What this man was, whose praise no thought|--Our lady of love by you is unbeholden; may reach, No words can weigh. Since man's first mother brought to mortal birth Her first-born son, Such grace befell not ever man on earth Of God nor man was ever this thing said: For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor -Is she a queen, having great gifts to give? 20-Yea, these: that whoso hath seen her shall not live Life back to her who gave him, whence his dead Mother might live. Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain, Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears; And when she bids die he shall surely die. But this man found his mother dead and slain, | And he shall leave all things under the sky, With fast-sealed eyes, And bade the dead rise up and live again, And go forth naked under sun and rain, For if she be not in the spirit of men, Life and the clouds are vanished; hate and fear In vain their mouths make much of her; for Have had their span But highest of all that heaven and earth be--And ye shall die before your thrones be won. -Yea, and the changed world and the liberal But somewhat in it of our blood once shed Plants in their fiery footprints our fresh 48 Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless; But man to man, nation would turn to nation, And the old life live, and the old great word be great. 80 -Pass on, then, and pass by us, and let us be, -But ye that might be clothed with all things For what light think ye after life to see? pleasant, Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present, That clothe yourselves with the cold future air; and brother And if the world fare better will ye know? And if man triumph who shall seek you and say? -Enough of light is this for one life's span, When mother and father, and tender sister That all men born are mortal, but not man; And the old live love that was shall be as ye, Than sister or wife or father unto us or 56 -Is this worth life, is this, to win for wages? Lo, the dead mouths of the awful grey-grown ages, The venerable, in the past that is their prison, In the outer darkness, in the unopening grave, Laugh, knowing how many as ye now say have said, How many, and all are fallen, are fallen and dead: Shall ye dead rise, and these dead have not risen? A FORSAKEN GARDEN 88 In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead. The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, -Not we but she, who is tender, and swift to If a step should sound or a word be spoken, save. 64 -Are ye not weary and faint not by the way, -We are weary in heart and head, in hands and And surely more than all things sleep were sweet,― Than all things save the inexorable desire Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep. 72 -Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow? Is this so sure where all men's hopes are hollow, 8 Even this your dream, that by much tribulation From the thicket of thorns whence the nightin- | Here death may deal not again forever; Here change may come not till all change end. gale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither, Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song. The sun burns sere, and the rain dishevels From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left naught living to ravage and rend. 32 Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping Years ago. 40 Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look Till the strength of the waves of the high tides thither, Did he whisper? "Look forth from the flowers to the sea; For the foam-flowers endure when the roseblossoms wither, humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, And men that love lightly may die-But As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, What love was ever as deep as a grave? They are loveless now as the grass above them Or the wave. 56 Death lies dead. A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND 80 Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred? All are at one now, roses and lovers, sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now 16 The green land's name that a charm encloses, When, as they that are free now of weeping And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard; and laughter, We shall sleep. No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart, 64 Only the song of a secret bird. 24 ENVOI* In the world of dreams I have chosen my part, UPON A CHILD Of such is the kingdom of heaven. No word that ever was spoken Of human or godlike tongue, Gave ever such godlike token Since human harps were strung. No sign that ever was given To faithful or faithless eyes Earth's creeds may be seventy times seven A CHILD'S LAUGHTER All sweet sounds together; Wind in warm wan weather, Hoped in heaven hereafter; Heard from morning's rosiest height, Fills a child's clear laughter. L'envoi, or "the despatch," was the name formerly given to the closing lines of a ballade. containing an address to some prince, or poet's patron; see The Compleynt of Chaucer to his Purse, p. 62. In modern imitations. this address can be only a formula and is frequently omitted, the envoi being merely a summary, or an appended stanza completing the metrical scheme Hours so blithe in tones so bold, As the radiant mouth of gold Here that rings forth heaven. If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale-why, then Something seen and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs a child of seven. A BABY'S DEATH* I A little soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul. Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll, Our fruitfulness is there but dearth, II The little feet that never trod A rose in June's most honied heat, Their pilgrimage's period A few swift moons have seen complete III The little hands that never sought We ask: but love's self silent stands, Ere this, perchance, though love knew nought, The little hands. From A Century of Roundels. Of the poem here given in part there are seven sections. each in the form of a roundel with regularly recurring refrain. The last three sections, however, vary in length of line, and being of a personal nature detract from the universal appeal of the first four. PRELUDE. TRISTRAM AND ISEULT Love, that is first and last of all things made, And alway through new act and passion new And ebb and flow of dying death and life; Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears, Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears, That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings; The whole world's fiery forces not burn down; The whole world's wrath and strength shall not Love, that if once his own hands make his grave save; Love, that for very life shall not be sold, Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell; The body spiritual of fire and light Led these twain to the life of tears and fire; Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime; Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land, The sweet twain chords that make the sweet Through day and night of things alternative, 20 Through silence and through sound of stress and strife, light Yea, but what then? albeit all this were thus, Hath love not likewise led them further yet, 50 Some large as suns, some moon-like warm and pale, Some starry-sighted, some through clouds that sail Seen as red flame through spectral float of Each with the blush of its own special bloom In the long lyrical epic thus named, Swinburne tells again the story of Tristram and Iseult, which shares with that of Siegfried and Brunhild the distinction of being one of the greatest love stories of the world. "The Divisible from all the radiant rest world of Swinburne," says Professor Woodberry, "is well symbolized by that Zodiac of And separable in splendour? Hath the best the burning signs of love that he named in Light of love's all, of all that burn and move, the prelude to Tristram of Lyonesse,-the signs of Helen, Hero, Alcyone, Iseult, Rosa- A better heaven than heaven is? Hath not mond, Dido, Juliet, Cleopatra, Francesca, Thisbe, Angelica, Guenevere; under the heavens of these starry names the poet moves in his place apart and sees his visions of woe and wrath and weaves his dream of the loves and the fates of men." love 60 Made for all these their sweet particular air |