Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (6 page)

And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx

[110] That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,

To comfort me on my entablature

Whereon I am to lie till I must ask

‘Do I live, am I dead?’ There, leave me, there!

For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude

To death – ye wish it – God, ye wish it! Stone –

Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat

As if the corpse they keep were oozing through –

And no more
lapis
to delight the world!

Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,

[120] But in a row: and, going, turn your backs

– Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,

And leave me in my church, the church for peace,

That I may watch at leisure if he leers –

Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,

As still he envied me, so fair she was!

Love Among the Ruins

I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,

Miles and miles

On the solitary pastures where our sheep

Half-asleep

Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop

As they crop –

Was the site once of a city great and gay,

(So they say)

Of our country’s very capital, its prince

[10] Ages since

Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far

Peace or war.

II

Now, – the country does not even boast a tree,

As you see,

To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills

From the hills

Intersect and give a name to, (else they run

Into one)

Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires

[20] Up like fires

O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall

Bounding all,

Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,

Twelve abreast.

III

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass

Never was!

Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’erspreads

And embeds

Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,

[30] Stock or stone –

Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe

Long ago;

Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame

Struck them tame;

And that glory and that shame alike, the gold

Bought and sold.

IV

Now, – the single little turret that remains

On the plains,

By the caper over-rooted, by the gourd

[40] Overscored,

While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks

Through the chinks –

Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time

Sprang sublime,

And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced

As they raced,

And the monarch and his minions and his dames

Viewed the games.

V

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve

[50] Smiles to leave

To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece

In such peace,

And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey

Melt away –

That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair

Waits me there

In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul

For the goal,

When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb

[60] Till I come.

VI

But he looked upon the city, every side,

Far and wide,

All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades’

Colonnades,

All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, – and then,

All the men!

When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,

Either hand

On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace

[70] Of my face,

Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech

Each on each.

VII

In one year they sent a million fighters forth

South and North,

And they built their gods a brazen pillar high

As the sky,

Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force –

Gold, of course.

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!

[80] Earth’s returns

For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!

Shut them in,

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

Love is best.

A Lovers’ Quarrel

I

Oh, what a dawn of day!

How the March sun feels like May!

All is blue again

After last night’s rain,

And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.

Only, my Love’s away!

I’d as lief that the blue were grey.

II

Runnels, which rillets swell,

Must be dancing down the dell,

[10] With a foaming head

On the beryl bed

Paven smooth as a hermit’s cell;

Each with a tale to tell,

Could my Love but attend as well.

III

Dearest, three months ago!

When we lived blocked-up with snow, –

When the wind would edge

In and in his wedge,

In, as far as the point could go –

[20] Not to our ingle, though,

Where we loved each the other so!

IV

Laughs with so little cause!

We devised games out of straws.

We would try and trace

One another’s face

In the ash, as an artist draws;

Free on each other’s flaws,

How we chattered like two church daws!

V

What’s in the ‘Times’? – a scold

[30] At the Emperor deep and cold;

He has taken a bride

To his gruesome side,

That’s as fair as himself is bold:

There they sit ermine-stoled,

And she powders her hair with gold.

VI

Fancy the Pampas’ sheen!

Miles and miles of gold and green

Where the sunflowers blow

In a solid glow,

[40] And – to break now and then the screen –

Black neck and eyeballs keen,

Up a wild horse leaps between!

VII

Try, will our table turn?

Lay your hands there light, and yearn

Till the yearning slips

Through the finger-tips

In a fire which a few discern,

And a very few feel burn,

And the rest, they may live and learn!

VIII

[50] Then we would up and pace,

For a change, about the place,

Each with arm o’er neck:

’Tis our quarter-deck,

We are seamen in woeful case.

Help in the ocean-space!

Or, if no help, we’ll embrace.

IX

See, how she looks now, dressed

In a sledging-cap and vest!

’Tis a huge fur cloak –

[60] Like a reindeer’s yoke

Falls the lappet along the breast:

Sleeves for her arms to rest,

Or to hang, as my Love likes best.

X

Teach me to flirt a fan

As the Spanish ladies can,

Or I tint your lip

With a burnt stick’s tip

And you turn into such a man!

Just the two spots that span

[70] Half the bill of the young male swan.

XI

Dearest, three months ago

When the mesmerizer Snow

With his hand’s first sweep

Put the earth to sleep:

’Twas a time when the heart could show

All – how was earth to know,

’Neath the mute hand’s to-and-fro?

XII

Dearest, three months ago

When we loved each other so,

[80] Lived and loved the same

Till an evening came

When a shaft from the devil’s bow

Pierced to our ingle-glow,

And the friends were friend and foe!

XIII

Not from the heart beneath –

’Twas a bubble born of breath,

Neither sneer nor vaunt,

Nor reproach nor taunt.

See a word, how it severeth!

[90] Oh, power of life and death

In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!

XIV

Woman, and will you cast

For a word, quite off at last

Me, your own, your You, –

Since, as truth is true,

I was You all the happy past –

Me do you leave aghast

With the memories We amassed?

XV

Love, if you knew the light

[100] That your soul casts in my sight,

How I look to you

For the pure and true

And the beauteous and the right, –

Bear with a moment’s spite

When a mere mote threats the white!

XVI

What of a hasty word?

Is the fleshly heart not stirred

By a worm’s pin-prick

Where its roots are quick?

[110] See the eye, by a fly’s foot blurred –

Ear, when a straw is heard

Scratch the brain’s coat of curd!

XVII

Foul be the world or fair

More or less, how can I care?

’Tis the world the same

For my praise or blame,

And endurance is easy there.

Wrong in the one thing rare –

Oh, it is hard to bear!

XVIII

[120] Here’s the spring back or close,

When the almond-blossom blows:

We shall have the word

In a minor third

There is none but the cuckoo knows:

Heaps of the guelder-rose!

I must bear with it, I suppose.

XIX

Could but November come,

Were the noisy birds struck dumb

At the warning slash

[130] Of his driver’s-lash –

I would laugh like the valiant Thumb

Facing the castle glum

And the giant’s fee-faw-fum!

XX

Then, were the world well stripped

Of the gear wherein equipped

We can stand apart,

Heart dispense with heart

In the sun, with the flowers unnipped, –

Oh, the world’s hangings ripped,

[140] We were both in a bare-walled crypt!

XXI

Each in the crypt would cry

‘But one freezes here! and why?

When a heart, as chill,

At my own would thrill

Back to life, and its fires out-fly?

Heart, shall we live or die?

The rest, … settle by-and-by!’

XXII

So, she’d efface the score,

And forgive me as before.

[150] It is twelve o’clock:

I shall hear her knock

In the worst of a storm’s uproar,

I shall pull her through the door,

I shall have her for evermore!

Up at a Villa – Down in the City

(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)

I

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,

The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;

Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

II

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!

There, the whole day long, one’s life is a perfect feast;

While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

III

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull

Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature’s skull,

Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!

[10] – I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool.

IV

But the city, oh the city – the square with the houses! Why?

They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there’s something to take the eye!

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;

Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

V

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,

’Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights: