Each Man Is An Island
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And Other Birds
Where, where will be the birds that sing
A hundred years to come ?
The flowers that now in beauty spring,
A hundred years to come ?
The rosy lips, the lofty brow,
The heart that beats so gayly now.
Oh, where will be love’s beaming eye,
Joy’s pleasant smile, and sorrow’s sigh,
A hundred years to come ?
Who’ll press for gold this crowded street,
A hundred years to come ?
Who’ll tread yon church with willing feet
A hundred years to come ?
Pale, trembling age. and fiery youth,
And childhood with its brow of truth;
The rich and poor, on land and sea.
Where will the mighty millions be
A hundred years to come ?
We all within our graves shall sleep
A hundred years to come;
No living soul for us will weep,
A hundred years to come,
But other men our lands shall till,
And others then these streets will fill,
And other birds will sing as gay,
And bright the sun shine as to-day,
A hundred years to come.
William Goldsmith Brown : A Hundred Years To Come
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Mors Et Vita Redoubled
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“UNDER the roots of the roses,
Down in the dark, rich mould,
The dust of my dear one reposes
Like a spark which night incloses
When the ashes of day are cold.”
“Under the awful wings
Which brood over land and sea,
And whose shadows nor lift nor flee, —
This is the order of things,
And hath been from of old:
First production,
And last destruction;
So the pendulum swings,
While cradles are rocked and bells are tolled.”
“Not under the roots of the roses,
But under the luminous wings
Of the King of kings
The soul of my love reposes,
With the light of morn in her eyes,
Where the Vision of Life discloses
Life that sleeps not nor dies.”
“Under or over the skies
What is it that never dies ?
Spirit — if such there be —
Whom no one hath seen nor heard,
We do not acknowledge thee;
For, spoken or written word,
Thou art but a dream, a breath;
Certain is nothing but Death !”
Richard Henry Stoddard : Mors et Vita
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She Burn’d With Love
Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle;
Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty;
Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle;
Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty:
A lily pale, with damask die to grace her,
None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.
Her lips to mine how often hath she join’d,
Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing!
How many tales to please me hath she coin’d,
Dreading my love, the loss thereof still fearing !
Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings,
Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings.
She burn’d with love, as straw with fire flameth;
She burn’d out love, as soon as straw outburneth;
She fram’d the love, and yet she foil’d the framing;
She bade love last, and yet she fell a turning.
Was this a lover, or a lecher whether ?
Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.
William Shakespeare : The Passionate Pilgrim VII
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Where Skims The Gull The Baltic Waves
WHERE is the German’s fatherland ?
The Prussian land? The Swabian land ?
Where Rhine the vine-clad mountain laves ?
Where skims the gull the Baltic waves ?
Ah, no, no, no !
His fatherland ’s not bounded so !
Where is the German’s fatherland ?
Bavarian land ? or Stygian land ?
Where sturdy peasants plough the plain ?
Where mountain-sons bright metal gain ?
Ah, no, no, no !
His fatherland’s not bounded so !
Where is the German’s fatherland ?
The Saxon hills ? The Zuyder strand ?
Where sweep wild winds the sandy shores
Where loud the rolling Danube roars ?
Ah, no, no, no !
His fatherland ’s not bounded so !
Where is the German’s fatherland ?
Then name, then name the mighty land !
The Austrian land in fight renowned ?
The Kaiser’s land with honors crowned ?
Ah, no, no, no !
His fatherland ’s not bounded so !
Where is the German’s fatherland ?
Then name, then name the mighty land !
The land of Hofer ? land of Tell ?
This land I know, and love it well;
But, no, no, no !
His fatherland ’s not bounded so !
Where is the German’s fatherland ?
Is his the pieced and parceled land
Where pirate-princes rule ? A gem
Torn from the empire’s diadem?
Ah, no, no, no !
Such is no German’s fatherland.
Where is the German’s fatherland ?
Then name, oh, name the mighty land !
Wherever is heard the German tongue,
And German hymns to God are sung !
This is the land, thy Hermann’s land;
This, German, is thy fatherland.
This is the German’s fatherland,
Where faith is in the plighted hand,
Where truth lives in each eye of blue,
And every heart is staunch and true.
This is the land, the honest land,
The honest German’s fatherland.
This is the land, the one true land,
O God, to aid be thou at hand !
And fire each heart, and nerve each arm,
To shield our German homes from harm,
To shield the land, the one true land,
One Deutschland and one fatherland !
Ernst Moritz Arndt : Was ist das deutsche Vaterland ?
