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branches ::: lair

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object:lair
class:Place
word class:noun

see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
DND_DM_Guide_5E
Evolution_II
Infinite_Library
Initiation_Into_Hermetics
Liber_ABA
Questions_And_Answers_1950-1951
The_Secret_Doctrine

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1951-02-19_-_Exteriorisation-_clairvoyance,_fainting,_etc_-_Somnambulism_-_Tartini_-_childrens_dreams_-_Nightmares_-_gurus_protection_-_Mind_and_vital_roam_during_sleep
3.18_-_Of_Clairvoyance_and_the_Body_of_Light

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.00a_-_Participants_in_the_Evening_Talks
0.06_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Sadhak
01.03_-_Mystic_Poetry
01.03_-_The_Yoga_of_the_King_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Souls_Release
01.04_-_The_Poetry_in_the_Making
01.10_-_Principle_and_Personality
0_1958-11-04_-_Myths_are_True_and_Gods_exist_-_mental_formation_and_occult_faculties_-_exteriorization_-_work_in_dreams
0_1960-10-25
0_1961-01-24
0_1961-02-11
0_1961-05-19
0_1961-06-24
0_1961-10-30
0_1962-10-06
0_1962-10-12
0_1963-10-16
0_1964-11-14
0_1965-06-30
0_1965-07-10
0_1968-07-13
0_1968-08-28
0_1969-07-30
0_1971-08-04
02.09_-_Two_Mystic_Poems_in_Modern_French
02.10_-_The_Kingdoms_and_Godheads_of_the_Little_Mind
02.10_-_Two_Mystic_Poems_in_Modern_Bengali
03.04_-_Towardsa_New_Ideology
03.11_-_The_Language_Problem_and_India
04.02_-_A_Chapter_of_Human_Evolution
04.03_-_Consciousness_as_Energy
04.04_-_The_Quest
05.05_-_In_Quest_of_Reality
07.04_-_The_Triple_Soul-Forces
10.04_-_The_Dream_Twilight_of_the_Earthly_Real
1.00e_-_DIVISION_E_-_MOTION_ON_THE_PHYSICAL_AND_ASTRAL_PLANES
10.23_-_Prayers_and_Meditations_of_the_Mother
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_Meditating_on_Tara
1.02_-_The_Development_of_Sri_Aurobindos_Thought
1.02_-_The_Stages_of_Initiation
1.03_-_Hymns_of_Gritsamada
1.03_-_Man_-_Slave_or_Free?
1.03_-_Some_Practical_Aspects
1.03_-_The_Void
1.04_-_Magic_and_Religion
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_The_Divine_Mother_-_This_Is_She
1.05_-_Adam_Kadmon
1.05_-_Consciousness
1.05_-_Hymns_of_Bharadwaja
1.05_-_Some_Results_of_Initiation
1.06_-_Dhyana
1.06_-_The_Transformation_of_Dream_Life
1.07_-_A_Song_of_Longing_for_Tara,_the_Infallible
1.07_-_Note_on_the_word_Go
1.07_-_The_Continuity_of_Consciousness
1.07_-_The_Psychic_Center
1.08_-_Independence_from_the_Physical
1.08_-_The_Splitting_of_the_Human_Personality_during_Spiritual_Training
1.09_-_Kundalini_Yoga
1.09_-_SKIRMISHES_IN_A_WAY_WITH_THE_AGE
1.09_-_The_Ambivalence_of_the_Fish_Symbol
1.1.05_-_The_Siddhis
1.10_-_Laughter_Of_The_Gods
1.12_-_The_Astral_Plane
1.13_-_The_Pentacle,_Lamen_or_Seal
1.14_-_Bibliography
1.15_-_Index
1.15_-_In_the_Domain_of_the_Spirit_Beings
1.16_-_Advantages_and_Disadvantages_of_Evocational_Magic
1.16_-_The_Season_of_Truth
1.18_-_Evocation
1.18_-_The_Human_Fathers
1.19_-_The_Victory_of_the_Fathers
1.20_-_Tabooed_Persons
1.240_-_Talks_2
1.27_-_Guido_da_Montefeltro._His_deception_by_Pope_Boniface_VIII.
13.07_-_The_Inter-Zone
1.31_-_Adonis_in_Cyprus
1.36_-_Quo_Stet_Olympus_-_Where_the_Gods,_Angels,_etc._Live
1.400_-_1.450_Talks
14.06_-_Liberty,_Self-Control_and_Friendship
1.439
1.44_-_Serious_Style_of_A.C.,_or_the_Apparent_Frivolity_of_Some_of_my_Remarks
1.51_-_How_to_Recognise_Masters,_Angels,_etc.,_and_how_they_Work
16.02_-_Mater_Dolorosa
1.62_-_The_Fire-Festivals_of_Europe
1.67_-_The_External_Soul_in_Folk-Custom
1.78_-_Sore_Spots
1914_08_31p
1951-02-19_-_Exteriorisation-_clairvoyance,_fainting,_etc_-_Somnambulism_-_Tartini_-_childrens_dreams_-_Nightmares_-_gurus_protection_-_Mind_and_vital_roam_during_sleep
1951-04-02_-_Causes_of_accidents_-_Little_entities,_helpful_or_mischievous-_incidents
1953-11-25
1954-07-14_-_The_Divine_and_the_Shakti_-_Personal_effort_-_Speaking_and_thinking_-_Doubt_-_Self-giving,_consecration_and_surrender_-_Mothers_use_of_flowers_-_Ornaments_and_protection
1954-10-06_-_What_happens_is_for_the_best_-_Blaming_oneself_-Experiences_-_The_vital_desire-soul_-Creating_a_spiritual_atmosphere_-Thought_and_Truth
1957-03-15_-_Reminiscences_of_Tlemcen
1962_02_27
1970_02_23
1.A_-_ANTHROPOLOGY,_THE_SOUL
1f.lovecraft_-_At_the_Mountains_of_Madness
1f.lovecraft_-_Herbert_West-Reanimator
1f.lovecraft_-_Hypnos
1f.lovecraft_-_Medusas_Coil
1f.lovecraft_-_Out_of_the_Aeons
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Crawling_Chaos
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Diary_of_Alonzo_Typer
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dunwich_Horror
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Haunter_of_the_Dark
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Hoard_of_the_Wizard-Beast
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Hound
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Mound
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Night_Ocean
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Shadow_out_of_Time
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Shadow_over_Innsmouth
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Slaying_of_the_Monster
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Temple
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Thing_on_the_Doorstep
1f.lovecraft_-_Under_the_Pyramids
1.fs_-_A_Funeral_Fantasie
1.fs_-_Hero_And_Leander
1.fs_-_The_Hostage
1.jk_-_Endymion_-_Book_III
1.jk_-_Endymion_-_Book_IV
1.jk_-_Hyperion._Book_I
1.jk_-_Lines_Written_In_The_Highlands_After_A_Visit_To_Burnss_Country
1.jk_-_Ode_To_Apollo
1.jk_-_Sonnet_IX._Keen,_Fitful_Gusts_Are
1.jk_-_Sonnet_X._To_One_Who_Has_Been_Long_In_City_Pent
1.jk_-_The_Cap_And_Bells;_Or,_The_Jealousies_-_A_Faery_Tale_.._Unfinished
1.lovecraft_-_The_Outpost
1.pbs_-_Adonais_-_An_elegy_on_the_Death_of_John_Keats
1.pbs_-_Bigotrys_Victim
1.pbs_-_Hellas_-_A_Lyrical_Drama
1.pbs_-_Love-_Hope,_Desire,_And_Fear
1.pbs_-_Marenghi
1.pbs_-_Orpheus
1.pbs_-_Prince_Athanase
1.pbs_-_Prometheus_Unbound
1.pbs_-_The_Mask_Of_Anarchy
1.pbs_-_The_Revolt_Of_Islam_-_Canto_I-XII
1.pbs_-_The_Wandering_Jews_Soliloquy
1.pbs_-_The_Witch_Of_Atlas
1.poe_-_Al_Aaraaf-_Part_2
1.poe_-_Ulalume
1.rb_-_Introduction:_Pippa_Passes
1.rb_-_Paracelsus_-_Part_II_-_Paracelsus_Attains
1.rb_-_Rhyme_for_a_Child_Viewing_a_Naked_Venus_in_a_Painting_of_'The_Judgement_of_Paris'
1.rmr_-_The_Sonnets_To_Orpheus_-_I
1.rwe_-_Initial_Love
1.rwe_-_The_Adirondacs
1.wby_-_The_Municipal_Gallery_Revisited
1.wby_-_The_Wanderings_Of_Oisin_-_Book_III
1.whitman_-_Europe,_The_72d_And_73d_Years_Of_These_States
1.whitman_-_Passage_To_India
1.ww_-_A_Whirl-Blast_From_Behind_The_Hill
1.ww_-_Book_Fifth-Books
1.ww_-_Memorials_Of_A_Tour_In_Scotland-_1803_X._Rob_Roys_Grave
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_VII-_Book_Sixth-_The_Churchyard_Among_the_Mountains
20.06_-_Translations_in_French
2.00_-_BIBLIOGRAPHY
2.01_-_Mandala_One
2.01_-_On_Books
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.08_-_ON_THE_FAMOUS_WISE_MEN
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.1.02_-_Combining_Work,_Meditation_and_Bhakti
2.10_-_Knowledge_by_Identity_and_Separative_Knowledge
2.12_-_On_Miracles
2.14_-_The_Passive_and_the_Active_Brahman
2.19_-_Out_of_the_Sevenfold_Ignorance_towards_the_Sevenfold_Knowledge
2.21_-_Towards_the_Supreme_Secret
2.25_-_List_of_Topics_in_Each_Talk
2.26_-_Samadhi
24.05_-_Vision_of_Dante
26.09_-_Le_Periple_d_Or_(Pome_dans_par_Yvonne_Artaud)
2_-_Other_Hymns_to_Agni
30.07_-_The_Poet_and_the_Yogi
30.10_-_The_Greatness_of_Poetry
30.11_-_Modern_Poetry
3.01_-_The_Soul_World
3.01_-_Towards_the_Future
3.02_-_THE_DEPLOYMENT_OF_THE_NOOSPHERE
3.02_-_The_Motives_of_Devotion
3.03_-_On_Thought_-_II
3.03_-_The_Soul_Is_Mortal
3.03_-_The_Spirit_Land
3.05_-_SAL
3.1.23_-_The_Rishi
3.12_-_Of_the_Bloody_Sacrifice
3.14_-_Of_the_Consecrations
3.18_-_Of_Clairvoyance_and_the_Body_of_Light
3.4.1.01_-_Poetry_and_Sadhana
37.01_-_Yama_-_Nachiketa_(Katha_Upanishad)
3.7.1.03_-_Rebirth,_Evolution,_Heredity
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.05_-_The_Instruments_of_the_Spirit
4.0_-_The_Path_of_Knowledge
4.1.2_-_The_Difficulties_of_Human_Nature
4.24_-_The_supramental_Sense
4.25_-_Towards_the_supramental_Time_Vision
4.2_-_Karma
5.01_-_The_Dakini,_Salgye_Du_Dalma
5.1.01.2_-_The_Book_of_the_Statesman
5.1.01.3_-_The_Book_of_the_Assembly
5.1.01.4_-_The_Book_of_Partings
5.1.01.5_-_The_Book_of_Achilles
5.1.01.7_-_The_Book_of_the_Woman
5.2.02_-_The_Meditations_of_Mandavya
5.4.01_-_Occult_Knowledge
5.4.02_-_Occult_Powers_or_Siddhis
6.01_-_THE_ALCHEMICAL_VIEW_OF_THE_UNION_OF_OPPOSITES
6.03_-_Extraordinary_And_Paradoxical_Telluric_Phenomena
Aeneid
APPENDIX_I_-_Curriculum_of_A._A.
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
Conversations_with_Sri_Aurobindo
Liber
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
LUX.02_-_EVOCATION
r1914_08_01
Talks_026-050
Talks_500-550
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
The_Aleph
The_Coming_Race_Contents
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Shadow_Out_Of_Time

PRIMARY CLASS

Place
SIMILAR TITLES
Charles Baudelaire
lair
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

lair ::: 1. A den or hideaway. 2. A den or resting place of a wild animal. lairs, lairlike.

laird ::: n. --> A lord; a landholder, esp. one who holds land directly of the crown.

lairdship ::: n. --> The state of being a laird; an estate; landed property.

laire de I’Angelologie.

laire de I’Angilologie.]

lair ::: n. --> A place in which to lie or rest; especially, the bed or couch of a wild beast.
A burying place.
A pasture; sometimes, food.



TERMS ANYWHERE

119.] Schwab, Vocabulaire de VAngelologie, identi¬

2. divine eye/clairvoyance (S. divyacaksus; T. lha'i spyan; C. tianyan 天眼)

(2) In ethics: in the narrower traditional sense, intuitionism is the view that certain actions or kinds of action may be known to be right or wrong by a direct intuition of their rightness or wrongness, without any consideration of the value of their consequences. In this sense intuitionism is opposed to utilitarian and teleological ethics, and is most recently represented by the neo-intuitionists at Oxford, H. A. Prichard, E. F. Carritt, W. D. Ross. It is sometimes said to involve the view that the organ of ethical insight is non-rational and even unique. It takes, according to Sidgwick, three forms. Perceptual intuitionism holds that only judgments relating to the rightness or wrongness of particular acts are intuitive. Dogmatic intuitionism holds that some general material propositions relating to the rightness or wrongness of kinds of acts may also be intuited, e.g. that promises ought to be kept. Philosophical intuitionism holds that it is only certain general propositions about what is right or wrong that are intuitive, and that these are few and purely formal. In the wider more recent sense, intuitionism includes all views in which ethics is made to rest on intuitions, particular or general, as to the rightness, obligatoriness, goodness, oi value of actions or objects. Taken in this sense, intuitionism is the dominant point of view in recent British ethics, and is represented in Europe by the phenomenological ethics of M. Scheler and N. Hartmann, having also proponents in America. That is, it covers not only the deontological intuitionism to be found at Oxford, but also the axiological and even teleological or utilitarian intuitionism to be found in J. Martineau, H. Sidgwick, H. Rashdall, G. E. Moore, J. Laird. Among earlier British moralists it is represented by tho Cambridge Platonists, the Moral Sense School, Clarke, Cumberland, Butler, Price, Reid, Whewell, etc.By saying that the basic propositions of ethics (i.e. of the theory of obligation, of the theory of value, or of both) are intuitive, the intuitionists mean at least that they are ultimate and underivative, primitive and uninferable, as well as synthetic, and sometimes also that they are self-evident and a priori. This implies that one or more of the basic notions of ethics (rightness, goodness, etc.) are indefinable, i.e. simple or unanalysable and unique; and that ethics is autonomous. Intuitionists also hold that rightness and goodness are objective and non-natural. Hence their view is sometimes called objectivism or non-naturalism. The views of Moore and Laird are also sometimes referred to as realistic. See Deontological ethics, Axiological ethics, Teleological ethics, Utilitarianism, Objectivism, Realism, Autonomy of ethics, Non-naturalistic ethics. -- W.K.F.

2. "the divine eye"/clairvoyance (S. divyacaksus; T. lha'i mig; C. tianyan ming 天眼明)

2. "the divine eye"/clairvoyance (S. divyacaksus; T. lha'i mig; C. tianyan 天眼)

2. "the divine eye"/clairvoyance (S. divyacaksus; T. lha'i mig gi mngon shes; C. tianyan [zhizheng] tong 天眼[智證]通)

3rd Heaven. [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelo-

3. "the divine ear"/clairaudience (S. divyasrotra; T. lha'i rna ba; C. tian'er 天耳)

3. "the divine ear"/clairaudience (S. divyasrotra; T. lha'i rna ba'i mngon shes; C. tian'er [zhizheng] tong 天耳[智證]通)

abhijNA. (P. abhiNNA; T. mngon shes; C. shentong; J. jinzu; K. sint'ong 神通). In Sanskrit, "superknowledges"; specifically referring to a set of supranormal powers that are by-products of meditation. These are usually enumerated as six: (1) various psychical and magical powers (ṚDDHIVIDHABHIJNA [alt. ṛddhividhi], P. iddhividhA), such as the ability to pass through walls, sometimes also known as "unimpeded bodily action" (ṛddhisAksAtkriyA); (2) clairvoyance, lit. "divine eye" (DIVYACAKsUS, P. dibbacakkhu), the ability to see from afar and to see how beings fare in accordance with their deeds; (3) clairaudience, lit. "divine ear" (DIVYAsROTRA, P. dibbasota), the ability to hear from afar; (4) the ability to remember one's own former lives (PuRVANIVASANUSMṚTI, P. pubbenivAsAnunssati); (5) "knowledge of others' states of mind" (CETOPARYAYABHIJNANA/PARACITTAJNANA, P. cetopariyaNAna), e.g., telepathy; and (6) the knowledge of the extinction of the contaminants (ASRAVAKsAYA, P. AsavakkhAya). The first five of these superknowledges are considered to be mundane (LAUKIKA) achievements, which are gained through still more profound refinement of the fourth stage of meditative absorption (DHYANA). The sixth power is said to be supramundane (LOKOTTARA) and is attainable through the cultivation of insight (VIPAsYANA) into the nature of reality. The first, second, and sixth superknowledges are also called the three kinds of knowledge (TRIVIDYA; P. tevijjA).

according to the story in Schwab, Vocabulaire de

A distinction is often drawn between two kinds of value, namely intrinsic value and extrinsic or instrumental value. By extrinsic value is meant the character of being good or of having value as a means to something. By intrinsic value is meant the character of being good or valuable in itself or as an end or for its own sake. See Intrinsic goodness. Value-theorists have been mainly concerned with intrinsic value. The term "worth" has sometimes been used as equivalent to intrinsic value (Kant). But the distinction has often been criticized, e.g., by Dewey and Laird.

(a) In metaphysics: Theory which admits in any given domain, two independent and mutually irreducible substances e.g. the Platonic dualism of the sensible and intelligible worlds, the Cartesian dinlism of thinking and extended substances, the Leibnizian dualism of the actual and possible worlds, the Kantian dualism of the noumenal and the phenomenal. The term dualism first appeared in Thomas Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum (1700) ch. IX, p. 164, where it applied to religious dualism of good and evil and is similarly employed by Bayle m his Dictionary article "Zoroaster" and by Leibniz in Theodicee. C. Wolff is responsible for its use in the psycho-physical sense, (cf. A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la Philosophie. Vol. I, p. 180, note by R. Eucken.)

aisvarya. (T. dbang phyug; C. zizai; J. jizai; K. chajae 自在). In Sanskrit, lit. "sovereignty"; referring to the "self-mastery" or "autonomy" that is a product of religious training and/or related superknowledges (ABHIJNA) that are gained thereby, such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, the ability to manifest transformation bodies, and erudition.

AKASHIC RECORDS (Q.) Such globe memories as can be reached with emotional clairvoyance (48:4-7). They do not contain the past of the planet, but what people in all times have believed about this past. The real akasha, the akasha of the planetary hierarchy, is world 44. (K 6.9)

Although in both kinds of entranced cases there is a more or less temporary dissociation of the human soul — a disruption of the normal relations of the personality — the resulting psychological conditions in typical cases of the two classes are distinctly opposite. In the unconscious state, the person’s mental-psychological or intermediate nature is in a subnormal and unnatural condition, even if he is seeing and reporting clairvoyant visions of unknown past events and of as yet unknown future. While his dislocated intermediate nature is thus functioning upon the chaotic astral plane, he is devoid of the judgment and will power of his higher mind, and is as helpless as in a nightmare or disorderly dream.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange "character, standard" The basis of {character sets} used in almost all present-day computers. {US-ASCII} uses only the lower seven {bits} ({character points} 0 to 127) to convey some {control codes}, {space}, numbers, most basic punctuation, and unaccented letters a-z and A-Z. More modern {coded character sets} (e.g., {Latin-1}, {Unicode}) define extensions to ASCII for values above 127 for conveying special {Latin characters} (like accented characters, or {German} ess-tsett), characters from non-Latin writing systems (e.g., {Cyrillic}, or {Han characters}), and such desirable {glyphs} as distinct open- and close-{quotation marks}. ASCII replaced earlier systems such as {EBCDIC} and {Baudot}, which used fewer bytes, but were each {broken} in their own way. Computers are much pickier about spelling than humans; thus, {hackers} need to be very precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names - some formal, some concise, some silly. Individual characters are listed in this dictionary with alternative names from revision 2.3 of the {Usenet} ASCII pronunciation guide in rough order of popularity, including their official {ITU-T} names and the particularly silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. See {V} {ampersand}, {asterisk}, {back quote}, {backslash}, {caret}, {colon}, {comma}, {commercial at}, {control-C}, {dollar}, {dot}, {double quote}, {equals}, {exclamation mark}, {greater than}, {hash}, {left bracket}, {left parenthesis}, {less than}, {minus}, {parentheses}, {oblique stroke}, {percent}, {plus}, {question mark}, {right brace}, {right brace}, {right bracket}, {right parenthesis}, {semicolon}, {single quote}, {space}, {tilde}, {underscore}, {vertical bar}, {zero}. Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The "

American Standard Code for Information Interchange ::: The basis of character sets used in almost all present-day computers. US-ASCII uses only the lower seven bits (character points 0 to 127) to convey some as EBCDIC and Baudot, which used fewer bytes, but were each broken in their own way.Computers are much pickier about spelling than humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names - some formal, some concise, some silly.Individual characters are listed in this dictionary with alternative names from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation guide in rough order of popularity, including their official ITU-T names and the particularly silly names introduced by INTERCAL.See V ampersand, asterisk, back quote, backslash, caret, colon, comma, commercial at, control-C, dollar, dot, double quote, equals, exclamation mark, brace, right bracket, right parenthesis, semicolon, single quote, space, tilde, underscore, vertical bar, zero.Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The

Astral light: In occult terminology, the name of a universal living element which is described as an element and a power at the same time and containing the character of all things. It is said to be the storehouse of memory for the Macrocosm, the contents of which may be reimbodied and reincarnated—and at the same time the storehouse of the memory of man’s Microcosm, into which he delves to recollect past happenings. While it exists uniformly all throughout the universe its density and activity are increased around certain objects, in particular around the human brain and spinal cord; it is the medium through which thought is transmitted, and its presence around man’s nerve cells and conduits enables human beings to perceive impressions on the astral aura and thus to “read by the astral light”—the akashic reading, scientifically called clairvoyance.

Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430.   St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents.   Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided.   Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients.   S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings").   This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism).   (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment.   Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect.   Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good."   In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love.   In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909).   Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint.   The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value.   (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey).   (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience.   (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria.   (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers:   subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists);   logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality);   metaphysical objectivism (values   --or norms or ideals   --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.

Aura [from Greek, Latin aura air] A subtle invisible essence or fluid emanating from and surrounding beings, both those classed as animate and inanimate. To the eyes of clairvoyants the human aura appears as a halo of light, variously colored according to the momentary psychic and mental condition of the individual. Since everything in the universe is a center of living energies of one kind or another, it must necessarily be surrounded by a field of force, representing its radiations into the surrounding space and upon all objects within its sphere of influence. The human being is of a composite nature, and his aura will, therefore, be composite, including astral-vital, psychomental, and spiritual emanations, and any of these may be perceptible according to the plane on which the perceiver is able to function. But the aura, even though not commonly visible to our eyes, is nevertheless perceptible by the effects which it produces upon those subtle senses which all possess in addition to the conventional five. By the auras of persons we are affected, both consciously and unconsciously, and thus is explained the influence which people exercise on each other. Animals are in some ways far more sensitive to auras than we are.

Baozhi. (J. Hoshi; K. Poji 保誌/寶誌) (418-514). Chinese monk and well-known thaumaturge who comes to be especially revered by the CHAN school. The earliest sources referring to Baozhi are his epitaph written by Lu Chui (470-526) and his hagiography in the GAOSENG ZHUAN. According to these two texts, Baozhi's secular surname was Zhu, and he was a native of Jinling (in present-day Jiansu); he is therefore sometimes known as Jinling Baozhi, using this toponym. Baozhi became a monk at a young age and around 466 suddenly turned eccentric: he would go for days without food, showing no sign of hunger, let his hair grow several inches long, and wander around the streets barefoot with a pair of scissors, a mirror, and a few strips of silk dangling from a long staff that he carried over his shoulder. Portraits of Baozhi often picture him carrying his staff with its various accoutrements, all symbols of his prescience. He also would work miracles, giving predictions and appearing in many places simultaneously. By the middle of the Tang dynasty, he was believed to be an incarnation of AVALOKITEsVARA and was widely worshipped. Baozhi was especially venerated by Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty (r. 502-549) and appears in the famous GONG'AN that relates Emperor Wu's encounter with the Chan founder BODHIDHARMA; there, Baozhi played the role of a clairvoyant witness who revealed to the emperor Bodhidharma's true identity as an incarnation of Avalokitesvara; YUANWU KEQIN's (1063-1135) commentary to this gong'an in the BIYAN LU ("Blue Cliff Record") refers briefly to the notion that Bodhidharma and Baozhi were both incarnations of Avalokitesvara. A few verses attributed to Baozhi are included in such Chan writings as HUANGBO XIYUN's CHUANXIN FAYAO, GUIFENG ZONGMI's commentary to the YUANJUE JING (Yuanjue xiuduoluo liaoyi jing lüeshu), and YONGMING YANSHOU's ZONGJING LU; these refer, for example, to the metaphor of wheat flour and flour products, and the nonduality between ordinary activities and the functioning of the buddha-nature (BUDDHADHATU; FOXING). These verses, however, are retrospective attributions, since they contain Chan ideas that postdate Baozhi and include terminology and ideology similar to later HONGZHOU ZONG texts, which could not have derived from Baozhi.

Barrett, The Magus', Schwab, Vocabulaire de

before the Deluge, as noted in Schwab, Vocabulaire

bernardine ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, or to the Cistercian monks. ::: n. --> A Cistercian monk.

Bernard of Clairvaux. de consideratione. In Migne,

ber). [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angdlologie.]

Besides these transcriptions or impresses the psychical vision receives thought Images and other forms created by constant activity of consciousaess in ourselves or in other human beings, and these may be according to the character of the activity, images of truth or falsehood or else mixed things, partly true, partly false, and may be too either mere shells and representa- tions or images inspired wth a temporary life and consciousness and, it may be, canjing in them in one way or another some kind of beneficent or maleficent action or some willed or unwilled effectiveness on our minds or vital being or through them e^'cn on the body. These transcriptions, impresses, thought images, life images, projections of the consciousness may also be representa- tions or creations not of the physical wxtrJd, but of vital, psychic or mental worlds beyond us, seen in our own minds or projected from other than human beings. And as there is this psychical vision of which some of the more cxremaf ana’ ordinary marrr- festaUons arc well enough known by the name of clairvoyance, so there is a psychical hearing and psychical touch, taste, smell

beurre ::: n. --> A beurre (or buttery) pear, one with the meat soft and melting; -- used with a distinguishing word; as, Beurre d&

birds. [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.]

bitty box "abuse" (Or "calculator") /bit'ee boks/ A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought of developing software on or for it. The term is especially used of small, obsolescent, {single-tasking}-only {personal computers} such as the {Atari 800}, {Osborne}, {Sinclair}, {VIC-20}, {TRS-80} or {IBM PC}, but the term is a general pejorative opposite of "real computer" (see {Get a real computer!}). See also {mess-dos}, {toaster}, {toy}. (1994-11-29)

bitty box ::: (abuse) (Or calculator) /bit'ee boks/ A computer sufficiently small, primitive, or incapable as to cause a hacker acute claustrophobia at the thought Osborne, Sinclair, VIC-20, TRS-80 or IBM PC, but the term is a general pejorative opposite of real computer (see Get a real computer!).See also mess-dos, toaster, toy. (1994-11-29)

lair ::: 1. A den or hideaway. 2. A den or resting place of a wild animal. lairs, lairlike.

laird ::: n. --> A lord; a landholder, esp. one who holds land directly of the crown.

lairdship ::: n. --> The state of being a laird; an estate; landed property.

laire de I’Angelologie.

laire de I’Angilologie.]

lair ::: n. --> A place in which to lie or rest; especially, the bed or couch of a wild beast.
A burying place.
A pasture; sometimes, food.


(b) More recently understood, especially in England, as the view that the right act is the act which will actually or probably produce at least as much intrinsic good, directly or indirectly, as any other action open to the agent in question. On this interpretation, traditional utilitarianism is one species of utilitarianism -- that which regards pleasure as the good. Ideal utilitarianism, on the other hand, holds that other things besides pleasure are good (see G.E. Moore, H. Rashdall, J. Laird) In America utilitarianism is chiefly associated with voluntaristic or "interest" theories of value, e.g. in the pragmatic ethics of James and Dewev, and in R. B. Perry. See intuitionism, deontological ethics, teleological ethics. -- W.K.F.

buddhacaksus. (P. buddhacakkhu; T. sangs rgyas kyi spyan; C. foyan; J. butsugen; K. puran 佛眼). In Sanskrit, "buddha eye"; one of the five eyes or five sorts of vision (PANCACAKsUS) similar to the five (or six) "clairvoyances" or "superknowledges" (ABHIJNA). In mainstream Buddhist materials, the buddha eye is one of the five sorts of extraordinary vision of a buddha and includes the other four sorts of vision: fleshly eye (MAMSACAKsUS, P. mAnsacakkhu), divine eye (DIVYACAKsUS, P. dibbacakkhu), wisdom eye (PRAJNACAKsUS, P. paNNAcakkhu), and all-seeing eye (samantacaksus, P. samantacakkhu). In MahAyAna texts, the buddha eye is described as the eye that knows all dharmas in the full awakening of final enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI).

caksus. (P. cakkhu; T. mig; C. yan; J. gen; K. an 眼). In Sanskrit, lit. "eye"; the base associated with the full range of types of vision (DARsANA), from sensory perception that occurs via the visual base (AYATANA), through extrasensory perception that was a product of meditative development (YOGIPRATYAKsA). Buddhist literature often refers to five types of "eyes" (paNcacaksus), viz., the physical eye (mAMsacaksus), which is the sense base (Ayatana) associated with visual consciousness; the divine eye (DIVYACAKsUS), the vision associated with the divinities (DEVA) in the heavens or the spiritual power (ABHIJNA) of clairvoyance; the wisdom eye (prajNAcaksus), which is the insight (PRAJNA) that derives from mainstream Buddhist practices; the dharma eye (dharmacaksus) that is exclusive to the BODHISATTVAs; and the buddha eye (buddhacaksus), which subsumes all other four. The caksus is said to be impossible to perceive with the naked eye and differs from the gross physical eyeball that is called the basis of the faculty.

capillaire ::: n. --> A sirup prepared from the maiden-hair, formerly supposed to have medicinal properties.
Any simple sirup flavored with orange flowers.


clairaudience ::: Clairaudience A French word meaning 'clear hearing' and describing the ability to hear sounds removed from our natural hearing conditions or the environment. Parapsychology refers to clairaudience as extra-sensory information received as sound. To someone experiencing this, it is as if another persons voice is being heard orally. The sound, however, is not audible and the physical ear does not receive it. It is closely allied to clairvoyance but the impressions are heard rather than seen. Consequently, it could be likened to hearing with the spiritual ear or mental hearing.

Clairaudience Clear-hearing; ways of hearing which, at our present stage of evolution, are abnormal, whether psychic or spiritual. Psychic clairaudience is a reflection or distortion of spiritual clairaudience, which extends to the solar system or even beyond, enabling one to perceive as sound the movements of all nature, from the cycles of the spheres to the vibrations of atoms.

Clairaudience ::: In its largest sense the word means simply "clear-hearing." True clairaudience is a spiritual faculty, thefaculty of the inner spiritual ear, of which the psychical clairaudience is but a distorted and thereforedeceptive reflection; neither is it hearing with the physical ear, so imperfect and undeveloped a sensoryorgan as the latter is. The power to hear with the inner ear enables you to hear anything you will, and atwhatever distance, whether on Mars, or on the Sun, or on the Moon, or on Jupiter, or perhaps even onsome distant star, or easily anywhere on Earth. Having this spiritual clairaudience, you can hear the grassgrow, and that hearing will be to you like a symphonic musical poem. You can hear the celestial orbssinging their songs as they advance along their orbits through space, because everything that is, is inmovement, producing sound, simple or composite as the case may be. Thus in very truth every tiny atomsings its own note, and every composite entity, therefore, is an imbodied musical poem, a musicalsymphony. (See also Music of the Spheres)

Clairaudience: In occult terminology, the psychic ability to hear sounds or voices regardless of distance.

Clairaudience

clairaudience ::: the power to hear sounds said to exist beyond the reach of ordinary experiences or capacity.

Clairaut's equation: A family of differential equations of the form

clair-obscur ::: n. --> See Chiaroscuro.

Clairsentience: An occult term indicating psychic sensitivity; “that peculiar feeling that something is going to happen.” Almost everyone possesses instinctive and intuitive clairsentience to some degree, popularly often referred to as a “hunch.”

clairvoyance ::: Clairvoyance This is a French word meaning 'clear seeing'. It is a paranormal mode of perception in which visual images are presented to the conscious mind. The perception may be of objects, people and/or scenes from the present, past or future. The clairvoyant experience may be spontaneous or induced through meditation, scrying or other methods of divination.

Clairvoyance Clear-seeing; generally, the power to use the psychic sense of vision to see things on the astral plane, the imperfect shadows of things to come or the astral records of things past. But this faculty is of restricted scope and very apt to mislead; prematurely developed in an untrained person, it is more likely to lead to error than to benefit. True clairvoyance is the opening of spiritual vision, called in India the Eye of Siva and beyond the Himalayas the Eye of Dangma; a faculty which enables the seer to see the truth and to recognize it as such. Among the seven saktis (occult powers) is enumerated jnana-sakti, which in its higher aspects is the power of knowing, true clairvoyance, but which on lower planes becomes more or less perfect psychic clairvoyance. True clairvoyance enables the seer to discern the reality behind its veils, to know right action, and to see what is happening in worlds removed by distance or difference of plane from our own. Retrospective clairvoyance interprets the past through its indelible records in the akasa.

Clairvoyance ::: In its largest sense the word simply means "clear-seeing," insight behind the veils, inner visioning.Genuine clairvoyance is a spiritual faculty and is the ability to see and to see aright; and in seeing toknow that your seeing is truth. This is no psychical faculty. The clairvoyance commonly called thepsychical clairvoyance is very deceptive, because it is a mere moonlight reflection so to speak, and thismoonlight reflection is uncertain, deceiving, and illusory. Genuine spiritual clairvoyance, of which thepsychical clairvoyance so called is but a feeble ray, will enable one to see what passes at immensedistances. You can sit in your armchair and see, with eyes closed, all that you care to see, however faraway. This can be done not only in this exterior world, but one can penetrate into the interior andinvisible worlds with this spiritual vision, and thus know what is going on in the worlds spiritual andethereal. This vision is not physical vision, nor that which, on the astral plane, manifests itself aspsychical clairvoyance; but true vision is spiritual clairvoyance -- seeing through the inner spiritual eye.

Clairvoyance: In occultism, the ability to see things and events regardless of distance; the gift of spiritual sight (“sight with the inner eye”).

clairvoyance ::: n. --> A power, attributed to some persons while in a mesmeric state, of discering objects not perceptible by the senses in their normal condition.

clairvoyant ::: a. --> Pertaining to clairvoyance; discerning objects while in a mesmeric state which are not present to the senses. ::: n. --> One who is able, when in a mesmeric state, to discern objects not present to the senses.

Chakra: In theosophical terminology, a sense organ of the ethereal body, visible only to a clairvoyant. There are ten chakras, which permit those trained in their use to gain knowledge of the astral world. (Three of the ten chakras are used in black magic only.)

chiaro-oscuro ::: n. --> The arrangement of light and dark parts in a work of art, such as a drawing or painting, whether in monochrome or in color.
The art or practice of so arranging the light and dark parts as to produce a harmonious effect. Cf. Clair-obscur.


Chidakasa ::: Depths of more and more subtle ether which are heavily curtained from the physical sense by the grosser ether of the material universe, and all things sensible, whether in the material world or any other, create reconstituting vibrations, sensible echoes, reproductions, recurrent images of themselves which that subtler ether receives and retains. It is this which explains many of the phenomena of clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.; for these phenomena are only the exceptional admission of the waking mentality into a limited sensitiveness to what might be called the image memory of the subtle ether, by which not only the signs of all things past and present, but even those of things future can be seized; for things future are already accomplished to knowledge and vision on higher planes of mind and their images can be
   reflected upon mind in the present. But these things which are exceptional to the waking mentality, difficult and to be perceived only by the possession of a special power or else after assiduous training, are natural to the dream-state of trance consciousness in which the subliminal mind is free. And that mind can also take cognizance of things on various planes not only by these sensible images, but by a species of thought perception or of thought reception and impression analogous to that phenomenon of consciousness which in modern psychical science has been given the name of telepathy.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 523-24


CLAIRVOYANCE Objective consciousness in the emotional and mental worlds. So-called clairvoyance does not provide any real knowledge, since man lacks the prerequisites of judging the reality content of his experiences in the emotional and mental worlds. This is also obvious from the fact that all clairvoyants have dissimilar views. K 3.8.3

The planetary hierarchy has repeatedly warned against the use of emotional or mental clairvoyance. What one gets to know in the emotional world is not the knowledge of existence, reality, and life. Like the mental world, it is intended to be a sojourn of rest pending a new incarnation. It is only in the physical and causal worlds that man is able to ascertain real facts, not in the emotional and mental worlds. In these worlds one cannot know whether what one sees is nature&


CLAIRVOYANCE, vide Ciddkdsa.

— clalraudience, clairsenticnce arc the more external manifesta- tions, — with precisely the same range each in its own kind, the same fields and manner and conditions and saricties of their phenomena.

Clive Sinclair "person" Sir Clive Sinclair (1939- ) The British inventor who pioneered the home {microcomputer} market in the early 1980s, with the introduction of low-cost, easy to use, {8-bit} computers produced by his company, {Sinclair Research}. Sir Clive also invented and produced a variety of electronic devices from the 1960s to 1990s, including pocket calculators (he marketed the first pocket calculator in the world), radios and televisions. Perhaps he is most famous (or some might say notorious) for his range electric vehicles, especially the Sinclair C5, introduced in 1985. He has been a member of MENSA, the high IQ society, since 1962. {Planet Sinclair (http://nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/)}. ["The Sinclair Story", Rodney Dale, pub. Duckworth 1985] (1998-11-09)

Clive Sinclair ::: (person) Sir Clive Sinclair (1939- ) The British inventor who pioneered the home microcomputer market in the early 1980s, with the introduction of low-cost, easy to use, 8-bit computers produced by his company, Sinclair Research.Sir Clive also invented and produced a variety of electronic devices from the 1960s to 1990s, including pocket calculators (he marketed the first pocket Sinclair C5, introduced in 1985. He has been a member of MENSA, the high IQ society, since 1962. .[The Sinclair Story, Rodney Dale, pub. Duckworth 1985] (1998-11-09)

ColdFusion "web, database, tool" {Allaire Corporation}'s commercial {database} application development tool that allows {databases} to have a {web interface}, so a database can be queried and updated using a {web browser}. The ColdFusion Server application runs on the {web server} and has access to a {database}. ColdFusion files on the web server are {HTML} pages with additional ColdFusion commands to {query} or {update} the database, written in {CFML}. When the page is requested by the user, the {web server} passes the page to the Cold Fusion application, which executes the {CFML} commands, places the results of the {CFML} commands in the {HTML} file, and returns the page to the {web server}. The page returned to the {web server} is now an ordinary {HTML} file, and it is sent to the user. Examples of ColdFusion applications include order entry, event registration, catalogue search, directories, calendars, and interactive training. ColdFusion applications are robust because all database interactions are encapsulated in a single industrial-strength {CGI} script. The formatting and presentation can be modified and revised at any time (as opposed to having to edit and recompile {source code}). ColdFusion Server can connect with any database that supports {ODBC} or {OLE DB} or one that has a native database driver. Native database drivers are available for {Oracle} and {Sybase} databases. ColdFusion is available for {Windows}, {Solaris}, and {HP-UX}. A {development environment} for creating ColdFusion files, called ColdFusion Studio, is also available for {Windows}. The {filename extension} for ColdFusion files is .cfm {(http://coldfusion.com/)}. (2003-07-27)

ColdFusion ::: (World-Wide Web, database, tool) Allaire Corporation's commercial database application development tool that allows databases to have a World-Wide Web interface, so a database can be queried and updated using a web browser.The ColdFusion Server application runs on the web server and has access to a database. ColdFusion files on the web server are HTML pages with additional returned to the web server is now an ordinary HTML file, and it is sent to the user.Examples of ColdFusion applications include order entry, event registration, catalogue search, directories, calendars, and interactive training. ColdFusion modified and revised at any time (as opposed to having to edit and recompile source code).ColdFusion Server can connect with any database that supports ODBC or OLE DB or one that has a native database driver. Native database drivers are available for Oracle and Sybase databases.ColdFusion is available for Windows, Solaris, and HP-UX. A development environment for creating ColdFusion files, called ColdFusion Studio, is also available for Windows.Current version: MX(6), as of 2003-07-11.The filename extension for ColdFusion files is .cfm .(2003-07-27)

Consortium for Lexical Research "body" (CLR) A repository for {natural language processing} software, {lexical} data, tools and resources; set up in July 1991 in the Computing Research Laboratory of {New Mexico State University}, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. CLR maintained a public {FTP} {archive site} and a separate members-only library. As of 1994-02-01, CLR had about 60 members, mostly academic institutions, including most US natural language processing centres. Materials could be contributed in exchange for membership. In 2006, the CRL closed down due to lack of funding. The CLR FTP server and e-mail address seems to have disappeared with it. [{The Consortium for Lexical Research, Y. Wilks, Principal Investigator, Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University (http://clair.eecs.umich.edu/aan/paper.php?paper_id=H92-1114)}]. (2014-07-06)

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS Different kinds of omniscience in worlds 1- 42 belonging to the cosmos (atomic worlds 43-
49 make up the material of the solar system, and that is why they are not counted as being part of the cosmos). The lowest kind of cosmic consciousness (42) thus has the highest kind of solar systemic consciousness (43) as its precondition. The &


Cryptesthesia: This expression, literally meaning hidden sensitivity, was coined by Professor Richert to serve as a collective term for clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry, telepathy, dowsing, premonitions, and in general for perception, of the mechanism of which science is ignorant. The cryptesthesia theory denies and intends to disprove the spiritistic explanations of these phenomena. (Cf. extrasensory perception.)

Crystal-gazing: An ancient method of divination, which induces a state of clairvoyance by gazing into a small crystal globe, in which a picture or series of pictures is seen.

Crystals, Crystallization The formation of crystals shows the working of intelligent life forces in the mineral world. The shapes of crystals show, in their harmony and proportion, the mathematical and geometrical principles permeant throughout the universe. A solution of salt, when evaporated, first crystallizes in triangular shapes and ultimately builds up cubes, both of which are symbolical figures of fundamental importance; and salt is a well-known alchemical symbol of the element of earth, also denoted by the cubical shape. Every salt has a particular form in which it crystallizes, or has perhaps two different forms; but different salts may have the same crystalline form. Snow crystals show the hexagonal patterns which display the septenate — a center from which six radii proceed. Cubic, tetragonal, hexagonal, and octagonal shapes occur; but the fivefold forms of the regular dodecahedron and icosahedron are not found. Clairvoyant sensitives see light emanating from crystals, and luminous phenomena are often seen at the formation or disruption of crystals. Blavatsky alludes to the idea that the process of crystallization might be a step in the evolution of the minerals to the next higher kingdom.

cyutyupapattijNAna. [alt. cyutyupapAdAnusmṛti] (P. cutupapAtaNAna; T. 'chi 'pho ba dang skye ba rjes su dran pa; C. shengsizhi; J. shojichi; K. saengsaji 生死智). In Sanskrit, lit., "recollection of the disappearance [in one life] and rebirth [in another]," viz., "insight into the future rebirth destinies" of all other beings, a by-product of the "divine eye" (DIVYACAKsUS), or clairvoyance, and the second of the "three knowledges" (TRIVIDYA). This recollection comes as a by-product of the enlightenment experience of a "worthy one" (ARHAT), and is an insight achieved by the Buddha during the second watch of the night of his own enlightenment. Through his enlightenment, the adept realizes not only that himself and all beings have been governed by the association between past actions (KARMAN) and their fruitions (VIPAKA) throughout all their past lives; but through this insight, he also realizes that all other beings continue to be governed by their actions, and he is able to observe where beings will be reborn in the future as well. Specifically, one who possesses this insight sees the disappearance and arising of beings as low or noble, beautiful or ugly, etc., according to their good and evil deeds (KARMAN) performed through body, speech, and mind. Those who revile the noble ones (ARYAPUDGALA), hold perverse views (MITHYADṚstI), and act in accordance with perverse views are observed to be reborn in lower realms of existence, e.g., in baleful destinies (APAYA; DURGATI) such as the hells. Those who honor the noble ones, hold right views, and act in accordance with right views are observed to be reborn in higher realms of existence, e.g., in pleasant destinies such as the heavens. This ability is also listed as one of the superknowledges (ABHIJNA).

darsana. (P. dassana; T. mthong ba; C. jian; J. ken; K. kyon 見). In Sanskrit, lit. "seeing," viz., "vision," "insight," or "understanding." In a purely physical sense, darsana refers most basically to visual perception that occurs through the ocular sense organ. However, Buddhism also accepts a full range of sensory and extrasensory perceptions, such as those associated with meditative development (see YOGIPRATYAKsA), that also involve "vision," in the sense of directly perceiving a reality hidden from ordinary sight. Darsana may thus refer to the seeing that occurs through any of the five types of "eyes" (CAKsUS) mentioned in Buddhist literature, viz., (1) the physical eye (MAMSACAKsUS), the sense base (AYATANA) associated with visual consciousness; (2) the divine eye (DIVYACAKsUS), the vision associated with the spiritual power (ABHIJNA) of clairvoyance; (3) the wisdom eye (PRAJNACAKsUS), which is the insight that derives from cultivating mainstream Buddhist practices; (4) the dharma eye (DHARMACAKsUS), which is exclusive to the BODHISATTVAs; and (5) the buddha eye (BUDDHACAKsUS), which subsumes all the other four. When used in its denotation of "insight," darsana often appears in the compound "knowledge and vision" (JNANADARsANA), viz., the direct insight that accords with reality (YATHABHuTA) of the three marks of existence (TRILAKsAnA)-impermanence (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself/insubstantiality (ANATMAN)-and one of the qualities perfected on the path leading to the state of "worthy one" (ARHAT). Darsana is usually considered to involve awakening (BODHI) to the truth, liberation (VIMUKTI) from bondage, and purification (VIsUDDHI) of all afflictions (KLEsA). The perfection of knowledge and vision (jNAnadarsanapAramitA) is also said to be an alternate name for the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNAPARAMITA), one of the six perfections (PARAMITA) of the bodhisattva path. In the fivefold structure of the Buddhist path, the DARsANAMARGA constitutes the third path. The related term "view" (DṚstI), which derives from the same Sanskrit root √dṛs ("to see"), is sometimes employed similarly to darsana, although it also commonly conveys the more pejorative meanings of dogma, heresy, or extreme or wrong views regarding the self and the world, often as propounded by non-Buddhist philosophical schools. Darsana is also sometimes used within the Indian tradition to indicate a philosophical or religious system, a usage still current today.

Dawn Frequently denotes the beginning of a new cycle, of greater or less extent. Venus-Lucifer is called the luminous son of morning or of manvantaric dawn; and the builders are the luminous sons of manvantaric dawn. In Greek mythology Apollo (the sun) has two daughters, Hilaira and Phoebe (evening twilight and dawn); Eos is the dawn, as is Aurora in Latin. In Hindu mythology, the wife of Surya (the sun) is Ushas (dawn), and she is also his mother. In the Vishnu-Purana, Brahma, for purposes of world formation, assumes four bodies — dawn, night, day, and evening twilight. Man is said to come from the body of dawn, for dawn signifies light, the intelligence of the intellect of the universe often called mahat, the ultimate progenitor, and indeed the final cosmic goal, of the Hierarchy of Light of which the human hierarchy is a small portion. See also SANDHI

(December-January). [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de

den ::: 1. The shelter or retreat of a wild animal; a lair. 2. A cave used as a place of shelter or concealment. 3. A squalid or vile abode or place.

Divination [from Latin divination a soothsayer from divus spiritual being, god] The art of obtaining hidden knowledge by the aid of spiritual or ethereal beings. It is divisible into two main kinds: the inducing of seership or clairvoyance, and the interpretation of signs. Under the former come the oracular responses of the Pythian priestess, of the Cumaean Sibyl, and many similar instances, including all cases where the diviner induces trance or clairvoyance, whether in himself by natural power or by incantations, drugs, or other preparations; or in a subject, as when ink is poured into the palm of a child, who sees visions in it, or by some kind of hypnotism. Under the second head come geomancy, augury, the reading of the marks on the liver of a slaughtered animal, reading cards, Chinese throwing-sticks, predictive astrology, palmistry, numerology, and a great variety of other forms. Between the two classes are ranged such practices as gazing into crystal or water, where external means and interior vision both play a part in the result. Often it is a means of utilizing one’s own inner faculties, whether by natural or induced clairvoyance, or by employing the agencies which regulate events apparently casual such as the fall of the cards, the marks in the sand, the drawing of lots; and this last is related to the subject of omens.

divyacaksus. (P. dibbacakkhu; T. lha'i mig; C. tianyan; J. tengen; K. ch'onan 天眼). In Sanskrit, lit. "divine eye," viz., "clairvoyance"; one of the five (or six) superknowledges (ABHIJNĀ) and one of the three "knowledges" (TRIVIDYĀ). The divine eye refers to the ability to observe things from afar, as well as to see the "mind-made bodies" (MANOMAYAKĀYA) that are the products of meditation or enlightenment. It also provides the ability to observe where beings will be reborn after they die (S. CYUTYUPAPĀDĀNUSMṚTI), the second of the TRIVIDYĀ. One who possesses this power sees the disappearance and arising of beings as low or noble, beautiful or ugly, etc., according to their wholesome and unwholesome deeds (KARMAN) in body, speech, and mind. Those who revile the noble ones (ĀRYAPUDGALA), hold perverse views (MITHYĀDṚstI), and act in accordance with perverse views are observed to be reborn in lower realms of existence, or in painful realms such as the hells. Those who honor the noble ones, hold right views, and act in accordance with right views are observed to be reborn in higher realms of existence, and in pleasant realms such as the heavens. On the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha gained the divine eye during the second watch of the night. This superknowledge is considered to be a mundane (LAUKIKA) achievement and is gained through refinement of the fourth stage of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA; RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA).

Divyachakshus, (Sanskrit) Divyacakṣus [from divya divine + cakṣus eye] The divine eye; in Buddhism the first of the divine faculties attained by a buddha: the power of seeing any object in any loka or plane of consciousness. It is one of the six or seven abhijnas (inner powers or faculties), divyachakshus being real spiritual clairvoyance, enabling one to see any object in the universe at whatever distance.

divyasrotra. (P. dibbasota; T. lha'i rna ba; C. tian'er; J. tenni; K. ch'oni 天耳). In Sanskrit, lit. "divine ear," viz., "clairaudience"; one of the five (or six) superknowledges (ABHIJNĀ). With the divine ear, one can hear heavenly and earthly sounds both far and near just as if one were a divinity. This superknowledge is considered to be a mundane (LAUKIKA) achievement and is gained through refinement of the fourth stage of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA; RuPĀVACARADHYĀNA).

Divyasrotra (Sanskrit) Divyaśrotra [from divya divine + śrotra ear] The divine ear; in Buddhism the second of the abhijnas (powers attained by a buddha or high initiate), that of understanding all sounds on whatever loka or plane, including the understanding of all languages. It corresponds to real clairaudience.

eclaircise ::: v. t. --> To make clear; to clear up what is obscure or not understood; to explain.

eclaircissement ::: v. t. --> The clearing up of anything which is obscure or not easily understood; an explanation.

eclair ::: n. --> A kind of frosted cake, containing flavored cream.

efficacy of amulets; as in Schwab, Vocabulaire de

Epoptes (Greek) [from epi at, upon + opt to see] Sometimes epopt. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, seer, overseer, master mason, one who has the vision sublime; an initiate into the highest degree of the Mysteries (epopteia) who had attained, among other spiritual faculties and powers, that of spiritual clairvoyance. The state attained, epopteia, was the seventh and highest degree of initiation in the Eleusinian Mysteries, when the inner god shone forth through the human being, so that the candidate was at one with his inner divinity.

F68K A portable {Forth} system for {Motorola} {680x0} computers by Joerg Plewe "joerg.plewe@mpi-dortmund.mpg.de". Ported to {Atari ST}, {Atari TT}, {Amiga}, {Sinclair QL} and {OS9}. Easily ported to {Motorola} {68000} based systems. {(ftp://archive.umich.edu/atari/Languages/)}. (1992-12-14)

F68K ::: A portable Forth system for Motorola 680x0 computers by Joerg Plewe . Ported to Atari ST, Atari TT, Amiga, Sinclair QL and OS9. Easily ported to Motorola 68000 based systems. . (1992-12-14)

fireflaire ::: n. --> A European sting ray of the genus Trygon (T. pastinaca); -- called also fireflare and fiery flaw.

FLAIR "language" An early system on the {IBM 650}. [Listed in CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959)]. (1995-03-17)

FLAIR ::: (language) An early system on the IBM 650.[Listed in CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959)]. (1995-03-17)

glair ::: a. --> The white of egg. It is used as a size or a glaze in bookbinding, for pastry, etc.
Any viscous, transparent substance, resembling the white of an egg.
A broadsword fixed on a pike; a kind of halberd. ::: v. t.


glaired ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Glair

glaire ::: n. --> See Glair.

glaireous ::: a. --> Glairy; covered with glair.

glairing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Glair

glairin ::: n. --> A glairy viscous substance, which forms on the surface of certain mineral waters, or covers the sides of their inclosures; -- called also baregin.

glairy ::: a. --> Like glair, or partaking of its qualities; covered with glair; viscous and transparent; slimy.

glareous ::: a. --> Glairy.

gleyre ::: n. --> See Glair.

(g) The problem of the structure of the knowledge-situation is to determine with respect to each of the major kinds of knowledge just enumerated -- but particularly with respect to perception -- the constituents of the knowledge-situation in their relation to one another. The structural problem stated in general but rather vague terms is: What is the relation between the subjective and objective components of the knowledge-situation? In contemporary epistemology, the structural problem has assumed a position of such preeminence as frequently to eclipse other issues of epistemology. The problem has even been incorporated by some into the definition of philosophy. (See A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la Philosophie, art. Theorie de la Connaissance. I. and G.D. Hicks, Encycl. Brit. 5th ed. art. Theory of Knowledge.) The principal cleavage in epistemology, according to this formulation of its problem, is between a subjectivism which telescopes the object of knowledge into the knowing subject (see Subjectivism; Idealism, Epistemological) and pan-objectivism which ascribes to the object all qualities perceived or otherwise cognized. See Pan-obiectivism. A compromise between the extrernes of subjectivism and objectivism is achieved by the theory of representative perception, which, distinguishing between primary and secondary qualities, considers the former objective, the latter subjective. See Representative Perception, Theory of; Primary Qualities; Secondary Qualities.

Heaven. [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.]

He is mentioned in Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’An-

  “He was a natural clairvoyant of most wonderful powers. With no education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of scientific truths; but then, as he says himself, what he wrote upon, he ‘saw it as in a great Deep in the Eternal.’ He had ‘a thorough view of the universe, as in a chaos,’ which yet ‘opened itself in him, from time to time, as in a young plant.’ He was a thorough born Mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is most rare; one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunion between the intellectual and the spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, like so many other untrained mystics, mistook for God; ‘Man must acknowledge,’ he writes, ‘that his knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of Man, in what measure he pleases.’ Had this great Theosophist mastered Eastern Occultism he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known then that the ‘god’ who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain, was his own divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that Deity gave out was not in ‘what measure he pleased,’ but in the measure of the capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed” (TG 60).

(Homilia and Moralia), Isidore of Seville ( Etymologiarum ), Bernard of Clairvaux (de consideration), Edmund Spenser

human beings. [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de

Hysteria This protean disorder is regarded as a functional neurosis with abnormal sensations, emotions, or paroxysms, manifesting itself chiefly by emotional instability, by the ease with which it is influenced, in negativism and impulsiveness, a tendency to make sensations, a remarkable egotism, desire to talk, to fabricate, and to simulate. There is constant, capricious change of mood and activity. No other disorder can counterfeit so many diseases as hysteria. The psychic faculties at times displayed in clairvoyance, hallucinations, cataleptic and somnambulistic states, etc., show an active functioning in the astral body; while convulsive and other abnormal movements, and mental absences in which the actor does and says bizarre, unwonted, and inexplicable things for various periods of which only a vague or no remembrance is retained, point to the play of some astral entity, as occurs in other obsessions.

IBM 650 "computer" A computer, produced ca. 1955 and in use in the late 1950s, with rotating {magnetic drum} storage and {punched card} input. Its memory words could store 10-digit decimal numbers and each instruction had two addresses, one for the {operand} and one for address of the next instruction on the drum. {SOAP} was its (optimising) {assembler}. Languages used on it included {BACAIC}, {BALITAC}, {BELL}, {CASE SOAP III}, {DRUCO I}, {EASE II}, {ELI}, {ESCAPE}, {FAST}, {FLAIR}, {FORTRANSIT}, {FORTRUNCIBLE}, {GAT}, {IPL}, {Internal Translator}, {KISS}, {MITILAC}, {MYSTIC}, {OMNICODE}, {PIT}, {RELATIVE}, {RUNCIBLE}, {SIR}, {SOAP}, {Speedcoding}, {SPIT}, {SPUR}. [More details?] (1995-03-30)

IBM 650 ::: (computer) A computer, produced ca. 1955 and in use in the late 1950s, with rotating magnetic drum storage and punched card input. Its memory words could store 10-digit decimal numbers and each instruction had two addresses, one for the operand and one for address of the next instruction on the drum.SOAP was its (optimising) assembler. Languages used on it included BACAIC, BALITAC, BELL, CASE SOAP III, DRUCO I, EASE II, ELI, ESCAPE, FAST, FLAIR, FORTRANSIT, FORTRUNCIBLE, GAT, IPL, Internal Translator, KISS, MITILAC, MYSTIC, OMNICODE, PIT, RELATIVE, RUNCIBLE, SIR, SOAP, Speedcoding, SPIT, SPUR.[More details?] (1995-03-30)

II. Early Scholastics (12 cent.) St. Anselm of Canterbury (+1109) did more than anyone else in this early period to codify the spirit of Scholasticism. His motto: credo, ut tntelligam taken from St. Augustine, expressed the organic relation that existed between the supernatural and the natural during the Middle Ages and the interpretative and the directive force which faith had upon reason. In this period a new interest was taken in the problem of the universals. For the first time a clear demarcation was noted between the realistic and the nominalistic solutions to this problem. William of Champeaux (+1121) proposed the former and Roscelin (+c. 1124) the latter. A third solution, concepiualistic in character, was proposed by Abelard (+1142) who finally crystalized the Scholastic method. He was the most subtle dialectician of his age. Two schools of great importance of this period were operating at Chartres and the Parisian Abbey of St. Victor. The first, founded by Fulbert of Chartres in the late tenth century, was characterized by its leanings toward Platonism and distinguished by its humanistic tendencies coupled with a love of the natural sciences. Many of its Greek, Arabian and Jewish sources for studies in natural sciences came from the translations of Constantine the African (+c. 1087) and Adelard of Bath. Worthy to be noted as members of or sympathizers with this school are Bernard and Thierry of Chartres (+c. 1127; c. 1150); William of Conches (+1145) and Bernard Silvestris (+1167). The two most important members of the School were Gilbert de la Poiree (+1154) and John of Salisbury (+1180). The latter was a humanistic scholar of great stylistic skill and calm, balanced judgment. It is from his works, particularly the Metalogicus, that most of our knowledge of this period still derives. Juxtaposed to the dialectic, syllogistic and rationalistic tendencies of this age was a mystical movement, headed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153). This movement did not oppose itself to dialectics in the uncompromising manner of Peter Damiani, but sought rather to experience and interiorize truth through contemplation and practice. Bernard found a close follower and friend in William of St. Thierry (+1148 or 1153). An attempt to synthesize the mystic and dialectical movements is found in two outstanding members of the Victorine School: Hugh of St. Victor (+1141) who founded its spirit in his omnia disce, videbis postea nihil esse supervuum and Richard of St. Victor (+1173), his disciple, who introduced the a posteriori proof for God's existence into the Scholastic current of thought. Finally, this century gave Scholasticism its principal form of literature which was to remain dominant for some four centuries. While the method came from Abelard and the formulas and content, in great part, from the Didascalion of Hugh of St. Victor, it was Robert of Melun (+1167) and especially Peter the Lombard (+1164) who fashioned the great Summae sententiarum.

Imriaf—in Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie,

ing pregnancy. [Rf Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Au-

In Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux were day and night, and their consorts Phoebe and Hilaira were the twilights.

in his Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie identifies Sham-

In later popular folklore the yakshas are associated with and classed with the pisachas, and therefore regarded with dread and made responsible for many demoniacal obsessions. “In esoteric science they are simply evil (elemental) influences, who in the sight of seers and clairvoyants descend on men, when open to the reception of such influences, like a fiery comet or a shooting star” (TG 375).

In the theory of value the first question concerns the meaning of value-terms and the status of goodness. As to meaning the main point is whether goodness is definable or not, and if so, how. As to status the main point is whether goodness is subjective or objective, relative or absolute. Various positions are possible. Recent emotive meaning theories e.g. that of A. J. Ayer, hold that "good" and other value-terms have only an emotive meaning, Intuitionists and non-naturalists often hold that goodness is an indefinable intrinsic (and therefore objective or absolute) property, e.g., Plato, G. E. Moore, W. D. Ross, J. Laird, Meinong, N. Hartman. Metaphysical and naturalistic moralists usually hold that goodness can be defined in metaphysical or in psychological terms, generally interpreting "x is good" to mean that a certain attitude is taken toward x by some mind or group of minds. For some of them value is objective or absolute in the sense of having the same locus for everyone, e.g., Aristotle in his definition of the good as that at which all things aim, (Ethics, bk. I). For others the locus of value varies from individual to individual or from group to group, i.e. different things will be good for different individuals or groups, e.g., Hobbes, Westermarck, William James, R. B. Perry.

invocation. [Rf Schwab, Vocabulaire de I'Angelo-

is mentioned in Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Atigelo-

It is this which explains many of the phenomena of clair- voyance, clairaudience, etc. ; for these phenomena are only the exceptional admission of the waking mentality into a limited sensitiveness to what might be called the image memory of the subtle ether,' by which not only the signs of all things past and present, but even those of things future can be seized ; for things future are already accomplished to knowledge and vision on higher planes of mind and their images can be reflected upon mind in the present. But these things which are exceptional to the w’aking mentality, difficult and to be perceived only by the pos- session of a special power or else after assiduous training, are natural to the dream-state of trance consciousness in which the subliminal mind is free. And that mind can al^o take cognizance

Jack Kilby "person" (1924 - 2005-06-20) The electronics engineer who invented the {integrated circuit} in 1958 at {Texas Instruments}. {TI Biography (http://ti.com/corp/docs/kilbyctr/jackstclair.shtml)}. [Was the {JK flip-flop} named after him?] (2005-06-22)

J. Laird, A Study in Realism, 1920.

juring rites. [Rf. Schwab, Vocahulaire de I’Angil-

kevalair indriyaih ::: by the mere organs. [Gita 5.11 ]

kevalair indriyaiscaran ::: [moving with the mere senses]. [cf. Gita 2.64] and the preceding.

kevalair ::: (instrumental plural of kevala) mere; pure, simple; isolated, alone; absolute. [Gita 5.11]

lare ::: n. --> Lore; learning.
Pasture; feed. See Lair. ::: v. t. --> To feed; to fatten.


latibulum ::: n. --> A concealed hiding place; a burrow; a lair; a hole.

London Conference (April 1, 2005) ::: Tony Blair hosts a Conference on April 1, 2005 on the Middle East that is attended by the US, UN, and Palestinian representatives but boycotted by Israel.

LPL ::: List Programming Language. LISP-like language with ALGOL-like syntax, for IBM 360. LPL - LISP Programming Language, F.W. Blair et al, RC 3062, IBM TJWRC, Sep 1970.

LPL List Programming Language. LISP-like language with ALGOL-like syntax, for IBM 360. "LPL - LISP Programming Language", F.W. Blair et al, RC 3062, IBM TJWRC, Sep 1970.

Lucidity: A collective term for clairvoyance, clairaudience, premonitions, etc.; in general, the faculty which permits one to obtain supernormal knowledge.

māMsacaksus. (P. maMsacakkhu; T. sha'i spyan; C. rouyan; J. nikugen; K. yugan 肉眼). In Sanskrit, "fleshly eye"; one of the five eyes or five sorts of vision (PANCACAKsUS), a list that overlaps with the five (or six) "clairvoyances" or superknowledges (ABHIJNĀ). In Pāli texts, the "fleshly eye" is one of the five types of vision of a buddha. In Mahāyāna texts, the māMsacaksus refers to what would ordinarily be considered eyesight. It is said to be a VIPĀKAPHALA (maturation result) restricted in its range to the sight of the particular animal or deity that possesses it. In the case of vultures, for example, the fleshly eye may be able to see up to several miles, and in the case of certain divinities (DEVA) it may be the entire cosmos.

Motorola 68000 ::: (processor) (MC68000) The first member of Motorola, Inc.'s family of 16- and 32-bit microprocessors. The successor to the Motorola 6809 and followed by the Motorola 68010.The 68000 has 32-bit registers but only a 16-bit ALU and external data bus. It has 24-bit addressing and a linear address space, with none of the evil segment are cut to fit the address bus into a 64-pin package (address and data share a bus in the 40 pin packages of the 8086 and Zilog Z8000).The 68000 has sixteen 32-bit registers, split into data and address registers. One address register is reserved for the Stack Pointer. Any register, of either registers can be used as the source of an address, but data registers can provide the offset from an address.Like the Zilog Z8000, the 68000 features a supervisor and user mode, each with its own Stack Pointer. The Zilog Z8000 and 68000 are similar in capabilities, but the 68000 is 32 bits internally, making it faster and eliminating forced segmentations.Like many other CPUs of its generation, it can fetch the next instruction during execution (2 stage pipeline).The 68000 was used in many workstations, notably early Sun-2 machines, and personal computers, notably Apple Computer's first Macintoshes and the Amiga. It was also used in most of Sega's early arcade machines, and in the Genesis/Megadrive consoles.Variants of the 68000 include the 68HC000 (a low-power HCMOS implementation) and the 68008 (an eight-bit data bus version used in the Sinclair QL).[The 68000: Principles and Programming, Leo Scanlon, 1981].(2003-07-11)

Motorola 68000 "processor" (MC68000) The first member of {Motorola, Inc.}'s family of 16- and 32-bit {microprocessors}. The successor to the {Motorola 6809} and followed by the {Motorola 68010}. The 68000 has 32-bit registers but only a 16-bit {ALU} and external {data bus}. It has 24-bit addressing and a {linear address space}, with none of the evil {segment registers} of {Intel}'s contemporary processors that make programming them unpleasant. That means that a single directly accessed {array} or structure can be larger than 64KB in size. Addresses are computed as 32 bit, but the top 8 bits are cut to fit the address bus into a 64-pin package (address and data share a bus in the 40 pin packages of the {8086} and {Zilog Z8000}). The 68000 has sixteen 32-bit {registers}, split into data and address registers. One address register is reserved for the {Stack Pointer}. Any register, of either type, can be used for any function except direct addressing. Only address registers can be used as the source of an address, but data registers can provide the offset from an address. Like the {Zilog Z8000}, the 68000 features a supervisor and user mode, each with its own {Stack Pointer}. The {Zilog Z8000} and 68000 are similar in capabilities, but the 68000 is 32 bits internally, making it faster and eliminating forced segmentations. Like many other CPUs of its generation, it can fetch the next instruction during execution (2 stage {pipeline}). The 68000 was used in many {workstations}, notably early {Sun-2} machines, and {personal computers}, notably {Apple Computer}'s first {Macintoshes} and the {Amiga}. It was also used in most of {Sega}'s early arcade machines, and in the {Genesis}/{Megadrive} consoles. Variants of the 68000 include the {68HC000} (a low-power HCMOS implementation) and the {68008} (an eight-bit data bus version used in the {Sinclair QL}). ["The 68000: Principles and Programming", Leo Scanlon, 1981]. (2003-07-11)

Music of the Spheres ::: Every sphere that runs its course in the abysmal depths of space sings a song as it passes along. Everylittle atom is attuned to a musical note. It is in constant movement, in constant vibration at speeds whichare incomprehensible to the ordinary brain-mind of man; and each such speed has its own numericalquantity, in other words its own numerical note, and therefore sings that note. This is called the music ofthe spheres, and if man had the power of spiritual clairaudience, the life surrounding him would be onegrand sweet song: his very body would be as it were a symphonic orchestra, singing some magnificent,incomprehensible, musical symphonic composition. The growth of a flower, for instance, would be like achanging melody running along from day to day; he could hear the grass grow, and understand why itgrows; he could hear the atoms sing and see their movements, and hear the unison of the songs of allindividual atoms, and the melodies that any physical body produces; and he would know what the stars intheir courses are constantly singing.

Nabi’ (Hebrew) Nābī’ [from nābā’ to deliver an oracle] A prophet, one inspired to foretell future events; the name given to prophecy in the Bible. One of the “spiritual powers, such as divination, clairvoyant visions, trance-conditions, and oracles. But while enchanters, diviners, and even astrologers are strictly condemned in the Mosaic books, prophecy, seership, and nobia appear as the special gifts of heaven. In early ages they were all termed Epoptai, the Greek word for seers, clairvoyants; after which they were designated as Nebim [nebi’im] ‘the plural of Nebo, the Babylonian god of wisdom.’ The kabalist distinguishes between the seer and the magician; one is passive, the other active; Nebirah [nabi’] is one who looks into futurity and a clairvoyant; Nebi-poel [nebi’-po‘el], he who possesses magic powers” (IU 1:xxxvii).

Nadiel —in Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie,

name appears in Schwab, Vocabulaire de I'Angelo-

Natural election: The inherent desire of all things for all other things in a certain order. First employed by Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in a passage quoted by A. N. Whitehead (1861-) from the Silva Silvarum "there is a kind of election to embrace that which is agreeable and to exclude or expel that which is ingrate". First erected into a philosophical principle by John Laird (1887-) in The Idea of Value, following a suggestion m Montaigne's Essays. Value, considered as a larger category than human value, an ingredient of the natural world but regarded without its affective content. Syn. with objective value, as independent of the cognitive process. -- J.K.F.

NEC 780-C "processor" A copy of the {Zilog Z80A} {microprocessor}, running at 3.25 MHz. The NEC 780-C was the processor used in the Sinclair {ZX-80}. (2002-03-11)

NEC 780-C ::: (processor) A copy of the Zilog Z80A microprocessor, running at 3.25 MHz.The NEC 780-C was the processor used in the Sinclair ZX-80.(2002-03-11)

ness. [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Ange'lologie.]

of matter and form include Alexander of Hales, Bernard ofClairvaux, St. Bonaventura, Origen. Those who hold,

Of the many types of astral elementals, connection with even those friendly to man are injurious, for they all use part of the living for their automatic actions. Moreover, black magicians who live in their kama-rupas — in the astral world — relatively few though they are, survive by using many of these nature spirits to vampirize vitality from the living. The elementaries who, unfortunately, are galvanized into a fictitious life by devitalizing the medium and the sitters — as clairvoyants have often seen — are making new evil karma, and even inviting final spiritual disaster.

Olbricht, General Friedrich ::: Chief of the OKW General Army Office in Berlin from 1941- 44. Developed plans for Operation Valkyrie with Beck, Stauffenberg and others. General Olbricht gave the signal to launch Operation Valkyrie after Stauffenberg's bombing of the Wolf's lair.

Orwell, George: Originally named Eric Arthur Blair, George Orwell used a pseudonym for his published work. The English author and journalist was born in 1903 and died in 1950. His most renowned works include Nineteen Eighty-four and Animal Farm, both of which comment upon dictatorships. See science fiction and dystopia.

Parapsychology: (Gr. para, at the side or + psyche, soul + logia from logein, to speak) The investigation of prescience, telepathy and other alleged psychical phenomena which seem to elude ordinary physical and physiological explanation. The term was proposed by Boirac (1893) and was adopted by Florunay and Oesterreich. See A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la philosophie, Vol II, p. 646. See Prescience, Telepathy. -- L.W.

parapsychology ::: Parapsychology The investigation and study of the evidence for psychological phenomena, such as telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis (see below), which are inexplicable by natural laws. See also Society for Psychological Research.

PC200 {Sinclair PC200}

Peano's first publication on mathematicil logic was the introduction to his Calcolo Geometrico, 1888. His postulates for arithmetic (see arithmetic, foundations of) appeared in his Arith¦metices Principia (1889) and in revised form in Sul concetto di numero (Rivista di Matematica, vol. 1 (1891)), and were repeated in successive volumes (more properly, editions) of his Formulaire de Mathematiques (1894-1908). The last-named work, written with the aid of collaborators, was intended to provide a reduction of all mathematics to symbolic notation, and often the encyclopedic aspect was stressed as much as, or more than, that of logical analysis.

Phone-voyance: A special form of clairvoyance, discovered and described by V. N. Turvey in 1905: the sensitive can “see” and describe objects and happenings in the physical vicinity of a person with whom he is talking over a telephone, including astral forms or spirits near the latter.

prajNācaksus. (P. paNNācakkhu; T. shes rab kyi spyan; C. zhihui yan; J. chiegen; K. chihye an 智慧眼). In Sanskrit, "wisdom eye," one of the five eyes or five sorts of vision (PANCACAKsUS), which are similar to the five (or six) "clairvoyances" or superknowledges (ABHIJNĀ). In Pāli texts, the wisdom eye is one of the five sorts of extraordinary vision of a buddha. In MAHĀYĀNA sources, the wisdom eye knows all conditioned (SAMSKṚTA) and unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA) dharmas and is free from all projections.

precognition ::: Precognition A term applied to having knowledge of something that has not yet happened, to see into the future, especially by ESP (clairvoyance).

primitive name of Moses. [R/l Schwab, Vocabulaire

PROOFS OF THE CORRECTNESS OF HYLOZOICS There are five proofs, for those who need them, of the correctness of hylozoics (its agreement with reality), each one of them by itself wholly sufficient, being of matchless logical tenability. These five are: the logical proof, the proof by explanation, the proof by prediction, the proof by clairvoyance, the experimental proof. K 1.3.4

Psion "company" The UK company that produced the {Psion Organiser}. They also wrote software for the {Sinclair} {QL}. {Psion Home (http://psionteklogix.com/)}. (2009-05-27)

Psychic Powers Powers pertaining to the lower intermediate human nature — i.e, between the mental-emotional and the physical — including powers of perception such as astral vision, the lower clairvoyance and clairaudience, the lower psychometry and seership, etc.; and lower biases or tendencies such as hypnotism, the power to produce minor occult phenomena of many kinds, and in connection with the power of automatic astral projection. In their nature they are morally neutral, being susceptible of use or misuse just as are physical powers. If used with an evil or selfish purpose, the action is black magic; and even if used without such motive or with good intention, they may prove confusing and therefore misleading for one who ventures to use them.

psychic ::: Psychic This widely used word, which can be both an adjective and a noun, means of the soul or mind. It is the quality of being attuned to or adept at interpreting the more subtle psychic, or soul, faculties and energies. One who is so attuned, such as a medium or an accomplished Yogi. Psychic faculties include such extra-sensory perception as clairvoyance, clairaudience, retrocognition and psychometry (see below) amongst others.

Qawwalis Populair spiritual devotional songs within the Muslim culture of Pakistan and Northern India. The songs are accompanied by a small harmonium and drums.

QDOS ::: (operating system) The Sinclair QL's proprietary operating system. The origin of the name is uncertain (a weak pun on kudos, perhaps, as Unix was on called Q.D.O.S. - Quick And Dirty Operating System. QDOS might also stand for QL Data/Disk/Drive/Device Operating System.QDOS did the usual OS sorts of things, as well as multitasking. It was unusual in several ways. It treated all devices (serial ports, mouse ports, screen, microdrive, disk drive, keyboard, etc.) uniformly, so you could print a text file direct to disk or save a binary to the screen for example.Also logical channels could be assigned to particular physical devices. Output directed to a channel would go to the appropriate in/output. This also meant you extent. Channels could be redirected without affecting the way the process sent or received the data. (1996-07-22)

QDOS "operating system" The Sinclair {QL}'s proprietary {operating system}. The origin of the name is uncertain (a weak pun on kudos, perhaps, as {Unix} was on {Multics}). There was another OS around from the birth of personal computers called Q.D.O.S. - Quick And Dirty Operating System. QDOS might also stand for QL Data/Disk/Drive/Device Operating System. QDOS did the usual OS sorts of things, as well as multitasking. It was unusual in several ways. It treated all devices (serial ports, mouse ports, screen, {microdrive}, {disk drive}, keyboard, etc.) uniformly, so you could print a text file direct to disk or save a binary to the screen for example. Also logical channels could be assigned to particular physical devices. Output directed to a channel would go to the appropriate in/output. This also meant you could have many windows on screen (the QL booted up from internal ROMs with 3 windows - command line, output and program listing) all independent to some extent. Channels could be redirected without affecting the way the process sent or received the data. (1996-07-22)

QL ::: (computer) (Quantum Leap) Sir Clive Sinclair's first Motorola 68008-based personal computer, developed from around 1981 and released about 1983. The QL It featured innovative microdrives which were random access tape drives. It was not a success.The microdrives were innovative but probably a mistake. Though reliable and quite quick, they sounded like they were going to jam and explode, releasing a shower of plastic shavings and tape into your face.The QL and QDOS only supported two graphics modes - ominously named high res and low res. High res had four (fixed) colours at a resolution of 512 by 256 pixels. channel single oscillator with various parameters for fuzz, pitch change. There was one internal font, scalable to 2 heights and 3 widths.Peripherals and enhancements included a GUI on a plug-in ROM, accelerator cards (Motorola 68020, 4 MB RAM), floppy disks and hard disks.In 1996 there is still some interest in the QL, spread by the Internet of course. Emulation software, source code, The QL Hackers Journal and similar are still available, and many QLs are on the net. . (1996-08-01)

QL "computer" (Quantum Leap) Sir {Clive Sinclair}'s first {Motorola 68008}-based {personal computer}, developed from around 1981 and released about 1983. The QL ran Sinclair's {QDOS} {operating system} which was the first {multitasking} OS on a home computer, though few programmers used this feature. It had a structured, extended {BASIC} and a suite of integrated {application programs} written by {Psion}. It featured innovative "{microdrives}" which were random-access tape drives. It was not a success. The microdrives were innovative but probably a mistake. Though reliable and quite quick, they sounded like they were going to jam and explode, releasing a shower of plastic shavings and tape into your face. The QL and QDOS only supported two graphics modes - ominously named high res and low res. High res had four (fixed) colours at a resolution of 512 by 256 {pixels}. Low res had 8 colours (black, blue, red, magenta, green, cyan, yellow, white) plus a flash mode with 256 by 256 pixels. The sound was next to useless - single channel single oscillator with various parameters for fuzz, pitch change. There was one internal {font}, scalable to 2 heights and 3 widths. Peripherals and enhancements included a {GUI} on a plug-in {ROM}, accelerator cards ({Motorola 68020}, 4 MB RAM), {floppy disks} and {hard disks}. In 1996 there is still some interest in the QL, spread by the Internet of course. {Emulation} software, {source code}, "The QL Hackers Journal" and similar are still available, and many QLs are on the net. {(http://imaginet.fr/~godefroy/english)}. (1996-08-01)

[Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de 1’Angelo logic ; West,

[Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angdologie.]

[R/i Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.]

Rockwell, George Lincoln ::: (1918-1967) an American neo-Nazi who achieved notoriety out of proportion to the minuscule number of his followers due to his flair for publicity. He founded the American Nazi Party in 1958. He and his "storm troopers" would appear in full Nazi regalia after informing the media in advance. In 1967, he was assassinated by one of his discontented followers.

Rohanee (Arabic) Rūhānī. Used by the modern Sufis, in some senses equivalent to the Sanskrit gupta-vidya (secret knowledge); “the Magic of modern Egypt, supposed to proceed from Angels and Spirits, that is Genii, and by the use of the mystery names of Allah; they distinguish two forms — Ilwee, that is the Higher or White Magic; and Suflee and Sheytanee, the Lower or Black Demoniac Magic. There is also Es-Seemuja, which is deception or conjuring. Opinions differ as to the importance of a branch of Magic called Darb el Mendel, or as Barker calls it in English, the Mendal: by this is meant a form of artificial clairvoyance, exhibited by a young boy before puberty, or a virgin, who, as the result of self-fascination by gazing on a pool of ink in the hand, with coincident use of incense and incantation, sees certain scenes of real life passing over its surface” (TG 280).

Schools of the Prophets “Schools established by Samuel for the training of the Nabiim (prophets). Their method was pursued on the same lines as that of a Chela or candidate for initiation into the occult sciences, i.e., the development of abnormal faculties or clairvoyance leading to Seership. Of such schools there were many in days of old in Palestine and Asia Minor. That the Hebrews worshipped Nebo, the Chaldean god of secret learning, is quite certain, since they adopted his name as an equivalent of Wisdom” (TG 294).

Schwab, Moi'se. Vocabulaire de I'Angilologie. Paris:

Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie; De Plancy,

Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.] In The

Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie. Iomuel is to

Schwab, Vocabulaire de I'Angelologie.] Ordinarily

Schwab, Vocabulaire de l'Angelologie ; Ginzberg,

Schwab, Vocabulaire de VAngelologie.

Schwab, Vocabulaire de VAngelologie.]

Schwab, Vocahulaire de /’ Angelologie.

Schwab, Vocahulaire de I’Angelologie; West, “Names

season (in Enoch lore and in Schwab, Vocabulaire

Second Sight A Scottish name for natural or cultivated clairvoyance, as found among the Scottish Highlanders. The function partakes of several converging inner powers or attributes, but it generally means seeing in the astral light figures not physically visible, or distant scenes or future events.

Seer In its highest sense, one who discerns truths clearly by the use of the real inner vision, the Eye of Siva; who can see throughout the ranges of space and time belonging to a universe — not barring intuitions of the spaces and times of other surrounding universes. But it is also used for a number of varying degrees of ability to see clairvoyantly in the astral light. Swedenborg is sometimes called a seer, which he was in small degree, but because he was untrained, what he saw was mainly peculiar to himself, as is the case with seers of the same class. Instructions for aspirants to wisdom are replete with warnings as to the manifold dangers and deceptions of the astral light, and the obstacles thrown up by the unpurified and undisciplined nature of the disciple. The ability to become a true spiritual seer using the inner eye, means the fruits of many lives of aspiration and training, involving the successful passing of many trials and initiations. The science called gupta-vidya is due to the collaboration and teaching of real seers, whose trained faculties enable them to have direct vision of actualities.

Selective Theories of Sensa: A selective in contrast to a creative theory, holds that sensa experienceable by any mind under all possible conditions of perception; preexists the act of sensing and that, consequently the function of the mind in relation to the sensa is selective rather than creative. The selective theory has been advanced by such contemporary Realists as B. Russell (The Analysis of Mind), E. B. Holt (The Concept of Consciousness), J. Laird (A Study in Realism). See Creative Theory of Sensa. -- L.W.

Shub-Internet /shuhb in't*r-net/ (MUD, from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity "Shub-Niggurath", the Black Goat with a Thousand Young) The harsh personification of the {Internet}, Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect of {MUD}ders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good connections. To no avail - its purpose is malign and evil, and is the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A forged response often follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also cursed by users of {FTP} and {telnet} when the system slows down. The dread name of Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair beneath the Pentagon. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-04)

Shub-Internet ::: /shuhb in't*r-net/ (MUD, from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young) The harsh Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair beneath the Pentagon.[Jargon File] (1994-11-04)

Siddhi: (Skr.) Reaching of the aim, success, particularly the attainment of supernatural powers, such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, levitation, the penetration of matter, etc, claimed for the Yogin (q.v.) in the highest stage of the practice of Yoga (q.v.). -- K.F.L.

Sinclair, Clive ::: Clive Sinclair

Sinclair, Clive {Clive Sinclair}

Sinclair PC200 "computer" {(http://nonowt.demon.co.uk/magfold/articfol/the_miss.htm)}. [Summary?] 1998-07-28

Sinclair PC200 ::: (computer) .[Summary?]1998-07-28

Sinclair Radionics ::: Sinclair Research

Sinclair Radionics {Sinclair Research}

Sinclair Research ::: (company) A British microelectronics developer and manufacturer. Evolving from Sinclair Radionics in 1979, Sinclair Research was owned by Sir Clive calculators and pocket radios and televisions), but Sinclair Research began by producing some of the first 8-bit home microcomputers.Sinclair produced five microcomputers from 1980 to 1987, all based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor (except for the QL, which used the Motorola 68008 - a variant the QL (Quantum Leap) in 1984. A portable laptop computer, the Z88, was released in 1987 under the Cambridge Computers banner.Of them all, the ZX Spectrum was the best known, and it went on to become the most popular microcomputer of its time in the United Kingdom and in many other are today) between owners of Spectrums and Commodore 64s over who had the best machine.Sir Clive's financial problems in the mid-80s led him to sell the rights to the Sinclair brand to Amstrad in April 1986. This led to further models of the production of these computers, and no computer with the Sinclair name has been produced since. . . . (1998-12-09)

Sinclair Research "company" A British microelectronics developer and manufacturer. Evolving from Sinclair Radionics in 1979, Sinclair Research was owned by Sir {Clive Sinclair}. Sinclair Radionics produced electronic components and devices (such as calculators and pocket radios and televisions), but Sinclair Research began by producing some of the first {8-bit} home {microcomputers}. Sinclair produced five microcomputers from 1980 to 1987, all based on the {Zilog Z80} {microprocessor} (except for the {QL}, which used the {Motorola 68008} - a variant on the {68000}). The 1K kit-build {ZX80}, introduced in 1980, was followed by the 1K {ZX81} (expandable to 16K) in 1981, the 16K (expandable to 48K) {ZX Spectrum} in 1982 (then superseded by two distinct 48K models and a 128K model in 1986) and the {QL} (Quantum Leap) in 1984. A portable {laptop computer}, the {Z88}, was released in 1987 under the {Cambridge Computers} banner. Of them all, the ZX Spectrum was the best known, and it went on to become the most popular microcomputer of its time in the United Kingdom and in many other territories. This was partly due to its ease of use, and also due to its enormous {software} catalogue, covering games, {word processing}, music, {programming} and {graphics}. Glorious "mine's-better-than-yours" battles were fought (and still are today) between owners of Spectrums and {Commodore 64s} over who had the best machine. Sir Clive's financial problems in the mid-80s led him to sell the rights to the Sinclair brand to {Amstrad} in April 1986. This led to further models of the Spectrum being released from 1986 to 1988 and also an {IBM} {PC}-compatible based internally on Amstrad's own PC range. Sir Clive was not involved with the production of these computers, and no computer with the Sinclair name has been produced since. {(http://sinclair-research.co.uk/)}. {Planet Sinclair (http://nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/)}. {comp.sys.sinclair FAQ (http://kendalls.demon.co.uk/cssfaq/)}. (1998-12-09)

SOKRATEAN REALIZATION The realization that man cannot on his own (by self-taught clairvoyance, meditation, speculation) attain to knowledge of reality and life. That realization is the result of sufficient experience of mankind&

Sortes Sanctorum (Latin) [from sors lot + sanctum holy] Divination of the holy ones; the oracular responses, sayings, or prophecies of the oracles. In a more popular sense, the mere casting of lots, or the attempt to ascertain the future by methods which have been popular throughout the ages. Divination was sometimes resorted to in the early Christian Church, and sanctioned even by Augustine, with the proviso that it must be used only for pure and lofty purposes. One manner probably consisted in picking a passage in holy writ, after praying for divine guidance. In the ancient sanctuaries, however, a genuine divination was practiced by actual seers who based their operations upon mathematics and on the fact that nature foreshadows what is to come to pass, because all her processes are regulated by law, and are consistent sequences of phenomena connected in a causal chain from spiritual originants. Thus the ancient seer or forecaster, taking almost any natural occurrence, or a series of them, could from his trained faculties, forecast what the present series of events in nature were inevitably leading towards. To do this successfully one would have to be a genuine seer, which means employing the awakened intuition and spiritual clairvoyance which lie latent in most human beings.

srāmanyaphala. (P. sāmaNNaphala; T. dge sbyong gi tshul gyi 'bras bu; C. shamen'guo; J. shamonka; K. samun'gwa 沙門果). In Sanskrit, "the fruit of recluseship," viz., "the beneficial effects of religious practice." "Fruit" in this compound refers to the benefits that come to fruition in a recluse's current or future life. The latter type includes both merit (PUnYA) and a favorable rebirth. The former benefits are expounded by the Buddha in various versions of the srāmanyaphalasutra (see SĀMANNAPHALASUTTANTA). These benefits include respect from members of higher classes, sensory restraint, contentedness, abandonment of the hindrances, attainment of the four meditative absorptions, insight, supranormal powers, clairaudience, recollection of past lives, and so on. In regard to the progressive path to liberation, srāmanyaphala refers to the four stages of sanctity that culminate in the realization of NIRVĀnA: the fruits of the stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), once-returner (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN), nonreturner (ANĀGĀMIN), and worthy one (ARHAT).

Stag tshang. (Taktsang). In Tibetan, "Tiger's Lair," a complex of meditation caves and temples located in Paro, Bhutan, considered one of the most important sacred Buddhist sites in the Himalayan region associated with the Indian adept PADMASAMBHAVA; also known as Spa gro Stag tshang (Paro Taktsang). Situated on a sheer cliff more than two thousand feet above the valley floor, the complex is the best known among numerous Stag tshang, or "Tiger's Lair," sites located across eastern Tibet. According to traditional accounts, Padmasambhava miraculously flew to the spot in wrathful form as RDO RJE DROD LO, seated on the back of a tigress believed to have been his consort YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, and remained there for three months. In 853, one of Padmasambhava's twenty-five main disciples, Glang chen Dpal gyi seng ge (Langchen Palkyi Sengye), went to meditate in the main cave at Stag tshang, after which it became known as Stag tshang dpal phug, or "Pal's cave at Taktsang." Later, many great masters undertook meditation retreats there; these include PHA DAM PA SANGS RGYAS, MA GCIG LAB SGRON, THANG STONG RGYAL PO, and, according to one tradition, the great YOGIN MI LA RAS PA. The first buildings were likely erected in the fourteenth century. However, it was under the direction of the Bhutanese reformer ZHABS DRUNG NGAG DBANG RNAM RGYAL and later his regent Bstan 'dzin rab rgyas, that the modern structure was completed in 1692. In 1998, the complex was destroyed by fire.

studly ::: Impressive; powerful. Said of code and designs which exhibit both complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to hairy but is more positive in tone. Often in the emphatic most studly or as noun-form studliness. Smail 3.0's configuration parser is most studly.[Jargon File]

studly Impressive; powerful. Said of code and designs which exhibit both complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to {hairy} but is more positive in tone. Often in the emphatic "most studly" or as noun-form "studliness". "Smail 3.0's configuration parser is most studly." [{Jargon File}]

Sukshmopadhi (Sanskrit) Sūkṣmopādhi [from śukṣma subtle, fine, ethereal + upādhi base, vehicle] The subtle base or vehicle, in the human constitution the combined qualities of the higher manas, the lower manas, the kama-energy, and their astral veil or vehicle infilled with life. According to Taraka-Raja-Yoga there are three upadhis in the human constitution: karanopadhi, sukshmopadhi, and sthulopadhi. The sukshmopadhi comprehends manas in its dual aspect in union with kama and the vital-astral portions in the theosophic sevenfold division of man, and likewise corresponds to the manomaya-kosa of the Vedantic classification. The state of consciousness known as the svapna or sleeping condition is connected causally with the sukshmopadhi. This upadhi when developed and trained in the adept is the seat of a number of remarkable faculties or powers, among them spiritual clairvoyance and clairaudience. In the ordinary person, it is the lower portion of sukshmopadhi which ordinarily acts automatically, producing flashes of unconscious clairvoyant vision, dreams of various kind, and other psychic phenomena.

SUPERPHYSICS All reality beyond the physical visible (49:5-7) and physical-etheric (49:1-4) is superphysical. The lowest superphysical reality is the emotional (48:1-7).

Only esoterics is able to furnish a superphysics, a science of the superphysical.
Man&


Telepathy. Transmissions of thoughts from one to another of two minds that presumably are in attunement or affinity, without the aid of any orthodox means of communication through ordinary channels of sensation. Defined in The Journal of Parapsychology as “extrasensory perception of the mental activities of another person. It does not include the clairvoyant perception of objective events.”

Telesthesia: A limited form of clairvoyance, consisting in the perception of distant objects or conditions.

Terafniel —an angel of prey, mentioned in Schwab, Vocabulaire de VAngelologie.

The cup has always been one means of divination, whether by looking into it, or looking into water in it, or shaking up tea leaves or coffee grounds. These last gestures are physical adjuncts to the use of the clairvoyant vision. In the Tarots, the second suite was the cups, answering to the hearts in playing cards.

The five physiological senses are modifications or specializations of a general perceptiveness which has different modifications in different animal species where the organs are different, especially in the insects. Sensitives and clairvoyants may be able to receive visual, auditory, or other impressions without the use of the physical organ, or the usual functions of a sense organ may be transferred to another part of the body.

the Jews; Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.]

The kama-rupic shades, whether mere shells or not, are usually invisible but they are sometimes seen by clairvoyants. The more coherent ones are the shells of gross or wicked people and are influences of sensual or evil trend which instinctively haunt the atmosphere of persons and places whose characters or conditions are congenial to them and therefore magnetically attract them. Even well-meaning sensitives and persons of mediumistic or psychic type, being relatively negative physically because more or less aware on the astral plane, are susceptible, at times, to some of these strangely perverse and obsessing influences. The ancient teachings show why people’s instinctive dread of the ghostly dregs or remnants of the personal self is well founded.

Theosophy: (Gr., lit. "divine wisdom") is a term introduced in the third century by Ammonius Saccas, the master of Plotinus to identify a recurring tendency prompted often by renewed impulses from the Orient, but implicit in mystery schools as that of Eleusis, among the Essenes and elsewhere. Theosophy differs from speculative philosophy in allowing validity to some classes of mystical experience as regard soul and spirit, and in recognising clairvoyance and telepathy and kindred forms of perception as linking the worlds of psyche and body. Its content describes a transcendental field as the only real (approximating to Brahman, Nous, and Pleroma) from which emerge material universes in series, with properties revealing that supreme Being. Two polarities appear as the first manifesting stage, consciousness or spirit (Brahma, Chaos, Holy Ghost), and matter or energy (Siva, Logos, Father). Simultaneously, life appears clothed in matter and spirit, as form or species (Vishnu, Cosmos, Son). In a sense, life is the direct reflection of the tnnscendent supreme, hence biological thinking has a privileged place in Theosophy. Thus, cycles of life are perceived in body, psyche, soul and spirit. The lesser of these is reincarnation of impersonal soul in many personalities. A larger epoch is "the cycle of necessity", when spirit evolves over vast periods. -- F.K.

Theosophy teaches that every body, indeed every monad or life-atom, is in constant motion, and as it moves emits a sound, its own keynote, and that this sound is in musical harmony with nature’s all-inclusive harmonic symphonies. Furthermore, every particle of matter, every physical atom even, in its incessant movements produces a sound which is indeed a song, so that had we the power of spiritual hearing (genuine clairaudience), we would be able to hear this unimaginably grand symphony of sounds: we would hear the grass growing — as the ancient Welsh mystic has it; and the opening of a flower would itself be a marvelous natural orchestral performance.

The reason we cannot remain continuously in the waking state, but must seek another aspect of consciousness during sleep, is that “our senses are all dual, and act according to the plane of consciousness on which the thinking entity energizes. Physical sleep affords the greatest facility for its action on the various planes; at the same time it is a necessity, in order that the senses may recuperate and obtain a new lease of life for the Jagrata, or waking state, from the Svapna and Sushupti. . . . As a man exhausted by one state of the life fluid seeks another; as, for example, when exhausted by the hot air he refreshes himself with cool water; so sleep is the shady nook in the sunlit valley of life. Sleep is a sign that waking life has become too strong for the physical organism, and that the force of the life current must be broken by changing the waking for the sleeping state. Ask a good clairvoyant to describe the aura of a person just refreshed by sleep, and that of another just before going to sleep. The former will be seen bathed in rhythmical vibrations of life currents — golden, blue, and rosy; these are the electrical waves of Life. The latter is, as it were, in a mist of intense golden-orange hue, composed of atoms whirling with an almost incredible spasmodic rapidity, showing that the person begins to be too strongly saturated with Life; the life essence is too strong for his physical organs, and he must seek relief in the shadowy side of that essence, which side is the dream element, or physical sleep, one of the states of consciousness” (TBL 58).

The second question in value-theory is the question "What things are good? What is good, what is the highest good, etc.;" On this question perhaps the main issue historically is between those who say that the good is pleasure, satisfaction, or some state of feeling, and those who say that the good is virtue, a state of will, or knowledge, a state of the intellect. Holding the good to be pleasure or satisfaction are some of the Sophists, the hedonists (the Cyrenaic, the Epicureans, Hobbes, Hume, Bentham, Mill, Sidgwick, Spencer, Schlick). Holding virtue or knowledge or both to be good or supremely good are Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Neo-Platonists, Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, G. E. Moore, H. Rashdall, J. Laird, W. D. Ross, N. Hartmann.

These elementals are the principal nature forces used by the disimbodied human dead, very real but never visible “shells” mistaken for spirits at seances, and are the producers of all the phenomena except the purely subjective. They may be described as centers of force having instinctive desires but no consciousness as we understand it. Hence their acts may be what we humans call good or bad, indifferently. They have astral forms which partake, to a distinguishing degree, of the element to which they belong and also of the universally encompassing ether. They are a combination of sublimated matter and a purely rudimental mind. Some remain throughout several cycles relatively unchanging, so far as radical change goes, but still have no separate individuality, and usually acting collectively, so to speak. Others, of certain elements and species, change under a fixed law which Qabbalists explain. The most solid of their bodies are ordinarily just immaterial enough to escape perception by our physical eyesight, but not so unsubstantial that they cannot be perfectly recognized by the inner or clairvoyant vision. They not only exist and can all live in ether, but can handle and direct it for the production of physical effects, as readily as we can compress air or water for the same purpose by pneumatic and hydraulic apparatus; in which occupation they are readily helped by the human elementaries or astral shells.

  “This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek Ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Brahma, or the place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. . . . We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest ‘spirit’ of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his ‘irrational soul,’ or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.

thorntail ::: n. --> A beautiful South American humming bird (Gouldia Popelairii), having the six outer tail feathers long, slender, and pointed. The head is ornamented with a long, pointed crest.

tions. [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.]

TK-90X ::: (computer) A Brazilian clone, manufactured by Micro Digital, of the British Sinclair Research ZX Spectrum 8-bit microcomputer. It differed from the extra BASIC commands to aid programming and graphics-editing. Because of these differences, it was slightly incompatible with the standard Spectrum.A later model, the TK-95, which boasted an improved keyboard (similar to the Commodore 64's) and a more compatible ROM, was little more than a Timex TC2048 (another Spectrum clone) in disguise. .[comp.sys.sinclair FAQ, D Burke M Fayzullin P Kendall et al, pub. Philip Kendall 1998] (1998-11-09)

TK-90X "computer" A Brazilian {clone}, manufactured by {Micro Digital}, of the British {Sinclair Research} {ZX Spectrum} {8-bit} {microcomputer}. It differed from the standard Spectrum by adding an {Interface 2}-compatible {joystick} {interface}, and extra {BASIC} commands to aid {programming} and {graphics}-editing. Because of these differences, it was slightly incompatible with the standard Spectrum. A later model, the TK-95, which boasted an improved keyboard (similar to the {Commodore 64}'s) and a more compatible {ROM}, was little more than a {Timex} {TC2048} (another Spectrum clone) in disguise. {comp.sys.sinclair FAQ (http://kendalls.demon.co.uk/cssfaq/)}. ["comp.sys.sinclair FAQ", D Burke M Fayzullin P Kendall et al, pub. Philip Kendall 1998] (1998-11-09)

Transcendental hearing. Clairaudience (q.v.).

Transcendental vision: Clairvoyance (q.v.).

Trends in fewish Mysticism ; Schwab, Vocabulaire de

Vocabulaire de I'Angdlologie.]

Vocabulaire de I’Angdlologie.

Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.] As the gatekeeper of

Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.

Vocabulaire de I'Angelologie, suppl.]

Vocabulaire del’ Angelologie, supp.]

Voluspa (Icelandic) [from volva, vala sibyl + spa see clairvoyantly] The foremost lay of the poetic or Elder Edda, sung by the “wise sibyl” in response to Odin’s quest for knowledge. The vala represents the indelible record of the past, which here is consulted by the god Odin. Odin Allfather is the central character in Norse myths, and represents evolving consciousness, whether human, solar, planetary, or cosmic. Odin questions the vala and she responds with an account of creation and foretells the future destiny of conscious beings. From this record of the past history of the world, Odin learns about our planet’s destiny and of nine former worlds that preceded the present one. The entire process of cosmic evolution is here comprised in a thumbnail sketch, which is all but incomprehensible unless amplified by the other lays of the Elder Edda.

Voyance: Clairvoyance (q.v.); loosely, psychometry and psi abilities in general.

Whelan, Basil Wilby, Claire Williams, Prof. Harry A. Wolfson, Dr. Amado M. Yuzon.

Wolf's Lair ::: In the winter of 1940-41 Hitler established his new headquarters near Rastenburg. During the following years, the compound included extensive bunker systems and was well hidden from possible aerial attack. It was at the Wolf's Lair that Stauffenberg planted a bomb, in the hopes of staging a coup.

women at childbirth. [Rf Schwab, Vocabulaire de

Wraith, Wraie The fleeting apparition of a person, about the moment of death, to another person in kinship or psychomagnetic sympathy. Though wraith may cover different cases, in general it is due to the mayavi-rupa of the person who is dying. It is produced by his thought, though he is unaware of the effect he is producing. An intense and anxious thought about the person he wishes to see becomes objective to the seer, and the apparition wears the aspect and commonly the ordinary clothing of the dying person. In some cases the apparition may not be due to any thought on the part of the dying person, but to abnormal sensitiveness or clairvoyance on the part of the seer. Being in close sympathy with the dying one, he bears the image of that one in his latent memory; and when the event occurs, his higher senses, being aware of it, cause the objectivization of this memory as a visual apparition. The thought itself is objective to a mind capable of perception on that plane; but to become objective to the physical senses, it must clothe itself in matter of a lower grade; and this objectivization may vary from a picture in the mind’s eye to an apparition seen by the physical vision. In any case the organism of the seer can provide the necessary vehicle for such an objectivization. Distance plays no part in the phenomenon, and there is no projection of a physically substantial body through space from one place to another. The above case should be distinguished from an appearance of the astral double seen near the graves of the recently deceased. See also EIDOLON; PHANTOM; SPECTER

Yabbashael is cited in Schwab, Vocabulaire de

yogipratyaksa. (T. rnal 'byor mngon sum; C. dingguan zhi; J. jokanchi; K. chonggwan chi 定觀知). In Sanskrit, "yogic direct perception"; a specific variety of direct perception (PRATYAKsA) that is typically presumed to derive from meditative practice (BHĀVANĀ; YOGA). A direct intuition of the real obtained through meditative practice, this type of understanding was accepted as a valid means of knowledge by most of the traditional Indian religious schools. In Buddhism, the psychological analysis of the notion of yogipratyaksa and the related yogijNāna (yogic knowledge or cognition) was undertaken by DHARMAKĪRTI (c. 600-670) in his PRAMĀnAVĀRTTIKA and NYĀYABINDU, as well as by his commentators. Dharmakīrti's predecessor DIGNĀGA (c. 480-540) had posited that there were only two reliable sources of knowledge (PRAMĀnA): direct perception (PRATYAKsA) and logical inference (ANUMĀNA). Dharmakīrti, however, subdivided direct perception (pratyaksa) into four subtypes, viz., sensory cognition (indriyajNāna), mental discrimination (MANOVIJNĀNA), self-awareness (SVASAMVEDANA), and yogic cognition (yogijNāna). In Dharmakīrti's analysis, yogic cognition (yogijNāna) is a form of yogic perception (yogipratyaksa), because it fulfills the two conditions of perception (pratyaksa): (1) it is devoid of conceptual construction (KALPANĀ); and (2) it is a cognition that is "nonerroneous" (abhrānta), viz., real. The treatment of yogipratyaksa in the literature thus focuses on how yogipratyaksa fulfills these two conditions of perception. Yogic knowledge is devoid of conceptual construction (kalpanā), Dharmakīrti maintains, because it is nonconceptual (akalpa; NIRVIKALPA) and thus "vivid" or "distinct" (spasta). This type of perception is therefore able to perceive reality directly, without the intercession of mental images or concepts. Since yogic cognition is said to be devoid of conceptual construction, this raises the issue of its second condition, its lack of error. Why is meditatively induced perception true and reliable? How does a meditator's yogic perception differ from the hallucinations of the deranged, since both of them presume they have a vivid cognition of an object? The reason, Dharmakīrti maintains, is that the objects of yogic knowledge are "true" or "real" (bhuta; sadbhuta), whereas hallucinations are "false" or "unreal" objects (abhuta; asadbhuta). The only true objects of yogic knowledge offered by Dharmakīrti are the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS: that is, the perception of these truths is true and reliable because they enable one to reach the goal of enlightenment, not because they involve a perception of an ultimate substance. In this sense, Dharmakīrti's understanding of yogijNāna is more focused on the direct realization of the soteriological import of the four noble truths than on extraordinary sensory ability. Therefore, yogic direct perception is qualitatively different from the various forms of clairvoyance that are the byproducts of deep states of concentration that may be achieved by both Buddhist and non-Buddhist practitioners. Yogipratyaksa is a form of insight (VIPAsYANĀ) posssessed only by noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA); and among the five paths it occurs only on the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) and above. See also DARsANA.

Zilog "company" The {microprocessor} manufacturer who produced the {Zilog Z80} in July 1976 (as used by {Sinclair} in the {ZX-80}, {ZX-81} and {ZX Spectrum} computers) and later the {Zilog Z8000}. Zilog was founded in 1974 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Exxon Corp. by 1980. The company's management and employees purchased Zilog back from Exxon in 1989. Zilog became a publicly-held company in February, 1991. In March of 1998, Zilog was privatised, as a result of the merger and recapitalisation transaction by Texas Pacific Group (TPG). Zilog now produce a range of 8-bit {microcontrollers}, 8-, 16- and 32-bit {microprocessors}, and {digital signal processors}, covering the home entertainment, communications, and {embedded systems} markets. {(http://zilog.com/)}. Address: 910 East Hamilton Avenue, Suite 110, Campbell, CA 95008, USA. (1998-09-14)

Zilog ::: (company) The microprocessor manufacturer who produced the Zilog Z80 in July 1976 (as used by Sinclair in the ZX-80, ZX-81 and ZX Spectrum computers) and later the Zilog Z8000.Zilog was founded in 1974 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Exxon Corp. by 1980. The company's management and employees purchased Zilog back from Exxon in Zilog was privatised, as a result of the merger and recapitalisation transaction by Texas Pacific Group (TPG).Zilog now produce a range of 8-bit microcontrollers, 8-, 16- and 32-bit microprocessors, and digital signal processors, covering the home entertainment, communications, and embedded systems markets. .Address: 910 East Hamilton Avenue, Suite 110, Campbell, CA 95008, USA. (1998-09-14)

ZX-80 ::: (computer) Sinclair's cheap personal computer with built-in BASIC, launched at the end of January 1980 at a computer fair in Wembley, UK. The 24 lines by 32 characters of monochrome text. An audio cassette recorder was used to save programs.The ZX-80 was sold in kit form for �79.95 or ready-built for �99.95. It was used by many UK hobbyists as a means of learning the basics of computing. Some remember the 1KB ZX-80 for the claim in its advertising that you could control a nuclear power station with it.The ZX-80 was succeeded by the ZX-81. . . .(2002-08-30)

ZX-80 "computer" {Sinclair}'s cheap {personal computer} with built-in {BASIC}, launched at the end of January 1980 at a computer fair in Wembley, UK. The processor was an {NEC 780-C} running at 3.25 MHz. It had 1KB of {RAM}, externally expandable to 16KB, and 4KB of ROM. It had RF video output to a TV, displaying 24 lines by 32 characters of monochrome text. An audio cassette recorder was used to save programs. The ZX-80 was sold in kit form for £79.95 or ready-built for £99.95. It was used by many UK hobbyists as a means of learning the basics of computing. Some remember the 1KB ZX-80 for the claim in its advertising that you could control a nuclear power station with it. The ZX-80 was succeeded by the {ZX-81}. {(http://home.t-online.de/home/p.liebert/zx80_eng.htm)}. {Planet Sinclair (http://nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/)}. {The Sinclair Story (http://sincuser.f9.co.uk/046/sstory.htm)}. (2002-08-30)

ZX-81 "computer" An even more successful version of the {Sinclair} {ZX-80}, featuring a large {uncommitted logic array} instead of much discrete logic, an improved {BASIC}, and rather more expandability (it could take 16kb {RAM} packs). It was launched around 1981 and was eventually replaced by the {Spectrum}. (1995-11-04)

ZX-81 ::: (computer) An even more successful version of the Sinclair ZX-80, featuring a large uncommitted logic array instead of much discrete logic, an improved BASIC, and rather more expandability (it could take 16kb RAM packs). It was launched around 1981 and was eventually replaced by the Spectrum. (1995-11-04)

ZX Spectrum ::: (computer) Sinclair's first personal computer with a colour display. The Spectrum used the Zilog Z80 processor like its predecessors the ZX-80 and ZX-81. didn't require the presence of a cold carton of milk to prevent it overheating. It was possibly the most popular home computer in the UK for many years.The TK-90X was a clone. (1995-11-04)

ZX Spectrum "computer" {Sinclair}'s first personal computer with a colour display. The Spectrum used the {Zilog Z80} processor like its predecessors the {ZX-80} and {ZX-81}. It was originally available in 16k and 48k versions using cassette tape and later grew to 128k and sprouted {floppy disks}. It had a wider and more solid case and a marginally better "dead flesh" keyboard. Unlike the earlier models, it didn't require the presence of a cold carton of milk to prevent it overheating. It was possibly the most popular home computer in the UK for many years. The {TK-90X} was a clone. (1995-11-04)



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1:I see well that our intellect is never sated unless that True enlightens it outside of which no truth has space. In that it reposes, like a beast in its lair, as soon as it gains it; and gain it it can, else every desire were in vain. ~ Dante, Paradiso 4.129-131,
2:To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget. ~ Arundhati Roy,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Unless you enter the tiger's lair, you cannot get hold of the tiger's cub's. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove
2:Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove
3:Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
4:The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Fear of the unknown is our greatest fear. Many of us would enter a tiger's lair before we would enter a dark cave. While caution is a useful instinct, we lose many opportunities and much of the adventure of life if we fail to support the curious explorer within us. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove
5:The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we'll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove

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1:All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
2:If you have a lair then you are probably not a good person. ~ Demetri Martin,
3:Unless you enter the tiger's lair, you cannot get hold of the tiger's cub's. ~ Sun Tzu,
4:His room was like an explorer's den, a lair of furs, the cave of a magician. ~ Ana s Nin,
5:If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey,
6:His bedroom was the gilded, diamond-studded, pearl-encrusted rococo lair of a god-king. ~ Lev Grossman,
7:Dragon's Lair 3D is about as close as you can come to controlling an animated feature film. ~ Don Bluth,
8:I'm just fiercely protective. It's like, that's my lair and nobody messes with my lair. ~ Whitney Houston,
9:There will be a guy in a yellow poncho, his name is Hank, he will take you to the whopper lair. ~ Dane Cook,
10:She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil's lair. ~ Laini Taylor,
11:And, to be true, an enemy's lair is an enemy's lair, no matter how comfortable or fancy it might appear. ~ Steven J Carroll,
12:Is it safe?" Evadne asked.
"In the heart of the lair of prehistoric people who eat humans? Probably not. ~ Michael Pryor,
13:The trap had been set, the bait had been laid and the greed consumed their eyes and enticed them into my lair. ~ Jill Thrussell,
14:A hollowed-out volcano is every super-villain’s dream lair. It’s all about location, location, location.” Riley ~ Janet Evanovich,
15:Is it safe?" Evadne asked.
"In the heart of the lair of prehistoric people who eat humans? Probably not." Pg 197 ~ Michael Pryor,
16:When walking into the lair of the dragon after robbing his hoard, the least you could do is hold you head high [...] ~ Ilona Andrews,
17:I am like some wounded animal in a darkened lair, nursing the thorn in my paw, unable to find anyone to take it out. ~ Kristin Hannah,
18:Growing ever smaller in the distance. Carrying that pain and sadness back with her to the lair where it, and she, lived. ~ James Sallis,
19:We shall dive down through black abysses...and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever. ~ H P Lovecraft,
20:No, thank you,” he flashed that grin of his. “I’ve been wondering what the lair of a poetry-inclined psychologist looks like. ~ Gina Marinello Sweeney,
21:So this guy walks into a dragon’s lair
and he says
why the long tale?
HAR HAR BUDDY
says the dragon
FUCK YOU. ~ Catherynne M Valente,
22:Children are not things to be molded, But are people to be unfolded.”—Jess Lair The Absorbent Mind and Sensitive Periods from Birth to Six Months ~ Anonymous,
23:The room was a magpie-nest of picked-at knowledge, the lair of a tinkerer to whom the universe was one vast toyshop of intriguing side issues. ~ Barbara Hambly,
24:The subterranean lair of the wily human relationship: a dark maze of pop-up demons, fun house mirrors, spooky dead ends, multiple false bottoms. ~ Stephen Wright,
25:Tell my father I was abducted by a lucius nymph and pulled to her lair." Styxx
"For the record, I resent being called a lucius nymph." Galen ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,
26:...before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
27:The heart of Dragon's Lair has always been its compelling story. With Dragon's Lair 3D, we think the team has really created an interactive animated movie. ~ Don Bluth,
28:We’ve found his lair in a mortal city called York—”

“It’s New York,” Stelian said with a roll of his eyes, as if he’d explained this before. ~ Kresley Cole,
29:Odd lair for a dragon", Darnak said, "and I've seen one or two in my times."
"Do all dragons own flower gardens?"
"This is the first one I've come across. ~ Jim C Hines,
30:One more thing," Jace said. "Is there a holy place around here?" “Good idea. If you're going to take on a lair of vampires by yourself, you'd better pray first. ~ Cassandra Clare,
31:One more thing," Jace said. "Is there a holy place around here?"
“Good idea. If you're going to take on a lair of vampires by yourself, you'd better pray first. ~ Cassandra Clare,
32:He looks up at the sound of the gravel crunch on the driveway, and I catch a flash of impression, a reclusive animal surprised in his lair by the arrival of the hunters. ~ Ben H Winters,
33:We were home from our trip just a few weeks when we found out she was pregnant. I did it! I got her pregnant, just as I had planned.
I’m one baby closer to my Lair army. ~ A M Madden,
34:It turned out she did not need the compass. It was easy to head in the other direction from the lair of the witch. All you had to do was move away from the thing pulling at you. ~ Anne Ursu,
35:My father died of the same thing that Edwyn had suffered... Was I too stupid--I couldn't be--to take a lesson from that? Could I trust myself? Not to make my life a lair. ~ Gwendoline Riley,
36:I just rely on natural talent," said Adrian, strolling up to the start of the Dragon's Lair. "When you have such a wealth of it to draw from, the danger comes from having too much. ~ Richelle Mead,
37:Come to see the devil in his lair, have you?” he asked.

[Evie] came closer, her expression intent and oddly fearless. “You’re not the devil. You’re only a man. A very fl-flawed one. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
38:The cross is Jesus going into the very lair of death. He goes to meet head-on that which frightens us the most. And what does He do? He battles it. He engages it. And finally he conquers it. ~ Robert Barron,
39:It won't happen again, I swear it!" Karic rasped.

"If we'd reached my lair in time it never would have happened at all!"

"But it did, it did and nothing will ever be the same! ~ Kathleen Morgan,
40:But she pursued them through their tangled lair And caught them, and put fire-flies in their hair; And then they all joined hands, and round and round They danced a morris on the moonlit ground. ~ Thomas Malory,
41:The old one opened his mind, but it was the new one that climbed inside, turned several circles, and settled in with a grunt—like a satisfied dragon in a cozy new lair. And there it would remain—the ~ Laini Taylor,
42:I'm also very pleased that we were able to include a full orchestrated score for Dragon's Lair 3D. The 40 different music pieces blend with the action to make you feel more a part of the whole adventure. ~ Don Bluth,
43:You have a death ray so when your enemies invade your secret lair, you pull out it out and you can swing it back and forth in a swath of doom, obliterating all your enemies while laughing maniacally! ~ Dennis Liggio,
44:I remember when we were doing the first Dragon's Lair, I got really involved with coming up with all the little rooms and what was the danger in the room and going into it with bats and spiders and snakes. ~ Don Bluth,
45:Fire, water, earth, and air,
All meet in the dragon's lair.
Six brave hearts have failed the test;One continues in the quest.
Remember well the words you know
When on to find your fate you go. ~ Emily Rodda,
46:Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair. ~ John Keats,
47:Every now and then, as he sucked up the daily load of cat hair, he thought wistfully of a Roomba, but Buster would try to kill it and carry it off to his lair. The big Maine Coon probably outweighed a Roomba. ~ Kaje Harper,
48:All right," Spook said. He reached to the ground, scooping up a pile of ash. "Let's just rub this into your clothing and on your face...." Breeze froze. "I'll meet you back ath the lair," he finally said. ~ Brandon Sanderson,
49:It was during this period that he might have hearkened to the memories of the lair and the stream and run back to the Wild. But the memory of his mother held him...So he remained in his bondage waiting for her. ~ Jack London,
50:Did you never wonder why the old books are so full of dragons chasing after maidens? The serpents think the girls are orphans, and long to get them away in a lair so that they may grow up strong and tall. ~ Catherynne M Valente,
51:Oh!" said Roberta, drawing a long breath; "it was like a great dragon tearing by. Did you feel it fan us with its hot wings?" "I suppose a dragon's lair might look very like that tunnel from the outside," said Phyllis. ~ E Nesbit,
52:I am in an undisclosed location. I call it . . . the Laaaair." "The Lair?" Steve said, laughing. "Hey, every Evil Overlord has to have a lair," Tyler said. "I couldn't find a volcano next to a piranha pit but it's close . . . ~ John Ringo,
53:Morgan and Catcher said their manly hellos - consisting of a symbolic head bob from Catcher (of the "You're in my lair now" variety) and a responding nod from Morgan (of the "You are clearly the king of this castle" variety). ~ Chloe Neill,
54:Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger. ~ Gordon R Dickson,
55:A school library is like the Bat Cave: it's a safe fortress in a chaotic world, a source of knowledge and the lair of a superhero.

True, the superhero is more likely to be wearing a cardigan than a batsuit, but still... ~ Tom Angleberger,
56:Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons. ~ C S Lewis,
57:Nancy Ward was almost eighty years old. For a moment, Tiana was frozen by the sight. Half exultant—if she could be like that, at that age!—and half petrified. It was like watching some ancient, terrible creature, rising from its lair. ~ Eric Flint,
58:The Ibex
My panther is active tonight,
hungry, intent,
nobody’s business but her own
not content
to leave me
gutted by moonlight,
I must be
her lair-thing,
her skin-to-lie-on,
her gnawed bone.
~ David Brooks,
59:Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists? ~ Ben Aaronovitch,
60:Great. I get to meet Jack Eversea, the Jack Eversea, and I act like a complete imbecile. It was so good Jazz wasn't here, she would have clobbered me by now. For that matter, she would have clobbered him and dragged him back to her lair. ~ Natasha Boyd,
61:We rehearsed at the space twice a day regardless of anything else going on in any of our lives. Many of the songs that made up Appetite and Lies—as well as more than a few from Use Your Illusion—came together in this back-alley lair. When ~ Duff McKagan,
62:Tarly, when I was a lad half your age, my lady mother told me that if I stood about with my mouth open, a weasel was like to mistake it for his lair and run down my throat. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, beware of weasels. ~ George R R Martin,
63:Enter my lair, said the dragon. I have shiny treasure for you to play with, I’ll keep you warm and safe, and if it suits my purpose, I’ll chain you to the floor and kill your client by throwing quarters at him with my magic. Been there, done that. ~ Ilona Andrews,
64:Enter my lair, said the dragon. I have shiny treasure for you to play with, I’ll keep you warm and safe, and if it suits my purpose, I’ll chain you to the floor and kill your client by throwing quarters at him with my magic. Been there, done that. “I ~ Ilona Andrews,
65:Hell, if I didn't know any better I'd think he just clubbed her over the head before dragging her back to his lair like some kind of caveman. I'm surprised he didn't whip out his dick and piss in a circle around her. I mean, what the fuck was that?” “I ~ Ashley Jade,
66:The beauty of my bleak childhood, the unforgivable sadness shared by dolls and statues - voiceless objects suitable for the double monologue between myself and the luxurious lair I live in, the pirate treasure buried in my first-person singular. ~ Alejandra Pizarnik,
67:Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger … LESSONS: Anonymous ~ Gordon R Dickson,
68:Then, as the priest was emerging somewhat uneasily from his lair, he went straight up to him, looked deep into his eyes, and growled into his face: 'If you weren't wearing skirts, what a punch I'd give you right on your ugly snout, wouldn't I just! ~ Guy de Maupassant,
69:White, red, evil, green. What haunts these woods stays unseen
Dragons roam and take to air. Cut down those who are near his lair.
Eat your meat and drink your blood. Leave remains in the tub.
Bone white, blood red. Along this path you'll soon be dead. ~ Kerri Maniscalco,
70:She sat in her chair and looked around the room. What should she take with her? The antique chatrang board her predecessor had given her? Her mummified baby alligator, which she had on the theory that every sorcerer’s lair should have a mummified reptile of some kind? ~ Tim Pratt,
71:I know that I could really kill for my daughter. I know because I'm living for her, so I'm fierce when it comes down to it. And I feel the same about my husband and my family. I'm just fiercely protective. It's like, that's my lair and nobody messes with my lair. ~ Whitney Houston,
72:I promise to keep my hands, tongue, and other body parts to myself. You risk your life by staying home. It's late and we're both too wiped out to go climbing into the People's lair tonight. What do you risk by coming with me?"
"A huge migraine from being in your company. ~ Ilona Andrews,
73:You’d think a lair would be a refuge from homicidal lunatics, Chronos fumed. But no, I don’t even feel safe with the people who are supposedly on my team! If all villains felt that way, she would never, ever understand why anyone chose such a bothersome way to live. ~ Emily Martha Sorensen,
74:You mean when we discovered the secret lair under the hangar where I'd been kept comatose for eight years of my life, then turned into a cyborg by some mystery surgeon before being given away to a family who didn't really want me? Yeah, Thorne, those were the good old days. ~ Marissa Meyer,
75:The world is outside us; our senses are within us. How, then, do the two come together so that we can know something? Obviously our senses can't go forth and drag an actual chunk if the world back to their internal lair, intact and as is, for the benefit of the rest if the brain. ~ Kathryn Schulz,
76:The world is outside us; our senses are within us. How, then, do the two come together so that we can know something? Obviously our senses can't go forth and drag an actual chunk of the world back to their internal lair, intact and as is, for the benefit of the rest of the brain. ~ Kathryn Schulz,
77:If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
78:The first thing to do was slip away from her father, who might have questions about why she kept insisting on going back to the lair of ultimate evil. Kami saw why so many teenagers who had adventures in books were interestingly tragic orphans. Parents were a real buzzkill, adventure-wise. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,
79:lair Hansen had always heard that near-death experiences made people reevaluate their lives. She’d spent nearly thirty years sure about what she wanted in life, but all it had taken for her to start questioning everything was some severe turbulence on a 747. She picked up her whiskey and took ~ Denise Grover Swank,
80:Both boys giggled at that one. Then growing more somber, Blakely said, “But man oh man, what a total Babe Lair.” “Love Nest.” “Herpes Haven.” “Penile Palace.” “Beaver Trap.” Myron tried not to sigh. It was like hanging out with a really annoying thesaurus. He turned to Win and asked what the plan was. “Follow ~ Harlan Coben,
81:There were two mysteries, actually: one old, one new. The old one opened his mind, but it was the new one that climbed inside, turned several circle, and settled in with a grunt--like a satisfied dragon in a new cozy lair. And there it would remain--the mystery, in his mind--exhaling enigma for years to come. ~ Laini Taylor,
82:She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil's lair. She wasn't innocent now, but she didn't know what to do about it. This was her life: magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing. ~ Laini Taylor,
83:Werewolves hold territories, and these territories are where they are strongest. You want to fight a werewolf? You lure him away from where he has the home advantage. You throw him off balance and you take the opportunity to hurt him as much as you can. You don't attack him in his own lair. That's just stupidity. ~ Liz de Jager,
84:Evie, bed down.” Scanning the dark, he murmured, “You doan have to be scared. I’ve got you.”
You do, don’t you? Here we were in the Bagmen’s lair, and I wasn’t terrified for my life. Jackson would kill
any that strayed too close. In fact, they should fear him.
I was with the boy that monsters should fear. ~ Kresley Cole,
85:TIGER! TIGER!” What of the hunting, hunter bold? Brother, the watch was long and cold. What of the quarry ye went to kill? Brother, he crops in the jungle still. Where is the power that made your pride? Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side. Where is the haste that ye hurry by? Brother, I go to my lair—to die. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
86:Tiger! Tiger!" What of the hunting, hunter bold? Brother, the watch was long and cold. What of the quarry ye went to kill? Brother, he crops in the jungle still. Where is the power that made your pride? Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side. Where is the haste that ye hurry by? Brother, I go to my lair—to die. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
87:This philosophy means that when you’ve entered a den of assholes, you do everything possible to get out as fast as you can—or, better yet, to figure out how to avoid that lair in the first place. I call this the “da Vinci rule.” As Leonardo da Vinci put it, “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. ~ Robert I Sutton,
88:I scorned him for huddling by the fire, and he offered to share his tea. I reviled him for his cowardice at the kai’s lair, and he made me soup. I ridiculed his noble ancestry, and he laughed at himself and cleaned my hearth. I drove him unmercifully in his schooling, and he devoured it as if I’d gifted him with jewels. ~ Carol Berg,
89:But honesty requires courage. As she cornered the thief in his lair, she found that she wasn’t so sure of herself. She was sure of only one thing. It made her fall back a little. She lifted her chin.
Her heart had an unsteady rhythm they both could hear when she told the thief that he might keep what he had stolen. ~ Marie Rutkoski,
90:What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair to die! ~ Rudyard Kipling,
91:The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Fear of the unknown is our greatest fear. Many of us would enter a tiger's lair before we would enter a dark cave. While caution is a useful instinct, we lose many opportunities and much of the adventure of life if we fail to support the curious explorer within us. ~ Joseph Campbell,
92:I shall plan my cousin's escape from that Canton mad-house, and together we shall go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth. We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever. ~ H P Lovecraft,
93:As a young designer explained to me bluntly: "Everyone upstairs is dumb," referring to the floor above the engineering lair at the 156 University office where customer support, administrators and salespeople sat. My first impulse was to laugh at his ridiculous, blithe dismissiveness, until I realized that it wasn't very funny. ~ Katherine Losse,
94:It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with addedweight upon other lands of Our America. All I have done up to now and shall do hereafter is to that end.... I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair--and my weapon is only the slingshot of David. ~ Jose Marti,
95:Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat. Even night crawlers are diurnal in this lair. There are sounds, of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life. ~ Delia Owens,
96:The kids cheered every time the lights went on and a spotlight revealed Jimmy [Page] bowing his electric guitar, eliciting stygian growls and demonic shrieks, as if to draw the Dark One from his lair in hell. Invariably, some of the more astute of Led Zeppelin's listeners realized that what they were watching was in part a magic show. ~ Stephen Davis,
97:The same organizational principles which called us forth into self-reflection have called forth self-reflection out of the planet itself. And the problem then is for us to suspect this, act on our suspicion, and be good detectives, and track down the spirit in its lair. And this is what shamans are doing. They are hunters of spirit. ~ Terence McKenna,
98:In his book I Ain’t Much, Baby—But I’m All I Got, the psychologist Jess Lair comments: “Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise. ~ Dale Carnegie,
99:Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death. ~ Roddy McDowall,
100:from the middle-middle classes, whose highest desire seemed shelter – continuous shelter – not a lair in the darkness to be reached against fear, but shelter everywhere and always, until the existence of earth and sky is forgotten, shelter from poverty and disease and violence and impoliteness; and consequently from joy; God slipped this retribution in. ~ E M Forster,
101:Flirtation
UPON thy purple mat thy body bare
Is fine and limber like a tender tree.
The motion of thy supple form is rare,
Like a lithe panther lolling languidly,
Toying and turning slowly in her lair.
Oh, I would never ask for more of thee,
Thou art so clean in passion and so fair.
Enough! if thou wilt ask no more of me!
~ Claude McKay,
102:You're kidding," Shane said. "Do you think I want to visit Crazy McTeeth in his lair of insanity?"
"No," Claire said, "but I'm pretty sure you won't like it if I go alone when I just kind of promised to be with you. So...?"
"Right. I've been missing Nutty McFang anyway."
"Stop making up names for him."
"What about Count Crackula?"
"Just stop. ~ Rachel Caine,
103:The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we'll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it. ~ Henry Miller,
104:Growl, you live in a slime lair and maintain an identity as the mysterious overlord of an undersea city, you command a fleet of meat dreadnaughts with crews of humanoid whale people, and you're currently reclining in a pulsating mass of gelatinous goo that looks like it escaped from hell's own Jell-O mold--so excuse the fuck out of me if I question your motives. ~ Christopher Moore,
105:Rise and enter the lair, where the darkness gives you your stripes. Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe," Etta read, running her finger beneath the words within the star. "Seek out the unknown gods whose ears were deaf to lecture. Stand on the shoulders of memory. Bring a coin to the widowed queen. Remember, the truth is in the telling, and an ending must be final. ~ Alexandra Bracken,
106:You've spent most of your life in hiding.' said Dr. Strayer. 'Your secret lair is the only place you feel truly safe. When you were a child it was your room where you'd hide so you didn't have to interact with your parents. In college it was the rare-books room; once you married Amanda, it was your basement book room. You bury yourself in these places, Peter. You avoid life there. ~ Charlie Lovett,
107:Our first point of discussion is the hunt. (...) My idea is to start the film with an image of the vixen locked out of her lair which has been plugged up. Her terror as she's pursued across the country. This is a big deal. It means training a fox from birth or dressing up a dog to look like a fox. Or hiring David Attenbrorough, who probably knows a few foxes well enough to ask a favour. ~ Emma Thompson,
108:Since moving to Vegas, I saw her a couple of times. She dismissed me with a haughty look. So, yes, I’m very sure.”
That had anger bubbling inside of him. “Knowing that makes me want to cast her out.”
“Nah, it’ll be more fun to have her stick around. She likes to pretend I don’t exist. But you can’t pretend someone doesn’t exist if they’re being paraded in front of your entire lair, can you? ~ Suzanne Wright,
109:In a perfect world, Joshua's vertically gifted murderer would've had himself a monologue before rampaging, during which he loudly and clearly would've announced his full name, occupation, religious preference, preferably with his god's country and time period of origin, his goals, dreams, and aspirations, and the location of his lair. But nobody had ever accused post-Shift Atlanta of being perfect. ~ Ilona Andrews,
110:In a perfect world, Joshua’s vertically gifted murderer would’ve had himself a monologue before rampaging, during which he loudly and clearly would’ve announced his full name, occupation, religious preference, preferably with his god’s country and time period of origin, his goals, dreams, and aspirations, and the location of his lair. But nobody had ever accused post-Shift Atlanta of being perfect. ~ Ilona Andrews,
111:Sanskrita, “polished, complete.” Sanskrit is the elder sister of all Indo-European tongues. Its alphabetical script is called Devanagari; literally, “divine abode.” “Who knows my grammar knows God!” Panini, great philologist of ancient India, paid that tribute to the mathematical and psychological perfection of Sanskrit. He who would track language to its lair must indeed end as omniscient. 2 ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
112:A friendly voice seldom reaches me nowadays. I am alone now, absurdly alone; and in the course of my relentless and underground struggle against everything that human beings till now have revered and loved, I have imperceptibly become something like a lair myself - something hidden away, which people do not find, even if they go out and look for it. But people do not go out in search of such things… ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
113:To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget. ~ Arundhati Roy,
114:Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox has obtained the widest and most familiar reputation.... His recent tracks still give variety to a winter's walk. I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone before me by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, with such a tip-toe of expectation as if I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in the wood, and expected soon to catch it in its lair. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
115:A dozen thoughts hit me all at once. The biggest was a one-word command: RUN! I had watched the horror movies, the ones where the mentally malnourished airhead goes into the house alone, sneaking around like, well, like me, and then ends up with an ax between the eyes. From the safety of my seat in the cineplex, I had scoffed at their idiocy and now, here I was, in Bat Lady’s lair, and someone else was here, in the basement. Why ~ Harlan Coben,
116:he’d wondered aloud if the Scottish-Japanese technophile wanted to be Batman. “You already have the lair, the finances and the right equipment,” he’d said. “Why do you ask? Do you have a fetish for rich men in masks?” Ken asked, smiling that angelic smile. “I don’t have fetishes,” Brady responded quickly. “But he isn’t my type. He’s got a cave full of baggage and relies on toys instead of natural talent. Give me Superman any day. ~ R G Alexander,
117:Hitler spends more time at the Wolf’s Lair than in Berlin—some eight hundred days in the last three years alone. The Führer is fond of saying that his military planners chose the “most marshy, mosquito-ridden, and climatically unpleasant place possible” for this hidden headquarters. On humid summer days, the air is so heavy and thick with clouds of mosquitoes that Hitler remains in the cool confines of his bunker all day long. But ~ Bill O Reilly,
118:I pull out my laptop, which is probably the most advanced piece of technology that has ever crossed the threshold of Lapin's lair, and set it up on a stack of heavy books, all from the Wayback-list. The shiny MacBook looks like a hapless alien trying to blend in with the quiet stalwarts of human civilization I crack it open - glowing alien guts revealed! - and cue the visualization as Lapin crosses the room with two cups in two saucers. ~ Robin Sloan,
119:I don't know how it got to this, but I'm in a war. There's no chance for diplomacy. They want me dead and I don't think I can run from this. Not after what they've done to me. So if this is a war, then I'm going to take the fight to them. I'll raid their lair and I'll kill as many as I can. There seem to be endless numbers of them, but they've got to have a limit. Tonight we'll find out if there are more of them than there is fight in me. ~ Dennis Liggio,
120:I’m nobody’s sidekick,” Annabeth growled. “And, Percy, his accent sounds familiar because he sounds like his mother. We killed her in New Jersey.”
Percy frowned. “I’m pretty sure that accent isn’t New Jersey. Who’s his—? Oh.”
It all fell into place. Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium—the lair of Medusa. She’d talked with that same accent, at least until Percy had cut off her head.
Medusa is your mom?” he asked. “Dude, that sucks for you. ~ Rick Riordan,
121:The Hebrew word is actually Lilith, which the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible explains is a Mesopotamian demoness residing in a tree that reaches back to the third millennium BC.   Here we find Inanna (Ishtar) who plants a tree later hoping to cut from its wood a throne and a bed for herself. But as the tree grows, a snake makes its nest at its roots, Anzu settled in the top and in the trunk the demon ki-sikil-líl-lá [Lilith] makes her lair.[15] ~ Brian Godawa,
122:And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy. It climbs the same way on damp walls. You are to blame for this cruel sport. They are fleeing from my dark lair. You fill everything, you fill everything. Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy, and they are more used to my sadness than you are. Now I want them to say what I want to say to you to make you hear as I want you to hear me. ~ Pablo Neruda,
123:Declan and Regin:
"Kiss you?" As he waited for the revulsion to seize him, he found himself wondering how she would react. Would she moan into his mouth?

"It will help you remember me. Kiss me. Come on, you know you want to so bad. You want me so bad."

"Never." Bloody get off her, get away from her. But he needed to be above her like this, to master her, overpower her.

"Never? That boner of yours just called you a lair. ~ Kresley Cole,
124:And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth. He stopped dancing and, catching his breath, stared at the ground beneath his feet as though peering into a bottomless hole. ~ Haruki Murakami,
125:We fatties have a bond, dude. It's like a secret society. We got all kinds of shit you don't know about. Handshakes, special fat people dances-we got these secret fugging lairs in the center of the earth and we go down there in the middle of the night when all the skinny kids are sleeping and eat cake and friend chicken and shit. Why d'you think Hollis is still sleeping, kafir? Because we were up all night in the secret lair injecting butter frosting into our veins. ...A fatty trusts another fatty. ~ John Green,
126:Unanswered vox hails requested medical aid and supply, but the line of Astartes at the top of the north ridge was grimly silent as the exhausted warriors of the Raven Guard and Salamanders came to within a hundred metres of their allies. A lone flare shot skyward from inside the black fortress where Horus had made his lair, exploding in a hellish red glow that lit the battlefield below like a madman’s vision of the end of the world. And the fire of betrayal roared from the barrels of a thousand guns. ~ Graham McNeill,
127:After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg) you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country, which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made. ~ John F Kennedy,
128:The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget. ~ Arundhati Roy,
129:But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry. I had started to desire power, because what I now realised was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage. ~ Rachel Cusk,
130:Growl he would, from the moment the petting began till it ended. But it was a growl with a new note in it. A stranger could not hear this note, and to such a stranger the growling of White Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve–racking and blood–curdling. But White Fang's throat had become harsh–fibred from the making of ferocious sounds through the many years since his first little rasp of anger in the lair of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds of that throat now to express the gentleness he felt. ~ Jack London,
131:I had been thinking a lot about how the media has created this complex, fictionalized cartoon version of me, you know, this man-eating, jet-setting serial dater who reels them in, but scares them off because she’s clingy and needy; then she’s all dejected, so she goes into her lair and writes a song as a weapon. I mean, man, that’s pretty intense. And I started thinking about what an interesting character that person is. And, if I was that person, what would my life motto be, my mantra? What would I say? I think I’d own it. ~ Taylor Swift,
132:You know,” she said to Ferbus, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
Not in the mood for his antics, Lex grabbed a pair of scissors and brandished them in his face. “I really suggest you rid your work space of sharp objects, we wouldn’t want any unfortunate castrations, now would we?”
“Driggs!” Ferbus yelled into the spidery Lair, where Driggs had wandered to get away from their constant squabbling. “Your partner is threatening to neuter me!”
“Yeah, she does that,” Driggs said from within. ~ Gina Damico,
133:He’s eating like a Neanderthal,” Emilia whispered to her mother. “Do men usually regress while in the wild?” Amusement danced in her golden-brown eyes. Just to mess with her, I groaned even louder and shoved the last third of the burger in my mouth all at once. Kim grinned. “Don’t worry. I don’t think it’s permanent. Once he’s back in his man-lair, he’ll be guzzling beer and watching Darth Vader on Star Trek in no time.” Emilia and I both turned to her, aghast at her blatant error—every nerd’s nightmare. Kim held up her hands in surrender. “Kidding! ~ Brenna Aubrey,
134:Like a slapstick comedian, Dirk suffered all kinds of iniquities. He battled past Mud Men, skeletons, creepy crawlies, giant bats and an obstinate suit of flying horse armour. If he survived the castle’s traps, he’d ultimately find the shapely Princess Daphne waiting for him, locked away inside a glass bubble in Singe the Dragon’s coin-filled lair. She was a blonde siren with nipples erect enough to hang your coat on - and her design owed more to animator Gary Goldman’s Playboy magazine collection than to the chaste Cinderellas and Snow Whites of Disney. ~ Anonymous,
135:lofting itself massively into the low-hanging clouds of the sky. In the early drab twilight it looked like an immense old gray elephant erecting himself somberly on his front legs, his haunches lost in the green bedding of his lair. The mountain seemed wise and powerful, and terrifying in its size. Gallagher stared at it in absorption, caught by a sense of beauty he could not express. The idea, the vision he always held of something finer and neater and more beautiful than the moil in which he lived trembled now, pitched almost to a climax of words. There ~ Norman Mailer,
136:Glass that housed a lonely soul up til midnight's final toll.
A saber from the deepest sea, meant for a groom's morality.
The bark of a basket held in fright while running from a bark with bite.
A stony crown that's made to share, found deep within a savage lair.
A needle that pierced the lovely skin of a princess with beauty found within.
A wavy lock of golden rope that once was freedom's only hope.
Glittering jewels whose value increased after preserving the false deceased.
Teardrops of a maiden fairy feeling neither magical nor merry. ~ Chris Colfer,
137:It struck him as an odd coincidence that they would happen upon such an extensive display of mass slaughter at a time where he could do nothing to address it. His duty was to watch over Saul. Then Mikael suddenly realized that this atrocity was not happenstance. Human sacrifice empowered Molech. And Saul was within the very lair of the monstrous god of the underworld. Saul was galloping into a trap. Mikael raced ahead to the end of the valley where he knew a narrow pass opened up to a plain leading north toward Gibeah. It was the perfect location for an ambush. ~ Brian Godawa,
138:Zeke's snort sounded suspiciously like laughter. "Allie, you're a beautiful, exotic-looking vampire girl with a katana. Trust me, if anyoneis going to attract attention, it's not going to me."
I didn't answer as we crossed the flimsy, creaking bridge into the lair of the vampire king. We didn't talk to each other for several minutes. If Zeke asked, I would've said that I was thinking of how to fing everyone, but that wasn't entirely true. I was thinking of the others and how i was going to get them out alive...but I kept being distracted by the thougth that Zeke had called me beautiful. ~ Julie Kagawa,
139:For a long time , I said, I believe that it was only through absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance...had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry. I had started to desire power, because what I now realized was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tail scripted not buy some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage. ~ Rachel Cusk,
140:The retaliation came in all varieties. One variety came largely from the Soviet soldiers. When they entered East Prussia in January, their propaganda officers hung up huge banners: ‘Soldier, you are now entering the lair of the fascist beast!’ The village of Nemmersdorf (now Mayakovskoya) was taken by the 2nd Red Army Guard, a few days later German troops launched a counteroffensive and entered the town again. They found bodies everywhere: refugees crushed under tanks, children shot in their gardens, raped women nailed to barn doors. The cameras rolled, the images were shown all over Germany: this is what happens when the Russians come in. ~ Geert Mak,
141:The Chord
Courageous lair "might prevail"
Waking up to her your "yellow coal"
Steals a its way
harm's imbrogliatic murmur
to concatenate
has been "said"
a mortal habitation or cut in air
that air leaks through
here too
***
Tricked again out of
hope's chord
The oscillatory hum in the head, or
amygdala
continual reaction in the wet mouth to
old oranges, or
mistakes in form
"I retain a clear memory of afternoon light."
A vertebra unfolds its wing, its smallest
wing, the pleasure particulate of such a wing
(harp's corde)
a our mycelium
Anonymous submission.
16
~ Erin Mouré,
142:In the tall tales told by firelight there was always a brief and laconic conversation. Because the bad guy had to be told why he had to die, as if reference to injured parties like Emily Lair and Peter and Lydia McCann and the gate guard’s grandchildren could conjure up spirits and console them, and also because the bad guy had to be given the chance to either repent or snarl further defiance, either of which could turn a story classic, depending on the hero’s next reply. But tales were tales, and not the real world. Reacher said nothing, and shot the fat man in the head, twice, a double tap, pop pop, and then he watched the kitchen door. Which stayed shut. ~ Lee Child,
143:King Street
A morn, a sallow lamp-lit morn,
A dawn that never breaks to day!
Old, old the faces, and forlorn;
The hearts look out, so seared, so grey!
It is as if some upturned stone
Had flung to light a vermin rout—
For things misfeatured, souls unknown,
Stagger in blind amaze about.
Along their gleaming lines of light
The charging trams go, head to ground;
Out from the drifting pathways, white
The faces flash—like faces drowned!
And there with painted features drear,
And eyes whose pathos still is sweet,
The hunted hunters prowl and peer—
Their lair the long, slow-surging street.
~ Arthur Henry Adams,
144:Ye Old Mule
Ye old mule that think yourself so fair,
Leave off with craft your beauty to repair,
For it is true, without any fable,
No man setteth more by riding in your saddle.
Too much travail so do your train appair.
Ye old mule
With false savour though you deceive th'air,
Whoso taste you shall well perceive your lair
Savoureth somewhat of a Kappurs stable.
Ye old mule
Ye must now serve to market and to fair,
All for the burden, for panniers a pair.
For since gray hairs been powdered in your sable,
The thing ye seek for, you must yourself enable
To purchase it by payment and by prayer,
Ye old mule.
~ David McKee Wright,
145:Come to see the devil in his lair, have you?" he asked.
She came closer, her expression intent and oddly fearless. "You're not the devil. You're only a man. A very f-flawed one."
For the first time in days Sebastian felt a faint urge to smile. A flicker of reluctant interest stirred in him. "Just because the tail and horns aren't visible, child, doesn't mean you should discount the possibility. The devil comes in many guises."
"Then I'm here to make a Faustian bargain." Her speech was very slow, as if she had to think over every word before she spoke. "I have a proposition for you, my lord."
And she drew closer to the hearth, emerging from the darkness that surrounded them both. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
146:Lion And Lioness
ONE night we were together, you and I,
And had unsown Assyria for a lair,
Before the walls of Babylon rose in air.
How languid hills were heaped along the sky,
And white bones marked the wells of alkali,
When suddenly down the lion-path a sound . . .
The wild man-odor . . . then a crouch, a bound,
And the frail Thing fell quivering with a cry!
Your yellow eyes burned beautiful with light:
The dead man lying there quieted and white:
I roared my triumph over the desert wide,
Then stretched out, glad for the sands and satisfied;
And through the long, star-stilled Assyrian night,
I felt your body breathing by my side.
~ Edwin Markham,
147:Yes
MY SOUL is raying like a star,
My heart is happier than a bird,
And all to hear through fortune’s jar
One promissory word.
A sound as simple as the low
Quick sliding gurgle of a rill,
And yet with power to overflow
A world with blissful will!
I feel as though the very air
Was breathen from the heart of Love,
As Pleasure in the sun’s bright lair
Sat brooding like a dove!
A billow of the sunny sea,
A cloudlet of the summer sky,
How wide is their felicity—
So widely blest am I!
O Beauty, through one little word
What boundless power is thine to bless!
O Love, a seraph’s voice is heard
In thy confiding “Yes!”
~ Charles Harpur,
148:In September
SPRING scarce had greener fields to show than these
Of mid September; through the still warm noon
The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune
Than ever in the summer; from the trees
Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,
No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon
In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon
Finds motionless white mists out on the leas.
Dear chance it were in some rough wood-god's lair
A month hence, gazing on the last bright field,
To sink o'er-drowsed, and dream that wild-flowers blew
Around my head and feet silently there,
Till Spring's glad choir adown the valley pealed,
And violets trembled in the morning dew.
~ Edward Dowden,
149:Fine." I glared at him and shook my head. Stubborn idiot.
"But at least try to look a little more raider-ish, okay? We don't want to attract attention."
Zeke's snort sounded suspiciously like laughter. "Allie, you're a beautiful, exotic-looking vampire girl with a katana. Trust me, if anyone is going to attract attention, it's not going to be me."
I didn't answer as we crossed the flimsy, creaking bridge into the lair of the vampire king. If Zeke had asked, I would've said that I was thinking of how to find everyone, but that wasn't entirely true. I was thinking of the others and how I was going to get them out alive...but I kept being distracted by the thought that Zeke had called me beautiful. ~ Julie Kagawa,
150:All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

- Work without Hope ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
151:Once Incarceron became a dragon, and a Prisoner crawled into his lair. They made a wager. They would ask each other riddles, and the one who could not answer would lose. It it was the man, he would give his life. The Prison offered a secret way of Escape. But even as the man agreed, he felt its hidden laughter.
They played for a year and a day. The lights stayed dark. The dead were not removed. Food was not provided. The Prison ignored the cries of its inmates.
Sapphique was the man. He had one riddle left. He said, "What is the Key that unlocks the heart?"
For a day Incarceron thought. For two days. For three. Then it said, "If I ever knew the answer, I have forgotten it."
--Sapphique in the Tunnels of Madness ~ Catherine Fisher,
152:Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace—as though not built to fly—against the roar of a thousand snow geese. Then within the marsh, here and there, true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in clammy forests. Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat. Even night crawlers are diurnal in this lair. There are sounds, of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life. ~ Delia Owens,
153:Come to see the devil in his lair, have you?” he asked.
She came closer, her expression intent and oddly fearless. “You’re not the devil. You’re only a man. A very fl-flawed one.”
For the first time in days Sebastian felt a faint urge to smile. A flicker of reluctant interest stirred in him. “Just because the tail and horns aren’t visible, child, doesn’t mean you should discount the possibility. The devil comes in many guises.”
“Then I’m here to make a Faustian bargain.” Her speech was very slow, as if she had to think over every word before she spoke. “I have a proposition for you, my lord.”
And she drew closer to the hearth, emerging from the darkness that surrounded them both.

