A Channel Passage and Other Poems Part 9

FOR GREECE AND CRETE

Storm and shame and fraud and darkness fill the nations full with night: Hope and fear whose eyes yearn eastward have but fire and sword in sight: One alone, whose name is one with glory, sees and seeks the light.

h.e.l.las, mother of the spirit, sole supreme in war and peace, Land of light, whose word remembered bids all fear and sorrow cease, Lives again, while freedom lightens eastward yet for sons of Greece.

Greece, where only men whose manhood was as G.o.dhead ever trod, Bears the blind world witness yet of light wherewith her feet are shod: Freedom, armed of Greece was always very man and very G.o.d.

Now the winds of old that filled her sails with triumph, when the fleet Bound for death from Asia fled before them stricken, wake to greet s.h.i.+ps full-winged again for freedom toward the sacred sh.o.r.es of Crete.

There was G.o.d born man, the song that spake of old time said: and there Man, made even as G.o.d by trust that shows him nought too dire to dare, Now may light again the beacon lit when those we wors.h.i.+p were.

Sharp the concert wrought of discord shrills the tune of shame and death, Turk by Christian fenced and fostered, Mecca backed by Nazareth: All the powerless powers, tongue-valiant, breathe but greed's or terror's breath.

Though the tide that feels the west wind lift it wave by widening wave Wax not yet to height and fullness of the storm that smites to save, None shall bid the flood back seaward till no bar be left to brave.

DELPHIC HYMN TO APOLLO

(B.C. 280)

DONE INTO ENGLISH

I

Thee, the son of G.o.d most high, Famed for harping song, will I Proclaim, and the deathless oracular word From the snow-topped rock that we gaze on heard, Counsels of thy glorious giving Manifest for all men living, How thou madest the tripod of prophecy thine Which the wrath of the dragon kept guard on, a shrine Voiceless till thy shafts could smite All his live coiled glittering might.

II

Ye that hold of right alone All deep woods on Helicon, Fair daughters of thunder-girt G.o.d, with your bright White arms uplift as to lighten the light, Come to chant your brother's praise, Gold-haired Phoebus, loud in lays, Even his, who afar up the twin-topped seat Of the rock Parna.s.sian whereon we meet Risen with glorious Delphic maids Seeks the soft spring-sweetened shades Castalian, fain of the Delphian peak Prophetic, sublime as the feet that seek.

Glorious Athens, highest of state, Come, with praise and prayer elate, O thou that art queen of the plain unscarred That the warrior Tritonid hath alway in guard, Where on many a sacred shrine Young bulls' thigh-bones burn and s.h.i.+ne As the G.o.d that is fire overtakes them, and fast The smoke of Arabia to heavenward is cast, Scattering wide its balm: and shrill Now with nimble notes that thrill The flute strikes up for the song, and the harp of gold Strikes up to the song sweet answer: and all behold, All, aswarm as bees, give ear, Who by birth hold Athens dear.

A NEW CENTURY

An age too great for thought of ours to scan, A wave upon the sleepless sea of time That sinks and sleeps for ever, ere the chime Pa.s.s that salutes with blessing, not with ban, The dark year dead, the bright year born for man, Dies: all its days that watched man cower and climb, Frail as the foam, and as the sun sublime, Sleep sound as they that slept ere these began.

Our mother earth, whose ages none may tell, Puts on no change: time bids not her wax pale Or kindle, quenched or quickened, when the knell Sounds, and we cry across the veering gale Farewell--and midnight answers us, Farewell; Hail--and the heaven of morning answers, Hail.

AN EVENING AT VICHY

SEPTEMBER 1896

WRITTEN ON THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF LORD LEIGHTON

A light has pa.s.sed that never shall pa.s.s away, A sun has set whose rays are unquelled of night.

The loyal grace, the courtesy bright as day, The strong sweet radiant spirit of life and light That shone and smiled and lightened on all men's sight, The kindly life whose tune was the tune of May, For us now dark, for love and for fame is bright.

Nay, not for us that live as the fen-fires live, As stars that shoot and shudder with life and die, Can death make dark that l.u.s.tre of life, or give The grievous gift of trust in oblivion's lie.

Days dear and far death touches, and draws them nigh, And bids the grief that broods on their graves forgive The day that seems to mock them as clouds that fly.

If life be life more faithful than s.h.i.+nes on sleep When dreams take wing and lighten and fade like flame, Then haply death may be not a death so deep That all things past are past for it wholly--fame, Love, loving-kindness, seasons that went and came, And left their light on life as a seal to keep Winged memory fast and heedful of time's dead claim.

Death gives back life and light to the sunless years Whose suns long sunken set not for ever. Time, Blind, fierce, and deaf as tempest, relents, and hears And sees how bright the days and how sweet their chime Rang, shone, and pa.s.sed in music that matched the clime Wherein we met rejoicing--a joy that cheers Sorrow, to see the night as the dawn sublime.

The days that were outlighten the days that are, And eyes now darkened s.h.i.+ne as the stars we see And hear not sing, impa.s.sionate star to star, As once we heard the music that haply he Hears, high in heaven if ever a voice may be The same in heaven, the same as on earth, afar From pain and earth as heaven from the heaving sea.

A woman's voice, divine as a bird's by dawn Kindled and stirred to sunward, arose and held Our souls that heard, from earth as from sleep withdrawn, And filled with light as stars, and as stars compelled To move by might of music, elate while quelled, Subdued by rapture, lit as a mountain lawn By morning whence all heaven in the sunrise welled.

And her the shadow of death as a robe clasped round Then: and as morning's music she pa.s.sed away.

And he then with us, warrior and wanderer, crowned With fame that shone from eastern on western day, More strong, more kind, than praise or than grief might say, Has pa.s.sed now forth of shadow by sunlight bound, Of night shot through with light that is frail as May.

May dies, and light grows darkness, and life grows death: Hope fades and shrinks and falls as a changing leaf: Remembrance, touched and kindled by love's live breath, s.h.i.+nes, and subdues the shadow of time called grief, The shade whose length of life is as life's date brief, With joy that broods on the sunlight past, and saith That thought and love hold sorrow and change in fief.

Sweet, glad, bright spirit, kind as the sun seems kind When earth and sea rejoice in his gentler spell, Thy face that was we see not; bereft and blind, We see but yet, rejoicing to see, and dwell Awhile in days that heard not the death-day's knell, A light so bright that scarcely may sorrow find One old sweet word that hails thee and mourns--Farewell.

TO GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

ON THE EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, FEBRUARY 23, 1897

High thought and hallowed love, by faith made one, Begat and bare the sweet strong-hearted child, Art, nursed of Nature; earth and sea and sun Saw Nature then more G.o.dlike as she smiled.

Life smiled on death, and death on life: the Soul Between them shone, and soared above their strife, And left on Time's unclosed and starry scroll A sign that quickened death to deathless life.

Peace rose like Hope, a patient queen, and bade h.e.l.l's firstborn, Faith, abjure her creed and die; And Love, by life and death made sad and glad, Gave Conscience ease, and watched Good Will pa.s.s by.

All these make music now of one man's name, Whose life and age are one with love and fame.

ON THE DEATH OF MRS. LYNN LINTON