Arndt was not a good man, for he was a liberal; yet he partially atoned by proving that if the Devil must have the all good tunes, he also acquires striking lyricists to complement them well…
To demonstrate that the less mundane, and more subtle, system of absolute monarchism can subvert revolutionary liberal impulses and turn them to light, Franz Liszt — above politics and kaisertreue, put the above anthem to music, dedicated to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV who then bestowed one of the earliest civilian Pour le Merites in return…
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Like Spray
A wind comes from the north
Blowing little flocks of birds
Like spray across the town,
And a train, roaring forth,
Rushes stampeding down
With cries and flying curds
Of steam, out of the darkening north.
Whither I turn and set
Like a needle steadfastly,
Waiting ever to get
The news that she is free;
But ever fixed, as yet,
To the lode of her agony.
D. H. Lawrence : Patience
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Each A Space
Old things need not be therefore true,
O brother men, nor yet the new;
Ah ! still awhile the old thought retain,
And yet consider it again !
The souls of now two thousand years
Have laid up here their toils and fears,
And all the earnings of their pain, —
Ah, yet consider it again !
We ! what do we see ? each a space
Of some few yards before his face;
Does that the whole wide plan explain ?
Ah, yet consider it again !
Alas ! the great world goes its way,
And takes its truth from each new day;
They do not quit, nor can retain,
Far less consider it again.
Arthur Hugh Clough : Ah, Yet Consider It Again !
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This Wild Rain
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
Edward Thomas : Rain
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What Is Man ?
Who would have guessed that R. D. Blackmore was also a poet ? His fiction is a trifle strenuous for these days — Lorna Doone was however quite royalist for the mainly republican Victorian era, and I recall another work of his regarding an utterly villainous 18th century clergyman, Parson Chowne, which was not unvicious; still Fringilla, this collection of poems [ Gutenberg ] was published by Elkin Mathews with very 90s illustrations by Louis Fairfax-Muckley. Mathews, who printed Yeats and Pound… The combination of R. D. Blackmore with The Yellow Book is weird at first sight. His poetry is mostly simple prettiness, yet there is a sombre bitter core rejecting mere convention.
“What means your finch ?”
“Being well aware that he cannot sing like a Nightingale,
He flits about from tree to tree, and twitters a little tale.”
Albeit he is an ancient bird, who tried his pipe in better days, and then was scared by random shots, he is fain to lift the migrant wing once more towards the humble perch, among the trees he loves. All gardeners own that he does no harm, unless he flits into a thicket of young buds, or a very choice ladies’ seed-bed. And he hopes that he is now too wise to commit such indiscretions.
Perhaps it would have been wiser still to have shut up his little mandible, or employed it only upon grub. But the long gnaw of last winter’s frost, which set mankind a-shivering, even in their most downy nest, has made them kindly to the race that has no roof for shelter and no hearth for warmth.
Anyhow, this little finch can do no harm, if he does no good; and if he pleases nobody, he will not be surprised, because he has never satisfied himself.
Excerpts from Lita of the Nile:
Follows him the loveliest maiden,
Afric’s thousand hills can show;
White apparel’d, flower-laden,
With the lotus on her brow.
…
Votive maid, who hath espousal
Of the river’s high carousal;
Twenty cubits if he rise,
This shall be his bridal prize.
Calm, and meek of face and carriage,
Deigning scarce a quicker breath,
Comes she to the funeral marriage,
The betrothal of black death.
Rosy hands, and hennaed fingers,
Nails whereon the onyx lingers,
Clasped, as at a lover’s tale,
In the bosom’s marble vale.
…
See, the large eyes, lit by heaven,
Brighter than the Sisters Seven,
( Like a star the storm hath cowed )
Sink their flash in sorrow’s cloud.
There the crystal tear refraineth,
And the founts of grief are dry;
“Father, Mother — none remaineth;
All are dead; and why not I ?”
Yet, by God’s will, heavenly beauty
Owes to Heaven alone its duty;
Off ye priests, who dare adjudge
Bride, like this, to slime and sludge !
…
Every bulrush, parched and welted,
Lifts his long joints yellow-belted;
Every lotus, faint and sick,
Hangs her fragrant tongue to lick.
Countless creatures, lone unthought of,
Swarm from every hole and nook;
What is man, that he make nought of
Other entries in God’s book ?
Excerpts from Kadisha, or the First Jealousy
When rivulets were loth to creep,
Except unto the pillow moss,
And distant lake, encurtained deep,
Was but a silver thread across
The eyes of sleep:
When nightingales, in the sycamore,
Sang low and soft, as an echo dreaming;
And slept the moon upon heaven’s shore —
The tidal shore of heaven, beaming
With lazuled ore:
When new-born earth was fain to lean
In Summer’s arms, recovering
The unaccustomed toil of Spring,
Why slept not Eve, their Queen ?
…
The mother of all loving wives
( Condemned unborn to many a tear )
Is fain to take his hand, and strives
In sorrow to be doubly dear—
But shame deprives.
The Shame, The Woe, The Black Surprise,
That Love’s First Dream Should Have Such Ending,
to Weep, and Wipe Neglected Eyes I
Oh Loss of True Love, Far Transcending
Lost Paradise !
