Kitabı oku: «Andromeda, and Other Poems», sayfa 6

SONGS FROM ‘THE WATER-BABIES’

THE TIDE RIVER

 
   Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool;
   Cool and clear, cool and clear,
By shining shingle, and foaming wear;
Under the crag where the ouzel sings,
And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings,
      Undefiled, for the undefiled;
   Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.
 
 
      Dank and foul, dank and foul,
   By the smoky town in its murky cowl;
      Foul and dank, foul and dank,
   By wharf and sewer and slimy bank;
Darker and darker the farther I go,
Baser and baser the richer I grow;
      Who dare sport with the sin-defiled?
   Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child.
 
 
      Strong and free, strong and free,
   The floodgates are open, away to the sea.
      Free and strong, free and strong,
   Cleansing my streams as I hurry along
To the golden sands, and the leaping bar,
And the taintless tide that awaits me afar,
As I lose myself in the infinite main,
Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again.
      Undefiled, for the undefiled;
   Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.
 

From The Water-Babies.

Eversley, 1862.

YOUNG AND OLD

 
When all the world is young, lad,
   And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
   And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
   And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
   And every dog his day.
 
 
When all the world is old, lad,
   And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
   And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
   The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
   You loved when all was young.
 

From The Water-Babies.  1862

THE SUMMER SEA

 
   Soft soft wind, from out the sweet south sliding,
Waft thy silver cloud webs athwart the summer sea;
   Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining
Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me.
 
 
   Deep deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding,
Pour Thyself abroad, O Lord, on earth and air and sea;
   Worn weary hearts within Thy holy temple hiding,
Shield from sorrow, sin, and shame my helpless babe and me.
 

From The Water-Babies.  1862

MY LITTLE DOLL

 
I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
   The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears,
   And her hair was so charmingly curled.
But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
   As I played in the heath one day;
And I cried for more than a week, dears,
   But I never could find where she lay.
 
 
I found my poor little doll, dears,
   As I played in the heath one day:
Folks say she is terribly changed, dears,
   For her paint is all washed away,
And her arms trodden off by the cows, dears
   And her hair not the least bit curled:
Yet for old sakes’ sake she is still, dears,
   The prettiest doll in the world.
 

From The Water-Babies.

Eversley, 1862.

THE KNIGHT’S LEAP: A LEGEND OF ALTENAHR

 
‘So the foemen have fired the gate, men of mine;
   And the water is spent and gone?
Then bring me a cup of the red Ahr-wine:
   I never shall drink but this one.
 
 
‘And reach me my harness, and saddle my horse,
   And lead him me round to the door:
He must take such a leap to-night perforce,
   As horse never took before.
 
 
‘I have fought my fight, I have lived my life,
   I have drunk my share of wine;
From Trier to Coln there was never a knight
   Led a merrier life than mine.
 
 
‘I have lived by the saddle for years two score;
   And if I must die on tree,
Then the old saddle tree, which has borne me of yore,
   Is the properest timber for me.
 
 
‘So now to show bishop, and burgher, and priest,
   How the Altenahr hawk can die:
If they smoke the old falcon out of his nest,
   He must take to his wings and fly.’
 
 
He harnessed himself by the clear moonshine,
   And he mounted his horse at the door;
And he drained such a cup of the red Ahr-wine,
   As man never drained before.
 
 
He spurred the old horse, and he held him tight,
   And he leapt him out over the wall;
Out over the cliff, out into the night,
   Three hundred feet of fall.
 
 
They found him next morning below in the glen,
   With never a bone in him whole—
A mass or a prayer, now, good gentlemen,
   For such a bold rider’s soul.
 

Eversley, 1864.

THE SONG OF THE LITTLE BALTUNG.  A.D. 395

 
A harper came over the Danube so wide,
   And he came into Alaric’s hall,
And he sang the song of the little Baltung
   To him and his heroes all.
 
