Part 13

—Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise Nought but the coward in us! That way lies The wisdom making passage through our slough. Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow; Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait. Philosophy is Life’s one match for Fate. That photosphere of our high fountain One, Our spirit’s Lord and Reason’s fostering sun, Philosophy, shall light us in the shade, Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid. Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed, Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good! Advantage to the Many: that we name God’s voice; have there the surety in our aim. This thought unto my sister do I owe, And irony and satire off me throw. They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, Where numbers crave their sustenance in words. Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen, Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene. Who never yet of scattered lamps was born To speed a world, a marching world to warn, But sunward from the vivid Many springs, Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.

THE WARNING

WE have seen mighty men ballooning high, And in another moment bump the ground. He falls; and in his measurement is found To count some inches o’er the common fry. ’Twas not enough to send him climbing sky, Yet ’twas enough above his fellows crowned, Had he less panted. Let his faithful hound Bark at detractors. He may walk or lie. Concerns it most ourselves, who with our gas— This little Isle’s insatiable greed For Continents—filled to inflation burst. So do ripe nations into squalor pass, When, driven as herds by their old private thirst, They scorn the brain’s wild search for virtuous light.

OUTSIDE THE CROWD

TO sit on History in an easy chair, Still rivalling the wild hordes by whom ’twas writ! Sure, this beseems a race of laggard wit, Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air. If more than hands’ and armsful be our share, Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit. Have we not heard derision infinite When old men play the youth to chase the snare? Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes, Or stand aloof, the great Benevolent, The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex, Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent; Armed to support her sword;—lest we compose That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks.

TRAFALGAR DAY

HE leads: we hear our Seaman’s call In the roll of battles won; For he is Britain’s Admiral Till setting of her sun.

When Britain’s life was in her ships, He kept the sea as his own right; And saved us from more fell eclipse Than drops on day from blackest night. Again his battle spat the flame! Again his victory flag men saw! At sound of Nelson’s chieftain name, A deeper breath did Freedom draw.

Each trusty captain knew his part: They served as men, not marshalled kine: The pulses they of his great heart, With heads to work his main design. Their Nelson’s word, to beat the foe, And spare the fall’n, before them shone. Good was the hour of blow for blow, And clear their course while they fought on.

Behold the Envied vanward sweep!— A day in mourning weeds adored! Then Victory was wrought to weep; Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared.

A breezeless flag above a shroud All Britain was when wind and wave, To make her, passing human, proud, Brought his last gift from o’er the grave!

Uprose the soul of him a star On that brave day of Ocean days: It rolled the smoke from Trafalgár To darken Austerlitz ablaze. Are we the men of old, its light Will point us under every sky The path he took; and must we fight, Our Nelson be our battle-cry!

He leads: we hear our Seaman’s call In the roll of battles won; For he is Britain’s Admiral Till setting of her sun.

ODES IN CONTRIBUTION TO THE SONG OF FRENCH HISTORY

THE REVOLUTION

NOT yet had History’s Aetna smoked the skies, And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained, While overhead in ordered set and rise Her kingly crowns immutably defiled; Effulgent on funereal piled Across the vacant heavens, and distrained Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear; Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air.

Through marching scores of winters racked she lay, Beneath a hoar-frost’s brilliant crust, Whereon the jewelled flies that drained Her breasts disported in a glistering spray; She, the land’s fount of fruits, enclosed with dust; By good and evil angels fed, sustained In part to curse, in part to pray, Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw The throbs of her charged heart before the Just, So worn the harrowed surface had become: And still they deemed the dance above was Law, Amort all passion in a rebel dumb.

III

Then, on the unanticipated day, Earth heaved, and rose a veinous mound To roar of the underfloods; and off it sprang, Ravishing as red wine in woman’s form, A splendid Maenad, she of the delirious laugh, Her body twisted flames with the smoke-cap crowned; She of the Bacchic foot; the challenger to the fray, Bewitchment for the embrace; who sang, who sang Intoxication to her swarm, Revolved them, hair, voice, feet, in her carmagnole, As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff, Dealt the awaited blow on gilt decay (O ripeness of the time! O Retribution sure, If but our vital lamp illume us to endure!) And, like a glad releasing of her soul, Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue, Her bridegroom in descent to her; and they joined, In the face of men they joined: attest it true, The million witnesses, that she, For ages lying beside the mole, Was on the unanticipated miracle day Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal, Enfolded, ere the Immaculate knew What Lucifer of the Mint had coined His bride’s adulterate currency Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate; She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate: His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed. Read backward on the hoar-frost’s brilliant crust; Beneath it read. Athirst to kiss, athirst to slay, she stood, A radiance fringed with grim affright; For them that hungered, she was nourishing food, For those who sparkled, Night. Read in her heart, and how before the Just Her doings, her misdoings, plead.

Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke To husband a resurgent France: From whom, with her dethroning stroke, Dishonour passed; the dalliance, That is occasion’s yea or nay, In issues for the soul to pay, Discarded; and the cleft ’twixt deed and word, The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird, Wherein we see old Darkness peer, Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence; And hence the talons and the beak of prey; Hence all the lures to silken swine Thronging the troughs of indolence; With every sleek convolvement serpentine; The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer, And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay. He clasped in this revived, uprisen France, A valorous dame, of countenance The lightning’s upon cloud: unlit as yet On brows and lips the lurid shine Of seas in the night-wind’s whirl; unstirred Her pouch of the centuries’ injuries compressed; The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard: Earth’s animate full flower she looked, intense For worship, wholly given him, fair Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet, Earth’s crystal spring to sky: Earth’s warrior Best To win Heaven’s Pure up that midway We vision for new ground, where sense And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare, Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray In scorn of the seductive insincere, But martially nude for hot Bellona’s play, And amorous of the loftiest in her view.