-Sebastian St. Vincent & Evie ~ Lisa Kleypas,
154:For Hitler, the daily routine was unchanged from that in the Wolf’s Lair. At meals – his own often consisted of no more than a plate of vegetables with apples to follow – he could still appear open, relaxed, engaged. As always, he monopolized dinner-table topics of conversation on a wide variety of topics that touched on his interests or obsessions. These included the evils of smoking, the construction of a motorway-system throughout the eastern territories, the deficiencies of the legal system, the achievements of Stalin as a latter-day Ghengis Khan, keeping the standard of living low among the subjugated peoples, the need to remove the last Jews from German cities, and the promotion of private initiative rather than a state-controlled economy. ~ Ian Kershaw,
155:Ah yes," Gabe said, "Pinter is ever the gallant when it comes to the ladies. He wouldn't risk leaving us alone with poor Miss Lake, for the fear one of us might spirit her off to our lair."
"Why?" Miss Lake asked, with a lift of her brow. "Do you three make a habit of spiriting women off?"
"Only on Tuesdays and Fridays," Masters said. "Seeing as how it's Wednesday, your safe."
"Unless you're wearing a blue garter, madam," Gabe quipped. "On Wednesdays, Masters and I have a great fondness for blue garters. Are your gaters blue, Miss Lake?"
"Only on Mondays and Thursdays." She dealt thirteen cards apiece to the two of them, then put the rest aside as the stock, turning the top card faceup. "Sorry gentlemen. I guess you'll have to spirit off some other woman. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,
156:At least the awkwardness between her and Driggs had dissipated. This was no more evident than the afternoon Lex caught Driggs lying face-down on the ground of the Lair, allowing scores of black widow spiders to crawl over his body. “Again?” Lex said, exasperated. “Really?”

“You gotta try it,” he said contentedly into the floor.

“No way. They don’t like me the way they like you.”

“Probably because you don’t cry yourself to sleep in their presence,” he said, quoting her taunt from their big fight. The whole thing had turned into something of a running joke between them. Often, when bored or uncomfortable, they repeated the insults they had hurled at each other that night, loudly guffawing at each reiteration. This is what is known as a defense mechanism ~ Gina Damico,
157:Apparently I’m hopeless when it comes to relationships.”

“No, you’re not.” I ease up on my tiptoes and kiss the corner of his jaw. “You’re a bit inept, sure. But you’re also ridiculously talented when it comes to romantic gestures, so if you screw up again, I’m ninety percent sure you’ll be able to win me back.”

“Only ninety percent?” He looks upset.

“Well, it depends how badly you screw up. I mean, if it’s picking a fight with me like you did today, then obviously we’ll be able to work through it. But if I’m over at your house and I go down to the basement and find a serial killer lair? No promises.”

“Jesus Christ, what is your obsession with serial killers?” He grins. “Hey, that should be your specialty. Profiling killers.”

Damn. Not a bad idea. ~ Elle Kennedy,
158:Song
We know where deepest lies the snow,
And where the frost-winds keenest blow,
O'er every mountain's brow,
We long have known and learnt to bear
The wandering outlaw's toil and care,
But where we late were hunted, there
Our foes are hunted now.
We have their princely homes, and they
To our wild haunts are chased away,
Dark woods, and desert caves.
And we can range from hill to hill,
And chase our vanquished victors still;
Small respite will they find until
They slumber in their graves.
But I would rather be the hare,
That crouching in its sheltered lair
Must start at every sound;
That forced from cornfields waving wide
Is driven to seek the bare hillside,
Or in the tangled copse to hide,
Than be the hunter's hound.
~ Anne Brontë,
159:The lair needs to know.”
“Yeah, I know that, but I would have preferred it if we didn’t have to make a big thing out of it. It would have been easier to just ask you and the other sentinels to pass on the news.”
“You’re their Prime, and there are certain expectations that come with that position. Making public announcements about key information is one of them. Celebrating important events is another. Your pregnancy is both of those things.”
“Yes, but have you not seen how people respond to a pregnant woman?” By the way his brow furrowed, no, he hadn’t. “Everyone’s suddenly an expert on babies and they’re all full of advice and nosy-ass questions. I’m glad my stomach’s not that big – people are a hell of a lot worse if there’s a bump. They try rubbing it like it’s a damn genie-infested lamp.”
“Genie-infested?” he chuckled.
“You get my point. ~ Suzanne Wright,
160:A Hunting Song
Hunters, where does Hope nest?
Not in the half-oped breast,
Nor the young rose,
Nor April sunrise—those
With a quick wing she brushes,
The wide world through,
Greets with the throat of thrushes,
Fades from as fast as dew.
But, would you spy her sleeping,
Cradled warm,
Look in the breast of weeping,
The tree stript by storm;
But, would you bind her fast,
Yours at last,
Bed-mate and lover,
Gain the last headland bare
That the cold tides cover,
There may you capture her, there,
Where the sea gives to the ground
Only the drift of the drowned.
Yet, if she slips you, once found,
Push to her uttermost lair
In the low house of despair.
There will she watch by your head,
Sing to you till you be dead,
Then, with your child in her breast,
In another heart build a new nest.
~ Edith Wharton,
161:Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip. "Hold ~ Charles Dickens,
162:Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there
Among the bushes half leafless, and dry;
The stars look very cold about the sky,
And I have many miles on foot to fare.
Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,
Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,
Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,
Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair:
For I am brimfull of the friendliness
That in a little cottage I have found;
Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress,
And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd;
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd.
'Clarke records that this sonnet was written on the occasion of Keats's first becoming acquainted with Leigh Hunt at the Cottage in the Vale of Health, Hampstead.' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Sonnet IX. Keen, Fitful Gusts Are
,
163:Winter Nears
Winter nears. Once more
the bear’s secret retreat
will vanish under mud’s floor,
to a child’s fretful grief.
Huts will wake in the water,
reflecting paths of smoke,
circled by autumn’s tremor
lovers meet by the fire to talk.
Denizens of the harsh North
whose roof is the clear air,
‘In this sign conquer’, set forth,
marks each unreachable lair.
I love you, provincial haunts,
off the map, the road, past the farms,
the more tired and faded the book,
the greater for me its charms.
Slow files of carts lumbering by
you spell out an alphabet flowing
from meadow to meadow. And I
found you always my favourite reading.
And it’s suddenly written again,
here in first snow is the spider’s
cursive script, runners of sleighs,
where ice on the page embroiders.
A silvered hazel October.
Pewter glow since frost began.
Autumn twilight, of Chekhov,
Tchaikovsky, and Levitan.
~ Boris Pasternak,
164:The Wolf
Like a grey shadow lurking in the light,
He ventures forth along the edge of night;
With silent foot he scouts the coulie's rim
And scents the carrion awaiting him.
His savage eyeballs lurid with a flare
Seen but in unfed beasts which leave their lair
To wrangle with their fellows for a meal
Of bones ill-covered. Sets he forth to steal,
To search and snarl and forage hungrily;
A worthless prairie vagabond is he.
Luckless the settler's heifer which astray
Falls to his fangs and violence a prey;
Useless her blatant calling when his teeth
Are fast upon her quivering flank--beneath
His fell voracity she falls and dies
With inarticulate and piteous cries,
Unheard, unheeded in the barren waste,
To be devoured with savage greed and haste.
Up the horizon once again he prowls
And far across its desolation howls;
Sneaking and satisfied his lair he gains
And leaves her bones to bleach upon the plains.
~ Emily Pauline Johnson,
165:To one who has been long in city pent,
    'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
    And open face of heaven -- to breathe a prayer
  Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
  Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
    Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
    Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
  And gentle tale of love and languishment?
  Returning home at evening, with an ear
    Catching the notes of Philomel,-- an eye
  Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
    He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
  E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
    That falls through the clear ether silently.
'In a transcript in the hand-writing of George Keats this sonnet is subscribed as "Written in the Fields -- June 1816." ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Sonnet X. To One Who Has Been Long In City Pent
,
166:The Piute
Unbeautiful is the Piute!
Howe'er bedecked with bravery,
His person is unsavory
Of soap he's destitute.
He multiplies upon the earth
In spite of all admonishing;
All censure his astonishing
And versatile unworth.
Upon the Reservation wide
We give for his inhabiting
He goes a-jackass rabbiting
To furnish his inside.
The hopper singing in the grass
He seizes with avidity:
He loves its tart acidity,
And gobbles all that pass.
He penetrates the spider's veil,
Industriously pillages
The toads' defenseless villages,
And shadows home the snail.
He lightly runs to earth the quaint
Red worm and, deftly troweling,
He makes it with his boweling
Familiarly acquaint.
He tracks the pine-nut to its lair,
Surrounds it with celerity,
Regards it with asperity
Smiles, and it isn't there!
I wish he'd open up a grin
Of adequate vivacity
And carrying capacity
To take his Agent in.
542
~ Ambrose Bierce,
167:If there was a moment that determined the course of my future, I'm pretty sure this was it. I had two somewhat simple choices. I could make a run for it and go back to Uncle Al's. Back to the bonfire where my cousins and dear sister would be drinking and revel in the normalcy of a Saturday night and forget I ever went to this horrid place and ran into this weirdo. Or I could go with said weirdo up the stairs in this decrepit old lighthouse, which was most likely condemned and unsafe, towards some unknown person (or thing) that was walking around, potentially waiting to murder us in horrific ways.

It didn't seem like a very hard decision to make. In fact, I think 99.7% of people in the right frame of mind would have picked from column A and gone on with their merry lives. But for some freaking crazy reason, I thought that maybe, just maybe I should go with this stranger up those kelp-ridden stairs and toward the lair of unimaginable horror. You know, because it was the more interesting alternative. ~ Karina Halle,
168:Old ocean, the different species of fish that you nurture have not sworn brotherhood among themselves. Each species lives apart, on its own. The varying temperaments & conformations of each one satisfactorily explain what at first appears an anomaly. So it is with man, who has not the same motives as excuse. If a piece of land be occupied by thirty million human beings, they consider they have no obligation to concern themselves with the existence of their neighbors who are settled like roots in the adjacent patch of land. And descending from the general to the particular, each man lives like a savage in his den & rarely leaves it to visit his fellow --crouching alike in another lair. The great universal human family is a utopia worthy of the most paltry logic. Besides, from the spectacle of your fecund breasts emerges the notion of ingratitude, for one thinks immediately of those innumerable parents ungrateful enough towards the Creator to abandon the fruit of their sorry unions. I hail you old ocean! ~ Comte de Lautr amont,
169:ls the Conjugial Angel stone
That here he stands with heavy head
The backward-looking pillared dead
Inert, moss-covered, aIl alone?

The Holy Ghost trawls ln the Void,
With fleshly Sophy on His Hook
The Sons of God crowd round to look
At plumpy limbs to be enjoyed

The Greater Man casts out the line
With dangling Sophy as the lure
Who howls around the Heavens' colure
To clasp the Human Form Divine

Rose-petals fall from fallen hair
That in the clay is redolent
Of liquid oozings and the scent
Of the dark Pit, the Beastly lair

And is my Love become the beast
That was, and is not, and yet is,
Who stretches scarlet holes to kiss
And clasps with claws the fleshly feast

Sweet Rosamund, adult'rous Rose
May lie inside her urn and stink
Whlle Alfred's tears tum into ink
And drop into her quelque-chose

The Angel spreads his golden wings
And raises high his golden cock
And man and wife together lock
Into one corpse that moans and sings ~ A S Byatt,
170:Ballade Of Autumn
We built a castle in the air,
In summer weather, you and I,
The wind and sun were in your hair, Gold hair against a sapphire sky:
When Autumn came, with leaves that fly
Before the storm, across the plain,
You fled from me, with scarce a sigh My Love returns no more again!
The windy lights of Autumn flare:
I watch the moonlit sails go by;
I marvel how men toil and fare,
The weary business that they ply!
Their voyaging is vanity,
And fairy gold is all their gain,
And all the winds of winter cry,
'My Love returns no more again!'
Here, in my castle of Despair,
I sit alone with memory;
The wind-fed wolf has left his lair,
To keep the outcast company.
The brooding owl he hoots hard by,
The hare shall kindle on thy hearth-stane,
The Rhymer's soothest prophecy,-My Love returns no more again!
ENVOY.
Lady, my home until I die
Is here, where youth and hope were slain:
They flit, the ghosts of our July,
My Love returns no more again!
~ Andrew Lang,
171:It's mechanical," Leo said. "Maybe a doorway to the dwarfs' secret lair?"
"Ooooo!" shrieked a nearby voice. "Secret lair?"
"I want a secret lair!" yelled another voice from above.

...

"If we had a secret lair," said Red Fur, "I would want a firehouse pole."
"And a waterslide!" said Brown Fur, who was pulling random tools out of Leo's belt, tossing aside wrenches, hammers, and staple guns.
"Stop that!" Leo tried to grab the dwarf's feet, but he couldn't reach the top of the pedestal.
"Too short?" Brown Fur sympathized.
"You're calling me short?" Leo looked around for something to throw, but there was nothing but pigeons, and he doubted he could catch one. "Give me my belt, you stupid-"
"Now, now!" said Brown Fur. "We haven't even introduced ourselves. I'm Akmon, and my brother over there-"
"-is the handsome one!" The red-furred dwarf lifted his espresso. Judging from his dilated eyes and maniacal grin, he didn't need any more caffeine. "Passolos! Singer of songs! Drinker of coffee! Stealer of shiny stuff! ~ Rick Riordan,
172:The Game
Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs,
pale, eyebrows blacked, eyes ‘tender’, ‘fatal’,
simpering still, and from their skinny ears
loosing their waterfalls of stone and metal:
Round the green baize, faces without lips,
lips without blood, jaws without the rest,
clawed fingers that the hellish fever grips,
fumbling an empty pocket, heaving breast:
below soiled ceilings, rows of pallid lights,
and huge candelabras shed their glimmer,
across the brooding brows of famous poets:
here it’s their blood and sweat they squander:
this the dark tableau of nocturnal dream
my clairvoyant eye once watched unfold.
In an angle of that silent lair, I leaned
hard on my elbows, envious, mute, and cold,
yes, envying that crew’s tenacious passion,
the graveyard gaiety of those old whores,
all bravely trafficking to my face, this one
her looks, that one his family honour,
heart scared of envying many a character
fervently rushing at the wide abyss,
drunk on their own blood, who’d still prefer
torment to death, and hell to nothingness!
~ Charles Baudelaire,
173:Her, though! Once when I was in high school she caught me doing something or other, imitating my Spanish teacher, perhaps with a pair of tights on my head, and said, like someone at the end of her rope, “What are you, a queer?” I’d been called a sissy before, not by her but by plenty of other people. That was different, though, as the word was less potent, something used by children. When my mother called me a queer, my face turned scarlet and I exploded. “Me? What are you talking about? Why would you even say a thing like that?” Then I ran down to my room, which was spotless, everything just so, the Gustav Klimt posters on the walls, the cornflower-blue vase I’d bought with the money I earned babysitting. The veil had been lifted, and now I saw this for what it was: the lair of a blatant homosexual. That would have been as good a time as any to say, “Yes, you’re right. Get me some help!” But I was still hoping that it might be a phase, that I’d wake up the next day and be normal. In the best of times, it seemed like such a short leap. I did fantasize about having a girlfriend—never the sex part, but the rest of it I had down. I knew what she’d ~ David Sedaris,
174:So my exploration continued, up dark stairwells and down dim passages. I came across a room full of antelope and deer trophies, the walls lined with dozens of ribbed or twisted horns, as if it were the entrance lobby to some stately home owned by a bloodthirsty monomaniac. On another occasion I found my way into one of the towers that flanked the main entrance to the Museum- only to find that to get there one had to take a path that led over the roof. I came across a taxidermist's lair, where a man with an eye patch was reconstructing a badger. I failed to find the Department of Mineralogy altogether, apart from meeting some meteorite experts in their redoubt at the end of the minerals gallery. There seemed to be no end to it. Even now, after more than thirty years of exploration, there are corners I have never visited. It was a place... labyrinthine and almost endless, where some forgotten specialist might be secreted in a room so hard to find that his very existence might be called into question. I felt that somebody might go quietly mad in a distant compartment and never be called to account. I was to discover that this was no less than the truth. ~ Richard Fortey,
175:Then the guy in the yard opened the slider and stepped inside, and the back of Reacher’s brain showed him the whole chess game right there, laid out, obvious, like flashing neon arrows, in immense and grotesque detail, the snap pivot left and the round into the meat of the yard guy’s chest, where it was less likely than a head shot to go through-and-through, which was good, given a neighborhood behind them full of wooden fences, but where it was more likely to soak the Lair family with thick pink mist, from behind, hair and all, which wasn’t good, because it would be traumatic, especially during such a week, except on reflection Reacher figured the week was already pretty much a disaster from that exact point onward, given that the chess game said there would be a dead guy at that very moment sliding to the floor of their private house, even as the homeowner-owned Python was snapping right again for two rounds at where the silhouette of the shoulder had been, which two rounds might or might not hit anything, but which would give a second’s cover for the scramble around the sofa and the capture of the dead guy’s Ruger, for a total of three rounds expended and fifteen gained. ~ Lee Child,
176:Cassie?”
It’s Sammy, holding on to Ben, because he’s feeling the Ben thing a little more than he is the Cassie one at the moment. Who’s this guy falling from the ductwork, and what’s he doing with my sister?
“This must be Sammy,” Evan says.
“This is Sammy,” I say. “Oh! And this is—”
“Ben Parish,” Ben says.
“Ben Parish?” Evan looks at me. That Ben Parish?
“Ben,” I say, my face on fire. I want to laugh and crawl under the counter at the same time. “This is Evan Walker.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Sammy asks.
I don’t know what to say. Ben looks totally lost, Evan completely amused, and Sammy just damned curious. It’s my first truly awkward moment in the alien lair, and I’d been through my share of moments.
“He’s a friend from high school,” I mutter.
And Evan corrects me, since it’s clear I’ve lost my mind. “Actually, Sam, Ben is Cassie’s friend from high school.”
“She’s not my friend,” Ben says. “I mean, I guess I kind of remember her…” Then Evan’s words sink in. “How do you know who I am?”
“He doesn’t!” I fairly shout.
Cassie told me about you,” Evan says. I elbow him in the ribs, and he gives me a look like What?
“Maybe we can chat about how everybody knows one another later ~ Rick Yancey,
177:If you fall for a dark-eyed beauty, pretty as a picture, with lips as sweet as a luscious rasberry, and a gentle face, unrumpled by kisses, like an apple-blossom petal in May, and she becomes your love—then do not say that love is yours: even though you cannot tire of her rounded breasts, of her slender frame that melts in your embrace like wax before a flame. . . . The day will come, that cruel hour will come, the fatal moment will come, when he face will fade, rumpled by kisses, her breasts will no longer quiver at your touch: all this will come to pass; and you will be alone with your own shadow amidst the sunscorched deserts and the dried up springs, where flowers do not bloom and the sunlight plays on the dry skin of a lizard; and you might even see the hairy black tarantula’s lair, all enmeshed in the threads of its web . . . And then your thirsting voice will be raised from the sands, calling longingly to your homeland.
---
But if your love is otherwise, if her browless face has once been touched by the black blemish of the pox, if her hair is red, her breasts sagging, her bare feet dirty, and to any extent at all her stomach protrudes, and still she is your love—then that which you have sought and found in her is the sacred homeland of your soul. ~ Andrei Bely,
178:The eye of the spirit can nowhere find more dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it can fix itself on no other thing which is more formidable, more complicated, more mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.

To make the poem of the human conscience, were it only with reference to a single man, were it only in connection with the basest of men, would be to blend all epics into one superior and definitive epic. Conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions. Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life! ~ Victor Hugo,
179:Down through the druid wood I saw Wildman join with Cleaver Creek, put on weight, exchange his lean and hungry look for one of more well-fed fanaticism. Then came Chichamoonga, the Indian Influence, whooping along with its banks war-painted with lupine and columbine. Then Dog Creek, then Olson Creek, then Weed Creek. Across a glacier-raked gorge I saw Lynx Falls spring hissing and spitting from her lair of fire-bright vine maple, claw the air with silver talons, then crash screeching into the tangle below. Darling Ida Creek slipped demurely from beneath a covered bridge to add her virginal presence, only to have the family name blackened immediately after by the bawdy rollicking of her brash sister, Jumping Nellie. There followed scores of relatives of various nationalities: White Man Creek, Dutchman Creek, Chinaman Creek, Deadman Creek, and even a Lost Creek, claiming with a vehement roar that, in spite of hundreds of other creeks in Oregon bearing the same name, she was the one and only original...Then Leaper Creek...Hideout Creek...Bossman Creek...I watched them one after another pass beneath their bridges to join in the gorge running alongside the highway, like members of a great clan marshaling into an army, rallying, swelling, marching to battle as the war chant became deeper and richer. ~ Ken Kesey,
180:Good-Night!
Good-night! Now dwindle wan and low
The embers of the afterglow,
And slowly over leaf and lawn
Is twilight's dewy curtain drawn.
The slouching vixen leaves her lair,
And, prowling, sniffs the tell-tale air.
The frogs croak louder in the dyke,
And all the trees seem dark alike:
The bee is drowsing in the comb,
The sharded beetle hath gone home:
Good-night!
Good-night! The hawk is in his nest,
And the last rook hath dropped to rest.
There is no hum, no chirp, no bleat,
No rustle in the meadow-sweet.
The woodbine, somewhere out of sight,
Sweetens the loneliness of night.
The Sister Stars, that once were seven,
Mourn for their missing mate in Heaven.
The poppy's fair frail petals close,
The lily yet more languid grows,
And dewy-dreamy droops the rose:
Good-night!
Good-night! Caressing and caressed,
The moist babe warms its mother's breast.
Silent are rustic loom and lathe;
The scythe lies quiet as the swathe;
The woodreeve blinks in covert shed,
The weary yokel is abed,
The covey warm beneath the wing,
And sleep enfoldeth everything.
Forsaken love, its last tear shed,
On the lone pillow lays its head,
And all our woes are respited:
Good-night!
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~ Alfred Austin,
181:The Spirit Of Great Joan
Back of each soldier who fights for France,
Aye, back of each woman and man
Who toils and prays through these long tense days.
Is the spirit of Great Joan.
For the love she gave, and the life she gave,
In the eyes of God sufficed
To crown her with light, and power, and might,
That made her second to Christ.
And so in that hour at the Marne she came,
To the seeing eyes of men;
And the blind of view still felt and knew
That her spirit had come again.
And she will come in each crucial hour
And joy shall follow despair,
For Joan sees her France on its knees
And she hears the voice of its prayer.
There is no hate in the heart of France,
But a mighty moral force
That takes its stand for her worshipped land,
And cannot be swerved from its course.
For this is the way with France to-day,
Her courage comes from faith,
And she bends her knee ere she straightens her arm;
In her forward rush toward death.
A jungle of beasts in the heart of the HunWar to the world laid bare.
And war has revealed, that France concealed,
Only the lion's lair.
A lioness fighting to save her own,
She fights as a lioness can,
And strength to the end shall the Unseen send,
In the spirit of Great Joan.
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~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
182:Let kings stack their treasure houses ceiling-high, and merchants burst their vaults with hoarded coin, and fools envy them. I have a treasure that outvalues theirs. A diamond as big as a man’s skull. Twelve rubies each as big as the skull of a cat. Seventeen emeralds each as big as the skull of a mole. And certain rods of crystal and bars of orichalcum. Let Overlords swagger jewel-bedecked and queens load themselves with gems, and fools adore them. I have a treasure that will outlast theirs. A treasure house have I builded for it in the far southern forest, where the two hills hump double, like sleeping camels, a day’s ride beyond the village of Soreev. “A great treasure house with a high tower, fit for a king’s dwelling—yet no king may dwell there.  Immediately below the keystone of the chief dome my treasure lies hid, eternal as the glittering stars. It will outlast me and my name, I, Urgaan of Angarngi. It is my hold on the future. Let fools seek it. They shall win it not. For although my treasure house be empty as air, no deadly creature in rocky lair, no sentinel outside anywhere, no pitfall, poison, trap, or snare, above and below the whole place bare, of demon or devil not a hair, no serpent lethal-fanged yet fair, no skull with mortal eye a-glare, yet have I left a guardian there. Let the wise read this riddle and forbear. ~ Fritz Leiber,
183:The only way to free yourself from a lifetime of being tyrannized by your own thought processes, whether you suffer from excessive anxiety or not, is to come to see your thoughts for what they are and to discern the sometimes subtle—but most often not-so-subtle—seeds of craving and aversion, of greed and hatred, at work within them. When you can successfully step back and see that you are not your thoughts and feelings, that you do not have to believe them, and that you certainly do not have to act on them, when you see vividly that many of them are inaccurate, judgmental, and fundamentally greedy or aversive, you will have found the key to understanding why you feel so much fear and anxiety. At the same time you will have found the key to maintaining your equilibrium. Fear, panic, and anxiety will no longer be uncontrollable demons. Instead you will see them as natural mental states that can be worked with and accepted just like any others. Then, lo and behold, the demons may not come around and bother you so much. You may find that you don’t see them at all for long stretches. You may wonder where they went or even whether they ever existed. Occasionally you may see some smoke, just enough to remind you that the lair of the dragon is still occupied, that fear is a natural part of living, but not something you have to be afraid of. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,
184:Freed of the burden I had been carrying, I moved on, this time circling east. Under an overpass at Nogizaka, north of Roppongi-dori, I saw a half-dozen chinpira, gaudy in sleek racing leathers, squatting in a tight semicircle, their low-slung metal motorcycles parked on the footpath alongside them. Fragments of their conversation skipped off the concrete wall to my right, the words unintelligible but the notes tuned as tight as the tricked-out exhaust pipes of their machines. They were probably jacked on kakuseizai, the methamphetamine that has been the Japanese drug of choice since the government distributed it to soldiers and workers during World War II, and of which these chinpira were doubtless both purveyors and consumers. They were waiting for the drug-induced hum in their muscles and brains to hit the right pitch, for the hour to grow suitably late and the night more seductively dark, before emerging from their concrete lair and answering the neon call of Roppongi. I watched them take notice of me, a solitary figure approaching from the southern end of what was in effect a narrow tunnel. I considered crossing the street, but a metal divider made that maneuver unfeasible. I might simply have backed up and taken a different route. My failure to do so made it more difficult for me to deny that I was indeed heading toward the cemetery. ~ Barry Eisler,
185:The Stormy Petrel
A THOUSAND miles from land are we,
Tossing about on the roaring sea;
From billow to bounding billow cast,
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast:
The sails are scatter’d abroad, like weeds,
The strong masts shake like quivering reeds,
The mighty cables, and iron chains,
The hull, which all earthly strength disdains,
They strain and they crack, and hearts like stone
Their natural hard, proud strength disown.
Up and down! Up and down!
From the base of the wave to the billow’s crown,
And midst the flashing and feathery foam
The Stormy Petrel finds a home,—
A home, if such a place may be,
For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,
On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,
And only seeketh her rocky lair
To warm her young, and to teach them spring
At once o’er the waves on their stormy wing.
O’er the Deep! O’er the Deep!
Where the whale, and the shark, and the sword-fish sleep,
Outflying the blast and the driving rain,
The Petrel telleth her tale—in vain;
For the mariner curseth the warning bird
Who bringeth him news of the storms unheard!
Ah! thus does the prophet, of good or ill,
Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still:
Yet he ne’er falters:—So, Petrel! spring
Once more o’er the waves on thy stormy wing!
~ Barry Cornwall,
186:The Pannikin Poet
There's nothing here sublime,
But just a roving rhyme,
Run off to pass the time,
With nought titanic in.
The theme that it supports,
And, though it treats of quarts,
It's bare of golden thoughts -It's just a pannikin.
I think it's rather hard
That each Australian bard -Each wan, poetic card -With thoughts galvanic in
His fiery thought alight,
In wild aerial flight,
Will sit him down and write
About a pannikin.
He makes some new-chum fare
From out his English lair
To hunt the native bear,
That curious mannikin;
And then the times get bad
That wandering English lad
Writes out a message sad
Upon his pannikin:
"O mother, think of me
Beneath the wattle tree"
(For you may bet that he
Will drag the wattle in)
"O mother, here I think
That I shall have to sink,
There ain't a single drink
The water-bottle in."
The dingo homeward hies,
The sooty crows uprise
And caw their fierce surprise
427
A tone Satanic in;
And bearded bushmen tread
Around the sleeper's head -"See here -- the bloke is dead!
Now where's his pannikin?"
They read his words and weep,
And lay him down to sleep
Where wattle branches sweep,
A style mechanic in;
And, reader, that's the way
The poets of today
Spin out their little lay
About a pannikin.
~ Banjo Paterson,
187:The war was all that mattered to Hitler. Yet, cocooned in the strange world of the Wolf's Lair, he was increasingly severed from its realities, both at the front and at home. Detachment ruled out all vestiges of humanity. Even towards those in his own entourage who had been with him for many years, there was nothing resembling real affection, let alone friendship; genuine fondness was reserved only for his young Alsatian. He had described the human being the previous autumn as no more than 'a ridiculous "cosmic bacterium" (eine lächerliche "Weltraumbakterie")'. Human life and suffering was, thus, of no consequence to him. He never visited a field-hospital, nor the homeless after bomb-raids. He saw no massacres, went near no concentration camp, viewed no compound of starving prisoners-of-war. His enemies were in his eyes like vermin to be stamped out. But his profound contempt for human existence extended to his own people. Decisions costing the lives of tens of thousands of his soldiers were made — perhaps it was only thus possible to make them — without consideration for any human plight. As he had told Guderian during the winter crisis, feelings of sympathy and pity for the suffering of his soldiers had to be shut out. For Hitler, the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed were merely an abstraction, the suffering a necessary and justified sacrifice in the 'heroic struggle' for the survival of the people. ~ Ian Kershaw,
188:He surveyed me, his eyes half closed, as if wondering if I were a delicious snack. I had an image of a massive dragon circling me slowly, eyes full of magic fixed on me as he moved, considering if he should bite me in half.
“Dragons.” Rogan snapped his fingers.
Oh crap.
“I wondered why I kept getting dragons around you.” He leaned forward. His eyes lit up, turning back to their clear sky blue. “You think I’m a dragon.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” My face felt hot. I was probably blushing. Damn it.
His smile went from amused to sexual, so charged with promise that carnal was the only way to describe it. I almost bolted out of my chair.
“Big powerful scary dragon.”
“You have delusions of grandeur.”
“Do I have a lair? Did I kidnap you to it from your castle?”
I stared straight at him, trying to frost my voice. “You have some strange fantasies, Rogan. You may need professional help.”
“Would you like to volunteer?”
“No. Besides, dragons kidnap virgins, so I’m out.” And why had I just told him I was not a virgin? Why did I even go there?
“It doesn’t matter if I’m the first. It only matters that I’ll be the last.”
“You won’t be the first, the last, or anything in between. Not in a million years.”
He laughed.
“Rogan,” I ground out through my teeth. “I’m on the clock. My client is in the next room mourning his wife. Stop flirting with me.”
“Stop? I haven’t even started. ~ Ilona Andrews,
189:Emancipation
Behold! the days of miracle at last
Return-if ever they were truly past:
From sinful creditors' unholy greed
The church called Calvary at last is freed
So called for there the Savior's crucified,
Roberts and Carmany on either side.
The circling contribution-box no more
Provokes the nod and simulated snore;
No more the Lottery, no more the Fair,
Lure the reluctant dollar from its lair,
Nor Ladies' Lunches at a bit a bite
Destroy the health yet spare the appetite,
While thrifty sisters o'er the cauldron stoop
To serve their God with zeal, their friends with soup,
And all the brethren mendicate the earth
With viewless placards: 'We've been _so_ from birth!'
Sure of his wage, the pastor now can lend
His whole attention to his latter end,
Remarking with a martyr's prescient thrill
The Hemp maturing on the cheerless Hill.
The holy brethren, lifting pious palms,
Pour out their gratitude in prayer and psalms,
Chant _De Profundis_, meaning 'out of debt,'
And dance like mad-or would if they were let.
Deeply disguised (a deacon newly dead
Supplied the means) Jack Satan holds his head
As high as any and as loudly sings
His _jubilate_ till each rafter rings.
'Rejoice, ye ever faithful,' bellows he,
'The debt is lifted and the temple free!'
Then says, aside, with gentle cachination:
'I've got a mortgage on the congregation.'
~ Ambrose Bierce,
190:Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He
Who dares arrest the wheels of destiny
And plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells?
Will not the lightning's blast destroy my frame?
Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells?
Nolet me hie where dark Destruction dwells,
To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair,
And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire,
Light long Oblivion's death-torch at its flame
And calmly mount Annihilation's pyre.
Tyrant of Earth! pale Misery's jackal Thou!
Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate
Within the magazines of Thy fierce hate?
No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow
That lowers on Thee with desperate contempt?
Where is the noonday Pestilence that slew
The myriad sons of Israel's favoured nation?
Where the destroying Minister that flew
Pouring the fiery tide of desolation
Upon the leagued Assyrian's attempt?
Where the dark Earthquake-daemon who engorged
At the dread word Korah's unconscious crew?
Or the Angel's two-edged sword of fire that urged
Our primal parents from their bower of bliss
(Reared by Thine hand) for errors not their own
By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown?
Yes! I would court a ruin such as this,
Almighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee--
Drink deeplydrain the cup of hate; remit this--I may die.
Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Bertram Dobell, 1887.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Wandering Jews Soliloquy
,
191:The Limitations Of Youth
I'd like to be a cowboy an' ride a fiery hoss
Way out into the big an' boundless west;
I'd kill the bears an' catamounts an' wolves I come across,
An' I'd pluck the bal' head eagle from his nest!
With my pistols at my side,
I would roam the prarers wide,
An' to scalp the savage Injun in his wigwam would I ride-If I darst; but I darsen't!
I'd like to go to Afriky an' hunt the lions there,
An' the biggest ollyfunts you ever saw!
I would track the fierce gorilla to his equatorial lair,
An' beard the cannybull that eats folks raw!
I'd chase the pizen snakes
An' the 'pottimus that makes
His nest down at the bottom of unfathomable lakes-If I darst; but I darsen't!
I would I were a pirut to sail the ocean blue,
With a big black flag aflyin' overhead;
I would scour the billowy main with my gallant pirut crew
An' dye the sea a gouty, gory red!
With my cutlass in my hand
On the quarterdeck I'd stand
And to deeds of heroism I'd incite my pirut band-If I darst; but I darsen't!
And, if I darst, I'd lick my pa for the times that he's licked me!
I'd lick my brother an' my teacher, too!
I'd lick the fellers that call round on sister after tea,
An' I'd keep on lickin' folks till I got through!
You bet! I'd run away
From my lessons to my play,
An' I'd shoo the hens, an' tease the cat, an' kiss the girls all day-If I darst; but I darsen't!
~ Eugene Field,
192:Communism
When my blood flows calm as a purling river,
When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway,
It is then that I vow we must part for ever,
That I will forget you, and put you away
Out of my life, as a dream is banished
Out of the mind when the dreamer awakes;
That I know it will be when the spell has vanished,
Better for both of our sakes.
When the court of the mind is ruled by Reason,
I know it wiser for us to part;
But Love is a spy who is plotting treason,
In league with that warm, red rebel, the Heart.
They whisper to me that the King is cruel,
That his reign is wicked, his law a sin,
And every word they utter is fuel
To the flame that smoulders within.
And on nights like this, when my blood runs riot
With the fever of youth and its mad desires,
When my brain in vain bids my heart be quiet,
When my breast seems the centre of lava-fires,
Oh, then is when most I miss you,
And I swear by the stars and my soul and say
That I will have you, and hold you, and kiss you,
Though the whole world stands in the way.
And like Communists, as mad, as disloyal,
My fierce emotions roam out of their lair;
They hate King Reason for being royal –
They would fire his castle, and burn him there.
O Love! They would clasp you, and crush you and kill you,
In the insurrection of uncontrol.
Across the miles, does this wild war thrill you
That is raging in my soul?
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
193:England's Hope And England's Heir
England's Hope and England's Heir!
Head and crown of Britain's glory,
Be thy future half so fair
As her past is famed in story,
Then wilt thou be great, indeed,
Daring, where there's cause to dare;
Greatest in the hour of need,
England's Hope and England's Heir.
By her past, in acts supreme,
By her present grand endeavour,
By her future, which the gleam
Of our fond hopes brings us ever:
We can trust that thou wilt be
Worthy of a fame so rare,
Worthy of thy destiny,
England's Hope and England's Heir.
Be thy spirit fraught with hers,
Queen, whom we revere and honour;
Be thine acts love's messengers,
Brightly flashing back upon her;
Be what most her trust would deem,
Help the answer to her prayer,
Realize her holiest dream,
England's Hope and England's Heir.
Welcome, Prince! the land is wide,
Wider still the love we cherish;
Love that thou shalt find, when tried,
Is not born to droop and perish;
Welcome to our heart of hearts;
You will find no falsehood there,
But the zeal that truth imparts,
England's Hope and England's Heir.
Welcome to our woodland deeps,
To our inland lakes, and rivers,
25
Where the rapid roars and sweeps,
Where the brightest sunlight quivers.
Loyal souls can never fail;
Serfdom crouches in its lair;
But our British hearts are hale,
England's Hope and England's Heir.
~ Charles Sangster,
194:Story-Time
'TELL us a story,' comes the cry
From little lips when nights are cold,
And in the grate the flames leap high.
'Tell us a tale of pirates bold,
Or fairies hiding in the glen,
Or of a ship that's wrecked at sea.'
I fill my pipe, and there and then
Gather the children round my knee.
I give them all a role to playNo longer are they youngsters small,
And I, their daddy, turning gray;
We are adventurers, one and all.
We journey forth as Robin Hood
In search of treasure, or to do
Some deed of daring, or of good,
Our hearts are ever brave and true.
We take a solemn oath to be
Defenders of the starry flag;
We brave the winter's stormy sea,
Or climb the rugged mountain crag,
To battle to the death with those
Who would defame our native land;
We pitch our camp among the snows
Or in the tropics burning sand.
We rescue maidens, young and fair,
Held captive long in prison towers;
We slay the villain in his lair,
For we're possessed of magic powers.
And though we desperately fight,
When by our foes we are beset,
We always triumph for the right;
We have not lost a battle yet.
It matters not how far we stray,
Nor where our battle lines may be,
We never get so far away
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That we must spend a night at sea.
It matters not how high we climb,
How many foes our pathway block,
We always conquer just in time
To go to bed at 9 o'clock.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,
195:The Cummerbund: An Indian Poem
She sate upon her Dobie,
To watch the Evening Star,
And all the Punkahs as they passed,
Cried, 'My! how fair you are!'
Around her bower, with quivering leaves,
The tall Kamsamahs grew,
And Kitmutgars in wild festoons
Hung down from Tchokis blue.
II
Below her home the river rolled
With soft meloobious sound,
Where golden-finned Chuprassies swam,
In myriads circling round.
Above, on talles trees remote
Green Ayahs perched alone,
And all night long the Mussak moan'd
Its melancholy tone.
III
And where the purple Nullahs threw
Their branches far and wide,-And silvery Goreewallahs flew
In silence, side by side,-The little Bheesties' twittering cry
Rose on the fragrant air,
And oft the angry Jampan howled
Deep in his hateful lair.
IV
She sate upon her Dobie,--
163
She heard the Nimmak hum,-When all at once a cry arose,-'The Cummerbund is come!'
In vain she fled: -- with open jaws
The angry monster followed,
And so, (before assistence came,)
That Lady Fair was swallowed.
They sought in vain for even a bone
Respectfully to bury,-They said, -- 'Hers was a dreadful fate!'
(And Echo answered 'Very.')
They nailed her Dobie to the wall,
Where last her form was seen,
And underneath they wrote these words,
In yellow, blue, and green:-Beware, ye Fair! Ye Fair, beware!
Nor sit out late at night,-Lest horrid Cummerbunds should come,
And swallow you outright.
~ Edward Lear,
196:Being Brave At Night
The other night 'bout two o'clock, or maybe it was three,
An elephant with shining tusks came chasing after me.
His trunk was wavin' in the air an' spoutin' jets of steam
An' he was out to eat me up, but still I didn't scream
Or let him see that I was scared - a better thought I had,
I just escaped from where I was and crawled in bed with Dad.
One time there was a giant who was horrible to see,
He had three heads and twenty arms, an' he came after me
And red hot fire came from his mouths and every hand was red
And he declared he'd grind my bones and make them into bread.
But I was just too smart for him, I fooled him mighty bad,
Before his hands could collar me I crawled in bed with Dad.
I ain't scared of nothin' that comes pesterin' me at night.
Once I was chased by forty ghosts all shimmery an' white.
An' I just raced 'em round the room an' let 'em think maybe
I'd have to stop an' rest awhile, when they could capture me.
Then when they leapt onto my bed, Oh Gee! But they were mad
To find that I had slipped away an' crawled in bed with Dad.
No giants, ghosts or elephants have dared to come in there
'Coz if they did he'd beat 'em up and chase 'em to their lair.
They just hang 'round the children's rooms
an' snap an' snarl an' bite
An' laugh if they can make 'em yell
for help with all their might.
But I don't ever yell out loud. I'm not that sort of lad,
I slip from out the covers and I crawl in bed with Dad.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,
197:To his Own Beloved Self
The Author Dedicates
These Lines"

Six.
Ponderous. The chimes of a clock.
“Render unto Caesar ... render unto God...”
But where’s
someone like me to dock?
Where’11 I find a lair?

Were I
like the ocean of oceans little,
on the tiptoes of waves I’d rise,
I’d strain, a tide, to caress the moon.
Where to find someone to love
of my size,
the sky too small for her to fit in?

Were I poor
as a multimillionaire,
it’d still be tough.
What’s money for the soul? –
thief insatiable.
The gold
of all the Californias isn’t enough
for my desires’ riotous horde.

I wish I were tongue-tied,
like Dante or Petrarch,
able to fire a woman’s heart,
reduce it to ashes with verse-filled pages!
My words
and my love
form a triumphal arch:
through it, in all their splendour,
leaving no trace, will pass
the inamoratas of all the ages!

Were I
as quiet as thunder,
how I’d wail and whine!
One groan of mine
would start the world’s crumbling cloister shivering.
And if
I’d end up by roaring
with all of its power of lungs and more –
the comets, distressed, would wring their hands
and from the sky’s roof
leap in a fever.

If I were dim as the sun,
night I’d drill
with the rays of my eyes,
and also
all by my lonesome,
radiant self
build up the earth’s shriveled bosom.

On I’ll pass,
dragging my huge love behind me.
On what
feverish night, deliria-ridden,
by what Goliaths was I begot –
I, so big
and by no one needed? ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky,
198:Gradually, it sank in. The Mother Beast was dead. I had killed her. The taste of her blood burned in my mouth. Behind her, a deep black hole bore into the ground beneath the remnants of the railroad car. It must have been her underground lair. She had raised her brood there, safe and far away from everyone, until Kyle's crew invaded her den.
Such an awful waste. None of this was necessary. At least one person died, many others were injured, and this great magnificient beast and her brood lost their lives all because Kyle Bell wanted to make a quick buck on the side. He stood by the remnants of the tent now, arms crossed, barking orders.
I marched over to Kyle. He saw me, opened his mouth, and I backhanded him. The blow knocked him to the ground. «This is your fault. You brought these people here. You knew this place was dangerous.» I pulled him upright and spun him toward the dead beast. «Look! People died because of you. Do you understand that? If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have had to murder her. She was just protecting her children.»
«She tried to kill us!»
I backhanded him again. «She tried to kill you because you broke into her house.»
The workers stood around us, thier faces grim. Nobody made any move to help their boss.
***
I found my bow and quiver and walked away. Ascanio jumped off the beast and joined me. His voice was a deep growl, shredded by his teeth. «It. Wash. Aweshome.»

«This was a tragedy.» People came before animals. I knew that, but when you turn into an animal, your perspective is a little different.
«Yesh. But aweshome.»
He was a boy. What did he know? ~ Ilona Andrews,
199:The Man In Chrysanthemum Land
There's a brave little berry-brown man
At the opposite side of the earth;
Of the White, and the Black, and the Tan,
He's the smallest in compass and girth.
O! he's little, and lively, and Tan,
And he's showing the world what he's worth.
For his nation is born, and its birth
Is for hardihood, courage, and sand,
So you take off your cap
To the brave little Jap
Who fights for Chrysanthemum Land.
Near the house that the little man keeps,
There's a Bug-a-boo building its lair;
It prowls, and it growls, and it sleeps
At the foot of his tiny back stair.
But the little brown man never sleeps,
For the Brownie will battle the Bear-He has soldiers and ships to command;
So take off you cap
To the brave little Jap
Who fights for Chrysanthemum Land.
Uncle Sam stands a-watching near by,
With his finger aside of his nose-John Bull with a wink in his eye,
Looks round to see how the wind blows-O! jolly old John, with his eye
Ever set on the East and its woes.
More than hoeing their own little rows
These wary old wags understand,
But they take off their caps
To the brave little Japs
Who fight for Chrysanthemum Land.
Now he's given us Geishas, and themes
For operas, stories, and plays,
His silks and his chinas are dreams,
And we copy his quaint little ways;
105
O! we look on his land in our dreams,
But his value we failed to appraise,
For he'll gather his laurels and bays-His Cruisers and Columns are manned,
And we take off our caps
To the brave little Japs
Who fight for Chrysanthemum Land.
~ Emily Pauline Johnson,
200:Just after a krampus that people had spotted in the area.” That got my attention. “A krampus? You’re sure?” Petra nodded. “I saw it walking down the road, swinging its chains around. Those fucking horrific bell things were making noise. You can’t really mistake a krampus for anything else.” In mythology, a krampus was a sort of anti-Santa. It would spirit away the naughty boys and girls to its lair. What it did with them is open to interpretation; some say it drowned the children and ate them, while some suggested it just kept them until they behaved and then brought them back. In most instances the truth is quite far removed from reality, but in the case of the krampus, truth and reality weren’t all that dissimilar. Krampus don’t care one way or the other about the behavior of the children they steal. They take children back to their lairs and feast on their souls, tossing the corpse of the child into a nearby stream or river when they finish. Unlike animals that need to hibernate during the winter, krampus only feed during the coldest months of the year, before vanishing once spring arrives. Before the tenth century, there were hundreds of the bastards running around, although nearly all of them were killed after it was made illegal to create them. Like most of the truly horrific creations in the world, krampus were made using dark blood magic. At one point, they’d been human, although once the magic had finished with them, any glimmer of humanity had been extinguished. They were considered a crime against magic, and their creation was punishable by death. Apparently, someone was unconcerned about the possibility of such things, if he or she had taken the time and effort to make a krampus and unleash it on the town of Mittenwald. ~ Steve McHugh,
201:Listening
1.
When earth's winter bareness
Feels the April rain,
All her summer fairness
Comes to life again.
So my spirit quickens to that magic strain.
2.
Fancy, warmed and brightened,
Spreads her folded wings —
Passion, stirred, enlightened,
From its slumber springs —
When that bow is laid upon those trembling strings.
3.
Visions, past all telling,
Sweet and strange, I see;
Mystic voices, swelling —
Melting — cry to me
From celestial realms of hope and memory.
4.
Tender thoughts caress me,
Like a summer's day;
Sterner moods possess me,
As the rough winds play
With an autumn leaf untimely cast away.
5.
Fierce desires come creeping
From their secret lair;
Wild regrets, upleaping,
At my heartstrings tear —
Wildest aspirations, more than I can bear.
125
6.
Like a leaf I quiver
With responsive thrills —
Ache, and burn, and shiver,
As the Master wills
Whose mysterious message all my being fills.
7.
Dreams of grace and glory,
Always out of reach —
Truths untold in story,
That no book can teach,
Past all human language, find their native speech.
8.
O what wailing sadness
That no tongue may tell,
What enraptured gladness,
In those wild notes swell —
Bliss and anguish both — divine, ineffable!
9.
Joys and woes unspoken,
Whereof earth is rife,
Dear hopes blest and broken,
Futile pain and strife,
Birth and death and love, the tragedy of life.
10.
And my soul, attending,
Through my listening ears
In those strains heartrending
Its own history hears —
All too sweet for words, too terrible for tears.
126
~ Ada Cambridge,
202:THE SHEEPDOGS
Most humans truly are like sheep
Wanting nothing more than peace to keep
To graze, grow fat and raise their young,
Sweet taste of clover on the tongue.
Their lives serene upon Life’s farm,
They sense no threat nor fear no harm.
On verdant meadows, they forage free
With naught to fear, with naught to flee.
They pay their sheepdogs little heed
For there is no threat; there is no need.
To the flock, sheepdog’s are mysteries,
Roaming watchful round the peripheries.
These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roar
With the fetid reek of the carnivore,
Too like the wolf of legends told,
To be amongst our docile fold.
Who needs sheepdogs? What good are they?
They have no use, not in this day.
Lock them away, out of our sight
We have no need of their fierce might.
But sudden in their midst a beast
Has come to kill, has come to feast
The wolves attack; they give no warning
Upon that calm September morning
They slash and kill with frenzied glee
Their passive helpless enemy
Who had no clue the wolves were there
Far roaming from their Eastern lair.
Then from the carnage, from the rout,
Comes the cry, “Turn the sheepdogs out!”
Thus is our nature but too our plight
To keep our dogs on leashes tight
And live a life of illusive bliss
Hearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss.
Until he has us by the throat,
We pay no heed; we take no note.
Not until he strikes us at our core
Will we unleash the Dogs of War
Only having felt the wolf pack’s wrath
Do we loose the sheepdogs on its path.
And the wolves will learn what we’ve shown before;

We love our sheep,
we Dogs of War.

Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66 ~ Jos N Harris,
203:The Murrumbidgee Shearer
Come, all you jolly natives, and I'll relate to you
Some of my observations—adventures, too, a few.
I've travelled about the country for miles, full many a score,
And oft-times would have hungered, but for the cheek I bore.
I've
I've
I've
I've
coasted on the Barwon—low down the Darling, too,
been on the Murrumbidgee, and out on the Paroo;
been on all the diggings, boys, from famous Ballarat;
loafed upon the Lachlan and fossicked Lambing Flat.
I went up to a squatter, and asked him for a feed,
But the knowledge of my hunger was swallowed by his greed.
He said I was a loafer and for work had no desire,
And so, to do him justice, I set his shed on fire.
Oh, yes, I've touched the shepherd's hut, of sugar, tea, and flour;
And a tender bit of mutton I always could devour.
I went up to a station, and there I got a job;
Plunged in the store, and hooked it, with a very tidy lob.
Oh, yes, my jolly dandies, I've done it on the cross.
Although I carry bluey now, I've sweated many a horse.
I've helped to ease the escort of many's the ounce of gold;
The traps have often chased me, more times than can be told.
Oh, yes, the traps have chased me, been frightened of their stripes
They never could have caught me, they feared my cure for gripes.
And well they knew I carried it, which they had often seen
A-glistening in my flipper, chaps, a patent pill machine.
I've been hunted like a panther into my mountain lair.
Anxiety and misery my grim companions there.
I've planted in the scrub, my boys, and fed on kangaroo,
And wound up my avocations by ten years on Cockatoo.
So you can understand, my boys, just from this little rhyme,
I'm a Murrumbidgee shearer, and one of the good old time.
399
~ Banjo Paterson,
204:The Devil's Rose

You would never take a rose from a beast.
If his callous hand were to hold out a scarlet flower, his grip unaffected by pricking thorns, you would shrink from the gift and refuse it. I know that is what you would do.

But the cunning beast will have his beauty.

He hunts not in hopeless pursuit, for fear would have you sprint all the day long. Thus, he turns toward the shadows and clutches the rosebud, crunching and twisting until every delicate petal is detached. One falls not far from your feet, and you notice the red spot in the snow.

The color sparkles in the sunlight, catching your curious eye. No beast stands in sight; there is nothing to fear, so you dare retrieve the lone petal. The touch of temptation is velvet against your thumb. It carries a scent you bring to your nose, and both eyes close to float on a cloud of perfume.

As your lashes lift, another scarlet drop stains the snow at a near distance. A glance around perceives no danger, and so your footprints scar the snowflakes to retrieve another rosy leaflet as soft and sweet as the first. Your eyes shine with flecks of golden greed at the discovery of more discarded petals, and you blame the wind for scattering them mere footprints apart. All you want is a few, so you step and snatch, step and snatch, step and snatch.

Soon, there is enough velvet to rub against your cheek like a silken kerchief. Your collection of one-plus-one-more reeks of floral essence.

Distracted, you jump at the sight of the beast in your path. He stands before his lair, grinning without love. His callous hands grip at thorns on a single naked stem, and you look down at your own hands that now cup his rose. But how can it be? You would never take a rose from a beast. You would shrink from the gift and refuse it. He knows that is what you would do. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,
205:A Change Of Menu
Now the new chum loaded his three-nought-three,
It's a small-bore gun, but his hopes were big.
"I am fed to the teeth with old ewe," said he,
"And I might be able to shoot a pig."
And he trusted more to his nose than ear
To give him warning when pigs were near.
Out of his lair in the lignum dark.
Where the wild duck nests and the bilbie digs,
With a whoof and a snort and a kind of bark
There rose the father of all the pigs:
And a tiger would have walked wide of him
As he stropped his tusks on a leaning limb.
Then the new chum's three-nought-three gave tongue
Like a popgun fired in an opera bouffe:
But a pig that was old when the world was young
Is near as possible bullet-proof.
(The more you shoot him the less he dies,
Unless you catch him between the eyes.)
So the new chum saw it was up to him
To become extinct if he stopped to shoot;
So he made a leap for a gidgee limb
While the tusker narrowly missed his boot.
Then he found a fork, where he swayed in air
As he gripped the boughs like a native bear.
The pig sat silent and gaunt and grim
To wait and wait till his foe should fall:
For night and day were the same to him,
And home was any old place at all.
"I must wait," said he, "till this sportsman drops;
I could use his boots for a pair of strops."
The crows that watch from the distant blue
Came down to see what it all might mean;
An eaglehawk and a cockatoo
Bestowed their patronage on the scene.
20
Till a far-off boundary rider said
"I must have a look -- there is something dead."
Now the new chum sits at his Christmas fare
Of a dried-up chop from a tough old ewe.
Says he, "It's better than native bear
And nearly as tender as kangaroo.
An emu's egg I can masticate,
But pork," says he, "is the thing I hate."
~ Banjo Paterson,
206:I.
Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,
The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind
Repose trust in his footsteps of air?
No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,
The monster transfixes his prey,
On the sand flows his life-blood away;
Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells reply,
Protracting the horrible harmony.

II.
Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,
Dares fearless to perish defending her brood,
Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches
Thirsting--ay, thirsting for blood;
And demands, like mankind, his brother for food;
Yet more lenient, more gentle than they;
For hunger, not glory, the prey
Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead.
Nor ambition with fame crown the murderers head.

III.
Though weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains,
And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air,
Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains,
Though a fiercer than tiger is there.
Though, more dreadful than death, it scatters despair,
Though its shadow eclipses the day,
And the darkness of deepest dismay
Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around,
And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.

IV.
They came to the fountain to draw from its stream
Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see;
They bathed for awhile in its silvery beam,
Then perished, and perished like me.
For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee;
The most tenderly loved of my soul
Are slaves to his hated control.
He pursues me, he blasts me! 'Tis in vain that I fly:--
What remains, but to curse him,--to curse him and die?
Published (without title) by Hogg, 'Life of Shelley', 1858; dated 1809-10. The title is Rossetti's (1870).


~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Bigotrys Victim
,
207:War
There is no picturesqueness and no glory,
No halo of romance, in war to-day.
It is a hideous thing; Time would turn grey
With horror, were he not already hoary
At sight of this vile monster, foul and gory.
Yet while sweet women perish as they pray,
And new-born babes are slaughtered, who dare say
'Halt!' till Right pens its 'Finis' to the story!
There is no pathway, but the path through blood,
Out of the horrors of this holocaust.
Hell has let loose its scalding crimson flood,
And he who stops to argue now is lost.
Not brooms of creeds, not Pacifistic words
Can stem the tide, but swords-uplifted swords!
II
Yet, after Peace has turned the clean white page
There shall be sorrow on the earth for years;
Abysmal grief, that has no eyes for tears,
And youth that hobbles through the earth like age.
But better to play this part upon life's stage
Than to aid structures that a tyrant rears,
To live a stalwart hireling torn with fears,
And shamed by feeding on a conqueror's wage.
Death, yea, a thousand deaths, were sweet in truth
Rather than such ignoble life. God gave
Being, and breath, and high resolve to youth
That it might be Wrong's master, not its slave.
Our road to Freedom is the road to guns!
Go, arm your sons! I say, Go, arm your sons!
III
Arm! arm! that mandate on each wind is whirled.
880
Let no man hesitate or look askance,
For from the devastated homes of France
And ruined Belgium the cry is hurled.
Why, Christ Himself would keep peace banners furled
Were He among us, till, with lifted lance,
He saw the hosts of Righteousness advance
To purify the Temples of the world.
There is no safety on the earth to-day
For any sacred thing, or clean, or fair;
Nor can there be, until men rise and slay
The hydra-headed monster in his lair.
War! horrid War! now Virtue's only friend;
Clasp hands with War, and battle to the end!
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
208:If They Dare!
Realm of ocean-guarded Peace,
Humming loom and grazing steer,
Farm, and forge, and woven fleece,
Happier, homelier, year by year,
Hark! athwart the wintry air,
Menace mutters, foemen glare:
Leave the shuttle, leave the share,
For the spear!
Envious of her world-wide race,
Goaded by the greed and hate
Of the hungry and the base
For the opulent and great,
``See,'' they whisper, ``did we band
All against Her, hand-in-hand,
We might bring that haughty Land
Face with Fate.''
Plotters insolent and vain,
Muster then your servile swarms.
Moated by the unbridged main,
We but laugh at such alarms.
Blinded braggarts, to forget
England old is England yet,
And can meet, as once She met,
World in arms.
Come athwart the ocean's crest,
Mob and Monarch, crowd and Crown!
Slavish East, or shrilling West,
Come, and strike at her renown.
Madmen! by your threats inane
What is it ye hope to gain?
Think of France, think of Spain,
Smitten down!
Derelict on wind and wave,
Tossing with the tossing tide,
Crushed by ice-floe, tombed in cave,
270
See the Armada's pomp and pride:
Prince and Pontiff, Rome and Spain,
Leagued against Her, leagued in vain;
England and her mother-main
Side by side.
Think of that self-sceptered King,
Caesar not by birth but brain,
Who with arbitrary wing
Hovered over hill and plain:
Headlong from that haughty height
Forced to sue to England's might,
And accept, for eagle's flight,
Cage and chain!
Still they cry, ``She is alone,
And must truckle to our nod.''
What! with half the world her own!
What! still wielding Neptune's rod!
She is lonely as the breeze,
Lonely as the stars or seas,
Lone, unreachable as these,
Lone as God!
Let the bandits then deride
Loneliness they shall not share.
We are lonely, unallied,
As the lion in his lair.
Doubters, dastards, now be dumb:
Sound the clarion! Roll the drum!
Let them menace, let them come,
If they dare!
~ Alfred Austin,
209:To Sculptor Borch
(On his fiftieth birthday)
With friends you stalwart stand and fair,
To-day of fifty years the heir;
The past your works rejoicing praise,
But forward goes your gaze.
Your childlike faith, your spirit true,
Your hand that never weary grew,
A home's sweet music, love of wife,
Make ever young your life.
You dared believe with heart alive
That here in Norway art can thrive.
You forced the hardness of our stones
To harmony of tones.
You laid our wild world's secrets bare
And caught 'The Hunter' near the lair.
Our nation's moods, of beauty born,
Your 'Girl with Eggs' adorn.
As o'er a slope's snow-covered brow
A youth came swiftly flying now,
You saw him, raised your hand, and lo!
He stood there, chiseled snow.
But your 'Ski-runner's' courage good,
It was your own, when forth you stood
Art's champion by the world unawed,
And with your faith in God.
You won your victory supreme
Through rock-like faith and will's full stream
While with unnumbered hours of rest
Your love has others blessed.
Were all now here from west and east
Whose hearts you own, oh, what a feast!
From Akershus the convicts e'en
Would bear a freeman's mien.
Now we whose lives with good you filled
For you to-day a palace build,
205
On heights of heart's-ease lifting square
Its golden tower of prayer.
In peace you oft shall dwell in it,
Whene'er you need to rest a bit,
And feel through them who hold you dear
Yourself to heaven near.
Long since our country to you gave
The meed of thanks that most you crave;
It gave a maid with golden hair,
Its springtime's image fair.
She came from where the fairies dwell,
With nixie's charm and wood-nymph's spell,
With peace all holy, sweet, and calm,
To sing of life the psalm.
So may your life yet long endure
To light our gland, your home secure!
May all that from your heart you gave,
Still blossom on your grave!
May God's protecting mercy hold
Your spirit ever fresh and bold,May He to genius oft impart
Just such a mind and heart!
~ Bjornstjerne Bjornson,
210:Gareth didn't need to open his eyes to know his brother was there, gazing down at him with his black stare that was severe enough to freeze the Devil in his lair of fire. And he didn't need to see Lucien's stark face to know what he would read there:  blatant disapproval. Fury. He felt Lucien's cool hand on his cheek. "Ah, Gareth," the duke said blandly, in a tone that didn't fool anyone in the room. "Another scrape you've got yourself into, I see. What is it this time, eh? No, let me guess. You were posing as a target and taking bets that none of your friends could hit you. Or perhaps you got so foxed that you fell from Crusader and impaled yourself on a fence? Do tell, dear boy. I have all night." "Go to hell, Luce." "I'm sure I will, but I'll have an explanation from you first." Bastard. Gareth refused to respond to the mocking taunts. Instead, he reached up, his fingers closing around Lucien's immaculate velvet sleeve. "Don't send her away, Luce. She's here. She needs us.... We owe it to Charles to take care of her and the baby." Footsteps came running down the hall, into the room. "Over here, Dr. Highworth!" Chilcot cried, suddenly. Lucien never moved. "Take care of whom, Gareth?" he inquired, with deadly menace. Weakly, Gareth turned his head on the pillow and looked up at his brother through a swirling fog of pain and alcohol. "Juliet Paige," he whispered, meeting Lucien's cool, veiled gaze. "The woman Charles was to marry ... she's here ... downstairs ... with his baby. Don't send her away, Lucien. I swear I'll kill you if you do." "My dear boy," Lucien murmured, with a chilling little smile, "I would not dream of it." But he had straightened up and was already moving toward the door. Gareth raised himself on one elbow even as the doctor tried to hold him down. "Lucien ... damn you, don't!" The duke kept walking. "Lucien!"  With the last of his strength, Gareth lunged from the bed, but the effort — and the Irish whiskey — did him in at last. As his feet hit the rug, his legs gave out beneath him, and he crashed heavily to the floor in a dead faint. Doctor, servants, and friends all rushed to his assistance. The duke never looked back.   ~ Danelle Harmon~ Danelle Harmon~ Danelle Harmon~ Danelle Harmon ~ Danelle Harmon,
211:...
And many there were hurt by that strong boy,
His name, they said, was Pleasure,
And near him stood, glorious beyond measure
Four Ladies who possess all empery
In earth and air and sea,
Nothing that lives from their award is free.
Their names will I declare to thee,
Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear,
And they the regents are
Of the four elements that frame the heart,
And each diversely exercised her art
By force or circumstance or sleight
To prove her dreadful might
Upon that poor domain.
Desire presented her [false] glass, and then
The spirit dwelling there
Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair
Within that magic mirror,
And dazed by that bright error,
It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger
And death, and penitence, and danger,
Had not then silent Fear
Touched with her palsying spear,
So that as if a frozen torrent
The blood was curdled in its current;
It dared not speak, even in look or motion,
But chained within itself its proud devotion.
Between Desire and Fear thou wert
A wretched thing, poor heart!
Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast,
Wild bird for that weak nest.
Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought,
And from the very wound of tender thought
Drew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes
Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies,
Surmount the loss, the terror, and the sorrow.
Then Hope approached, she who can borrow
For poor to-day, from rich tomorrow,
And Fear withdrew, as night when day
Descends upon the orient ray,
And after long and vain endurance
The poor heart woke to her assurance.
At one birth these four were born
With the worlds forgotten morn,
And from Pleasure still they hold
All it circles, as of old.
When, as summer lures the swallow,
Pleasure lures the heart to follow--
O weak heart of little wit!
The fair hand that wounded it,
Seeking, like a panting hare,
Refuge in the lynxs lair,
Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear,
Ever will be near.
Published by Dr. Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862. 'A very free translation of Brunetto Latini's Tesoretto, lines 81-154.'A.C. Bradley.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Love- Hope, Desire, And Fear
,
212:The Night Of The Lion
'_And that a reply be received before midnight._'
_British Ultimatum_.
Their Day was at twelve of the night,
When the graves give up their dead.
And still, from the City, no light
Yellows the clouds overhead.
Where the Admiral stands there's a star,
But his column is lost in the gloom;
For the brazen doors are ajar,
And the Lion awakes, and the doom.
_He is not of a chosen race.
His strength is the strength of the skies,
In whose glory all nations have place,
In whose downfall Liberty dies.
He is mighty, but he is just.
He shall live to the end of years.
He shall bring the proud to the dust.
He shall raise the weak to the spheres._
It is night on the world's great mart,
But the brooding hush is awake
With the march of a steady heart
That calls like the drum of Drake,
_Come!_ And a muttering deep
As the pulse of the distant guns,
Or the thunder before the leap
Thro' the rolling thoroughfare runs.
And the wounded men go by
Like thoughts in the Lion's brain.
And the clouds lift on high
Like the slow waves of his mane
And the narrowing lids conceal
The furnaces of his eyes.
Their gold is gone out. They reveal
Only two search-lights of steel
139
Steadily sweeping the skies.
And we hoped he had peace in his lair
Where the bones of old tyrannies lay,
And the skulls that his cubs have stripped bare,
The old skulls they still toss in their play.
But the tyrants are risen again,
And the last light dies from their path;
For the midnight of his mane
Lifts to the stars with his wrath.
From the East to the West he is crouching.
He snuffs at the North-East wind.
His breast upon Britain is couching.
His haunches quiver on Ind.
It is night, black night, where he lies;
But a kingdom and a fleet
Shall burn in his terrible eyes
When he leaps, and the darkness dies
With the War-gods under his feet.
_Till the day when a little child,
Shall lay but a hand on his mane,
And his eyes grow golden and mild
And he stands in the heavens again;
Till the day of the seventh seal,
Which the Lion alone shall rend,
When the stars from their courses reel,
His Freedom shall not end._
~ Alfred Noyes,
213:1.
In thy western halls of gold
When thou sittest in thy state,
Bards, that erst sublimely told
Heroic deeds, and sang of fate,
With fervour seize their adamantine lyres,
Whose chords are solid rays, and twinkle radiant fires.

2.
Here Homer with his nervous arms
Strikes the twanging harp of war,
And even the western splendour warms,
While the trumpets sound afar:
But, what creates the most intense surprise,
His soul looks out through renovated eyes.

3.
Then, through thy Temple wide, melodious swells
The sweet majestic tone of Maro's lyre:
The soul delighted on each accent dwells,--
Enraptur'd dwells,--not daring to respire,
The while he tells of grief around a funeral pyre.

4.
'Tis awful silence then again;
Expectant stand the spheres;
Breathless the laurell'd peers,
Nor move, till ends the lofty strain,
Nor move till Milton's tuneful thunders cease,
And leave once more the ravish'd heavens in peace.

5.
Thou biddest Shakespeare wave his hand,
And quickly forward spring
The Passions--a terrific band--
And each vibrates the string
That with its tyrant temper best accords,
While from their Master's lips pour forth the inspiring words.

6.
A silver trumpet Spenser blows,
And, as its martial notes to silence flee,
From a virgin chorus flows
A hymn in praise of spotless Chastity.
'Tis still! Wild warblings from the Aeolian lyre
Enchantment softly breathe, and tremblingly expire.

7.
Next thy Tasso's ardent numbers
Float along the pleased air,
Calling youth from idle slumbers,
Rousing them from Pleasure's lair:--
Then o'er the strings his fingers gently move,
And melt the soul to pity and to love.

8.
But when Thou joinest with the Nine,
And all the powers of song combine,
We listen here on earth:
Thy dying tones that fill the air,
And charm the ear of evening fair,
From thee, great God of Bards, receive their heavenly birth.
'First given among the Literary Remains in the second volume of the Life, Letters &c. 1848. The date to which Lord Houghton assigns the poem is February 1815.'
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Ode To Apollo
,
214:At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,
till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf.

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink,

my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes

but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws
and went in search of a living bird – white dove –

which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

But then I was young – and it took ten years
in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.

Little Red-Cap ~ Carol Ann Duffy,
215:Mid-August
From the upland hidden,
Where the hill is sunny
Tawny like pure honey
In the August heat,
Memories float unbidden
Where the thicket serries
Fragrant with ripe berries
And the milk-weed sweet.
Like a prayer-mat holy
Are the patterned mosses
Which the twin-flower crosses
With her flowerless vine;
In fragile melancholy
The pallid ghost flowers hover
As if to guard and cover
The shadow of a shrine.
Where the pine-linnet lingered
The pale water searches,
The roots of gleaming birches
Draw silver from the lake;
The ripples, liquid-fingered,
Plucking the root-layers,
Fairy like lute players
Lulling music make.
O to lie here brooding
Where the pine-tree column
Rises dark and solemn
To the airy lair,
Where, the day eluding,
Night is couched dream laden,
Like a deep witch-maiden
Hidden in her hair.
In filmy evanescence
Wraithlike scents assemble,
Then dissolve and tremble
62
A little until they die;
Spirits of the florescence
Where the bees searched and tarried
Till the blossoms all were married
In the days before July.
Light has lost its splendour,
Light refined and sifted,
Cool light and dream drifted
Ventures even where,
(Seeping silver tender)
In the dim recesses,
Trembling mid her tresses,
Hides the maiden hair.
Covered with the shy-light,
Filling in the hushes,
Slide the tawny thrushes
Calling to their broods,
Hoarding till the twilight
The song that made for noon-days
Of the amorous June days
Preludes and interludes.
The joy that I am feeling
Is there something in it
Unlike the warble the linnet
Phrases and intones?
Or is a like thought stealing
With a rapture fine, free
Through the happy pine tree
Ripening her cones?
In some high existence
In another planet
Where their poets cannot
Know our birds and flowers,
Does the same persistence
Give the dreams they issue
Something like the tissue
Of these dreams of ours?
63
O to lie athinking-Moods and whims! I fancy
Only necromancy
Could the web unroll,
Only somehow linking
Beauties that meet and mingle
In this quiet dingle
With the beauty of the whole.
~ Duncan Campbell Scott,
216:At any rate,’ he continued, ‘we hoped that once the war was over the Oracle might start working again. When it did not … Rachel became concerned.’ ‘Who’s Rachel?’ Meg asked. ‘Rachel Dare,’ I said. ‘The Oracle.’ ‘Thought the Oracle was a place.’ ‘It is.’ ‘Then Rachel is a place, and she stopped working?’ Had I still been a god, I would have turned her into a blue-belly lizard and released her into the wilderness never to be seen again. The thought soothed me. ‘The original Delphi was a place in Greece,’ I told her. ‘A cavern filled with volcanic fumes, where people would come to receive guidance from my priestess, the Pythia.’ ‘Pythia.’ Meg giggled. ‘That’s a funny word.’ ‘Yes. Ha-ha. So the Oracle is both a place and a person. When the Greek gods relocated to America back in … what was it, Chiron, 1860?’ Chiron see-sawed his hand. ‘More or less.’ ‘I brought the Oracle here to continue speaking prophecies on my behalf. The power has passed down from priestess to priestess over the years. Rachel Dare is the present Oracle.’ From the cookie platter, Meg plucked the only Oreo, which I had been hoping to have myself. ‘Mm-kay. Is it too late to watch that movie?’ ‘Yes,’ I snapped. ‘Now, the way I gained possession of the Oracle of Delphi in the first place was by killing this monster called Python who lived in the depths of the cavern.’ ‘A python like the snake,’ Meg said. ‘Yes and no. The snake species is named after Python the monster, who is also rather snaky, but who is much bigger and scarier and devours small girls who talk too much. At any rate, last August, while I was … indisposed, my ancient foe Python was released from Tartarus. He reclaimed the cave of Delphi. That’s why the Oracle stopped working.’ ‘But, if the Oracle is in America now, why does it matter if some snake monster takes over its old cave?’ That was about the longest sentence I had yet heard her speak. She’d probably done it just to spite me. ‘It’s too much to explain,’ I said. ‘You’ll just have to –’ ‘Meg.’ Chiron gave her one of his heroically tolerant smiles. ‘The original site of the Oracle is like the deepest taproot of a tree. The branches and leaves of prophecy may extend across the world, and Rachel Dare may be our loftiest branch, but if the taproot is strangled the whole tree is endangered. With Python back in residence at his old lair, the spirit of the Oracle has been completely blocked. ~ Rick Riordan,
217:AROUND me the images of thirty years:
An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;
Kevin O'Higgins' countenance that wears
A gentle questioning look that cannot hide
A soul incapable of remorse or rest;
A revolutionary soldier kneeling to be blessed;
An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
Blessing the Tricolour. "This is not,' I say,
"The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland
The poets have imagined, terrible and gay.'
Before a woman's portrait suddenly I stand,
Beautiful and gentle in her Venetian way.
I met her all but fifty years ago
For twenty minutes in some studio.

III
Heart-smitten with emotion I Sink down,
My heart recovering with covered eyes;
Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
My permanent or impermanent images:
Augusta Gregory's son; her sister's son,
Hugh Lane, "onlie begetter' of all these;
Hazel Lavery living and dying, that tale
As though some ballad-singer had sung it all;
Mancini's portrait of Augusta Gregory,
"Greatest since Rembrandt,' according to John Synge;
A great ebullient portrait certainly;
But where is the brush that could show anything
Of all that pride and that humility?
And I am in despair that time may bring
Approved patterns of women or of men
But not that selfsame excellence again.
My mediaeval knees lack health until they bend,
But in that woman, in that household where
Honour had lived so long, all lacking found.
Childless I thought, "My children may find here
Deep-rooted things,' but never foresaw its end,
And now that end has come I have not wept;
No fox can foul the lair the badger swept

VI
(An image out of Spenser and the common tongue).
John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought
All that we did, all that we said or sang
Must come from contact with the soil, from that
Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.
We three alone in modern times had brought
Everything down to that sole test again,
Dream of the noble and the beggar-man.

VII
And here's John Synge himself, that rooted man,
"Forgetting human words,' a grave deep face.
You that would judge me, do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland's history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.

~ William Butler Yeats, The Municipal Gallery Revisited
,
218:She spoke so passionately that some of the Historians believed her, even the ones like Dr. Karuna who had been passed over for promotion when Crome put Valentine in charge of their Guild. As for Bevis Pod, he watched her with shining eyes, filled with a feeling that he couldn’t even name; something that they had never taught him about in the Learning Labs. It made him shiver all over. Pomeroy was the first to speak. “I hope you’re right, Miss Valentine,” he said. “Because he is the only man who can hope to challenge the Lord Mayor. We must wait for his return.” “But …” “In the meantime, we have agreed to keep Mr. Pod safe, here at the Museum. He can sleep up in the old Transport Gallery, and help Dr. Nancarrow catalogue the art collection, and if the Engineers come hunting for him we’ll find a hiding place. It isn’t much of a blow against Crome, I know. But please understand, Katherine: We are old, and frightened, and there really is nothing more that we can do.” The world was changing. That was nothing new, of course; the first thing an Apprentice Historian learned was that the world was always changing, but now it was changing so fast that you could actually see it happening. Looking down from the flight deck of the Jenny Haniver, Tom saw the wide plains of the eastern Hunting Ground speckled with speeding towns, spurred into flight by whatever it was that had bruised the northern sky, heading away from it as fast as their tracks or wheels could carry them, too preoccupied to try and catch one another. “MEDUSA,” he heard Miss Fang whisper to herself, staring toward the far-off, flame-flecked smoke. “What is a MEDUSA?” asked Hester. “You know something, don’t you? About what my mum and dad were killed for?” “I’m afraid not,” the aviatrix replied. “I wish I did. But I heard the name once. Six years ago another League agent managed to get into London, posing as a crewman on a licensed airship. He had heard something that must have intrigued him, but we never learned what it was. The League had only one message from him, just two words: Beware MEDUSA. The Engineers caught him and killed him.” “How do you know?” asked Tom. “Because they sent us back his head,” said Miss Fang. “Cash on Delivery.” That evening she set the Jenny Haniver down on one of the fleeing towns, a respectable four-decker called Peripatetiapolis that was steering south to lair in the mountains beyond the Sea of Khazak. At the air-harbor there they heard more news of what had happened to Panzerstadt-Bayreuth. “I saw it!” said an aviator. “I was a hundred miles away, but I still saw it. A tongue of fire, reaching out from London’s Top Tier and bringing death to everything ~ Philip Reeve,
219:Fairy Tale
Once, in times forgotten,
In a fairy place,
Through the steppe, a rider
Made his way apace.
While he sped to battle,
Nearing from the dim
Distance, a dark forest
Rose ahead of him.
Something kept repeating,
Seemed his heart to graze:
Tighten up the saddle,
Fear the watering-place.
But he did not listen.
Heeding but his will,
At full speed he bounded
Up the wooded hill;
Rode into a valley,
Turning from the mound,
Galloped through a meadow,
Skirted higher ground;
Reached a gloomy hollow,
Found a trail to trace
Down the woodland pathway
To the watering-place.
Deaf to voice of warning,
And without remorse,
Down the slope, the rider
Led his thirsty horse.
____
Where the stream grew shallow,
48
Winding through the glen,
Eerie flames lit up the
Entrance to a den.
Through thick clouds of crimson
Smoke above the spring,
An uncanny calling
Made the forest ring.
And the rider started,
And with peering eye
Urged his horse in answer
To the haunting cry.
Then he saw the dragon,
And he gripped his lance;
And his horse stood breathless
Fearing to advance.
Thrice around a maiden
Was the serpent wound;
Fire-breathing nostrils
Cast a glare around.
And the dragon's body
Moved his scaly neck,
At her shoulder snaking
Whiplike forth and back.
By that country's custom
Was a young and fair
Captive brought as ransom
To the dragon's lair.
This then was the tribute
That the people owed
To the worm-protection
For a poor abode.
Now the dragon hugged his
Victim in alarm,
And the coils grew tighter
49
Round her throat and arm.
Skyward looked the horseman
With imploring glance,
And for the impending
Fight he couched his lance.
____
Tightly closing eyelids.
Heights and cloudy spheres.
Rivers. Waters. Boulders.
Centuries and years.
Helmetless, the wounded
Lies, his life at stake.
With his hooves the charger
Tramples down the snake.
On the sand, togetherDragon, steed, and lance;
In a swoon the rider,
The maiden-in a trance.
Blue the sky; soft breezes
Tender noon caress.
Who is she? A lady?
Peasant girl? Princess?
Now in joyous wonder
Cannot cease to weep;
Now again abandoned
To unending sleep.
Now, his strength returning,
Opens up his eyes;
Now anew the wounded
Limp and listless lies.
But their hearts are beating.
Waves surge up, die down;
50
Carry them, and waken,
And in slumber drown.
Tightly closing eyelids.
Heights and cloudy spheres.
Rivers. Waters. Boulders.
Centuries and years.
~ Boris Pasternak,
220:The Old Land And The Young Land
The Young Land said, ``I have borne it long,
But can suffer it now no more;
I must end this endless inhuman wrong
Within hail of my own free shore.
So fling out the war-flag's folds, and let the righteous cannons roar!''
'Twas a quick, rash word, for the strong Young Land
Is a Land whose ways are peace;
It weareth no mail, and its keels are manned
With cotton, and corn, and fleece,
While lands there are that live cased in steel, and whose war-hammers never
cease.
And these, when they saw the Young Land gird
Its loins to redress the wrong,
Whispered one to the other, ``Its heart is stirred,
But its hosts are an undrilled throng,
And its bolts yet to forge, so quick let us strike before that it grows too strong.''
And they said to the Old Land, ``Surely you
Will help us to foil its claim?
It waxeth in strength, as striplings do,
And it girds at its parent's name.
Take heed lest its overweening growth overshadow your fading fame.''
Then the Old Land said, ``Youth is strong and quick,
And Wisdom is strong but mild;
And blood than water is yet more thick,
And this Young Land is my child.
I am proud, not jealous, to watch it grow.''
Thus the Old Land spake and smiled.
``And look you,'' it said, ``at the strong Young Land
Strike for Freedom and Freedom's growth;
Which makes 'twixt us twain, though unsigned by hand,
A bond strong as lovers' troth.
So 'ware what you do, for, if you strike, you will strike not one, but both.''
Then they fretted and chafed; for, though shod in steel,
529
Their war-tread stops at the shore,
While the Old Land's breath is the breath of the gale,
And its music the wave-wind's roar.
Then they hated the Young Land's youth and strength, but they hated the Old
Land more.
Now the Old Land, in turn, for Freedom's Cause
Speeds her sons to the Southern zone,
They snarl, ``Let us clip the Lion's claws,
The Lion that stands alone;
And harry her lair, and spear her cubs, and sit on the Lion's throne.''
And the Young Land laughs: ``With her foamsteeds fleet,
I guess she's a match for you all.
She hath saddled the sea, and more firm her seat
Than yours, that would ride for a fall,
If you put all your fighting force afield, and charged at her watery wall.
``But if ever, hemmed in by a world of foes,
Her sinews were sorely tried,
By the self-same blood in our veins that flows,
You would find me at her side,
So long as she strikes for the Cause for which her sons and my sons have died.''
And thus let it be until wrong shall end,
This bond strong as lovers' troth,
'Twixt Old Land and Young Land, to defend
Man's freedom and freedom's growth,
So if any should band against either now, they must meet, not one, but both!
~ Alfred Austin,
221:NOW this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep.

The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a Hunter — go forth and get food of thine own.

Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear.
And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair.

When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail.

When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war.

The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home,
Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come.

The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain,
The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again.

If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay,
Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away.

Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!

If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride;
Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide.

The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies.

The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will;
But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill.

Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same.

Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same.

Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own:
He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone.

Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law.

Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey! ~ Rudyard Kipling,
222:To Mrs. Goodchild
The night-wind's shriek is pitiless and hollow,
The boding bat flits by on sullen wing,
And I sit desolate, like that 'one swallow'
Who found (with horror) that he'd not brought spring:
Lonely as he who erst with venturous thumb
Drew from its pie-y lair the solitary plum.
And to my gaze the phantoms of the Past,
The cherished fictions of my boyhood, rise:
I see Red Ridinghood observe, aghast,
The fixed expression of her grandam's eyes;
I hear the fiendish chattering and chuckling
Which those misguided fowls raised at the Ugly Duckling.
The House that Jack built--and the Malt that lay
Within the House--the Rat that ate the Malt The Cat, that in that sanguinary way
Punished the poor thing for its venial fault The Worrier-Dog--the Cow with Crumpled horn And then--ah yes! and then--the Maiden all forlorn!
O Mrs. Gurton--(may I call thee Gammer?)
Thou more than mother to my infant mind!
I loved thee better than I loved my grammar I used to wonder why the Mice were blind,
And who was gardener to Mistress Mary,
And what--I don't know still--was meant by 'quite contrary'?
'Tota contraria,' an 'Arundo Cami'
Has phrased it--which is possibly explicit,
Ingenious certainly--but all the same I
Still ask, when coming on the word, 'What is it?'
There were more things in Mrs. Gurton's eye,
Mayhap, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
No doubt the Editor of 'Notes and Queries'
Or 'Things not generally known' could tell
That word's real force--my only lurking fear is
That the great Gammer 'didna ken hersel':
63
(I've precedent, yet feel I owe apology
For passing in this way to Scottish phraseology).
Alas, dear Madam, I must ask your pardon
For making this unwarranted digression,
Starting (I think) from Mistress Mary's garden:And beg to send, with every expression
Of personal esteem, a Book of Rhymes,
For Master G. to read at miscellaneous times.
There is a youth, who keeps a 'crumpled Horn,'
(Living next me, upon the selfsame story,)
And ever, 'twixt the midnight and the morn,
He solaces his soul with Annie Laurie.
The tune is good; the habit p'raps romantic;
But tending, if pursued, to drive one's neighbours frantic.
And now,--at this unprecedented hour,
When the young Dawn is 'trampling out the stars,' I hear that youth--with more than usual power
And pathos--struggling with the first few bars.
And I do think the amateur cornopean
Should be put down by law--but that's perhaps Utopian.
Who knows what 'things unknown' I might have 'bodied
Forth,' if not checked by that absurd Too-too?
But don't I know that when my friend has plodded
Through the first verse, the second will ensue?
Considering which, dear Madam, I will merely
Send the aforesaid book--and am yours most sincerely.
~ Charles Stuart Calverley,
223:The Tin Bank
Speaking of banks, I'm bound to say
That a bank of tin is far the best,
And I know of one that has stood for years
In a pleasant home away out west.
It has stood for years on the mantelpiece
Between the clock and the Wedgwood plate-A wonderful bank, as you'll concede
When you've heard the things I'll now relate.
This bank was made of McKinley tin,
Well soldered up at sides and back;
But it didn't resemble tin at all,
For they'd painted it over an iron black.
And that it really was a bank
'Twas an easy thing to see and say,
For above the door in gorgeous red
Appeared the letters B-A-N-K!
The bank had been so well devised
And wrought so cunningly that when
You put your money in at the hole
It couldn't get out of that hole again!
Somewhere about that stanch, snug thing
A secret spring was hid away,
But _where_ it was or _how it_ worked-Excuse me, please, but I will not say.
Thither, with dimpled cheeks aglow,
Came pretty children oftentimes,
And, standing up on stool or chair,
Put in their divers pence and dimes.
Once Uncle Hank came home from town
After a cycle of grand events,
And put in a round, blue, ivory thing,
He said was good for 50 cents!
The bank went clinkety-clinkety-clink,
And larger grew the precious sum
Which grandma said she hoped would prove
377
A gracious boon to heathendom!
But there were those--I call no names-Who did not fancy any plan
That did not in some wise involve
The candy and banana man.
Listen; once when the wind went 'Yooooooo!'
And the raven croaked in the tangled tarn-When, with a wail, the screech-owl flew
Out of her lair in the haunted barn-There came three burglars down the road-Three burglars skilled in arts of sin,
And they cried: 'What's this? Aha! Oho!'
And straightway tackled the bank of tin.
They burgled from half-past ten p.m.,
Till the village bell struck four o'clock;
They hunted and searched and guessed and tried-But the little tin bank would not unlock!
They couldn't discover the secret spring!
So, when the barn-yard rooster crowed,
They up with their tools and stole away
With the bitter remark that they'd be blowed!
Next morning came a sweet-faced child
And reached her dimpled hand to take
A nickel to send to the heathen poor
And a nickel to spend for her stomach's sake.
She pressed the hidden secret spring,
And lo! the bank flew open then
With a cheery creak that seemed to say:
'I'm glad to see you; come again!'
If you were I, and if I were you,
What would we keep our money in?
In a downtown bank of British steel,
Or an at-home bank of McKinley tin?
Some want silver and some want gold,
But the little tin bank that wants the two
And is run on the double standard plan-Why, that is the bank for me and you!
378
~ Eugene Field,
224:The Riders Of The Plains
Who is it lacks the knowledge? Who are the curs that dare
To whine and sneer that they do not fear the whelps in the Lion's lair?
But we of the North will answer, while life in the North remains,
Let the curs beware lest the whelps they dare are the Riders of the Plains;
For these are the kind whose muscle makes the power of the Lion's jaw,
And they keep the peace of our people and the honour of British law.
A woman has painted a picture,--'tis a neat little bit of art
The critics aver, and it roused up for her the love of the big British heart.
'Tis a sketch of an English bulldog that tigers would scarce attack,
And round and about and beneath him is painted the Union Jack.
With its blaze of colour, and courage, its daring in every fold,
And underneath is the title, "What we have we'll hold."
'Tis a picture plain as a mirror, but the reflex it contains
Is the counterpart of the life and heart of the Riders of the Plains;
For like to that flag and that motto, and the power of that bulldog's jaw,
They keep the peace of our people and the honour of British law.
These are the fearless fighters, whose life in the open lies,
Who never fail on the prairie trail 'neath the Territorial skies,
Who have laughed in the face of the bullets and the edge of the rebels' steel,
Who have set their ban on the lawless man with his crime beneath their heel;
These are the men who battle the blizzards, the suns, the rains,
These are the famed that the North has named the "Riders of the Plains,"
And theirs is the might and the meaning and the strength of the bulldog's jaw,
While they keep the peace of the people and the honour of British law.
These are the men of action, who need not the world's renown,
For their valour is known to England's throne as a gem in the British crown;
These are the men who face the front, whose courage the world may scan,
The men who are feared by the felon, but are loved by the honest man;
These are the marrow, the pith, the cream, the best that the blood contains,
Who have cast their days in the valiant ways of the Riders of the Plains;
And theirs is the kind whose muscle makes the power of old England's jaw,
And they keep the peace of her people and the honour of British law.
Then down with the cur that questions,--let him slink to his craven den,-For he daren't deny our hot reply as to "who are our mounted men."
He shall honour them east and westward, he shall honour them south and north,
113
He shall bare his head to that coat of red wherever that red rides forth.
'Tis well that he knows the fibre that the great North-West contains,
The North-West pride in her men that ride on the Territorial plains,-For of such as these are the muscles and the teeth in the Lion's jaw,
And they keep the peace of our people and the honour of British law.
~ Emily Pauline Johnson,
225:A More Ancient Mariner
The swarthy bee is a buccaneer,
A burly velveted rover,
Who loves the booming wind in his ear
As he sails the seas of clover.
A waif of the goblin pirate crew,
With not a soul to deplore him,
He steers for the open verge of blue
With the filmy world before him.
His flimsy sails abroad on the wind
Are shivered with fairy thunder;
On a line that sings to the light of his wings
He makes for the lands of wonder.
He harries the ports of Hollyhocks,
And levies on poor Sweetbriar;
He drinks the whitest wine of Phlox,
And the Rose is his desire.
He hangs in the Willows a night and a day;
He rifles the Buckwheat patches;
Then battens his store of pelf galore
Under the taughtest hatches.
He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach,
Inveigles Daffodilly,
And then like a tramp abandons each
For the gorgeous Canada Lily.
There's not a soul in the garden world
But wishes the day were shorter,
When Mariner B. puts out to sea
With the wind in the proper quarter.
Or, so they say! But I have my doubts;
For the flowers are only human,
And the valor and gold of a vagrant bold
Were always dear to woman.
11
He dares to boast, along the coast,
The beauty of Highland Heather,How he and she, with night on the sea,
Lay out on the hills together.
He pilfers every port of the wind,
From April to golden autumn;
But the theiving ways of his mortal days
Are those his mother taught him.
His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed;
He prospers after his kind,
And follows an instinct compass-sure,
The philosophers call blind.
And that is why, when he comes to die,
He'll have an earlier sentence
Than someone I know who thinks just so,
And then leaves room for repentance.
He never could box the compass round;
He doesn't know port from starboard;
But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits,
Where the choicest goods are harbored.
He never could see the Rule of Three,
But he knows the rule of thumb
Better than Euclid's, better than yours,
Or the teachers' yet to come.
He knows the smell of the hydromel
As if two and two were five;
And hides it away for a year and a day
In his own hexagonal hive.
Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone,
Booms the old vagrant hummer,
With only his whim to pilot him
Throught the splendid vast of summer.
He steers and steers on the slant of the gale,
12
Like the fiend or Vanderdecken;
And there's never an unknown course to sail
But his crazy log can reckon.
He drones along with his rough sea-song
And the throat of a salty tar,
This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair
By the light of a yellow star.
He looks like a gentleman, lives like a lord,
And makes like a Trojan hero;
Then loafs all winter upon his hoard,
With the mercury at zero.
~ Bliss William Carman,
226:The Law of the Jungle
NOW this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep.

The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a Hunter — go forth and get food of thine own.

Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear.
And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair.

When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail.

When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war.

The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home,
Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come.

The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain,
The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again.

If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay,
Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away.

Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!

If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride;
Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide.

The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies.

The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will;
But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill.

Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same.

Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same.

Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own:
He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone.

Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law.

Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey! ~ Rudyard Kipling,
227:Plaint Of The Missouri 'Coon In The Berlin Zoological
Gardens
Friend, by the way you hump yourself you're from the States, I know,
And born in old Mizzourah, where the 'coons in plenty grow;
I, too, am a native of that clime, but harsh, relentless fate
Has doomed me to an exile far from that noble state,
And I, who used to climb around and swing from tree to tree,
Now lead a life of ignominious ease, as you can see.
Have pity, O compatriot mine! and bide a season near
While I unfurl a dismal tale to catch your friendly ear.
My pedigree is noble--they used my grandsire's skin
To piece a coat for Patterson to warm himself within-Tom Patterson of Denver; no ermine can compare
With the grizzled robe that democratic statesman loves to wear!
Of such a grandsire I have come, and in the County Cole,
All up an ancient cottonwood, our family had its hole-We envied not the liveried pomp nor proud estate of kings
As we hustled around from day to day in search of bugs and things.
And when the darkness fell around, a mocking bird was nigh,
Inviting pleasant, soothing dreams with his sweet lullaby;
And sometimes came the yellow dog to brag around all night
That nary 'coon could wollop him in a stand-up barrel fight;
We simply smiled and let him howl, for all Mizzourians know
That ary 'coon can beat a dog if the 'coon gets half a show!
But we'd nestle close and shiver when the mellow moon had ris'n
And the hungry nigger sought our lair in hopes to make us his'n!
Raised as I was, it's hardly strange I pine for those old days-I cannot get acclimated or used to German ways;
The victuals that they give me here may all be very fine
For vulgar, common palates, but they will not do for mine!
The 'coon that's been used to stanch democratic cheer
Will not put up with onion tarts and sausage steeped in beer!
No; let the rest, for meat and drink, accede to slavish terms,
But send _me_ back from whence I came and let me grub for worms!
They come (these gaping Teutons do) on Sunday afternoons
256
And wonder what I am--alas! there are no German 'coons!
For, if there were, I might still swing at home from tree to tree,
A symbol of democracy that's woolly, blythe and free.
And yet for what my captors are I would not change my lot,
For _I_ have tasted liberty--these others, _they_ have not!
So, even caged, the democratic 'coon more glory feels
Than the conscript German puppets with their swords about their heels!
Well, give my love to Crittenden, to Clardy and O'Neill,
To Jasper Burke and Colonel Jones, and tell 'em how I feel;
My compliments to Cockrill, Munford, Switzler, Hasbrook, Vest,
Bill Nelson, J. West Goodwin, Jedge Broadhead and the rest;
Bid them be steadfast in the faith and pay no heed at all
To Joe McCullagh's badinage or Chauncy Filley's gall;
And urge them to retaliate for what I'm suffering here
By cinching all the alien class that wants its Sunday beer.
~ Eugene Field,
228:Episode 34
THE fall of his lord he was fain to requite
in after days; and to Eadgils he proved
friend to the friendless, and forces sent
over the sea to the son of Ohtere,
weapons and warriors: well repaid he
those care-paths cold when the king he slew.
Thus safe through struggles the son of Ecgtheow
had passed a plenty, through perils dire,
with daring deeds, till this day was come
that doomed him now with the dragon to strive.
With comrades eleven the lord of Geats
swollen in rage went seeking the dragon.
He had heard whence all the harm arose
and the killing of clansmen; that cup of price
on the lap of the lord had been laid by the finder.
In the throng was this one thirteenth man,
starter of all the strife and ill,
care-laden captive; cringing thence
forced and reluctant, he led them on
till he came in ken of that cavern-hall,
the barrow delved near billowy surges,
flood of ocean. Within 'twas full
of wire-gold and jewels; a jealous warden,
warrior trusty, the treasures held,
lurked in his lair. Not light the task
of entrance for any of earth-born men!
Sat on the headland the hero king,
spake words of hail to his hearth-companions,
gold-friend of Geats. All gloomy his soul,
wavering, death-bound. Wyrd full nigh
stood ready to greet the gray-haired man,
to seize his soul-hoard, sunder apart
life and body. Not long would be
the warrior's spirit enwound with flesh.
Beowulf spake, the bairn of Ecgtheow: -"Through store of struggles I strove in youth,
mighty feuds; I mind them all.
I was seven years old when the sovran of rings,
friend-of-his-folk, from my father took me,
207
had me, and held me, Hrethel the king,
with food and fee, faithful in kinship.
Ne'er, while I lived there, he loathlier found me,
bairn in the burg, than his birthright sons,
Herebeald and Haethcyn and Hygelac mine.
For the eldest of these, by unmeet chance,
by kinsman's deed, was the death-bed strewn,
when Haethcyn killed him with horny bow,
his own dear liege laid low with an arrow,
missed the mark and his mate shot down,
one brother the other, with bloody shaft.
A feeless fight, and a fearful sin,
horror to Hrethel; yet, hard as it was,
unavenged must the atheling die!
Too awful it is for an aged man
to bide and bear, that his bairn so young
rides on the gallows. A rime he makes,
sorrow-song for his son there hanging
as rapture of ravens; no rescue now
can come from the old, disabled man!
Still is he minded, as morning breaks,
of the heir gone elsewhere; another he hopes not
he will bide to see his burg within
as ward for his wealth, now the one has found
doom of death that the deed incurred.
Forlorn he looks on the lodge of his son,
wine-hall waste and wind-swept chambers
reft of revel. The rider sleepeth,
the hero, far-hidden; no harp resounds,
in the courts no wassail, as once was heard.
~ Anonymous Olde English,
229:Beowulf (Episode 02)
WENT he forth to find at fall of night
that haughty house, and heed wherever
the Ring-Danes, outrevelled, to rest had gone.
Found within it the atheling band
asleep after feasting and fearless of sorrow,
of human hardship. Unhallowed wight,
grim and greedy, he grasped betimes,
wrathful, reckless, from resting-places,
thirty of the thanes, and thence he rushed
fain of his fell spoil, faring homeward,
laden with slaughter, his lair to seek.
Then at the dawning, as day was breaking,
the might of Grendel to men was known;
then after wassail was wail uplifted,
loud moan in the morn. The mighty chief,
atheling excellent, unblithe sat,
labored in woe for the loss of his thanes,
when once had been traced the trail of the fiend,
spirit accurst: too cruel that sorrow,
too long, too loathsome. Not late the respite;
with night returning, anew began
ruthless murder; he recked no whit,
firm in his guilt, of the feud and crime.
They were easy to find who elsewhere sought
in room remote their rest at night,
bed in the bowers, when that bale was shown,
was seen in sooth, with surest token, -the hall-thane's hate. Such held themselves
far and fast who the fiend outran!
Thus ruled unrighteous and raged his fill
one against all; until empty stood
that lordly building, and long it bode so.
Twelve years' tide the trouble he bore,
sovran of Scyldings, sorrows in plenty,
boundless cares. There came unhidden
tidings true to the tribes of men,
in sorrowful songs, how ceaselessly Grendel
harassed Hrothgar, what hate he bore him,
what murder and massacre, many a year,
86
feud unfading, -- refused consent
to deal with any of Daneland's earls,
make pact of peace, or compound for gold:
still less did the wise men ween to get
great fee for the feud from his fiendish hands.
But the evil one ambushed old and young
death-shadow dark, and dogged them still,
lured, or lurked in the livelong night
of misty moorlands: men may say not
where the haunts of these Hell-Runes be.
Such heaping of horrors the hater of men,
lonely roamer, wrought unceasing,
harassings heavy. O'er Heorot he lorded,
gold-bright hall, in gloomy nights;
and ne'er could the prince approach his throne,
-- 'twas judgment of God, -- or have joy in his hall.
Sore was the sorrow to Scyldings'-friend,
heart-rending misery. Many nobles
sat assembled, and searched out counsel
how it were best for bold-hearted men
against harassing terror to try their hand.
Whiles they vowed in their heathen fanes
altar-offerings, asked with words
that the slayer-of-souls would succor give them
for the pain of their people. Their practice this,
their heathen hope; 'twas Hell they thought of
in mood of their mind. Almighty they knew not,
Doomsman of Deeds and dreadful Lord,
nor Heaven's-Helmet heeded they ever,
Wielder-of-Wonder. -- Woe for that man
who in harm and hatred hales his soul
to fiery embraces; -- nor favor nor change
awaits he ever. But well for him
that after death-day may draw to his Lord,
and friendship find in the Father's arms!
~ Anonymous Olde English,
230:The Mountains
The Mountains
What ails you, Ocean, that nor near nor far,
Find you a bourne to ease your burdened breast,
But throughout time inexorable are
Never at rest?
With foaming mouth and fluttering crest you leap
Impatiently towards never-shifting beach,
Then wheel, and hurry to some distant deep
Beyond your reach.
Nor golden sands nor sheltering combes can slake
Your fretful longing for some shore unknown,
And through your shrineless pilgrimage you make
Unending moan.
The Sea
Nimbused by sunlight or enwreathed in snow,
Lonely you stand, and loftily you soar,
While I immeasurably ebb and flow
From shore to shore.
I see the palm-dates mellowing in the sun,
I hear the snow-fed torrents bound and brawl,
And if, where'er I range, content with none,
I know them all.
Inward the ice-floes where the walrus whet
Their pendent tusks, I sweep and swirl my way,
Or dally where 'neath dome and minaret
The dolphins play.
Beneath or bountiful or bitter sky
If I myself can never be at rest,
I lullaby the winds until they lie
Husht on my breast.
The Mountains
Till they awake, and from your feeble lap
526
Whirl through the air, and in their rage rejoice:
Then you with levin-bolt and thunderclap
Mingle your voice.
But I their vain insanity survey,
And on my silent brow I let them beat.
What is there it is worth my while to say
To storm or sleet?
I hear the thunder rumbling through the rain,
I feel the lightning flicker round my head;
The blizzards buffet me, but I remain
Dumb as the dead!
Urged by the goad of stern taskmaster Time,
The Seasons come and go, the years roll round.
I watch them from my solitude sublime,
Uttering no sound.
For hate and love I have nor love nor hate;
To be alone is not to be forlorn:
The only armour against pitiless Fate
Is pitying scorn.
The Sea
Yet do I sometimes seem to hear afar
A tumult in your dark ravines as though
You weary of your loneliness, and are
Wrestling with woe.
The Mountains
When the white wolves of Winter to their lair
Throng, and yet deep and deeper sleeps the snow,
I loose the avalanche, to shake and scare
The vale below.
And, when its sprouting hopes and brimming glee
Are bound and buried in a death-white shroud,
Then at the thought that I entombed can be,
I laugh aloud.
The Sea
527
I grieve with grief, at anguish I repine,
I dirge the keel the hurricane destroys:
For all the sorrows of the world are mine,
And all its joys.
And when there is no space 'twixt surf and sky,
And all the universe seems cloud and wave,
It is the immitigable wind, not I,
That scoops men's grave.
I wonder how the blast can hear them moan
For pity, yet keep deaf unto their prayers.
I have too many sorrows of my own,
Not to feel theirs.
And when the season of sweet joy comes round,
My bosom to their rapture heaves and swells;
And closer still I creep to catch the sound
Of wedding bells.
I see the children digging in the sand,
I hear the sinewy mariners carouse,
And lovers in the moonlight, hand-in-hand,
Whispering their vows.
You in your lofty loneliness disdain
Suffering below and comfort from above.
The sweetest thing in all the world is pain
Consoled by Love.
~ Alfred Austin,
231:CHAPTER II—THE LOWEST DEPTHS There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined; each one is for himself. The I in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles, and gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf. The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress; they are ignorant both of the idea and of the word; they take no thought for anything but the satisfaction of their individual desires. They are almost unconscious, and there exists within them a sort of terrible obliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance and misery. They have a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger. From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation, dizzy creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lower level is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty—that is the point of departure; to be Satan—that is the point reached. From that vault Lacenaire emerges. We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments of the upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary, and philosophical excavation. There, as we have just said, all is pure, noble, dignified, honest. There, assuredly, one might be misled; but error is worthy of veneration there, so thoroughly does it imply heroism. The work there effected, taken as a whole has a name: Progress. The moment has now come when we must take a look at other depths, hideous depths. There exists beneath society, we insist upon this point, and there will exist, until that day when ignorance shall be dissipated, the great cavern of evil. This cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is hatred, without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers; its dagger has never cut a pen. Its blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to Schinderhannes. This cavern has for its object the destruction of everything. Of everything. Including the upper superior mines, which it execrates. It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming, the actual social order; it undermines philosophy, it undermines human thought, it undermines civilization, it undermines revolution, it undermines progress. Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder, assassination. It is darkness, and it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance. All the others, those above it, have but one object—to suppress it. It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend, with all their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of the real, as well as by their contemplation of the absolute. Destroy the cavern Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime. Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written. The only social peril is darkness. Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination. The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with the human paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possession of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil. ~ Anonymous,
232:Lex Talionis
To beasts of the field, and fowls of the air,
And fish of the sea alike,
Man's hand is ever slow to spare,
And ever ready to strike ;
With a license to kill, and to work our will,
In season by land or by water,
To our heart's content we may take our fill
Of the joys we derive from slaughter.
And few, I reckon, our rights gainsay
In this world of rapine and wrong,
Where the weak and the timid seem lawful prey
For the resolute and the strong ;
Fins, furs, and feathers, they are and were
For our use and pleasure created,
We can shoot, and hunt, and angle, and snare,
Unquestioned, if not unsated.
I have neither the will nor the right to blame,
Yet to many (though not to all)
The sweets of destruction are somewhat tame,
When no personal risks befall ;
Our victims suffer but little, we trust
(Mere guesswork and blank enigma),
If they suffer at all, our field sports must
Of cruelty bear the stigma.
Shall we, hard-hearted to their fates, thus
Soft-hearted shrink from our own,
When the measure we mete is meted to us,
When we reap as we've always sown ?
Shall we who for pastime have squander'd life,
Who are styled 'the Lords of Creation',
Recoil from our chance of more equal strife,
And our risk of retaliation ?
Though short is the dying pheasant's pain,
Scant pity you well may spare,
And the partridge slain is a triumph vain,
202
And a risk that a child may dare ;
You feel, when you lower the smoking gun,
Some ruth for yon slaughtered hare,
And hit or miss, in your selfish fun
The widgeon has little share.
But you've no remorseful qualms or pangs
When you kneel by the grizzly's lair,
On that conical bullet your sole chance hangs,
'Tis the weak one's advantage fair,
And the shaggy giant's terrific fangs
Are ready to crush and tear
Should you miss, one vision of home and friends,
Five words of unfinish'd prayer,
Three savage knife stabs, so your sport ends
In the worrying grapple that chokes and rends ;—
Rare sport, at least, for the bear.
Short shrift ! sharp fate ! dark doom to dree !
Hard struggle, though quickly ending !
At home or abroad, by land or sea,
In peace or war, sore trials must be,
And worse may happen to you or to me,
For none are secure, and none can flee
From a destiny impending.
Ah ! friend, did you think when the London sank.
Timber by timber, plank by plank,
In a cauldron of boiling surf,
How alone at least, with never a flinch,
In a rally contested inch by inch,
You could fall on the trampled turf ?
When a livid wall of the sea leaps high,
In the lurid light of a leaden sky,
And bursts on the quarter railing ;
While the howling storm-gust seems to vie
With the crash of splintered beams that fly,
Yet fails too oft to smother the cry
Of women and children wailing ?
Then those who listen in sinking ships
To despairing sobs from their lov'd one's lips,
203
Where the green wave thus slowly shatters,
May long for the crescent-claw that rips
The bison into ribbons and strips,
And tears the strong elk to tatters.
Oh ! sunderings short of body and breath !
Oh ! 'battle and murder and sudden death !'
Against which the Liturgy preaches ;
By the will of a just, yet a merciful Power,
Less bitter, perchance, in the mystic hour,
When the wings of the shadowy angel lower,
Than man in his blindness teaches !
~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,
233:Episode 33
THEN the baleful fiend its fire belched out,
and bright homes burned. The blaze stood high
all landsfolk frighting. No living thing
would that loathly one leave as aloft it flew.
Wide was the dragon's warring seen,
its fiendish fury far and near,
as the grim destroyer those Geatish people
hated and hounded. To hidden lair,
to its hoard it hastened at hint of dawn.
Folk of the land it had lapped in flame,
with bale and brand. In its barrow it trusted,
its battling and bulwarks: that boast was vain!
To Beowulf then the bale was told
quickly and truly: the king's own home,
of buildings the best, in brand-waves melted,
that gift-throne of Geats. To the good old man
sad in heart, 'twas heaviest sorrow.
The sage assumed that his sovran God
he had angered, breaking ancient law,
and embittered the Lord. His breast within
with black thoughts welled, as his wont was never.
The folk's own fastness that fiery dragon
with flame had destroyed, and the stronghold all
washed by waves; but the warlike king,
prince of the Weders, plotted vengeance.
Warriors'-bulwark, he bade them work
all of iron -- the earl's commander -a war-shield wondrous: well he knew
that forest-wood against fire were worthless,
linden could aid not. -- Atheling brave,
he was fated to finish this fleeting life,
his days on earth, and the dragon with him,
though long it had watched o'er the wealth of thehoard! -Shame he reckoned it, sharer-of-rings,
to follow the flyer-afar with a host,
a broad-flung band; nor the battle feared he,
nor deemed he dreadful the dragon's warring,
its vigor and valor: ventures desperate
204
he had passed a-plenty, and perils of war,
contest-crash, since, conqueror proud,
Hrothgar's hall he had wholly purged,
and in grapple had killed the kin of Grendel,
loathsome breed! Not least was that
of hand-to-hand fights where Hygelac fell,
when the ruler of Geats in rush of battle,
lord of his folk, in the Frisian land,
son of Hrethel, by sword-draughts died,
by brands down-beaten. Thence Beowulf fled
through strength of himself and his swimming power,
though alone, and his arms were laden with thirty
coats of mail, when he came to the sea!
Nor yet might Hetwaras haughtily boast
their craft of contest, who carried against him
shields to the fight: but few escaped
from strife with the hero to seek their homes!
Then swam over ocean Ecgtheow's son
lonely and sorrowful, seeking his land,
where Hygd made him offer of hoard and realm,
rings and royal-seat, reckoning naught
the strength of her son to save their kingdom
from hostile hordes, after Hygelac's death.
No sooner for this could the stricken ones
in any wise move that atheling's mind
over young Heardred's head as lord
and ruler of all the realm to be:
yet the hero upheld him with helpful words,
aided in honor, till, older grown,
he wielded the Weder-Geats. -- Wandering exiles
sought him o'er seas, the sons of Ohtere,
who had spurned the sway of the Scylfings'-helmet,
the bravest and best that broke the rings,
in Swedish land, of the sea-kings' line,
haughty hero. Hence Heardred's end.
For shelter he gave them, sword-death came,
the blade's fell blow, to bairn of Hygelac;
but the son of Ongentheow sought again
house and home when Heardred fell,
leaving Beowulf lord of Geats
and gift-seat's master. -- A good king he!
205
~ Anonymous Olde English,
234:Religion, then, is far from "useless." It humanizes violence; it protects man from his own violence by taking it out of his hands, transforming it into a transcendent and ever-present danger to be kept in check by the appropriate rites appropriately observed and by a modest and prudent demeanor. Religious misinterpretation is a truly constructive force, for it purges man of the suspicions that would poison his existence if he were to remain conscious of the crisis as it actually took place.

To think religiously is to envision the city's destiny in terms of that violence whose mastery over man increases as man believes he has gained mastery over it. To think religiously (in the primitive sense) is to see violence as something superhuman, to be kept always at a distance and ultimately renounced. When the fearful adoration of this power begins to diminish and all distinctions begin to disappear, the ritual sacrifices lose their force; their potency is not longer recognized by the entire community. Each member tries to correct the situation individually, and none succeeds. The withering away of the transcendental influence means that there is no longer the slightest difference between a desire to save the city and unbridled ambition, between genuine piety and the desire to claim divine status for oneself. Everyone looks on a rival enterprise as evidence of blasphemous designs. Men set to quarreling about the gods, and their skepticism leads to a new sacrificial crisis that will appear - retrospectively, in the light of a new manifestation of unanimous violence - as a new act of divine intervention and divine revenge.

Men would not be able to shake loose the violence between them, to make of it a separate entity both sovereign and redemptory, without the surrogate victim. Also, violence itself offers a sort of respite, the fresh beginning of a cycle of ritual after a cycle of violence. Violence will come to an end only after it has had the last word and that word has been accepted as divine. The meaning of this word must remain hidden, the mechanism of unanimity remain concealed. For religion protects man as long as its ultimate foundations are not revealed. To drive the monster from its secret lair is to risk loosing it on mankind. To remove men's ignorance is only to risk exposing them to an even greater peril. The only barrier against human violence is raised on misconception. In fact, the sacrificial crisis is simply another form of that knowledge which grows grater as the reciprocal violence grows more intense but which never leads to the whole truth. It is the knowledge of violence, along with the violence itself, that the act of expulsion succeeds in shunting outside the realm of consciousness. From the very fact that it belies the overt mythological messages, tragic drama opens a vast abyss before the poet; but he always draws back at the last moment. He is exposed to a form of hubris more dangerous than any contracted by his characters; it has to do with a truth that is felt to be infinitely destructive, even if it is not fully understood - and its destructiveness is as obvious to ancient religious thought as it is to modern philosophers. Thus we are dealing with an interdiction that still applies to ourselves and that modern thought has not yet invalidated. The fact that this secret has been subjected to exceptional pressure in the play [Bacchae] must prompt the following lines:

May our thoughts never aspire to anything higher than laws! What does it cost man to acknowledge the full sovereignty of the gods? That which has always been held as true owes its strength to Nature. ~ Ren Girard,
235:Beowulf (Episode 06)
HROTHGAR answered, helmet of Scyldings: -"I knew him of yore in his youthful days;
his aged father was Ecgtheow named,
to whom, at home, gave Hrethel the Geat
his only daughter. Their offspring bold
fares hither to seek the steadfast friend.
And seamen, too, have said me this, -who carried my gifts to the Geatish court,
thither for thanks, -- he has thirty men's
heft of grasp in the gripe of his hand,
the bold-in-battle. Blessed God
out of his mercy this man hath sent
to Danes of the West, as I ween indeed,
against horror of Grendel. I hope to give
the good youth gold for his gallant thought.
Be thou in haste, and bid them hither,
clan of kinsmen, to come before me;
and add this word, -- they are welcome guests
to folk of the Danes."
[To the door of the hall
Wulfgar went] and the word declared: -"To you this message my master sends,
East-Danes' king, that your kin he knows,
hardy heroes, and hails you all
welcome hither o'er waves of the sea!
Ye may wend your way in war-attire,
and under helmets Hrothgar greet;
but let here the battle-shields bide your parley,
and wooden war-shafts wait its end."
Uprose the mighty one, ringed with his men,
brave band of thanes: some bode without,
battle-gear guarding, as bade the chief.
Then hied that troop where the herald led them,
under Heorot's roof: [the hero strode,]
hardy 'neath helm, till the hearth he neared.
Beowulf spake, -- his breastplate gleamed,
war-net woven by wit of the smith: -"Thou Hrothgar, hail! Hygelac's I,
kinsman and follower. Fame a plenty
94
have I gained in youth! These Grendel-deeds
I heard in my home-land heralded clear.
Seafarers say how stands this hall,
of buildings best, for your band of thanes
empty and idle, when evening sun
in the harbor of heaven is hidden away.
So my vassals advised me well, -brave and wise, the best of men, -O sovran Hrothgar, to seek thee here,
for my nerve and my might they knew full well.
Themselves had seen me from slaughter come
blood-flecked from foes, where five I bound,
and that wild brood worsted. I' the waves I slew
nicors by night, in need and peril
avenging the Weders, whose woe they sought, -crushing the grim ones. Grendel now,
monster cruel, be mine to quell
in single battle! So, from thee,
thou sovran of the Shining-Danes,
Scyldings'-bulwark, a boon I seek, -and, Friend-of-the-folk, refuse it not,
O Warriors'-shield, now I've wandered far, -that I alone with my liegemen here,
this hardy band, may Heorot purge!
More I hear, that the monster dire,
in his wanton mood, of weapons recks not;
hence shall I scorn -- so Hygelac stay,
king of my kindred, kind to me! -brand or buckler to bear in the fight,
gold-colored targe: but with gripe alone
must I front the fiend and fight for life,
foe against foe. Then faith be his
in the doom of the Lord whom death shall take.
Fain, I ween, if the fight he win,
in this hall of gold my Geatish band
will he fearless eat, -- as oft before, -my noblest thanes. Nor need'st thou then
to hide my head; for his shall I be,
dyed in gore, if death must take me;
and my blood-covered body he'll bear as prey,
ruthless devour it, the roamer-lonely,
with my life-blood redden his lair in the fen:
95
no further for me need'st food prepare!
To Hygelac send, if Hild should take me,
best of war-weeds, warding my breast,
armor excellent, heirloom of Hrethel
and work of Wayland. Fares Wyrd as she must."
~ Anonymous Olde English,
236:To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sereThe leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of WeirIt was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my SoulOf cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
There were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that rollAs the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the poleThat groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sereOur memories were treacherous and sereFor we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber(Though once we had journeyed down here),
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent,
And star-dials pointed to mornAs the star-dials hinted of mornAt the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn-
105
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
And I said- 'She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighsShe revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion,
To point us the path to the skiesTo the Lethean peace of the skiesCome up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyesCome up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes.'
But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said- 'Sadly this star I mistrustHer pallor I strangely mistrust:Oh, hasten!- oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly!- let us fly!- for we must.'
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dustIn agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dustTill they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
I replied- 'This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendor is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty to-night:See!- it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us arightWe safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night.'
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloomAnd conquered her scruples and gloom;
106
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tombBy the door of a legended tomb;
And I said- 'What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?'
She replied- 'Ulalume- Ulalume'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!'
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sereAs the leaves that were withering and sereAnd I cried- 'It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed- I journeyed down hereThat I brought a dread burden down hereOn this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of AuberThis misty mid region of WeirWell I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.'
~ Edgar Allan Poe,
237:There is one in this tribe too often miserable - a child bereaved of both parents. None cares for this child: she is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten: a hut rarely receives her: the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home. Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades: sadness hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she should die: but she both lives and grows: the green wilderness nurses her, and becomes to her a mother: feeds her on juicy berry, on saccharine root and nut.

There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly: there must be something, too, in its dews, which heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ of pure thought, and purer feeling. Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness.

The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, - bestowed on deer and dove, - has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her tresses: her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy: above those eyes, when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample, - a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or vacant; she haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful: though of what one so untaught can think, it is not easy to divine.


On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone - for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where, - she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station: the oak-roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat: the oak-boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy.

Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death: the wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair.

The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, - in wishing, than hoping, - in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself seemed to herself the centre, - a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed, - a star in an else starless firmament, - which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a guide, or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise? ~ Charlotte Bront,
238:Beowulf (Episode 22)
BEOWULF spake, bairn of Ecgtheow: -"Have mind, thou honored offspring of Healfdene
gold-friend of men, now I go on this quest,
sovran wise, what once was said:
if in thy cause it came that I
should lose my life, thou wouldst loyal bide
to me, though fallen, in father's place!
Be guardian, thou, to this group of my thanes,
my warrior-friends, if War should seize me;
and the goodly gifts thou gavest me,
Hrothgar beloved, to Hygelac send!
Geatland's king may ken by the gold,
Hrethel's son see, when he stares at the treasure,
that I got me a friend for goodness famed,
and joyed while I could in my jewel-bestower.
And let Unferth wield this wondrous sword,
earl far-honored, this heirloom precious,
hard of edge: with Hrunting I
seek doom of glory, or Death shall take me."
After these words the Weder-Geat lord
boldly hastened, biding never
answer at all: the ocean floods
closed o'er the hero. Long while of the day
fled ere he felt the floor of the sea.
Soon found the fiend who the flood-domain
sword-hungry held these hundred winters,
greedy and grim, that some guest from above,
some man, was raiding her monster-realm.
She grasped out for him with grisly claws,
and the warrior seized; yet scathed she not
his body hale; the breastplate hindered,
as she strove to shatter the sark of war,
the linked harness, with loathsome hand.
Then bore this brine-wolf, when bottom she touched,
the lord of rings to the lair she haunted
whiles vainly he strove, though his valor held,
weapon to wield against wondrous monsters
that sore beset him; sea-beasts many
tried with fierce tusks to tear his mail,
131
and swarmed on the stranger. But soon he marked
he was now in some hall, he knew not which,
where water never could work him harm,
nor through the roof could reach him ever
fangs of the flood. Firelight he saw,
beams of a blaze that brightly shone.
Then the warrior was ware of that wolf-of-the-deep,
mere-wife monstrous. For mighty stroke
he swung his blade, and the blow withheld not.
Then sang on her head that seemly blade
its war-song wild. But the warrior found
the light-of-battle was loath to bite,
to harm the heart: its hard edge failed
the noble at need, yet had known of old
strife hand to hand, and had helmets cloven,
doomed men's fighting-gear. First time, this,
for the gleaming blade that its glory fell.
Firm still stood, nor failed in valor,
heedful of high deeds, Hygelac's kinsman;
flung away fretted sword, featly jewelled,
the angry earl; on earth it lay
steel-edged and stiff. His strength he trusted,
hand-gripe of might. So man shall do
whenever in war he weens to earn him
lasting fame, nor fears for his life!
Seized then by shoulder, shrank not from combat,
the Geatish war-prince Grendel's mother.
Flung then the fierce one, filled with wrath,
his deadly foe, that she fell to ground.
Swift on her part she paid him back
with grisly grasp, and grappled with him.
Spent with struggle, stumbled the warrior,
fiercest of fighting-men, fell adown.
On the hall-guest she hurled herself, hent her short sword,
broad and brown-edged, the bairn to avenge,
the sole-born son. -- On his shoulder lay
braided breast-mail, barring death,
withstanding entrance of edge or blade.
Life would have ended for Ecgtheow's son,
under wide earth for that earl of Geats,
had his armor of war not aided him,
battle-net hard, and holy God
132
wielded the victory, wisest Maker.
The Lord of Heaven allowed his cause;
and easily rose the earl erect.
~ Anonymous Olde English,
239:Ulalume
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere Our memories were treacherous and sere, For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year (Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber (Though once we had journey down here),
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent,
And star-dials pointed to morn As the star-dials hinted of morn At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn -
122
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
And I said - "She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies To the Lethean peace of the skies Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."
But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said - "Sadly this star I mistrust Her pallor I strangely mistrust: Oh, hasten! - oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly! - let us fly! - for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
I replied - "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendor is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty to-night! See! - it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright We safely may trust to a gleaming,
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom And conquered her scruples and gloom;
123
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said - "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied - "Ulalume - Ulalume ‘Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried - "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed - I journeyed down here That I brought a dread burden down here!
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber This misty mid region of Weir Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
~ Edgar Allan Poe,
240:Bohémiens En Voyage (Gypsies On The Road)
La tribu prophétique aux prunelles ardentes
Hier s'est mise en route, emportant ses petits
Sur son dos, ou livrant à leurs fiers appétits
Le trésor toujours prêt des mamelles pendantes.
Les hommes vont à pied sous leurs armes luisantes
Le long des chariots où les leurs sont blottis,
Promenant sur le ciel des yeux appesantis
Par le morne regret des chimères absentes.
Du fond de son réduit sablonneux, le grillon,
Les regardant passer, redouble sa chanson;
Cybèle, qui les aime, augmente ses verdures,
Fait couler le rocher et fleurir le désert
Devant ces voyageurs, pour lesquels est ouvert
L'empire familier des ténèbres futures.
Gypsies Traveling
The prophetical tribe, that ardent eyed people,
Set out last night, carrying their children
On their backs, or yielding to those fierce appetites
The ever ready treasure of pendulous breasts.
The men travel on foot with their gleaming weapons
Alongside the wagons where their kin are huddled,
Surveying the heavens with eyes rendered heavy
By a mournful regret for vanished illusions.
The cricket from the depths of his sandy retreat
Watches them as they pass, and louder grows his song;
Cybele, who loves them, increases her verdure,
Makes the desert blossom, water spurt from the rock
Before these travelers for whom is opened wide
The familiar domain of the future's darkness.
127
— Translated by William Aggeler
Gipsies on the Road
The tribe of seers, last night, began its match
With burning eyes, and shouldering its young
To whose ferocious appetites it swung
The wealth of hanging breasts that nought can parch.
The men, their weapons glinting in the rays,
Walk by the convoy where their folks are carted,
Sweeping the far-off skylines with a gaze
Regretful of Chimeras long-departed.
Out of his hole the cricket sees them pass
And sings the louder. Greener grows the grass
Because Cybele loves them, and has made
The barren rock to gush, the sands to flower,
To greet these travellers, before whose power
Familiar futures open realms of shade.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
The Gypsies
They set out yesterday, the tribe of ragged seers
With burning eyes — bearing their little ones in nests
Upon their backs, or giving them, to stop their tears,
The teats of inexhaustible and swarthy breasts.
The men walk shouldering their rifles silently
Beside the hooded wagons with bright tatters hung,
And peer into the sky, as if they hoped to see
Some old mirage that beckoned them when they were young.
No matter where they journey through the meager land,
The cricket will sing louder from his lair of sand,
And Cybele, who loves them, will smile where they advance:
The desert will be fruitful, the arid rock will flow
128
Before the footsteps of these wayfarers, who go
Eternally into the lightless realm of chance.
— Translated by George Dillon
Travelling Bohemians
The prophetic tribe of the ardent eyes
Yesterday they took the road, holding their babies
On their backs, delivering to fierce appetites
The always ready treasure of pendulous breasts.
The men stick their feet out, waving their guns
Alongside the caravan where they tremble together,
Scanning the sky their eyes are weighted down
In mourning for absent chimeras.
At the bottom of his sandy retreat, a cricket
Watched passing, redoubles his song,
Cybele, who loves, adds more flower,
Makes fountains out of rock and blossoms from desert
Opening up before these travelers in a yawn—
A familiar empire, the inscrutable future.
Translated by William A. Sigler
~ Charles Baudelaire,
241:Wolf And Hound
You'll take my tale with a little salt;
But it needs none, nevertheless!
I was foiled completely - fair at fault Disheartened, too, I confess!
At the splitters' tent I had seen the track
Of horse-hoofs fresh on the sward;
And though Darby Lynch and Donovan Jack
(Who could swear through a ten-inch board)
Solemnly swore he had not been there,
I was just as sure they lied;
For to Darby all that is foul was fair,
And Jack for his life was tried.
We had run him for seven miles or more
As hard as our nags could split;
At the start they were all too weary and sore,
And his was quite fresh and fit.
318
Young Marsden's pony had had enough
On the plain where the chase was hot;
We breasted the swell of the Bitterns' bluff,
And Mark couldn't raise a trot.
When the sea like a splendid silver shield
To the south-west suddenly lay,
On the brow of the Beetle the chestnut reeled And I bid good-bye to McCrea.
And I was alone when the mare fell lame
With a pointed flint in her shoe,
On the Stony Flats: I had lost the game! And what was a man to do?
I turned away with a fixed intent
And headed for Hawthorndell:
I could neither eat in the splitters' tent
Nor drink at the splitters' well.
I know that they gloried in my mishap,
319
And I cursed them between my teeth: A blood-red sunset through Brayton's Gap
Flung a lurid fire on the hearth.
Could I reach the Dell? I had little reck,
And with scarce a choice of my own
I threw the reins on Miladi's neck I had freed her foot from the stone.
That season most of the swamps were dry,
And after so hard a burst
In the sultry noon of so hot a sky
She was keen to appease her thirst -
Or by instinct urged, or impelled by Fate
(I care not to solve these things)
Certain it is that she took me straight
To the Warrigal water springs!
I can shut my eyes and recall the ground
As though it were yesterday:
320
With shelf on the low, grey rocks girt round,
The springs in their basin lay.
Woods to the east and wolds to the north
In the sundown suddenly bloomed:
Dead black on a curtain of crimson cloth
Large peaks to the westward loomed.
I led Miladi through weed and sedge,
She leisurely drank her fill:
There was something close to the water's edge And my heart, with one leap, stood still!
For a horse's shoe and a rider's boot
Had left clean prints on the clay:
Someone had watered his beast on foot ''Twas he! - he had gone! - which way?
Then the mouth of the cavern faced me fair
As I turned and fronted the rocks:
So at last I had pressed the wolf to his lair!
321
I had run to his earth the fox!
I thought so! Perhaps he was resting?
Perhaps He was waiting,
watching for me?
I examined all my revolver caps;
I hitched my mare to a tree.
I had sworn to have him, alive or dead!
And to give him a chance was loth:
He knew his life had been forfeited!
He had even heard of my oath!
In my stockinged soles to the shelf I crept I crawled safe into the cave:
All silent! - if he was there he slept Not there - all dark as a grave!....
Through the crack I could hear the leaden hiss!
See the livid face through the flame!
How strange it seemed that a man should miss
322
When his life depends on his aim!
There couldn't have been a better light
For him, nor a worse for me:
We were cooped up - like caged beasts for a fight And dumb as dumb beasts were we!
Flash! flash! - Bang! Bang! - and we blazed away,
And the grey roof reddened and rang!
Flash! flash! - and I felt his bullet flay
The tip of my ear -Flash! bang!
Bang! flash! -and my pistol arm fell broke:
I struck with my left hand then:
-Struck at a corpse through a cloud of smoke!
I had shot him dead in his den.
~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,
242:Spleen (I)
Pluviôse, irrité contre la ville entière,
De son urne à grands flots verse un froid ténébreux
Aux pâles habitants du voisin cimetière
Et la mortalité sur les faubourgs brumeux.
Mon chat sur le carreau cherchant une litière
Agite sans repos son corps maigre et galeux;
L'âme d'un vieux poète erre dans la gouttière
Avec la triste voix d'un fantôme frileux.
Le bourdon se lamente, et la bûche enfumée
Accompagne en fausset la pendule enrhumée
Cependant qu'en un jeu plein de sales parfums,
Héritage fatal d'une vieille hydropique,
Le beau valet de coeur et la dame de pique
Causent sinistrement de leurs amours défunts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
January, irritated with the whole city,

Pours from his urn great waves of gloomy cold

On the pale occupants of the nearby graveyard

And death upon the foggy slums.

My cat seeking a bed on the tiled floor

Shakes his thin, mangy body ceaselessly;

The soul of an old poet wanders in the rain-pipe

With the sad voice of a shivering ghost.

The great bell whines, the smoking log

Accompanies in falsetto the snuffling clock,

While in a deck of cards reeking of filthy scents,

My mortal heritage from some dropsical old woman,

The handsome knave of hearts and the queen of spades

Converse sinisterly of their dead love affair.

424

— Translated by William Aggeler

----------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
The Month of Rains, incensed at life, outpours

Out of her urn, a dark chill, like a penance,

Over the graveyards and their wan, grey tenants

And folk in foggy suburbs out of doors.

My cat seeks out a litter on the ground

Twitching her scrawny body flecked with mange.

The soul of some old poet seems to range

The gutter, with a chill phantasmal sound.

The big bell tolls: damp hearth-logs seem to mock,

Whistling, the sniffle-snuffle of the clock,

While in the play of odours stale with must,

Reminders of a dropsical old crone,

The knave of hearts and queen of spades alone

Darkly discuss a passion turned to dust.

— Translated by Roy Campbell

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Late January
Pluviose, hating all that lives, and loathing me,

Distills his cold and gloomy rain and slops it down

Upon the pallid lodgers in the cemetery

Next door, and on the people shopping in the town.

My cat, for sheer discomfort, waves a sparsely-furred

And shabby tail incessantly on the tiled floor;

And, wandering sadly in the rain-spout, can be heard

The voice of some dead poet who had these rooms before.

425

The log is wet, and smokes; its hissing high lament

Mounts to the bronchial clock on the cracked mantel there;

While (heaven knows whose they were — some dropsical old maid's)

In a soiled pack of cards that reeks of dirty scent,

The handsome jack of hearts and the worn queen of spades

Talk in suggestive tones of their old love-affair.

— Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Spleen
November, vexed with all the capital,

whelms in a death-chill from her gloomy urn

the cold pale dead beneath the graveyard wall,

the death-doomed who in dripping houses yearn.

Grimalkin prowls, a gaunt and scurvy ghoul,

seeking a softer lair for her sojourn;

along the eaves an ancient poet's soul

shivers and wails, a ghost no eyes discern.

the whining church-bell and the log a-sputter

repeat the rheumy clock's falsetto mutter;

while in a pack of cards, scent-filled and vile,

grim relic of a dropsical old maid,

the queen of spades and knave of hearts parade

their dead amours, with many an evil smile.

— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks

~ Charles Baudelaire,
243:At The Making Of Man
First all the host of Raphael
In liveries of gold,
Lifted the chorus on whose rhythm
The spinning spheres are rolled,–
The Seraphs of the morning calm
Whose hearts are never cold.
He shall be born a spirit,
Part of the soul that yearns,
The core of vital gladness
That suffers and discerns,
The stir that breaks the budding sheath
When the green spring returns,–
The gist of power and patience
Hid in the plasmic clay,
The calm behind the senses,
The passionate essay
To make his wise and lovely dream
Immortal on a day.
The soft Aprilian ardours
That warm the waiting loam
Shall whisper in his pulses
To bid him overcome,
And he shall learn the wonder-cry
Beneath the azure dome.
And though all-dying nature
Should teach him to deplore,
The ruddy fires of autumn
Shall lure him but the more
To pass from joy to stronger joy,
As through an open door.
He shall have hope and honour,
Proud trust and courage stark,
To hold him to his purpose
Through the unlighted dark,
49
And love that sees the moon's full orb
In the first silver arc.
And he shall live by kindness
And the heart's certitude,
Which moves without misgiving
In ways not understood,
Sure only of the vast event,–
The large and simple good.
Then Gabriel's host in silver gear
And vesture twilight blue,
The spirits of immortal mind,
The warders of the true,
Took up the theme that gives the world
Significance anew.
He shall be born to reason,
And have the primal need
To understand and follow
Wherever truth may lead,–
To grow in wisdom like a tree
Unfolding from a seed.
A watcher by the sheepfolds,
With wonder in his eyes,
He shall behold the seasons,
And mark the planets rise,
Till all the marching firmament
Shall rouse his vast surmise.
Beyond the sweep of vision,
Or utmost reach of sound,
This cunning fire-maker,
This tiller of the ground,
Shall learn the secrets of the suns
And fathom the profound.
For he must prove all being,
Sane, beauteous, benign,
And at the heart of nature
Discover the divine,–
50
Himself the type and symbol
Of the eternal trine.
He shall perceive the kindling
Of knowledge, far and dim,
As of the fire that brightens
Below the dark sea-rim,
When ray by ray the splendid sun
Floats to the world's wide brim.
And out of primal instinct,
The lore of lair and den,
He shall emerge to question
How, wherefore, whence, and when,
Till the last frontier of the truth
Shall lie within his ken.
Then Michael's scarlet-suited host
Took up the word and sang;
As though a trumpet had been loosed
In heaven, the arches rang;
For these were they who feel the thrill
Of beauty like a pang.
He shall be framed and balanced
For loveliness and power,
Lithe as the supple creatures,
And coloured as a flower,
Sustained by the all-feeding earth,
Nurtured by wind and shower,
To stand within the vortex
Where surging forces play,
A poised and pliant figure
Immutable as they,
Till time and space and energy
Surrender to his sway.
He shall be free to journey
Over the teeming earth,
An insatiable seeker,
A wanderer from his birth,
51
Clothed in the fragile veil of sense,
With fortitude for girth.
His hands shall have dominion
Of all created things,
To fashion in the likeness
Of his imaginings,
To make his will and thought survive
Unto a thousand springs.
The world shall be his province,
The princedom of his skill;
The tides shall wear his harness,
The winds obey his will;
Till neither flood, nor fire, nor frost,
Shall work to do him ill.
A creature fit to carry
The pure creative fire,
Whatever truth inform him,
Whatever good inspire,
He shall make lovely in all things
To the end of his desire.
~ Bliss William Carman,
244:There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain,
Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain;
There is a pleasure on the heath where Druids old have been,
Where mantles grey have rustled by and swept the nettles green;
There is a joy in every spot made known by times of old,
New to the feet, although each tale a hundred times be told;
There is a deeper joy than all, more solemn in the heart,
More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart,
When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf,
Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron scurf,
Toward the castle or the cot, where long ago was born
One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn.
Light heather-bells may tremble then, but they are far away;
Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern, -- the Sun may hear this lay;
Runnels may kiss the grass on shelves and shallows clear,
But their low voices are not heard, though come on travels drear;
Blood-red the Sun may set behind the black mountain peaks;
Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in caves and weedy creeks;
Eagles may seem to sleep wing-side upon the air;
Ring-dove may fly convuls'd across to some high-cedar'd lair;
But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground,
As Palmer's, that with weariness, mid-desert shrine hath found.
At such a time the soul's a child, in childhood is the brain;
Forgotten is the worldly heart -- alone, it beats in vain.--
Aye, if a madman could have leave to pass a healthful day
To tell his forehead's swoon and faint when first began decay,
He might make tremble many a one whose spirit had gone forth
To find a Bard's low cradle-place about the silent North!
Scanty the hour and few the steps, because a longer stay
Would bar return, and make a man forget his mortal way:
O horrible! to lose the sight of well remember'd face,
Of Brother's eyes, of Sister's brow -- constant to every place;
Filling the air, as on we move, with portraiture intense;
More warm than those heroic tints that pain a painter's sense,
When shapes of old come striding by, and visages of old,
Locks shining black, hair scanty grey, and passions manifold.
No, no, that horror cannot be, for at the cable's length
Man feels the gentle anchor pull and gladdens in its strength:--
One hour, half-idiot, he stands by mossy waterfall,
But in the very next he reads his soul's memorial:--
He reads it on the mountain's height, where chance he may sit down
Upon rough marble diadem -- that hill's eternal crown.
Yet be his anchor e'er so fast, room is there for a prayer
That man may never lose his mind on mountains black and bare;
That he may stray league after league some great birth-place to find
And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind.
'After leaving Ayr Keats and Brown appear to have been detained by rain at some place twelve miles along the road, when Keats took the opportunity of going on with his letter to Reynolds begun at Maybole. They were enroute for Glasgow (casually mentioned in a letter to Bailey begun at Inverary on the 18th of July), which they took on their way from Ayr to Loch Lomond and Inverary. The poem given above is mentioned to Bailey as having been written within a few days of the sonnet in Burns's cottage, so that, although it is headed as above in the manuscript written at the end of Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion, it seems more probable that the term Highlands was used in a lax popular sense than that the poem was composed after the visit to Staffa. Indeed in the letter to Bailey he speaks of the whole tour as in the Highlands. Keats expected to be by Loch Lomond about the 15th of July, and may have written this poem on high ground anywhere about the Loch, with the scenery of which he was very much impressed. They did not ascend Ben Lomond as intended, being deterred by expense and need of rest.'
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ John Keats, Lines Written In The Highlands After A Visit To Burnss Country
,
245:The Angel In The House. Book Ii. Canto Ix.
Preludes.
I The Nursling of Civility
Lo, how the woman once was woo'd:
Forth leapt the savage from his lair,
And fell'd her, and to nuptials rude
He dragg'd her, bleeding, by the hair.
From that to Chloe's dainty wiles
And Portia's dignified consent,
What distance! But these Pagan styles
How far below Time's fair intent!
Siegfried sued Kriemhild. Sweeter life
Could Love's self covet? Yet 'tis sung
In what rough sort he chid his wife
For want of curb upon her tongue!
Shall Love, where last I leave him, halt?
Nay; none can fancy or foresee
To how strange bliss may time exalt
This nursling of civility.
II The Foreign Land
A woman is a foreign land,
Of which, though there he settle young,
A man will ne'er quite understand
The customs, politics, and tongue.
The foolish hie them post-haste through,
See fashions odd, and prospects fair,
Learn of the language, ‘How d'ye do,’
And go and brag they have been there.
The most for leave to trade apply,
For once, at Empire's seat, her heart,
Then get what knowledge ear and eye
Glean chancewise in the life-long mart.
And certain others, few and fit,
Attach them to the Court, and see
The Country's best, its accent hit,
And partly sound its polity.
143
III Disappointment
‘The bliss which woman's charms bespeak,
‘I've sought in many, found in none!’
‘In many 'tis in vain you seek
‘What can be found in only one.’
The Friends.
Frank's long, dull letter, lying by
The gay sash from Honoria's waist,
Reproach'd me; passion spared a sigh
For friendship without fault disgraced.
How should I greet him? how pretend
I felt the love he once inspired?
Time was when either, in his friend,
His own deserts with joy admired;
We took one side in school-debate,
Like hopes pursued with equal thirst,
Were even-bracketed by Fate,
Twin-Wranglers, seventh from the First;
And either loved a lady's laugh
More than all music; he and I
Were perfect in the pleasant half
Of universal charity.
II
From pride of likeness thus I loved
Him, and he me, till love begot
The lowliness which now approved
Nothing but that which I was not.
Blest was the pride of feeling so
Subjected to a girl's soft reign.
She was my vanity, and, oh,
All other vanities how vain!
III
Frank follow'd in his letter's track,
And set my guilty heart at ease
By echoing my excuses back
With just the same apologies.
144
So he had slighted me as well!
Nor was my mind disburthen'd less
When what I sought excuse to tell
He of himself did first confess.
IV
Each, rapturous, praised his lady's worth;
He eloquently thus: ‘Her face
‘Is the summ'd sweetness of the earth,
‘Her soul the glass of heaven's grace,
‘To which she leads me by the hand;
‘Or, briefly all the truth to say
‘To you, who briefly understand,
‘She is both heaven and the way.
‘Displeasures and resentments pass
‘Athwart her charitable eyes
‘More fleetingly than breath from glass,
‘Or truth from foolish memories;
‘Her heart's so touch'd with others' woes
‘She has no need of chastisement;
‘Her gentle life's conditions close,
‘Like God's commandments, with content,
‘And make an aspect calm and gay,
‘Where sweet affections come and go,
‘Till all who see her, smile and say,
‘How fair, and happy that she's so!
‘She is so lovely, true, and pure,
‘Her virtue virtue so endears,
‘That often, when I think of her,
‘Life's meanness fills mine eyes with tears—’
‘You paint Miss Churchill! Pray go on—’
‘She's perfect, and, if joy was much
‘To think her nature's paragon,
‘'Tis more that there's another such!’
Praising and paying back their praise
With rapturous hearts, t'ward Sarum Spire
We walk'd, in evening's golden haze,
Friendship from passion stealing fire.
In joy's crown danced the feather jest,
145
And, parting by the Deanery door,
Clasp'd hands, less shy than words, confess'd
We had not been true friends before.
~ Coventry Patmore,
246:. Pale, at its ghastly noon,
  Pauses above the death-still woodthe moon;
  The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs;
   The clouds descend in rain;
   Mourning, the wan stars wane,
  Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres!
  Haggard as spectresvision-like and dumb,
   Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow,
  Towards that sad lair the pale procession come
   Where the grave closes on the night below.

  With dim, deep-sunken eye,
  Crutched on his staff, who trembles tottering by?
  As wrung from out the shattered heart, one groan
  Breaks the deep hush alone!
  Crushed by the iron fate, he seems to gather
   All life's last strength to stagger to the bier,
  And hearkenDo these cold lips murmur "Father?"
   The sharp rain, drizzling through that place of fear,
  Pierces the bones gnawed fleshless by despair,
  And the heart's horror stirs the silver hair.

  Fresh bleed the fiery wounds
   Through all that agonizing heart undone
  Still on the voiceless lips "my Father" sounds,
   And still the childless Father murmurs "Son!"
  Ice-coldice-cold, in that white shroud he lies
   Thy sweet and golden dreams all vanished there
  The sweet and golden name of "Father" dies
  Into thy curse,ice-coldice-coldhe lies!
   Dead, what thy life's delight and Eden were!

  Mild, as when, fresh from the arms of Aurora,
   While the air like Elysium is smiling above,
  Steeped in rose-breathing odors, the darling of Flora
   Wantons over the blooms on his winglets of love.
  So gay, o'er the meads, went his footsteps in bliss,
   The silver wave mirrored the smile of his face;
  Delight, like a flame, kindled up at his kiss,
   And the heart of the maid was the prey of his chase.

  Boldly he sprang to the strife of the world,
   As a deer to the mountain-top carelessly springs;
  As an eagle whose plumes to the sun are unfurled,
   Swept his hope round the heaven on its limitless wings.
  Proud as a war-horse that chafes at the rein,
   That, kingly, exults in the storm of the brave;
  That throws to the wind the wild stream of its mane,
   Strode he forth by the prince and the slave!

  Life like a spring day, serene and divine,
   In the star of the morning went by as a trance;
  His murmurs he drowned in the gold of the wine,
   And his sorrows were borne on the wave of the dance.

  Worlds lay concealed in the hopes of his youth!
   When once he shall ripen to manhood and fame!
  Fond father exult!In the germs of his youth
   What harvests are destined for manhood and fame!

  Not to be was that manhood!The death-bell is knelling,
   The hinge of the death-vault creaks harsh on the ears
  How dismal, O Death, is the place of thy dwelling!
   Not to be was that manhood!Flow on, bitter tears!
  Go, beloved, thy path to the sun,
   Rise, world upon world, with the perfect to rest;
  Goquaff the delight which thy spirit has won,
   And escape from our grief in the Halls of the Blest.

  Again (in that thought what a healing is found!)
   To meet in the Eden to which thou art fled!
  Hark, the coffin sinks down with a dull, sullen sound,
   And the ropes rattle over the sleep of the dead.
  And we cling to each other!O Grave, he is thine!
   The eye tells the woe that is mute to the ears
  And we dare to resent what we grudge to resign,
   Till the heart's sinful murmur is choked in its tears.
  Pale at its ghastly noon,
  Pauses above the death-still woodthe moon!
  The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs:
   The clouds descend in rain;
   Mourning, the wan stars wane,
  Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres.
  The dull clods swell into the sullen mound;
   Earth, one look yet upon the prey we gave!
  The grave locks up the treasure it has found;
  Higher and higher swells the sullen mound
   Never gives back the grave!
  