…
“For what is glory, what is power ?
And what the pride of standing first ?
A twig struck down by a thunder shower,
A crown of thistle to quench the thirst,
A sun-scorched flower.
“God grant the men who spring from me,
As knowledge waxeth deep and splendid,
To find a loftier pedigree
Than any by the Lord intended —
Frog, slug, or tree !
“So shall they live, without the grief
Of having womankind to love,
Find nought below, and less above,
And be their own belief.
To Fame
I
Right Fairy of the morn, with flowers arrayed,
Whose beauties to thy young pursuer seem
Beyond the ecstasy of poet’s dream —
Shall I overtake thee, ere thy lustre fade ?
II
Ripe glory of the noon, august, and proud,
A vision of high purpose, power, and skill,
That melteth into mirage of good-will —
Do I o’ertake thee, or embrace a cloud ?
III
Gray shadow of the evening, gaunt and bare,
At random cast, beyond me or above,
And cold as memory in the arms of love —
If I o’ertook thee now, what should I care ?
IV
“No morn, or noon, or eve am I,” she said;
“But night — the depth of night behind the sun;
By all mankind pursued; but never won,
Until my shadow falls upon a shade.”
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Behold Thy Virgin Daughters
Last night I idly considered the tragic life and death of Anna Nicole Smith, and wondered why the keepers of Amerika still have not yet transformed the Statue of Liberty into her likeness — for that life and death perfectly capture the parallel destiny of the land… A century ago George S. Viereck wrote this predictive fantasy. He was quintessentially an odd bird, and despite some sympathy for his Hohenzollern cousins was rather a teutonophile than in any way royalist, yet his Germanic imagination qualified him as a seer.
PRELUDE
THE EMPIRE CITY
HUGE steel-ribbed monsters rise into the air
Her Babylonian towers, while on high
Like gilt-scaled serpents glide the swift trains by,
Or, underfoot, creep to their secret lair.
A thousand lights are jewels in her hair,
The sea her girdle, and her crown the sky,
Her life-blood throbs, the fevered pulses fly,
Immense, defiant, breathless she stands there
And ever listens in the ceaseless din,
Waiting for him, her lover who shall come,
Whose singing lips shall boldly claim their own
And render sonant what in her was dumb:
The splendour and the madness and the sin,
Her dreams in iron and her thoughts of stone.
I
NINEVEH
O NINEVEH, thy realm is set
Upon a base of rock and steel
From where the under-rivers fret
High up to where the planets reel.
Clad in a blazing coat of mail,
Above the gables of the town
Huge dragons with a monstrous trail
Have pillared pathways up and down.
And in the bowels of the deep
Where no man sees the gladdening sun,
All night without the balm of sleep
The human tide rolls on and on.
The Hudson’s mighty waters lave
In stern caress thy granite shore,
And to thy port the salt sea wave
Brings oil and wine and precious ore.
Yet if the ocean in its might
Should rise confounding stream and bay,
The stain of one delirious night
Not all the tides can wash away.
Thick pours the smoke of thousand fires,
Life throbs and beats relentlessly —
But lo, above the stately spires
Two lemans: Death and Leprosy.
What fruit shall spring from such embrace ?
Ah, even thou wouldst quake to hear !
He bends to kiss her loathsome face,
She laughs — and whispers in his ear.
Sit not too proudly on thy throne,
Think on thy sisters, them that fell;
Not all the hosts of Babylon
Could save her from the jaws of hell.
II
Through the long alleys of the park
On noiseless wheels and delicate springs,
Glide painted women fair and dark,
Bedecked with silks and jewelled things.
In peacock splendour goes the rout
With shrill, loud laughter of the mad —
Red lips to suck thy life-blood out,
And eyes too weary to be sad !
Their feet go down to shameful death,
They flaunt the livery of their wrong,
Their beauty is of Ashtoreth,
Her strength it is that makes them strong.
Behold thy virgin daughters, how
They know the smile a wanton wears;
And oh ! on many a boyish brow
The blood-red brand of murder flares.
See, through the crowded streets they fly,
Like doves before the gathering storm.
They cannot rest, for ceaselessly
In every heart there dwells a worm.
They sing in mimic joy, and crown
Their temples to the flutes of sin;
But no sweet noise shall ever drown
The whisper of the worm within.
They revel in the gilded line
Of lamplit halls to charm the night,
But think you that the crimson wine
Can veil the horror from their sight ?
Ah, no — their staring eyes are led
To where it lurks with hideous leer:
Therefore the women flush so red,
And all the men are white with fear.
As in a mansion vowed to lust,
Where wantons with their guests make free,
‘Tis thus thou humblest in the dust
Thy queenly body, Nineveh !
