Astrophel and Other Poems Part 8

ELEGY

1869-1891

Auvergne, Auvergne, O wild and woful land, O glorious land and gracious, white as gleam The stairs of heaven, black as a flameless brand, Strange even as life, and stranger than a dream,

Could earth remember man, whose eyes made bright The splendour of her beauty, lit by day Or soothed and softened and redeemed by night, Wouldst thou not know what light has pa.s.sed away?

Wouldst thou not know whom England, whom the world, Mourns? For the world whose wildest ways he trod, And smiled their dangers down that coiled and curled Against him, knows him now less man than G.o.d.

Our demiG.o.d of daring, keenest-eyed To read and deepest read in earth's dim things, A spirit now whose body of death has died And left it mightier yet in eyes and wings, The sovereign seeker of the world, who now Hath sought what world the light of death may show, Hailed once with me the crowns that load thy brow, Crags dark as midnight, columns bright as snow.

Thy steep small Siena, splendid and content As s.h.i.+nes the mightier city's Tuscan pride Which here its face reflects in radiance, pent By narrower bounds from towering side to side,

Set fast between the ridged and foamless waves Of earth more fierce and fluctuant than the sea, The fearless town of towers that hails and braves The heights that gird, the sun that brands Le Puy;

The huddled churches clinging on the cliffs As birds alighting might for storm's sake cling, Moored to the rocks as tempest-harried skiffs To perilous refuge from the loud wind's wing;

The stairs on stairs that wind and change and climb Even up to the utmost crag's edge curved and curled, More bright than vision, more than faith sublime, Strange as the light and darkness of the world;

Strange as are night and morning, stars and sun, And washed from west and east by day's deep tide.

s.h.i.+ne yet less fair, when all their heights are won, Than sundawn shows thy pillared mountain-side.

Even so the dawn of death, whose light makes dim The starry fires that life sees rise and set, Shows higher than here he shone before us him Whom faith forgets not, nor shall fame forget.

Even so those else unfooted heights we clomb Through scudding mist and eddying whirls of cloud, Blind as a pilot beaten blind with foam, And shrouded as a corpse with storm's grey shroud,

Foot following foot along the sheer strait ledge Where s.p.a.ce was none to bear the wild goat's feet Till blind we sat on the outer footless edge Where darkling death seemed fain to share the seat,

The abyss before us, viewless even as time's, The abyss to left of us, the abyss to right, Bid thought now dream how high the freed soul climbs That death sets free from change of day and night.

The might of raging mist and wind whose wrath Shut from our eyes the narrowing rock we trod, The wondrous world it darkened, made our path Like theirs who take the shadow of death for G.o.d.

Yet eastward, veiled in vapour white as snow, The grim black herbless heights that scorn the sun And mock the face of morning rose to show The work of earth-born fire and earthquake done.

And half the world was haggard night, wherein We strove our blind way through: but far above Was light that watched the wild mists whirl and spin, And far beneath a land worth light and love.

Deep down the Valley of the Curse, undaunted By shadow and whisper of winds with sins for wings And ghosts of crime wherethrough the heights live haunted By present sense of past and monstrous things,

The glimmering water holds its gracious way Full forth, and keeps one happier hand's-breadth green Of all that storm-scathed world whereon the sway Sits dark as death of deadlier things unseen.

But on the soundless and the viewless river That bears through night perchance again to day The dead whom death and twin-born fame deliver From life that dies, and time's inveterate sway,

No shadow save of falsehood and of fear That brands the future with the past, and bids The spirit wither and the soul grow sere, Hovers or hangs to cloud life's opening lids,

If life have eyes to lift again and see, Beyond the bounds of sensual sight or breath, What life incognisable of ours may be That turns our light to darkness deep as death.

Priests and the soulless serfs of priests may swarm With vulturous acclamation, loud in lies, About his dust while yet his dust is warm Who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes,

Their G.o.dless ghost of G.o.dhead, false and foul As fear his dam or h.e.l.l his throne: but we, Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf's howl: The corpse be theirs to mock; the soul is free.

Free as ere yet its earthly day was done It lived above the coil about us curled: A soul whose eyes were keener than the sun, A soul whose wings were wider than the world.

We, sons of east and west, ringed round with dreams, Bound fast with visions, girt about with fears, Live, trust, and think by chance, while shadow seems Light, and the wind that wrecks a hand that steers.

He, whose full soul held east and west in poise, Weighed man with man, and creed of man's with creed, And age with age, their triumphs and their toys, And found what faith may read not and may read.

Scorn deep and strong as death and life, that lit With fire the smile at lies and dreams outworn Wherewith he smote them, showed sublime in it The splendour and the steadfastness of scorn.

What loftier heaven, what lordlier air, what s.p.a.ce Illimitable, insuperable, infinite, Now to that strong-winged soul yields ampler place Than pa.s.sing darkness yields to pa.s.sing light,

No dream, no faith can tell us: hope and fear, Whose tongues were loud of old as children's, now From babbling fall to silence: change is here, And death; dark furrows drawn by time's dark plough.

Still sunward here on earth its flight was bent, Even since the man within the child began To yearn and kindle with superb intent And trust in time to magnify the man.

Still toward the old garden of the Sun, whose fruit The honey-heavy lips of Sophocles Desired and sang, wherein the unwithering root Sprang of all growths that thought brings forth and sees

Incarnate, bright with bloom or dense with leaf Far-shadowing, deep as depth of dawn or night: And all were parcel of the garnered sheaf His strenuous spirit bound and stored aright.

And eastward now, and ever toward the dawn, If death's deep veil by life's bright hand be rent, We see, as through the shadow of death withdrawn, The imperious soul's indomitable ascent.

But not the soul whose labour knew not end-- But not the swordsman's hand, the crested head-- The royal heart we mourn, the faultless friend, Burton--a name that lives till fame be dead.

A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING

I

The clearest eyes in all the world they read With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed, As they the light of ages quick and dead, Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew Can slay not one of all the works we knew, Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head.

The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought, And moulded of unconquerable thought, And quickened with imperishable flame, Stand fast and s.h.i.+ne and smile, a.s.sured that nought May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame, Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name.

_December 13, 1889._

II

Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom Time is not lord, but servant? What least part Of all the fire that fed his living heart, Of all the light more keen than sundawn's bloom That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what thou art, A shadow born of terror's barren womb, That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou, To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow, That power on him is given thee,--that thy breath Can make him less than love acclaims him now, And hears all time sound back the word it saith?

What part hast thou then in his glory, Death?

III

A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve: Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand, Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve.

A graceless guerdon we that loved receive For all our love, from that the dearest land Love wors.h.i.+pped ever. Blithe and soft and bland, Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave, Shone on our dreams and memories evermore The domes, the towers, the mountains and the sh.o.r.e That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black Seems now the face we loved as he of yore.

We have given thee love--no stint, no stay, no lack: What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back?