~ Friedrich Schiller, A Funeral Fantasie
,
247:The Vision Of The Rock
I SATE upon a lonely peak,
A backwood river’s course to view,
And watched the changing shadows freak
Its liquid length of gleaming blue,
Streaked by the crane slow gliding o’er,
Or chequering to the leafy roar
Of woods that ’neath me grew,
Or curdling dark, as high o’erhead
The gathering clouds before the sounding breezes fled.
Straight I bethought how once the scene
Spread in its primal horror there,
When, but some lone bird’s weary threne
Or howlings from the wild dog’s lair,
Or rush of startled kangaroo,
As near some stealthy savage drew
With hunger in his air,
Or, from the stream some murmur’d sound
Broke the dread slumbrous calm of solitude profound.
A change came o’er my thoughts—behind
A length of coming time I threw,
Till round me, on that rock reclined,
Its folds prophetic vision drew;
And purpling, like the morning, gave
Mine eyes of freedom’s births to have
A seeming ante-view;
As haply in brave promise stole
His country’s purer weal o’er youthful Hampden’s soul.
All round me villages upgrew
At once, with orchards clumped about,
And oft between, tall pine-rows through,
Some mansion’s pillard porch looked out,
And thickening up from alleys green,
Where rustic groups in dance were seen,
Came merry cry and shout;
While from tall groves beyond, the cheer
Of maiden’s laughter soft, broke in rich wavelets near.
216
And in the gusts that overpassed
The stir of neighbouring cities came,
Whose structures in the distance massed
Proclaimed their opulence and fame,
O’er fields of ripening plenty viewed,
Or hills with white flocks fleeced, and strewed
With herds that grazed the same;
While on the paven roads between
The crowding chariots came with rapid-rolling din.
Now gaining depth, the vision lay
Around my being like a law,
So that my spirit might not say
But all was real that I saw:
I mark a youth and maiden, pressed
By love’s sweet power, elude the rest,
And as they nearer draw
I list the vow that each imparts
Folded within the spells of harmonizing hearts.
But suddenly a grim-faced sire
Strides like a fatal wraith between
With that cold whiteness is his ire
Which in the bad alone is seen!
Alas! This world can never be
A poet’s Eden utterly—
Twill be what it hath been!
So long as love’s rich heart is red,
And beauty’s eyes are bright—so long shall tears be shed.
They pass; and lo, a lonely boy
With wandering step goes musing by;
Glory is in his air, and joy,
And all the poet in his eye!
And now, whilst rich emotions flush
His happy face, as cloud-hues blush
In morning’s radiant sky,
He sings—and to the charmful sound
Troops of angelic shapes throng into being round.
But ’neath a sombre cypress tree,
And clad in garbs of kindred gloom,
217
A mother and her child I see
Both mourning o’er a lowly tomb!
Ah! Life hath ever been a brief
Mixed dream of glory and grief—
Its earliest, latest doom!
That heart in which love’s tides first ran
Descends with all its risks to every child of man.
Now turning see, with locks all grey,
A form majestic; wisdom true
Illumes his brow—the power to weigh
All worth, and look all semblence through;
And stately youths of studious mien,
Children of light, with him are seen,
His auditory—who
Attend the speaking sage along
And hearken to the wisdom of his manna-dropping tongue.
And now doth his large utterance throw
A sacred solemnizing spell
O’er scenes that yet no record know,
Round names that now I may not tell;
But there was one—too long unknown!
Whereat, as with a household tone
Upon the ear it fell,
Each listener’s speaking eyes were given
To glisten with a tear and turn awhile to heaven.
Thus night came on; for hours had flown,
And yet its hold the vision kept,
Till lulled by many a dying tone,
I laid me on the rock and slept!
And now the moon hung big between
Two neighbouring summits sheath’d with sheen—
When all with dews dewept,
And roused by a loud coming gale,
I sought our camp-fire’s glow, deep in the darkening vale.
218
~ Charles Harpur,
248:The Cattle Thief
They were coming across the prairie, they were
galloping hard and fast;
For the eyes of those desperate riders had sighted
their man at last-Sighted him off to Eastward, where the Cree
encampment lay,
Where the cotton woods fringed the river, miles and
miles away.
Mistake him? Never! Mistake him? the famous
Eagle Chief!
That terror to all the settlers, that desperate Cattle
Thief-That monstrous, fearless Indian, who lorded it over
the plain,
Who thieved and raided, and scouted, who rode like
a hurricane!
But they've tracked him across the prairie; they've
followed him hard and fast;
For those desperate English settlers have sighted
their man at last.
Up they wheeled to the tepees, all their British
blood aflame,
Bent on bullets and bloodshed, bent on bringing
down their game;
But they searched in vain for the Cattle Thief: that
lion had left his lair,
And they cursed like a troop of demons--for the
women alone were there.
"The sneaking Indian coward," they hissed; "he
hides while yet he can;
He'll come in the night for cattle, but he's scared
to face a man."
"Never!" and up from the cotton woods rang the
voice of Eagle Chief;
And right out into the open stepped, unarmed, the
Cattle Thief.
Was that the game they had coveted? Scarce fifty
years had rolled
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Over that fleshless, hungry frame, starved to the
bone and old;
Over that wrinkled, tawny skin, unfed by the
warmth of blood.
Over those hungry, hollow eyes that glared for the
sight of food.
He turned, like a hunted lion: "I know not fear,"
said he;
And the words outleapt from his shrunken lips in
the language of the Cree.
"I'll fight you, white-skins, one by one, till I
kill you all," he said;
But the threat was scarcely uttered, ere a dozen
balls of lead
Whizzed through the air about him like a shower
of metal rain,
And the gaunt old Indian Cattle Thief dropped
dead on the open plain.
And that band of cursing settlers gave one
triumphant yell,
And rushed like a pack of demons on the body that
writhed and fell.
"Cut the fiend up into inches, throw his carcass
on the plain;
Let the wolves eat the cursed Indian, he'd have
treated us the same."
A dozen hands responded, a dozen knives gleamed
high,
But the first stroke was arrested by a woman's
strange, wild cry.
And out into the open, with a courage past
belief,
She dashed, and spread her blanket o'er the corpse
of the Cattle Thief;
And the words outleapt from her shrunken lips in
the language of the Cree,
"If you mean to touch that body, you must cut
your way through me."
And that band of cursing settlers dropped
backward one by one,
For they knew that an Indian woman roused, was
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a woman to let alone.
And then she raved in a frenzy that they scarcely
understood,
Raved of the wrongs she had suffered since her
earliest babyhood:
"Stand back, stand back, you white-skins, touch
that dead man to your shame;
You have stolen my father's spirit, but his body I
only claim.
You have killed him, but you shall not dare to
touch him now he's dead.
You have cursed, and called him a Cattle Thief,
though you robbed him first of bread-Robbed him and robbed my people--look there, at
that shrunken face,
Starved with a hollow hunger, we owe to you and
your race.
What have you left to us of land, what have you
left of game,
What have you brought but evil, and curses since
you came?
How have you paid us for our game? how paid us
for our land?
By a book, to save our souls from the sins you
brought in your other hand.
Go back with your new religion, we never have
understood
Your robbing an Indian's body, and mocking his
soul with food.
Go back with your new religion, and find--if find
you can-The honest man you have ever made from out a
starving man.
You say your cattle are not ours, your meat is not
our meat;
When you pay for the land you live in, we'll pay
for the meat we eat.
Give back our land and our country, give back our
herds of game;
Give back the furs and the forests that were ours
before you came;
Give back the peace and the plenty. Then come
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with your new belief,
And blame, if you dare, the hunger that drove him to
be a thief."
~ Emily Pauline Johnson,
249:On Love
TO the assembled folk
At great St. Kavin’s spoke
Young Brother Amiel on Christmas Eve;
I give you joy, my friends,
That as the round year ends,
We meet once more for gladness by God’s leave.
On other festal days
For penitence or praise
Or prayer we meet, or fullness of thanksgiving;
To-night we calendar
The rising of that star
Which lit the old world with new joy of living.
Ah, we disparage still
The Tidings of Good Will,
Discrediting Love’s gospel now as then!
And with the verbal creed
That God is love indeed,
Who dares make Love his god before all men?
Shall we not, therefore, friends,
Resolve to make amends
To that glad inspiration of the heart;
To grudge not, to cast out
Selfishness, malice, doubt,
Anger and fear; and for the better part,
To love so much, so well,
The spirit cannot tell
The range and sweep of her own boundary!
There is no period
Between the soul and God;
Love is the tide, God the eternal sea.…
To-day we walk by love;
To strive is not enough,
Save against greed and ignorance and might.
We apprehend peace comes
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Not with the roll of drums,
But in the still processions of the night.
And we perceive, not awe
But love is the great law
That binds the world together safe and whole.
The splendid planets run
Their courses in the sun;
Love is the gravitation of the soul.
In the profound unknown,
Illumined, fair, and lone,
Each star is set to shimmer in its place.
In the profound divine
Each soul is set to shine,
And its unique appointed orbit trace.
There is no near nor far,
Where glorious Algebar
Swings round his mighty circuit through the night,
Yet where without a sound
The winged seed comes to ground,
And the red leaf seems hardly to alight.
One force, one lore, one need
For satellite and seed,
In the serene benignity for all.
Letting her time-glass run
With star-dust, sun by sun,
In Nature’s thought there is no great nor small.
There is no far nor near
Within the spirit’s sphere.
The summer sunset’s scarlet-yellow wings
Are tinged with the same dye
That paints the tulip’s ply.
And what is colour but the soul of things?
(The earth was without form;
God moulded it with storm,
Ice, flood, and tempest, gleaming tint and hue;
Lest it should come to ill
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For lack of spirit still,
He gave it colour,—let the love shine through.)…
Of old, men said, ‘Sin not;
By every line and jot
Ye shall abide; man’s heart is false and vile.’
Christ said, ‘By love alone
In man’s heart is God known;
Obey the word no falsehood can defile.’…
And since that day we prove
Only how great is love,
Nor to this hour its greatness half believe.
For to what other power
Will life give equal dower,
Or chaos grant one moment of reprieve!
Look down the ages’ line,
Where slowly the divine
Evinces energy, puts forth control;
See mighty love alone
Transmuting stock and stone,
Infusing being, helping sense and soul.
And what is energy,
In-working, which bids be
The starry pageant and the life of earth?
What is the genesis
Of every joy and bliss,
Each action dared, each beauty brought to birth?
What hangs the sun on high?
What swells the growing rye?
What bids the loons cry on the Northern lake?
What stirs in swamp and swale,
When April winds prevail,
And all the dwellers of the ground awake?…
What lurks in the deep gaze
Of the old wolf? Amaze,
Hope, recognition, gladness, anger, fear.
But deeper than all these
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Love muses, yearns, and sees,
And is the self that does not change nor veer.
Not love of self alone,
Struggle for lair and bone,
But self-denying love of mate and young,
Love that is kind and wise,
Knows trust and sacrifice,
And croons the old dark universal tongue.…
And who has understood
Our brothers of the wood,
Save he who puts off guile and every guise
Of violence,—made truce
With panther, bear, and moose,
As beings like ourselves whom love makes wise?
For they, too, do love’s will,
Our lesser clansmen still;
The House of Many Mansions holds us all;
Courageous, glad and hale,
They go forth on the trail,
Hearing the message, hearkening to the call.…
Open the door to-night
Within your heart, and light
The lantern of love there to shine afar.
On a tumultuous sea
Some straining craft, maybe,
With bearings lost, shall sight love’s silver star.
~ Bliss William Carman,
250:The Deserted Homestead
PAST a dull, grey plain where a world-old grief seems to brood o’er the silent
land,
When the orbéd moon turns her tense, white face on the ominous waste of sand,
And the wind that steals by the dreamer feels like the touch of a phantom hand,
Through the tall, still trees and the tangled scrub that has sprung on the old bush
track,
In a clearing wide, where a willow broods and the cowering bush shrinks backs,
Stands a house alone that no dwellers own, yet unharmed by the storm’s attack.
’Tis a strange, sad place. On the shingle roof mosses gather and corn-blades
spring,
And a stillness reigns in the air unstirred by the beat of a wild bird’s wing.
He who sees believes that the old house grieves with the grief of a sentient thing.
From the charmed gums that about the land in a reverent circle throng
Comes no parrot’s call, nor the wild cat’s cry, nor the magpie’s mellow song,
And their shadows chill with an icy thrill and the sense of an awful wrong.
And the creek winds by ’neath the twisted briar and the curling creepers here;
In the dusky depths of its bed it slips on it’s slime-green rocks in fear,
And it murmurs low to its stealthy flow in a monotone quaint and drear.
On a furrowed paddock that fronts the house grow the saplings straight and tall,
And noxious weeds in the garden ground on the desolate pathways crawl;
But the briar twists back with the supple-jack ’tween the rocks of the rubble wall.
On the rotting wall of the gloomy rooms bats gather with elfin wings,
And a snake is coiled by the shattered door where a giant lizard clings,
For this house of care is the fitting lair of a myriad voiceless things.
Once I camped alone on the clearing’s edge through the lapse of a livelong night,
When the wan moon flooded the house and land in a lake of her ghostly light,
And the silence dread of a world long dead filled my credulous soul with fright.
For no wind breathed by, but a nameless awe was abroad in the open there,
And the camp-fire burned with a pale, thin flame in the chill, translucent air,
And my dog lay prone, like a chiselled stone, with his opaline eyes a-stare.
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In the trancéd air was an omen felt and the sway of a subtle spell,
And I waited long for I know not what, but the pale night augured well—
At a doleful hour, when the dead have power, lo! A hideous thing befell.
From the shadows flung by the far bush wall came a treacherous, phantom crew,
Like the smoke rack blown o’er the plain at morn when the bracken is wet with
dew.
Not a sound they made, and their forms no shade on the moonlit surface threw.
And the night was changed to the quiet eve of a beautiful summer’s day,
And the old house warmed as with life and light, and was set in a garden gay,
And a babe that crawled by the doorway called to a kitten that leapt in play.
But the black fiends circled the peaceful home, and I fathomed their evil quest;
From the ground up-springing they hurled their spears, and danced with a demon
zest,
And a girl lay dead ’neath the roses red with a wound in her fair, white breast.
Through the looped wall spat a rifle’s flame, and the devilish pack gave tongue,
For a lean form writhed in a torment dire, on the crimsoned stubble flung.
Many echoes spoke, and the sluggish smoke on the shingles rolled and clung.
Yet again and oft did the flame spring forth, and each shaft from the dwelling
shore
Through a savage heart, but the band unawed at the walls of the homestead
tore,
And a man and wife fought for love and life with the horde by the broken door.
Then ghostly and grey, from the dusky bush came a company riding fast.
Seven horses strode on the buoyant air, and I trembled and gazed aghast,
Such a deadly hate on the forehead sate of each rider racing past.
With a cry they leapt on the dusky crew, and swept them aside like corn
In the lusty stroke of the mower’s scythe, and distracted and overborne
Many demons fled, leaving many dead, by the hoofs of the horses torn.
Not in vain—not all—though a father lay with the light on his cold, grey face,
And a mother bled, with a murdered maid held close in a last embrace,
For the babe laughed back at a visage black death drawn to a foul grimace.
Came a soft wind swaying the pendent leaves, like the sigh of awakening day,
And the darkness fell on my tired eyes, for the phantoms had passed away;
110
And the breezes bore from a distant shore faint echoes of ocean’s play.
Past a dull, grey plain, through the tall, still trees, where the lingering days
inspire
An unspoken woe in the heart of man, and the nights hold visions dire,
Stands a house alone that no dwellers own, yet unmarred by the storm or fire.
~ Edward George Dyson,
251: ON THE

FAMOUS WISE

MEN

You have served the people and the superstition of
the people, all you famous wise men-and not truth.
And that is precisely why you were accorded respect.
And that is also why your lack of faith was tolerated:
it was a joke and a circuitous route to the people. Thus
the master lets his slaves have their way and is even
amused by their pranks.
But the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the nonadorer who dwells in the woods, is as hateful to the
people as a wolf to dogs. To hound him out of his lair
-that is what the people have ever called "a sense of
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decency"; and against him the people still set their
fiercest dogs.
"Truth is there: after all, the people are there Let
those who seek beware1"-these words have echoed
through the ages. You wanted to prove your people
right in their reverence: that is what you called "will
to truth," you famous wise men. And your hearts ever
said to themselves: "From among the people I came,
and from there too the voice of God came to me. As
the people's advocates you have always been stiff-necked
and clever like asses.
And many who were powerful and wanted to get
along smoothly with the people harnessed in front of
their horses a little ass, a famous wise man.
And now I should wish, you famous wise men, that
you would at long last throw off the lion's skin completely. The skin of the beast of prey, mottled, and the
mane of those who search, seek, and conquer.
Oh, to make me believe in your "truthfulness" you
would first have to break your revering will.
Truthful I call him who goes into godless deserts,
having broken his revering heart. In the yellow sands,
burned by the sun, he squints thirstily at the islands
abounding in wells, where living things rest under dark
trees. Yet his thirst does not persuade him to become
like these, dwelling in comfort; for where there are
oases there are also idols.
Hungry, violent, lonely, godless: thus the lion-will
wants itself. Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from gods and adorations, fearless and fearinspiring, great and lonely: such is the will of the truthful.
It was ever in the desert that the truthful have dwelt,
the free spirits, as masters of the desert; but in the
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cities dwell the well-fed, famous wise men-the beasts
of burden. For, as asses, they always pull the people's
cart. Not that I am angry with them for that: but for
me they remain such as serve and work in a harness,
even when they shine in harnesses of gold. And often
they have been good servants, worthy of praise. For thus
speaks virtue: "If you must be a servant, seek him who
profits most from your service. The spirit and virtue of
your master shall grow by your being his servant: then
you yourself will grow with his spirit and his virtue."
And verily, you famous wise men, you servants of the
people, you yourselves have grown with the spirit and
virtue of the people-and the people through you. In
your honor I say this. But even in your virtues you rexnain for me part of the people, the dumb-eyed people
-the people, who do not know what spirit is.
Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: with its own
agony it increases its own knowledge. Did you know
that?
And the happiness of the spirit is this: to be anointed
and through tears to be consecrated as a sacrificial
animal. Did you know that?
And the blindness of the blind and their seeking and
groping shall yet bear witness to the power of the sun,
into which they have looked. Did you know that?
And the lover of knowledge shall learn to build with
mountains. It means little that the spirit moves mountains. Did you know that?
You know only the spark of the spirit, but you do not
see the anvil it is, nor the cruelty of its hammer.
Verily, you do not know the pride of the spirit! But
even less would you endure the modesty of the spirit,
if ever it would speak.
And you have never yet been able to cast your spirit
105
into a pit of snow: you are not hot enough for that.
Hence you also do not know the ecstasies of its coldness.
In all things, however, you act too familiarly with the
spirit, and you have often made wisdom into a poorhouse and a hospital for bad poets.
You are no eagles: hence you have never experienced
the happiness that is in the terror of the spirit. And he
who is not a bird should not build his nest over abysses.
You are lukewarm to me, but all profound knowledge
fows cold. Ice cold are the inmost wells of the spirit:
refreshing for hot hands and men of action. You stand
there honorable and stiff and with straight backs, you
famous wise men: no strong wind and will drives you.
Have you never seen a sail go over the sea, rounded
and taut and trembling with the violence of the wind?
Like the sail, trembling with the violence of the spirit,
my wisdom goes over the sea-my wild wisdom.
But you servants of the people, you famous wise
men-how could you go with me?
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ON THE FAMOUS WISE MEN
,
252:Part Iv: Banker’s Dream
Of chases and courses dogs dream, so do horses—
Last night I was dozing and dreaming,
The crowd and the bustle were there, and the rustle
Of the silk in the autumn sky gleaming.
The
The
The
The
stand throng'd with faces, the broadcloth and laces,
booths, and the tents, and the cars,
bookmakers' jargon, for odds making bargain,
nasty stale smell of cigars.
We formed into line, 'neath the merry sunshine,
Near the logs at the end of the railing ;
'Are you ready, boys ? Go !' cried the starter, and low
Sank the flag, and away we went sailing.
In the van of the battle we heard the stones rattle,
Some slogging was done, but no slaughter,
A shout from the stand, and the whole of our band
Skimm'd merrily over the water.
Two fences we clear'd, and the roadway we near'd,
When three of our troop came to troublen ;
Like a bird on the wing, or a stone from a sling,
Flew Cadger, first over the double.
And Western was there, head and tail in the air,
And Pondon was there, too—what noodle
Could so name a horse ? I should feel some remorse
If I gave such a name to a poodle.
In and out of the lane, to the racecourse again,
Craig's pony was first, I was third,
And Ingleside lit in my tracks, with the bit
In his teeth, and came up 'like a bird.'
In the van of the battle we heard the rails rattle,
Says he, 'Though I don't care for shunning
My share of the raps, I shall look out for gaps,
When the light weight's away with the running.'
216
At the fence just ahead the outsider still led,
The chestnut play'd follow my leader ;
Oh ! the devil a gap, he went into it slap,
And he and his jock took a header.
Says Ingleside, 'Mate, should the pony go straight,
You've no time to stop or turn restive ;'
Says I, 'Who means to stop ? I shall go till I drop ;'
Says he, 'Go it, old cuss, gay and festive.'
The fence stiff and tall, just beyond the log wall,
We cross'd, and the walls, and the water,—
I took off too near, a small made fence to clear,
And just touch'd the grass with my snorter.
At the next post and rail up went Western's bang tail,
And down (by the very same token)
To earth went his nose, for the panel he chose
Stood firm and refused to be broken.
I dreamt someone said that the bay would have made
The race safe if he'd stood a while longer ;
If he had,—but, like if, there the panel stands stiff—
He stood, but the panel stood stronger.
In and out of the road, with a clear lead still show'd
The violet fluted with amber ;
Says Johnson, 'Old man, catch him now if you can,
'Tis the second time round, you'll remember.'
At the road once again, pulling hard on the rein,
Craig's pony popp'd in and popp'd out ;
I followed like smoke, and the pace was no joke,
For his friends were beginning to shout.
And Ingleside came to my side, strong and game,
And once he appear'd to outstrip me,
But I felt the steel gore, and I shot to the fore,
Only Cadger seem'd likely to whip me.
In the van of the battle I heard the logs rattle,
217
His stroke never seem'd to diminish,
And thrice I drew near him, and thrice he drew clear,
For the weight served him well at the finish.
Ha ! Cadger goes down, see, he stands on his crown—
Those rails take a power of clouting—
A long sliding blunder—he's up—well, I wonder
If now it's all over but shouting.
All loosely he's striding, the amateur's riding
All loosely, some reverie locked in
Of a 'vision in smoke,' or a 'wayfaring bloke,'
His poetical rubbish concocting.
Now comes from afar the faint cry, 'Here they are,'
'The violet winning with ease,'
'Fred goes up like a shot,' 'Does he catch him or not ?'
Level money, I'll take the cerise.
To his haunches I spring, and my muzzle I bring
To his flank, to his girth, to his shoulder ;
Through the shouting and yelling I hear my name swelling,
The hearts of my backers grow bolder.
Neck and neck ! head and head ! staring eye ! nostrils spread !
Girth and stifle laid close to the ground !
Stride for stride ! stroke for stroke ! through one hurdle we've broke!
On the splinters we've lit with one bound.
And 'Banker for choice' is the cry, and one voice
Screams, 'Six to four once upon Banker ;'
'Banker wins,' 'Banker's beat,' 'Cadger wins,' 'A dead heat'—
'Ah ! there goes Fred's whalebone a flanker.'
Springs the whip with a crack ! nine stone ten on his back,
Fit and light he can race like the devil ;
I draw past him—'tis vain ; he draws past me again,
Springs the whip ! and again we are level.
Steel and cord do their worst, now my head struggles first !
That tug my last spurt has expended—
Nose to nose ! lip to lip ! from the sound of the whip
218
He strains to the utmost extended.
How they swim through the air, as we roll to the chair,
Stand, faces, and railings flit past ;
Now I spring. . .
from my lair, with a snort and a stare,
Rous'd by Fred with my supper at last.
~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,
253:The tyrant Dionys to seek,
Stern Moerus with his poniard crept;
The watchful guard upon him swept;
The grim king marked his changeless cheek:
"What wouldst thou with thy poniard? Speak!"
"The city from the tyrant free!"
"The death-cross shall thy guerdon be."

"I am prepared for death, nor pray,"
Replied that haughty man, "I to live;
Enough, if thou one grace wilt give
For three brief suns the death delay
To wed my sisterleagues away;
I boast one friend whose life for mine,
If I should fail the cross, is thine."

The tyrant mused,and smiled,and said
With gloomy craft, "So let it be;
Three days I will vouchsafe to thee.
But markif, when the time be sped,
Thou fail'stthy surety dies instead.
His life shall buy thine own release;
Thy guilt atoned, my wrath shall cease."

He sought his friend"The king's decree
Ordains my life the cross upon
Shall pay the deed I would have done;
Yet grants three days' delay to me,
My sister's marriage-rites to see;
If thou, the hostage, wilt remain
Till Iset freereturn again!"

His friend embracedNo word he said,
But silent to the tyrant strode
The other went upon his road.
Ere the third sun in heaven was red,
The rite was o'er, the sister wed;
And back, with anxious heart unquailing,
He hastes to hold the pledge unfailing.

Down the great rains unending bore,
Down from the hills the torrents rushed,
In one broad stream the brooklets gushed.
The wanderer halts beside the shore,
The bridge was swept the tides before
The shattered arches o'er and under
Went the tumultuous waves in thunder.

Dismayed he takes his idle stand
Dismayed, he strays and shouts around;
His voice awakes no answering sound.
No boat will leave the sheltering strand,
To bear him to the wished-for land;
No boatman will Death's pilot be;
The wild stream gathers to a sea!

Sunk by the banks, awhile he weeps,
Then raised his arms to Jove, and cried,
"Stay thou, oh stay the maddening tide;
Midway behold the swift sun sweeps,
And, ere he sinks adown the deeps,
If I should fail, his beams will see
My friend's last anguishslain for me!"

More fierce it runs, more broad it flows,
And wave on wave succeeds and dies
And hour on hour remorseless flies;
Despair at last to daring grows
Amidst the flood his form he throws;
With vigorous arms the roaring waves
Cleavesand a God that pities, saves.

He wins the bankhe scours the strand,
He thanks the God in breathless prayer;
When from the forest's gloomy lair,
With ragged club in ruthless hand,
And breathing murderrushed the band
That find, in woods, their savage den,
And savage prey in wandering men.

"What," cried he, pale with generous fear;
"What think to gain ye by the strife?
All I bear with me is my life
I take it to the king!"and here
He snatched the club from him most near:
And thrice he smote, and thrice his blows
Dealt deathbefore him fly the foes!

The sun is glowing as a brand;
And faint before the parching heat,
The strength forsakes the feeble feet:
"Thou hast saved me from the robbers' hand,
Through wild floods given the blessed land;
And shall the weak limbs fail me now?
And he!Divine one, nerve me, thou!"
Hark! like some gracious murmur by,
Babbles low music, silver-clear
The wanderer holds his breath to hear;
And from the rock, before his eye,
Laughs forth the spring delightedly;
Now the sweet waves he bends him o'er,
And the sweet waves his strength restore.

Through the green boughs the sun gleams dying,
O'er fields that drink the rosy beam,
The trees' huge shadows giant seem.
Two strangers on the road are hieing;
And as they fleet beside him flying,
These muttered words his ear dismay:
"Nownow the cross has claimed its prey!"

Despair his winged path pursues,
The anxious terrors hound him on
There, reddening in the evening sun,
From far, the domes of Syracuse!
When towards him comes Philostratus
(His leal and trusty herdsman he),
And to the master bends his knee.

"Backthou canst aid thy friend no more,
The ****rd time already flown
His life is forfeitsave thine own!
Hour after hour in hope he bore,
Nor might his soul its faith give o'er;
Nor could the tyrant's scorn deriding,
Steal from that faith one thought confiding!"

"Too late! what horror hast thou spoken!
Vain life, since it cannot requite him!
But death with me can yet unite him;
No boast the tyrant's scorn shall make
How friend to friend can faith forsake.
But from the double death shall know,
That truth and love yet live below!"

The sun sinks downthe gate's in view,
The cross looms dismal on the ground
The eager crowd gape murmuring round.
His friend is bound the cross unto. . . .
Crowdguardsall bursts he breathless through:
"Me! Doomsman, me!" he shouts, "alone!
His life is rescuedlo, mine own!"

Amazement seized the circling ring!
Linked in each other's arms the pair
Weeping for joyyet anguish there!
Moist every eye that gazed;they bring
The wondrous tidings to the king
His breast man's heart at last hath known,
And the friends stand before his throne.

Long silent, he, and wondering long,
Gazed on the pair"In peace depart,
Victors, ye have subdued my heart!
Truth is no dream!its power is strong.
Give grace to him who owns his wrong!
'Tis mine your suppliant now to be,
Ah, let the band of lovebe three!"
~ Friedrich Schiller, The Hostage
,
254:In Country Sleep
Never and never, my girl riding far and near
In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,
Fear or believe that the wolf in a sheepwhite hood
Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap,
My dear, my dear,
Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year
To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.
Sleep, good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise,
My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire
Of the hobnail tales: no gooseherd or swine will turn
Into a homestall king or hamlet of fire
And prince of ice
To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise
In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn,
Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed
And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep.
From the broomed witch's spume you are shielded by fern
And flower of country sleep and the greenwood keep.
Lie fast and soothed,
Safe be and smooth from the bellows of the rushy brood.
Never, my girl, until tolled to sleep by the stern
Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell
Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near,
For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves
Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear
From the starred well?
A hill touches an angel. Out of a saint's cell
The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves
Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays.
_Sanctum sanctorum_ the animal eye of the wood
In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost
The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood.
Now the tales praise
92
The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze
On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. Fear most
For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood
Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind
And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew.
The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,
Know the green good,
Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood
Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you
Lie in grace. Sleep spelled at rest in the lowly house
In the squirrel nimble grove, under linen and thatch
And star: held and blessed, though you scour the high four
Winds, from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch,
Cool in your vows.
Yet out of the beaked, web dark and the pouncing boughs
Be you sure the Thief will seek a way sly and sure
And sly as snow and meek as dew blown to the thorn,
This night and each vast night until the stern bell talks
In the tower and tolls to sleep over the stalls
Of the hearthstone tales my own, lost love; and the soul walks
The waters shorn.
This night and each night since the falling star you were born,
Ever and ever he finds a way, as the snow falls,
As the rain falls, hail on the fleece, as the vale mist rides
Through the haygold stalls, as the dew falls on the windMilled dust of the apple tree and the pounded islands
Of the morning leaves, as the star falls, as the winged
Apple seed glides,
And falls, and flowers in the yawning wound at our sides,
As the world falls, silent as the cyclone of silence.
II
Night and the reindeer on the clouds above the haycocks
And the wings of the great roc ribboned for the fair!
The leaping saga of prayer! And high, there, on the hareHeeled winds the rooks
93
Cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books
Of birds! Among the cocks like fire the red fox
Burning! Night and the vein of birds in the winged, sloe wrist
Of the wood! Pastoral beat of blood through the laced leaves!
The stream from the priest black wristed spinney and sleeves
Of thistling frost
Of the nightingale's din and tale! The upgiven ghost
Of the dingle torn to singing and the surpliced
Hill of cypresses! The din and tale in the skimmed
Yard of the buttermilk rain on the pail! The sermon
Of blood! The bird loud vein! The saga from mermen
To seraphim
Leaping! The gospel rooks! All tell, this night, of him
Who comes as red as the fox and sly as the heeled wind.
Illumination of music! the lulled black-backed
Gull, on the wave with sand in its eyes! And the foal moves
Through the shaken greensward lake, silent, on moonshod hooves,
In the winds' wakes.
Music of elements, that a miracle makes!
Earth, air, water, fire, singing into the white act,
The haygold haired, my love asleep, and the rift blue
Eyed, in the haloed house, in her rareness and hilly
High riding, held and blessed and true, and so stilly
Lying the sky
Might cross its planets, the bell weep, night gather her eyes,
The Thief fall on the dead like the willy nilly dew,
Only for the turning of the earth in her holy
Heart! Slyly, slowly, hearing the wound in her side go
Round the sun, he comes to my love like the designed snow,
And truly he
Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew's ruly sea,
And surely he sails like the ship shape clouds. Oh he
Comes designed to my love to steal not her tide raking
Wound, nor her riding high, nor her eyes, nor kindled hair,
But her faith that each vast night and the saga of prayer
He comes to take
94
Her faith that this last night for his unsacred sake
He comes to leave her in the lawless sun awaking
Naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come.
Ever and ever by all your vows believe and fear
My dear this night he comes and night without end my dear
Since you were born:
And you shall wake, from country sleep, this dawn and each first dawn,
Your faith as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun.
~ Dylan Thomas,
255:A:
Not far from hence. From yonder pointed hill,
Crowned with a ring of oaks, you may behold
A dark and barren field, through which there flows,
Sluggish and black, a deep but narrow stream,
Which the wind ripples not, and the fair moon
Gazes in vain, and finds no mirror there.
Follow the herbless banks of that strange brook
Until you pause beside a darksome pond,
The fountain of this rivulet, whose gush
Cannot be seen, hid by a rayless night
That lives beneath the overhanging rock
That shades the poolan endless spring of gloom,
Upon whose edge hovers the tender light,
Trembling to mingle with its paramour,--
But, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies day,
Or, with most sullen and regardless hate,
Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace.
On one side of this jagged and shapeless hill
There is a cave, from which there eddies up
A pale mist, like aereal gossamer,
Whose breath destroys all life--awhile it veils
The rockthen, scattered by the wind, it flies
Along the stream, or lingers on the clefts,
Killing the sleepy worms, if aught bide there.
Upon the beetling edge of that dark rock
There stands a group of cypresses; not such
As, with a graceful spire and stirring life,
Pierce the pure heaven of your native vale,
Whose branches the air plays among, but not
Disturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn grace;
But blasted and all wearily they stand,
One to another clinging; their weak boughs
Sigh as the wind buffets them, and they shake
Beneath its blastsa weatherbeaten crew!

CHORUS:

What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint,
But more melodious than the murmuring wind
Which through the columns of a temple glides?

A:

It is the wandering voice of Orpheus lyre,
Borne by the winds, who sigh that their rude king
Hurries them fast from these air-feeding notes;
But in their speed they bear along with them
The waning sound, scattering it like dew
Upon the startled sense.

CHORUS:

Does he still sing?
Methought he rashly cast away his harp
When he had lost Eurydice.

A:

Ah, no!
Awhile he paused. As a poor hunted stag
A moment shudders on the fearful brink
Of a swift streamthe cruel hounds press on
With deafening yell, the arrows glance and wound,--
He plunges in: so Orpheus, seized and torn
By the sharp fangs of an insatiate grief,
Maenad-like waved his lyre in the bright air,
And wildly shrieked Where she is, it is dark!
And then he struck from forth the strings a sound
Of deep and fearful melody. Alas!
In times long past, when fair Eurydice
With her bright eyes sat listening by his side,
He gently sang of high and heavenly themes.
As in a brook, fretted with little waves
By the light airs of springeach riplet makes
A many-sided mirror for the sun,
While it flows musically through green banks,
Ceaseless and pauseless, ever clear and fresh,
So flowed his song, reflecting the deep joy
And tender love that fed those sweetest notes,
The heavenly offspring of ambrosial food.
But that is past. Returning from drear Hell,
He chose a lonely seat of unhewn stone,
Blackened with lichens, on a herbless plain.
Then from the deep and overflowing spring
Of his eternal ever-moving grief
There rose to Heaven a sound of angry song.
Tis as a mighty cataract that parts
Two sister rocks with waters swift and strong,
And casts itself with horrid roar and din
Adown a steep; from a perennial source
It ever flows and falls, and breaks the air
With loud and fierce, but most harmonious roar,
And as it falls casts up a vaporous spray
Which the sun clothes in hues of Iris light.
Thus the tempestuous torrent of his grief
Is clothed in sweetest sounds and varying words
Of poesy. Unlike all human works,
It never slackens, and through every change
Wisdom and beauty and the power divine
Of mighty poesy together dwell,
Mingling in sweet accord. As I have seen
A fierce south blast tear through the darkened sky,
Driving along a rack of winged clouds,
Which may not pause, but ever hurry on,
As their wild shepherd wills them, while the stars,
Twinkling and dim, peep from between the plumes.
Anon the sky is cleared, and the high dome
Of serene Heaven, starred with fiery flowers,
Shuts in the shaken earth; or the still moon
Swiftly, yet gracefully, begins her walk,
Rising all bright behind the eastern hills.
I talk of moon, and wind, and stars, and not
Of song; but, would I echo his high song,
Nature must lend me words neer used before,
Or I must borrow from her perfect works,
To picture forth his perfect attributes.
He does no longer sit upon his throne
Of rock upon a desert herbless plain,
For the evergreen and knotted ilexes,
And cypresses that seldom wave their boughs,
And sea-green olives with their grateful fruit,
And elms dragging along the twisted vines,
Which drop their berries as they follow fast,
And blackthorn bushes with their infant race
Of blushing rose-blooms; beeches, to lovers dear,
And weeping willow trees; all swift or slow,
As their huge boughs or lighter dress permit,
Have circled in his throne, and Earth herself
Has sent from her maternal breast a growth
Of starlike flowers and herbs of odour sweet,
To pave the temple that his poesy
Has framed, while near his feet grim lions couch,
And kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair.
Even the blind worms seem to feel the sound.
The birds are silent, hanging down their heads,
Perched on the lowest branches of the trees;
Not even the nightingale intrudes a note
In rivalry, but all entranced she listens.
Published by Dr. Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862; revised and enlarged by Rossetti, Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S., 1870.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Orpheus
,
256:The Old Bark Hut
In an old bark hut on a mountainside
In a spot that was lone and drear
A woman whose heart was aching sat
Watching from year to year.
A small boy, Jim, her only child,
Helped her to watch and wait,
But the time never came when they could go free,
Free from the bond of hate.
For McConnel was out on the mountainside
Living without a hope
And seeing nothing before him now
But death by a hangman’s rope.
Hated and chased by his fellow men,
To take him alive or dead,
An outlaw banned by the world was he
With five hundred pounds on his head.
A message had come that evening which said
“Now, Jim, you mustn’t wait,
If you want to save your father, or
By heaven, you’ll be too late.
“He’s out at Mackinnon’s Crossing, they say,
The track is rough, old man,
But if any here can do it—why
It’s you and old Darky can.”
And Jim knew well what the message meant,
As he brought his horse to the door!
While away through the gathering darkness came
The sound of the river’s roar.
But the brave little heart never faltered as
He stooped to kiss her good-bye
And said, “God bless you, Mother dear,
I’ll save Dad tonight or I’ll die.”
The old horse answered the touch of his hand
And galloped away from the door;
He seemed to know ‘twas a journey for life—
Well, he’d done such journey’s before.
Out from the firelight, and through the rails,
Out through the ghastly trees,
While all the time the warning roar
42
Of the river came back on the breeze;
Steadily down the mountainside
He rode, for his course was plain,
Though his heart was heavy, though not with fear,
But because of that brand of Cain.
The boy thinks over his mother’s last words:
“I’ll love him as long as I live!
He must have time for repentance on earth
But surely God will forgive.”
As he glanced back over his shoulder there
She stood by the light of the door
Trying to pierce the darkness in vain,
Thinking she’d see him no more.
Then as he looked she bowed her head
And slowly turned away,
And the boy knew that the noble wife
Had knelt by the bed to pray.
Mile after mile, hour after hour,
And then just ahead, shining and white,
Was the foam of Mackinnon’s Crossing—
What a jump for old Darky tonight!
And then Jim thinks of the long, lone years
And the hopes that are crushed and dead;
And a woman whose heart is as true as steel,
As rue as the day she was wed.
As she loved him then in the years gone by
When the future held promise in store,
So she loved him today when the future held
Naught but death by his country’s law.
Jim pressed his knees to the saddle flap
And tightened his hold on the rein;
They had jumped the river last summertime,
How he hoped they would do it again!
Then a voice rang out through the darkness there,
“Hold, now hold, stand still!
We know you, lad, it’s too late to run;
Hands up or we’ll shoot to kill!”
Then he knew that the police were around him,
In the darkness they moved to and fro;
For an instant he pulled on the bridle-rein,
But he’d promised his mother he’d go.
And he thought of the poor, sad woman alone,
43
Kneeling in prayer by the bed;
So he loosened the reins on old Darky’s neck
And rushed at the river ahead.
Then a volley rang out through the forest dark—
A fall in the roaring flood;
And the darkness hid from all human eyes
The form that was stained with blood.
The horse struggled hard, the waters rushed on;
He sank to rise no more.
But the boy fought the flood in silence, inch
By inch to the other shore.
Slowly and sadly, but bravely on,
Brushing away the tears;
He was leaving behind in the river’s flood
His friend and companion for years.
And all the time the blood trickled down,
O God! what a hot burning pain!
And he knew he was doing is duty clean
He would never come back again.
Staggering in through the yielding door
Into the cold dark room
Where his father lay, and the faint firelight
Showed through the ghostly gloom.
The bushranger sprang to his feet in alarm
And levelled the gun at his head
And his loud voice demanded, “Who are you?
Speak quick, or you are dead.”
And then a weak little voice made answer,
“It’s me; Mother sends you her love;
The police are back at the crossing now,
So clear out and meet Mother above.”
Then McConnel placed his gun by the wall
And knelt on the cold hard floor;
And somehow the tears came rushing down
As they never had before.
His arms went around the brave little lad,
He nursed his head on his breast;
He seemed to know that the end was nigh
And Jim would soon be at rest.
And the boy was speaking feebly at last,
“They shot me back at the creek,
And old Darky is dead and gone, Dad,
44
And oh, I’m so tired and weak.”
Then his voice fell away in a whisper soft,
So faint it could scarce be heard,
“Oh Dad,, clear out, they are coming fast;
Tell Mother, I kept my word.”
Quickly in silence the police gathered around,
They had captured the beast in his lair;
The outlaw sat with his boy in his arms,
He semed not to heed nor to care.
He was thinking now of the seed he had sown,
He was tasting its bitter fruit,
When the sergeant stepped to the door and said,
“McConnel, bail up or I’ll shoot.”
Then the sergeant placed a lamp by the door,
The rifles gleamed out in the light;
But the outlaw said, “Sergeant O’Drady,
Let’s have no more shooting tonight.
“You can take me now to the judgement seat
As God has taken this lad;
You’d die to take my life, you men—
He died to save his dad.
“I want you to help me dig his grave,
And perhaps you will say a prayer;
Then you can take me and hang me dead—
It’s my wife, or I wouldn’t care.
“Carefully now. . . Oh thank you, men,
Lay him as best you can;
The policeman is shown by his coat, of course;
But the tears—well, they show the man.”
Then the party went back to the old bark hut
As the sun was mounting the hill;
No smoke arose from the chimney cold
And all was silent and still.
The sergeant opened the creaky door,
And lifted his cap with a start,
…Ah, McConnel had broken the country’s laws
And broken a woman’s heart.
~ Anonymous Oceania,
257:September On Jessore Road
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
Millions
Millions
Millions
Millions
of
of
of
of
fathers in rain
mothers in pain
brothers in woe
sisters nowhere to go
One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad
Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone
Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan
Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts
Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise
Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there
70
on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry
Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek
No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.
On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue cried mister Please
Identity card torn up on the floor
Husband still waits at the camp office door
Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won't give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play our death curse
Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line They play hungry tricks
Breaking the line and jumping in front
Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage
Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage
Why are these infants massed in this place
Laughing in play & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread
The man in the bread door Cries & comes out
71
Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer? "No more bread today"
Thousands of Children at once scream "Hooray!"
Run home to tents where elders await
Messenger children with bread from the state
No bread more today! & and no place to squat
Painful baby, sick shit he has got.
Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep
Refugee camps in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked on mother's thin laps
Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die
September Jessore Road rickshaw
50,000 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food
Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?
Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?
Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?
Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road's children close their big eyes
72
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?
Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul'd lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!
Ring
Ring
Ring
Ring
O ye tongues of the world for their woe
out ye voices for Love we don't know
out ye bells of electrical pain
in the conscious of America brain
How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare-Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve in their mother's arms curled.
Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?
What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night's table on bone & roast pork?
How many millions of beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams-Finish the war in your breast with a sigh
Come tast the tears in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara on planet TV
73
How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast the children they've killed?
How
How
How
How
many
many
many
many
souls walk through Maya in pain
babes in illusory pain?
families hollow eyed lost?
grandmothers turning to ghost?
How
How
How
How
many
many
many
many
loves who never get bread?
Aunts with holes in their head?
sisters skulls on the ground?
grandfathers make no more sound?
How
How
How
How
many
many
many
many
fathers in woe
sons nowhere to go?
daughters nothing to eat?
uncles with swollen sick feet?
Millions
Millions
Millions
Millions
of
of
of
of
babies in pain
mothers in rain
brothers in woe
children nowhere to go
~ Allen Ginsberg,
258:A Storm In The Mountains
A lonely boy, far venturing from home
Out on the half-wild herd’s faint tracks I roam;
Mid rock-browned mountains, which with stony frown
Glare into haggard chasms deep adown;
A rude and craggy world, the prospect lies
Bounded in circuit by the bending skies.
Now at some clear pool scooped out by the shocks
Of rain-floods plunging from the upper rocks
Whose liquid disc in its undimpled rest
Glows like a mighty gem brooching the mountain’s breast,
I drink and must, or mark the wide-spread herd,
Or list the thinking of the dingle-bird;
And now towards some wild-hanging shade I stray,
To shun the bright oppression of the day;
For round each crag, and o’er each bosky swell,
The fierce refracted heat flares visible,
Lambently restless, like the dazzling hem
Of some else viewless veil held trembling over them.
Why congregate the swallows in the air,
And northward then in rapid flight repair?
With sudden swelling din, remote yet harsh,
Why roar the bull-frogs in the tea-tree marsh?
Why cease the locusts to throng up in flight
And clap their gay wings in the fervent light?
Why climb they, bodingly demure, instead
The tallest spear-grass to the bending head?
Instinctively, along the sultry sky,
I turn a listless, yet inquiring, eye;
And mark that now with a slow gradual pace
A solemn trance creams northward o’er its face;
Yon clouds that late were labouring past the sun,
Reached by its sure arrest, one after one,
Come to a heavy halt; the airs that played
About the rugged mountains all are laid:
While drawing nearer far-off heights appear,
As in a dream’s wild prospect, strangely near!
Till into wood resolves their robe of blue,
And the grey crags rise bluffly on the view.
Such are the signs and tokens that presage
25
A summer hurricane’s forthcoming rage.
At length the south sends out her cloudy heaps
And up the glens at noontide dimness creeps;
The birds, late warbling in the hanging green
Off steep-set brakes, seek now some safer screen;
The herd, in doubt, no longer wanders wide,
But fast ingathering throngs yon mountain’s side,
Whose echoes, surging to its tramp, might seem
The muttered troubles of some Titan’s dream.
Fast the dim legions of the muttering storm
Throng denser, or protruding columns form;
While splashing forward from their cloudy lair,
Convolving flames, like scouting dragons, glare:
Low thunders follow, labouring up the sky;
And as fore-running blasts go blaring by,
At once the forest, with a mighty stir,
Bows, as in homage to the thunderer!
Hark! From the dingoes blood-polluted dens
In the gloom-hidden chasms of the glens,
Long fitful howls wail up; and in the blast
Strange hissing whispers seem to huddle past;
As if the dread stir had aroused from sleep
Weird spirits, cloistered in yon cavy steep
(On which, in the grim past, some Cain’s offence
Hath haply outraged heaven!) Who rising thence
Wrapped in the boding vapours, laughed again
To wanton in the wild-willed hurricane.
See in the storm’s front, sailing dark and dread,
A wide-winged eagle like a black flag spread!
The clouds aloft flash doom! Short stops his flight!
He seems to shrivel in the blasting light!
The air is shattered with a crashing sound,
And he falls stonelike, lifeless, to the ground.
Now, like a shadow at great nature’s heart,
The turmoil grows. Now wonder, with a start,
Marks where right overhead the storm careers,
Girt with black horrors and wide-flaming fears!
Arriving thunders, mustering on his path,
26
Swell more and more the roarings of his wrath,
As out in widening circles they extend,
And then—at once—in utter silence end.
Portentous silence! Time keeps breathing past,
Yet it continues! May this marvel last?
This wild weird silence in the midst of gloom
So manifestly big with coming doom?
Tingles the boding ear; and up the glens
Instinctive dread comes howling from the wild-dogs dens.
Terrific vision! Heaven’s great ceiling splits,
And a vast globe of writhing fire emits,
Which pouring down in one continuous stream,
Spans the black concave like a burning beam,
A moment;—then from end to end it shakes
With a quick motion—and in thunder breaks!
Peal rolled on peal! While heralding the sound,
As each concussion thrills the solid ground,
Fierce glares coil, snake-like, round the rocky wens
Of the red hills, or hiss into the glens,
Or thick through heaven like flaming falchions swarm,
Cleaving the teeming cisterns of the storm,
From which rain-torrents, searching every gash,
Split by the blast come sheeting with a dash.
On yon grey peak, from rock-encrusted roots,
The mighty patriarch of the wood upshoots,
In whose proud-spreading top’s imperial height,
The mountain-eagle loveth most to light:
Now dimly seen through the tempestuous air,
His form seems harrowed by a mad despair,
As with his ponderous arms uplifted high,
He wrestles with the storm and threshes at the sky!
A swift bolt hurtles through the lurid air,
Another thundering crash! The peak is bare!
Huge hurrying fragments all around are cast,
The wild-winged, mad-limbed monsters of the blast.
The darkness thickens! With despairing cry
From shattering boughs the rain-drenched parrtos fly;
Loose rocks roll rumbling from the mountains round,
27
And half the forest strews the smoking ground;
To the bared crags the blasts now wilder moan,
And the caves labour with a ghostlier groan.
Wide raging torrents down the gorges flow
Swift bearing with them to the vale below
Those sylvan wrecks that littered late the path
Of the loud hurricane s all-trampling wrath.
The storm is past. Yet booming on afar
Is heard the rattling of the thunder-car,
And that low muffled moaning, as of grief,
Which follows with a wood-sigh wide and brief.
The clouds break up; the sun s forth-bursting rays
Clothe the wet landscape with a dazzling blaze;
The birds begin to sing a lively strain,
And merry echoes ring it o’er again;
The clustered herd is spreading out to graze,
Though lessening torrents still a hundred ways
Flash downward, and from many a rock ledge
A mantling gush comes quick and shining o er the edge.
’Tis evening; and the torrent’s furious flow
Runs gentlier now into the lake below,
O’er all the freshened scene no sound is heard,
Save the short twitter of some busied bird,
Or a faint rustle made amongst the trees
By wasting fragments of a broken breeze.
Along the wild and wreck-strewed paths I wind,
Watching earth’s happiness with quiet mind,
And see a beauty all unmarked till now
Flushing each flowery nook and sunny brow;
Wished peace returning like a bird of calm,
Brings to the wounded world its blessed healing balm.
On nerveless, tuneless lines how sadly
Ringing rhymes may wasted be,
While blank verse oft is mere prose madly
Striving to be poetry:
While prose that’s craggy as a mountain
May Apollo’s sun-robe don,
Or hold the well-spring of a fountain
Bright as that in Helicon.
28
~ Charles Harpur,
259:I.
Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn
Such bitter faith beside Marenghis urn.

II.
A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now...

...

III.
Another scene are wise Etruria knew
Its second ruin through internal strife
And tyrants through the breach of discord threw
The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,
As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
So Monarchy succeeds to Freedoms foison.

IV.
In Pisas church a cup of sculptured gold
Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn:
A Sacrament more holy neer of old
Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn
Of moon-illumined forests, when...

V.
And reconciling factions wet their lips
With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit
Undarkened by their countrys last eclipse...

...

VI.
Was Florence the liberticide? that band
Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,
Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand,
A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
Of many impious faithswise, justdo they,
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants prey?

VII.
O foster-nurse of mans abandoned glory,
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour;
Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:
The light-invested angel Poesy
Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.

VIII.
And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
The sculptors fearless souland as he wrought,
The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,
Thou wart among the false...was this thy crime?

IX.
Yes; and on Pisas marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlandedthe snake
Inhabits its wrecked palaces;in thine
A beast of subtler venom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
And thus thy victims fate is as thine own.

X.
The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
And good and ill like vines entangled are,
So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;--
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghis sake.

Xa.

[Albert] Marenghi was a Florentine;
If he had wealth, or children, or a wife
Or friends, [or farm] or cherished thoughts which twine
The sights and sounds of home with lifes own life
Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent...

...

XI.
No record of his crime remains in story,
But if the morning bright as evening shone,
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriots meed, toil, death, and infamy.

XII.
For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set
A penalty of blood on all who shared
So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided nothe went
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

XIII.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold,
Month after month endured; it was a feast
Wheneer he found those globes of deep-red gold
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

XIV.
And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,--

XV.
He housed himself. There is a point of strand
Near Vados tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide,
And on the other, creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.

XVI.
Here the earths breath is pestilence, and few
But things whose nature is at war with life--
Snakes and ill wormsendure its mortal dew.
The trophies of the climes victorious strife--
And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,
And the wolfs dark gray scalp who tracked him there.

XVII.
And at the utmost point...stood there
The relics of a reed-inwoven cot, 95
Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer
Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot
When he was cold. The birds that were his grave
Fell dead after their feast in Vados wave.

XVIII.
There must have burned within Marenghis breast
That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,
(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon...
More joyous than free heavens majestic cope
To his oppressor), warring with decay,--
Or he could neer have lived years, day by day.

XIX.
Nor was his state so lone as you might think.
He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,
And every seagull which sailed down to drink
Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.
And each one, with peculiar talk and play,
Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.

XX.
And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night
Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet;
And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,
In many entangled figures quaint and sweet
To some enchanted music they would dance--
Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.

XXI.
He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed
The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;
And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read
Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn
Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves
The likeness of the woods remembered leaves.

XXII.
And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken--
While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron
Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken
Of mountains and blue isles which did environ
With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,--
And feel ... liberty.

XXIII.
And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean
Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled,
Starting from dreams...
Communed with the immeasurable world;
And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated,
Till his mind grew like that it contemplated.

XXIV.
His food was the wild fig and strawberry;
The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast
Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry
As from the sea by winter-storms are cast;
And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found
Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.

XXV.
And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made
His solitude less dark. When memory came
(For years gone by leave each a deepening shade),
His spirit basked in its internal flame,--
As, when the black storm hurries round at night,
The fisher basks beside his red firelight.

XXVI.
Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,
Like billows unawakened by the wind,
Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors,
Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.
His couch...

...

XXVII.
And, when he saw beneath the sunsets planet
A black ship walk over the crimson ocean,--
Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it,
Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,
Like the dark ghost of the unburied even
Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,--

XXVIII.
The thought of his own kind who made the soul
Which sped that winged shape through night and day,--
The thought of his own country...

...
This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province.--[MRS. SHELLEYS NOTE, 1824.]
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Marenghi
,
260:Disenchanted
Alas, I thought this forest must be true,
And would not change because of my changed eyes;
I thought the growing things were as I knew,
And not a mock; I thought at least the skies
Were honest and would keep that happy blue
They used to wear before I learned to see
.But woe the day!
Lo, I have wandered forth and thought to stay
Here where some gladness still might be for me,
Where some delight
Should still break on my now too faithful sight;
And, lo, not even here may I go free.
Oh, hateful knowledge, pass and let me be:
Why am I made thy slave? why am I wise
Who once beheld all life with glamoured eyes?
Ah, woe the day! this bleak and shrivelled wood,
These rotted leaves, and all the wild flowers dead:
And here the ferns lie bruised and brown that stood
My tall green shelter: and, above my head,
The naked creaking branches show the sky
Athwart their lattice one murk sunless grey
Ah, woe the day!
I see, and beauty has all passed away.
Woe for my desolate wisdom, woe! Ah why
Must the sweet spell be broken ere I die?
Dear glad-tongued lark, come down and talk with me;
Tell me, oh tell me, hast thou caught, maybe,
Some little word,
Some word from heaven to make the meaning plain
Of this great change, or change me back again?
And, chattering sparrow from the eaves, come here
And tell me, thou who seest men so near,
Canst thou have heard
Some talk among them, out of all their lore,
To teach me, who have learned to see as they,
To be like them still more
And smile at hateful things or pass them o'er?
74
Sky-bird and house-bird, do you know the way?
Come hither, let me tell you all my woe;
Have you not known me in my carelessness?
I was that joyous child, not long ago,
The fairies hid away from life's distress
And eager weariness of burdened men
To live their darling in the elfin glen;
I was that thing of mirth and fantasies,
More antic than young squirrels at their play,
More wilful wanton than coy butterflies
Teasing the flowers with make-believes to kiss,
More happy than the early thrush whose lay
Awakes the woodlands with spring melodies
And sings the year to summer with his bliss:
And now I am so sad:
For, listen, I am wise, my eyes see truth,
And nothing wears the brightness that it had,
Nothing is fair or glad;
All joy and grace were dreams, dead with my fairy youth.
Ah, had you seen our home!
For the great hall one amethyst clear dome
Fretted with silver or, who could say which,
With white pure moonbeams; and the floors made rich
With patens of all rare translucent gems
And musky flower-buds bending down their stems
For weight of diamonds that hung like dews;
And everywhere the radiance of carved gold,
And pearls' soft shimmer, and quick various hues
Of mystic opals glinting manifold;
And everywhere the music and the gleams
Of clear cool water's sparkling iris beams
In emerald and crystal fountains wrought
Like river lilies with their buds and leaves,
Or as late briar shoots caught
In the first glittering rime-webs blithe October weaves.
Ah me, so fair, so bright!
Had you but seen! But, lo, the other night
I was alone and watching how the sky
Made a new star each moment and grew dim,
75
And singing to the moon, when he came by,
The wise weird man—what need had I of him?—
The wise weird man who can see fairy folk
And break all spells, he saw me and he spoke
'Poor changeling child,
How is thy heart beguiled,
And thy blind eyes made foolish with false sight!
Let the spell end: be wise, and see aright.'
Then with a frozen salve that brought sharp tears
Signed both my eyes, and went. And from that hour
I am made weary with the cruel dower
Of sight for evil. For mine eyes before
Made beauty where they looked, and saw no more.
Ah happy eyes! Ah sweet, blind, cheated years!
Alas! the glories of our fairy halls:
Alas! the blossoms and the gems and gold:
Dreams, dreams, and lies.
Broken and clammy are the earthen walls,
The mildew is their silvering; where of old
The jewels shimmered shimmers moist and cold
The dew of oozing damps; and, for the dyes
And the fair shapes of diamond laden flowers,
Foul toadstool growths that never saw the skies;
And, for the fountains,pools; and, for the bowers,
Blank caves. Nought, nought in its old gracious guise.
And what is left for beauty is a mock:
Spangles and gilt and glass for precious things,
Bedraggled tinsel gauzes to enfrock
Unlovely nakedness of earth and rock,
And painted images and cozenings.
Ah me! ah me! the beauty, the delight:
Dreams, dreams, and lies.
Ah me! and a curse more has come with sight;
There is no sweetness left me for my ears:
For when they sing the fairy melodies,
Like voice of laughters and like voice of sighs
And voice of running brooks and voice of birds
And voice of lovers' wooing, and the words
Are those that fill the heart of each who hears,
I hate the song, for I hear all the while
'Dreams, dreams, and lies.'
76
Yea, and I see no loving in a smile;
For, when they soothe me tenderly, and praise,
And speak the soft words of the former days,
My heart is cold and wise as are mine eyes,
And I grow sick of pleasant flatteries
And talk of bliss and ancient merry ways:
For, lo, the hollow old content was vain, How shall it live again?
Dreams, dreams, and lies.
And even here is change. For not till now
Have I seen barrenness, and leaves lie dank.
For me the leaf was green upon the bough
The livelong year, my tall ferns never sank,
Some sweet and tender blossom always grew,
The summer and the winter skies were blue;
And when the snow came in a winter freak
To make the blossoms play me hide and seek
I laughed because I knew that they were there.
Ah woe is me!
I said 'I will steal forth and make my lair,
Like some strayed foxcub, in the sheltered wood,
For that will be as it was wont to be:
And I will live among the careless birds
And happy forest beasts and insect herds
Who in blithe wanderings find their easy food,
And feed and sport and rest in ceaseless glee,
Having their world all real and all fair.'
Alas! for it was falseness even here!
The beauty has gone by, it was my dream,
And all the black and dripping trees lie bare,
Soddening in fog and in dull mists that steam
From the unwholesome barren earth and where
The dead leaves fester that were born this year.
Ah me, I am grown wise, my sight is clear:
And to see clear is weeping, wisdom is despair.
Kind birds, oh tell me, whither shall I hie?
Dear lark, hast thou looked down out of thy sky
On the sweet quiet of some summer land
Where truth and beauty yet go hand in hand?—
Nay, but would'st thou be here!
77
Tell me, half human sparrow, hast thou seen,
Among the homes of men where thine has been,
A home where I might be among my kind
And love it, and love them, not being blind?
Tell me; draw near.
Oh answer me, for now I learn desires
For men's strong life to stir me, and were fain
To lose old dreams, warm by their hearthside fires.
Yea, and I must go, though it all were pain:
The doom of my new'wisdom is on me.
Woe for my fairy youth! Man among men
I must go forth and suffer, for I see.
Woe for the blind days in the happy glen!
And the lark answered 'Nay, I am not wise;
I can teach nought. Only, the other day,
I heard them singing who sing in the skies,
And ceaselessly I whisper low that lay,
To sing it when the summer comes again:
'In the world are Love and Pain:
Foes yet lovers they remain:
Pain strengthens Love till Love slay Pain.''
The sparrow said 'I could not hear thee plain,
For I was chirruping the merry rhyme
I heard men sing last night at supper-time:
'Reap the grain, and sow the grain,
To grow by sunshine and by rain.''
Then the sad fairies' foster-child arose,
And saw the grey day darkening to its close,
And passed out from the wood, and wandered down,
Along the misty hillside, to the town.
~ Augusta Davies Webster,
261:A Une Madone (To A Madonna)
Ex-voto dans le goût espagnol
Je veux bâtir pour toi, Madone, ma maîtresse,
Un autel souterrain au fond de ma détresse,
Et creuser dans le coin le plus noir de mon coeur,
Loin du désir mondain et du regard moqueur,
Une niche, d'azur et d'or tout émaillée,
Où tu te dresseras, Statue émerveillée.
Avec mes Vers polis, treillis d'un pur métal
Savamment constellé de rimes de cristal
Je ferai pour ta tête une énorme Couronne;
Et dans ma Jalousie, ô mortelle Madone
Je saurai te tailler un Manteau, de façon
Barbare, roide et lourd, et doublé de soupçon,
Qui, comme une guérite, enfermera tes charmes,
Non de Perles brodé, mais de toutes mes Larmes!
Ta Robe, ce sera mon Désir, frémissant,
Onduleux, mon Désir qui monte et qui descend,
Aux pointes se balance, aux vallons se repose,
Et revêt d'un baiser tout ton corps blanc et rose.
Je te ferai de mon Respect de beaux Souliers
De satin, par tes pieds divins humiliés,
Qui, les emprisonnant dans une molle étreinte
Comme un moule fidèle en garderont l'empreinte.
Si je ne puis, malgré tout mon art diligent
Pour Marchepied tailler une Lune d'argent
Je mettrai le Serpent qui me mord les entrailles
Sous tes talons, afin que tu foules et railles
Reine victorieuse et féconde en rachats
Ce monstre tout gonflé de haine et de crachats.
Tu verras mes Pensers, rangés comme les Cierges
Devant l'autel fleuri de la Reine des Vierges
Etoilant de reflets le plafond peint en bleu,
Te regarder toujours avec des yeux de feu;
Et comme tout en moi te chérit et t'admire,
Tout se fera Benjoin, Encens, Oliban, Myrrhe,
Et sans cesse vers toi, sommet blanc et neigeux,
En Vapeurs montera mon Esprit orageux.
14
Enfin, pour compléter ton rôle de Marie,
Et pour mêler l'amour avec la barbarie,
Volupté noire! des sept Péchés capitaux,
Bourreau plein de remords, je ferai sept Couteaux
Bien affilés, et comme un jongleur insensible,
Prenant le plus profond de ton amour pour cible,
Je les planterai tous dans ton Coeur pantelant,
Dans ton Coeur sanglotant, dans ton Coeur ruisselant!
To a Madonna
Votive Offering in the Spanish Style
I want to build for you, Madonna, my mistress,
An underground altar in the depths of my grief
And carve out in the darkest corner of my heart,
Far from worldly desires and mocking looks,
A niche, all enameled with azure and with gold,
Where you shall stand, amazed Statue;
With my polished Verses as a trellis of pure metal
Studded cunningly with rhymes of crystal,
I shall make for your head an immense Crown,
And from my Jealousy, O mortal Madonna,
I shall know how to cut a cloak in a fashion,
Barbaric, heavy, and stiff, lined with suspicion,
Which, like a sentry-box, will enclose your charms;
Embroidered not with Pearls, but with all of my Tears!
Your Gown will be my Desire, quivering,
Undulant, my Desire which rises and which falls,
Balances on the crests, reposes in the troughs,
And clothes with a kiss your white and rose body.
Of my Self-respect I shall make you Slippers
Of satin which, humbled by your divine feet,
Will imprison them in a gentle embrace,
And assume their form like a faithful mold;
If I can't, in spite of all my painstaking art,
Carve a Moon of silver for your Pedestal,
I shall put the Serpent which is eating my heart
Under your heels, so that you may trample and mock,
15
Triumphant queen, fecund in redemptions,
That monster all swollen with hatred and spittle.
You will see my Thoughts like Candles in rows
Before the flower-decked altar of the Queen of Virgins,
Starring with their reflections the azure ceiling,
And watching you always with eyes of fire.
And since my whole being admires and loves you,
All will become Storax, Benzoin, Frankincense, Myrrh,
And ceaselessly toward you, white, snowy pinnacle,
My turbulent spirit will rise like a vapor.
Finally, to complete your role of Mary,
And to mix love with inhumanity,
Infamous pleasure! of the seven deadly sins,
I, torturer full of remorse, shall make seven
Well sharpened Daggers and, like a callous juggler,
Taking your deepest love for a target,
I shall plant them all in your panting Heart,
In your sobbing Heart, in your bleeding Heart!
— Translated by William Aggeler
To a Madonna
(Ex Voto in Spanish Style)
I'd build, Madonna, love, for my belief,
An altar in the dim crypt of my grief,
And in the darkest comer of my heart,
From mortal lust and mockery far apart,
Scoop you a niche, with gold and azure glaze,
Where you would stand in wonderment and gaze,
With my pure verses trellised, and all round
In constellated rhymes of crystal bound:
And with a huge tiara richly crowned.
Out of the Jealousy which rules my passion,
Mortal Madonna, I a cloak would fashion,
Barbarous, stiff, and heavy with my doubt,
Whereon as in a fourm you would fill out
And mould your lair. Of tears, not pearls, would be
16
The sparkle of its rich embroidery:
Your robe would be my lust, with waving flow,
Poising on tips, in valleys lying low,
And clothing, in one kiss, coral and snow.
In my Respect (for satin) you'll be shod
Which your white feet would humble to the clod,
While prisoning their flesh with tender hold
It kept their shape imprinted like a mould.
If for a footstool to support your shoon,
For all my art, I could not get the moon,
I'd throw the serpent, that devours my vitals
Under your trampling heels for his requitals,
Victorious queen, to spurn, bruise, and belittle
That monstrous worm blown-up with hate and spittle.
Round you my thoughts like candles should be seen
Around the flowered shrine of the virgins' Queen,
Reflected on a roof that's painted blue,
And aiming all their golden eyes at you.
Since nought is in me that you do not stir,
All will be incense, benjamin, and myrrh,
And up to you, white peak, in clouds will soar
My stormy soul, in rapture, to adore.
In fine, your role of Mary to perfect
And mingle barbarism with respect —
Of seven deadly sins, O black delight!
Remorseful torturer, to show my sleight,
I'll forge and sharpen seven deadly swords
And like a callous juggler on the boards,
Taking it for my target, I would dart
Them deep into your streaming, sobbing heart.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
À une Madone
I'll build for thee, Madonna, mistress mine,
deep in my crypt of woe a secret shrine;
— carve in the blackest corner of my heart,
from worldly lust and mocking eyes apart,
a niche, with gold and blue enamel blent,
17
to hold thy statue filled with wonderment.
my polished verse, of virgin metal hard
with crystal rhymes artistically starred,
shall raise for thee a towering diadem;
and from my jealousy I'll cut and hem
a mangle, mortal Lady mine, designed
as 'twere a sentry-box, stiff, heavy, lined
with barbs of keen suspicion and with fears,
embroidered, not with pearls, but all my tears!
to make thy robe I'll give thee my desire
that rises, falls and quivers like a fire,
clings to each summit, rests in each abyss,
and clothes thy rosy body with a kiss.
of my respect I'll make thee buskins fine
of satin, humbled by thy feet divine,
to prison them in soft embraces warm
and like a faithful mould to preserve their form.
then if my art is powerless to cut
thy pedestal, a silver moon, I'll put
beneath thy heel the serpent in my heart
for thee to bruise and mock, because thou art
the queen of my redemption, conquering all,
even that monster spewing hate and gall.
thine altar, like the Virgin's, shall be twined
with flowers, and like tapers all aligned,
my thoughts shall light the niche: from those blue skies,
watching thee always with their fiery eyes;
and since thou holdest all the love within
my heart, as incense, myrrh and benjamin,
in clouds forevermore to thee, its goal,
o snowy peak, shall rise my stormy soul.
and last, to make thee Mary utterly,
commingling love with savage cruelty,
— black joy! — with all the seven capital sins
I'll forge, remorsefully, seven javelins
knife-sharp, and like a juggler nonchalant,
taking thy love as target, I shall plant
deep in thy heart convulsed each deadly dart
18
— thy panting heart, thy sobbing, streaming heart!
— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
~ Charles Baudelaire,
262:The Kalevala - Rune Xli
WAINAMOINEN'S HARP-SONGS.
Wainamoinen, ancient minstrel,
The eternal wisdom-singer,
Laves his hands to snowy whiteness,
Sits upon the rock of joyance,
On the stone of song be settles,
On the mount of silver clearness,
On the summit, golden colored;
Takes the harp by him created,
In his hands the harp of fish-bone,
With his knee the arch supporting,
Takes the harp-strings in his fingers,
Speaks these words to those assembled:
'Hither come, ye Northland people,
Come and listen to my playing,
To the harp's entrancing measures,
To my songs of joy and gladness.'
Then the singer of Wainola
Took the harp of his creation,
Quick adjusting, sweetly tuning,
Deftly plied his skillful fingers
To the strings that he had fashioned.
Now was gladness rolled on gladness,
And the harmony of pleasure
Echoed from the hills and mountains:
Added singing to his playing,
Out of joy did joy come welling,
Now resounded marvelous music,
All of Northland stopped and listened.
Every creature in the forest,
All the beasts that haunt the woodlands,
On their nimble feet came bounding,
Came to listen to his playing,
Came to hear his songs of joyance.
Leaped the squirrels from the branches,
Merrily from birch to aspen;
Climbed the ermines on the fences,
186
O'er the plains the elk-deer bounded,
And the lynxes purred with pleasure;
Wolves awoke in far-off swamp-lands,
Bounded o'er the marsh and heather,
And the bear his den deserted,
Left his lair within the pine-wood,
Settled by a fence to listen,
Leaned against the listening gate-posts,
But the gate-posts yield beneath him;
Now he climbs the fir-tree branches
That he may enjoy and wonder,
Climbs and listens to the music
Of the harp of Wainamoinen.
Tapiola's wisest senior,
Metsola's most noble landlord,
And of Tapio, the people,
Young and aged, men and maidens,
Flew like red-deer up the mountains
There to listen to the playing,
To the harp, of Wainamoinen.
Tapiola's wisest mistress,
Hostess of the glen and forest,
Robed herself in blue and scarlet,
Bound her limbs with silken ribbons,
Sat upon the woodland summit,
On the branches of a birch-tree,
There to listen to the playing,
To the high-born hero's harping,
To the songs of Wainamoinen.
All the birds that fly in mid-air
Fell like snow-flakes from the heavens,
Flew to hear the minstrel's playing,
Hear the harp of Wainamoinen.
Eagles in their lofty eyrie
Heard the songs of the enchanter;
Swift they left their unfledged young ones,
Flew and perched around the minstrel.
From the heights the hawks descended,
From the, clouds down swooped the falcon,
Ducks arose from inland waters,
Swans came gliding from the marshes;
Tiny finches, green and golden,
187
Flew in flocks that darkened sunlight,
Came in myriads to listen '
Perched upon the head and shoulders
Of the charming Wainamoinen,
Sweetly singing to the playing
Of the ancient bard and minstrel.
And the daughters of the welkin,
Nature's well-beloved daughters,
Listened all in rapt attention;
Some were seated on the rainbow,
Some upon the crimson cloudlets,
Some upon the dome of heaven.
In their hands the Moon's fair daughters
Held their weaving-combs of silver;
In their hands the Sun's sweet maidens
Grasped the handles of their distaffs,
Weaving with their golden shuttles,
Spinning from their silver spindles,
On the red rims of the cloudlets,
On the bow of many colors.
As they hear the minstrel playing,
Hear the harp of Wainamoinen,
Quick they drop their combs of silver,
Drop the spindles from their fingers,
And the golden threads are broken,
Broken are the threads of silver.
All the fish in Suomi-waters
Heard the songs of the magician,
Came on flying fins to listen
To the harp of Wainamoinen.
Came the trout with graceful motions,
Water-dogs with awkward movements,
From the water-cliffs the salmon,
From the sea-caves came the whiting,
From the deeper caves the bill-fish;
Came the pike from beds of sea-fern,
Little fish with eyes of scarlet,
Leaning on the reeds and rushes,
With their heads above the surface;
Came to bear the harp of joyance,
Hear the songs of the enchanter.
Ahto, king of all the waters,
188
Ancient king with beard of sea-grass,
Raised his head above the billows,
In a boat of water-lilies,
Glided to the coast in silence,
Listened to the wondrous singing,
To the harp of Wainamoinen.
These the words the sea-king uttered:
'Never have I heard such playing,
Never heard such strains of music,
Never since the sea was fashioned,
As the songs of this enchanter,
This sweet singer, Wainamoinen.'
Satko's daughters from the blue-deep,
Sisters of the wave-washed ledges,
On the colored strands were sitting,
Smoothing out their sea-green tresses
With the combs of molten silver,
With their silver-handled brushes,
Brushes forged with golden bristles.
When they hear the magic playing,
Hear the harp of Wainamoinen,
Fall their brushes on the billows,
Fall their combs with silver handles
To the bottom of the waters,
Unadorned their heads remaining,
And uncombed their sea-green tresses.
Came the hostess of the waters,
Ancient hostess robed in flowers,
Rising from her deep sea-castle,
Swimming to the shore in wonder,
Listened to the minstrel's playing,
To the harp of Wainamoinen.
As the magic tones re-echoed,
As the singer's song out-circled,
Sank the hostess into slumber,
On the rocks of many colors,
On her watery couch of joyance,
Deep the sleep that settled o'er her.
Wainamoinen, ancient minstrel,
Played one day and then a second,
Played the third from morn till even.
There was neither man nor hero,
189
Neither ancient dame, nor maiden,
Not in Metsola a daughter,
Whom he did not touch to weeping;
Wept the young, and wept the aged,
Wept the mothers, wept the daughters
Wept the warriors and heroes
At the music of his playing,
At the songs of the magician.
Wainamoinen's tears came flowing,
Welling from the master's eyelids,
Pearly tear-drops coursing downward,
Larger than the whortle-berries,
Finer than the pearls of ocean,
Smoother than the eggs of moor-hens,
Brighter than the eyes of swallows.
From his eves the tear-drops started,
Flowed adown his furrowed visage,
Falling from his beard in streamlets,
Trickled on his heaving bosom,
Streaming o'er his golden girdle,
Coursing to his garment's border,
Then beneath his shoes of ermine,
Flowing on, and flowing ever,
Part to earth for her possession,
Part to water for her portion.
As the tear-drops fall and mingle,
Form they streamlets from the eyelids
Of the minstrel, Wainamoinen,
To the blue-mere's sandy margin,
To the deeps of crystal waters,
Lost among the reeds and rushes.
Spake at last the ancient minstrel:
'Is there one in all this concourse,
One in all this vast assembly
That can gather up my tear-drops
From the deep, pellucid waters?'
Thus the younger heroes answered,
Answered thus the bearded seniors:
'There is none in all this concourse,
None in all this vast assembly,
That can gather up thy tear-drops
From the deep, pellucid waters.'
190
Spake again wise Wainamoinen:
'He that gathers up my tear-drops
From the deeps of crystal waters
Shall receive a beauteous plumage.'
Came a raven, flying, croaking,
And the minstrel thus addressed him:
'Bring, O raven, bring my tear-drops
From the crystal lake's abysses;
I will give thee beauteous plumage,
Recompense for golden service.'
But the raven failed his master.
Came a duck upon the waters,
And the hero thus addressed him:
'Bring O water-bird, my tear-drops;
Often thou dost dive the deep-sea,
Sink thy bill upon the bottom
Of the waters thou dost travel;
Dive again my tears to gather,
I will give thee beauteous plumage,
Recompense for golden service.'
Thereupon the duck departed,
Hither, thither, swam, and circled,
Dived beneath the foam and billow,
Gathered Wainamoinen's tear-drops
From the blue-sea's pebbly bottom,
From the deep, pellucid waters;
Brought them to the great magician,
Beautifully formed and colored,
Glistening in the silver sunshine,
Glimmering in the golden moonlight,
Many-colored as the rainbow,
Fitting ornaments for heroes,
Jewels for the maids of beauty.
This the origin of sea-pearls,
And the blue-duck's beauteous plumage.
~ Elias Lönnrot,
263:New Year's Day at Asolo in the Trevisan

Scene.A large mean airy chamber. A girl, Pippa, from the Silk-mills, springing out of bed.
Day!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee,
A mite of my twelve hours' treasure,
The least of thy gazes or glances,
(Be they grants thou art bound to or gifts above measure)
One of thy choices or one of thy chances,
(Be they tasks God imposed thee or freaks at thy pleasure)
My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure,
Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!
Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing,
Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good
Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going,
As if earth turned from work in gamesome mood
All shall be mine! But thou must treat me not
As prosperous ones are treated, those who live
At hand here, and enjoy the higher lot,
In readiness to take what thou wilt give,
And free to let alone what thou refusest;
For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest
Me, who am only Pippa,old-year's sorrow,
Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow:
Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow
Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow.
All other men and women that this earth
Belongs to, who all days alike possess,
Make general plenty cure particular dearth,
Get more joy one way, if another, less:
Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven
What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven,
Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sun's!
Try now! Take Asolo's Four Happiest Ones
And let thy morning rain on that superb
Great haughty Ottima; can rain disturb
Her Sebald's homage? All the while thy rain
Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane,
He will but press the closer, breathe more warm
Against her cheek; how should she mind the storm?
And, morning past, if mid-day shed a gloom
O'er Jules and Phene,what care bride and groom
Save for their dear selves? 'T is their marriage-day;
And while they leave church and go home their way,
Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be
Sunbeams and pleasant weather spite of thee.
Then, for another trial, obscure thy eve
With mist,will Luigi and his mother grieve
The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth,
She in her age, as Luigi in his youth,
For true content? The cheerful town, warm, close
And safe, the sooner that thou art morose,
Receives them. And yet once again, outbreak
In storm at night on Monsignor, they make
Such stir about,whom they expect from Rome
To visit Asolo, his brothers' home,
And say here masses proper to release
A soul from pain,what storm dares hurt his peace?
Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward
Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard.
But Pippajust one such mischance would spoil
Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's toil
At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil!
And here I let time slip for nought!
Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam, caught
With a single splash from my ewer!
You that would mock the best pursuer,
Was my basin over-deep?
One splash of water ruins you asleep,
And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits
Wheeling and counterwheeling,
Reeling, broken beyond healing:
Now grow together on the ceiling!
That will task your wits.
Whoever it was quenched fire first, hoped to see
Morsel after morsel flee
As merrily, as giddily . . .
Meantime, what lights my sunbeam on,
Where settles by degrees the radiant cripple?
Oh, is it surely blown, my martagon?
New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple,
Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk bird's poll!
Be sure if corals, branching 'neath the ripple
Of ocean, bud there,fairies watch unroll
Such turban-flowers; I say, such lamps disperse
Thick red flame through that dusk green universe!
I am queen of thee, floweret!
And each fleshy blossom
Preserve I not(safer
Than leaves that embower it,
Or shells that embosom)
From weevil and chafer?
Laugh through my pane then; solicit the bee;
Gibe him, be sure; and, in midst of thy glee,
Love thy queen, worship me!
Worship whom else? For am I not, this day,
Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day?
My morn, noon, eve and nighthow spend my day?
To-morrow I must be Pippa who winds silk,
The whole year round, to earn just bread and milk:
But, this one day, I have leave to go,
And play out my fancy's fullest games;
I may fancy all dayand it shall be so
That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names
Of the Happiest Four in our Asolo!
See! Up the hill-side yonder, through the morning,
Some one shall love me, as the world calls love:
I am no less than Ottima, take warning!
The gardens, and the great stone house above,
And other house for shrubs, all glass in front,
Are mine; where Sebald steals, as he is wont,
To court me, while old Luca yet reposes:
And therefore, till the shrub-house door uncloses,
I . . . what now?give abundant cause for prate
About meOttima, I meanof late,
Too bold, too confident she'll still face down
The spitefullest of talkers in our town.
How we talk in the little town below!
But love, love, lovethere's better love, I know!
This foolish love was only day's first offer;
I choose my next love to defy the scoffer:
For do not our Bride and Bridegroom sally
Out of Possagno church at noon?
Their house looks over Orcana valley:
Why should not I be the bride as soon
As Ottima? For I saw, beside,
Arrive last night that little bride
Saw, if you call it seeing her, one flash
Of the pale snow-pure cheek and black bright tresses,
Blacker than all except the black eyelash;
I wonder she contrives those lids no dresses!
So strict was she, the veil
Should cover close her pale
Pure cheeksa bride to look at and scarce touch,
Scarce touch, remember, Jules! For are not such
Used to be tended, flower-like, every feature,
As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?
A soft and easy life these ladies lead:
Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed.
Oh, save that brow its virgin dimness,
Keep that foot its lady primness,
Let those ankles never swerve
From their exquisite reserve,
Yet have to trip along the streets like me,
All but naked to the knee!
How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss
So startling as her real first infant kiss?
Oh, nonot envy, this!
Not envy, sure!for if you gave me
Leave to take or to refuse,
In earnest, do you think I'd choose
That sort of new love to enslave me?
Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning;
As little fear of losing it as winning:
Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives,
And only parents' love can last our lives.
At eve the Son and Mother, gentle pair,
Commune inside our turret: what prevents
My being Luigi? While that mossy lair
Of lizards through the winter-time is stirred
With each to each imparting sweet intents
For this new-year, as brooding bird to bird
(For I observe of late, the evening walk
Of Luigi and his mother, always ends
Inside our ruined turret, where they talk,
Calmer than lovers, yet more kind than friends)
Let me be cared about, kept out of harm,
And schemed for, safe in love as with a charm;
Let me be Luigi! If I only knew
What was my mother's facemy father, too!
Nay, if you come to that, best love of all
Is God's; then why not have God's love befall
Myself as, in the palace by the Dome,
Monsignor?who to-night will bless the home
Of his dead brother; and God bless in turn
That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn
With love for all men! I, to-night at least,
Would be that holy and beloved priest.
Now wait!even I already seem to share
In God's love: what does New-year's hymn declare?
What other meaning do these verses bear?
All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly he trod
Paradise, his presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can workGod's puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.
Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?
Costs it more pain that this, ye call
A "great event," should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!
And more of it, and more of it!oh yes
I will pass each, and see their happiness,
And envy nonebeing just as great, no doubt,
Useful to men, and dear to God, as they!
A pretty thing to care about
So mightily, this single holiday!
But let the sun shine! Wherefore repine?
With thee to lead me, O Day of mine,
Down the grass path grey with dew,
Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs,
Where the swallow never flew
Nor yet cicala dared carouse
No, dared carouse!
[She enters the street]


~ Robert Browning, Introduction: Pippa Passes
,
264:See you the towers, that, gray and old,
Frown through the sunlight's liquid gold,
Steep sternly fronting steep?
The Hellespont beneath them swells,
And roaring cleaves the Dardanelles,
The rock-gates of the deep!
Hear you the sea, whose stormy wave,
From Asia, Europe clove in thunder?
That sea which rent a world, cannot
Rend love from love asunder!

In Hero's, in Leander's heart,
Thrills the sweet anguish of the dart
Whose feather flies from love.
All Hebe's bloom in Hero's cheek
And his the hunter's steps that seek
Delight, the hills above!
Between their sires the rival feud
Forbids their plighted hearts to meet;
Love's fruits hang over danger's gulf,
By danger made more sweet.

Alone on Sestos' rocky tower,
Where upward sent in stormy shower,
The whirling waters foam,
Alone the maiden sits, and eyes
The cliffs of fair Abydos rise
Afarher lover's home.
Oh, safely thrown from strand to strand,
No bridge can love to love convey;
No boatman shoots from yonder shore,
Yet Love has found the way.

That love, which could the labyrinth pierce
Which nerves the weak, and curbs the fierce,
And wings with wit the dull;
That love which o'er the furrowed land
Bowedtame beneath young Jason's hand
The fiery-snorting bull!
Yes, Styx itself, that ninefold flows,
Has love, the fearless, ventured o'er,
And back to daylight borne the bride,
From Pluto's dreary shore!

What marvel then that wind and wave,
Leander doth but burn to brave,
When love, that goads him, guides!
Still when the day, with fainter glimmer,
Wanes palehe leaps, the daring swimmer,
Amid the darkening tides;
With lusty arms he cleaves the waves,
And strikes for that dear strand afar;
Where high from Hero's lonely tower
Lone streams the beacon-star.

In vain his blood the wave may chill,
These tender arms can warm it still
And, weary if the way,
By many a sweet embrace, above
All earthly boonscan liberal love
The lover's toil repay,
Until Aurora breaks the dream,
And warns the loiterer to depart
Back to the ocean's icy bed,
Scared from that loving heart.

So thirty suns have sped their flight
Still in that theft of sweet delight
Exult the happy pair;
Caress will never pall caress,
And joys that gods might envy, bless
The single bride-night there.
Ah! never he has rapture known,
Who has not, where the waves are driven
Upon the fearful shores of hell,
Plucked fruits that taste of heaven!

Now changing in their season are,
The morning and the Hesper star;
Nor see those happy eyes
The leaves that withering droop and fall,
Nor hear, when, from its northern hall,
The neighboring winter sighs;
Or, if they see, the shortening days
But seem to them to close in kindness;
For longer joys, in lengthening nights,
They thank the heaven in blindness.

It is the time, when night and day,
In equal scales contend for sway
Lone, on her rocky steep,
Lingers the girl with wistful eyes
That watch the sun-steeds down the skies,
Careering towards the deep.
Lulled lay the smooth and silent sea,
A mirror in translucent calm,
The breeze, along that crystal realm,
Unmurmuring, died in balm.

In wanton swarms and blithe array,
The merry dolphins glide and play
Amid the silver waves.
In gray and dusky troops are seen,
The hosts that serve the ocean-queen,
Upborne from coral caves:
Theyonly theyhave witnessed love
To rapture steal its secret way:
And Hecate [36] seals the only lips
That could the tale betray!

She marks in joy the lulled water,
And Sestos, thus thy tender daughter,
Soft-flattering, woos the sea!
"Fair godand canst thou then betray?
No! falsehood dwells with them that say
That falsehood dwells with thee!
Ah! faithless is the race of man,
And harsh a father's heart can prove;
But thee, the gentle and the mild,
The grief of love can move!"

"Within these hated walls of stone,
Should I, repining, mourn alone,
And fade in ceaseless care,
But thou, though o'er thy giant tide,
Nor bridge may span, nor boat may glide,
Dost safe my lover bear.
And darksome is thy solemn deep,
And fearful is thy roaring wave;
But wave and deep are won by love
Thou smilest on the brave!"

"Nor vainly, sovereign of the sea,
Did Eros send his shafts to thee
What time the rain of gold,
Bright Helle, with her brother bore,
How stirred the waves she wandered o'er,
How stirred thy deeps of old!
Swift, by the maiden's charms subdued,
Thou cam'st from out the gloomy waves,
And in thy mighty arms, she sank
Into thy bridal caves."

"A goddess with a god, to keep
In endless youth, beneath the deep,
Her solemn ocean-court!
And still she smooths thine angry tides,
Tames thy wild heart, and favoring guides
The sailor to the port!
Beautiful Helle, bright one, hear
Thy lone adoring suppliant pray!
And guide, O goddessguide my love
Along the wonted way!"

Now twilight dims the waters' flow,
And from the tower, the beacon's glow
Waves flickering o'er the main.
Ah, where athwart the dismal stream,
Shall shine the beacon's faithful beam
The lover's eyes shall strain!
Hark! sounds moan threatening from afar
From heaven the blessed stars are gone
More darkly swells the rising sea
The tempest labors on!

Along the ocean's boundless plains
Lies nightin torrents rush the rains
From the dark-bosomed cloud
Red lightning skirs the panting air,
And, loosed from out their rocky lair,
Sweep all the storms abroad.
Huge wave on huge wave tumbling o'er,
The yawning gulf is rent asunder,
And shows, as through an opening pall,
Grim earththe ocean under!

Poor maiden! bootless wail or vow
"Have mercy, Jovebe gracious, thou!
Dread prayer was mine before!"
What if the gods have heardand he,
Lone victim of the stormy sea,
Now struggles to the shore!
There's not a sea-bird on the wave
Their hurrying wings the shelter seek;
The stoutest ship the storms have proved,
Takes refuge in the creek.

"Ah, still that heart, which oft has braved
The danger where the daring saved,
Love lureth o'er the sea;
For many a vow at parting morn,
That naught but death should bar return,
Breathed those dear lips to me;
And whirled around, the while I weep,
Amid the storm that rides the wave,
The giant gulf is grasping down
The rash one to the grave!

"False Pontus! and the calm I hailed,
The awaiting murder darkly veiled
The lulled pellucid flow,
The smiles in which thou wert arrayed,
Were but the snares that love betrayed
To thy false realm below!
Now in the midway of the main,
Return relentlessly forbidden,
Thou loosenest on the path beyond
The horrors thou hadst hidden."

Loud and more loud the tempest raves
In thunder break the mountain waves,
White-foaming on the rock
No ship that ever swept the deep
Its ribs of gnarled oak could keep
Unshattered by the shock.
Dies in the blast the guiding torch
To light the struggler to the strand;
'Tis death to battle with the wave,
And death no less to land!

On Venus, daughter of the seas,
She calls the tempest to appease
To each wild-shrieking wind
Along the ocean-desert borne,
She vows a steer with golden horn
Vain vowrelentless wind!
On every goddess of the deep,
On all the gods in heaven that be,
She callsto soothe in calm, awhile
The tempest-laden sea!

"Hearken the anguish of my cries!
From thy green halls, arisearise,
Leucothoe the divine!
Who, in the barren main afar,
Oft on the storm-beat mariner
Dost gently-saving shine.
Oh,reach to him thy mystic veil,
To which the drowning clasp may cling,
And safely from that roaring grave,
To shore my lover bring!"

And now the savage winds are hushing.
And o'er the arched horizon, blushing,
Day's chariot gleams on high!
Back to their wonted channels rolled,
In crystal calm the waves behold
One smile on sea and sky!
All softly breaks the rippling tide,
Low-murmuring on the rocky land,
And playful wavelets gently float
A corpse upon the strand!

'Tis he!who even in death would still
Not fail the sweet vow to fulfil;
She looksseesknows him there!
From her pale lips no sorrow speaks,
No tears glide down her hueless cheeks;
Cold-numbed in her despair
She looked along the silent deep,
She looked upon the brightening heaven,
Till to the marble face the soul
Its light sublime had given!

"Ye solemn powers men shrink to name,
Your might is here, your rights ye claim
Yet think not I repine
Soon closed my course; yet I can bless
The life that brought me happiness
The fairest lot was mine!
Living have I thy temple served,
Thy consecrated priestess been
My last glad offering now receive
Venus, thou mightiest queen!"

Flashed the white robe along the air,
And from the tower that beetled there
She sprang into the wave;
Roused from his throne beneath the waste,
Those holy forms the god embraced
A god himself their grave!
Pleased with his prey, he glides along
More blithe the murmured music seems,
A gush from unexhausted urns
His everlasting streams!

~ Friedrich Schiller, Hero And Leander
,
265: The Meditations of Mandavya
I
O joy of gaining all the soul's desire!
O stranger joy of the defeat and loss!
O heart that yearnest to uplift the world!
O fiercer heart that bendest over its pain
And drinkst the savour! I will love thee, O Love,
Naked or veiled or dreadfully disguised;
Not only when thou flatterest my heart
But when thou tearst it. Thy sweet pity I love
And mother's care for creatures, for the joys
I love thee that the lives of things possess,
And love thee for the torment of our pains;
Nor cry, as some, against thy will, nor say
Thou art not. Easy is the love that lasts
Only with favours in the shopman heart!
Who, smitten, takes and gives the kiss, he loves.
2
Blue-winged like turquoise, crimson-throated, beaked,
Enormous, fluttering over the garden wall
He came to me, some moments on a bough
Was perched, then flew away, leaving my heart
Enchanted. It was as if thou saidst, "Behold, my love,
How beautiful I am! To show thee this,
I came, my beauty. Now I flee away
Since thou hast seen and lov'st." So dealst thou always,
Luring and fleeing; but our hearts pursue.
3
While on a terrace hushed I walked at night,
He came and stung my foot. My soul surprised

510

Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
Rejoiced in lover's contact; but the mind
Thought of a scorpion and was snared by forms.

Still, still my soul remembered its delight,
Denying mind, and midst the body's pain,
I laughed contented.
4
All is attained, attained! The pain is dead,
The striving. O thou joy that since this world
Began, wast waiting for me in thy lair.

O Wild Beast of the ways who torest my soul
With rapture felt as pain.

O cruelty divine! O pity fierce!
O timeless rapture of the nights that pass
Embraced, poignant and pure with Thy caress!
Humanity, acceptable I find
Thy ages that have wept out sweat and blood,
Since all was made to give its utter price
To one wild moment of thy hidden God.

Let the whole world end now, since all for which
It was created is fulfilled at last
And I am swallowed up in Thee, O God.
II
Who made of Nature here a tyrant? Who
Condemned us to be slaves? It was not God.

Nay, we ourselves chose our own servitude
And we ourselves have forged and heaped our chains
On our own members. God only watched the while
And mocked us sweetly at our childish task.

Then if He seized us helpless in our bonds,
Then if He played with us despite our cries
And answered with His dreadful laugh our wrath,
Ours was the fault who chose that bondage first,
Ours is the folly whom His play affrights

The Meditations of Mandavya

511

While all the time He tells us, "It is nought."
And now we say we never can be free,
For Nature binds us, for the fire must burn,
The water drown and death must seize his prey
And grief and torture do their will with us
And sin be like a lion with the world,
Because 'tis Nature. Man's not infinite,
The proof is with us every day, they cry,
And God Himself's a huge machine at last.

Yet over us all the while Thought's lightnings play
And all the while within us works His love.

Now more than when the play began, He laughs.
2
Now I believe that it is possible
To manage the arising clouds, to silence
The thunder when it roars and put our rein
Upon the lightnings. Only first within
The god we must coerce who wallows here
In love with his subjection and confined
By his own servants, wantonly enslaved
To every lure and every tempting bond.

And therefore man loves power, but power o'ercome,
Force that accepts its limits. Wherefore then
A limit? Why not dare the whole embrace,
The vast attraction? Let us risk extinction then
If by that venture immortality
And high omnipotence come near our grasp.

'Tis not the little rippling wayward seas,
Nor all huge ocean tumbled by its storms
That can be our exemplar. The vault of heaven
Is not a true similitude for man
Whose space outgyres thought's last horizon. Something
There is in us fears not the night beyond,
But breathless sails, unanchored, without helm,
Where mind and senses fail. Our naked soul

512

Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
Can journey to the farther unshaped void
Where nothing is except ourselves, arrive, hold on,
Not shake, not ask return. Who accepts at last
His limit save the beast and plant and clod?
O to be perfect here, to exceed all bounds,
To feel the world a toy between our hands!
Yet now enough that I have seized one current
Of the tremendous Force that moves the world.

I know, O God, the day shall dawn at last
When man shall rise from playing with the mud
And taking in his hands the sun and stars
Remould appearance, law and process old.

Then, pain and discord vanished from the world,
Shall the dead wilderness accept the rose
And the hushed desert babble of its rills;
Man once more seem the image true of God.
3
I will not faint, O God. There is this thirst,
And thirst supposes water somewhere. Yes,
But in this life we may not ever find;
Old nature sits a phantom by the way,
Old passions may forbid, old doubts return.

Then are there other lives here or beyond
To satisfy us. I will persist, O Lord.
III
What is this Love that I have never found?
I have imagined in the skies a God,
And seen Him in the stirring of the leaves,
And heard Him in the purling of the brooks,
And feared Him in the lightning's flashing tusk,
And missed Him in the mute eternal night,
And woke to Him in the returning Dawns.

And now I say there is no God at all,

The Meditations of Mandavya
But only a dumb Void that belches forth
Numberless larvae and phantasmal shapes
Into a void less happy than itself
Because this feels. O if this dream were true,
This iron, brute, gigantic helpless toy
They call a world, this thing that turns and turns
And shrieks and bleeds and cannot stop, this victim
Broken and living yet on its own wheel,
And if a Will created this, what name
Shall best blaspheme against that tyrant God?
Let all men seek it out and hurl it up
Against Him with one cry, if yet perchance
Complete denial may destroy His life
With happy end to His unhappy world.

For where in all these stars is any sign of Love?
It is not here, but that which seems like Love
Is a sleek cruel cheat that soon unmasks,
Sent here to make the final suffering worse, -
Not Love, but Death disguised that strokes its food!
And all good in the world is only that.

A death that eats and eating is devoured,
This is the brutal image of the world.
-
Lo, I have cursed Thee, lo, I have denied
Thy love, Thy being. Strike me with Thy rod,
Convince me that Thou art. O leave it not
To Thy dumb messengers that have no heart,
No wrath in the attack, no angered love,
No exultation in the blow that falls,
The cry that answers. Let me feel a Heart,
Even though an evil one, that throbs and is
Against our tears, our pressure and our search.

Beware, for I will send my soul across the earth
And all men turn against Thee at my word.

There is no sign, there comes not any voice.

And yet, alas! I know He will return

513

514

Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
And He will soo the my wounds and charm my heart;
I shall again forgive, again shall love,
Again shall suffer, be again deceived.

And where is any end, O Heaven, O Earth?
But there is never any end when one has loved.
-
A sudden silence and a sudden sound,
The sound above and in another world,
The silence here; and from the two a thought.

Perhaps the heart of God for ever sings
And worlds come throbbing out from every note;
Perhaps His soul sits ever calm and still
And listens to the music rapturously,
Himself adoring, by Himself adored.

So were the singer and the hearer one
Eternally. The anthem buoyant rides
For ever on the seas of Space and Time
And worships the white Bliss from which 'twas born;
The ineffable Delight leans silent down
And clasps the creatures of its mystic cry
For ever and for ever without end.
-
Who art thou that pursuest my desire
Like a wild beast behind the jungle's screen
And throw'st a dread upon its fiercest fire,
A shadow on its flowering joy and green?
Thou madest and deniest me my need,
Thou jealous Lover and devouring Greed!

-
Who spoke of God? There is a hungry Beast
In ambush for the world who all devours,
Yet is his hunger sated not the least.

He tears our beauty, strength and happiest hours,
And eats our flesh and drinks our blood and tears,

The Meditations of Mandavya

515

Ranging as in a thicket through the years.
-
Dost thou desire my last vain hope? Take it, rejoice!
Wilt thou exact my dying bliss? Tear it and end!
But give me this at least, dying, to hear thy voice
By thee as foeman slain if never clasped as friend.
-
Foeman or friend, lover or slayer, only thee
I need and feel, O personal Eternity.
-
If what thou gavest, thou must needs again exact,
Cancel thy forms, deny thy own accomplished fact,
With what wilt thou replace them? Is thy nameless void
Embraceable by arms? Or can the soul upbuoyed
Rest on a shoreless emptiness without a name?
Can Love find rapture by renouncing all his flame?
Thou hast forgotten or our nature is misled.

Lur'st thou to utter life beyond the silence dead?

-
Not sound, nor silence, neither world nor void,
But the unthinkable, absolute, unalloyed
One, multitudinous, nameless, yet a Name,
Innumerably other, yet the same.

Immeasurable ecstasy where Time
And Space have fainted in a swoon sublime!

-
Of silence I have tired, from the profounder Night
I come rejected. All the immensities overhead
Are given to my fierce upwinging soul at last
Rapt into high impossible ranges huge outspread.

Unnumbered voices thrill the silent waiting Vast,
A million flames converge into the rayless Light.

~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Meditations of Mandavya
,
266:Fragmentary Scenes From The Road To Avernus
Scene I
'Discontent'
LAURENCE RABY.
Laurence:
I said to young Allan M'Ilveray,
Beside the swift swirls of the North,
When, in lilac shot through with a silver ray,
We haul'd the strong salmon fish forth
Said only, 'He gave us some trouble
To land him, and what does he weigh?
Our friend has caught one that weighs double,
The game for the candle won't pay
Us to-day,
We may tie up our rods and away.'
I said to old Norman M'Gregor,
Three leagues to the west of Glen Dhu
I had drawn, with a touch of the trigger,
The best BEAD that ever I drew
Said merely, 'For birds in the stubble
I once had an eye-I could swear
He's down-but he's not worth the trouble
Of seeking. You once shot a bear
In his lair'Tis only a buck that lies there.'
I said to Lord Charles only last year,
The time that we topp'd the oak rail
Between Wharton's plough and Whynne's pasture,
And clear'd the big brook in Blakesvale
We only-at Warburton's double
He fell, then I finish'd the run
And kill'd clean-said, 'So bursts a bubble
That shone half an hour in the sun
What is won?
Your sire clear'd and captured a gun.'
159
I said to myself, in true sorrow,
I said yestere'en, 'A fair prize
Is won, and it may be to-morrow
'Twill not seem so fair in thine eyes
Real life is a race through sore trouble,
That gains not an inch on the goal,
And bliss an intangible bubble
That cheats an unsatisfied soul,
And the whole
Of the rest an illegible scroll.'
Scene VII
'Two Exhortations'
A Shooting-box in the West of Ireland. A Bedchamber.
LAURENCE RABY and MELCHIOR. Night.
Melchior:
Surely in the great beginning God made all things good, and still
That soul-sickness men call sinning entered not without His will.
Nay, our wisest have asserted that, as shade enhances light,
Evil is but good perverted, wrong is but the foil of right.
Banish sickness, then you banish joy for health to all that live;
Slay all sin, all good must vanish, good being but comparative.
Sophistry, you say-yet listen: look you skyward, there 'tis known
Worlds on worlds in myriads glisten-larger, lovelier than our own
This has been, and this still shall be, here as there, in sun or star;
These things are to be and will be, those things were to be and are.
Man in man's imperfect nature is by imperfection taught:
Add one cubit to your stature if you can by taking thought.
Laurence:
Thus you would not teach that peasant, though he calls you 'father'.
Melchior: True,
I should magnify this present, mystify that future, too
We adapt our conversation always to our hearer's light.
Laurence:
160
I am not of your persuasion.
Melchior: Yet the difference is but slight.
Laurence:
I, EVEN I, say, 'He who barters worldly weal for heavenly worth
He does well'-your saints and martyrs were examples here on earth.
Melchior:
Aye, in earlier Christian ages, while the heathen empire stood,
When the war 'twixt saints and sages cried aloud for saintly blood,
Christ was then their model truly. Now, if all were meek and pure,
Save the ungodly and the unruly, would the Christian Church endure?
Shall the toiler or the fighter dream by day and watch by night,
Turn the left cheek to the smiter, smitten rudely on the right?
Strong men must encounter bad men-so-called saints of latter days
Have been mostly pious madmen, lusting after righteous praise
Or the thralls of superstition, doubtless worthy some reward,
Since they came by their condition hardly of their free accord.
'Tis but madness, sad and solemn, that these fakir-Christians feel
Saint Stylites on his column gratified a morbid zeal.
Laurence:
By your showing, good is really on a par (of worth) with ill.
Melchior:
Nay, I said not so; I merely tell you both some ends fulfil
Priestly vows were my vocation, fast and vigil wait for me.
You must work and face temptation. Never should the strong man flee,
Though God wills the inclination with the soul at war to be. (Pauses.)
In the strife 'twixt flesh and spirit, while you can the spirit aid.
Should you fall not less your merit, be not for a fall afraid.
Whatsoe'er most right, most fit is you shall do. When all is done
Chaunt the noble Nunc Dimittis-Benedicimur, my son.
[Exit MELCHIOR.]
Laurence (alone):
Why do I provoke these wrangles? Melchior talks (as well he may)
With the tongues of men and angels.
(Takes up a pamphlet.) What has this man got to say?
(Reads.) Sic sacerdos fatur (ejus nomen quondam erat Burgo.)
Mala mens est, caro pejus, anima infirma, ergo
161
I nunc, ora, sine mora-orat etiam Sancta Virgo.
(Thinks.)
(Speaks.) So it seems they mean to make her wed the usurer, Nathan Lee.
Poor Estelle! her friends forsake her; what has this to do with me?
Glad I am, at least, that Helen still refuses to discard
Her, through tales false gossips tell
in spite or heedlessness.-'Tis hard!
Lee, the Levite!-some few years back Herbert horsewhipp'd him-the cur
Show'd his teeth and laid his ears back. Now his wealth has purchased her.
Must his baseness mar her brightness? Shall the callous, cunning churl
Revel in the rosy whiteness of that golden-headed girl?
(Thinks and smokes.)
(Reads.) Cito certe venit vitae finis (sic sacerdos fatur),
Nunc audite omnes, ite, vobis fabula narratur
Nunc orate et laudate, laudat etiam Alma Mater.
(Muses.) Such has been, and such shall still be,
here as there, in sun or star;
These things are to be and will be, those things were to be and are.
If I thought that speech worth heeding I should-Nay, it seems to me
More like Satan's special pleading than like Gloria Domine.
(Lies down on his couch.)
(Reads.) Et tuquoque frater meus facta mala quod fecisti
Denique confundit Deus omnes res quas tetegisti.
Nunc si unquam, nunc aut nunquam, sanguine adjuro Christi.
Scene IX
'In the Garden'
Aylmer's Garden, near the Lake. LAURENCE RABY and ESTELLE.
He:
Come to the bank where the boat is moor'd to the willow-tree low;
Bertha, the baby, won't notice, Brian, the blockhead, won't know.
She:
Bertha is not such a baby, sir, as you seem to suppose;
Brian, a blockhead he may be, more than you think for he knows.
He:
This much, at least, of your brother, from the beginning he knew
Somewhat concerning that other made such a fool of by you.
162
She:
Firmer those bonds were and faster, Frank was my spaniel, my slave.
You! you would fain be my master; mark you! the difference is grave.
He:
Call me your spaniel, your starling, take me and treat me as these,
I would be anything, darling! aye, whatsoever you please.
Brian and Basil are 'punting', leave them their dice and their wine,
Bertha is butterfly hunting, surely one hour shall be mine.
See, I have done with all duty; see, I can dare all disgrace,
Only to look at your beauty, feasting my eyes on your face.
She:
Look at me, aye, till your eyes ache! How, let me ask, will it end?
Neither for your sake, nor my sake, but for the sake of my friend?
He:
Is she your friend then? I own it, this is all wrong, and the rest,
Frustra sed anima monet, caro quod fortius est.
She:
Not quite so close, Laurence Raby, not with your arm round my waist;
Something to look at I may be, nothing to touch or to taste.
He:
Wilful as ever and wayward; why did you tempt me, Estelle?
She:
You misinterpret each stray word, you for each inch take an ell.
Lightly all laws and ties trammel me, I am warn'd for all that.
He (aside):
Perhaps she will swallow her camel when she has strained at her gnat.
She:
Therefore take thought and consider, weigh well, as I do, the whole,
You for mere beauty a bidder, say, would you barter a soul?
He:
Girl! THAT MAY happen, but THIS IS; after this welcome the worst;
Blest for one hour by your kisses, let me be evermore curs'd.
Talk not of ties to me reckless, here every tie I discard
163
Make me your girdle, your necklace
She: Laurence, you kiss me too hard.
He:
Aye, 'tis the road to Avernus, n'est ce pas vrai donc, ma belle?
There let them bind us or burn us, mais le jeu vaut la chandelle.
Am I your lord or your vassal? Are you my sun or my torch?
You, when I look at you, dazzle, yet when I touch you, you scorch.
She:
Yonder are Brian and Basil watching us fools from the porch.
Scene X
'After the Quarrel'
Laurence Raby's Chamber. LAURENCE enters, a little the worse for liquor.
Laurence:
He never gave me a chance to speak,
And he call'd her-worse than a dog
The girl stood up with a crimson cheek,
And I fell'd him there like a log.
I can feel the blow on my knuckles yet
He feels it more on his brow.
In a thousand years we shall all forget
The things that trouble us now.
Scene XI
'Ten Paces Off'
An open country. LAURENCE RABY and FORREST, BRIAN AYLMER and PRESCOT.
Forrest:
I've won the two tosses from Prescot;
Now hear me, and hearken and heed,
And pull that vile flower from your waistcoat,
And throw down that beast of a weed;
I'm going to give you the signal
I gave Harry Hunt at Boulogne,
The morning he met Major Bignell,
And shot him as dead as a stone;
For he must look round on his right hand
To watch the white flutter-that stops
His aim, for it takes off his sight, and
164
I COUGH WHILE THE HANDKERCHIEF DROPS.
And you keep both eyes on his figure,
Old fellow, and don't take them off.
You've got the sawhandled hair trigger
You sight him and shoot when I cough.
Laurence (aside):
Though God will never forgive me,
Though men make light of my name,
Though my sin and my shame outlive me,
I shall not outlast my shame.
The coward, does he mean to miss me?
His right hand shakes like a leaf;
Shall I live for my friends to hiss me,
Of fools and of knaves the chief?
Shall I live for my foes to twit me?
He has master'd his nerve again
He is firm, he will surely hit me
Will he reach the heart or the brain?
One long look eastward and northward
One prayer-'Our Father which art'
And the cough chimes in with the fourth word,
And I shoot skyward-the heart.
Last Scene
'Exeunt'
HELEN RABY.
Where the grave-deeps rot, where the grave-dews rust,
They dug, crying, 'Earth to earth'
Crying, 'Ashes to ashes and dust to dust'
And what are my poor prayers worth?
Upon whom shall I call, or in whom shall I trust,
Though death were indeed new birth.
And they bid me be glad for my baby's sake
That she suffered sinless and young
Would they have me be glad when my breasts still ache
165
Where that small, soft, sweet mouth clung?
I am glad that the heart will so surely break
That has been so bitterly wrung.
He was false, they tell me, and what if he were?
I can only shudder and pray,
Pouring out my soul in a passionate prayer
For the soul that he cast away;
Was there nothing that once was created fair
In the potter's perishing clay?
Is it well for the sinner that souls endure?
For the sinless soul is it well?
Does the pure child lisp to the angels pure?
And where does the strong man dwell,
If the sad assurance of priests be sure,
Or the tale that our preachers tell?
The unclean has follow'd the undefiled,
And the ill MAY regain the good,
And the man MAY be even as the little child!
We are children lost in the wood
Lord! lead us out of this tangled wild,
Where the wise and the prudent have been beguil'd,
And only the babes have stood.
~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,
267:Charades
I.
She stood at Greenwich, motionless amid
The ever-shifting crowd of passengers.
I marked a big tear quivering on the lid
Of her deep-lustrous eye, and knew that hers
Were days of bitterness. But, 'Oh! what stirs'
I said 'such storm within so fair a breast?'
Even as I spoke, two apoplectic curs
Came feebly up: with one wild cry she prest
Each singly to her heart, and faltered, 'Heaven be blest!'
Yet once again I saw her, from the deck
Of a black ship that steamed towards Blackwall.
She walked upon MY FIRST. Her stately neck
Bent o'er an object shrouded in her shawl:
I could not see the tears--the glad tears--fall,
Yet knew they fell. And 'Ah,' I said, 'not puppies,
Seen unexpectedly, could lift the pall
From hearts who KNOW what tasting misery's cup is,
As Niobe's, or mine, or Mr. William Guppy's.'
***
Spake John Grogblossom the coachman to Eliza Spinks the cook:
'Mrs. Spinks,' says he, 'I've foundered: 'Liza dear, I'm overtook.
Druv into a corner reglar, puzzled as a babe unborn;
Speak the word, my blessed 'Liza; speak, and John the coachman's yourn.'
Then Eliza Spinks made answer, blushing, to the coachman John:
'John, I'm born and bred a spinster: I've begun and I'll go on.
Endless cares and endless worrits, well I knows it, has a wife:
Cooking for a genteel family, John, it's a goluptious life!
'I gets 20 pounds per annum--tea and things o' course not reckoned, There's a cat that eats the butter, takes the coals, and breaks MY
SECOND:
There's soci'ty--James the footman;--(not that I look after him;
But he's aff'ble in his manners, with amazing length of limb -
'Never durst the missis enter here until I've said 'Come in':
If I saw the master peeping, I'd catch up the rolling-pin.
Christmas-boxes, that's a something; perkisites, that's something too;
And I think, take all together, John, I won't be on with you.'
John the coachman took his hat up, for he thought he'd had enough;
Rubbed an elongated forehead with a meditative cuff;
Paused before the stable doorway; said, when there, in accents mild,
'She's a fine young 'oman, cook is; but that's where it is, she's
spiled.'
***
I have read in some not marvellous tale,
(Or if I have not, I've dreamed)
Of one who filled up the convivial cup
Till the company round him seemed
To be vanished and gone, tho' the lamps upon
Their face as aforetime gleamed:
And his head sunk down, and a Lethe crept
O'er his powerful brain, and the young man slept.
Then they laid him with care in his moonlit bed:
But first--having thoughtfully fetched some tar Adorned him with feathers, aware that the weather's
Uncertainty brings on at nights catarrh.
They staid in his room till the sun was high:
But still did the feathered one give no sign
Of opening a peeper--he might be a sleeper
Such as rests on the Northern or Midland line.
At last he woke, and with profound
Bewilderment he gazed around;
Dropped one, then both feet to the ground,
But never spake a word:
Then to my WHOLE he made his way;
Took one long lingering survey;
And softly, as he stole away,
10
Remarked, 'By Jove, a bird!'
II.
If you've seen a short man swagger tow'rds the footlights at Shoreditch,
Sing out 'Heave aho! my hearties,' and perpetually hitch
Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace,
Briskly flourishing a cudgel in his pleased companion's face;
If he preluded with hornpipes each successive thing he did,
From a sun-browned cheek extracting still an ostentatious quid;
And expectorated freely, and occasionally cursed:Then have you beheld, depicted by a master's hand, MY FIRST.
O my countryman! if ever from thy arm the bolster sped,
In thy school-days, with precision at a young companion's head;
If 'twas thine to lodge the marble in the centre of the ring,
Or with well-directed pebble make the sitting hen take wing:
Then do thou--each fair May morning, when the blue lake is as glass,
And the gossamers are twinkling star-like in the beaded grass;
When the mountain-bee is sipping fragrance from the bluebell's lip,
And the bathing-woman tells you, Now's your time to take a dip:
When along the misty valleys fieldward winds the lowing herd,
And the early worm is being dropped on by the early bird;
And Aurora hangs her jewels from the bending rose's cup,
And the myriad voice of Nature calls thee to MY SECOND up:Hie thee to the breezy common, where the melancholy goose
Stalks, and the astonished donkey finds that he is really loose;
There amid green fern and furze-bush shalt thou soon MY WHOLE behold,
Rising 'bull-eyed and majestic'--as Olympus queen of old:
Kneel,--at a respectful distance,--as they kneeled to her, and try
With judicious hand to put a ball into that ball-less eye:
Till a stiffness seize thy elbows, and the general public wake Then return, and, clear of conscience, walk into thy well-earned steak.
11
III.
Ere yet 'knowledge for the million'
Came out 'neatly bound in boards;'
When like Care upon a pillion
Matrons rode behind their lords:
Rarely, save to hear the Rector,
Forth did younger ladies roam;
Making pies, and brewing nectar
From the gooseberry-trees at home.
They'd not dreamed of Pan or Vevay;
Ne'er should into blossom burst
At the ball or at the levee;
Never come, in fact, MY FIRST:
Nor illumine cards by dozens
With some labyrinthine text,
Nor work smoking-caps for cousins
Who were pounding at MY NEXT.
Now have skirts, and minds, grown ampler;
Now not all they seek to do
Is create upon a sampler
Beasts which Buffon never knew:
But their venturous muslins rustle
O'er the cragstone and the snow,
Or at home their biceps muscle
Grows by practising the bow.
Worthier they those dames who, fable
Says, rode 'palfreys' to the war
With gigantic Thanes, whose 'sable
Destriers caracoled' before;
Smiled, as--springing from the war-horse
As men spring in modern 'cirques' They plunged, ponderous as a four-horse
Coach, among the vanished Turks:In the good times when the jester
Asked the monarch how he was,
And the landlady addrest her
12
Guests as 'gossip' or as 'coz';
When the Templar said, 'Gramercy,'
Or, ''Twas shrewdly thrust, i' fegs,'
To Sir Halbert or Sir Percy
As they knocked him off his legs:
And, by way of mild reminders
That he needed coin, the Knight
Day by day extracted grinders
From the howling Israelite:
And MY WHOLE in merry Sherwood
Sent, with preterhuman luck,
Missiles--not of steel but firwood Thro' the two-mile-distant buck.
IV.
Evening threw soberer hue
Over the blue sky, and the few
Poplars that grew just in the view
Of the hall of Sir Hugo de Wynkle:
'Answer me true,' pleaded Sir Hugh,
(Striving to woo no matter who,)
'What shall I do, Lady, for you?
'Twill be done, ere your eye may twinkle.
Shall I borrow the wand of a Moorish enchanter,
And bid a decanter contain the Levant, or
The brass from the face of a Mormonite ranter?
Shall I go for the mule of the Spanish Infantar (That _R_, for the sake of the line, we must grant her,) And race with the foul fiend, and beat in a canter,
Like that first of equestrians Tam o' Shanter?
I talk not mere banter--say not that I can't, or
By this MY FIRST--(a Virginia planter
Sold it me to kill rats)--I will die instanter.'
The Lady bended her ivory neck, and
Whispered mournfully, 'Go for--MY SECOND.'
She said, and the red from Sir Hugh's cheek fled,
And 'Nay,' did he say, as he stalked away
The fiercest of injured men:
13
'Twice have I humbled my haughty soul,
And on bended knee I have pressed MY WHOLE But I never will press it again!'
V.
On pinnacled St. Mary's
Lingers the setting sun;
Into the street the blackguards
Are skulking one by one:
Butcher and Boots and Bargeman
Lay pipe and pewter down;
And with wild shout come tumbling out
To join the Town and Gown.
And now the undergraduates
Come forth by twos and threes,
From the broad tower of Trinity,
From the green gate of Caius:
The wily bargeman marks them,
And swears to do his worst;
To turn to impotence their strength,
And their beauty to MY FIRST.
But before Corpus gateway
MY SECOND first arose,
When Barnacles the freshman
Was pinned upon the nose:
Pinned on the nose by Boxer,
Who brought a hobnailed herd
From Barnwell, where he kept a van,
Being indeed a dogsmeat man,
Vendor of terriers, blue or tan,
And dealer in MY THIRD.
'Twere long to tell how Boxer
Was 'countered' on the cheek,
And knocked into the middle
Of the ensuing week:
How Barnacles the Freshman
14
Was asked his name and college;
And how he did the fatal facts
Reluctantly acknowledge.
He called upon the Proctor
Next day at half-past ten;
Men whispered that the Freshman cut
A different figure then:That the brass forsook his forehead,
The iron fled his soul,
As with blanched lip and visage wan
Before the stony-hearted Don
He kneeled upon MY WHOLE.
VI.
Sikes, housebreaker, of Houndsditch,
Habitually swore;
But so surpassingly profane
He never was before,
As on a night in winter,
When--softly as he stole
In the dim light from stair to stair,
Noiseless as boys who in her lair
Seek to surprise a fat old hare He barked his shinbone, unaware
Encountering MY WHOLE.
As pours the Anio plainward,
When rains have swollen the dykes,
So, with such noise, poured down MY FIRST,
Stirred by the shins of Sikes.
The Butler Bibulus heard it;
And straightway ceased to snore,
And sat up, like an egg on end,
While men might count a score:
Then spake he to Tigerius,
A Buttons bold was he:
'Buttons, I think there's thieves about;
Just strike a light and tumble out;
15
If you can't find one, go without,
And see what you may see.'
But now was all the household,
Almost, upon its legs,
Each treading carefully about
As if they trod on eggs.
With robe far-streaming issued
Paterfamilias forth;
And close behind him,--stout and true
And tender as the North, Came Mrs. P., supporting
On her broad arm her fourth.
Betsy the nurse, who never
From largest beetle ran,
And--conscious p'raps of pleasing caps The housemaids, formed the van:
And Bibulus the Butler,
His calm brows slightly arched;
(No mortal wight had ere that night
Seen him with shirt unstarched
And Bob, the shockhaired knifeboy,
Wielding two Sheffield blades,
And James Plush of the sinewy legs,
The love of lady's maids:
And charwoman and chaplain
Stood mingled in a mass,
And 'Things,' thought he of Houndsditch,
'Is come to a pretty pass.'
Beyond all things a Baby
Is to the schoolgirl dear;
Next to herself the nursemaid loves
Her dashing grenadier;
Only with life the sailor
Parts from the British flag;
While one hope lingers, the cracksman's fingers
Drop not his hard-earned 'swag.'
But, as hares do MY SECOND
Thro' green Calabria's copses,
16
As females vanish at the sight
Of short-horns and of wopses;
So, dropping forks and teaspoons,
The pride of Houndsditch fled,
Dumbfoundered by the hue and cry
He'd raised up overhead.
***
They gave him--did the Judges As much as was his due.
And, Saxon, should'st thou e'er be led
To deem this tale untrue;
Then--any night in winter,
When the cold north wind blows,
And bairns are told to keep out cold
By tallowing the nose:
When round the fire the elders
Are gathered in a bunch,
And the girls are doing crochet,
And the boys are reading Punch:Go thou and look in Leech's book;
There haply shalt thou spy
A stout man on a staircase stand,
With aspect anything but bland,
And rub his right shin with his hand,
To witness if I lie.
~ Charles Stuart Calverley,
268:Custer: Book Third
As in the long dead days marauding hosts
Of Indians came from far Siberian coasts,
And drove the peaceful Aztecs from their grounds,
Despoiled their homes (but left their tell-tale mounds),
So has the white man with the Indians done.
Now with their backs against the setting sun
The remnants of a dying nation stand
And view the lost domain, once their beloved land.
II
Upon the vast Atlantic's leagues of shore
The happy red man's tent is seen no more;
And from the deep blue lakes which mirror heaven
His bounding bark canoe was long since driven.
The mighty woods, those temples where his God
Spoke to his soul, are leveled to the sod;
And in their place tall church spires point above,
While priests proclaim the law of Christ, the King of Love.
III
The avaricious and encroaching rail
Seized the wide fields which knew the Indians' trail.
Back to the reservations in the West
The native owners of the land were pressed,
And selfish cities, harbingers of want,
Shut from their vision each accustomed haunt.
Yet hungry Progress, never satisfied,
Gazed on the western plains, and gazing, longed and sighed.
IV
As some strange bullock in a pasture field
Compels the herds to fear him, and to yield
The juicy grass plots and the cooling shade
Until, despite their greater strength, afraid,
200
They huddle in some corner spot and cower
Before the monarch's all controlling power,
So has the white man driven from its place
By his aggressive greed, Columbia's native race.
Yet when the bull pursues the herds at bay,
Incensed they turn, and dare dispute his sway.
And so the Indians turned, when men forgot
Their sacred word, and trespassed on the spot,
The lonely little spot of all their lands,
The reservation of the peaceful bands.
But lust for gold all conscience kills in man,
'Gold in the Black Hills, gold!' the cry arose and ran
VI
From lip to lip, as flames from tree to tree
Leap till the forest is one fiery sea,
And through the country surged that hot unrest
Which thirst for riches wakens in the breast.
In mighty throngs the fortune hunters came,
Despoiled the red man's lands and slew his game,
Broke solemn treaties and defied the law.
And all these ruthless acts the Nation knew and saw.
VII
Man is the only animal that kills
Just for the wanton love of slaughter; spills
The blood of lesser things to see it flow;
Lures like a friend, to murder like a foe
The trusting bird and beast; and, coward like,
Deals covert blows he dare not boldly strike.
The brutes have finer souls, and only slay
When torn by hunger's pangs, or when to fear a prey.
VIII
The pale-faced hunter, insolent and bold,
Pursued the bison while he sought for gold.
201
And on the hungry red man's own domains
He left the rotting and unused remains
To foul with sickening stench each passing wind
And rouse the demon in the savage mind,
Save in the heart where virtues dominate
Injustice always breeds its natural offspring-hate.
IX
The chieftain of the Sioux, great Sitting Bull,
Mused o'er their wrongs, and felt his heart swell full
Of bitter vengeance. Torn with hate's unrest
He called a council and his braves addressed.
'From fair Wisconsin's shimmering lakes of blue
Long years ago the white man drove the Sioux.
Made bold by conquest, and inflamed by greed,
He still pursues our tribes, and still our ranks recede.
'Fair are the White Chief's promises and words,
But dark his deeds who robs us of our herds.
He talks of treaties, asks the right to buy,
Then takes by force, not waiting our reply.
He grants us lands for pastures and abodes
To devastate them by his iron roads.
But now from happy Spirit Lands, a friend
Draws near the hunted Sioux, to strengthen and defend.
XI
'While walking in the fields I saw a star;
Unconsciously I followed it afarIt led me on to valleys filled with light,
Where danced our noble chieftains slain in fight.
Black Kettle, first of all that host I knew,
He whom the strong armed Custer foully slew.
And then a spirit took me by the hand,
The Great Messiah King who comes to free the land.
XII
202
'Suns were his eyes, a speaking tear his voice,
Whose rainbow sounds made listening hearts rejoice
And thus he spake: 'The red man's hour draws near
When all his lost domains shall reappear.
The elk, the deer, the bounding antelope,
Shall here return to grace each grassy slope.'
He waved his hand above the fields, and lo!
Down through the valleys came a herd of buffalo.
XIII
'The wondrous vision vanished, but I knew
That Sitting Bull must make the promise true.
Great Spirits plan what mortal man achieves,
The hand works magic when the heart believes.
Arouse, ye braves! let not the foe advance.
Arm for the battle and begin the danceThe sacred dance in honor of our slain,
Who will return to earth, ere many moons shall wane.'
XIV
Thus Sitting Bull, the chief of wily knaves,
Worked on the superstitions of his braves.
Mixed truth with lies; and stirred to mad unrest
The warlike instinct in each savage breast.
A curious product of unhappy times,
The natural offspring of unnumbered crimes,
He used low cunning and dramatic arts
To startle and surprise those crude untutored hearts.
XV
Out from the lodges pour a motley throng,
Slow measures chanting of a dirge-like song.
In one great circle dizzily they swing,
A squaw and chief alternate in the ring.
Coarse raven locks stream over robes of white,
Their deep set orbs emit a lurid light,
And as through pine trees moan the winds refrains,
So swells and dies away, the ghostly graveyard strains.
203
XVI
Like worded wine is music to the ear,
And long indulged makes mad the hearts that hear.
The dancers, drunken with the monotone
Of oft repeated notes, now shriek and groan
And pierce their ruddy flesh with sharpened spears;
Still more excited when the blood appears,
With warlike yells, high in the air they bound,
Then in a deathlike trance fall prostrate on the ground.
XVII
They wake to tell weird stories of the dead,
While fresh performers to the ring are led.
The sacred nature of the dance is lost,
War is their cry, red war, at any cost.
Insane for blood they wait for no command,
But plunge marauding through the frightened land.
Their demon hearts on devils' pleasures bent,
For each new foe surprised, new torturing deaths invent.
XVIII
Staked to the earth one helpless creature lies,
Flames at his feet and splinters in his eyes.
Another groans with coals upon his breast,
While 'round the pyre the Indians dance and jest.
A crying child is brained upon a tree,
The swooning mother saved from death, to be
The slave and plaything of a filthy knave,
Whose sins would startle hell, whose clay defile a grave.
XIX
Their cause was right, their methods all were wrong.
Pity and censure both to them belong.
Their woes were many, but their crimes were more.
The soulless Satan holds not in his store
Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath
Keeps for the hapless victim in his path.
And if the last lone remnants of that race
204
Were by the white man swept from off the earth's fair face,
XX
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Again great Custer in his strength arose,
More daring, more intrepid than of old.
The passing years had touched and turned to gold
The ever widening aureole of fame
That shone upon his brow, and glorified his name.
XXI
Wise men make laws, then turn their eyes away,
While fools and knaves ignore them day by day;
And unmolested, fools and knaves at length
Induce long wars which sap a country's strength.
The sloth of leaders, ruling but in name,
Has dragged full many a nation down to shame.
A word unspoken by the rightful lips
Has dyed the land with blood, and blocked the sea with ships.
XXII
The word withheld, when Indians asked for aid,
Came when the red man started on his raid.
What Justice with a gesture might have done
Was left for noisy war with bellowing gun.
And who save Custer and his gallant men
Could calm the tempest into peace again?
What other hero in the land could hope
With Sitting Bull, the fierce and lawless one to cope?
XXIII
What other warrior skilled enough to dare
Surprise that human tiger in his lair?
Sure of his strength, unconscious of his fame
Out from the quiet of the camp he came;
205
And stately as Diana at his side
Elizabeth, his wife and alway bride,
And Margaret, his sister, rode apace;
Love's clinging arms he left to meet death's cold embrace.
XXIV
As the bright column wound along its course,
The smiling leader turned upon his horse
To gaze with pride on that superb command.
Twelve hundred men, the picked of all the land,
Innured to hardship and made strong by strife
Their lithe limbed bodies breathed of out-door life;
While on their faces, resolute and brave,
Hope stamped its shining seal, although their thoughts were grave.
XXV
The sad eyed women halted in the dawn,
And waved farewell to dear ones riding on.
The modest mist picked up her robes and ran
Before the Sun god's swift pursuing van.
And suddenly there burst on startled eyes,
The sight of soldiers, marching in the skies;
That phantom host, a phantom Custer led;
Mirage of dire portent, forecasting days ahead.
XXVI
The soldiers' children, flaunting mimic flags,
Played by the roadside, striding sticks for nags.
Their mothers wept, indifferent to the crowd
Who saw their tears and heard them sob aloud.
Old Indian men and squaws crooned forth a rhyme
Sung by their tribes from immemorial time;
And over all the drums' incessant beat
Mixed with the scout's weird rune, and tramp of myriad feet.
XXVII
So flawless was the union of each part
The mighty column (moved as by one heart)
206
Pulsed through the air, like some sad song well sung,
Which gives delight, although the soul is wrung.
Farther and fainter to the sight and sound
The beautiful embodied poem wound;
Till like a ribbon, stretched across the land
Seemed the long narrow line of that receding band.
XXVIII
The lot of those who in the silence wait
Is harder than the fighting soldiers' fate.
Back to the lonely post two women passed,
With unaccustomed sorrow overcast.
Two sad for sighs, too desolate for tears,
The dark forebodings of long widowed years
In preparation for the awful blow
Hung on the door of hope the sable badge of woe.
XXIX
Unhappy Muse! for thee no song remains,
Save the sad miséréré of the plains.
Yet though defeat, not triumph, ends the tale,
Great victors sometimes are the souls that fail.
All glory lies not in the goals we reach,
But in the lessons which our actions teach.
And he who, conquered, to the end believes
In God and in himself, though vanquished, still achieves.
XXX
Ah, grand as rash was that last fatal raid
The little group of daring heroes made.
Two hundred and two score intrepid men
Rode out to war; not one came back again.
Like fiends incarnate from the depths of hell
Five thousand foemen rose with deafening yell,
And swept that vale as with a simoon's breath,
But like the gods of old, each martyr met his death.
XXXI
207
Like gods they battled and like gods they died.
Hour following hour that little band defied
The hordes of red men swarming o'er the plain,
Till scarce a score stood upright 'mid the slain.
Then in the lull of battle, creeping near,
A scout breathed low in Custer's listening ear:
'Death lies before, dear life remains behind
Mount thy sure-footed steed, and hasten with the wind.'
XXXII
A second's silence. Custer dropped his head,
His lips slow moving as when prayers are saidTwo words he breathed-'God and Elizabeth,'
Then shook his long locks in the face of death,
And with a final gesture turned away
To join that fated few who stood at bay.
Ah! deeds like that the Christ in man reveal
Let Fame descend her throne at Custer's shrine to kneel.
XXXIII
Too late to rescue, but in time to weep,
His tardy comrades came. As if asleep
He lay, so fair, that even hellish hate
Withheld its hand and dared not mutilate.
By fiends who knew not honor, honored still,
He smiled and slept on that far western hill.
Cast down thy lyre, oh Muse! thy song is done!
Let tears complete the tale of him who failed, yet won.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
269:WRITTEN ON THE OCCASION OF THE MASSACRE AT MANCHESTER

I.
As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

II.
I met Murder on the way
He had a mask like Castlereagh
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:

III.
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.

IV.
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

V.
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.

VI.
Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.

VII.
And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

VIII.
Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

IX.
And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw
'I am God, and King, and Law!'

X.
With a pace stately and fast,
Over English land he passed,
Trampling to a mire of blood
The adoring multitude.

XI.
And a mighty troop around,
With their trampling shook the ground,
Waving each a bloody sword,
For the service of their Lord.

XII.
And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.

XIII.
O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.

XIV.
And each dweller, panic-stricken,
Felt his heart with terror sicken
Hearing the tempestuous cry
Of the triumph of Anarchy.

XV.
For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
The hired murderers, who did sing
'Thou art God, and Law, and King.

XVI.
'We have waited, weak and lone
For thy coming, Mighty One!
Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,
Give us glory, and blood, and gold.'

XVII.
Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed;
Like a bad prayer not over loud,
Whispering'Thou art Law and God.'

XVIII.
Then all cried with one accord,
'Thou art King, and God, and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!'

XIX.
And Anarchy, the Skeleton,
Bowed and grinned to every one,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten millions to the nation.

XX.
For he knew the Palaces
Of our Kings were rightly his;
His the sceptre, crown, and globe,
And the gold-inwoven robe.

XXI.
So he sent his slaves before
To seize upon the Bank and Tower,
And was proceeding with intent
To meet his pensioned Parliament

XXII.
When one fled past, a maniac maid,
And her name was Hope, she said:
But she looked more like Despair,
And she cried out in the air:

XXIII.
'My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!

XXIV.
'He has had child after child,
And the dust of death is piled
Over every one but me
Misery, oh, Misery!'

XXV.
Then she lay down in the street,
Right before the horses' feet,
Expecting, with a patient eye,
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy.

XXVI.
When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak, and frail
Like the vapour of a vale:

XXVII.
Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky,

XXVIII.
It grewa Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper's scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain.

XXIX.
On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning's, lay;
And those plumes its light rained through
Like a shower of crimson dew.

XXX.
With step as soft as wind it passed
O'er the heads of menso fast
That they knew the presence there,
And looked,but all was empty air.

XXXI.
As flowers beneath May's footstep waken,
As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken,
As waves arise when loud winds call,
Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.

XXXII.
And the prostrate multitude
Looked-and ankle-deep in blood,
Hope, that maiden most serene,
Was walking with a quiet mien:

XXXIII.
And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Lay dead earth upon the earth;
The Horse of Death tameless as wind
Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust the murderers thronged behind.

XXXIV.
A rushing light of clouds and splendour,
A sense awakening and yet tender
Was heard and feltand at its close
These words of joy and fear arose

XXXV.
As if their own indignant Earth
Which gave the sons of England birth
Had felt their blood upon her brow,
And shuddering with a mother's throe

XXXVI.
Had turnd every drop of blood
By which her face had been bedewed
To an accent unwithstood,
As if her heart had cried aloud:

XXXVII.
'Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
Hopes of her, and one another;

XXXVIII.
'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are manythey are few.

XXXIX.
'What is Freedom?ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

XL.
''Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants' use to dwell,

XLI.
'So that ye for them are made
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent
To their defence and nourishment.

XLII.
''Tis to see your children weak
With their mothers pine and peak,
When the winter winds are bleak,
They are dying whilst I speak.

XLIII.
''Tis to hunger for such diet
As the rich man in his riot
Casts to the fat dogs that lie
Surfeiting beneath his eye;

XLIV.
''Tis to let the Ghost of Gold
Take from Toil a thousandfold
More than e'er its substance could
In the tyrannies of old.

XLV.
'Paper cointhat forgery
Of the title-deeds, which ye
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of Earth.

XLVI.
''Tis to be a slave in soul
And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye.

XLVII.
'And at length when ye complain
With a murmur weak and vain
'Tis to see the Tyrant's crew
Ride over your wives and you
Blood is on the grass like dew.

XLVIII.
'Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for bloodand wrong for wrong
Do not thus when ye are strong.

XLIX.
'Birds find rest, in narrow nest
When weary of their wingd quest;
Beasts find fare, in woody lair
When storm and snow are in the air[1].

L.
'Asses, swine, have litter spread
And with fitting food are fed;
All things have a home but one
Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!

LI.
'This is Slaverysavage men,
Or wild beasts within a den
Would endure not as ye do
But such ills they never knew.

LII.
'What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves
Answer from their living graves
This demandtyrants would flee
Like a dream's dim imagery:

LIII.
'Thou art not, as impostors say,
A shadow soon to pass away,
A superstition, and a name
Echoing from the cave of Fame.

LIV.
'For the labourer thou art bread,
And a comely table spread
From his daily labour come
In a neat and happy home.

LV.
'Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude
Noin countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be
As in England now we see.

LVI.
'To the rich thou art a check,
When his foot is on the neck
Of his victim, thou dost make
That he treads upon a snake.

LVII.
'Thou art Justicene'er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in Englandthou
Shield'st alike the high and low.

LVIII.
'Thou art WisdomFreemen never
Dream that God will damn for ever
All who think those things untrue
Of which Priests make such ado.

LIX.
'Thou art Peacenever by thee
Would blood and treasure wasted be
As tyrants wasted them, when all
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.

LX.
'What if English toil and blood
Was poured forth, even as a flood?
It availed, Oh, Liberty,
To dim, but not extinguish thee.

LXI.
'Thou art Lovethe rich have kissed
Thy feet, and like him following Christ,
Give their substance to the free
And through the rough world follow thee,

LXII.
'Or turn their wealth to arms, and make
War for thy belovd sake
On wealth, and war, and fraudwhence they
Drew the power which is their prey.

LXIII.
'Science, Poetry, and Thought
Are thy lamps; they make the lot
Of the dwellers in a cot
So serene, they curse it not.

LXIV.
'Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,
All that can adorn and bless
Art thoulet deeds, not words, express
Thine exceeding loveliness.

LXV.
'Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless and the free
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around.

LXVI.
'Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.

LXVII.
'From the corners uttermost
Of the bounds of English coast;
From every hut, village, and town
Where those who live and suffer moan
For others' misery or their own[2],

LXVIII.
'From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain, and weep for cold

LXIX.
'From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares

LXX.
'Lastly from the palaces
Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
Of a wind alive around

LXXI.
'Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan, and toil, and wail
As must make their brethren pale

LXXII.
'Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold

LXXIII.
'Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free

LXXIV.
'Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.

LXXV.
'Let the tyrants pour around
With a quick and startling sound,
Like the loosening of a sea,
Troops of armed emblazonry.

LXXVI.
'Let the charged artillery drive
Till the dead air seems alive
With the clash of clanging wheels,
And the tramp of horses' heels.

LXXVII.
'Let the fixd bayonet
Gleam with sharp desire to wet
Its bright point in English blood
Looking keen as one for food.

LXXVIII.
'Let the horsemen's scimitars
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
In a sea of death and mourning.

LXXIX.
'Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war,

LXXX.
'And let Panic, who outspeeds
The career of armd steeds
Pass, a disregarded shade
Through your phalanx undismayed.

LXXXI.
'Let the laws of your own land,
Good or ill, between ye stand
Hand to hand, and foot to foot,
Arbiters of the dispute,

LXXXII.
'The old laws of Englandthey
Whose reverend heads with age are gray,
Children of a wiser day;
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echoLiberty!

LXXXIII.
'On those who first should violate
Such sacred heralds in their state
Rest the blood that must ensue,
And it will not rest on you.

LXXXIV.
'And if then the tyrants dare
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,
What they like, that let them do.

LXXXV.
'With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.

LXXXVI.
'Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

LXXXVII.
'Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the street.

LXXXVIII.
'And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company.
'And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

LXXXIX.
'And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard againagainagain

XC.
'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are manythey are few.'
''Composed at the Villa Valsovano near Leghorn -- or possibly later, during Shelley's sojourn at Florence -- in the autumn of 1819, shortly after the Peterloo riot at Manchester, August 16; edited with Preface by Leigh Hunt, and published under the poet's name by Edward Moxon, 1832 (Bradbury & Evans, printers). Two MSS. are extant: a transcript by Mrs. Shelley with Shelley's autograph corrections, known as the 'Hunt MS.'; and an earlier draft, not quite complete, in the poet's handwriting, presented by Mrs. Shelley to (Sir) John Bowring in 1826, and now in the possession of Mr. Thomas J. Wise (the 'Wise MS.').'' this note taken from the Oxford Edition, Hutchinson's Poetical Works of Percy Shelley, 1905.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask Of Anarchy
,
270:Ii. The Quest Of Silence
Secreta Silvarum: Prelude
Oh yon, when Holda leaves her hill
of winter, on the quest of June,
black oaks with emerald lamplets thrill
that flicker forth to her magic tune.
At dawn the forest shivers whist
and all the hidden glades awake;
then sunshine gems the milk-white mist
and the soft-swaying branches make
along its edge a woven sound
of legends that allure and flit
and horns wound towards the enchanted ground
where, in the light moon-vapours lit,
all night, while the black woods in mass,
serried, forbid with goblin fear,
fay-revels gleam o'er the pale grass
till shrill-throats ring the matins near.
Oh there, oh there in the sweet o' the year,
adventurous in the witching green,
last feal of the errant spear,
to seek the eyes of lost Undine
clear blue above the blue cold stream
that lingers till her plaint be done,
oh, and perchance from that sad dream
to woo her, laughing, to the sun
and that glad blue that seems to flow
far up, where dipping branches lift
sidelong their soft-throng'd frondage slow
and slow the thin cloud-fleecelets drift.
Oh, there to drowse the summer thro'
deep in some odorous twilit lair,
swoon'd in delight of golden dew
within the sylvan witches hair;
the while on half-veil'd eyes to feel
the yellow sunshafts broken dim,
and seldom waftures moth-like steal
and settle, on the bare-flung limb:
or under royal autumn, pall'd
27
in smouldering magnificence,
to feel the olden heart enthrall'd
in wisdoms of forgotten sense,
and mad desire and pain that fill'd
red August's heart of throbbing bloom
in one grave hour of knowledge still'd
where glory ponders o'er its doom:
and, when the boughs are sombre lace
and silence chisels silver rime,
o'er some old hearth, with dim-lit face,
to dream the vanish'd forest prime,
the springtime's sweet and June's delight,
more precious now that hard winds chill
the dews that made their mornings bright,
and Holda sleeps beneath her hill.
What tho' the outer day be brazen rude
not here the innocence of morn is fled:
this green unbroken dusk attests it wed
with freshness, where the shadowy breasts are nude,
hers guess'd, whose looks, felt dewy-cool, elude —
save this reproach that smiles on foolish dread:
wood-word, grave gladness in its heart, unsaid,
knoweth the guarded name of Quietude.
Nor start, if satyr-shapes across the path
tumble; it is but children: lo, the wrath
couchant, heraldic, of her beasts that pierce
with ivory single horn whate'er misplaced
outrageous nears, or whinny of the fierce
Centaur, or mailed miscreant unchaste.
II
O friendly shades, where anciently I grew!
me entering at dawn a child ye knew,
all little welcoming leaves, and jealous wove
your roof of lucid emerald above,
that scarce therethro' the envious sun might stray,
save smiling dusk or, lure for idle play,
such glancing finger your chance whim allows,
all that long forenoon of the tuneful boughs;
which growing on, the myriad small noise
28
and flitting of the wood-life's busy joys,
thro' tenuous weft of sound, had left, divined,
the impending threat of silence, clear, behind:
and, noon now past, that hush descended large
in the wood's heart, and caught me in its marge
of luminous foreboding widely flung;
so hourlong I have stray'd, and tho' among
the glimpsing lures of all green aisles delays
that revelation of its wondrous gaze,
yet am I glad to wander, glad to seek
and find not, so the gather'd tufts bespeak,
naked, reclined, its friendly neighbourhood —
as in this hollow of the rarer wood
where, listening, in the cool glen-shade, with me,
white-bloom'd and quiet, stands a single tree;
rich spilth of gold is on the eastward rise;
westward the violet gloom eludes mine eyes.
This is the house of Pan, not whom blind craze
and babbling wood-wits tell, where bare flints blaze,
noon-tide terrific with the single shout,
but whom behind each bole sly-peering out
the traveller knows, but turning, disappear'd
with chuckle of laughter in his thicket-beard,
and rustle of scurrying faun-feet where the ground
each autumn deeper feels its yellow mound.
Onward: and lo, at length, the secret glade,
soft-gleaming grey, what time the grey trunks fade
in the white vapours o'er its further rim.
'Tis no more time to linger: now more dim
the woods are throng'd to ward the haunted spot
where, as I turn my homeward face, I wot
the nymphs of twilight have resumed, unheard,
their glimmering dance upon the glimmering sward.
III
The point of noon is past, outside: light is asleep;
brooding upon its perfect hour: the woods are deep
and solemn, fill'd with unseen presences of light
that glint, allure, and hide them; ever yet more bright
(it seems) the turn of a path will show them: nay, but rest;
seek not, and think not; dream, and know not; this is best:
the hour is full; be lost: whispering, the woods are bent,
29
This is the only revelation; be content.
IIII
The forest has its horrors, as the sea:
and ye that enter from the staling lea
into the early freshness kept around
the waiting trunks that watch its rarer bound,
after the glistening song that, sprinkled, leaves
an innocence upon the glancing leaves;
O ye that dream to find the morning yet
secret and chaste, beside her mirror set,
some glimmering source o'ershadow'd, where the light
is coolness felt, whom filter'd glints invite
thro' the slow-shifting green transparency;
O ye that hearken towards pale mystery
a rustle of hidden pinions, and obey
the beckoning of each little leaf asway:
return, return, or e'er to warn you back
the shadow bend along your rearward track
longer and longer from the brooding west;
return, and evening shall bosom your rest
in the warm gloom that wraps the blazing hearth:
there hear from wither'd lips long wean'd of mirth
the tale that lulls old watches; — How they rode,
brave-glittering once, where the brave morning glow'd
along the forest-edges, and were lost
for ever, where the crossing trunks are most;
and, far beyond the dim arcades of song,
where moon-mist weaves a dancing elfin throng,
and far beyond the luring glades that brood
around a maiden thought of Quietude,
the savage realm begins, of lonely dread,
black branches from the fetid marish bred
that lurks to trap the loyal careless foot,
and gaping trunks protrude a snaky root
o'er slinking paths that centre, where beneath
a sudden rock on the short blasted heath,
bare-set, a cavern lurks and holds within
its womb, obscene with some corroding sin,
coil'd on itself and stirring, a squat shade
before the entrance rusts a broken blade.
The forest hides its horrors, as the sea.
30
V
No emerald spring, no royal autumn-red,
no glint of morn or sullen vanquish'd day
might venture against this obscene horror's sway
blackly from the witch-blasted branches shed.
No silver bells around the bridle-head
ripple, and on no quest the pennons play:
the path's romance is shuddering disarray,
or eaten by the marsh: the knights are dead.
The Lady of the Forest was a tale:
of the white unicorns that round her sleep
gamboll'd, no turf retains a print; and man,
rare traveller, feels, athwart the knitted bale
watching, now lord of loathly deaths that creep,
maliciously the senile leer of Pan.
Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills,
and fire made solid in the flinty stone,
thick-mass'd or scatter'd pebble, fire that fills
the breathless hour that lives in fire alone.
This valley, long ago the patient bed
of floods that carv'd its antient amplitude,
in stillness of the Egyptian crypt outspread,
endures to drown in noon-days tyrant mood.
Behind the veil of burning silence bound,
vast life's innumerous busy littleness
is hush'd in vague-conjectured blur of sound
that dulls the brain with slumbrous weight, unless
some dazzling puncture let the stridence throng
in the cicada's torture-point of song.
Peace dwells in blessing o'er a place
folded within the hills to keep
and under dark boughs seawind-frayd:
and the kind slopes where soothings creep,
in the gold light or the green shade,
wear evermore the ancient face
of silence, and the eyes of sleep;
because they are listening evermore
unto the seawinds what they tell
to the wise, nodding, indifferent trees
high on the ridge that guard the dell,
31
of wars on many a far grey shore
and how the shores decay and fade
before the obstinate old seas:
and all their triumphing is made
a tale that dwindles with the eves,
while the soft dusk lingers, delay'd,
and drifts between the indolent leaves.
A gray and dusty daylight flows
athwart the shatter'd traceries,
pale absence of the ruin'd rose.
Here once, on labour-harden'd knees,
beneath the kindly vaulted gloom
that gather'd them in quickening ease,
they saw the rose of heaven bloom,
alone, in heights of musky air,
with many an angel's painted plume.
So, shadowing forth their dim-felt prayer,
the daedal glass compell'd to grace
the outer days indifferent stare,
where now its disenhallow'd face
beholds the petal-ribs enclose
nought, in their web of shatter'd lace,
save this pale absence of the rose.
Breaking the desert's tawny level ring
three columns, an oasis; but no shade
falls from the curl'd acanthus-leaves; no spring
bubbles soft laughter for its leaning maid.
The cell is waste: where once the god abode
a burning desolation furls its wing:
enter, and lo! once more, the hopeless road
world-wide, the tawny desert's level ring.
Before she pass'd behind the glacier wall
that hides her white eternal sorceries
the northern witch, in clinging ermine pall,
cast one last look along the shallow seas,
a look that held them in its numbing thrall
and melted onward to the sandy leas
where our lorn city lives its lingering fall
and wistful summer shrinks in scant-clad trees.
32
Hence came one greyness over grass and stone:
the silent-lapping waters fade and tone
into the air and into them the land;
and all along our stagnant waterways
a drown'd and dusky gleaming sleeps, unbann'd,
the lurking twilight of her vanish'd gaze.
Out of no quarter of the charted sky
flung in the bitter wind intolerably,
abrupt, the trump that sings behind the end
exults alone. Here grass is none to bend:
the stony plain blackens with rapid night
that best reveals the land's inflicted blight
since in the smitten hero-hand the sword
broke, and the hope the long-dumb folk adored,
and over all the north a tragic flare
told Valhall perish'd and the void's despair
to dwell as erst, all disinhabited,
a vault above the heart its hungering led.
The strident clangour cuts; but space is whole,
inert, absorb'd in dead regret. Here, sole,
on the bare uplands, stands, vast thro' the gloom
staring, to mark an irretrievable doom,
the stranger stone, sphinx-couchant, thunder-hurl'd
from red star-ruin o'er the elder world.
This night is not of gentle draperies
or cluster'd banners where the star-breaths roam,
nor hangs above the torch a lurching dome
of purple shade that slips with phantom ease;
but, on our apathy encroaching, these,
stable, whose smooth defiance none hath clomb,
basalt and jade, a patience of the gnome,
polish'd and shadow-brimm'd transparencies.
Far, where our oubliette is shut, above,
we guess the ample lids that never move
beneath her brows, each massive arch inert
hung high-contemptuous o'er the blatant wars
we deem'd well waged for her, who may avert
some Janus-face that smiles on hidden stars.
Lightning: and, momently, the silhouette,
33
flat on the far horizon, comes and goes
of that night-haunting city; minaret,
dome, spire, all sharp while yet the levin glows.
Day knows it not; whether fierce noon-tide fuse
earth's rim with sky in throbbing haze, or clear
gray softness tinge afresh the enamell'd hues
of mead and stream, it shows no tipping spear.
Night builds it: now upon the marbled plain
a blur, discern'd lurking, ever more nigh;
now close against the walls that hem my reign
a leaguer-town, threatening my scope of sky.
So late I saw it; in a misty moon
it bulk'd, all dusky and transparent, dumb
as ever, fast in some prodigious swoon:
its battlements deserted — who might come?
— ay, one! his eyes, 'neath the high turban's plume,
watch'd mine, intent, behind the breast-high stone:
his face drew mine across the milky gloom:
a sudden moonbeam show'd it me, my own!
ONE! an iron core, shock'd and dispers'd
in throbs of sound that ebb across the bay:
I shudder: the one clang smites disarray
thro' all my sense, that starts awake, inhears'd
in the whole lifeless world: and some accurs'd
miasma steals, resumed from all decay,
where the dead tide lies flat round the green quay,
hinting what self-fordone despairs it nurs'd.
The corpse of time is stark upon the night:
my soul is coffin'd, staring, grave-bedight,
upon some dance of death that reels and feasts
around its living tomb, with vampire grin,
inverted sacraments of Satan's priests —
and, mask'd no more, the maniac face of sin.
There is a far-off thrill that troubles me:
a faint thin ripple of shadow, momently,
dies out across my lucid icy cell.
I am betrayed by winter to the spell
of morbid sleep, that somewhere rolls its waves
insidiously, gather'd from unblest graves,
to creep above each distant crumbled mole.
34
When that assault is full against my soul,
I must go down, thro' chapels black with mould,
past ruin'd doors, whose arches, ridged with gold,
catch, in their grooves, a gloom more blackly dript,
some stairway winding hours-long towards the crypt
where panic night lies stricken 'neath the curse
exuding from the dense enormous hearse
of some old vampire-god, whose bulk, within,
lies gross and festering in his shroud of sin.
~ Christopher John Brennan,
271:A FRAGMENT

PART I

There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel

Which burned within him, withering up his prime
And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.
Not his the load of any secret crime,

For nought of ill his heart could understand,
But pity and wild sorrow for the same;
Not his the thirst for glory or command,

Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame;
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,

Had left within his soul their dark unrest:
Nor what religion fables of the grave
Feared he,Philosophy's accepted guest.

For none than he a purer heart could have,
Or that loved good more for itself alone;
Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.

What sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown,
Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?
If with a human sadness he did groan,

He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;
And such a glorious consolation find

In others' joy, when all their own is dead:
He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,
And yet, unlike all others, it is said

That from such toil he never found relief.
Although a child of fortune and of power,
Of an ancestral name the orphan chief,

His soul had wedded Wisdom, and her dower
Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,

Pitying the tumult of their dark estate.
Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse
The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate

Those false opinions which the harsh rich use
To blind the world they famish for their pride;
Nor did he hold from any man his dues,

But, like a steward in honest dealings tried,
With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,
His riches and his cares he did divide.

Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
What he dared do or think, though men might start,
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;

Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
And to his many friendsall loved him well
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,

If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;
If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes
He neither spurned nor hatedthough with fell

And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
They passed like aimless arrows from his ear
Nor did his heart or mind its portal close

To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere
May comprehend within its wide array.
What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?

He knew not. Though his life, day after day,
Was failing like an unreplenished stream,
Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay,

Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam
Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem

Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour,
Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,

Were driven within him by some secret power,
Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower

O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war
Is levied by the night-contending winds,
And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;

Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends
Which wake and feed an everliving woe,
What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds

A mirror found,he knew notnone could know;
But on whoe'er might question him he turned
The light of his frank eyes, as if to show

He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look;
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned

The cause of his disquietude; or shook
With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
So that his friends soon rarely undertook

To stir his secret pain without avail;
For all who knew and loved him then perceived
That there was drawn an adamantine veil

Between his heart and mind,both unrelieved
Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
Some said that he was mad, others believed

That memories of an antenatal life
Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;
And others said that such mysterious grief

From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell
On souls like his, which owned no higher law
Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible

By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
And others,''Tis the shadow of a dream
Which the veiled eye of Memory never saw,

'But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream
Through shattered mines and caverns underground,
Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam

'Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned
In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure;
Soon its exhausted waters will have found

'A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
O Athanase!in one so good and great,
Evil or tumult cannot long endure.'

So spake they: idly of another's state
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy;
This was their consolation; such debate

Men held with one another; nor did he,
Like one who labours with a human woe,
Decline this talk: as if its theme might be

Another, not himself, he to and fro
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;
And none but those who loved him best could know

That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit

Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;
And so his grief remainedlet it remainuntold.

PART II

FRAGMENT I

Prince Athanase had one belovd friend,
An old, old man, with hair of silver white,
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend

With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
He was the last whom superstition's blight

Had spared in Greecethe blight that cramps and blinds,
And in his olive bower at OEnoe
Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds

A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates
Many a drear month in a great shipso he

With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:
'The mind becomes that which it contemplates,'

And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;
And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing

A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen

Was grass-grownand the unremembered tears
Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:

And as the lady looked with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path,
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief

And blighting hope, who with the news of death
Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
She saw between the chestnuts, far beneath,

An old man toiling up, a weary wight;
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the light

Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;
And his wan visage and his withered mien,
Yet calm and gentle and majestical.

And Athanase, her child, who must have been
Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed
In patient silence.

FRAGMENT II

Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
One amaranth glittering on the path of frost,
When autumn nights have nipped all weaker kinds,

Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tossed,
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,

The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.

And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,
The pupil and the master, shared; until,
Sharing that undiminishable store,

The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill
Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
His teacher, and did teach with native skill

Strange truths and new to that experienced man;
Still they were friends, as few have ever been
Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.

So in the caverns of the forest green,
Or on the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen

By summer woodmen; and when winter's roar
Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war,
The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,

Hanging upon the peakd wave afar,
Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam,
Piercing the stormy darkness, like a star

Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,
Whilst all the constellations of the sky
Seemed reeling through the storm . . . They did but seem

For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,
And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing,
And far o'er southern waves, immovably

Belted Orion hangswarm light is flowing
From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.
'O, summer eve! with power divine, bestowing

'On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm
Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness,
Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm

'Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness,
Were lulled by thee, delightful nightingale,
And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,

'And the far sighings of yon piny dale
Made vocal by some wind we feel not here.
I bear alone what nothing may avail

'To lightena strange load!'No human ear
Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan
Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow, ran,
Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake,
Glassy and dark.And that divine old man

Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake,
Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest
And with a calm and measured voice he spake,

And, with a soft and equal pressure, pressed
That cold lean hand:'Dost thou remember yet
When the curved moon then lingering in the west

'Paused, in yon waves her mighty horns to wet,
How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?
'Tis just one yearsure thou dost not forget

'Then Plato's words of light in thee and me
Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east,
For we had just then readthy memory

'Is faithful nowthe story of the feast;
And Agathon and Diotima seemed
From death and dark forgetfulness released '
. . .

FRAGMENT III

And when the old man saw that on the green
Leaves of his opening . . . a blight had lighted
He said: 'My friend, one grief alone can wean

A gentle mind from all that once delighted:
Thou lovest, and thy secret heart is laden
With feelings which should not be unrequited.'

And Athanase . . . then smiled, as one o'erladen
With iron chains might smile to talk(?) of bands
Twined round her lover's neck by some blithe maiden,
And said . . .

FRAGMENT IV

'Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings
From slumber, as a spherd angel's child,
Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,

Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled

To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,
The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove
Waxed greenand flowers burst forth like starry beams;

The grass in the warm sun did start and move,
And sea-buds burst under the waves serene:
How many a one, though none be near to love,

Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen
In any mirroror the spring's young minions,
The wingd leaves amid the copses green;

How many a spirit then puts on the pinions
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,
And his own stepsand over wide dominions

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,
More fleet than stormsthe wide world shrinks below,
When winter and despondency are past.

FRAGMENT V

'Twas at this season that Prince Athanase
Passed the white Alpsthose eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow;beside the ways

The waterfalls were voicelessfor their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
Or by the curdling windslike brazen wings

Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow
Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung
And filled with frozen light the chasms below.

Vexed by the blast, the great pines groaned and swung
Under their load of [snow]. . .
. . .
. . .

Such as the eagle sees, when he dives down
From the gray deserts of wide air, [beheld]
[Prince] Athanase; and o'er his mien(?) was thrown

The shadow of that scene, field after field,
Purple and dim and wide . . .

FRAGMENT VI

Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all
We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,

Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thine ambrosial dew;
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls

Investeth it; and when the heavens are blue
Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue

Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some light robe;thou ever soarest
Among the towers of men, and as soft air

In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest

That which from thee they should implore:the weak
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts
The strong have brokenyet where shall any seek

A garment whom thou clothest not? the darts
Of the keen winter storm, barbd with frost,
Which, from the everlasting snow that parts

The Alps from Heaven, pierce some traveller lost
In the wide waved interminable snow
Ungarmented, . . .

ANOTHER FRAGMENT (A)

Yes, often when the eyes are cold and dry,
And the lips calm, the Spirit weeps within
Tears bitterer than the blood of agony

Trembling in drops on the discoloured skin
Of those who love their kind and therefore perish
In ghastly torturea sweet medicine

Of peace and sleep are tears, and quietly
Them soothe from whose uplifted eyes they fall
But . . .

ANOTHER FRAGMENT

Her hair was brown, her spherd eyes were brown,
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,
Like the dim orb of the eclipsd moon;

Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came
The light from them, as when tears of delight
Double the western planet's serene flame.
Written at Marlow in 1817, towards the close of the year; first published in Posthumous Poems, 1824. Part I is dated by Mrs. Shelley, 'December, 1817,' the remainder, 'Marlow, 1817.' The verses were probably rehandled in Italy during the following year.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prince Athanase
,
272:A JOURNAL.
DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW-TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858.
Wise and polite,--and if I drew
Their several portraits, you would own
Chaucer had no such worthy crew,
Nor Boccace in Decameron.

We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,
Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks
Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach
The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach
We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,--
Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.

Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,
With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,
Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,
Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead,
And other Titans without muse or name.
Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,
Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills,
And made our distance wider, boat from boat,
As each would hear the oracle alone.
By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid
Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,
Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,
Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,
Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,
On through the Upper Saranac, and up
Pere Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass
Winding through grassy shallows in and out,
Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge,
To Follansbee Water, and the Lake of Loons.

Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,
Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge
Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.
A pause and council: then, where near the head
On the east a bay makes inward to the land
Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,
And in the twilight of the forest noon
Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.
We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,
Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,
Then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire.

The wood was sovran with centennial trees,--
Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,
Linden and spruce. In strict society
Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine,
Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew thereby.
Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,
The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.

'Welcome!' the wood god murmured through the leaves,--
'Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.'
Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs,
Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.
Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,
Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft
In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,
Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,
And greet unanimous the joyful change.
So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,
Though late returning to her pristine ways.
Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold;
And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,
Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.
Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air
That circled freshly in their forest dress
Made them to boys again. Happier that they
Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,
At the first mounting of the giant stairs.
No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,
No door-bell heralded a visitor,
No courier waits, no letter came or went,
Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold;
The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,
The falling rain will spoil no holiday.
We were made freemen of the forest laws,
All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,
Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes,
At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded:
Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make
His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain,
He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn:
A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,
And in the left, a gun, his needful arms.
By turns we praised the stature of our guides,
Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill
To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,
To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs
Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down:
Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,
And wit to track or take him in his lair.
Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,
In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides;
Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired
Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!
No city airs or arts pass current here.
Your rank is all reversed: let men of cloth
Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:
They are the doctors of the wilderness,
And we the low-prized laymen.
In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test
Which few can put on with impunity.
What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?
Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here.
The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb;
The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks
He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,
Tell the sun's time, determine the true north,
Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods
To thread by night the nearest way to camp?

Ask you, how went the hours?
All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,
North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,
Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer,
Or whipping its rough surface for a trout;
Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon;
Challenging Echo by our guns and cries;
Or listening to the laughter of the loon;
Or, in the evening twilight's latest red,
Beholding the procession of the pines;
Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,
In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter
Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds
Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist.
Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods
Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck
Who stands astonished at the meteor light,
Then turns to bound away,--is it too late?

Sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark,
Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five;
Sometimes our wits at sally and retort,
With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle;
Or parties scaled the near acclivities
Competing seekers of a rumoured lake,
Whose unauthenticated waves we named
Lake Probability,--our carbuncle,
Long sought, not found.

Two Doctors in the camp
Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain,
Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew,
Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth;
Insatiate skill in water or in air
Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss;
The while, one leaden pot of alcohol
Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds.
Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants,
Orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus,
Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride,
Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss,
Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.
Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed,
The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker
Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp.
As water poured through the hollows of the hills
To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets,
So Nature shed all beauty lavishly
From her redundant horn.

Lords of this realm,
Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day
Rounded by hours where each outdid the last
In miracles of pomp, we must be proud,
As if associates of the sylvan gods.
We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac,
So pure the Alpine element we breathed,
So light, so lofty pictures came and went.
We trode on air, contemned the distant town,
Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned
That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge,
And how we should come hither with our sons,
Hereafter,--willing they, and more adroit.

Hard fare, hard bed, and comic misery,--
The midge, the blue-fly, and the mosquito
Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands:
But, on the second day, we heed them not,
Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries,
Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.
For who defends our leafy tabernacle
From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,--
Who but the midge, mosquito, and the fly,
Which past endurance sting the tender cit,
But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,
Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?

Our foaming ale we drunk from hunters' pans,
Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave
Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread;
All ate like abbots, and, if any missed
Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss
With hunters' appetite and peals of mirth.
And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore,
Crusoe, Crusader, Pius AEneas, said aloud,
"Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating
Food indigestible":--then murmured some,
Others applauded him who spoke the truth.

Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought
Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday
'Mid all the hints and glories of the home.
For who can tell what sudden privacies
Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry
Of scholars furloughed from their tasks, and let
Into this Oreads' fended Paradise,
As chapels in the city's thoroughfares,
Whither gaunt Labour slips to wipe his brow,
And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest.
Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke
To each apart, lifting her lovely shows
To spiritual lessons pointed home.
And as through dreams in watches of the night,
So through all creatures in their form and ways
Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,
Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense
Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.
Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler?
Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.
Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,
Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light,
Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?

And presently the sky is changed; O world!
What pictures and what harmonies are thine!
The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,
So like the soul of me, what if't were me?
A melancholy better than all mirth.
Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,
Or at the foresight of obscurer years?
Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory,
Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty
Superior to all its gaudy skirts.
And, that no day of life may lack romance,
The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down
A private beam into each several heart.
Daily the bending skies solicit man,
The seasons chariot him from this exile,
The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,
The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights
Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.

With a vermilion pencil mark the day
When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs
Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls
Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront
Two of our mates returning with swift oars.
One held a printed journal waving high
Caught from a late-arriving traveller,
Big with great news, and shouted the report
For which the world had waited, now firm fact,
Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,
And landed on our coast, and pulsating
With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries
From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,
Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path
Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,
Match God's equator with a zone of art,
And lift man's public action to a height
Worthy the enormous clouds of witnesses,
When linked hemispheres attest his deed.
We have few moments in the longest life
Of such delight and wonder as there grew,--
Nor yet unsuited to that solitude:
A burst of joy, as if we told the fact
To ears intelligent; as if gray rock
And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know
This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind;
As if we men were talking in a vein
Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs,
And a prime end of the most subtle element
Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves!
Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops,
Let them hear well! 't is theirs as much as ours.

A spasm throbbing through the pedestals
Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,
Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill
To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.
The lightning has run masterless too long;
He must to school, and learn his verb and noun,
And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage,
Spelling with guided tongue man's messages
Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.
And yet I marked, even in the manly joy
Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat,
(Perchance I erred,) a shade of discontent;
Or was it for mankind a generous shame,
As of a luck not quite legitimate,
Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part?
Was it a college pique of town and gown,
As one within whose memory it burned
That not academicians, but some lout,
Found ten years since the Californian gold?
And now, again, a hungry company
Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade,
Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools
Of science, not from the philosophers,
Had won the brightest laurel of all time.
'Twas always thus, and will be; hand and head
Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift,
The other slow,--this the Prometheus,
And that the Jove,--yet, howsoever hid,
It was from Jove the other stole his fire,
And, without Jove, the good had never been.
It is not Iroquois or cannibals,
But ever the free race with front sublime,
And these instructed by their wisest too,
Who do the feat, and lift humanity.
Let not him mourn who best entitled was,
Nay, mourn not one: let him exult,
Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant,
And water it with wine, nor watch askance
Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit:
Enough that mankind eat, and are refreshed.

We flee away from cities, but we bring
The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers,
Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.
We praise the guide, we praise the forest life;
But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore
Of books and arts and trained experiment,
Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz?
O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook
Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail
The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge
Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears
From a log-cabin stream Beethoven's notes
On the piano, played with master's hand.
'Well done!' he cries; 'the bear is kept at bay,
The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire;
All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold,
This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall,
This wild plantation will suffice to chase.
Now speed the gay celerities of art,
What in the desert was impossible
Within four walls is possible again,--
Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill,
Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife
Of keen competing youths, joined or alone
To outdo each other, and extort applause.
Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep.
Twirl the old wheels? Time takes fresh start again
On for a thousand years of genius more.'

The holidays were fruitful, but must end;
One August evening had a cooler breath;
Into each mind intruding duties crept;
Under the cinders burned the fires of home;
Nay, letters found us in our paradise;
So in the gladness of the new event
We struck our camp, and left the happy hills.
The fortunate star that rose on us sank not;
The prodigal sunshine rested on the land,
The rivers gambolled onward to the sea,
And Nature, the inscrutable and mute,
Permitted on her infinite repose
Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons,
As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Adirondacs
,
273:Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke,
High as the Saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance broke;
The immortal desire of Immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.

I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair,
And never a song sang Niamh, and over my finger-tips
Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,
And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.

Were we days long or hours long in riding, when, rolled in a grisly peace,
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?
And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiter than new-washed fleece
Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke.

And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge; the sea's edge barren and grey,
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away,
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

But the trees grew taller and closer, immense in their wrinkling bark;
Dropping; a murmurous dropping; old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures lived there, no weasels moved in the dark:
Long sighs arose in our spirits, beneath us bubbled the ground.

And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow night,
For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun,
Ceased on our hands and our faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light,
And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one.

Till the horse gave a whinny; for, cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak,
A valley flowed down from his hoofs, and there in the long grass lay,
Under the starlight and shadow, a monstrous slumbering folk,
Their naked and gleaming bodies poured out and heaped in the way.

And by them were arrow and war-axe, arrow and shield and blade;
And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollow a child of three years old
Could sleep on a couch of rushes, and all inwrought and inlaid,
And more comely than man can make them with bronze and silver and gold.

And each of the huge white creatures was huger than fourscore men;
The tops of their ears were feathered, their hands were the claws of birds,
And, shaking the plumes of the grasses and the leaves of the mural glen,
The breathing came from those bodies, long warless, grown whiter than curds.

The wood was so Spacious above them, that He who has stars for His flocks
Could fondle the leaves with His fingers, nor go from His dew-cumbered skies;
So long were they sleeping, the owls had builded their nests in their locks,
Filling the fibrous dimness with long generations of eyes.

And over the limbs and the valley the slow owls wandered and came,
Now in a place of star-fire, and now in a shadow-place wide;
And the chief of the huge white creatures, his knees in the soft star-flame,
Lay loose in a place of shadow: we drew the reins by his side.

Golden the nails of his bird-clawS, flung loosely along the dim ground;
In one was a branch soft-shining with bells more many than sighs
In midst of an old man's bosom; owls ruffling and pacing around
Sidled their bodies against him, filling the shade with their eyes.

And my gaze was thronged with the sleepers; no, not since the world began,
In realms where the handsome were many, nor in glamours by demons flung,
Have faces alive with such beauty been known to the salt eye of man,
Yet weary with passions that faded when the sevenfold seas were young.

And I gazed on the bell-branch, sleep's forebear, far sung by the Sennachies.
I saw how those slumbererS, grown weary, there camping in grasses deep,
Of wars with the wide world and pacing the shores of the wandering seas,
Laid hands on the bell-branch and swayed it, and fed of unhuman sleep.

Snatching the horn of Niamh, I blew a long lingering note.
Came sound from those monstrous sleepers, a sound like the stirring of flies.
He, shaking the fold of his lips, and heaving the pillar of his throat,
Watched me with mournful wonder out of the wells of his eyes.

I cried, 'Come out of the shadow, king of the nails of gold!
And tell of your goodly household and the goodly works of your hands,
That we may muse in the starlight and talk of the battles of old;
Your questioner, Oisin, is worthy, he comes from the Fenian lands.'

Half open his eyes were, and held me, dull with the smoke of their dreams;
His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;
Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streams
Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.

Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,
The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone
Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.

In the roots of the grasses, the sorrels, I laid my body as low;
And the pearl-pale Niamh lay by me, her brow on the midst of my breast;
And the horse was gone in the distance, and years after years 'gan flow;
Square leaves of the ivy moved over us, binding us down to our rest.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot
How the fetlocks drip blood in the battle, when the fallen on fallen lie rolled;
How the falconer follows the falcon in the weeds of the heron's plot,
And the name of the demon whose hammer made Conchubar's sword-blade of old.

And, man of the many white croziers, a century there I forgot
That the spear-shaft is made out of ashwood, the shield out of osier and hide;
How the hammers spring on the anvil, on the spearhead's burning spot;
How the slow, blue-eyed oxen of Finn low sadly at evening tide.

But in dreams, mild man of the croziers, driving the dust with their throngs,
Moved round me, of seamen or landsmen, all who are winter tales;
Came by me the kings of the Red Branch, with roaring of laughter and songs,
Or moved as they moved once, love-making or piercing the tempest with sails.

Came Blanid, Mac Nessa, tall Fergus who feastward of old time slunk,
Cook Barach, the traitor; and warward, the spittle on his beard never dry,
Dark Balor, as old as a forest, car-borne, his mighty head sunk
Helpless, men lifting the lids of his weary and death making eye.

And by me, in soft red raiment, the Fenians moved in loud streams,
And Grania, walking and smiling, sewed with her needle of bone.
So lived I and lived not, so wrought I and wrought not, with creatures of dreams,
In a long iron sleep, as a fish in the water goes dumb as a stone.

At times our slumber was lightened. When the sun was on silver or gold;
When brushed with the wings of the owls, in the dimness they love going by;
When a glow-worm was green on a grass-leaf, lured from his lair in the mould;
Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.

So watched I when, man of the croziers, at the heel of a century fell,
Weak, in the midst of the meadow, from his miles in the midst of the air,
A starling like them that forgathered 'neath a moon waking white as a shell
When the Fenians made foray at morning with Bran, Sceolan, Lomair.

I awoke: the strange horse without summons out of the distance ran,
Thrusting his nose to my shoulder; he knew in his bosom deep
That once more moved in my bosom the ancient sadness of man,
And that I would leave the Immortals, their dimness, their dews dropping sleep.

O, had you seen beautiful Niamh grow white as the waters are white,
Lord of the croziers, you even had lifted your hands and wept:
But, the bird in my fingers, I mounted, remembering alone that delight
Of twilight and slumber were gone, and that hoofs impatiently stept.

I died, 'O Niamh! O white one! if only a twelve-houred day,
I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young
In the Fenians' dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play,
Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan's slanderous tongue!

'Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle,
Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to threadbare rags;
No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile,
But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and flags.'

Their motionless eyeballs of spirits grown mild with mysterious thought,
Watched her those seamless faces from the valley's glimmering girth;
As she murmured, 'O wandering Oisin, the strength of the bell-branch is naught,
For there moves alive in your fingers the fluttering sadness of earth.

'Then go through the lands in the saddle and see what the mortals do,
And softly come to your Niamh over the tops of the tide;
But weep for your Niamh, O Oisin, weep; for if only your shoe
Brush lightly as haymouse earth's pebbles, you will come no more to my side.

'O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?'
I saw from a distant saddle; from the earth she made her moan:
'I would die like a small withered leaf in the autumn, for breast unto breast
We shall mingle no more, nor our gazes empty their sweetness lone

'In the isles of the farthest seas where only the spirits come.
Were the winds less soft than the breath of a pigeon who sleeps on her nest,
Nor lost in the star-fires and odours the sound of the sea's vague drum?
O flaming lion of the world, O when will you turn to your rest?'

The wailing grew distant; I rode by the woods of the wrinkling bark,
Where ever is murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark:
In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling' ground.

And I rode by the plains of the sea's edge, where all is barren and grey,
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away',
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

And the winds made the sands on the sea's edge turning and turning go,
As my mind made the names of the Fenians. Far from the hazel and oak,
I rode away on the surges, where, high aS the saddle-bow,
Fled foam underneath me, and round me, a wandering and milky smoke.

Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast,
Snatching the bird in secret; nor knew I, embosomed apart,
When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast,
For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart.

Till, fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay
Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down;
Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away,
From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-weeds brown.

If I were as I once was, the strong hoofs crushing the sand and the shells,
Coming out of the sea as the dawn comes, a chaunt of love on my lips,
Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells,
I would leave no saint's head on his body from Rachlin to Bera of ships.

Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path
Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,
Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath,
And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade,

Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;
While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood,
Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in your net:
Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the roaring of wind in a wood.

And before I went by them so huge and so speedy with eyes so bright,
Came after the hard gaze of youth, or an old man lifted his head:
And I rode and I rode, and I cried out, 'The Fenians hunt wolves in the night,
So sleep thee by daytime.' A voice cried, 'The Fenians a long time are dead.'

A whitebeard stood hushed on the pathway, the flesh of his face as dried grass,
And in folds round his eyes and his mouth, he sad as a child without milk-
And the dreams of the islands were gone, and I knew how men sorrow and pass,
And their hound, and their horse, and their love, and their eyes that glimmer like silk.

And wrapping my face in my hair, I murmured, 'In old age they ceased';
And my tears were larger than berries, and I murmured, 'Where white clouds lie spread
On Crevroe or broad Knockfefin, with many of old they feast
On the floors of the gods.' He cried, 'No, the gods a long time are dead.'

And lonely and longing for Niamh, I shivered and turned me about,
The heart in me longing to leap like a grasshopper into her heart;
I turned and rode to the westward, and followed the sea's old shout
Till I saw where Maeve lies sleeping till starlight and midnight part.

And there at the foot of the mountain, two carried a sack full of sand,
They bore it with staggering and sweating, but fell with their burden at length.
Leaning down from the gem-studded saddle, I flung it five yards with my hand,
With a sob for men waxing so weakly, a sob for the Fenians' old strength.

The rest you have heard of, O croziered man; how, when divided the girth,
I fell on the path, and the horse went away like a summer fly;
And my years three hundred fell on me, and I rose, and walked on the earth,
A creeping old man, full of sleep, with the spittle on his beard never dry'.

How the men of the sand-sack showed me a church with its belfry in air;
Sorry place, where for swing of the war-axe in my dim eyes the crozier gleams;
What place have Caoilte and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair?
Speak, you too are old with your memories, an old man surrounded with dreams.

S. Patrick. Where the flesh of the footsole clingeth on the burning stones is their place;
Where the demons whip them with wires on the burning stones of wide Hell,
Watching the blessed ones move far off, and the smile on God's face,
Between them a gateway of brass, and the howl of the angels who fell.

Oisin. Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chaunt
The war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their Breath,
Innumerable, singing, exultant; the clay underneath them shall pant,
And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death.

And demons afraid in their darkness; deep horror of eyes and of wings,
Afraid, their ears on the earth laid, shall listen and rise up and weep;
Hearing the shaking of shields and the quiver of stretched bowstrings,
Hearing Hell loud with a murmur, as shouting and mocking we sweep.

We will tear out the flaming stones, and batter the gateway of brass
And enter, and none sayeth 'No' when there enters the strongly armed guest;
Make clean as a broom cleans, and march on as oxen move over young grass;
Then feast, making converse of wars, and of old wounds, and turn to our rest.

S. Patrick. On the flaming stones, without refuge, the limbs of the Fenians are lost;
None war on the masters of Hell, who could break up the world in their rage;
But kneel and wear out the flags and pray for your soul that is lost
Through the demon love of its youth and its godless and passionate age.

Oisin. Ah me! to be Shaken with coughing and broken with old age and pain,
Without laughter, a show unto children, alone with remembrance and fear;
All emptied of purple hours as a beggar's cloak in the rain,
As a hay-cock out on the flood, or a wolf sucked under a weir.

It were sad to gaze on the blessed and no man I loved of old there;
I throw down the chain of small stones! when life in my body has ceased,
I will go to Caoilte, and Conan, and Bran, Sceolan, Lomair,
And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast.

~ William Butler Yeats, The Wanderings Of Oisin - Book III
,
274:Al Aaraaf
PART I
O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of CircassyO! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rillOr (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy's voice so peacefully departed
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwellOh, nothing of the dross of oursYet all the beauty- all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowersAdorn yon world afar, afarThe wandering star.
'Twas a sweet time for Nesace- for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns- a temporary restAn oasis in desert of the blest.
Away- away- 'mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soulThe soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin'd eminence,To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode
And late to ours, the favor'd one of GodBut, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm,
She throws aside the sceptre- leaves the helm,
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.
Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
Whence sprang the 'Idea of Beauty' into birth,
(Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star,
Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar,
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)
She looked into Infinity- and knelt.
15
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curledFit emblems of the model of her worldSeen but in beauty- not impeding sight
Of other beauty glittering thro' the lightA wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opal'd air in color bound.
All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers: of lilies such as rear'd the head
On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of- deep prideOf her who lov'd a mortal- and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Upreared its purple stem around her knees:And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'dInmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd
All other loveliness:- its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond- and on a sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie:
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant in grief
Disconsolate linger- grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have Red,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chasten'd and more fair:
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia, pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run:
And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth,
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:
And Valisnerian lotus, thither flown'
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!
16
Isola d'oro!- Fior di Levante!
And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever
With Indian Cupid down the holy riverFair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
To bear the Goddess' song, in odors, up to Heaven:
'Spirit! that dwellest where,
In the deep sky,
The terrible and fair,
In beauty vie!
Beyond the line of blueThe boundary of the star
Which turneth at the view
Of thy barrier and thy barOf the barrier overgone
By the comets who were cast
From their pride and from their throne
To be drudges till the lastTo be carriers of fire
(The red fire of their heart)
With speed that may not tire
And with pain that shall not partWho livest- that we knowIn Eternity- we feelBut the shadow of whose brow
What spirit shall reveal?
Tho' the beings whom thy Nesace,
Thy messenger hath known
Have dream'd for thy Infinity
A model of their ownThy will is done, O God!
The star hath ridden high
Thro' many a tempest, but she rode
Beneath thy burning eye;
And here, in thought, to theeIn thought that can alone
Ascend thy empire and so be
A partner of thy throneBy winged Fantasy,
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of Heaven.'
17
She ceas'd- and buried then her burning cheek
Abash'd, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervor of His eye;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirr'd not- breath'd not- for a voice was there
How solemnly pervading the calm air!
A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name 'the music of the sphere.'
Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call
'Silence'- which is the merest word of all.
All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wingsBut ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky:'What tho 'in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Linked to a little system, and one sunWhere all my love is folly and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What tho' in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets thro' the upper Heaven!
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
With all thy train, athwart the moony skyApart- like fire-flies in Sicilian night,
And wing to other worlds another light!
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle- and so be
To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!'
Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve!- on Earth we plight
Our faith to one love- and one moon adoreThe birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
18
And bent o'er sheeny mountains and dim plain
Her way, but left not yet her Therasaean reign.
PART II
High on a mountain of enamell'd headSuch as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter'd 'hope to be forgiven'
What time the moon is quadrated in HeavenOf rosy head that, towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve- at noon of night,
While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger lightUprear'd upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall
Of their own dissolution, while they dieAdorning then the dwellings of the sky.
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crownA window of one circular diamond, there,
Look'd out above into the purple air,
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallow'd all the beauty twice again,
Save, when, between th' empyrean and that ring,
Some eager spirit Flapp'd his dusky wing.
But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world: that greyish green
That Nature loves the best Beauty's grave
Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architraveAnd every sculptur'd cherub thereabout
That from his marble dwelling peered out,
Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his nicheAchaian statues in a world so rich!
Friezes from Tadmor and PersepolisFrom Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
19
Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave
Is now upon thee- but too late to save!
Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
Witness the murmur of the grey twilight
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,
Of many a wild star-gazer long agoThat stealeth ever on the ear of him
Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,
And sees the darkness coming as a cloudIs not its form- its voice- most palpable and loud?
But what is this?- it cometh, and it brings
A music with it- 'tis the rush of wingsA pause- and then a sweeping, falling strain
And Nesace is in her halls again.
From the wild energy of wanton haste
Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;
And zone that clung around her gentle waist
Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.
Within the centre of that hall to breathe,
She paused and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,
The fairy light that kiss'd her golden hair
And long'd to rest, yet could but sparkle there.
Young flowers were whispering in melody
To happy flowers that night- and tree to tree;
Fountains were gushing music as they fell
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell;
Yet silence came upon material thingsFair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wingsAnd sound alone that from the spirit sprang
Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:
''Neath the blue-bell or streamerOr tufted wild spray
That keeps, from the dreamer,
The moonbeam awayBright beings! that ponder,
With half closing eyes,
On the stars which your wonder
Hath drawn from the skies,
20
Till they glance thro' the shade, and
Come down to your brow
Like- eyes of the maiden
Who calls on you nowArise! from your dreaming
In violet bowers,
To duty beseeming
These star-litten hoursAnd shake from your tresses
Encumber'd with dew
The breath of those kisses
That cumber them too(O! how, without you, Love!
Could angels be blest?)
Those kisses of true Love
That lull'd ye to rest!
Up!- shake from your wing
Each hindering thing:
The dew of the nightIt would weigh down your flight
And true love caressesO, leave them apart!
They are light on the tresses,
But lead on the heart.
Ligeia! Ligeia!
My beautiful one!
Whose harshest idea
Will to melody run,
O! is it thy will
On the breezes to toss?
Or, capriciously still,
Like the lone Albatros,
Incumbent on night
(As she on the air)
To keep watch with delight
On the harmony there?
Ligeia! wherever
Thy image may be,
No magic shall sever
Thy music from thee.
21
Thou hast bound many eyes
In a dreamy sleepBut the strains still arise
Which thy vigilance keepThe sound of the rain,
Which leaps down to the flowerAnd dances again
In the rhythm of the showerThe murmur that springs
From the growing of grass
Are the music of thingsBut are modell'd, alas!Away, then, my dearest,
Oh! hie thee away
To the springs that lie clearest
Beneath the moon-rayTo lone lake that smiles,
In its dream of deep rest,
At the many star-isles
That enjewel its breastWhere wild flowers, creeping,
Have mingled their shade,
On its margin is sleeping
Full many a maidSome have left the cool glade, and
Have slept with the beeArouse them, my maiden,
On moorland and leaGo! breathe on their slumber,
All softly in ear,
Thy musical number
They slumbered to hearFor what can awaken
An angel so soon,
Whose sleep hath been taken
Beneath the cold moon,
As the spell which no slumber
Of witchery may test,
The rhythmical number
Which lull'd him to rest?'
Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,
22
A thousand seraphs burst th' Empyrean thro',
Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flightSeraphs in all but 'Knowledge,' the keen light
That fell, refracted, thro' thy bounds, afar,
O Death! from eye of God upon that star:
Sweet was that error- sweeter still that deathSweet was that error- even with us the breath
Of Science dims the mirror of our joyTo them 'twere the Simoom, and would destroyFor what (to them) availeth it to know
That Truth is Falsehood- or that Bliss is Woe?
Sweet was their death- with them to die was rife
With the last ecstasy of satiate lifeBeyond that death no immortalityBut sleep that pondereth and is not 'to be'!And there- oh! may my weary spirit dwellApart from Heaven's Eternity- and yet how far from Hell!
What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
A maiden-angel and her seraph-loverO! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?
Unguided Love hath fallen- 'mid 'tears of perfect moan.'
He was a goodly spirit- he who fell:
A wanderer by moss-y-mantled wellA gazer on the lights that shine aboveA dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
What wonder? for each star is eye-like there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hairAnd they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of woe)
Upon a mountain crag, young AngeloBeetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sat he with his love- his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament:
Now turn'd it upon her- but ever then
It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.
23
'Ianthe, dearest, see- how dim that ray!
How lovely 'tis to look so far away!
She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls- nor mourn'd to leave.
That eve- that eve- I should remember wellThe sun-ray dropp'd in Lemnos, with a spell
On th' arabesque carving of a gilded hall
Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wallAnd on my eyelids- O the heavy light!
How drowsily it weigh'd them into night!
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran
With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:
But O that light!- I slumber'd- Death, the while,
Stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle
So softly that no single silken hair
Awoke that slept- or knew that he was there.
'The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon
Was a proud temple call'd the Parthenon;
More beauty clung around her column'd wall
Than ev'n thy glowing bosom beats withal,
And when old Time my wing did disenthral
Thence sprang I- as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left behind me in an hour.
What time upon her airy bounds I hung,
One half the garden of her globe was flung
Unrolling as a chart unto my viewTenantless cities of the desert too!
Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,
And half I wish'd to be again of men.'
'My Angelo! and why of them to be?
A brighter dwelling-place is here for theeAnd greener fields than in yon world above,
And woman's loveliness- and passionate love.'
'But, list, Ianthe! when the air so soft
Fail'd, as my pennon'd spirit leapt aloft,
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy- but the world
I left so late was into chaos hurl'dSprang from her station, on the winds apart.
And roll'd, a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.
24
Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar
And fell- not swiftly as I rose before,
But with a downward, tremulous motion thro'
Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto!
Nor long the measure of my falling hours,
For nearest of all stars was thine to oursDread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,
A red Daedalion on the timid Earth.'
'We came- and to thy Earth- but not to us
Be given our lady's bidding to discuss:
We came, my love; around, above, below,
Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,
Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod
She grants to us, as granted by her GodBut, Angelo, than thine grey Time unfurl'd
Never his fairy wing O'er fairier world!
Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes
Alone could see the phantom in the skies,
When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be
Headlong thitherward o'er the starry seaBut when its glory swell'd upon the sky,
As glowing Beauty's bust beneath man's eye,
We paused before the heritage of men,
And thy star trembled- as doth Beauty then!'
Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away
The night that waned and waned and brought no day.
They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.
~ Edgar Allan Poe,
275:Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

  Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,
No further than to where his feet had stray'd,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;
While his bow'd head seem'd list'ning to the Earth,
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

  It seem'd no force could wake him from his place;
But there came one, who with a kindred hand
Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low
With reverence, though to one who knew it not.
She was a Goddess of the infant world;
By her in stature the tall Amazon
Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en
Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;
Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,
Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,
When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face:
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.
One hand she press'd upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain:
The other upon Saturn's bended neck
She laid, and to the level of his ear
Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake
In solemn tenor and deep organ tone:
Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in these like accents; O how frail
To that large utterance of the early Gods!
"Saturn, look up!-though wherefore, poor old King?
I have no comfort for thee, no not one:
I cannot say, 'O wherefore sleepest thou?'
For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth
Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God;
And ocean too, with all its solemn noise,
Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air
Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands
Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
O aching time! O moments big as years!
All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth,
And press it so upon our weary griefs
That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
Saturn, sleep on:-O thoughtless, why did I
Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?
Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep."

  As when, upon a tranced summer-night,
Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave;
So came these words and went; the while in tears
She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground,
Just where her fallen hair might be outspread
A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet.
One moon, with alteration slow, had shed
Her silver seasons four upon the night,
And still these two were postured motionless,
Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern;
The frozen God still couchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,
And all the gloom and sorrow ofthe place,
And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,
As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard
Shook horrid with such aspen-malady:
"O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,
Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;
Look up, and let me see our doom in it;
Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape
Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice
Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow,
Naked and bare of its great diadem,
Peers like the front of Saturn? Who had power
To make me desolate? Whence came the strength?
How was it nurtur'd to such bursting forth,
While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp?
But it is so; and I am smother'd up,
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,
Of admonitions to the winds and seas,
Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.-I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!
Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round
Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of light;
Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;
Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.-
Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest
A certain shape or shadow, making way
With wings or chariot fierce to repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile: it must-it must
Be of ripe progress-Saturn must be King.
Yes, there must be a golden victory;
There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown
Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival
Upon the gold clouds metropolitan,
Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir
Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be
Beautiful things made new, for the surprise
Of the sky-children; I will give command:
Thea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn?"
This passion lifted him upon his feet,
And made his hands to struggle in the air,
His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat,
His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease.
He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep;
A little time, and then again he snatch'd
Utterance thus.-"But cannot I create?
Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe,
To overbear and crumble this to nought?
Where is another Chaos? Where?"-That word
Found way unto Olympus, and made quake
The rebel three.-Thea was startled up,
And in her bearing was a sort of hope,
As thus she quick-voic'd spake, yet full of awe.

  "This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends,
O Saturn! come away, and give them heart;
I know the covert, for thence came I hither."
Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went
With backward footing through the shade a space:
He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way
Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist
Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest.

  Meanwhile in other realms big tears were shed,
More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,
Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe:
The Titans fierce, self-hid, or prison-bound,
Groan'd for the old allegiance once more,
And listen'd in sharp pain for Saturn's voice.
But one of the whole mammoth-brood still kept
His sov'reigny, and rule, and majesy;-
Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire
Still sat, still snuff'd the incense, teeming up
From man to the sun's God: yet unsecure:
For as among us mortals omens drear
Fright and perplex, so also shuddered he-
Not at dog's howl, or gloom-bird's hated screech,
Or the familiar visiting of one
Upon the first toll of his passing-bell,
Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp;
But horrors, portion'd to a giant nerve,
Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright,
Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold,
And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks,
Glar'd a blood-red through all its thousand courts,
Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries;
And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds
Flush'd angerly: while sometimes eagles' wings,
Unseen before by Gods or wondering men,
Darken'd the place; and neighing steeds were heard
Not heard before by Gods or wondering men.
Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths
Of incense, breath'd aloft from sacred hills,
Instead of sweets, his ample palate took
Savor of poisonous brass and metal sick:
And so, when harbor'd in the sleepy west,
After the full completion of fair day,-
For rest divine upon exalted couch,
And slumber in the arms of melody,
He pac'd away the pleasant hours of ease
With stride colossal, on from hall to hall;
While far within each aisle and deep recess,
His winged minions in close clusters stood,
Amaz'd and full offear; like anxious men
Who on wide plains gather in panting troops,
When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.
Even now, while Saturn, rous'd from icy trance,
Went step for step with Thea through the woods,
Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear,
Came slope upon the threshold of the west;
Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope
In smoothest silence, save what solemn tubes,
Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet
And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies;
And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape,
In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye,
That inlet to severe magnificence
Stood full blown, for the God to enter in.

  He enter'd, but he enter'd full of wrath;
His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,
That scar'd away the meek ethereal Hours
And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared
From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,
Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light,
And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades,
Until he reach'd the great main cupola;
There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot,
And from the basements deep to the high towers
Jarr'd his own golden region; and before
The quavering thunder thereupon had ceas'd,
His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb,
To this result: "O dreams of day and night!
O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!
O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!
O lank-eared phantoms of black-weeded pools!
Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why
Is my eternal essence thus distraught
To see and to behold these horrors new?
Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall?
Am I to leave this haven of my rest,
This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,
This calm luxuriance of blissful light,
These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes,
Of all my lucent empire? It is left
Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine.
The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry,
I cannot see but darkness, death, and darkness.
Even here, into my centre of repose,
The shady visions come to domineer,
Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp.-
Fall!-No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
Over the fiery frontier of my realms
I will advance a terrible right arm
Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove,
And bid old Saturn take his throne again."-
He spake, and ceas'd, the while a heavier threat
Held struggle with his throat but came not forth;
For as in theatres of crowded men
Hubbub increases more they call out "Hush!"
So at Hyperion's words the phantoms pale
Bestirr'd themselves, thrice horrible and cold;
And from the mirror'd level where he stood
A mist arose, as from a scummy marsh.
At this, through all his bulk an agony
Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown,
Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular
Making slow way, with head and neck convuls'd
From over-strained might. Releas'd, he fled
To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours
Before the dawn in season due should blush,
He breath'd fierce breath against the sleepy portals,
Clear'd them of heavy vapours, burst them wide
Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams.
The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode
Each day from east to west the heavens through,
Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds;
Not therefore veiled quite, blindfold, and hid,
But ever and anon the glancing spheres,
Circles, and arcs, and broad-belting colure,
Glow'd through, and wrought upon the muffling dark
Sweet-shaped lightnings from the nadir deep
Up to the zenith,-hieroglyphics old,
Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers
Then living on the earth, with laboring thought
Won from the gaze of many centuries:
Now lost, save what we find on remnants huge
Of stone, or rnarble swart; their import gone,
Their wisdom long since fled.-Two wings this orb
Possess'd for glory, two fair argent wings,
Ever exalted at the God's approach:
And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense
Rose, one by one, till all outspreaded were;
While still the dazzling globe maintain'd eclipse,
Awaiting for Hyperion's command.
Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne
And bid the day begin, if but for change.
He might not:-No, though a primeval God:
The sacred seasons might not be disturb'd.
Therefore the operations of the dawn
Stay'd in their birth, even as here 'tis told.
Those silver wings expanded sisterly,
Eager to sail their orb; the porches wide
Open'd upon the dusk demesnes of night
And the bright Titan, phrenzied with new woes,
Unus'd to bend, by hard compulsion bent
His spirit to the sorrow of the time;
And all along a dismal rack of clouds,
Upon the boundaries of day and night,
He stretch'd himself in grief and radiance faint.
There as he lay, the Heaven with its stars
Look'd down on him with pity, and the voice
Of Coelus, from the universal space,
Thus whisper'd low and solemn in his ear:
"O brightest of my children dear, earth-born
And sky-engendered, son of mysteries
All unrevealed even to the powers
Which met at thy creating; at whose joys
And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft,
I, Coelus, wonder, how they came and whence;
And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be,
Distinct, and visible; symbols divine,
Manifestations of that beauteous life
Diffus'd unseen throughout eternal space:
Of these new-form'd art thou, O brightest child!
Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses!
There is sad feud among ye, and rebellion
Of son against his sire. I saw him fall,
I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne!
To me his arms were spread, to me his voice
Found way from forth the thunders round his head!
Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face.
Art thou, too, near such doom? vague fear there is:
For I have seen my sons most unlike Gods.
Divine ye were created, and divine
In sad demeanour, solemn, undisturb'd,
Unruffled, like high Gods, ye liv'd and ruled:
Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath;
Actions of rage and passion; even as
I see them, on the mortal world beneath,
In men who die.-This is the grief, O son!
Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall!
Yet do thou strive; as thou art capable,
As thou canst move about, an evident God;
And canst oppose to each malignant hour
Ethereal presence:-I am but a voice;
My life is but the life of winds and tides,
No more than winds and tides can I avail:-
But thou canst.-Be thou therefore in the van
Of circumstance; yea, seize the arrow's barb
Before the tense string murmur.-To the earth!
For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes.
Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun,
And of thy seasons be a careful nurse."-
Ere half this region-whisper had come down,
Hyperion arose, and on the stars
Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide
Until it ceas'd; and still he kept them wide:
And still they were the same bright, patient stars.
Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,
Like to a diver in the pearly seas,
Forward he stoop'd over the airy shore,
And plung'd all noiseless into the deep night.
'Lord Houghton records, on the authority of Brown, that "Hyperion" was begun after the death of Tom Keats, when the poet took up his residence at Wentworth Place.

(line 14): It seems to me that the power of realization shown in the first decade, and indeed throughout the fragment, answers all objections to the subject, and is the most absolute security for the nobility of the result which Keats would have achieved had he finished the poem. It is impossible to over-estimate the value of such a landscape, so touched in with a few strokes of titanic meaning and completeness; and the whole sentiment of gigantic despair reflected around the fallen god of the Titan dynasty, and permeating the landscape, is resumed in the most perfect manner in the incident of the motionless fallen leaf, a line almost as intense and full of the essence of poetry as any line in our language. It were ungracious to take exception to the poor Naiad; but she has not the convincing appropriateness of the rest of this sublime opening.'

(line 51): Leigh Hunt's remarks upon Keats's failure to finish the poem are specially appropriate to this passage, "If any living poet could finish this fragment, we believe it is the author himself. But perhaps he feels that he ought not. A story which involves passion, almost of necessity involves speech; and though we may well enough describe beings greater than ourselves by comparison, unfortunately we cannot make them speak by comparison." ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.

by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

~ John Keats, Hyperion. Book I
,
276: The Rishi
King Manu in the former ages of the world, when the
Arctic continent still subsisted, seeks knowledge from the Rishi of the Pole, who after long baffling him with conflicting side-lights of the knowledge, reveals to him what it chiefly concerns man to know.

MANU
Rishi who trance-held on the mountains old
Art slumbering, void
Of sense or motion, for in the spirit's hold
Of unalloyed
Immortal bliss thou dreamst protected! Deep
Let my voice glide
Into thy dumb retreat and break thy sleep
Abysmal. Hear!
The frozen snows that heap thy giant bed
Ice-cold and clear,
The chill and desert heavens above thee spread
Vast, austere,
Are not so sharp but that thy warm limbs brook
Their bitter breath,
Are not so wide as thy immense outlook
On life and death:
Their vacancy thy silent mind and bright
Outmeasureth.

But ours are blindly active and thy light
We have forgone.

RISHI
Who art thou, warrior armed gloriously
Like the sun?
Thy gait is as an empire and thine eye
Dominion.
Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
MANU
King Manu, of the Aryan peoples lord,
Greets thee, Sage.

RISHI
I know thee, King, earth to whose sleepless sword
Was heritage.

The high Sun's distant glories gave thee forth
On being's edge:
Where the slow skies of the auroral North
Lead in the morn
And flaming dawns for ever on heaven's verge
Wheel and turn,
Thundering remote the clamorous Arctic surge
Saw thee born.

There 'twas thy lot these later Fates to build,
This race of man
New-fashion. O watcher with the mountains wild,
The icy plain,
Thee I too, asleep, have watched, both when the Pole
Was brightening wan
And when like a wild beast the darkness stole
Prowling and slow
Alarming with its silent march the soul.

O King, I know
Thy purpose; for the vacant ages roll
Since man below
Conversed with God in friendship. Thou, reborn
For men perplexed,
Seekest in this dim aeon and forlorn
With evils vexed
The vanished light. For like this Arctic land
Death has annexed
To sleep, our being's summits cold and grand
Where God abides,
Repel the tread of thought. I too, O King,

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In winds and tides
Have sought Him, and in armies thundering,
And where Death strides
Over whole nations. Action, thought and peace
Were questioned, sleep,
And waking, but I had no joy of these,
Nor ponderings deep,
And pity was not sweet enough, nor good
My will could keep.

Often I found Him for a moment, stood
Astonished, then
It fell from me. I could not hold the bliss,
The force for men,
My brothers. Beauty ceased my heart to please,
Brightness in vain
Recalled the vision of the light that glows
Suns behind:
I hated the rich fragrance of the rose;
Weary and blind,
I tired of the suns and stars; then came
With broken mind
To heal me of the rash devouring flame,
The dull disease,
And sojourned with this mountain's summits bleak,
These frozen seas.

King, the blind dazzling snows have made me meek,
Cooled my unease.

Pride could not follow, nor the restless will
Come and go;
My mind within grew holy, calm and still
Like the snow.

MANU
O thou who wast with chariots formidable
And with the bow!
Voiceless and white the cold unchanging hill,

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
Has it then
A mightier presence, deeper mysteries
Than human men?
The warm low hum of crowds, towns, villages,
The sun and rain,
The village maidens to the water bound,
The happy herds,
The fluting of the shepherd lads, the sound
Myriad of birds,
Speak these not clearer to the heart, convey
More subtle words?
Here is but great dumb night, an awful day
Inert and dead.

RISHI
The many's voices fill the listening ear,
Distract the head:
The One is silence; on the snows we hear
Silence tread.

MANU
What hast thou garnered from the crags that lour,
The icy field?
RISHI
O King, I spurned this body's death; a Power
There was, concealed,
That raised me. Rescued from the pleasant bars
Our longings build,
My winged soul went up above the stars
Questing for God.
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MANU
Oh, didst thou meet Him then? in what bright field
Upon thy road?
RISHI
I asked the heavenly wanderers as they wheeled
For His abode.

MANU
Could glorious Saturn and his rings of hue
Direct thy flight?
RISHI
Sun could not tell, nor any planet knew
Its source of light,
Nor could I glean that knowledge though I paced
The world's beyond
And into outer nothingness have gazed.

Time's narrow sound
I crossed, the termless flood where on the Snake
One slumbers throned,
Attempted. But the ages from Him break
Blindly and Space
Forgets its origin. Then I returned
Where luminous blaze
Deathless and ageless in their ease unearned
The ethereal race.

MANU
Did the gods tell thee? Has Varuna seen
The high God's face?

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
RISHI
How shall they tell of Him who marvel at sin
And smile at grief?
MANU
Did He not send His blissful Angels down
For thy relief?
RISHI
The Angels know Him not, who fear His frown,
Have fixed belief.

MANU
Is there no heaven of eternal light
Where He is found?
RISHI
The heavens of the Three have beings bright
Their portals round,
And I have journeyed to those regions blest,
Those hills renowned.

In Vishnu's house where wide Love builds his nest,
My feet have stood.

MANU
Is he not That, the blue-winged Dove of peace,
Father of Good?
RISHI
Nor Brahma, though the suns and hills and seas
Are called his brood.
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MANU
Is God a dream then? are the heavenly coasts
Visions vain?
RISHI
I came to Shiva's roof; the flitting ghosts
Compelled me in.

MANU ls He then God whom the forsaken seek,
Things of sin?
RISHI
He sat on being's summit grand, a peak
Immense of fire.

MANU
Knows He the secret of release from tears
And from desire?
RISHI
His voice is the last murmur silence hears,
Tranquil and dire.

MANU
The silence calls us then and shall enclose?
RISHI
Our true abode
Is here and in the pleasant house He chose
To harbour God.
Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
MANU
In vain thou hast travelled the unwonted stars
And the void hast trod!
RISHI
King, not in vain. I knew the tedious bars
That I had fled,
To be His arms whom I have sought; I saw
How earth was made
Out of His being; I perceived the Law,
The Truth, the Vast,
From which we came and which we are; I heard
The ages past
Whisper their history, and I knew the Word
That forth was cast
Into the unformed potency of things
To build the suns.

Through endless Space and on Time's iron wings
A rhythm runs
Our lives pursue, and till the strain's complete
That now so moans
And falters, we upon this greenness meet,
That measure tread.

MANU
Is earth His seat? this body His poor hold
Infirmly made?
RISHI
I flung off matter like a robe grown old;
Matter was dead.
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MANU
Sages have told of vital force behind:
It is God then?
RISHI
The vital spirits move but as a wind
Within men.

MANU
Mind then is lord that like a sovereign sways
Delight and pain?
RISHI
Mind is His wax to write and, written, rase
Form and name.

MANU
Is Thought not He who has immortal eyes
Time cannot dim?
RISHI
Higher, O King, the still voice bade me rise
Than thought's clear dream.

Deep in the luminous secrecy, the mute
Profound of things,
Where murmurs never sound of harp or lute
And no voice sings,
Light is not, nor our darkness, nor these bright
Thunderings,
In the deep steady voiceless core of white
And burning bliss,
The sweet vast centre and the cave divine
Called Paradise,

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
He dwells within us all who dwells not in
Aught that is.

MANU
Rishi, thy thoughts are like the blazing sun
Eye cannot face.

How shall our souls on that bright awful One
Hope even to gaze
Who lights the world from His eternity
With a few rays?
RISHI
Dare on thyself to look, thyself art He,
O Aryan, then.

There is no thou nor I, beasts of the field,
Nor birds, nor men,
But flickerings on a many-sided shield
Pass, or remain,
And this is winged and that with poisonous tongue
Hissing coils.

We love ourselves and hate ourselves, are wrung
With woes and toils
To slay ourselves or from ourselves to win
Shadowy spoils.

And through it all, the rumour and the din,
Voices roam,
Voices of harps, voices of rolling seas,
That rarely come
And to our inborn old affinities
Call us home.

Shadows upon the many-sided Mind
Arrive and go,
Shadows that shadows see; the vain pomps wind
Above, below,
While in their hearts the single mighty God
Whom none can know,

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Guiding the mimic squadrons with His nod
Watches it all -
Like transient shapes that sweep with half-guessed truth
A luminous wall.

MANU
Alas! is life then vain? Our gorgeous youth
Li the and tall,
Our sweet fair women with their tender eyes
Outshining stars,
The mighty meditations of the wise,
The grandiose wars,
The blood, the fiery strife, the clenched dead hands,
The circle sparse,
The various labour in a hundred lands,
Are all these shows
To please some audience cold? as in a vase
Lily and rose,
Mixed snow and crimson, for a moment blaze
Till someone throws
The withered petals in some outer dust,
Heeding not, -
The virtuous man made one with the unjust,
Is this our lot?
RISHI
O King, sight is not vain, nor any sound.

Weeds that float
Upon a puddle and the majestic round
Of the suns
Are thoughts eternal, - what man loves to laud
And what he shuns;
Through glorious things and base the wheel of God
For ever runs.

O King, no thought is vain; our very dreams
Substantial are;

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
The light we see in fancy, yonder gleams
In the star.

MANU
Rishi, are we both dreams and real? the near
Even as the far?
RISHI
Dreams are we not, O King, but see dreams, fear
Therefore and strive.

Like poets in a wondrous world of thought
Always we live,
Whose shapes from out ourselves to being brought
Abide and thrive.

The poet from his vast and labouring mind
Brings brilliant out
A living world; forth into space they wind,
The shining rout,
And hate and love, and laugh and weep, enjoy,
Fight and shout,
King, lord and beggar, tender girl and boy,
Foemen, friends;
So to His creatures God's poetic mind
A substance lends.

The Poet with dazzling inspiration blind,
Until it ends,
Forgets Himself and lives in what He forms;
For ever His soul
Through chaos like a wind creating storms,
Till the stars roll
Through ordered space and the green lands arise,
The snowy Pole,
Ocean and this great heaven full of eyes,
And sweet sounds heard,
Man with his wondrous soul of hate and love,
And beast and bird, -

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Yes, He creates the worlds and heaven above
With a single word;
And these things being Himself are real, yet
Are they like dreams,
For He awakes to self He could forget
In what He seems.

Yet, King, deem nothing vain: through many veils
This Spirit gleams.

The dreams of God are truths and He prevails.

Then all His time
Cherish thyself, O King, and cherish men,
Anchored in Him.

MANU
Upon the silence of the sapphire main
Waves that sublime
Rise at His word and when that fiat's stilled
Are hushed again,
So is it, Rishi, with the Spirit concealed,
Things and men?
RISHI
Hear then the truth. Behind this visible world
The eyes see plain,
Another stands, and in its folds are curled
Our waking dreams.

Dream is more real, which, while here we wake,
Unreal seems.

From that our mortal life and thoughts we take.

Its fugitive gleams
Are here made firm and solid; there they float
In a magic haze,
Melody swelling note on absolute note,
A lyric maze,
Beauty on beauty heaped pell-mell to chain
The enchanted gaze,

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
Thought upon mighty thought with grandiose strain
Weaving the stars.

This is that world of dream from which our race
Came; by these bars
Of body now enchained, with laggard pace,
Borne down with cares,
A little of that rapture to express
We labour hard,
A little of that beauty, music, thought
With toil prepared;
And if a single strain is clearly caught,
Then our reward
Is great on earth, and in the world that floats
Lingering awhile
We hear the fullness and the jarring notes
Reconcile, -
Then travel forwards. So we slowly rise,
And every mile
Of our long journey mark with eager eyes;
So we progress
With gurge of revolution and recoil,
Slaughter and stress
Of anguish because without fruit we toil,
Without success;
Even as a ship upon the stormy flood
With fluttering sails
Labours towards the shore; the angry mood
Of Ocean swells,
Calms come and favouring winds, but yet afar
The harbour pales
In evening mists and Ocean threatens war:
Such is our life.

Of this be sure, the mighty game goes on,
The glorious strife,
Until the goal predestined has been won.

Not on the cliff
To be shattered has our ship set forth of old,

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Nor in the surge
To founder. Therefore, King, be royal, bold,
And through the urge
Of winds, the reboant thunders and the close
Tempestuous gurge
Press on for ever laughing at the blows
Of wind and wave.

The haven must be reached; we rise from pyre,
We rise from grave,
We mould our future by our past desire,
We break, we save,
We find the music that we could not find,
The thought think out
We could not then perfect, and from the mind
That brilliant rout
Of wonders marshal into living forms.

End then thy doubt;
Grieve not for wounds, nor fear the violent storms,
For grief and pain
Are errors of the clouded soul; behind
They do not stain
The living spirit who to these is blind.

Torture, disdain,
Defeat and sorrow give him strength and joy:
'Twas for delight
He sought existence, and if pains alloy,
'Tis here in night
Which we call day. The Yogin knows, O King,
Who in his might
Travels beyond the mind's imagining,
The worlds of dream.

For even they are shadows, even they
Are not, - they seem.

Behind them is a mighty blissful day
From which they stream.

The heavens of a million creeds are these:
Peopled they teem

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
By creatures full of joy and radiant ease.

There is the mint
From which we are the final issue, types
Which here we print
In dual letters. There no torture grips,
Joy cannot stint
Her streams, - beneath a more than mortal sun
Through golden air
The spirits of the deathless regions run.

But we must dare
To still the mind into a perfect sleep
And leave this lair
Of gross material flesh which we would keep
Always, before
The guardians of felicity will ope
The golden door.

That is our home and that the secret hope
Our hearts explore.

To bring those heavens down upon the earth
We all descend,
And fragments of it in the human birth
We can command.

Perfect millenniums are sometimes, until
In the sweet end
All secret heaven upon earth we spill,
Then rise above
Taking mankind with us to the abode
Of rapturous Love,
The bright epiphany whom we name God,
Towards whom we drove
In spite of weakness, evil, grief and pain.

He stands behind
The worlds of Sleep; He is and shall remain
When they grow blind
To individual joys; for even these
Are shadows, King,
And gloriously into that lustre cease

235

236

Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909
From which they spring.

We are but sparks of that most perfect fire,
Waves of that sea:
From Him we come, to Him we go, desire
Eternally,
And so long as He wills, our separate birth
Is and shall be.

Shrink not from life, O Aryan, but with mirth
And joy receive
His good and evil, sin and virtue, till
He bids thee leave.

But while thou livest, perfectly fulfil
Thy part, conceive
Earth as thy stage, thyself the actor strong,
The drama His.

Work, but the fruits to God alone belong,
Who only is.

Work, love and know, - so shall thy spirit win
Immortal bliss.

Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,
Fear not to enjoy;
For Death's a passage, grief a fancied thing
Fools to annoy.

From self escape and find in love alone
A higher joy.

MANU
O Rishi, I have wide dominion,
The earth obeys
And heaven opens far beyond the sun
Her golden gaze.

But Him I seek, the still and perfect One, -
The Sun, not rays.
Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
RISHI
Seek Him upon the earth. For thee He set
In the huge press
Of many worlds to build a mighty state
For man's success,
Who seeks his goal. Perfect thy human might,
Perfect the race.

For thou art He, O King. Only the night
Is on thy soul
By thy own will. Remove it and recover
The serene whole
Thou art indeed, then raise up man the lover
To God the goal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Rishi
,
277:The Legend Of Lady Gertrude
I.
Fallen the lofty halls, where vassal crowds
Drank in the dawn of Gertrude's natal day.
The dungeon roof an Alpine snow-wreath shrouds,
The strong, wild eagle's eyrie in the clouds—
The robber-baron's nest—is swept away.
II.
Bare is the mountain brow of lordly towers;
Only the sunbeams stay, the moon and stars,
The faithful saxifrage and gentian flowers,
The silvery mist, and soft, white, crystal showers,
And torrents rushing through their rocky bars.
III.
More than three hundred years ago, the flag
Charged with that dread device, an Alpine bear—
By many storm-winds rent—a grim, grey rag—
Floated above the castle on the crag,
Above the last whose heads were shelter'd there.
IV.
He was the proudest of an ancient race,
The fiercest of the robber chieftain's band,
That haughty Freiherr, with the iron face:
And she—his lady-sister, by God's grace—
The sweetest, gentlest maiden in the land.
V.
'Twas a rude nest for such a tender bird,
That lonely fortress, with its warrior-lord.
Aye drunken revels the night-stillness stirred;
From morn till eve the battle-cries were heard,
The sound of jingling spur and clanking sword.
VI.
And Lady Gertrude was both young and fair,
A mark for lawless hearts and roving eyes,—
209
With sweet, grave face, and amber-tinted hair,
And a low voice soft-thrilling through the air,
Filling it full of subtlest melodies.
VII.
But the great baron, proudest of his line,
Fetter'd, with jealous care, his white dove's wing;
Guarded his treasure in an inner shrine,
Till such a day as knightly hands should twine
Her slender fingers with the marriage-ring.
VIII.
From all her household rights was she debarred—
Her chair and place within the castle-hall,
Her palfrey's saddle in the castle-yard,
Her nursing ministries when blows fell hard
In border struggles—she was kept from all.
IX.
A stone-paved chamber, and the parapet
Opening above its winding turret-stair;
The castle-chapel, where few men were met,—
Round these the brother's boundaries were set.
The sweet child-sister was so very fair!
X.
She had her faithful nurse, her doves, her lute,
Her broidery and her distaff, and the hound—
Best prized of all—the grand, half-human brute,
Who aye watched near her, beautiful and mute,
With ears love-quicken'd, listening from the ground.
XI.
But the wild bird, so honourably caged,
Grew sick and sad in its captivity;
Longed—like those hills which time nor storm had aged,
And those deep glens where Danube waters raged—
In God's own wind and sunshine to be free.
XII.
And on a day, when she had seen them ride,
Baron and troopers, on some border raid,
210
Wooed by the glory of the summer tide,
The hound's soft-slouching footstep at her side,
Adown the valley Lady Gertrude stray'd.
XIII.
Adown the crag, whose shadow, still and black,
Lay like the death-sleep on a mountain pool;
Through rocky glen, by silvery torrent's track,
Through forest glade, 'neath wild vines, fluttering back
From softest zephyr kisses, green and cool.
XIV.
E'en till the woods and hamlets down below,
And summer meadows, were all broad and clear;
The river, moving statelily and slow,
A crimson ribbon in the sunset glow—
The dim, white, distant city strangely near.
XV.
She sat her down, a-weary, on the ground,
With tremulous long-drawn breath and wistful eyes;
Caress'd the velvet muzzle of the hound,
And listen'd vainly for some little sound
To come up from her world of mysteries.
XVI.
She had forgotten of the time and place,
When clank of warrior's harness smote her dream.
A growl, a spring, a shadow on her face,
And one strode up, with slow and stately pace,
And stood before her in the soft sun-gleam.
XVII.
An armèd knight, in noblest knightly guise,
From golden spur to golden dragon-crest;
Through open vizor gazing with surprise
Into the fair, flush'd face and startled eyes,
While horse and hound stood watchfully at rest.
XVIII.
The sun went down, and, with long, stealthy stride,
The shadows came, blurring the summer light;
211
And there was none the lady's step to guide
Up the lost pathway on the mountain-side—
None to protect her but this stranger knight!
XIX.
He placed her gently on his dappled grey,
Clothed in his mantle—for the air was chill;
He led her all the long and devious way,
Through glens, where starless night held royal sway,
And vine-tressed woodlands, where the leaves were still:
XX.
Through pathless ravines, where swift waters roll'd;
Up dark crag-ramparts, perilously steep,
Where eagles and a she-bear watch'd the fold;—
Facing the mountain breezes, clear and cold—
In shy, sweet silence, eloquent and deep.
XXI.
Holding his charger by the bridle-rein,
He led her through the robber-chieftain's lands;
Led her, unchallenged by the baron's train,
E'en to the low-brow'd castle-gate again,
And there he humbly knelt to kiss her hands.
XXII.
Brave lips, o'er tender palms bent down so low,
Silent and reverent, as it were to bless—
'Twas e'en a knightly love they did bestow,
Love true as steel and undefiled as snow;
No common courtesy, no light caress.
XXIII.
He rode away; and she to turret-lair
Sped, swift and trembling, like a hunted doe.
But wherefore, on the loopholed winding stair
Knelt she till morning, weeping, watching there?—
Because he was her brother's deadliest foe.
XXIV.
Because the golden dragon's blood had mixt
In all those mountain streams, had dyed the grass
212
Now trodden for her sake; because betwixt
Those two proud barons such a gulf was fixt
As never bridge of peace might overpass.
XXV.
A bitter, passionate feud, that was begun
In ages long forgotten, and bequeath'd
With those rich baronies by sire to son—
A sacred charge, a great work never done,
A sharp and fiery weapon never sheath'd.
XXVI.
Yet, e'er a month slipped by, as summer slips
On noiseless wings, another kiss was laid,
Not on white palms or rosy finger-tips,
But softly on shut eyes and quivering lips;
And vows were sealèd in the forest glade.
XXVII.
The robber baron, who had hedged about
That fairest blossom of the sacred plant,
Saw he the insolent mailèd hand stretch'd out
To break down all his barriers, strong and stout?
Knew he aught of that gracious covenant?
XXVIII.
His pride serenely slept. Nor did it wake
Till, in amaze, he saw his enemy stand
In his own castle, praying him to take
The pledge of peace for Lady Gertrude's sake—
Praying him humbly for the lady's hand.
XXIX.
Slowly the knitted brows grew fierce and black;
Slowly the eagle eyes began to shine.
“Sir knight,” he said, “I pray you get you back.
But one hour—and the Bears are on your track.
There's naught but fire and sword 'twixt mine and thine.”
XXX.
And then the doors were barred on every side
213
Upon the innocent traitor, who had done
Such doubly-shameful despite to his pride.
Mocking, “I'll satisfy your heart,” he cried,
“An' you will have a husband, pretty one!”
XXXI.
Yet did she send a message stealthily,
Spurred by the torture of this ominous threat.
“Thou wilt not suffer it?” she said. And he,
“Fear not. To-morrow will I come for thee,—
At eve to-morrow, when the sun has set.”
XXXII.
And on the morrow, when the autumn light
Of red and gold had faded into grey,
She heard his signal up the echoing height,
Like hoarse owl-whistle, quivering through the night;
And in the dark she softly slipped away.
XXXIII.
Her faithful nurse, with trembling hands, untwined
The new-forged fetters and drew back the bars.
The hound look'd up into her face, and whined,
And scratch'd the door; he would not stay behind.
And so she went—watch'd only by the stars.
XXXIV.
Adown the mountain passes, with wing'd feet
And bright, blank eyes—her hand fast clutch'd around
A ragged slip of myrtle, white and sweet;
The hound beside her, velvet-footed, fleet
And silent, with his muzzle to the ground.
XXXV.
The knight was waiting, with his dappled steed,
Hard by the black brink of the waveless pool.
In his strong, tender arms—now safe indeed—
She cross'd the valley, with the wild bird's speed,
Fanned by the whispering night-wind, clear and cool.
XXXVI.
Away—away—far from the trysting-place—
214
Over the blood-stain'd border-lands at last!
One wandering hind alone beheld the race;
A sudden rush—a shadow on his face—
A glint of golden scales—and she was past.
XXXVII.
She felt the shadow of a mighty wall,
And then the glow of torchlight, and again
The gloom of cloister'd stair and passage, fall
Upon her vacant eyes. She heard a call;
And, in the echoing mountains, its refrain.
XXXVIII.
Then all around her a great silence lay;
She knew not why, nor greatly seem'd to care,
Till, in low tones, she heard the baron say,
“Hast thou confess'd, my little one, to-day?”—
The while he weaved the myrtle in her hair.
XXXIX.
She glanced up suddenly, in blank amaze;
And then remember'd. 'Twas an altar, hung
With silk and rich embroidery, met her gaze;
'Twas perfumed, waxen altar-tapers' blaze
On her chill'd face and troubled spirit flung.
XL.
A holy father, with his open book,
Stood by the threshold of the chapel door.
Slowly, with bated breath and hands that shook,
Soft-clasped together—drawn with but a look—
She went, and knelt down humbly on the floor.
XLI.
The baron left her, lowly crouching there,
Her bright, starred tresses trailing on the stones;
And waited, kneeling on the altar-stair—
Holding his sword-hilt to his lips, in prayer—
The while she pleaded in her tremulous tones.
XLII.
A warning voice upon the still air dwelt,
215
A long, low cry of mingled hope and dread;—
A pause—a solemn silence—and she felt
The sweet absolving whisper as she knelt,
And hands of blessing covering her head.
XLIII.
The knight arose in silence, with a brow
Haughty and pale; and, softly drawing nigh,—
Love, life, and death in the new “I and thou”—
He gave and took each solemn marriage vow,
With all his arm'd retainers standing by.
XLIV.
The soft light fell upon their faces—still,
And calm, and full of rest. None now to part
The golden link between them!—naught to chill
The blest assurance that the father's will
Laid hand in hand, and gather'd heart to heart.
XLV.
And so 'twas done. Each finger now had worn
The rings that aye ring'd in the double life;
From each the pledge had been withdrawn in turn,
As one by one the hallow'd oaths were sworn;
And Lady Gertrude was the baron's wife.
XLVI.
He led her to her chamber, when the glow
Of dawn began to quicken earth and sky;
They watch'd the rosy wine-cup overflow
The pale, cool, silvery track upon the snow
Of Alpine crests, uplifted far and high.
XLVII.
They saw the mountain floodgates open'd wide,
The downward streaming of unfetter'd day;
In blessed stillness, standing side by side—
Stillness that told how they were satisfied,
Those hearts whereon the new-born glamour lay.
XLVIII.
And then, down cloister'd aisle and sculptured stair,
216
Through open courts, all bathed in shining mist,
They pass'd together, knight and lady fair;
She with the matron's coif upon her hair,
Her golden hair by lip and finger kiss'd.
XLIX.
He throned her proudly in his castle hall,
High on the daïs above the festive board,
'Neath shields and pennons drooping from the wall;
And they below the salt rose, one and all,
To greet the bride of their puissant lord.
L.
Loud were the shouts, and fair with smiling grace
The blue eyes of the lady baroness;
And bright and eager was the haughty face
Of her brave husband, towering in his place,
Yet aye low-stooping for a mute caress.
LI.
There came a sudden pause—a thunder-cloud,
Darkening the sunshine of the golden noon—
An ominous stillness in the armèd crowd,
While slowly stiffening lips, all stern and proud,
Shut in the kindly laughter—all too soon!
LII.
“To arms! To arms!” A passionate crimson flush
Rose, sank, and blanched the fair face of the bride.
“To arms!” The cry smote sharply on the hush,
And broke it;—all was one tumultuous rush—
“The Bears have cross'd the border-land!” they cried.
LIII.
But a few hours had Lady Gertrude dwelt
With her dear lord. Sad honours now were hers,
With white, hot hands she clasp'd his silver belt;
She held his dinted shield and sword; and knelt,
Like lowly squire, to don his golden spurs.
LIV.
“Thou wilt not fight with him?—thou wilt forbear
217
For my sake?” So she pleaded, while the sun
Shone on her falling tears—each tear a prayer.
He whisper'd gravely, as he kissed her hair,
“I know not if I can, my little one.”
LV.
She held his hands, with infinite mute desire
To hold him back; then watch'd him to the field
With hungry, feverish eyes that could not tire,
Till sunny space absorb'd the fitful fire
Of the bright dragons on his crest and shield.
LVI.
When he was gone—quite gone—she crept away,
Back to the castle chapel, still and dim;
And knelt where he had knelt but yesterday,
Low on the altar step, to watch and pray—
To pour her heart out for the love of him.
LVII.
Her bower-maidens sat alone and spun
The while she pray'd, the terror-stricken wife.
The long hours slowly wanèd, one by one,
And evening came, and, with the setting sun,
The sudden darkness that eclipsed her life.
LVIII.
She listen'd, and she heard the sound at last,—
The ominous pause, the heavy, clanging tread;
She saw the strange, long shadow weirdly cast
Upon the floor, the red blood streaming fast,
The dear face grey and stiffen'd;—he was dead!
LIX.
“Ay, dead, my lady baroness; and slain
By him you call your brother. Curses light
Upon his caitiff soul! Ah, 'tis in vain
To murmur thus,—he will not hear again—
He cannot heed your whisperings to-night.”
LX.
She lay down on her bridal couch—the stone
218
Whereon he lay in his eternal rest;
They, pitying, pass'd out, leaving her alone,
To kiss the rigid lips, and cry, and moan,
With her white face upon his bleeding breast.
LXI.
'Twas night—wakeful, restless, troubled night,
Both wild and soft—fair;
With clouds fast flying through the domheight,
And shrieking winds, and silvery shining light,
And clear bells piercing the transparent air.
LXII.
Down vale and fell a lonely figure stray'd,—
Now a dark shadow on the moonlit ground,
Now flickering white and ghostly in the shade
Of haunted glen and scented forest-glade—
A woman, watched and followed by a hound.
LXIII.
'Twas Lady Gertrude, widow'd and forlorn,
Returning to the wild birds' mountain nest;
Sent out with smiling insult and with scorn,
And creeping to the home where she was born,
To hide her sorrow, to lie down and rest.
LXIV.
She reach'd the gate and cross'd the castle-yard,
And stood upon the threshold, chill'd with fear.
The baron rose and faced her, breathing hard:
“Troopers,” he thunder'd, “let the doors be barred
And double-barred!—we'll have no traitors here.”
LXV.
Such was her welcome. As she turn'd away,
Groping with sightless eyes and hands outspread,
The hound, unnoticed, slowly made his way
Along the hall, as if in track of prey,
With glistening teeth and stealthy velvet tread.
219
LXVI.
There was no clarion cry, none heard the sound
Of knightly challenge, till the champion rose,
Avenging. Lo! they saw upon the ground
The baron struggling with the savage hound,
And grim death grimly waiting for the close!
LXVII.
'Twas done. He lay there unassoilzied, dead,
Ere scarcely fell'd by the relentless paws.
And the fierce hound, with painful, limping tread,
Was following still where Lady Gertrude led,
His own red life-blood dripping from his jaws.
LXVIII.
'Neath shadowy glades, with moonbeams interlaced,
Through valleys, at day—dawning, soft and dim,
Up mountain steeps at sunrise—uplands paced
By her dead lord in childhood—she retraced
The long miles stretching betwixt her and him.
LXIX.
She reach'd the castle, ere the torches' glare
Had wanèd in the brightness of the sky—
Another lord than hers was feasting there!
She shudder'd at the sounds that fill'd the air,
Of drunken laughter and loud revelry,
LXX.
And softly up the cloister'd stairs she crept,
Back to the lonely chapel, where all sound
Of human life in solemn silence slept.
With weary heart and noiseless feet she stept
Beneath the doorway into hallow'd ground.
LXXI.
Low at the altar, wrapped in slumber sweet
And still and deep, her murder'd lord lay here;
With waxen tapers at his head and feet—
Forcing reluctant darkness to retreat—
And cross-embroider'd pall upon his bier.
220
LXXII.
The blood-hound blindly stumbled, and fell prone
Across the threshold. Something came and prest
His huge head downward, stiffening him to stone.
And Lady Gertrude, passing up alone,
Spread her white arms above the baron's breast.
LXXIII.
The weapons which his lowly coffin bore—
His sword and spurs, his helm and shield and belt—
Like him, to rest from battle evermore,
Whose long-drawn shadows barred the chapel floor,—
She kiss'd them, for his dear sake, as she knelt.
LXXIV.
She laid her cheek upon the velvet pall,
With one long, quivering sigh; and tried to creep
Where the soft shadow of the rood would fall,
'Mid light of sunrise and of tapers tall,
Upon them both, and there she fell asleep.
LXXV.
She woke no more. But where her track had been,
On that last night, became a haunted ground.
And when the wild wind blows upon the sheen
Of summer moonlight, there may still be seen
The phantom of a lady and a hound.
~ Ada Cambridge,
278:The Deserted Garden
I know a village in a far-off land
Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain
With tinted walls a space on either hand
And fed by many an olive-darkened lane
The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band
Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain,
Winds off to that dim corner of the skies
Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.
Here, among trees whose overhanging shade
Strews petals on the little droves below,
Pattering townward in the morning weighed
With greens from many an upland garden-row,
Runs an old wall; long centuries have frayed
Its scalloped edge, and passers to and fro
Heard never from beyond its crumbling height
Sweet laughter ring at noon or plaintive song at night.
But here where little lizards bask and blink
The tendrils of the trumpet-vine have run,
At whose red bells the humming bird to drink
Stops oft before his garden feast is done;
And rose-geraniums, with that tender pink
That cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun,
Have covered part of this old wall, entwined
With fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind.
And crowning other parts the wild white rose
Rivals the honey-suckle with the bees.
Above the old abandoned orchard shows
And all within beneath the dense-set trees,
Tall and luxuriant the rank grass grows,
That settled in its wavy depth one sees
Grass melt in leaves, the mossy trunks between,
Down fading avenues of implicated green;
Wherein no lack of flowers the verdurous night
With stars and pearly nebula o'erlay;
Azalea-boughs half rosy and half white
94
Shine through the green and clustering apple-spray,
Such as the fairy-queen before her knight
Waved in old story, luring him away
Where round lost isles Hesperian billows break
Or towers loom up beneath the clear, translucent lake;
And under the deep grass blue hare-bells hide,
And myrtle plots with dew-fall ever wet,
Gay tiger-lilies flammulate and pied,
Sometime on pathway borders neatly set,
Now blossom through the brake on either side,
Where heliotrope and weedy mignonette,
With vines in bloom and flower-bearing trees,
Mingle their incense all to swell the perfumed breeze,
That sprung like Hermes from his natal cave
In some blue rampart of the curving West,
Comes up the valleys where green cornfields wave,
Ravels the cloud about the mountain crest,
Breathes on the lake till gentle ripples pave
Its placid floor; at length a long-loved guest,
He steals across this plot of pleasant ground,
Waking the vocal leaves to a sweet vernal sound.
Here many a day right gladly have I sped,
Content amid the wavy plumes to lie,
And through the woven branches overhead
Watch the white, ever-wandering clouds go by,
And soaring birds make their dissolving bed
Far in the azure depths of summer sky,
Or nearer that small huntsman of the air,
The fly-catcher, dart nimbly from his leafy lair;
Pillowed at case to hear the merry tune
Of mating warblers in the boughs above
And shrill cicadas whom the hottest noon
Keeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dove
Pours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croon
That like the voice of visionary love
Oft have I risen to seek through this green maze
(Even as my feet thread now the great world's garden-ways);
95
And, parting tangled bushes as I passed
Down beechen allies beautiful and dim,
Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last
My feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim,
And snowy callas' velvet cups are massed
Around the mossy, fern-encircled brim.
Here, then, that magic summoning would cease,
Or sound far off again among the orchard trees.
And here where the blanched lilies of the vale
And violets and yellow star-flowers teem,
And pink and purple hyacinths exhale
Their heavy fume, once more to drowse and dream
My head would sink, from many an olden tale
Drawing imagination's fervid theme,
Or haply peopling this enchanting spot
Only with fair creations of fantastic thought.
For oft I think, in years long since gone by,
That gentle hearts dwelt here and gentle hands
Stored all this bowery bliss to beautify
The paradise of some unsung romance;
Here, safe from all except the loved one's eye,
'Tis sweet to think white limbs were wont to glance,
Well pleased to wanton like the flowers and share
Their simple loveliness with the enamored air.
Thrice dear to them whose votive fingers decked
The altars of First Love were these green ways,
These lawns and verdurous brakes forever flecked
With the warm sunshine of midsummer days;
Oft where the long straight allies intersect
And marble seats surround the open space,
Where a tiled pool and sculptured fountain stand,
Hath Evening found them seated, silent, hand in hand.
When twilight deepened, in the gathering shade
Beneath that old titanic cypress row,
Whose sombre vault and towering colonnade
Dwarfed the enfolded forms that moved below,
Oft with close steps these happy lovers strayed,
Till down its darkening aisle the sunset glow
96
Grew less and patterning the garden floor
Faint flakes of filtering moonlight mantled more and more.
And the strange tempest that a touch imparts
Through the mid fibre of the molten frame,
When the sweet flesh in early youth asserts
Its heyday verve and little hints enflame,
Disturbed them as they walked; from their full hearts
Welled the soft word, and many a tender name
Strove on their lips as breast to breast they strained
And the deep joy they drank seemed never, never drained.
Love's soul that is the depth of starry skies
Set in the splendor of one upturned face
To beam adorably through half-closed eyes;
Love's body where the breadth of summer days
And all the beauty earth and air comprise
Come to the compass of an arm's embrace,
To burn a moment on impassioned lips
And yield intemperate joy to quivering finger-tips,
They knew; and here where morning-glories cling
Round carven forms of carefullest artifice,
They made a bower where every outward thing
Should comment on the cause of their own bliss;
With flowers of liveliest hue encompassing
That flower that the beloved body is
That rose that for the banquet of Love's bee
Has budded all the æons of past eternity.
But their choice seat was where the garden wall,
Crowning a little summit, far and near,
Looks over tufted treetops onto all
The pleasant outer country; rising here
From rustling foliage where cuckoos call
On summer evenings, stands a belvedere,
Buff-hued, of antique plaster, overrun
With flowering vines and weatherworn by rain and sun.
Still round the turrets of this antique tower
The bougainvillea hangs a crimson crown,
Wistaria-vines and clematis in flower,
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Wreathing the lower surface further down,
Hide the old plaster in a very shower
Of motley blossoms like a broidered gown.
Outside, ascending from the garden grove,
A crumbling stairway winds to the one room above.
And whoso mounts by this dismantled stair
Finds the old pleasure-hall, long disarrayed,
Brick-tiled and raftered, and the walls foursquare
Ringed all about with a twofold arcade.
Backward dense branches intercept the glare
Of afternoon with eucalyptus shade;
Eastward the level valley-plains expand,
Sweet as a queen's survey of her own Fairyland.
For through that frame the ivied arches make,
Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye,
Frequent with hamlet grove, and lucent lake
Where the blue hills' inverted contours lie;
Far to the east where billowy mountains break
In surf of snow against a sapphire sky,
Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges,
Changing from gold to pink as deepening sunset changes;
And over plain and far sierra spread
The fulgent rays of fading afternoon,
Showing each utmost peak and watershed
All clarified, each tassel and festoon
Of floating cloud embroidered overhead,
Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn,
Flushing with rose, while all breathes fresh and free
In peace and amplitude and bland tranquillity.
Dear were such evenings to this gentle pair;
Love's tide that launched on with a blast too strong
Sweeps toward the foaming reef, the hidden snare,
Baffling with fond illusion's siren-song,
Too faint, on idle shoals, to linger there
Far from Youth's glowing dream, bore them along,
With purple sail and steered by seraph hands
To isles resplendent in the sunset of romance.
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And out of this old house a flowery fane,
A bridal bower, a pearly pleasure-dome,
They built, and furnished it with gold and grain,
And bade all spirits of beauty hither come,
And wingéd Love to enter with his train
And bless their pillow, and in this his home
Make them his priests as Hero was of yore
In her sweet girlhood by the blue Dardanian shore.
Tree-ferns, therefore, and potted palms they brought,
Tripods and urns in rare and curious taste,
Polychrome chests and cabinets inwrought
With pearl and ivory etched and interlaced;
Pendant brocades with massive braid were caught,
And chain-slung, oriental lamps so placed
To light the lounger on some low divan,
Sunken in swelling down and silks from Hindustan.
And there was spread, upon the ample floors,
Work of the Levantine's laborious loom,
Such as by Euxine or Ionian shores
Carpets the dim seraglio's scented gloom.
Each morn renewed, the garden's flowery stores
Blushed in fair vases, ochre and peach-bloom,
And little birds through wicker doors left wide
Flew in to trill a space from the green world outside.
And there was many a dainty attitude,
Bronze and eburnean. All but disarrayed,
Here in eternal doubt sweet Psyche stood
Fain of the bath's delight, yet still afraid
Lest aught in that palatial solitude
Lurked of most menace to a helpless maid.
Therefore forever faltering she stands,
Nor yet the last loose fold slips rippling from her hands.
Close by upon a beryl column, clad
In the fresh flower of adolescent grace,
They set the dear Bithynian shepherd lad,
The nude Antinous. That gentle face,
Forever beautiful, forever sad,
Shows but one aspect, moon-like, to our gaze,
99
Yet Fancy pictures how those lips could smile
At revelries in Rome, and banquets on the Nile.
And there were shapes of Beauty myriads more,
Clustering their rosy bridal bed around,
Whose scented breadth a silken fabric wore
Broidered with peacock hues on creamiest ground,
Fit to have graced the barge that Cydnus bore
Or Venus' bed in her enchanted mound,
While pillows swelled in stuffs of Orient dyes,
All broidered with strange fruits and birds of Paradise.
'Twas such a bower as Youth has visions of,
Thither with one fair spirit to retire,
Lie upon rose-leaves, sleep and wake with Love
And feast on kisses to the heart's desire;
Where by a casement opening on a grove,
Wide to the wood-winds and the sweet birds' choir,
A girl might stand and gaze into green boughs,
Like Credhe at the window of her golden house.
Or most like Vivien, the enchanting fay,
Where with her friend, in the strange tower they planned,
She lies and dreams eternity away,
Above the treetops in Broceliande,
Sometimes at twilight when the woods are gray
And wolf-packs howl far out across the lande,
Waking to love, while up behind the trees
The large midsummer moon lifts-even so loved these.
For here, their pleasure was to come and sit
Oft when the sun sloped midway to the west,
Watching with sweet enjoyment interknit
The long light slant across the green earth's breast,
And clouds upon the ranges opposite,
Rolled up into a gleaming thundercrest,
Topple and break and fall in purple rain,
And mist of summer showers trail out across the plain.
Whereon the shafts of ardent light, far-flung
Across the luminous azure overhead,
Ofttimes in arcs of transient beauty hung
100
The fragmentary rainbow's green and red.
Joy it was here to love and to be young,
To watch the sun sink to his western bed,
And streaming back out of their flaming core
The vesperal aurora's glorious banners soar.
Tinging each altitude of heaven in turn,
Those fiery rays would sweep. The cumuli
That peeped above the mountain-tops would burn
Carmine a space; the cirrus-whorls on high,
More delicate than sprays of maiden fern,
Streak with pale rose the peacock-breasted sky,
Then blanch. As water-lilies fold at night,
Sank back into themselves those plumes of fervid light.
And they would watch the first faint stars appear,
The blue East blend with the blue hills below,
As lovers when their shuddering bliss draws near
Into one pulse of fluid rapture grow.
New fragrance on the freshening atmosphere
Would steal with evening, and the sunset glow
Draw deeper down into the wondrous west
Round vales of Proserpine and islands of the blest.
So dusk would come and mingle lake and shore,
The snow-peaks fade to frosty, opaline,
To pearl the doméd clouds the mountains bore,
Where late the sun's effulgent fire had been
Showing as darkness deepened more and more
The incandescent lightnings flare within,
And Night that furls the lily in the glen
And twines impatient arms would fall, and then---and then . . .
Sometimes the peasant, coming late from town
With empty panniers on his little drove
Past the old lookout when the Northern Crown
Glittered with Cygnus through the scented grove,
Would hear soft noise of lute-strings wafted down
And voices singing through the leaves above
Those songs that well from the warm heart that woos
At balconies in Merida or Vera Cruz.
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And he would pause under the garden wall,
Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain,
With all the sultry South in it, and all
Its importunity of love and pain;
And he would wait till the last passionate fall
Died on the night, and all was still again.
Then to his upland village wander home,
Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come.
O lyre that Love's white holy hands caress,
Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays
Sweet opportunity for happiness
So brief, so passing beautiful---O days,
When to the heart's divine indulgences
All earth in smiling ministration pays
Thine was the source whose plenitude, past over,
What prize shall rest to pluck, what secret to discover!
The wake of color that follows her when May
Walks on the hills loose-haired and daisy-crowned,
The deep horizons of a summer's day,
Fair cities, and the pleasures that abound
Where music calls, and crowds in bright array
Gather by night to find and to be found;
What were these worth or all delightful things
Without thine eyes to read their true interpretings!
For thee the mountains open glorious gates,
To thee white arms put out from orient skies,
Earth, like a jewelled bride for one she waits,
Decks but to be delicious in thine eyes,
Thou guest of honor for one day, whose fêtes
Eternity has travailed to devise;
Ah, grace them well in the brief hour they last!
Another's turn prepares, another follows fast.
Yet not without one fond memorial
Let my sun set who found the world so fair!
Frail verse, when Time the singer's coronal
Has rent, and stripped the rose-leaves from his hair,
Be thou my tablet on the temple wall!
Among the pious testimonials there,
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Witness how sweetly on my heart as well
The miracles of dawn and starry evening fell!
Speak of one then who had the lust to feel,
And, from the hues that far horizons take,
And cloud and sunset, drank the wild appeal,
Too deep to live for aught but life's sweet sake,
Whose only motive was the will to kneel
Where Beauty's purest benediction spake,
Who only coveted what grove and field
And sunshine and green Earth and tender arms could yield--A nympholept, through pleasant days and drear
Seeking his faultless adolescent dream,
A pilgrim down the paths that disappear
In mist and rainbows on the world's extreme,
A helpless voyager who all too near
The mouth of Life's fair flower-bordered stream,
Clutched at Love's single respite in his need
More than the drowning swimmer clutches at a reed--That coming one whose feet in other days
Shall bleed like mine for ever having, more
Than any purpose, felt the need to praise
And seek the angelic image to adore,
In love with Love, its wonderful, sweet ways
Counting what most makes life worth living for,
That so some relic may be his to see
How I loved these things too and they were dear to me.
I sometimes think a conscious happiness
Mantles through all the rose's sentient vine
When summer winds with myriad calyces
Of bloom its clambering height incarnadine;
I sometimes think that cleaving lips, no less,
And limbs that crowned desires at length entwine
Are nerves through which that being drinks delight,
Whose frame is the green Earth robed round with day and night.
And such were theirs: the traveller without,
Pausing at night under the orchard trees,
Wondered and crossed himself in holy doubt,
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For through their song and in the murmuring breeze
It seemed angelic choirs were all about
Mingling in universal harmonies,
As though, responsive to the chords they woke,
All Nature into sweet epithalamium broke.
And still they think a spirit haunts the place:
'Tis said, when Night has drawn her jewelled pall
And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace
Their mimic constellations, if it fall
That one should see the moon rise through the lace
Of blossomy boughs above the garden wall,
That surely would he take great ill thereof
And famish in a fit of unexpressive love.
But this I know not, for what time the wain
Was loosened and the lily's petal furled,
Then I would rise, climb the old wall again,
And pausing look forth on the sundown world,
Scan the wide reaches of the wondrous plain,
The hamlet sites where settling smoke lay curled,
The poplar-bordered roads, and far away
Fair snowpeaks colored with the sun's last ray.
Waves of faint sound would pulsate from afar
Faint song and preludes of the summer night;
Deep in the cloudless west the evening star
Hung 'twixt the orange and the emerald light;
From the dark vale where shades crepuscular
Dimmed the old grove-girt belfry glimmering white,
Throbbing, as gentlest breezes rose or fell,
Came the sweet invocation of the evening bell.
~ Alan Seeger,
279: Book VII: The Book of the Woman

So to the voice of their best they were bowed and obeyed undebating;
Men whose hearts were burning yet with implacable passion
Felt Odysseus strength and rose up clay to his counsels.
King Agamemnon rose at his word, the wide-ruling monarch,
Rose at his word the Cretan and Locrian, Thebes and Epirus,
Nestor rose, the time-tired hoary chief of the Pylians.
Round Agamemnon the Atreid Europe surged in her chieftains
Forth from their tent on the shores of the Troad, splendid in armour,
Into the golden blaze of the sun and the race of the sea-winds.
Fierce and clear like a flame to the death-gods bright on its altar
Shone in their eyes the lust of blood and of earth and of pillage;
For in their hearts those fires replaced the passions of discord
Forging a brittle peace by a common hatred and yearning.
Joyous they were of mood; for their hopes were already in Troya
Sating with massacre, plunder and rape and the groans of their foemen
Death and Hell in our mortal bosoms seated and shrouded;
There they have altars and seats, in mankind, in this fair-builded temple,
Made for purer gods; but we turn from their luminous temptings;
Vainly the divine whispers seek us; the heights are rejected.
Man to his earth drawn always prefers his nethermost promptings,
Man, devouring, devoured who is slayer and slain through the ages
Since by the beast he soars held and exceeds not that pedestals measure.
They now followed close on the steps of the mighty Atrides
Glued like the forest pack to the war-scarred coat of its leader,
Glued as the pack when wolves follow their prey like Doom that can turn not.
Perfect forms and beautiful faces crowded the tent-door,
Brilliant eyes and fierce of souls that remembered the forest,
Wild-beasts touched by thought and savages lusting for beauty.
Dire and fierce and formidable chieftains followed Atrides,
Merciless kings of merciless men and the founders of Europe,
Sackers of Troy and sires of the Par thenon, Athens and Caesar.
Here they had come to destroy the ancient perishing cultures;
For, it is said, from the savage we rose and were born to a wild-beast.
So when the Eye supreme perceives that we rise up too swiftly,
Drawn towards height but fullness contemning, called by the azure,
Life when we fail in, poor in our base and forgetting our mother,
Back we are hurled to our roots; we recover our sap from the savage.
So were these sent by Zeus to destroy the old that was grandiose.
Such were those frames of old as the sons of Heaven might have chosen
Who in the dawn of eternity wedded the daughters of Nature,
Cultures touched by the morning star, vast, bold and poetic,
Titans works and joys, but thrust down from their puissance and pleasure
Fainting now fell from the paces of Time or were left by his ages.
So were these born from Zeus to found the new that should flower
Lucid and slender and perfectly little as fit for this mortal
Ever who sinks back fatigued from immortalitys stature;
Man, repelled by the gulfs within him and shrinking from vastness,
Form of the earth accepts and is glad of the lap of his mother.
Safe through the infinite seas could his soul self-piloted voyage,
Chasing the dawns and the wondrous horizons, eternitys secrets
Drawn from her luminous gulfs! But he journeys rudderless, helmless,
Driven and led by the breath of God who meets him with tempest,
Hurls at him Night. The earth is safer, warmer its sunbeams;
Death and limits are known; so he clings to them hating the summons.
So might one dwell who has come to take joy in a fair-lighted prison;
Amorous grown of its marble walls and its noble adornments,
Lost to mightier cares and the spaces boundlessly calling
Lust of the infinite skies he forgets and the kiss of the stormwind.
So might one live who inured to his days of the field and the farm-yard
Shrinks from the grandiose mountain-tops; shut up in lanes and in hedges
Only his furrows he leads and only orders his gardens,
Only his fleeces weaves and drinks of the yield of his vine-rows:
Lost to his ear is the song of the waterfall, wind in the forests.
Now to our earth we are bent and we study the skies for its image.
That was Greece and its shining, that now is France and its keenness,
That still is Europe though by the Christ-touch troubled and tortured,
Seized by the East but clasping her chains and resisting our freedom.
Then was all founded, on Phrygias coasts, round Ilions ramparts,
Then by the spear of Achilles, then in the Trojan death-cry;
Bearers mute of a future world were those armoured Achaians.
So they arrived from Zeus, an army led by the death-god.
So one can see them still who has sight from the gods in the trance-sleep
Out from the tent emerging on Phrygias coasts in their armour;
Those of the early seed Pelasgian slighter in stature,
Dark-haired, hyacinth-curled from the isles of the sea and the southron,
Soft-eyed men with pitiless hearts; bright-haired the Achaians,
Hordes of the Arctic Dawn who had fled from the ice and the death-blast;
Children of conquerors lured to the coasts and the breezes and olives,
Noons of Mediterranean suns and the kiss of the southwind
Mingled their brilliant force with the plastic warmth of the Hamite.
There they shall rule and their children long till Fate and the Dorian
Break down Hellene doors and trample stern through the passes.
Mixed in a glittering rout on the Ocean beaches one sees them,
Perfect and beautiful figures and fronts, not as now are we mortals
Marred and crushed by our burden long of thought and of labour;
Perfect were these as our race bright-imaged was first by the Thinker
Seen who in golden lustres shapes all the glories we tarnish,
Rich from the moulds of Gods and unmarred in their splendour and swiftness.
Many and mighty they came over the beaches loud of the Aegean,
Roots of an infant world and the morning stars of this Europe,
Great Agamemnons kingly port and the bright Menelaus,
Tall Idomeneus, Nestor, Odysseus Atlas-shouldered,
Helmeted Ajax, his chin of the beast and his eyes of the dreamer.
Over the sands they dispersed to their armies ranked by the Ocean.
But from the Argive front Acirrous loosed by Tydides
Parted as hastens a shaft from the string and he sped on intently
Swift where the beaches were bare or threading the gaps of the nations;
Crossing Thebes and Epirus he passed through the Lemnian archers,
Ancient Gnossus hosts and Meriones leaderless legions.
Heedless of cry and of laughter calling over the sea-sands
Swiftly he laboured, wind in his hair and the sea to him crying,
Straight he ran to the Myrmidon hosts and the tents of Achilles.
There he beheld at his tent-door the Phthian gleaming in armour,
Glittering-helmed with the sun that climbed now the cusp of Cronion,
Nobly tall, excelling humanity, planned like Apollo.
Proud at his side like a pillar upreared of snow or of marble,
Golden-haired, hard and white was the boy Neoptolemus, fire-eyed.
New were his feet to the Trojan sands from the ships and from Scyros:
Led to this latest of all his fathers fights in the Troad
He for his earliest battle waited, the son of Achilles.
So in her mood had Fate brought them together, the son and the father,
Even as our souls travelling different paths have met in the ages
Each for its work and they cling for an hour to the names of affection,
Then Times long waves bear them apart for new forms we shall know not,
So these two long severed had met in the shadow of parting.
Often he smote his hand on the thigh-piece for sound of the armour,
Bent his ear to the plains or restless moved like a war-horse
Curbed by his masters will, when he stands new-saddled for battle
Hearing the voice of the trumpets afar and pawing the meadows.
Over the sands Acirrous came to them running and toiling,
Known from far off, for he ran unhelmeted. High on the hero
Sunlike smiled the golden Achilles and into the tent-space
Seized by the hand and brought him and seated. War-shaft of Troezen,
Whence was thy speed, Acirrous? Comst thou, O friend, to my tent-side
Spurred by thy eager will or the trusted stern Diomedes?
Or from the Greeks like the voice still loved from a heart that is hollow?
What say the banded princes of Greece to the single Achilles?
Bringest thou flattery pale or an empty and futureless menace?
But to the strength of Pelides the hero Acirrous answered:
Response none make the Greeks to thy high-voiced message and challenge;
Only their shout at thy side will reply when thou leapst into Troya.
So have their chieftains willed and the wisdom calm of Odysseus.
But with a haughty scorn made answer the high-crested Hellene:
Wise is Odysseus, wise are the hearts of Achaias chieftains.
Ilions chiefs are enough for their strength and life is too brittle
Hurrying Fate to advance on the spear of the Phthian Achilles.
Not from the Greeks have I sped to thy tents, their friendship or quarrel
Urged not my feet; but Tiryns chieftain strong Diomedes
Sent me claiming a word long old that first by his war-car
Young Neoptolemus come from island Scyros should enter
Far-crashing into the fight that has lacked this shoot of Achilles,
Pressing in front with his fathers strength in the playground of Ares,
Shouting his fathers cry as he clashed to his earliest battle.
So let Achilles son twin-carred fight close by Tydides,
Seal of the ancient friendship new-sworn twixt your sires in their boyhood
Then when they learned the spear to guide and strove in the wrestle.
So he spoke recalling other times and regretted
And to the Argives word consented the strength of Pelides.
He on the shoulder white of his son with a gesture of parting
Laid his fateful hand and spoke from his prescient spirit:
Pyrrhus, go. No mightier guide couldst thou hope into battle
Opening the foemens ranks than the hero stern Diomedes.
Noble that rugged heart, thy fathers friend and his fathers.
Journey through all wide Greece, seek her prytanies, schools and palaestras,
Traverse Oceans rocks and the cities that dream on his margin,
Phocian dales, Aetolias cliffs and Arcadys pastures,
Never a second man wilt thou find, but alone Diomedes.
Pyrrhus, follow his counsels always losing thy father,
If in this battle I fall and Fate has denied to me Troya.
Pyrrhus, be like thy father in virtue, thou canst not excel him;
Noble be in peace, invincible, brave in the battle,
Stern and calm to thy foe, to the suppliant merciful. Mortal
Favour and wrath as thou walkst heed never, son of Achilles.
Always thy will and the right impose on thy friend and thy foeman.
Count not life nor death, defeat nor triumph, Pyrrhus.
Only thy soul regard and the gods in thy joy or thy labour.
Pyrrhus heard and erect with a stride that was rigid and stately
Forth with Acirrous went from his sire to the joy of the battle.
Little he heeded the word of death that the god in our bosom
Spoke from the lips of Achilles, but deemed at sunset returning,
Slaying Halamus, Paris or dangerous mighty Aeneas,
Proudly to lay at his fathers feet the spoils of the foeman.
But in his lair alone the godlike doomed Pelides
Turned to the door of his tent and was striding forth to the battle,
When from her inner chamber Briseis parting the curtain,
Long had she stood there spying and waiting her lonely occasion,
Came and caught and held his hand like a creeper detaining
Vainly a moment the deathward stride of the kings of the forest.
Tarry awhile, Achilles; not yet have the war-horns clamoured,
Nor have the scouts streamed yet from Xanthus fierily running.
Lose a moment for her who has only thee under heaven.
Nay, had war sounded, thou yet wouldst squander that moment, Achilles,
Hearkening a womans fears and the voice of a dream in the midnight.
Art thou not gentle even as terrible, lion of Hellas?
Others have whispered the deeds of thy wrath; we have heard, but not seen it;
Marvelling much at their pallor and awe we have listened and wondered.
Never with thrall or slavegirl or captive saw I thee angered,
Hero, nor any humble heart ever trembled to near thee.
Pardoning rather our many faults and our failures in service
Lightly thou layedst thy yoke on us kind as the clasp of a lover
Sparing the weak as thou breakest the mighty, O godlike Achilles.
Only thy equals have felt all the dread of the death-god within thee;
We have presumed and have played with the strength at which nations have trembled.
Lo, thou hast leaned thy mane to the clutch of the boys and the maidens.
But to Briseis white-armed made answer smiling Achilles:
Something sorely thou needst, for thou flatterest long, O Briseis.
Tell me, O woman, thy fear or thy dream that my touch may dispel it,
White-armed net of bliss slipped down from the gold Aphrodite.
And to Achilles answered the captive white Briseis:
Long have they vexed my soul in the tents of the Greeks, O Achilles,
Telling of Thetis thy mother who bore thee in caves of the Ocean
Clasped by a mortal and of her fear from the threats of the Ancients,
Weavers of doom who play with our hopes and smile at our passions
Painting Time with the red of our hearts on the web they have woven,
How on the Oceans bosom she hid thee in vine-tangled Scyros
Clothed like a girl among girls with the daughters of King Lycomedes,
Art thou not fairer than womans beauty, yet great as Apollo?
Fearing Paris shafts and the anger of Delian Phoebus.
Now in the night has a vision three times besieged me from heaven.
Over the sea in my dream an argent bow was extended;
Nearing I saw a terror august over moonlit waters,
Cloud and a fear and a face that was young and lovely and hostile.
Then three times I heard arise in the grandiose silence,
Still was the sky and still was the land and still were the waters,
Echoing a mighty voice, Take back, O King, what thou gavest;
Strength, take thy strong man, sea, take thy wave, till the warfare eternal
Need him again to thunder through Asias plains to the Ganges.
That fell silent, but nearer the beautiful Terror approached me,
Clang I heard of the argent bow and I gazed on Apollo.
Shrilly I cried; it was thee that the shaft of the heavens had yearned for,
Thee that it sought like a wild thing in anger straight at its quarry,
Quivering into thy heel. I awoke and found myself trembling,
Held thee safe in my arms, yet hardly believed that thou livest.
Lo, in the night came this dream; on the morn thou arisest for battle.
But to Briseis white-armed made answer the golden Achilles:
This was a dream indeed, O princess, daughter of Brises!
Will it restrain Achilles from fight, the lion from preying?
Come, thou hast heard of my prowess and knowest what man is Achilles.
Deemst thou so near my end? or does Polyxena vex thee,
Jealousy shaping thy dreams to frighten me back from her capture?
Passionate, vexed Briseis, smiting his arm with her fingers,
Yet with a smile half-pleased made answer to mighty Achilles.
Thinkst thou I fear thee at all? I am brave and will chide thee and threaten.
See that thou recklessly throw not, Achilles, thy life into battle
Hurting this body, my world, nor venture sole midst thy foemen,
Leaving thy shielders behind as oft thou art wont in thy war-rage
Lured by thy tempting gods who seek their advantage to slay thee,
Fighting divinely, careless of all but thy spear and thy foeman.
Cover thy limbs with thy shield, speed slowly restraining thy coursers.
Dost thou not know all the terrible void and cold desolation
Once again my life must become if I lose thee, Achilles?
Twice then thus wilt thou smite me, O hero, a desolate woman?
I will not stay behind on an earth that is empty and kingless.
Into the grave I will leap, through the fire I will burn, I will follow
Down into Hades depths or wherever thy footsteps go clanging,
Hunting thee always,didst thou not seize me here for thy pleasure?
Stronger there by my love as thou than I here, O Achilles.
Thou shalt not dally alone with Polyxena safe in the shadows.
But to Briseis answered the hero, mighty Pelides,
Holding her delicate hands like gathered flowers in his bosom,
Pressing her passionate mouth like a rose that trembles with beauty.
There then follow me even as I would have drawn thee, O woman,
Voice that chimes with my soul and hands that are eager for service,
Beautiful spoil beloved of my foemen, perfect Briseis
But for the dreams that come to us mortals sleeping or waking,
Shadows are these from our souls and who shall discern what they figure?
Fears from the heart speak voiced like Zeus, take shape as Apollo.
But were they truer than Delphis cavern voice or Dodonas
Moan that seems wind in his oaks immemorable, how should they alter
Fate that the stern gods have planned from the first when the earth was unfashioned,
Shapeless the gyre of the sun? For dream or for oracle adverse
Why should man swerve from the path of his feet? The gods have invented
Only one way for a man through the world, O my slavegirl Briseis,
Valiant to be and noble and truthful and just to the humble,
Only one way for a woman, to love and serve and be faithful.
This observe, thy task in thy destiny noble or fallen;
Time and result are the gods; with these things be not thou troubled.
So he spoke and kissed her lips and released her and parted.
Out from the tent he strode and into his chariot leaping
Seized the reins and shouted his cry and drove with a far-borne
Sound of wheels mid the clamour of hooves and the neigh of the war-steeds
Swift through the line of the tents and forth from the heart of the leaguer.
Over the causeway Troyward thundered the wheels of Achilles.
After him crashing loud with a fierce and resonant rumour
Chieftains impetuous prone to the mellay and swift at the war-cry
Came, who long held from the lust of the spear and the joy of the war-din
Rushed over earth like hawks released through the air; a shouting
Limitless rolled behind, for nations followed each war-cry.
Lords renowned of the northern hills and the plains and the coast-lands,
Many a Dorian, many a Phthian, many a Hellene,
Names now lost to the ear though then reputed immortal!
Night has swallowed them, Zeus has devoured the light of his children;
Drawn are they back to his bosom vast whence they came in their fierceness
Thinking to conquer the earth and dominate Time and his ages.
Nor on their left less thick came numerous even as the sea-sands
Forth from the line of the leaguer that skirted the far-sounding waters,
Ranked behind Tydeus son and the Spartan, bright Menelaus,
Ithacas chief and Epeus, Idomeneus lord of the Cretans,
Acamas, Nestor, Neleus son, and the brave Ephialtus,
Prothous, Meges, Leitus the bold and the king Prothonor,
Wise Alcestes son and the Lemnian, stern Philoctetes,
These and unnumbered warlike captains marching the Argives.
Last in his spacious car drove shaping the tread of his armies,
Even as a shepherd who follows his flock to the green of the pastures,
Atreus far-famed son, the monarch great Agamemnon.
They on the plain moved out and gazing far over the pastures
Saw behind Xanthus rolling with dust like a cloud full of thunder,
Ominous, steadily nearing, shouting their war-cry the Trojans.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 7 - The Book of the Woman
,
280: Book V: The Book of Achilles

Meanwhile grey from the Trojan gates Talthybius journeyed
Spurred by the secret thought of the Fates who change not nor falter.
Simois sighed round his wheels and Xanthus roared at his passing,
Troas god like a lion wroth and afraid; to meet him
Whistling the ocean breezes came and Ida regarded.
So with his haste in the wheels the herald oceanward driving
Came through the gold of the morn, oer the trampled green of the pastures
Back to the ships and the roar of the sea and the iron-hooped leaguer.
Wide to the left his circle he wrote where the tents of Achilles
Trooped like a flock of the sea-fowl pensive and still on the margin.
He past the outposts rapidly coursed to the fosse of the Argives.
In with a quavering cry to the encampment over the causeway
Bridging the moat of the ships Talthybius drove in his chariot
Out of the wide plains azure-roofed and the silence of Nature
Passing in to the murmur of men and the thick of the leaguer.
There to a thrall of the Hellene he cast his reins and with labour
Down from the high seat climbed of the war-car framed for the mighty.
Then betwixt tent-doors endless, vistaed streets of the canvas,
Slowly the old man toiled with his eager heart, and to meet him
Sauntering forth from his tent at the sound of the driving car-wheels
Strong Automedon came who was charioteer of Achilles.
Grey Talthybius, whence art thou coming? From Troya the ancient?
Or from a distant tent was thy speed and the King Agamemnon?
What in their armoured assembly counsel the kings of the Argives?
Not from the host but from Troy, Automedon, come I with tidings,
Nor have I mixed with the Greeks in their cohorts ranked by the Ocean,
Nor have I stood in their tents who are kings in sceptred Achaia,
But from Achilles sent to Achilles I bring back the message.
Tell me, then, what does Pelides, whether his strength he reposes
Soothed by the lyre or hearing the chanted deeds of the mighty
Or does he walk as he loves by the shore of the far-sounding waters?
And to the Argive herald grey Automedon answered:
Now from the meal he rests and Briseis lyres to him singing
One of the Ilian chants of old in the tongue of the Trojans.
Early, then, he has eaten, Automedon, early reposes?
Early the meat was broached on the spits, Talthybius, early
High on the sands or under the tents we have eaten and rested.
None knows the hour of the hunt, red, fierce, nor the prey he shall leap on,
All are like straining hounds; for Achilles shares not his counsels,
But on the ships, in the tents the talk has run like Peneus;
These upon Troy to be loosed and the hard-fighting wolf-brood of Priam,
These hope starkly with Argos embraced to have done with the Spartan,
Ending his brilliance in blood or to sport on the sands of the margent
Playing at bowls with the heads of the Cretan and crafty Odysseus.
Welcome were either or both; we shall move in the dances of Ares,
Quicken heart-beats dulled and limbs that are numb with reposing.
War we desire and no longer this ease by the drone of the waters.
So as they spoke, they beheld far-off the tent of Achilles
Splendid and spacious even as the hall of a high-crested chieftain,
Lofty, held by a hundred stakes to the Phrygian meadow.
Hung were its sides with memories bronze and trophies of armour,
Sword and spear and helmet and cuirass of fallen heroes
Slain by the hand of the mighty Achilles warring with Troya.
Teemed in its canvas rooms the plundered riches of Troas,
Craftsmans work and the wood well-carved and the ivory painted,
Work of bronze and work of gold and the dreams of the artist.
And in those tents of his pride, in the dreadful guard of the Hellene,
Noble boys and daughters of high-born Phrygians captive,
Borne from the joyless ruins that now were the sites of their childhood,
Served in the land of their sires the will of the Phthian Achilles.
There on a couch reclined in his beauty mighty and golden,
Loved by the Fates and doomed by them, spear of their will against Troya,
Peleus hero son by the foam-white child of the waters
Dreaming reposed and his death-giving hand hung lax oer the couch-side.
Near him dark-eyed Briseis, the fatal and beautiful captive,
Sang to the Grecian victor chants of the land of her fathers,
Sang the chant of Ilus, the tale of the glories of Troya.
Trojan boys and maidens sat near the singer and listened
Heart-delighted if with some tears; for easy are mortal
Hearts to be bent by Fate and soon we consent to our fortunes.
But in the doorway Automedon stood with the shadowy Argive
And at the ominous coming the voice of the singer faltered,
Faltering hushed like a thought melodious ceasing in heaven.
But from his couch the Peleid sprang and he cried to the herald.
Long hast thou lingered in Ilion, envoy, mute in the chambers
Golden of Priam old, while around thee darkened the counsels
Wavering blindly and fiercely of minds that revolt from compulsion,
Natures at war with the gods and their fortunes. Fain would I fathom
What were the thoughts of Deiphobus locked in that nature of iron
Now that he stands confronting his fate in the town of his fathers.
Peace dwells not in thy aspect. Sowst thou a seed then of ruin
Cast from the inflexible heart and the faltering tongue of Aeneas,
Or with the golden laugh of the tameless bright Alexander?
Grey Talthybius answered, Surely their doom has embraced them
Wrapping her locks round their ears and their eyes, lest they see and escape her,
Kissing their tongue with her fatal lips and dictating its answers.
Dire is the hope of their chiefs and fierce is the will of their commons.
Son of the Aeacids, spurned is thy offer. The pride of thy challenge
Rather we choose; it is nearer to Dardanus, King of the Hellenes.
Neither shall Helen captive be dragged to the feet of her husband,
Nor down the paths of peace revisit her fathers Eurotas.
Death and the fire may prevail on us, never our wills shall surrender
Lowering Priams heights and darkening Ilions splendours;
Not of such sires were we born, but of kings and of gods. Larissan,
Not with her gold Troy purchases safety but with her spear-point.
Stand with thy oath in the war-front, Achilles, call on thy helpers
Armed to descend from the calm of Olympian heights to thy succour
Hedging thy fame from defeat; for we all desire thee in battle,
Mighty to end thee or tame at last by the floods of the Xanthus.
So they reply; they are true to their death, they are constant for ruin.
Humbler answer hope not, O hero, from Penthesilea;
Insolent, warlike, regal and swift as herself is her message.
Sea of renown and of valour that fillest the world with thy rumour,
Speed of the battle incarnate, mortal image of Ares!
Terror and tawny delight like a lion one hunts or is hunted!
Dread of the world and my target, swift-footed glorious hero!
Thus have I imaged thee, son of Peleus, dreaming in countries
Far from thy knowledge, in mountains that never have rung to thy war-cry.
O, I have longed for thee, warrior! Therefore today by thy message
So was I seized with delight that my heart was hurt with its rapture,
Knowing today I shall gaze with my eyes on that which I imaged
Only in air of the mind or met in the paths of my dreaming.
Thus have I praised thee first with my speech; with my spear I would answer.
Yet for thy haughty scorn who deeming of me as some Hellene
Or as a woman weak of these plains fit but for the distaff,
Promisest capture in war and fame as thy slavegirl in Phthia,
Surely I think that death today will reply to that promise,
Now I will give thee my answer and warn thee ere we encounter.
Know me queen of a race that never was conquered in battle!
Know me armed with a spear that never has missed in the combat!
There where my car-wheels run, good fruit gets the husbandman after.
This thou knowest. Ajax has told thee, thy friend, in his dying.
Has not Meriones spirit come in thy dreams then to warn thee?
Didst thou not number the Argives once ere I came to the battle?
Number them now and measure the warrior Penthesilea.
Such am I then whom thy dreams have seen meek-browed in Larissa,
And in the battle behind me thunder the heroes Eoan,
Ranks whose feeblest can match with the vaunted chiefs of the Argives.
Never yet from the shock have they fled; if they turn from the foeman,
Always tis to return like death recircling on mortals.
Yet being such, having such for my armies, this do I promise:
I on the left of the Trojans war with my bright-armed numbers,
Thou on the Argive right come forth, Achilles, and meet me!
If thou canst drive us with rout into Troy, I will own thee for master,
Do thy utmost will and make thee more glorious than gods are
Serving thy couch in Phthia and drawing the jar from thy rivers.
Nay, if thou hast that strength, then hunt me, O hunter, and seize me,
If tis thy hope indeed that the sun can turn back from the Orient,
But if thou canst not, death of myself or thyself thou shalt capture.
Musing heard and was silent awhile the strength of Achilles,
Musing of Fate and the wills of men and the purpose of Heaven,
Then from his thoughts he broke and turned in his soul towards battle.
Well did I know what reply would come winged from the princes of Troya.
Prone are the hearts of heroes to wrath and to God-given blindness
When from their will they are thrust and harried by Fate and disaster:
Fierceness then is the armour of strength against grief and its yieldings.
So have the gods made man for their purpose, cunningly fashioned.
Once had defiance waked from my depths a far-striding fury,
Flaming for justice and vengeance, nor had it, satisfied, rested,
Sunk to its lair, till the insulter died torn or was kneeling for pardon.
Fierce was my heart in my youth and exulted in triumph and slaughter.
Now as I grow in my spirit like to my kin the immortals,
Joy more I find in saving and cherishing than in the carnage.
Greater it seems to my mind to be king over men than their slayer,
Nobler to build and to govern than what the ages have laboured
Putting their godhead forth to create or the high gods have fashioned,
That to destroy in our wrath of a moment. Ripened, more widely
Opens my heart to the valour of man and the beauty of woman,
Works of the world and delight; the cup of my victory sweetens
Not with the joys of hate, but the human pride of the triumph.
Yet was the battle decreed for the means supreme of the mortal
Placed in a world where all things strive from the worm to the Titan.
So will I seize by the onset what peace from my soul would sequester,
So will I woo with the sword and with love the delight of my foeman,
Troy and Polyxena, beauty of Paris and glory of Priam.
This was the ancient wrestling, this was the spirit of warfare
Fit for the demigods. Soon in the city of gold and of marble,
There where Ilus sat and Tros, where Laomedon triumphed,
Peleus house shall reign, the Hellene sit where the Trojan
Thought himself deathless. Arise, Automedon! Out to the people!
Send forth the cry through the ships and the tents of the Myrmidon nation.
Let not a man be found then lingering when oer the causeway
Thunder my chariot-wheels, nor let any give back in the battle,
Good if he wills from me, till through the conquered gates of the foeman
Storming we herd in their remnants and press into Troy as with evening
Helios rushing sinks to the sea. But thou, Briseis,
Put by thy lyre, O girl; it shall gladden my heart in my triumph
Victor returned from Troy to listen pleased to thy singing,
Bearing a captive bound to my car-wheels Penthesilea,
Bearing my valours reward, Polyxena, daughter of Priam,
Won in despite of her city and brothers and spears of her kindred.
So by force it is best to take ones will and be mighty.
Joyful, Automedon ran through the drowsy camp of the Hellenes
Changing the hum of the tents as he raced into shoutings of battle;
For with the giant din of a nation triumphant arising
Hellas sprang from her irksome ease and mounted her war-car;
Donning her armour bright she rejoiced in the trumpets of battle.
But to the herald grey the Peleid turned and the old man
Shuddered under his gaze and shrank from the voice of the hero:
Thou to the tents of thy Kings, Talthybius, herald of Argos!
Stand in the Argive assembly, voice of the strength of Achilles.
Care not at all though the greatest and fiercest be wroth with thy message.
Deem not thyself, old man, as a body and flesh that is mortal,
Rather as living speech from the iron breast of the Hellene.
Thus shalt thou cry to the vanquished chiefs who fled from a woman,
Thus shalt thou speak my will to the brittle and fugitive legions:
Now Achilles turns towards Troya and fast-flowing Xanthus,
Now he leaps at the iron zone, the impregnable city.
Two were the forms of the Gods that oerhung the sails of Pelides
When with a doubtful word in his soul he came wind-helped from Hellas
Cleaving the Aegean deep towards the pine-crested vision of Ida.
Two are the Fates that stride with the hero counting his exploits.
Over all earthly things the soul that is fearless is master,
Only on death he can reckon not whether it comes in the midnight
Treading the couch of Kings in their pride or speeds in the spear-shaft.
Now will I weigh down that double beam of the Olympian balance
Claiming one of the equal Fates that stand robed for the fighter,
For to my last dire wrestle I go with the Archer of heaven,
And ere the morning gleam have awakened the eagles on Ida,
Troy shall lie prone or the earth shall be empty of Phthian Achilles.
But for whatever Fate I accept from the ageless Immortals,
Whether cold Hades dim or Indus waits for my coming
Pouring down vast to the sea with the noise of his numberless waters,
I with Zeus am enough. Your mortal aid I desire not,
Rushing to Troy like the eagle of Zeus when he flies towards the thunders,
Winged with might, the bird of the spaces, upbuoying his pinions.
Nor shall my spirit look back for the surge of your Danaan fighters,
Tramp of the Argive multitudes helping my lonely courage,
Neither the transient swell of the cry Achaian behind me
Seek, nor the far-speeding voice of Atrides guiding his legions.
Need has he none for a leader who himself is the soul of his action.
Zeus and his fate and his spear are enough for the Phthian Achilles.
Rest, O wearied hosts; my arm shall win for you Troya,
Quelled when the stern Eoans break and Penthesilea
Lies like a flower in the dust at my feet. Yet if Ares desire you,
Come then and meet him once more mid the cry and the trampling! Assemble
Round the accustomed chiefs, round the old victorious wrestlers
Wearied strengths Deiphobus leaves you or sternest Aeneas.
But when my arm and my Fate have vanquished their gods and Apollo,
Brilliant with blood when we stand amid Ilions marble splendours,
Then let none seat deaf flame on the glory of Phrygias marbles
Or with his barbarous rapine shatter the chambers of sweetness
Slaying the work of the gods and the beauty the ages have lived for.
For he shall moan in the night remote from the earth and her greenness,
Spurred like a steed to its goal by my spear dug deep in his bosom;
Fast he shall fleet to the waters of wailing, the pleasureless pastures.
Touch not the city Apollo built, where Poseidon has laboured.
Seized and dishelmed and disgirdled of Apollonian ramparts,
Empty of wide-rolling wheels and the tramp of a turbulent people
Troy with her marble domes shall live for our nations in beauty
Hushed mid the trees and the corn and the pictured halls of the ancients,
Watching her image of dreams in the gliding waves of Scamander,
Sacred and still, a city of memory spared by the Grecians.
So shalt thou warn the arrogant hearts of Achaias chieftains
Lest upon Greece an evil should fall and her princes should perish.
Herald, beware how thou soften my speech in the ears of thy nation
Sparing their pride and their hearts but dooming their lives to the death-stroke.
Even thy time-touched snows shall not shield thy days from my sword-edge.
Wroth the old mans heart, but he feared Achilles and slowly
Over the margin grey on the shore of the far-sounding ocean
Silent paced to the tents of the Greeks and the Argive assembly.
There on the sands while the scream of the tide as it dragged at the pebbles
Strove in vain with their droning roar, awaiting their chieftains
Each in his tribe and his people far down the margin Aegean
Argolis sons and Epirote spears and the isles and the southron,
Locris swarms and Messenes pikes and the strength of the Theban,
Hosts bright-armed, bright-eyed, bright-haired, time-hardened to Ares,
Stretched in harsh and brilliant lines with a glitter of spear-points
Far as the eye could toil. All Europe helmeted, armoured
Swarmed upon Asias coasts disgorged from her ships in their hundreds.
There in the wide-winged tent of the council that peered oer the margin,
High where the grass and the meadow-bloom failed on the sand-rifted sward-edge,
Pouring his argent voice Epeus spoke to the princes,
Rapid in battle and speech; and even as a boy in a courtyard
Tosses his ball in the air and changes his hands for the seizing
So he played with counsel and thought and rejoiced in his swiftness.
But now a nearing Fate he felt and his impulse was silenced.
Stilled were his thoughts by the message that speeds twixt our minds in their shadows
Dumb, unthought, unphrased, to us dark, but the caverns of Nature
Hear its cry when Gods moment changing our fate comes visored
Silently into our lives and the spirit too knows, for it watches.
Quiet he fell and all men turned to the face of the herald.
Mute and alone through the ranks of the seated and silent princes
Old Talthybius paced, nor paused till he stood at the midmost
Fronting that council of Kings and nearest to Locrian Ajax
And where Sthenelus sat and where sat the great Diomedes,
Chiefs of the South, but their love was small for the Kings of the Spartans.
There like one close to a refuge he lifted his high-chanting accents.
High was his voice like the winds when it whistles shrill oer a forest
Sole of all sounds at night, for the kite is at rest and the tiger
Sleeps from the hunt returned in the deepest hush of the jungle.
Hearken, O Kings of the world, to the lonely will of the Phthian!
One is the roar of the lion heard by the jungles hundreds,
One is the voice of the great and the many shall hear it inclining.
Lo, he has shaken his mane for the last great leap upon Troya
And when the eagles scream shall arise in the dawn over Ida,
Troy shall have fallen or earth shall be empty of Phthian Achilles.
But by whatever Fate he is claimed that waits for the mortal,
Whether the fast-closed hands above have kept for his morrows
Chill of the joyless shades or earth and her wooings of sunlight
Still shall detain his days with the doubtful meed of our virtues,
He and Zeus shall provide, not mortals. Chaff are mens armies
Threshed by the flails of Fate; tis the soul of the hero that conquers.
Not on the tramp of the multitudes, not on the cry of the legions
Founds the strong man his strength but the god that he carries within him.
Zeus and his Fate and his spear are enough for the Phthian Achilles.
Prudence of men shall curb no more his god-given impulse.
He has no need of thy voice, O Atrides, guiding the legions,
He is the leader, his is the soul of magnificent emprise.
Rest, O ye sons of the Greeks, the Phthian shall conquer for Hellas!
Rest! expose not your hearts to the war-cry of Penthesilea.
Yet if the strength in you thirsts for the war-din, if Ares is hungry,
Meet him stark in the mellay urging Deiphobus coursers,
Guiding Aeneas spear; recover the souls of your fathers.
Bronze must his heart be who looks in the eyes of the implacable war-god!
But when his Fate has conquered their gods and slaughtered their heroes,
And in this marble Ilion forced to the tread of her foemen
Watched by the ancient domes you stand, by the timeless turrets,
Then let no chieftain garbed for the sacrifice lift against Troya,
Counselled of Ate, torch of the burning, hand of the plunder
Groping for gold but finding death in her opulent chambers.
For he shall moan in the night regretting the earth and her greenness,
Spurred by the spear in his arrogant breast like a steed to the gorges:
Fast he shall fleet to the flowerless meadows, the sorrowful pastures.
Touch not the city Apollo built, where Poseidon has laboured,
Slay not the work of the gods and the glory the ages have lived for.
Mute of the voice of her children, void of the roll of her war-cars
Timeless Troy leave solitary dreaming by ancient Scamander
Sacred and still, a city of memory spared by the Phthian.
So Talthybius spoke and anger silenced the Argives.
Mute was the warlike assembly, silent Achaias princes.
Wrath and counsel strove in the hush for the voice of the speakers.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 5 - The Book of Achilles
,
281:He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed,
Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.

Like (7) 2
Saul
I.

Said Abner, ``At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
``Kiss my cheek, wish me well!'' Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.
And he, ``Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,
``Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent
``Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet,
``Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet.
``For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days,
``Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise,
``To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife,
``And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon life.

II.

``Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew
``On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue
``Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild beat
``Were now raging to torture the desert!''

III.

                     Then I, as was meet,
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet,
And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped;
I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone,
That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my way on
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed,
And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid
But spoke, ``Here is David, thy servant!'' And no voice replied.
At the first I saw nought but the blackness but soon I descried
A something more black than the blackness-the vast, the upright
Main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into sight
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all.
Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent-roof, showed Saul.

IV.

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide
On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side;
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangs
And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs,
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come
With the spring-time,-so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

V.

Then I tuned my harp,-took off the lilies we twine round its chords
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noon-tide-those sunbeams like swords!
And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one,
So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done.
They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed;
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star
Into eve and the blue far above us,-so blue and so far!

VI.

-Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland will each leave his mate
To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate
Till for boldness they fight one another: and then, what has weight
To set the quick jerboa amusing outside his sand house-
There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse!
God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.
VII.

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when hand
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand
And grow one in the sense of this world's life.-And then, the last song
When the dead man is praised on his journey-``Bear, bear him along
``With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm-seeds not here
``To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier.
``Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!''-And then, the glad chaunt
Of the marriage,-first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt
As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.-And then, the great march
Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch
Nought can break; who shall harm them, our friends?-Then, the chorus intoned
As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned.
But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul groaned.

VIII.

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart;
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gan dart
From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once with a start,
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart.
So the head: but the body still moved not, still hung there erect.
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked,
As I sang,-

IX.

     ``Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste,
``Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.
``Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
``The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock
``Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear,
``And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
``And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine,
``And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,
``And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
``That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
``How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
``All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!
``Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst guard
``When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward?
``Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung
``The low song of the nearly-departed, and bear her faint tongue
``Joining in while it could to the witness, `Let one more attest,
`` `I have lived, seen God's hand thro'a lifetime, and all was for best'?
``Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest.
``And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew
``Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true:
``And the friends of thy boyhood-that boyhood of wonder and hope,
``Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,-
``Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine;
``And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head combine!
``On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the throe
``That, a-work in the rock, helps its labour and lets the gold go)
``High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,-all
``Brought to blaze on the head of one creature-King Saul!''

X.

And lo, with that leap of my spirit,-heart, hand, harp and voice,
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice
Saul's fame in the light it was made for-as when, dare I say,
The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its array,
And up soareth the cherubim-chariot-``Saul!'' cried I, and stopped,
And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung propped
By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name.
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim,
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone,
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate,-leaves grasp of the sheet?
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet,
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old,
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold-
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest-all hail, there they are!
-Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest
For their food in the ardours of summer. One long shudder thrilled
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled
At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware.
What was gone, what remained? All to traverse, 'twixt hope and despair;
Death was past, life not come: so he waited. Awhile his right hand
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to remand
To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before.
I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more
Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore,
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean-a sun's slow decline
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine
Base with base to knit strength more intensely: so, arm folded arm
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

XI.

                     What spell or what charm,
(For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next should I urge
To sustain him where song had restored him?-Song filled to the verge
His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields
Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what fields,
Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye
And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?
He saith, ``It is good;'' still he drinks not: he lets me praise life,
Gives assent, yet would die for his own part.

XII.

                      Then fancies grew rife
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep
Fed in silence-above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep;
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky:
And I laughed-``Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks,
``Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks,
``Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show
``Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!
``Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains,
``And the prudence that keeps what men strive for.'' And now these old trains
Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus-

XIII.

                        ``Yea, my King,''
I began-``thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring
``From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute:
``In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit.
``Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree,-how its stem trembled first
``Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler then safely outburst
``The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn
``Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was to learn,
``E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight,
``When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight
``Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and branch
``Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall staunch
``Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine.
``Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine!
``By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy
``More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy.
``Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou hast done
``Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sun
``Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface,
``Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace
``The results of his past summer-prime'-so, each ray of thy will,
``Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill
``Thy whole people, the countless, with ardour, till they too give forth
``A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the South and the North
``With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past!
``But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last:
``As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height
``So with man-so his power and his beauty for ever take flight.
``No! Again a long draught of my soul-wine! Look forth o'er the years!
``Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's!
``Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb-bid arise
``A grey mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the skies,
``Let it mark where the great First King slumbers: whose fame would ye know?
``Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go
``In great characters cut by the scribe,-Such was Saul, so he did;
``With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid,-
``For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to amend,
``In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend
``(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and record
``With the gold of the graver, Saul's story,-the statesman's great word
``Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave
``With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave:
``So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part
``In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!''

XIV.

And behold while I sang but O Thou who didst grant me that day,
And before it not seldom hast granted thy help to essay,
Carry on and complete an adventure,-my shield and my sword
In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,-
Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavour
And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever
On the new stretch of heaven above me-till, mighty to save,
Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance-God's throne from man's grave!
Let me tell out my tale to its ending-my voice to my heart
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part,
As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep,
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep!
For I wake in the grey dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine.

XV.

                   I say then,-my song
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever more strong
Made a proffer of good to console him-he slowly resumed
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right-hand replumed
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes
Of his turban, and see-the huge sweat that his countenance bathes,
He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore,
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before.
He is Saul, ye remember in glory,-ere error had bent
The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent
Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose,
To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.
So sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed by the pile
Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile,
And sat out my singing,-one arm round the tent-prop, to raise
His bent head, and the other hung slack-till I touched on the praise
I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there;
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees
Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak-roots which please
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know
If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: thro' my hair
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my bead, with kind power-
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower.
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine-
And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?
I yearned-``Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,
``I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this;
``I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,
``As this moment,-had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense!''

XVI.

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more-no song more! outbroke-

XVII.

``I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke:
``I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain
``And pronounced on the rest of his hand-work-returned him again
``His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw:
``I report, as a man may of God's work-all's love, yet all's law.
``Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked
``To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop was asked.
``Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.
``Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!
``Do I task any faculty highest, to image success?
``I but open my eyes,-and perfection, no more and no less,
``In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God
``In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.
``And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
``(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
``The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
``As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.
``Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known,
``I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own.
``There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,
``I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think)
``Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
``E'en the Giver in one gift.-Behold, I could love if I durst!
``But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
``God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake.
``-What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small,
``Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal?
``In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all?
``Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
``That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
``Here, the creature surpass the Creator,-the end, what Began?
``Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,
``And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?
``Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,
``To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower
``Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul,
``Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole?
``And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest)
``These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?
``Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height
``This perfection,-succeed with life's day-spring, death's minute of night?
``Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake,
``Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now,-and bid him awake
``From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set
``Clear and safe in new light and new life,-a new harmony yet
``To be run, and continued, and ended-who knows?-or endure!
``The man taught enough, by life's dream, of the rest to make sure;
``By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
``And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.

XVIII.

``I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:
``In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe.
``All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my prayer
``As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.
``From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth:
``I will?-the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth
``To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare
``Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
``This;-'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
``See the King-I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through.
``Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
``To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would-knowing which,
``I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!
``Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou-so wilt thou!
``So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown-
``And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
``One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,
``Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!
``As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
``Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!
``He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.
``'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
``In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
``A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
``Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand
``Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!''

XIX.

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news-
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth-
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of the hills;
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill
That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:
E'en the serpent that slid away silent,-he felt the new law.
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices-``E'en so, it is so!''
The jumping hare.

One of the three cities of Refuge.
*
A brook in Jerusalem.


~ Robert Browning, Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgement of Paris'
,
282:I.
I weep for Adonais -he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

II.
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

III.
O, weep for Adonais -he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend; -oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

IV.
Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania! -He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride,
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.

V.
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.

VI.
But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished -
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies -the storm is overpast.

VII.
To that high Capital, where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal. -Come away!
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

VIII.
He will awake no more, oh, never more! -
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law
Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

IX.
O, weep for Adonais! -The quick Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not, -
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.

X.
And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
"Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain."
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

XI.
One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak;
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

XII.
Another Splendour on his mouth alit,
That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.

XIII.
And others came Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp; -the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

XIV.
All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

XV.
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds: -a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

XVI.
Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
For whom should she have waked the sullen year?
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.

XVII.
Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,
As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

XVIII.
Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year;
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

XIX.
Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed,
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst;
Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

XX.
The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning? -the intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

XXI.
Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

XXII.
He will awake no more, oh, never more!
"Wake thou," cried Misery, "childless Mother, rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core,
A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs."
And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes,
And all the Echoes whom their sister's song
Had held in holy silence, cried: "Arise!"
Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.

XXIII.
She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
Our of the East, and follows wild and drear
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

XXIV.
Our of her secret Paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,
And human hearts, which to her aery tread
Yielding not, wounded the invisible
Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell:
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,
Rent the soft Form they never could repel,
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

XXV.
In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living Might,
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
Revisited those lips, and Life's pale light
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.
"Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
Leave me not!" cried Urania: her distress
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.

XXVI.
"'Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive,
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

XXVII.
"O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.

XXVIII.
"The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;
The vultures to the conqueror's banner true
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion; -how they fled,
When, like Apollo, from his golden bow
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped
And smiled! -The spoilers tempt no second blow,
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

XXIX.
"The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again;
So is it in the world of living men:
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night."

XXX.
Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow; from her wilds Irene sent
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.

XXXI.
Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,
A phantom among men; companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,
Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

XXXII.
A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift -
A Love in desolation masked; -a Power
Girt round with weakness; -it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow; -even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

XXXIII.
His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart;
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.

XXXIV.
All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another's fate now wept his own,
As in the accents of an unknown land
He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
The Stranger's mien, and murmured: "Who art thou?"
He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,
Which was like Cain's or Christ's -oh! that it should be so!

XXXV.
What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed,
In mockery of monumental stone,
The heavy heart heaving without a moan?
If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,
Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,
The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.

XXXVI.
Our Adonais has drunk poison -oh!
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown:
It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song,
Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

XXXVII.
Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow:
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt -as now.

XXXVIII.
Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
Far from these carrion kites that scream below;
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now -
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

XXXIX.
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep -
He hath awakened from the dream of life -
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. -We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

XL.
He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

XLI.
He lives, he wakes -'tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais. -Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

XLII.
He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

XLIII.
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the Heavens' light.

XLIV.
The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it, for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

XLV.
The inheritors of unfulfilled renown
Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,
Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton
Rose pale, -his solemn agony had not
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell and as he lived and loved
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,
Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.

XLVI.
And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.
"Thou art become as one of us," they cry,
"It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
Swung blind in unascended majesty,
Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song.
Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"

XLVII.
Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth,
Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink
Even to a point within our day and night;
And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.

XLVIII.
Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought
That ages, empires, and religions there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend, -they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

XLIX.
Go thou to Rome, -at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness
Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;

L.
And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.

LI.
Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.
What Adonais is, why fear we to become?

LII.
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. -Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! -Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

LIII.
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
A light is passed from the revolving year,
And man, and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
The soft sky smiles, -the low wind whispers near:
'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,
No more let Life divide what Death can join together.

LIV.
That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,
That Beauty in which all things work and move,
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

LV.
The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

Adonais was composed at Pisa during the early days of June, 1821, and printed, with the author's name, at Pisa, 'with the types of Didot,'by July 13, 1821. Part of the impression was sent to the brothers Ollier for sale in London. An exact reprint of this Pisa edition (a few typographical errors only being corrected) was issued in 1829 by Gee & Bridges, Cambridge, at the instance of Arthur Hallan and Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton). The poem was included in Galignani's edition of Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, Paris, 1829, and by Mrs. Shelley in the Poetical Works of 1839.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais - An elegy on the Death of John Keats
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283:The Watch At Midnight
Dead stars, beneath the midnight's granite cope
and round your dungeon-gulf that blindly grope
and fall not, since no lower than any place
needs when the wing is dash'd and foil'd the face:
is this your shadow on the watcher's thought
imposed, or rather hath his anguish taught
the dumb and suffering dark to send you out,
reptile, the doubles of his lurking doubt,
in coasts of night that well might be supposed
the exiled hall of chaos late-deposed,
to haunt across this hour's desuetude,
immense, that whelms in monumental mood
the broad waste of his spirit, stonily
strewn with the wreck of his eternity?
The plumes of night, unfurl'd
and eyed with fire, are whirl'd
slowly above this watch, funereal:
the vast is wide, and yet
no way lies open; set
no bar, but the flat deep rises, a placid wall.
Some throne thou think'st to win
or pride of thy far kin;
this incomplete and dusty hour to achieve:
know that the hour is one,
eternally begun,
eternally deferr'd, thy grasp a Danaid sieve.
O weary realm, O height
the which exhausted flight
familiar finds, home of its prompting ill!
here, there, or there, or there,
even the same despair;
rest in thy place, O fool, the heart eludes thee still.
Rest — and a new abyss
suddenly yawns, of this
the moment sole, and yet the counterpart:
and thou must house it, thou,
within thy fleshy Now,
thyself the abyss that shrinks, the unbounded hermit-heart:
70
the mightier heart untold
whose paining depths enfold
all loneliness, all height, all vision'd shores;
and the abyss uncrown'd,
blank failure thro' each bound
from the consummate point thy broken hope implores.
The trees that thro' the tuneful morn had made
bride-dusk for beams that pierce the melting shade,
or thro' the opulent afternoon had stood
lordly, absorb'd in hieratic mood, —
now stricken with misgiving of the night
rise black and ominous, as who invite
some fearful coming whose foreblown wind shall bow,
convuls'd and shuddering, each dishevell'd brow:
the garden that had sparkled thro' its sheen
all day, a self-sufficing gem serene,
hiding in emerald depths the vision'd white
of limbs that follow their own clear delight,
exhales towards the inaccessible skies,
commencing, failing, broken, scents or sighs:
O mother, only,
where that thou hidest thee,
crown for the lonely brow,
bosom for the spent wanderer,
or balm for ache:
O mother,
nightly —
undiscoverable —
O heart too vast to find,
whelming our little desire:
we wander and fail —
But on the zenith, mass'd, a glittering throng,
the distant stars dropt a disdainful song:
They said, because their parcel-thought
might nor her shadowy vast embrace,
nor be refurl'd within that nought
which is the hid heart of all place,
they said: She is not anywhere!
have we not sought her and not seen?
71
nor is there found in earth or air
a sign to tell if she hath been!
— O fools and blind, not to have found!
is her desire not as your own?
stirs she not in the arms that round
a hopeless clasp, lone with the lone!
And the tense lips towards her bliss
in secret cells of anguish'd prayer
might know her in the broken kiss
she prompts nor, prompting, fails to share.
We drift from age to age nor waste
our strenuous song's exultant tone,
disdaining or to rest or haste:
because each place is still our throne.
The anguish'd doubt broods over Eden; night
hangs her rent banners thro' the viewless height;
trophies and glories whence a trouble streams
of lamentable valour in old dreams:
out of its blank the watcher's soul is stirr'd
to take unto itself some olden word:
O thou that achest, pulse o' the unwed vast,
now in the distant centre of my brain
dizzily narrow'd, now beyond the last
calm circle widening of the starry plain,
where, on the scatter'd edge of my surmise,
the twilit dreams fail off and rule is spent
vainly on vagrant bands the gulfs invite
to break away to the dark: they, backward sent,
tho' dumb, with dire infection in their eyes,
startle the central seat: — O pulse of night,
passing the hard throb of sun-smitten blood
when the noon-world is fused in fire and blent
with my then unattained hero-mood;
what will with me the imperious instinct
that hounds the gulfs together on that place
vanishing utterly out of mortal trace,
the citadel where I would seem distinct —
if not thou ween'st a vanity, my deep
unlighted still, the which thy refluent sweep
intolerably dilates, a tide that draws
72
with lunatic desire, distraught and fond,
to some dark moon of vastness, hung beyond
our little limits of familiar cause,
as tho' the tense and tortured voids should dash
ruining amorously together, a clash
portentous with some rose of thinnest flame,
secret, exhaled in the annull'd abyss,
that, with this soul, passes in that fell kiss
and to the soft-sprung flush all sanctity
surrenders, centring in the blossom'd Name,
as the dark wings of silence lovingly
hover above the adventurous song that fares
forth to the void and finds no lip that shares
its rapture, just the great wings spreading wide.
O mother thou or sister or my bride,
inevitable, whom this hour in me declares,
were thine of old such rhythmic pangs that bore
my shivering soul, wind-waif upon the shore
that is a wavering twilight, thence astray
beneath the empty plainness of the day?
me thy first want conceived to some dim end,
that my unwelcom'd love might henceward tend
to the dumb home that draws it in thy breast
and the veil'd couch of some divine incest,
where thou didst wait some hour of sharp delight
to wither up in splendour the stark night
and haggard shame that ceremented thy dearth,
with purest diamond-blaze, some overbirth
of the dark fire thy foresight did enmesh
within this hither and thither harried flesh?
Ay, yet obscurely stirs, a monstrous worm
in the rear cavern of my dazzled thought,
a memory that wavers, formless form
of superhuman nuptials, clasp'd and caught
unto the breast that is our loathed tomb:
then, issuing from the violated womb,
tremendous birth of dreadful prodigies
begotten on the apocalyptic skies:
one moment's hope, one thrill alone was given
of pinions beating up the parting heaven;
but straight thereon the spectral mirk was riven
73
by shapes of snaky horror, grisly jaw,
cold fear, and scaly fold, and endless maw.
What terror clutch'd me, even as ecstasy
smote dire across transfigured mystery?
and whose the sin that doom'd thee to disgrace,
to haunt the shapeless dark, a burning face,
eyes that would cling to mine and lips that seek
some baffled kiss, some word they may not speak,
condemn'd to yearn where the worn foam is hoar
and vain against the unshaken nightly shore.
Nightly thy tempting comes, when the dark breeze
scatters my thought among the unquiet trees
and sweeps it, with dead leaves, o'er widow'd lands
and kingdoms conquer'd by no human hands;
nightly thou wouldst exalt me in the deep,
crown'd with the morn that shines beyond our sleep,
nightly renew those nuptials, and re-win
virginity, and shed the doubtful sin:
but I am born into dividual life
and I have ta'en the woman for my wife,
a flowery pasture fenced and soft with streams,
fill'd with slow ease and fresh with eastern beams
of coolest silver on the sliding wave:
such refuge the derisive morning gave,
shaped featly in thy similitude, to attract
earthward the gusty soul thy temptings rack'd.
I sicken with the long unsatisfied
waiting: the sombre gulfs of night divide:
no dawn is shown that keeps its grace nor soon
degraded not to brutal fires of noon;
and heavy on my soul the tyrant lays
his hand, and dazzles with his common blaze
eyes that are fain, when evening brings the dew,
to cool them in the grasses: few, how few
are now the hours that thou mayst claim as thine!
— And shall I not take heart? if no divine
revealment star me with the diadem
hermetic, magian, alchemic gem,
shall I not feel the earth with firmer tread
if abdicating to the viewless dead
74
the invaluable round of nothingness?
Kingdom awaits me, homage, swords, liesse,
battle, broad fame in fable, song: shall I
confide all hope to scanty shapes that fly
in dreams, whom even if they be all I know
not, or fore-runners of the One? I go,
shaking them from my spirit, to rule and mould
in mine own shape the gods that shall be old.
— Nay, not thus lightly, heart the winds have mock'd!
wings of fierce winds that o'er the star-strown height
sweep, and adown the wide world-ways unlock'd
feign for thy trouble a last conclusive fight:
O heart wherethro' these insolent powers stray,
pass and repass, and thou dost foolish hold
aught else inspires them than their cynic play,
the aimless idle sport they plann'd of old
to while the waste hours of their tedious state
and shall pursue when thou art seal'd in dust,
thou latest toy, framed for this silly fate,
to watch their pastime turning, tremble and trust
some deathless gain for thee should issue of it
imblazed in stars on some thy kindred's brow;
O thou, all laughable for thy short wit,
not lightly thus shalt thou put off their slight
and steady thee to build in their despite
secure, some seat, and hold thy being safe,
joying in this at last that thou art thou,
distinct, no longer in wilful tides a waif:
O heart the winds have emptied of all clear
and natural impulse, O wasted brain
and spirit expent with straining from thy sphere,
turn thee to earth, if that be not a cheat,
and, childlike, lay thee in her torpid lap,
there to reflush these flaccid veins with sap
from spilth of sleep, where herbs of drowsy bane
spring in slow shade and death is sprinkled sweet,
with promis'd coolness dark — perchance a lure..
Thou sleep, at least, receive and wrap me sure
in midmost of thy softness, that no flare,
disastrous, from some rending of the veil,
nor dawn from springs beyond thy precincts, rare
75
with revelation, risen, or dewy-pale
exhaled from fields of death, disturb that full
absorption of robustness, and I wake
in placid large content, replete and dull,
fast-grown to earth, whom winds no longer shake.
Thick sleep, with error of the tangled wood,
and vapour from the evening marsh of sense,
and smoothness of the glide of Lethe, would
inaugurate his dullard innocence,
cool'd of his calenture, elaborate brute:
but, all deceitful of his craven hope,
the devious and covert ways of dream
shall lead him out upon no temper'd beam
or thick-grass'd ease, where herbs of soothing shoot
in asphodel, but on the shuddering scope
and the chill touch of endless distances
still thronging on the wingless soul that flees
along the self-pursuing path, to find
the naked night before it and behind.
What night is this, made denser, in his breast
or round him, suddenly or first confest
after its gradual thickening complete?
as tho' the mighty current, bearing fleet
the unresting stars, had here devolved its lees,
stagnant, contempt, on recreant destinies;
as tho' a settling of tremendous pens,
above the desolate dream, had shed immense
addition to the incumbence of despair
downward, across this crypt of stirless air,
from some henceforth infrangible attitude,
upon his breast, that knows no dawn renew'd,
builded enormously, each brazen stage,
with rigor of his hope in hopeless age
mummied, and look that turns his thew to stone:
even hers, that is his strangling sphinx, made known
with, on her breast, his fore-erected tomb,
engraven deep, the letters of his doom.
Terrible, if he will not have me else,
I lurk to seize and strangle, in the cells
where he hath made a dusk round his delight:
76
whether he woo the bride's incarnate bright
and natural rose to shimmer thro' the dense
of odour-motes whereby the brooding sense
flows forth beyond its aching bounds and lies,
full-brimm'd and sombre, around her clear disguise
that saturates the dusk with secret gold;
or the miraculous rose of Heaven to unfold
out from its heart of ruby fire and rain
unceasing drift of petals, and maintain
a tabernacle about the little hour
where his eternity hath phantom power:
and terrible I am moulded in the stone
that clamps for ever, rigid, stark, alone,
round nought but absence of the man he was,
some cell of that cold space against whose laws
he seeks a refuge in his inner deep
of love, and soften'd fire, and quicken'd sleep,
tho' knowing that I, the bride his sin dethroned
and exiled to the wastes that lie disown'd,
can bring that icy want even to the heart
of his most secret bliss, that he shall start
aghast, to see its burning centre fade
and know his hope, the impious, vain, unmade.
Lo now, beneath the watch of knitted boughs
he lies, close-folded to his newer spouse,
creature of morn, that hath ordain'd its fresh
dew and cool glimmer in her crystal flesh
sweetly be mix'd, with quicken'd breath of leaves
and the still charm the spotless dawning weaves.
But I have set my hand upon his soul
and moulded it to my unseen control;
and he hath slept within my shadowy hair
and guards a memory how in my far lair
the forces of tremendous passion stir:
my spectral face shall come between his eyes
and the soft face of her, my name shall rise,
unutter'd, in each thought that goes to her;
and in the quiet waters of her gaze
shall lurk a siren-lure that beckons him
down halls of death and sinful chambers dim:
he shall not know her nor her gentle ways
77
nor rest, content, by her sufficing source,
but, under stress of the veil'd stars, shall force
her simple bloom to perilous delight
adulterate with pain, some nameless night
stain'd with miasm of flesh become a tomb:
then baffled hope, some torch o' the blood to illume
and flush the jewel hid beyond all height,
and sombre rage that burst the holy bourne
of garden-joy, murdering innocence,
and the distraught desire to bring a kiss
unto the fleeting centre of the abyss,
discovering the eternal lack, shall spurn
even that sun-god's garden of pure sense,
not wisely wasted with insensate will.
I am his bride and was and shall be still,
tho' infamous as devil's dam, a fear
to wives that watch the cradle-side and hear
how I devour the newling flesh, and none
shall void my claim upon his latest son,
because the father fell beneath my harm,
not god invented late, nor anxious charm;
tho' with the chemic mind he holds in trust
to show me gem, he celebrate the dust;
dumb earth, in garb of borrow'd beauty dight
by the fond day that curtains him in light;
green pleasaunces, whose smiling would attest
his heart true-born of her untroubled breast
and leaves that beckon on the woodland ways
of the stream-side, where expectation strays
of water-brides, swift blight to them that see,
because the waters are to mirror me:—
of these his hunted thought, seeking retreat
in narrow light, and some sure bosom-heat
to cherish him, and friendly face of kin,
shall mould him fancied ancestors, to win
some certitude that he is in his home
rescued from any doom that bids him roam,
and him the blossom of the day presume,
unheeding that its roots are in my womb
nor song may breathe a magic unconfest
of the anterior silence of my breast:
78
but I shall lurk within the sightless stare
of his impassive idols, housing there
an unknown that allures and makes him fain
to perish for his creatures' fancied gain;
and they shall gaze and see not while his brood
befouls their stony presence with much blood,
their children's, and their captive enemies',
stretch'd out, exenterate, on those callous knees,
and, last, their own, ere some ill-fortuned field
drink all of it, since faith forbids them yield
and brings to learn in full, the fool's just trade,
the gratitude of gods themselves have made.
Last, since a pinch of dust may quench the eyes
that took the azure curve of stainless skies
and still the fiercest heart, he seeks to whelm
infinite yearning with a little realm,
beating together with ungentle hands,
enslaved, the trembling spawn of generous lands,
whom he shall force, a busy swarm, to raise,
last bulwarks of his whelming discontent,
heaven-threatening Babels, iron Ninevehs
square-thought with rigid will, a monument
of stony rage in high defiant stones
eternized with blasphemous intent,
and carve the mountain-cone to hide his bones,
a wonder to blank tribes of shrunken days:
but in that cave before his upstart gates
where elder night endures unshaken, waits
that foe of settled peace, the smiling sphinx,
or foul Echidna's mass'd insidious links,
reminding him that all is vanities;
and when, at last, o'er his nine roods he lies,
stretch'd in the sarcophage whereover grief
makes way before one huge gust of relief,
not the wing-blast of his vain shade shall drive
his wizen'd captives from their dungeon-hive,
and make a solitude about his bed;
nor the chill thought petrific his low head
exudes in rays of darkness, that beyond
this perturb'd sphere congeal, an orb of dread:
I, Lilith, on his tomb immensely throned,
79
with viewless face and viewless vans outspread;
in the wide waste of his unhallow'd work,
calm coils of fear, my serpent-brood shall lurk;
and I shall muse above the little dust
that was the flesh that held my word in trust.
Warrior and prince and poet, thou that fain
over some tract of lapsing years wouldst reign
nor know'st the crown that all thy wants confess
is Lilith's own, the round of nothingness:
warrior, whose witless game is but to feel
thyself authentic thro' the wielded steel
and give thy ghost assurance that thou art,
what aimless endless wars shall make thy heart
arena for the wheeling of their play!
king, that wast mighty in the easy way
of thy desire, what time these thews were young,
how bitter is the wisdom on thy tongue
in the late season, when a westering sun
shows thee thy work, that it is evil done!
O priest and poet, thou that makest God,
woe, when the path of thine illusion, trod
even to the end, reveals thee thy worn face,
eternal hermit of the unhallow'd place!
O man, the coward hope of thy despair
to be confounded with the driven air,
the grass that grows and knows not, the kind herds
that are not wrought with dreams nor any words,
to hollow out some refuge sunk as deep
as that was high thou hadst not sense to keep,
and here thy vexing shade to obliterate
ensuring that it rise not, soon or late,
thou knowing I claim thee whole when that thou art dead.
Go forth: be great, O nothing. I have said.
Thus in her hour of wrath, o'er Adam's head
Lilith, then first reveal'd, a name of dread,
thus in her hour of sorrow: and the rage,
that drove the giant-hunters in that age
since whelm'd beneath the weltering cataclysm,
was the mad flight from her instant abysm
and iron sadness and unsatisfied
80
despair of kings that by Euphrates' side
rein the wing'd steer or grasp the stony mane
of lions dared, if so they might obtain
surcease of lingering unnamed distress.
And if she kept the word forgetfulness
absorb'd, sole ear of sunken sleep, it is
to them that wander thro' Persepolis,
Ekbatan, or where else o'er arrow'd bricks
her snakes make the dry noise of trodden sticks,
known and well-known how that revolt was dash'd
and cruel keeps with lustral silence wash'd.
A name of dread reveal'd: and tho' forgot
in strenuous times to whom the lyre was not,
yet, when her hour awoke, the peoples heard
her coming and the winds no more deferr'd
that sweep along the expected day of wrath,
and rear'd the soaring aisles along her path
to house the massive gloom where she might dwell,
conjectured, hovering, impenetrable,
while o'er the mortal terror crouch'd beneath
the shuddering organ pour'd black wave of death;
when man withheld his hand from life, in fear
to find her, temptress, in the flesh most dear
or on the lowliest ways of simple peace —
vain-weening he that thus their feud might cease:
ay, and the cynic days that thought them blest
to know this earth a plunder-ground confest
and calm within them of the glutted beast
knew her, the emptiness that, when the feast
hath quench'd its lamps, makes, in the invaded hall,
stray'd steps, reverberated from the wall,
sound on the ear like some portentous stride,
companion's fixt, to mock our tread, beside,
nor near and show his apprehended guise
familiar, ease to our intended eyes.
Lilith, a name of dread: yet was her pain
and loving to her chosen ones not vain
hinted, who know what weight of gelid tears
afflicts the widow'd uplands of the spheres,
and whence the enrapturing breaths are sent that bring
a perfume of the secular flowering
81
of the far-bleeding rose of Paradise,
that mortal hearts in censer-fume arise
unto the heart that were an ardent peace,
and whence the sibyl-hints of song, that cease
in pale and thrilling silence, lest they wrong
her beauty, whose love bade live their fleeting throng,
even hers, who is the silence of our thought,
as he that sleeps in hush'd Valvins hath taught.
She is the night: all horror is of her
heap'd, shapeless, on the unclaim'd chaotic marsh
or huddled on the looming sepulchre
where the incult and scanty herb is harsh.
She is the night: all terror is of her
when the distemper'd dark begins to boil
with wavering face of larve and oily blur
of pallor on her suffocating coil.
Or majesty is hers, when marble gloom
supports her, calm, with glittering signs severe
and grandeur of metallic roof of doom,
far in the windows of our broken sphere.
Or she can be all pale, under no moon
or star, with veiling of the glamour cloud,
all pale, as were the fainting secret soon
to be exhaled, bride-robed in clinging shroud.
For she is night, and knows each wooing mood:
and her warm breasts are near in the charm'd air
of summer eve, and lovingly delude
the aching brow that craves their tender care.
The wooing night: all nuptials are of her;
and she the musky golden cloud that hangs
on maiden blood that burns, a boding stir
shot thro' with flashes of alluring pangs,
far off, in creeks that slept unvisited
or moved so smoothly that no ripple creas'd
their mirror'd slip of blue, till that sweet dread
melted the air and soft sighs stole, releas'd;
and she the shame of brides, veiling the white
of bosoms that for sharp fulfilment yearn;
she is the obscure centre of delight
and steals the kiss, the kiss she would return
82
deepen'd with all the abysm that under speech
moves shudderingly, or as that gulf is known
to set the astonied spouses each from each
across the futile sea of sighs, alone.
All mystery, and all love, beyond our ken,
she woos us, mournful till we find her fair:
and gods and stars and songs and souls of men
are the sparse jewels in her scatter'd hair.
This rose, the lips that kiss, and the young breast
they kindle, flush'd throughout its waking snows;
and this, that tremulous on the morning blows,
heart's youth some golden dew of dream hath blest;
auroras, grace and sooth! no tragic west
shed splendid the red anger of your close:
how soon within this wandering barrow grows
the canker'd heap of petals once caress'd!
Old odours of the rose are sickening; night,
hasten above the corpse of old delight,
if in decay the heart cherish some heat,
to breed new spice within the charnel-mould,
that eyes unseal'd with living dew may greet
the morning of the deathless rose of gold.
~ Christopher John Brennan,
284:Admetus: To My Friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson
He who could beard the lion in his lair,
To bind him for a girl, and tame the boar,
And drive these beasts before his chariot,
Might wed Alcestis. For her low brows' sake,
Her hairs' soft undulations of warm gold,
Her eyes' clear color and pure virgin mouth,
Though many would draw bow or shiver spear,
Yet none dared meet the intolerable eye,
Or lipless tusk, of lion or of boar.
This heard Admetus, King of Thessaly,
Whose broad, fat pastures spread their ample fields
Down to the sheer edge of Amphrysus' stream,
Who laughed, disdainful, at the father's pride,
That set such value on one milk-faced child.
One morning, as he rode alone and passed
Through the green twilight of Thessalian woods,
Between two pendulous branches interlocked,
As through an open casement, he descried
A goddess, as he deemed, — in truth a maid.
On a low bank she fondled tenderly
A favorite hound, her floral face inclined
Above the glossy, graceful animal,
That pressed his snout against her cheek and gazed
Wistfully, with his keen, sagacious eyes.
One arm with lax embrace the neck enwreathed,
With polished roundness near the sleek, gray skin.
Admetus, fixed with wonder, dared not pass,
Intrusive on her holy innocence
And sacred girlhood, but his fretful steed
Snuffed the large air, and champed and pawed the ground;
And hearing this, the maiden raised her head.
No let or hindrance then might stop the king,
Once having looked upon those supreme eyes.
The drooping boughs disparting, forth he sped,
And then drew in his steed, to ask the path,
Like a lost traveller in an alien land.
Although each river-cloven vale, with streams
Arrowy glancing to the blue Ægean,
Each hallowed mountain, the abode of gods,
Pelion and Ossa fringed with haunted groves,
The height, spring-crowned, of dedicate Olympus,
And pleasant sun-fed vineyards, were to him
Familiar as his own face in the stream,
Nathless he paused and asked the maid what path
Might lead him from the forest. She replied,
But still he tarried, and with sportsman's praise
Admired the hound and stooped to stroke its head,
And asked her if she hunted. Nay, not she:
Her father Pelias hunted in these woods,
Where there was royal game. He knew her now, —
Alcestis, — and her left her with due thanks:
No goddess, but a mortal, to be won
By such a simple feat as driving boars
And lions to his chariot. What was that
To him who saw the boar of Calydon,
The sacred boar of Artemis, at bay
In the broad stagnant marsh, and sent his darts
In its tough, quivering flank, and saw its death,
Stung by sure arrows of Arcadian nymph?
To river-pastures of his flocks and herds
Admetus rode, where sweet-breathed cattle grazed,
Heifers and goats and kids, and foolish sheep
Dotted cool, spacious meadows with bent heads,
And necks' soft wool broken in yellow flakes,
Nibbling sharp-toothed the rich, thick-growing blades.
One herdsmen kept the innumerable droves —
A boy yet, young as immortality —
In listless posture on a vine-grown rock.
Around him huddled kids and sheep that left
The mother's udder for his nighest grass,
Which sprouted with fresh verdure where he sat.
And yet dull neighboring rustics never guessed
A god had been among them till he went,
Although with him they acted as he willed,
Renouncing shepherds' silly pranks and quips,
10
Because his very presence made them grave.
Amphryssius, after their translucent stream,
They called him, but Admetus knew his name, —
Hyperion, god of sun and song and silver speech,
Condemned to serve a mortal for his sin
To Zeus in sending violent darts of death,
And raising hand irreverent, against
The one-eyed forgers of the thunderbolt.
For shepherd's crook he held the living rod
Of twisted serpents, later Hermes' wand.
Him sought the king, discovering soon hard by,
Idle, as one in nowise bound to time,
Watching the restless grasses blow and wave,
The sparkle of the sun upon the stream,
Regretting nothing, living with the hour:
For him, who had his light and song within,
Was naught that did not shine, and all things sang.
Admetus prayed for his celestial aid
To win Alcestis, which the god vouchsafed,
Granting with smiles, as grant all gods, who smite
With stern hand, sparing not for piteousness,
But give their gifts in gladness.
Thus the king
Led with loose rein the beasts as tame as kine,
And townsfolk thronged within the city streets,
As round a god; and mothers showed their babes,
And maidens loved the crowned intrepid youth,
And men would worship, though the very god
Who wrought the wonder dwelled unnoted nigh,
Divinely scornful of neglect or praise.
Then Pelias, seeing this would be his son,
As he had vowed, called for his wife and child.
With Anaxibia, Alcestis came,
A warm flush spreading o'er her eager face
In looking on the rider of the woods,
And knowing him her suitor and the king.
Admetus won Alcestis thus to wife,
And these with mated hearts and mutual love
11
Lived a life blameless, beautiful: the king
Ordaining justice in the gates; the queen,
With grateful offerings to the household gods,
Wise with the wisdom of the pure in heart.
One child she bore, — Eumelus, — and he throve.
Yet none the less because they sacrificed
The firstlings of their flocks and fruits and flowers,
Did trouble come; for sickness seized the king.
Alcestis watched with many-handed love,
But unavailing service, for he lay
With languid limbs, despite his ancient strength
Of sinew, and his skill with spear and sword.
His mother came, Clymene, and with her
His father, Pheres: his unconscious child
They brought him, while forlorn Alcestis sat
Discouraged, with the face of desolation.
The jealous gods would bind his mouth from speech,
And smite his vigorous frame with impotence;
And ruin with bitter ashes, worms, and dust,
The beauty of his crowned, exalted head.
He knew her presence, — soon he would not know,
Nor feel her hand in his lie warm and close,
Nor care if she were near him any more.
Exhausted with long vigils, thus the queen
Held hard and grievous thoughts, till heavy sleep
Possessed her weary senses, and she dreamed.
And even in her dream her trouble lived,
For she was praying in a barren field
To all the gods for help, when came across
The waste of air and land, from distant skies,
A spiritual voice divinely clear,
Whose unimaginable sweetness thrilled
Her aching heart with tremor of strange joy:
'Arise, Alcestis, cast away white fear.
A god dwells with you: seek, and you shall find.'
Then quiet satisfaction filled her soul
Almost akin to gladness, and she woke.
Weak as the dead, Admetus lay there still;
But she, superb with confidence, arose,
And passed beyond the mourners' curious eyes,
Seeking Amphryssius in the meadow-lands.
She found him with the godlike mien of one
12
Who, roused, awakens unto deeds divine:
'I come, Hyperion, with incessant tears,
To crave the life of my dear lord the king.
Pity me, for I see the future years
Widowed and laden with disastrous days.
And ye, the gods, will miss him when the fires
Upon your shrines, unfed, neglected die.
Who will pour large libations in your names,
And sacrifice with generous piety?
Silence and apathy will greet you there
Where once a splendid spirit offered praise.
Grant me this boon divine, and I will beat
With prayer at morning's gates, before they ope
Unto thy silver-hoofed and flame-eyed steeds.
Answer ere yet the irremeable stream
Be crossed: answer, O god, and save!'
She ceased,
With full throat salt with tears, and looked on him,
And with a sudden cry of awe fell prone,
For, lo! he was transmuted to a god;
The supreme aureole radiant round his brow,
Divine refulgence on his face, — his eyes
Awful with splendor, and his august head
With blinding brilliance crowned by vivid flame.
Then in a voice that charmed the listening air:
'Woman, arise! I have no influence
On Death, who is the servant of the Fates.
Howbeit for thy passion and thy prayer,
The grace of thy fair womanhood and youth,
Thus godlike will I intercede for thee,
And sue the insatiate sisters for this life.
Yet hope not blindly: loth are these to change
Their purpose; neither will they freely give,
But haggling lend or sell: perchance the price
Will countervail the boon. Consider this.
Now rise and look upon me.' And she rose,
But by her stood no godhead bathed in light,
But young Amphryssius, herdsman to the king,
Benignly smiling.
Fleet as thought, the god
Fled from the glittering earth to blackest depths
Of Tartarus; and none might say he sped
13
On wings ambrosial, or with feet as swift
As scouring hail, or airy chariot
Borne by flame-breathing steeds ethereal;
But with a motion inconceivable
Departed and was there. Before the throne
Of Ades, first he hailed the long-sought queen,
Stolen with violent hands from grassy fields
And delicate airs of sunlit Sicily,
Pensive, gold-haired, but innocent-eyed no more
As when she laughing plucked the daffodils,
But grave as one fulfilling a strange doom.
And low at Ades' feet, wrapped in grim murk
And darkness thick, the three gray women sat,
Loose-robed and chapleted with wool and flowers,
Purple narcissi round their horrid hair.
Intent upon her task, the first one held
The slender thread that at a touch would snap;
The second weaving it with warp and woof
Into strange textures, some stained dark and foul,
Some sanguine-colored, and some black as night,
And rare ones white, or with a golden thread
Running throughout the web: the farthest hag
With glistening scissors cut her sisters' work.
To these Hyperion, but they never ceased,
Nor raised their eyes, till with soft, moderate tones,
But by their powerful persuasiveness
Commanding all to listen and obey,
He spoke, and all hell heard, and these three looked
And waited his request:
'I come, a god,
At a pure mortal queen's request, who sues
For life renewed unto her dying lord,
Admetus; and I also pray this prayer.'
'Then cease, for when hath Fate been moved by prayer?'
'But strength and upright heart should serve with you.'
'Nay, these may serve with all but Destiny.'
'I ask ye not forever to forbear,
But spare a while, — a moment unto us,
A lifetime unto men.' 'The Fates swerve not
For supplications, like the pliant gods.
Have they not willed a life's thread should be cut?
With them the will is changeless as the deed.
14
O men! ye have not learned in all the past,
Desires are barren and tears yield no fruit.
How long will ye besiege the thrones of gods
With lamentations? When lagged Death for all
Your timorous shirking? We work not like you,
Delaying and relenting, purposeless,
With unenduring issues; but our deeds,
Forever interchained and interlocked,
Complete each other and explain themselves.'
'Ye will a life: then why not any life?'
'What care we for the king? He is not worth
These many words; indeed, we love not speech.
We care not if he live, or lose such life
As men are greedy for, — filled full with hate,
Sins beneath scorn, and only lit by dreams,
Or one sane moment, or a useless hope, —
Lasting how long? — the space between the green
And fading yellow of the grass they tread.'
But he withdrawing not: 'Will any life
Suffice ye for Admetus?' 'Yea,' the crones
Three times repeated. 'We know no such names
As king or queen or slave: we want but life.
Begone, and vex us in our work no more.'
With broken blessings, inarticulate joy
And tears, Alcestis thanked Hyperion,
And worshipped. Then he gently: 'Who will die,
So that the king may live?' And she: 'You ask?
Nay, who will live when life clasps hands with shame,
And death with honor? Lo, you are a god;
You cannot know the highest joy of life, —
To leave it when 't is worthier to die.
His parents, kinsmen, courtiers, subjects, slaves, —
For love of him myself would die, were none
Found ready; but what Greek would stand to see
A woman glorified, and falter? Once,
And only once, the gods will do this thing
In all the ages: such a man themselves
Delight to honor, — holy, temperate, chaste,
15
With reverence for his dæmon and his god.'
Thus she triumphant to the very door
Of King Admetus' chamber. All there saw
Her ill-timed gladness with much wonderment.
But she: 'No longer mourn! The king is saved:
The Fates will spare him. Lift your voice in praise;
Sing pæans to Apollo; crown your brows
With laurel; offer thankful sacrifice!'
'O Queen, what mean these foolish words misplaced?
And what an hour is this to thank the Fates?'
'Thrice blessed be the gods! — for God himself
Has sued for me, — they are not stern and deaf.
Cry, and they answer: commune with your soul,
And they send counsel: weep with rainy grief,
And these will sweeten you your bitterest tears.
On one condition King Admetus lives,
And ye, on hearing, will lament no more,
Each emulous to save.' Then — for she spake
Assured, as having heard an oracle —
They asked: 'What deed of ours may serve the king?'
'The Fates accept another life for his,
And one of you may die.' Smiling, she ceased.
But silence answered her. 'What! do ye thrust
Your arrows in your hearts beneath your cloaks,
Dying like Greeks, too proud to own the pang?
This ask I not. In all the populous land
But one need suffer for immortal praise.
The generous Fates have sent no pestilence,
Famine, nor war: it is as though they gave
Freely, and only make the boon more rich
By such slight payment. Now a people mourns,
And ye may change the grief to jubilee,
Filling the cities with a pleasant sound.
But as for me, what faltering words can tell
My joy, in extreme sharpness kin to pain?
A monument you have within my heart,
Wreathed with kind love and dear remembrances;
And I will pray for you before I crave
Pardon and pity for myself from God.
Your name will he the highest in the land,
16
Oftenest, fondest on my grateful lips,
After the name of him you die to save.
What! silent still? Since when has virtue grown
Less beautiful than indolence and ease?
Is death more terrible, more hateworthy,
More bitter than dishonor? Will ye live
On shame? Chew and find sweet its poisoned fruits?
What sons will ye bring forth — mean-souled like you,
Or, like your parents, brave — to blush like girls,
And say, 'Our fathers were afraid to die!'
Ye will not dare to raise heroic eyes
Unto the eyes of aliens. In the streets
Will women and young children point at you
Scornfully, and the sun will find you shamed,
And night refuse to shield you. What a life
Is this ye spin and fashion for yourselves!
And what new tortures of suspense and doubt
Will death invent for such as are afraid!
Acastus, thou my brother, in the field
Foremost, who greeted me with sanguine hands
From ruddy battle with a conqueror's face, —
These honors wilt thou blot with infamy?
Nay, thou hast won no honors: a mere girl
Would do as much as thou at such a time,
In clamorous battle, 'midst tumultuous sounds,
Neighing of war-steeds, shouts of sharp command,
Snapping of shivered spears; for all are brave
When all men look to them expectantly;
But he is truly brave who faces death
Within his chamber, at a sudden call,
At night, when no man sees, — content to die
When life can serve no longer those he loves.'
Then thus Acastus: 'Sister, I fear not
Death, nor the empty darkness of the grave,
And hold my life but as a little thing,
Subject unto my people's call, and Fate.
But if 't is little, no greater is the king's;
And though my heart bleeds sorely, I recall
Astydamia, who thus would mourn for me.
We are not cowards, we youth of Thessaly,
And Thessaly — yea, all Greece — knoweth it;
Nor will we brook the name from even you,
17
Albeit a queen, and uttering these wild words
Through your unwonted sorrow.' Then she knew
That he stood firm, and turning from him, cried
To the king's parents: 'Are ye deaf with grief,
Pheres, Clymene? Ye can save your son,
Yet rather stand and weep with barren tears.
O, shame! to think that such gray, reverend hairs
Should cover such unvenerable heads!
What would ye lose?— a remnant of mere life,
A few slight raveled threads, and give him years
To fill with glory. Who, when he is gone,
Will call you gentlest names this side of heaven, —
Father and mother? Knew ye not this man
Ere he was royal, — a poor, helpless child,
Crownless and kingdomless? One birth alone
Sufficeth not, Clymene: once again
You must give life with travail and strong pain.
Has he not lived to outstrip your swift hopes?
What mother can refuse a second birth
To such a son? But ye denying him,
What after-offering may appease the gods?
What joy outweigh the grief of this one day?
What clamor drown the hours' myriad tongues,
Crying, 'Your son, your son? where is your son,
Unnatural mother, timid, foolish man?'
Then Pheres gravely: 'These are graceless words
From you our daughter. Life is always life,
And death comes soon enough to such as we.
We twain are old and weak, have served our time,
And made our sacrifices. Let the young
Arise now in their turn and save the king.'
'O gods! look on your creatures! do ye see?
And seeing, have ye patience? Smite them all,
Unsparing, with dishonorable death.
Vile slaves! a woman teaches you to die.
Intrepid, with exalted steadfast soul,
Scorn in my heart, and love unutterable,
I yield the Fates my life, and like a god
Command them to revere that sacred head.
Thus kiss I thrice the dear, blind, holy eyes,
And bid them see; and thrice I kiss this brow,
And thus unfasten I the pale, proud lips
18
With fruitful kissings, bringing love and life,
And without fear or any pang, I breathe
My soul in him.'
'Alcestis, I awake.
I hear, I hear — unspeak thy reckless words!
For, lo! thy life-blood tingles in my veins,
And streameth through my body like new wine.
Behold! thy spirit dedicate revives
My pulse, and through thy sacrifice I breathe.
Thy lips are bloodless: kiss me not again.
Ashen thy cheeks, faded thy flowerlike hands.
O woman! perfect in thy womanhood
And in thy wifehood, I adjure thee now
As mother, by the love thou bearest our child,
In this thy hour of passion and of love,
Of sacrifice and sorrow, to unsay
Thy words sublime!' 'I die that thou mayest live.'
'And deemest thou that I accept the boon,
Craven, like these my subjects? Lo, my queen,
Is life itself a lovely thing, — bare life?
And empty breath a thing desirable?
Or is it rather happiness and love
That make it precious to its inmost core?
When these are lost, are there not swords in Greece,
And flame and poison, deadly waves and plagues?
No man has ever lacked these things and gone
Unsatisfied. It is not these the gods refuse
(Nay, never clutch my sleeve and raise thy lip), —
Not these I seek; but I will stab myself,
Poison my life and burn my flesh, with words,
And save or follow thee. Lo! hearken now:
I bid the gods take back their loathsome gifts:
I spurn them, and I scorn them, and I hate.
Will they prove deaf to this as to my prayers?
With tongue reviling, blasphemous, I curse,
With mouth polluted from deliberate heart.
Dishonored be their names, scorned be their priests,
Ruined their altars, mocked their oracles!
It is Admetus, King of Thessaly,
Defaming thus: annihilate him, gods!
So that his queen, who worships you, may live.'
He paused as one expectant; but no bolt
19
From the insulted heavens answered him,
But awful silence followed. Then a hand,
A boyish hand, upon his shoulder fell,
And turning, he beheld his shepherd boy,
Not wrathful, but divinely pitiful,
Who spake in tender, thrilling tones: 'The gods
Cannot recall their gifts. Blaspheme them not:
Bow down and worship rather. Shall he curse
Who sees not, and who hears not, — neither knows
Nor understands? Nay, thou shalt bless and pray, —
Pray, for the pure heart, purged by prayer, divines
And seeth when the bolder eyes are blind.
Worship and wonder, — these befit a man
At every hour; and mayhap will the gods
Yet work a miracle for knees that bend
And hands that supplicate.'
Then all they knew
A sudden sense of awe, and bowed their heads
Beneath the stripling's gaze: Admetus fell,
Crushed by that gentle touch, and cried aloud:
'Pardon and pity! I am hard beset.'
There waited at the doorway of the king
One grim and ghastly, shadowy, horrible,
Bearing the likeness of a king himself,
Erect as one who serveth not, — upon
His head a crown, within his fleshless hands
A sceptre, — monstrous, winged, intolerable.
To him a stranger coming 'neath the trees,
Which slid down flakes of light, now on his hair,
Close-curled, now on his bared and brawny chest,
Now on his flexile, vine-like veinéd limbs,
With iron network of strong muscle thewed,
And godlike brows and proud mouth unrelaxed.
Firm was his step; no superfluity
Of indolent flesh impeded this man's strength.
Slender and supple every perfect limb,
Beautiful with the glory of a man.
No weapons bare he, neither shield: his hands
Folded upon his breast, his movements free
Of all incumbrance. When his mighty strides
20
Had brought him nigh the waiting one, he paused:
'Whose palace this? and who art thou, grim shade?'
'The palace of the King of Thessaly,
And my name is not strange unto thine ears;
For who hath told men that I wait for them,
The one sure thing on earth? Yet all they know,
Unasking and yet answered. I am Death,
The only secret that the gods reveal.
But who art thou who darest question me?'
'Alcides; and that thing I dare not do
Hath found no name. Whom here awaitest thou?'
'Alcestis, Queen of Thessaly, — a queen
Who wooed me as the bridegroom woos the bride,
For her life sacrificed will save her lord
Admetus, as the Fates decreed. I wait
Impatient, eager; and I enter soon,
With darkening wing, invisible, a god,
And kiss her lips, and kiss her throbbing heart,
And then the tenderest hands can do no more
Than close her eyes and wipe her cold, white brow,
Inurn her ashes and strew flowers above.'
'This woman is a god, a hero, Death.
In this her sacrifice I see a soul
Luminous, starry: earth can spare her not:
It is not rich enough in purity
To lose this paragon. Save her, O Death!
Thou surely art more gentle than the Fates,
Yet these have spared her lord, and never meant
That she should suffer, and that this their grace,
Beautiful, royal on one side, should turn
Sudden and show a fearful, fatal face.'
'Nay, have they not? O fond and foolish man,
Naught comes unlooked for, unforeseen by them.
Doubt when they favor thee, though thou mayest laugh
When they have scourged thee with an iron scourge.
Behold, their smile is deadlier than their sting,
And every boon of theirs is double-faced.
Yea, I am gentler unto ye than these:
I slay relentless, but when have I mocked
With poisoned gifts, and generous hands that smite
Under the flowers? for my name is Truth.
Were this fair queen more fair, more pure, more chaste,
21
I would not spare her for your wildest prayer
Nor her best virtue. Is the earth's mouth full?
Is the grave satisfied? Discrown me then,
For life is lord, and men may mock the gods
With immortality.' 'I sue no more,
But I command thee spare this woman's life,
Or wrestle with Alcides.' 'Wrestle with thee,
Thou puny boy!' And Death laughed loud, and swelled
To monstrous bulk, fierce-eyed, with outstretched wings,
And lightnings round his brow; but grave and firm,
Strong as a tower, Alcides waited him,
And these began to wrestle, and a cloud
Impenetrable fell, and all was dark.
'Farewell, Admetus and my little son,
Eumelus, — O these clinging baby hands!
Thy loss is bitter, for no chance, no fame,
No wealth of love, can ever compensate
For a dead mother. Thou, O king, fulfill
The double duty: love him with my love,
And make him bold to wrestle, shiver spears,
Noble and manly, Grecian to the bone;
And tell him that his mother spake with gods.
Farewell, farewell! Mine eyes are growing blind:
The darkness gathers. O my heart, my heart!'
No sound made answer save the cries of grief
From all the mourners, and the suppliance
Of strick'n Admetus: ' O have mercy, gods!
O gods, have mercy, mercy upon us!'
Then from the dying woman's couch again
Her voice was heard, but with strange sudden tones:
'Lo, I awake, — the light comes back to me.
What miracle is this?' And thunders shook
The air, and clouds of mighty darkness fell,
And the earth trembled, and weird, horrid sounds
Were heard of rushing wings and fleeing feet,
And groans; and all were silent, dumb with awe,
Saving the king, who paused not in his prayer:
'Have mercy, gods!' and then again, 'O gods,
Have mercy!'
22
Through the open casement poured
Bright floods of sunny light; the air was soft,
Clear, delicate as though a summer storm
Had passed away; and those there standing saw,
Afar upon the plain, Death fleeing thence,
And at the doorway, weary, well-nigh spent,
Alcides, flushed with victory.
~ Emma Lazarus,
285:Scene. Constantinople; the house of a Greek Conjurer. 1521.
Paracelsus.
Paracelsus.
Over the waters in the vaporous West
The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold
Behind the arm of the city, which between,
With all that length of domes and minarets,
Athwart the splendour, black and crooked runs
Like a Turk verse along a scimitar.
There lie, sullen memorial, and no more
Possess my aching sight! 'T is done at last.
Strangeand the juggles of a sallow cheat
Have won me to this act! 'T is as yon cloud
Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a mountain-top
And break upon a molehill. I have dared
Come to a pause with knowledge; scan for once
The heights already reached, without regard
To the extent above; fairly compute
All I have clearly gained; for once excluding
A brilliant future to supply and perfect
All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes:
And all because a fortune-teller wills
His credulous seekers should inscribe thus much
Their previous life's attainment, in his roll,
Before his promised secret, as he vaunts,
Make up the sum: and here amid the scrawled
Uncouth recordings of the dupes of this
Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results!
A few blurred characters suffice to note
A stranger wandered long through many lands
And reaped the fruit he coveted in a few
Discoveries, as appended here and there,
The fragmentary produce of much toil,
In a dim heap, fact and surmise together
Confusedly massed as when acquired; he was
Intent on gain to come too much to stay
And scrutinize the little gained: the whole
Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's gibber
And a mad lover's dittythere it lies.
And yet those blottings chronicle a life
A whole life, and my life! Nothing to do,
No problem for the fancy, but a life
Spent and decided, wasted past retrieve
Or worthy beyond peer. Stay, what does this
Remembrancer set down concerning "life"?
"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,'
"It is the echo of time; and he whose heart
"Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech
"Was copied from a human tongue, can never
"Recall when he was living yet knew not this.
"Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him
"Till some one hour's experience shows what nothing,
"It seemed, could clearer show; and ever after,
"An altered brow and eye and gait and speech
"Attest that now he knows the adage true
"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.'"
Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same hour
As well as any: now, let my time be!
Now! I can go no farther; well or ill,
'T is done. I must desist and take my chance.
I cannot keep on the stretch: 't is no back-shrinking
For let but some assurance beam, some close
To my toil grow visible, and I proceed
At any price, though closing it, I die.
Else, here I pause. The old Greek's prophecy
Is like to turn out true: "I shall not quit
"His chamber till I know what I desire!"
Was it the light wind sang it o'er the sea?
An end, a rest! strange how the notion, once
Encountered, gathers strength by moments! Rest!
Where has it kept so long? this throbbing brow
To cease, this beating heart to cease, all cruel
And gnawing thoughts to cease! To dare let down
My strung, so high-strung brain, to dare unnerve
My harassed o'ertasked frame, to know my place,
My portion, my reward, even my failure,
Assigned, made sure for ever! To lose myself
Among the common creatures of the world,
To draw some gain from having been a man,
Neither to hope nor fear, to live at length!
Even in failure, rest! But rest in truth
And power and recompense . . . I hoped that once!
What, sunk insensibly so deep? Has all
Been undergone for this? This the request
My labour qualified me to present
With no fear of refusal? Had I gone
Slightingly through my task, and so judged fit
To moderate my hopes; nay, were it now
My sole concern to exculpate myself,
End things or mend them,why, I could not choose
A humbler mood to wait for the event!
No, no, there needs not this; no, after all,
At worst I have performed my share of the task
The rest is God's concern; mine, merely this,
To know that I have obstinately held
By my own work. The mortal whose brave foot
Has trod, unscathed, the temple-court so far
That he descries at length the shrine of shrines,
Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes,
Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten now
Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no
He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last,
Having a charm to baffle them; behold,
He bares his front: a mortal ventures thus
Serene amid the echoes, beams and glooms!
If he be priest henceforth, if he wake up
The god of the place to ban and blast him there,
Both well! What's failure or success to me?
I have subdued my life to the one purpose
Whereto I ordained it; there alone I spy,
No doubt, that way I may be satisfied.
Yes, well have I subdued my life! beyond
The obligation of my strictest vow,
The contemplation of my wildest bond,
Which gave my nature freely up, in truth,
But in its actual state, consenting fully
All passionate impulses its soil was formed
To rear, should wither; but foreseeing not
The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness,
Would seem one day, remembered as it was,
Beside the parched sand-waste which now it is,
Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then.
I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frail
I felt them not; yet now, 't is very plain
Some soft spots had their birth in me at first,
If not love, say, like love: there was a time
When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge
Set not remorselessly love's claims aside.
This heart was human once, or why recall
Einsiedeln, now, and Wrzburg which the Mayne
Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm?
And Festusmy poor Festus, with his praise
And counsel and grave fearswhere is he now
With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride?
I surely loved themthat last night, at least,
When we . . . gone! gone! the better. I am saved
The sad review of an ambitious youth
Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth,
But let grow up and wind around a will
Till action was destroyed. No, I have gone
Purging my path successively of aught
Wearing the distant likeness of such lusts.
I have made life consist of one idea:
Ere that was master, up till that was born,
I bear a memory of a pleasant life
Whose small events I treasure; till one morn
I ran o'er the seven little grassy fields,
Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell
Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy,
To leave all trouble for my future plans,
Since I had just determined to become
The greatest and most glorious man on earth.
And since that morn all life has been forgotten;
All is one day, one only step between
The outset and the end: one tyrant all-
Absorbing aim fills up the interspace,
One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up
Through a career apparently adverse
To its existence: life, death, light and shadow,
The shows of the world, were bare receptacles
Or indices of truth to be wrung thence,
Not ministers of sorrow or delight:
A wondrous natural robe in which she went.
For some one truth would dimly beacon me
From mountains rough with pines, and flit and wink
O'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble
Into assured light in some branching mine
Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold
And all the beauty, all the wonder fell
On either side the truth, as its mere robe;
I see the robe nowthen I saw the form.
So far, then, I have voyaged with success,
So much is good, then, in this working sea
Which parts me from that happy strip of land:
But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too!
And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rough,
And still more faint as the sea widens; last
I sicken on a dead gulf streaked with light
From its own putrefying depths alone.
Then, God was pledged to take me by the hand;
Now, any miserable juggle can bid
My pride depart. All is alike at length:
God may take pleasure in confounding pride
By hiding secrets with the scorned and base
I am here, in short: so little have I paused
Throughout! I never glanced behind to know
If I had kept my primal light from wane,
And thus insensibly amwhat I am!
Oh, bitter; very bitter!
             And more bitter,
To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin,
Plague beneath plague, the last turning the first
To light beside its darkness. Let me weep
My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone,
In tears which burn! Would I were sure to win
Some startling secret in their stead, a tincture
Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed
Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change
To opal shafts!only that, hurling it
Indignant back, I might convince myself
My aims remained supreme and pure as ever!
Even now, why not desire, for mankind's sake,
That if I fail, some fault may be the cause,
That, though I sink, another may succeed?
O God, the despicable heart of us!
Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart!
'T was politic in you, Aureole, to reject
Single rewards, and ask them in the lump;
At all events, once launched, to hold straight on:
For now' t is all or nothing. Mighty profit
Your gains will bring if they stop short of such
Full consummation! As a man, you had
A certain share of strength; and that is gone
Already in the getting these you boast.
Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say
"Great master, we are here indeed, dragged forth
"To light; this hast thou done: be glad! Now, seek
"The strength to use which thou hast spent in getting!"
And yet't is much, surely't is very much,
Thus to have emptied youth of all its gifts,
To feed a fire meant to hold out till morn
Arrived with inexhaustible light; and lo,
I have heaped up my last, and day dawns not!
And I am left with grey hair, faded hands,
And furrowed brow. Ha, have I, after all,
Mistaken the wild nursling of my breast?
Knowledge it seemed, and power, and recompense!
Was she who glided through my room of nights,
Who laid my head on her soft knees and smoothed
The damp locks,whose sly soothings just began
When my sick spirit craved repose awhile
God! was I fighting sleep off for death's sake?
God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind
Mind should be precious. Spare my mind alone!
All else I will endure; if, as I stand
Here, with my gains, thy thunder smite me down,
I bow me; 't is thy will, thy righteous will;
I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die;
And if no trace of my career remain
Save a thin corpse at pleasure of the wind
In these bright chambers level with the air,
See thou to it! But if my spirit fail,
My once proud spirit forsake me at the last,
Hast thou done well by me? So do not thou!
Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be crushed!
Hold me before the frequence of thy seraphs
And say"I crushed him, lest he should disturb
"My law. Men must not know their strength: behold
"Weak and alone, how he had raised himself!"
But if delusions trouble me, and thou,
Not seldom felt with rapture in thy help
Throughout my toils and wanderings, dost intend
To work man's welfare through my weak endeavour,
To crown my mortal forehead with a beam
From thine own blinding crown, to smile, and guide
This puny hand and let the work so wrought
Be styled my work,hear me! I covet not
An influx of new power, an angel's soul:
It were no marvel thenbut I have reached
Thus far, a man; let me conclude, a man!
Give but one hour of my first energy,
Of that invincible faith, but only one!
That I may cover with an eagle-glance
The truths I have, and spy some certain way
To mould them, and completing them, possess!
Yet God is good: I started sure of that,
And why dispute it now? I'll not believe
But some undoubted warning long ere this
Had reached me: a fire-labarum was not deemed
Too much for the old founder of these walls.
Then, if my life has not been natural,
It has been monstrous: yet, till late, my course
So ardently engrossed me, that delight,
A pausing and reflecting joy,'t is plain,
Could find no place in it. True, I am worn;
But who clothes summer, who is life itself?
God, that created all things, can renew!
And then, though after-life to please me now
Must have no likeness to the past, what hinders
Reward from springing out of toil, as changed
As bursts the flower from earth and root and stalk?
What use were punishment, unless some sin
Be first detected? let me know that first!
No man could ever offend as I have done . . .
[A voice from within.]
I hear a voice, perchance I heard
Long ago, but all too low,
So that scarce a care it stirred
If the voice were real or no:
I heard it in my youth when first
The waters of my life outburst:
But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear
That voice, still low, but fatal-clear
As if all poets, God ever meant
Should save the world, and therefore lent
Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused
To do his work, or lightly used
Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,
So, mourn cast off by him for ever,
As if these leaned in airy ring
To take me; this the song they sing.
"Lost, lost! yet come,
With our wan troop make thy home.
Come, come! for we
Will not breathe, so much as breathe
Reproach to thee,
Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.
So sank we in those old years,
We who bid thee, come! thou last
Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.
And altogether we, thy peers,
Will pardon crave for thee, the last
Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast
With those who watch but work no more,
Who gaze on life but live no more.
Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak
The message which our lips, too weak,
Refused to utter,shouldst redeem
Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!
Yet we chose thee a birthplace
Where the richness ran to flowers:
Couldst not sing one song for grace?
Not make one blossom man's and ours?
Must one more recreant to his race
Die with unexerted powers,
And join us, leaving as he found
The world, he was to loosen, bound?
Anguish! ever and for ever;
Still beginning, ending never.
Yet, lost and last one, come!
How couldst understand, alas,
What our pale ghosts strove to say,
As their shades did glance and pass
Before thee night and day?
Thou wast blind as we were dumb:
Once more, therefore, come, O come!
How should we clothe, how arm the spirit
Shall next thy post of life inherit
How guard him from thy speedy ruin?
Tell us of thy sad undoing
Here, where we sit, ever pursuing
Our weary task, ever renewing
Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave
Our powers, and man they could not save!"
Aprile enters.
Aprile.
Ha, ha! our king that wouldst be, here at last?
Art thou the poet who shall save the world?
Thy hand to mine! Stay, fix thine eyes on mine!
Thou wouldst be king? Still fix thine eyes on mine!
Paracelsus.
Ha, ha! why crouchest not? Am I not king?
So torture is not wholly unavailing!
Have my fierce spasms compelled thee from thy lair?
Art thou the sage I only seemed to be,
Myself of after-time, my very self
With sight a little clearer, strength more firm,
Who robes him in my robe and grasps my crown
For just a fault, a weakness, a neglect?
I scarcely trusted God with the surmise
That such might come, and thou didst hear the while!
Aprile.
Thine eyes are lustreless to mine; my hair
Is soft, nay silken soft: to talk with thee
Flushes my cheek, and thou art ashy-pale.
Truly, thou hast laboured, hast withstood her lips,
The siren's! Yes, 't is like thou hast attained!
Tell me, dear master, wherefore now thou comest?
I thought thy solemn songs would have their meed
In after-time; that I should hear the earth
Exult in thee and echo with thy praise,
While I was laid forgotten in my grave.
Paracelsus.
Ah fiend, I know thee, I am not thy dupe!
Thou art ordained to follow in my track,
Reaping my sowing, as I scorned to reap
The harvest sown by sages passed away.
Thou art the sober searcher, cautious striver,
As if, except through me, thou hast searched or striven!
Ay, tell the world! Degrade me after all,
To an aspirant after fame, not truth
To all but envy of thy fate, be sure!
Aprile.
Nay, sing them to me; I shall envy not:
Thou shalt be king! Sing thou, and I will sit
Beside, and call deep silence for thy songs,
And worship thee, as I had ne'er been meant
To fill thy throne: but none shall ever know!
Sing to me; for already thy wild eyes
Unlock my heart-strings, as some crystal-shaft
Reveals by some chance blaze its parent fount
After long time: so thou reveal'st my soul.
All will flash forth at last, with thee to hear!
Paracelsus.
(His secret! I shall get his secretfool!)
I am he that aspired to know: and thou?
Aprile.
I would love infinitely, and be loved!
Paracelsus.
Poor slave! I am thy king indeed.
Aprile.
                 Thou deem'st
Thatborn a spirit, dowered even as thou,
Born for thy fatebecause I could not curb
My yearnings to possess at once the full
Enjoyment, but neglected all the means
Of realizing even the frailest joy,
Gathering no fragments to appease my want,
Yet nursing up that want till thus I die
Thou deem'st I cannot trace thy safe sure march
O'er perils that o'erwhelm me, triumphing,
Neglecting nought below for aught above,
Despising nothing and ensuring all
Nor that I could (my time to come again)
Lead thus my spirit securely as thine own.
Listen, and thou shalt see I know thee well.
I would love infinitely . . . Ah, lost! lost!
Oh ye who armed me at such cost,
How shall I look on all of ye
With your gifts even yet on me?
Paracelsus.
(Ah, 't is some moonstruck creature after all!
Such fond fools as are like to haunt this den:
They spread contagion, doubtless: yet he seemed
To echo one foreboding of my heart
So truly, that . . . no matter! How he stands
With eve's last sunbeam staying on his hair
Which turns to it as if they were akin:
And those clear smiling eyes of saddest blue
Nearly set free, so far they rise above
The painful fruitless striving of the brow
And enforced knowledge of the lips, firm-set
In slow despondency's eternal sigh!
Has he, too, missed life's end, and learned the cause?)
I charge thee, by thy fealty, be calm!
Tell me what thou wouldst be, and what I am.
Aprile.
I would love infinitely, and be loved.
First: I would carve in stone, or cast in brass,
The forms of earth. No ancient hunter lifted
Up to the gods by his renown, no nymph
Supposed the sweet soul of a woodland tree
Or sapphirine spirit of a twilight star,
Should be too hard for me; no shepherd-king
Regal for his white locks; no youth who stands
Silent and very calm amid the throng,
His right hand ever hid beneath his robe
Until the tyrant pass; no lawgiver,
No swan-soft woman rubbed with lucid oils
Given by a god for love of hertoo hard!
Every passion sprung from man, conceived by man,
Would I express and clothe it in its right form,
Or blend with others struggling in one form,
Or show repressed by an ungainly form.
Oh, if you marvelled at some mighty spirit
With a fit frame to execute its will
Even unconsciously to work its will
You should be moved no less beside some strong
Rare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body,
Endeavouring to subdue it and inform it
With its own splendour! All this I would do:
And I would say, this done, "His sprites created,
"God grants to each a sphere to be its world,
"Appointed with the various objects needed
"To satisfy its own peculiar want;
"So, I create a world for these my shapes
"Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength!"
And, at the word, I would contrive and paint
Woods, valleys, rocks and plains, dells, sands and wastes,
Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quivering bed,
Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun,
And ocean isles so small, the dog-fish tracking
A dead whale, who should find them, would swim thrice
Around them, and fare onwardall to hold
The offspring of my brain. Nor these alone:
Bronze labyrinth, palace, pyramid and crypt,
Baths, galleries, courts, temples and terraces,
Marts, theatres and wharfsall filled with men,
Men everywhere! And this performed in turn,
When those who looked on, pined to hear the hopes
And fears and hates and loves which moved the crowd,
I would throw down the pencil as the chisel,
And I would speak; no thought which ever stirred
A human breast should be untold; all passions,
All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir
Within a heart fed with desires like mine,
To the last comfort shutting the tired lids
Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away
Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well:
And this in language as the need should be,
Now poured at once forth in a burning flow,
Now piled up in a grand array of words.
This done, to perfect and consummate all,
Even as a luminous haze links star to star,
I would supply all chasms with music, breathing
Mysterious motions of the soul, no way
To be defined save in strange melodies.
Last, having thus revealed all I could love,
Having received all love bestowed on it,
I would die: preserving so throughout my course
God full on me, as I was full on men:
He would approve my prayer, "I have gone through
"The loveliness of life; create for me
"If not for men, or take me to thyself,
"Eternal, infinite love!"
             If thou hast ne'er
Conceived this mighty aim, this full desire,
Thou hast not passed my trial, and thou art
No king of mine.
Paracelsus.
         Ah me!
         Aprile.
           But thou art here!
Thou didst not gaze like me upon that end
Till thine own powers for compassing the bliss
Were blind with glory; nor grow mad to grasp
At once the prize long patient toil should claim,
Nor spurn all granted short of that. And I
Would do as thou, a second time: nay, listen!
Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great,
Our time so brief, 't is clear if we refuse
The means so limited, the tools so rude
To execute our purpose, life will fleet,
And we shall fade, and leave our task undone.
We will be wise in time: what though our work
Be fashioned in despite of their ill-service,
Be crippled every way? 'T were little praise
Did full resources wait on our goodwill
At every turn. Let all be as it is.
Some say the earth is even so contrived
That tree and flower, a vesture gay, conceal
A bare and skeleton framework. Had we means
Answering to our mind! But now I seem
Wrecked on a savage isle: how rear thereon
My palace? Branching palms the props shall be,
Fruit glossy mingling; gems are for the East;
Who heeds them? I can pass them. Serpents' scales,
And painted birds' down, furs and fishes' skins
Must help me; and a little here and there
Is all I can aspire to: still my art
Shall show its birth was in a gentler clime.
"Had I green jars of malachite, this way
"I'd range them: where those sea-shells glisten above,
"Cressets should hang, by right: this way we set
"The purple carpets, as these mats are laid,
"Woven of fern and rush and blossoming flag."
Or if, by fortune, some completer grace
Be spared to me, some fragment, some slight sample
Of the prouder workmanship my own home boasts,
Some trifle little heeded there, but here
The place's one perfectionwith what joy
Would I enshrine the relic, cheerfully
Foregoing all the marvels out of reach!
Could I retain one strain of all the psalm
Of the angels, one word of the fiat of God,
To let my followers know what such things are!
I would adventure nobly for their sakes:
When nights were still, and still the moaning sea
And far away I could descry the land
Whence I departed, whither I return,
I would dispart the waves, and stand once more
At home, and load my bark, and hasten back,
And fling my gains to them, worthless or true.
"Friends," I would say, "I went far, far for them,
"Past the high rocks the haunt of doves, the mounds
"Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out,
"Past tracts of milk-white minute blinding sand,
"Till, by a mighty moon, I tremblingly
"Gathered these magic herbs, berry and bud,
"In haste, not pausing to reject the weeds,
"But happy plucking them at any price.
"To me, who have seen them bloom in their own soil,
"They are scarce lovely: plait and wear them, you!
"And guess, from what they are, the springs that fed them,
"The stars that sparkled o'er them, night by night,
"The snakes that travelled far to sip their dew!"
Thus for my higher loves; and thus even weakness
Would win me honour. But not these alone
Should claim my care; for common life, its wants
And ways, would I set forth in beauteous hues:
The lowest hind should not possess a hope,
A fear, but I'd be by him, saying better
Than he his own heart's language. I would live
For ever in the thoughts I thus explored,
As a discoverer's memory is attached
To all he finds; they should be mine henceforth,
Imbued with me, though free to all before:
For clay, once cast into my soul's rich mine,
Should come up crusted o'er with gems. Nor this
Would need a meaner spirit, than the first;
Nay, 't would be but the selfsame spirit, clothed
In humbler guise, but still the selfsame spirit:
As one spring wind unbinds the mountain snow
And comforts violets in their hermitage.
But, master, poet, who hast done all this,
How didst thou'scape the ruin whelming me?
Didst thou, when nerving thee to this attempt,
Ne'er range thy mind's extent, as some wide hall,
Dazzled by shapes that filled its length with light,
Shapes clustered there to rule thee, not obey,
That will not wait thy summons, will not rise
Singly, nor when thy practised eye and hand
Can well transfer their loveliness, but crowd
By thee for ever, bright to thy despair?
Didst thou ne'er gaze on each by turns, and ne'er
Resolve to single out one, though the rest
Should vanish, and to give that one, entire
In beauty, to the world; forgetting, so,
Its peers, whose number baffles mortal power?
And, this determined, wast thou ne'er seduced
By memories and regrets and passionate love,
To glance once more farewell? and did their eyes
Fasten thee, brighter and more bright, until
Thou couldst but stagger back unto their feet,
And laugh that man's applause or welfare ever
Could tempt thee to forsake them? Or when years
Had passed and still their love possessed thee wholly,
When from without some murmur startled thee
Of darkling mortals famished for one ray
Of thy so-hoarded luxury of light,
Didst thou ne'er strive even yet to break those spells
And prove thou couldst recover and fulfil
Thy early mission, long ago renounced,
And to that end, select some shape once more?
And did not mist-like influences, thick films,
Faint memories of the rest that charmed so long
Thine eyes, float fast, confuse thee, bear thee off,
As whirling snow-drifts blind a man who treads
A mountain ridge, with guiding spear, through storm?
Say, though I fell, I had excuse to fall;
Say, I was tempted sorely: say but this,
Dear lord, Aprile's lord!
Paracelsus.
             Clasp me not thus,
Aprile! That the truth should reach me thus!
We are weak dust. Nay, clasp not or I faint!
Aprile.
My king! and envious thoughts could outrage thee?
Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice
In thy success, as thou! Let our God's praise
Go bravely through the world at last! What care
Through me or thee? I feel thy breath. Why, tears?
Tears in the darkness, and from thee to me?
Paracelsus.
Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn
To love; and, merciful God, forgive us both!
We wake at length from weary dreams; but both
Have slept in fairy-land: though dark and drear
Appears the world before us, we no less
Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still.
I too have sought to know as thou to love
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.
Still thou hast beauty and I, power. We wake:
What penance canst devise for both of us?
Aprile.
I hear thee faintly. The thick darkness! Even
Thine eyes are hid. 'T is as I knew: I speak,
And now I die. But I have seen thy face!
O poet, think of me, and sing of me!
But to have seen thee and to die so soon!
Paracelsus.
Die not, Aprile! We must never part.
Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? never!
Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Loveuntil both are saved. Aprile, hear!
We will accept our gains, and use themnow!
God, he will die upon my breast! Aprile!
Aprile.
To speak but once, and die! yet by his side.
Hush! hush!
     Ha! go you ever girt about
With phantoms, powers? I have created such,
But these seem real as I.
Paracelsus.
             Whom can you see
Through the accursed darkness?
Aprile.
                Stay; I know,
I know them: who should know them well as I?
White brows, lit up with glory; poets all!
Paracelsus.
Let him but live, and I have my reward!
Aprile.
Yes; I see now. God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
Had you but told me this at first! Hush! hush!
Paracelsus.
Live! for my sake, because of my great sin,
To help my brain, oppressed by these wild words
And their deep import. Live! 't is not too late.
I have a quiet home for us, and friends.
Michal shall smile on you. Hear you? Lean thus,
And breathe my breath. I shall not lose one word
Of all your speech, one little word, Aprile!
Aprile.
No, no. Crown me? I am not one of you!
'T is he, the king, you seek. I am not one.
Paracelsus.
Thy spirit, at least, Aprile! Let me love!
I have attained, and now I may depart.


~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus - Part II - Paracelsus Attains
,
286:The King's Tragedy
February 1437
James I. Of Scots.—20th
I Catherine am a Douglas born,
A name to all Scots dear;
And Kate Barlass they've called me now
Through many a waning year.
This old arm's withered now. 'Twas once
Most deft 'mong maidens all
To rein the steed, to wing the shaft,
To smite the palm-play ball.
In hall adown the close-linked dance
It has shone most white and fair;
It has been the rest for a true lord's head,
And many a sweet babe's nursing-bed,
And the bar to a King's chambère.
Aye, lasses, draw round Kate Barlass,
And hark with bated breath
How good King James, King Robert's son,
Was foully done to death.
Through all the days of his gallant youth
The princely James was pent,
By his friends at first and then by his foes,
In long imprisonment.
For the elder Prince, the kingdom's heir,
By treason's murderous brood
Was slain; and the father quaked for the child
With the royal mortal blood.
I' the Bass Rock fort, by his father's care,
Was his childhood's life assured;
And Henry the subtle Bolingbroke,
Proud England's King, 'neath the southron yoke
His youth for long years immured.
Yet in all things meet for a kingly man
Himself did he approve;
And the nightingale through his prison-wall
Taught him both lore and love.
For once, when the bird's song drew him close
To the opened window-pane,
In her bower beneath a lady stood,
431
A light of life to his sorrowful mood,
Like a lily amid the rain.
And for her sake, to the sweet bird's note,
He framed a sweeter Song,
More sweet than ever a poet's heart
Gave yet to the English tongue.
She was a lady of royal blood;
And when, past sorrow and teen,
He stood where still through his crownless years
His Scotish realm had been,
At Scone were the happy lovers crowned,
A heart-wed King and Queen.
But the bird may fall from the bough of youth,
And song be turned to moan,
And Love's storm-cloud be the shadow of Hate,
When the tempest-waves of a troubled State
Are beating against a throne.
Yet well they loved; and the god of Love,
Whom well the King had sung,
Might find on the earth no truer hearts
His lowliest swains among.
From the days when first she rode abroad
With Scotish maids in her train,
I Catherine Douglas won the trust
Of my mistress sweet Queen Jane.
And oft she sighed, “To be born a King!”
And oft along the way
When she saw the homely lovers pass
She has said, “Alack the day!”
Years waned,—the loving and toiling years:
Till England's wrong renewed
Drove James, by outrage cast on his crown,
To the open field of feud.
'Twas when the King and his host were met
At the leaguer of Roxbro' hold,
The Queen o' the sudden sought his camp
With a tale of dread to be told.
And she showed him a secret letter writ
That spoke of treasonous strife,
And how a band of his noblest lords
Were sworn to take his life.
“And it may be here or it may be there,
432
In the camp or the court,” she said:
“But for my sake come to your people's arms
And guard your royal head.”
Quoth he, “'Tis the fifteenth day of the siege,
And the castle's nigh to yield.”
“O face your foes on your throne,” she cried,
“And show the power you wield;
And under your Scotish people's love
You shall sit as under your shield.”
At the fair Queen's side I stood that day
When he bade them raise the siege,
And back to his Court he sped to know
How the lords would meet their Liege.
But when he summoned his Parliament,
The louring brows hung round,
Like clouds that circle the mountain-head
Ere the first low thunders sound.
For he had tamed the nobles' lust
And curbed their power and pride,
And reached out an arm to right the poor
Through Scotland far and wide;
And many a lordly wrong-doer
By the headsman's axe had died.
'Twas then upspoke Sir Robert Græme,
The bold o'ermastering man:—
“O King, in the name of your Three Estates
I set you under their ban!
“For, as your lords made oath to you
Of service and fealty,
Even in like wise you pledged your oath
Their faithful sire to be:—
“Yet all we here that are nobly sprung
Have mourned dear kith and kin
Since first for the Scotish Barons' curse
Did your bloody rule begin.”
With that he laid his hands on his King:—
“Is this not so, my lords?”
But of all who had sworn to league with him
Not one spake back to his words.
Quoth the King:—“Thou speak'st but for one Estate,
Nor doth it avow thy gage.
Let my liege lords hale this traitor hence!”
433
The Græme fired dark with rage:—
“Who works for lesser men than himself,
He earns but a witless wage!”
But soon from the dungeon where he lay
He won by privy plots,
And forth he fled with a price on his head
To the country of the Wild Scots.
And word there came from Sir Robert Græme
To the King at Edinbro':—
“No Liege of mine thou art; but I see
From this day forth alone in thee
God's creature, my mortal foe.
“Through thee are my wife and children lost,
My heritage and lands;
And when my God shall show me a way,
Thyself my mortal foe will I slay
With these my proper hands.”
Against the coming of Christmastide
That year the King bade call
I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth
A solemn festival.
And we of his household rode with him
In a close-ranked company;
But not till the sun had sunk from his throne
Did we reach the Scotish Sea.
That eve was clenched for a boding storm,
'Neath a toilsome moon half seen;
The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
And where there was a line of the sky,
Wild wings loomed dark between.
And on a rock of the black beach-side,
By the veiled moon dimly lit,
There was something seemed to heave with life
As the King drew nigh to it.
And was it only the tossing furze
Or brake of the waste sea-wold?
Or was it an eagle bent to the blast?
When near we came, we knew it at last
For a woman tattered and old.
But it seemed as though by a fire within
Her writhen limbs were wrung;
And as soon as the King was close to her,
434
She stood up gaunt and strong.
'Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack
On high in her hollow dome;
And still as aloft with hoary crest
Each clamorous wave rang home,
Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed
Amid the champing foam.
And the woman held his eyes with her eyes:—
“O King, thou art come at last;
But thy wraith has haunted the Scotish Sea
To my sight for four years past.
“Four years it is since first I met,
'Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu,
A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud,
And that shape for thine I knew.
“A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle
I saw thee pass in the breeze,
With the cerecloth risen above thy feet
And wound about thy knees.
“And yet a year, in the Links of Forth,
As a wanderer without rest,
Thou cam'st with both thine arms i' the shroud
That clung high up thy breast.
“And in this hour I find thee here,
And well mine eyes may note
That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast
And risen around thy throat.
“And when I meet thee again, O King,
That of death hast such sore drouth,—
Except thou turn again on this shore,—
The winding-sheet shall have moved once more
And covered thine eyes and mouth.
“O King, whom poor men bless for their King,
Of thy fate be not so fain;
But these my words for God's message take,
And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake
Who rides beside thy rein!”
While the woman spoke, the King's horse reared
As if it would breast the sea,
And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale
The voice die dolorously.
When the woman ceased, the steed was still,
435
But the King gazed on her yet,
And in silence save for the wail of the sea
His eyes and her eyes met.
At last he said:—“God's ways are His own;
Man is but shadow and dust.
Last night I prayed by His altar-stone;
To-night I wend to the Feast of His Son;
And in Him I set my trust.
“I have held my people in sacred charge,
And have not feared the sting
Of proud men's hate,—to His will resign'd
Who has but one same death for a hind
And one same death for a King.
“And if God in His wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.
“What man can say but the Fiend hath set
Thy sorcery on my path,
My heart with the fear of death to fill,
And turn me against God's very will
To sink in His burning wrath?”
The woman stood as the train rode past,
And moved nor limb nor eye;
And when we were shipped, we saw her there
Still standing against the sky.
As the ship made way, the moon once more
Sank slow in her rising pall;
And I thought of the shrouded wraith of the King,
And I said, “The Heavens know all.”
And now, ye lasses, must ye hear
How my name is Kate Barlass:—
But a little thing, when all the tale
Is told of the weary mass
Of crime and woe which in Scotland's realm
God's will let come to pass.
'Twas in the Charterhouse of Perth
That the King and all his Court
Were met, the Christmas Feast being done,
For solace and disport.
'Twas a wind-wild eve in February,
436
And against the casement-pane
The branches smote like summoning hands,
And muttered the driving rain.
And when the wind swooped over the lift
And made the whole heaven frown,
It seemed a grip was laid on the walls
To tug the housetop down.
And the Queen was there, more stately fair
Than a lily in garden set;
And the King was loth to stir from her side;
For as on the day when she was his bride,
Even so he loved her yet.
And the Earl of Athole, the King's false friend,
Sat with him at the board;
And Robert Stuart the chamberlain
Who had sold his sovereign Lord.
Yet the traitor Christopher Chaumber there
Would fain have told him all,
And vainly four times that night he strove
To reach the King through the hall.
But the wine is bright at the goblet's brim
Though the poison lurk beneath;
And the apples still are red on the tree
Within whose shade may the adder be
That shall turn thy life to death.
There was a knight of the King's fast friends
Whom he called the King of Love;
And to such bright cheer and courtesy
That name might best behove.
And the King and Queen both loved him well
For his gentle knightliness;
And with him the King, as that eve wore on,
Was playing at the chess.
And the King said, (for he thought to jest
And soothe the Queen thereby —
“In a book 'tis writ that this same year
A King shall in Scotland die.
“And I have pondered the matter o'er,
And this have I found, Sir Hugh,—
There are but two Kings on Scotish ground,
And those Kings are I and you.
“And I have a wife and a newborn heir,
437
And you are yourself alone;
So stand you stark at my side with me
To guard our double throne.
“For here sit I and my wife and child,
As well your heart shall approve,
In full surrender and soothfastness,
Beneath your Kingdom of Love.”
And the Knight laughed, and the Queen too smiled;
But I knew her heavy thought,
And I strove to find in the good King's jest
What cheer might thence be wrought.
And I said, “My Liege, for the Queen's dear love
Now sing the song that of old
You made, when a captive Prince you lay,
And the nightingale sang sweet on the spray,
In Windsor's castle-hold.”
Then he smiled the smile I knew so well
When he thought to please the Queen;
The smile which under all bitter frowns
Of fate that rose between
For ever dwelt at the poet's heart
Like the bird of love unseen.
And he kissed her hand and took his harp,
And the music sweetly rang;
And when the song burst forth, it seemed
'Twas the nightingale that sang.
“Worship, ye lovers, on this May:
Of bliss your kalends are begun:
Sing with us, Away, Winter, away!
Come, Summer, the sweet season and sun!
Awake for shame,—your heaven is won,—
And amorously your heads lift all:
Thank Love, that you to his grace doth call!”
But when he bent to the Queen, and sang
The speech whose praise was hers,
It seemed his voice was the voice of the Spring
And the voice of the bygone years.
“The fairest and the freshest flower
That ever I saw before that hour,
The which o' the sudden made to start
The blood of my body to my heart.
Ah sweet, are ye a worldly creature
438
Or heavenly thing in form of nature?”
And the song was long, and richly stored
With wonder and beauteous things;
And the harp was tuned to every change
Of minstrel ministerings;
But when he spoke of the Queen at the last,
Its strings were his own heart-strings.
“Unworthy but only of her grace,
Upon Love's rock that's easy and sure,
In guerdon of all my lovè's space
She took me her humble creäture.
Thus fell my blissful aventure
In youth of love that from day to day
Flowereth aye new, and further I say.
“To reckon all the circumstance
As it happed when lessen gan my sore,
Of my rancour and woful chance,
It were too long,—I have done therefor.
And of this flower I say no more,
But unto my help her heart hath tended
And even from death her man defended.”
“Aye, even from death,” to myself I said;
For I thought of the day when she
Had borne him the news, at Roxbro' siege,
Of the fell confederacy.
But Death even then took aim as he sang
With an arrow deadly bright;
And the grinning skull lurked grimly aloof,
And the wings were spread far over the roof
More dark than the winter night.
Yet truly along the amorous song
Of Love's high pomp and state,
There were words of Fortune's trackless doom
And the dreadful face of Fate.
And oft have I heard again in dreams
The voice of dire appeal
In which the King then sang of the pit
That is under Fortune's wheel.
And under the wheel beheld I there
An ugly Pit as deep as hell,
That to behold I quaked for fear:
And this I heard, that who therein fell
439
Came no more up, tidings to tell:
Whereat, astound of the fearful sight,
I wist not what to do for fright.”
And oft has my thought called up again
These words of the changeful song:—
“Wist thou thy pain and thy travàil
To come, well might'st thou weep and wail!”
And our wail, O God! is long.
But the song's end was all of his love;
And well his heart was grac'd
With her smiling lips and her tear-bright eyes
As his arm went round her waist.
And on the swell of her long fair throat
Close clung the necklet-chain
As he bent her pearl-tir'd head aside,
And in the warmth of his love and pride
He kissed her lips full fain.
And her true face was a rosy red,
The very red of the rose
That, couched on the happy garden-bed,
In the summer sunlight glows.
And all the wondrous things of love
That sang so sweet through the song
Were in the look that met in their eyes,
And the look was deep and long.
'Twas then a knock came at the outer gate,
And the usher sought the King.
“The woman you met by the Scotish Sea,
My Liege, would tell you a thing;
And she says that her present need for speech
Will bear no gainsaying.”
And the King said: “The hour is late;
To-morrow will serve, I ween.”
Then he charged the usher strictly, and said:
“No word of this to the Queen.”
But the usher came again to the King.
“Shall I call her back?” quoth he:
“For as she went on her way, she cried,
‘Woe! Woe! then the thing must be!’”
And the King paused, but he did not speak.
Then he called for the Voidee-cup:
And as we heard the twelfth hour strike,
440
There by true lips and false lips alike
Was the draught of trust drained up.
So with reverence meet to King and Queen,
To bed went all from the board;
And the last to leave of the courtly train
Was Robert Stuart the chamberlain
Who had sold his sovereign lord.
And all the locks of the chamber-door
Had the traitor riven and brast;
And that Fate might win sure way from afar,
He had drawn out every bolt and bar
That made the entrance fast.
And now at midnight he stole his way
To the moat of the outer wall,
And laid strong hurdles closely across
Where the traitors' tread should fall.
But we that were the Queen's bower-maids
Alone were left behind;
And with heed we drew the curtains close
Against the winter wind.
And now that all was still through the hall,
More clearly we heard the rain
That clamoured ever against the glass
And the boughs that beat on the pane.
But the fire was bright in the ingle-nook,
And through empty space around
The shadows cast on the arras'd wall
'Mid the pictured kings stood sudden and tall
Like spectres sprung from the ground.
And the bed was dight in a deep alcove;
And as he stood by the fire
The King was still in talk with the Queen
While he doffed his goodly attire.
And the song had brought the image back
Of many a bygone year;
And many a loving word they said
With hand in hand and head laid to head;
And none of us went anear.
But Love was weeping outside the house,
A child in the piteous rain;
And as he watched the arrow of Death,
He wailed for his own shafts close in the sheath
441
That never should fly again.
And now beneath the window arose
A wild voice suddenly:
And the King reared straight, but the Queen fell back
As for bitter dule to dree;
And all of us knew the woman's voice
Who spoke by the Scotish Sea.
“O King,” she cried, “in an evil hour
They drove me from thy gate;
And yet my voice must rise to thine ears;
But alas! it comes too late!
“Last night at mid-watch, by Aberdour,
When the moon was dead in the skies,
O King, in a death-light of thine own
I saw thy shape arise.
“And in full season, as erst I said,
The doom had gained its growth;
And the shroud had risen above thy neck
And covered thine eyes and mouth.
“And no moon woke, but the pale dawn broke,
And still thy soul stood there;
And I thought its silence cried to my soul
As the first rays crowned its hair.
“Since then have I journeyed fast and fain
In very despite of Fate,
Lest Hope might still be found in God's will:
But they drove me from thy gate.
“For every man on God's ground, O King,
His death grows up from his birth
In a shadow-plant perpetually;
And thine towers high, a black yew-tree,
O'er the Charterhouse of Perth!”
That room was built far out from the house;
And none but we in the room
Might hear the voice that rose beneath,
Nor the tread of the coming doom.
For now there came a torchlight-glare,
And a clang of arms there came;
And not a soul in that space but thought
Of the foe Sir Robert Græme.
Yea, from the country of the Wild Scots,
O'er mountain, valley, and glen,
442
He had brought with him in murderous league
Three hundred armèd men.
The King knew all in an instant's flash;
And like a King did he stand;
But there was no armour in all the room,
Nor weapon lay to his hand.
And all we women flew to the door
And thought to have made it fast;
But the bolts were gone and the bars were gone
And the locks were riven and brast.
And he caught the pale pale Queen in his arms
As the iron footsteps fell,—
Then loosed her, standing alone, and said,
“Our bliss was our farewell!”
And 'twixt his lips he murmured a prayer,
And he crossed his brow and breast;
And proudly in royal hardihood
Even so with folded arms he stood,—
The prize of the bloody quest.
Then on me leaped the Queen like a deer:—
“O Catherine, help!” she cried.
And low at his feet we clasped his knees
Together side by side.
“Oh! even a King, for his people's sake,
From treasonous death must hide!”
“For her sake most!” I cried, and I marked
The pang that my words could wring.
And the iron tongs from the chimney-nook
I snatched and held to the king:—
“Wrench up the plank! and the vault beneath
Shall yield safe harbouring.”
With brows low-bent, from my eager hand
The heavy heft did he take;
And the plank at his feet he wrenched and tore;
And as he frowned through the open floor,
Again I said, “For her sake!”
Then he cried to the Queen, “God's will be done!”
For her hands were clasped in prayer.
And down he sprang to the inner crypt;
And straight we closed the plank he had ripp'd
And toiled to smooth it fair.
(Alas! in that vault a gap once was
443
Wherethro' the King might have fled:
But three days since close-walled had it been
By his will; for the ball would roll therein
When without at the palm he play'd.)
Then the Queen cried, “Catherine, keep the door,
And I to this will suffice!”
At her word I rose all dazed to my feet,
And my heart was fire and ice.
And louder ever the voices grew,
And the tramp of men in mail;
Until to my brain it seemed to be
As though I tossed on a ship at sea
In the teeth of a crashing gale.
Then back I flew to the rest; and hard
We strove with sinews knit
To force the table against the door;
But we might not compass it.
Then my wild gaze sped far down the hall
To the place of the hearthstone-sill;
And the Queen bent ever above the floor,
For the plank was rising still.
And now the rush was heard on the stair,
And “God, what help?” was our cry.
And was I frenzied or was I bold?
I looked at each empty stanchion-hold,
And no bar but my arm had I!
Like iron felt my arm, as through
The staple I made it pass:—
Alack! it was flesh and bone—no more!
'Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door,
But I fell back Kate Barlass.
With that they all thronged into the hall,
Half dim to my failing ken;
And the space that was but a void before
Was a crowd of wrathful men.
Behind the door I had fall'n and lay,
Yet my sense was wildly aware,
And for all the pain of my shattered arm
I never fainted there.
Even as I fell, my eyes were cast
Where the King leaped down to the pit;
And lo! the plank was smooth in its place,
444
And the Queen stood far from it.
And under the litters and through the bed
And within the presses all
The traitors sought for the King, and pierced
The arras around the wall.
And through the chamber they ramped and stormed
Like lions loose in the lair,
And scarce could trust to their very eyes,—
For behold! no King was there.
Then one of them seized the Queen, and cried,—
“Now tell us, where is thy lord?”
And he held the sharp point over her heart:
She drooped not her eyes nor did she start,
But she answered never a word.
Then the sword half pierced the true true breast:
But it was the Græme's own son
Cried, “This is a woman,—we seek a man!”
And away from her girdle-zone
He struck the point of the murderous steel;
And that foul deed was not done.
And forth flowed all the throng like a sea
And 'twas empty space once more;
And my eyes sought out the wounded Queen
As I lay behind the door.
And I said: “Dear Lady, leave me here,
For I cannot help you now:
But fly while you may, and none shall reck
Of my place here lying low.”
And she said, “My Catherine, God help thee!”
Then she looked to the distant floor,
And clasping her hands, “O God help him,”
She sobbed, “for we can no more!”
But God He knows what help may mean,
If it mean to live or to die;
And what sore sorrow and mighty moan
On earth it may cost ere yet a throne
Be filled in His house on high.
And now the ladies fled with the Queen;
And through the open door
The night-wind wailed round the empty room
And the rushes shook on the floor.
And the bed drooped low in the dark recess
445
Whence the arras was rent away;
And the firelight still shone over the space
Where our hidden secret lay.
And the rain had ceased, and the moonbeams lit
The window high in the wall,—
Bright beams that on the plank that I knew
Through the painted pane did fall,
And gleamed with the splendour of Scotland's crown
And shield armorial.
But then a great wind swept up the skies
And the climbing moon fell back;
And the royal blazon fled from the floor,
And nought remained on its track;
And high in the darkened window-pane
The shield and the crown were black.
And what I say next I partly saw
And partly I heard in sooth,
And partly since from the murderers' lips
The torture wrung the truth.
For now again came the armèd tread,
And fast through the hall it fell;
But the throng was less; and ere I saw,
By the voice without I could tell
That Robert Stuart had come with them
Who knew that chamber well.
And over the space the Græme strode dark
With his mantle round him flung;
And in his eye was a flaming light
But not a word on his tongue.
And Stuart held a torch to the floor,
And he found the thing he sought;
And they slashed the plank away with their swords;
And O God! I fainted not!
And the traitor held his torch in the gap,
All smoking and smouldering;
And through the vapour and fire, beneath
In the dark crypt's narrow ring,
With a shout that pealed to the room's high roof
They saw their naked King.
Half naked he stood, but stood as one
Who yet could do and dare:
With the crown, the King was stript away,—
446
The Knight was 'reft of his battle-array,—
But still the Man was there.
From the rout then stepped a villain forth,—
Sir John Hall was his name;
With a knife unsheathed he leapt to the vault
Beneath the torchlight-flame.
Of his person and stature was the King
A man right manly strong,
And mightily by the shoulder-blades
His foe to his feet he flung.
Then the traitor's brother, Sir Thomas Hall,
Sprang down to work his worst;
And the King caught the second man by the neck
And flung him above the first.
And he smote and trampled them under him;
And a long month thence they bare
All black their throats with the grip of his hands
When the hangman's hand came there.
And sore he strove to have had their knives,
But the sharp blades gashed his hands.
Oh James! so armed, thou hadst battled there
Till help had come of thy bands;
And oh! once more thou hadst held our throne
And ruled thy Scotish lands!
But while the King o'er his foes still raged
With a heart that nought could tame,
Another man sprang down to the crypt;
And with his sword in his hand hard-gripp'd,
There stood Sir Robert Græme.
(Now shame on the recreant traitor's heart
Who durst not face his King
Till the body unarmed was wearied out
With two-fold combating!
Ah! well might the people sing and say,
As oft ye have heard aright:—
“O Robert Græme, O Robert Græme,
Who slew our King, God give thee shame!”
For he slew him not as a knight.)
And the naked King turned round at bay,
But his strength had passed the goal,
And he could but gasp:—“Mine hour is come;
But oh! to succour thine own soul's doom,
447
Let a priest now shrive my soul!”
And the traitor looked on the King's spent strength,
And said:—“Have I kept my word?—
Yea, King, the mortal pledge that I gave?
No black friar's shrift thy soul shall have,
But the shrift of this red sword!”
With that he smote his King through the breast;
And all they three in that pen
Fell on him and stabbed and stabbed him there
Like merciless murderous men.
Yet seemed it now that Sir Robert Græme,
Ere the King's last breath was o'er,
Turned sick at heart with the deadly sight
And would have done no more.
But a cry came from the troop above:—
“If him thou do not slay,
The price of his life that thou dost spare
Thy forfeit life shall pay!”
O God! what more did I hear or see,
Or how should I tell the rest?
But there at length our King lay slain
With sixteen wounds in his breast.
O God! and now did a bell boom forth,
And the murderers turned and fled;—
Too late, too late, O God, did it sound!—
And I heard the true men mustering round,
And the cries and the coming tread.
But ere they came, to the black death-gap
Somewise did I creep and steal;
And lo! or ever I swooned away,
Through the dusk I saw where the white face lay
In the Pit of Fortune's Wheel.
And now, ye Scotish maids who have heard
Dread things of the days grown old,—
Even at the last, of true Queen Jane
May somewhat yet be told,
And how she dealt for her dear lord's sake
Dire vengeance manifold.
'Twas in the Charterhouse of Perth,
In the fair-lit Death-chapelle,
That the slain King's corpse on bier was laid
With chaunt and requiem-knell.
448
And all with royal wealth of balm
Was the body purified;
And none could trace on the brow and lips
The death that he had died.
In his robes of state he lay asleep
With orb and sceptre in hand;
And by the crown he wore on his throne
Was his kingly forehead spann'd.
And, girls, 'twas a sweet sad thing to see
How the curling golden hair,
As in the day of the poet's youth,
From the King's crown clustered there.
And if all had come to pass in the brain
That throbbed beneath those curls,
Then Scots had said in the days to come
That this their soil was a different home
And a different Scotland, girls!
And the Queen sat by him night and day,
And oft she knelt in prayer,
All wan and pale in the widow's veil
That shrouded her shining hair.
And I had got good help of my hurt:
And only to me some sign
She made; and save the priests that were there,
No face would she see but mine.
And the month of March wore on apace;
And now fresh couriers fared
Still from the country of the Wild Scots
With news of the traitors snared.
And still as I told her day by day,
Her pallor changed to sight,
And the frost grew to a furnace-flame
That burnt her visage white.
And evermore as I brought her word,
She bent to her dead King James,
And in the cold ear with fire-drawn breath
She spoke the traitors' names.
But when the name of Sir Robert Græme
Was the one she had to give,
I ran to hold her up from the floor;
For the froth was on her lips, and sore
I feared that she could not live.
449
And the month of March wore nigh to its end,
And still was the death-pall spread;
For she would not bury her slaughtered lord
Till his slayers all were dead.
And now of their dooms dread tidings came,
And of torments fierce and dire;
And nought she spake,—she had ceased to speak,—
But her eyes were a soul on fire.
But when I told her the bitter end
Of the stern and just award,
She leaned o'er the bier, and thrice three times
She kissed the lips of her lord.
And then she said,—“My King, they are dead!”
And she knelt on the chapel-floor,
And whispered low with a strange proud smile,—
“James, James, they suffered more!”
Last she stood up to her queenly height,
But she shook like an autumn leaf,
As though the fire wherein she burned
Then left her body, and all were turned
To winter of life-long grief.
And “O James!” she said,—“My James!” she said,—
“Alas for the woful thing,
That a poet true and a friend of man,
In desperate days of bale and ban,
Should needs be born a King!”
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
287:

Book II: The Book of the Statesman



Now from his cycle sleepless and vast round the dance of the earth-globe
Gold Hyperion rose in the wake of the dawn like the eyeball
Flaming of God revealed by his uplifted luminous eyelid.
Troy he beheld and he viewed the transient labour of mortals.
All her marble beauty and pomp were laid bare to the heavens.
Sunlight streamed into Ilion waking the voice of her gardens,
Amorous seized on her ways, lived glad in her plains and her pastures,
Kissed her leaves into brightness of green. As a lover the last time
Yearns to the beauty desired that again shall not wake to his kisses,
So over Ilion doomed leaned the yearning immense of the sunrise.
She like a wordless marble memory dreaming for ever
Lifted the gaze of her perishable immortality sunwards.
All her human past aspired in the clearness eternal,
Temples of Phryx and Dardanus touched with the gold of the morning,
Columns triumphant of Ilus, domes of their greatness enamoured,
Stones that intended to live; and her citadel climbed up to heaven
White like the soul of the Titan Laomedon claiming his kingdoms,
Watched with alarm by the gods as he came. Her bosom maternal
Thrilled to the steps of her sons and a murmur began in her high-roads.
Life renewed its ways which death and sleep cannot alter,
Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,
Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats.
Then as now men walked in the round which the gods have decreed them
Eagerly turning their eyes to the lure and the tool and the labour.
Chained is their gaze to the span in front, to the gulfs they are blinded
Meant for their steps. The seller opened his shop and the craftsman
Bent oer his instruments handling the work he never would finish,
Busy as if their lives were for ever, today in its evening
Sure of tomorrow. The hammers clanged and the voice of the markets
Waking desired its daily rumour. Nor only the craftsman,
Only the hopes of the earth, but the hearts of her votaries kneeling
Came to her marble shrines and upraised to our helpers eternal
Missioned the prayer and the hymn or silent, subtly adoring
Ventured upwards in incense. Loud too the clash of the cymbals
Filled all the temples of Troy with the cry of our souls to the azure.
Prayers breathed in vain and a cry that fell back with Fate for its answer!
Children laughed in her doorways; joyous they played, by their mothers
Smiled on still, but their tender bodies unknowing awaited
Grecian spearpoints sharpened by Fate for their unripe bosoms,
Tasks of the slave in Greece. Like bees round their honey-filled dwellings
Murmuring swarmed to the well-heads the large-eyed daughters of Troya,
Deep-bosomed, limbed like the gods,glad faces of old that were sentient
Rapturous flowers of the soul, bright bodies that lived under darkness
Nobly massed of their locks like day under night made resplendent,
Daughters divine of the earth in the ages when heaven was our father.
They round Troys well-heads flowerlike satisfied morn with their beauty
Or in the river baring their knees to the embrace of the coolness
Dipped their white feet in the clutch of his streams, in the haste of Scamander,
Lingering this last time with laughter and talk of the day and the morrow
Leaned to the hurrying flood. All his swiftnesses raced down to meet them,
Crowding his channel with dancing billows and turbulent murmurs.
Xanthus primaeval met these waves of our life in its passing
Even as of old he had played with Troys ancient fair generations
Mingling his deathless voice with the laughter and joy of their ages,
Laughter of dawns that are dead and a joy that the earth has rejected.
Still his whispering trees remembered their bygone voices.
Hast thou forgotten, O river of Troy? Still, still we can hear them
Now, if we listen long in our souls, the bygone voices.
Earth in her fibres remembers, the breezes are stored with our echoes.
Over the stone-hewn steps for their limpid orient waters
Joyous they leaned and they knew not yet of the wells of Mycenae,
Drew not yet from Eurotas the jar for an alien master,
Mixed not Peneus yet with their tears. From the clasp of the current
Now in their groups they arose and dispersed through the streets and the byways,
Turned from the freedom of earth to the works and the joy of the hearthside,
Lightly they rose and returned through the lanes of the wind-haunted city
Swaying with rhythmical steps while the anklets jangled and murmured.
Silent temples saw them passing; you too, O houses
Built with such hopes by mortal man for his transient lodging;
Fragrant the gardens strewed on dark tresses their white-smiling jasmines
Dropped like a silent boon of purity soft from the branches:
Flowers by the wayside were budding, cries flew winged round the tree-tops.
Bright was the glory of life in Ilion city of Priam.
Thrice to the city the doom-blast published its solemn alarum;
Blast of the trumpets that call to assembly clamoured through Troya
Thrice and were still. From garden and highway, from palace and temple
Turned like a steed to the trumpet, rejoicing in war and ambition,
Gathered alert to the call the democracy hated of heaven.
First in their ranks upbearing their age as Atlas his heavens,
Eagle-crested, with hoary hair like the snow upon Ida,
Ilions senators paced, Antenor and wide-browed Anchises,
Athamas famous for ships and the war of the waters, Tryas
Still whose name was remembered by Oxus the orient river,
Astyoches and Ucalegon, dateless Pallachus, Aetor,
Aspetus who of the secrets divine knew all and was silent,
Ascanus, Iliones, Alcesiphron, Orus, Aretes.
Next from the citadel came with the voice of the heralds before him
Priam and Priams sons, Aeneas leonine striding,
Followed by the heart of a nation adoring her Penthesilea.
All that was noble in Troy attended the regal procession
Marching in front and behind and the tramp of their feet was a rhythm
Tuned to the arrogant fortunes of Ilion ruled by incarnate
Demigods, Ilus and Phryx and Dardanus, Tros of the conquests,
Tros and far-ruling Laomedon who to his souls strong labour
Drew down the sons of the skies and was served by the ageless immortals.
Into the agora vast and aspirant besieged by its columns
Bathed and anointed they came like gods in their beauty and grandeur.
Last like the roar of the winds came trampling the surge of the people.
Clamorous led by a force obscure to its ultimate fatal
Session of wrath the violent mighty democracy hastened;
Thousands of ardent lives with the heart yet unslain in their bosoms
Lifted to heaven the voice of man and his far-spreading rumour.
Singing the young men with banners marched in their joyous processions,
Trod in martial measure or dancing with lyrical paces
Chanted the glory of Troy and the wonderful deeds of their fathers.
Into the columned assembly where Ilus had gathered his people,
Thousands on thousands the tramp and the murmur poured; in their armoured
Glittering tribes they were ranked, an untameable high-hearted nation
Waiting the voice of its chiefs. Some gazed on the greatness of Priam
Ancient, remote from their days, the last of the gods who were passing,
Left like a soul uncompanioned in worlds where his strength shall not conquer:
Sole like a column gigantic alone on a desolate hill-side
Older than mortals he seemed and mightier. Many in anger
Aimed their hostile looks where calm though by heaven abandoned,
Left to his soul and his lucid mind and its thoughts unavailing,
Leading the age-chilled few whom the might of their hearts had not blinded,
Famous Antenor was seated, the fallen unpopular statesman,
Wisest of speakers in Troy but rejected, stoned and dishonoured.
Silent, aloof from the people he sat, a heart full of ruins.
Low was the rumour that swelled like the hum of the bees in a meadow
When with the thirst of the honey they swarm on the thyme and the linden,
Hundreds humming and flitting till all that place is a murmur.
Then from his seat like a tower arising Priam the monarch
Slowly erect in his vast tranquillity silenced the people:
Lonely, august he stood like one whom death has forgotten,
Reared like a column of might and of silence over the assembly.
So Olympus rises alone with his snows into heaven.
Crowned were his heights by the locks that swept like the mass of the snow-swathe
Clothing his giant shoulders; his eyes of deep meditation,
Eyes that beheld now the end and accepted it like the beginning
Gazed on the throng of the people as on a pomp that is painted:
Slowly he spoke like one who is far from the scenes where he sojourns.
Leader of Ilion, hero Deiphobus, thou who hast summoned
Troy in her people, arise; say wherefore thou callest us. Evil
Speak thou or good, thou canst speak that only: Necessity fashions
All that the unseen eye has beheld. Speak then to the Trojans;
Say on this dawn of her making what issue of death or of triumph
Fate in her suddenness puts to the unseeing, what summons to perish
Send to this nation men who revolt and gods who are hostile.
Rising Deiphobus spoke, in stature less than his father,
Less in his build, yet the mightiest man and tallest whom coursers
Bore or his feet to the fight since Ajax fell by the Xanthus.
People of Ilion, long have you fought with the gods and the Argives
Slaying and slain, but the years persist and the struggle is endless.
Fainting your helpers cease from the battle, the nations forsake you.
Asia weary of strenuous greatness, ease-enamoured
Suffers the foot of the Greek to tread on the beaches of Troas.
Yet have we striven for Troy and for Asia, men who desert us.
Not for ourselves alone have we fought, for our life of a moment!
Once if the Greeks were triumphant, once if their nations were marshalled
Under some far-seeing chief, Odysseus, Peleus, Achilles,
Not on the banks of Scamander and skirts of the azure Aegean
Fainting would cease the audacious emprise, the Titanic endeavour;
Tigris would flee from their tread and Indus be drunk by their coursers.
Now in these days when each sun goes marvelling down that Troy stands yet
Suffering, smiting, alive, though doomed to all eyes that behold her,
Flinging back Death from her walls and bronze to the shock and the clamour,
Driven by a thought that has risen in the dawn from the tents on the beaches
Grey Talthybius chariot waits in the Ilian portals,
Voice of the Hellene demigod challenges timeless Troya.
Thus has he said to us: Know you not Doom when she walks in your heavens?
Feelst thou not then thy set, O sun who illuminedst Nature?
Stripped of helpers you stand alone against Doom and Achilles,
Left by the earth that served you, by heaven that helped you rejected:
Death insists at your gates and the flame and the sword are impatient.
None can escape the wheel of the gods and its vast revolutions!
Fate demands the joy and pride of the earth for the Argive,
Asias wealth for the lust of the young barbarian nations.
City divine, whose fame overroofed like heaven the nations,
Sink eclipsed in the circle vast of my radiance; Troya,
Joined to my northern realms deliver the East to the Hellene;
Ilion, to Hellas be yoked; wide Asia, fringe thou Peneus.
Lay down golden Helen, a sacrifice lovely and priceless
Cast by your weakness and fall on immense Necessitys altar;
Yield to my longing Polyxena, Hecubas deep-bosomed daughter,
Her whom my heart desires. She shall leave with you peace and her healing
Joy of mornings secure and death repulsed from your hearthsides.
Yield these and live, else I leap on you, Fate in front, Hades behind me.
Bound to the gods by an oath I return not again from the battle
Till from high Ida my shadow extends to the Mede and Euphrates.
Let not your victories deceive you, steps that defeat has imagined;
Hear not the voice of your heroes; their fame is a trumpet in Hades:
Only they conquer while yet my horses champ free in their stables.
Earth cannot long resist the man whom Heaven has chosen;
Gods with him walk; his chariot is led; his arm is assisted.
High rings the Hellene challenge, earth waits for the Ilian answer.
Always mans Fate hangs poised on the flitting breath of a moment;
Called by some word, by some gesture it leaps, then tis graven, tis granite.
Speak! by what gesture high shall the stern gods recognise Troya?
Sons of the ancients, race of the gods, inviolate city,
Firmer my spear shall I grasp or cast from my hand and for ever?
Search in your hearts if your fathers still dwell in them, children of Teucer.
So Deiphobus spoke and the nation heard him in silence,
Awed by the shadow vast of doom, indignant with Fortune.
Calm from his seat Antenor arose as a wrestler arises,
Tamer of beasts in the cage of the lions, eyeing the monsters
Brilliant, tawny of mane, and he knows if his courage waver,
Falter his eye or his nerve be surprised by the gods that are hostile,
Death will leap on him there in the crowded helpless arena.
Fearless Antenor arose, and a murmur swelled in the meeting
Cruel and threatening, hoarse like the voice of the sea upon boulders;
Hisses thrilled through the roar and one man cried to another,
Lo he will speak of peace who has swallowed the gold of Achaia!
Surely the people of Troy are eunuchs who suffer Antenor
Rising unharmed in the agora. Are there not stones in the city?
Surely the steel grows dear in the land when a traitor can flourish.
Calm like a god or a summit Antenor stood in the uproar.
But as he gazed on his soul came memory dimming the vision;
For he beheld his past and the agora crowded and cheering,
Passionate, full of delight while Antenor spoke to the people,
Troy that he loved and his fatherl and proud of her eloquent statesman.
Tears to his eyes came thick and he gripped at the staff he was holding.
Mounting his eyes met fully the tumult, mournful and thrilling,
Conquering mens hearts with a note of doom in its sorrowful sweetness.
People of Ilion, blood of my blood, O race of Antenor,
Once will I speak though you slay me; for who would shrink from destruction
Knowing that soon of his city and nation, his house and his dear ones
All that remains will be a couch of trampled ashes? Athene,
Slain today may I join the victorious souls of our fathers,
Not for the anguish be kept and the irremediable weeping.
Loud will I speak the word that the gods have breathed in my spirit,
Strive this last time to save the death-destined. Who are these clamour
Hear him not, gold of the Greeks bought his words and his throat is accursd?
Troy whom my counsels made great, hast thou heard this roar of their frenzy
Tearing thy ancient bosom? Is it thy voice, heaven-abandoned, my mother?
O my country, O my creatress, earth of my longings!
Earth where our fathers lie in their sacred ashes undying,
Memoried temples shelter the shrines of our gods and the altars
Pure where we worshipped, the beautiful children smile on us passing,
Women divine and the men of our nation! O land where our childhood
Played at a mothers feet mid the trees and the hills of our country,
Hoping our manhood toiled and our youth had its seekings for godhead,
Thou for our age keepst repose mid the love and the honour of kinsmen,
Silent our relics shall lie with the city guarding our ashes!
Earth who hast fostered our parents, earth who hast given us our offspring,
Soil that created our race where fed from the bosom of Nature
Happy our children shall dwell in the storied homes of their fathers,
Souls that our souls have stamped, sweet forms of ourselves when we perish!
Once even then have they seen thee in their hearts, or dreamed of thee ever
Who from thy spirit revolt and only thy name make an idol
Hating thy faithful sons and the cult of thy ancient ideal!
Wake, O my mother divine, remember thy gods and thy wisdom,
Silence the tongues that degrade thee, prophets profane of thy godhead.
Madmen, to think that a man who has offered his life for his country,
Served her with words and deeds and adored with victories and triumphs
Ever could think of enslaving her breast to the heel of a foeman!
Surely Antenors halls are empty, he begs from the stranger
Leading his sons and his childrens sons by the hand in the market
Showing his rags since his need is so bitter of gold from the Argives!
You who demand a reply when Laocoon lessens Antenor,
Hush then your feeble roar and your ear to the past and the distance
Turn. You fields that are famous for ever, reply for me calling,
Fields of the mighty mown by my swords edge, Chersonese conquered,
Thrace and her snows where we fought on the frozen streams and were victors
Then when they were unborn who are now your delight and your leaders.
Answer return, you columns of Ilus, here where my counsels
Made Troy mightier guiding her safe through the shocks of her foemen.
Gold! I have heaped it up high, I am rich with the spoils of your haters.
It was your fathers dead who gave me that wealth as my guerdon,
Now my reproach, your fathers who saw not the Greeks round their ramparts:
They were not cooped by an upstart race in the walls of Apollo,
Saw not Hector slain and Troilus dragged by his coursers.
Far over wrathful Jaxartes they rode; the shaken Achaian
Prostrate adored your strength who now shouts at your portals and conquers
Then when Antenor guided Troy, this old man, this traitor,
Not Laocoon, nay, not even Paris nor Hector.
But I have changed, I have grown a niggard of blood and of treasure,
Selfish, chilled as old men seem to the young and the headstrong,
Counselling safety and ease, not the ardour of noble decisions.
Come to my house and behold, my house that was filled once with voices.
Sons whom the high gods envied me crowded the halls that are silent.
Where are they now? They are dead, their voices are silent in Hades,
Fallen slaying the foe in a war between sin and the Furies.
Silent they went to the battle to die unmourned for their country,
Die as they knew in vain. Do I keep now the last ones remaining,
Sparing their blood that my house may endure? Is there any in Troya
Speeds to the front of the mellay outstripping the sons of Antenor?
Let him arise and speak and proclaim it and bid me be silent.
Heavy is this war that you love on my heart and I hold you as madmen
Doomed by the gods, abandoned by Pallas, by Hera afflicted.
Who would not hate to behold his work undone by the foolish?
Who would not weep if he saw Laocoon ruining Troya,
Paris doomed in his beauty, Aeneas slain by his valour?
Still you need to be taught that the high gods see and remember,
Dream that they care not if justice be done on the earth or oppression!
Happy to live, aspire while you violate man and the immortals!
Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,
Signs that the gods had left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,
One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none.
None has been able to hold all the gods in his bosom unstaggered,
All have grown drunken with force and have gone down to Hell and to Ate.
All have been thrust from their heights, say the fools; we shall live and for ever.
We are the people at last, the children, the favourites; all things
Only to us are permitted. They too descend to the silence,
Death receives their hopes and the void their stirrings of action.
Eviller fate there is none than life too long among mortals.
I have conversed with the great who have gone, I have fought in their war-cars;
Tros I have seen, Laomedons hand has dwelt on my temples.
Now I behold Laocoon, now our greatest is Paris.
First when Phryx by the Hellespont reared to the cry of the ocean
Hewing her stones as vast as his thoughts his high-seated fortress,
Planned he a lair for a beast of prey, for a pantheress dire-souled
Crouched in the hills for her bound or self-gathered against the avenger?
Dardanus shepherded Asias coasts and her sapphire-girt islands.
Mild was his rule like the blessing of rain upon fields in the summer.
Gladly the harried coasts reposed confessing the Phrygian,
Caria, Lycias kings and the Paphlagon, strength of the Mysian;
Minos Crete recovered the sceptre of old Rhadamanthus.
Ilus and Tros had strength in the fight like a far-striding Titans:
Troy triumphant following the urge of their souls to the vastness,
Helmeted, crowned like a queen of the gods with the fates for her coursers
Rode through the driving sleet of the spears to Indus and Oxus.
Then twice over she conquered the vanquished, with peace as in battle;
There where discord had clashed, sweet Peace sat girded with plenty,
There where tyranny counted her blows, came the hands of a father.
Neither had Teucer a soul like your chiefs who refounded this nation.
Such was the antique and noble tradition of Troy in her founders,
Builders of power that endured; but it perishes lost to their offspring,
Trampled, scorned by an arrogant age, by a violent nation.
Strong Anchises trod it down trampling victorious onwards
Stern as his sword and hard as the silent bronze of his armour.
More than another I praise the man who is mighty and steadfast,
Even as Ida the mountain I praise, a refuge for lions;
But in the council I laud him not, he who a god for his kindred,
Lives for the rest without bowels of pity or fellowship, lone-souled,
Scorning the world that he rules, who untamed by the weight of an empire
Holds allies as subjects, subjects as slaves and drives to the battle
Careless more of their wills than the coursers yoked to his war-car.
Therefore they fought while they feared, but gladly abandon us falling.
Yet had they gathered to Teucer in the evil days of our nation.
Where are they now? Do they gather then to the dreaded Anchises?
Or has Aeneas helped with his counsels hateful to wisdom?
Hateful is this, abhorred of the gods, imagined by Ate
When against subjects murmuring discord and faction appointed
Scatter unblest gold, the heart of a people is poisoned,
Virtue pursued and baseness triumphs tongued like a harlot,
Brother against brother arrayed that the rule may endure of a stranger.
Yes, but it lasts! For its hour. The high gods watch in their silence,
Mute they endure for a while that the doom may be swifter and greater.
Hast thou then lasted, O Troy? Lo, the Greeks at thy gates and Achilles.
Dream, when Virtue departs, that Wisdom will linger, her sister!
Wisdom has turned from your hearts; shall Fortune dwell with the foolish?
Fatal oracles came to you great-tongued, vaunting of empires
Stretched from the risen sun to his rest in the occident waters,
Dreams of a city throned on the hills with her foot on the nations.
Meanwhile the sword was prepared for our breasts and the flame for our housetops.
Wake, awake, O my people! the fire-brand mounts up your doorsteps;
Gods who deceived to slay, press swords on your childrens bosoms.
See, O ye blind, ere death in pale countries open your eyelids!
Hear, O ye deaf, the sounds in your ears and the voices of evening!
Young men who vaunt in your strength! when the voice of this aged Antenor
Governed your fathers youth, all the Orient was joined to our banners.
Macedon leaned to the East and her princes yearned to the victor,
Scythians worshipped in Ilions shrines, the Phoenician trader
Bartered her tokens, Babylons wise men paused at our thresholds;
Fair-haired sons of the snows came rapt towards golden Troya
Drawn by the song and the glory. Strymon sang hymns unto Ida,
Hoarse Chalcidice, dim Chersonesus married their waters
Under the oerarching yoke of Troy twixt the term-posts of Ocean.
Meanwhile far through the world your fortunes led by my counsels
Followed their lure like women snared by a magical tempter:
High was their chant as they paced and it came from continents distant.
Turn now and hear! what voice approaches? what glitter of armies?
Loud upon Trojan beaches the tread and the murmur of Hellas!
Hark! tis the Achaians paean rings oer the Pergaman waters!
So wake the dreams of Aeneas; reaped is Laocoons harvest.
Artisans new of your destiny fashioned this far-spreading downfall,
Counsellors blind who scattered your strength to the hooves of the Scythian,
Barren victories, trophies of skin-clad Illyrian pastors.
Who but the fool and improvident, who but the dreamer and madman
Leaves for the far and ungrasped earths close and provident labour?
Children of earth, our mother gives tokens, she lays down her signposts,
Step by step to advance on her bosom, to grow by her seasons,
Order our works by her patience and limit our thought by her spaces.
But you had chiefs who were demigods, souls of an earth-scorning stature,
Minds that saw vaster than life and strengths that Gods hour could not limit!
These men seized upon Troy as the tool of their giant visions,
Dreaming of Africas suns and bright Hesperian orchards,
Carthage our mart and our feet on the sunset hills of the Latins.
Ilions hinds in the dream ploughed Libya, sowed Italys cornfields,
Troy stretched to Gades; even the gods and the Fates had grown Trojan.
So are the natures of men uplifted by Heaven in its satire.
Scorning the bit of the gods, despisers of justice and measure,
Zeus is denied and adored some shadow huge of their natures
Losing the shape of man in a dream that is splendid and monstrous.
Titans, vaunting they stride and the world resounds with their footsteps;
Titans, clanging they fall and the world is full of their ruin.
Children, you dreamed with them, heard the roar of the Atlantic breakers
Welcome your keels and the Isles of the Blest grew your wonderful gardens.
Lulled in the dream, you saw not the black-drifting march of the storm-rack,
Heard not the galloping wolves of the doom and the howl of their hunger.
Greece in her peril united her jarring clans; you suffered
Patient, preparing the north, the wisdom and silence of Peleus,
Atreus craft and the Argives gathered to King Agamemnon.
But there were prophecies, Pythian oracles, mutterings from Delphi.
How shall they prosper who haste after auguries, oracles, whispers,
Dreams that walk in the night and voices obscure of the silence?
Touches are these from the gods that bewilder the brain to its ruin.
One sole oracle helps, still armoured in courage and prudence
Patient and heedful to toil at the work that is near in the daylight.
Leave to the night its phantoms, leave to the future its curtain!
Only today Heaven gave to mortal man for his labour.
If thou hadst bowed not thy mane, O Troy, to the child and the dreamer,
Hadst thou been faithful to Wisdom the counsellor seated and ancient,
Then would the hour not have dawned when Paris lingered in Sparta
Led by the goddess fatal and beautiful, white Aphrodite.
Man, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy natures abysms!
Dread the dusk rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals!
Therefore the black deed was done and the hearth that welcomed was sullied.
Sin-called the Fury uplifted her tresses of gloom oer the nations
Maddening the earth with the scream of her blood-thirst, bowelless, stone-eyed,
Claiming her victims from God and bestriding the hate and the clamour.
Yet midst the stroke and the wail when mens eyes were blind with the blood-mist,
Still had the high gods mercy recalling Teucer and Ilus.
Just was the heart of their anger. Discord flaming from Ida,
Hundred-voiced glared from the ships through the camp of the victor Achaians,
Love to that discord added her flowerlike lips of Briseis;
Faltering lids of Polyxena conquered the strength of Pelides.
Vainly the gods who pity open the gates of salvation!
Vainly the winds of their mercy brea the on our fevered existence!
Man his passions prefers to the voice that guides from the heavens.
These too were here whom Hera had chosen to ruin this nation:
Charioteers cracking the whips of their speed on the paths of destruction,
Demigods they! they have come down from Heaven glad to that labour,
Deaf is the world with the fame of their wheels as they race down to Hades.
O that alone they could reach it! O that pity could soften
Harsh Necessitys dealings, sparing our innocent children,
Saving the Trojan women and aged from bonds and the sword-edge!
These had not sinned whom you slay in your madness! Ruthless, O mortals,
Must you be then to yourselves when the gods even faltering with pity
Turn from the grief that must come and the agony vast and the weeping?
Say not the road of escape sinks too low for your arrogant treading.
Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our mother
And we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;
Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire.
Children, lie prone to their scourge, that your hearts may revive in their sunshine.
This is our lot! when the anger of heaven has passed then the mortal
Raises his head; soon he heals his heart and forgets he has suffered.
Yet if resurgence from weakness and shame were withheld from the creature,
Every fall without morrow, who then would counsel submission?
But since the height of mortal fortune ascending must stumble,
Fallen, again ascend, since death like birth is our portion,
Ripening, mowed, to be sown again like corn by the farmer,
Let us be patient still with the gods accepting their purpose.
Deem not defeat I welcome. Think not to Hellas submitting
Death of proud hope I would seal. Not this have I counselled, O nation,
But to be even as your high-crested forefa thers, greatest of mortals.
Troya of old enringed by the hooves of Cimmerian armies
Flamed to the heavens from her plains and her smoke-blackened citadel sheltered
Mutely the joyless rest of her sons and the wreck of her greatness.
Courage and wisdom survived in that fall and a stern-eyed prudence
Helped her to live; disguised from her mightiness Troy crouched waiting.
Teucer descended whose genius worked at this kingdom and nation,
Patient, scrupulous, wise, like a craftsman carefully toiling
Over a helmet or over a breastplate, testing it always,
Toiled in the eye of the Masters of all and had heed of its labour.
So in the end they would not release him like souls that are common;
They out of Ida sent into Ilion Pallas Athene;
Secret she came and he went with her into the luminous silence.
Teucers children after their sire completed his labour.
Now too, O people, front adversity self-gathered, silent.
Veil thyself, leonine mighty Ilion, hiding thy greatness!
Be as thy father Teucer; be as a cavern for lions;
Be as a Fate that crouches! Wordless and stern for your vengeance
Self-gathered work in the night and secrecy shrouding your bosoms.
Let not the dire heavens know of it; let not the foe seize a whisper!
Ripen the hour of your stroke, while your words drip sweeter than honey.
Sure am I, friends, you will turn from death at my voice, you will hear me!
Some day yet I shall gaze on the ruins of haughty Mycenae.
Is this not better than Ilion cast to the sword of her haters,
Is this not happier than Troya captured and wretchedly burning,
Time to await in his stride when the southern and northern Achaians
Gazing with dull distaste now over their severing isthmus
Hate-filled shall move to the shock by the spur of the gods in them driven,
Pelops march upon Attica, Thebes descend on the Spartan?
Then shall the hour now kept in heaven for us ripen to dawning,
Then shall Victory cry to our banners over the Ocean
Calling our sons with her voice immortal. Children of Ilus,
Then shall Troy rise in her strength and stride over Greece up to Gades.
So Antenor spoke and the mind of the hostile assembly
Moved and swayed with his words like the waters ruled by Poseidon.
Even as the billows rebellious lashed by the whips of the tempest
Curvet and rear their crests like the hooded wrath of a serpent,
Green-eyed under their cowls sublime,unwilling they journey,
Foam-bannered, hoarse-voiced, shepherded, forced by the wind to the margin
Meant for their rest and can turn not at all, though they rage, on their driver,
Last with a sullen applause and consenting lapse into thunder,
Where they were led all the while they sink down huge and astonished,
So in their souls that withstood and obeyed and hated the yielding,
Lashed by his censure, indignant, the Trojans moved towards his purpose:
Sometimes a roar arose, then only, weakened, rarer,
Angry murmurs swelled between sullen stretches of silence;
Last, a reluctant applause broke dull from the throats of the commons.
Silent raged in their hearts Laocoons following daunted;
Troubled the faction of Paris turned to the face of their leader.
He as yet rose not; careless he sat in his beauty and smiling,
Gazing with brilliant eyes at the sculptured pillars of Ilus.
Doubtful, swayed by Antenor, waited in silence the nation.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 2 - The Book of the Statesman
,
288:TO MARY
(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST)

I.
How, my dear Mary, -- are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

II.
What hand would crush the silken-wingd fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

III.
To thy fair feet a wingd Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
The watery bow burned in the evening flame,
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way
And that is dead.O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!

IV.
Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.

V.
My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsonsbut she matches Peter,
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness.'

VI.
If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.
If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin, -- if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.
THE WITCH OF ATLAS.

I.
Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learnd rhyme,
A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain
Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.

II.
Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden
In the warm shadow of her loveliness;--
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of gray rock in which she lay--
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

III.
'Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
Like splendour-wingd moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
And then into a meteor, such as caper
On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:
Then, into one of those mysterious stars
Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.

IV.
Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
With that bright sign the billows to indent
The sea-deserted sand -- like children chidden,
At her command they ever came and went--
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
Took shape and motion: with the living form
Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.

V.
A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty -- deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a Temple's cloven roof -- her hair
Darkthe dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,
Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.

VI.
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own volumes intervolved -- all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
Such gentleness and power even to behold.

VII.
The brinded lioness led forth her young,
That she might teach them how they should forego
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know
With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.

VIII.
And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
Teasing the God to sing them something new;
Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.

IX.
And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,
And though none saw him,through the adamant
Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,
And through those living spirits, like a want,
He passed out of his everlasting lair
Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
And felt that wondrous lady all alone,
And she felt him, upon her emerald throne.

X.
And every nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks,
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his gray locks,
And quaint Priapus with his company,
All came, much wondering how the enwombd rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.

XI.
The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs, and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
Wet clefts,and lumps neither alive nor dead,
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.

XII.
For she was beautifulher beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
No thought of living spirit could abide,
Which to her looks had ever been betrayed,
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.

XIII.
Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she
As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle
In the belated moon, wound skilfully;
And with these threads a subtle veil she wove
A shadow for the splendour of her love.

XIV.
The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
Were stored with magic treasuressounds of air,
Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;
Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never dieyet ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And the regret they leave remains alone.

XV.
And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis,
Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss
It was its work to bear to many a saint
Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
Even Love's -- and others white, green, gray, and black,
And of all shapesand each was at her beck.

XVI.
And odours in a kind of aviary
Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,
Clipped in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy
Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept;
As bats at the wired window of a dairy.
They beat their vans; and each was an adept,
When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,
To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.

XVII.
And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
Of glorious dreamsor if eyes needs must weep,
Could make their tears all wonder and delight,
She in her crystal vials did closely keep:
If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.

XVIII.
Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
And which might quench the Earth-consuming rage
Of gold and bloodtill men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above;

XIX.
And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked and not to be confined,
Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill;
Time, earth, and firethe ocean and the wind,
And all their shapes -- and man's imperial will;
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
The inmost lore of Lovelet the profane
Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.

XX.
And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her father's power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
Carved lamps and chalices, and vials which shone
In their own golden beams -- each like a flower,
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.

XXI.
At first she lived alone in this wild home,
And her own thoughts were each a minister,
Clothing themselves, or with the ocean foam,
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
To work whatever purposes might come
Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
Had girt them with, whether to fly or run,
Through all the regions which he shines upon.

XXII.
The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
Oreads and Naiads, with long weedy locks,
Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks,
And far beneath the matted roots of trees,
And in the gnarld heart of stubborn oaks,
So they might live for ever in the light
Of her sweet presence -- each a satellite.

XXIII.
'This may not be,' the wizard maid replied;
'The fountains where the Naiades bedew
Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried;
The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
The boundless ocean like a drop of dew
Will be consumedthe stubborn centre must
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.

XXIV.
'And ye with them will perish, one by one;
If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
If I must weep when the surviving Sun
Shall smile on your decay -- oh, ask not me
To love you till your little race is run;
I cannot die as ye must -- over me
Your leaves shall glance -- the streams in which ye dwell
Shall be my paths henceforth, and so -- farewell!'--

XXV.
She spoke and wept:the dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
And intertangled lines of light:a knell
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing Forms, o'er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.

XXVI.
All day the wizard lady sate aloof,
Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity,
Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof;
Or broidering the pictured poesy
Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
In hues outshining heavenand ever she
Added some grace to the wrought poesy.

XXVII.
While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon;
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is
Each flame of it is as a precious stone
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.
The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand
She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.

XXVIII.
This lady never slept, but lay in trance
All night within the fountain -- as in sleep.
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance;
Through the green splendour of the water deep
She saw the constellations reel and dance
Like fire-flies -- and withal did ever keep
The tenour of her contemplations calm,
With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.

XXIX.
And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended
From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,
She passed at dewfall to a space extended,
Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel
Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended,
There yawned an inextinguishable well
Of crimson firefull even to the brim,
And overflowing all the margin trim.

XXX.
Within the which she lay when the fierce war
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor
In many a mimic moon and bearded star
O'er woods and lawns -- the serpent heard it flicker
In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar--
And when the windless snow descended thicker
Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came
Melt on the surface of the level flame.

XXXI.
She had a boat, which some say Vulcan wrought
For Venus, as the chariot of her star;
But it was found too feeble to be fraught
With all the ardours in that sphere which are,
And so she sold it, and Apollo bought
And gave it to this daughter: from a car
Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat
Which ever upon mortal stream did float.

XXXII.
And others say, that, when but three hours old,
The first-born Love out of his cradle lept,
And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,
And like an horticultural adept,
Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould,
And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept
Watering it all the summer with sweet dew,
And with his wings fanning it as it grew.

XXXIII.
The plant grew strong and green, the snowy flower
Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began
To turn the light and dew by inward power
To its own substance; woven tracery ran
Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er
The solid rind, like a leaf's veind fan--
Of which Love scooped this boat -- and with soft motion
Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.

XXXIV.
This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
A living spirit within all its frame,
Breathing the soul of swiftness into it.
Couched on the fountain like a panther tame,
One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit--
Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame--
Or on blind Homer's heart a wingd thought,--
In joyous expectation lay the boat.

XXXV.
Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
Together, tempering the repugnant mass
With liquid love -- all things together grow
Through which the harmony of love can pass;
And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow--
A living Image, which did far surpass
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.

XXXVI.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
It seemed to have developed no defect
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both,--
In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
The countenance was such as might select
Some artist that his skill should never die,
Imaging forth such perfect purity.

XXXVII.
From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,
Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,
Tipped with the speed of liquid lightenings,
Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere:
She led her creature to the boiling springs
Where the light boat was moored, and said: 'Sit here!'
And pointed to the prow, and took her seat
Beside the rudder, with opposing feet.

XXXVIII.
And down the streams which clove those mountains vast,
Around their inland islets, and amid
The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast
Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed;
By many a star-surrounded pyramid
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,
And caverns yawning round unfathomably.

XXXIX.
The silver noon into that winding dell,
With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,
Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;
A green and glowing light, like that which drops
From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell,
When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps;
Between the severed mountains lay on high,
Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.

XL.
And ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o'er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
They had aroused from that full heart and brain.

XLI.
And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:
Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
The calm and darkness of the deep content
In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road
Of white and dancing waters, all besprent
With sand and polished pebbles:mortal boat
In such a shallow rapid could not float.

XLII.
And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
Their snow-like waters into golden air,
Or under chasms unfathomable ever
Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear
A subterranean portal for the river,
It fledthe circling sunbows did upbear
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
Lighting it far upon its lampless way.

XLIII.
And when the wizard lady would ascend
The labyrinths of some many-winding vale,
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend
She called 'Hermaphroditus!'and the pale
And heavy hue which slumber could extend
Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
Into the darkness of the stream did pass.

XLIV.
And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
And from above into the Sun's dominions
Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
In which Spring clothes her emerald-wingd minions,
All interwoven with fine feathery snow
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime,
With which frost paints the pines in winter time.

XLV.
And then it winnowed the Elysian air
Which ever hung about that lady bright,
With its aethereal vansand speeding there,
Like a star up the torrent of the night,
Or a swift eagle in the morning glare
Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.

XLVI.
The water flashed, like sunlight by the prow
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven
The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro:
Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel
The swift and steady motion of the keel.

XLVII.
Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
Or in the noon of interlunar night,
The lady-witch in visions could not chain
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
Its storm-outspeeding wings, the Hermaphrodite;
She to the Austral waters took her way,
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana,

XLVIII.
Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,
Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake,
With the Antarctic constellations paven,
Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake
There she would build herself a windless haven
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make
The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
The spirits of the tempest thundered by:

XLIX.
A haven beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
And around which the solid vapours hoar,
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices gray,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.

L.
And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing,
And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke -- this haven
Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,--

LI.
On which that lady played her many pranks,
Circling the image of a shooting star,
Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks
Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,
In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water, till the car
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,
To journey from the misty east began.

LII.
And then she called out of the hollow turrets
Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,
The armies of her ministering spirits
In mighty legions, million after million,
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere
They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.

LIII.
They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen
Of woven exhalations, underlaid
With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
With crimson silk -- cressets from the serene
Hung there, and on the water for her tread
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.

LIV.
And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught
Upon those wandering isles of ary dew,
Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,
She sate, and heard all that had happened new
Between the earth and moon, since they had brought
The last intelligence -- and now she grew
Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night--
And now she wept, and now she laughed outright.

LV.
These were tame pleasures; she would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beakd cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back
Ride singing through the shoreless air; -- oft-time
Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.

LVI.
And sometimes to those streams of upper air
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round,
She would ascend, and win the spirits there
To let her join their chorus. Mortals found
That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed,
And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.

LVII.
But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads
Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep
Of utmost Axum, until he spreads,
Like a calm flock of silver-fleecd sheep,
His waters on the plain: and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.

LVIII.
By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes,
Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors,
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
Of those huge forms -- within the brazen doors
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.

LIX.
And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased -- but tremble ever
Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever
The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight
To wander in the shadow of the night.

LX.
With motion like the spirit of that wind
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind,
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined
With many a dark and subterranean street
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.

LXI.
A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.
Here lay two sister twins in infancy;
There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linkd innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem;and there lay calm
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.

LXII.
But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song--
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
And pale imaginings of visioned wrong;
And all the code of Custom's lawless law
Written upon the brows of old and young:
'This,' said the wizard maiden, 'is the strife
Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life.'

LXIII.
And little did the sight disturb her soul.--
We, the weak mariners of that wide lake
Where'er its shores extend or billows roll,
Our course unpiloted and starless make
O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal:--
But she in the calm depths her way could take,
Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide
Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.

LXIV.
And she saw princes couched under the glow
Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
In dormitories ranged, row after row,
She saw the priests asleepall of one sort--
For all were educated to be so.
The peasants in their huts, and in the port
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,
And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.

LXV.
And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array
Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us
Only their scorn of all concealment: they
Move in the light of their own beauty thus.
But these and all now lay with sleep upon them,
And little thought a Witch was looking on them.

LXVI.
She, all those human figures breathing there,
Beheld as living spirits -- to her eyes
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,
And often through a rude and worn disguise
She saw the inner form most bright and fair--
And then she had a charm of strange device,
Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone,
Could make that spirit mingle with her own.

LXVII.
Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm when Tithon became gray?
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven
Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina
Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

LXVIII.
'Tis said in after times her spirit free
Knew what love was, and felt itself alone--
But holy Dian could not chaster be
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,
Than now this lady -- like a sexless bee
Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none,
Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.

LXIX.
To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:--
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,
And lived thenceforward as if some control,
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

LXX.
For on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery
Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

LXXI.
And there the body lay, age after age,
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind
And fleeting generations of mankind.

LXXII.
And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake
Which the sand coversall his evil gain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap;the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

LXXIII.
The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the God Apis really was a bull,
And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
The old cant down; they licensed all to speak
What'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.

LXXIV.
The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey.Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
And kissed -- alas, how many kiss the same!

LXXV.
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares; -- in a band
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

LXXVI.
And timid lovers who had been so coy,
They hardly knew whether they loved or not,
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
Blushed at the thing which each believed was done
Only in fancy -- till the tenth moon shone;

LXXVII.
And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart -- a wide wound, mind from mind!--
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

LXXVIII.
These were the pranks she played among the cities
Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is
A tale more fit for the weird winter nights
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.
Composed at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 14-16, 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, ed. Mrs. Shelley, 1824. The dedication To Mary first appeared in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st ed.

Note by Mrs. Shelley: 'We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood. The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino -- a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lsasitude and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas.
This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes -- wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested.'
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Witch Of Atlas
,
289:I.
In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool,
There stood, or hover'd, tremulous in the air,
A faery city 'neath the potent rule
Of Emperor Elfinan; fam'd ev'rywhere
For love of mortal women, maidens fair,
Whose lips were solid, whose soft hands were made
Of a fit mould and beauty, ripe and rare,
To tamper his slight wooing, warm yet staid:
He lov'd girls smooth as shades, but hated a mere shade.

II.
This was a crime forbidden by the law;
And all the priesthood of his city wept,
For ruin and dismay they well foresaw,
If impious prince no bound or limit kept,
And faery Zendervester overstept;
They wept, he sin'd, and still he would sin on,
They dreamt of sin, and he sin'd while they slept;
In vain the pulpit thunder'd at the throne,
Caricature was vain, and vain the tart lampoon.

III.
Which seeing, his high court of parliament
Laid a remonstrance at his Highness' feet,
Praying his royal senses to content
Themselves with what in faery land was sweet,
Befitting best that shade with shade should meet:
Whereat, to calm their fears, he promis'd soon
From mortal tempters all to make retreat,--
Aye, even on the first of the new moon,
An immaterial wife to espouse as heaven's boon.

IV.
Meantime he sent a fluttering embassy
To Pigmio, of Imaus sovereign,
To half beg, and half demand, respectfully,
The hand of his fair daughter Bellanaine;
An audience had, and speeching done, they gain
Their point, and bring the weeping bride away;
Whom, with but one attendant, safely lain
Upon their wings, they bore in bright array,
While little harps were touch'd by many a lyric fay.

V.
As in old pictures tender cherubim
A child's soul thro' the sapphir'd canvas bear,
So, thro' a real heaven, on they swim
With the sweet princess on her plumag'd lair,
Speed giving to the winds her lustrous hair;
And so she journey'd, sleeping or awake,
Save when, for healthful exercise and air,
She chose to "promener l'aile," or take
A pigeon's somerset, for sport or change's sake.

VI.
"Dear Princess, do not whisper me so loud,"
Quoth Corallina, nurse and confidant,
"Do not you see there, lurking in a cloud,
Close at your back, that sly old Crafticant?
He hears a whisper plainer than a rant:
Dry up your tears, and do not look so blue;
He's Elfinan's great state-spy militant,
His running, lying, flying foot-man too,--
Dear mistress, let him have no handle against you!

VII.
"Show him a mouse's tail, and he will guess,
With metaphysic swiftness, at the mouse;
Show him a garden, and with speed no less,
He'll surmise sagely of a dwelling house,
And plot, in the same minute, how to chouse
The owner out of it; show him a" --- "Peace!
Peace! nor contrive thy mistress' ire to rouse!"
Return'd the Princess, "my tongue shall not cease
Till from this hated match I get a free release.

VIII.
"Ah, beauteous mortal!" "Hush!" quoth Coralline,
"Really you must not talk of him, indeed."
"You hush!" reply'd the mistress, with a shinee
Of anger in her eyes, enough to breed
In stouter hearts than nurse's fear and dread:
'Twas not the glance itself made nursey flinch,
But of its threat she took the utmost heed;
Not liking in her heart an hour-long pinch,
Or a sharp needle run into her back an inch.

IX.
So she was silenc'd, and fair Bellanaine,
Writhing her little body with ennui,
Continued to lament and to complain,
That Fate, cross-purposing, should let her be
Ravish'd away far from her dear countree;
That all her feelings should be set at nought,
In trumping up this match so hastily,
With lowland blood; and lowland blood she thought
Poison, as every staunch true-born Imaian ought.

X.
Sorely she griev'd, and wetted three or four
White Provence rose-leaves with her faery tears,
But not for this cause; -- alas! she had more
Bad reasons for her sorrow, as appears
In the fam'd memoirs of a thousand years,
Written by Crafticant, and published
By Parpaglion and Co., (those sly compeers
Who rak'd up ev'ry fact against the dead,)
In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal's Head.

XI.
Where, after a long hypercritic howl
Against the vicious manners of the age,
He goes on to expose, with heart and soul,
What vice in this or that year was the rage,
Backbiting all the world in every page;
With special strictures on the horrid crime,
(Section'd and subsection'd with learning sage,)
Of faeries stooping on their wings sublime
To kiss a mortal's lips, when such were in their prime.

XII.
Turn to the copious index, you will find
Somewhere in the column, headed letter B,
The name of Bellanaine, if you're not blind;
Then pray refer to the text, and you will see
An article made up of calumny
Against this highland princess, rating her
For giving way, so over fashionably,
To this new-fangled vice, which seems a burr
Stuck in his moral throat, no coughing e'er could stir.

XIII.
There he says plainly that she lov'd a man!
That she around him flutter'd, flirted, toy'd,
Before her marriage with great Elfinan;
That after marriage too, she never joy'd
In husband's company, but still employ'd
Her wits to 'scape away to Angle-land;
Where liv'd the youth, who worried and annoy'd
Her tender heart, and its warm ardours fann'd
To such a dreadful blaze, her side would scorch her hand.

XIV.
But let us leave this idle tittle-tattle
To waiting-maids, and bed-room coteries,
Nor till fit time against her fame wage battle.
Poor Elfinan is very ill at ease,
Let us resume his subject if you please:
For it may comfort and console him much,
To rhyme and syllable his miseries;
Poor Elfinan! whose cruel fate was such,
He sat and curs'd a bride he knew he could not touch.

XV.
Soon as (according to his promises)
The bridal embassy had taken wing,
And vanish'd, bird-like, o'er the suburb trees,
The Emperor, empierc'd with the sharp sting
Of love, retired, vex'd and murmuring
Like any drone shut from the fair bee-queen,
Into his cabinet, and there did fling
His limbs upon a sofa, full of spleen,
And damn'd his House of Commons, in complete chagrin.

XVI.
"I'll trounce some of the members," cry'd the Prince,
"I'll put a mark against some rebel names,
I'll make the Opposition-benches wince,
I'll show them very soon, to all their shames,
What 'tis to smother up a Prince's flames;
That ministers should join in it, I own,
Surprises me! -- they too at these high games!
Am I an Emperor? Do I wear a crown?
Imperial Elfinan, go hang thyself or drown!

XVII.
"I'll trounce 'em! -- there's the square-cut chancellor,
His son shall never touch that bishopric;
And for the nephew of old Palfior,
I'll show him that his speeches made me sick,
And give the colonelcy to Phalaric;
The tiptoe marquis, mortal and gallant,
Shall lodge in shabby taverns upon tick;
And for the Speaker's second cousin's aunt,
She sha'n't be maid of honour,-- by heaven that she sha'n't!

XVIII.
"I'll shirk the Duke of A.; I'll cut his brother;
I'll give no garter to his eldest son;
I won't speak to his sister or his mother!
The Viscount B. shall live at cut-and-run;
But how in the world can I contrive to stun
That fellow's voice, which plagues me worse than any,
That stubborn fool, that impudent state-dun,
Who sets down ev'ry sovereign as a zany,--
That vulgar commoner, Esquire Biancopany?

XIX.
"Monstrous affair! Pshaw! pah! what ugly minx
Will they fetch from Imaus for my bride?
Alas! my wearied heart within me sinks,
To think that I must be so near ally'd
To a cold dullard fay,--ah, woe betide!
Ah, fairest of all human loveliness!
Sweet Bertha! what crime can it be to glide
About the fragrant plaintings of thy dress,
Or kiss thine eyes, or count thy locks, tress after tress?"

XX.
So said, one minute's while his eyes remaind'
Half lidded, piteous, languid, innocent;
But, in a wink, their splendour they regain'd,
Sparkling revenge with amorous fury blent.
Love thwarted in bad temper oft has vent:
He rose, he stampt his foot, he rang the bell,
And order'd some death-warrants to be sent
For signature: -- somewhere the tempest fell,
As many a poor fellow does not live to tell.

XXI.
"At the same time, Eban," -- (this was his page,
A fay of colour, slave from top to toe,
Sent as a present, while yet under age,
From the Viceroy of Zanguebar, -- wise, slow,
His speech, his only words were "yes" and "no,"
But swift of look, and foot, and wing was he,--)
"At the same time, Eban, this instant go
To Hum the soothsayer, whose name I see
Among the fresh arrivals in our empery.

XXII.
"Bring Hum to me! But stay -- here, take my ring,
The pledge of favour, that he not suspect
Any foul play, or awkward murdering,
Tho' I have bowstrung many of his sect;
Throw in a hint, that if he should neglect
One hour, the next shall see him in my grasp,
And the next after that shall see him neck'd,
Or swallow'd by my hunger-starved asp,--
And mention ('tis as well) the torture of the wasp."

XXIII.
These orders given, the Prince, in half a pet,
Let o'er the silk his propping elbow slide,
Caught up his little legs, and, in a fret,
Fell on the sofa on his royal side.
The slave retreated backwards, humble-ey'd,
And with a slave-like silence clos'd the door,
And to old Hun thro' street and alley hied;
He "knew the city," as we say, of yore,
And for short cuts and turns, was nobody knew more.

XXIV.
It was the time when wholesale dealers close
Their shutters with a moody sense of wealth,
But retail dealers, diligent, let loose
The gas (objected to on score of health),
Convey'd in little solder'd pipes by stealth,
And make it flare in many a brilliant form,
That all the powers of darkness it repell'th,
Which to the oil-trade doth great scaith and harm,
And superseded quite the use of the glow-worm.

XXV.
Eban, untempted by the pastry-cooks,
(Of pastry he got store within the palace,)
With hasty steps, wrapp'd cloak, and solemn looks,
Incognito upon his errand sallies,
His smelling-bottle ready for the allies;
He pass'd the Hurdy-gurdies with disdain,
Vowing he'd have them sent on board the gallies;
Just as he made his vow; it 'gan to rain,
Therefore he call'd a coach, and bade it drive amain.

XXVI.
"I'll pull the string," said he, and further said,
"Polluted Jarvey! Ah, thou filthy hack!
Whose springs of life are all dry'd up and dead,
Whose linsey-woolsey lining hangs all slack,
Whose rug is straw, whose wholeness is a crack;
And evermore thy steps go clatter-clitter;
Whose glass once up can never be got back,
Who prov'st, with jolting arguments and bitter,
That 'tis of modern use to travel in a litter.

XXVII.
"Thou inconvenience! thou hungry crop
For all corn! thou snail-creeper to and fro,
Who while thou goest ever seem'st to stop,
And fiddle-faddle standest while you go;
I' the morning, freighted with a weight of woe,
Unto some lazar-house thou journeyest,
And in the evening tak'st a double row
Of dowdies, for some dance or party drest,
Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west.

XXVIII.
"By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien,
An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge;
Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign,
Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge,
School'd in a beckon, learned in a nudge,
A dull-ey'd Argus watching for a fare;
Quiet and plodding, thou dost bear no grudge
To whisking Tilburies, or Phaetons rare,
Curricles, or Mail-coaches, swift beyond compare."

XXIX.
Philosophizing thus, he pull'd the check,
And bade the Coachman wheel to such a street,
Who, turning much his body, more his neck,
Louted full low, and hoarsely did him greet:
"Certes, Monsieur were best take to his feet,
Seeing his servant can no further drive
For press of coaches, that to-night here meet,
Many as bees about a straw-capp'd hive,
When first for April honey into faint flowers they dive."

XXX.
Eban then paid his fare, and tiptoe went
To Hum's hotel; and, as he on did pass
With head inclin'd, each dusky lineament
Show'd in the pearl-pav'd street, as in a glass;
His purple vest, that ever peeping was
Rich from the fluttering crimson of his cloak,
His silvery trowsers, and his silken sash
Tied in a burnish'd knot, their semblance took
Upon the mirror'd walls, wherever he might look.

XXXI.
He smil'd at self, and, smiling, show'd his teeth,
And seeing his white teeth, he smil'd the more;
Lifted his eye-brows, spurn'd the path beneath,
Show'd teeth again, and smil'd as heretofore,
Until he knock'd at the magician's door;
Where, till the porter answer'd, might be seen,
In the clear panel more he could adore,--
His turban wreath'd of gold, and white, and green,
Mustachios, ear-ring, nose-ring, and his sabre keen.

XXXII.
"Does not your master give a rout to-night?"
Quoth the dark page. "Oh, no!" return'd the Swiss,
"Next door but one to us, upon the right,
The Magazin des Modes now open is
Against the Emperor's wedding;--and, sir, this
My master finds a monstrous horrid bore;
As he retir'd, an hour ago I wis,
With his best beard and brimstone, to explore
And cast a quiet figure in his second floor.

XXXIII.
"Gad! he's oblig'd to stick to business!
For chalk, I hear, stands at a pretty price;
And as for aqua vitae -- there's a mess!
The dentes sapientiae of mice,
Our barber tells me too, are on the rise,--
Tinder's a lighter article, -- nitre pure
Goes off like lightning, -- grains of Paradise
At an enormous figure! -- stars not sure! --
Zodiac will not move without a slight douceur!

XXXIV.
"Venus won't stir a peg without a fee,
And master is too partial, entre nous,
To" -- "Hush -- hush!" cried Eban, "sure that is he
Coming down stairs, -- by St. Bartholomew!
As backwards as he can, -- is't something new?
Or is't his custom, in the name of fun?"
"He always comes down backward, with one shoe"--
Return'd the porter -- "off, and one shoe on,
Like, saving shoe for sock or stocking, my man John!"

XXXV.
It was indeed the great Magician,
Feeling, with careful toe, for every stair,
And retrograding careful as he can,
Backwards and downwards from his own two pair:
"Salpietro!" exclaim'd Hum, "is the dog there?
He's always in my way upon the mat!"
"He's in the kitchen, or the Lord knows where,"--
Reply'd the Swiss, -- "the nasty, yelping brat!"
"Don't beat him!" return'd Hum, and on the floor came pat.

XXXVI.
Then facing right about, he saw the Page,
And said: "Don't tell me what you want, Eban;
The Emperor is now in a huge rage,--
'Tis nine to one he'll give you the rattan!
Let us away!" Away together ran
The plain-dress'd sage and spangled blackamoor,
Nor rested till they stood to cool, and fan,
And breathe themselves at th' Emperor's chamber door,
When Eban thought he heard a soft imperial snore.

XXXVII.
"I thought you guess'd, foretold, or prophesy'd,
That's Majesty was in a raving fit?"
"He dreams," said Hum, "or I have ever lied,
That he is tearing you, sir, bit by bit."
"He's not asleep, and you have little wit,"
Reply'd the page; "that little buzzing noise,
Whate'er your palmistry may make of it,
Comes from a play-thing of the Emperor's choice,
From a Man-Tiger-Organ, prettiest of his toys."

XXXVIII.
Eban then usher'd in the learned Seer:
Elfinan's back was turn'd, but, ne'ertheless,
Both, prostrate on the carpet, ear by ear,
Crept silently, and waited in distress,
Knowing the Emperor's moody bitterness;
Eban especially, who on the floor 'gan
Tremble and quake to death,-- he feared less
A dose of senna-tea or nightmare Gorgon
Than the Emperor when he play'd on his Man-Tiger-Organ.

XXXIX.
They kiss'd nine times the carpet's velvet face
Of glossy silk, soft, smooth, and meadow-green,
Where the close eye in deep rich fur might trace
A silver tissue, scantly to be seen,
As daisies lurk'd in June-grass, buds in green;
Sudden the music ceased, sudden the hand
Of majesty, by dint of passion keen,
Doubled into a common fist, went grand,
And knock'd down three cut glasses, and his best ink-stand.

XL.
Then turning round, he saw those trembling two:
"Eban," said he, "as slaves should taste the fruits
Of diligence, I shall remember you
To-morrow, or next day, as time suits,
In a finger conversation with my mutes,--
Begone! -- for you, Chaldean! here remain!
Fear not, quake not, and as good wine recruits
A conjurer's spirits, what cup will you drain?
Sherry in silver, hock in gold, or glass'd champagne?"

XLI.
"Commander of the faithful!" answer'd Hum,
"In preference to these, I'll merely taste
A thimble-full of old Jamaica rum."
"A simple boon!" said Elfinan; "thou may'st
Have Nantz, with which my morning-coffee's lac'd."
"I'll have a glass of Nantz, then," -- said the Seer,--
"Made racy -- (sure my boldness is misplac'd!)--
With the third part -- (yet that is drinking dear!)--
Of the least drop of crme de citron, crystal clear."

XLII.
"I pledge you, Hum! and pledge my dearest love,
My Bertha!" "Bertha! Bertha!" cry'd the sage,
"I know a many Berthas!" "Mine's above
All Berthas!" sighed the Emperor. "I engage,"
Said Hum, "in duty, and in vassalage,
To mention all the Berthas in the earth;--
There's Bertha Watson, -- and Miss Bertha Page,--
This fam'd for languid eyes, and that for mirth,--
There's Bertha Blount of York, -- and Bertha Knox of Perth."

XLIII.
"You seem to know" -- "I do know," answer'd Hum,
"Your Majesty's in love with some fine girl
Named Bertha; but her surname will not come,
Without a little conjuring." "'Tis Pearl,
'Tis Bertha Pearl! What makes my brain so whirl?
And she is softer, fairer than her name!"
"Where does she live?" ask'd Hum. "Her fair locks curl
So brightly, they put all our fays to shame!--
Live? -- O! at Canterbury, with her old grand-dame."

XLIV.
"Good! good!" cried Hum, "I've known her from a child!
She is a changeling of my management;
She was born at midnight in an Indian wild;
Her mother's screams with the striped tiger's blent,
While the torch-bearing slaves a halloo sent
Into the jungles; and her palanquin,
Rested amid the desert's dreariment,
Shook with her agony, till fair were seen
The little Bertha's eyes ope on the stars serene."

XLV.
"I can't say," said the monarch; "that may be
Just as it happen'd, true or else a bam!
Drink up your brandy, and sit down by me,
Feel, feel my pulse, how much in love I am;
And if your science is not all a sham.
Tell me some means to get the lady here."
"Upon my honour!" said the son of Cham,
"She is my dainty changeling, near and dear,
Although her story sounds at first a little queer."

XLVI.
"Convey her to me, Hum, or by my crown,
My sceptre, and my cross-surmounted globe,
I'll knock you" -- "Does your majesty mean -- down?
No, no, you never could my feelings probe
To such a depth!" The Emperor took his robe,
And wept upon its purple palatine,
While Hum continued, shamming half a sob,--
"In Canterbury doth your lady shine?
But let me cool your brandy with a little wine."

XLVII.
Whereat a narrow Flemish glass he took,
That since belong'd to Admiral De Witt,
Admir'd it with a connoisseuring look,
And with the ripest claret crowned it,
And, ere the lively bead could burst and flit,
He turn'd it quickly, nimbly upside down,
His mouth being held conveniently fit
To catch the treasure: "Best in all the town!"
He said, smack'd his moist lips, and gave a pleasant frown.

XLVIII.
"Ah! good my Prince, weep not!" And then again
He filled a bumper. "Great Sire, do not weep!
Your pulse is shocking, but I'll ease your pain."
"Fetch me that Ottoman, and prithee keep
Your voice low," said the Emperor; "and steep
Some lady's-fingers nice in Candy wine;
And prithee, Hum, behind the screen do peep
For the rose-water vase, magician mine!
And sponge my forehead, -- so my love doth make me pine.

XLIX.
"Ah, cursed Bellanaine!" "Don't think of her,"
Rejoin'd the Mago, "but on Bertha muse;
For, by my choicest best barometer,
You shall not throttled be in marriage noose;
I've said it, Sire; you only have to choose
Bertha or Bellanaine." So saying, he drew
From the left pocket of his threadbare hose,
A sampler hoarded slyly, good as new,
Holding it by his thumb and finger full in view.

L.
"Sire, this is Bertha Pearl's neat handy-work,
Her name, see here, Midsummer, ninety-one."
Elfinan snatch'd it with a sudden jerk,
And wept as if he never would have done,
Honouring with royal tears the poor homespun;
Whereon were broider'd tigers with black eyes,
And long-tail'd pheasants, and a rising sun,
Plenty of posies, great stags, butterflies
Bigger than stags,-- a moon,-- with other mysteries.

LI.
The monarch handled o'er and o'er again
Those day-school hieroglyphics with a sigh;
Somewhat in sadness, but pleas'd in the main,
Till this oracular couplet met his eye
Astounded -- Cupid, I do thee defy!
It was too much. He shrunk back in his chair,
Grew pale as death, and fainted -- very nigh!
"Pho! nonsense!" exclaim'd Hum, "now don't despair;
She does not mean it really. Cheer up, hearty -- there!

LII.
"And listen to my words. You say you won't,
On any terms, marry Miss Bellanaine;
It goes against your conscience -- good! Well, don't.
You say you love a mortal. I would fain
Persuade your honour's highness to refrain
From peccadilloes. But, Sire, as I say,
What good would that do? And, to be more plain,
You would do me a mischief some odd day,
Cut off my ears and limbs, or head too, by my fay!

LIII.
"Besides, manners forbid that I should pass any
Vile strictures on the conduct of a prince
Who should indulge his genius, if he has any,
Not, like a subject, foolish matters mince.
Now I think on't, perhaps I could convince
Your Majesty there is no crime at all
In loving pretty little Bertha, since
She's very delicate,-- not over tall, --
A fairy's hand, and in the waist why -- very small."

LIV.
"Ring the repeater, gentle Hum!" "'Tis five,"
Said the gentle Hum; "the nights draw in apace;
The little birds I hear are all alive;
I see the dawning touch'd upon your face;
Shall I put out the candles, please your Grace?"
"Do put them out, and, without more ado,
Tell me how I may that sweet girl embrace,--
How you can bring her to me." "That's for you,
Great Emperor! to adventure, like a lover true."

LV.
"I fetch her!" -- "Yes, an't like your Majesty;
And as she would be frighten'd wide awake
To travel such a distance through the sky,
Use of some soft manoeuvre you must make,
For your convenience, and her dear nerves' sake;
Nice way would be to bring her in a swoon,
Anon, I'll tell what course were best to take;
You must away this morning." "Hum! so soon?"
"Sire, you must be in Kent by twelve o'clock at noon."

LVI.
At this great Caesar started on his feet,
Lifted his wings, and stood attentive-wise.
"Those wings to Canterbury you must beat,
If you hold Bertha as a worthy prize.
Look in the Almanack -- Moore never lies --
April the twenty- fourth, -- this coming day,
Now breathing its new bloom upon the skies,
Will end in St. Mark's Eve; -- you must away,
For on that eve alone can you the maid convey."

LVII.
Then the magician solemnly 'gan to frown,
So that his frost-white eyebrows, beetling low,
Shaded his deep green eyes, and wrinkles brown
Plaited upon his furnace-scorched brow:
Forth from his hood that hung his neck below,
He lifted a bright casket of pure gold,
Touch'd a spring-lock, and there in wool or snow,
Charm'd into ever freezing, lay an old
And legend-leaved book, mysterious to behold.