Thy course is downward; ’tis the road
To sins that even where disgrace
And shameful pleasure walk abroad
Dare not unmask their shrouded face !
Surely at last shall come the day
When these that dance so merrily
Shall watch with terrible faces gray
Thy doom draw near, O Nineveh !
III
I, too, the fatal harvest gained
Of them that sow with seed of fire
In passion’s garden — I have drained
The goblet of thy sick desire.
I from thy love had bitter bliss,
And ever in my memory stir
The after-savours of thy kiss —
The taste of aloes and of myrrh.
And yet I love thee, love unblessed
The poison of thy wanton’s art;
Though thou be sister to the Pest
In thy great hands I lay my heart !
And when thy body Titan-strong
Writhes on its giant couch of sin,
Yea, though upon the trembling throng
The very vault of Heaven fall in;
And though the palace of thy feasts
Sink crumbling in a fiery sea —
l, like, the last of Baal’s priests,
Will share thy doom, O Nineveh.
George Sylvester Viereck : Nineveh
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Felt Of This Flame
NOT that by this disdain
I am releas’d,
And freed from thy tyrannick chain,
Do I my self think blest;
Nor that thy Flame shall burn
No more; for know
That I shall into ashes turn,
Before this fire doth so.
Nor yet that unconfin’d
I now may rove,
And with new beauties please my mind;
But that thou ne’r didst love:
For since thou hast no part
Felt of this flame,
I onely from thy tyrant heart
Repuls’d, not banish’d am.
To loose what once was mine
Would grieve me more
Then those inconstant sweets of thine
Had pleas’d my soul before.
Now I have not lost the blisse
I ne’r possest;
And spight of fate am blest in this,
That I was never blest.
Sir Thomas Stanley : The Repulse
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Dark Are The Lovely Pleiades
Storm and destruction shattering
Strike fear upon the world,
The winds are out, and through high heaven
Their Bacchanals are hurled.
Their league is broken, burst the girth
And launched their fury on the earth.
Torrent on torrent falls the rain,
Dark are the lovely Pleiades,
Their seven lamps are out, and dark
The Houses where abide the stars.
And Sirius shines no more at all,
And heaven is hung with blackest pall.
Yet through the summits of the sky
Flashes afar the livid levin,
And cataracts of pallid fire
Pour from the toppling crests of heaven.
Struggling with clouds the mountains stand,
The dark sea masses on the strand
Following wave on wave behind
The rush and ruin of the wind.
Along the pathways of the sea
The salt waves rise in foam.
The deep is boiling like a pot,
Dark water seething furiously,
And Ocean with his might of war
And thunder of his waves afar,
Storming the headlands, shock on shock,
And shouting victory.
Scholar of Malmesbury : To Aldhelm [ translated by Helen Waddell ]
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The Fire That Breaks
- I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding,
- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
- High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy ! then off, off forth on swing,- As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding,
- As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
- Stirred for a bird, — the achieve of; the mastery of the thing !
- Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
- Buckle ! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
- Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier !
- No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,- Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Gerard Manley Hopkins : The Windhover
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Ingleside B: Ah, But You Shudder
It is absurd for fond parents to think to enlist great interest from strangers in the writhing or passive tenants of the cradle. Except in theory, this undeveloped bud must be a blank to nearly all but Father ( sometimes ), Mother and nurse always. No baby can suggest to the mind that strange thrill of parental wonder until it is your own, your firstborn. To be a Father ! That is a holy name, a sweet relation, a thought full of surprise at first. So it is by the cradle in your own nursery that you must be supposed to be sitting if these musings are to find an echo in your heart. It is the evening hour; you have come in from a parish round, or from a day in the counting-house; you pass the nursery door; the curtains are drawn across the window ; there is a mellow glow and dance of firelight in the room; the nurse has gone downstairs for her mistress’s hot water; you steal in and take your seat by the cradle or the cot. Such quiet, soft breathing, such a passive tiny hand outside the counterpane: so helpless and dependent a creature; the parted lips a full-drawn Cupid’s bow; the scant silky hair; the flushed round cheek,—so soft when you stoop to kiss it,—the little clutching thumbs, and slight twitching movements of the tiny dimpled hand ; the pretty noise and motion, sucking in his dreams. Yes, there is plenty of beauty in the sight to the interested watcher. You crave soon to touch the wee passive hand; to feel its soft tendril-closing about your coarse big fore-finger, to kiss the white smooth forehead. And you pass from wonder at the little newcomer, which has settled down so confidingly and securely as a life-inmate with you, to musings about it, about its future. What will that Future be ? Oh what strange store of experiences lies before this unconscious little traveller, asleep in its bark while storms rage around it in the weary world ! What meanest thou, 0 sleeper ? — while we are casting out our bales, of joy, and health, and gladness, and blithe spirits, to be sucked in by the hungry sea. What meanest thou, 0 sleeper ? And yet, ah, sleep on ! For who can tell what life will bring, in the coming years, to thee ? What sadnesses — ( you think of these, you will notice, rather than of the joys, which come seldom, and less certainly, and fleet sooner ) — what disillusions as life goes on; what blights, and frosts, and winds, and insects, ready for the sheets of blossom ! What strong agonies; what silent aches; and, far worse than these wholesome bitters of sorrow, — what experiences of sin; stains on the white unwritten page; marring worms in the unfolding bud. But what will be the completed story, when God writes “Finis” on the last page of the earth-portion of the everlasting history, which has here begun ? What flower will open from the bud ; resulting in what fruit, meet for the Master’s table?
