Selected Poems Read Online
And you?’
– ‘Then, more kisses?’ – ‘Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?’
Hark, the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to!
IX
So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
‘Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!’
X
Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
[30] Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.
XI
But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.
XII
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
‘Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
The soul, doubtless, is immortal – where a soul can be discerned.
XIII
‘Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction, – you’ll not die, it cannot be!
XIV
[40] ‘As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
XV
‘Dust and ashes!’ So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too – what’s become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician
Karshish, the picker-up of learning’s crumbs,
The not-incurious in God’s handiwork
(This man’s-flesh he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and keep down on earth a space
That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul)
– To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,
Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,
Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks
[10] Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,
Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip
Back and rejoin its source before the term, –
And aptest in contrivance (under God)
To baffle it by deftly stopping such: –
The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home
Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)
Three samples of true snakestone – rarer still,
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)
[20] And writeth now the twenty-second time.
My journeyings were brought to Jericho:
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art
Shall count a little labour unrepaid?
I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone
On many a flinty furlong of this land.
Also, the country-side is all on fire
With rumours of a marching hitherward:
Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son.
A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;
[30] Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.
Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,
And once a town declared me for a spy;
But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,
Since this poor covert where I pass the night,
This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence
A man with plague-sores at the third degree
Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!
’Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,
[40] To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip
And share with thee whatever Jewry yields.
A viscid choler is observable
In tertians, I was nearly bold to say;
And falling-sickness hath a happier cure
Than our school wots of: there’s a spider here
Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,
Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back;
Take five and drop them … but who knows his mind,
The Syrian runagate I trust this to?
[50] His service payeth me a sublimate
Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.
Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,
There set in order my experiences,
Gather what most deserves, and give thee all –
Or I might add, Judea’s gum-tragacanth
Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-gained,
Cracks ’twixt the pestle and the porphyry,
In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease
Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy –
[60] Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar –
But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.
Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,
Protesteth his devotion is my price –
Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,
What set me off a-writing first of all.
An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!
For, be it this town’s barrenness – or else
The Man had something in the look of him –
[70] His case has struck me far more than ’tis worth.
So, pardon if – (lest presently I lose
In the great press of novelty at hand
The care and pains this somehow stole from me)
I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,
Almost in sight – for, wilt thou have the truth?
The very man is gone from me but now,
Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.
Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!
’Tis but a case of mania – subinduced
[80] By epilepsy, at the turning-point
Of trance prolonged unduly some three days:
When, by the exhibition of some drug
Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art
Unknown to me and which ’twere well to know,
The evil thing out-breaking all at once
Left the man whole and sound of body indeed, –
But, flinging (so to speak) life’s gates too wide,
Making a clear house of it too suddenly,
The first conceit that entered might inscribe
[90] Whatever it was minded on the wall
So plainly at that vantage, as it were,
(First come, first served) that nothing subsequent
Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls
The just-returned and new-established soul
Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart
That henceforth she will read or these or none.
And first – the man’s own firm conviction rests
That he was dead (in fact they buried him)
– That he was dead and then restored to life
[100] By a Nazarene physician of his tribe:
– ’Sayeth, the same bade ‘Rise,’ and he did rise.
‘Such cases are diurnal,’ thou wilt cry.
Not so this figment! – not, that such a fume,
Instead of giving way to time and health,
Should eat itself into the life of life,
As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!
For see, how he takes up the after-life.
The man – it is one Lazarus a Jew,
Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,
[110] The body’s habit wholly laudable,
As much, indeed, beyond the common health
As he were made and put aside to show.
Think, could we penetrate by any drug
And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,
And bring it clear and fair, by three days’ sleep!
Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
This grown man eyes the world now like a child.
Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,
Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,
[120] To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,
Now sharply, now with sorrow, – told the case, –
He listened not except I spoke to him,
But folded his two hands and let them talk,
Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.
And that’s a sample how his years must go.
Look, if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,
Should find a treasure, – can he use the same
With straitened habits and with tastes starved small,
And take at once to his impoverished brain
[130] The sudden element that changes things,
That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand
And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?
Is he not such an one as moves to mirth –
Warily parsimonious, when no need,
Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?
All prudent counsel as to what befits
The golden mean, is lost on such an one:
The man’s fantastic will is the man’s law.
So here – we call the treasure knowledge, say,
[140] Increased beyond the fleshly faculty –
Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,
Earth forced on a soul’s use while seeing heaven:
The man is witless of the size, the sum,
The value in proportion of all things,
Or whether it be little or be much.
Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,
And of the passing of a mule with gourds –
’Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
[150] Speak of some trifling fact, – he will gaze rapt
With stupor at its very littleness,
(Far as I see) as if in that indeed
He caught prodigious import, whole results;
And so will turn to us the bystanders
In ever the same stupor (note this point)
That we too see not with his opened eyes.
Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,
Preposterously, at cross-purposes.
Should his child sicken unto death, – why, look
[160] For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or pretermission of the daily craft!
While a word, gesture, glance from that same child
At play or in the school or laid asleep,
Will startle him to an agony of fear,
Exasperation, just as like. Demand
The reason why – ‘’tis but a word,’ object –
‘A gesture’ – he regards thee as our lord
Who lived there in the pyramid alone,
Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,
[170] We both would unadvisedly recite
Some charm’s beginning, from that book of his,
Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst
All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.
Thou and the child have each a veil alike
Thrown o’er your heads, from under which ye both
Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match
Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!
He holds on firmly to some thread of life –
(It is the life to lead perforcedly)
[180] Which runs across some vast distracting orb
Of glory on either side that meagre thread,
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet –
The spiritual life around the earthly life:
The law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.
So is the man perplext with impulses
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,
Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,
And not along, this black thread through the blaze –
[190] ‘It should be’ balked by ‘here it cannot be.’
And oft the man’s soul springs into his face
As if he saw again and heard again
His sage that bade him ‘Rise’ and he did rise.
Something, a word, a tick o’ the blood within
Admonishes: then back he sinks at once
To ashes, who was very fire before,
In sedulous recurrence to his trade
Whereby he earneth him the daily bread;
And studiously the humbler for that pride,
[200] Professedly the faultier that he knows
God’s secret, while he holds the thread of life.
Indeed the especial marking of the man
Is prone submission to the heavenly will –
Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.
’Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last
For that same death which must restore his being
To equilibrium, body loosening soul
Divorced even now by premature full growth:
He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live
[210] So long as God please, and just how God please.
He even seeketh not to please God more
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.
Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach
The doctrine of his sect whate’er it be,
Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do:
How can he give his neighbour the real ground,
His own conviction? Ardent as he is –
Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old
‘Be it as God please’ reassureth him.
[220] I probed the sore as thy disciple should:
‘How, beast,’ said I, ‘this stolid carelessness
Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march
To stamp out like a little spark thy town,
Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?’
He merely looked with his large eyes on me.
The man is apathetic, you deduce?
Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,
Able and weak, affects the very brutes
And birds – how say I? flowers of the field –
[230] As a wise workman recognizes tools
In a master’s workshop, loving what they make.
Thus is the man, as harmless as a lamb:
Only impatient, let him do his best,
At ignorance and carelessness and sin –
An indignation which is promptly curbed:
As when in certain travels I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art
According to some preconceived design,
And happed to hear the land’s practitioners
[240] Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,
Prattle fantastically on disease,
Its cause and cure – and I must hold my peace!
Thou wilt object – Why have I not ere this
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,
Conferring with the frankness that befits?
Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech
Perished in a tumult many years ago,
Accused, – our learning’s fate, – of wizardry,
[250] Rebellion, to the setting up a rule
And creed prodigious as described to me.
His death, which happened when the earthquake fell
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss
To occult learning in our lord the sage
Who lived there in the pyramid alone)
Was wrought by the mad people – that’s their wont!
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,
To his tried virtue, for miraculous help –
How could he stop the earthquake? That’s their way!
[260] The other imputations must be lies:
But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,
In mere respect for any good man’s fame.
(And after all, our patient Lazarus
Is stark mad; should we count on what he says?
Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech
’Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.)
This man so cured regards the curer, then,
As – God forgive me! who but God himself,
Creator and sustainer of the world,
[270] That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile!
– ’Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,
And yet was … what I said nor choose repeat,
And must have so avouched himself, in fact,
In hearing of this very Lazarus
Who saith – but why all this of what he saith?
Why write of trivial matters, things of price
Calling at every moment for remark?
[280] I noticed on the margin of a pool
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!
Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!
Nor I myself discern in what is writ
Good cause for the peculiar interest
And awe indeed this man has touched me with.
Perhaps the journey’s end, the weariness
[290] Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills
Like an old lion’s cheek teeth. Out there came
A moon made like a face with certain spots
Multiform, manifold and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrian – he may lose,
[300] Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem’s repose shall make amends
For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!
The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too –
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
[310] But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!’
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.
Mesmerism
I
All I believed is true!
I am able yet
All I want, to get
By a method as strange as new:
Dare I trust the same to you?