LVIII.
"Take this same book,-- it will not bite you, Sire;
There, put it underneath your royal arm;
Though it's a pretty weight it will not tire,
But rather on your journey keep you warm:
This is the magic, this the potent charm,
That shall drive Bertha to a fainting fit!
When the time comes, don't feel the least alarm,
But lift her from the ground, and swiftly flit
Back to your palace. * * * * * * * * * *

LIX.
"What shall I do with that same book?" "Why merely
Lay it on Bertha's table, close beside
Her work-box, and 'twill help your purpose dearly;
I say no more." "Or good or ill betide,
Through the wide air to Kent this morn I glide!"
Exclaim'd the Emperor. "When I return,
Ask what you will, -- I'll give you my new bride!
And take some more wine, Hum; -- O Heavens! I burn
To be upon the wing! Now, now, that minx I spurn!"

LX.
"Leave her to me," rejoin'd the magian:
"But how shall I account, illustrious fay!
For thine imperial absence? Pho! I can
Say you are very sick, and bar the way
To your so loving courtiers for one day;
If either of their two archbishops' graces
Should talk of extreme unction, I shall say
You do not like cold pig with Latin phrases,
Which never should be used but in alarming cases."

LXI.
"Open the window, Hum; I'm ready now!"
Zooks!" exclaim'd Hum, as up the sash he drew.
"Behold, your Majesty, upon the brow
Of yonder hill, what crowds of people!" "Whew!
The monster's always after something new,"
Return'd his Highness, "they are piping hot
To see my pigsney Bellanaine. Hum! do
Tighten my belt a little, -- so, so, -- not
Too tight, -- the book! -- my wand! -- so, nothing is forgot."

LXII.
"Wounds! how they shout!" said Hum, "and there, -- see, see!
Th' ambassador's return'd from Pigmio!
The morning's very fine, -- uncommonly!
See, past the skirts of yon white cloud they go,
Tinging it with soft crimsons! Now below
The sable-pointed heads of firs and pines
They dip, move on, and with them moves a glow
Along the forest side! Now amber lines
Reach the hill top, and now throughout the valley shines."

LXIII.
"Why, Hum, you're getting quite poetical!
Those 'nows' you managed in a special style."
"If ever you have leisure, Sire, you shall
See scraps of mine will make it worth your while,
Tid-bits for Phoebus! -- yes, you well may smile.
Hark! hark! the bells!" "A little further yet,
Good Hum, and let me view this mighty coil."
Then the great Emperor full graceful set
His elbow for a prop, and snuff'd his mignonnette.

LXIV.
The morn is full of holiday; loud bells
With rival clamours ring from every spire;
Cunningly-station'd music dies and swells
In echoing places; when the winds respire,
Light flags stream out like gauzy tongues of fire;
A metropolitan murmur, lifeful, warm,
Comes from the northern suburbs; rich attire
Freckles with red and gold the moving swarm;
While here and there clear trumpets blow a keen alarm.

LXV.
And now the fairy escort was seen clear,
Like the old pageant of Aurora's train,
Above a pearl-built minister, hovering near;
First wily Crafticant, the chamberlain,
Balanc'd upon his grey-grown pinions twain,
His slender wand officially reveal'd;
Then black gnomes scattering sixpences like rain;
Then pages three and three; and next, slave-held,
The Imaian 'scutcheon bright, -- one mouse in argent field.

LXVI.
Gentlemen pensioners next; and after them,
A troop of winged Janizaries flew;
Then slaves, as presents bearing many a gem;
Then twelve physicians fluttering two and two;
And next a chaplain in a cassock new;
Then Lords in waiting; then (what head not reels
For pleasure?) -- the fair Princess in full view,
Borne upon wings, -- and very pleas'd she feels
To have such splendour dance attendance at her heels.

LXVII.
For there was more magnificence behind:
She wav'd her handkerchief. "Ah, very grand!"
Cry'd Elfinan, and clos'd the window-blind;
"And, Hum, we must not shilly-shally stand,--
Adieu! adieu! I'm off for Angle-land!
I say, old Hocus, have you such a thing
About you, -- feel your pockets, I command,--
I want, this instant, an invisible ring,--
Thank you, old mummy! -- now securely I take wing."

LXVIII.
Then Elfinan swift vaulted from the floor,
And lighted graceful on the window-sill;
Under one arm the magic book he bore,
The other he could wave about at will;
Pale was his face, he still look'd very ill;
He bow'd at Bellanaine, and said -- "Poor Bell!
Farewell! farewell! and if for ever! still
For ever fare thee well!" -- and then he fell
A laughing! -- snapp'd his fingers! -- shame it is to tell!

LXIX.
"By'r Lady! he is gone!" cries Hum, "and I --
(I own it) -- have made too free with his wine;
Old Crafticant will smoke me. By-the-bye!
This room is full of jewels as a mine,--
Dear valuable creatures, how ye shine!
Sometime to-day I must contrive a minute,
If Mercury propitiously incline,
To examine his scutoire, and see what's in i,
For of superfluous diamonds I as well may thin it.

LXX.
"The Emperor's horrid bad; yes, that's my cue!"
Some histories say that this was Hum's last speech;
That, being fuddled, he went reeling through
The corridor, and scarce upright could reach
The stair-head; that being glutted as a leech,
And us'd, as we ourselves have just now said,
To manage stairs reversely, like a peach
Too ripe, he fell, being puzzled in his head
With liquor and the staircase: verdict -- found stone dead.

LXXI.
This as a falsehood Crafticanto treats;
And as his style is of strange elegance,
Gentle and tender, full of soft conceits,
(Much like our Boswell's,) we will take a glance
At his sweet prose, and, if we can, make dance
His woven periods into careless rhyme;
O, little faery Pegasus! rear -- prance --
Trot round the quarto -- ordinary time!
March, little Pegasus, with pawing hoof sublime!

LXXII.
Well, let us see, -- tenth book and chapter nine,--
Thus Crafticant pursues his diary:--
"'Twas twelve o'clock at night, the weather fine,
Latitude thirty-six; our scouts descry
A flight of starlings making rapidly
Towards Thibet. Mem.: -- birds fly in the night;
From twelve to half-past -- wings not fit to fly
For a thick fog -- the Princess sulky quite;
Call'd for an extra shawl, and gave her nurse a bite.

LXXIII.
"Five minutes before one -- brought down a moth
With my new double-barrel -- stew'd the thighs
And made a very tolerable broth --
Princess turn'd dainty, to our great surprise,
Alter'd her mind, and thought it very nice;
Seeing her pleasant, try'd her with a pun,
She frown'd; a monstrous owl across us flies
About this time, -- a sad old figure of fun;
Bad omen -- this new match can't be a happy one.

LXXIV.
"From two to half-past, dusky way we made,
Above the plains of Gobi, -- desert, bleak;
Beheld afar off, in the hooded shade
Of darkness, a great mountain (strange to speak),
Spitting, from forth its sulphur-baken peak,
A fan-shap'd burst of blood-red, arrowy fire,
Turban'd with smoke, which still away did reek,
Solid and black from that eternal pyre,
Upon the laden winds that scantly could respire.

LXXV.
"Just upon three o'clock a falling star
Created an alarm among our troop,
Kill'd a man-cook, a page, and broke a jar,
A tureen, and three dishes, at one swoop,
Then passing by the princess, singed her hoop:
Could not conceive what Coralline was at,
She clapp'd her hands three times and cry'd out 'Whoop!'
Some strange Imaian custom. A large bat
Came sudden 'fore my face, and brush'd against my hat.

LXXVI.
"Five minutes thirteen seconds after three,
Far in the west a mighty fire broke out,
Conjectur'd, on the instant, it might be,
The city of Balk -- 'twas Balk beyond all doubt:
A griffin, wheeling here and there about,
Kept reconnoitring us -- doubled our guard --
Lighted our torches, and kept up a shout,
Till he sheer'd off -- the Princess very scar'd --
And many on their marrow-bones for death prepar'd.

LXXVII.
"At half-past three arose the cheerful moon--
Bivouack'd for four minutes on a cloud --
Where from the earth we heard a lively tune
Of tambourines and pipes, serene and loud,
While on a flowery lawn a brilliant crowd
Cinque-parted danc'd, some half asleep reposed
Beneath the green-fan'd cedars, some did shroud
In silken tents, and 'mid light fragrance dozed,
Or on the opera turf their soothed eyelids closed.

LXXVIII.
"Dropp'd my gold watch, and kill'd a kettledrum--
It went for apoplexy -- foolish folks! --
Left it to pay the piper -- a good sum --
(I've got a conscience, maugre people's jokes,)
To scrape a little favour; 'gan to coax
Her Highness' pug-dog -- got a sharp rebuff --
She wish'd a game at whist -- made three revokes --
Turn'd from myself, her partner, in a huff;
His majesty will know her temper time enough.

LXXIX.
"She cry'd for chess -- I play'd a game with her --
Castled her king with such a vixen look,
It bodes ill to his Majesty -- (refer
To the second chapter of my fortieth book,
And see what hoity-toity airs she took).
At half-past four the morn essay'd to beam --
Saluted, as we pass'd, an early rook --
The Princess fell asleep, and, in her dream,
Talk'd of one Master Hubert, deep in her esteem.

LXXX.
"About this time, -- making delightful way,--
Shed a quill-feather from my larboard wing --
Wish'd, trusted, hop'd 'twas no sign of decay --
Thank heaven, I'm hearty yet! -- 'twas no such thing:--
At five the golden light began to spring,
With fiery shudder through the bloomed east;
At six we heard Panthea's churches ring --
The city wall his unhiv'd swarms had cast,
To watch our grand approach, and hail us as we pass'd.

LXXXI.
"As flowers turn their faces to the sun,
So on our flight with hungry eyes they gaze,
And, as we shap'd our course, this, that way run,
With mad-cap pleasure, or hand-clasp'd amaze;
Sweet in the air a mild-ton'd music plays,
And progresses through its own labyrinth;
Buds gather'd from the green spring's middle-days,
They scatter'd, -- daisy, primrose, hyacinth,--
Or round white columns wreath'd from capital to plinth.

LXXXII.
"Onward we floated o'er the panting streets,
That seem'd throughout with upheld faces paved;
Look where we will, our bird's-eye vision meets
Legions of holiday; bright standards waved,
And fluttering ensigns emulously craved
Our minute's glance; a busy thunderous roar,
From square to square, among the buildings raved,
As when the sea, at flow, gluts up once more
The craggy hollowness of a wild reefed shore.

LXXXIII.
"And 'Bellanaine for ever!' shouted they,
While that fair Princess, from her winged chair,
Bow'd low with high demeanour, and, to pay
Their new-blown loyalty with guerdon fair,
Still emptied at meet distance, here and there,
A plenty horn of jewels. And here I
(Who wish to give the devil her due) declare
Against that ugly piece of calumny,
Which calls them Highland pebble-stones not worth a fly.

LXXXIV.
"Still 'Bellanaine!' they shouted, while we glide
'Slant to a light Ionic portico,
The city's delicacy, and the pride
Of our Imperial Basilic; a row
Of lords and ladies, on each hand, make show
Submissive of knee-bent obeisance,
All down the steps; and, as we enter'd, lo!
The strangest sight -- the most unlook'd for chance --
All things turn'd topsy-turvy in a devil's dance.

LXXXV.
"'Stead of his anxious Majesty and court
At the open doors, with wide saluting eyes,
Conges and scrape-graces of every sort,
And all the smooth routine of gallantries,
Was seen, to our immoderate surprise,
A motley crowd thick gather'd in the hall,
Lords, scullions, deputy-scullions, with wild cries
Stunning the vestibule from wall to wall,
Where the Chief Justice on his knees and hands doth crawl.

LXXXVI.
"Counts of the palace, and the state purveyor
Of moth's-down, to make soft the royal beds,
The Common Council and my fool Lord Mayor
Marching a-row, each other slipshod treads;
Powder'd bag-wigs and ruffy-tuffy heads
Of cinder wenches meet and soil each other;
Toe crush'd with heel ill-natur'd fighting breeds,
Frill-rumpling elbows brew up many a bother,
And fists in the short ribs keep up the yell and pother.

LXXXVII.
"A Poet, mounted on the Court-Clown's back,
Rode to the Princess swift with spurring heels,
And close into her face, with rhyming clack,
Began a Prothalamion; -- she reels,
She falls, she faints! while laughter peels
Over her woman's weakness. 'Where!' cry'd I,
'Where is his Majesty?' No person feels
Inclin'd to answer; wherefore instantly
I plung'd into the crowd to find him or die.

LXXXVIII.
"Jostling my way I gain'd the stairs, and ran
To the first landing, where, incredible!
I met, far gone in liquor, that old man,
That vile impostor Hum. ----"
So far so well,--
For we have prov'd the Mago never fell
Down stairs on Crafticanto's evidence;
And therefore duly shall proceed to tell,
Plain in our own original mood and tense,
The sequel of this day, though labour 'tis immense!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
'Lord Houghton first gave this composition in the Life, Letters &c. (1848), and in Volume II, page 51, refers to it as "the last of Keats's literary labours." The poet says in a letter to Brown, written after the first attack of blood-spitting,
"I shall soon begin upon 'Lucy Vaughan Lloyd.' I do not begin composition yet, being willing, in case of a relapse, to have nothing to reproach myself with."
I presume, therefore, that the composition may be assigned to the Spring or Summer of 1820. In August of that year, Leigh Hunt seems to have had the manuscript in his hands, for, in the first part of his article on Coaches, which fills The Indicator for the 23rd of August 1820, he quotes four stanzas and four lines from the poem, as by "a very good poetess, of the name of Lucy V---- L----, who has favoured us with a sight of a manuscript poem," &c. The stanzas quoted are XXV to XXIX. Lord Houghton gives, in the Aldine Edition of 1876, the following note by Brown: --
"This Poem was written subject to future amendments and omissions: it was begun without a plan, and without any prescribed laws for the supernatural machinery."

His Lordship adds an interesting passage from a letter written to him by Lord Jeffrey: --
"There are beautiful passages and lines of ineffable sweetness in these minor pieces, and strange outbursts of individual fancy and felicitous expressions in the 'Cap and Bells,' though the general extravagance of the poetry is more suited to an Italian than to an English taste."
The late Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote to me of this poem as "the only unworthy stuff Keats ever wrote except an early trifle or two," and again as "the to me hateful Cap and Bells." I confess that it seems to me entirely unworthy of Keats, though certainly a proof, if proof were needed, of his versatility. It has the character of a mere intellectual and mechanical exercise, performed at a time when those higher forces constituting the mainspring of poetry were exhausted; but even so I find it difficult to figure Keats as doing anything so aimless as this appears when regarded solely as an effort of the fancy. He probably had a satirical under-current of meaning; and it needs no great stretch of the imagination to see the illicit passion of Emperor Elfinan, and his detestation for his authorized bride-elect, an oblique glance at the martial relations of George IV.
It is not difficult to suggest prototypes for many of the faery-land statesmen against whom Elfinan vows vengeance; and there are many particulars in which earthly incidents are too thickly strewn to leave one in the settled belief that the poet's programme was wholly unearthly.--- H. B. F.'
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, The Cap And Bells; Or, The Jealousies - A Faery Tale .. Unfinished
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290:Custer
BOOK FIRST.
I.
ALL valor died not on the plains of Troy.
Awake, my Muse, awake! be thine the joy
To sing of deeds as dauntless and as brave
As e'er lent luster to a warrior's grave.
Sing of that noble soldier, nobler man,
Dear to the heart of each American.
Sound forth his praise from sea to listening seaGreece her Achilles claimed, immortal Custer, we.
II.
Intrepid are earth's heroes now as when
The gods came down to measure strength with men.
Let danger threaten or let duty call,
And self surrenders to the needs of all;
Incurs vast perils, or, to save those dear,
Embraces death without one sigh or tear.
Life's martyrs still the endless drama play
Though no great Homer lives to chant their worth to-day.
III.
And if he chanted, who would list his songs,
So hurried now the world's gold-seeking throngs?
And yet shall silence mantle mighty deeds?
Awake, dear Muse, and sing though no ear heeds!
Extol the triumphs, and bemoan the end
Of that true hero, lover, son and friend
Whose faithful heart in his last choice was shownDeath with the comrades dear, refusing flight alone.
IV.
He who was born for battle and for strife
Like some caged eagle frets in peaceful life;
152
So Custer fretted when detained afar
From scenes of stirring action and of war.
And as the captive eagle in delight,
When freedom offers, plumes himself for flight
And soars away to thunder clouds on high,
With palpitating wings and wild exultant cry,
V.
So lion-hearted Custer sprang to arms,
And gloried in the conflict's loud alarms.
But one dark shadow marred his bounding joy;
And then the soldier vanished, and the boy,
The tender son, clung close, with sobbing breath,
To her from whom each parting was new death;
That mother who like goddesses of old,
Gave to the mighty Mars, three warriors brave and bold,
VI.
Yet who, unlike those martial dames of yore,
Grew pale and shuddered at the sight of gore.
A fragile being, born to grace the hearth,
Untroubled by the conflicts of the earth.
Some gentle dove who reared young eaglets, might,
In watching those bold birdlings take their flight,
Feel what that mother felt who saw her sons
Rush from her loving arms, to face death-dealing guns.
VII.
But ere thy lyre is strung to martial strains
Of wars which sent our hero o'er the plains,
To add the cypress to his laureled brow,
Be brave, my Muse, and darker truths avow.
Let Justice ask a preface to thy songs,
Before the Indian's crimes declare his wrongs;
Before effects, wherein all horrors blend,
Declare the shameful cause, precursor of the end.
VIII.
153
When first this soil the great Columbus trod,
He was less like the image of his God
Than those ingenuous souls, unspoiled by art,
Who lived so near to Mother Nature's heart;
Those simple children of the wood and wave,
As frank as trusting, and as true as brave;
Savage they were, when on some hostile raid
(For where is he so high, whom war does not degrade?) .
IX.
But dark deceit and falsehood's shameless shame
They had not learned, until the white man came.
He taught them, too, the lurking devil's joy
In liquid lies, that lure but to destroy.
With wily words, as false as they were sweet,
He spread his snares for unsuspecting feet;
Paid truth with guile, and trampled in the dust
Their gentle childlike faith and unaffected trust.
X.
And for the sport of idle kings and knaves
Of Nature's greater noblemen, made slaves.
Alas, the hour, when the wronged Indian knows
His seeming benefactors are but foes.
His kinsmen kidnapped and his lands possessed,
The demon woke in that untutored breast.
Four hundred years have rolled upon their wayThe ruthless demon rules the red man to this day.
XI.
If, in the morning of success, that grand
Invincible discoverer of our land
Had made no lodge or wigwam desolate
To carry trophies to the proud and great;
If on our history's page there were no blot
Left by the cruel rapine of Cabot,
Of Verrazin, and Hudson, dare we claim
The Indian of the plains, to-day had been same?
154
XII.
For in this brief existence, not alone
Do our lives gather what our hands have sown,
But we reap, too, what others long ago
Sowed, careless of the harvests that might grow.
Thus hour by hour the humblest human souls
Inscribe in cipher on unending scrolls,
The history of nations yet to be;
Incite fierce bloody wars, to rage from sea to sea,
XIII.
Or pave the way to peace. There is no past,
So deathless are events-results so vast.
And he who strives to make one act or hour
Stand separate and alone, needs first the power
To look upon the breaking wave and say,
'These drops were bosomed by a cloud to-day,
And those from far mid-ocean's crest were sent.'
So future, present, past, in one wide sea are blent.
BOOK SECOND.
I.
Oh, for the power to call to aid, of mine
Own humble Muse, the famed and sacred nine.
Then might she fitly sing, and only then,
Of those intrepid and unflinching men
Who knew no homes save ever moving tents,
And who 'twixt fierce unfriendly elements
And wild barbarians warred. Yet unfraid,
Since love impels thy strains, sing, sing, my modest maid.
II.
Relate how Custer in midwinter sought
Far Washita's cold shores; tell why he fought
With savage nomads fortressed in deep snows.
Woman, thou source of half the sad world's woes
155
And all its joys, what sanguinary strife
Has vexed the earth and made contention rife
Because of thee! For, hidden in man's heart,
Ay, in his very soul, of his true self a part,
III.
The natural impulse and the wish belongs
To win thy favor and redress thy wrongs.
Alas! for woman, and for man, alas!
If that dread hour should ever come to pass,
When, through her new-born passion for control,
She drives that beauteous impulse from his soul.
What were her vaunted independence worth
If to obtain she sells her sweetest rights of birth?
IV.
God formed fair woman for her true estateMan's tender comrade, and his equal mate,
Not his competitor in toil and trade.
While coarser man, with greater strength was made
To fight her battles and her rights protect.
Ay! to protect the rights of earth's elect
(The virgin maiden and the spotless wife)
From immemorial time has man laid down his life.
V.
And now brave Custer's valiant army pressed
Across the dangerous desert of the West,
To rescue fair white captives from the hands
Of brutal Cheyenne and Comanche bands,
On Washita's bleak banks. Nine hundred strong
It moved its slow determined way along,
Past frontier homes left dark and desolate
By the wild Indians' fierce and unrelenting hate;
VI.
Past forts where ranchmen, strong of heart and bold,
Wept now like orphaned children as they told,
156
With quivering muscles and with anguished breath,
Of captured wives, whose fate was worse than death;
Past naked bodies whose disfiguring wounds
Spoke of the hellish hate of human hounds;
Past bleaching skeleton and rifled grave,
On pressed th' avenging host, to rescue and to save.
VII.
Uncertain Nature, like a fickle friend,
(Worse than the foe on whom we may depend)
Turned on these dauntless souls a brow of wrath
And hurled her icy jav'lins in their path.
With treacherous quicksands, and with storms that blight,
Entrapped their footsteps and confused their sight.
'Yet on, ' urged Custer, 'on at any cost,
No hour is there to waste, no moment to be lost.'
VIII.
Determined, silent, on they rode, and on,
Like fabled Centaurs, men and steeds seemed one.
No bugle echoed and no voice spoke near,
Lest on some lurking Indian's list'ning ear
The sound might fall. Through swift descending snow
The stealthy guides crept, tracing out the foe;
No fire was lighted, and no halt was made
From haggard gray-lipped dawn till night lent friendly shade.
IX.
Then, by the shelt'ring river's bank at last,
The weary warriors paused for their repast.
A couch of ice and falling shows for spread
Made many a suffering soldier's chilling bed.
They slept to dream of glory and delight,
While the pale fingers of the pitying night
Wove ghostly winding sheets for that doomed score
Who, ere another eve, should sleep to wake no more.
X.
157
But those who slept not, saw with startled eyes
Far off, athwart dim unprotecting skies,
Ascending slowly with majestic grace,
A lustrous rocket, rising out of space.
'Behold the signal of the foe, ' cried one,
The field is lost before the strife's begun.
Yet no! for see! yon rays spread near and far;
It is the day's first smile, the radiant morning star.
XI.
The long hours counting till the daylight broke,
In whispered words the restless warriors spoke.
They talked of battles, but they thought of home
(For hearts are faithful though the feet may roam) .
Brave Hamilton, all eager for the strife,
Mused o'er that two-fold mystery-death and life;
'And when I die, ' quoth he, ' mine be the part
To fall upon the field, a bullet in my heart.'
XII.
At break of dawn the scouts crept in to say
The foe was camped a rifle shot away.
The baying of a dog, an infant's cry
Pierced through the air; sleep fled from every eye.
To horse! to arms! the dead demand the dead!
Let the grand charge upon the lodge be led!
Let the Mosaic law, life for a life
Pay the long standing debt of blood. War to the knife!
XIII.
So spake each heart in that unholy rage
Which fires the brain, when war the thoughts engage.
War, hideous war, appealing to the worst
In complex man, and waking that wild thirst
For human blood which blood alone can slake.
Yet for their country's safety, and the sake
Of tortured captives moaning in alarm
The Indian must be made to fear the law's strong arm.
158
XIV.
A noble vengeance burned in Custer's breast,
But, as he led his army to the crest,
Above the wigwams, ready for the charge
He felt the heart within him, swelling large
With human pity, as an infant's wail
Shrilled once again above the wintry gale.
Then hosts of murdered children seemed to rise;
And shame his halting thought with sad accusing eyes,
XV.
And urge him on to action. Stern of brow
The just avenger, and the General now,
He gives the silent signal to the band
Which, all impatient, waits for his command.
Cold lips to colder metal press; the air
Echoes those merry strains which mean despair
For sleeping chieftain and for toiling squaw,
But joy to those stern hearts which glory in the law
XVI.
Of murder paying murder's awful debt.
And now four squadrons in one charge are met.
From east and west, from north and south they come,
At call of bugle and at roll of drum.
Their rifles rain hot hail upon the foe,
Who flee from danger in death's jaws to go.
The Indians fight like maddened bulls at bay,
And dying shriek and groan, wound the young ear of day.
XVII.
A pallid captive and a white-browed boy
Add to the tumult piercing cries of joy,
As forth they fly, with high hope animate.
159
A hideous squaw pursues them with her hate;
Her knife descends with sickening force and sound;
Their bloody entrails stain the snow-clad ground.
She shouts with glee, then yells with rage and falls
Dead by her victims' side, pierced by avenging balls.
XVIII.
Now war runs riot, carnage reigns supreme.
All thoughts of mercy fade from Custer's scheme.
Inhuman methods for inhuman foes,
Who feed on horrors and exult in woes.
To conquer and subdue alone remains
In dealing with the red man on the plains.
The breast that knows no conscience yields to fear,
Strike! let the Indian meet his master now and here,
XIX.
With thoughts like these was Custer's mind engaged.
The gentlest are the sternest when enraged.
All felt the swift contagion of his ire,
For he was one who could arouse and fire
The coldest heart, so ardent was his own.
His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone,
Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power,
Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower.
XX.
Again they charge! and now among the killed
Lies Hamilton, his wish so soon fulfilled,
Brave Elliott pursues across the field
The flying foe, his own young life to yield.
But like the leaves in some autumnal gale
The red men fall in Washita's wild vale.
Each painted face and black befeathered head
Still more repulsive seems with death's grim pallor wed.
160
XXI.
New forces gather on surrounding knolls,
And fierce and fiercer war's red river rolls.
With bright-hued pennants flying from each lance
The gayly costumed Kiowas advance.
And bold Comanches (Bedouins of the land)
Infuse fresh spirit in the Cheyenne band.
While from the ambush of some dark ravine
Flash arrows aimed by hands, unerring and unseen.
XXIII.
The hours advance; the storm clouds roll away;
Still furious and more furious grows the fray.
The yellow sun makes ghastlier still the sight
Of painted corpses, staring in its light.
No longer slaves, but comrades of their griefs,
The squaws augment the forces of their chiefs.
They chant weird dirges in a minor key,
While from the narrow door of wigwam and tepee
XXIII.
Cold glittering eyes above cold glittering steel
Their deadly purpose and their hate reveal.
The click of pistols and the crack of guns
Proclaim war's daughters dangerous as her sons.
She who would wield the soldier's sword and lance
Must be prepared to take the soldier's chance.
She who would shoot must serve as target, too;
The battle-frenzied men, infuriate now pursue.
XXIV.
And blood of warrior, woman and papoose,
Flow free as waters when some dam breaks loose;
Consuming fire, the wanton friend of war
(Whom allies worship and whom foes abhor)
161
Now trails her crimson garments through the street,
And ruin marks the passing of her feet.
Full three-score lodges smoke upon the plain,
And all the vale is strewn with bodies of the slain.
XXV.
And those who are not numbered with the dead
Before all-conquering Custer now are led.
To soothe their woes, and calm their fears he seeks;
An Osage guide interprets while he speaks.
The vanquished captives, humbled, cowed and spent
Read in the victor's eye his kind intent.
The modern victor is as kind as brave;
His captive is his guest, not his insulted slave.
XXVI.
Mahwissa, sister of the slaughtered chief
Of all the Cheyennes, listens; and her grief
Yields now to hope; and o'er her withered face
There flits the stealthy cunning of her race.
Then forth she steps, and thus begins to speak:
'To aid the fallen and support the weak
Is man's true province; and to ease the pain
Of those o'er whom it is his purpose now to reign.
XXVII.
'Let the strong chief unite with theirs his life,
And take this black-eyed maiden for a wife.'
Then, moving with an air of proud command,
She leads a dusky damsel by the hand,
And places her at wondering Custer's side,
Invoking choicest blessings on the bride
And all unwilling groom, who thus replies.
'Fair is the Indian maid, with bright bewildering eyes,
162
XXVIII.
'But fairer still is one who, year on year,
Has borne man's burdens, conquered woman's fear;
And at my side rode mile on weary mile,
And faced all deaths, all dangers, with a smile,
Wise as Minerva, as Diana brave,
Is she whom generous gods in kindness gave
To share the hardships of my wandering life,
Companion, comrade, friend, my loved and loyal wife.
XXIX.
'The white chief weds but one. Take back thy maid.'
He ceased, and o'er Mahwissa's face a shade
Of mingled scorn and pity and surprise
Sweeps as she slow retreats, and thus replies:
'Rich is the pale-faced chief in battle fame,
But poor is he who but one wife may claim.
Wives are the red-skinned heroes' rightful spoil;
In war they prove his strength, in times of peace they toil.'
XXX.
But hark! The bugle echoes o'er the plains
And sounds again those merry Celtic strains
Which oft have called light feet to lilting dance,
But now they mean the order to advance.
Along the river's bank, beyond the hill
Two thousand foemen lodge, unconquered still.
Ere falls night's curtain on this bloody play,
The army must proceed, with feint of further fray.
XXXI.
The weary warriors mount their foam-flecked steeds,
With flags unfurled the dauntless host proceeds.
What though the foe outnumbers two to one?
Boldness achieves what strength oft leaves undone;
A daring mein will cause brute force to cower,
163
And courage is the secret source of power.
As Custer's column wheels upon their sight
The frightened red men yield the untried field by flight.
XXXII.
Yet when these conquering heroes sink to rest,
Dissatisfaction gnaws the leader's breast,
For far away across vast seas of snows
Held prisoners still by hostile Arapahoes
And Cheyennes unsubdued, two captives wait.
On God and Custer hangs their future fate.
May the Great Spirit nerve the mortal's arm
To rescue suffering souls from worse than death's alarm.
XXXIII.
But ere they seek to rescue the oppressed,
The valiant dead, in state, are laid to rest.
Mourned Hamilton, the faithful and the brave,
Nine hundred comrades follow to the grave;
And close behind the banner-hidden corse
All draped in black, walks mournfully his horse;
While tears of sound drip through the sunlit day.
A soldier may not weep, but drums and bugles may.
XXXIV.
Now, Muse, recount, how after long delays
And dangerous marches through untrodden ways,
Where cold and hunger on each hour attend,
At last the army gains the journey's end.
An Indian village bursts upon the eye;
Two hundred lodges, sleep-encompassed lie,
There captives moan their anguished prayers through tears,
While in the silent dawn the armied answer nears.
XXXV.
164
To snatch two fragile victims from the foe
Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow.
Each woe they suffered in a hostile land
The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned.
They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait
To wrest the captives from their horrid fate.
Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls,
Each savage soldier's heart for awful bloodshed calls.
XXXVI.
And one, in years a youth, in woe a man,
Sad Brewster, scarred by sorrow's blighting ban,
Looks, panting, where his captive sister sleeps,
And o'er his face the shade of murder creeps.
His nostrils quiver like a hungry beast
Who scents anear the bloody carnal feast.
He longs to leap down in that slumbering vale
And leave no foe alive to tell the awful tale.
XXXVII.
Not so, calm Custer. Sick of gory strife,
He hopes for rescue with no loss of life;
And plans that bloodless battle of the plains
Where reasoning mind outwits mere savage brains.
The sullen soldiers follow where he leads;
No gun is emptied, and no foeman bleeds.
Fierce for the fight and eager for the fray
They look upon their Chief in undisguised dismay.
XXXVIII.
He hears the murmur of their discontent,
But sneers can never change a strong mind's bent.
He knows his purpose and he does not swerve,
And with a quiet mien and steady nerve
He meets dark looks where'er his steps may go,
And silence that is bruising as a blow,
165
Where late were smiles and words of ardent praise.
So pass the lagging weeks of wearying delays.
XXXIX.
Inaction is not always what it seems,
And Custer's mind with plan and project teems.
Fixed in his peaceful purpose he abides
With none takes counsel and in none confides;
But slowly weaves about the foe a net
Which leaves them wholly at his mercy, yet
He strikes no fateful blow; he takes no life,
And holds in check his men, who pant for bloody strife.
XL.
Intrepid warrior and skilled diplomate,
In his strong hands he holds the red man's fate.
The craftiest plot he checks with counterplot,
Till tribe by tribe the tricky foe is brought
To fear his vengeance and to know his power.
As man's fixed gaze will make a wild beast cower,
So these crude souls feel that unflinching will
Which draws them by its force, yet does not deign to kill.
XLI.
And one by one the hostile Indians send
Their chiefs to seek a peaceful treaty's end.
Great councils follow; skill with cunning copes
And conquers it; and Custer sees his hopes
So long delayed, like stars storm hidden, rise
To radiate with splendor all his skies.
The stubborn Cheyennes, cowed at last by fear,
Leading the captive pair, o'er spring-touched hills appear.
XLII.
166
With breath suspended, now the whole command
Waits the approach of that equestrian band.
Nearer it comes, still nearer, then a cry,
Half sob, half shriek, goes piercing God's blue sky,
And Brewster, like a nimble-footed doe,
Or like an arrow hurrying from a bow,
Shoots swiftly through the intervening space
And that lost sister clasps, in sorrowing love's embrace.
XLIII.
And men who leaned o'er Hamilton's rude bier
And saw his dead dear face without a tear,
Strong souls who early learned the manly art
Of keeping from the eye what's in the heart,
Soldiers who look unmoved on death's pale brow,
Avert their eyes, to hide their moisture now.
The briny flood forced back from shores of woe,
Needs but to touch the strands of joy to overflow.
XLIV.
About the captives welcoming warriors crowd,
All eyes are wet, and Brewster sobs aloud.
Alas, the ravage wrought by toil and woe
On faces that were fair twelve moons ago.
Bronzed by exposure to the heat and cold,
Still young in years, yet prematurely old,
By insults humbled and by labor worn,
They stand in youth's bright hour, of all youth's graces shorn.
XLV.
A scanty garment rudely made of sacks
Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs;
About their necks are twisted tangled strings
Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings
Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow.
Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe
The cunning Indians decked the captive pair
167
Who in one year have known a lifetime of despair.
XLVI.
But love can resurrect from sorrow's tomb
The vanished beauty and the faded bloom,
As sunlight lifts the bruised flower from the sod,
Can lift crushed hearts to hope, for love is God.
Already now in freedom's glad release
The hunted look of fear gives place to peace,
And in their eyes at thought of home appears
That rainbow light of joy which brightest shines through tears.
XLVII.
About the leader thick the warriors crowd;
Late loud in censure, now in praises loud,
They laud the tactics, and the skill extol
Which gained a bloodless yet a glorious goal.
Alone and lonely in the path of right
Full many a brave soul walks. When gods requite
And crown his actions as their worth demands,
Among admiring throngs the hero always stands.
A row of six asterisks is on the page at this point
XLVIII.
Back to the East the valorous squadrons sweep;
The earth, arousing from her long, cold sleep,
Throws from her breast the coverlet of snow,
Revealing Spring's soft charms which lie below.
Suppressed emotions in each heart arise,
The wooer wakens and the warrior dies.
The bird of prey is vanquished by the dove,
And thoughts of bloody strife give place to thoughts of love.
XLIX.
168
The mighty plains, devoid of whispering trees,
Guard well the secrets of departed seas.
Where once great tides swept by with ebb and flow
The scorching sun looks down in tearless woe.
And fierce tornadoes in ungoverned pain
Mourn still the loss of that mysterious main.
Across this ocean bed the soldiers flyHome is the gleaming goal that lures each eager eye.
L.
Like some elixir which the gods prepare,
They drink the viewless tonic of the air,
Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes
Which speed before them over swelling slopes.
Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor,
The column curves and makes a slight detour,
As Custer leads a thousand men away
To save a ground bird's nest which in the footpath lay.
LI.
Mile following mile, against the leaning skies
Far off they see a dull dark cloud arise.
The hunter's instinct in each heart is stirred,
Beholding there in one stupendous herd
A hundred thousand buffaloes. Oh great
Unwieldy proof of Nature's cruder state,
Rough remnant of a prehistoric day,
Thou, with the red man, too, must shortly pass away.
LII.
Upon those spreading plains is there not room
For man and bison, that he seals its doom?
What pleasure lies and what seductive charm
In slaying with no purpose but to harm?
Alas, that man, unable to create,
Should thirst forever to exterminate,
And in destruction find his fiercest joy.
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The gods alone create, gods only should destroy.
LIII.
The flying hosts a straggling bull pursue;
Unerring aim, the skillful Custer drew.
The wounded beast turns madly in despair
And man and horse are lifted high in air.
The conscious steed needs not the guiding rein;
Back with a bound and one quick cry of pain
He springs, and halts, well knowing where must fall
In that protected frame, the sure death dealing ball.
LIV.
With minds intent upon the morrow's feast,
The men surround the carcass of the beast.
Rolled on his back, he lies with lolling tongue,
Soon to the saddle savory steaks are hung.
And from his mighty head, great tufts of hair
Are cut as trophies for some lady fair.
To vultures then they leave the torn remains
Of what an hour ago was monarch of the plains.
LV.
Far off, two bulls in jealous war engage,
Their blood-shot eye balls roll in furious rage;
With maddened hoofs they mutilate the ground
And loud their angry bellowings resound;
With shaggy heads bent low they plunge and roar,
Till both broad bellies drip with purple gore.
Meanwhile, the heifer, whom the twain desire,
Stands browsing near the pair, indifferent to their ire.
LVI.
At last she lifts her lazy head and heeds
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The clattering hoofs of swift advancing steeds.
Off to the herd with cumb'rous gait she runs
And leaves the bulls to face the threatening guns.
No more for them the free life of the plains,
Its mating pleasures and its warring pains.
Their quivering flesh shall feed unnumbered foes,
Their tufted tails adorn the soldiers' saddle bows.
LVII.
Now into camp the conquering hosts advance;
On burnished arms the brilliant sunbeams glance.
Brave Custer leads, blonde as the gods of old;
Back from his brow blow clustering locks of gold,
And, like a jewel in a brook, there lies,
Far in the depths of his blue guarded eyes,
The thought of one whose smiling lips upcurled,
Mean more of joy to him than plaudits of the world.
LVIII.
The troops in columns of platoons appear
Close to the leader following. Ah, here
The poetry of war is fully seen,
Its prose forgotten; as against the green
Of Mother Nature, uniformed in blue,
The soldiers pass for Sheridan's review.
The motion-music of the moving throng,
Is like a silent tune, set to a wordless song.
LIX.
The guides and trailers, weird in war's array,
Precede the troops along the grassy way.
They chant wild songs, and, with loud noise and stress,
In savage manner savage joy express.
The Indian captives, blanketed in red,
On ponies mounted, by the scouts are led.
Like sumach bushes, etched on evening skies,
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Against the blue-clad troops, this patch of color lies.
LX.
High o'er the scene vast music billows bound,
And all the air is liquid with the sound
Of those invisible compelling waves.
Perchance they reach the low and lonely graves
Where sleep brave Elliott and Hamilton,
And whisper there the tale of victory won;
Or do the souls of soldiers tried and true
Come at the bugle call, and march in grand review?
LXI.
The pleased Commander watches in surprise
This splendid pageant surge before his eyes.
Not in those mighty battle days of old
Did scenes like this upon his sight unfold.
But now it passes. Drums and bugles cease
To dash war billows on the shores of Peace.
The victors smile on fair broad bosomed Sleep
While in her soothing arms, the vanquished cease to weep.
BOOK THIRD.
There is an interval of eight years between Books Second and Third.
I.
As in the long dead days marauding hosts
Of Indians came from far Siberian coasts,
And drove the peaceful Aztecs from their grounds,
Despoiled their homes (but left their tell-tale mounds) ,
So has the white man with the Indians done.
Now with their backs against the setting sun
The remnants of a dying nation stand
And view the lost domain, once their beloved land.
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II.
Upon the vast Atlantic's leagues of shore
The happy red man's tent is seen no more;
And from the deep blue lakes which mirror heaven
His bounding bark canoe was long since driven.
The mighty woods, those temples where his God
Spoke to his soul, are leveled to the sod;
And in their place tall church spires point above,
While priests proclaim the law of Christ, the King of Love.
III.
The avaricious and encroaching rail
Seized the wide fields which knew the Indians' trail.
Back to the reservations in the West
The native owners of the land were pressed,
And selfish cities, harbingers of want,
Shut from their vision each accustomed haunt.
Yet hungry Progress, never satisfied,
Gazed on the western plains, and gazing, longed and sighed.
IV.
As some strange bullock in a pasture field
Compels the herds to fear him, and to yield
The juicy grass plots and the cooling shade
Until, despite their greater strength, afraid,
They huddle in some corner spot and cower
Before the monarch's all controlling power,
So has the white man driven from its place
By his aggressive greed, Columbia's native race.
V.
Yet when the bull pursues the herds at bay,
Incensed they turn, and dare dispute his sway.
And so the Indians turned, when men forgot
Their sacred word, and trespassed on the spot.
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The lonely little spot of all their lands,
The reservation of the peaceful bands.
But lust for gold all conscience kills in man,
'Gold in the Black Hills, gold! ' the cry arose and ran
VI.
From lip to lip, as flames from tree to tree
Leap till the forest is one fiery sea,
And through the country surged that hot unrest
Which thirst for riches wakens in the breast.
In mighty throngs the fortune hunters came,
Despoiled the red man's lands and slew his game,
Broke solemn treaties and defied the law.
And all these ruthless acts the Nation knew and saw.
VII.
Man is the only animal that kills
Just for the wanton love of slaughter; spills
The blood of lesser things to see it flow;
Lures like a friend, to murder like a foe
The trusting bird and beast; and, coward like,
Deals covert blows he dare not boldly strike.
The brutes have finer souls, and only slay
When torn by hunger's pangs, or when to fear a prey.
VIII.
The pale-faced hunter, insolent and bold,
Pursued the bison while he sought for gold.
And on the hungry red man's own domains
He left the rotting and unused remains
To foul with sickening stench each passing wind
And rouse the demon in the savage mind,
Save in the heart where virtues dominate
Injustice always breeds its natural offspring- hate.
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IX.
The chieftain of the Sioux, great Sitting Bull,
Mused o'er their wrongs, and felt his heart swell full
Of bitter vengeance. Torn with hate's unrest
He called a council and his braves addressed.
'From fair Wisconsin's shimmering lakes of blue
Long years ago the white man drove the Sioux.
Made bold by conquest, and inflamed by greed,
He still pursues our tribes, and still our ranks recede.
X.
'Fair are the White Chief's promises and words,
But dark his deeds who robs us of our herds.
He talks of treaties, asks the right to buy,
Then takes by force, not waiting our reply.
He grants us lands for pastures and abodes
To devastate them by his iron roads.
But now from happy Spirit Lands, a friend
Draws near the hunted Sioux, to strengthen and defend.
XI.
'While walking in the fields I saw a star;
Unconsciously I followed it afarIt led me on to valleys filled with light,
Where danced our noble chieftains slain in fight.
Black Kettle, first of all that host I knew,
He whom the strong armed Custer foully slew.
And then a spirit took me by the hand,
The Great Messiah King who comes to free the land.
XII.
'Suns were his eyes, a speaking tear his voice,
.Whose rainbow sounds made listening hearts rejoice
And thus he spake: 'The red man's hour draws near
When all his lost domains shall reappear.
The elk, the deer, the bounding antelope,
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Shall here return to grace each grassy slope.'
He waved his hand above the fields, and lo!
Down through the valleys came a herd of buffalo.
XIII.
'The wondrous vision vanished, but I knew
That Sitting Bull must make the promise true.
Great Spirits plan what mortal man achieves,
The hand works magic when the heart believes.
Arouse, ye braves! let not the foe advance.
Arm for the battle and begin the danceThe sacred dance in honor of our slain,
Who will return to earth, ere many moons shall wane.'
XIV.
Thus Sitting Bull, the chief of wily knaves,
Worked on the superstitions of his braves.
Mixed truth with lies; and stirred to mad unrest
The warlike instinct in each savage breast.
A curious product of unhappy times,
The natural offspring of unnumbered crimes,
He used low cunning and dramatic arts
To startle and surprise those crude untutored hearts.
XV.
Out from the lodges pour a motley throng,
Slow measures chanting of a dirge-like song.
In one great circle dizzily they swing,
A squaw and chief alternate in the ring.
Coarse raven locks stream over robes of white,
Their deep set orbs emit a lurid light,
And as through pine trees moan the winds refrains,
So swells and dies away, the ghostly graveyard strains.
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XVI.
Like worded wine is music to the ear,
And long indulged makes mad the hearts that hear.
The dancers, drunken with the monotone
Of oft repeated notes, now shriek and groan
And pierce their ruddy flesh with sharpened spears;
Still more excited when the blood appears,
With warlike yells, high in the air they bound,
Then in a deathlike trance fall prostrate on the ground.
XVII.
They wake to tell weird stories of the dead,
While fresh performers to the ring are led.
The sacred nature of the dance is lost,
War is their cry, red war, at any cost.
Insane for blood they wait for no command,
But plunge marauding through the frightened land.
Their demon hearts on devils' pleasures bent,
For each new foe surprised, new torturing deaths invent.
XVIII.
Staked to the earth one helpless creature lies,
Flames at his feet and splinters in his eyes.
Another groans with coals upon his breast,
While 'round the pyre the Indians dance and jest.
A crying child is brained upon a tree,
The swooning mother saved from death, to be
The slave and plaything of a filthy knave,
Whose sins would startle hell, whose clay defile a grave.
XIX.
Their cause was right, their methods all were wrong.
Pity and censure both to them belong.
Their woes were many, but their crimes were more.
The soulless Satan holds not in his store
Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath
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Keeps for the hapless victim in his path.
And if the last lone remnants of that race
Were by the white man swept from off the earth's fair face,
XX.
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Again great Custer in his strength arose,
More daring, more intrepid than of old.
The passing years had touched and turned to gold
The ever widening aureole of fame
That shone upon his brow, and glorified his name.
XXI.
Wise men make laws, then turn their eyes away,
While fools and knaves ignore them day by day;
And unmolested, fools and knaves at length
Induce long wars which sap a country's strength.
The sloth of leaders, ruling but in name,
Has dragged full many a nation down to shame.
A word unspoken by the rightful lips
Has dyed the land with blood, and blocked the sea with ships.
XXII.
The word withheld, when Indians asked for aid,
Came when the red man started on his raid.
What Justice with a gesture might have done
Was left for noisy war with bellowing gun.
And who save Custer and his gallant men
Could calm the tempest into peace again?
What other hero in the land could hope
With Sitting Bull, the fierce and lawless one to cope?
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XXIII.
What other warrior skilled enough to dare
Surprise that human tiger in his lair?
Sure of his strength, unconscious of his fame
Out from the quiet of the camp he came;
And stately as Diana at his side
Elizabeth, his wife and alway bride,
And Margaret, his sister, rode apace;
Love's clinging arms he left to meet death's cold embrace.
XXIV.
As the bright column wound along its course,
The smiling leader turned upon his horse
To gaze with pride on that superb command.
Twelve hundred men, the picked of all the land,
Innured to hardship and made strong by strife
Their lithe limbed bodies breathed of out-door life;
While on their faces, resolute and brave,
Hope stamped its shining seal, although their thoughts were grave.
XXV.
The sad eyed women halted in the dawn,
And waved farewell to dear ones riding on.
The modest mist picked up her robes and ran
Before the Sun god's swift pursuing van.
And suddenly there burst on startled eyes,
The sight of soldiers, marching in the skies;
That phantom host, a phantom Custer led;
Mirage of dire portent, forecasting days ahead.
XXVI.
The soldiers' children, flaunting mimic flags,
Played by the roadside, striding sticks for nags.
Their mothers wept, indifferent to the crowd
Who saw their tears and heard them sob aloud.
Old Indian men and squaws crooned forth a rhyme
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Sung by their tribes from immemorial time;
And over all the drums' incessant beat
Mixed with the scout's weird rune, and tramp of myriad feet.
XXVII.
So flawless was the union of each part
The mighty column (moved as by one heart)
Pulsed through the air, like some sad song well sung,
Which gives delight, although the soul is wrung.
Farther and fainter to the sight and sound
The beautiful embodied poem wound;
Till like a ribbon, stretched across the land
Seemed the long narrow line of that receding band.
XXVIII.
The lot of those who in the silence wait
Is harder than the fighting soldiers' fate.
Back to the lonely post two women passed,
With unaccustomed sorrow overcast.
Two sad for sighs, too desolate for tears,
The dark forebodings of long widowed years
In preparation for the awful blow
Hung on the door of hope the sable badge of woe.
XXIX.
Unhappy Muse! for thee no song remains,
Save the sad miséréré of the plains.
Yet though defeat, not triumph, ends the tale,
Great victors sometimes are the souls that fail.
All glory lies not in the goals we reach,
But in the lessons which our actions teach.
And he who, conquered, to the end believes
In God and in himself, though vanquished, still achieves.
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XXX.
Ah, grand as rash was that last fatal raid
The little group of daring heroes made.
Two hundred and two score intrepid men
Rode out to war; not one came back again.
Like fiends incarnate from the depths of hell
Five thousand foemen rose with deafening yell,
And swept that vale as with a simoon's breath,
But like the gods of old, each martyr met his death.
XXXI.
Like gods they battled and like gods they died.
Hour following hour that little band defied
The hordes of red men swarming o'er the plain,
Till scarce a score stood upright 'mid the slain.
Then in the lull of battle, creeping near,
A scout breathed low in Custer's listening ear:
'Death lies before, dear life remains behind
Mount thy sure-footed steed, and hasten with the wind.'
XXXII.
A second's silence. Custer dropped his head,
His lips slow moving as when prayers are saidTwo words he breathed-'God and Elizabeth, '
Then shook his long locks in the face of death
And with a final gesture turned away
To join that fated few who stood at bay.
Ah! deeds like that the Christ in man reveal
Let Fame descend her throne at Custer's shrine to kneel.
XXXIII.
Too late to rescue, but in time to weep,
His tardy comrades came. As if asleep
He lay, so fair, that even hellish hate
Withheld its hand and dared not mutilate.
By fiends who knew not honor, honored still,
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He smiled and slept on that far western hill.
Cast down thy lyre, oh Muse! thy song is done!
Let tears complete the tale of him who failed, yet won.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
291:

Book III: The Book of the Assembly



But as the nation beset betwixt doom and a shameful surrender
Waited mute for a voice that could lead and a heart to encourage,
Up in the silence deep Laocoon rose up, far-heard,
Heard by the gods in their calm and heard by men in their passion
Cloud-haired, clad in mystic red, flamboyant, sombre,
Priams son Laocoon, fate-darkened seer of Apollo.
As when the soul of the Ocean arises rapt in the dawning
And mid the rocks and the foam uplifting the voice of its musings
Opens the chant of its turbulent harmonies, so rose the far-borne
Voice of Laocoon soaring mid columns of Ilions glories,
Claiming the earth and the heavens for the field of its confident rumour.
Trojans, deny your hearts to the easeful flutings of Hades!
Live, O nation! he thundered forth and Troys streets and her pillars
Sent back their fierce response. Restored to her leonine spirits
Ilion rose in her agora filling the heavens with shoutings,
Bearing a name to the throne of Zeus in her mortal defiance.
As when a sullen calm of the heavens discourages living,
Nature and man feel the pain of the lightnings repressed in their bosoms,
Dangerous and dull is the air, then suddenly strong from the anguish
Zeus of the thunders starts into glories releasing his storm-voice,
Earth exults in the kiss of the rain and the life-giving laughters,
So from the silence broke forth the thunder of Troya arising;
Fiercely she turned from prudence and wisdom and turned back to greatness
Casting her voice to the heavens from the depths of her fathomless spirit.
Raised by those clamours, triumphant once more on this scene of his greatness,
Tool of the gods, but he deemed of his strength as a leader in Nature,
Took for his own a voice that was given and dreamed that he fashioned
Fate that fashions us all, Laocoon stood mid the shouting
Leaned on the calm of an ancient pillar. In eyes self-consuming
Kindled the flame of the prophet that blinds at once and illumines;
Quivering thought-besieged lips and shaken locks of the lion,
Lifted his gaze the storm-led enthusiast. Then as the shouting
Tired of itself at last disappeared in the bosom of silence,

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Once more he started erect and his voice oer the hearts of his hearers
Swept like Oceans impatient cry when it calls from its surges,
Ocean loud with a thought sublime in its measureless marching,
Each man felt his heart like foam in the rushing of waters.
Ilion is vanquished then! she abases her grandiose spirit
Mortal found in the end to the gods and the Greeks and Antenor,
And when a barbarous chieftains menace and insolent mercy
Bring here their pride to insult the columned spirit of Ilus,
Trojans have sat and feared! For a man has arisen and spoken,
One whom the gods in their anger have hired. Since the Argive prevailed not,
Armed with his strength and his numbers, in Troya they sought for her slayer,
Gathered their wiles in a voice and they chose a man famous and honoured,
Summoned Ate to aid and corrupted the heart of Antenor.
Flute of the breath of the Hell-witch, always he scatters among you
Doubt, affliction and weakness chilling the hearts of the fighters,
Always his voice with its cadenced and subtle possession for evil
Breaks the constant will and maims the impulse heroic.
Therefore while yet her heroes fight and her arms are unconquered,
Troy in your hearts is defeated! The souls of your Fathers have heard you
Dallying, shamefast, with vileness, lured by the call of dishonour.
Such is the power Zeus gave to the wingd words of a mortal!
Foiled in his will, disowned by the years that stride on for ever,
Yet in the frenzy cold of his greed and his fallen ambition
Doom from heaven he calls down on his countrymen, Trojan abuses
Troy, his country, extolling her enemies, blessing her slayers.
Such are the gods Antenor has made in his hearts own image
That if one evil man have not way for his greed and his longing
Cities are doomed and kings must be slain and a nation must perish!
But from the mind of the free and the brave I will answer thy bodings,
Gold-hungry raven of Troy who croakst from thy nest at her princes.
Only one doom irreparable treads down the soul of a nation,
Only one downfall endures; tis the ruin of greatness and virtue,
Mourning when Freedom departs from the life and the heart of a people,
Into her room comes creeping the mind of the slave and it poisons
Manhood and joy and the voice to lying is trained and subjection
Easy feels to the neck of man who is next to the godheads.
Not of the fire am I terrified, not of the sword and its slaying;
Vileness of men appals me, baseness I fear and its voices.
What can man suffer direr or worse than enslaved from a victor
Boons to accept, to take safety and ease from the foe and the stranger,
Fallen from the virtue stern that heaven permits to a mortal?
Death is not keener than this nor the slaughter of friends and our dear ones.
Out and alas! earths greatest are earth and they fail in the testing,
Conquered by sorrow and doubt, fates hammerers, fires of her furnace.
God in their souls they renounce and submit to their clay and its promptings.
Else could the heart of Troy have recoiled from the loom of the shadow
Cast by Achilles spear or shrunk at the sound of his car-wheels?
Now he has graven an oath austere in his spirit unpliant
Victor at last to constrain in his stride the walls of Apollo
Burning Troy ere he sleeps. Tis the vow of a high-crested nature;
Shall it break ramparted Troy? Yea, the soul of a man too is mighty
More than the stone and the mortar! Troy had a soul once, O Trojans,
Firm as her god-built ramparts. When by the spears overtaken,
Strong Sarpedon fell and Zeus averted his visage,
Xanthus red to the sea ran sobbing with bodies of Trojans,
When in the day of the silence of heaven the far-glancing helmet
Ceased from the ways of the fight, and panic slew with Achilles
Hosts who were left unshepherded pale at the fall of their greatest,
Godlike Troy lived on. Do we speak mid a citys ruins?
Lo! she confronts her heavens as when Tros and Laomedon ruled her.
All now is changed, these mutter and sigh to you, all now is ended;
Strength has renounced you, Fate has finished the thread of her spinning.
Hector is dead, he walks in the shadows; Troilus fights not;
Resting his curls on the asphodel he has forgotten his country:
Strong Sarpedon lies in Bellerophons city sleeping:
Memnon is slain and the blood of Rhesus has dried on the Troad:
All of the giant Asius sums in a handful of ashes.
Grievous are these things; our hearts still keep all the pain of them treasured,
Hard though they grow by use and iron caskets of sorrow.
Hear me yet, O fainters in wisdom snared by your pathos,
Know this iron world we live in where Hell casts its shadow.
Blood and grief are the ransom of men for the joys of their transience,
For we are mortals bound in our strength and beset in our labour.
This is our human destiny; every moment of living
Toil and loss have gained in the constant siege of our bodies.
Men must sow earth with their hearts and their tears that their country may prosper;
Earth who bore and devours us that life may be born from our remnants.
Then shall the Sacrifice gather its fruits when the war-shout is silent,
Nor shall the blood be in vain that our mother has felt on her bosom
Nor shall the seed of the mighty fail where Death is the sower.
Still from the loins of the mother eternal are heroes engendered,
Still Deiphobus shouts in the war-front trampling the Argives,
Strong Aeneas far-borne voice is heard from our ramparts,
Paris hands are swift and his feet in the chases of Ares.
Lo, when deserted we fight by Asias soon-wearied peoples,
Men ingrate who enjoyed the protection and loathed the protector,
Heaven has sent us replacing a continent Penthesilea!
Low has the heart of Achaia sunk since it shook at her war-cry.
Ajax has bit at the dust; it is all he shall have of the Troad;
Tall Meriones lies and measures his portion of booty.
Who is the fighter in Ilion thrills not rejoicing to hearken
Even her name on unwarlike lips, much more in the mellay
Shout of the daughter of battles, armipotent Penthesilea?
If there were none but these only, if hosts came not surging behind them,
Young men burning-eyed to outdare all the deeds of their elders,
Each in his beauty a Troilus, each in his valour a Hector,
Yet were the measures poised in the equal balance of Ares.
Who then compels you, O people unconquered, to sink down abjuring
All that was Troy? For O, if she yield, let her use not ever
One of her titles! shame not the shades of Teucer and Ilus,
Soil not Tros! Are you awed by the strength of the swift-foot Achilles?
Is it a sweeter lure in the cadenced voice of Antenor?
Or are you weary of Time and the endless roar of the battle?
Wearier still are the Greeks! their eyes look out oer the waters
Nor with the flight of their spears is the wing of their hopes towards Troya.
Dull are their hearts; they sink from the war-cry and turn from the spear-stroke
Sullenly dragging backwards, desiring the paths of the Ocean,
Dreaming of hearths that are far and the children growing to manhood
Who are small infant faces still in the thoughts of their fathers.
Therefore these call you to yield lest they wake and behold in the dawn-light
All Poseidon whitening lean to the west in his waters
Thick with the sails of the Greeks departing beaten to Hellas.
Who is it calls? Antenor the statesman, Antenor the patriot,
Thus who loves his country and worships the soil of his fathers!
Which of you loves like him Troya? which of the children of heroes
Yearns for the touch of a yoke on his neck and desires the aggressor?
If there be any so made by the gods in the nation of Ilus,
Leaving this city which freemen have founded, freemen have dwelt in,
Far on the beach let him make his couch in the tents of Achilles,
Not in this mighty Ilion, not with this lioness fighting,
Guarding the lair of her young and roaring back at her hunters.
We who are souls descended from Ilus and seeds of his making,
Other-hearted shall march from our gates to answer Achilles.
What! shall this ancient Ilion welcome the day of the conquered?
She who was head of the world, shall she live in the guard of the Hellene
Cherished as slavegirls are, who are taken in war, by their captors?
Europe shall walk in our streets with the pride and the gait of the victor?
Greeks shall enter our homes and prey on our mothers and daughters?
This Antenor desires and this Ucalegon favours.
Traitors! whether tis cowardice drives or the sceptic of virtue,
Cold-blooded age, or gold insatiably tempts from its coffers
Pleading for safety from foreign hands and the sack and the plunder.
Leave them, my brothers! spare the baffled hypocrites! Failure
Sharpest shall torture their hearts when they know that still you are Trojans.
Silence, O reason of man! for a voice from the gods has been uttered!
Dardanans, hearken the sound divine that comes to you mounting
Out of the solemn ravines from the mystic seat on the tripod!
Phoebus, the master of Truth, has promised the earth to our peoples.
Children of Zeus, rejoice! for the Olympian brows have nodded
Regal over the world. In earths rhythm of shadow and sunlight
Storm is the dance of the locks of the God assenting to greatness,
Zeus who with secret compulsion orders the ways of our nature;
Veiled in events he lives and working disguised in the mortal
Builds our strength by pain, and an empire is born out of ruins.
Then if the tempest be loud and the thunderbolt leaping incessant
Shatters the roof, if the lintels flame at last and each cornice
Shrieks with the pain of the blast, if the very pillars totter,
Keep yet your faith in Zeus, hold fast to the word of Apollo.
Not by a little pain and not by a temperate labour
Trained is the nation chosen by Zeus for a dateless dominion.
Long must it labour rolled in the foam of the fathomless surges,
Often neighbour with death and ere Ares grow firm to its banners
Feel on the pride of its Capitol tread of the triumphing victor,
Hear the barbarian knock at its gates or the neighbouring foeman
Glad of the transient smile of his fortune suffer insulting;
They, the nation eternal, brook their taunts who must perish!
Heaviest toils they must bear; they must wrestle with Fate and her Titans,
And when some leader returns from the battle sole of his thousands
Crushed by the hammers of God, yet never despair of their country.
Dread not the ruin, fear not the storm-blast, yield not, O Trojans.
Zeus shall rebuild. Death ends not our days, the fire shall not triumph.
Death? I have faced it. Fire? I have watched it climb in my vision
Over the timeless domes and over the rooftops of Priam;
But I have looked beyond and have seen the smile of Apollo.
After her glorious centuries, after her world-wide triumphs,
If near her ramparts outnumbered she fights, by the nations forsaken,
Lonely again on her hill, by her streams, and her meadows and beaches,
Once where she revelled, shake to the tramp of her countless invaders,
Testings are these from the god. For Fate severe like a mother
Teaches our wills by disaster and strikes down the props that would weaken,
Fate and the Thought on high that is wiser than yearnings of mortals.
Troy has arisen before, but from ashes, not shame, not surrender!
Souls that are true to themselves are immortal; the soulless for ever
Lingers helpless in Hades a shade among shades disappointed.
Now is the god in my bosom mighty compelling me, Trojans,
Now I release what my spirit has kept and it saw in its vision;
Nor will be silent for gibe of the cynic or sneer of the traitor.
Troy shall triumph! Hear, O ye peoples, the word of Apollo.
Hear it and tremble, O Greece, in thy youth and the dawn of thy future;
Rather forget while thou canst, but the gods in their hour shall remind thee.
Tremble, O nations of Asia, false to the greatness within you.
Troy shall surge back on your realms with the sword and the yoke of the victor.
Troy shall triumph! Though nations conspire and gods lead her foemen,
Fate that is born of the spirit is greater than they and will shield her.
Foemen shall help her with war; her defeats shall be victorys moulders.
Walls that restrain shall be rent; she shall rise out of sessions unsettled.
Oceans shall be her walls at the end and the desert her limit;
Indus shall send to her envoys; her eyes shall look northward from Thule.
She shall enring all the coasts with her strength like the kingly Poseidon,
She shall oervault all the lands with her rule like the limitless azure.
Ceasing from speech Laocoon, girt with the shouts of a nation,
Lapsed on his seat like one seized and abandoned and weakened; nor ended
Only in iron applause, but throughout with a stormy approval
Ares broke from the hearts of his people in ominous thunder.
Savage and dire was the sound like a wild beasts tracked out and hunted,
Wounded, yet trusting to tear out the entrails live of its hunters,
Savage and cruel and threatening doom to the foe and opponent.
Yet when the shouting sank at last, Ucalegon rose up
Trembling with age and with wrath and in accents hurried and piping
Faltered a senile fierceness forth on the maddened assembly.
Ah, it is even so far that you dare, O you children of Priam,
Favourites vile of a people sent mad by the gods, and thou risest,
Dark Laocoon, prating of heroes and spurning as cowards,
Smiting for traitors the aged and wise who were grey when they spawned thee!
Imp of destruction, mane of mischief! Ah, spur us with courage,
Thou who hast never prevailed against even the feeblest Achaian.
Rather twice hast thou raced in the rout to the ramparts for shelter,
Leading the panic, and shrieked as thou ranst to the foemen for mercy
Who were a mile behind thee, O matchless and wonderful racer.
Safely counsel to others the pride and the firmness of heroes.
Thou wilt not die in the battle! For even swiftest Achilles
Could not oertake thee, I ween, nor wind-footed Penthesilea.
Mask of a prophet, heart of a coward, tongue of a trickster,
Timeless Ilion thou alone ruinest, helped by the Furies.
I, Ucalegon, first will rend off the mask from thee, traitor.
For I believe thee suborned by the cynic wiles of Odysseus
And thou conspirest to sack this Troy with the greed of the Cretan.
Hasting unstayed he pursued like a brook that scolds amid pebbles,
Voicing angers shrill; for the people astonished were silent.
Long he pursued not; a shouting broke from that stupor of fury,
Men sprang pale to their feet and hurled out menaces lethal;
All that assembly swayed like a forest swept by the stormwind.
Obstinate, straining his age-dimmed eyes Ucalegon, trembling
Worse yet with anger, clamoured feebly back at the people,
Whelmed in their roar. Unheard was his voice like a swimmer in surges
Lost, yet he spoke. But the anger grew in the throats of the people
Lion-voiced, hurting the heart with sound and daunting the nature,
Till from some stalwart hand a javelin whistling and vibrant
Missing the silvered head of the senator rang disappointed
Out on the distant wall of a house by the side of the market.
Not even then would the old man hush or yield to the tempest.
Wagging his hoary beard and shifting his aged eyeballs,
Tossing his hands he stood; but Antenor seized him and Aetor,
Dragged him down on his seat though he strove, and chid him and silenced,
Cease, O friend, for the gods have won. It were easier piping
High with thy aged treble to alter the rage of the Ocean
Than to oerbear this people stirred by Laocoon. Leave now
Effort unhelpful, wrap thy days in a mantle of silence;
Give to the gods their will and dry-eyed wait for the ending.
So now the old men ceased from their strife with the gods and with Troya;
Cowed by the storm of the peoples wrath they desisted from hoping.
But though the roar long swelled, like the sea when the winds have subsided,
One man yet rose up unafraid and beckoned for silence,
Not of the aged, but ripe in his look and ruddy of visage,
Stalwart and bluff and short-limbed, Halamus son of Antenor.
Forward he stood from the press and the people fell silent and listened,
For he was ever first in the mellay and loved by the fighters.
He with a smile began: Come, friends, debate is soon ended
If there is right but of lungs and you argue with javelins. Wisdom
Rather pray for her aid in this dangerous hour of your fortunes.
Not to exalt Laocoon, too much praising his swiftness,
Trojans, I rise; for some are born brave with the spear in the war-car,
Others bold with the tongue, nor equal gifts unto all men
Zeus has decreed who guides his world in a round that is devious
Carried this way and that like a ship that is tossed on the waters.
Why should we rail then at one who is lame by the force of Cronion?
Not by his will is he lame; he would race, if he could, with the swiftest.
Yet is the halt man no runner, nor, friends, must you rise up and slay me,
If I should say of this priest, he is neither Sarpedon nor Hector.
Then, if my father whom once you honoured, ancient Antenor,
Hugs to him Argive gold which I see not, his son in his mansion,
Me too accusest thou, prophet Laocoon? Friends, you have watched me
Sometimes fight. Did you see with my houses allies how I gambolled,
Changed, when with sportive spear I was tickling the ribs of my Argives,
Nudges of friendly counsel inviting to entry in Troya?
Men, these are visions of lackbrains; men, these are myths of the market.
Let us have done with them, brothers and friends; hate only the Hellene.
Prophet, I bow to the oracles. Wise are the gods in their silence,
Wise when they speak; but their speech is other than ours and their wisdom
Hard for a mortal mind to hold and not madden or wander;
But for myself I see only the truth as a soldier who battles
Judging the strength of his foes and the chances of iron encounter.
Few are our armies, many the Greeks, and we waste in the combat
Bound to our numbers, they by the ocean hemmed from their kinsmen,
We by our fortunes, waves of the gods that are harder to master,
They like a rock that is chipped, but we like a mist that disperses.
Then if Achilles, bound by an oath, bring peace to us, healing,
Bring to us respite, help, though bought at a price, yet full-measured,
Strengths of the North at our side and safety assured from the Achaian,
For he is true though a Greek, will you shun this mighty advantage?
Peace at least we shall have, though gold we lose and much glory;
Peace we will use for our strength to brea the in, our wounds to recover,
Teaching Time to prepare for happier wars in the future.
Pause ere you fling from you life; you are mortals, not gods in your glory.
Not for submission to new ally or to ancient foeman
Peace these desire; for who would exchange wide death for subjection?
Who would submit to a yoke? Or who shall rule Trojans in Troya?
Swords are there still at our sides, there are warriors hearts in our bosoms.
Peace your senators welcome, not servitude, breathing they ask for.
But if for war you pronounce, if a noble death you have chosen,
That I approve. What fitter end for this warlike nation,
Knowing that empires at last must sink and perish all cities,
Than to preserve to the end posteritys praise and its greatness
Ceasing in clangour of arms and a citys flames for our death-pyre?
Choose then with open eyes what the dread gods offer to Troya.
Hope not now Hector is dead and Sarpedon, Asia inconstant,
We but a handful, Troy can prevail over Greece and Achilles.
Play not with dreams in this hour, but sternly, like men and not children,
Choose with a noble and serious greatness fates fit for Troya.
Stark we will fight till buried we fall under Ilions ruins,
Or, unappeased, we will curb our strength for the hope of the future.
Not without praise of his friends and assent of the thoughtfuller Trojans,
Halamus spoke and ceased. But now in the Ilian forum
Bright, of the sungod a ray, and even before he had spoken
Sending the joy of his brilliance into the hearts of his hearers,
Paris arose. Not applauded his rising, but each man towards him
Eagerly turned as if feeling that all before which was spoken
Were but a prelude and this was the note he has waited for always.
Sweet was his voice like a harps, when it chants of war, and its cadence
Softened with touches of music thoughts that were hard to be suffered,
Sweet like a string that is lightly struck, but it penetrates wholly.
Calm with the greatness you hold from your sires by the right of your nature
I too would have you decide before Heaven in the strength of your spirits,
Not to the past and its memories moored like the thoughts of Antenor
Hating the vivid march of the present, nor towards the future
Panting through dreams like my brother Laocoon vexed by Apollo.
Dead is the past; the void has possessed it; its drama is ended,
Finished its music. The future is dim and remote from our knowledge;
Silent it lies on the knees of the gods in their luminous stillness.
But to our gaze Gods light is a darkness, His plan is a chaos.
Who shall foretell the event of a battle, the fall of a footstep?
Oracles, visions and prophecies voice but the dreams of the mortal,
And tis our spirit within is the Pythoness tortured in Delphi.
Heavenly voices to us are a silence, those colours a whiteness.
Neither the thought of the statesman prevails nor the dream of the prophet,
Whether one cry, Thus devise and thy heart shall be given its wanting,
Vainly the other, The heavens have spoken; hear then their message.
Who can point out the way of the gods and the path of their travel,
Who shall impose on them bounds and an orbit? The winds have their treading,
They can be followed and seized, not the gods when they move towards their purpose.
They are not bound by our deeds and our thinkings. Sin exalted
Seizes secure on the thrones of the world for her glorious portion,
Down to the bottomless pit the good man is thrust in his virtue.
Leave to the gods their godhead and, mortal, turn to thy labour;
Take what thou canst from the hour that is thine and be fearless in spirit;
This is the greatness of man and the joy of his stay in the sunlight.
Now whether over the waste of Poseidon the ships of the Argives
Empty and sad shall return or sacred Ilion perish,
Priam be slain and for ever cease this imperial nation,
These things the gods are strong to conceal from the hopings of mortals.
Neither Antenor knows nor Laocoon. Only of one thing
Man can be sure, the will in his heart and his strength in his purpose:
This too is Fate and this too the gods, nor the meanest in Heaven.
Paris keeps what he seized from Time and from Fate while unconquered
Life speeds warm through his veins and his heart is assured of the sunlight.
After tis cold, none heeds, none hinders. Not for the dead man
Earth and her wars and her cares, her joys and her gracious concessions,
Whether for ever he sleeps in the chambers of Nature unmindful
Or into wideness wakes like a dreamer called from his visions.
Ilion in flames I choose, not fallen from the heights of her spirit.
Great and free has she lived since they raised her twixt billow and mountain,
Great let her end; let her offer her freedom to fire, not the Hellene.
She was not founded by mortals; gods erected her ramparts,
Lifted her piles to the sky, a seat not for slaves but the mighty.
All men marvelled at Troy; by her deeds and her spirit they knew her
Even from afar, as the lion is known by his roar and his preying.
Sole she lived royal and fell, erect in her leonine nature.
So, O her children, still let her live unquelled in her purpose
Either to stand with your feet on the world oppressing the nations
Or in your ashes to lie and your name be forgotten for ever.
Justly your voices approve me, armipotent children of Ilus;
Straight from Zeus is our race and the Thunderer lives in our nature.
Long I have suffered this taunt that Paris was Ilions ruin
Born on a night of the gods and of Ate, clothed in a body.
Scornful I strode on my path secure of the light in my bosom,
Turned from the muttering voices of envy, their hates who are fallen,
Voices of hate that cling round the wheels of the triumphing victor;
Now if I speak, tis the strength in me answers, not to belittle,
That excusing which most I rejoice in and glory for ever,
Tyndaris rape whom I seized by the will of divine Aphrodite.
Mortal this error that Greece would have slumbered apart in her mountains,
Sunk, by the trumpets of Fate unaroused and the morning within her,
Only were Paris unborn and the world had not gazed upon Helen.
Fools, who say that a spark was the cause of this giant destruction!
War would have stridden on Troy though Helen were still in her Sparta
Tending an Argive loom, not the glorious prize of the Trojans,
Greece would have banded her nations though Paris had drunk not Eurotas.
Coast against coast I set not, nor Ilion opposite Argos.
Phryx accuse who upreared Troys domes by the azure Aegean,
Curse Poseidon who fringed with Greece the blue of his waters:
Then was this war first decreed and then Agamemnon was fashioned;
Armed he strode forth in the secret Thought that is womb of the future.
Fate and Necessity guided those vessels, captained their armies.
When they stood mailed at her gates, when they cried in the might of their union,
Troy, renounce thy alliances, draw back humbly from Hellas,
Should she have hearkened persuading her strength to a shameful compliance,
Ilion queen of the world whose voice was the breath of the storm-gods?
Should she have drawn back her foot as it strode towards the hills of the Latins?
Thrace left bare to her foes, recoiled from Illyrian conquests?
If all this without battle were possible, people of Priam,
Blame then Paris, say then that Helen was cause of the struggle.
But I have sullied the hearth, I have trampled the gift and the guest-rite,
Heaven I have armed with my sin and unsealed the gaze of the Furies,
So was Troy doomed who righteous had triumphed, locked with the Argive.
Fools or hypocrites! Meanest falsehood is this among mortals,
Veils of purity weaving, names misplacing ideal
When our desires we disguise and paint the lusts of our nature.
Men, ye are men in your pride and your strength, be not sophists and tonguesters.
Lie not! prate not that nations live by righteousness, justice
Shields them, gods out of heaven look down wroth on the crimes of the mighty!
Known have men what thing has screened itself mouthing these semblances. Crouching
Dire like a beast in the green of the thickets, selfishness silent
Crunches the bones of its prey while the priest and the statesman are glozing.
So are the nations soothed and deceived by the clerics of virtue,
Taught to reconcile fear of the gods with their lusts and their passions;
So with a lie on their lips they march to the rapine and slaughter.
Truly the vanquished were guilty! Else would their cities have perished,
Shrieked their ravished virgins, their peasants been hewn in the vineyards?
Truly the victors were tools of the gods and their glorious servants!
Else would the war-cars have ground triumphant their bones whom they hated?
Servants of God are they verily, even as the ape and the tiger.
Does not the wild-beast too triumph enjoying the flesh of his captives?
Tell us then what was the sin of the antelope, wherefore they doomed her,
Wroth at her many crimes? Come, justify God to his creatures!
Not to her sins was she offered, not to the Furies or Justice,
But to the strength of the lion the high gods offered a victim,
Force that is God in the lions breast with the forest for altar.
What, in the cities stormed and sacked by Achilles in Troas
Was there no just man slain? Was Brises then a transgressor?
Hearts that were pierced in his walls, were they sinners tracked by the Furies?
No, they were pious and just and their altars burned for Apollo,
Reverent flamed up to Pallas who slew them aiding the Argives.
Or if the crime of Paris they shared and his doom has embraced them,
Whom had the island cities offended, stormed by the Locrian,
Wave-kissed homes of peace but given to the sack and the spoiler?
Was then King Atreus just and the house accursd of Pelops,
Tantalus race, whose deeds men shuddering hear and are silent?
Look! they endure, their pillars are firm, they are regnant and triumph.
Or are Thyestean banquets sweet to the gods in their savour?
Only a womans heart is pursued in their wrath by the Furies!
No, when the wrestlers meet and embrace in the mighty arena,
Not at their sins and their virtues the high gods look in that trial;
Which is the strongest, which is the subtlest, this they consider.
Nay, there is none in the world to befriend save ourselves and our courage;
Prowess alone in the battle is virtue, skill in the fighting
Only helps, the gods aid only the strong and the valiant.
Put forth your lives in the blow, you shall beat back the banded aggressors.
Neither believe that for justice denied your subjects have left you
Nor that for justice trampled Pallas and Hera abandon.
Two are the angels of God whom men worship, strength and enjoyment.
Into this life which the sunlight bounds and the greenness has cradled,
Armed with strength we have come; as our strength is, so is our joyance.
What but for joyance is birth and what but for joyance is living?
But on this earth that is narrow, this stage that is crowded, increasing
One on another we press. There is hunger for lands and for oxen,
Horses and armour and gold desired; possession allures us
Adding always as field to field some fortunate farmer.
Hearts too and minds are our prey; we seize on mens souls and their bodies,
Slaves to our works and desires that our hearts may bask golden in leisure.
One on another we prey and one by another are mighty.
This is the world and we have not made it; if it is evil,
Blame first the gods; but for us, we must live by its laws or we perish.
Power is divine; divinest of all is power over mortals.
Power then the conqueror seeks and power the imperial nation,
Even as luminous, passionless, wonderful, high over all things
Sit in their calmness the gods and oppressing our grief-tortured nations
Stamp their wills on the world. Nor less in our death-besieged natures
Gods are and altitudes. Earth resists, but my soul in me widens
Helped by the toil behind and the agelong effort of Nature.
Even in the worm is a god and it writhes for a form and an outlet.
Workings immortal obscurely struggling, hints of a godhead
Labour to form in this clay a divinity. Hera widens,
Pallas aspires in me, Phoebus in flames goes battling and singing,
Ares and Artemis chase through the fields of my soul in their hunting.
Last in some hour of the Fates a Birth stands released and triumphant;
Poured by its deeds over earth it rejoices fulfilled in its splendour.
Conscious dimly of births unfinished hid in our being
Rest we cannot; a world cries in us for space and for fullness.
Fighting we strive by the spur of the gods who are in us and oer us,
Stamping our image on men and events to be Zeus or be Ares.
Love and the need of mastery, joy and the longing for greatness
Rage like a fire unquenchable burning the world and creating,
Nor till humanity dies will they sink in the ashes of Nature.
All is injustice of love or all is injustice of battle.
Man over woman, woman oer man, over lover and foeman
Wrestling we strive to expand in our souls, to be wide, to be happy.
If thou wouldst only be just, then wherefore at all shouldst thou conquer?
Not to be just, but to rule, though with kindness and high-seated mercy,
Taking the world for our own and our will from our slaves and our subjects,
Smiting the proud and sparing the suppliant, Trojans, is conquest.
Justice was base of thy government? Vainly, O statesman, thou liest.
If thou wert just, thou wouldst free thy slaves and be equal with all men.
Such were a dream of some sage at night when he muses in fancy,
Imaging freely a flawless world where none were afflicted,
No man inferior, all could sublimely equal and brothers
Live in a peace divine like the gods in their luminous regions.
This, O Antenor, were justice known but in words to us mortals.
But for the justice thou vauntest enslaving men to thy purpose,
Setting an iron yoke, nor regarding their need and their nature,
Then to say I am just; I slay not, save by procedure,
Rob not save by law, is an outrage to Zeus and his creatures.
Terms are these feigned by the intellect making a pact with our yearnings,
Lures of the sophist within us draping our passions with virtue.
When thou art weak, thou art just, when thy subjects are strong and remember.
Therefore, O Trojans, be firm in your will and, though all men abandon,
Bow not your heads to reproach nor your hearts to the sin of repentance;
For you have done what the gods desired in your breasts and are blameless.
Proudly enjoy the earth that they gave you, enthroning their natures,
Fight with the Greeks and the world and trample down the rebellious,
What you have lost, recover, nor yield to the hurricane passing.
You cannot utterly die while the Power lives untired in your bosoms;
When tis withdrawn, not a moment of life can be added by virtue.
Faint not for helpers fled! Though your yoke had been mild as a fathers
They would have gone as swiftly. Strength men desire in their masters;
All men worship success and in failure and weakness abandon.
Not for his justice they clung to Teucer, but for their safety,
Seeing in Troy a head and by barbarous foemen afflicted.
Faint not, O Trojans, cease not from battle, persist in your labour!
Conquer the Greeks, your allies shall be yours and fresh nations your subjects.
One care only lodge in your hearts, how to fight, how to conquer.
Peace has smiled out of Phthia; a hand comes outstretched from the Hellene.
Who would not join with the godlike? who would not grasp at Achilles?
There is a price for his gifts; it is such as Achilles should ask for,
Never this nation concede. O Antenors golden phrases
Glorifying rest to the tired and confuting patience and courage,
Garbed with a subtlety lax and the hopes that palliate surrender!
Charmed men applaud the skilful purpose, the dexterous speaker;
This they forget that a Force decides, not the wiles of the statesman.
Now let us yield, do you say, we will rise when our masters are weakened?
Nay, then, our masters master shall find us an easy possession!
Easily nations bow to a yoke when their virtue relaxes;
Hard is the breaking fetters once worn, for the virtue has perished.
Hope you when custom has shaped men into the mould of a vileness,
Hugging their chains when the weak feel easier trampled than rising
Or though they groan, yet have heart nor strength for the anguish of effort,
Then to cast down whom, armed and strong, you were mastered opposing?
Easy is lapse into uttermost hell, not easy salvation.
Or have you dreamed that Achilles, this son of the gods and the ocean,
Aught else can be with the strong and the bold save pursuer or master?
Know you so little the mood of the mighty? Think you the lion
Only will lick his prey, that his jaws will refrain from the banquet?
Rest from thy bodings, Antenor! Not all the valour of Troya
Perished with Hector, nor with Polydamas vision has left her;
Troy is not eager to slay her soul on a pyre of dishonour.
Still she has children left who remember the mood of their mother.
Helen none shall take from me living, gold not a drachma
Travels from coffers of Priam to Greece. Let another and older
Pay down his wealth if he will and his daughters serve Menelaus.
Rather from Ilion I will go forth with my brothers and kinsmen;
Troy I will leave and her shame and live with my heart and my honour
Refuged with lions on Ida or build in the highlands a city
Or in an isle of the seas or by dark-driven Pontic waters.
Dear are the halls of our childhood, dear are the fields of our fathers,
Yet to the soul that is free no spot on the earth is an exile.
Rather wherever sunlight is bright, flowers bloom and the rivers
Flow in their lucid streams to the Ocean, there is our country.
So will I live in my souls wide freedom, never in Troya
Shorn of my will and disgraced in my strength and the mock of my rivals.
First had you yielded, shame at least had not stained your surrender.
Strength indulges the weak! But what Hector has fallen refusing,
Men! what through ten loud years we denied with the spear for our answer,
That what Trojan will ever renounce, though his city should perish?
Once having fought we will fight to the end nor that end shall be evil.
Clamour the Argive spears on our walls? Are the ladders erected?
Far on the plain is their flight, on the farther side of the Xanthus.
Where are the deities hostile? Vainly the eyes of the tremblers
See them stalking vast in the ranks of the Greeks and the shoutings
Dire of Poseidon they hear and are blind with the aegis of Pallas.
Who then sustained so long this Troy, if the gods are against her?
Even the hills could not stand save upheld by their concert immortal.
Now not with Tydeus son, not now with Odysseus and Ajax
Trample the gods in the sound of their chariot-wheels, victory leading:
Argos falls red in her heaps to their scythes; they shelter the Trojans;
Victory unleashed follows and fawns upon Penthesilea.
Ponder no more, O Ilion, city of ancient Priam!
Rise, O beloved of the gods, and go forth in thy strength to the battle.
Not by the dreams of Laocoon strung to the faith that is febrile,
Nor with the tremblings vain and the haunted thoughts of Antenor,
But with a noble and serious strength and an obstinate valour
Suffer the shock of your foes, O nation chosen by Heaven;
Proudly determine on victory, live by disaster unshaken.
Either Fate receive like men, nay, like gods, nay, like Trojans.
So like an army that streams and that marches, speeding and pausing,
Drawing in horn and wing or widened for scouting and forage,
Bridging the floods, avoiding the mountains, threading the valleys,
Fast with their flashing panoply clad in gold and in iron
Moved the array of his thoughts; and throughout delight and approval
Followed their march, in triumph led but like prisoners willing,
Glad and unbound to a land they desire. Triumphant he ended,
Lord of opinion, though by the aged frowned on and censured,
But to this voice of their thoughts the young men vibrated wholly.
Loud like a storm on the ocean mounted the roar of the people.
Cease from debate, men cried, arise, O thou warlike Aeneas!
Speak for this nation, launch like a spear at the tents of the Hellene
Ilions voice of war! Then up mid a limitless shouting
Stern and armed from his seat like a war-god helmd Aeneas
Rose by King Priam approved in this last of Ilions sessions,
Holding the staff of the senates authority. Silence, O commons,
Hear and assent or refuse as your right is, masters of Troya,
Ancient and sovereign people, act that your kings have determined
Sitting in council high, their reply to the strength of Achilles.
Son of the Aeacids, vain is thy offer; the pride of thy challenge
Rather we choose; it is nearer to Dardanus, King of the Hellenes.
Neither shall Helen be led back, the Tyndarid, weeping to Argos,
Nor down the paths of peace revisit her fathers Eurotas.
Death and the fire may prevail oer us, never our wills shall surrender
Lowering Priams heights and darkening Ilions splendours.
Not of such sires were we born, but of kings and of gods, O Larissan.
Not with her gold Troy traffics for safety, but with her spear-points.
Stand with thy oath in the war-front, Achilles; call on thy helpers
Armed to descend from the calm of Olympian heights to thy succour
Hedging thy fame from defeat; for we all desire thee in battle,
Mighty to end thee or tame at last by the floods of the Xanthus.
So Aeneas resonant spoke, stern, fronted like Ares,
And with a voice that conquered the earth and invaded the heavens
Loud they approved their doom and fulfilled their impulse immortal.
Last Deiphobus rose in their meeting, head of their mellay:
Proudly and well have you answered, O nation beloved of Apollo;
Fearless of death they must walk who would live and be mighty for ever.
Now, for the sun is hastening up the empyrean azure,
Hasten we also. Tasting of food round the call of your captains
Meet in your armd companies, chariots and hoplites and archers.
Strong be your hearts, let your courage be stern like the sun when it blazes;
Fierce will the shock be today ere he sink blood-red in the waters.
They with a voice as of Oceans meeting rose from their session,
Filling the streets with her tread Troy strode from her Ilian forum.
***

~ Sri Aurobindo, 3 - The Book of the Assembly
,
292:Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
While yet our England was a wolfish den;
Before our forests heard the talk of men;
Before the first of Druids was a child;--
Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild
Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude.
There came an eastern voice of solemn mood:--
Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine,
Apollo's garland:--yet didst thou divine
Such home-bred glory, that they cry'd in vain,
"Come hither, Sister of the Island!" Plain
Spake fair Ausonia; and once more she spake
A higher summons:--still didst thou betake
Thee to thy native hopes. O thou hast won
A full accomplishment! The thing is done,
Which undone, these our latter days had risen
On barren souls. Great Muse, thou know'st what prison
Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets
Our spirit's wings: despondency besets
Our pillows; and the fresh to-morrow morn
Seems to give forth its light in very scorn
Of our dull, uninspired, snail-paced lives.
Long have I said, how happy he who shrives
To thee! But then I thought on poets gone,
And could not pray:nor can I now--so on
I move to the end in lowliness of heart.--

"Ah, woe is me! that I should fondly part
From my dear native land! Ah, foolish maid!
Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade
Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields!
To one so friendless the clear freshet yields
A bitter coolness, the ripe grape is sour:
Yet I would have, great gods! but one short hour
Of native airlet me but die at home."

Endymion to heaven's airy dome
Was offering up a hecatomb of vows,
When these words reach'd him. Whereupon he bows
His head through thorny-green entanglement
Of underwood, and to the sound is bent,
Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn.

"Is no one near to help me? No fair dawn
Of life from charitable voice? No sweet saying
To set my dull and sadden'd spirit playing?
No hand to toy with mine? No lips so sweet
That I may worship them? No eyelids meet
To twinkle on my bosom? No one dies
Before me, till from these enslaving eyes
Redemption sparkles!I am sad and lost."

Thou, Carian lord, hadst better have been tost
Into a whirlpool. Vanish into air,
Warm mountaineer! for canst thou only bear
A woman's sigh alone and in distress?
See not her charms! Is Phoebe passionless?
Phoebe is fairer farO gaze no more:
Yet if thou wilt behold all beauty's store,
Behold her panting in the forest grass!
Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass
For tenderness the arms so idly lain
Amongst them? Feelest not a kindred pain,
To see such lovely eyes in swimming search
After some warm delight, that seems to perch
Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond
Their upper lids?Hist!      "O for Hermes' wand
To touch this flower into human shape!
That woodland Hyacinthus could escape
From his green prison, and here kneeling down
Call me his queen, his second life's fair crown!
Ah me, how I could love!My soul doth melt
For the unhappy youthLove! I have felt
So faint a kindness, such a meek surrender
To what my own full thoughts had made too tender,
That but for tears my life had fled away!
Ye deaf and senseless minutes of the day,
And thou, old forest, hold ye this for true,
There is no lightning, no authentic dew
But in the eye of love: there's not a sound,
Melodious howsoever, can confound
The heavens and earth in one to such a death
As doth the voice of love: there's not a breath
Will mingle kindly with the meadow air,
Till it has panted round, and stolen a share
Of passion from the heart!"

               Upon a bough
He leant, wretched. He surely cannot now
Thirst for another love: O impious,
That he can even dream upon it thus!
Thought he, "Why am I not as are the dead,
Since to a woe like this I have been led
Through the dark earth, and through the wondrous sea?
Goddess! I love thee not the less: from thee
By Juno's smile I turn notno, no, no
While the great waters are at ebb and flow.
I have a triple soul! O fond pretence
For both, for both my love is so immense,
I feel my heart is cut in twain for them."

And so he groan'd, as one by beauty slain.
The lady's heart beat quick, and he could see
Her gentle bosom heave tumultuously.
He sprang from his green covert: there she lay,
Sweet as a muskrose upon new-made hay;
With all her limbs on tremble, and her eyes
Shut softly up alive. To speak he tries.
"Fair damsel, pity me! forgive that I
Thus violate thy bower's sanctity!
O pardon me, for I am full of grief
Grief born of thee, young angel! fairest thief!
Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith
I was to top the heavens. Dear maid, sith
Thou art my executioner, and I feel
Loving and hatred, misery and weal,
Will in a few short hours be nothing to me,
And all my story that much passion slew me;
Do smile upon the evening of my days:
And, for my tortur'd brain begins to craze,
Be thou my nurse; and let me understand
How dying I shall kiss that lily hand.
Dost weep for me? Then should I be content.
Scowl on, ye fates! until the firmament
Outblackens Erebus, and the full-cavern'd earth
Crumbles into itself. By the cloud girth
Of Jove, those tears have given me a thirst
To meet oblivion."As her heart would burst
The maiden sobb'd awhile, and then replied:
"Why must such desolation betide
As that thou speakest of? Are not these green nooks
Empty of all misfortune? Do the brooks
Utter a gorgon voice? Does yonder thrush,
Schooling its half-fledg'd little ones to brush
About the dewy forest, whisper tales?
Speak not of grief, young stranger, or cold snails
Will slime the rose to night. Though if thou wilt,
Methinks 'twould be a guilta very guilt
Not to companion thee, and sigh away
The lightthe duskthe darktill break of day!"
"Dear lady," said Endymion, "'tis past:
I love thee! and my days can never last.
That I may pass in patience still speak:
Let me have music dying, and I seek
No more delightI bid adieu to all.
Didst thou not after other climates call,
And murmur about Indian streams?"Then she,
Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree,
For pity sang this roundelay
     "O Sorrow,
     Why dost borrow
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?
     To give maiden blushes
     To the white rose bushes?
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?

     "O Sorrow,
     Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?
     To give the glow-worm light?
     Or, on a moonless night,
To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea-spry?

     "O Sorrow,
     Why dost borrow
The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue?
     To give at evening pale
     Unto the nightingale,
That thou mayst listen the cold dews among?

     "O Sorrow,
     Why dost borrow
Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?
     A lover would not tread
     A cowslip on the head,
Though he should dance from eve till peep of day
     Nor any drooping flower
     Held sacred for thy bower,
Wherever he may sport himself and play.

     "To Sorrow
     I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
     But cheerly, cheerly,
     She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
     I would deceive her
     And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.

"Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: in the whole world wide
There was no one to ask me why I wept,
     And so I kept
Brimming the water-lily cups with tears
     Cold as my fears.

"Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: what enamour'd bride,
Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds,
    But hides and shrouds
Beneath dark palm trees by a river side?

"And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revellers: the rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue
    'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din
    'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
Like to a moving vintage down they came,
Crown'd with green leaves, and faces all on flame;
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley,
    To scare thee, Melancholy!
O then, O then, thou wast a simple name!
And I forgot thee, as the berried holly
By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June,
Tall chesnuts keep away the sun and moon:
    I rush'd into the folly!

"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood,
    With sidelong laughing;
And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white
    For Venus' pearly bite;
And near him rode Silenus on his ****,
Pelted with flowers as he on did pass
    Tipsily quaffing.

"Whence came ye, merry Damsels! whence came ye!
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your bowers desolate,
    Your lutes, and gentler fate?
We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing?
    A conquering!
Bacchus, young Bacchus! good or ill betide,
We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide:
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
    To our wild minstrelsy!'

"Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! whence came ye!
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left
    Your nuts in oak-tree cleft?
For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;
For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,
    And cold mushrooms;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;
Great God of breathless cups and chirping mirth!
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
To our mad minstrelsy!'

"Over wide streams and mountains great we went,
And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent,
Onward the tiger and the leopard pants,
    With Asian elephants:
Onward these myriadswith song and dance,
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance,
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil:
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,
    Nor care for wind and tide.

"Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes,
From rear to van they scour about the plains;
A three days' journey in a moment done:
And always, at the rising of the sun,
About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn,
    On spleenful unicorn.

"I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown
    Before the vine-wreath crown!
I saw parch'd Abyssinia rouse and sing
    To the silver cymbals' ring!
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
    Old Tartary the fierce!
The kings of Inde their jewel-sceptres vail,
And from their treasures scatter pearled hail;
Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans,
    And all his priesthood moans;
Before young Bacchus' eye-wink turning pale.
Into these regions came I following him,
Sick hearted, wearyso I took a whim
To stray away into these forests drear
    Alone, without a peer:
And I have told thee all thou mayest hear.

     "Young stranger!
     I've been a ranger
In search of pleasure throughout every clime:
     Alas! 'tis not for me!
     Bewitch'd I sure must be,
To lose in grieving all my maiden prime.

     "Come then, Sorrow!
     Sweetest Sorrow!
Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast:
     I thought to leave thee
     And deceive thee,
But now of all the world I love thee best.

     "There is not one,
     No, no, not one
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid;
     Thou art her mother,
     And her brother,
Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade."

O what a sigh she gave in finishing,
And look, quite dead to every worldly thing!
Endymion could not speak, but gazed on her;
And listened to the wind that now did stir
About the crisped oaks full drearily,
Yet with as sweet a softness as might be
Remember'd from its velvet summer song.
At last he said: "Poor lady, how thus long
Have I been able to endure that voice?
Fair Melody! kind Syren! I've no choice;
I must be thy sad servant evermore:
I cannot choose but kneel here and adore.
Alas, I must not thinkby Phoebe, no!
Let me not think, soft Angel! shall it be so?
Say, beautifullest, shall I never think?
O thou could'st foster me beyond the brink
Of recollection! make my watchful care
Close up its bloodshot eyes, nor see despair!
Do gently murder half my soul, and I
Shall feel the other half so utterly!
I'm giddy at that cheek so fair and smooth;
O let it blush so ever! let it soothe
My madness! let it mantle rosy-warm
With the tinge of love, panting in safe alarm.
This cannot be thy hand, and yet it is;
And this is sure thine other softlingthis
Thine own fair bosom, and I am so near!
Wilt fall asleep? O let me sip that tear!
And whisper one sweet word that I may know
This is this worldsweet dewy blossom!"Woe!
Woe! Woe to that Endymion! Where is he?
Even these words went echoing dismally
Through the wide foresta most fearful tone,
Like one repenting in his latest moan;
And while it died away a shade pass'd by,
As of a thunder cloud. When arrows fly
Through the thick branches, poor ring-doves sleek forth
Their timid necks and tremble; so these both
Leant to each other trembling, and sat so
Waiting for some destructionwhen lo,
Foot-feather'd Mercury appear'd sublime
Beyond the tall tree tops; and in less time
Than shoots the slanted hail-storm, down he dropt
Towards the ground; but rested not, nor stopt
One moment from his home: only the sward
He with his wand light touch'd, and heavenward
Swifter than sight was goneeven before
The teeming earth a sudden witness bore
Of his swift magic. Diving swans appear
Above the crystal circlings white and clear;
And catch the cheated eye in wild surprise,
How they can dive in sight and unseen rise
So from the turf outsprang two steeds jet-black,
Each with large dark blue wings upon his back.
The youth of Caria plac'd the lovely dame
On one, and felt himself in spleen to tame
The other's fierceness. Through the air they flew,
High as the eagles. Like two drops of dew
Exhal'd to Phoebus' lips, away they are gone,
Far from the earth awayunseen, alone,
Among cool clouds and winds, but that the free,
The buoyant life of song can floating be
Above their heads, and follow them untir'd.
Muse of my native land, am I inspir'd?
This is the giddy air, and I must spread
Wide pinions to keep here; nor do I dread
Or height, or depth, or width, or any chance
Precipitous: I have beneath my glance
Those towering horses and their mournful freight.
Could I thus sail, and see, and thus await
Fearless for power of thought, without thine aid?
There is a sleepy dusk, an odorous shade
From some approaching wonder, and behold
Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold
Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire,
Dying to embers from their native fire!

There curl'd a purple mist around them; soon,
It seem'd as when around the pale new moon
Sad Zephyr droops the clouds like weeping willow:
'Twas Sleep slow journeying with head on pillow.
For the first time, since he came nigh dead born
From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn
Had he left more forlorn; for the first time,
He felt aloof the day and morning's prime
Because into his depth Cimmerian
There came a dream, shewing how a young man,
Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin,
Would at high Jove's empyreal footstool win
An immortality, and how espouse
Jove's daughter, and be reckon'd of his house.
Now was he slumbering towards heaven's gate,
That he might at the threshold one hour wait
To hear the marriage melodies, and then
Sink downward to his dusky cave again.
His litter of smooth semilucent mist,
Diversely ting'd with rose and amethyst,
Puzzled those eyes that for the centre sought;
And scarcely for one moment could be caught
His sluggish form reposing motionless.
Those two on winged steeds, with all the stress
Of vision search'd for him, as one would look
Athwart the sallows of a river nook
To catch a glance at silver throated eels,
Or from old Skiddaw's top, when fog conceals
His rugged forehead in a mantle pale,
With an eye-guess towards some pleasant vale
Descry a favourite hamlet faint and far.

These raven horses, though they foster'd are
Of earth's splenetic fire, dully drop
Their full-veined ears, nostrils blood wide, and stop;
Upon the spiritless mist have they outspread
Their ample feathers, are in slumber dead,
And on those pinions, level in mid air,
Endymion sleepeth and the lady fair.
Slowly they sail, slowly as icy isle
Upon a calm sea drifting: and meanwhile
The mournful wanderer dreams. Behold! he walks
On heaven's pavement; brotherly he talks
To divine powers: from his hand full fain
Juno's proud birds are pecking pearly grain:
He tries the nerve of Phoebus' golden bow,
And asketh where the golden apples grow:
Upon his arm he braces Pallas' shield,
And strives in vain to unsettle and wield
A Jovian thunderbolt: arch Hebe brings
A full-brimm'd goblet, dances lightly, sings
And tantalizes long; at last he drinks,
And lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks,
Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hand.
He blows a bugle,an ethereal band
Are visible above: the Seasons four,
Green-kyrtled Spring, flush Summer, golden store
In Autumn's sickle, Winter frosty hoar,
Join dance with shadowy Hours; while still the blast,
In swells unmitigated, still doth last
To sway their floating morris. "Whose is this?
Whose bugle?" he inquires: they smile"O Dis!
Why is this mortal here? Dost thou not know
Its mistress' lips? Not thou?'Tis Dian's: lo!
She rises crescented!" He looks, 'tis she,
His very goddess: good-bye earth, and sea,
And air, and pains, and care, and suffering;
Good-bye to all but love! Then doth he spring
Towards her, and awakesand, strange, o'erhead,
Of those same fragrant exhalations bred,
Beheld awake his very dream: the gods
Stood smiling; merry Hebe laughs and nods;
And Phoebe bends towards him crescented.
O state perplexing! On the pinion bed,
Too well awake, he feels the panting side
Of his delicious lady. He who died
For soaring too audacious in the sun,
Where that same treacherous wax began to run,
Felt not more tongue-tied than Endymion.
His heart leapt up as to its rightful throne,
To that fair shadow'd passion puls'd its way
Ah, what perplexity! Ah, well a day!
So fond, so beauteous was his bed-fellow,
He could not help but kiss her: then he grew
Awhile forgetful of all beauty save
Young Phoebe's, golden hair'd; and so 'gan crave
Forgiveness: yet he turn'd once more to look
At the sweet sleeper,all his soul was shook,
She press'd his hand in slumber; so once more
He could not help but kiss her and adore.
At this the shadow wept, melting away.
The Latmian started up: "Bright goddess, stay!
Search my most hidden breast! By truth's own tongue,
I have no ddale heart: why is it wrung
To desperation? Is there nought for me,
Upon the bourne of bliss, but misery?"

These words awoke the stranger of dark tresses:
Her dawning love-look rapt Endymion blesses
With 'haviour soft. Sleep yawned from underneath.
"Thou swan of Ganges, let us no more breathe
This murky phantasm! thou contented seem'st
Pillow'd in lovely idleness, nor dream'st
What horrors may discomfort thee and me.
Ah, shouldst thou die from my heart-treachery!
Yet did she merely weepher gentle soul
Hath no revenge in it: as it is whole
In tenderness, would I were whole in love!
Can I prize thee, fair maid, all price above,
Even when I feel as true as innocence?
I do, I do.What is this soul then? Whence
Came it? It does not seem my own, and I
Have no self-passion or identity.
Some fearful end must be: where, where is it?
By Nemesis, I see my spirit flit
Alone about the darkForgive me, sweet:
Shall we away?" He rous'd the steeds: they beat
Their wings chivalrous into the clear air,
Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair.

The good-night blush of eve was waning slow,
And Vesper, risen star, began to throe
In the dusk heavens silvery, when they
Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy.
Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strange
Eternal oaths and vows they interchange,
In such wise, in such temper, so aloof
Up in the winds, beneath a starry roof,
So witless of their doom, that verily
'Tis well nigh past man's search their hearts to see;
Whether they wept, or laugh'd, or griev'd, or toy'd
Most like with joy gone mad, with sorrow cloy'd.

Full facing their swift flight, from ebon streak,
The moon put forth a little diamond peak,
No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy scymetar;
Bright signal that she only stoop'd to tie
Her silver sandals, ere deliciously
She bow'd into the heavens her timid head.
Slowly she rose, as though she would have fled,
While to his lady meek the Carian turn'd,
To mark if her dark eyes had yet discern'd
This beauty in its birthDespair! despair!
He saw her body fading gaunt and spare
In the cold moonshine. Straight he seiz'd her wrist;
It melted from his grasp: her hand he kiss'd,
And, horror! kiss'd his ownhe was alone.
Her steed a little higher soar'd, and then
Dropt hawkwise to the earth.    There lies a den,
Beyond the seeming confines of the space
Made for the soul to wander in and trace
Its own existence, of remotest glooms.
Dark regions are around it, where the tombs
Of buried griefs the spirit sees, but scarce
One hour doth linger weeping, for the pierce
Of new-born woe it feels more inly smart:
And in these regions many a venom'd dart
At random flies; they are the proper home
Of every ill: the man is yet to come
Who hath not journeyed in this native hell.
But few have ever felt how calm and well
Sleep may be had in that deep den of all.
There anguish does not sting; nor pleasure pall:
Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate,
Yet all is still within and desolate.
Beset with painful gusts, within ye hear
No sound so loud as when on curtain'd bier
The death-watch tick is stifled. Enter none
Who strive therefore: on the sudden it is won.
Just when the sufferer begins to burn,
Then it is free to him; and from an urn,
Still fed by melting ice, he takes a draught
Young Semele such richness never quaft
In her maternal longing. Happy gloom!
Dark Paradise! where pale becomes the bloom
Of health by due; where silence dreariest
Is most articulate; where hopes infest;
Where those eyes are the brightest far that keep
Their lids shut longest in a dreamless sleep.
O happy spirit-home! O wondrous soul!
Pregnant with such a den to save the whole
In thine own depth. Hail, gentle Carian!
For, never since thy griefs and woes began,
Hast thou felt so content: a grievous feud
Hath let thee to this Cave of Quietude.
Aye, his lull'd soul was there, although upborne
With dangerous speed: and so he did not mourn
Because he knew not whither he was going.
So happy was he, not the aerial blowing
Of trumpets at clear parley from the east
Could rouse from that fine relish, that high feast.
They stung the feather'd horse: with fierce alarm
He flapp'd towards the sound. Alas, no charm
Could lift Endymion's head, or he had view'd
A skyey mask, a pinion'd multitude,
And silvery was its passing: voices sweet
Warbling the while as if to lull and greet
The wanderer in his path. Thus warbled they,
While past the vision went in bright array.

"Who, who from Dian's feast would be away?
For all the golden bowers of the day
Are empty left? Who, who away would be
From Cynthia's wedding and festivity?
Not Hesperus: lo! upon his silver wings
He leans away for highest heaven and sings,
Snapping his lucid fingers merrily!
Ah, Zephyrus! art here, and Flora too!
Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew,
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil,
Be careful, ere ye enter in, to fill
    Your baskets high
With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines,
Savory, latter-mint, and columbines,
Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme;
Yea, every flower and leaf of every clime,
All gather'd in the dewy morning: hie
    Away! fly, fly!
Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven,
Aquarius! to whom king Jove has given
Two liquid pulse streams 'stead of feather'd wings,
Two fan-like fountains,thine illuminings
    For Dian play:
Dissolve the frozen purity of air;
Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare
Shew cold through watery pinions; make more bright
The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night:
    Haste, haste away!
Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see!
And of the Bear has Pollux mastery:
A third is in the race! who is the third,
Speeding away swift as the eagle bird?
    The ramping Centaur!
The Lion's mane's on end: the Bear how fierce!
The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce
Some enemy: far forth his bow is bent
Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent,
    Pale unrelentor,
When he shall hear the wedding lutes a playing.
Andromeda! sweet woman! why delaying
So timidly among the stars: come hither!
Join this bright throng, and nimbly follow whither
    They all are going.
Danae's Son, before Jove newly bow'd,
Has wept for thee, calling to Jove aloud.
Thee, gentle lady, did he disenthral:
Ye shall for ever live and love, for all
    Thy tears are flowing.
By Daphne's fright, behold Apollo!"

                    More
Endymion heard not: down his steed him bore,
Prone to the green head of a misty hill.

His first touch of the earth went nigh to kill.
"Alas!" said he, "were I but always borne
Through dangerous winds, had but my footsteps worn
A path in hell, for ever would I bless
Horrors which nourish an uneasiness
For my own sullen conquering: to him
Who lives beyond earth's boundary, grief is dim,
Sorrow is but a shadow: now I see
The grass; I feel the solid groundAh, me!
It is thy voicedivinest! Where?who? who
Left thee so quiet on this bed of dew?
Behold upon this happy earth we are;
Let us ay love each other; let us fare
On forest-fruits, and never, never go
Among the abodes of mortals here below,
Or be by phantoms duped. O destiny!
Into a labyrinth now my soul would fly,
But with thy beauty will I deaden it.
Where didst thou melt too? By thee will I sit
For ever: let our fate stop herea kid
I on this spot will offer: Pan will bid
Us live in peace, in love and peace among
His forest wildernesses. I have clung
To nothing, lov'd a nothing, nothing seen
Or felt but a great dream! O I have been
Presumptuous against love, against the sky,
Against all elements, against the tie
Of mortals each to each, against the blooms
Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs
Of heroes gone! Against his proper glory
Has my own soul conspired: so my story
Will I to children utter, and repent.
There never liv'd a mortal man, who bent
His appetite beyond his natural sphere,
But starv'd and died. My sweetest Indian, here,
Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast
My life from too thin breathing: gone and past
Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewel!
And air of visions, and the monstrous swell
Of visionary seas! No, never more
Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore
Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.
Adieu, my daintiest Dream! although so vast
My love is still for thee. The hour may come
When we shall meet in pure elysium.
On earth I may not love thee; and therefore
Doves will I offer up, and sweetest store
All through the teeming year: so thou wilt shine
On me, and on this damsel fair of mine,
And bless our simple lives. My Indian bliss!
My river-lily bud! one human kiss!
One sigh of real breathone gentle squeeze,
Warm as a dove's nest among summer trees,
And warm with dew at ooze from living blood!
Whither didst melt? Ah, what of that!all good
We'll talk aboutno more of dreaming.Now,
Where shall our dwelling be? Under the brow
Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun
Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none;
And where dark yew trees, as we rustle through,
Will drop their scarlet berry cups of dew?
O thou wouldst joy to live in such a place;
Dusk for our loves, yet light enough to grace
Those gentle limbs on mossy bed reclin'd:
For by one step the blue sky shouldst thou find,
And by another, in deep dell below,
See, through the trees, a little river go
All in its mid-day gold and glimmering.
Honey from out the gnarled hive I'll bring,
And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee,
Cresses that grow where no man may them see,
And sorrel untorn by the dew-claw'd stag:
Pipes will I fashion of the syrinx flag,
That thou mayst always know whither I roam,
When it shall please thee in our quiet home
To listen and think of love. Still let me speak;
Still let me dive into the joy I seek,
For yet the past doth prison me. The rill,
Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill
With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn,
And thou shalt feed them from the squirrel's barn.
Its bottom will I strew with amber shells,
And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells.
Its sides I'll plant with dew-sweet eglantine,
And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine.
I will entice this crystal rill to trace
Love's silver name upon the meadow's face.
I'll kneel to Vesta, for a flame of fire;
And to god Phoebus, for a golden lyre;
To Empress Dian, for a hunting spear;
To Vesper, for a taper silver-clear,
That I may see thy beauty through the night;
To Flora, and a nightingale shall light
Tame on thy finger; to the River-gods,
And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods
Of gold, and lines of Naiads' long bright tress.
Heaven shield thee for thine utter loveliness!
Thy mossy footstool shall the altar be
'Fore which I'll bend, bending, dear love, to thee:
Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak
Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek,
Trembling or stedfastness to this same voice,
And of three sweetest pleasurings the choice:
And that affectionate light, those diamond things,
Those eyes, those passions, those supreme pearl springs,
Shall be my grief, or twinkle me to pleasure.
Say, is not bliss within our perfect seisure?
O that I could not doubt?"

               The mountaineer
Thus strove by fancies vain and crude to clear
His briar'd path to some tranquillity.
It gave bright gladness to his lady's eye,
And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow;
Answering thus, just as the golden morrow
Beam'd upward from the vallies of the east:
"O that the flutter of this heart had ceas'd,
Or the sweet name of love had pass'd away.
Young feather'd tyrant! by a swift decay
Wilt thou devote this body to the earth:
And I do think that at my very birth
I lisp'd thy blooming titles inwardly;
For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee,
With uplift hands I blest the stars of heaven.
Art thou not cruel? Ever have I striven
To think thee kind, but ah, it will not do!
When yet a child, I heard that kisses drew
Favour from thee, and so I kisses gave
To the void air, bidding them find out love:
But when I came to feel how far above
All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood,
All earthly pleasure, all imagin'd good,
Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss,
Even then, that moment, at the thought of this,
Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers,
And languish'd there three days. Ye milder powers,
Am I not cruelly wrong'd? Believe, believe
Me, dear Endymion, were I to weave
With my own fancies garlands of sweet life,
Thou shouldst be one of all. Ah, bitter strife!
I may not be thy love: I am forbidden
Indeed I amthwarted, affrighted, chidden,
By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath.
Twice hast thou ask'd whither I went: henceforth
Ask me no more! I may not utter it,
Nor may I be thy love. We might commit
Ourselves at once to vengeance; we might die;
We might embrace and die: voluptuous thought!
Enlarge not to my hunger, or I'm caught
In trammels of perverse deliciousness.
No, no, that shall not be: thee will I bless,
And bid a long adieu."

             The Carian
No word return'd: both lovelorn, silent, wan,
Into the vallies green together went.
Far wandering, they were perforce content
To sit beneath a fair lone beechen tree;
Nor at each other gaz'd, but heavily
Por'd on its hazle cirque of shedded leaves.

Endymion! unhappy! it nigh grieves
Me to behold thee thus in last extreme:
Ensky'd ere this, but truly that I deem
Truth the best music in a first-born song.
Thy lute-voic'd brother will I sing ere long,
And thou shalt aidhast thou not aided me?
Yes, moonlight Emperor! felicity
Has been thy meed for many thousand years;
Yet often have I, on the brink of tears,
Mourn'd as if yet thou wert a forester,
Forgetting the old tale.

              He did not stir
His eyes from the dead leaves, or one small pulse
Of joy he might have felt. The spirit culls
Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays
Through the old garden-ground of boyish days.
A little onward ran the very stream
By which he took his first soft poppy dream;
And on the very bark 'gainst which he leant
A crescent he had carv'd, and round it spent
His skill in little stars. The teeming tree
Had swollen and green'd the pious charactery,
But not ta'en out. Why, there was not a slope
Up which he had not fear'd the antelope;
And not a tree, beneath whose rooty shade
He had not with his tamed leopards play'd.
Nor could an arrow light, or javelin,
Fly in the air where his had never been
And yet he knew it not.

             O treachery!
Why does his lady smile, pleasing her eye
With all his sorrowing? He sees her not.
But who so stares on him? His sister sure!
Peona of the woods!Can she endure
Impossiblehow dearly they embrace!
His lady smiles; delight is in her face;
It is no treachery.

           "Dear brother mine!
Endymion, weep not so! Why shouldst thou pine
When all great Latmos so exalt wilt be?
Thank the great gods, and look not bitterly;
And speak not one pale word, and sigh no more.
Sure I will not believe thou hast such store
Of grief, to last thee to my kiss again.
Thou surely canst not bear a mind in pain,
Come hand in hand with one so beautiful.
Be happy both of you! for I will pull
The flowers of autumn for your coronals.
Pan's holy priest for young Endymion calls;
And when he is restor'd, thou, fairest dame,
Shalt be our queen. Now, is it not a shame
To see ye thus,not very, very sad?
Perhaps ye are too happy to be glad:
O feel as if it were a common day;
Free-voic'd as one who never was away.
No tongue shall ask, whence come ye? but ye shall
Be gods of your own rest imperial.
Not even I, for one whole month, will pry
Into the hours that have pass'd us by,
Since in my arbour I did sing to thee.
O Hermes! on this very night will be
A hymning up to Cynthia, queen of light;
For the soothsayers old saw yesternight
Good visions in the air,whence will befal,
As say these sages, health perpetual
To shepherds and their flocks; and furthermore,
In Dian's face they read the gentle lore:
Therefore for her these vesper-carols are.
Our friends will all be there from nigh and far.
Many upon thy death have ditties made;
And many, even now, their foreheads shade
With cypress, on a day of sacrifice.
New singing for our maids shalt thou devise,
And pluck the sorrow from our huntsmen's brows.
Tell me, my lady-queen, how to espouse
This wayward brother to his rightful joys!
His eyes are on thee bent, as thou didst poise
His fate most goddess-like. Help me, I pray,
To lureEndymion, dear brother, say
What ails thee?" He could bear no more, and so
Bent his soul fiercely like a spiritual bow,
And twang'd it inwardly, and calmly said:
"I would have thee my only friend, sweet maid!
My only visitor! not ignorant though,
That those deceptions which for pleasure go
'Mong men, are pleasures real as real may be:
But there are higher ones I may not see,
If impiously an earthly realm I take.
Since I saw thee, I have been wide awake
Night after night, and day by day, until
Of the empyrean I have drunk my fill.
Let it content thee, Sister, seeing me
More happy than betides mortality.
A hermit young, I'll live in mossy cave,
Where thou alone shalt come to me, and lave
Thy spirit in the wonders I shall tell.
Through me the shepherd realm shall prosper well;
For to thy tongue will I all health confide.
And, for my sake, let this young maid abide
With thee as a dear sister. Thou alone,
Peona, mayst return to me. I own
This may sound strangely: but when, dearest girl,
Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearl
Will trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair!
Wilt be content to dwell with her, to share
This sister's love with me?" Like one resign'd
And bent by circumstance, and thereby blind
In self-commitment, thus that meek unknown:
"Aye, but a buzzing by my ears has flown,
Of jubilee to Dian:truth I heard!
Well then, I see there is no little bird,
Tender soever, but is Jove's own care.
Long have I sought for rest, and, unaware,
Behold I find it! so exalted too!
So after my own heart! I knew, I knew
There was a place untenanted in it:
In that same void white Chastity shall sit,
And monitor me nightly to lone slumber.
With sanest lips I vow me to the number
Of Dian's sisterhood; and, kind lady,
With thy good help, this very night shall see
My future days to her fane consecrate."

As feels a dreamer what doth most create
His own particular fright, so these three felt:
Or like one who, in after ages, knelt
To Lucifer or Baal, when he'd pine
After a little sleep: or when in mine
Far under-ground, a sleeper meets his friends
Who know him not. Each diligently bends
Towards common thoughts and things for very fear;
Striving their ghastly malady to cheer,
By thinking it a thing of yes and no,
That housewives talk of. But the spirit-blow
Was struck, and all were dreamers. At the last
Endymion said: "Are not our fates all cast?
Why stand we here? Adieu, ye tender pair!
Adieu!" Whereat those maidens, with wild stare,
Walk'd dizzily away. Pained and hot
His eyes went after them, until they got
Near to a cypress grove, whose deadly maw,
In one swift moment, would what then he saw
Engulph for ever. "Stay!" he cried, "ah, stay!
Turn, damsels! hist! one word I have to say.
Sweet Indian, I would see thee once again.
It is a thing I dote on: so I'd fain,
Peona, ye should hand in hand repair
Into those holy groves, that silent are
Behind great Dian's temple. I'll be yon,
At vesper's earliest twinklethey are gone
But once, once, once again" At this he press'd
His hands against his face, and then did rest
His head upon a mossy hillock green,
And so remain'd as he a corpse had been
All the long day; save when he scantly lifted
His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted
With the slow move of time,sluggish and weary
Until the poplar tops, in journey dreary,
Had reach'd the river's brim. Then up he rose,
And, slowly as that very river flows,
Walk'd towards the temple grove with this lament:
"Why such a golden eve? The breeze is sent
Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fall
Before the serene father of them all
Bows down his summer head below the west.
Now am I of breath, speech, and speed possest,
But at the setting I must bid adieu
To her for the last time. Night will strew
On the damp grass myriads of lingering leaves,
And with them shall I die; nor much it grieves
To die, when summer dies on the cold sward.
Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord
Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies,
Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbour roses;
My kingdom's at its death, and just it is
That I should die with it: so in all this
We miscal grief, bale, sorrow, heartbreak, woe,
What is there to plain of? By Titan's foe
I am but rightly serv'd." So saying, he
Tripp'd lightly on, in sort of deathful glee;
Laughing at the clear stream and setting sun,
As though they jests had been: nor had he done
His laugh at nature's holy countenance,
Until that grove appear'd, as if perchance,
And then his tongue with sober seemlihed
Gave utterance as he entered: "Ha!" I said,
"King of the butterflies; but by this gloom,
And by old Rhadamanthus' tongue of doom,
This dusk religion, pomp of solitude,
And the Promethean clay by thief endued,
By old Saturnus' forelock, by his head
Shook with eternal palsy, I did wed
Myself to things of light from infancy;
And thus to be cast out, thus lorn to die,
Is sure enough to make a mortal man
Grow impious." So he inwardly began
On things for which no wording can be found;
Deeper and deeper sinking, until drown'd
Beyond the reach of music: for the choir
Of Cynthia he heard not, though rough briar
Nor muffling thicket interpos'd to dull
The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full,
Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.
He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,
Wan as primroses gather'd at midnight
By chilly finger'd spring. "Unhappy wight!
Endymion!" said Peona, "we are here!
What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier?"
Then he embrac'd her, and his lady's hand
Press'd, saying:" Sister, I would have command,
If it were heaven's will, on our sad fate."
At which that dark-eyed stranger stood elate
And said, in a new voice, but sweet as love,
To Endymion's amaze: "By Cupid's dove,
And so thou shalt! and by the lily truth
Of my own breast thou shalt, beloved youth!"
And as she spake, into her face there came
Light, as reflected from a silver flame:
Her long black hair swell'd ampler, in display
Full golden; in her eyes a brighter day
Dawn'd blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld
Phoebe, his passion! joyous she upheld
Her lucid bow, continuing thus; "Drear, drear
Has our delaying been; but foolish fear
Withheld me first; and then decrees of fate;
And then 'twas fit that from this mortal state
Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlook'd for change
Be spiritualiz'd. Peona, we shall range
These forests, and to thee they safe shall be
As was thy cradle; hither shalt thou flee
To meet us many a time." Next Cynthia bright
Peona kiss'd, and bless'd with fair good night:
Her brother kiss'd her too, and knelt adown
Before his goddess, in a blissful swoon.
She gave her fair hands to him, and behold,
Before three swiftest kisses he had told,
They vanish'd far away!Peona went
Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.

(line 2): This line originally began with 'O Mountain-born in the draft, where also 'while' stands cancelled in favour of 'by.'

(line 158): Keats has been supposed to have invented the variant 'spry' for 'spray' for convenience of rhyming, just as Shelley has been accused of inventing for like reasons the word 'uprest', for example, in Laon And Cythna, Canto III, Stanza xxi. Sandys, the translator of Ovid, may not be a very good authority; but he is not improbably Keats's authority for 'spry', and will certainly do in default of a better.

(line 273): The biblical dissyllabic form 'mayest' is clearly used by deliberate preference, for the line originally stood thus in the draft :
And I have told thee all that thou canst hear.

(line 298): Remember'd from its velvet summer song : The gentleness of summer wind seems to have been a cherished idea with Keats. Compare with Sleep And Poetry, line 1 --
'What is more gentle than a wind in summer?'

(line 585): This was originally a short line consisting of the words "Thine illuminings" alone. The whole stanza, ... was sent by Keats to his friend Baily for his "vote, pro or con," in a letter dated the 22nd of November 1817.

(line 668): An imagination in which Hunt would have found it difficult to discover the reality; but probably Keats had never seen the miserable platform of dry twigs that serves for "a dove's nest among summer trees."

(line 672): Endymion's imaginary home and employments as pictured in the next fifty lines may be compared with Shelley's AEgean island described so wonderfully in Epipsychidion. Both passages are thoroughly characteristic; and they show the divergence between the modes of thought and sentiment of the two men in a very marked way.

(line 885-86): A curious importation from Hebrew theology into a subject from Greek mythology. Compare St. Matthew, X, 29: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father." Or, as made familiar to our childhood by the popular hymn-wright,---
'A little sparrow cannot fall,
Unnoticed, Lord, by Thee.'

In the finished manuscript the word "kist" occurs twice instead of "kiss'd" as in the first edition; but "bless'd" is not similarly transformed to "blest."

At the end of the draft Keats wrote "Burford Bridge Nov. 28, 1817--".

The imprint of Endymion is as follows:-- T. Miller, Printer, Noble Street, Cheapside. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Endymion - Book IV
,
293:There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
From human pastures; or, O torturing fact!
Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd
Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe
Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge
Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight
Able to face an owl's, they still are dight
By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests,
And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts,
Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount
To their spirit's perch, their being's high account,
Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones
Amid the fierce intoxicating tones
Of trumpets, shoutings, and belabour'd drums,
And sudden cannon. Ah! how all this hums,
In wakeful ears, like uproar past and gone
Like thunder clouds that spake to Babylon,
And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks.
Are then regalities all gilded masks?
No, there are throned seats unscalable
But by a patient wing, a constant spell,
Or by ethereal things that, unconfin'd,
Can make a ladder of the eternal wind,
And poise about in cloudy thunder-tents
To watch the abysm-birth of elements.
Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate
A thousand Powers keep religious state,
In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne;
And, silent as a consecrated urn,
Hold sphery sessions for a season due.
Yet few of these far majesties, ah, few!
Have bared their operations to this globe
Few, who with gorgeous pageantry enrobe
Our piece of heavenwhose benevolence
Shakes hand with our own Ceres; every sense
Filling with spiritual sweets to plenitude,
As bees gorge full their cells. And, by the feud
'Twixt Nothing and Creation, I here swear,
Eterne Apollo! that thy Sister fair
Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest.
When thy gold breath is misting in the west,
She unobserved steals unto her throne,
And there she sits most meek and most alone;
As if she had not pomp subservient;
As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent
Towards her with the Muses in thine heart;
As if the ministring stars kept not apart,
Waiting for silver-footed messages.
O Moon! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees
Feel palpitations when thou lookest in:
O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din
The while they feel thine airy fellowship.
Thou dost bless every where, with silver lip
Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine,
Couched in thy brightness, dream of fields divine:
Innumerable mountains rise, and rise,
Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes;
And yet thy benediction passeth not
One obscure hiding-place, one little spot
Where pleasure may be sent: the nested wren
Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken,
And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf
Takes glimpses of thee; thou art a relief
To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps
Within its pearly house.The mighty deeps,
The monstrous sea is thinethe myriad sea!
O Moon! far-spooming Ocean bows to thee,
And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load.

Cynthia! where art thou now? What far abode
Of green or silvery bower doth enshrine
Such utmost beauty? Alas, thou dost pine
For one as sorrowful: thy cheek is pale
For one whose cheek is pale: thou dost bewail
His tears, who weeps for thee. Where dost thou sigh?
Ah! surely that light peeps from Vesper's eye,
Or what a thing is love! 'Tis She, but lo!
How chang'd, how full of ache, how gone in woe!
She dies at the thinnest cloud; her loveliness
Is wan on Neptune's blue: yet there's a stress
Of love-spangles, just off yon cape of trees,
Dancing upon the waves, as if to please
The curly foam with amorous influence.
O, not so idle: for down-glancing thence
She fathoms eddies, and runs wild about
O'erwhelming water-courses; scaring out
The thorny sharks from hiding-holes, and fright'ning
Their savage eyes with unaccustomed lightning.
Where will the splendor be content to reach?
O love! how potent hast thou been to teach
Strange journeyings! Wherever beauty dwells,
In gulf or aerie, mountains or deep dells,
In light, in gloom, in star or blazing sun,
Thou pointest out the way, and straight 'tis won.
Amid his toil thou gav'st Leander breath;
Thou leddest Orpheus through the gleams of death;
Thou madest Pluto bear thin element;
And now, O winged Chieftain! thou hast sent
A moon-beam to the deep, deep water-world,
To find Endymion.

         On gold sand impearl'd
With lily shells, and pebbles milky white,
Poor Cynthia greeted him, and sooth'd her light
Against his pallid face: he felt the charm
To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm
Of his heart's blood: 'twas very sweet; he stay'd
His wandering steps, and half-entranced laid
His head upon a tuft of straggling weeds,
To taste the gentle moon, and freshening beads,
Lashed from the crystal roof by fishes' tails.
And so he kept, until the rosy veils
Mantling the east, by Aurora's peering hand
Were lifted from the water's breast, and fann'd
Into sweet air; and sober'd morning came
Meekly through billows:when like taper-flame
Left sudden by a dallying breath of air,
He rose in silence, and once more 'gan fare
Along his fated way.

           Far had he roam'd,
With nothing save the hollow vast, that foam'd
Above, around, and at his feet; save things
More dead than Morpheus' imaginings:
Old rusted anchors, helmets, breast-plates large
Of gone sea-warriors; brazen beaks and targe;
Rudders that for a hundred years had lost
The sway of human hand; gold vase emboss'd
With long-forgotten story, and wherein
No reveller had ever dipp'd a chin
But those of Saturn's vintage; mouldering scrolls,
Writ in the tongue of heaven, by those souls
Who first were on the earth; and sculptures rude
In ponderous stone, developing the mood
Of ancient Nox;then skeletons of man,
Of beast, behemoth, and leviathan,
And elephant, and eagle, and huge jaw
Of nameless monster. A cold leaden awe
These secrets struck into him; and unless
Dian had chaced away that heaviness,
He might have died: but now, with cheered feel,
He onward kept; wooing these thoughts to steal
About the labyrinth in his soul of love.

"What is there in thee, Moon! that thou shouldst move
My heart so potently? When yet a child
I oft have dried my tears when thou hast smil'd.
Thou seem'dst my sister: hand in hand we went
From eve to morn across the firmament.
No apples would I gather from the tree,
Till thou hadst cool'd their cheeks deliciously:
No tumbling water ever spake romance,
But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance:
No woods were green enough, no bower divine,
Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine:
In sowing time ne'er would I dibble take,
Or drop a seed, till thou wast wide awake;
And, in the summer tide of blossoming,
No one but thee hath heard me blithly sing
And mesh my dewy flowers all the night.
No melody was like a passing spright
If it went not to solemnize thy reign.
Yes, in my boyhood, every joy and pain
By thee were fashion'd to the self-same end;
And as I grew in years, still didst thou blend
With all my ardours: thou wast the deep glen;
Thou wast the mountain-topthe sage's pen
The poet's harpthe voice of friendsthe sun;
Thou wast the riverthou wast glory won;
Thou wast my clarion's blastthou wast my steed
My goblet full of winemy topmost deed:
Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!
O what a wild and harmonized tune
My spirit struck from all the beautiful!
On some bright essence could I lean, and lull
Myself to immortality: I prest
Nature's soft pillow in a wakeful rest.
But, gentle Orb! there came a nearer bliss
My strange love cameFelicity's abyss!
She came, and thou didst fade, and fade away
Yet not entirely; no, thy starry sway
Has been an under-passion to this hour.
Now I begin to feel thine orby power
Is coming fresh upon me: O be kind,
Keep back thine influence, and do not blind
My sovereign vision.Dearest love, forgive
That I can think away from thee and live!
Pardon me, airy planet, that I prize
One thought beyond thine argent luxuries!
How far beyond!" At this a surpris'd start
Frosted the springing verdure of his heart;
For as he lifted up his eyes to swear
How his own goddess was past all things fair,
He saw far in the concave green of the sea
An old man sitting calm and peacefully.
Upon a weeded rock this old man sat,
And his white hair was awful, and a mat
Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet;
And, ample as the largest winding-sheet,
A cloak of blue wrapp'd up his aged bones,
O'erwrought with symbols by the deepest groans
Of ambitious magic: every ocean-form
Was woven in with black distinctness; storm,
And calm, and whispering, and hideous roar
Were emblem'd in the woof; with every shape
That skims, or dives, or sleeps, 'twixt cape and cape.
The gulphing whale was like a dot in the spell,
Yet look upon it, and 'twould size and swell
To its huge self; and the minutest fish
Would pass the very hardest gazer's wish,
And show his little eye's anatomy.
Then there was pictur'd the regality
Of Neptune; and the sea nymphs round his state,
In beauteous vassalage, look up and wait.
Beside this old man lay a pearly wand,
And in his lap a book, the which he conn'd
So stedfastly, that the new denizen
Had time to keep him in amazed ken,
To mark these shadowings, and stand in awe.

The old man rais'd his hoary head and saw
The wilder'd strangerseeming not to see,
His features were so lifeless. Suddenly
He woke as from a trance; his snow-white brows
Went arching up, and like two magic ploughs
Furrow'd deep wrinkles in his forehead large,
Which kept as fixedly as rocky marge,
Till round his wither'd lips had gone a smile.
Then up he rose, like one whose tedious toil
Had watch'd for years in forlorn hermitage,
Who had not from mid-life to utmost age
Eas'd in one accent his o'er-burden'd soul,
Even to the trees. He rose: he grasp'd his stole,
With convuls'd clenches waving it abroad,
And in a voice of solemn joy, that aw'd
Echo into oblivion, he said:

"Thou art the man! Now shall I lay my head
In peace upon my watery pillow: now
Sleep will come smoothly to my weary brow.
O Jove! I shall be young again, be young!
O shell-borne Neptune, I am pierc'd and stung
With new-born life! What shall I do? Where go,
When I have cast this serpent-skin of woe?
I'll swim to the syrens, and one moment listen
Their melodies, and see their long hair glisten;
Anon upon that giant's arm I'll be,
That writhes about the roots of Sicily:
To northern seas I'll in a twinkling sail,
And mount upon the snortings of a whale
To some black cloud; thence down I'll madly sweep
On forked lightning, to the deepest deep,
Where through some sucking pool I will be hurl'd
With rapture to the other side of the world!
O, I am full of gladness! Sisters three,
I bow full hearted to your old decree!
Yes, every god be thank'd, and power benign,
For I no more shall wither, droop, and pine.
Thou art the man!" Endymion started back
Dismay'd; and, like a wretch from whom the rack
Tortures hot breath, and speech of agony,
Mutter'd: "What lonely death am I to die
In this cold region? Will he let me freeze,
And float my brittle limbs o'er polar seas?
Or will he touch me with his searing hand,
And leave a black memorial on the sand?
Or tear me piece-meal with a bony saw,
And keep me as a chosen food to draw
His magian fish through hated fire and flame?
O misery of hell! resistless, tame,
Am I to be burnt up? No, I will shout,
Until the gods through heaven's blue look out!
O Tartarus! but some few days agone
Her soft arms were entwining me, and on
Her voice I hung like fruit among green leaves:
Her lips were all my own, andah, ripe sheaves
Of happiness! ye on the stubble droop,
But never may be garner'd. I must stoop
My head, and kiss death's foot. Love! love, farewel!
Is there no hope from thee? This horrid spell
Would melt at thy sweet breath.By Dian's hind
Feeding from her white fingers, on the wind
I see thy streaming hair! and now, by Pan,
I care not for this old mysterious man!"

He spake, and walking to that aged form,
Look'd high defiance. Lo! his heart 'gan warm
With pity, for the grey-hair'd creature wept.
Had he then wrong'd a heart where sorrow kept?
Had he, though blindly contumelious, brought
Rheum to kind eyes, a sting to human thought,
Convulsion to a mouth of many years?
He had in truth; and he was ripe for tears.
The penitent shower fell, as down he knelt
Before that care-worn sage, who trembling felt
About his large dark locks, and faultering spake:

"Arise, good youth, for sacred Phoebus' sake!
I know thine inmost bosom, and I feel
A very brother's yearning for thee steal
Into mine own: for why? thou openest
The prison gates that have so long opprest
My weary watching. Though thou know'st it not,
Thou art commission'd to this fated spot
For great enfranchisement. O weep no more;
I am a friend to love, to loves of yore:
Aye, hadst thou never lov'd an unknown power
I had been grieving at this joyous hour
But even now most miserable old,
I saw thee, and my blood no longer cold
Gave mighty pulses: in this tottering case
Grew a new heart, which at this moment plays
As dancingly as thine. Be not afraid,
For thou shalt hear this secret all display'd,
Now as we speed towards our joyous task."

So saying, this young soul in age's mask
Went forward with the Carian side by side:
Resuming quickly thus; while ocean's tide
Hung swollen at their backs, and jewel'd sands
Took silently their foot-prints. "My soul stands
Now past the midway from mortality,
And so I can prepare without a sigh
To tell thee briefly all my joy and pain.
I was a fisher once, upon this main,
And my boat danc'd in every creek and bay;
Rough billows were my home by night and day,
The sea-gulls not more constant; for I had
No housing from the storm and tempests mad,
But hollow rocks,and they were palaces
Of silent happiness, of slumberous ease:
Long years of misery have told me so.
Aye, thus it was one thousand years ago.
One thousand years!Is it then possible
To look so plainly through them? to dispel
A thousand years with backward glance sublime?
To breathe away as 'twere all scummy slime
From off a crystal pool, to see its deep,
And one's own image from the bottom peep?
Yes: now I am no longer wretched thrall,
My long captivity and moanings all
Are but a slime, a thin-pervading scum,
The which I breathe away, and thronging come
Like things of yesterday my youthful pleasures.

"I touch'd no lute, I sang not, trod no measures:
I was a lonely youth on desert shores.
My sports were lonely, 'mid continuous roars,
And craggy isles, and sea-mew's plaintive cry
Plaining discrepant between sea and sky.
Dolphins were still my playmates; shapes unseen
Would let me feel their scales of gold and green,
Nor be my desolation; and, full oft,
When a dread waterspout had rear'd aloft
Its hungry hugeness, seeming ready ripe
To burst with hoarsest thunderings, and wipe
My life away like a vast sponge of fate,
Some friendly monster, pitying my sad state,
Has dived to its foundations, gulph'd it down,
And left me tossing safely. But the crown
Of all my life was utmost quietude:
More did I love to lie in cavern rude,
Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune's voice,
And if it came at last, hark, and rejoice!
There blush'd no summer eve but I would steer
My skiff along green shelving coasts, to hear
The shepherd's pipe come clear from aery steep,
Mingled with ceaseless bleatings of his sheep:
And never was a day of summer shine,
But I beheld its birth upon the brine:
For I would watch all night to see unfold
Heaven's gates, and Aethon snort his morning gold
Wide o'er the swelling streams: and constantly
At brim of day-tide, on some grassy lea,
My nets would be spread out, and I at rest.
The poor folk of the sea-country I blest
With daily boon of fish most delicate:
They knew not whence this bounty, and elate
Would strew sweet flowers on a sterile beach.

"Why was I not contented? Wherefore reach
At things which, but for thee, O Latmian!
Had been my dreary death? Fool! I began
To feel distemper'd longings: to desire
The utmost privilege that ocean's sire
Could grant in benediction: to be free
Of all his kingdom. Long in misery
I wasted, ere in one extremest fit
I plung'd for life or death. To interknit
One's senses with so dense a breathing stuff
Might seem a work of pain; so not enough
Can I admire how crystal-smooth it felt,
And buoyant round my limbs. At first I dwelt
Whole days and days in sheer astonishment;
Forgetful utterly of self-intent;
Moving but with the mighty ebb and flow.
Then, like a new fledg'd bird that first doth shew
His spreaded feathers to the morrow chill,
I tried in fear the pinions of my will.
'Twas freedom! and at once I visited
The ceaseless wonders of this ocean-bed.
No need to tell thee of them, for I see
That thou hast been a witnessit must be
For these I know thou canst not feel a drouth,
By the melancholy corners of that mouth.
So I will in my story straightway pass
To more immediate matter. Woe, alas!
That love should be my bane! Ah, Scylla fair!
Why did poor Glaucus everever dare
To sue thee to his heart? Kind stranger-youth!
I lov'd her to the very white of truth,
And she would not conceive it. Timid thing!
She fled me swift as sea-bird on the wing,
Round every isle, and point, and promontory,
From where large Hercules wound up his story
Far as Egyptian Nile. My passion grew
The more, the more I saw her dainty hue
Gleam delicately through the azure clear:
Until 'twas too fierce agony to bear;
And in that agony, across my grief
It flash'd, that Circe might find some relief
Cruel enchantress! So above the water
I rear'd my head, and look'd for Phoebus' daughter.
Aeaea's isle was wondering at the moon:
It seem'd to whirl around me, and a swoon
Left me dead-drifting to that fatal power.

"When I awoke, 'twas in a twilight bower;
Just when the light of morn, with hum of bees,
Stole through its verdurous matting of fresh trees.
How sweet, and sweeter! for I heard a lyre,
And over it a sighing voice expire.
It ceasedI caught light footsteps; and anon
The fairest face that morn e'er look'd upon
Push'd through a screen of roses. Starry Jove!
With tears, and smiles, and honey-words she wove
A net whose thraldom was more bliss than all
The range of flower'd Elysium. Thus did fall
The dew of her rich speech: "Ah! Art awake?
O let me hear thee speak, for Cupid's sake!
I am so oppress'd with joy! Why, I have shed
An urn of tears, as though thou wert cold dead;
And now I find thee living, I will pour
From these devoted eyes their silver store,
Until exhausted of the latest drop,
So it will pleasure thee, and force thee stop
Here, that I too may live: but if beyond
Such cool and sorrowful offerings, thou art fond
Of soothing warmth, of dalliance supreme;
If thou art ripe to taste a long love dream;
If smiles, if dimples, tongues for ardour mute,
Hang in thy vision like a tempting fruit,
O let me pluck it for thee." Thus she link'd
Her charming syllables, till indistinct
Their music came to my o'er-sweeten'd soul;
And then she hover'd over me, and stole
So near, that if no nearer it had been
This furrow'd visage thou hadst never seen.

"Young man of Latmos! thus particular
Am I, that thou may'st plainly see how far
This fierce temptation went: and thou may'st not
Exclaim, How then, was Scylla quite forgot?

"Who could resist? Who in this universe?
She did so breathe ambrosia; so immerse
My fine existence in a golden clime.
She took me like a child of suckling time,
And cradled me in roses. Thus condemn'd,
The current of my former life was stemm'd,
And to this arbitrary queen of sense
I bow'd a tranced vassal: nor would thence
Have mov'd, even though Amphion's harp had woo'd
Me back to Scylla o'er the billows rude.
For as Apollo each eve doth devise
A new appareling for western skies;
So every eve, nay every spendthrift hour
Shed balmy consciousness within that bower.
And I was free of haunts umbrageous;
Could wander in the mazy forest-house
Of squirrels, foxes shy, and antler'd deer,
And birds from coverts innermost and drear
Warbling for very joy mellifluous sorrow
To me new born delights!

             "Now let me borrow,
For moments few, a temperament as stern
As Pluto's sceptre, that my words not burn
These uttering lips, while I in calm speech tell
How specious heaven was changed to real hell.

"One morn she left me sleeping: half awake
I sought for her smooth arms and lips, to slake
My greedy thirst with nectarous camel-draughts;
But she was gone. Whereat the barbed shafts
Of disappointment stuck in me so sore,
That out I ran and search'd the forest o'er.
Wandering about in pine and cedar gloom
Damp awe assail'd me; for there 'gan to boom
A sound of moan, an agony of sound,
Sepulchral from the distance all around.
Then came a conquering earth-thunder, and rumbled
That fierce complain to silence: while I stumbled
Down a precipitous path, as if impell'd.
I came to a dark valley.Groanings swell'd
Poisonous about my ears, and louder grew,
The nearer I approach'd a flame's gaunt blue,
That glar'd before me through a thorny brake.
This fire, like the eye of gordian snake,
Bewitch'd me towards; and I soon was near
A sight too fearful for the feel of fear:
In thicket hid I curs'd the haggard scene
The banquet of my arms, my arbour queen,
Seated upon an uptorn forest root;
And all around her shapes, wizard and brute,
Laughing, and wailing, groveling, serpenting,
Shewing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting!
O such deformities! Old Charon's self,
Should he give up awhile his penny pelf,
And take a dream 'mong rushes Stygian,
It could not be so phantasied. Fierce, wan,
And tyrannizing was the lady's look,
As over them a gnarled staff she shook.
Oft-times upon the sudden she laugh'd out,
And from a basket emptied to the rout
Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick
And roar'd for more; with many a hungry lick
About their shaggy jaws. Avenging, slow,
Anon she took a branch of mistletoe,
And emptied on't a black dull-gurgling phial:
Groan'd one and all, as if some piercing trial
Was sharpening for their pitiable bones.
She lifted up the charm: appealing groans
From their poor breasts went sueing to her ear
In vain; remorseless as an infant's bier
She whisk'd against their eyes the sooty oil.
Whereat was heard a noise of painful toil,
Increasing gradual to a tempest rage,
Shrieks, yells, and groans of torture-pilgrimage;
Until their grieved bodies 'gan to bloat
And puff from the tail's end to stifled throat:
Then was appalling silence: then a sight
More wildering than all that hoarse affright;
For the whole herd, as by a whirlwind writhen,
Went through the dismal air like one huge Python
Antagonizing Boreas,and so vanish'd.
Yet there was not a breath of wind: she banish'd
These phantoms with a nod. Lo! from the dark
Came waggish fauns, and nymphs, and satyrs stark,
With dancing and loud revelry,and went
Swifter than centaurs after rapine bent.
Sighing an elephant appear'd and bow'd
Before the fierce witch, speaking thus aloud
In human accent: "Potent goddess! chief
Of pains resistless! make my being brief,
Or let me from this heavy prison fly:
Or give me to the air, or let me die!
I sue not for my happy crown again;
I sue not for my phalanx on the plain;
I sue not for my lone, my widow'd wife;
I sue not for my ruddy drops of life,
My children fair, my lovely girls and boys!
I will forget them; I will pass these joys;
Ask nought so heavenward, so tootoo high:
Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die,
Or be deliver'd from this cumbrous flesh,
From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh,
And merely given to the cold bleak air.
Have mercy, Goddess! Circe, feel my prayer!"

That curst magician's name fell icy numb
Upon my wild conjecturing: truth had come
Naked and sabre-like against my heart.
I saw a fury whetting a death-dart;
And my slain spirit, overwrought with fright,
Fainted away in that dark lair of night.
Think, my deliverer, how desolate
My waking must have been! disgust, and hate,
And terrors manifold divided me
A spoil amongst them. I prepar'd to flee
Into the dungeon core of that wild wood:
I fled three dayswhen lo! before me stood
Glaring the angry witch. O Dis, even now,
A clammy dew is beading on my brow,
At mere remembering her pale laugh, and curse.
"Ha! ha! Sir Dainty! there must be a nurse
Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express,
To cradle thee my sweet, and lull thee: yes,
I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch:
My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch.
So, fairy-thing, it shall have lullabies
Unheard of yet; and it shall still its cries
Upon some breast more lily-feminine.
Oh, noit shall not pine, and pine, and pine
More than one pretty, trifling thousand years;
And then 'twere pity, but fate's gentle shears
Cut short its immortality. Sea-flirt!
Young dove of the waters! truly I'll not hurt
One hair of thine: see how I weep and sigh,
That our heart-broken parting is so nigh.
And must we part? Ah, yes, it must be so.
Yet ere thou leavest me in utter woe,
Let me sob over thee my last adieus,
And speak a blessing: Mark me! thou hast thews
Immortal, for thou art of heavenly race:
But such a love is mine, that here I chase
Eternally away from thee all bloom
Of youth, and destine thee towards a tomb.
Hence shalt thou quickly to the watery vast;
And there, ere many days be overpast,
Disabled age shall seize thee; and even then
Thou shalt not go the way of aged men;
But live and wither, cripple and still breathe
Ten hundred years: which gone, I then bequeath
Thy fragile bones to unknown burial.
Adieu, sweet love, adieu!"As shot stars fall,
She fled ere I could groan for mercy. Stung
And poisoned was my spirit: despair sung
A war-song of defiance 'gainst all hell.
A hand was at my shoulder to compel
My sullen steps; another 'fore my eyes
Moved on with pointed finger. In this guise
Enforced, at the last by ocean's foam
I found me; by my fresh, my native home.
Its tempering coolness, to my life akin,
Came salutary as I waded in;
And, with a blind voluptuous rage, I gave
Battle to the swollen billow-ridge, and drave
Large froth before me, while there yet remain'd
Hale strength, nor from my bones all marrow drain'd.

"Young lover, I must weepsuch hellish spite
With dry cheek who can tell? While thus my might
Proving upon this element, dismay'd,
Upon a dead thing's face my hand I laid;
I look'd'twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!
O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?
Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,
But thou must nip this tender innocent
Because I lov'd her?Cold, O cold indeed
Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed
The sea-swell took her hair. Dead as she was
I clung about her waist, nor ceas'd to pass
Fleet as an arrow through unfathom'd brine,
Until there shone a fabric crystalline,
Ribb'd and inlaid with coral, pebble, and pearl.
Headlong I darted; at one eager swirl
Gain'd its bright portal, enter'd, and behold!
'Twas vast, and desolate, and icy-cold;
And all aroundBut wherefore this to thee
Who in few minutes more thyself shalt see?
I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled.
My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread
Met palsy half way: soon these limbs became
Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, feeble, cramp'd, and lame.

