Part 16

FROM HUGO’S ‘FEUILLES D’AUTOMNE’

HAVE you sometimes, calm, silent, let your tread aspirant rise Up to the mountain’s summit, in the presence of the skies? Was’t on the borders of the South? or on the Bretagne coast? And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed? And there, leaned o’er the wave and o’er the immeasurableness, Calm, silent, have you harkened what it says? Lo, what it says! One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicensèd to muse, Had drooped its wing above the beachèd margent of the ooze, And, plunging from the mountain height into the immensity, Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea. I harkened, comprehended,—never, as from those abysses, No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear, such voice as this is!

A sound it was, at outset, vast, immeasurable, confused, Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused, Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies When the hoarse melee in its arms the closing squadrons grips, And pants, in furious breathings, from the clarions’ brazen lips. Unutterable the harmony, unsearchable its deep, Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep, And through the vasty heavens, which by its surges are washed young, Its infinite volutions roll, enlarging as they throng, Even to the profound arcane, whose ultimate chasms sombre Its shattered flood englut with time, with space and form and number. Like to another atmosphere with thin o’erflowing robe, The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe: And the world, swathed about with this investuring symphony, Even as it trepidates in the air, so trepidates in the harmony.

And pensive, I attended the ethereal lutany, Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea.

Soon I distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous profound.

The one was of the waters; a be-radiant hymnal speech! That was the voice o’ the surges, as they parleyed each with each. The other, which arose from our abode terranean, Was sorrowful; and that, alack! the murmur was of man; And in this mighty quire, whose chantings day and night resound, Every wave had its utterance, and every man his sound.

Now, the magnificent Ocean, as I said, unbannering A voice of joy, a voice of peace, did never stint to sing, Most like in Sion’s temples to a psaltery psaltering, And to creation’s beauty reared the great lauds of his song. Upon the gale, upon the squall, his clamour borne along Unpausingly arose to God in more triumphal swell; And every one among his waves, that God alone can quell, When the other of its song made end, into the singing pressed. Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest, At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed; And I, t’ward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and broad, Under his golden mane, methought, that I saw pass the hand of God.

Meanwhile, and side by side with that august fan-faronnade, The other voice, like the sudden scream of a destrier affrayed, Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat, Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote, Grinded; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the lewd taunt, Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font, And clamour, and malediction, and dread blasphemy, among That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue, Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick t’ward night, The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening flight on flight. What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping? Alas! the sound was earth’s and man’s, for earth and man were weeping.

Brothers! of these two voices, strange most unimaginably, Unceasingly regenerated, dying unceasingly, Harkenèd of the Eternal throughout His Eternity, The one voice uttereth: NATURE! and the other voice: HUMANITY!

Then I alit in reverie; for my ministering sprite Alack! had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler flight, Nor ever had my shadow endured so large a day to burn: And long I rested dreaming, contemplating turn by turn Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the water’s roll, And now that other untemptable abyss which opened in my soul. And I made question of me, to what issues are we here, Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this ravelled gear; What doth the soul; to be or live if better worth it is; And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book of His, In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of humankind?

(The metre of the second of these two translations is an experiment. The splendid fourteen-syllable metre of Chapman I have treated after the manner of Drydenian rhyming heroics; with the occasional triplet, and even the occasional Alexandrine, represented by a line of eight accents—a treatment which can well extend, I believe, the majestic resources of the metre.)

ULTIMA

LOVE’S ALMSMAN PLAINETH HIS FARE

O YOU, love’s mendicancy who never tried, How little of your almsman me you know! Your little languid hand in mine you slide, Like to a child says—‘Kiss me and let me go!’ And night for this is fretted with my tears, While I:—‘How soon this heavenly neck doth tire Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!’ Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire! Who bound thee to a body nothing worth, And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul, That the most strainedest charity of earth Distasteth soon to render back the whole Of thine inflamèd sweets and gentilesse! Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thou Gnaw’st on thyself for famine’s bitterness, And leap’st against thy chain. Sweet Lady, how Little a linking of the hand to you! Though I should touch yours careless for a year, Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet. But little food love’s beggars needs must serve, That eye your plenteous graces from the street. A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night, A noon, although the untasted feast you lay, To mock me, of your beauty. That you might Be lover for one space, and make essay What ’tis to pass unsuppered to your couch, Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught The famine which these craving lines avouch! Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught, How know’st thou poor men’s hunger?—Misery! When I go doleless and unfed by thee!

A HOLOCAUST

‘No man ever attained supreme knowledge, unless his heart had been torn up by the roots.’

WHEN I presage the time shall come—yea, now Perchance is come, when you shall fail from me, Because the mighty spirit, to whom you vow Faith of kin genius unrebukably, Scourges my sloth, and from your side dismissed Henceforth this sad and most, most lonely soul Must, marching fatally through pain and mist, The God-bid levy of its powers enrol; When I presage that none shall hear the voice From the great Mount that clangs my ordained advance, That sullen envy bade the churlish choice Yourself shall say, and turn your altered glance; O God! Thou knowest if this heart of flesh Quivers like broken entrails, when the wheel Rolleth some dog in middle street, or fresh Fruit when ye tear it bleeding from the peel; If my soul cries the uncomprehended cry When the red agony oozed on Olivet! Yet not for this, a caitiff, falter I, Beloved whom I must lose, nor thence regret The doubly-vouched and twin allegiance owed To you in Heaven, and Heaven in you, Lady. How could you hope, loose dealer with my God, That I should keep for you my fealty? For still ’tis thus:—because I am so true, My Fair, to Heaven, I am so true to you!

BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH

PHŒBUS, who taught me art divine, Here tried his hand where I did mine; And his white fingers in this face Set my Fair’s sigh-suggesting grace. O sweetness past profaning guess, Grievous with its own exquisiteness! Vesper-like face, its shadows bright With meanings of sequestered light; Drooped with shamefast sanctities She purely fears eyes cannot miss, Yet would blush to know she is. Ah, who can view with passionless glance This tear-compelling countenance! He has cozened it to tell Almost its own miracle. Yet I, all-viewing though he be, Methinks saw further here than he; And, Master gay! I swear I drew Something the better of the two!

AFTER HER GOING

THE after-even! Ah, did I walk, Indeed, in her or even? For nothing of me or around But absent She did leaven, Felt in my body as its soul, And in my soul its heaven.

‘Ah me! my very flesh turns soul, Essenced,’ I sighed, ‘with bliss!’ And the blackbird held his lutany, All fragrant-through with bliss; And all things stilled were as a maid Sweet with a single kiss.

For grief of perfect fairness, eve Could nothing do but smile; The time was far too perfect fair, Being but for a while; And ah, in me, too happy grief Blinded herself with smile!

The sunset at its radiant heart Had somewhat unconfest: The bird was loath of speech, its song Half-refluent on its breast, And made melodious toyings with A note or two at best.

And she was gone, my sole, my Fair, Ah, sole my Fair, was gone! Methinks, throughout the world ’twere right I had been sad alone; And yet, such sweet in all things’ heart, And such sweet in my own!

MY LADY THE TYRANNESS

ME since your fair ambition bows Feodary to those gracious brows, Is nothing mine will not confess Your sovran sweet rapaciousness? Though use to the white yoke inures, Half-petulant is Your loving rebel for somewhat his, Not yours, my love, not yours!

Behold my skies, which make with me One passionate tranquillity! Wrap thyself in them as a robe, She shares them not; their azures probe, No countering wings thy flight endures. Nay, they do stole Me like an aura of her soul. I yield them, love, for yours!