To a Poet, Charles Bridges

THOU singest, thou, meseems,

Coming from high Parnassus; where thy head

Beside the silent streams,

Among fast-fading blooms, hath fashionèd

A pillow of pale dreams;

While from thee, sleeping, gods, of heart and soul,

Have taken fullest toll.

Thou knowest at what cost

Thy sleep was taken on those awful hills--

What thou hast gained, and lost;

Thou knowest, too, if what thou art fulfils

The pledge of what thou wast;

And if all compensates the poet's wreath

That wounds the brow beneath.

Rememberest thou that night

Incomparable? Thou in dreams wast laid,

Where petals, rose and white,

Above thy head a pale pavilion made;

Where at unscalèd height

The moon lay anchored in the heaving sky,

And clouds went surging by.

Then came the gods unknown!--

The plundering gods--to take thee unawares,

While thou wast sleeping, thrown

Upon the sacred mountain that is theirs.

In vain sad flowers had blown

A gale of petals o'er thee, on they came

In a still sheet of flame!

They knew that those who dare

To sleep one night beside Parnassus' streams

The poet's crown must wear--

Must lip the chalice of immortal dreams,

And breathe the eternal air;

Who, even unto trembling Ossa's hill,

May walk the mount at will!

They killed thy happiness,

And strangled all thy youth, with hands profane,

They brake Love's rosaries,

Tossing thy ravaged soul amid the slain,

While thou wast weaponless;

And left thee gibbeted 'twixt pain and peace,

Forbidding thy release.

Then they augustly laid

Their crippled gifts beside thee, and withdrew

Into high Pelion's shade;

Their tireless feet made fall no bead of dew,

Their passing bent no blade,

Though thunder muttered round each mighty plume,

And crumbled into gloom.

They laid a fatal spell

Of beauty on thine eyes, that made most fair

The rose unpluckable;

They bade thee thirst, yet find no Cup to bear

Water from any well;

They mocked thee with a vision passionate,

And a soul celibate!

O friend, what thou hast known

Thou givest me; what thou hast suffered, thou

Wouldst calmly bear alone;

Forbidding thorns to gather on my brow,--

Accustomed on thine own;

Thou lingerest at my side, to show and spare

The pitfall and the snare.

For thou wouldst give to me

The poet'spillow, who has suffered not

The poet's penalty;

A goodly heritage, a happy lot

Wouldst have my portion be.

With honey from the rod art fain to feed,

Not from the gallèd reed.

Thou hast some rare reward!

The reed that gods have guided, in thine hand

Becomes a dreadful sword;

Their fingers on thy heartstrings still demand

A loud, triumphant chord:

They pass the ditch-delivered poets by,

With wide contemptuous eye.

Poet: I take thy cup:

But, from my coloured wreath of morning flowers

Where bees wild honey sup,

Upon thy sepulchre of buried hours

Am fain to offer up

Some bud, that spills upon thy brow anew

Its fragile shell of dew.

And if at last I choose

To make my pillow on some slope forlorn,

And, in that slumber, lose

My morning wreath, that must be tossed and torn

To feed the jealous Muse,

Remember the poor gifts that I resign . . .

I shall remember thine!

Ave et Vale

FAREWELL is said! Yea, but I cannot take

All that my Greeting gave.

In you hath Hope her doom and Joy her grave;

Still you go crowned with old imaginings,

Clad in the purple that young passion flings

About the sorriest god that Love can make.

Ah! would you might forget, and so pass by

Unwounded of my kiss,

Made free of Youth's unmemorable bliss!

Love's hand that speeds along his daisy chain

Forgets in swift delight to tell again

Old prayers upon a new-strung rosary.

For when I part from you I would not leave

One shadow that might be

A ghost to haunt you, what you had of me

I would fold by in Memory's lavender--

Something my breath may very gently stir

In the slow fading of a rainy eve.

When you drop cherries in the purple wine

For other lips to drain,

Let not old nights betrayed leap up again,

Throw down no murdering chalice at your feast

To-night, nor find another woman's breast

Less lovely with the sudden dream of mine.

Yet if a stranger bear my name, or one

With the same-coloured eyes

Glance at you suddenly, lost dreams shall rise

With unintelligible swift appeals,

The broken images of old ideals

Shall stare from corners where as gods they shone.

