A Channel Passage and Other Poems Part 14

Swift music made of pa.s.sion's changeful power, Sweet as the change that leaves the world in flower When spring laughs winter down to deathward, rang From grave and gracious lips that smiled and sang When Ma.s.singer, too wise for kings to hear And learn of him truth, wisdom, faith, or fear, Gave all his gentler heart to love's light lore, That grief might brood and scorn breed wrath no more.

Soft, bright, fierce, tender, fitful, truthful, sweet, A shrine where faith and change might smile and meet, A soul whose music could but s.h.i.+ft its tune As when the l.u.s.trous year turns May to June And spring subsides in summer, so makes good Its perfect claim to very womanhood.

The heart that hate of wrong made fire, the hand Whose touch was fire as keen as shame's own brand When fraud and treason, swift to smile and sting, Crowned and discrowned a tyrant, knave or king, False each and ravenous as the fitful sea, Grew gently glad as love that fear sets free.

Like eddying ripples that the wind restrains, The bright words whisper music ere it wanes.

Ere fades the sovereign sound of song that rang As though the sun to match the sea's tune sang, When noon from dawn took life and light, and time Shone, seeing how Shakespeare made the world sublime, Ere sinks the wind whose breath was heaven's and day's, The sunset's witness gives the sundawn praise.

PROLOGUE TO THE SPANISH GIPSY

The wind that brings us from the springtide south Strange music as from love's or life's own mouth Blew hither, when the blast of battle ceased That swept back southward Spanish prince and priest, A sound more sweet than April's flower-sweet rain, And bade bright England smile on pardoned Spain.

The land that cast out Philip and his G.o.d Grew gladly subject where Cervantes trod.

Even he whose name above all names on earth Crowns England queen by grace of Shakespeare's birth Might scarce have scorned to smile in G.o.d's wise down And gild with praise from heaven an earthlier crown.

And he whose hand bade live down lengthening years Quixote, a name lit up with smiles and tears, Gave the glad watchword of the gipsies' life, Where fear took hope and grief took joy to wife.

Times change, and fame is fitful as the sea: But sunset bids not darkness always be, And still some light from Shakespeare and the sun Burns back the cloud that masks not Middleton.

With strong swift strokes of love and wrath he drew Shakespearean London's loud and l.u.s.ty crew: No plainer might the likeness rise and stand When Hogarth took his living world in hand.

No surer then his fire-fledged shafts could hit, Winged with as forceful and as faithful wit: No truer a tragic depth and heat of heart Glowed through the painter's than the poet's art.

He lit and hung in heaven the wan fierce moon Whose glance kept time with witchcraft's air-struck tune: He watched the doors where loveless love let in The pageant hailed and crowned by death and sin: He bared the souls where love, twin-born with hate, Made wide the way for pa.s.sion-fostered fate.

All English-hearted, all his heart arose To scourge with scorn his England's cowering foes: And Rome and Spain, who bade their scorner be Their prisoner, left his heart as England's free.

Now give we all we may of all his due To one long since thus tried and found thus true.

PROLOGUE TO THE TWO n.o.bLE KINSMEN

Sweet as the dewfall, splendid as the south, Love touched with speech Boccaccio's golden mouth, Joy thrilled and filled its utterance full with song, And sorrow smiled on doom that wrought no wrong.

A starrier l.u.s.tre of lordlier music rose Beyond the sundering bar of seas and snows When Chaucer's thought took life and light from his And England's crown was one with Italy's.

Loftiest and last, by grace of Shakespeare's word, Arose above their quiring spheres a third, Arose, and flashed, and faltered: song's deep sky Saw Shakespeare pa.s.s in light, in music die.

No light like his, no music, man might give To bid the darkened sphere, left songless, live.

Soft though the sound of Fletcher's rose and rang And lit the lunar darkness as it sang, Below the singing stars the cloud-crossed moon Gave back the sunken sun's a trembling tune.

As when at highest high tide the sovereign sea Pauses, and patience doubts if pa.s.sion be, Till gradual ripples ebb, recede, recoil, s.h.i.+ne, smile, and whisper, laughing as they toil, Stark silence fell, at turn of fate's high tide, Upon his broken song when Shakespeare died, Till Fletcher's light sweet speech took heart to say What evening, should it speak for morning, may.

And fourfold now the gradual glory s.h.i.+nes That shows once more in heaven two twinborn signs, Two brethren stars whose light no cloud may fret, No soul whereon their story dawns forget.

