Part 26

FROM VICTOR HUGO

CHILD, were I king, I’d yield my royal rule, My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due, My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool, My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool, For a glance from you!

Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs, Angels, the demons abject under me, Vast chaos with its teeming womby lairs, Time, space, all would I give—aye, upper spheres, For a kiss from thee!

CARDINAL BEMBO’S EPITAPH ON RAPHAEL

HERE’S one in whom Nature feared—faint at such vying— Eclipse while he lived, and decease at his dying.

RETROSPECT

“I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES”

I HAVE lived with shades so long, And talked to them so oft, Since forth from cot and croft I went mankind among, That sometimes they In their dim style Will pause awhile To hear my say;

And take me by the hand, And lead me through their rooms In the To-be, where Dooms Half-wove and shapeless stand: And show from there The dwindled dust And rot and rust Of things that were.

III

“Now turn,” spake they to me One day: “Look whence we came, And signify his name Who gazes thence at thee.”— —“Nor name nor race Know I, or can,” I said, “Of man So commonplace.

“He moves me not at all; I note no ray or jot Of rareness in his lot, Or star exceptional. Into the dim Dead throngs around He’ll sink, nor sound Be left of him.”

“Yet,” said they, “his frail speech, Hath accents pitched like thine— Thy mould and his define A likeness each to each— But go! Deep pain Alas, would be His name to thee, And told in vain!”

Feb. 2, 1899.

MEMORY AND I

“O MEMORY, where is now my youth, Who used to say that life was truth?”

“I saw him in a crumbled cot Beneath a tottering tree; That he as phantom lingers there Is only known to me.”

“O Memory, where is now my joy, Who lived with me in sweet employ?”

“I saw him in gaunt gardens lone, Where laughter used to be; That he as phantom wanders there Is known to none but me.”

“O Memory, where is now my hope, Who charged with deeds my skill and scope?”

“I saw her in a tomb of tomes, Where dreams are wont to be; That she as spectre haunteth there Is only known to me.”

“O Memory, where is now my faith, One time a champion, now a wraith?”

“I saw her in a ravaged aisle, Bowed down on bended knee; That her poor ghost outflickers there Is known to none but me.”

“O Memory, where is now my love, That rayed me as a god above?”

“I saw him by an ageing shape Where beauty used to be; That his fond phantom lingers there Is only known to me.”

ἈΓΝΩΣΤΩι ΘΕΩι.

LONG have I framed weak phantasies of Thee, O Willer masked and dumb! Who makest Life become,— As though by labouring all-unknowingly, Like one whom reveries numb.

How much of consciousness informs Thy will Thy biddings, as if blind, Of death-inducing kind, Nought shows to us ephemeral ones who fill But moments in Thy mind.