"Now let me pass a cruel, cruel space,
Without one hope, without one faintest trace
Of mitigation, or redeeming bubble
Of colour'd phantasy; for I fear 'twould trouble
Thy brain to loss of reason: and next tell
How a restoring chance came down to quell
One half of the witch in me.        On a day,
Sitting upon a rock above the spray,
I saw grow up from the horizon's brink
A gallant vessel: soon she seem'd to sink
Away from me again, as though her course
Had been resum'd in spite of hindering force
So vanish'd: and not long, before arose
Dark clouds, and muttering of winds morose.
Old Eolus would stifle his mad spleen,
But could not: therefore all the billows green
Toss'd up the silver spume against the clouds.
The tempest came: I saw that vessel's shrouds
In perilous bustle; while upon the deck
Stood trembling creatures. I beheld the wreck;
The final gulphing; the poor struggling souls:
I heard their cries amid loud thunder-rolls.
O they had all been sav'd but crazed eld
Annull'd my vigorous cravings: and thus quell'd
And curb'd, think on't, O Latmian! did I sit
Writhing with pity, and a cursing fit
Against that hell-born Circe. The crew had gone,
By one and one, to pale oblivion;
And I was gazing on the surges prone,
With many a scalding tear and many a groan,
When at my feet emerg'd an old man's hand,
Grasping this scroll, and this same slender wand.
I knelt with painreached out my handhad grasp'd
These treasurestouch'd the knucklesthey unclasp'd
I caught a finger: but the downward weight
O'erpowered meit sank. Then 'gan abate
The storm, and through chill aguish gloom outburst
The comfortable sun. I was athirst
To search the book, and in the warming air
Parted its dripping leaves with eager care.
Strange matters did it treat of, and drew on
My soul page after page, till well-nigh won
Into forgetfulness; when, stupefied,
I read these words, and read again, and tried
My eyes against the heavens, and read again.
O what a load of misery and pain
Each Atlas-line bore off!a shine of hope
Came gold around me, cheering me to cope
Strenuous with hellish tyranny. Attend!
For thou hast brought their promise to an end.

"In the wide sea there lives a forlorn wretch,
Doom'd with enfeebled carcase to outstretch
His loath'd existence through ten centuries,
And then to die alone. Who can devise
A total opposition? No one. So
One million times ocean must ebb and flow,
And he oppressed. Yet he shall not die,
These things accomplish'd:If he utterly
Scans all the depths of magic, and expounds
The meanings of all motions, shapes, and sounds;
If he explores all forms and substances
Straight homeward to their symbol-essences;
He shall not die. Moreover, and in chief,
He must pursue this task of joy and grief
Most piously;all lovers tempest-tost,
And in the savage overwhelming lost,
He shall deposit side by side, until
Time's creeping shall the dreary space fulfil:
Which done, and all these labours ripened,
A youth, by heavenly power lov'd and led,
Shall stand before him; whom he shall direct
How to consummate all. The youth elect
Must do the thing, or both will be destroy'd."

"Then," cried the young Endymion, overjoy'd,
"We are twin brothers in this destiny!
Say, I intreat thee, what achievement high
Is, in this restless world, for me reserv'd.
What! if from thee my wandering feet had swerv'd,
Had we both perish'd?""Look!" the sage replied,
"Dost thou not mark a gleaming through the tide,
Of divers brilliances? 'tis the edifice
I told thee of, where lovely Scylla lies;
And where I have enshrined piously
All lovers, whom fell storms have doom'd to die
Throughout my bondage." Thus discoursing, on
They went till unobscur'd the porches shone;
Which hurryingly they gain'd, and enter'd straight.
Sure never since king Neptune held his state
Was seen such wonder underneath the stars.
Turn to some level plain where haughty Mars
Has legion'd all his battle; and behold
How every soldier, with firm foot, doth hold
His even breast: see, many steeled squares,
And rigid ranks of ironwhence who dares
One step? Imagine further, line by line,
These warrior thousands on the field supine:
So in that crystal place, in silent rows,
Poor lovers lay at rest from joys and woes.
The stranger from the mountains, breathless, trac'd
Such thousands of shut eyes in order plac'd;
Such ranges of white feet, and patient lips
All ruddy,for here death no blossom nips.
He mark'd their brows and foreheads; saw their hair
Put sleekly on one side with nicest care;
And each one's gentle wrists, with reverence,
Put cross-wise to its heart.

               "Let us commence,
Whisper'd the guide, stuttering with joy, even now."
He spake, and, trembling like an aspen-bough,
Began to tear his scroll in pieces small,
Uttering the while some mumblings funeral.
He tore it into pieces small as snow
That drifts unfeather'd when bleak northerns blow;
And having done it, took his dark blue cloak
And bound it round Endymion: then struck
His wand against the empty air times nine.
"What more there is to do, young man, is thine:
But first a little patience; first undo
This tangled thread, and wind it to a clue.
Ah, gentle! 'tis as weak as spider's skein;
And shouldst thou break itWhat, is it done so clean?
A power overshadows thee! Oh, brave!
The spite of hell is tumbling to its grave.
Here is a shell; 'tis pearly blank to me,
Nor mark'd with any sign or charactery
Canst thou read aught? O read for pity's sake!
Olympus! we are safe! Now, Carian, break
This wand against yon lyre on the pedestal."

'Twas done: and straight with sudden swell and fall
Sweet music breath'd her soul away, and sigh'd
A lullaby to silence."Youth! now strew
These minced leaves on me, and passing through
Those files of dead, scatter the same around,
And thou wilt see the issue."'Mid the sound
Of flutes and viols, ravishing his heart,
Endymion from Glaucus stood apart,
And scatter'd in his face some fragments light.
How lightning-swift the change! a youthful wight
Smiling beneath a coral diadem,
Out-sparkling sudden like an upturn'd gem,
Appear'd, and, stepping to a beauteous corse,
Kneel'd down beside it, and with tenderest force
Press'd its cold hand, and weptand Scylla sigh'd!
Endymion, with quick hand, the charm applied
The nymph arose: he left them to their joy,
And onward went upon his high employ,
Showering those powerful fragments on the dead.
And, as he pass'd, each lifted up its head,
As doth a flower at Apollo's touch.
Death felt it to his inwards; 'twas too much:
Death fell a weeping in his charnel-house.
The Latmian persever'd along, and thus
All were re-animated. There arose
A noise of harmony, pulses and throes
Of gladness in the airwhile many, who
Had died in mutual arms devout and true,
Sprang to each other madly; and the rest
Felt a high certainty of being blest.
They gaz'd upon Endymion. Enchantment
Grew drunken, and would have its head and bent.
Delicious symphonies, like airy flowers,
Budded, and swell'd, and, full-blown, shed full showers
Of light, soft, unseen leaves of sounds divine.
The two deliverers tasted a pure wine
Of happiness, from fairy-press ooz'd out.
Speechless they eyed each other, and about
The fair assembly wander'd to and fro,
Distracted with the richest overflow
Of joy that ever pour'd from heaven.

                  "Away!"
Shouted the new-born god; "Follow, and pay
Our piety to Neptunus supreme!"
Then Scylla, blushing sweetly from her dream,
They led on first, bent to her meek surprise,
Through portal columns of a giant size,
Into the vaulted, boundless emerald.
Joyous all follow'd, as the leader call'd,
Down marble steps; pouring as easily
As hour-glass sandand fast, as you might see
Swallows obeying the south summer's call,
Or swans upon a gentle waterfall.

Thus went that beautiful multitude, nor far,
Ere from among some rocks of glittering spar,
Just within ken, they saw descending thick
Another multitude. Whereat more quick
Moved either host. On a wide sand they met,
And of those numbers every eye was wet;
For each their old love found. A murmuring rose,
Like what was never heard in all the throes
Of wind and waters: 'tis past human wit
To tell; 'tis dizziness to think of it.

This mighty consummation made, the host
Mov'd on for many a league; and gain'd, and lost
Huge sea-marks; vanward swelling in array,
And from the rear diminishing away,
Till a faint dawn surpris'd them. Glaucus cried,
"Behold! behold, the palace of his pride!
God Neptune's palaces!" With noise increas'd,
They shoulder'd on towards that brightening east.
At every onward step proud domes arose
In prospect,diamond gleams, and golden glows
Of amber 'gainst their faces levelling.
Joyous, and many as the leaves in spring,
Still onward; still the splendour gradual swell'd.
Rich opal domes were seen, on high upheld
By jasper pillars, letting through their shafts
A blush of coral. Copious wonder-draughts
Each gazer drank; and deeper drank more near:
For what poor mortals fragment up, as mere
As marble was there lavish, to the vast
Of one fair palace, that far far surpass'd,
Even for common bulk, those olden three,
Memphis, and Babylon, and Nineveh.

As large, as bright, as colour'd as the bow
Of Iris, when unfading it doth shew
Beyond a silvery shower, was the arch
Through which this Paphian army took its march,
Into the outer courts of Neptune's state:
Whence could be seen, direct, a golden gate,
To which the leaders sped; but not half raught
Ere it burst open swift as fairy thought,
And made those dazzled thousands veil their eyes
Like callow eagles at the first sunrise.
Soon with an eagle nativeness their gaze
Ripe from hue-golden swoons took all the blaze,
And then, behold! large Neptune on his throne
Of emerald deep: yet not exalt alone;
At his right hand stood winged Love, and on
His left sat smiling Beauty's paragon.

Far as the mariner on highest mast
Can see all round upon the calmed vast,
So wide was Neptune's hall: and as the blue
Doth vault the waters, so the waters drew
Their doming curtains, high, magnificent,
Aw'd from the throne aloof;and when storm-rent
Disclos'd the thunder-gloomings in Jove's air;
But sooth'd as now, flash'd sudden everywhere,
Noiseless, sub-marine cloudlets, glittering
Death to a human eye: for there did spring
From natural west, and east, and south, and north,
A light as of four sunsets, blazing forth
A gold-green zenith 'bove the Sea-God's head.
Of lucid depth the floor, and far outspread
As breezeless lake, on which the slim canoe
Of feather'd Indian darts about, as through
The delicatest air: air verily,
But for the portraiture of clouds and sky:
This palace floor breath-air,but for the amaze
Of deep-seen wonders motionless,and blaze
Of the dome pomp, reflected in extremes,
Globing a golden sphere.

             They stood in dreams
Till Triton blew his horn. The palace rang;
The Nereids danc'd; the Syrens faintly sang;
And the great Sea-King bow'd his dripping head.
Then Love took wing, and from his pinions shed
On all the multitude a nectarous dew.
The ooze-born Goddess beckoned and drew
Fair Scylla and her guides to conference;
And when they reach'd the throned eminence
She kist the sea-nymph's cheek,who sat her down
A toying with the doves. Then,"Mighty crown
And sceptre of this kingdom!" Venus said,
"Thy vows were on a time to Nais paid:
Behold!"Two copious tear-drops instant fell
From the God's large eyes; he smil'd delectable,
And over Glaucus held his blessing hands.
"Endymion! Ah! still wandering in the bands
Of love? Now this is cruel. Since the hour
I met thee in earth's bosom, all my power
Have I put forth to serve thee. What, not yet
Escap'd from dull mortality's harsh net?
A little patience, youth! 'twill not be long,
Or I am skilless quite: an idle tongue,
A humid eye, and steps luxurious,
Where these are new and strange, are ominous.
Aye, I have seen these signs in one of heaven,
When others were all blind; and were I given
To utter secrets, haply I might say
Some pleasant words:but Love will have his day.
So wait awhile expectant. Pr'ythee soon,
Even in the passing of thine honey-moon,
Visit my Cytherea: thou wilt find
Cupid well-natured, my Adonis kind;
And pray persuade with theeAh, I have done,
All blisses be upon thee, my sweet son!"
Thus the fair goddess: while Endymion
Knelt to receive those accents halcyon.

Meantime a glorious revelry began
Before the Water-Monarch. Nectar ran
In courteous fountains to all cups outreach'd;
And plunder'd vines, teeming exhaustless, pleach'd
New growth about each shell and pendent lyre;
The which, in disentangling for their fire,
Pull'd down fresh foliage and coverture
For dainty toying. Cupid, empire-sure,
Flutter'd and laugh'd, and oft-times through the throng
Made a delighted way. Then dance, and song,
And garlanding grew wild; and pleasure reign'd.
In harmless tendril they each other chain'd,
And strove who should be smother'd deepest in
Fresh crush of leaves.

             O 'tis a very sin
For one so weak to venture his poor verse
In such a place as this. O do not curse,
High Muses! let him hurry to the ending.

All suddenly were silent. A soft blending
Of dulcet instruments came charmingly;
And then a hymn.

          "KING of the stormy sea!
Brother of Jove, and co-inheritor
Of elements! Eternally before
Thee the waves awful bow. Fast, stubborn rock,
At thy fear'd trident shrinking, doth unlock
Its deep foundations, hissing into foam.
All mountain-rivers lost, in the wide home
Of thy capacious bosom ever flow.
Thou frownest, and old Eolus thy foe
Skulks to his cavern, 'mid the gruff complaint
Of all his rebel tempests. Dark clouds faint
When, from thy diadem, a silver gleam
Slants over blue dominion. Thy bright team
Gulphs in the morning light, and scuds along
To bring thee nearer to that golden song
Apollo singeth, while his chariot
Waits at the doors of heaven. Thou art not
For scenes like this: an empire stern hast thou;
And it hath furrow'd that large front: yet now,
As newly come of heaven, dost thou sit
To blend and interknit
Subdued majesty with this glad time.
O shell-borne King sublime!
We lay our hearts before thee evermore
We sing, and we adore!

"Breathe softly, flutes;
Be tender of your strings, ye soothing lutes;
Nor be the trumpet heard! O vain, O vain;
Not flowers budding in an April rain,
Nor breath of sleeping dove, nor river's flow,
No, nor the Eolian twang of Love's own bow,
Can mingle music fit for the soft ear
Of goddess Cytherea!
Yet deign, white Queen of Beauty, thy fair eyes
On our souls' sacrifice.

"Bright-winged Child!
Who has another care when thou hast smil'd?
Unfortunates on earth, we see at last
All death-shadows, and glooms that overcast
Our spirits, fann'd away by thy light pinions.
O sweetest essence! sweetest of all minions!
God of warm pulses, and dishevell'd hair,
And panting bosoms bare!
Dear unseen light in darkness! eclipser
Of light in light! delicious poisoner!
Thy venom'd goblet will we quaff until
We fillwe fill!
And by thy Mother's lips"
            Was heard no more
For clamour, when the golden palace door
Opened again, and from without, in shone
A new magnificence. On oozy throne
Smooth-moving came Oceanus the old,
To take a latest glimpse at his sheep-fold,
Before he went into his quiet cave
To muse for everThen a lucid wave,
Scoop'd from its trembling sisters of mid-sea,
Afloat, and pillowing up the majesty
Of Doris, and the Egean seer, her spouse
Next, on a dolphin, clad in laurel boughs,
Theban Amphion leaning on his lute:
His fingers went across itAll were mute
To gaze on Amphitrite, queen of pearls,
And Thetis pearly too.

             The palace whirls
Around giddy Endymion; seeing he
Was there far strayed from mortality.
He could not bear itshut his eyes in vain;
Imagination gave a dizzier pain.
"O I shall die! sweet Venus, be my stay!
Where is my lovely mistress? Well-away!
I dieI hear her voiceI feel my wing"
At Neptune's feet he sank. A sudden ring
Of Nereids were about him, in kind strife
To usher back his spirit into life:
But still he slept. At last they interwove
Their cradling arms, and purpos'd to convey
Towards a crystal bower far away.

Lo! while slow carried through the pitying crowd,
To his inward senses these words spake aloud;
Written in star-light on the dark above:
Dearest Endymion! my entire love!
How have I dwelt in fear of fate: 'tis done
Immortal bliss for me too hast thou won.
Arise then! for the hen-dove shall not hatch
Her ready eggs, before I'll kissing snatch
Thee into endless heaven. Awake! awake!

The youth at once arose: a placid lake
Came quiet to his eyes; and forest green,
Cooler than all the wonders he had seen,
Lull'd with its simple song his fluttering breast.
How happy once again in grassy nest!

(line 1): Woodhouse notes that "Keats said, with much simplicity, 'It will be easily seen what I think of the present ministers, by the beginning of the third Book.'"

(line 407): Whether the reference is to the Pillars of Hercules, the confluence of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, or to the scene of the Death of Hercules, is not very clear; but probably "wound up his story" refers rather to his last labour than to his death on Mount ta.

(lines 863-65): This simile must surely be a reminiscence of Perrin's Fables Amusantes or some similar book used in Mr. Clarke's School. I remember the Fable of the old eagle and her young stood first in the book I used at school. The draft gives line 860 thus -- 'But soon like eagles natively their gaze...'

At the end of this Book Keats wrote in the draft, "Oxf: Sept. 26."
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Endymion - Book III
,
294:Pearl
Pearl of delight that a prince doth please
To grace in gold enclosed so clear,
I vow that from over orient seas
Never proved I any in price her peer.
So round, so radiant ranged by these,
So fine, so smooth did her sides appear
That ever in judging gems that please
Her only alone I deemed as dear.
Alas! I lost her in garden near:
Through grass to the ground from me it shot;
I pine now oppressed by love-wound drear
For that pearl, mine own, without a spot.
Since in that spot it sped from me,
I have looked and longed for that precious thing
That me once was wont from woe to free,
To uplift my lot and healing bring,
But my heart doth hurt now cruelly,
My breast with burning torment sting.
Yet in secret hour came soft to me
The sweetest song I e'er heard sing;
Yea, many a thought in mind did spring
To think that her radiance in clay should rot.
O mould! Thou marrest a lovely thing,
My pearl, mine own, without a spot.
In that spot must needs be spices spread
Where away such wealth to waste hath run;
Blossoms pale and blue and red
There shimmer shining in the sun;
No flower nor fruit their hue may shed
Where it down into darkling earth was done,
For all grass must grow from grains that are dead,
No wheat would else to barn be won.
From good all good is ever begun,
And fail so fair a seed could not,
So that sprang and sprouted spices none
504
From that precious pearl without a spot.
That spot whereof I speak I found
When I entered in that garden green,
As August's season high came round
When corn is cut with sickles keen.
There, where that pearl rolled down, a mound
With herbs was shadowed fair and sheen,
With gillyflower, ginger, and gromwell crowned,
And peonies powdered all between.
If sweet was all that there was seen,
Fair too, a fragrance flowed I wot,
Where dwells that dearest, as I ween,
My precious pearl without a spot.
By that spot my hands I wrung dismayed;
For care full cold that had me caught
A hopeless grief on my heart was laid.
Though reason to reconcile me sought,
For my pearl there prisoned a plaint I made,
In fierce debate unmoved I fought;
Be comforted Christ Himself me bade,
But in woe my will ever strove distraught.
On the flowery plot I fell, methought;
Such odour through my senses shot,
I slipped and to sudden sleep was brought,
O'er that precious pearl without a spot.
From that spot my spirit sprang apace,
On the turf my body abode in trance;
My would was gone by God's own grace
Adventuring where marvels chance.
I knew not where in the world was that place
Save by cloven cliffs was set my stance;
And towards a forest I turned my face,
Where rocks in splendour met my glance;
From them did a glittering glory lance,
None could believe the light they lent;
Never webs were woven in mortal haunts
505
Of half such wealth and wonderment.
Wondrous was made each mountain-side
With crystal cliffs so clear of hue;
About them woodlands bright lay wide,
As Indian dye their boles were blue;
The leaves did as burnished silver slide
That thick upon twigs were trembling grew.
When glades let light upon them glide
They shone with a shimmer of dazzling hue.
The gravel on ground that I trod with shoe
Was of precious pearls of Orient:
Sunbeams are blear and dark to view
Compared with that fair wonderment.
In wonder at those fells so fair
My soul all grief forgot let fall;
Odours so fresh of fruits there were,
I was fed as by food celestial.
In the woods the birds did wing and pair,
Of flaming hues, both great and small;
But cithern-string and gittern-player
Their merry mirth could ne'er recall,
For when the beat their pinions all
In harmony their voices bent:
No delight more lovely could men enthrall
Than behold and hear that wonderment.
Thus arrayed was all in wonderment
That forest where forth my fortune led;
No man its splendour to present
With tongue could worthy words have said.
I walked ever onward well-content;
No hill was so tall that it stayed my tread;
More fair the further afield I went
Were plants, and fruits, and spices spread;
Through hedge and mead lush waters led
As in strands of gold there steeply pent.
A river I reached in cloven bed:
506
O Lord! the wealth of its wonderment!
10
The adornments of that wondrous deep
Were beauteous banks of beryl bright:
Swirling sweetly its waters sweep,
Ever rippling on in murmurous flight.
In the depths stood dazzling stones aheap
As a glitter through glass that glowed with light,
As streaming stars when on earth men sleep
Stare in the welkin in winter night;
For emerald, sapphire, or jewel bright
Was every pebble in pool there pent,
And the water was lit with rays of light,
Such wealth was in its wonderment.
11
The wonderous wealth of down and dales,
of wood and water and lordly plain,
My mirth makes mount: my mourning fails,
My care is quelled and cured my pain.
Then down a stream that strongly sails
I blissful turn with teeming brain;
The further I follow those flowing vales
The more strength of joy my heart doth strain.
As fortune fares where she doth deign,
Whether gladness she gives or grieving sore,
So he who may her graces gain,
His hap is to have ever more and more.
12
There more was of such marvels thrice
Than I could tell, though I long delayed;
For earthly heart could not suffice
For a tithe of the joyful joys displayed.
Therefore I thought that Paradise
Across those banks was yonder laid;
I weened that the water by device
As bounds between pleasances was made;
Beyond that stream by steep or slade
That city's walls I weened must soar;
But the water was deep, I dared not wade,
507
And ever I longed to, more and more.
13
More and more, and yet still more,
I fain beyond the stream had scanned,
For fair as was this hither shore,
Far lovelier was the further land.
To find a ford I did then explore,
And round about did stare and stand;
But perils pressed in sooth more sore
The further I strode along the strand.
I should not, I thought, by fear be banned
From delights so lovely that lay in store;
But a happening new then came to hand
That moved my mind ever more and more.
14
A marvel more did my mind amaze:
I saw beyond that border bright
From a crystal cliff the lucent rays
And beams in splendour lift their light.
A child abode there at its base:
She wore a gown of glistening white,
A gentle maid of courtly grace;
Erewhile I had known her well by sight.
As shredded gold that glistered bright
She shone in beauty upon the shore;
Long did my glance on her alight,
And the longer I looked I knew her more.
15
The more I that face so fair surveyed,
When upon her gracious form I gazed,
Such gladdening glory upon me played
As my wont was seldom to see upraised.
Desire to call her then me swayed,
But dumb surprise my mind amazed;
In place so strange I saw that maid,
The blow might well my wits have crazed.
Her forehead fair then up she raised
That hue of polished ivory wore.
It smote my heart distraught and dazed,
508
And ever the longer, the more and more.
16
More than I would my dread did rise.
I stood there still and dared not call
With closed mouth and open eyes,
I stood as tame as hawk in hall.
A ghost was present, I did surmise,
And feared for what might then befall,
Lest she should flee before mine eyes
Ere I to tryst could her recall.
So smooth, so seemly, slight and small,
That flawless fair and mirthful maid
Arose in robes majestical,
A precious gem in pearls arrayed.
17
There pearls arrayed and royally dight
Might one have seen by fortune graced
When fresh as flower-de-luces bright
She down to the water swiftly paced
In linen robe of glistening white,
With open sides that seams enlaced
With the merriest margery-pearls my sight
Ever before, I vow, had traced.
Her sleeves hung long below her waist
Adorned with pearls in double braid;
Her kirtle matched her mantle chaste
All about with precious pearls arrayed.
18
A crown arrayed too wore that girl
Of margery-stones and others none,
With pinnacles of pure white pearl
That perfect flowers were figured on,
On head nought else her hair did furl,
And it framed, as it did round her run,
Her countenance grave for duke or earl,
And her hue as rewel ivory wan.
As shredded sheen of gold then shone
Her locks on shoulder loosly laid.
Her colour pure was surpassed by none
509
Of the pearls in purfling rare arrayed.
19
Arrayed was wristlet, and the hems were dight
At hands, at sides, at throat so fair
With no gem but the pearl all white
And burnished white her garments were;
But a wondrous pearl unstained and bright
She amidst her breast secure did bear;
Ere mind could fathom its worth and might
Man's reason thwarted would despair.
No tongue could in worthy words declare
The beauty that was there displayed,
It was so polished, pure, and fair,
That precious pearl on her arrayed.
20
In pearls arrayed that maiden free
Beyond the stream came down the strand.
From here to Greece none as glad could be
As I on shore to see her stand,
Than aunt or niece more near to me:
The more did joy my heart expand.
She deigned to speak, so sweet was she,
Bowed low as ladies' ways demand.
With her crown of countless worth in hand
A gracious welcome she me bade.
My birth I blessed, who on the strand
To my love replied in pearls arrayed.
21
'O Pearl!' said I, 'in pearls arrayed,
Are you my pearl whose loss I mourn?
Lament alone by night I made,
Much longing I have hid for thee forlorn,
Since to the grass you from me strayed.
While I pensive waste by weeping worn,
Your life of joy in the land is laid
Of Paradise by strife untorn.
What fate hath hither my jewel borne
And made me mourning's prisoner?
Since asunder we in twain were torn,
510
I have been a joyless jeweller.'
22
That jewel in gems so excellent
Lifted her glance with eyes of grey,
Put on her crown of pearl-orient,
And gravely then began to say:
'Good sir, you have your speech mis-spent
to say your pearl is all away
that is in chest so choicely pent,
Even in this gracious garden gay,
Here always to linger and to play
Where regret nor grief e'er trouble her.
'Here is a casket safe' you would say.
If you were a gentle jeweller.
23
But jeweller gentle, if from you goes
Your joy through a gem that you held lief,
Methinks your mind toward madness flows
And frets for a fleeting cause of grief.
For what you lost was but a rose
That by nature failed after flowering brief;
Now the casket's virtues that it enclose
Prove it a pearl of price in chief;
And yet you have called your fate a thief
That of naught to aught hath fashioned her,
You grudge the healing of your grief,
You are no grateful jeweller.'
24
Then a jewel methought had now come near,
And jewels the courteous speech she made.
'My blissful one,' quoth I, 'most dear,
My sorrows deep you have all allayed.
To pardon me I pray you here!
In the darkness I deemed my pearl was laid;
I have found it now, and shall make good cheer,
With it dwell in shining grove and glade,
And praise all the laws that my Lord hath made,
Who hath brought me near such bliss with her.
Now could I to reach you these waters wade,
511
I should be a joyful jeweller.'
25
'Jeweller,' rejoined that jewel clean,
'Why jest ye men? How mad ye be!
Three things at once you have said, I ween:
Thoughtless, forsooth, were all the three,
You know now on earth what one doth mean;
Your words from your wits escaping flee:
You believe I live here on this green,
Because you can with eyes me see;
Again, you will in this land with me
Here dwell yourself, you now aver;
And thirdly, pass this water free:
That may no joyful jeweller.
26
I hold that jeweller worth little praise
Who well esteems what he sees with eye,
And much to blame his graceless wayus
Who believes our Lord would speak a lie.
He promised faithfully your lives to raise
Though fate decreed your flesh should die;
His words as nonsense ye appraise
Who approve of naught not seen with eye;
And that presumption doth imply,
Which all good men doth ill beseem,
On tale as true ne'er to rely
Save private reason right it deem.
27
Do you deem that you yourself maintain
Such words as man to God should dare?
You will dwell, you say, in this domain:
'Twere best for leave first offer prayer,
And yet that grace yo umight not gain.
Now over this water you wish to fare:
By another course you must that attain;
Your flesh shall in clay find colder lair,
For our heedless father did of old prepare
Its doom by Eden's grove and stream;
Through dismal death must each man fare,
512
Ere o're this deep him God redeem.'
28
'If my doom you deem it, maiden sweet,
To mourn once more, then I must pine.
Now my lost one found again I greet,
Must bereavement new till death be mine?
Why must I at once both part and meet?
My precious pearl doth my pain design!
What use hath treasure but tears to repeat,
When one at its loss must again repine?
Now I care not though my days decline
Outlawed afar o'er land and stream;
When in my pearl no part is mine,
Only endless dolour one that may deem.'
29
'But of woe, I deem, and deep distress
You speak,' she said. 'Why do you so?
Through loud lament when they lose the less
Oft many men the more forego.
'Twere better with cross yourself to bless,
Ever praising God in weal and woe;
For resentment gains you not a cress:
Who must needs endure, he may not say no!
For though you dance as any doe,
Rampant bray or raging scream,
When escape you cannot, to nor fro,
His doom you must abide, I deem.
30
Deem God unjust, the Lord indict,
From His way a foot He will not wend;
The relief amounts not to a mite,
Though gladness your grief may never end.
Cease then to wrangle, to speak in spite,
And swiftly seek Him as your friend,
You prayer His pity may excite,
So that Mercy shall her powers expend.
To you languor He may comfort lend,
And swiftly your griefs removed may seem;
For lament or rave, to submit pretend,
513
'Tis His to ordain what He right may deem.'
31
Then I said, I deem, to that damosel:
'May I give no grievance to my Lord,
Rash fool, though blundering tale I tell.
My heart the pain of loss outpoured,
Gushing as water springs from well.
I commit me ever to His mercy's ward.
Rebuke me not with words so fell,
Though I erring stray, my dear adored!
But your comfort kindly to me accord,
In pity bethinking you of this:
For partner you did me pain award
On whom was founded all my bliss.
32
Both bliss and gried you have been to me,
But of woe far greater hath been my share.
You were caught away from all perils free,
But my pearl was gone, I knew not where;
My sorrow is softened now I it see.
When we parted, too, at one we were;
Now God forbid that we angry be!
We meet on our roads by chance so rare.
Though your converse courtly is and fair,
I am but mould and good manners miss.
Christ's mercy, Mary and John: I dare
Only on these to found my bliss.
33
In bliss you abide and happiness,
And I with woe an worn and grey;
Oft searing sorrows I possess,
Yet little heed to that you pay.
But now I here yourself address,
Without reproach I would you pray
To deign in sober words express
What life you lead the livelong day.
For delighted I am that your lot, you say,
So glorious and so glad now is;
There finds my joy its foremost way,
514
On that is founded all my bliss.'
34
'Now bliss you ever bless!' she cried,
Lovely in limb, in hue so clear,
'And welcome here to walk and bide;
For now your words are to me dear.
Masterful mood and haughty pride,
I warn you, are bitterly hated here.
It doth not delight my Lord to chide,
For meek are all that dwell Him near.
So, when in His place you must appear,
Be devout in humble lowliness:
To my Lord, the Lamb, such a mien is dear,
On whom is founded all my bliss.
35
A blissful life you say is mine;
You wish to know in what degree.
Your pearl you know you did resign
When in young and tender years was she;
Yet my Lord, the Lamb, through power divine
Myself He chose His bride to be,
And crowned me queen in bliss to shine,
While days shall endure eternally.
Dowered with His heritage all is she
That is His love. I am wholly His:
On His glory, honour, and high degree
Are built and founded all my bliss.'
36
'O blissful!' said I, 'can this be true?
Be not displased if in speech I err!
Are you the queen of heavens blue,
Whom all must honour on earth that fare?
We believe that our Grace of Mary grew,
Who in virgin-bloom a babe did bear;
And claim her crown: who could this do
But once that surpassed her in favour fair?
And yet for unrivalled sweetness rare
We call her the Phoenix of Araby,
That her Maker let faultless wing the air,
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Like to the Queen of Courtesy.'
37
'O courteous Queen,' that damsel said,
Kneeling on earth with uplifted face,
'Mother immaculate, and fairest maid,
Blessed beginner of every grace!'
Uprising then her prayer she stayed,
And there she spoke to me a space:
'Here many the prize they have gained are praid,
But usurpers, sir, here have no place.
That empress' realm doth heaven embrace,
From their heritage yet will none displace,
For she is the Queen of Courtesy.
38
'The court where the living God doth reign
Hath a virtue of its own being,
That each who may thereto attain
Of all the realm is queen or king,
Yet never shall other's right obtain,
But in other's good each glorying
And wishing each crown worth five again,
If amended might be so fair a thing.
But my Lady of whom did Jesu spring,
O'er us high she holds her empery,
And none that grieves of our following,
For she is the Queen of Courtesy.'
39
In courtesy we are members all
Of Jesus Christ, Saint Paul doth write:
As head, arm, leg, and navel small
To their body doth loyalty true unite,
So as limbs to their Master mystical
All Christian souls belong by right.
Now among your limbs can you find at all
Any tie or bond of hate or spite?
Your head doth not feel affront or slight
On your arm or finger though ring it see;
So we all proceed in love's delight
To king and queen by courtesy.'
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40
'Courtesy,' I said, 'I do believe
And charity great dwells you among,
But may my words no wise you grieve,
.............................................................
You in heaven too high yourself conceive
To make you a queen who were so young.
What honour more might he achieve
Who in strife on earth was ever strong,
And lived his life in penance long
With his body's pain to get bliss for fee?
What greater glory could to him belong
Than king to be crowned by courtesy?
41
That courtesy gives its gifts too free,
If it be sooth that you now say.
Two years you lived not on earth with me,
And God you could not please, nor pray
With Pater and Creed upon your knee And made a queen that very day!
I cannot believe, God helping me,
That God so far from right would stray.
Of a countess, damsel, I must say,
'Twere fair in heaven to find the grace,
Or of lady even of less array,
But a queen! It is too high a place.'
42
'Neither time nor place His grace confine',
Then said to me that maiden bright,
'For just is all that He doth assign,
And nothing can He work but right.
In God's true gospel, in words divine
That Matthew in your mass doth cite,
A tale he aptly doth design,
In parable saith of heaven's light:
'My realm on high I liken might
To a vineyard owner in this case.
The year had run to season right;
To dress the vines 'twas time and place.
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43
All labourers know when that time is due.
The master up full early rose
To hire him vineyard workers new;
And some to suit his needs he chose.
Together they pledge agreement true
For a penny a day, and forth each goes,
Travails and toils to tie and hew,
Binds and prunes and in order stows.
In forenoon the master to market goes,
And there finds men that idle laze.
'Why stand ye idle? he said to those.
'Do ye know not time of day nor place?'
44
'This place we reached betimes ere day',
This answer from all alike he drew,
'Since sunrise standing here we stay,
And no man offers us work to do.'
'Go to my vineyard! Do what ye may!'
Said the lord, and made a bargain true:
'In deed and intent I to you will pay
What hire may justly by night accrue.'
They went to his vines and laboured too,
But the lord all day that way did pace,
And brought to his vineyard workers new,
Till daytime almost passed that place.
45
In that place at time of evensong,
One hour before the set of sun,
He saw there idle labourers strong
And thus his earnest words did run:
'Why stand ye idle all day long?'
They said they chance of hire had none.
'Go to my vineyard, yeoman young,
And work and do what may be done!'
The hour grew late and sank the sun,
Dusk came o'er the world apace;
He called them to claim the wage they had won,
For time of day had passed that place.
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46
The time in that place he well did know;
He called: 'Sir steward, the people pay!
Give them hire that I them owe.
Moreover, that none reproach me may,
Set them all in a single row,
And to each alike give a penny a day;
Begin at the last that stands below,
Till to the first you make your way.'
Then the first began to complain and say
That they had laboured long and sore:
'These but one hour in stress did stay;
It seems to us we should get more.
47
More have we earned, we think it true,
Who have borne the daylong heat indeed,
Than these who hours have worked not two,
And yet you our equals have decreed.'
One such the lord then turned him to:
'My friend, I will not curtail your meed.
Go now and take what is your due!
For a penny I hired you as agreed,
Why now to wrangle do you proceed?
Was it not a penny you bargained for?
To surpass his bargain may no man plead.
Why then will you ask for more?
48
Nay, more - am I not allowed in gift
To dispose of mine as I please to do?
Or your eye to evil, maybe, you lift,
For I none betray and I am true?'
'Thus I', said Christ, 'shall the order shift:
The last shall come first to take his due,
And the first come last, be he never so swift;
For many are called, but the favourites few.'
Thus the poor get ever their portion too,
Though late they came and little bore;
And though to their labour little accrue,
The mercy of God is much the more.
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49
More is my joy and bliss herein,
The flower of my life, my lady's height,
Than all the folk in the world might win,
Did they seek award on ground of right.
Though 'twas but now that I entered in,
And came to the vineyard by eveing's light,
First with my hire did my Lord begin;
I was paid at once to the furthest mite.
Yet others in toil without respite
That had laboured and sweated long of yore,
He did not yet with hire requite,
Nor will, perchance, for years yet more.'
50
Then more I said and spoke out plain:
'Unreasonable is what you say.
Ever ready God's justice on high doth reign,
Or a fable doth Holy Writ purvey.
The Psalms a cogent verse contain,
Which puts a point that one must weigh:
'High King, who all dost foreordain,
His deserts Thou dost to each repay.'
Now if daylong one did steadfast stay,
And you to payment came him before,
Then lesser work can earn more pay;
And the longer you reckon, the less hath more.'
51
'Of more and less in God's domains
No question arises,' said that maid,
'For equal hire there each one gains,
Be geurdon great or small him paid.
No churl is our Chieftain that in bounty reigns,
Be soft or hard by Him purveyed;
As water of dike His gifts He drains,
Or streams from a deep by drought unstayed.
Free is the pardon to him conveyed
Who in fear to the Saviour in sin did bow;
No bars from bliss will for such be made,
For the grace of God is great enow.
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52
But now to defeat me you debate
That wrongly my penny I have taken here;
Deserve not hire at price so dear.
Where heard you ever of man relate
Who, pious in prayer from year to year,
Did not somehow forfeit the guerdon great
Sometime of Heaven's glory clear?
Nay, wrong men work, from right they veer,
And ever the ofter the older, I trow.
Mercy and grace must then them steer,
For the grace of God is great enow.
53
But enow have the innocent of grace.
As soon as born, in lawful line
Baptismal waters them embrace;
Then they are brought unto the vine.
Anon the day with darkened face
Doth toward the night of death decline.
They wrought no wrong while in that place,
And his workmen then pays the Lord divine.
They were there; they worked at his design;
Why should He not their toil allow,
Yea, first to them their hire assign?
For the grace of God is great enow.
54
Enow 'tis known that Man's high kind
At first for perfect bliss was bred.
Our eldest father that grace resigned
Through an apple upon which he fed.
We were all damned, for that food assigned
To die in grief, all joy to shed,
And after in flames of hell confined
To dwell for ever unrespited.
But soon a healing hither sped:
Rich blood ran on rough rood-bough,
And water fair. In that hour of dread
The grace of God grew great enow.
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55
Enow there went forth from that well
Water and blood from wounds so wide:
The blood redeemed us from pains of hell
Of the second death the bond untied;
The water is baptism, truth to tell,
That the spear so grimly ground let glide.
It washes away the trespass fell
By which Adam drowned us in deathly tide.
No bars in the world us from Bliss divide
In blessed hour restored, I trow,
Save those that He hath drawn aside;
And the grace of God is great enow.
56
Grace enow may the man receive
Who sins anew, if he repent;
But craving it he must sigh and grieve
And abide what pains are consequent.
But reason that right can never leave
Evermore preserves the innocent;
'Tis a judgement God did never give
That the guiltless should ever have punishment.
The guilty, contrite and penitent,
Through mercy may to grace take flight;
But he that to treachery never bent
In innocence is saved by right.
57
It is right thus by reason, as in this case
I learn, to save these two from ill;
The righteous man shall see His face,
Come unto him the harmless will.
This point the Psalms in a passage raise:
'Who, Lord, shall climb Thy lofty hill,
Or rest within Thy holy place?'
He doth the answer swift fulfil:
'Who wrought with hands no harm nor ill,
Who is of heart both clean and bright,
His steps shall there be steadfast still':
The innocent ever is saved by right.
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58
The righteous too, one many maintain,
He shall to that noble tower repair,
Who leads not his life in folly vain,
Nor guilefully doth to neighbour swear.
That Wisdom did honour once obtain
For such doth Solomon declare:
She pressed him on by ways made plain
And showed him afar God's kingdom fair,
As if saying: 'That lovely island there
That mayst thou win, be thou brave in fight.'
But to say this doubtless one may dare:
The innocent ever is saved by right.
59
To righteous men - have you seen it there? In the Psalter David a verse applied:
'Do not, Lord, Thy servant to judgement bear;
For to Thee none living is justified.'
So when to that Court you must repair
Where all our cases shall be tried,
If on right you stand, lest you trip beware,
Warned by these words that I espied.
But He on rood that bleeding died,
Whose hands the nail did harshly smite,
Grant you may pass, when you are tried,
By innocence and not by right.
60
Let him that can rightly read in lore,
Look in the Book and learn thereby
How Jesus walked the world of yore,
And people pressed their babes Him nigh,
For joy and health from Him did pour.
'Our children touch!' they humbly cry,
'Let be!' his disciples rebuked them sore,
And to many would approach deny.
Then Jesus sweetly did reply:
'Nay! let children by me alight;
For such is heaven prepared on high!'
The innocent ever is saved by right.
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61
Then Jesus summoned his servants mild,
And said His realm no man might win,
Unless he came there as a child;
Else never should he come therein.
Harmless, true, and undefiled,
Without mark or mar of soiling sin,
When such knock at those portals piled,
Quick for them men will the gate unpin.
That bliss unending dwells therein
That the jeweller sought, above gems did rate,
And sold all he had to clothe him in,
To purchase a pearl immaculate.
62
This pearl immaculate purchased dear
The jeweller gave all his goods to gain
Is like the realm of heaven's sphere:
So said the Lord of land and main;
For it is flawless, clean and clear,
Endlessly round, doth joy contain,
And is shared by all the righteous here.
Lo! amid my breast it doth remain;
There my Lord, the Lamb that was bleeding slain,
In token of peace it placed in state.
I bid you the wayward world disdain
And procure your pearl immaculate!'
63
'Immaculate Pearl in pearls unstained,
Who bear of precious pearls the prize,
Your figure fair for you who feigned?
Who wrought your robe, he was full wise!
Your beauty was never from nature gained;
Pygmalion did ne'er your face devise;
In Aristotle's learning is contained
Of these properties' nature no surmise;
Your hue the flower-de-luce defies,
Your angel-bearing is of grace so great.
What office, purest, me apprise
Doth bear this pearl immaculate?'
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64
'My immaculate Lamb, my final end
Beloved, Who all can heal,' said she,
'Chose me as spouse, did to bridal bend
That once would have seemed unmeet to be.
From your weeping world when I did wend
He called me to his felicity:
'Come hither to me, sweetest friend,
For no blot nor spot is found in thee!'
Power and beauty he gave to me;
In his blood he washed my weeds in state,
Crowned me clean in virginity,
And arrayed me in pearls immaculate.'
65
'Why, immaculate bride of brightest flame,
Who royalty have so rich and bare,
Of what kind can He be, the Lamb you name,
Who would you His wedded wife declare?
Over others all hath climbed your fame,
In lady's life with Him to fare.
For Christ have lived in care and blame
Many comely maids with comb in hair;
Yet the prize from all those brave you bear,
And all debar from bridal state,
All save yourself so proud and fair,
A matchless maid immaculate.'
66
'Immaculate, without a stain,
Flawless I am', said that fair queen;
'And that I may with grace maintain,
But 'matchless' I said not nor do mean.
As brides of the Lamb in bliss we reign,
Twelve times twelve thousand strong, I ween,
As Apocalypse reveals it plain:
In a throng they there by John were seen;
On Zion's hill, that mount serene,
The apostle had dream divine of them
On that summit for marriage robed all clean
In the city of New Jerusalem.
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67
Of Jerusalem my tale doth tell,
If you will know what His nature be,
My Lamb, my Lord, my dear Jewel,
My Joy, my Bliss, my Truelove free.
Isaiah the prophet once said well
In pity for His humility:
'That glorious Guiltless they did fell
Without cause or charge of felony,
As sheep to the slaughter led was He,
And as lamb the shearer in hand doth hem
His mouth he closed without plaint or plea,
When the Jews Him judged in Jerusalem.'
68
In Jerusalem was my Truelove slain,
On the rood by ruffians fierce was rent;
Willing to suffer all our pain
To Himself our sorrows sad He lent.
With cruel blows His face was flain
That was to behold so excellent:
He for sin to be set at naught did deign,
Who of sin Himself was innocent.
Beneath the scourge and thorns He bent,
And stretched on a cross's brutal stem
As meek as lamb made no lament,
And died for us in Jerusalem.
69
In Jerusalem, Jordan, and Galilee,
As there baptized the good Saint John,
With Isaiah well did his words agree.
When to meet him once had Jesus gone
He spake of Him this prophecy:
'Lo, the Lamb of God whom our trust is on!
From the grievous sins He sets us free
That all this world hath daily done.'
He wrought himself yet never one,
Though He smirched himself with all of them.
Who can tell the Fathering of that Son
That died for us in Jerusalem?
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70
In Jerusalem as lamb they knew
And twice thus took my Truelove dear,
As in prophets both in record true,
For His meekness and His gentle cheer.
The third time well is matched thereto,
In Apocalypse 'tis written clear:
Where sat the saints, Him clear to view
Amidst the throne the Apostle dear
Saw loose the leaves of the book and shear
The seven signets sewn on them.
At that sight all folk there bowed in fear
In hell, in earth, and Jerusalem.
71
Jerusalem's Lamb had never stain
Of other hue than whiteness fair;
There blot nor blemish could remain,
So white the wool, so rich and rare.
Thus every soul that no soil did gain
His comely wife doth the Lamb declare;
Though each day He a host obtain,
No grudge nor grievance do we bear,
But for each one five we wish there were.
The more the merrier, so God me bless!
Our love doth thrive where many fare
In honour more and never less.
72
To less of bliss may none us bring
Who bear this pearl upon each breast,
For ne'er could they think of quarrelling
Of spotless pearls who bear the crest.
Though the clods may to our corses cling,
And for woe ye wail bereaved of rest,
From one death all our trust doth spring
In knowledge complete by us possessed.
The Lamb us gladdens, and, our grief redressed,
Doth at every Mass with joy us bless.
Here each hath bliss supreme and best,
Yet no one's honour is ever the less.
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73
Lest less to trust my tale you hold,
In Apocalypse 'tis writ somewhere:
'The Lamb', saith John, 'I could behold
On Zion standing proud and fair;
With him maidens a hundred-thousand fold,
And four and forty thousand were,
Who all upon their brows inscrolled
The Lamb's name and His Father's bare.
A shout then I heard from heaven there,
Like many floods met in pouring press;
And as thunder in darkling tors doth blare,
That noise, I believe, was nowise less.
74
But nonetheless, though it harshly roared,
And echo loud though it was to hear,
I heard them note then new accord,
A delight as lovely to listening ear
As harpers harping on harps afford.
This new song now they sang full clear,
With resounding notes in noble accord
Making in choir their musics dear.
Before God's very throne drawn near
And the Beasts to Him bowed in lowliness
And the ancient Elders grave of cheer
They sang their song there, nonetheless.
75
Yet nonetheless were none so wise
For all the arts that they ever knew
Of that song who could a phrase devise,
Save those of the Lamb's fair retinue;
For redeemed and removed from earthly eyes,
As firstling fruits that to God are due,
To the noble Lamb they are allies,
Being like to Him in mien and hue;
For no lying word nor tale untrue
Ever touched their tongues despite duress.
Ever close that company pure shall sue
That Master immaculate, and never less.''
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76
'My thanks may none the less you find,
My Pearl', quoth I, 'though I question pose.
I should not try your lofty mind,
Whom Christ to bridal chamber chose.
I am but dirt and dust in kind,
And you a rich and radiant rose
Here by this blissful bank reclined
Where life's delight unfading grows.
Now, Lady, your heart sincere enclose,
And I would ask one thing express,
And though it clown uncouth me shows,
My prayer disdain not, nevertheless.
77
I nonetheless my appeal declare,
If you to do this may well deign,
Deny you not my piteous prayer,
As you are glorious without a stain.
No home in castle-wall do ye share,
No mansion to meet in, no domain?
Of Jerusalem you speak the royal and fair,
Where David on regal throne did reign;
It abides not here on hill nor plain,
But in Judah is that noble plot.
As under moon ye have no stain
Your home should be without a spot.
78
This spotless troop of which you tell,
This thronging press many-thousandfold,
Ye doubtless a mighty citadel
Must have your number great to hold:
For jewels so lovely 'twould not be well
That flock so fair should have no fold!
Yet by these banks where a while I dwell
I nowhere about any house behold.
To gaze on this glorious stream you strolled
And linger alone now, do you not?
If elsewhere you have stout stronghold,
Now guide me to that goodly spot!'
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79
'That spot', that peerless maid replied,
'In Judah's land of which you spake,
Is the city to which the Lamb did ride,
To suffer sore there for Man's sake.
The Old Jerusalem is implied,
For old sin's bond He there let break.
But the New, that God sent down to glide,
The Apocalypse in account doth take.
The Lamb that no blot ever black shall make
Doth there His lovely throng allot,
And as His flock all stains forsake
So His mansion is unmarred by spot.
80
There are two spots. To speak of these:
They both the name 'Jerusalem' share;
'The City of God' or 'Sight of Peace',
These meanings only doth that bear.
In the first it once the Lamb did please
Our peace by His suffering to repair;
In the other naught is found but peace
That shall last for ever without impair.
To that high city we swiftly fare
As soon as our flesh is laid to rot;
Ever grow shall the bliss and glory there
For the host within that hath no spot.'
81
'O spotless maiden kind!' I cried
To that lovely flower, 'O lead me there,
To see where blissful you abide,
To that goodly place let me repair!'
'God will forbid that,' she replied,
'His tower to enter you may not dare.
But the Lamb hath leave to me supplied
For a sigh thereof by favour rare:
From without on that precinct pure to stare
But foot within to venture not;
In the street you have no strength to fare,
Unless clean you be without a spot.
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82
If I this spot shall to you unhide,
Turn up towards this water's head,
While I escort you on this side,
Until your ways to a hill have led.'
No longer would I then abide,
But shrouded by leafy boughs did tread,
Until from a hill I there espied
A glimpse of that city, as forth I sped.
Beyond the river below me spread
Brighter than the sun with beams it shone;
In the Apocalypse may its form be read,
As it describes the apostle John.
83
As John the apostle it did view,
I saw that city of great renown,
Jerusalem royally arrayed and new,
As it was drawn from heaven down.
Of gold refined in fire to hue
Of glittering glass was that shining town;
Fair gems beneath were joined as due
In courses twelve, on the base laid down
That with tenoned tables twelve they crown:
A single stone was each tier thereon,
As well describes this wondrous town
In apocalypse the apostle John.
84
These stones doth John in Writ disclose;
I knew their names as he doth tell:
As jewel first the jasper rose,
And first at the base I saw it well,
On the lowest course it greenly glows;
On the second stage doth sapphire dwell;
Chalcedony on the third tier shows,
A flawless, pure, and pale jewel;
The emerald fourth so green of shell;
The sardonyx, the fifth it shone,
The ruby sixth: he saw it well
In the Apocalypse, the apostle John.
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85
To them John then joined the chrysolite,
The seventh gem in the ascent;
The eighth the beryl clear and white;
The twin-hued topaz as ninth was pent;
Tenth the chrysoprase formed the flight;
Eleventh was jacinth excellent;
The twelfth, most trusty in every plight,
The amethyst blue with purple blent.
Sheer from those tiers the wall then went
Of jasper like glass that glistening shone;
I knew it, for thus did it present
In the Apocalypse the apostle John.
86
As John described, I broad and sheer
These twelve degrees saw rising there;
Above the city square did rear
(Its length with breadth and height compare);
The streets of gold as glass all clear,
The wall of jasper that gleamed like glair;
With all precious stones that might there appear
Adorned within the dwellings were.
Of that domain each side all square
Twelve thousand furlongs held then on,
As in height and breadth, in length did fare,
For it measured saw the aspostle John.
87
As John hath writ, I saw yet more:
Each quadrate wall there had three gates,
So in compass there were three times four,
The portals o'erlaid with richest plates;
A single pearl was every door,
A pearl whose perfection ne'er abates;
And each inscribed a name there bore
Of Israel's children by their dates:
Their times of birth each allocates,
Ever first the eldest thereon is hewn.
Such light every street illuminates
They have need of neither sun nor moon.
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Of sun nor moon they had no need,
For God Himself was their sunlight;
The Lamb their lantern was indeed
And through Him blazed that city bright
That unearthly clear did no light impede;
Through wall and hall thus passed my sight.
The Throne on high there might one heed,
With all its rich adornment dight,
As John in chosen words did write.
High God Himself sat on that throne,
Whence forth a river ran with light
Outshining both the sun and moon.
89
Neither sun nor moon ever shone so sweet
As the pouring flood from that court that flowed;
Swiftly it swept through every street,
And no filth nor soil nor slime it showed.
No church was there the sight to greet,
Nor chapel nor temple there ever abode:
The Almighty was their minister meet;
Refreshment the Victim Lamb bestowed.
The gates ever open to every road
Were never yet shut from noon to noon;
There enters none to find abode
Who bears any spot beneath the moon.
90
The moon therefrom may gain no might,
Too spotty is she, of form too hoar;
Moreover there comes never night:
Why should the moon in circle soar
And compare her with that peerless light
That shines upon that water's shore?
The planets are in too poor a plight,
Yea, the sun himself too pale and frore.
On shining trees where those waters pour
Twelve fruits of life there ripen soon;
Twelve times a year they bear a store,
And renew them anew in every moon.
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Such marvels as neath the moon upraised
A fleshly heart could not endure
I saw, who on that castle gazed;
Such wonders did its castle gazed;
I stood there still as quail all dazed;
Its wondrous form did me allure,
That rest nor toil I felt, amazed,
And ravished by that radiance pure.
For with conscience clear I you assure,
If man embodied had gained that boon,
Though sages all essayed his cure,
His life had been lost beneath the moon.
92
As doth the moon in might arise,
Ere down must daylight leave the air,
So, suddenly, in a wondrous wise,
Of procession long I was aware.
Unheralded to my surprise
That city of royal renown so fair
Was with virgins filled in the very guise
Of my blissful one with crown on hair.
All crowned in manner like they were,
In pearls appointed, and weeds of white,
and bound on breast did each one bear
The blissful pearl with great delight.
93
With great delight in line they strolled
On golden ways that gleamed like glass;
A hundred thousands were there, I hold,
And all to match their livery was;
The gladdest face could none have told.
the Lamb before did proudly pass
With seven horns of clear red gold;
As pearls of price His raimant was.
To the Throne now drawn they pacing pass:
No crowding, though great their host in white,
But gentle as modest maids at Mass,
So lead they on with great delight.
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94
The delight too great were to recall
That at His coming forth did swell.
When He approached those elders all
On their faces at His feet they fell;
There summoned hosts angelical
An incense cast of sweetest smell:
New glory and joy then forth did fall,
All sang to praise that fair Jewel.
The strain could strike through earth to hell
That the Virtues of heaven in joy endite.
With His host to laud the Lamb as well
In deed I found a great delight.
95
Delight the Lamb to behold with eyes
Then moved my mind with wonder more:
The best was He, blithest, most dear to prize
Of whom I e'er heard tales of yore;
So wondrous white was all His guise,
So noble Himself He so meekly bore.
But by his heart a wound my eyes
Saw wide and wet; the fleece it tore,
From His white side His blood did pour.
Alas! thought I, who did that spite?
His breast should have burned with anguish sore,
Ere in that deed one took delight.
96
The Lamb's delight to doubt, I ween,
None wished; though wound He sore displayed,
In His face no sign thereof was seen,
In His glance such glorious gladness played.
I marked among His host serene,
How life in full on each was laid-Then saw I there my little queen
That I thought stood by me in the glade!
Lord! great was the merriment she made,
Among her peers who was so white.
That vision made me think to wade
For love-longing in great delight.
535
97
Delight there pierced my eye and ear,
In my mortal mind a madness reigned;
When I saw her beauty I would be near,
Though beyond the stream she was retained.
I thought that naught could interfere,
Could strike me back to halt constrained,
From plunge in stream would none me steer,
Though I died ere I swam o'er what remained.
But as wild in the water to start I strained,
On my intent did quaking seize;
From that aim recalled I was detained:
It was not as my Prince did please.
98
It pleased Him not that I leapt o'er
Those marvellous bounds my madness swayed.
Though headlong haste me heedless bore,
Yet swift arrest was on me made,
For right as I rushed then to the shore
That fury made my dream to fade.
I woke in that garden as before,
My head upon that mound was laid
Where once to earth my pearl had strayed.
I stretched, and fell in great unease,
And sighing to myself I prayed:
'Now all be as that Prince may please.'
99
It pleased me ill outcast to be
So suddenly from that region fair
Where living beauty I could see.
A swoon of longing smote me there,
And I cried aloud then piteously:
'O Pearl, renowned beyond compare!
How dear was all that you said to me,
That vision true while I did share.
If it be true and sooth to swear
That in garland gay you are set at ease,
Then happy I, though chained in care,
That you that Prince indeed do please.'
536
100
To please that Prince had I always bent,
Desired no more than was my share,
And loyally been obedient,
As the Pearl me prayed so debonair,
I before God's face might have been sent,
In his mysteries further maybe to fare.
But with fortune no man is content
That rightly he may claim and bear;
So robbed of realms immortally fair
Too soon my joy did sorrow seize.
Lord! mad are they who against Thee dare
Or purpose what Thee may displease!
101
To please that Prince, or be pardon shown,
May Christian good with ease design;
For day and night I have Him known
A God, a Lord, a Friend divine.
This chance I met on mound where prone
In grief for my pearl I would repine;
With Christ's sweet blessing and mine own
I then to God it did resign.
May He that in form of bread and wine
By priest upheld each day one sees,
Us inmates of His house divine
Make precious pearls Himself to please.
Amen Amen
~ Anonymous Olde English,
295:

Book IV: The Book of Partings



Eagerly, spurred by Ares swift in their souls to the war-cry,
All now pressed to their homes for the food of their strength in the battle.
Ilion turned her thoughts in a proud expectancy seaward
Waiting to hear the sounds that she loved and the cry of the mellay.
Now to their citadel Priams sons returned with their father,
Now from the gates Talthybius issued grey in his chariot;
But in the halls of Anchises Aeneas not doffing his breastpiece
Hastily ate of the corn of his country, cakes of the millet
Doubled with wild-deers flesh, from the quiet hands of Cresa.
She, as he ate, with her calm eyes watching him smiled on her husband:
Ever thou hastest to battle, O warrior, ever thou fightest
Far in the front of the ranks and thou seekest out Locrian Ajax,
Turnest thy ear to the roar for the dangerous shout of Tydides;
There, once heard, leaving all thou drivest, O stark in thy courage.
Yet am I blest among women who tremble not, left in thy mansion,
Quiet at old Anchises feet when I see thee in vision
Sole with the shafts hissing round thee and say to my quivering spirit,
Now he is striking at Ajax, now he has met Diomedes.
Such are the mighty twain who are ever near to protect thee,
Phoebus, the Thunderers son, and thy mother, gold Aphrodite;
Such are the Fates that demand thee, O destined head of the future.
But though my thoughts for their own are not troubled, always, Aeneas,
Sore is my heart with pity for other Ilian women
Who in this battle are losing their children and well-loved husbands,
Brothers too dear, for the eyes that are wet, for the hearts that are silent.
Will not this war then end that thunders for ever round Troya?
But to Cresa the hero answered, the son of Anchises:
Surely the gods protect, yet is Death too always mighty.
Most in his shadowy envy he strikes at the brave and the lovely,
Grudging works to abridge their days and to widow the sunlight.
Most, disappointed, he rages against the beloved of Heaven;
Striking their lives through their hearts he mows down their loves and their pleasures.
Truly thou sayst, thou needst not to fear for my life in the battle;
Ever for thine I fear lest he find thee out in his anger,
Missing my head in the fight, when he comes here crossed in his godhead.
Yet shall Phoebus protect and my mother, gold Aphrodite.
But to Aeneas answered the tranquil lips of Cresa:
So may it be that I go before thee, seeing, Aeneas,
Over my dying eyes thy lips bend down for the parting.
Blissfullest end is this for a woman here mid earths sorrows;
Afterwards there we hope that the hands shall join which were parted.
So she spoke, not knowing the gods: but Aeneas departing
Clasped his fathers knees, the ancient mighty Anchises.
Bless me, my father; I go to the battle. Strong with thy blessing
Even today may I hurl down Ajax, slay Diomedes,
And on the morrow gaze on the empty beaches of Troas.
Troubled and joyless, nought replying to warlike Aeneas
Long Anchises sat unmoving, silent, sombre,
Gazing into his soul with eyes that were closed to the sunlight.
Prosper, Aeneas, slowly he answered him, son of a goddess,
Prosper, Aeneas; and if for Troy some doom is preparing,
Suffer always the will of the gods with a piety constant.
Only they will what Necessity fashions compelled by the Silence.
Labour and war she has given to man as the law of his transience.
Work; she shall give thee the crown of thy deeds or their ending appointed,
Whether glorious thou pass or in silent shadows forgotten.
But what thy mother commands perform ever, loading thy vessels.
Who can know what the gods have hid with the mist of our hopings?
Then from the house of his fathers Aeneas rapidly striding
Came to the city echoing now with the wheels of the chariots,
Clanging with arms and astream with the warlike tramp of her thousands.
Fast through the press he strode and men turning knew Aeneas,
Greatened in heart and went on with loftier thoughts towards battle.
He through the noise and the crowd to Antenors high-built mansion
Striding came, and he turned to its courts and the bronze of its threshold
Trod which had suffered the feet of so many princes departed.
But as he crossed its brazen square from the hall there came running,
Leaping up light to his feet and laughing with sudden pleasure,
Eurus the youngest son of Polydamas. Clasping the fatal
War-hardened hand with a palm that was smooth as a maidens or infants,
Well art thou come, Aeneas, he said, and good fortune has sent thee!
Now I shall go to the field; thou wilt speak with my grandsire Antenor
And he shall hear thee though chid by his heart reluctant. Rejoicing
I shall go forth in thy car or warring by Penthesilea,
Famous, give to her grasp the spear that shall smite down Achilles.
Smiling answered Aeneas, Surely will, Eurus, thy prowess
Carry thee far to the front; thou shalt fight with Epeus and slay him.
Who shall say that this hand was not chosen to pierce Menelaus?
But for a while with the ball should it rather strive, O hero,
Till in the play and the wrestle its softness is trained for the smiting.
Eagerly Eurus answered, But they have told me, Aeneas,
This is the last of our fights; for today will Penthesilea
Meet Achilles in battle and slay him ending the Argives.
Then shall I never have mixed in this war that is famous for ever.
What shall I say when my hairs are white like the aged Antenors?
Men will ask, And what were thy deeds in the warfare Titanic?
Whom didst thou slay of the Argives, son of Polydamas, venging
Bravely thy father? Then must I say, I lurked in the city.
I was too young and only ascending the Ilian ramparts
Saw the return or the flight, but never the deed and the triumph.
Friend, if you take me not forth, I shall die of grief ere the sunset.
Plucking the hand of Aeneas he drew him into the mansion
Vast; and over the floor of the spacious hall they hastened
Laughing, the gracious child and the mighty hero and statesman,
Flower of a present stock and the burdened star of the future.
Meanwhile girt by his sons and the sons of his sons in his chamber
Cried to the remnants left of his blood the aged Antenor.
Hearken you who are sprung from my loins and children, their offspring!
None shall again go forth to the fight who is kin to Antenor.
Weighed with my curse he shall go and the spear-points athirst of the Argives
Meet him wroth; he shall die in his sin and his name be forgotten.
Oft have I sent forth my blood to be spilled in vain in the battle
Fighting for Troy and her greatness earned by my toil and my fathers.
Now all the debt has been paid; she rejects us driven by the immortals.
Much do we owe to the mother who bore us, much to our country;
But at the last our life is ours and the gods and the futures.
Gather the gold of my house and our kin, O ye sons of Antenor.
Warned by a voice in my soul I will go forth tonight from this city
Fleeing the doom and bearing my treasures; the ships shall receive them
Gathered, new-keeled by my care and the gods, in the narrow Propontis.
Over Gods waters guided, treading the rage of Poseidon,
Bellying out with their sails let them cleave to the untravelled distance
Oceans crests and resign to their Fates the doomed and the evil.
So Antenor spoke and his children heard him in silence;
Awed by his voice and the dread of his curse they obeyed, though in sorrow.
Halamus only replied to his father: Dire are the white hairs
Reverend, loved, of a father, dreadful his curse to his children.
Yet in my heart there is one who cries, tis the voice of my country,
She for whose sake I would be in Tartarus tortured for ever.
Pardon me then, if thou wilt; if the gods can, then let them pardon.
For I will sleep in the dust of Troy embracing her ashes,
There where Polydamas sleeps and the many comrades I cherished.
So let me go to the darkness remembered or wholly forgotten,
Yet having fought for my country, true in my fall to my nation.
Then in his aged wrath to Halamus answered Antenor:
Go then and perish doomed with the doomed and the hated of heaven;
Nor shall the gods forgive thee dying nor shall thy father.
Out from the chamber Halamus strode with grief in his bosom
Wrestling with wrath and he went to his doom nor looked back at his dear ones.
Crossing the hall the son of Antenor and son of Anchises
Met in the paths of their fates where they knotted and crossed for the parting,
One with the curse of the gods and his sire fast wending to Hades,
Fortunate, blessed the other; yet equal their minds were and virtues.
Cypris son to the Antenorid: Thee I have sought and thy brothers,
Bough of Antenor; sore is our need today of thy counsels,
Endless our want of their arms that are strong and their hearts that recoil not
Meeting myriads stark with the spear in unequal battle.
Halamus answered him: I will go forth to the palace of Priam,
There where Troy yet lives and far from the halls of my fathers;
There will I speak, not here. For my kin they repose in the mansion
Sitting unarmed in their halls while their brothers fall in the battle.
Eurus eagerly answered the hero: Me rather, therefore,
Take to the fight with you; I will make war on the Greeks for my uncles;
One for all I will fill their place in the shock with the foemen.
But from his chamber-door Antenor heard and rebuked him:
Scamp of my heart, thou torment! in to thy chamber and rest there,
Bound with cords lest thou cease, thou flutter-brain, scourged into quiet;
So shall thy lust of the fight be healed and our mansion grow tranquil.
Chid by the old man Eurus slunk from the hall discontented,
Yet with a dubious smile like a moonbeam lighting his beauty.
But to Antenor the Dardanid born from the white Aphrodite:
Late the Antenorids learn to flinch from the spears of the Argives,
Even this boy of their blood has Polydamas heart and his valour.
Nor should a life that was honoured and noble be stained in its ending.
Nay, then, the mood of a child would shame a grey-headed wisdom,
If for the fault of the people virtue and Troy were forgotten.
For, though the people hear us not, yet are we bound to our nation:
Over the people the gods are; over a man is his country;
This is the deity first adored by the hearths of the noble.
For by our nations will we are ruled in the home and the battle
And for our nations weal we offer our lives and our childrens.
Not by their own wills led nor their passions men rise to their manhood,
Selfishly seeking their good, but the gods and the States and the fathers.
Wroth Antenor replied to the warlike son of Anchises:
Great is the soul in thee housed and stern is thy will, O Aeneas;
Onward it moves undismayed to its goal though a city be ruined.
They too guide thee who deepest see of the ageless immortals,
One with her heart and one in his spirit, Cypris and Phoebus.
Yet might a man not knowing this think as he watched thee, Aeneas,
Spurring Priams race to its fall he endangers this city,
Hoping to build a throne out of ruins sole in the Troad.
I too have gods who warn me and lead, Athene and Hera.
Not as the ways of other mortals are theirs who are guided,
They whose eyes are the gods and they walk by a light that is secret.
Coldly Aeneas made answer, stirred into wrath by the taunting:
High wert thou always, nurtured in wisdom, ancient Antenor.
Walk then favoured and led, yet watch lest passion and evil
Feign auguster names and mimic the gait of the deathless.
And with a smile on his lips but wrath in his bosom answered,
Wisest of men but with wisdom of mortals, aged Antenor:
Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;
Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded.
Nor shalt thou hear in this battle the shout of the men of my lineage
Holding the Greeks as once and driving back Fate from their country.
His alone will be heard for a space while the stern gods are patient
Even now who went forth a victim self-offered to Hades,
Last whom their wills have plucked from the fated house of Antenor.
They now with wrath in their bosoms sundered for ever and parted.
Forth from the halls of Antenor Aeneas rapidly striding
Passed once more through the city hurrying now with its car-wheels,
Filled with a mightier rumour of war and the march of its thousands,
Till at Troys upward curve he found the Antenorid crestward
Mounting the steep incline that climbed to the palace of Priam
White in her proud and armed citadel. Silent, ascending
Hardly their feet had attempted the hill when behind them they hearkened
Sweet-tongued a call and the patter and hurry of light-running sandals,
Turning they beheld with a flush on his cheeks and a light on his lashes
Challenging mutely and pleading the boyish beauty of Eurus.
Racer to mischief, said Halamus, couldst thou not sit in thy chamber?
Surely cords and the rod await thee, Eurus, returning.
Answered with laughter the child, I have broken through ranks of the fighters,
Dived under chariot-wheels to arrive here and I return not.
I too for counsel of battle have come to the palace of Priam.
Burdened with thought they mounted slowly the road of their fathers
Breasting the Ilian hill where Laomedons mansion was seated,
They from the crest down-gazing saw their countrys housetops
Under their feet and heard the murmur of Troya below them.
But in the palace of Priam coming and going of house-thralls
Filled all the corridors; smoke from the kitchens curled in its plenty
Rich with savour and breathed from the labouring lungs of Hephaestus.
Far in the halls and the chambers voices travelled and clustered,
Anklets jangling ran and sang back from doorway to doorway
Mocking with music of speed and its laughters the haste of the happy,
Sound came of arms, there was tread of the great, there were murmurs of women,
Voices glad of the doomed in Laomedons marvellous mansion.
Six were the halls of its splendour, a hundred and one were its chambers
Lifted on high upon columns that soared like the thoughts of its dwellers,
Thoughts that transcended the earth though they sank down at last into ashes;
So had Apollo dreamed to his lyre; and its tops were a grandeur
Domed, as if seeking to roof mens lives with a hint of the heavens;
Marble his columns rose and with marble his roofs were appointed,
Conquered wealth of the world in its largeness suffered, supporting
Purities of marble, glories of gold. Nor only of matter
Blazed there the brutal pomps, but images mystic or mighty
Crowded ceiling and wall, a work that the gods even admire
Hardly believing that forms like these were imagined by mortals
Here upon earth where sight is a blur and the soul lives encumbered.
Scrolls that remembered in gems the thoughts austere of the ancients
Bordered the lines of the stone and the forms of serpent and Naiad
Ran in relief on those walls of pride in the palace of Priam
Mingled with Dryads who tempted and fled and Satyrs who followed,
Sports of the nymphs in the sea and the woods and their meetings with mortals,
Sessions and battles of Trojan demigods, deaths that were famous,
Wars and loves of men and the deeds of the golden immortals.
Pillars sculptured with gods and with giants soared up from bases
Lion-carved or were seated on bulls and bore into grandeur
Amply those halls where they soared, or in lordliness slenderly fashioned,
Dressed in flowers and reeds like virgins standing on Ida,
Guarded the screens of stone and divided alcove and chamber.
Ivory carved and broidered robes and the riches of Indus
Cherished in sandalwood triumphed and teemed in the palace of Priam;
Doors that were carven and fragrant sheltered the joys of its princes.
Here in a chamber of luminous privacy Paris was arming.
Near him moved Helen, a whiteness divine, and intent on her labour
Fastened his cuirass, bound the greaves and settled the hauberk
Thrilling his limbs with her touch that was heaven to the yearning of mortals.
She with her hands of delight caressing the senseless metal
Pressed her lips to his brilliant armour; she bowed down, she whispered:
Cuirass, allowed by the gods, protect the beauty of Paris;
Keep for me that for which country was lost and my child and my brothers.
Yearning she bent to his feet, to the sandal-strings of her lover;
Then as she gazed up, changed grew her mood; for the Daemon within her
Rose that had banded Greece and was burning Troy into ashes.
Slowly a smile that was perfect and perilous over her beauty
Dawned like the sunlight on Paradise; strangely she looked on her lover.
So might a goddess have gazed as she played with the love of a mortal
Passing an hour on the earth ere she rose up white to Olympus.
So art thou winner, Paris, yet and thy spirit ascendant
Leads this Troy where thou wilt, O thou mighty one veiled in thy beauty.
First in the dance and the revel, first in the joy of the mellay,
Who would not leave for thy sake and repent it not country and homestead?
Winning thou reignest still over Troy, over Fate, over Helen.
Always so canst thou win? Has Death no claim on thy beauty,
Fate no scourge for thy sins? How the years have passed by in a glory,
Years of this heaven of the gods, O ravisher, since from my hearthstone
Seizing thou borest me compelled to thy ships and my joy on the waters.
Troy is enringed with the spears, her children fall and her glories,
Mighty souls of heroes have gone down prone to the darkness;
Thou and I abide! the mothers wail for our pleasure.
Wilt thou then keep me for ever, O son of Priam, in Troya?
Fate was my mother, they say, and Zeus for this hour begot me.
Art thou a god too, O hero, disguised in this robe of the mortal,
Brilliant, careless of death and of sin as if sure of thy rapture?
What then if Fate today were to lay her hands on thee, Paris?
Calmly he looked on the face of which Greece was enamoured, the body
For whose desire great Troy was a sacrifice, tranquil regarded
Lovely and dire on the lips he loved that smile of a goddess,
Saw the daughter of Zeus in the woman, yet was not shaken.
Temptress of Argos, he answered, thou snare for the world to be seized in,
Thou then hopst to escape! But the gods could not take thee, O Helen,
How then thy will that to mine is a captive, or how, though with battle,
He who has lost thee, unhappy, the Spartan, bright Menelaus?
All things yield to a man and Zeus is himself his accomplice
When like a god he wills without remorse or longing.
Thou on this earth art mine since I claimed thee beheld, not speaking,
But with thy lids that fell thou veiledst thy heart of compliance.
Then in whatever beyond I shall know how to take thee, O Helen,
Even as here upon earth I knew, in heaven as in Sparta;
I on Elysian fields will enjoy thee as now in the Troad.
Silent a moment she lingered like one who is lured by a music
Rapturous, heard by himself alone and his lover in heaven,
Then in her beauty compelling she rose up divine among women.
Yes, it is good, she cried, what the gods do and actions of mortals;
Good is this play of the world; it is good, the joy and the torture.
Praised be the hour of the gods when I wedded bright Menelaus!
Praised, more praised the keels that severed the seas towards Helen
Churning the senseless waves that knew not the bliss of their burden!
Praised to the end the hour when I passed through the doors of my husband
Laughing with joy in my heart for the arms that bore and enchained me!
Never can Death undo what life has done for us, Paris.
Nor, whatsoever betide, can the hour be unlived of our rapture.
This too is good that nations should meet in the shock of the battle,
Heroes be slain and a theme be made for the songs of the poets,
Songs that shall thrill with the name of Helen, the beauty of Paris.
Well is this also that empires should fall for the eyes of a woman;
Well that for Helen Hector ended, Memnon was slaughtered,
Strong Sarpedon fell and Troilus ceased in his boyhood.
Troy for Helen burning, her glory, her empire, her riches,
This is the sign of the gods and the type of things that are mortal.
Thou who art kin to the masters of heaven, unconstrained like thy kindred
High on this ancient stage of the Troad with gods for spectators
Play till the end thy part, O thou wondrous and beautiful actor:
Fight and slay the Greeks, my countrymen; victor returning
Take for reward of the play, thy delight of Argive Helen.
Force from my bosom a hint of the joy denied to the death-claimed,
Rob in the kiss of my lips a pang from the raptures of heaven.
Clasping him wholly her arms of desire were a girdle of madness,
Cestus divine of the dread Aphrodite. He with her kisses
Flushed like the gods with unearthly wine and rejoiced in his ruin.
Thus while they conversed now in this hour that was near to their parting
Last upon earth, a fleet-footed slavegirl came to the chamber:
Paris, thy father and mother desire thee; there in the strangers
Outer hall Aeneas and Halamus wait for thy coming.
So with the Argive he wended to Priams ample chamber
Far in Laomedons house where Troy looked upwards to Ida.
Priam and Hecuba there, the ancient grey-haired rulers,
Waiting him sat in their chairs of ivory calm in their greatness;
Hid in her robes at their feet lay Cassandra crouched from her visions.
Since, O my father, said Paris, thy thoughts have been with me, thy blessing
Surely shall help me today in my strife with the strength of Achilles.
Surely the gods shall obey in the end the might of our spirits,
Pallas and Hera, flame-sandalled Artemis, Zeus and Apollo.
Ever serve the immortal brightnesses man when he stands up
Firm with his will uplifted a steadfast flame towards the heavens,
Ares works in his heart and Hephaestus burns in his labour.
Priam replied to his son: Forewilled by the gods, Alexander,
All things happen on earth and yet we must strive who are mortals,
Knowing all vain, yet we strive; for our nature seizing us always
Drives like the flock that is herded and urged towards shambles or pasture.
So have the high gods fashioned these tools of their action and pleasure;
Failure and grief are their engines no less than the might of the victor;
They in the blow descend and resist in the sobs of the smitten.
Such are their goads that I too must walk in the paths that are common,
Even I who know must send for thee, moved by Cassandra.
Speak, O my child, since Apollo has willed it, once, and be silent.
But in her raiment hidden Cassandra answered her father:
No, for my heart has changed since I cried for him, vexed by Apollo.
Why should I speak? For who will believe me in Troy? who believed me
Ever in Troy or the world? Event and disaster approve me
Only, my comrades, not men in their thoughts, not my brothers and kinsmen.
All by their hopes are gladly deceived and grow wroth with the warner,
Half-blind prophets of hope entertained by the gods in the mortal!
Wiser blind, if nothing they saw or only the darkness.
I too once hoped when Apollo pursued me with love in his temple.
Round me already there gleamed the ray of the vision prophetic,
Thrill of that rapture I felt and the joy of the god in his seeing
Nor did I know that the knowledge of mortals is bound unto blindness.
Either only they walk mid the coloured dreams of the senses
Treading the greenness of earth and deeming the touch of things real,
Or if they see, by the curse of the gods their sight into falsehood
Easily turns and leads them more stumbling astray than the sightless.
So are we either blind in a darkness or dazzled by seeing.
Thus have the gods protected their purpose and baffled the sages;
Over the face of the Truth their shield of gold is extended.
But I deemed otherwise, urged by the Dreadful One, he who sits always
Veiled in us fighting the gods whom he uses. I cried to Apollo,
Give me thy vision sheer, not such as thou givst to thy prophets,
Troubled though luminous; clear be the vision and ruthless to error,
Far-darting god who art veiled by the sun and by death thou art shielded.
Then I shall know that thou lovest. He gave, alarmed and reluctant,
Driven by Fate and his heart; but I mocked him, I broke from my promise,
Courage fatal helping my heart to its ruin with laughter.
Always now I remember his face that grew tranquil and ruthless,
Hear the voice divine and implacable: Since thou deceivest
Even the gods and thou hast not feared to lie to Apollo,
Speak shalt thou henceforth only truth, but none shall believe thee:
Scorned in thy words, rejected yet more for their bitter fulfilment,
Scourged by the gods thou must speak though thy sick heart yearns to be silent.
For in this play thou hast dared to play with the masters of heaven,
Girl, it is thou who hast lost; thy voice is mine and thy bosom.
Since then all I foreknow; therefore anguish is mine for my portion:
Since then all whom I love must perish slain by my loving.
Even of that I denied him, violent force shall bereave me
Grasped mid the flames of my city and shouts of her merciless victors.
But to Cassandra answered gently the voice of her brother:
Sister of mine, afflicted and seized by the dreadful Apollo,
All whose eyes can pierce that curtain, gaze into dimness;
This they have glimpsed and that they imagine deceived by their natures
Seeing the forms in their hearts of dreadful things and of joyous;
As in the darkness our eyes are deceived by shadows uncertain,
Such is their sight who rend the veil that the dire gods have woven.
Busy our hearts are weaving thoughts and images always:
After their kind they see what here we call truth. So thy nature
Tender and loving, plagued by this war and its fears for thy loved ones,
Sees calamity everywhere; when the event like the vision
Seems, as in every war the beloved must fall and the cherished,
Then the heart cries, It has happened as all shall happen I mourn for.
All that was bright it misses and only seizes on sorrow.
Dear, on the brightness look and if thou must prophesy, tell us
Rather of great Pelides slain by my spear in the onset.
But with a voice of grief the sister answered her brother:
Yes, he shall fall and his slayer too perish and Troy with his slayer.
But in his spirit rejoicing Paris answered Cassandra:
Let but this word come true; for the rest, the gods shall avert it.
Look once more, O Cassandra, and comfort the heart of thy mother,
See, O seer, my safe return with the spoils of Achilles.
And with a voice of grief the sister answered her brother:
Thou shalt return for thy hour while Troy yet stands in the sunshine.
But in his spirit exultant Paris seizing the omen:
Hearst thou, my father, my mother? She who still prophesied evil
Now perceives of our night this dawning. Yet is it grievous,
Since through a heart that we love must be pierced the heart of Achilles.
Fate, with this evil satisfied, turn in the end from Troya.
Bless me, my father, and thou, O Hecuba, mother long-patient,
Still forgive that thy children have fallen for Helen and Paris.
Tenderly yearning his mother drew him towards her and murmured:
All for thy hyacinth curls was forgiven even from childhood
And for thy sunlit looks, O wonder of charm, O Paris.
Paris, my son, though Troy must fall, thy mother forgives thee,
Blessing the gods who have lent thee to me for a while in their sunshine.
Theirs are fate and result, but ours is the joy of our children;
Even the griefs are dear that come from their hands while they love us.
Fight and slay Achilles, the murderer dire of thy brothers;
Venging Hector return, my son, to the clasp of thy mother.
But in his calm august to Paris Priam the monarch:
Victor so mightst thou come, so gladden the heart of thy mother.
Then to the aged father of Paris Helen the Argive
Bright and immortal and sad like a star that grows near to the dawning
And on its pale companions looks who now fade from its vision:
Me too pardon and love, my parents, even Helen,
Cause of all bane and all death; but I came from the gods for this ruin
Born as a torch for the burning of empires, cursed with this beauty.
Nor have I known a fathers embrace, a mothers caresses,
But to the distant gods I was born and nursed as an alien
Here by earth from fear, not affection, compelled by the thunders.
Two are her monstrous births, from the Furies and from the immortals;
Either touching mortality suffers and bears not the contact.
I have been both, a monster of doom and a portent of beauty.
Slowly Priam the monarch answered to Argive Helen:
That which thou art the gods have made thee; thou couldst not be other:
That which thou didst, the gods have done; thou couldst not prevent them.
Who here shall blame or whom shall he pardon? Should not my people
Rail at me murmuring, Priam has lost what his fathers had gathered;
Cursed is this king by heaven and cursed who are born as his subjects?
Masked the high gods act; the doer is hid by his working.
Each of us bears his punishment, fruit of a seed thats forgotten;
Each of us curses his neighbour protecting his heart with illusions:
Therefore like children we blame each other and hate and are angry.
Take, my child, the joy of the sunshine won by thy beauty.
I who lodge on this earth as an alien bound by the body,
Wearing my sorrow even as I wear the imperial purple,
Praise yet the gods for my days that have seen thee at last in my ending.
Fitly Troy may cease having gazed on thy beauty, O Helen.
He became silent, he ceased from words. But Paris and Helen
Lightly went and gladly; pursuing their footsteps the mother,
Mother once of Troilus, mother once of Hector,
Stood at the door with her death in her eyes, nor returned from her yearning,
But as one after a vanishing sunbeam gazes in prison,
Gazed down the corridors after him, long who had passed from her vision.
Then in the silent chamber Cassandra seized by Apollo
Staggered erect and tossing her snow-white arms of affliction
Cried to the heavens in her pain; for the fierce god tortured her bosom:
Woe is me, woe for the guile and the bitter gift of Apollo!
Woe, thrice woe, for my birth in Troy and the lineage of Teucer!
So do you deal, O gods, with those who have served you and laboured,
Those who have borne for your sake the evil burden of greatness.
Blessed is he who holds mattock in hand or who bends oer the furrow
Taking no thought for the good of mankind, with no yearnings for knowledge.
Woe unto me for my wisdom which none shall value nor hearken!
Woe unto thee, O King, for thy strength which shall not deliver!
Better the eye that is sealed, more blest is the spirit thats feeble.
Vainly your hopes with iron Necessity struggle, O mortals.
Virtue shall lie in her pangs, for the gods have need of her torture;
Sin shall be scourged, though her deeds were compelled by the gods in their anger.
None shall avail in the end, the coward shall die and the hero.
Troy shall fall in her sin and her virtues shall not protect her;
Argos shall grow by her crimes till the gods shall destroy her for ever.
Now have I fruit of thy love, O Loxias, dreadful Apollo.
Woe is me, woe for the flame that approaches the house of my fathers!
Woe is me, woe for the hand of Ajax laid on my tresses!
Woe, thrice woe to him who shall ravish and him who shall cherish!
Woe for the ships that shall bound too swift oer the azure Aegean!
Woe for thy splendid shambles of hell, O Argive Mycenae!
Woe for the evil spouse and the house accursd of Atreus!
So with her voice of the swan she clanged out doom on the peoples,
Over the palace of Priam and over the armd nation
Marching resolved to the war in the pride of its centuries conquered,
Centuries slain by a single day of the anger of heaven.
Dim to the thoughts like a vision of Hades the luminous chamber
Grew; in his ivory chair King Priam sat like a shadow
Throned mid the ghosts of departed kings and forgotten empires.
But in his valiance careless and bli the the Priamid hastened
Seeking the pillared megaron wide where Deiphobus armoured
Waited his coming forth with the warlike chiefs of the Trojans.
Now as he passed by the halls of the women, the chambers that harboured
Daughters and wives of King Priam and wives of his sons and their playmates,
Niches of joy that were peopled with murmurs and sweet-tongued laughters,
Troubled like trees with their birds in a morning of sun and of shadow
Where in some garden of kings one walks with his heart in the sunshine,
Out from her door where she stood for him waiting Polyxena started,
Seized his hand and looked in his face and spoke to her brother.
Then not even the brilliant strength of Paris availed him;
Joyless he turned his face from her eyes of beauty and sorrow.
So it is come, the hour that I feared, and thou goest, O Paris,
Armed with the strength of Fate to strike at my heart in the battle;
For he is doomed and thou and I, a victim to Hades.
This thou preferrest and neither thy father could move nor thy mother
Burning with Troy in their palace, nor could thy country persuade thee,
Nor dost thou care for thy sisters happiness pierced by thy arrows.
Will she remember it all, my sister Helen, in Argos
Passing tranquil days with her husband, bright Menelaus,
Holding her child on her knees? But we shall lie joyless in Hades.
Paris replied: O sister Polyxena, blame me not wholly.
We by the gods are ensnared; for the pitiless white Aphrodite
Doing her will with us both compels this. Helpless our hearts are
And when she drives perforce must love, for death or for gladness:
Weighed in unequal scales she deals them to one or another.
Happy who holding his love can go down into bottomless Hades.
But to her brother replied in her anguish the daughter of Priam:
Evilly deal with my days the immortals happy in heaven;
Yes, I accuse the gods and I curse them who heed not our sorrow.
This they have done with me, forcing my heart to the love of a foeman,
One whose terrible hands have been stained with the blood of my brothers.
This now they do, they have taken the two whom I love beyond heaven,
Brother and husband, and drive to the fight to be slain by each other.
Nay, go thou forth; for thou canst not help it, nor I, nor can Helen.
Since I must die as a pageant to satisfy Zeus and his daughter,
Since now my heart must be borne as a victim bleeding to please them,
So let it be, let me deck myself and be bright for the altar.
Into her chamber she turned with her great eyes blind, unregarding;
He for a moment stood, then passed to the megaron slowly;
Dim was the light in his eyes and clouded his glorious beauty.
Meanwhile armed in the palace of Priam Penthesilea.
Near her her captains silent and mighty stood, from the Orient
Distant clouds of war, Surabdas and iron Surenas,
Pharatus planned like the hills, Somaranes, Valarus, Tauron,
High-crested Sumalus, Arithon, Sambus and Artavoruxes.
There too the princes of Phrygian Troya gathered for counsel
And with them Eurus came, Polydamas son, who most dearly
Loved was of all the Trojan boys by the glorious virgin.
She from her arming stayed to caress his curls and to chide him:
Eurus, forgotten of grace, dost thou gad like a stray in the city
Eager to mix with the armoured men and the chariots gliding?
High on the roofs wouldst thou watch the swaying speck that is battle?
Better to aim with the dart or seek with thy kind the palaestra;
So wilt thou sooner be part of this greatness rather than straining
Yearn from afar to the distance that veils the deeds of the mighty.
But with an anxious lure in his smile on her Eurus answered:
Not that remoteness to see have I come to the palace of Priam
Leaving the house of my fathers, but for the spear and the breastpiece.
Hast thou not promised me long I shall fight in thy car with Achilles?
Doubtful he eyed her, a lions cub at play in his beauty,
And mid the heroes who heard him laughter arose for a moment,
Yet with a sympathy stirred; they remembered the days of their childhood,
Thought of Troy still mighty, life in its rose-touched dawning
When they had longed for the clash of the fight and the burden of armour.
Glad, with the pride of the lioness watching her cub in the desert,
Couchant she lies with her paws before her and joys in his gambols,
Over the prey as he frisks and is careless, answered the virgin:
Younger than thou in my nation have mounted the steed and the war-car.
Eurus, arm; from under my shield thou shalt gaze at the Phthian,
Reaching my shafts for the cast from the rim of my car in the battle
Handle perhaps the spear that shall smite down the Phthian Achilles.
What sayst thou, Halamus? Were not such prowess a perfect beginning
Worthy Polydamas son and the warlike house of Antenor?
Halamus started and smiting his hand on the grief of his bosom,
Sombre replied and threatened with Fate the high-hearted virgin.
Virgin armipotent, wherefore mockst thou thy friend, though unwitting?
Nay, for the world will know at the end and my death cannot hide it,
Slain by a fathers curse we fight who are kin to Antenor.
Take not the boy in thy car, lest the Furies, Penthesilea,
Aim through the shield and the shielder to wreak the curse of the grandsire.
They will not turn nor repent for thy strength nor his delicate beauty.
Swiftly to Halamus answered the high-crested might of the virgin:
Curses leave lightly the lips when the soul of a man is in anger
Even as blessings easily crowd round the head that is cherished.
Yet have I never seen that a curse has sharpened a spear-point;
Never Death drew back from the doomed by the power of a blessing.
Valour and skill and chance are Fate and the gods and the Furies.
Give me the boy; a hero shall come back formed from the onset.
Do as thou wilt, replied Halamus; Fate shall guard or shall end him.
Then to the boy delighted and smiling-eyed and exultant
Cried with her voice like the call of heavens bugles waking the heroes,
Blown by the lips of gold-haired Valkyries, Penthesilea.
Go, find the spear, gird the sword, don the cuirass, child of the mighty.
Armed when thou standst on the plain of the Xanthus, field of thy fathers,
See that thou fight on this day like the comrade of Penthesilea.
Bud of a hero, gaze unalarmed in the eyes of Achilles.
Light as a hound released he ran to the hall of the armour
Where were the shields of the mighty, the arms of the mansion of Teucer;
There from the house-thralls he wrung the greaves and the cuirass and helmet
Troilus wore, the wonderful boy who, ere ripened his prowess,
Conquered the Greeks and drove to the ships and fought with Achilles.
These on his boyish limbs he donned and ran back exulting
Bearing spears and a sword and rejoiced in the clank on his armour.
Meanwhile Deiphobus, head of the mellay, moved by Aeneas
Opened the doors of their warlike debate to the strength of the virgin:
Well do I hope that our courage outwearying every opponent
Triumph shall lift to her ancient seat on the Pergaman turrets;
Clouds from Zeus come and pass; his sunshine eternal survives them.
Yet we are few in the fight and armoured nations besiege us.
Surging on Troy today a numberless foe well-captained
Hardly pushed back in shock after shock with the Myrmidon numbers
Swelled returns; they fight with a hope that broken refashion
Helpful skies and a man now leads them who conquers and slaughters,
One of the sons of the gods and armed by the gods for the struggle.
We unhelped save by Ares stern and the mystic Apollo
And but as mortals striving with stubborn mortal courage,
Hated and scorned and alone in the world, by the nations rejected,
Fight with the gods and mankind and Achilles and numbers against us
Keeping our country from death in this bitter hour of her fortunes.
Therefore have prudence and hardihood severed contending our counsels
Whether far out to fight on the seaward plain with the Argives
Or behind Xanthus the river impetuous friendly to Troya.
This my brother approves and the son of Antenor advises,
Prudent masters of war who prepare by defence their aggression.
But for myself from rashness I seek a more far-seeing wisdom,
Not behind vain defences choosing a tardy destruction,
Rather as Zeus with his spear of the lightning and chariot of tempest
Scatters and chases the heavy mass of the clouds through the heavens,
So would I hunt the Greeks through the plains to their lair by the Ocean,
Straight at the throat of my foeman so would I leap in the battle.
Swiftly to smite at the foe is prudence for armies outnumbered.
Then to the Dardanid answered the high-crested Penthesilea:
There where I find my foe I will fight him, whether by Xanthus
Or at the fosse of the ships where they crouch behind bulwarks for shelter,
Or if they dare by Scamander the higher marching on Troya.
Sternly approved her the Trojan, So should they fight who would triumph
Meeting the foe ere he move in his will to the clash of encounter.
But with his careless laughter the brilliant Priamid Paris:
Joy of the battle, joy of the tempest, joy of the gamble
Mated are in thy blood, O virgin, daughter of Ares.
Thou like the deathless wouldst have us combat, us who are human?
Come, let the gods do their will with us, Ares let lead and his daughter!
Always the blood is wiser and knows what is hid from the thinker.
Life and treasure and fame to cast on the wings of a moment,
Fiercer joy than this the gods have not given to mortals.
Highly to Paris the virgin armipotent Penthesilea,
Paris and Halamus, shafts of the war-god, fear not for Troya.
Not as a vaunt do I speak it, you gods who stern-thoughted watch us,
But in my vision of strength and the soul that is seated within me,
Not while I live and war shall the host of the Myrmidon fighters
Forcing the currents lave, as once they were wont, in Scamander
Vaunting their victor car-wheels red with the blood of the vanquished.
Then when I lie by some war-god slain on the fields of the Troad,
Fight again if you will behind high-banked fast-flowing Xanthus.
Halamus answered her, Never so by my will would I battle
Flinging Troy as a stake on the doubtful diceboard of Ares.
But you have willed it and so let it be; yet hearken my counsel.
Massed in the fight let us aim the storm of our spears at one greatness,
Mighty Pelides head who gives victory still to the Argives.
Easy the Greeks to destroy lay Achilles once slain on the Troad,
But if the Peleid lives the fire shall yet finish with Troya.
Join then Orestes speed to the stubborn might of Aeneas,
Paris fatal shafts and the missiles of Penthesilea.
Others meanwhile, a puissant screen of our bravest and strongest,
Fighting shall hold back Pylos and Argolis, Crete and the Locrian.
Thou, Deiphobus, front the bronze-clad stern Diomedes,
I with Polydamas spear will dare to restrain and discourage
Ajax feet though they yearn for pursuit and are hungry for swiftness.
Knot of retreat behind let some strong experienced captain
Stand with our younger levies guarding the fords of the Xanthus,
Fortify the wavering line and dawn as fresh strength on the wearied.
Then if the fierce gods prevail we shall perish not driven like cattle
Over the plains, but draw back sternly and slowly to Troya.
Answered the Priamid, Wise is thy counsel, branch of Antenor.
Chaff are the southern Achaians, only the hardihood Hellene,
Only the savage speed of the Locrian rescues their legions.
Marshal we so this field. Stand, Halamus, covering Xanthus,
Helping our need when the foe press hard on the Ilian fighters.
Paris, my brother, thou with our masses aid the Eoan.
I with Aeneas single spear am enough for the Argive.
Gladlier Halamus cried would I fight in the front with the Locrian!
This too let be as you will; for one is the glory and service
Fighting in front or guarding behind the fate of our country.
So in their thoughts they ordered battle. Meanwhile Eurus
Gleaming returned and the room grew glad with the light of his armour.
Glad were its conscious walls of that vision of boyhood and valour;
Gods of the household sighed and smiled at his courage and beauty,
They who had seen so many pass over their floors and return not
Hasting to battle, the fair and the mighty, the curled and the grizzled,
All of them treading one path like the conscious masks of one pageant
Winding past through the glare of a light to the shadows beyond them.
But on her captains proudly smiling Penthesilea
Seized him and cried aloud, her wild and warlike nature
Moved by the mothers heart that the woman loses not ever.
Who then shall fear for the fate of Troy when such are her children?
Verily, Eurus, yearning has seized me to meet thee in battle
Rather than Locrian Ajax, rather than Phthian Achilles.
There acquiring a deathless fame I would make thee my captive,
Greedy and glad who feel as a lioness eyeing her booty.
Nay, I can never leave thee behind, my delicate Trojan,
But, when this war ends, will bear thee away to the hills of my country
And, as a robber might, with my captive glad and unwilling
Bring thee a perfect gift to my sisters Ditis and Anna.
Eurus, there in my land thou shalt look on such hills as thy vision
Gazed not on yet, with their craggy tops besieging Cronion,
Sheeted in virgin white and chilling his feet with their vastness.
Thou shalt rejoice in our wooded peaks and our fruit-bearing valleys,
Lakes of Elysium dreaming and wide and rivers of wonder.
All day long thou shalt glide between mystic woodlands in silence
Broken only by call of the birds and the plashing of waters.
There shalt thou see, O Eurus, the childhood of Penthesilea.
Thou shalt repose in my fathers house and walk in the gardens
Green where I played at the ball with my sisters, Ditis and Anna.
Musing she ceased, but if any god had touched her with prescience
Bidding her think for the last time now of the haunts of her childhood,
Gaze in her soul with a parting love at the thought of her sisters
And of the lovely and distant land where she played through her summers,
Brief was the touch; for she changed at once and only of triumph
Dreamed and only yearned in her heart for the shock of Achilles.
So they passed from the halls of Priam fated and lofty,
Halls where the air seemed sobbing yet with the cry of Cassandra;
Clad in their brilliant armour, bright in their beauty and courage,
Sons of the passing demigods, they to their latest battle
Down the ancestral hill of the Pergamans moved to the gateway.
Loud with an endless march, with a tireless gliding to meet them,
All Troy streamed from her streets and her palaces armed for the combat.
Then to the voice of Deiphobus clanging high oer the rumour
Wide the portals swung that shall close on a blood-red evening,
Slow, foreboding, reluctant, and through the yawn of the gateway
Drove with a cry her steeds the virgin Penthesilea
Calling aloud, O steeds of my east, we drive to Achilles.
Bli the in the car behind her Eurus scouted around him
Scared with his eyes lest Antenor his grandsire should rise in the gateway,
Hardly believing his fate that led him safe through the portals.
After her trampled and crashed the ranks of her orient fighters.
Paris next with his hosts came brilliant, gold on his armour,
Gold on his helm; a mighty bow hung slack on his shoulder,
Propped oer his arm a spear, as he drove his car through the gateway.
Next Deiphobus drove and the hero strong Aeneas,
Leading their numbers on. Behind them Dus and Polites,
Helenus, Priams son, Thrasymachus, grizzled Aretes,
Came like the tempest his father, Adamas, son of the Northwind
Orus old in the fight and Eumachus, kin to Aeneas,
Who was Cresas brother and richest of men in the Troad
After Antenor only and Priam, Ilions monarch.
Halamus drove and Arintheus led on his Lycian levies.
Who were the last to speed out of Troya of all those legions
Doomed to the sword? for never again from the ancient city
Foot would march or chariots crash in their pride to the Xanthus.
Aetor the old and Tryas the conqueror known by the Oxus.
They in the portals met and their ancient eyes on each other
Looked amazed, admiring on age the harness of battle.
They in the turreted head of the gateway halted and conversed.
Twenty years have passed, O Tryas, chief of the Trojans,
Since in the battle thy car was seen and the arm of thy prowess
Age has wronged. Why now to the crowded ways of the battle
Move once more thy body infirm and thy eyes that are faded?
And to Antenors brother the Teucrian, Thou too, O Aetor,
Old and weary hast sat in thy halls and desisted from battle.
Now in Troys portals I meet thee driving forth to the mellay.
Aetor answered, Which then is better, to wretchedly perish
Crushed by the stones of my falling house or slain like a victim
Dragged through the blood of my kin on the sacred hearth of my fathers,
Or in the battle to cease mid the war-cry and hymn of the chariots
Knowing that Troy yet stands in her pride though doomed in her morrows?
So have the young men willed and the old like thee who age not,
Old are thy limbs, but thy heart is still young and hot for the war-din.
Tryas replied, To perish is better for man or for nation
Nobly in battle, nor end disgraced by disease or subjection.
So have I come here to offer this shoulder Laomedon leaned on,
Arms that have fought by the Oxus and conquered the Orients heroes
Famous in Priams wars, and a heart that is faithful to Troya.
These I will offer to death on his splendid altar of battle,
Tri bute from Ilion. If she must fall, I shall see not her ending.
Aetor replied to Tryas, Then let us perish together,
Joined by the love of our race who in life were divided in counsel.
All things embrace in death and the strife and the hatred are ended.
Silent together they drove for the last time through Ilions portals
Out with the rest to the fight towards the sea and the spears of the Argives.
Only once, as they drove, they gazed back silent on Troya
Lifting her marble pride in the golden joy of the morning.
So through the ripening morn the army, crossing Scamander,
Filling the heavens with the dust and the war-cry, marched on the Argives.
Far in front Troys plain spread wide to the echoing Ocean.
***
~ Sri Aurobindo, 4 - The Book of Partings
,
296:MANTIS EIM ESQLWN AGWNWN
--Oedip. Colon.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA THE DRAMA OF HELLAS IS INSCRIBED AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP OF THE AUTHOR.

PROLOGUE TO HELLAS
Herald of Eternity.
It is the day when all the sons of God
Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor
Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss
Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline...
The shadow of God, and delegate
Of that before whose breath the universe
Is as a print of dew.

           Hierarchs and kings
Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past
Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit
Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom
Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation
Steaming from earth, conceals the...of heaven
Which gave it birth,...assemble here
Before your Father's throne; the swift decree
Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation
Is yet withheld, clothd in which it shall
...annul
The fairest of those wandering isles that gem
The sapphire space of interstellar air,
That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped
Less in the beauty of its tender light
Than in an atmosphere of living spirit
Which interpenetrating all the...
...it rolls from realm to realm
And age to age, and in its ebb and flow
Impels the generations
To their appointed place,
Whilst the high Arbiter
Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time
Sends His decrees veiled in eternal...

Within the circuit of this pendent orb
There lies an antique region, on which fell
The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn
Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung
Temples and cities and immortal forms
And harmonies of wisdom and of song,
And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair.
And when the sun of its dominion failed,
And when the winter of its glory came,
The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept
That dew into the utmost wildernesses
In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed
The unmaternal bosom of the North.
Haste, sons of God,...for ye beheld,
Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished,
The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece
Ruin and degradation and despair.
A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God,
To speed or to prevent or to suspend,
If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld,
The unaccomplished destiny...

Chorus.

The curtain of the Universe
Is rent and shattered,
The splendour-wingd worlds disperse
Like wild doves scattered.

  Space is roofless and bare,
And in the midst a cloudy shrine,
Dark amid thrones of light.
In the blue glow of hyaline
Golden worlds revolve and shine.
In...flight
From every point of the Infinite,
Like a thousand dawns on a single night
The splendours rise and spread;
And through thunder and darkness dread
Light and music are radiated,
And in their pavilioned chariots led
By living wings high overhead
The giant Powers move,
Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill...
A chaos of light and motion
Upon that glassy ocean...
The senate of the Gods is met,
Each in his rank and station set;
  There is silence in the spaces
Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet
Start from their places!

Christ.

             Almighty Father!
Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny. . .
There are two fountains in which spirits weep
When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named,
And with their bitter dew two Destinies
Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third,
Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added
Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's lymph,
And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain. . .
The Aurora of the nations. By this brow
Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds,
By this imperial crown of agony,
By infamy and solitude and death,
For this I underwent, and by the pain
Of pity for those who would...for me
The unremembered joy of a revenge,
For this I feltby Plato's sacred light,
Of which my spirit was a burning morrow
By Greece and all she cannot cease to be,
Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth,
Stars of all nighther harmonies and forms,
Echoes and shadows of what Love adores
In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate,
Thy irrevocable child: let her descend,
A seraph-wingd Victory [arrayed]
In tempest of the omnipotence of God
Which sweeps through all things.

From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms
Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies
To stamp, as on a wingd serpent's seed,
Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm
Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens
The solid heart of enterprise; from all
By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits
Are stars beneath the dawn...

                 She shall arise
Victorious as the world arose from Chaos!
And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed
Their presence in the beauty and the light
Of Thy first smile, O Father,as they gather
The spirit of Thy love which paves for them
Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere
Shall be one living Spirit,-- so shall Greece--

Satan.
Be as all things beneath the empyrean,
Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,
Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns?
Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed
Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn;
For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor
The innumerable worlds of golden light
Which are my empire, and the least of them
...which thou wouldst redeem from me?
Know'st thou not them my portion?
Or wouldst rekindle the...strife
Which our great Father then did arbitrate
Which he assigned to his competing sons
Each his apportioned realm?

               Thou Destiny,
Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence
Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task,
Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine
Thy trophies, whether Greece again become
The fountain in the desert whence the earth
Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength
To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death
To swallow all delight, all life, all hope.
Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less
Than of the Father's; but lest thou shouldst faint,
The wingd hounds, Famine and Pestilence,
Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forkd snake
Insatiate Superstition still shall...
The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover
Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change
Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings,
Convulsing and consuming, and I add
Three vials of the tears which daemons weep
When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death
Pass triumphing over the thorns of life,
Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares,
Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates.
The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure,
Glory and science and security,
On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree,
Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes.
The second Tyranny--

Christ.
           Obdurate spirit!
Thou seest but the Past in the To-come.
Pride is thy error and thy punishment.
Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds
Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops
Before the Power that wields and kindles them.
True greatness asks not space, true excellence
Lives in the Spirit of all things that live,
Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine...

Mahomet.
Haste thou and fill the waning crescent
With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow
Of Christian night rolled back upon the West,
When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph
From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow...
                       Wake, thou Word
Of God, and from the throne of Destiny
Even to the utmost limit of thy way
May Triumph...........
Be thou a curse on them whose creed
Divides and multiplies the most high God.

HELLAS

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Mahmud.
Hassan.
Daood.
Ahasuerus, a Jew.
Chorus of Greek Captive Women.
The Phantom of Mahomet II.
Messengers, Slaves, and Attendants.

Scene, Constantinople. Time, Sunset.

Scene--A Terrace on the Seraglio. Mahmud sleeping, an Indian Slave sitting beside his Couch.
Chorus of Greek Captive Women.
We strew these opiate flowers
  On thy restless pillow,
They were stripped from Orient bowers,
  By the Indian billow.
   Be thy sleep
   Calm and deep,
Like theirs who fellnot ours who weep!
Indian.
Away, unlovely dreams!
  Away, false shapes of sleep!
Be his, as Heaven seems,
  Clear, and bright, and deep!
Soft as love, and calm as death,
Sweet as a summer night without a breath.
Chorus.
Sleep, sleep! our song is laden
  With the soul of slumber;
It was sung by a Samian maiden,
  Whose lover was of the number
   Who now keep
   That calm sleep
Whence none may wake, where none shall weep.
Indian.
I touch thy temples pale!
  I breathe my soul on thee!
And could my prayers avail,
  All my joy should be
Dead, and I would live to weep,
So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.
Chorus.
  Breathe low, low
The spell of the mighty mistress now!
When Conscience lulls her sated snake,
And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake.
  Breathe lowlow
The words which, like secret fire, shall flow
Through the veins of the frozen earthlow, low!
Semichorus I.
Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed,but it returneth!
Semichorus II.
Yet were life a charnel where
Hope lay coffined with Despair;
Yet were truth a sacred lie,
Love were lust
Semichorus I.
         If Liberty
Lent not life its soul of light,
Hope its iris of delight,
Truth its prophet's robe to wear,
Love its power to give and bear.
Chorus.
In the great morning of the world,
The Spirit of God with might unfurled
The flag of Freedom over Chaos,
And all its banded anarchs fled,
Like vultures frighted from Imaus,
Before an earthquake's tread.
So from Time's tempestuous dawn
Freedom's splendour burst and shone:
Thermopylae and Marathon
Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted,
The springing Fire.The wingd glory
On Philippi half-alighted,
Like an eagle on a promontory.
Its unwearied wings could fan
The quenchless ashes of Milan.[1]
From age to age, from man to man,
It lived; and lit from land to land
Florence, Albion, Switzerland.
Then night fell; and, as from night,
Reassuming fiery flight,
From the West swift Freedom came,
Against the course of Heaven and doom,
A second sun arrayed in flame,
To burn, to kindle, to illume.
From far Atlantis its young beams
Chased the shadows and the dreams.
France, with all her sanguine steams,
Hid, but quenched it not; again
Through clouds its shafts of glory rain
From utmost Germany to Spain.
As an eagle fed with morning
Scorns the embattled tempest's warning,
When she seeks her aerie hanging
In the mountain-cedar's hair,
And her brood expect the clanging
Of her wings through the wild air,
Sick with famine:Freedom, so
To what of Greece remaineth now
Returns; her hoary ruins glow
Like Orient mountains lost in day;
Beneath the safety of her wings
Her renovated nurslings prey,
And in the naked lightenings
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.
Let Freedom leavewhere'er she flies,
A Desert, or a Paradise:
Let the beautiful and the brave
Share her glory, or a grave.
Semichorus I.
With the gifts of gladness
Greece did thy cradle strew;
Semichorus II.
With the tears of sadness
Greece did thy shroud bedew!
Semichorus I.
With an orphan's affection
She followed thy bier through Time;
Semichorus II.
And at thy resurrection
Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!
Semichorus I.
If Heaven should resume thee,
To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;
Semichorus II.
If Hell should entomb thee,
To Hell shall her high hearts bend.
Semichorus I.
If Annihilation
Semichorus II.
Dust let her glories be!
And a name and a nation
Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee!
Indian.
His brow grows darkerbreathe notmove not!
He startshe shuddersye that love not,
With your panting loud and fast,
Have awakened him at last.
Mahmud
(starting from his sleep).
Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate!
What! from a cannonade of three short hours?
'Tis false! that breach towards the Bosphorus
Cannot be practicable yetwho stirs?
Stand to the match; that when the foe prevails
One spark may mix in reconciling ruin
The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower
Into the gapwrench off the roof!
(Enter Hassan.)
                  Ha! what!
The truth of day lightens upon my dream
And I am Mahmud still.
Hassan.
            Your Sublime Highness
Is strangely moved.
Mahmud.
          The times do cast strange shadows
On those who watch and who must rule their course,
Lest they, being first in peril as in glory,
Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:and these are of them.
Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me
As thus from sleep into the troubled day;
It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,
Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.
Would thatno matter. Thou didst say thou knewest
A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle
Of strange and secret and forgotten things.
I bade thee summon him:'tis said his tribe
Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.
Hassan.
The Jew of whom I spake is old,so old
He seems to have outlived a world's decay;
The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean
Seem younger still than he;his hair and beard
Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;
His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries
Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct
With light, and to the soul that quickens them
Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift
To the winter wind:but from his eye looks forth
A life of unconsumd thought which pierces
The Present, and the Past, and the To-come.
Some say that this is he whom the great prophet
Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery,
Mocked with the curse of immortality.
Some feign that he is Enoch: others dream
He was pre-adamite and has survived
Cycles of generation and of ruin.
The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence
And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh,
Deep contemplation, and unwearied study,
In years outstretched beyond the date of man,
May have attained to sovereignty and science
Over those strong and secret things and thoughts
Which others fear and know not.
Mahmud.
                 I would talk
With this old Jew.
Hassan.
          Thy will is even now
Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern
'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible
Than thou or God! He who would question him
Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream
Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles,
When the young moon is westering as now,
And evening airs wander upon the wave;
And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle,
Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow
Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water,
Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud
'Ahasuerus!' and the caverns round
Will answer 'Ahasuerus!' If his prayer
Be granted, a faint meteor will arise
Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind
Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest,
And with the wind a storm of harmony
Unutterably sweet, and pilot him
Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:
Thence at the hour and place and circumstance
Fit for the matter of their conference
The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare
Win the desired communionbut that shout
Bodes
[A shout within.
Mahmud.
    Evil, doubtless; like all human sounds.
Let me converse with spirits.
Hassan.
                That shout again.
                Mahmud.
This Jew whom thou hast summoned
Hassan.
                  Will be here
                  Mahmud.
When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked
He, I, and all things shall compelenough!
Silence those mutineersthat drunken crew,
That crowd about the pilot in the storm.
Ay! strike the foremost shorter by a head!
They weary me, and I have need of rest.
Kings are like starsthey rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.
[Exeunt severally.
Chorus[2].
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river
Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
  But they are still immortal
  Who, through birth's orient portal
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
  Clothe their unceasing flight
  In the brief dust and light
Gathered around their chariots as they go;
  New shapes they still may weave,
  New gods, new laws receive,
Bright or dim are they as the robes they last
  On Death's bare ribs had cast.
   A power from the unknown God,
  A Promethean conqueror, came;
Like a triumphal path he trod
  The thorns of death and shame.
  A mortal shape to him
  Was like the vapour dim
Which the orient planet animates with light;
  Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,
  Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight;
  The moon of Mahomet
  Arose, and it shall set:
While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon
The cross leads generations on.
  Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep
  From one whose dreams are Paradise
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
  And Day peers forth with her blank eyes;
  So fleet, so faint, so fair,
  The Powers of earth and air
Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem:
  Apollo, Pan, and Love,
  And even Olympian Jove
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;
  Our hills and seas and streams,
  Dispeopled of their dreams,
Their watrs turned to blood, their dew to tears,
  Wailed for the golden years.
  Enter Mahmud, Hassan, Daood, and others.
Mahmud.
More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory,
And shall I sell it for defeat?
Daood.
                 The Janizars
Clamour for pay.
Mahmud.
         Go! bid them pay themselves
With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins
Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?
No infidel children to impale on spears?
No hoary priests after that Patriarch[3]
Who bent the curse against his country's heart,
Which clove his own at last? Go! bid them kill,
Blood is the seed of gold.
Daood.
              It has been sown,
And yet the harvest to the sicklemen
Is as a grain to each.
Mahmud.
            Then, take this signet,
Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie
The treasures of victorious Solyman,
An empire's spoil stored for a day of ruin.
O spirit of my sires! is it not come?
The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep;
But these, who spread their feast on the red earth,
Hunger for gold, which fills not.See them fed;
Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh death. [Exit Daood.

O miserable dawn, after a night
More glorious than the day which it usurped!
O faith in God! O power on earth! O word
Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings
Darkened the thrones and idols of the West,
Now bright!For thy sake cursd be the hour,
Even as a father by an evil child,
When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph
From Caucasus to White Ceraunia!
Ruin above, and anarchy below;
Terror without, and treachery within;
The Chalice of destruction full, and all
Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares
To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?
Hassan.
The lamp of our dominion still rides high;
One God is GodMahomet is His prophet.
Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits
Of utmost Asia, irresistibly
Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco's cry;
But not like them to weep their strength in tears:
They bear destroying lightning, and their step
Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm,
And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus,
Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen
With horrent arms; and lofty ships even now,
Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge,
Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala
The convoy of the ever-veering wind.
Samos is drunk with blood;the Greek has paid
Brief victory with swift loss and long despair.
The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far,
When the fierce shout of 'Allah-illa-Allah!'
Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind
Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock
Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm.
So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day!
If night is mute, yet the returning sun
Kindles the voices of the morning birds;
Nor at thy bidding less exultingly
Than birds rejoicing in the golden day,
The Anarchies of Africa unleash
Their tempest-wingd cities of the sea,
To speak in thunder to the rebel world.
Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm,
They sweep the pale Aegean, while the Queen
Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne,
Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons
Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee:
Russia still hovers, as an eagle might
Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane
Hang tangled in inextricable fight,
To stoop upon the victor;for she fears
The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine.
But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave
Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war
Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,
And howl upon their limits; for they see
The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,
Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood
Crouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre,
Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold,
Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes?
Our arsenals and our armouries are full;
Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon
Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour
Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city;
The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale
The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew
Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth.
Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds,
Over the hills of Anatolia,
Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry
Sweep;the far flashing of their starry lances
Reverberates the dying light of day.
We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law;
But many-headed Insurrection stands
Divided in itself, and soon must fall.
Mahmud.
Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable:
Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned
Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud
Which leads the rear of the departing day;
Wan emblem of an empire fading now!
See how it trembles in the blood-red air,
And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent
Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above,
One star with insolent and victorious light
Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams,
Like arrows through a fainting antelope,
Strikes its weak from to death.
Hassan.
                 Even as that moon
Renews itself
Mahmud.
        Shall we be not renewed!
Far other bark than ours were needed now
To stem the torrent of descending time:
The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord
Stalks through the capitals of armd kings,
And spreads his ensign in the wilderness:
Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls,
Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust;
And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts
When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear
Cower in their kingly densas I do now.
What were Defeat when Victory must appal?
Or Danger, when Security looks pale?
How said the messengerwho, from the fort
Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle
Of Bucharest?that
Hassan.
           Ibrahim's scimitar
Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven,
To burn before him in the night of battle
A light and a destruction.
Mahmud.
              Ay! the day
Was ours: but how?
Hassan.
           The light Wallachians,
The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies
Fled from the glance of our artillery
Almost before the thunderstone alit.
One half the Grecian army made a bridge
Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead;
The other
Mahmud.
      Speaktremble not.
      Hassan.
                 Islanded
By victor myriads, formed in hollow square
With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back
The deluge of our foaming cavalry;
Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines.
Our baffled army trembled like one man
Before a host, and gave them space; but soon,
From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed,
Kneading them down with fire and iron rain:
Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn
Under the hook of the swart sickleman,
The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead,
Grew weak and few.Then said the Pacha, 'Slaves,
Render yourselvesthey have abandoned you
What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid?
We grant your lives.' 'Grant that which is thine own!'
Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died!
Another'God, and man, and hope abandon me;
But I to them, and to myself, remain
Constant:'he bowed his head, and his heart burst.
A third exclaimed, 'There is a refuge, tyrant,
Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm
Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.'
Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm,
The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment
Among the slaindead earth upon the earth!
So these survivors, each by different ways,
Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable,
Met in triumphant death; and when our army
Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame
Held back the base hyaenas of the battle
That feed upon the dead and fly the living,
One rose out of the chaos of the slain:
And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit
Of the old saviours of the land we rule
Had lifted in its anger, wandering by;
Or if there burned within the dying man
Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith
Creating what it feigned;I cannot tell
But he cried, 'Phantoms of the free, we come!
Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike
To dust the citadels of sanguine kings,
And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts,
And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;
O ye who float around this clime, and weave
The garment of the glory which it wears,
Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped,
Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;
Progenitors of all that yet is great,
Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept
In your high ministrations, us, your sons
Us first, and the more glorious yet to come!
And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale
When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread,
The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame,
Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still
They crave the relic of Destruction's feast.
The exhalations and the thirsty winds
Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death;
Heaven's light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where'er
Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets,
The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast
Of these dead limbs,upon your streams and mountains,
Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops,
Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,
Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down
With poisoned lightFamine, and Pestilence,
And Panic, shall wage war upon our side!
Nature from all her boundaries is moved
Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam.
The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake
Their empire o'er the unborn world of men
On this one cast;but ere the die be thrown,
The renovated genius of our race,
Proud umpire of the impious game, descends,
A seraph-wingd Victory, bestriding
The tempest of the Omnipotence of God,
Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom,
And you to oblivion!'More he would have said,
But
Mahmud.
   Diedas thou shouldst ere thy lips had painted
Their ruin in the hues of our success.
A rebel's crime, gilt with a rebel's tongue!
Your heart is Greek, Hassan.
Hassan.
               It may be so:
A spirit not my own wrenched me within,
And I have spoken words I fear and hate;
Yet would I die for
Mahmud.
           Live! oh live! outlive
Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet
Hassan.
Alas!
Mahmud.
    The fleet which, like a flock of clouds
Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner!
Our wingd castles from their merchant ships!
Our myriads before their weak pirate bands!
Our arms before their chains! our years of empire
Before their centuries of servile fear!
Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters!
They own no more the thunder-bearing banner
Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed,
Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master.
Hassan.
Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw
The wreck
Mahmud.
      The caves of the Icarian isles
Told each to the other in loud mockery,
And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes,
First of the sea-convulsing fightand, then,
Thou darest to speaksenseless are the mountains:
Interpret thou their voice!
Hassan.
               My presence bore
A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet
Bore down at daybreak from the North, and hung
As multitudinous on the ocean line,
As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind.
Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men,
Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle
Was kindled.
First through the hail of our artillery
The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail
Dashed:ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man
To man were grappled in the embrace of war,
Inextricable but by death or victory.
The tempest of the raging fight convulsed
To its crystlline depths that stainless sea,
And shook Heaven's roof of golden morning clouds,
Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles.
In the brief trances of the artillery
One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer
Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped
The unforeseen event, till the north wind
Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil
Of battle-smokethen victoryvictory!
For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers
Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon
The abhorrd cross glimmered behind, before,
Among, around us; and that fatal sign
Dried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts,
As the sun drinks the dew.What more? We fled!
Our noonday path over the sanguine foam
Was beaconed,and the glare struck the sun pale,
By our consuming transports: the fierce light
Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red,
And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding
The ravening fire, even to the water's level;
Some were blown up; some, settling heavily,
Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died
Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far,
Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished!
We met the vultures legioned in the air
Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind;
They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks,
Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched
Each on the weltering carcase that we loved,
Like its ill angel or its damnd soul,
Riding upon the bosom of the sea.
We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast.
Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea,
And ravening Famine left his ocean cave
To dwell with War, with us, and with Despair.
We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,
And with night, tempest
Mahmud.
              Cease!
              Enter a Messenger.
Messenger.
                 Your Sublime Highness,
That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador,
Has left the city.If the rebel fleet
Had anchored in the port, had victory
Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome,
Panic were tamer.Obedience and Mutiny,
Like giants in contention planet-struck,
Stand gazing on each other.There is peace
In Stamboul.
Mahmud.
       Is the grave not calmer still?
Its ruins shall be mine.
Hassan.
             Fear not the Russian:
The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay
Against the hunter.Cunning, base, and cruel,
He crouches, watching till the spoil be won,
And must be paid for his reserve in blood.
After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian
That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion
Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields,
Rivers and seas, like that which we may win,
But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves!
Enter second Messenger.
Second Messenger.
Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens,
Navarin, Artas, Monembasia,
Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault,
And every Islamite who made his dogs
Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves
Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood,
Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death;
But like a fiery plague breaks out anew
In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale
In its own light. The garrison of Patras
Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope
But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant,
His wishes still are weaker than his fears,
Or he would sell what faith may yet remain
From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway;
And if you buy him not, your treasury
Is empty even of promiseshis own coin.
The freedman of a western poet-chief[4]
Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels,
And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont:
The agd Ali sits in Yanina
A crownless metaphor of empire:
His name, that shadow of his withered might,
Holds our besieging army like a spell
In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny;
He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth
Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors
The ruins of the city where he reigned
Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped
The costly harvest his own blood matured,
Not the sower, Aliwho has bought a truce
From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads
Of Indian gold.
Enter a third Messenger.
Mahmud.
        What more?
        Third Messenger.
              The Christian tribes
Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness
Are in revolt;Damascus, Hems, Aleppo
Tremble;the Arab menaces Medina,
The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar,
And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed,
Who denies homage, claims investiture
As price of tardy aid. Persia demands
The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians
Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus,
Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins
Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm,
Shake in the general fever. Through the city,
Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek,
And prophesyings horrible and new
Are heard among the crowd: that sea of men
Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.
A Dervise, learnd in the Koran, preaches
That it is written how the sins of Islam
Must raise up a destroyer even now.
The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West[5],
Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,
But in the omnipresence of that Spirit
In which all live and are. Ominous signs
Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky:
One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun;
It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare
The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord.
The army encamped upon the Cydaris
Was roused last night by the alarm of battle,
And saw two hosts conflicting in the air,
The shadows doubtless of the unborn time
Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet
The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm
Which swept the phantoms from among the stars.
At the third watch the Spirit of the Plague
Was heard abroad flapping among the tents;
Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead.
The last news from the camp is, that a thousand
Have sickened, and
Enter a fourth Messenger.
Mahmud.
           And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow
Of some untimely rumour, speak!
Fourth Messenger.
                 One comes
Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood:
He stood, he says, on Chelonites'
Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan
Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters
Then trembling in the splendour of the moon,
When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid
Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets
Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer,
Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams,
And smoke which strangled every infant wind
That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.
At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco
Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds
Over the sea-horizon, blotting out
All objectssave that in the faint moon-glimpse
He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral
And two the loftiest of our ships of war,
With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven,
Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;
And the abhorrd cross
Enter an Attendant.
Attendant.
             Your Sublime Highness,
The Jew, who
Mahmud.
       Could not come more seasonably:
Bid him attend. I'll hear no more! too long
We gaze on danger through the mist of fear,
And multiply upon our shattered hopes
The images of ruin. Come what will!
To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps
Set in our path to light us to the edge
Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught
Which He inflicts not in whose hand we are.
[Exeunt.
Semichorus I.
Would I were the wingd cloud
Of a tempest swift and loud!
  I would scorn
  The smile of morn
And the wave where the moonrise is born!
  I would leave
  The spirits of eve
A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave
From other threads than mine!
Bask in the deep blue noon divine.
   Who would? Not I.
   Semichorus II.
Whither to fly?
Semichorus I.
Where the rocks that gird th'Aegean
Echo to the battle paean
  Of the free
  I would flee
A tempestuous herald of victory!
  My golden rain
  For the Grecian slain
Should mingle in tears with the bloody main,
And my solemn thunder-knell
Should ring to the world the passing-bell
  Of Tyranny!
  Semichorus II.
Ah king! wilt thou chain
The rack and the rain?
Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane?
The storms are free,
  But we
  Chorus.
O Slavery! thou frost of the world's prime,
Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare!
Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime,
These brows thy branding garland bear,
  But the free heart, the impassive soul
   Scorn thy control!
   Semichorus I.
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!Around her born,
Shone like mountains in the morn
Glorious states;and are they now
Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?
Semichorus II.
             Go,
Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed
Persia, as the sand does foam;
Deluge upon deluge followed,
Discord, Macedon, and Rome:
And lastly thou!
Semichorus I.
         Temples and towers,
Citadels and marts, and they
Who live and die there, have been ours,
And may be thine, and must decay;
But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystlline sea
Of thought and its eternity;
Her citizens, imperial spirits,
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set.
Semichorus II.
           Hear ye the blast,
Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls
From ruin her Titanian walls?
Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones
Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete
Hear, and from their mountain thrones
The daemons and the nymphs repeat
The harmony.
Semichorus I.
      I hear! I hear!
      Semichorus II.
The world's eyeless charioteer,
  Destiny, is hurrying by!
What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds
Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds?
What eagle-wingd victory sits
At her right hand? what shadow flits
Before? what splendour rolls behind?
  Ruin and renovation cry
'Who but We?'
Semichorus I.
       I hear! I hear!
The hiss as of a rushing wind,
The roar as of an ocean foaming,
The thunder as of earthquake coming.
  I hear! I hear!
The crash as of an empire falling,
The shrieks as of a people calling
'Mercy! mercy!'How they thrill!
Then a shout of 'kill! kill! kill!'
And then a small still voice, thus
Semichorus II.
                    For
Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,
The foul cubs like their parents are,
Their den is in the guilty mind,
And Conscience feeds them with despair.
Semichorus I.
In sacred Athens, near the fane
Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood:
Serve not the unknown God in vain,
But pay that broken shrine again,
Love for hate and tears for blood.
Enter Mahmud and Ahasuerus.
Mahmud.
Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.
Ahasuerus.
No more!
Mahmud.
    But raised above thy fellow-men
By thought, as I by power.
Ahasuerus.
              Thou sayest so.
              Mahmud.
Thou art an adept in the difficult lore
Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest
The flowers, and thou measurest the stars;
Thou severest element from element;
Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees
The birth of this old world through all its cycles
Of desolation and of loveliness,
And when man was not, and how man became
The monarch and the slave of this low sphere,
And all its narrow circlesit is much
I honour thee, and would be what thou art
Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour,
Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,
Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any
Mighty or wise. I apprehended not
What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive
That thou art no interpreter of dreams;
Thou dost not own that art, device, or God,
Can make the Future presentlet it come!
Moreover thou disdainest us and ours;
Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.
Ahasuerus.
Disdain thee?not the worm beneath thy feet!
The Fathomless has care for meaner things
Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those
Who would be what they may not, or would seem
That which they are not. Sultan! talk no more
Of thee and me, the Future and the Past;
But look on that which cannot changethe One,
The unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean,
Space, and the isles of life or light that gem
The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,
With all its cressets of immortal fire,
Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably
Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them
As Calpe the Atlantic cloudsthis Whole
Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,
With all the silent or tempestuous workings
By which they have been, are, or cease to be,
Is but a vision;all that it inherits
Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;
Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less
The Future and the Past are idle shadows
Of thought's eternal flightthey have no being:
Nought is but that which feels itself to be.
Mahmud.
What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest
Of dazzling mist within my brainthey shake
The earth on which I stand, and hang like night
On Heaven above me. What can they avail?
They cast on all things surest, brightest, best,
Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.
Ahasuerus.
Mistake me not! All is contained in each.
Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup
Is that which has been, or will be, to that
Which isthe absent to the present. Thought
Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,
Reason, Imagination, cannot die;
They are, what that which they regard appears,
The stuff whence mutability can weave
All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, worms,
Empires, and superstitions. What has thought
To do with time, or place, or circumstance?
Wouldst thou behold the Future?ask and have!
Knock and it shall be openedlook, and lo!
The coming age is shadowed on the Past
As on a glass.
Mahmud.
       Wild, wilder thoughts convulse
My spiritDid not Mahomet the Second
Win Stamboul?
Ahasuerus.
       Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit
The written fortunes of thy house and faith.
Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell
How what was born in blood must die.
Mahmud.
                    Thy words
Have power on me! I see
Ahasuerus.
              What hearest thou?
              Mahmud.
A far whisper
Terrible silence.
Ahasuerus.
         What succeeds?
         Mahmud.
                 The sound
As of the assault of an imperial city[6],
The hiss of inextinguishable fire,
The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking
Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,
The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,
The clash of wheels, and clang of armd hoofs,
And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck
Of adamantine mountainsthe mad blast
Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,
The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,
And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear,
As of a joyous infant waked and playing
With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud
The mingled battle-cry,ha! hear I not
'En toutwi nikh!' 'Allah-illa-Allah!'?
Ahasuerus.
The sulphurous mist is raisedthou seest
Mahmud.
                       A chasm,
As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamboul;
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,
Like giants on the ruins of a world,
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one
Of regal port has cast himself beneath
The stream of war. Another proudly clad
In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb
Into the gap, and with his iron mace
Directs the torrent of that tide of men,
And seemshe isMahomet!
Ahasuerus.
              What thou seest
Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.
A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that
Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst behold
How cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned,
Bow their towered crests to mutability.
Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest,
Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power
Ebbs to its depths.Inheritor of glory,
Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished
With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes
Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past
Now stands before thee like an Incarnation
Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with
That portion of thyself which was ere thou
Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death,
Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion
Which called it from the uncreated deep,
Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms
Of raging death; and draw with mighty will
The imperial shade hither.
[Exit Ahasuerus. The Phantom of Mahomet the Second appears.
Mahmud.
              Approach!
              Phantom.
                   I come
Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter
To take the living than give up the dead;
Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here.
The heavy fragments of the power which fell
When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds,
Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices
Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose,
Wailing for glory never to return.
A later Empire nods in its decay:
The autumn of a greener faith is come,
And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip
The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built
Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below.
The storm is in its branches, and the frost
Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects
Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,
Ruin on ruin:Thou art slow, my son;
The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep
A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies
Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou,
Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life,
The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now
Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears,
And hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die!
Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine.
Islam must fall, but we will reign together
Over its ruins in the world of death:
And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed
Unfold itself even in the shape of that
Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe!
To the weak people tangled in the grasp
Of its last spasms.
Mahmud.
          Spirit, woe to all!
Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe
To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed!
Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver!
Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor!
Woe both to those that suffer and inflict;
Those who are born and those who die! but say,
Imperial shadow of the thing I am,
When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish
Her consummation!
Phantom.
         Ask the cold pale Hour,
Rich in reversion of impending death,
When he shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs
Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity
The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,
Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart
Over the heads of men, under which burthen
They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!
He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years
To come, and how in hours of youth renewed
He will renew lost joys, and
Voice without.
                Victory! Victory!
                [The Phantom vanishes.
Mahmud.
What sound of the importunate earth has broken
My mighty trance?
Voice without.
         Victory! Victory!
         Mahmud.
Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile
Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response
Of hollow weakness! Do I wake and live?
Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain,
Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew,
Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear?
It matters not!for nought we see or dream,
Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth
More than it gives or teaches: Come what may,
The Future must become the Past, and I
As they were to whom once this present hour,
This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,
Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy
Never to be attained.I must rebuke
This drunkenness of triumph ere it die,
And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves!
Exit Mahmud.
Voice without.
Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks
Are as a brood of lions in the net
Round which the kingly hunters of the earth
Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food
Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death,
From Thule to the girdle of the world,
Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;
The cup is foaming with a nation's blood,
Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!
Semichorus I.
Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream,
Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!
I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream,
Perch on the trembling pyramid of night,
Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay
In visions of the dawning undelight.
  Who shall impede her flight?
  Who rob her of her prey?
  Voice without.
Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles
Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.
Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil!
Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!
Semichorus II.
Thou voice which art
The herald of the ill in splendour hid!
Thou echo of the hollow heart
Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode
When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed:
Oh, bear me to those isles of jaggd cloud
Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid
The momentary oceans of the lightning,
Or to some toppling promontory proud
Of solid tempest whose black pyramid,
Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ning
Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire
Before their waves expire,
When heaven and earth are light, and only light
  In the thunder-night!
  Voice without.
Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England,
And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France,
Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak.
Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes,
These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners
Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.
Semichorus I.
   Alas! for Liberty!
If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,
Or fate, can quell the free!
   Alas! for Virtue, when
Torments, or contumely, or the sneers
   Of erring judging men
  Can break the heart where it abides.
Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid,
  Can change with its false times and tides,
   Like hope and terror,
    Alas for Love!
And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,
If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror
Before the dazzled eyes of Error,
Alas for thee! Image of the Above.
Semichorus II.
  Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,
Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn
  Through many an hostile Anarchy!
At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea!'
  Through exile, persecution, and despair,
   Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become
   The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb
Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair:
But Greece was as a hermit-child,
  Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built
To woman's growth, by dreams so mild,
  She knew not pain or guilt;
And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble
   When ye desert the free
   If Greece must be
A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,
And build themselves again impregnably
   In a diviner clime,
To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,
Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.
Semichorus I.
Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;
Let the free possess the Paradise they claim;
Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed
With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!
Semichorus II.
Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,
Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,
Our adversity a dream to pass away
Their dishonour a remembrance to abide!
Voice without.
Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends
The keys of ocean to the Islamite.
Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,
And British skill directing Othman might,
Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy
This jubilee of unrevengd blood!
Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!
Semichorus I.
Darkness has dawned in the East
On the noon of time:
The death-birds descend to their feast
From the hungry clime.
Let Freedom and Peace flee far
To a sunnier strand,
And follow Love's folding-star
To the Evening land!
Semichorus II.
    The young moon has fed
     Her exhausted horn
      With the sunset's fire:
    The weak day is dead,
     But the night is not born;
And, like loveliness panting with wild desire
While it trembles with fear and delight,
Hesperus flies from awakening night,
And pants in its beauty and speed with light
Fast-flashing, soft, and bright.
Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!
   Guide us far, far away,
To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day
    Thou art hidden
  From waves on which weary Noon
  Faints in her summer swoon,
  Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,
  Around mountains and islands inviolably
    Pranked on the sapphire sea.
    Semichorus I.
Through the sunset of hope,
Like the shapes of a dream,
What Paradise islands of glory gleam!
  Beneath Heaven's cope,
Their shadows more clear float by
The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,
The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe
Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,
  Through the walls of our prison;
And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!
Chorus[7].
The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death's scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free:
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst[8], more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.
Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past,
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
Hellas was composed at Pisa in the autumn of 1821, and dispatched to London, November 11. It was published, with the author's name, by C. & J. Ollier in the spring of 1822. A transcript of the poem by Edward Williams is in the Rowfant Library.

Note by Mrs. Shelley: 'Hellas was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:--
''But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity.'''
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hellas - A Lyrical Drama
,
297:A Lyrical Drama, In Four Acts.
Audisne haec amphiarae, sub terram abdite?

ACT I
Scene.A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea andIone are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.
Prometheus.
Monarch of Gods and Dmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.
Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,
O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn and despair,these are mine empire:
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains
Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
Heaven's wingd hound, polluting from thy lips
His beak in poison not his own, tears up
My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
When the rocks split and close again behind:
While from their loud abysses howling throng
The genii of the storm, urging the rage
Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
And yet to me welcome is day and night,
Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,
Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead
The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom
As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim
Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood
From these pale feet, which then might trample thee
If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.
Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin
Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!
How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
Not exultation, for I hate no more,
As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
Whose many-voicd Echoes, through the mist
Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!
Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,
Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisd wings
Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
The orbd world! If then my words had power,
Though I am changed so that aught evil wish
Is dead within; although no memory be
Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!
What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.
First Voice
(from the Mountains).
Thrice three hundred thousand years
O'er the Earthquake's couch we stood:
Oft, as men convulsed with fears,
We trembled in our multitude.
Second Voice
(from the Springs).
Thunderbolts had parched our water,
We had been stained with bitter blood,
And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter,
Thro' a city and a solitude.
Third Voice
(from the Air).
I had clothed, since Earth uprose,
Its wastes in colours not their own,
And oft had my serene repose
Been cloven by many a rending groan.
Fourth Voice
(from the Whirlwinds).
We had soared beneath these mountains
Unresting ages; nor had thunder,
Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains,
Nor any power above or under
Ever made us mute with wonder.
First Voice.
But never bowed our snowy crest
As at the voice of thine unrest.
Second Voice.
Never such a sound before
To the Indian waves we bore.
A pilot asleep on the howling sea
Leaped up from the deck in agony,
And heard, and cried, 'Ah, woe is me!'
And died as mad as the wild waves be.
Third Voice.
By such dread words from Earth to Heaven
My still realm was never riven:
When its wound was closed, there stood
Darkness o'er the day like blood.
Fourth Voice.
And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin
To frozen caves our flight pursuing
Made us keep silencethusand thus
Though silence is as hell to us.
The Earth.
The tongueless Caverns of the craggy hills
Cried, 'Misery!' then; the hollow Heaven replied,
'Misery!' And the Ocean's purple waves,
Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,
And the pale nations heard it, 'Misery!'
Prometheus.
I heard a sound of voices: not the voice
Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou
Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,
Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,
The Titan? He who made his agony
The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?
Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams,
Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,
Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once
With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, now
To commune with me? me alone, who checked,
As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:
Why answer ye not, still? Brethren!
The Earth.
                   They dare not.
                   Prometheus.
Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!
'Tis scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice
I only know that thou art moving near
And love. How cursed I him?
The Earth.
               How canst thou hear
Who knowest not the language of the dead?
Prometheus.
Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.
The Earth.
I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King
Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
More torturing than the one whereon I roll.
Subtle thou art and good, and though the Gods
Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.
Prometheus.
Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,
Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel
Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
Yet 'tis not pleasure.
The Earth.
            No, thou canst not hear:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
Only to those who die.
Prometheus.
            And what art thou,
O, melancholy Voice?
The Earth.
           I am the Earth,
Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,
And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.
Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll
Around us: their inhabitants beheld
My spherd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;
Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;
Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads
Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled:
When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,
And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds
Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained
With the contagion of a mother's hate
Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard
Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,
Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
And the inarticulate people of the dead,
Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
But dare not speak them.
Prometheus.
             Venerable mother!
All else who live and suffer take from thee
Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,
And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.
But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.
The Earth.
They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know there are two worlds of life and death:
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live
Till death unite them and they part no more;
Dreams and the light imaginings of men,
And all that faith creates or love desires,
Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.
There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,
'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods
Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds,
Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;
And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne
Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter
The curse which all remember. Call at will
Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,
Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods
From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin
Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.
Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge
Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,
As rainy wind through the abandoned gate
Of a fallen palace.
Prometheus.
          Mother, let not aught
Of that which may be evil, pass again
My lips, or those of aught resembling me.
Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!
Ione.
My wings are folded o'er mine ears:
  My wings are crossd o'er mine eyes:
Yet through their silver shade appears,
  And through their lulling plumes arise,
A Shape, a throng of sounds;
  May it be no ill to thee
O thou of many wounds!
Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake,
Ever thus we watch and wake.
Panthea.
The sound is of whirlwind underground,
  Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;
The shape is awful like the sound,
  Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
A sceptre of pale gold
  To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud
His veind hand doth hold.
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
Like one who does, not suffers wrong.
Phantasm of Jupiter.
Why have the secret powers of this strange world
Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither
On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds
Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice
With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk
In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?
Prometheus.
Tremendous Image, as thou art must be
He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,
The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,
Although no thought inform thine empty voice.
The Earth.
Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,
Gray mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,
Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,
Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak.
Phantasm.
A spirit seizes me and speaks within:
It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.
Panthea.
See, how he lifts his mighty looks, the Heaven
Darkens above.
Ione.
       He speaks! O shelter me!
       Prometheus.
I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,
And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,
And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,
Written as on a scroll: yet speak: Oh, speak!
Phantasm.
Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
  All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Human-kind,
  One only being shalt thou not subdue.
Rain then thy plagues upon me here,
Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear;
And let alternate frost and fire
Eat into me, and be thine ire
Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.
Ay, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent.
  O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,
And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent
  To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.
Let thy malignant spirit move
In darkness over those I love:
On me and mine I imprecate
The utmost torture of thy hate;
And thus devote to sleepless agony,
This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.
But thou, who art the God and Lord: O, thou,
  Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,
To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow
  In fear and worship: all-prevailing foe!
I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse
Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;
Till thine Infinity shall be
A robe of envenomed agony;
And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,
To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.
Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,
  Ill deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good;
Both infinite as is the universe,
  And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude.
An awful image of calm power
Though now thou sittest, let the hour
Come, when thou must appear to be
That which thou art internally;
And after many a false and fruitless crime
Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time.
Prometheus.
Were these my words, O Parent?
The Earth.
                They were thine.
                Prometheus.
It doth repent me: words are quick and vain;
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
The Earth.
Misery, Oh misery to me,
That Jove at length should vanquish thee.
Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,
The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye.
Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead,
Your refuge, your defence lies fallen and vanquishd.
First Echo.
Lies fallen and vanquishd!
Second Echo.
Fallen and vanquishd!
Ione.
Fear not: 'tis but some passing spasm,
The Titan is unvanquished still.
But see, where through the azure chasm
Of yon forked and snowy hill
Trampling the slant winds on high
With golden-sandalled feet, that glow
Under plumes of purple dye,
Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
A Shape comes now,
Stretching on high from his right hand
A serpent-cinctured wand.
Panthea.
'Tis Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury.
Ione.
And who are those with hydra tresses
And iron wings that climb the wind,
Whom the frowning God represses
Like vapours steaming up behind,
Clanging loud, an endless crowd
Panthea.
These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,
Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
When charioted on sulphurous cloud
He bursts Heaven's bounds.
Ione.
Are they now led, from the thin dead
On new pangs to be fed?
Panthea.
The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud.
First Fury.
Ha! I scent life!
Second Fury.
         Let me but look into his eyes!
         Third Fury.
The hope of torturing him smells like a heap
Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle.
First Fury.
Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds
Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon
Should make us food and sportwho can please long
The Omnipotent?
Mercury.
        Back to your towers of iron,
And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
Chimra, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine,
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate:
These shall perform your task.
First Fury.
                Oh, mercy! mercy!
We die with our desire: drive us not back!
Mercury.
Crouch then in silence.
            Awful Sufferer!
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
To execute a doom of new revenge.
Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
That measure and divide the weary years
From which there is no refuge, long have taught
And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
With the strange might of unimagined pains
The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
And my commission is to lead them here,
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
Be it not so! there is a secret known
To thee, and to none else of living things,
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart:
For benefits and meek submission tame
The fiercest and the mightiest.
Prometheus.
                 Evil minds
Change good to their own nature. I gave all
He has; and in return he chains me here
Years, ages, night and day: whether the Sun
Split my parched skin, or in the moony night
The crystal-wingd snow cling round my hair:
Whilst my belovd race is trampled down
By his thought-executing ministers.
Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis just:
He who is evil can receive no good;
And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,
He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude:
He but requites me for his own misdeed.
Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks
With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.
Submission, thou dost know I cannot try:
For what submission but that fatal word,
The death-seal of mankind's captivity,
Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword,
Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,
Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
In brief Omnipotence: secure are they:
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.
But hark, the hell-hounds clamour: fear delay:
Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.
Mercury.
Oh, that we might be spared: I to inflict
And thou to suffer! Once more answer me:
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?
Prometheus.
I know but this, that it must come.
Mercury.
                   Alas!
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?
Prometheus.
They last while Jove must reign: nor more, nor less
Do I desire or fear.
Mercury.
           Yet pause, and plunge
Into Eternity, where recorded time,
Even all that we imagine, age on age,
Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind
Flags wearily in its unending flight,
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;
Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?
Prometheus.
Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.
Mercury.
If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while
Lapped in voluptuous joy?
Prometheus.
              I would not quit
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.
Mercury.
Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.
Prometheus.
Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,
As light in the sun, throned: how vain is talk!
Call up the fiends.
Ione.
          O, sister, look! White fire
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!
Mercury.
I must obey his words and thine: alas!
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!
Panthea.
See where the child of Heaven, with wingd feet,
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.
Ione.
Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
Lest thou behold and die: they come: they come
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
And hollow underneath, like death.
First Fury.
                  Prometheus!
                  Second Fury.
Immortal Titan!
Third Fury.
        Champion of Heaven's slaves!
        Prometheus.
He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
What and who are ye? Never yet there came
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.
First Fury.
We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue
Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
When the great King betrays them to our will.
Prometheus.
Oh! many fearful natures in one name,
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
The darkness and the clangour of your wings.
But why more hideous than your loathd selves
Gather ye up in legions from the deep?
Second Fury.
We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice, rejoice!
Prometheus.
Can aught exult in its deformity?
Second Fury.
The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
Gazing on one another: so are we.
As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
To gather for her festal crown of flowers
The areal crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
So from our victim's destined agony
The shade which is our form invests us round,
Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.
Prometheus.
I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.
First Fury.
Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?
Prometheus.
Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
Ye rend me now: I care not.
Second Fury.
               Dost imagine
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?
Prometheus.
I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
You, or aught else so wretched, into light.
Third Fury.
Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,
Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude
Vexing the self-content of wisest men:
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins
Crawling like agony?
Prometheus.
           Why, ye are thus now;
Yet am I king over myself, and rule
The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.
Chorus of Furies.
From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
     Come, come, come!
Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track,
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
     Come, come, come!
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
  Fire is left for future burning:
It will burst in bloodier flashes
  When ye stir it, soon returning:
Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
  Misery's yet unkindled fuel:
  Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
   To the maniac dreamer; cruel
  More than ye can be with hate
    Is he with fear.
     Come, come, come!
We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate
And we burthen the blast of the atmosphere,
But vainly we toil till ye come here.
Ione.
Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.
Panthea.
These solid mountains quiver with the sound
Even as the tremulous air: their shadows make
The space within my plumes more black than night.
First Fury.
Your call was as a wingd car
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
It rapped us from red gulfs of war.
Second Fury.
From wide cities, famine-wasted;
Third Fury.
Groans half heard, and blood untasted;
Fourth Fury.
Kingly conclaves stern and cold,
Where blood with gold is bought and sold;
Fifth Fury.
From the furnace, white and hot,
In which
A Fury.
     Speak not: whisper not:
I know all that ye would tell,
But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the Invincible,
The stern of thought;
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.
A Fury.
Tear the veil!
Another Fury.
       It is torn.
       Chorus.
              The pale stars of the morn
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne.
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst for man?
Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran
Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever.
  One came forth of gentle worth
  Smiling on the sanguine earth;
  His words outlived him, like swift poison
   Withering up truth, peace, and pity.
  Look! where round the wide horizon
   Many a million-peopled city
  Vomits smoke in the bright air.
  Hark that outcry of despair!
  'Tis his mild and gentle ghost
   Wailing for the faith he kindled:
  Look again, the flames almost
   To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled:
The survivors round the embers
Gather in dread.
    Joy, joy, joy!
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,
And the future is dark, and the present is spread
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.
Semichorus I.
Drops of bloody agony flow
From his white and quivering brow.
Grant a little respite now:
See a disenchanted nation
Springs like day from desolation;
To Truth its state is dedicate,
And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;
A legioned band of linkd brothers
Whom Love calls children
Semichorus II.
              'Tis another's:
See how kindred murder kin:
'Tis the vintage-time for death and sin:
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within:
  Till Despair smothers
The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.
[All the Furies vanish, except one.
Ione.
Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan
Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart
Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,
And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.
Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?
Panthea.
Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.
Ione.
What didst thou see?
Panthea.
           A woful sight: a youth
With patient looks nailed to a crucifix.
Ione.
What next?
Panthea.
     The heaven around, the earth below
Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,
All horrible, and wrought by human hands,
And some appeared the work of human hearts,
For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles:
And other sights too foul to speak and live
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear
By looking forth: those groans are grief enough.
Fury.
Behold an emblem: those who do endure
Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap
Thousandfold torment on themselves and him.
Prometheus.
Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;
Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow
Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!
Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
O, horrible! Thy name I will not speak,
It hath become a curse. I see, I see,
The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,
Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,
Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home,
An early-chosen, late-lamented home;
As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;
Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells:
SomeHear I not the multitude laugh loud?
Impaled in lingering fire: and mighty realms
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,
Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood
By the red light of their own burning homes.
Fury.
Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans;
Worse things, unheard, unseen, remain behind.
Prometheus.
Worse?
Fury.
   In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
But live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.
Prometheus.
Thy words are like a cloud of wingd snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.
Fury.
Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
[Vanishes.
Prometheus.
                   Ah woe!
Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumd mind,
Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.
The grave hides all things beautiful and good:
I am a God and cannot find it there,
Nor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,
This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
With new endurance, till the hour arrives
When they shall be no types of things which are.
Panthea.
Alas! what sawest thou more?
Prometheus.
               There are two woes:
To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.
Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.
This was the shadow of the truth I saw.
The Earth.
I felt thy torture, son; with such mixed joy
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,
Its world-surrounding aether: they behold
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
The future: may they speak comfort to thee!
Panthea.
Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air!
Ione.
              And see! more come,
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
And, hark! is it the music of the pines?
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?
Panthea.
'Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.
Chorus of Spirits.
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought:
Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o'er by dying gleams;
Be it bright as all between
Cloudless skies and windless streams,
Silent, liquid, and serene;
As the birds within the wind,
As the fish within the wave,
As the thoughts of man's own mind
Float through all above the grave;
We make there our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element:
Thence we bear the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee!
Ione.
More yet come, one by one: the air around them
Looks radiant as the air around a star.
First Spirit.
On a battle-trumpet's blast
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
'Mid the darkness upward cast.
From the dust of creeds outworn,
From the tyrant's banner torn,
Gathering 'round me, onward borne,
There was mingled many a cry
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
Till they faded through the sky;
And one sound, above, around,
One sound beneath, around, above,
Was moving; 'twas the soul of Love;
'Twas the hope, the prophecy,
Which begins and ends in thee.
Second Spirit.
A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,
Which rocked beneath, immovably;
And the triumphant storm did flee,
Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
Between, with many a captive cloud,
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
Each by lightning riven in half:
I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh:
Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
And spread beneath a hell of death
O'er the white waters. I alit
On a great ship lightning-split,
And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy
His plank, then plunged aside to die.
Third Spirit.
I sate beside a sage's bed,
And the lamp was burning red
Near the book where he had fed,
When a Dream with plumes of flame,
To his pillow hovering came,
And I knew it was the same
Which had kindled long ago
Pity, eloquence, and woe;
And the world awhile below
Wore the shade, its lustre made.
It has borne me here as fleet
As Desire's lightning feet:
I must ride it back ere morrow,
Or the sage will wake in sorrow.
Fourth Spirit.
On a poet's lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the areal kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!
One of these awakened me,
And I sped to succour thee.
Ione.
Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west
Come, as two doves to one belovd nest,
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air
On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
And, hark! their sweet, sad voices! 'tis despair
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.
Panthea.
Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.
Ione.
Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float
On their sustaining wings of skiey grain,
Orange and azure deepening into gold:
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.
Chorus of Spirits.
Hast thou beheld the form of Love?
Fifth Spirit.
                  As over wide dominions
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's wildernesses,
That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:
His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading,
And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness,
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.
Sixth Spirit.
Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
But treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
Dream visions of areal joy, and call the monster, Love,
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.
Chorus.
Though Ruin now Love's shadow be,
Following him, destroyingly,
On Death's white and wingd steed,
Which the fleetest cannot flee,
Trampling down both flower and weed,
Man and beast, and foul and fair,
Like a tempest through the air;
Thou shalt quell this horseman grim,
Woundless though in heart or limb.
Prometheus.
Spirits! how know ye this shall be?
Chorus.
In the atmosphere we breathe,
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,
From Spring gathering up beneath,
Whose mild winds shake the elder brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
That the white-thorn soon will blow:
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
When they struggle to increase,
  Are to us as soft winds be
  To shepherd boys, the prophecy
  Which begins and ends in thee.
  Ione.
Where are the Spirits fled?
Panthea.
               Only a sense
Remains of them, like the omnipotence
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute,
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.
Prometheus.
How fair these airborn shapes! and yet I feel
Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,
Asia! who, when my being overflowed,
Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.
All things are still: alas! how heavily
This quiet morning weighs upon my heart;
Though I should dream I could even sleep with grief
If slumber were denied not. I would fain
Be what it is my destiny to be,
The saviour and the strength of suffering man,
Or sink into the original gulf of things:
There is no agony, and no solace left;
Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more.
Panthea.
Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee
The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when
The shadow of thy spirit falls on her?
Prometheus.
I said all hope was vain but love: thou lovest.
Panthea.
Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white,
And Asia waits in that far Indian vale,
The scene of her sad exile; rugged once
And desolate and frozen, like this ravine;
But now invested with fair flowers and herbs,
And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow
Among the woods and waters, from the aether
Of her transforming presence, which would fade
If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!
END OF THE FIRST ACT.

