The House of Life Part 8

FAREWELL TO THE GLEN

Sweet stream-fed glen, why say 'farewell' to thee Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth The brow of Time where man may read no ruth?

Nay, do thou rather say 'farewell' to me, Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe By other streams, what while in fragrant youth The bliss of being sad made melancholy.

And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there In hours to come, than when an hour ago Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.

VAIN VIRTUES

What is the sorriest thing that enters h.e.l.l?

None of the sins,--but this and that fair deed Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.

These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit, Whose names, half entered in the book of Life, Were G.o.d's desire at noon. And as their hair And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife, The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

LOST DAYS

The lost days of my life until to-day, What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat Sown once for food but trodden into clay?

Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?

Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?

Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat The throats of men in h.e.l.l, who thirst alway?

I do not see them here; but after death G.o.d knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.

'I am thyself,--what hast thou done to me?'

'And I--and I--thyself,' (lo! each one saith,) 'And thou thyself to all eternity!'

DEATH'S SONGSTERS

When first that horse, within whose populous womb The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate, Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight, Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home: She whispered, 'Friends, I am alone; come, come!'

Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid, And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

The same was he who, lashed to his own mast, There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves, Beside the sirens' singing island pa.s.s'd, Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves...

Say, soul,--are songs of Death no heaven to thee, Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

HERO'S LAMP*

That lamp thou fill'st in Eros name to-night, O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.

Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break; While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake, Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.

That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine Shall stand unlit (for so the G.o.ds decree) Till some one man the happy issue see Of a life's love, and bid its flame to s.h.i.+ne: Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine, O brother, what brought love to them or thee?

*After the deaths of Leander and Hero, the signal-lamp was dedicated to Anteros, with the edict that no man should light it unless his love had proved fortunate.

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN

Ye who have pa.s.sed Death's haggard hills; and ye Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know And still stand silent:--is it all a show, A wisp that laughs upon the wall?--decree Of some inexorable supremacy Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes, Sphinx-faced with unabashed augury?

Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day Whose roots are hillocks where the children play; Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke Those stars, his spray-crown's cl.u.s.tering gems, shall wage Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.

'RETRO ME, SATHANA!'

Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled, Stooping against the wind, a charioteer Is s.n.a.t.c.hed from out his chariot by the hair, So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world: Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air, It shall be sought and not found anywhere.

Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled, Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath Much mightiness of men to win thee praise.

Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.

Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path, Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath For certain years, for certain months and days.

LOST ON BOTH SIDES

As when two men have loved a woman well, Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit; Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet And the long pauses of this wedding bell; Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat; Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet The two lives left that most of her can tell:--

So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed The one same Peace, strove with each other long, And Peace before their faces perished since: So through that soul, in restless brotherhood, They roam together now, and wind among Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.

THE SUN'S SHAME

I

Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught From life; and mocking pulses that remain When the soul's death of bodily death is fain; Honour unknown, and honour known unsought; And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane; And longed-for woman longing all in vain For lonely man with love's desire distraught; And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness, Given unto bodies of whose souls men say, None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:-- Beholding these things, I behold no less The blus.h.i.+ng morn and blus.h.i.+ng eve confess The shame that loads the intolerable day.

As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth, 'Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess, Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless;'-- Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal, And bitterly feels breathe against his soul The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:--

Even so the World's grey Soul to the green World Perchance one hour must cry: 'Woe's me, for whom Inveteracy of ill portends the doom,-- Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd: While thou even as of yore art journeying, All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!'

MICHELANGELO'S KISS

Great Michelangelo, with age grown bleak And uttermost labours, having once o'ersaid All grievous memories on his long life shed, This worst regret to one true heart could speak:-- That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek, He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed, His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed, Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.

O Buonarruoti,--good at Art's fire-wheels To urge her chariot!--even thus the Soul, Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal, Earns oftenest but a little: her appeals Were deep and mute,--lowly her claim. Let be: What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?

THE VASE OF LIFE