Studies in Song Part 2

35.

For of all souls for all time glorious none Loved Freedom better, of all who have loved her best, Than he who wrote that scripture of the sun Writ as with fire and light on heaven's own crest, Of all words heard on earth the n.o.blest one That ever spake for souls and left them blest: GLADLY WE SHOULD REST EVER, HAD WE WON FREEDOM: WE HAVE LOST, AND VERY GLADLY REST.

O poet hero, lord And father, we record Deep in the burning tablets of the breast Thankfully those divine And living words of thine For faith and comfort in our hearts imprest With strokes engraven past hurt of years And lines inured with fire of immemorial tears.

36.

But who being less than thou shall sing of thee Words worthy of more than pity or less than scorn?

Who sing the golden garland woven of three, Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the morn, More G.o.dlike than the graven G.o.ds men see Made all but all immortal, human born And heavenly natured? With the first came He, Led by the living hand, who left forlorn Life by his death, and time More by his life sublime Than by the lives of all whom all men mourn, And even for mourning praise Heaven, as for all those days These dead men's lives clothed round with glories worn By memory till all time lie dead, And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare's head.

37.

Then, fairer than the fairest Grace of ours, Came girt with Grecian gold the second Grace, And verier daughter of his most perfect hours Than any of latter time or alien place Named, or with hair inwoven of English flowers Only, nor wearing on her statelier face The lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers That graced and guarded round that holiest race, That heavenliest and most high Time hath seen live and die, Poured all their power upon him to retrace The erased immortal roll Of Love's most sovereign scroll And Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace, The scroll that on Aspasia's knees Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles.

38.

Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air, Came laughing like Etrurian spring the third, With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her hair Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that engird The walls engirdling with a circling stair My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word Fell from her flowerlike mouth Not sweet with all the south; As though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred And spake, as o'er it shone That bright Pentameron, And his own vines again and chestnuts heard Boccaccio: nor swift Elsa's chime Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca's rhyme.

39.

No lovelier laughed the garden which receives Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves, Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies, Bowed like a flowering reed when May's wind heaves The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs, In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes What yet the wisest of the starriest wise Whom Greece might ever hear Speaks in the gentlest ear That ever heard love's lips philosophize With such deep-reasoning words As blossoms use and birds, Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they rise Far off, in no wise over far, Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star.

40.

What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire, Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night, Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre That makes time's face pale with its reflex light And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire, A shadow of red remembrance? Right nor might Alternating wore ever shapes more dire Nor manifest in all men's awful sight In form and face that wore Heaven's light and likeness more Than these, or held suspense men's hearts at height More fearful, since man first Slaked with man's blood his thirst, Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight, Till tower on ruining tower was hurled Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world.

41.

Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand Who carved their several praise in words of gold To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand, Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold For price of blood or incense, dust or sand, Triumph or terror. He that sought of old His father Ammon in a stranger's land, And shrank before the serpentining fold, Stood in our seer's wide eye No higher than man most high, And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold Fast as a scripture furled The scroll of all the world Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold First thief of empire, round whose head Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed.[1]

42.

As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss, He saw the light of death, riotous and red, Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis Re-risen, and mightier, from the a.s.syrian dead, Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice, The steely snows of Russia, for the tread Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss The snaky lines of blood violently shed.

Like living creeping things That writhe but have no stings To scare adulterers from the imperial bed Bowed with its load of l.u.s.t, Or chill the ravenous gusts That made her body a fire from heel to head; Or change her high bright spirit and clear, For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear.

43.

As light that blesses, hallowing with a look; He saw the G.o.dhead in Vittoria's face s.h.i.+ne soft on Buonarroti's, till he took, Albeit himself G.o.d, a more G.o.dlike grace, A strength more heavenly to confront and brook All ill things coiled about his worldly race, From the bright scripture of that present book Wherein his tired grand eyes got power to trace Comfort more sweet than youth, And hope whose child was truth, And love that brought forth sorrow for a s.p.a.ce, Only that she might bear Joy: these things, written there, Made even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place, Perused with eyes whose glory and glow Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo.

