Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

RIZPAH* 17

I

Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea

And Willy's voice in the wind, "O mother, come out to me!"

Why should he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go?

For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow.

II

We should be seen, my dear; they would spy us out of the town.

The loud black nights for us, and the storm rushing over the down,

When I cannot see my own hand, but am led by the creak of the chain,1

And grovel and grope for my son till I find myself drenched with the rain.

III

Anything fallen again? nay-what was there left to fall?

have done it, while you were asleep-you were only made for the day.

have gather'd my baby together-and now

you may go your way.

VI

20

Nay-for it's kind of you, madam, to sit by an old dying wife.

But say nothing hard of my boy, I have only an hour of life.

I kiss'd my boy in the prison, before he went out to die.

"They dared me to do it,' he said, and he never has told me a lie.

I whipt him for robbing an orchard once when he was but a child

"The farmer dared me to do it," he said; he was always so wild

And idle-and could n't be idle-my Willy— he never could rest.

The King should have made him a soldier, he would have been one of his best.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

flung it among his fellows-"I'll none of it," said my son.

VIII

Falls? what falls! who knows? As the tree I came into court to the judge and the lawyers.

falls so must it lie.

IV

Who let her in? how long has she been? youwhat have you heard?

Why did you sit so quiet? you never have spoken a word.

[blocks in formation]

O-to pray with me-yes-a lady-none of Dust to dust-low down-let us hide! but they their spies-

set him so high

But the night has crept into my heart, and That all the ships of the world could stare at begun to darken my eyes.

him, passing by.

* Founded on a story related in a penny magazine, God 'll pardon the hell-black raven and horrible

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Do you think I was scared by the bones? I kiss'd 'em, I buried 'em all

I can't dig deep, I am old-in the night by the churchyard wall.

[blocks in formation]

And if he be lost-but to save my soul, that is all your desire

Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the fire?

I have been with God in the dark-go, go, you may leave me alone

My Willy 'll rise up whole when the trumpet of You never have borne a child—you are just as

judgment 'll sound,

But I charge you never to say that I laid him

hard as a stone.

80

in holy ground.

XIII

[blocks in formation]

Sin?

They would scratch him up—they would hang | But I cannot hear what you say for my Willy's him again on the cursed tree. voice in the windO, yes, we are sinners, I know-let all The snow and the sky so bright-he used but that be, to call in the dark, And read me a Bible verse of the Lord's good- And he calls to me now from the church and will toward mennot from the gibbet-for hark!

60

"Full of compassion and mercy, the Lord"-Nay-you can hear it yourself—it is coming

let me hear it again;

"Full of compassion and mercy-long-suffer

ing." Yes, O, yes!

shaking the walls

[blocks in formation]

MILTON (ALCAICS)*

O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England,

Milton, a name to resound for ages: Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset! Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches

Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods Whisper in odorous heights of even.

TO DANTE

(WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE FLOREN

TINES) †

[blocks in formation]

King, that hast reign'd six hundred years, and Now thy Forum roars no longer,

grown

In power, and ever growest, since thine own
Fair Florence honouring thy nativity,
Thy Florence now the crown of Italy,
Hath sought the tribute of a verse from me,
I, wearing but the garland of a day,
Cast at thy feet one flower that fades away.

TO VIRGIL

(WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTENARY OF VIRGIL'S DEATH.)

Roman Virgil, thou that singest

Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,

Ilion falling, Rome arising,

wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;

Landscape-lover, lord of language

more than he that sang the "Works and Days, 971

All the chosen coin of fancy

flashing out from many a golden phrase;

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;

1 Hesiod.

* This poem is one of Tennyson's experiments in the quantitative metre of the classics. The two styles of Milton here described may be found in many passages of Paradise Lost: see especially, for the "angel onset," Boox VI, 96 ff., and for the "bowery loneliness," IV, 214 ff. For a festival on the six hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dante, 1865,

fallen every purple Cæsar's domeTho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm

sound forever of Imperial Rome

[blocks in formation]

2 A shepherd piper in 4 Title of the fourth Virgil's first Eclogue.

Eclogue, which is prophetic of a golden age.

3 Eclogue sixth. In these words, "Hail, brother, and farewell." the Roman poet Catullus lamented the death of his brother (Carmina 101, 10). Catullus had a villa on the peninsula of Sermione"venusta (beautiful) Sirmio"-in Lake Garda, northern Italy. The last two lines of this little poem, which reproduce so well the soft music of Catullus's verse, are modelled upon lines in his thirty-first song. Catullus used the word "Lydian" in the belief that the Etruscans, who anciently had settlements near the Lake of Garda, were of Lydian origin.

There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in

[blocks in formation]

hopeless woe,

my stable,

Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines?

II

Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age,

[blocks in formation]

Sweet

Lake below

save breaking my bones on the rack? Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar!

OLD AGE

Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was
Sirmio!

[blocks in formation]

BY AN EVOLUTIONIST

linkt with thee eighty years back.

Less weight now for the ladder-of-heaven that hangs on a star.

[blocks in formation]

Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish'd face,

Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanish'd race.

Raving politics, never at rest-as this poor earth's pale history runs,

The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam

of a man,

And the man said, 'Am I your debtor?' And the Lord-Not yet: but make it as clean

as you can,

And then I will let you a better.'

I

If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain or a fable,

Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines,

of a million million of suns?

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourned by the wise, Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies;

Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet,

Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat;

Innocence seethed in her mother's milk, and What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, Charity setting the martyr aflame; varying voices of prayer, Thraldom who walks with the banner of Free- All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is dom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her filthy with all that is fair?

[blocks in formation]

Trade flying over a thousand seas with her spice and her vintage, her silk and her corn; Desolate offing, sailorless harbours, famishing populace, wharves forlorn;

Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise; gloom of the evening, Life at a close; Pleasure who flaunts on her wide downway with her flying robe and her poison'd rose; Pain that has crawl'd from the corpse of Pleas ure, a worm which writhes all day, and at night

Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings him back to the curse of the light;

Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; honest Poverty, bare to the bone; Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty; Flattery gilding the rift in a throne; 20

Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet a jubilant challenge to Time and to Fate; Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on all the laurell'd graves of the great;

Love for the maiden, crown 'd with marriage, no regrets for aught that has been,

Household happiness, gracious children, debtless competence, golden mean;

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

CROSSING THE BAR*

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and
Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

National hatreds of whole generations, and ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)

pigmy spites of the village spire; Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle, and

vows that are snapt in a moment of fire;

He that has lived for the lust of the minute, and died in the doing it, flesh without mind; He that has nail'd all flesh to the Cross, till Self died out in the love of his kind;

Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and all these old revolutions of earth; All new-old revolutions of Empire-change of the tide what is all of it worth? 30

FROM PIPPA PASSES

NEW YEAR'S HYMN

If now, as formerly he trod
Paradise, his presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work-God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.

All service ranks the same with God:

Say not "a small event!': Why "small"'? Costs it more pain that this, ye call

* Written in Tennyson's eighty-first year.

« PreviousContinue »