Ionica Part 11

Waste, waste; each knoweth his own worth, And would be something ere he sink To silence, ere he mix with earth, And part with love, and cease to think.

Shall I then comfort thee and me, My neighbour, preaching thus of waste?

Count yonder planet fragments; see, The meteors into darkness haste.

Lo! myriad germs at random float, Fall on no fostering home, and die Back to mere elements; every mote Was framed for life as thou, as I.

For ages over soulless eyes, Ere man was born, the heavens in vain Dipt clouds in dawn and sunset dyes Unheeded, and shall we complain?

Aye, Nature plays that wanton game And Nature's hierophants may smile, Contented with their lore; no blame To rhymers if they groan meanwhile.

Since that which yearns towards minds of men, Which flashes down from brain to lip, Finds but cold truth in mammoth den, With spores, with stars, no fellows.h.i.+p.

Say we that our ungamered thought Drifts on the stream of all men's fate, Our travail is a thing of naught, Only because mankind is great.

Born to be wasted, even so, And doomed to feel, and lift no voice; Yet not unblessed, because I know So many other souls rejoice.

1863.

LACORDAIRE AT OXFORD

Lost to the Church and deaf to me, this town Yet wears a reverend garniture of peace.

Set in a land of trade, like Gideon's fleece Bedewed where all is dry; the Pope may frown; But, if this city is the shrine of youth, How shall the Preacher lord of virgin souls, When by glad streams and laughing lawns he strolls, How can he bless them not? Yet in sad sooth, When I would love these English gownsmen, sighs Heave my frail breast, and weakness dims mine eyes.

These strangers heed me not. Far off in France Are young men not so fair, and not so cold, My listeners. Were they here, their greeting glance Might charm me to forget that I were old.

1863.

A RETROSPECT OF SCHOOL LIFE

I go, and men who know me not, When I am reckoned man, will ask, "What is it then that thou hast got By drudging through that five-year task?

"What knowledge or what art is thine?

Set out thy stock, thy craft declare."

Then this child-answer shall be mine, "I only know they loved me there."

There courteous strivings with my peers, And duties not bound up in books, And courage fanned by stormy cheers, And wisdom writ in pleasant looks,

And hards.h.i.+p buoyed with hope, and pain Encountered for the common weal, And glories void of vulgar gain, Were mine to take, were mine to feel.

Nor from Apollo did I shrink Like t.i.tans chained; but sweet and low Whispered the Nymphs, who seldom think: "Up, up for action, run and row!"

He let me, though his smile was grave, Seek an Egeria out of town Beneath the chestnuts; he forgave; And should the jealous Muses frown?

Fieldward some remnants of their lore Went with me, as the rhymes of Gray Annealed the heart of Wolfe for war When drifting on his starlit way.

Much lost I; something stayed behind, A s.n.a.t.c.h, maybe, of ancient song; Some breathings of a deathless mind, Some love of truth, some hate of wrong.

And to myself in games I said, "What mean the books? Can I win fame?

I would be like the faithful dead A fearless man, and pure of blame.

I may have failed, my School may fail; I tremble, but thus much I dare; I love her. Let the critics rail, My brethren and my home are there.

July 28th, 1863.

CLOVELLY BEACH

Oh, music! breathe me something old to-day, Some fine air gliding in from far away, Through to the soul that lies behind the clay.

This hour, if thou did'st ever speak before, Speak in the wave that sobs upon the sh.o.r.e, Speak in the rill that trickles from the moor.

Known was this sea's slow chant when I was young; To me these rivulets sing as once they sung, No need this hour of human throat and tongue.

The Dead who loved me heard this selfsame tide.

Oh that the Dead were listening by my side, And I could give the fondness then denied.

Once in the parlour of my mother's sire One sang, "And ye shall walk in silk attire."

Then my cold childhood woke to strange desire.

That was an unconfessed and idle spell, A drop of dew that on a blossom fell; And what it wrought I cannot surely tell.

Far off that thought and changed, like lines that stay On withered canvas, pink and pearly grey, When rose and violet hues have pa.s.sed away.

Oh, had I dwelt with music since that night!

What life but that is life, what other flight Escapes the plaguing doubts of wrong and right!

Oh music! once I felt the touch of thee, Once when this soul was as the chainless sea.

Oh, could'st thou bid me even now be free!

April, 1865.

AN EPOCH IN A SWEET LIFE

This sun, whose javelins strike and gild the wheat, Who gives the nectarine half an orb of bloom, Burns on my life no less, and beat by beat Shapes that grave hour when boyhood hears her doom.

Between this glow of pious eve and me, Lost moments, thick as clouds of summer flies, Specks of old time, which else one could not see, Made manifest in the windless calm, arise.

Streaks fairy green are traced on backward ways, Through vacant regions lightly overleapt, With pauses, where in soft pathetic haze Are phantoms of the joys that died unwept.