Ah, you shudder to think how fond Mothers and Fathers have watched by the cots and stooped over to kiss the lips of an Absalom, — a Nero, — a Judas. A monstrous growth, and no flower of beauty or fruit of use, has sprung from such tender buds. Those little pearls, which gave such interest and anxiety in the cutting, have turned out to be serpents’ teeth, yea ” sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” before now. — Hush ! such thoughts shall not have place by this innocent dear slumberer. Yet let them; for God has made it very much your responsibility, ( He tells us so, however mysterious it must be now to us ), whether an angel of light or an angel of darkness shall finally develop out of that tender bud.
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Ingleside A: Eternal Right And Order
Two posts from ‘Ingleside and Wayside Musings‘: My copy has no titlepage, yet Google informs that this was written by the Rev. I. R. Vernon. Whatever, the influence of Carlyle is rather manifest — even perhaps partaking of Carlyle’s own influence to style, the surprising Jean-Paul Richter — allied to the natural fervency of the impassioned Victorian preacher…
STARS : These seem to me even as the quiet thoughts of Heaven; and some similes and meditations may well therefore be linked with them to introduce this humble cluster of musings, a constellation of lesser lights, no doubt, which, however, I would hang somewhere, if I may, between earth and heaven ; stars, I would have them, abiding in the one, but still looking down upon the other. Thoughts removed from earth, but not alien from it: orbs watching and shining down upon the turmoil and the jostling, but taking no feverish or heated part in it: — this is the character which I would have my constellations to bear, however minute be their twinkle. Mild light, let them give, scarce perceived through the haze; light clear and vivid through the frost; light luminous and large now and then, and making a narrow quiet trembling path upon some restless ocean underneath. Stars with all the jewel-lights of dew-drops on a hoary autumn lawn; jasper; sapphire; a chalcedony ; an emerald ; beryl; jacinth; amethyst; opals ; pearls ; all hues of diamonds, and
“One star, the chrysolite.”
For all these are to be found on —
“Heaven’s star-sprinkled floor,”
which is our canopy.
Stars. Ay, you must wait for the quiet hours, when work is done, before you can find them ; they will not make their presence known in the busy day. Above the dust and the heat and the turbulence, they watch on, indeed, in grave contemplation ; but they are withdrawn behind a screen of light from that carefulness and trouble about many things which goes on beneath their shining. Stars are ever lovely ; stars watching, with their haunting eyes, over still lakes and sleeping mountains; over hushed autumn forests and vast prairies; over interminable miles of sand, and over hedge-patterned fields, and twinkling homesteads, and nestling farms ; over the great unquiet sea, and over the heaped dead in a battle-field; over a mounded churchyard, and over a dance in a garden ; — they are lovely, and perhaps as it were most at home, over all the scenes of quiet, and innocent gladness, and repose.
But they have to me a special charm, a charm of incongruity and yet of peculiar fitness, when I see them steal out one by one, or in faint clusters, into the dusking sky above the streets of a great City. They come — not with any scorn or sarcasm, — come in their sublime ethereal stillness to look upon the thronged streets, and the glittering wares, and the squalid back lanes; gay Regent Street; noisy Cheapside ; sedate Paternoster Row ; murky Seven Dials ;-— not with any touch of sarcasm, oh no ; — rather with a hint of hope-in-sadness ; still more, with a revelation, a message from God; a voice without speech or language speaking down through the smoke and the foul exhalations and the clang and clash and roar, — telling of what-not that is high and pure, and ethereal and peaceful ? Of infinity, amid that which is finite ; of calm, amid that which is an endless perturbation ; of rest, to weary toil; of peace, where there are many distractions ; of nobility, amid a whirl of meannesses and low aims ; of Heaven to that which, having Earth’s unloveliness, is shut out from all her beauty, except that of the clouds and the sky,
Still above these lower clouds and this blue atmosphere, they abide and watch, and are speechlessly eloquent; when the roar dies into a murmur, and the murmur into a few hours’ broken hush, while the sin-burdened, sorrow-laden, toiling, laughing, weeping City sleeps ; over all, those grave eyes are watching. There are the casinos, with their frantic revelry, and heat, and glare; there are the dens of vice and infamy; there is the murderer with his hand raised over his victim; there are the lonely wanderers in the street, or the the rows of dark, dumb, blind houses; there is a jumble of sleeping and waking, of laughing and sobbing, of living and dying, while over all —
“Starry tears are trembling on the mighty Midnight’s face.”
