May-Day Part 5

THE TEST. (Musa loquitur.)

I hung my verses in the wind, Time and tide their faults may find.

All were winnowed through and through, Five lines lasted sound and true; Five were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot; These the siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And the meaning was more white Than July's meridian light.

Suns.h.i.+ne cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know.

Have you eyes to find the five Which five hundred did survive?

SOLUTION.

I am the Muse who sung alway By Jove, at dawn of the first day.

Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought To fire the stagnant earth with thought: On sp.a.w.ning slime my song prevails, Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales; Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn, Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born.

Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race, And Nile substructs her granite base,-- Tented Tartary, columned Nile,-- And, under vines, on rocky isle, Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak, Forward stepped the perfect Greek: That wit and joy might find a tongue, And earth grow civil, HOMER Sung.

Flown to Italy from Greece, I brooded long, and held my peace, For I am wont to sing uncalled, And in days of evil plight Unlock doors of new delight; And sometimes mankind I appalled With a bitter horoscope, With spasms of terror for balm of hope.

Then by better thought I lead Bards to speak what nations need; So I folded me in fears, And DANTE searched the triple spheres, Moulding nature at his will, So shaped, so coloured, swift or still, And, sculptor-like, his large design Etched on Alp and Apennine.

Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur, Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit.

The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

Far in the North, where polar night Holds in check the frolic light, In trance upborne past mortal goal The Swede EMANUEL leads the soul.

Through snows above, mines underground, The inks of Erebus he found; Rehea.r.s.ed to men the d.a.m.ned wails On which the seraph music sails, In spirit-worlds he trod alone, But walked the earth unmarked, unknown.

The near by-stander caught no sound,-- Yet they who listened far aloof Heard rendings of the skyey roof, And felt, beneath, the quaking ground; And his air-sown, unheeded words, In the next age, are flaming swords.

In newer days of war and trade, Romance forgot, and faith decayed, When Science armed and guided war, And clerks the Ja.n.u.s-gates unbar, When France, where poet never grew, Halved and dealt the globe anew, GOETHE, raised o'er joy and strife, Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life, And brought Olympian wisdom down To court and mart, to gown and town, Stooping, his finger wrote in clay The open secret of to-day.

So bloom the unfading petals five, And verses that all verse outlive.

NATURE AND LIFE.

NATURE.

I.

Winters know Easily to shed the snow, And the untaught Spring is wise In cowslips and anemonies.

Nature, hating art and pains, Baulks and baffles plotting brains; Casualty and Surprise Are the apples of her eyes; But she dearly loves the poor, And, by marvel of her own, Strikes the loud pretender down.

For Nature listens in the rose, And hearkens in the berry's bell, To help her friends, to plague her foes, And like wise G.o.d she judges well.

Yet doth much her love excel To the souls that never fell, To swains that live in happiness, And do well because they please, Who walk in ways that are unfamed, And feats achieve before they're named.

NATURE.

II.

She is gamesome and good, But of mutable mood,-- No dreary repeater now and again, She will be all things to all men.

She who is old, but nowise feeble, Pours her power into the people, Merry and manifold without bar, Makes and moulds them what they are, And what they call their city way Is not their way, but hers, And what they say they made to-day, They learned of the oaks and firs.

She sp.a.w.neth men as mallows fresh, Hero and maiden, flesh of her flesh; She drugs her water and her wheat With the flavours she finds meet, And gives them what to drink and eat; And having thus their bread and growth, They do her bidding, nothing loath.

What's most theirs is not their own, But borrowed in atoms from iron and stone, And in their vaunted works of Art The master-stroke is still her part.

THE ROMANY GIRL.

The sun goes down, and with him takes The coa.r.s.eness of my poor attire; The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race; You captives of your air-tight halls, Wear out in-doors your sickly days, But leave us the horizon walls.

And if I take you, dames, to task, And say it frankly without guile, Then you are Gypsies in a mask, And I the lady all the while.

If, on the heath, below the moon, I court and play with paler blood, Me false to mine dare whisper none,-- One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain, For teeth and hair with shopmen deal; My swarthy tint is in the grain, The rocks and forest know it real.

The wild air bloweth in our lungs, The keen stars twinkle in our eyes, The birds gave us our wily tongues, The panther in our dances flies.

You doubt we read the stars on high, Nathless we read your fortunes true; The stars may hide in the upper sky, But without gla.s.s we fathom you.

DAYS.

Damsels of Time, the hypocritic Days, m.u.f.fled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and f.a.gots in their hands.

To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT.

Day! hast thou two faces, Making one place two places?

One, by humble farmer seen, Chill and wet, unlighted, mean, Useful only, triste and damp, Serving for a labourer's lamp?

Have the same mists another side, To be the appanage of pride, Gracing the rich man's wood and lake, His park where amber mornings break, And treacherously bright to show His planted isle where roses glow?

O Day! and is your mightiness A sycophant to smug success?

Will the sweet sky and ocean broad Be fine accomplices to fraud?

O Sun! I curse thy cruel ray: Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!