II
If at night, when doors are shut,
And the wood-worm picks,
And the death-watch ticks,
And the bar has a flag of smut,
[10] And a cat’s in the water-butt –
III
And the socket floats and flares,
And the house-beams groan,
And a foot unknown
Is surmised on the garret-stairs,
And the locks slip unawares –
IV
And the spider, to serve his ends,
By a sudden thread,
Arms and legs outspread,
On the table’s midst descends,
[20] Comes to find, God knows what friends! –
V
If since eve drew in, I say,
I have sat and brought
(So to speak) my thought
To bear on the woman away,
Till I felt my hair turn grey –
Till I seemed to have and hold,
In the vacancy
’Twixt the wall and me,
From the hair-plait’s chestnut gold
[30] To the foot in its muslin fold –
VII
Have and hold, then and there,
Her, from head to foot,
Breathing and mute,
Passive and yet aware,
In the grasp of my steady stare –
VIII
Hold and have, there and then,
All her body and soul
That completes my whole,
All that women add to men,
[40] In the clutch of my steady ken –
IX
Having and holding, till
I imprint her fast
On the void at last
As the sun does whom he will
By the calotypist’s skill –
X
Then, – if my heart’s strength serve,
And through all and each
Of the veils I reach
To her soul and never swerve,
[50] Knitting an iron nerve –
XI
Command her soul to advance
And inform the shape
Which has made escape
And before my countenance
Answers me glance for glance –
I, still with a gesture fit
Of my hands that best
Do my soul’s behest,
Pointing the power from it,
[60] While myself do steadfast sit –
XIII
Steadfast and still the same
On my object bent,
While the hands give vent
To my ardour and my aim
And break into very flame –
XIV
Then I reach, I must believe,
Not her soul in vain,
For to me again
It reaches, and past retrieve
[70] Is wound in the toils I weave;
XV
And must follow as I require,
As befits a thrall,
Bringing flesh and all,
Essence and earth-attire,
To the source of the tractile fire:
XVI
Till the house called hers, not mine,
With a growing weight
Seems to suffocate
If she break not its leaden line
[80] And escape from its close confine.
XVII
Out of doors into the night!
On to the maze
Of the wild wood-ways,
Not turning to left nor right
From the pathway, blind with sight –
Making through rain and wind
O’er the broken shrubs,
’Twixt the stems and stubs,
With a still, composed, strong mind,
[90] Nor a care for the world behind –
XIX
Swifter and still more swift,
As the crowding peace
Doth to joy increase
In the wide blind eyes uplift
Through the darkness and the drift!
XX
While I – to the shape, I too
Feel my soul dilate
Nor a whit abate,
And relax not a gesture due,
[100] As I see my belief come true.
XXI
For, there! have I drawn or no
Life to that lip?
Do my fingers dip
In a flame which again they throw
On the cheek that breaks a-glow?
XXII
Ha! was the hair so first?
What, unfilleted,
Made alive, and spread
Through the void with a rich outburst,
[110] Chestnut gold-interspersed?
XXIII
Like the doors of a casket-shrine,
See, on either side,
Her two arms divide
Till the heart betwixt makes sign,
Take me, for I am thine!
‘Now – now’ – the door is heard!
Hark, the stairs! and near –
Nearer – and here –
‘Now!’ and at call the third
[120] She enters without a word.
XXV
On doth she march and on
To the fancied shape;
It is, past escape,
Herself, now: the dream is done
And the shadow and she are one.
XXVI
First I will pray. Do Thou
That ownest the soul,
Yet wilt grant control
To another, nor disallow
[130] For a time, restrain me now!
XXVII
I admonish me while I may,
Not to squander guilt,
Since require Thou wilt
At my hand its price one day!
What the price is, who can say?
A Serenade at the Villa
I
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.
II
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
[10] You heard music; that was I.
III
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning! – where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.
IV
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing’s best was done,
[20] To my lute I left the rest.
V
So wore night; the East was grey,
White the broad-faced hemlock-flowers:
There would be another day;
Ere its first of heavy hours
Found me, I had passed away.
What became of all the hopes,
Words and song and lute as well?
Say, this struck you – ‘When life gropes
Feebly for the path where fell
[30] Light last on the evening slopes,
VII
‘One friend in that path shall be,
To secure my step from wrong;
One to count night day for me,
Patient through the watches long,
Serving most with none to see.’
VIII
Never say – as something bodes –
‘So, the worst has yet a worse!
When life halts ’neath double loads,
Better the taskmaster’s curse
[40] Than such music on the roads!
IX
‘When no moon succeeds the sun,
Nor can pierce the midnight’s tent
Any star, the smallest one,
While some drops, where lightning rent,
Show the final storm begun –
X
‘When the fire-fly bides its spot,
When the garden-voices fail
In the darkness thick and hot, –
Shall another voice avail,
[50] That shape be where these are not?
XI
‘Has some plague a longer lease,
Proffering its help uncouth?
Can’t one even die in peace?
As one shuts one’s eyes on youth,
Is that face the last one sees?’
Oh how dark your villa was,
Windows fast and obdurate!
How the garden grudged me grass
Where I stood – the iron gate
[60] Ground its teeth to let me pass!
‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’
(See Edgar’s song in Lear)
I
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
II
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
[10] And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,
III
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.
IV
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
[20] What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring, –
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (‘since all is o’er,’ he saith,
[30] ‘And the blow fallen no grieving can amend’;)
VI
While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.
VII
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among ‘The Band’ – to wit,
[40] The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed
Their steps – that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now – should I be fit?
VIII
So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
IX
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
[50] Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.
I might go on; naught else remained to do.
So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers – as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
[60] You’d think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.
XI
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. ‘See
Or shut your eyes,’ said Nature peevishly,
‘It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
’Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place,
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.’
XII
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
[70] In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk
All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.
XIII
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!
XIV
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
[80] With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards – the soldier’s art:
[90] One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
XVI
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!
Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.
XVII
Giles then, the soul of honour – there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
[100] Good – but the scene shifts – faugh! what hangman-hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
XVIII
Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
XIX
[110] A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend’s glowing hoof – to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
[120] Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
XXI
Which, while I forded, – good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
– It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.
XXII
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the stragglers, what war did they wage,
[130] Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage –
XXIII
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
XXIV
And more than that – a furlong on – why, there!
[140] What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel – that harrow fit to reel
Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
[150] Changes and off he goes!) within a rood –
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.
XXVI
Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
XXVII
And just as far as ever from the end!
Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
[160] A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap – perchance the guide I sought.
XXVIII
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
’Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains – with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me, – solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.
XXIX
Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
[170] Of mischief happened to me, God knows when –
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts – you’re inside the den!
Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain … Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
[180] After a life spent training for the sight!
XXXI
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
XXXII
Not see? because of night perhaps? – why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
[190] The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, –
‘Now stab and end the creature – to the heft!’
XXXIII
Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers, –
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
XXXIV
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
[200] To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.’
The Statue and the Bust
There’s a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
And a statue watches it from the square,
And this story of both do our townsmen tell.
Ages ago, a lady there,
At the farthest window facing the East
Asked, ‘Who rides by with the royal air?’
The bridesmaids’ prattle around her ceased;
She leaned forth, one on either hand;
They saw how the blush of the bride increased –
[10] They felt by its beats her heart expand –
As one at each ear and both in a breath
Whispered, ‘The Great-Duke Ferdinand.’
That self-same instant, underneath,
The Duke rode past in his idle way,
Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.
Gay he rode, with a friend as gay,
Till he threw his head back – ‘Who is she?’
– ‘A bride the Riccardi brings home today.’
Hair in heaps lay heavily
[20] Over a pale brow spirit-pure –
Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree,
Crisped like a war-steed’s encolure –
And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes
Of the blackest black our eyes endure.
And lo, a blade for a knight’s emprise
Filled the fine empty sheath of a man, –
The Duke grew straightway brave and wise.
He looked at her, as a lover can;
She looked at him, as one who awakes:
[30] The past was a sleep, and her life began.
Now, love so ordered for both their sakes,
A feast was held that selfsame night
In the pile which the mighty shadow makes.
(For Via Larga is three-parts light,
But the palace overshadows one,
Because of a crime which may God requite!
To Florence and God the wrong was done,
Through the first republic’s murder there
By Cosimo and his cursèd son.)
[40] The Duke (with the statue’s face in the square)
Turned in the midst of his multitude
At the bright approach of the bridal pair.
Face to face the lovers stood
A single minute and no more,
While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued –
Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor –
For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,
As the courtly custom was of yore.
In a minute can lovers exchange a word?
[50] If a word did pass, which I do not think,
Only one out of the thousand heard.
That was the bridegroom. At day’s brink
He and his bride were alone at last
In a bedchamber by a taper’s blink.
Calmly he said that her lot was cast,
That the door she had passed was shut on her
Till the final catafalque repassed.
The world meanwhile, its noise and stir,
Through a certain window facing the East,
[60] She could watch like a convent’s chronicler.
Since passing the door might lead to a feast,
And a feast might lead to so much beside,
He, of many evils, chose the least.
‘Freely I choose too,’ said the bride –
‘Your window and its world suffice,’
Replied the tongue, while the heart replied –
‘If I spend the night with that devil twice,
May his window serve as my loop of hell
Whence a damned soul looks on paradise!
[70] ‘I fly to the Duke who loves me well,
Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow
Ere I count another ave-bell.
‘’Tis only the coat of a page to borrow,
And tie my hair in a horse-boy’s trim,
And I save my soul – but not tomorrow’ –
(She checked herself and her eye grew dim)
‘My father tarries to bless my state:
I must keep it one day more for him.
‘Is one day more so long to wait?
[80] Moreover the Duke rides past, I know;
We shall see each other, sure as fate.’
She turned on her side and slept.
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