And above this close-packed speck on the world’s plains, where there is neither elbow-room nor air-room, and where acres are worth millions, there is reminding, but not mockery, in the prodigal exhibiting of infinite Space, with which —
“The night reveals Her hollow gulfs of stars.”
0 money-absorbed men in London; in Manchester; in Liverpool; in Glasgow; wheresoever; 0 nation of shopkeepers, more bent than ever now on earning this name ; 0 grave and honest men, shrewd and practical, yet ever looking down, looking down; ever in a whirl of busy life, ever set to the grindstone of money-making; — gradually growing more and more to be mere dull drudges in the heavy cart laden with this world’s short-lived but exacting wants and whims, requirements and conventionalities; 0 lofty spirits, in danger of ever-growing and even eternal lessening and degradation: — it is for you that those Stars are set in the heaven, above your Offices and Warehouses ; it is for you that they come from their radiant chamber when Night empties your counting-houses, and out in the streets you cannot elude them ; it is for you that they look down between the houses, over the roofs, over the courts, glittering like to fruit through the gaunt solitary tree here and there ; penetrating with their great gracious eyes your very being; — and oh, if you would listen, — and not still look only on or down, still absorbed, still absorbed; — if you would look up, — what a heart-stirring sermon you might gather from their silence ! what a lesson of vastness, contrasted with the ever-increasing pettiness of your lives ! What infinity, compared with your ends, which are growing more and more utterly finite! What a speech of Eternity, what silent bell-music, stealing over the jangling voices of Time !
How ? say you the necessities of business must make an artificial code of morality, at variance with, and that must supersede, the everlasting principles of Right ? Has not —
“The intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,”
a word to say about this ? As you emerge from the hot glaring office, and stand apart from the stream of men — ( in that recess, say, by St. Michael’s Church, Cornhill ), and look up, above the Temple-like Royal Exchange, and see those eternal Watchers; the abysses of black-blue between them ; and, across this, cast, like a light mist or scarf, the untold billions of the Milky Way; do not flimsy sophistries exhale ? can expedient Wrong ( profitable for this moment ) endure that glittering picture of eternal Right and Order ?
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Stand Fast, Koshchei, Who Made All Things As They Are
When this bright bee had departed as the other had done before him, then Toupan moved his wings, and he made ready to overlook the work of Koshchei: and in the instant that Toupan moved, the worlds in that part of the universe were dislodged and ran melting down the sky. It was Gauracy who swept all the fragments together and formed a sun immeasurably larger than that which he had lost, and an obstreperous mad conflagration which did not in anything conform with the handiwork of Koshchei.
And Gauracy then shouted friendlily to Toupan, “Now is the hour of thy release, O Toupan ! now is the hour of the return of the Old Ones, now is the hour that Koshchei falls !”
Toupan answered: “The hour of my release is not yet come. But this is the hour of my overlooking.”
Then Gauracy bellowed, as he swept yet other worlds into the insatiable flaming of his dreadful sun, “I kindle for you a fine light to see by !”
And now the gods who were worshipped in those worlds which remained, these also cried out to Koshchei. For now, in the intolerable glare of Gauracy’s malefic sun, they showed as flimsy and incredible inventions. And the gods knew, moreover, that, if ever the last remaining bee were freed from the cross, the dizain of the Pleiades would be completed, and Toupan would be released, and the power of the Old Ones would return; and that a day foretold by many prophets, the day upon which every god must shave with a razor that is hired, would be at hand; and that, with the falling about of this very dreadful and ignominious necessity, the day of the divine contentment of all gods in any place would be over, for ever.
Meanwhile the eyes of Toupan went forth, among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds. It was They who, under Koshchei, had shaped the earths and the waters, and who had knit together the mountains, and who had fashioned all other things as they are. It was They who had woven the heavens, and who had placed the soul of every god within him. They were the makers of the hours and the creators of the days and the kindlers of the fires of life, and They were powers whose secret and sustaining names were not known to any of the gods of men. Yet now the eyes of Toupan went among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds, and Toupan regarded them one by one; and wheresoever the old eyes of Toupan had rested there remained no world nor any Warden watching over it, but only, for that instant, a very little spiral of thin sluggish vapour.
And those of them who were not yet destroyed cried piteously to Koshchei, who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations to keep eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.