Farewell is on the lips of the first kiss

But speaks no word until

The loud voice of Desire hath had its will.

Greeting is swift and beautiful, Farewell

Is slow and patient and immutable,

Knowing of old that love must lead to this.

Greeting! Farewell! The day's grown very old,

My heart put out the light,

Read no more pages of the Past to-night.

There are no roses here to miss the sun;

A soul hath looked on love and he hath flown;

Ashes are on the wind; the tale is told.

The Chalice of Circe

DRINK of our Cup--of the red wine that burns in it,

All the wild shames that have crusted its mouth,

Passion that twists in it, Madness that churns in it,

Fever that yearns in it, Folly that turns in it,

Drink of our Cup! It is Love, it is Youth!

"Amorous valleys have travailed to breed in it,

Eden hath shaken one tree at its brim,

Syria scattered an infamous seed in it,

Paphos hath freed in it lovers, to bleed in it,

Foam from Armida hath rusted its rim!

Chalice of gold with the bruised roses dying there,

How the mad kisses have clustered and clung!

All the sweet loves of the world, softly crying there,

Longing and lying there, swooning and sighing there,

Call to me: "Scatter our wine on thy tongue!"

Rim of it: poisoned with carrion kisses,

Taints the fresh flower, and forbiddeth the sun:

Doves never brood where the stirred serpent hisses

At maddening kisses--mysterious blisses:

Over its edges the spiders have spun.

Fierce wife of Philip her portion hath found in it,

Messaline waits there, Aspasia woos:

Helen and Egypt go vested and crowned in it,

Phryne is bound in it, Faustine swings round in it,

Crying: "Come down to us, watch us and choose!"

Voices are calling: "The revel begins with us,

Run thou again in the race of delight!

All the sweet chase and the capturing win with us,

Enter thou in with us, gambol and sin with us,

Fleet is the quarry and fair is the flight!"

Ere I clould slake at the chalice's wonder

Lips all a-fire for the taste of such bliss,

Rose a great storm, sucked the white faces under,

And tore them asunder with fury and thunder,

Crushed the last folly and choked the last kiss.

Fiercely it flung them and savagely shattered them,

Burst the last breath in a bubble of blood!

Fury and foam of it broke them and battered them,

Scorched them and scattered them, tortured and tattered them,

Hurling their limbs in the froth of the flood.

.         .         .         .         .         .        .

Perished their promise, their beauty forsaken;

Silence alone walked the face of the deep:

The whirlpool was stilled, and the surface with snaken

Small ripples was shaken, as if did awaken

Some sorrowful ghost from the margin of sleep.

Nothing was left of their beauty and 'plaining--

Left of their magic and spared of their spell:

Only the lip of the dark water, staining

The roses, fast waning; and only the craning

Of snakes' heads, disturbed by the petals that fell.

To the Old Gods

To F.D.C.
Who much inspired what is in this book.

O YE, who rode the gales of Sicily,

Sandalled with flame,

Spread on the pirate winds; o ye who broke

No wind-flower as ye came--

Though Pelion shivered when the thunder spoke

The gods' decree!--

Into the twilight of the ancient days

Have not ye flown!--

Ye, whom the happy Greeks inspirèd hand

Struck from the frenzied stone:

That, ye withdrawn, your images should stand

To take their praise.

Smeared into clay, and frozen into stone!

Ye, that do now

Face eyes unworshipful in plunder's halls,

Mutilate, with marred brow:

Broken and maimed: couched along alien walls

In lands unknown.

O gracious ones! No more, no more, shall ye

Spread wing above

Perilous Ossa! No more wring delight

From pool and golden grove:

No more beneath your fire-shod feet in flight

Shall hiss the sea.

The thuunder shall not groan between your breasts,

Nor lightning writhe

Barbed in your clutch; no worshippers shall trace

Your steps in grove and hithe.

No more 'thwart skies your golden stallions race

On mighty quests.

And yet what fane, what column, rises now

To save or shine:

What temple travails at such quickening feet,

What wing-tip seeds a shrine:

What god hath bid us build in wold or street,

Such breast and brow?

What have our wisdom and our worship done

To raise such gods?

To quench the ruined eyes of Parthenon

What newer beauty nods,

And shames the wreckless brow that stares upon

The amazèd sun?

