MILTON (ALCAICS) * O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages: Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset! Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods Whisper in odorous heights of even. TO DANTE (WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE FLORENTINES)† King, that hast reign'd six hundred years, and grown In power, and ever growest, since thine own TO VIRGIL (WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTENARY OF VIRGIL'S DEATH.) Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; Landscape-lover, lord of language more than he that sang the "Works and Days, ''1 All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; 1 Hesiod. * This poem is one of Tennyson's experiments in the quantitative metre of the classics. The two styles of Milton here described may be found in many passages of Paradise Lost; see especially, for the "angel onset," Boox VI, 96 ff., and for the "bowery loneliness," IV, 214 ff. † For a festival on the six hundredth anniversary 2 A shepherd piper in 3 Eclogue sixth. 4 Title of the fourth Eclogue, which is prophetic of a golden age. * In these words, "Hail, brother, and farewell," the Roman poet Catullus lamented the death of his brother (Carmina 101, 10). Catullus had a villa on the peninsula of Sermione"yenusta (beautiful) Sirmio"-in Lake Garda. northern Italy. The last two lines of this little poem, which reproduce so well the soft music of Catullus's verse, are modelled upon lines in his thirty-first song. Catullus used the word "Lydian" in the belief that the Etruscans, who anciently had settlements near the Lake of Garda, were of Lydian origin There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in my stable, II summer glow, There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow, Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines? Came that "Ave atque Vale" of the Poet's hopeless woe, Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago, "Frater Ave atque Vale"-as we wander'd to and fro Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack? Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar! OLD AGE Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was Sirmio! FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, WAGES Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right I have climb'd to the snows of Age, and I gaze The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam Innocence seethed in her mother's milk, and What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesj Charity setting the martyr aflame; Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her varying voices of prayer, All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that i filthy with all that is fair? What is it all, if we all of us end but in bein our own corpse-coffins at last? Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown' in the deeps of a meaningless Past What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or moment's anger of bees in their hive? Desolate offing, sailorless harbours, famishing Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love hin National hatreds of whole generations, and ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889 Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his Many's the friend there, will listen and pray snarls impressing, enlisting parleys, debates Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say; "God's luck to gallants that strike up the layCHO.-Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" may it serve Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay, These songs are meant to portray the spirit of the adherents of Charles I., and their hatred of the Puritans, or Roundheads. The Byngs Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array: of Kent are famous in the annals of British Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my Cho.-Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" fay, 4 Oliver's (i. e., Cromwell's) . warfare. Pym, a leader of the Long Parlia ment, Hazelrig (or Hesilrige), Fiennes (Lord Say), and Sir Henry Vane the Younger, were all important figures in the rebellion against Charles. Prince Rupert was a nephew of The standard of Charles was raised there in Charles, and a celebrated cavalry leader. 1642, marking the beginning of the Civil War. INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and You know, we French stormed Ratisbon: 5 A mile or so away, On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming-day; Just as perhaps he mused "My plans Waver at yonder wall, " Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew Until he reached the mound. Then off there flung in smiling joy, By just his horse's mane, a boy: (So tight he kept his lips compressed, "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace We 've got you Ratisbon! The Marshal 's in the market-place, And you 'll be there anon To see your flag-bird flap his vans MY LAST DUCHESS* FERRARA That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Worked busily a day, and there she stands. durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20 24 30 Or blush, at least. She thanked men,-good! but thanked Somehow-I know not how as if she ranked Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his In speech (which I have not)- to make your Where I, to heart's desire, plans 5 In Bavaria; stormed by Napoleon in 1809. * A Duke of Ferrara stands before a portrait of his deceased Duchess, talking coolly with the envoy of a Count whose daughter he seeks to marry. The poem is a study in the heartless jealousy of supreme selfishness. The nature of the commands (line 45) which such a man might give, living at the time of the Italian Renaissance, may be left to the imagi nation, as Browning leaves it. The artists mentioned (lines 3, 56) are imaginary. On the monologue form, see Eng. Lit., p. 301. |