 
How the old old Balt and the young young Balt
   Rode out of Caucaland,
With the royal elephant’s trunk on helm
   And the royal lance in hand.
 
 
Thuringer heroes, counts and knights,
   Pricked proud in their meinie;
For they were away to the great Kaiser,
   In Byzant beside the sea.
 
 
And when they came to the Danube so wide
   They shouted from off the shore,
‘Come over, come over, ye Roman slaves,
   And ferry your masters o’er.’
 
 
And when they came to Adrian’s burgh,
   With its towers so smooth and high,
‘Come out, come out, ye Roman knaves,
   And see your lords ride by.’
 
 
But when they came lo the long long walls
   That stretch from sea to sea,
That old old Balt let down his chin,
   And a thoughtful man grew he.
 
 
‘Oh oft have I scoffed at brave Fridigern,
   But never will I scoff more,
If these be the walls which kept him out
   From the Micklegard there on the shore.’
 
 
Then out there came the great Kaiser,
   With twice ten thousand men;
But never a Thuring was coward enough
   To wish himself home again.
 
 
‘Bow down, thou rebel, old Athanarich,
   And beg thy life this day;
The Kaiser is lord of all the world,
   And who dare say him nay?’
 
 
‘I never came out of Caucaland
   To beg for less nor more;
But to see the pride of the great Kaiser,
   In his Micklegard here by the shore.
 
 
‘I never came out of Caucaland
   To bow to mortal wight,
But to shake the hand of the great Kaiser,
   And God defend my right.’
 
 
He shook his hand, that cunning Kaiser,
   And he kissed him courteouslie,
And he has ridden with Athanarich
   That wonder-town to see.
 
 
He showed him his walls of marble white—
   A mile o’erhead they shone;
Quoth the Balt, ‘Who would leap into that garden,
   King Siegfried’s boots must own.’
 
 
He showed him his engines of arsmetrick
   And his wells of quenchless flame,
And his flying rocks, that guarded his walls
   From all that against him came.
 
 
He showed him his temples and pillared halls,
   And his streets of houses high;
And his watch-towers tall, where his star-gazers
   Sit reading the signs of the sky.
 
 
He showed him his ships with their hundred oars,
   And their sides like a castle wall,
That fetch home the plunder of all the world,
   At the Kaiser’s beck and call.
 
 
He showed him all nations of every tongue
   That are bred beneath the sun,
How they flowed together in Micklegard street
   As the brooks flow all into one.
 
 
He showed him the shops of the china ware,
   And of silk and sendal also,
And he showed him the baths and the waterpipes
   On arches aloft that go.
 
 
He showed him ostrich and unicorn,
   Ape, lion, and tiger keen;
And elephants wise roared ‘Hail Kaiser!’
   As though they had Christians been.
 
 
He showed him the hoards of the dragons and trolls,
   Rare jewels and heaps of gold—
‘Hast thou seen, in all thy hundred years,
   Such as these, thou king so old?’
 
 
Now that cunning Kaiser was a scholar wise,
   And could of gramarye,
And he cast a spell on that old old Balt,
   Till lowly and meek spake he.
 
 
‘Oh oft have I heard of the Micklegard,
   What I held for chapmen’s lies;
But now do I know of the Micklegard,
   By the sight of mine own eyes.
 
 
‘Woden in Valhalla,
   But thou on earth art God;
And he that dare withstand thee, Kaiser,
   On his own head lies his blood.’
 
 
Then out and spake that little Baltung,
   Rode at the king’s right knee,
Quoth ‘Fridigern slew false Kaiser Valens,
   And he died like you or me.’
 
 
‘And who art thou, thou pretty bold boy,
   Rides at the king’s right knee?’
‘Oh I am the Baltung, boy Alaric,
   And as good a man as thee.’
 
 
‘As good as me, thou pretty bold boy,
   With down upon thy chin?’
‘Oh a spae-wife laid a doom on me,
   The best of thy realm to win.’
 