44.

With balms and dews of blessing he consoled The fair fame wounded by the black priest's fang, Giovanna's, and washed off her blithe and bold Boy-bridegroom's blood, that seemed so long to hang On her fair hand, even till the stain of old Was cleansed with healing song, that after sang Sharp truth by sweetest singers' lips untold Of pale Beatrice, though her death-note rang From other strings divine Ere his rekindling line With yet more piteous and intolerant pang Pierced all men's hearts anew That heard her pa.s.sion through Till fierce from throes of fiery pity sprang Wrath, armed for chase of monstrous beasts, Strong to lay waste the kingdom of the seed of priests.

45.

He knew the high-souled humbleness, the mirth And majesty of meanest men born free, That made with Luther's or with Hofer's birth The whole world worthier of the sun to see: The wealth of spirit among the snows, the dearth Wherein souls festered by the servile sea That saw the lowest of even crowned heads on earth Thronged round with wors.h.i.+p in Parthenope.

His hand bade Justice guide Her child Tyrannicide, Light winged by fire that brings the dawn to be; And pierced with Tyrrel's dart Again the riotous heart That mocked at mercy's tongue and manhood's knee: And oped the cell where kinglike death Hung o'er her brows discrowned who bare Elizabeth.

46.

Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind He bared the heart of Ess.e.x, twain and one, For the base heart that soiled the starry mind Stern, for the father in his child undone Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed With their sweet image visibly set on As by G.o.d's hand, clear as his own designed The likeness radiant out of ages gone That none may now destroy Of that high Roman boy Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son True-born of sovereign seed, Foredoomed even thence to bleed, The stately grace of bright Caesarion, The head unbent, the heart unbowed, That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud.

47.

With gracious G.o.ds he communed, honouring thus At once by service and similitude, Service devout and wors.h.i.+p emulous Of the same golden Muses once they wooed, The names and shades adored of all of us, The nurslings of the brave world's earlier brood, Grown G.o.ds for us themselves: Theocritus First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed With blessings bright like tears From the old memorial years, And loves and lovely laughters, every mood Sweet as the drops that fell Of their own oenomel From living lips to cheer the mult.i.tude That feeds on words divine, and grows More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose.

48.

Peace, the soft seal of long life's closing story, The silent music that no strange note jars, Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors h.o.a.ry With much long warfare, and with gradual bars Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory, Broke, and the power came back that pa.s.sion mars: And at the lovely last Above all anguish past Before his own the sightless eyes like stars Arose that watched arise Like stars in other skies Above the strife of s.h.i.+ps and hurtling cars The Dioscurian songs divine That lighten all the world with lightning of their line.

49.

He sang the last of Homer, having sung The last of his Ulysses. Bright and wide For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung About the day-star, doubtful to divide, Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried, Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung, Homer, and grey Laertes at his side Kingly as kings are none Beneath a later sun, And the sweet maiden ministering in pride To sovereign and to sage In their more sweet old age: These things he sang, himself as old, and died.

And if death be not, if life be, As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he.

50.

Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love Was pure toward all high poets, all their kind And all bright words and all sweet works thereof; Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight kind; Heart that no fear but every grief might move Wherewith men's hearts were bound of powers that bind; The purest soul that ever proof could prove From taint of tortuous or of envious mind; Whose eyes elate and clear Nor shame nor ever fear But only pity or glorious wrath could blind; Name set for love apart, Held lifelong in my heart, Face like a father's toward my face inclined; No gilts like thine are mine to give, Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live.

[1] Thy lifelong works, Napoleon, who shall write?

Time, in his children's blood who takes delight.

_From the Greek of Landor._

NOTES.

6. See note to the Imaginary Conversation of Leofric and G.o.diva for the exquisite first verses extant from the hand of Landor.

10. The Poems of Walter Savage Landor: 1795. Moral Epistle, respectfully dedicated to Earl Stanhope: 1795. Gebir.

13. Count Julian: Ines de Castro: Ippolito di Este.