

  Trenchant time behoves to hurry

  All to yean and all to bury: 405

  All the forms are fugitive,

  But the substances survive.

  Ever fresh the broad creation,

  A divine improvisation,

  From the heart of God proceeds, 410

  A single will, a million deeds.

  Once slept the world an egg of stone,

 

‹ Prev