Now there is no denying that, in the manner of artists, Koshchei had cleared his throat, and had fidgeted a little, in the while that Toupan was overlooking Koshchei’s handiwork. But when the Wardens and the Star Warriors cried out to him for aid, then Koshchei, lifting never a finger, said only:
“Eh, sirs, have patience ! For I made all things as they are; and I know now it is my safeguard that I made them in two ways.”
James Branch Cabell : The Silver Stallion — Chapter 16.
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To-Morrow
- Her strong enchantments failing,
- Her towers of fear in wreck,
- Her limbecks dried of poisons
- And the knife at her neck,
- The Queen of air and darkness
- Begins to shrill and cry,
- “O young man, O my slayer,
- To-morrow you shall die.”
- O Queen of air and darkness,
- I think ‘tis truth you say,
- And I shall die to-morrow;
- But you will die to-day.
A. E. Housman : Her Strong Enchantments Failing
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Like A Bird
- All that I know
- Of a certain star
- Is, it can throw
- ( Like the angled spar )
- Now a dart of red,
- Now a dart of blue;
- Till my friends have said
- They would fain see, too,
- My star that dartles the red and the blue !
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled:- They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
- What matter to me if their star is a world ?
- Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.
Robert Browning : My Star
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Are But Dust Beneath The Sun
Through the valleys, softly creeping
‘Mid the tree-tops, tempest-tossed,
see the cloud-forms seeking, peeping
For the loved ones that are lost.
Not for storm or sunshine resting,
Will they slacken or desist,
Or grow weary in their questing
For the children of the mist.
Where are those children hiding ?
Surely they will soon return,
In the gorge again abiding
‘Mid the myrtle and the fern.
Ah ! the dusky forms departed
Nevermore will keep their tryst,
And the clouds, alone, sad-hearted,
mourn the Children of the Mist.
E’en the wild bush-creatures, scattered,
Ere they die renew their race,
And the pine, by levin shattered,
Leaves an heir to take his place.
Though each forest thing, forth stealing,
Year by year the clouds have kissed,
Vainly are those white arms feeling
For the children of the mist.
Dead the race, beyond awaking,
Ere its task was well begun;
Human hearts that throbbed to breaking
Are but dust beneath the sun.
Past all dreams of vengeance-wreaking,
Blown where’er the tempests list.
. . .
But the cloud-forms still are seeking
For the children of the mist.
John Sandes : The Children of the Mist ( Tasmania )
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Twilight’s First Gleaming
I love thee dagger mine, thou sure defence —
I love the beauty of thy glitter cold,
A brooding Georgian whetted thee for war,
Forged for revenge thou wert by Khirgez bold.
A lily hand, in parting’s silent woe,
Gave thee to me in morning’s twilight shade;
Instead of blood, I saw thee first be-dewed
With sorrow’s tear-pearls flowing o’er thy blade.
Two dusky eyes so true and pure of soul,
Mute in the throe of love’s mysterious pain–
Like thine own steel within the fire’s glow,
Flashed forth to me — then faded dull again.
For a soul-pledge thou wert by love appointed,
In my life’s night to guide me to my end;
Stedfast and true my heart shall be forever,
Like thee, like thee, my steely hearted friend !
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov : The Dagger [ Trans by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi ]
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It Seemed ‘Twas Diamonds In The Air
As Lucy went a-walking one morning cold and fine,
There sate three crows upon a bough, and three times three is nine:
Then “O !” said Lucy, in the snow, “it’s very plain to see
A witch has been a-walking in the fields in front of me.”
Then slept she light and heedfully across the frozen snow,
And plucked a bunch of elder-twigs that near a pool did grow:
And, by and by, she comes to seven shadows in one place
Stretched black by seven poplar-trees against the sun’s bright face.
She looks to left, she looks to right, and in the midst she sees
A little pool of water clear and frozen ‘neath the trees;
Then down beside its margent in the crusty snow she kneels,
And hears a magic belfry a-ringing with sweet bells.
Clear sang the faint far merry peal, then silence on the air,
And icy-still the frozen pool and poplars standing there:
Then lo ! as Lucy turned her head and looked along the snow
She sees a witch–a witch she sees, come frisking to and fro.
Her scarlet, buckled shoes they clicked, her heels a-twinkling high;
With mistletoe her steeple-hat bobbed as she capered by;
But never a dint, or mark, or print, in the whiteness for to see,
Though danced she high, though danced she fast, though danced she lissomely.
It seemed ’twas diamonds in the air, or little flakes of frost;
It seemed ’twas golden smoke around, or sunbeams lightly tossed;
It seemed an elfin music like to reeds and warblers rose:
“Nay !” Lucy said, “it is the wind that through the branches flows.”
And as she peeps, and as she peeps, ’tis no more one, but three,
And eye of bat, and downy wing of owl within the tree,
And the bells of that sweet belfry a-pealing as before,
And now it is not three she sees, and now it is not four–
“O ! who are ye,” sweet Lucy cries, “that in a dreadful ring,
All muffled up in brindled shawls, do caper, frisk, and spring ?”