 
‘If thou be so fierce, thou little wolf cub
   Or ever thy teeth be grown;
Then I must guard my two young sons
   Lest they should lose their own.’
 
 
‘Oh, it’s I will guard your two lither lads,
   In their burgh beside the sea,
And it’s I will prove true man to them
   If they will prove true to me.
 
 
‘But it’s you must warn your two lither lads,
   And warn them bitterly,
That if I shall find them two false Kaisers,
   High hanged they both shall be.’
 
 
Now they are gone into the Kaiser’s palace
   To eat the peacock fine,
And they are gone into the Kaiser’s palace
   To drink the good Greek wine.
 
 
The Kaiser alone, and the old old Balt,
   They sat at the cedar board;
And round them served on the bended knee
   Full many a Roman lord.
 
 
‘What ails thee, what ails thee, friend Athanarich?
   What makes thee look so pale?’
‘I fear I am poisoned, thou cunning Kaiser,
   For I feel my heart-strings fail.
 
 
‘Oh would I had kept that great great oath
   I swore by the horse’s head,
I would never set foot on Roman ground
   Till the day that I lay dead.
 
 
‘Oh would I were home in Caucaland,
   To hear my harpers play,
And to drink my last of the nut-brown ale,
   While I gave the gold rings away.
 
 
‘Oh would I were home in Caucaland,
   To hear the Gothmen’s horn,
And watch the waggons, and brown brood mares
   And the tents where I was born.
 
 
‘But now I must die between four stone walls
   In Byzant beside the sea:
And as thou shalt deal with my little Baltung,
   So God shall deal with thee.’
 
 
The Kaiser he purged himself with oaths,
   And he buried him royally,
And he set on his barrow an idol of gold,
   Where all Romans must bow the knee.
 
 
And now the Goths are the Kaiser’s men,
   And guard him with lance and sword,
And the little Baltung is his sworn son-at-arms,
   And eats at the Kaiser’s board,
 
 
And the Kaiser’s two sons are two false white lads
   That a clerk may beat with cane.
The clerk that should beat that little Baltung
   Would never sing mass again.
 
 
Oh the gates of Rome they are steel without,
   And beaten gold within:
But they shall fly wide to the little Baltung
   With the down upon his chin.
 
 
Oh the fairest flower in the Kaiser’s garden
   Is Rome and Italian land:
But it all shall fall to the little Baltung
   When he shall take lance in hand.
 
 
And when he is parting the plunder of Rome,
   He shall pay for this song of mine,
Neither maiden nor land, neither jewel nor gold,
   But one cup of Italian wine.
 

Eversley, 1864.

ON THE DEATH OF LEOPOLD, KING OF THE BELGIANS ⁸

 
A King is dead!  Another master mind
   Is summoned from the world-wide council hall.
Ah, for some seer, to say what links behind—
   To read the mystic writing on the wall!
 
 
Be still, fond man: nor ask thy fate to know.
   Face bravely what each God-sent moment brings.
Above thee rules in love, through weal and woe,
   Guiding thy kings and thee, the King of kings.
 

Windsor Castle,

November 10, 1865.

EASTER WEEK

(Written for music to be sung at a parish industrial exhibition)

 
See the land, her Easter keeping,
   Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
   Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices;
   Fields and gardens hail the spring;
Shaughs and woodlands ring with voices,
   While the wild birds build and sing.
 
 
You, to whom your Maker granted
   Powers to those sweet birds unknown,
Use the craft by God implanted;
   Use the reason not your own.
Here, while heaven and earth rejoices,
   Each his Easter tribute bring—
Work of fingers, chant of voices,
   Like the birds who build and sing.
 

Eversley, 1867.

DRIFTING AWAY: A FRAGMENT

 
They drift away.  Ah, God! they drift for ever.
I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea,
Like some old battered buoy upon a roaring river,
Round whom the tide-waifs hang—then drift to sea.
 
