Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (16 page)

Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,

Singing together.

Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes

Each in its tether

Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,

Cared-for till cock-crow:

Look out if yonder be not day again

Rimming the rock-row!

[10] That’s the appropriate country; there, man’s thought,

Rarer, intenser,

Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,

Chafes in the censer.

Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;

Seek we sepulture

On a tall mountain, citied to the top,

Crowded with culture!

All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;

Clouds overcome it;

[20] No! yonder sparkle is the citadel’s

Circling its summit.

Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:

Wait ye the warning?

Our low life was the level’s and the night’s;

He’s for the morning.

Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,

’Ware the beholders!

This is our master, famous calm and dead,

Borne on our shoulders.

Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,

[30]
Safe from the weather!

He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,

Singing together,

He was a man born with thy face and throat,

Lyric Apollo!

Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note

Winter would follow?

Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!

Cramped and diminished,

[40] Moaned he, ‘New measures, other feet anon!

My dance is finished?’

No, that’s the world’s way: (keep the mountain-side,

Make for the city!)

He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride

Over men’s pity;

Left play for work, and grappled with the world

Bent on escaping:

‘What’s in the scroll,’ quoth he, ‘thou keepest furled?

Show me their shaping,

[50] Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, –

Give!’ – So, he gowned him,

Straight got by heart that book to its last page:

Learned, we found him.

Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,

Accents uncertain:

‘Time to taste life,’ another would have said,

‘Up with the curtain!’

This man said rather, ‘Actual life comes next?

Patience a moment!

[60] Grant I have mastered learning’s crabbed text,

Still there’s the comment.

Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,

Painful or easy!

Even to the crumbs I’d fain eat up the feast,

Ay, nor feel queasy.’

Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,

When he had learned it,

When he had gathered all books had to give!

Sooner, he spurned it.

[70] Image the whole, then execute the parts –

Fancy the fabric

Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,

Ere mortar dab brick!

(Here’s the town-gate reached: there’s the market-place

Gaping before us.)

Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace

(Hearten our chorus!)

That before living he’d learn how to live –

No end to learning:

Earn the means first – God surely will contrive

[80] Use for our earning.

Others mistrust and say, ‘But time escapes:

Live now or never!’

He said, ‘What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!

Man has Forever.’

Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head:

Calculus
racked him:

Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:

Tussis
attacked him.

[90] ‘Now, master, take a little rest!’ – not he!

(Caution redoubled,

Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)

Not a whit troubled

Back to his studies, fresher than at first,

Fierce as a dragon

He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)

Sucked at the flagon.

Oh, if we draw a circle premature,

Heedless of far gain,

[100] Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure

Bad is our bargain!

Was it not great? did not he throw on God,

(He loves the burthen) –

God’s task to make the heavenly period

Perfect the earthen?

Did not he magnify the mind, show clear

Just what it all meant?

He would not discount life, as fools do here,

Paid by instalment.

[110] He ventured neck or nothing – heaven’s success

Found, or earth’s failure:

‘Wilt thou trust death or not?’ He answered ‘Yes:

Hence with life’s pale lure!’

That low man seeks a little thing to do,

Sees it and does it:

This high man, with a great thing to pursue,

Dies ere he knows it.

That low man goes on adding one to one,

His hundred’s soon hit:

[120] This high man, aiming at a million,

Misses an unit.

That, has the world here – should he need the next,

Let the world mind him!

This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed

Seeking shall find him.

So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,

Ground he at grammar;

Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife:

While he could stammer

[130] He settled
Hoti’s
business – let it be! –

Properly based
Oun
–

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic
De
,

Dead from the waist down.

Well, here’s the platform, here’s the proper place:

Hail to your purlieus,

All ye highfliers of the feathered race,

Swallows and curlews!

Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below

Live, for they can, there:

[140] This man decided not to Live but Know –

Bury this man there?

Here – here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,

Lightnings are loosened,

Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,

Peace let the dew send!

Lofty designs must close in like effects:

Loftily lying,

Leave him – still loftier than the world suspects,

Living and dying.