“A witch, and witches, one and nine,” they straight to her reply,
And looked upon her narrowly, with green and needle eye.
Then Lucy sees in clouds of gold green cherry trees upgrow,
And bushes of red roses that bloomed above the snow;
She smells, all faint, the almond-boughs blowing so wild and fair,
And doves with milky eyes ascend fluttering in the air.
Clear flowers she sees, like tulip buds, go floating by like birds,
With wavering tips that warbled sweetly strange enchanted words;
And, as with ropes of amethyst, the boughs with lamps were hung,
And clusters of green emeralds like fruit upon them clung.
“O witches nine, ye dreadful nine, O witches seven and three !
Whence come these wondrous things that I this Christmas morning see ?”
But straight, as in a clap, when she of Christmas says the word,
Here is the snow, and there the sun, but never bloom nor bird;
Nor warbling flame, nor gloaming-rope of amethyst there shows,
Nor bunches of green emeralds, nor belfry, well, and rose,
Nor cloud of gold, nor cherry-tree, nor witch in brindled shawl,
But like a dream that vanishes, so vanished were they all.
When Lucy sees, and only sees three crows upon a bough,
And earthly twigs, and bushes hidden white in driven snow,
Then “O !” said Lucy, “three times three is nine — I plainly see
Some witch has been a-walking in the fields in front of me.”
Walter de la Mare : As Lucy Went A-Walking
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After The Stars Are Gone
A little maiden climbed an old man’s knee
Begged for a story - “Do, uncle, please !”
“Why are you single, why live alone ?
Have you no babies, have you no home ?”
“I had a sweetheart, years, years ago
Where she is now, pet, you will soon know
List to the story, I’ll tell it all
I believed her faithless, after the ball”
After the ball is over
After the break of morn
After the dancers’ leaving
After the stars are gone
Many a heart is aching
If you could read them all
Many the hopes that have vanished
After the ball
“Bright lights were flashing in the grand ballroom
Softly the music, playing sweet tunes
There came my sweetheart, my love, my own
‘I wish some water, leave me alone’
When I returned, dear, there stood a man
Kissing my sweetheart, as lovers can
Down fell the glass, pet, broken, that’s all
Just as my heart was, after the ball”
After the ball is over
After the break of morn
After the dancers’ leaving
After the stars are gone
Many a heart is aching
If you could read them all
Many the hopes that have vanished
After the ball
“Long years have passed child, I’ve never wed
True to my lost love, though she is dead
She tried to tell me, tried to explain
I would not listen, pleadings were vain
One day a letter came from that man
He was her brother - the letter ran
That’s why I’m lonely, no home at all
I broke her heart, pet, after the ball”
After the ball is over
After the break of morn
After the dancers’ leaving
After the stars are gone
Many a heart is aching
If you could read them all
Many the hopes that have vanished
After the ball
Charles K. Harris : After The Ball Is Over
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No Hand Or Word
Good-by, my dear, good-by.
Friend, you are sticking in my breast.
The promised destinies are weaving
the thread from parting to a meeting.
Good-by, my dear, no hand or word,
Do not be sad, don’t cloud your brow,
To die — in life is nothing new,
But nor is new, of course — to live.
Sergei Yesenin : The Last Poem ( written in blood before self-ending )
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Star-Shadows Shine, Love
See the stars, love,
In the water much clearer and brighter
Than those above us, and whiter,
Like nenuphars.
Star-shadows shine, love,
How many stars in your bowl ?
How many shadows in your soul,
Only mine, love, mine ?
When I move the oars, love,
See how the stars are tossed,
Distorted, the brightest lost.
— So that bright one of yours, love.
The poor waters spill
The stars, waters broken, forsaken.
— The heavens are not shaken, you say, love,
Its stars stand still.
There, did you see
That spark fly up at us; even
Stars are not safe in heaven.
— What of yours, then, love, yours ?
What then, love, if soon
Your light be tossed over a wave ?
Will you count the darkness a grave,
And swoon, love, swoon ?
D. H. Lawrence : In A Boat
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Those Babies In Your Eyes
You say I love not, ’cause I doe not play
Still with your curles, and kisse the time away.
You blame me too, because I cann’t devise
Some sport, to please those Babies in your eyes:
By Loves Religion, I must here confesse it,
The most I love, when I the least expresse it.
Small griefs find tongues: Full Casques are ever found
To give ( if any, yet ) but little sound.
Deep waters noyse-lesse are; And this we know,
That chiding streams betray small depth below.
So when Love speechlesse is, she doth expresse
A depth in love, and that depth, bottomlesse.
Now since my love is tongue-lesse, know me such,
Who speak but little, ’cause I love so much.
Robert Herrick : To his Mistresse objecting to him neither Toying or Talking