 
I watch them drift—the old familiar faces,
Who fished and rode with me, by stream and wold,
Till ghosts, not men, fill old beloved places,
And, ah! the land is rank with churchyard mold.
 
 
I watch them drift—the youthful aspirations,
Shores, landmarks, beacons, drift alike.
. . . . .
I watch them drift—the poets and the statesmen;
The very streams run upward from the sea.
   . . . . . .
   Yet overhead the boundless arch of heaven
   Still fades to night, still blazes into day.
   . . . . .
   Ah, God!  My God!  Thou wilt not drift away
 

November 1867.

CHRISTMAS DAY

 
How will it dawn, the coming Christmas Day?
A northern Christmas, such as painters love,
And kinsfolk, shaking hands but once a year,
And dames who tell old legends by the fire?
Red sun, blue sky, white snow, and pearled ice,
Keen ringing air, which sets the blood on fire,
And makes the old man merry with the young,
Through the short sunshine, through the longer night?
   Or southern Christmas, dark and dank with mist,
And heavy with the scent of steaming leaves,
And rosebuds mouldering on the dripping porch;
One twilight, without rise or set of sun,
Till beetles drone along the hollow lane,
And round the leafless hawthorns, flitting bats
Hawk the pale moths of winter?  Welcome then
At best, the flying gleam, the flying shower,
The rain-pools glittering on the long white roads,
And shadows sweeping on from down to down
Before the salt Atlantic gale: yet come
In whatsoever garb, or gay, or sad,
Come fair, come foul, ’twill still be Christmas Day.
   How will it dawn, the coming Christmas Day?
To sailors lounging on the lonely deck
Beneath the rushing trade-wind?  Or to him,
Who by some noisome harbour of the East,
Watches swart arms roll down the precious bales,
Spoils of the tropic forests; year by year
Amid the din of heathen voices, groaning
Himself half heathen?  How to those—brave hearts!
Who toil with laden loins and sinking stride
Beside the bitter wells of treeless sands
Toward the peaks which flood the ancient Nile,
To free a tyrant’s captives?  How to those—
New patriarchs of the new-found underworld—
Who stand, like Jacob, on the virgin lawns,
And count their flocks’ increase?  To them that day
Shall dawn in glory, and solstitial blaze
Of full midsummer sun: to them that morn,
Gay flowers beneath their feet, gay birds aloft,
Shall tell of nought but summer: but to them,
Ere yet, unwarned by carol or by chime,
They spring into the saddle, thrills may come
From that great heart of Christendom which beats
Round all the worlds; and gracious thoughts of youth;
Of steadfast folk, who worship God at home;
Of wise words, learnt beside their mothers’ knee;
Of innocent faces upturned once again
In awe and joy to listen to the tale
Of God made man, and in a manger laid—
May soften, purify, and raise the soul
From selfish cares, and growing lust of gain,
And phantoms of this dream which some call life,
Toward the eternal facts; for here or there,
Summer or winter, ’twill be Christmas Day.
 