Held up in arms of columns white as flowers,

You faced the sea,

With your great breasts for glory passioning,--

For mortal's victory;

Not 'neath occaisonal thin spires that spring

From streets of ours,

Hooding the dying god, whom men revile,--

Who bears their sin.

No great winds thunder over sun-splashed thrones,

Our dusty shrines within,

Where troubled feet make groan the weary stones,

In hollow isle.

I, only I, kneel at forsaken shrine:

The lamp I bring

Scarce throws a shade beneath your eyelids there:

Forlorn the song I sing

To ears august, and these wrung berries bear

A bitter wine.

Yet still I kneel, poor praise to offer up

To each great name!

And I shall feel upon my brow descend

A sudden edge of flame.

Your wings shall smear these words, even as ye bend

To this poor cup.

The Dead Moment

THE world is changed between us, never more

Shall the dawn rise and seek another mate

Over the hill-tops; never can the shore

Spread out her ragged tresses to the roar

Of the sea passionate,

Moon-chained, and for a season love-forbid;

Never shall shift the sullen thunder's lid

At lightning-lash, and never shall the night

Throw the wild stars about,

Nor the day flicker out

Against the evening's breath; but this shall creep--

This moment on us, to make different

The face of every day's intent,

And change the brow of sleep.

What can we name it? Oh, the whitest word

Would leave a stain upon that moment's mouth!

The sweetest piping heard

By wearying birds a-South

Would shake its silence, let no word be said;

What need of name or music hath the dead?

Too far for call, too faint for song it is,

This ghost of ours, that you have buried deep;

Less earth than any violet nourishes

Its fragile stem would keep;

And we could lose it in the frailest shell,

Or lily's wannest bell;

In any rose's urn that dust might dwell.

Oh! to forsake it thus,

Our only one, our starveling piteous!

Even as men who garner and lock up

Gold chasuble and cup,--

Their alabaster and their tourmaline,--

Their sandal-wood and wine,

Will give their dearest to the earth to keep,

Housed among strangers, and will let the clay

Or oozing river-bed

Rot all their wealth away,

While they go home to sleep!

Will let the wild roots of the bramble clutch,

And see the careless sod

Trample it down, and bruise with common touch

All that they knew of glory and of God!

(Who would not house a thief so house their dead!)

In the blind dark with wolf-winds overhead.

When night sucks honey from the hive of day

They lie, while April, with her merry clout,

Flings the white dust about;

When the swift silences that ride the Spring

Whip on their misty chariots, and wring

Foam from the bridled lips of May;

What time the sick moon looks up yellowly

Out of the pillowed sky,

Or when doth sing

Some crazy bird, aslant upon a bough

A song that makes him, just this time of year,

A poet, and can never sing again;

When the pale lips of rain

Tremble above the eyelids of the plain.

Ah! would you hide our one dead moment, now,

Even as they, my dear?

Who into one grave hurdle grace and mirth,

Beating down Beauty with a noisy spade,

Nor dream that 'neath the stunned and senseless earth

Are all their riches laid;--

Such gold as they shall never see again,

Such wine as shall not stain

Their shallow cups! All beauty, all delight,

Treasure, unbarterable and bright,

All lie there in the cold, and in the night.

Nay, you will have it so?

Let all its sweetness go,

Brief, exquisite?

Then take it hence; but make a wreath for it

And let us sing for it a requiem,

Not the few strangled words above the dead

That those, whose hearts condemn,

Mutter, for having left so long unsaid,

Pity or praise, to ears desiring them.

Bury it not as something sick and shamed,

Unfathered and unnamed.

Nay, break sweet spices, myrrh and cedar bring,

Bury it as a king,

Or some belovèd child that lies beneath

The rose whose name he knew not, wondering

Why his young mother wove it in a wreath.

For, look you, and remember what it gave,--

Those gifts, that naught and none can take away!

How it makes red as rose each pallid day,

Each coward moment, brave;

And how each wingless heel of Misery

It sandals with a hope, and sends a-sky!

While we await the hour that somewhere goes

Unmatched, unmated . . . it shall not be yet:

Night's heavy eyelids close

On tears; and leave the Morning's pillow wet.

Weep not, though said the requiem, flung the wreath;

Only when you forget, and I forget,

Weep for that moment's death.