James Lee’s Wife

I James Lee’s Wife Speaks at the Window

I

Ah, Love, but a day

And the world has changed!

The sun’s away,

And the bird estranged;

The wind has dropped,

And the sky’s deranged:

Summer has stopped.

II

Look in my eyes!

[10] Wilt thou change too?

Should I fear surprise?

Shall I find aught new

In the old and dear,

In the good and true,

With the changing year?

III

Thou art a man,

But I am thy love.

For the lake, its swan;

For the dell, its dove;

And for thee – (oh, haste!)

[20] Me, to bend above,

Me, to hold embraced.

II By the Fireside

I

Is all our fire of shipwreck wood,

Oak and pine?

Oh, for the ills half-understood,

The dim dead woe

Long ago

Befallen this bitter coast of France!

Well, poor sailors took their chance;

[20] I take mine.

II

[30] A ruddy shaft our fire must shoot

O’er the sea:

Do sailors eye the casement – mute,

Drenched and stark,

From their bark –

And envy, gnash their teeth for hate

O’ the warm safe house and happy freight

– Thee and me?

III

God help you, sailors, at your need!

Spare the curse!

[40] For some ships, safe in port indeed,

Rot and rust,

Run to dust,

All through worms i’ the wood, which crept,

Gnawed our hearts out while we slept:

That is worse.

IV

Who lived here before us two?

Old-world pairs.

Did a woman ever – would I knew! –

Watch the man

[50] With whom began

Love’s voyage full-sail, – (now, gnash your teeth!)

When planks start, open hell beneath

Unawares?

III In the Doorway

I

The swallow has set her six young on the rail,

And looks sea-ward:

The water’s in stripes like a snake, olive-pale

To the leeward, –

On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind.

‘Good fortune departs, and disaster’s behind,’ –

[60] Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!

II

Our fig-tree, that leaned for the saltness, has furled

Her five fingers,

Each leaf like a hand opened wide to the world

Where there lingers

No glint of the gold, Summer sent for her sake:

How the vines writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake!

My heart shrivels up and my spirit shrinks curled.

III

Yet here are we two; we have love, house enough,

With the field there,

[70] This house of four rooms, that field red and rough,

Though it yield there,

For the rabbit that robs, scarce a blade or a bent;

If a magpie alight now, it seems an event;

And they both will be gone at November’s rebuff.

IV

But why must cold spread? but wherefore bring change

To the spirit,

God meant should mate his with an infinite range,

And inherit

His power to put life in the darkness and cold?

[80] Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold!

Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!

IV Along the Beach

I

I will be quiet and talk with you,

And reason why you are wrong.

You wanted my love – is that much true?

And so I did love, so I do:

What has come of it all along?

II

I took you – how could I otherwise?

For a world to me, and more;

For all, love greatens and glorifies

[90] Till God’s a-glow, to the loving eyes,

In what was mere earth before.

III

Yes, earth – yes, mere ignoble earth!

Now do I mis-state, mistake?

Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth?

Expect all harvest, dread no dearth,

Seal my sense up for your sake?

IV

Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! not so, indeed!

You were just weak earth, I knew:

With much in you waste, with many a weed,

[100] And plenty of passions run to seed,

But a little good grain too.

V

And such as you were, I took you for mine:

Did not you find me yours,

To watch the olive and wait the vine,

And wonder when rivers of oil and wine

Would flow, as the Book assures?

VI

Well, and if none of these good things came,

What did the failure prove?

The man was my whole world, all the same,

[110] With his flowers to praise or his weeds to blame,

And, either or both, to love.

VII

Yet this turns now to a fault – there! there!

That I do love, watch too long,

And wait too well, and weary and wear;

And ’tis all an old story, and my despair

Fit subject for some new song:

VIII

‘How the light, light love, he has wings to fly

At suspicion of a bond:

My wisdom has bidden your pleasure good-bye,

[120] Which will turn up next in a laughing eye,

And why should you look beyond?’

V On the Cliff