 
   Blest day, which aye reminds us, year by year,
What ’tis to be a man: to curb and spurn
The tyrant in us; that ignobler self
Which boasts, not loathes, its likeness to the brute,
And owns no good save ease, no ill save pain,
No purpose, save its share in that wild war
In which, through countless ages, living things
Compete in internecine greed.—Ah God!
Are we as creeping things, which have no Lord?
That we are brutes, great God, we know too well;
Apes daintier-featured; silly birds who flaunt
Their plumes unheeding of the fowler’s step;
Spiders, who catch with paper, not with webs;
Tigers, who slay with cannon and sharp steel,
Instead of teeth and claws;—all these we are.
Are we no more than these, save in degree?
No more than these; and born but to compete—
To envy and devour, like beast or herb;
Mere fools of nature; puppets of strong lusts,
Taking the sword, to perish with the sword
Upon the universal battle-field,
Even as the things upon the moor outside?
   The heath eats up green grass and delicate flowers,
The pine eats up the heath, the grub the pine,
The finch the grub, the hawk the silly finch;
And man, the mightiest of all beasts of prey,
Eats what he lists; the strong eat up the weak,
The many eat the few; great nations, small;
And he who cometh in the name of all—
He, greediest, triumphs by the greed of all;
And, armed by his own victims, eats up all:
While ever out of the eternal heavens
Looks patient down the great magnanimous God,
Who, Maker of all worlds, did sacrifice
All to Himself?  Nay, but Himself to one;
Who taught mankind on that first Christmas Day,
What ’twas to be a man; to give, not take;
To serve, not rule; to nourish, not devour;
To help, not crush; if need, to die, not live.
   O blessed day, which givest the eternal lie
To self, and sense, and all the brute within;
Oh, come to us, amid this war of life;
To hall and hovel, come; to all who toil
In senate, shop, or study; and to those
Who, sundered by the wastes of half a world,
Ill-warned, and sorely tempted, ever face
Nature’s brute powers, and men unmanned to brutes—
Come to them, blest and blessing, Christmas Day.
Tell them once more the tale of Bethlehem;
The kneeling shepherds, and the Babe Divine:
And keep them men indeed, fair Christmas Day.
 

Eversley, 1868.

SEPTEMBER 21, 1870 ⁹

 
Speak low, speak little; who may sing
   While yonder cannon-thunders boom?
Watch, shuddering, what each day may bring:
   Nor ‘pipe amid the crack of doom.’
 
 
And yet—the pines sing overhead,
   The robins by the alder-pool,
The bees about the garden-bed,
   The children dancing home from school.
 
 
And ever at the loom of Birth
   The mighty Mother weaves and sings:
She weaves—fresh robes for mangled earth;
   She sings—fresh hopes for desperate things.
 
 
And thou, too: if through Nature’s calm
   Some strain of music touch thine ears,
Accept and share that soothing balm,
   And sing, though choked with pitying tears.
 

Eversley, 1870.

THE MANGO-TREE

 
He wiled me through the furzy croft;
   He wiled me down the sandy lane.
He told his boy’s love, soft and oft,
   Until I told him mine again.
 
 
We married, and we sailed the main;
   A soldier, and a soldier’s wife.
We marched through many a burning plain;
   We sighed for many a gallant life.
 
 
But his—God kept it safe from harm.
   He toiled, and dared, and earned command;
And those three stripes upon his arm
   Were more to me than gold or land.
 
 
Sure he would win some great renown:
   Our lives were strong, our hearts were high.
One night the fever struck him down.
   I sat, and stared, and saw him die.
 
 
I had his children—one, two, three.
   One week I had them, blithe and sound.
The next—beneath this mango-tree,
   By him in barrack burying-ground.
 
 
I sit beneath the mango-shade;
   I live my five years’ life all o’er—
Round yonder stems his children played;
   He mounted guard at yonder door.
 
 
’Tis I, not they, am gone and dead.
   They live; they know; they feel; they see.
Their spirits light the golden shade
   Beneath the giant mango-tree.
 
 
All things, save I, are full of life:
   The minas, pluming velvet breasts;
The monkeys, in their foolish strife;
   The swooping hawks, the swinging nests;
 
 
The lizards basking on the soil,
   The butterflies who sun their wings;
The bees about their household toil,
   They live, they love, the blissful things.
 
 
Each tender purple mango-shoot,
   That folds and droops so bashful down;
It lives; it sucks some hidden root;
   It rears at last a broad green crown.
 
 
It blossoms; and the children cry—
   ‘Watch when the mango-apples fall.’
It lives: but rootless, fruitless, I—
   I breathe and dream;—and that is all.
 
 
Thus am I dead: yet cannot die:
   But still within my foolish brain
There hangs a pale blue evening sky;
   A furzy croft; a sandy lane.
 

1870.