Part 9

THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS

TAKE thy lute and sing By the ruined castle walls, Where the torrent-foam falls, And long weeds wave: Take thy lute and sing, O’er the grey ancestral grave! Daughter of a King, Tune thy string.

Sing of happy hours, In the roar of rushing time; Till all the echoes chime To the days gone by; Sing of passing hours To the ever-present sky;— Weep—and let the showers Wake thy flowers.

Sing of glories gone:— No more the blazoned fold From the banner is unrolled; The gold sun is set. Sing his glory gone, For thy voice may charm him yet; Daughter of the dawn, He is gone!

Pour forth all thy grief! Passionately sweep the chords, Wed them quivering to thy words; Wild words of wail! Shed thy withered grief— But hold not Autumn to thy bale; The eddy of the leaf Must be brief!

Sing up to the night: Hard it is for streaming tears To read the calmness of the spheres; Coldly they shine; Sing up to their light; They have views thou may’st divine— Gain prophetic sight From their light!

On the windy hills Lo, the little harebell leans On the spire-grass that it queens, With bonnet blue; Trusting love instils Love and subject reverence true; Learn what love instils On the hills!

By the bare wayside Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks, Softly touch’d with pale green streaks, Soon, soon, to die; On the clothed hedgeside Bands of rosy beauties vie, In their prophesied Summer pride.

From the snowdrop learn; Not in her pale life lives she, But in her blushing prophecy. Thus be thy hopes, Living but to yearn Upwards to the hidden scopes;— Even within the urn Let them burn!

Heroes of thy race— Warriors with golden crowns, Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns Stare thee to stone; Matrons of thy race Pass before thee making moan; Full of solemn grace Is their pace.

Piteous their despair! Piteous their looks forlorn! Terrible their ghostly scorn! Still hold thou fast;— Heed not their despair!— Thou art thy future, not thy past; Let them glance and glare Thro’ the air.

Thou the ruin’s bud, Be not that moist rich-smelling weed With its arras-sembled brede, And ruin-haunting stalk; Thou the ruin’s bud, Be still the rose that lights the walk, Mix thy fragrant blood With the flood!

THE RAPE OF AURORA

NEVER, O never, Since dewy sweet Flora Was ravished by Zephyr, Was such a thing heard In the valleys so hollow! Till rosy Aurora, Uprising as ever, Bright Phosphor to follow, Pale Phoebe to sever, Was caught like a bird To the breast of Apollo!

Wildly she flutters, And flushes all over With passionate mutters Of shame to the hush Of his amorous whispers: But O such a lover Must win when he utters, Thro’ rosy red lispers, The pains that discover The wishes that gush From the torches of Hesperus.

One finger just touching The Orient chamber, Unflooded the gushing Of light that illumed All her lustrous unveiling. On clouds of glow amber, Her limbs richly blushing, She lay sweetly wailing, In odours that gloomed On the God as he bloomed O’er her loveliness paling.

Great Pan in his covert Beheld the rare glistening, The cry of the love-hurt, The sigh and the kiss Of the latest close mingling; But love, thought he, listening, Will not do a dove hurt, I know,—and a tingling, Latent with bliss, Prickt thro’ him, I wis, For the Nymph he was singling.

SOUTH-WEST WIND IN THE WOODLAND

THE silence of preluded song— Æolian silence charms the woods; Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings Are waiting for the master’s touch To sweep them into storms of joy, Stands mute and whispers not; the birds Brood dumb in their foreboding nests, Save here and there a chirp or tweet, That utters fear or anxious love, Or when the ouzel sends a swift Half warble, shrinking back again His golden bill, or when aloud The storm-cock warns the dusking hills And villages and valleys round: For lo, beneath those ragged clouds That skirt the opening west, a stream Of yellow light and windy flame Spreads lengthening southward, and the sky Begins to gloom, and o’er the ground A moan of coming blasts creeps low And rustles in the crisping grass; Till suddenly with mighty arms Outspread, that reach the horizon round, The great South-West drives o’er the earth, And loosens all his roaring robes Behind him, over heath and moor. He comes upon the neck of night, Like one that leaps a fiery steed Whose keen black haunches quivering shine With eagerness and haste, that needs No spur to make the dark leagues fly! Whose eyes are meteors of speed; Whose mane is as a flashing foam; Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks;— He comes, and while his growing gusts, Wild couriers of his reckless course, Are whistling from the daggered gorse, And hurrying over fern and broom, Midway, far off, he feigns to halt And gather in his streaming train.

Now, whirring like an eagle’s wing Preparing for a wide blue flight; Now, flapping like a sail that tacks And chides the wet bewildered mast; Now, screaming like an anguish’d thing Chased close by some down-breathing beak; Now, wailing like a breaking heart, That will not wholly break, but hopes With hope that knows itself in vain; Now, threatening like a storm-charged cloud; Now, cooing like a woodland dove; Now, up again in roar and wrath High soaring and wide sweeping; now, With sudden fury dashing down Full-force on the awaiting woods.

Long waited there, for aspens frail That tinkle with a silver bell, To warn the Zephyr of their love, When danger is at hand, and wake The neighbouring boughs, surrendering all Their prophet harmony of leaves, Had caught his earliest windward thought, And told it trembling; naked birk Down showering her dishevelled hair, And like a beauty yielding up Her fate to all the elements, Had swayed in answer; hazels close, Thick brambles and dark brushwood tufts, And briared brakes that line the dells With shaggy beetling brows, had sung Shrill music, while the tattered flaws Tore over them, and now the whole Tumultuous concords, seized at once With savage inspiration,—pine, And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn, And ash, and oak, and oakling, rave And shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss, And stretch their arms, and split, and crack, And bend their stems, and bow their heads, And grind, and groan, and lion-like Roar to the echo-peopled hills And ravenous wilds, and crake-like cry With harsh delight, and cave-like call With hollow mouth, and harp-like thrill With mighty melodies, sublime, From clumps of column’d pines that wave A lofty anthem to the sky, Fit music for a prophet’s soul— And like an ocean gathering power, And murmuring deep, while down below Reigns calm profound;—not trembling now The aspens, but like freshening waves That fall upon a shingly beach;— And round the oak a solemn roll Of organ harmony ascends, And in the upper foliage sounds A symphony of distant seas.

The voice of nature is abroad This night; she fills the air with balm; Her mystery is o’er the land; And who that hears her now and yields His being to her yearning tones, And seats his soul upon her wings, And broadens o’er the wind-swept world With her, will gather in the flight More knowledge of her secret, more Delight in her beneficence, Than hours of musing, or the lore That lives with men could ever give! Nor will it pass away when morn Shall look upon the lulling leaves, And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet, Dreams o’er the paths of peaceful shade;— For every elemental power Is kindred to our hearts, and once Acknowledged, wedded, once embraced, Once taken to the unfettered sense, Once claspt into the naked life, The union is eternal.

WILL O’ THE WISP

FOLLOW me, follow me, Over brake and under tree, Thro’ the bosky tanglery, Brushwood and bramble! Follow me, follow me, Laugh and leap and scramble! Follow, follow, Hill and hollow, Fosse and burrow, Fen and furrow, Down into the bulrush beds, ’Midst the reeds and osier heads, In the rushy soaking damps, Where the vapours pitch their camps, Follow me, follow me, For a midnight ramble! O! what a mighty fog, What a merry night O ho! Follow, follow, nigher, nigher— Over bank, and pond, and briar, Down into the croaking ditches, Rotten log, Spotted frog, Beetle bright With crawling light, What a joy O ho! Deep into the purple bog— What a joy O ho! Where like hosts of puckered witches All the shivering agues sit Warming hands and chafing feet, By the blue marsh-hovering oils: O the fools for all their moans! Not a forest mad with fire Could still their teeth, or warm their bones, Or loose them from their chilly coils. What a clatter, How they chatter! Shrink and huddle, All a muddle! What a joy O ho! Down we go, down we go, What a joy O ho! Soon shall I be down below, Plunging with a grey fat friar, Hither, thither, to and fro, Breathing mists and whisking lamps, Plashing in the shiny swamps; While my cousin Lantern Jack, With cook ears and cunning eyes, Turns him round upon his back, Daubs him oozy green and black, Sits upon his rolling size, Where he lies, where he lies, Groaning full of sack— Staring with his great round eyes! What a joy O ho! Sits upon him in the swamps Breathing mists and whisking lamps! What a joy O ho! Such a lad is Lantern Jack, When he rides the black nightmare Through the fens, and puts a glare In the friar’s track. Such a frolic lad, good lack! To turn a friar on his back, Trip him, clip him, whip him, nip him. Lay him sprawling, smack! Such a lad is Lantern Jack! Such a tricksy lad, good lack! What a joy O ho! Follow me, follow me, Where he sits, and you shall see!

SONG

FAIR and false! No dawn will greet Thy waking beauty as of old; The little flower beneath thy feet Is alien to thy smile so cold; The merry bird flown up to meet Young morning from his nest i’ the wheat Scatters his joy to wood and wold, But scorns the arrogance of gold.

False and fair! I scarce know why, But standing in the lonely air, And underneath the blessed sky, I plead for thee in my despair;— For thee cut off, both heart and eye From living truth; thy spring quite dry; For thee, that heaven my thought may share, Forget—how false! and think—how fair!

SONG