THE AFTERGLOW OF SHAKESPEARE

Let there be light, said Time: and England heard: And manhood grew to G.o.dhead at the word.

No light had shone, since earth arose from sleep, So far; no fire of thought had cloven so deep.

A day beyond all days bade life acclaim Shakespeare: and man put on his crowning name.

All secrets once through darkling ages kept Shone, sang, and smiled to think how long they slept.

Man rose past fear of lies whereon he trod: And Dante's ghost saw h.e.l.l devour his G.o.d.

Bright Marlowe, brave as winds that brave the sea When sundawn bids their bliss in battle be, Lit England first along the ways whereon Song brighter far than sunlight soared and shone.

He died ere half his life had earned his right To lighten time with song's triumphant light.

Hope shrank, and felt the stroke at heart: but one She knew not rose, a man to match the sun.

And England's hope and time's and man's became Joy, deep as music's heart and keen as flame.

Not long, for heaven on earth may live not long, Light sang, and darkness died before the song.

He pa.s.sed, the man above all men, whose breath Transfigured life with speech that lightens death.

He pa.s.sed: but yet for many a l.u.s.trous year His light of song bade England s.h.i.+ne and hear.

As plague and fire and faith in falsehood spread, So from the man of men, divine and dead, Contagious G.o.dhead, seen, unknown, and heard, Fulfilled and quickened England; thought and word, When men would fain set life to music, grew More sweet than years which knew not Shakespeare knew.

The simplest soul that set itself to song Sang, and may fear not time's or change's wrong.

The lightest eye that glanced on life could see Through grief and joy the G.o.d that man might be.

All pa.s.sion whence the living soul takes fire Till death fulfil despair and quench desire, All love that lightens through the cloud of chance, All hate that lurks in hope and smites askance, All holiness of sorrow, all divine Pity, whose tears are stars that save and s.h.i.+ne, All sunbright strength of laughter like the sea's When spring and autumn loose their l.u.s.trous breeze, All sweet, all strange, all sad, all glorious things, Lived on his lips, and hailed him king of kings.

All thought, all strife, all anguish, all delight, Spake all he bade, and speak till day be night.

No soul that heard, no spirit that beheld, Knew not the G.o.d that lured them and compelled.

On Beaumont's brow the sun arisen afar Shed fire which lit through heaven the younger star That sank before the sunset: one dark spring Slew first the kinglike subject, then the king.

The glory left above their graves made strong The heart of Fletcher, till the flower-sweet song That Shakespeare culled from Chaucer's field, and died, Found ending on his lips that smiled and sighed.

From Dekker's eyes the light of tear-touched mirth Shone as from Shakespeare's, mingling heaven and earth.

Wild witchcraft's lure and England's love made one With Shakespeare's heart the heart of Middleton.

Harsh, homely, true, and tragic, Rowley told His heart's debt down in rough and radiant gold.

The skies that Tourneur's lightning clove and rent Flamed through the clouds where Shakespeare's thunder went.

Wise Ma.s.singer bade kings be wise in vain Ere war bade song, storm-stricken, cower and wane.

Kind Heywood, simple-souled and single-eyed, Found voice for England's home-born praise and pride.

Strange grief, strange love, strange terror, bared the sword That smote the soul by grace and will of Ford.

The stern grim strength of Chapman's thought found speech Loud as when storm at ebb-tide rends the beach: And all the honey brewed from flowers in May Made sweet the lips and bright the dreams of Day.

But even as Shakespeare caught from Marlowe's word Fire, so from his the thunder-bearing third, Webster, took light and might whence none but he Hath since made song that sounded so the sea Whose waves are lives of men--whose tidestream rolls From year to darkening year the freight of souls.

Alone above it, sweet, supreme, sublime, Shakespeare attunes the jarring chords of time; Alone of all whose doom is death and birth, Shakespeare is lord of souls alive on earth.

CLEOPATRA

"Her beauty might outface the jealous hours, Turn shame to love and pain to a tender sleep, And the strong nerve of hate to sloth and tears; Make spring rebellious in the sides of frost, Thrust out lank winter with hot August growths, Compel sweet blood into the husks of death, And from strange beasts enforce harsh courtesy."

T. HAYMAN, _Fall of Antony_, 1655.

CLEOPATRA

I

Her mouth is fragrant as a vine, A vine with birds in all its boughs; Serpent and scarab for a sign Between the beauty of her brows And the amorous deep lids divine.

II

Her great curled hair makes luminous Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin Shall she not have the hearts of us To shatter, and the loves therein To shred between her fingers thus?