She sprang from dust to drink of earth’s cool dew, The breath of swaying grasses share, Mankind embrace, their weaklings rear, At wrestle with the tyrannic strong; Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew, As immortals may be in the mortal sphere. Read through her launching heart, who had lain long With Earth and heard till it became her own Our good Great Mother’s eve and matin song: The humming burden of Earth’s toil to feed Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth, Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both, Of either aided on their hard ascent. Now when she looked, with love’s benign delight After great ecstasy, along the plains, What foulest impregnation of her sight Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent, As were they winter sedges, broken hoops, Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts, With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains? Recked she that some perverting devil had limned Earth’s proudest to spout scorn of the Maker’s hand, Who could a day behold these deathly hosts, And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed, A ribanded and gemmed elected few, Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:— Like melody in flesh, its pleasant game Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame: Beautiful statures; hideous, By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains, And flexile where is manhood straight; Mortuaries where warm should beat The brotherhood that keeps blood sweet: Who dared in cantique impious Proclaim the Just, to whom was due Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state, For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains, On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew. Surely a devil’s land when that meant death for each! Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus, With all the body’s life to plump the leech, Is Nature’s way, she knew. The abominable scene Spat at the skies; and through her veins, To cloud celestially sown, Ran venom of what nourishment Her dark sustainer subterrene Supplied her, stretched supine on the rack, Alive in the shrewd nerves, the seething brains, Under derisive revels, prone As one clamped fast, with the interminable senseless blent.

Now was her face white waves in the tempest’s sharp flame-blink; Her skies shot black. Now was it visioned infamy to drink Of earth’s cool dew, and through the vines Frolic in pearly laughter with her young, Watching the healthful, natural, happy signs Where hands of lads and maids like tendrils clung, After their sly shy ventures from the leaf, And promised bunches. Now it seemed The world was one malarious mire, Crying for purification: chief This land of France. It seemed A duteous desire To drink of life’s hot flood, and the crimson streamed.

VII

She drank what makes man demon at the draught. Her skies lowered black, Her lover flew, There swept a shudder over men. Her heavenly lover fled her, and she laughed, For laughter was her spirit’s weapon then. The Infernal rose uncalled, he with his crew.

VIII

As mighty thews burst manacles, she went mad: Her heart a flaring torch usurped her wits. Such enemies of her next-drawn breath she had! To tread her down in her live grave beneath Their dancing floor sunned blind by the Royal wreath, They ringed her steps with crafty prison pits. Without they girdled her, made nest within. There ramped the lion, here entrailed the snake. They forced the cup to her lips when she drank blood; Believing it, in the mother’s mind at strain, In the mother’s fears, and in young Liberty’s wail Alarmed, for her encompassed children’s sake, The sole sure way to save her priceless bud. Wherewith, when power had gifted her to prevail, Vengeance appeared as logically akin. Insanely rational they; she rationally insane; And in compute of sin, was hers the appealing sin.

Amid the plash of scarlet mud Stained at the mouth, drunk with our common air, Not lack of love was her defect; The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France Breathing from exultation to despair At every wild-winged hope struck by mischance Soaring at each faint gleam o’er her abyss. Heard still, to be heard while France shall stand erect, The frontier march she piped her sons, for where Her crouching outer enemy camped, Attendant on the deadlier inner’s hiss. She piped her sons the frontier march, the wine Of martial music, History’s cherished tune; And they, the saintliest labourers that aye Dropped sweat on soil for bread, took arms and tramped; High-breasted to match men or elements, Or Fortune, harsh schoolmistress with the undrilled: War’s ragged pupils; many a wavering line, Torn from the dear fat soil of champaigns hopefully tilled, Torn from the motherly bowl, the homely spoon, To jest at famine, ply The novel scythe, and stand to it on the field; Lie in the furrows, rain-clouds for their tents; Fronting the red artillery straighten spine; Buckle the shiver at sight of comrades strewn; Over an empty platter affect the merrily filled; Die, if the multiple hazards around said die; Downward measure a foeman mightily sized; Laugh at the legs that would run for a life despised; Lyrical on into death’s red roaring jaw-gape, steeled Gaily to take of the foe his lesson, and give reply. Cheerful apprentices, they shall be masters soon!

Lo, where hurricane flocks of the North-wind rattle their thunder Loud through a night, and at dawn comes change to the great South-west, Hounds are the hounded in clouds, waves, forests, inverted the race: Lo, in the day’s young beams the colossal invading pursuers Burst upon rocks and were foam; Ridged up a torrent crest; Crumbled to ruin, still gazing a glacial wonder; Turned shamed feet toe to heel on their track at a panic pace. Yesterday’s clarion cock scudded hen of the invalid comb; They, the triumphant tonant towering upper, were under; They, violators of home, dared hope an inviolate home; They that had stood for the stroke were the vigorous hewers; Quick as the trick of the wrist with the rapier, they the pursuers. Heavens and men amazed heard the arrogant crying for grace; Saw the once hearth-reek rabble the scourge of an army dispieced; Saw such a shift of the hunt as when Titan Olympus clomb. Fly! was the sportsman’s word; and the note of the quarry rang, Chase!