ACT II
Scene I.
Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. Asia alone.
Asia.
From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended:
Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,
And beatings haunt the desolated heart,
Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descended
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!
O child of many winds! As suddenly
Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
Like genius, or like joy which riseth up
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
The desert of our life.
This is the season, this the day, the hour;
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,
Too long desired, too long delaying, come!
How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains. through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:
'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow
The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not
The olian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn?
[Panthea enters.
               I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
Belovd and most beautiful, who wearest
The shadow of that soul by which I live,
How late thou art! the spherd sun had climbed
The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before
The printless air felt thy belated plumes.
Panthea.
Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint
With the delight of a remembered dream,
As are the noontide plumes of summer winds
Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep
Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm
Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy
Unhappy love, had made, through use and pity,
Both love and woe familiar to my heart
As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept
Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean
Within dim bowers of green and purple moss,
Our young Ione's soft and milky arms
Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,
While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within
The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:
But not as now, since I am made the wind
Which fails beneath the music that I bear
Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved
Into the sense with which love talks, my rest
Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours
Too full of care and pain.
Asia.
              Lift up thine eyes,
And let me read thy dream.
Panthea.
              As I have said
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
From the keen ice shielding our linkd sleep.
Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
Grew radiant with the glory of that form
Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
'Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
With lovelinessmore fair than aught but her,
Whose shadow thou artlift thine eyes on me.'
I lifted them: the overpowering light
Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er
By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,
And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,
Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere
Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power,
As the warm aether of the morning sun
Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.
I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt
His presence flow and mingle through my blood
Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
And I was thus absorbed, until it passed,
And like the vapours when the sun sinks down,
Gathering again in drops upon the pines,
And tremulous as they, in the deep night
My being was condensed; and as the rays
Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
Like footsteps of weak melody: thy name
Among the many sounds alone I heard
Of what might be articulate; though still
I listened through the night when sound was none.
Ione wakened then, and said to me:
'Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night?
I always knew what I desired before,
Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.
But now I cannot tell thee what I seek;
I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet
Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;
Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,
Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept
And mingled it with thine: for when just now
We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips
The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth
Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,
Quivered between our intertwining arms.'
I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,
But fled to thee.
Asia.
         Thou speakest, but thy words
Are as the air: I feel them not: Oh, lift
Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul!
Panthea.
I lift them though they droop beneath the load
Of that they would express: what canst thou see
But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?
Asia.
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
Contracted to two circles underneath
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.
Panthea.
Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed?
Asia.
There is a change: beyond their inmost depth
I see a shade, a shape: 'tis He, arrayed
In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread
Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.
Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!
Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
Within that bright pavilion which their beams
Shall build o'er the waste world? The dream is told.
What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard
Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air,
For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew
Whose stars the noon has quenched not.
Dream.
                     Follow! Follow!
                     Panthea.
It is mine other dream.
Asia.
            It disappears.
            Panthea.
It passes now into my mind. Methought
As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds
Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond-tree,
When swift from the white Scythian wilderness
A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost:
I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief,
O, follow, follow!
Asia.
          As you speak, your words
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
With shapes. Methought among these lawns together
We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;
And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently;
And there was more which I remember not:
But on the shadows of the morning clouds,
Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written
Follow, O, follow! as they vanished by;
And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen,
The like was stamped, as with a withering fire;
A wind arose among the pines; it shook
The clinging music from their boughs, and then
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,
Were heard: O, follow, follow, follow me!
And then I said: 'Panthea, look on me.'
But in the depth of those belovd eyes
Still I saw, follow, follow!
Echo.
               Follow, follow!
               Panthea.
The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices
As they were spirit-tongued.
Asia.
               It is some being
Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! O, list!
Echoes
(unseen).
Echoes we: listen!
We cannot stay:
As dew-stars glisten
Then fade away
  Child of Ocean!
  Asia.
Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses
Of their areal tongues yet sound.
Panthea.
                  I hear.
                  Echoes.
O, follow, follow,
As our voice recedeth
Through the caverns hollow,
Where the forest spreadeth; (More distant.)

O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
Where the wild bee never flew,
Through the noontide darkness deep,
By the odour-breathing sleep
Of faint night flowers, and the waves
At the fountain-lighted caves,
While our music, wild and sweet,
Mocks thy gently falling feet,
  Child of Ocean!
  Asia.
Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint And distant.
Panthea.
List! the strain floats nearer now.
Echoes.
In the world unknown
Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone
Can its rest be broken;
  Child of Ocean!
  Asia.
How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!
Echoes.
O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
By the woodland noontide dew;
By the forest, lakes, and fountains,
Through the many-folded mountains;
To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,
Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
On the day when He and thou
Parted, to commingle now;
  Child of Ocean!
  Asia.
Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,
And follow, ere the voices fade away.
Scene II.
A Forest, intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. Asia and Panthea pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock listening.
Semichorus I. of Spirits.
The path through which that lovely twain
Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,
And each dark tree that ever grew,
Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue;
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
  Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
  Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
Of the green laurel, blown anew;
And bends, and then fades silently,
One frail and fair anemone:
Or when some star of many a one
That climbs and wanders through steep night,
Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon
Ere it is borne away, away,
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
It scatters drops of golden light,
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite:
And the gloom divine is all around,
And underneath is the mossy ground.
Semichorus II.
There the voluptuous nightingales,
Are awake through all the broad noonday.
When one with bliss or sadness fails,
  And through the windless ivy-boughs,
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
On its mate's music-panting bosom;
Another from the swinging blossom,
  Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain, then lifts on high
The wings of the weak melody,
'Till some new strain of feeling bear
The song, and all the woods are mute;
When there is heard through the dim air
The rush of wings, and rising there
Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
Sounds overflow the listener's brain
So sweet, that joy is almost pain.
Semichorus I.
There those enchanted eddies play
Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,
By Demogorgon's mighty law,
With melting rapture, or sweet awe,
All spirits on that secret way;
As inland boats are driven to Ocean
Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw:
  And first there comes a gentle sound
  To those in talk or slumber bound,
And wakes the destined soft emotion,
Attracts, impels them; those who saw
Say from the breathing earth behind
There steams a plume-uplifting wind
Which drives them on their path, while they
Believe their own swift wings and feet
The sweet desires within obey:
And so they float upon their way,
Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,
The storm of sound is driven along,
Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet
Behind, its gathering billows meet
And to the fatal mountain bear
Like clouds amid the yielding air.
First Faun.
Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
Which make such delicate music in the woods?
We haunt within the least frequented caves
And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,
Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:
Where may they hide themselves?
Second Faun.
                 'Tis hard to tell:
I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,
The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float
Under the green and golden atmosphere
Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves;
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,
The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,
They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire
Under the waters of the earth again.
First Faun.
If such live thus, have others other lives,
Under pink blossoms or within the bells
Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,
Or on their dying odours, when they die,
Or in the sunlight of the spherd dew?
Second Faun.
Ay, many more which we may well divine.
But, should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,
And Love, and the chained Titan's woful doom,
And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer
Our solitary twilights, and which charm
To silence the unenvying nightingales.
Scene III.
A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains.
Asia and Panthea.
Panthea.
Hither the sound has borne usto the realm
Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,
Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm,
Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up
Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,
And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,
That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain
To deep intoxication; and uplift,
Like Mnads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
The voice which is contagion to the world.
Asia.
Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!
How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
Though evil stain its work, and it should be
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
I could fall down and worship that and thee.
Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!
Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain:
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,
As a lake, paving in the morning sky,
With azure waves which burst in silver light,
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on
Under the curdling winds, and islanding
The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,
Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,
Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumd caves,
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling
The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,
From some Atlantic islet scattered up,
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops.
The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl
Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines,
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
Panthea.
Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises
As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon
Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.
Asia.
The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;
The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;
Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain
Grows dizzy; see'st thou shapes within the mist?
Panthea.
A countenance with beckoning smiles: there burns
An azure fire within its golden locks!
Another and another: hark! they speak!
Song of Spirits.
To the deep, to the deep,
  Down, down!
Through the shade of sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;
Through the veil and the bar
Of things which seem and are
Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
  Down, down!
   While the sound whirls around,
  Down, down!
As the fawn draws the hound,
As the lightning the vapour,
As a weak moth the taper;
Death, despair; love, sorrow;
Time both; to-day, to-morrow;
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
  Down, down!
   Through the gray, void abysm,
  Down, down!
Where the air is no prism,
And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern-crags wear not
The radiance of Heaven,
Nor the gloom to Earth given,
Where there is One pervading, One alone,
  Down, down!
   In the depth of the deep,
  Down, down!
Like veiled lightning asleep,
Like the spark nursed in embers,
The last look Love remembers,
Like a diamond, which shines
On the dark wealth of mines,
A spell is treasured but for thee alone.
  Down, down!
   We have bound thee, we guide thee;
  Down, down!
With the bright form beside thee;
Resist not the weakness,
Such strength is in meekness
That the Eternal, the Immortal,
Most unloose through life's portal
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne
  By that alone.
  Scene IV.
The Cave of Demogorgon.
Asia and Panthea.
Panthea.
What viled form sits on that ebon throne?
Asia.
The veil has fallen.
Panthea.
           I see a mighty darkness
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun.
Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,
Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
A living Spirit.
Demogorgon.
         Ask what thou wouldst know.
         Asia.
What canst thou tell?
Demogorgon.
           All things thou dar'st demand.
           Asia.
Who made the living world?
Demogorgon.
              God.
              Asia.
                Who made all
That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will, Imagination?
Demogorgon.
God: Almighty God.
Asia.
Who made that sense which, when the winds of Spring
In rarest visitation, or the voice
Of one belovd heard in youth alone,
Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim
The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
And leaves this peopled earth a solitude
When it returns no more?
Demogorgon.
             Merciful God.
             Asia.
And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,
Which from the links of the great chain of things,
To every thought within the mind of man
Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels
Under the load towards the pit of death;
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;
And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;
Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech
Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;
And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?
Demogorgon.
                    He reigns.
                    Asia.
Utter his name: a world pining in pain
Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia.
     I feel, I know it: who?
     Demogorgon.
                  He reigns.
                  Asia.
Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first,
And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne
Time fell, an envious shadow: such the state
Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway,
As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves
Before the wind or sun has withered them
And semivital worms; but he refused
The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,
The skill which wields the elements, the thought
Which pierces this dim universe like light,
Self-empire, and the majesty of love;
For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus
Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
And with this law alone, 'Let man be free,'
Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.
To know nor faith, nor love, nor law; to be
Omnipotent but friendless is to reign;
And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man
First famine, and then toil, and then disease,
Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,
Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove
With alternating shafts of frost and fire,
Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves:
And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle
Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,
So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,
Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,
That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings
The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
The disunited tendrils of that vine
Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;
And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath
The frown of man; and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
And music lifted up the listening spirit
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine;
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.
He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven
Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun
Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea:
He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
The tempest-wingd chariots of the Ocean,
And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then
Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
The warm winds, and the azure aether shone,
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
Such, the alleviations of his state,
Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs
Withering in destined pain: but who rains down
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
Man looks on his creation like a God
And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,
The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,
The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
Not Jove: while yet his frown shook Heaven, ay, when
His adversary from adamantine chains
Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare
Who is his master? Is he too a slave?
Demogorgon.
All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil:
Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no.
Asia.
Whom calledst thou God?
Demogorgon.
            I spoke but as ye speak,
For Jove is the supreme of living things.
Asia.
Who is the master of the slave?
Demogorgon.
                 If the abysm
Could vomit forth its secrets. . . But a voice
Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;
For what would it avail to bid thee gaze
On the revolving world? What to bid speak
Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these
All things are subject but eternal Love.
Asia.
So much I asked before, and my heart gave
The response thou hast given; and of such truths
Each to itself must be the oracle.
One more demand; and do thou answer me
As mine own soul would answer, did it know
That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise
Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world:
When shall the destined hour arrive?
Demogorgon.
                    Behold!
                    Asia.
The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night
I see cars drawn by rainbow-wingd steeds
Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they all
Sweep onward.
Demogorgon.
       These are the immortal Hours,
Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee.
Asia.
A spirit with a dreadful countenance
Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf.
Unlike thy brethren, ghastly charioteer,
Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak!
Spirit.
I am the shadow of a destiny
More dread than is my aspect: ere yon planet
Has set, the darkness which ascends with me
Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne.
Asia.
What meanest thou?
Panthea.
          That terrible shadow floats
Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke
Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea.
Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly
Terrified: watch its path among the stars
Blackening the night!
Asia.
           Thus I am answered: strange!
           Panthea.
See, near the verge, another chariot stays;
An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire,
Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim
Of delicate strange tracery; the young spirit
That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope;
How its soft smiles attract the soul! as light
Lures wingd insects through the lampless air.
Spirit.
My coursers are fed with the lightning,
They drink of the whirlwind's stream,
And when the red morning is bright'ning
They bathe in the fresh sunbeam;
They have strength for their swiftness I deem,
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.
I desire: and their speed makes night kindle;
I fear: they outstrip the Typhoon;
Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle
We encircle the earth and the moon:
We shall rest from long labours at noon:
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.
Scene V.
The Car pauses within a Cloud on the top of a snowy Mountain. Asia, Panthea, and the Spirit of the Hour.
Spirit.
On the brink of the night and the morning
My coursers are wont to respire;
But the Earth has just whispered a warning
That their flight must be swifter than fire:
They shall drink the hot speed of desire!
Asia.
Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath
Would give them swifter speed.
Spirit.
                Alas! it could not.
                Panthea.
Oh Spirit! pause, and tell whence is the light
Which fills this cloud? the sun is yet unrisen.
Spirit.
The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo
Is held in heaven by wonder; and the light
Which fills this vapour, as the areal hue
Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water,
Flows from thy mighty sister.
Panthea.
                Yes, I feel
                Asia.
What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale.
Panthea.
How thou art changed! I dare not look on thee;
I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure
The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change
Is working in the elements, which suffer
Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell
That on the day when the clear hyaline
Was cloven at thine uprise, and thou didst stand
Within a veind shell, which floated on
Over the calm floor of the crystal sea,
Among the gean isles, and by the shores
Which bear thy name; love, like the atmosphere
Of the sun's fire filling the living world,
Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven
And the deep ocean and the sunless caves
And all that dwells within them; till grief cast
Eclipse upon the soul from which it came:
Such art thou now; nor is it I alone,
Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one,
But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.
Hearest thou not sounds i' the air which speak the love
Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not
The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List!
[Music.
Asia.
Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his
Whose echoes they are: yet all love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
It makes the reptile equal to the God:
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still, after long sufferings,
As I shall soon become.
Panthea.
            List! Spirits speak.
            Voice in the Air, singing.
Life of Life! thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
Fair are others; none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour,
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!
Asia.
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:
Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music's most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.
We have passed Age's icy caves,
And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
A paradise of vaulted bowers,
Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
And watery paths that wind between
Wildernesses calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!
END OF THE SECOND ACT.

ACT III
Scene I.
Heaven. Jupiter on his Throne; Thetis and the other Deities assembled.
Jupiter.
Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share
The glory and the strength of him ye serve,
Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.
All else had been subdued to me; alone
The soul of man, like unextinguished fire,
Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,
And lamentation, and reluctant prayer,
Hurling up insurrection, which might make
Our antique empire insecure, though built
On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear;
And though my curses through the pendulous air,
Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,
And cling to it; though under my wrath's night
It climbs the crags of life, step after step,
Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet,
It yet remains supreme o'er misery,
Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall:
Even now have I begotten a strange wonder,
That fatal child, the terror of the earth,
Who waits but till the destined hour arrive,
Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne
The dreadful might of ever-living limbs
Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,
To redescend, and trample out the spark.
Pour forth heaven's wine, Idan Ganymede,
And let it fill the Ddal cups like fire,
And from the flower-inwoven soil divine
Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise,
As dew from earth under the twilight stars:
Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins
The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,
Till exultation burst in one wide voice
Like music from Elysian winds.
                And thou
Ascend beside me, veild in the light
Of the desire which makes thee one with me,
Thetis, bright image of eternity!
When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might!
God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,
The penetrating presence; all my being,
Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw
Into a dew with poison, is dissolved,
Sinking through its foundations:' even then
Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third
Mightier than either, which, unbodied now,
Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld,
Waiting the incarnation, which ascends,
(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels
Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon's throne.
Victory! victory! Feel'st thou not, O world,
The earthquake of his chariot thundering up
Olympus?
[The Car of the Hour arrives. Demogorgon descends, and moves towards the Throne of Jupiter.
    Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!
    Demogorgon.
Eternity. Demand no direr name.
Descend, and follow me down the abyss.
I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child;
Mightier than thee: and we must dwell together
Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.
The tyranny of heaven none may retain,
Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee:
Yet if thou wilt, as 'tis the destiny
Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead,
Put forth thy might.
Jupiter.
           Detested prodigy!
Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons
I trample thee! thou lingerest?
                 Mercy! mercy!
No pity, no release, no respite! Oh,
That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge,
Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,
On Caucasus! he would not doom me thus.
Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not
The monarch of the world? What then art thou?
No refuge! no appeal!
           Sink with me then,
We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
Even as a vulture and a snake outspent
Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,
Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock
Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,
And whelm on them into the bottomless void
This desolated world, and thee, and me,
The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck
Of that for which they combated.
                 Ai! Ai!
The elements obey me not. I sink
Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down.
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above
Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!
Scene II.
The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis.Ocean is discovered reclining near the Shore; Apollo stands beside him.
Ocean.
He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror's frown?
Apollo.
Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim
The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,
The terrors of his eye illumined heaven
With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts
Of the victorious darkness, as he fell:
Like the last glare of day's red agony,
Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,
Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.
Ocean.
He sunk to the abyss? To the dark void?
Apollo.
An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud
On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings
Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes
Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded
By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail
Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length
Prone, and the areal ice clings over it.
Ocean.
Henceforth the fields of heaven-reflecting sea
Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn
Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow
Round many-peopled continents, and round
Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones
Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark
The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see
The floating bark of the light-laden moon
With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest,
Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea;
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,
And desolation, and the mingled voice
Of slavery and command; but by the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
And sweetest music, such as spirits love.
Apollo.
And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make
My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse
Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear
The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
That sits i' the morning star.
Ocean.
                Thou must away;
Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell:
The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it
With azure calm out of the emerald urns
Which stand for ever full beside my throne.
Behold the Nereids under the green sea,
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,
Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,
Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy. [A sound of waves is heard.

It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.
Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.
Apollo.
                    Farewell.
                    Scene III.
Caucasus. Prometheus, Hercules, Ione, the Earth, Spirits, Asia, and Panthea, borne in the Car with the Spirit of the Hour. Hercules unbinds Prometheus, who descends.
Hercules.
Most glorious among Spirits, thus doth strength
To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,
And thee, who art the form they animate,
Minister like a slave.
Prometheus.
            Thy gentle words
Are sweeter even than freedom long desired
And long delayed.
         Asia, thou light of life,
Shadow of beauty unbeheld: and ye,
Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain
Sweet to remember, through your love and care:
Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,
All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,
Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,
And paved with veind emerald, and a fountain
Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.
From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears
Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,
Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light:
And there is heard the ever-moving air,
Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,
And bees; and all around are mossy seats,
And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;
A simple dwelling, which shall be our own;
Where we will sit and talk of time and change,
As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.
What can hide man from mutability?
And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,
Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,
Until I weep, when ye shal smile away
The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.
We will entangle buds and flowers and beams
Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make
Strange combinations out of common things,
Like human babes in their brief innocence;
And we will search, with looks and words of love,
For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,
Our unexhausted spirits; and like lutes
Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,
Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,
From difference sweet where discord cannot be;
And hither come, sped on the charmd winds,
Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees
From every flower areal Enna feeds,
At their known island-homes in Himera,
The echoes of the human world, which tell
Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,
And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music,
Itself the echo of the heart, and all
That tempers or improves man's life, now free;
And lovely apparitions,dim at first,
Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright
From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms
Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them
The gathered rays which are reality
Shall visit us, the progeny immortal
Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.
The wandering voices and the shadows these
Of all that man becomes, the mediators
Of that best worship love, by him and us
Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow
More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,
And, veil by veil, evil and error fall:
Such virtue has the cave and place around. [Turning to the Spirit of the Hour.

For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,
Give her that curvd shell, which Proteus old
Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it
A voice to be accomplished, and which thou
Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.
Ione.
Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely
Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell;
See the pale azure fading into silver
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light:
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?
Spirit.
It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:
Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.
Prometheus.
Go, borne over the cities of mankind
On whirlwind-footed coursers: once again
Outspeed the sun around the orbd world;
And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,
Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,
Loosening its mighty music; it shall be
As thunder mingled with clear echoes: then
Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.
And thou, O, Mother Earth!
The Earth.
               I hear, I feel;
Thy lips are on me, and their touch runs down
Even to the adamantine central gloom
Along these marble nerves; 'tis life, 'tis joy,
And through my withered, old, and icy frame
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down
Circling. Henceforth the many children fair
Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants,
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,
And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,
Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,
Draining the poison of despair, shall take
And interchange sweet nutriment; to me
Shall they become like sister-antelopes
By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,
Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.
The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float
Under the stars like balm: night-folded flowers
Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose:
And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather
Strength for the coming day, and all its joy:
And death shall be the last embrace of her
Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother
Folding her child, says, 'Leave me not again.'
Asia.
Oh, mother! wherefore speak the name of death?
Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,
Who die?
The Earth.
    It would avail not to reply:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
But to the uncommunicating dead.
Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile
In mild variety the seasons mild
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.
And thou! There is a cavern where my spirit
Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain
Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it
Became mad too, and built a temple there,
And spoke, and were oracular, and lured
The erring nations round to mutual war,
And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds
A violet's exhalation, and it fills
With a serener light and crimson air
Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;
It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,
And the dark linkd ivy tangling wild,
And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms
Which star the winds with points of coloured light,
As they rain through them, and bright golden globes
Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven,
And through their veind leaves and amber stems
The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls
Stand ever mantling with areal dew,
The drink of spirits: and it circles round,
Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,
Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,
Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.
Arise! Appear!
[A Spirit rises in the likeness of a winged child.
       This is my torch-bearer;
Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing
On eyes from which he kindled it anew
With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,
For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,
And guide this company beyond the peak
Of Bacchic Nysa, Mnad-haunted mountain,
And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,
Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes
With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,
And up the green ravine, across the vale,
Beside the windless and crystalline pool,
Where ever lies, on unerasing waves,
The image of a temple, built above,
Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,
And palm-like capital, and over-wrought,
And populous with most living imagery,
Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.
It is deserted now, but once it bore
Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths
Bore to thy honour through the divine gloom
The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those
Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope
Into the grave, across the night of life,
As thou hast borne it most triumphantly
To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.
Beside that temple is the destined cave.
Scene IV.
A Forest. In the Background a Cave. Prometheus, Asia, Panthea, Ione, and the Spirit of the Earth.
Ione.
Sister, it is not earthly: how it glides
Under the leaves! how on its head there burns
A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams
Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,
The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass!
Knowest thou it?
Panthea.
         It is the delicate spirit
That guides the earth through heaven. From afar
The populous constellations call that light
The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes
It floats along the spray of the salt sea,
Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud,
Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep,
Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the rivers,
Or through the green waste wilderness, as now,
Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned
It loved our sister Asia, and it came
Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light
Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted
As one bit by a dipsas, and with her
It made its childish confidence, and told her
All it had known or seen, for it saw much,
Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her
For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I
Mother, dear mother.
The Spirit of the Earth
(running to Asia).
           Mother, dearest mother;
May I then talk with thee as I was wont?
May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,
After thy looks have made them tired of joy?
May I then play beside thee the long noons,
When work is none in the bright silent air?
Asia.
I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth
Can cherish thee unenvied: speak, I pray:
Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.
Spirit of the Earth.
Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;
And happier too; happier and wiser both.
Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,
And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs
That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever
An hindrance to my walks o'er the green world:
And that, among the haunts of humankind,
Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,
Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,
Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,
Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts
Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;
And women too, ugliest of all things evil,
(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,
When good and kind, free and sincere like thee),
When false or frowning made me sick at heart
To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.
Well, my path lately lay through a great city
Into the woody hills surrounding it:
A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:
When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook
The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet
Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;
A long, long sound, as it would never end:
And all the inhabitants leaped suddenly
Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,
Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet
The music pealed along. I hid myself
Within a fountain in the public square,
Where I lay like the reflex of the moon
Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon
Those ugly human shapes and visages
Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,
Passed floating through the air, and fading still
Into the winds that scattered them; and those
From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all
Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise
And greetings of delighted wonder, all
Went to their sleep again: and when the dawn
Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,
Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they were,
And that with little change of shape or hue:
All things had put their evil nature off:
I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake
Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,
With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;
So, with my thoughts full of these happy changes,
We meet again, the happiest change of all.
Asia.
And never will we part, till thy chaste sister
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon
Will look on thy more warm and equal light
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow
And love thee.
Spirit of the Earth.
       What; as Asia loves Prometheus?
       Asia.
Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.
Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill
With spherd fires the interlunar air?
Spirit of the Earth.
Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp
'Tis hard I should go darkling.
Asia.
                 Listen; look!
                 [The Spirit of the Hour enters.
Prometheus.
We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak.
Spirit of the Hour.
Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
There was a change: the impalpable thin air
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,
As if the sense of love dissolved in them
Had folded itself round the spherd world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
Into the mysteries of the universe:
Dizzy as with delight I floated down,
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,
My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,
Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire;
And where my moonlike car will stand within
A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,
And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel,
In memory of the tidings it has borne,
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,
And open to the bright and liquid sky.
Yoked to it by an amphisbaenic snake
The likeness of those wingd steeds will mock
The flight from which they find repose. Alas,
Whither has wandered now my partial tongue
When all remains untold which ye would hear?
As I have said, I floated to the earth:
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss
To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering went
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,
And first was disappointed not to see
Such mighty change as I had felt within
Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked
One with the other even as spirits do,
None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,
Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows
No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,
'All hope abandon ye who enter here;'
None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear
Gazed on another's eye of cold command,
Until the subject of a tyrant's will
Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,
Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.
None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart
The sparks of love and hope till there remained
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
And the wretch crept a vampire among men,
Infecting all with his own hideous ill;
None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy
With such a self-mistrust as has no name.
And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,
The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.
Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,
And beside which, by wretched men were borne
Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,
Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,
The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth
In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs
Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,
These imaged to the pride of kings and priests
A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide
As is the world it wasted, and are now
But an astonishment; even so the tools
And emblems of its last captivity,
Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,
Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,
Which, under many a name and many a form
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,
And slain amid men's unreclaiming tears,
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,
Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines:
The painted veil, by those who were, called life,
Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,
All men believed or hoped, is torn aside;
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man
Passionless?no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made or suffered them,
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
END OF THE THIRD ACT.

ACT IV
Scene.A Part of the Forest near the Cave of Prometheus.Panthea and Ione are sleeping: they awaken gradually during the first Song.
Voice of unseen Spirits.
The pale stars are gone!
For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fawns flee the leopard.
  But where are ye?
  A Train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly, singing.
Here, oh, here:
We bear the bier
Of the Father of many a cancelled year!
Spectres we
Of the dead Hours be,
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.
Strew, oh, strew
Hair, not yew!
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!
Be the faded flowers
Of Death's bare bowers
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours!
Haste, oh, haste!
As shades are chased,
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste.
We melt away,
Like dissolving spray,
From the children of a diviner day,
With the lullaby
Of winds that die
On the bosom of their own harmony!
Ione.
What dark forms were they?
Panthea.
The past Hours weak and gray,
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.
Ione.
Have they passed?
Panthea.
         They have passed;
They outspeeded the blast,
While 'tis said, they are fled:
Ione.
Whither, oh, whither?
Panthea.
To the dark, to the past, to the dead.
Voice of unseen Spirits.
Bright clouds float in heaven,
Dew-stars gleam on earth,
Waves assemble on ocean,
They are gathered and driven
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!
They shake with emotion,
They dance in their mirth.
  But where are ye?
   The pine boughs are singing
Old songs with new gladness,
The billows and fountains
Fresh music are flinging,
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;
The storms mock the mountains
With the thunder of gladness.
  But where are ye?
  Ione.
What charioteers are these?
Panthea.
               Where are their chariots?
               Semichorus of Hours.
The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth
Have drawn back the figured curtain of sleep
Which covered our being and darkened our birth
In the deep.
A Voice.
      In the deep?
      Semichorus II.
             Oh, below the deep.
             Semichorus I.
An hundred ages we had been kept
Cradled in visions of hate and care,
And each one who waked as his brother slept,
Found the truth
Semichorus II.
          Worse than his visions were!
          Semichorus I.
We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep;
We have known the voice of Love in dreams;
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap
Semichorus II.
As the billows leap in the morning beams!
Chorus.
Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,
Pierce with song heaven's silent light,
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,
To check its flight ere the cave of Night.
Once the hungry Hours were hounds
Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,
And it limped and stumbled with many wounds
Through the nightly dells of the desert year.
But now, oh weave the mystic measure
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light,
Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite.
A Voice.
                    Unite!
                    Panthea.
See, where the Spirits of the human mind
Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.
Chorus of Spirits.
We join the throng
Of the dance and the song,
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along;
As the flying-fish leap
From the Indian deep,
And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep.
Chorus of Hours.
Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,
For sandals of lightning are on your feet,
And your wings are soft and swift as thought,
And your eyes are as love which is veild not?
Chorus of Spirits.
We come from the mind
Of human kind
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind,
Now 'tis an ocean
Of clear emotion,
A heaven of serene and mighty motion
From that deep abyss
Of wonder and bliss,
Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
From those skiey towers
Where Thought's crowned powers
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!
From the dim recesses
Of woven caresses,
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses
From the azure isles,
Where sweet Wisdom smiles,
Delaying your ships with her siren wiles.
From the temples high
Of Man's ear and eye,
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;
From the murmurings
Of the unsealed springs
Where Science bedews her Ddal wings.
Years after years,
Through blood, and tears,
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears;
We waded and flew,
And the islets were few
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.
Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm,
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm;
And, beyond our eyes,
The human love lies
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.
Chorus of Spirits and Hours.
Then weave the web of the mystic measure;
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth,
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,
Fill the dance and the music of mirth,
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by
To an ocean of splendour and harmony!
Chorus of Spirits.
Our spoil is won,
Our task is done,
We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
Beyond and around,
Or within the bound
Which clips the world with darkness round.
We'll pass the eyes
Of the starry skies
Into the hoar deep to colonize:
Death, Chaos, and Night,
From the sound of our flight,
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might.
And Earth, Air, and Light,
And the Spirit of Might,
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;
And Love, Thought, and Breath,
The powers that quell Death,
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.
And our singing shall build
In the void's loose field
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;
We will take our plan
From the new world of man,
And our work shall be called the Promethean.
Chorus of Hours.
Break the dance, and scatter the song;
Let some depart, and some remain.
Semichorus I.
We, beyond heaven, are driven along:
Semichorus II.
Us the enchantments of earth retain:
Semichorus I.
Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free,
With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,
And a heaven where yet heaven could never be.
Semichorus II.
Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,
Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night,
With the powers of a world of perfect light.
Semichorus I.
We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.
Semichorus II.
We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth,
And the happy forms of its death and birth
Change to the music of our sweet mirth.
Chorus of Hours and Spirits.
Break the dance, and scatter the song,
Let some depart, and some remain,
Wherever we fly we lead along
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,
The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.
Panthea.
Ha! they are gone!
Ione.
          Yet feel you no delight
From the past sweetness?
Panthea.
             As the bare green hill
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water
To the unpavilioned sky!
Ione.
             Even whilst we speak
New notes arise. What is that awful sound?
Panthea.
'Tis the deep music of the rolling world
Kindling within the strings of the waved air
olian modulations.
Ione.
          Listen too,
How every pause is filled with under-notes,
Clear, silver, icy, keen, awakening tones,
Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air
And gaze upon themselves within the sea.
Panthea.
But see where through two openings in the forest
Which hanging branches overcanopy,
And where two runnels of a rivulet,
Between the close moss violet-inwoven,
Have made their path of melody, like sisters
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,
Turning their dear disunion to an isle
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;
Two visions of strange radiance float upon
The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,
Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet
Under the ground and through the windless air.
Ione.
I see a chariot like that thinnest boat,
In which the Mother of the Months is borne
By ebbing light into her western cave,
When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;
O'er which is curved an orblike canopy
Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,
Distinctly seen through that dusk aery veil,
Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;
Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
Such as the genii of the thunderstorm
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
When the sun rushes under it; they roll
And move and grow as with an inward wind;
Within it sits a wingd infant, white
Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.
Its hair is white, the brightness of white light
Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens
Of liquid darkness, which the Deity
Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured
From jaggd clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,
Tempering the cold and radiant air around,
With fire that is not brightness; in its hand
It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point
A guiding power directs the chariot's prow
Over its wheeld clouds, which as they roll
Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,
Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew.
Panthea.
And from the other opening in the wood
Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,
A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,
Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass
Flow, as through empty space, music and light:
Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,
Purple and azure, white, and green, and golden,
Sphere within sphere; and every space between
Peopled with unimaginable shapes,
Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep,
Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl
Over each other with a thousand motions,
Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,
And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,
Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on,
Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,
Intelligible words and music wild.
With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb
Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist
Of elemental subtlety, like light;
And the wild odour of the forest flowers,
The music of the living grass and air,
The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams
Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed,
Seem kneaded into one areal mass
Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,
Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,
Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil,
On its own folded wings, and wavy hair,
The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,
And you can see its little lips are moving,
Amid the changing light of their own smiles,
Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.
Ione.
'Tis only mocking the orb's harmony.
Panthea.
And from a star upon its forehead, shoot,
Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
Embleming heaven and earth united now,
Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel
Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,
Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings,
And perpendicular now, and now transverse,
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,
Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;
Infinite mines of adamant and gold,
Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,
And caverns on crystalline columns poised
With vegetable silver overspread;
Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs
Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed,
Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops
With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on
And make appear the melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;
Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,
And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels
Of scythd chariots, and the emblazonry
Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,
Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems
Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!
The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
Whose population which the earth grew over
Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes
Huddled in gray annihilation, split,
Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
The anatomies of unknown wingd things,
And fishes which were isles of living scale,
And serpents, bony chains, twisted around
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
The jaggd alligator, and the might
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
Increased and multiplied like summer worms
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
Wrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God
Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,
'Be not!' And like my words they were no more.
The Earth.
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
The vaporous exultation not to be confined!
Ha! ha! the animation of delight
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.
The Moon.
Brother mine, calm wanderer,
Happy globe of land and air,
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrates my frozen frame,
And passes with the warmth of flame,
With love, and odour, and deep melody
  Through me, through me!
  The Earth.
Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.
The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,
And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.
They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,
Who all our green and azure universe
Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending
A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones,
And splinter and knead down my children's bones,
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending,
Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,
Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,
My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire;
My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom
Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,
Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:
How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up
By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup
Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;
And from beneath, around, within, above,
Filling thy void annihilation, love
Burst in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball.
The Moon.
The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine:
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
It clothes with unexpected birth
My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine
  On mine, on mine!
   Gazing on thee I feel, I know
Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,
And living shapes upon my bosom move:
Music is in the sea and air,
Wingd clouds soar here and there,
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
  'Tis love, all love!
  The Earth.
It interpenetrates my granite mass,
Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;
Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread,
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,
They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers.
And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison
With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being:
With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver
Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever,
Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,
Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror,
Which could distort to many a shape of error,
This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;
Which over all his kind, as the sun's heaven
Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even,
Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:
Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left,
Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft
Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured;
Then when it wanders home with rosy smile,
Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile
It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.
Man, oh, not men! a chain of linkd thought,
Of love and might to be divided not,
Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;
As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze,
The unquiet republic of the maze
Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.
Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
Familiar acts are beautiful through love;
Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!
His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
Is as a tempest-wingd ship, whose helm
Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.
All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;
Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;
Language is a perpetual Orphic song,
Which rules with Ddal harmony a throng
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.
The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!
The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.
The Moon.
The shadow of white death has passed
From my path in heaven at last,
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
  Thy vales more deep.
  The Earth.
As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,
And crystalline, till it becomes a wingd mist,
And wanders up the vault of the blue day,
Outlives the moon, and on the sun's last ray
Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.
The Moon.
Thou art folded, thou art lying
In the light which is undying
Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;
All suns and constellations shower
On thee a light, a life, a power
Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
  On mine, on mine!
  The Earth.
I spin beneath my pyramid of night,
Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.
The Moon.
As in the soft and sweet eclipse,
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,
  Full, oh, too full!
   Thou art speeding round the sun
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom life and light is given;
I, thy crystal paramour
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise,
Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move
Gazing, an insatiate bride,
On thy form from every side
Like a Mnad, round the cup
Which Agave lifted up
In the weird Cadman forest.
Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl and follow
Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space,
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might,
As a lover or a chameleon
Grows like what it looks upon,
As a violet's gentle eye
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds,
As a gray and watery mist
Glows like solid amethyst
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,
When the sunset sleeps
  Upon its snow
  The Earth.
  And the weak day weeps
   That it should be so.
Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,
Through isles for ever calm;
Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.
Panthea.
I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
Out of the stream of sound.
Ione.
               Ah me! sweet sister,
The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
And you pretend to rise out of its wave,
Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.
Panthea.
Peace! peace! A mighty Power, which is as darkness,
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,
Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone,
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.
Ione.
There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
Panthea.
An universal sound like words: Oh, list!
Demogorgon.
Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,
Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
The love which paves thy path along the skies:
The Earth.
I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.
Demogorgon.
Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;
Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:
The Moon.
I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!
Demogorgon.
Ye Kings of suns and stars, Dmons and Gods,
Aetherial Dominations, who possess
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:
A Voice from above.
Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and bless.
Demogorgon.
Ye happy Dead, whom beams of brightest verse
Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray,
Whether your nature is that universe
Which once ye saw and suffered
A Voice from beneath.
                 Or as they
Whom we have left, we change and pass away.
Demogorgon.
Ye elemental Genii, who have homes
From man's high mind even to the central stone
Of sullen lead; from heaven's star-fretted domes
To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:
A confused Voice.
We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.
Demogorgon.
Spirits, whose homes are flesh: ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves and buds;
Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:
A Voice.
Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.
Demogorgon.
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day:
All.
Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.
Demogorgon.
This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
Composed at Este, Sept., Oct., 1818 (Act I); at Rome, March - April 6, 1819 (Acts II, III); at Florence, close of 1819 (Act IV). Published by C. and J. Ollier, London, summer of 1820.

Note from Mrs. Shelley: 'On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return. His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. .....Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world. ....And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in their decay, or gaed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the Prometheus which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet must feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he wrote from Rome, ''My Prometheus Unbound is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts.'''
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
,
298:Beowulf
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
till before him the folk, both far and near,
who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!
To him an heir was afterward born,
a son in his halls, whom heaven sent
to favor the folk, feeling their woe
that erst they had lacked an earl for leader
so long a while; the Lord endowed him,
the Wielder of Wonder, with world's renown.
Famed was this Beowulf: far flew the boast of him,
son of Scyld, in the Scandian lands.
So becomes it a youth to quit him well
with his father's friends, by fee and gift,
that to aid him, aged, in after days,
come warriors willing, should war draw nigh,
liegemen loyal: by lauded deeds
shall an earl have honor in every clan.
Forth he fared at the fated moment,
sturdy Scyld to the shelter of God.
Then they bore him over to ocean's billow,
loving clansmen, as late he charged them,
while wielded words the winsome Scyld,
the leader beloved who long had ruled….
In the roadstead rocked a ring-dight vessel,
ice-flecked, outbound, atheling's barge:
there laid they down their darling lord
on the breast of the boat, the breaker-of-rings,
by the mast the mighty one. Many a treasure
fetched from far was freighted with him.
No ship have I known so nobly dight
with weapons of war and weeds of battle,
47
with breastplate and blade: on his bosom lay
a heaped hoard that hence should go
far o'er the flood with him floating away.
No less these loaded the lordly gifts,
thanes' huge treasure, than those had done
who in former time forth had sent him
sole on the seas, a suckling child.
High o'er his head they hoist the standard,
a gold-wove banner; let billows take him,
gave him to ocean. Grave were their spirits,
mournful their mood. No man is able
to say in sooth, no son of the halls,
no hero 'neath heaven, - who harbored that freight!
Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings,
leader beloved, and long he ruled
in fame with all folk, since his father had gone
away from the world, till awoke an heir,
haughty Healfdene, who held through life,
sage and sturdy, the Scyldings glad.
Then, one after one, there woke to him,
to the chieftain of clansmen, children four:
Heorogar, then Hrothgar, then Halga brave;
and I heard that - was -'s queen,
the Heathoscylfing's helpmate dear.
To Hrothgar was given such glory of war,
such honor of combat, that all his kin
obeyed him gladly till great grew his band
of youthful comrades. It came in his mind
to bid his henchmen a hall uprear,
a master mead-house, mightier far
than ever was seen by the sons of earth,
and within it, then, to old and young
he would all allot that the Lord had sent him,
save only the land and the lives of his men.
Wide, I heard, was the work commanded,
for many a tribe this mid-earth round,
to fashion the folkstead. It fell, as he ordered,
in rapid achievement that ready it stood there,
of halls the noblest: Heorot [1] he named it
whose message had might in many a land.
48
Not reckless of promise, the rings he dealt,
treasure at banquet: there towered the hall,
high, gabled wide, the hot surge waiting
of furious flame. [2] Nor far was that day
when father and son-in-law stood in feud
for warfare and hatred that woke again.
With envy and anger an evil spirit
endured the dole in his dark abode,
that he heard each day the din of revel
high in the hall: there harps rang out,
clear song of the singer. He sang who knew
tales of the early time of man,
how the Almighty made the earth,
fairest fields enfolded by water,
set, triumphant, sun and moon
for a light to lighten the land-dwellers,
and braided bright the breast of earth
with limbs and leaves, made life for all
of mortal beings that breathe and move.
So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel
a winsome life, till one began
to fashion evils, that field of hell.
Grendel this monster grim was called,
march-riever [5] mighty, in moorland living,
in fen and fastness; fief of the giants
the hapless wight a while had kept
since the Creator his exile doomed.
On kin of Cain was the killing avenged
by sovran God for slaughtered Abel.
Ill fared his feud, [6] and far was he driven,
for the slaughter's sake, from sight of men.
Of Cain awoke all that woful breed,
Etins [7] and elves and evil-spirits,
as well as the giants that warred with God
weary while: but their wage was paid them!
II
WENT he forth to find at fall of night
that haughty house, and heed wherever
the Ring-Danes, outrevelled, to rest had gone.
Found within it the atheling band
asleep after feasting and fearless of sorrow,
49
of human hardship. Unhallowed wight,
grim and greedy, he grasped betimes,
wrathful, reckless, from resting-places,
thirty of the thanes, and thence he rushed
fain of his fell spoil, faring homeward,
laden with slaughter, his lair to seek.
Then at the dawning, as day was breaking,
the might of Grendel to men was known;
then after wassail was wail uplifted,
loud moan in the morn. The mighty chief,
atheling excellent, unblithe sat,
labored in woe for the loss of his thanes,
when once had been traced the trail of the fiend,
spirit accurst: too cruel that sorrow,
too long, too loathsome. Not late the respite;
with night returning, anew began
ruthless murder; he recked no whit,
firm in his guilt, of the feud and crime.
They were easy to find who elsewhere sought
in room remote their rest at night,
bed in the bowers, [1] when that bale was shown,
was seen in sooth, with surest token, the hall-thane's [2] hate. Such held themselves
far and fast who the fiend outran!
Thus ruled unrighteous and raged his fill
one against all; until empty stood
that lordly building, and long it bode so.
Twelve years' tide the trouble he bore,
sovran of Scyldings, sorrows in plenty,
boundless cares. There came unhidden
tidings true to the tribes of men,
in sorrowful songs, how ceaselessly Grendel
harassed Hrothgar, what hate he bore him,
what murder and massacre, many a year,
feud unfading, - refused consent
to deal with any of Daneland's earls,
make pact of peace, or compound for gold:
still less did the wise men ween to get
great fee for the feud from his fiendish hands.
But the evil one ambushed old and young
death-shadow dark, and dogged them still,
lured, or lurked in the livelong night
50
of misty moorlands: men may say not
where the haunts of these Hell-Runes be.
Such heaping of horrors the hater of men,
lonely roamer, wrought unceasing,
harassings heavy. O'er Heorot he lorded,
gold-bright hall, in gloomy nights;
and ne'er could the prince [4] approach his throne,
- 'twas judgment of God, - or have joy in his hall.
Sore was the sorrow to Scyldings'-friend,
heart-rending misery. Many nobles
sat assembled, and searched out counsel
how it were best for bold-hearted men
against harassing terror to try their hand.
Whiles they vowed in their heathen fanes
altar-offerings, asked with words [5]
that the slayer-of-souls would succor give them
for the pain of their people. Their practice this,
their heathen hope; 'twas Hell they thought of
in mood of their mind. Almighty they knew not,
Doomsman of Deeds and dreadful Lord,
nor Heaven's-Helmet heeded they ever,
Wielder-of-Wonder. - Woe for that man
who in harm and hatred hales his soul
to fiery embraces; - nor favor nor change
awaits he ever. But well for him
that after death-day may draw to his Lord,
and friendship find in the Father's arms!
III
THUS seethed unceasing the son of Healfdene
with the woe of these days; not wisest men
assuaged his sorrow; too sore the anguish,
loathly and long, that lay on his folk,
most baneful of burdens and bales of the night.
This heard in his home Hygelac's thane,
great among Geats, of Grendel's doings.
He was the mightiest man of valor
in that same day of this our life,
stalwart and stately. A stout wave-walker
he bade make ready. Yon battle-king, said he,
far o'er the swan-road he fain would seek,
the noble monarch who needed men!
51
The prince's journey by prudent folk
was little blamed, though they loved him dear;
they whetted the hero, and hailed good omens.
And now the bold one from bands of Geats
comrades chose, the keenest of warriors
e'er he could find; with fourteen men
the sea-wood [1] he sought, and, sailor proved,
led them on to the land's confines.
Time had now flown; [2] afloat was the ship,
boat under bluff. On board they climbed,
warriors ready; waves were churning
sea with sand; the sailors bore
on the breast of the bark their bright array,
their mail and weapons: the men pushed off,
on its willing way, the well-braced craft.
Then moved o'er the waters by might of the wind
that bark like a bird with breast of foam,
till in season due, on the second day,
the curved prow such course had run
that sailors now could see the land,
sea-cliffs shining, steep high hills,
headlands broad. Their haven was found,
their journey ended. Up then quickly
the Weders' [3] clansmen climbed ashore,
anchored their sea-wood, with armor clashing
and gear of battle: God they thanked
for passing in peace o'er the paths of the sea.
Now saw from the cliff a Scylding clansman,
a warden that watched the water-side,
how they bore o'er the gangway glittering shields,
war-gear in readiness; wonder seized him
to know what manner of men they were.
Straight to the strand his steed he rode,
Hrothgar's henchman; with hand of might
he shook his spear, and spake in parley.
'Who are ye, then, ye armed men,
mailed folk, that yon mighty vessel
have urged thus over the ocean ways,
here o'er the waters? A warden I,
sentinel set o'er the sea-march here,
lest any foe to the folk of Danes
with harrying fleet should harm the land.
52
No aliens ever at ease thus bore them,
linden-wielders: [4] yet word-of-leave
clearly ye lack from clansmen here,
my folk's agreement. - A greater ne'er saw I
of warriors in world than is one of you, yon hero in harness! No henchman he
worthied by weapons, if witness his features,
his peerless presence! I pray you, though, tell
your folk and home, lest hence ye fare
suspect to wander your way as spies
in Danish land. Now, dwellers afar,
ocean-travellers, take from me
simple advice: the sooner the better
I hear of the country whence ye came.'
IV
To him the stateliest spake in answer;
the warriors' leader his word-hoard unlocked:'We are by kin of the clan of Geats,
and Hygelac's own hearth-fellows we.
To folk afar was my father known,
noble atheling, Ecgtheow named.
Full of winters, he fared away
aged from earth; he is honored still
through width of the world by wise men all.
To thy lord and liege in loyal mood
we hasten hither, to Healfdene's son,
people-protector: be pleased to advise us!
To that mighty-one come we on mickle errand,
to the lord of the Danes; nor deem I right
that aught be hidden. We hear - thou knowest
if sooth it is - the saying of men,
that amid the Scyldings a scathing monster,
dark ill-doer, in dusky nights
shows terrific his rage unmatched,
hatred and murder. To Hrothgar I
in greatness of soul would succor bring,
so the Wise-and-Brave [1] may worst his foes, if ever the end of ills is fated,
of cruel contest, if cure shall follow,
and the boiling care-waves cooler grow;
else ever afterward anguish-days
53
he shall suffer in sorrow while stands in place
high on its hill that house unpeered!'
Astride his steed, the strand-ward answered,
clansman unquailing: 'The keen-souled thane
must be skilled to sever and sunder duly
words and works, if he well intends.
I gather, this band is graciously bent
to the Scyldings' master. March, then, bearing
weapons and weeds the way I show you.
I will bid my men your boat meanwhile
to guard for fear lest foemen come, your new-tarred ship by shore of ocean
faithfully watching till once again
it waft o'er the waters those well-loved thanes,
- winding-neck'd wood, - to Weders' bounds,
heroes such as the hest of fate
shall succor and save from the shock of war.'
They bent them to march, - the boat lay still,
fettered by cable and fast at anchor,
broad-bosomed ship. - Then shone the boars
over the cheek-guard; chased with gold,
keen and gleaming, guard it kept
o'er the man of war, as marched along
heroes in haste, till the hall they saw,
broad of gable and bright with gold:
that was the fairest, 'mid folk of earth,
of houses 'neath heaven, where Hrothgar lived,
and the gleam of it lightened o'er lands afar.
The sturdy shieldsman showed that bright
burg-of-the-boldest; bade them go
straightway thither; his steed then turned,
hardy hero, and hailed them thus:'Tis time that I fare from you. Father Almighty
in grace and mercy guard you well,
safe in your seekings. Seaward I go,
'gainst hostile warriors hold my watch.'
STONE-BRIGHT the street: it showed the way
to the crowd of clansmen. Corselets glistened
hand-forged, hard; on their harness bright
the steel ring sang, as they strode along
54
in mail of battle, and marched to the hall.
There, weary of ocean, the wall along
they set their bucklers, their broad shields, down,
and bowed them to bench: the breastplates clanged,
war-gear of men; their weapons stacked,
spears of the seafarers stood together,
gray-tipped ash: that iron band
was worthily weaponed! - A warrior proud
asked of the heroes their home and kin.
'Whence, now, bear ye burnished shields,
harness gray and helmets grim,
spears in multitude? Messenger, I,
Hrothgar's herald! Heroes so many
ne'er met I as strangers of mood so strong.
'Tis plain that for prowess, not plunged into exile,
for high-hearted valor, Hrothgar ye seek!'
Him the sturdy-in-war bespake with words,
proud earl of the Weders answer made,
hardy 'neath helmet:-'Hygelac's, we,
fellows at board; I am Beowulf named.
I am seeking to say to the son of Healfdene
this mission of mine, to thy master-lord,
the doughty prince, if he deign at all
grace that we greet him, the good one, now.'
Wulfgar spake, the Wendles' chieftain,
whose might of mind to many was known,
his courage and counsel: 'The king of Danes,
the Scyldings' friend, I fain will tell,
the Breaker-of-Rings, as the boon thou askest,
the famed prince, of thy faring hither,
and, swiftly after, such answer bring
as the doughty monarch may deign to give.'
Hied then in haste to where Hrothgar sat
white-haired and old, his earls about him,
till the stout thane stood at the shoulder there
of the Danish king: good courtier he!
Wulfgar spake to his winsome lord:'Hither have fared to thee far-come men
o'er the paths of ocean, people of Geatland;
and the stateliest there by his sturdy band
is Beowulf named. This boon they seek,
that they, my master, may with thee
55
have speech at will: nor spurn their prayer
to give them hearing, gracious Hrothgar!
In weeds of the warrior worthy they,
methinks, of our liking; their leader most surely,
a hero that hither his henchmen has led.'
VI
HROTHGAR answered, helmet of Scyldings:'I knew him of yore in his youthful days;
his aged father was Ecgtheow named,
to whom, at home, gave Hrethel the Geat
his only daughter. Their offspring bold
fares hither to seek the steadfast friend.
And seamen, too, have said me this, who carried my gifts to the Geatish court,
thither for thanks, - he has thirty men's
heft of grasp in the gripe of his hand,
the bold-in-battle. Blessed God
out of his mercy this man hath sent
to Danes of the West, as I ween indeed,
against horror of Grendel. I hope to give
the good youth gold for his gallant thought.
Be thou in haste, and bid them hither,
clan of kinsmen, to come before me;
and add this word, - they are welcome guests
to folk of the Danes.'
[To the door of the hall
Wulfgar went] and the word declared:'To you this message my master sends,
East-Danes' king, that your kin he knows,
hardy heroes, and hails you all
welcome hither o'er waves of the sea!
Ye may wend your way in war-attire,
and under helmets Hrothgar greet;
but let here the battle-shields bide your parley,
and wooden war-shafts wait its end.'
Uprose the mighty one, ringed with his men,
brave band of thanes: some bode without,
battle-gear guarding, as bade the chief.
Then hied that troop where the herald led them,
under Heorot's roof: [the hero strode,]
hardy 'neath helm, till the hearth he neared.
56
Beowulf spake, - his breastplate gleamed,
war-net woven by wit of the smith:'Thou Hrothgar, hail! Hygelac's I,
kinsman and follower. Fame a plenty
have I gained in youth! These Grendel-deeds
I heard in my home-land heralded clear.
Seafarers say how stands this hall,
of buildings best, for your band of thanes
empty and idle, when evening sun
in the harbor of heaven is hidden away.
So my vassals advised me well, brave and wise, the best of men, O sovran Hrothgar, to seek thee here,
for my nerve and my might they knew full well.
Themselves had seen me from slaughter come
blood-flecked from foes, where five I bound,
and that wild brood worsted. I' the waves I slew
nicors [1] by night, in need and peril
avenging the Weders, [2] whose woe they sought, crushing the grim ones. Grendel now,
monster cruel, be mine to quell
in single battle! So, from thee,
thou sovran of the Shining-Danes,
Scyldings'-bulwark, a boon I seek, and, Friend-of-the-folk, refuse it not,
O Warriors'-shield, now I've wandered far, that I alone with my liegemen here,
this hardy band, may Heorot purge!
More I hear, that the monster dire,
in his wanton mood, of weapons recks not;
hence shall I scorn - so Hygelac stay,
king of my kindred, kind to me! brand or buckler to bear in the fight,
gold-colored targe: but with gripe alone
must I front the fiend and fight for life,
foe against foe. Then faith be his
in the doom of the Lord whom death shall take.
Fain, I ween, if the fight he win,
in this hall of gold my Geatish band
will he fearless eat, - as oft before, my noblest thanes. Nor need'st thou then
to hide my head; [3] for his shall I be,
57
dyed in gore, if death must take me;
and my blood-covered body he'll bear as prey,
ruthless devour it, the roamer-lonely,
with my life-blood redden his lair in the fen:
no further for me need'st food prepare!
To Hygelac send, if Hild [4] should take me,
best of war-weeds, warding my breast,
armor excellent, heirloom of Hrethel
and work of Wayland. [5] Fares Wyrd as she must.'
VII
HROTHGAR spake, the Scyldings'-helmet:'For fight defensive, Friend my Beowulf,
to succor and save, thou hast sought us here.
Thy father's combat [1] a feud enkindled
when Heatholaf with hand he slew
among the Wylfings; his Weder kin
for horror of fighting feared to hold him.
Fleeing, he sought our South-Dane folk,
over surge of ocean the Honor-Scyldings,
when first I was ruling the folk of Danes,
wielded, youthful, this widespread realm,
this hoard-hold of heroes. Heorogar was dead,
my elder brother, had breathed his last,
Healfdene's bairn: he was better than I!
Straightway the feud with fee [2] I settled,
to the Wylfings sent, o'er watery ridges,
treasures olden: oaths he [3] swore me.
Sore is my soul to say to any
of the race of man what ruth for me
in Heorot Grendel with hate hath wrought,
what sudden harryings. Hall-folk fail me,
my warriors wane; for Wyrd hath swept them
into Grendel's grasp. But God is able
this deadly foe from his deeds to turn!
Boasted full oft, as my beer they drank,
earls o'er the ale-cup, armed men,
that they would bide in the beer-hall here,
Grendel's attack with terror of blades.
Then was this mead-house at morning tide
dyed with gore, when the daylight broke,
all the boards of the benches blood-besprinkled,
58
gory the hall: I had heroes the less,
doughty dear-ones that death had reft.
- But sit to the banquet, unbind thy words,
hardy hero, as heart shall prompt thee.'
Gathered together, the Geatish men
in the banquet-hall on bench assigned,
sturdy-spirited, sat them down,
hardy-hearted. A henchman attended,
carried the carven cup in hand,
served the clear mead. Oft minstrels sang
blithe in Heorot. Heroes revelled,
no dearth of warriors, Weder and Dane.
VIII
UNFERTH spake, the son of Ecglaf,
who sat at the feet of the Scyldings' lord,
unbound the battle-runes. - Beowulf's quest,
sturdy seafarer's, sorely galled him;
ever he envied that other men
should more achieve in middle-earth
of fame under heaven than he himself. 'Art thou that Beowulf, Breca's rival,
who emulous swam on the open sea,
when for pride the pair of you proved the floods,
and wantonly dared in waters deep
to risk your lives? No living man,
or lief or loath, from your labor dire
could you dissuade, from swimming the main.
Ocean-tides with your arms ye covered,
with strenuous hands the sea-streets measured,
swam o'er the waters. Winter's storm
rolled the rough waves. In realm of sea
a sennight strove ye. In swimming he topped thee,
had more of main! Him at morning-tide
billows bore to the Battling Reamas,
whence he hied to his home so dear
beloved of his liegemen, to land of Brondings,
fastness fair, where his folk he ruled,
town and treasure. In triumph o'er thee
Beanstan's bairn [2] his boast achieved.
So ween I for thee a worse adventure
- though in buffet of battle thou brave hast been,
59
in struggle grim, - if Grendel's approach
thou darst await through the watch of night!'
Beowulf spake, bairn of Ecgtheow:'What a deal hast uttered, dear my Unferth,
drunken with beer, of Breca now,
told of his triumph! Truth I claim it,
that I had more of might in the sea
than any man else, more ocean-endurance.
We twain had talked, in time of youth,
and made our boast, - we were merely boys,
striplings still, - to stake our lives
far at sea: and so we performed it.
Naked swords, as we swam along,
we held in hand, with hope to guard us
against the whales. Not a whit from me
could he float afar o'er the flood of waves,
haste o'er the billows; nor him I abandoned.
Together we twain on the tides abode
five nights full till the flood divided us,
churning waves and chillest weather,
darkling night, and the northern wind
ruthless rushed on us: rough was the surge.
Now the wrath of the sea-fish rose apace;
yet me 'gainst the monsters my mailed coat,
hard and hand-linked, help afforded, battle-sark braided my breast to ward,
garnished with gold. There grasped me firm
and haled me to bottom the hated foe,
with grimmest gripe. 'Twas granted me, though,
to pierce the monster with point of sword,
with blade of battle: huge beast of the sea
was whelmed by the hurly through hand of mine.
IX
ME thus often the evil monsters
thronging threatened. With thrust of my sword,
the darling, I dealt them due return!
Nowise had they bliss from their booty then
to devour their victim, vengeful creatures,
seated to banquet at bottom of sea;
but at break of day, by my brand sore hurt,
on the edge of ocean up they lay,
60
put to sleep by the sword. And since, by them
on the fathomless sea-ways sailor-folk
are never molested. - Light from east,
came bright God's beacon; the billows sank,
so that I saw the sea-cliffs high,
windy walls. For Wyrd oft saveth
earl undoomed if he doughty be!
And so it came that I killed with my sword
nine of the nicors. Of night-fought battles
ne'er heard I a harder 'neath heaven's dome,
nor adrift on the deep a more desolate man!
Yet I came unharmed from that hostile clutch,
though spent with swimming. The sea upbore me,
flood of the tide, on Finnish land,
the welling waters. No wise of thee
have I heard men tell such terror of falchions,
bitter battle. Breca ne'er yet,
not one of you pair, in the play of war
such daring deed has done at all
with bloody brand, - I boast not of it! though thou wast the bane [1] of thy brethren dear,
thy closest kin, whence curse of hell
awaits thee, well as thy wit may serve!
For I say in sooth, thou son of Ecglaf,
never had Grendel these grim deeds wrought,
monster dire, on thy master dear,
in Heorot such havoc, if heart of thine
were as battle-bold as thy boast is loud!
But he has found no feud will happen;
from sword-clash dread of your Danish clan
he vaunts him safe, from the Victor-Scyldings.
He forces pledges, favors none
of the land of Danes, but lustily murders,
fights and feasts, nor feud he dreads
from Spear-Dane men. But speedily now
shall I prove him the prowess and pride of the Geats,
shall bid him battle. Blithe to mead
go he that listeth, when light of dawn
this morrow morning o'er men of earth,
ether-robed sun from the south shall beam!'
Joyous then was the Jewel-giver,
hoar-haired, war-brave; help awaited
61
the Bright-Danes' prince, from Beowulf hearing,
folk's good shepherd, such firm resolve.
Then was laughter of liegemen loud resounding
with winsome words. Came Wealhtheow forth,
queen of Hrothgar, heedful of courtesy,
gold-decked, greeting the guests in hall;
and the high-born lady handed the cup
first to the East-Danes' heir and warden,
bade him be blithe at the beer-carouse,
the land's beloved one. Lustily took he
banquet and beaker, battle-famed king.
Through the hall then went the Helmings' Lady,
to younger and older everywhere
carried the cup, till come the moment
when the ring-graced queen, the royal-hearted,
to Beowulf bore the beaker of mead.
She greeted the Geats' lord, God she thanked,
in wisdom's words, that her will was granted,
that at last on a hero her hope could lean
for comfort in terrors. The cup he took,
hardy-in-war, from Wealhtheow's hand,
and answer uttered the eager-for-combat.
Beowulf spake, bairn of Ecgtheow:'This was my thought, when my thanes and I
bent to the ocean and entered our boat,
that I would work the will of your people
fully, or fighting fall in death,
in fiend's gripe fast. I am firm to do
an earl's brave deed, or end the days
of this life of mine in the mead-hall here.'
Well these words to the woman seemed,
Beowulf's battle-boast. - Bright with gold
the stately dame by her spouse sat down.
Again, as erst, began in hall
warriors' wassail and words of power,
the proud-band's revel, till presently
the son of Healfdene hastened to seek
rest for the night; he knew there waited
fight for the fiend in that festal hall,
when the sheen of the sun they saw no more,
and dusk of night sank darkling nigh,
and shadowy shapes came striding on,
62
wan under welkin. The warriors rose.
Man to man, he made harangue,
Hrothgar to Beowulf, bade him hail,
let him wield the wine hall: a word he added:'Never to any man erst I trusted,
since I could heave up hand and shield,
this noble Dane-Hall, till now to thee.
Have now and hold this house unpeered;
remember thy glory; thy might declare;
watch for the foe! No wish shall fail thee
if thou bidest the battle with bold-won life.'
THEN Hrothgar went with his hero-train,
defence-of-Scyldings, forth from hall;
fain would the war-lord Wealhtheow seek,
couch of his queen. The King-of-Glory
against this Grendel a guard had set,
so heroes heard, a hall-defender,
who warded the monarch and watched for the monster.
In truth, the Geats' prince gladly trusted
his mettle, his might, the mercy of God!
Cast off then his corselet of iron,
helmet from head; to his henchman gave, choicest of weapons, - the well-chased sword,
bidding him guard the gear of battle.
Spake then his Vaunt the valiant man,
Beowulf Geat, ere the bed be sought:'Of force in fight no feebler I count me,
in grim war-deeds, than Grendel deems him.
Not with the sword, then, to sleep of death
his life will I give, though it lie in my power.
No skill is his to strike against me,
my shield to hew though he hardy be,
bold in battle; we both, this night,
shall spurn the sword, if he seek me here,
unweaponed, for war. Let wisest God,
sacred Lord, on which side soever
doom decree as he deemeth right.'
Reclined then the chieftain, and cheek-pillows held
the head of the earl, while all about him
seamen hardy on hall-beds sank.
63
None of them thought that thence their steps
to the folk and fastness that fostered them,
to the land they loved, would lead them back!
Full well they wist that on warriors many
battle-death seized, in the banquet-hall,
of Danish clan. But comfort and help,
war-weal weaving, to Weder folk
the Master gave, that, by might of one,
over their enemy all prevailed,
by single strength. In sooth 'tis told
that highest God o'er human kind
hath wielded ever! - Thro' wan night striding,
came the walker-in-shadow. Warriors slept
whose hest was to guard the gabled hall, all save one. 'Twas widely known
that against God's will the ghostly ravager
him [1] could not hurl to haunts of darkness;
wakeful, ready, with warrior's wrath,
bold he bided the battle's issue.
XI
THEN from the moorland, by misty crags,
with God's wrath laden, Grendel came.
The monster was minded of mankind now
sundry to seize in the stately house.
Under welkin he walked, till the wine-palace there,
gold-hall of men, he gladly discerned,
flashing with fretwork. Not first time, this,
that he the home of Hrothgar sought, yet ne'er in his life-day, late or early,
such hardy heroes, such hall-thanes, found!
To the house the warrior walked apace,
parted from peace; [1] the portal opended,
though with forged bolts fast, when his fists had
struck it,
and baleful he burst in his blatant rage,
the house's mouth. All hastily, then,
o'er fair-paved floor the fiend trod on,
ireful he strode; there streamed from his eyes
fearful flashes, like flame to see.
He spied in hall the hero-band,
kin and clansmen clustered asleep,
64
hardy liegemen. Then laughed his heart;
for the monster was minded, ere morn should dawn,
savage, to sever the soul of each,
life from body, since lusty banquet
waited his will! But Wyrd forbade him
to seize any more of men on earth
after that evening. Eagerly watched
Hygelac's kinsman his cursed foe,
how he would fare in fell attack.
Not that the monster was minded to pause!
Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior
for the first, and tore him fiercely asunder,
the bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams,
swallowed him piecemeal: swiftly thus
the lifeless corse was clear devoured,
e'en feet and hands. Then farther he hied;
for the hardy hero with hand he grasped,
felt for the foe with fiendish claw,
for the hero reclining, - who clutched it boldly,
prompt to answer, propped on his arm.
Soon then saw that shepherd-of-evils
that never he met in this middle-world,
in the ways of earth, another wight
with heavier hand-gripe; at heart he feared,
sorrowed in soul, - none the sooner escaped!
Fain would he flee, his fastness seek,
the den of devils: no doings now
such as oft he had done in days of old!
Then bethought him the hardy Hygelac-thane
of his boast at evening: up he bounded,
grasped firm his foe, whose fingers cracked.
The fiend made off, but the earl close followed.
The monster meant - if he might at all to fling himself free, and far away
fly to the fens, - knew his fingers' power
in the gripe of the grim one. Gruesome march
to Heorot this monster of harm had made!
Din filled the room; the Danes were bereft,
castle-dwellers and clansmen all,
earls, of their ale. Angry were both
those savage hall-guards: the house resounded.
Wonder it was the wine-hall firm
65
in the strain of their struggle stood, to earth
the fair house fell not; too fast it was
within and without by its iron bands
craftily clamped; though there crashed from sill
many a mead-bench - men have told me gay with gold, where the grim foes wrestled.
So well had weened the wisest Scyldings
that not ever at all might any man
that bone-decked, brave house break asunder,
crush by craft, - unless clasp of fire
in smoke engulfed it. - Again uprose
din redoubled. Danes of the North
with fear and frenzy were filled, each one,
who from the wall that wailing heard,
God's foe sounding his grisly song,
cry of the conquered, clamorous pain
from captive of hell. Too closely held him
he who of men in might was strongest
in that same day of this our life.
XII
NOT in any wise would the earls'-defence [1]
suffer that slaughterous stranger to live,
useless deeming his days and years
to men on earth. Now many an earl
of Beowulf brandished blade ancestral,
fain the life of their lord to shield,
their praised prince, if power were theirs;
never they knew, - as they neared the foe,
hardy-hearted heroes of war,
aiming their swords on every side
the accursed to kill, - no keenest blade,
no farest of falchions fashioned on earth,
could harm or hurt that hideous fiend!
He was safe, by his spells, from sword of battle,
from edge of iron. Yet his end and parting
on that same day of this our life
woful should be, and his wandering soul
far off flit to the fiends' domain.
Soon he found, who in former days,
harmful in heart and hated of God,
on many a man such murder wrought,
66
that the frame of his body failed him now.
For him the keen-souled kinsman of Hygelac
held in hand; hateful alive
was each to other. The outlaw dire
took mortal hurt; a mighty wound
showed on his shoulder, and sinews cracked,
and the bone-frame burst. To Beowulf now
the glory was given, and Grendel thence
death-sick his den in the dark moor sought,
noisome abode: he knew too well
that here was the last of life, an end
of his days on earth. - To all the Danes
by that bloody battle the boon had come.
From ravage had rescued the roving stranger
Hrothgar's hall; the hardy and wise one
had purged it anew. His night-work pleased him,
his deed and its honor. To Eastern Danes
had the valiant Geat his vaunt made good,
all their sorrow and ills assuaged,
their bale of battle borne so long,
and all the dole they erst endured
pain a-plenty. - 'Twas proof of this,
when the hardy-in-fight a hand laid down,
arm and shoulder, - all, indeed,
of Grendel's gripe, - 'neath the gabled roof·
XIII
MANY at morning, as men have told me,
warriors gathered the gift-hall round,
folk-leaders faring from far and near,
o'er wide-stretched ways, the wonder to view,
trace of the traitor. Not troublous seemed
the enemy's end to any man
who saw by the gait of the graceless foe
how the weary-hearted, away from thence,
baffled in battle and banned, his steps
death-marked dragged to the devils' mere.
Bloody the billows were boiling there,
turbid the tide of tumbling waves
horribly seething, with sword-blood hot,
by that doomed one dyed, who in den of the moor
laid forlorn his life adown,
67
his heathen soul,-and hell received it.
Home then rode the hoary clansmen
from that merry journey, and many a youth,
on horses white, the hardy warriors,
back from the mere. Then Beowulf's glory
eager they echoed, and all averred
that from sea to sea, or south or north,
there was no other in earth's domain,
under vault of heaven, more valiant found,
of warriors none more worthy to rule!
(On their lord beloved they laid no slight,
gracious Hrothgar: a good king he!)
From time to time, the tried-in-battle
their gray steeds set to gallop amain,
and ran a race when the road seemed fair.
From time to time, a thane of the king,
who had made many vaunts, and was mindful of verses,
stored with sagas and songs of old,
bound word to word in well-knit rime,
welded his lay; this warrior soon
of Beowulf's quest right cleverly sang,
and artfully added an excellent tale,
in well-ranged words, of the warlike deeds
he had heard in saga of Sigemund.
Strange the story: he said it all, the Waelsing's wanderings wide, his struggles,
which never were told to tribes of men,
the feuds and the frauds, save to Fitela only,
when of these doings he deigned to speak,
uncle to nephew; as ever the twain
stood side by side in stress of war,
and multitude of the monster kind
they had felled with their swords. Of Sigemund
grew,
when he passed from life, no little praise;
for the doughty-in-combat a dragon killed
that herded the hoard: [1] under hoary rock
the atheling dared the deed alone
fearful quest, nor was Fitela there.
Yet so it befell, his falchion pierced
that wondrous worm, - on the wall it struck,
best blade; the dragon died in its blood.
68
Thus had the dread-one by daring achieved
over the ring-hoard to rule at will,
himself to pleasure; a sea-boat he loaded,
and bore on its bosom the beaming gold,
son of Waels; the worm was consumed.
He had of all heroes the highest renown
among races of men, this refuge-of-warriors,
for deeds of daring that decked his name
since the hand and heart of Heremod
grew slack in battle. He, swiftly banished
to mingle with monsters at mercy of foes,
to death was betrayed; for torrents of sorrow
had lamed him too long; a load of care
to earls and athelings all he proved.
Oft indeed, in earlier days,
for the warrior's wayfaring wise men mourned,
who had hoped of him help from harm and bale,
and had thought their sovran's son would thrive,
follow his father, his folk protect,
the hoard and the stronghold, heroes' land,
home of Scyldings. - But here, thanes said,
the kinsman of Hygelac kinder seemed
to all: the other [2] was urged to crime!
And afresh to the race, [3] the fallow roads
by swift steeds measured! The morning sun
was climbing higher. Clansmen hastened
to the high-built hall, those hardy-minded,
the wonder to witness. Warden of treasure,
crowned with glory, the king himself,
with stately band from the bride-bower strode;
and with him the queen and her crowd of maidens
measured the path to the mead-house fair.
XIV
HROTHGAR spake, - to the hall he went,
stood by the steps, the steep roof saw,
garnished with gold, and Grendel's hand:'For the sight I see to the Sovran Ruler
be speedy thanks! A throng of sorrows
I have borne from Grendel; but God still works
wonder on wonder, the Warden-of-Glory.
It was but now that I never more
69
for woes that weighed on me waited help
long as I lived, when, laved in blood,
stood sword-gore-stained this stateliest house, widespread woe for wise men all,
who had no hope to hinder ever
foes infernal and fiendish sprites
from havoc in hall. This hero now,
by the Wielder's might, a work has done
that not all of us erst could ever do
by wile and wisdom. Lo, well can she say
whoso of women this warrior bore
among sons of men, if still she liveth,
that the God of the ages was good to her
in the birth of her bairn. Now, Beowulf, thee,
of heroes best, I shall heartily love
as mine own, my son; preserve thou ever
this kinship new: thou shalt never lack
wealth of the world that I wield as mine!
Full oft for less have I largess showered,
my precious hoard, on a punier man,
less stout in struggle. Thyself hast now
fulfilled such deeds, that thy fame shall endure
through all the ages. As ever he did,
well may the Wielder reward thee still!'
Beowulf spake, bairn of Ecgtheow:'This work of war most willingly
we have fought, this fight, and fearlessly dared
force of the foe. Fain, too, were I
hadst thou but seen himself, what time
the fiend in his trappings tottered to fall!
Swiftly, I thought, in strongest gripe
on his bed of death to bind him down,
that he in the hent of this hand of mine
should breathe his last: but he broke away.
Him I might not - the Maker willed not hinder from flight, and firm enough hold
the life-destroyer: too sturdy was he,
the ruthless, in running! For rescue, however,
he left behind him his hand in pledge,
arm and shoulder; nor aught of help
could the cursed one thus procure at all.
None the longer liveth he, loathsome fiend,
70
sunk in his sins, but sorrow holds him
tightly grasped in gripe of anguish,
in baleful bonds, where bide he must,
evil outlaw, such awful doom
as the Mighty Maker shall mete him out.'
More silent seemed the son of Ecglaf [1]
in boastful speech of his battle-deeds,
since athelings all, through the earl's great prowess,
beheld that hand, on the high roof gazing,
foeman's fingers, - the forepart of each
of the sturdy nails to steel was likest, heathen's 'hand-spear,' hostile warrior's
claw uncanny. 'Twas clear, they said,
that him no blade of the brave could touch,
how keen soever, or cut away
that battle-hand bloody from baneful foe.
XV
THERE was hurry and hest in Heorot now
for hands to bedeck it, and dense was the throng
of men and women the wine-hall to cleanse,
the guest-room to garnish. Gold-gay shone the hangings
that were wove on the wall, and wonders many
to delight each mortal that looks upon them.
Though braced within by iron bands,
that building bright was broken sorely; [1]
rent were its hinges; the roof alone
held safe and sound, when, seared with crime,
the fiendish foe his flight essayed,
of life despairing. - No light thing that,
the flight for safety, - essay it who will!
Forced of fate, he shall find his way
to the refuge ready for race of man,
for soul-possessors, and sons of earth;
and there his body on bed of death
shall rest after revel.
Arrived was the hour
when to hall proceeded Healfdene's son:
the king himself would sit to banquet.
Ne'er heard I of host in haughtier throng
more graciously gathered round giver-of-rings!
Bowed then to bench those bearers-of-glory,
71
fain of the feasting. Featly received
many a mead-cup the mighty-in-spirit,
kinsmen who sat in the sumptuous hall,
Hrothgar and Hrothulf. Heorot now
was filled with friends; the folk of Scyldings
ne'er yet had tried the traitor's deed.
To Beowulf gave the bairn of Healfdene
a gold-wove banner, guerdon of triumph,
broidered battle-flag, breastplate and helmet;
and a splendid sword was seen of many
borne to the brave one. Beowulf took
cup in hall: for such costly gifts
he suffered no shame in that soldier throng.
For I heard of few heroes, in heartier mood,
with four such gifts, so fashioned with gold,
on the ale-bench honoring others thus!
O'er the roof of the helmet high, a ridge,
wound with wires, kept ward o'er the head,
lest the relict-of-files should fierce invade,
sharp in the strife, when that shielded hero
should go to grapple against his foes.
Then the earls'-defence on the floor bade lead
coursers eight, with carven head-gear,
adown the hall: one horse was decked
with a saddle all shining and set in jewels;
'twas the battle-seat of the best of kings,
when to play of swords the son of Healfdene
was fain to fare. Ne'er failed his valor
in the crush of combat when corpses fell.
To Beowulf over them both then gave
the refuge-of-Ingwines right and power,
o'er war-steeds and weapons: wished him joy of them.
Manfully thus the mighty prince,
hoard-guard for heroes, that hard fight repaid
with steeds and treasures contemned by none
who is willing to say the sooth aright.
XVI
AND the lord of earls, to each that came
with Beowulf over the briny ways,
an heirloom there at the ale-bench gave,
precious gift; and the price [] bade pay
72
in gold for him whom Grendel erst
murdered, - and fain of them more had killed,
had not wisest God their Wyrd averted,
and the man's brave mood. The Maker then
ruled human kind, as here and now.
Therefore is insight always best,
and forethought of mind. How much awaits him
of lief and of loath, who long time here,
through days of warfare this world endures!
Then song and music mingled sounds
in the presence of Healfdene's head-of-armies
and harping was heard with the hero-lay
as Hrothgar's singer the hall-joy woke
along the mead-seats, making his song
of that sudden raid on the sons of Finn.
Healfdene's hero, Hnaef the Scylding,
was fated to fall in the Frisian slaughter.
Hildeburh needed not hold in value
her enemies' honor! [6] Innocent both
were the loved ones she lost at the linden-play,
bairn and brother, they bowed to fate,
stricken by spears; 'twas a sorrowful woman!
None doubted why the daughter of Hoc
bewailed her doom when dawning came,
and under the sky she saw them lying,
kinsmen murdered, where most she had kenned
of the sweets of the world! By war were swept, too,
Finn's own liegemen, and few were left;
in the parleying-place he could ply no longer
weapon, nor war could he wage on Hengest,
and rescue his remnant by right of arms
from the prince's thane. A pact he offered:
another dwelling the Danes should have,
hall and high-seat, and half the power
should fall to them in Frisian land;
and at the fee-gifts, Folcwald's son
day by day the Danes should honor,
the folk of Hengest favor with rings,
even as truly, with treasure and jewels,
with fretted gold, as his Frisian kin
he meant to honor in ale-hall there.
Pact of peace they plighted further
73
on both sides firmly. Finn to Hengest
with oath, upon honor, openly promised
that woful remnant, with wise-men's aid,
nobly to govern, so none of the guests
by word or work should warp the treaty,
or with malice of mind bemoan themselves
as forced to follow their fee-giver's slayer,
lordless men, as their lot ordained.
Should Frisian, moreover, with foeman's taunt,
that murderous hatred to mind recall,
then edge of the sword must seal his doom.
Oaths were given, and ancient gold
heaped from hoard. - The hardy Scylding,
battle-thane best, [9] on his balefire lay.
All on the pyre were plain to see
the gory sark, the gilded swine-crest,
boar of hard iron, and athelings many
slain by the sword: at the slaughter they fell.
It was Hildeburh's hest, at Hnaef's own pyre
the bairn of her body on brands to lay,
his bones to burn, on the balefire placed,
at his uncle's side. In sorrowful dirges
bewept them the woman: great wailing ascended.
Then wound up to welkin the wildest of death-fires,
roared o'er the hillock: [10] heads all were melted,
gashes burst, and blood gushed out
from bites [11] of the body. Balefire devoured,
greediest spirit, those spared not by war
out of either folk: their flower was gone.
XVII
THEN hastened those heroes their home to see,
friendless, to find the Frisian land,
houses and high burg. Hengest still
through the death-dyed winter dwelt with Finn,
holding pact, yet of home he minded,
though powerless his ring-decked prow to drive
over the waters, now waves rolled fierce
lashed by the winds, or winter locked them
in icy fetters. Then fared another
year to men's dwellings, as yet they do,
the sunbright skies, that their season ever
74
duly await. Far off winter was driven;
fair lay earth's breast; and fain was the rover,
the guest, to depart, though more gladly he pondered
on wreaking his vengeance than roaming the deep,
and how to hasten the hot encounter
where sons of the Frisians were sure to be.
So he escaped not the common doom,
when Hun with 'Lafing,' the light-of-battle,
best of blades, his bosom pierced:
its edge was famed with the Frisian earls.
On fierce-heart Finn there fell likewise,
on himself at home, the horrid sword-death;
for Guthlaf and Oslaf of grim attack
had sorrowing told, from sea-ways landed,
mourning their woes. [1] Finn's wavering spirit
bode not in breast. The burg was reddened
with blood of foemen, and Finn was slain,
king amid clansmen; the queen was taken.
To their ship the Scylding warriors bore
all the chattels the chieftain owned,
whatever they found in Finn's domain
of gems and jewels. The gentle wife
o'er paths of the deep to the Danes they bore,
led to her land.
The lay was finished,
the gleeman's song. Then glad rose the revel;
bench-joy brightened. Bearers draw
from their 'wonder-vats' wine. Comes Wealhtheow forth,
under gold-crown goes where the good pair sit,
uncle and nephew, true each to the other one,
kindred in amity. Unferth the spokesman
at the Scylding lord's feet sat: men had faith in his Spirit,
his keenness of courage, though kinsmen had found him
unsure at the sword-play. The Scylding queen spoke:
'Quaff of this cup, my king and lord,
breaker of rings, and blithe be thou,
gold-friend of men; to the Geats here speak
such words of mildness as man should use.
Be glad with thy Geats; of those gifts be mindful,
or near or far, which now thou hast.
Men say to me, as son thou wishest
yon hero to hold. Thy Heorot purged,
75
jewel-hall brightest, enjoy while thou canst,
with many a largess; and leave to thy kin
folk and realm when forth thou goest
to greet thy doom. For gracious I deem
my Hrothulf, [2] willing to hold and rule
nobly our youths, if thou yield up first,
prince of Scyldings, thy part in the world.
I ween with good he will well requite
offspring of ours, when all he minds
that for him we did in his helpless days
of gift and grace to gain him honor!'
Then she turned to the seat where her sons were placed,
Hrethric and Hrothmund, with heroes' bairns,
young men together: the Geat, too, sat there,
Beowulf brave, the brothers between.
XVIII
A CUP she gave him, with kindly greeting
and winsome words. Of wounden gold,
she offered, to honor him, arm-jewels twain,
corselet and rings, and of collars the noblest
that ever I knew the earth around.
Ne'er heard I so mighty, 'neath heaven's dome,
a hoard-gem of heroes, since Hama bore
to his bright-built burg the Brisings' necklace,
jewel and gem casket. - Jealousy fled he,
Eormenric's hate: chose help eternal.
Hygelac Geat, grandson of Swerting,
on the last of his raids this ring bore with him,
under his banner the booty defending,
the war-spoil warding; but Wyrd o'erwhelmed him
what time, in his daring, dangers he sought,
feud with Frisians. Fairest of gems
he bore with him over the beaker-of-waves,
sovran strong: under shield he died.
Fell the corpse of the king into keeping of Franks,
gear of the breast, and that gorgeous ring;
weaker warriors won the spoil,
after gripe of battle, from Geatland's lord,
and held the death-field.
Din rose in hall.
Wealhtheow spake amid warriors, and said:-
76
'This jewel enjoy in thy jocund youth,
Beowulf lov'd, these battle-weeds wear,
a royal treasure, and richly thrive!
Preserve thy strength, and these striplings here
counsel in kindness: requital be mine.
Hast done such deeds, that for days to come
thou art famed among folk both far and near,
so wide as washeth the wave of Ocean
his windy walls. Through the ways of life
prosper, O prince! I pray for thee
rich possessions. To son of mine
be helpful in deed and uphold his joys!
Here every earl to the other is true,
mild of mood, to the master loyal!
Thanes are friendly, the throng obedient,
liegemen are revelling: list and obey!'
Went then to her place.-That was proudest of feasts;
flowed wine for the warriors. Wyrd they knew not,
destiny dire, and the doom to be seen
by many an earl when eve should come,
and Hrothgar homeward hasten away,
royal, to rest. The room was guarded
by an army of earls, as erst was done.
They bared the bench-boards; abroad they spread
beds and bolsters. - One beer-carouser
in danger of doom lay down in the hall. At their heads they set their shields of war,
bucklers bright; on the bench were there
over each atheling, easy to see,
the high battle-helmet, the haughty spear,
the corselet of rings. 'Twas their custom so
ever to be for battle prepared,
at home, or harrying, which it were,
even as oft as evil threatened
their sovran king. - They were clansmen good.
XIX
THEN sank they to sleep. With sorrow one bought
his rest of the evening, - as ofttime had happened
when Grendel guarded that golden hall,
evil wrought, till his end drew nigh,
slaughter for sins. 'Twas seen and told
77
how an avenger survived the fiend,
as was learned afar. The livelong time
after that grim fight, Grendel's mother,
monster of women, mourned her woe.
She was doomed to dwell in the dreary waters,
cold sea-courses, since Cain cut down
with edge of the sword his only brother,
his father's offspring: outlawed he fled,
marked with murder, from men's delights
warded the wilds. - There woke from him
such fate-sent ghosts as Grendel, who,
war-wolf horrid, at Heorot found
a warrior watching and waiting the fray,
with whom the grisly one grappled amain.
But the man remembered his mighty power,
the glorious gift that God had sent him,
in his Maker's mercy put his trust
for comfort and help: so he conquered the foe,
felled the fiend, who fled abject,
reft of joy, to the realms of death,
mankind's foe. And his mother now,
gloomy and grim, would go that quest
of sorrow, the death of her son to avenge.
To Heorot came she, where helmeted Danes
slept in the hall. Too soon came back
old ills of the earls, when in she burst,
the mother of Grendel. Less grim, though, that terror,
e'en as terror of woman in war is less,
might of maid, than of men in arms
when, hammer-forged, the falchion hard,
sword gore-stained, through swine of the helm,
crested, with keen blade carves amain.
Then was in hall the hard-edge drawn,
the swords on the settles, [1] and shields a-many
firm held in hand: nor helmet minded
nor harness of mail, whom that horror seized.
Haste was hers; she would hie afar
and save her life when the liegemen saw her.
Yet a single atheling up she seized
fast and firm, as she fled to the moor.
He was for Hrothgar of heroes the dearest,
of trusty vassals betwixt the seas,
78
whom she killed on his couch, a clansman famous,
in battle brave. - Nor was Beowulf there;
another house had been held apart,
after giving of gold, for the Geat renowned. Uproar filled Heorot; the hand all had viewed,
blood-flecked, she bore with her; bale was returned,
dole in the dwellings: 'twas dire exchange
where Dane and Geat were doomed to give
the lives of loved ones. Long-tried king,
the hoary hero, at heart was sad
when he knew his noble no more lived,
and dead indeed was his dearest thane.
To his bower was Beowulf brought in haste,
dauntless victor. As daylight broke,
along with his earls the atheling lord,
with his clansmen, came where the king abode
waiting to see if the Wielder-of-All
would turn this tale of trouble and woe.
Strode o'er floor the famed-in-strife,
with his hand-companions, - the hall resounded, wishing to greet the wise old king,
Ingwines' lord; he asked if the night
had passed in peace to the prince's mind.
XX
HROTHGAR spake, helmet-of-Scyldings:'Ask not of pleasure! Pain is renewed
to Danish folk. Dead is Aeschere,
of Yrmenlaf the elder brother,
my sage adviser and stay in council,
shoulder-comrade in stress of fight
when warriors clashed and we warded our heads,
hewed the helm-boars; hero famed
should be every earl as Aeschere was!
But here in Heorot a hand hath slain him
of wandering death-sprite. I wot not whither,
proud of the prey, her path she took,
fain of her fill. The feud she avenged
that yesternight, unyieldingly,
Grendel in grimmest grasp thou killedst, seeing how long these liegemen mine
he ruined and ravaged. Reft of life,
79
in arms he fell. Now another comes,
keen and cruel, her kin to avenge,
faring far in feud of blood:
so that many a thane shall think, who e'er
sorrows in soul for that sharer of rings,
this is hardest of heart-bales. The hand lies low
that once was willing each wish to please.
Land-dwellers here [2] and liegemen mine,
who house by those parts, I have heard relate
that such a pair they have sometimes seen,
march-stalkers mighty the moorland haunting,
wandering spirits: one of them seemed,
so far as my folk could fairly judge,
of womankind; and one, accursed,
in man's guise trod the misery-track
of exile, though huger than human bulk.
Grendel in days long gone they named him,
folk of the land; his father they knew not,
nor any brood that was born to him
of treacherous spirits. Untrod is their home;
by wolf-cliffs haunt they and windy headlands,
fenways fearful, where flows the stream
from mountains gliding to gloom of the rocks,
underground flood. Not far is it hence
in measure of miles that the mere expands,
and o'er it the frost-bound forest hanging,
sturdily rooted, shadows the wave.
By night is a wonder weird to see,
fire on the waters. So wise lived none
of the sons of men, to search those depths!
Nay, though the heath-rover, harried by dogs,
the horn-proud hart, this holt should seek,
long distance driven, his dear life first
on the brink he yields ere he brave the plunge
to hide his head: 'tis no happy place!
Thence the welter of waters washes up
wan to welkin when winds bestir
evil storms, and air grows dusk,
and the heavens weep. Now is help once more
with thee alone! The land thou knowst not,
place of fear, where thou findest out
that sin-flecked being. Seek if thou dare!
80
I will reward thee, for waging this fight,
with ancient treasure, as erst I did,
with winding gold, if thou winnest back.'
XXI
BEOWULF spake, bairn of Ecgtheow:
'Sorrow not, sage! It beseems us better
friends to avenge than fruitlessly mourn them.
Each of us all must his end abide
in the ways of the world; so win who may
glory ere death! When his days are told,
that is the warrior's worthiest doom.
Rise, O realm-warder! Ride we anon,
and mark the trail of the mother of Grendel.
No harbor shall hide her - heed my promise! enfolding of field or forested mountain
or floor of the flood, let her flee where she will!
But thou this day endure in patience,
as I ween thou wilt, thy woes each one.'
Leaped up the graybeard: God he thanked,
mighty Lord, for the man's brave words.
For Hrothgar soon a horse was saddled
wave-maned steed. The sovran wise
stately rode on; his shield-armed men
followed in force. The footprints led
along the woodland, widely seen,
a path o'er the plain, where she passed, and trod
the murky moor; of men-at-arms
she bore the bravest and best one, dead,
him who with Hrothgar the homestead ruled.
On then went the atheling-born
o'er stone-cliffs steep and strait defiles,
narrow passes and unknown ways,
headlands sheer, and the haunts of the Nicors.
Foremost he [1] fared, a few at his side
of the wiser men, the ways to scan,
till he found in a flash the forested hill
hanging over the hoary rock,
a woful wood: the waves below
were dyed in blood. The Danish men
had sorrow of soul, and for Scyldings all,
for many a hero, 'twas hard to bear,
81
ill for earls, when Aeschere's head
they found by the flood on the foreland there.
Waves were welling, the warriors saw,
hot with blood; but the horn sang oft
battle-song bold. The band sat down,
and watched on the water worm-like things,
sea-dragons strange that sounded the deep,
and nicors that lay on the ledge of the ness such as oft essay at hour of morn
on the road-of-sails their ruthless quest, and sea-snakes and monsters. These started away,
swollen and savage that song to hear,
that war-horn's blast. The warden of Geats,
with bolt from bow, then balked of life,
of wave-work, one monster, amid its heart
went the keen war-shaft; in water it seemed
less doughty in swimming whom death had seized.
Swift on the billows, with boar-spears well
hooked and barbed, it was hard beset,
done to death and dragged on the headland,
wave-roamer wondrous. Warriors viewed the grisly guest.
Then girt him Beowulf
in martial mail, nor mourned for his life.
His breastplate broad and bright of hues,
woven by hand, should the waters try;
well could it ward the warrior's body
that battle should break on his breast in vain
nor harm his heart by the hand of a foe.
And the helmet white that his head protected
was destined to dare the deeps of the flood,
through wave-whirl win: 'twas wound with chains,
decked with gold, as in days of yore
the weapon-smith worked it wondrously,
with swine-forms set it, that swords nowise,
brandished in battle, could bite that helm.
Nor was that the meanest of mighty helps
which Hrothgar's orator offered at need:
'Hrunting' they named the hilted sword,
of old-time heirlooms easily first;
iron was its edge, all etched with poison,
with battle-blood hardened, nor blenched it at fight
in hero's hand who held it ever,
82
on paths of peril prepared to go
to folkstead [2] of foes. Not first time this
it was destined to do a daring task.
For he bore not in mind, the bairn of Ecglaf
sturdy and strong, that speech he had made,
drunk with wine, now this weapon he lent
to a stouter swordsman. Himself, though, durst not
under welter of waters wager his life
as loyal liegeman. So lost he his glory,
honor of earls. With the other not so,
who girded him now for the grim encounter.
XXII
BEOWULF spake, bairn of Ecgtheow:'Have mind, thou honored offspring of Healfdene
gold-friend of men, now I go on this quest,
sovran wise, what once was said:
if in thy cause it came that I
should lose my life, thou wouldst loyal bide
to me, though fallen, in father's place!
Be guardian, thou, to this group of my thanes,
my warrior-friends, if War should seize me;
and the goodly gifts thou gavest me,
Hrothgar beloved, to Hygelac send!
Geatland's king may ken by the gold,
Hrethel's son see, when he stares at the treasure,
that I got me a friend for goodness famed,
and joyed while I could in my jewel-bestower.
And let Unferth wield this wondrous sword,
earl far-honored, this heirloom precious,
hard of edge: with Hrunting I
seek doom of glory, or Death shall take me.'
After these words the Weder-Geat lord
boldly hastened, biding never
answer at all: the ocean floods
closed o'er the hero. Long while of the day
fled ere he felt the floor of the sea.
Soon found the fiend who the flood-domain
sword-hungry held these hundred winters,
greedy and grim, that some guest from above,
some man, was raiding her monster-realm.
She grasped out for him with grisly claws,
83
and the warrior seized; yet scathed she not
his body hale; the breastplate hindered,
as she strove to shatter the sark of war,
the linked harness, with loathsome hand.
Then bore this brine-wolf, when bottom she touched,
the lord of rings to the lair she haunted
whiles vainly he strove, though his valor held,
weapon to wield against wondrous monsters
that sore beset him; sea-beasts many
tried with fierce tusks to tear his mail,
and swarmed on the stranger. But soon he marked
he was now in some hall, he knew not which,
where water never could work him harm,
nor through the roof could reach him ever
fangs of the flood. Firelight he saw,
beams of a blaze that brightly shone.
Then the warrior was ware of that wolf-of-the-deep,
mere-wife monstrous. For mighty stroke
he swung his blade, and the blow withheld not.
Then sang on her head that seemly blade
its war-song wild. But the warrior found
the light-of-battle [1] was loath to bite,
to harm the heart: its hard edge failed
the noble at need, yet had known of old
strife hand to hand, and had helmets cloven,
doomed men's fighting-gear. First time, this,
for the gleaming blade that its glory fell.
Firm still stood, nor failed in valor,
heedful of high deeds, Hygelac's kinsman;
flung away fretted sword, featly jewelled,
the angry earl; on earth it lay
steel-edged and stiff. His strength he trusted,
hand-gripe of might. So man shall do
whenever in war he weens to earn him
lasting fame, nor fears for his life!
Seized then by shoulder, shrank not from combat,
the Geatish war-prince Grendel's mother.
Flung then the fierce one, filled with wrath,
his deadly foe, that she fell to ground.
Swift on her part she paid him back
with grisly grasp, and grappled with him.
Spent with struggle, stumbled the warrior,
84
fiercest of fighting-men, fell adown.
On the hall-guest she hurled herself,
hent her short sword,
broad and brown-edged, the bairn to avenge,
the sole-born son. - On his shoulder lay
braided breast-mail, barring death,
withstanding entrance of edge or blade.
Life would have ended for Ecgtheow's son,
under wide earth for that earl of Geats,
had his armor of war not aided him,
battle-net hard, and holy God
wielded the victory, wisest Maker.
The Lord of Heaven allowed his cause;
and easily rose the earl erect.
XXIII
'MID the battle-gear saw he a blade triumphant,
old-sword of Eotens, with edge of proof,
warriors' heirloom, weapon unmatched,
- save only 'twas more than other men
to bandy-of-battle could bear at all as the giants had wrought it, ready and keen.
Seized then its chain-hilt the Scyldings' chieftain,
bold and battle-grim, brandished the sword,
reckless of life, and so wrathfully smote
that it gripped her neck and grasped her hard,
her bone-rings breaking: the blade pierced through
that fated-one's flesh: to floor she sank.
Bloody the blade: he was blithe of his deed.
Then blazed forth light. 'Twas bright within
as when from the sky there shines unclouded
heaven's candle. The hall he scanned.
By the wall then went he; his weapon raised
high by its hilts the Hygelac-thane,
angry and eager. That edge was not useless
to the warrior now. He wished with speed
Grendel to guerdon for grim raids many,
for the war he waged on Western-Danes
oftener far than an only time,
when of Hrothgar's hearth-companions
he slew in slumber, in sleep devoured,
fifteen men of the folk of Danes,
85
and as many others outward bore,
his horrible prey. Well paid for that
the wrathful prince! For now prone he saw
Grendel stretched there, spent with war,
spoiled of life, so scathed had left him
Heorot's battle. The body sprang far
when after death it endured the blow,
sword-stroke savage, that severed its head.
Soon, [1] then, saw the sage companions
who waited with Hrothgar, watching the flood,
that the tossing waters turbid grew,
blood-stained the mere. Old men together,
hoary-haired, of the hero spake;
the warrior would not, they weened, again,
proud of conquest, come to seek
their mighty master. To many it seemed
the wolf-of-the-waves had won his life.
The ninth hour came. The noble Scyldings
left the headland; homeward went
the gold-friend of men. [2] But the guests sat on,
stared at the surges, sick in heart,
and wished, yet weened not, their winsome lord
again to see.
Now that sword began,
from blood of the fight, in battle-droppings,
war-blade, to wane: 'twas a wondrous thing
that all of it melted as ice is wont
when frosty fetters the Father loosens,
unwinds the wave-bonds, wielding all
seasons and times: the true God he!
Nor took from that dwelling the duke of the Geats
precious things, though a plenty he saw,
save only the head and that hilt withal
blazoned with jewels: the blade had melted,
burned was the bright sword, her blood was so hot,
so poisoned the hell-sprite who perished within there.
Soon he was swimming who safe saw in combat
downfall of demons; up-dove through the flood.
The clashing waters were cleansed now,
waste of waves, where the wandering fiend
her life-days left and this lapsing world.
Swam then to strand the sailors'-refuge,
86
sturdy-in-spirit, of sea-booty glad,
of burden brave he bore with him.
Went then to greet him, and God they thanked,
the thane-band choice of their chieftain blithe,
that safe and sound they could see him again.
Soon from the hardy one helmet and armor
deftly they doffed: now drowsed the mere,
water 'neath welkin, with war-blood stained.
Forth they fared by the footpaths thence,
merry at heart the highways measured,
well-known roads. Courageous men
carried the head from the cliff by the sea,
an arduous task for all the band,
the firm in fight, since four were needed
on the shaft-of-slaughter [4] strenuously
to bear to the gold-hall Grendel's head.
So presently to the palace there
foemen fearless, fourteen Geats,
marching came. Their master-of-clan
mighty amid them the meadow-ways trod.
Strode then within the sovran thane
fearless in fight, of fame renowned,
hardy hero, Hrothgar to greet.
And next by the hair into hall was borne
Grendel's head, where the henchmen were drinking,
an awe to clan and queen alike,
a monster of marvel: the men looked on.
XXIV
BEOWULF spake, bairn of Ecgtheow:'Lo, now, this sea-booty, son of Healfdene,
Lord of Scyldings, we've lustily brought thee,
sign of glory; thou seest it here.
Not lightly did I with my life escape!
In war under water this work I essayed
with endless effort; and even so
my strength had been lost had the Lord not shielded me.
Not a whit could I with Hrunting do
in work of war, though the weapon is good;
yet a sword the Sovran of Men vouchsafed me
to spy on the wall there, in splendor hanging,
old, gigantic, - how oft He guides
87
the friendless wight! - and I fought with that brand,
felling in fight, since fate was with me,
the house's wardens. That war-sword then all burned, bright blade, when the
blood gushed o'er it,
battle-sweat hot; but the hilt I brought back
from my foes. So avenged I their fiendish deeds
death-fall of Danes, as was due and right.
And this is my hest, that in Heorot now
safe thou canst sleep with thy soldier band,
and every thane of all thy folk
both old and young; no evil fear,
Scyldings' lord, from that side again,
aught ill for thy earls, as erst thou must!'
Then the golden hilt, for that gray-haired leader,
hoary hero, in hand was laid,
giant-wrought, old. So owned and enjoyed it
after downfall of devils, the Danish lord,
wonder-smiths' work, since the world was rid
of that grim-souled fiend, the foe of God,
murder-marked, and his mother as well.
Now it passed into power of the people's king,
best of all that the oceans bound
who have scattered their gold o'er Scandia's isle.
Hrothgar spake - the hilt he viewed,
heirloom old, where was etched the rise
of that far-off fight when the floods o'erwhelmed,
raging waves, the race of giants
(fearful their fate!), a folk estranged
from God Eternal: whence guerdon due
in that waste of waters the Wielder paid them.
So on the guard of shining gold
in runic staves it was rightly said
for whom the serpent-traced sword was wrought,
best of blades, in bygone days,
and the hilt well wound. - The wise-one spake,
son of Healfdene; silent were all:'Lo, so may he say who sooth and right
follows 'mid folk, of far times mindful,
a land-warden old, [1] that this earl belongs
to the better breed! So, borne aloft,
thy fame must fly, O friend my Beowulf,
far and wide o'er folksteads many. Firmly thou
88
shalt all maintain,
mighty strength with mood of wisdom. Love of
mine will I assure thee,
as, awhile ago, I promised;
thou shalt prove a stay in future,
in far-off years, to folk of thine,
to the heroes a help. Was not Heremod thus
to offspring of Ecgwela, Honor-Scyldings,
nor grew for their grace, but for grisly slaughter,
for doom of death to the Danishmen.
He slew, wrath-swollen, his shoulder-comrades,
companions at board! So he passed alone,
chieftain haughty, from human cheer.
Though him the Maker with might endowed,
delights of power, and uplifted high
above all men, yet blood-fierce his mind,
his breast-hoard, grew, no bracelets gave he
to Danes as was due; he endured all joyless
strain of struggle and stress of woe,
long feud with his folk. Here find thy lesson!
Of virtue advise thee! This verse I have said for thee,
wise from lapsed winters. Wondrous seems
how to sons of men Almighty God
in the strength of His spirit sendeth wisdom,
estate, high station: He swayeth all things.
Whiles He letteth right lustily fare
the heart of the hero of high-born race, in seat ancestral assigns him bliss,
his folk's sure fortress in fee to hold,
puts in his power great parts of the earth,
empire so ample, that end of it
this wanter-of-wisdom weeneth none.
So he waxes in wealth, nowise can harm him
illness or age; no evil cares
shadow his spirit; no sword-hate threatens
from ever an enemy: all the world
wends at his will, no worse he knoweth,
till all within him obstinate pride
waxes and wakes while the warden slumbers,
the spirit's sentry; sleep is too fast
which masters his might, and the murderer nears,
stealthily shooting the shafts from his bow!
89
XXV
'UNDER harness his heart then is hit indeed
by sharpest shafts; and no shelter avails
from foul behest of the hellish fiend.
Him seems too little what long he possessed.
Greedy and grim, no golden rings
he gives for his pride; the promised future
forgets he and spurns, with all God has sent him,
Wonder-Wielder, of wealth and fame.
Yet in the end it ever comes
that the frame of the body fragile yields,
fated falls; and there follows another
who joyously the jewels divides,
the royal riches, nor recks of his forebear.
Ban, then, such baleful thoughts, Beowulf dearest,
best of men, and the better part choose,
profit eternal; and temper thy pride,
warrior famous! The flower of thy might
lasts now a while: but erelong it shall be
that sickness or sword thy strength shall minish,
or fang of fire, or flooding billow,
or bite of blade, or brandished spear,
or odious age; or the eyes' clear beam
wax dull and darken: Death even thee
in haste shall o'erwhelm, thou hero of war!
So the Ring-Danes these half-years a hundred I ruled,
wielded 'neath welkin, and warded them bravely
from mighty-ones many o'er middle-earth,
from spear and sword, till it seemed for me
no foe could be found under fold of the sky.
Lo, sudden the shift! To me seated secure
came grief for joy when Grendel began
to harry my home, the hellish foe;
for those ruthless raids, unresting I suffered
heart-sorrow heavy. Heaven be thanked,
Lord Eternal, for life extended
that I on this head all hewn and bloody,
after long evil, with eyes may gaze!
- Go to the bench now! Be glad at banquet,
warrior worthy! A wealth of treasure
at dawn of day, be dealt between us!'
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Glad was the Geats' lord, going betimes
to seek his seat, as the Sage commanded.
Afresh, as before, for the famed-in-battle,
for the band of the hall, was a banquet dight
nobly anew. The Night-Helm darkened
dusk o'er the drinkers.
The doughty ones rose:
for the hoary-headed would hasten to rest,
aged Scylding; and eager the Geat,
shield-fighter sturdy, for sleeping yearned.
Him wander-weary, warrior-guest
from far, a hall-thane heralded forth,
who by custom courtly cared for all
needs of a thane as in those old days
warrior-wanderers wont to have.
So slumbered the stout-heart. Stately the hall
rose gabled and gilt where the guest slept on
till a raven black the rapture-of-heaven [2]
blithe-heart boded. Bright came flying
shine after shadow. The swordsmen hastened,
athelings all were eager homeward
forth to fare; and far from thence
the great-hearted guest would guide his keel.
Bade then the hardy-one Hrunting be brought
to the son of Ecglaf, the sword bade him take,
excellent iron, and uttered his thanks for it,
quoth that he counted it keen in battle,
'war-friend' winsome: with words he slandered not
edge of the blade: 'twas a big-hearted man!
Now eager for parting and armed at point
warriors waited, while went to his host
that Darling of Danes. The doughty atheling
to high-seat hastened and Hrothgar greeted.
XXVI
BEOWULF spake, bairn of Ecgtheow:'Lo, we seafarers say our will,
far-come men, that we fain would seek
Hygelac now. We here have found
hosts to our heart: thou hast harbored us well.
If ever on earth I am able to win me
more of thy love, O lord of men,
91
aught anew, than I now have done,
for work of war I am willing still!
If it come to me ever across the seas
that neighbor foemen annoy and fright thee, as they that hate thee erewhile have used, thousands then of thanes I shall bring,
heroes to help thee. Of Hygelac I know,
ward of his folk, that, though few his years,
the lord of the Geats will give me aid
by word and by work, that well I may serve thee,
wielding the war-wood to win thy triumph
and lending thee might when thou lackest men.
If thy Hrethric should come to court of Geats,
a sovran's son, he will surely there
find his friends. A far-off land
each man should visit who vaunts him brave.'
Him then answering, Hrothgar spake:'These words of thine the wisest God
sent to thy soul! No sager counsel
from so young in years e'er yet have I heard.
Thou art strong of main and in mind art wary,
art wise in words! I ween indeed
if ever it hap that Hrethel's heir
by spear be seized, by sword-grim battle,
by illness or iron, thine elder and lord,
people's leader, - and life be thine, no seemlier man will the Sea-Geats find
at all to choose for their chief and king,
for hoard-guard of heroes, if hold thou wilt
thy kinsman's kingdom! Thy keen mind pleases me
the longer the better, Beowulf loved!
Thou hast brought it about that both our peoples,
sons of the Geat and Spear-Dane folk,
shall have mutual peace, and from murderous strife,
such as once they waged, from war refrain.
Long as I rule this realm so wide,
let our hoards be common, let heroes with gold
each other greet o'er the gannet's-bath,
and the ringed-prow bear o'er rolling waves
tokens of love. I trow my landfolk
towards friend and foe are firmly joined,
and honor they keep in the olden way.'
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To him in the hall, then, Healfdene's son
gave treasures twelve, and the trust-of-earls
bade him fare with the gifts to his folk beloved,
hale to his home, and in haste return.
Then kissed the king of kin renowned,
Scyldings' chieftain, that choicest thane,
and fell on his neck. Fast flowed the tears
of the hoary-headed. Heavy with winters,
he had chances twain, but he clung to this, [1] that each should look on the other again,
and hear him in hall. Was this hero so dear to him.
his breast's wild billows he banned in vain;
safe in his soul a secret longing,
locked in his mind, for that loved man
burned in his blood. Then Beowulf strode,
glad of his gold-gifts, the grass-plot o'er,
warrior blithe. The wave-roamer bode
riding at anchor, its owner awaiting.
As they hastened onward, Hrothgar's gift
they lauded at length. - 'Twas a lord unpeered,
every way blameless, till age had broken
- it spareth no mortal - his splendid might.
XXVII
CAME now to ocean the ever-courageous
hardy henchmen, their harness bearing,
woven war-sarks. The warden marked,
trusty as ever, the earl's return.
From the height of the hill no hostile words
reached the guests as he rode to greet them;
but 'Welcome!' he called to that Weder clan
as the sheen-mailed spoilers to ship marched on.
Then on the strand, with steeds and treasure
and armor their roomy and ring-dight ship
was heavily laden: high its mast
rose over Hrothgar's hoarded gems.
A sword to the boat-guard Beowulf gave,
mounted with gold; on the mead-bench since
he was better esteemed, that blade possessing,
heirloom old. - Their ocean-keel boarding,
they drove through the deep, and Daneland left.
A sea-cloth was set, a sail with ropes,
93
firm to the mast; the flood-timbers moaned;
nor did wind over billows that wave-swimmer blow
across from her course. The craft sped on,
foam-necked it floated forth o'er the waves,
keel firm-bound over briny currents,
till they got them sight of the Geatish cliffs,
home-known headlands. High the boat,
stirred by winds, on the strand updrove.
Helpful at haven the harbor-guard stood,
who long already for loved companions
by the water had waited and watched afar.
He bound to the beach the broad-bosomed ship
with anchor-bands, lest ocean-billows
that trusty timber should tear away.
Then Beowulf bade them bear the treasure,
gold and jewels; no journey far
was it thence to go to the giver of rings,
Hygelac Hrethling: at home he dwelt
by the sea-wall close, himself and clan.
Haughty that house, a hero the king,
high the hall, and Hygd right young,
wise and wary, though winters few
in those fortress walls she had found a home,
Haereth's daughter. Nor humble her ways,
nor grudged she gifts to the Geatish men,
of precious treasure. Not Thryth's pride showed she,
folk-queen famed, or that fell deceit.
Was none so daring that durst make bold
(save her lord alone) of the liegemen dear
that lady full in the face to look,
but forged fetters he found his lot,
bonds of death! And brief the respite;
soon as they seized him, his sword-doom was spoken,
and the burnished blade a baleful murder
proclaimed and closed. No queenly way
for woman to practise, though peerless she,
that the weaver-of-peace [3] from warrior dear
by wrath and lying his life should reave!
But Hemming's kinsman hindered this. For over their ale men also told
that of these folk-horrors fewer she wrought,
onslaughts of evil, after she went,
94
gold-decked bride, to the brave young prince,
atheling haughty, and Offa's hall
o'er the fallow flood at her father's bidding
safely sought, where since she prospered,
royal, throned, rich in goods,
fain of the fair life fate had sent her,
and leal in love to the lord of warriors.
He, of all heroes I heard of ever
from sea to sea, of the sons of earth,
most excellent seemed. Hence Offa was praised
for his fighting and feeing by far-off men,
the spear-bold warrior; wisely he ruled
over his empire. Eomer woke to him,
help of heroes, Hemming's kinsman,
Grandson of Garmund, grim in war.
XXVIII
HASTENED the hardy one, henchmen with him,
sandy strand of the sea to tread
and widespread ways. The world's great candle,
sun shone from south. They strode along
with sturdy steps to the spot they knew
where the battle-king young, his burg within,
slayer of Ongentheow, shared the rings,
shelter-of-heroes. To Hygelac
Beowulf's coming was quickly told, that there in the court the clansmen's refuge,
the shield-companion sound and alive,
hale from the hero-play homeward strode.
With haste in the hall, by highest order,
room for the rovers was readily made.
By his sovran he sat, come safe from battle,
kinsman by kinsman. His kindly lord
he first had greeted in gracious form,
with manly words. The mead dispensing,
came through the high hall Haereth's daughter,
winsome to warriors, wine-cup bore
to the hands of the heroes. Hygelac then
his comrade fairly with question plied
in the lofty hall, sore longing to know
what manner of sojourn the Sea-Geats made.
'What came of thy quest, my kinsman Beowulf,
95
when thy yearnings suddenly swept thee yonder
battle to seek o'er the briny sea,
combat in Heorot? Hrothgar couldst thou
aid at all, the honored chief,
in his wide-known woes? With waves of care
my sad heart seethed; I sore mistrusted
my loved one's venture: long I begged thee
by no means to seek that slaughtering monster,
but suffer the South-Danes to settle their feud
themselves with Grendel. Now God be thanked
that safe and sound I can see thee now!'
Beowulf spake, the bairn of Ecgtheow:''Tis known and unhidden, Hygelac Lord,
to many men, that meeting of ours,
struggle grim between Grendel and me,
which we fought on the field where full too many
sorrows he wrought for the Scylding-Victors,
evils unending. These all I avenged.
No boast can be from breed of Grendel,
any on earth, for that uproar at dawn,
from the longest-lived of the loathsome race
in fleshly fold! - But first I went
Hrothgar to greet in the hall of gifts,
where Healfdene's kinsman high-renowned,
soon as my purpose was plain to him,
assigned me a seat by his son and heir.
The liegemen were lusty; my life-days never
such merry men over mead in hall
have I heard under heaven! The high-born queen,
people's peace-bringer, passed through the hall,
cheered the young clansmen, clasps of gold,
ere she sought her seat, to sundry gave.
Oft to the heroes Hrothgar's daughter,
to earls in turn, the ale-cup tendered, she whom I heard these hall-companions
Freawaru name, when fretted gold
she proffered the warriors. Promised is she,
gold-decked maid, to the glad son of Froda.
Sage this seems to the Scylding's-friend,
kingdom's-keeper: he counts it wise
the woman to wed so and ward off feud,
store of slaughter. But seldom ever
96
when men are slain, does the murder-spear sink
but briefest while, though the bride be fair! [1]
'Nor haply will like it the Heathobard lord,
and as little each of his liegemen all,
when a thane of the Danes, in that doughty throng,
goes with the lady along their hall,
and on him the old-time heirlooms glisten
hard and ring-decked, Heathobard's treasure,
weapons that once they wielded fair
until they lost at the linden-play [2]
liegeman leal and their lives as well.
Then, over the ale, on this heirloom gazing,
some ash-wielder old who has all in mind
that spear-death of men, [3] - he is stern of mood,
heavy at heart, - in the hero young
tests the temper and tries the soul
and war-hate wakens, with words like these:_Canst thou not, comrade, ken that sword
which to the fray thy father carried
in his final feud, 'neath the fighting-mask,
dearest of blades, when the Danish slew him
and wielded the war-place on Withergild's fall,
after havoc of heroes, those hardy Scyldings?
Now, the son of a certain slaughtering Dane,
proud of his treasure, paces this hall,
joys in the killing, and carries the jewel [4]
that rightfully ought to be owned by thee!_
Thus he urges and eggs him all the time
with keenest words, till occasion offers
that Freawaru's thane, for his father's deed,
after bite of brand in his blood must slumber,
losing his life; but that liegeman flies
living away, for the land he kens.
And thus be broken on both their sides
oaths of the earls, when Ingeld's breast
wells with war-hate, and wife-love now
after the care-billows cooler grows.
'So [5] I hold not high the Heathobards' faith
due to the Danes, or their during love
and pact of peace. - But I pass from that,
turning to Grendel, O giver-of-treasure,
and saying in full how the fight resulted,
97
hand-fray of heroes. When heaven's jewel
had fled o'er far fields, that fierce sprite came,
night-foe savage, to seek us out
where safe and sound we sentried the hall.
To Hondscio then was that harassing deadly,
his fall there was fated. He first was slain,
girded warrior. Grendel on him
turned murderous mouth, on our mighty kinsman,
and all of the brave man's body devoured.
Yet none the earlier, empty-handed,
would the bloody-toothed murderer, mindful of bale,
outward go from the gold-decked hall:
but me he attacked in his terror of might,
with greedy hand grasped me. A glove hung by him [6]
wide and wondrous, wound with bands;
and in artful wise it all was wrought,
by devilish craft, of dragon-skins.
Me therein, an innocent man,
the fiendish foe was fain to thrust
with many another. He might not so,
when I all angrily upright stood.
'Twere long to relate how that land-destroyer
I paid in kind for his cruel deeds;
yet there, my prince, this people of thine
got fame by my fighting. He fled away,
and a little space his life preserved;
but there staid behind him his stronger hand
left in Heorot; heartsick thence
on the floor of the ocean that outcast fell.
Me for this struggle the Scyldings'-friend
paid in plenty with plates of gold,
with many a treasure, when morn had come
and we all at the banquet-board sat down.
Then was song and glee. The gray-haired Scylding,
much tested, told of the times of yore.
Whiles the hero his harp bestirred,
wood-of-delight; now lays he chanted
of sooth and sadness, or said aright
legends of wonder, the wide-hearted king;
or for years of his youth he would yearn at times,
for strength of old struggles, now stricken with age,
hoary hero: his heart surged full
98
when, wise with winters, he wailed their flight.
Thus in the hall the whole of that day
at ease we feasted, till fell o'er earth
another night. Anon full ready
in greed of vengeance, Grendel's mother
set forth all doleful. Dead was her son
through war-hate of Weders; now, woman monstrous
with fury fell a foeman she slew,
avenged her offspring. From Aeschere old,
loyal councillor, life was gone;
nor might they e'en, when morning broke,
those Danish people, their death-done comrade
burn with brands, on balefire lay
the man they mourned. Under mountain stream
she had carried the corpse with cruel hands.
For Hrothgar that was the heaviest sorrow
of all that had laden the lord of his folk.
The leader then, by thy life, besought me
(sad was his soul) in the sea-waves' coil
to play the hero and hazard my being
for glory of prowess: my guerdon he pledged.
I then in the waters - 'tis widely known that sea-floor-guardian savage found.
Hand-to-hand there a while we struggled;
billows welled blood; in the briny hall
her head I hewed with a hardy blade
from Grendel's mother, - and gained my life,
though not without danger. My doom was not yet.
Then the haven-of-heroes, Healfdene's son,
gave me in guerdon great gifts of price.
XXXI
'So held this king to the customs old,
that I wanted for nought in the wage I gained,
the meed of my might; he made me gifts,
Healfdene's heir, for my own disposal.
Now to thee, my prince, I proffer them all,
gladly give them. Thy grace alone
can find me favor. Few indeed
have I of kinsmen, save, Hygelac, thee!'
Then he bade them bear him the boar-head standard,
the battle-helm high, and breastplate gray,
99
the splendid sword; then spake in form:'Me this war-gear the wise old prince,
Hrothgar, gave, and his hest he added,
that its story be straightway said to thee. A while it was held by Heorogar king,
for long time lord of the land of Scyldings;
yet not to his son the sovran left it,
to daring Heoroweard, - dear as he was to him,
his harness of battle. - Well hold thou it all!'
And I heard that soon passed o'er the path of this treasure, all apple-fallow, four
good steeds,
each like the others, arms and horses
he gave to the king. So should kinsmen be,
not weave one another the net of wiles,
or with deep-hid treachery death contrive
for neighbor and comrade. His nephew was ever
by hardy Hygelac held full dear,
and each kept watch o'er the other's weal.
I heard, too, the necklace to Hygd he presented,
wonder-wrought treasure, which Wealhtheow gave him
sovran's daughter: three steeds he added,
slender and saddle-gay. Since such gift
the gem gleamed bright on the breast of the queen.
Thus showed his strain the son of Ecgtheow
as a man remarked for mighty deeds
and acts of honor. At ale he slew not
comrade or kin; nor cruel his mood,
though of sons of earth his strength was greatest,
a glorious gift that God had sent
the splendid leader. Long was he spurned,
and worthless by Geatish warriors held;
him at mead the master-of-clans
failed full oft to favor at all.
Slack and shiftless the strong men deemed him,
profitless prince; but payment came,
to the warrior honored, for all his woes. Then the bulwark-of-earls [1] bade bring within,
hardy chieftain, Hrethel's heirloom
garnished with gold: no Geat e'er knew
in shape of a sword a statelier prize.
The brand he laid in Beowulf's lap;
and of hides assigned him seven thousand,
100
with house and high-seat. They held in common
land alike by their line of birth,
inheritance, home: but higher the king
because of his rule o'er the realm itself.
Now further it fell with the flight of years,
with harryings horrid, that Hygelac perished,
and Heardred, too, by hewing of swords
under the shield-wall slaughtered lay,
when him at the van of his victor-folk
sought hardy heroes, Heatho-Scilfings,
in arms o'erwhelming Hereric's nephew.
Then Beowulf came as king this broad
realm to wield; and he ruled it well
fifty winters, [4] a wise old prince,
warding his land, until One began
in the dark of night, a Dragon, to rage.
In the grave on the hill a hoard it guarded,
in the stone-barrow steep. A strait path reached it,
unknown to mortals. Some man, however,
came by chance that cave within
to the heathen hoard. [5] In hand he took
a golden goblet, nor gave he it back,
stole with it away, while the watcher slept,
by thievish wiles: for the warden's wrath
prince and people must pay betimes!
XXXII
THAT way he went with no will of his own,
in danger of life, to the dragon's hoard,
but for pressure of peril, some prince's thane.
He fled in fear the fatal scourge,
seeking shelter, a sinful man,
and entered in. At the awful sight
tottered that guest, and terror seized him;
yet the wretched fugitive rallied anon
from fright and fear ere he fled away,
and took the cup from that treasure-hoard.
Of such besides there was store enough,
heirlooms old, the earth below,
which some earl forgotten, in ancient years,
left the last of his lofty race,
heedfully there had hidden away,
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dearest treasure. For death of yore
had hurried all hence; and he alone
left to live, the last of the clan,
weeping his friends, yet wished to bide
warding the treasure, his one delight,
though brief his respite. The barrow, new-ready,
to strand and sea-waves stood anear,
hard by the headland, hidden and closed;
there laid within it his lordly heirlooms
and heaped hoard of heavy gold
that warden of rings. Few words he spake:
'Now hold thou, earth, since heroes may not,
what earls have owned! Lo, erst from thee
brave men brought it! But battle-death seized
and cruel killing my clansmen all,
robbed them of life and a liegeman's joys.
None have I left to lift the sword,
or to cleanse the carven cup of price,
beaker bright. My brave are gone.
And the helmet hard, all haughty with gold,
shall part from its plating. Polishers sleep
who could brighten and burnish the battle-mask;
and those weeds of war that were wont to brave
over bicker of shields the bite of steel
rust with their bearer. The ringed mail
fares not far with famous chieftain,
at side of hero! No harp's delight,
no glee-wood's gladness! No good hawk now
flies through the hall! Nor horses fleet
stamp in the burgstead! Battle and death
the flower of my race have reft away.'
Mournful of mood, thus he moaned his woe,
alone, for them all, and unblithe wept
by day and by night, till death's fell wave
o'erwhelmed his heart. His hoard-of-bliss
that old ill-doer open found,
who, blazing at twilight the barrows haunteth,
naked foe-dragon flying by night
folded in fire: the folk of earth
dread him sore. 'Tis his doom to seek
hoard in the graves, and heathen gold
to watch, many-wintered: nor wins he thereby!
102
Powerful this plague-of-the-people thus
held the house of the hoard in earth
three hundred winters; till One aroused
wrath in his breast, to the ruler bearing
that costly cup, and the king implored
for bond of peace. So the barrow was plundered,
borne off was booty. His boon was granted
that wretched man; and his ruler saw
first time what was fashioned in far-off days.
When the dragon awoke, new woe was kindled.
O'er the stone he snuffed. The stark-heart found
footprint of foe who so far had gone
in his hidden craft by the creature's head. So may the undoomed easily flee
evils and exile, if only he gain
the grace of The Wielder! - That warden of gold
o'er the ground went seeking, greedy to find
the man who wrought him such wrong in sleep.
Savage and burning, the barrow he circled
all without; nor was any there,
none in the waste…. Yet war he desired,
was eager for battle. The barrow he entered,
sought the cup, and discovered soon
that some one of mortals had searched his treasure,
his lordly gold. The guardian waited
ill-enduring till evening came;
boiling with wrath was the barrow's keeper,
and fain with flame the foe to pay
for the dear cup's loss. - Now day was fled
as the worm had wished. By its wall no more
was it glad to bide, but burning flew
folded in flame: a fearful beginning
for sons of the soil; and soon it came,
in the doom of their lord, to a dreadful end.
XXXIII
THEN the baleful fiend its fire belched out,
and bright homes burned. The blaze stood high
all landsfolk frighting. No living thing
would that loathly one leave as aloft it flew.
Wide was the dragon's warring seen,
its fiendish fury far and near,
103
as the grim destroyer those Geatish people
hated and hounded. To hidden lair,
to its hoard it hastened at hint of dawn.
Folk of the land it had lapped in flame,
with bale and brand. In its barrow it trusted,
its battling and bulwarks: that boast was vain!
To Beowulf then the bale was told
quickly and truly: the king's own home,
of buildings the best, in brand-waves melted,
that gift-throne of Geats. To the good old man
sad in heart, 'twas heaviest sorrow.
The sage assumed that his sovran God
he had angered, breaking ancient law,
and embittered the Lord. His breast within
with black thoughts welled, as his wont was never.
The folk's own fastness that fiery dragon
with flame had destroyed, and the stronghold all
washed by waves; but the warlike king,
prince of the Weders, plotted vengeance.
Warriors'-bulwark, he bade them work
all of iron - the earl's commander a war-shield wondrous: well he knew
that forest-wood against fire were worthless,
linden could aid not. - Atheling brave,
he was fated to finish this fleeting life,
his days on earth, and the dragon with him,
though long it had watched o'er the wealth of the hoard! Shame he reckoned it, sharer-of-rings,
to follow the flyer-afar with a host,
a broad-flung band; nor the battle feared he,
nor deemed he dreadful the dragon's warring,
its vigor and valor: ventures desperate
he had passed a-plenty, and perils of war,
contest-crash, since, conqueror proud,
Hrothgar's hall he had wholly purged,
and in grapple had killed the kin of Grendel,
loathsome breed! Not least was that
of hand-to-hand fights where Hygelac fell,
when the ruler of Geats in rush of battle,
lord of his folk, in the Frisian land,
son of Hrethel, by sword-draughts died,
by brands down-beaten. Thence Beowulf fled
104
through strength of himself and his swimming power,
though alone, and his arms were laden with thirty
coats of mail, when he came to the sea!
Nor yet might Hetwaras [2] haughtily boast
their craft of contest, who carried against him
shields to the fight: but few escaped
from strife with the hero to seek their homes!
Then swam over ocean Ecgtheow's son
lonely and sorrowful, seeking his land,
where Hygd made him offer of hoard and realm,
rings and royal-seat, reckoning naught
the strength of her son to save their kingdom
from hostile hordes, after Hygelac's death.
No sooner for this could the stricken ones
in any wise move that atheling's mind
over young Heardred's head as lord
and ruler of all the realm to be:
yet the hero upheld him with helpful words,
aided in honor, till, older grown,
he wielded the Weder-Geats. - Wandering exiles
sought him o'er seas, the sons of Ohtere,
who had spurned the sway of the Scylfings'-helmet,
the bravest and best that broke the rings,
in Swedish land, of the sea-kings' line,
haughty hero. [3] Hence Heardred's end.
For shelter he gave them, sword-death came,
the blade's fell blow, to bairn of Hygelac;
but the son of Ongentheow sought again
house and home when Heardred fell,
leaving Beowulf lord of Geats
and gift-seat's master. - A good king he!
XXXIV
THE fall of his lord he was fain to requite
in after days; and to Eadgils he proved
friend to the friendless, and forces sent
over the sea to the son of Ohtere,
weapons and warriors: well repaid he
those care-paths cold when the king he slew. [1]
Thus safe through struggles the son of Ecgtheow
had passed a plenty, through perils dire,
105
with daring deeds, till this day was come
that doomed him now with the dragon to strive.
With comrades eleven the lord of Geats
swollen in rage went seeking the dragon.
He had heard whence all the harm arose
and the killing of clansmen; that cup of price
on the lap of the lord had been laid by the finder.
In the throng was this one thirteenth man,
starter of all the strife and ill,
care-laden captive; cringing thence
forced and reluctant, he led them on
till he came in ken of that cavern-hall,
the barrow delved near billowy surges,
flood of ocean. Within 'twas full
of wire-gold and jewels; a jealous warden,
warrior trusty, the treasures held,
lurked in his lair. Not light the task
of entrance for any of earth-born men!
Sat on the headland the hero king,
spake words of hail to his hearth-companions,
gold-friend of Geats. All gloomy his soul,
wavering, death-bound. Wyrd full nigh
stood ready to greet the gray-haired man,
to seize his soul-hoard, sunder apart
life and body. Not long would be
the warrior's spirit enwound with flesh.
Beowulf spake, the bairn of Ecgtheow:'Through store of struggles I strove in youth,
mighty feuds; I mind them all.
I was seven years old when the sovran of rings,
friend-of-his-folk, from my father took me,
had me, and held me, Hrethel the king,
with food and fee, faithful in kinship.
Ne'er, while I lived there, he loathlier found me,
bairn in the burg, than his birthright sons,
Herebeald and Haethcyn and Hygelac mine.
For the eldest of these, by unmeet chance,
by kinsman's deed, was the death-bed strewn,
when Haethcyn killed him with horny bow,
his own dear liege laid low with an arrow,
missed the mark and his mate shot down,
one brother the other, with bloody shaft.
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A feeless fight, [2] and a fearful sin,
horror to Hrethel; yet, hard as it was,
unavenged must the atheling die!
Too awful it is for an aged man
to bide and bear, that his bairn so young
rides on the gallows. A rime he makes,
sorrow-song for his son there hanging
as rapture of ravens; no rescue now
can come from the old, disabled man!
Still is he minded, as morning breaks,
of the heir gone elsewhere; [3] another he hopes not
he will bide to see his burg within
as ward for his wealth, now the one has found
doom of death that the deed incurred.
Forlorn he looks on the lodge of his son,
wine-hall waste and wind-swept chambers
reft of revel. The rider sleepeth,
the hero, far-hidden; [4] no harp resounds,
in the courts no wassail, as once was heard.
XXXV
'THEN he goes to his chamber, a grief-song chants
alone for his lost. Too large all seems,
homestead and house. So the helmet-of-Weders
hid in his heart for Herebeald
waves of woe. No way could he take
to avenge on the slayer slaughter so foul;
nor e'en could he harass that hero at all
with loathing deed, though he loved him not.
And so for the sorrow his soul endured,
men's gladness he gave up and God's light chose.
Lands and cities he left his sons
(as the wealthy do) when he went from earth.
There was strife and struggle 'twixt Swede and Geat
o'er the width of waters; war arose,
hard battle-horror, when Hrethel died,
and Ongentheow's offspring grew
strife-keen, bold, nor brooked o'er the seas
pact of peace, but pushed their hosts
to harass in hatred by Hreosnabeorh.
Men of my folk for that feud had vengeance,
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for woful war ('tis widely known),
though one of them bought it with blood of his heart,
a bargain hard: for Haethcyn proved
fatal that fray, for the first-of-Geats.
At morn, I heard, was the murderer killed
by kinsman for kinsman, [1] with clash of sword,
when Ongentheow met Eofor there.
Wide split the war-helm: wan he fell,
hoary Scylfing; the hand that smote him
of feud was mindful, nor flinched from the death-blow.
- 'For all that he [2] gave me, my gleaming sword
repaid him at war, - such power I wielded, for lordly treasure: with land he entrusted me,
homestead and house. He had no need
from Swedish realm, or from Spear-Dane folk,
or from men of the Gifths, to get him help, some warrior worse for wage to buy!
Ever I fought in the front of all,
sole to the fore; and so shall I fight
while I bide in life and this blade shall last
that early and late hath loyal proved
since for my doughtiness Daeghrefn fell,
slain by my hand, the Hugas' champion.
Nor fared he thence to the Frisian king
with the booty back, and breast-adornments;
but, slain in struggle, that standard-bearer
fell, atheling brave. Not with blade was he slain,
but his bones were broken by brawny gripe,
his heart-waves stilled. - The sword-edge now,
hard blade and my hand, for the hoard shall strive.'
Beowulf spake, and a battle-vow made
his last of all: 'I have lived through many
wars in my youth; now once again,
old folk-defender, feud will I seek,
do doughty deeds, if the dark destroyer
forth from his cavern come to fight me!'
Then hailed he the helmeted heroes all,
for the last time greeting his liegemen dear,
comrades of war: 'I should carry no weapon,
no sword to the serpent, if sure I knew
how, with such enemy, else my vows
I could gain as I did in Grendel's day.
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But fire in this fight I must fear me now,
and poisonous breath; so I bring with me
breastplate and board. [3] From the barrow's keeper
no footbreadth flee I. One fight shall end
our war by the wall, as Wyrd allots,
all mankind's master. My mood is bold
but forbears to boast o'er this battling-flyer.
- Now abide by the barrow, ye breastplate-mailed,
ye heroes in harness, which of us twain
better from battle-rush bear his wounds.
Wait ye the finish. The fight is not yours,
nor meet for any but me alone
to measure might with this monster here
and play the hero. Hardily I
shall win that wealth, or war shall seize,
cruel killing, your king and lord!'
Up stood then with shield the sturdy champion,
stayed by the strength of his single manhood,
and hardy 'neath helmet his harness bore
under cleft of the cliffs: no coward's path!
Soon spied by the wall that warrior chief,
survivor of many a victory-field
where foemen fought with furious clashings,
an arch of stone; and within, a stream
that broke from the barrow. The brooklet's wave
was hot with fire. The hoard that way
he never could hope unharmed to near,
or endure those deeps, [4] for the dragon's flame.
Then let from his breast, for he burst with rage,
the Weder-Geat prince a word outgo;
stormed the stark-heart; stern went ringing
and clear his cry 'neath the cliff-rocks gray.
The hoard-guard heard a human voice;
his rage was enkindled. No respite now
for pact of peace! The poison-breath
of that foul worm first came forth from the cave,
hot reek-of-fight: the rocks resounded.
Stout by the stone-way his shield he raised,
lord of the Geats, against the loathed-one;
while with courage keen that coiled foe
came seeking strife. The sturdy king
had drawn his sword, not dull of edge,
109
heirloom old; and each of the two
felt fear of his foe, though fierce their mood.
Stoutly stood with his shield high-raised
the warrior king, as the worm now coiled
together amain: the mailed-one waited.
Now, spire by spire, fast sped and glided
that blazing serpent. The shield protected,
soul and body a shorter while
for the hero-king than his heart desired,
could his will have wielded the welcome respite
but once in his life! But Wyrd denied it,
and victory's honors. - His arm he lifted
lord of the Geats, the grim foe smote
with atheling's heirloom. Its edge was turned
brown blade, on the bone, and bit more feebly
than its noble master had need of then
in his baleful stress. - Then the barrow's keeper
waxed full wild for that weighty blow,
cast deadly flames; wide drove and far
those vicious fires. No victor's glory
the Geats' lord boasted; his brand had failed,
naked in battle, as never it should,
excellent iron! - 'Twas no easy path
that Ecgtheow's honored heir must tread
over the plain to the place of the foe;
for against his will he must win a home
elsewhere far, as must all men, leaving
this lapsing life! - Not long it was
ere those champions grimly closed again.
The hoard-guard was heartened; high heaved his breast
once more; and by peril was pressed again,
enfolded in flames, the folk-commander!
Nor yet about him his band of comrades,
sons of athelings, armed stood
with warlike front: to the woods they bent them,
their lives to save. But the soul of one
with care was cumbered. Kinship true
can never be marred in a noble mind!
XXXVI
WIGLAF his name was, Weohstan's son,
linden-thane loved, the lord of Scylfings,
110
Aelfhere's kinsman. His king he now saw
with heat under helmet hard oppressed.
He minded the prizes his prince had given him,
wealthy seat of the Waegmunding line,
and folk-rights that his father owned
Not long he lingered. The linden yellow,
his shield, he seized; the old sword he drew: as heirloom of Eanmund earth-dwellers knew it,
who was slain by the sword-edge, son of Ohtere,
friendless exile, erst in fray
killed by Weohstan, who won for his kin
brown-bright helmet, breastplate ringed,
old sword of Eotens, Onela's gift,
weeds of war of the warrior-thane,
battle-gear brave: though a brother's child
had been felled, the feud was unfelt by Onela. [1]
For winters this war-gear Weohstan kept,
breastplate and board, till his bairn had grown
earlship to earn as the old sire did:
then he gave him, mid Geats, the gear of battle,
portion huge, when he passed from life,
fared aged forth. For the first time now
with his leader-lord the liegeman young
was bidden to share the shock of battle.
Neither softened his soul, nor the sire's bequest
weakened in war. [2] So the worm found out
when once in fight the foes had met!
Wiglaf spake, - and his words were sage;
sad in spirit, he said to his comrades:'I remember the time, when mead we took,
what promise we made to this prince of ours
in the banquet-hall, to our breaker-of-rings,
for gear of combat to give him requital,
for hard-sword and helmet, if hap should bring
stress of this sort! Himself who chose us
from all his army to aid him now,
urged us to glory, and gave these treasures,
because he counted us keen with the spear
and hardy 'neath helm, though this hero-work
our leader hoped unhelped and alone
to finish for us, - folk-defender
who hath got him glory greater than all men
111
for daring deeds! Now the day is come
that our noble master has need of the might
of warriors stout. Let us stride along
the hero to help while the heat is about him
glowing and grim! For God is my witness
I am far more fain the fire should seize
along with my lord these limbs of mine! [3]
Unsuiting it seems our shields to bear
homeward hence, save here we essay
to fell the foe and defend the life
of the Weders' lord. I wot 'twere shame
on the law of our land if alone the king
out of Geatish warriors woe endured
and sank in the struggle! My sword and helmet,
breastplate and board, for us both shall serve!'
Through slaughter-reek strode he to succor his Chieftain,
his battle-helm bore, and brief words spake:'Beowulf dearest, do all bravely,
as in youthful days of yore thou vowedst
that while life should last thou wouldst let no wise
thy glory droop! Now, great in deeds,
atheling steadfast, with all thy strength
shield thy life! I will stand to help thee.'
At the words the worm came once again,
murderous monster mad with rage,
with fire-billows flaming, its foes to seek,
the hated men. In heat-waves burned
that board [4] to the boss, and the breastplate failed
to shelter at all the spear-thane young.
Yet quickly under his kinsman's shield
went eager the earl, since his own was now
all burned by the blaze. The bold king again
had mind of his glory: with might his glaive
was driven into the dragon's head, blow nerved by hate. But Naegling was shivered,
broken in battle was Beowulf's sword,
old and gray. 'Twas granted him not
that ever the edge of iron at all
could help him at strife: too strong was his hand,
so the tale is told, and he tried too far
with strength of stroke all swords he wielded,
though sturdy their steel: they steaded him nought.
112
Then for the third time thought on its feud
that folk-destroyer, fire-dread dragon,
and rushed on the hero, where room allowed,
battle-grim, burning; its bitter teeth
closed on his neck, and covered him
with waves of blood from his breast that welled.
XXXVII
'TWAS now, men say, in his sovran's need
that the earl made known his noble strain,
craft and keenness and courage enduring.
Heedless of harm, though his hand was burned,
hardy-hearted, he helped his kinsman.
A little lower the loathsome beast
he smote with sword; his steel drove in
bright and burnished; that blaze began
to lose and lessen. At last the king
wielded his wits again, war-knife drew,
a biting blade by his breastplate hanging,
and the Weders'-helm smote that worm asunder,
felled the foe, flung forth its life.
So had they killed it, kinsmen both,
athelings twain: thus an earl should be
in danger's day! - Of deeds of valor
this conqueror's-hour of the king was last,
of his work in the world. The wound began,
which that dragon-of-earth had erst inflicted,
to swell and smart; and soon he found
in his breast was boiling, baleful and deep,
pain of poison. The prince walked on,
wise in his thought, to the wall of rock;
then sat, and stared at the structure of giants,
where arch of stone and steadfast column
upheld forever that hall in earth.
Yet here must the hand of the henchman peerless
lave with water his winsome lord,
the king and conqueror covered with blood,
with struggle spent, and unspan his helmet.
Beowulf spake in spite of his hurt,
his mortal wound; full well he knew
his portion now was past and gone
of earthly bliss, and all had fled
113
of his file of days, and death was near:
'I would fain bestow on son of mine
this gear of war, were given me now
that any heir should after me come
of my proper blood. This people I ruled
fifty winters. No folk-king was there,
none at all, of the neighboring clans
who war would wage me with 'warriors'-friends' [1]
and threat me with horrors. At home I bided
what fate might come, and I cared for mine own;
feuds I sought not, nor falsely swore
ever on oath. For all these things,
though fatally wounded, fain am I!
From the Ruler-of-Man no wrath shall seize me,
when life from my frame must flee away,
for killing of kinsmen! Now quickly go
and gaze on that hoard 'neath the hoary rock,
Wiglaf loved, now the worm lies low,
sleeps, heart-sore, of his spoil bereaved.
And fare in haste. I would fain behold
the gorgeous heirlooms, golden store,
have joy in the jewels and gems, lay down
softlier for sight of this splendid hoard
my life and the lordship I long have held.'
XXXVIII
I HAVE heard that swiftly the son of Weohstan
at wish and word of his wounded king, war-sick warrior, - woven mail-coat,
battle-sark, bore 'neath the barrow's roof.
Then the clansman keen, of conquest proud,
passing the seat, [1] saw store of jewels
and glistening gold the ground along;
by the wall were marvels, and many a vessel
in the den of the dragon, the dawn-flier old:
unburnished bowls of bygone men
reft of richness; rusty helms
of the olden age; and arm-rings many
wondrously woven. - Such wealth of gold,
booty from barrow, can burden with pride
each human wight: let him hide it who will! -
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His glance too fell on a gold-wove banner
high o'er the hoard, of handiwork noblest,
brilliantly broidered; so bright its gleam,
all the earth-floor he easily saw
and viewed all these vessels. No vestige now
was seen of the serpent: the sword had ta'en him.
Then, I heard, the hill of its hoard was reft,
old work of giants, by one alone;
he burdened his bosom with beakers and plate
at his own good will, and the ensign took,
brightest of beacons. - The blade of his lord
- its edge was iron - had injured deep
one that guarded the golden hoard
many a year and its murder-fire
spread hot round the barrow in horror-billows
at midnight hour, till it met its doom.
Hasted the herald, the hoard so spurred him
his track to retrace; he was troubled by doubt,
high-souled hero, if haply he'd find
alive, where he left him, the lord of Weders,
weakening fast by the wall of the cave.
So he carried the load. His lord and king
he found all bleeding, famous chief
at the lapse of life. The liegeman again
plashed him with water, till point of word
broke through the breast-hoard. Beowulf spake,
sage and sad, as he stared at the gold. 'For the gold and treasure, to God my thanks,
to the Wielder-of-Wonders, with words I say,
for what I behold, to Heaven's Lord,
for the grace that I give such gifts to my folk
or ever the day of my death be run!
Now I've bartered here for booty of treasure
the last of my life, so look ye well
to the needs of my land! No longer I tarry.
A barrow bid ye the battle-fanned raise
for my ashes. 'Twill shine by the shore of the flood,
to folk of mine memorial fair
on Hrones Headland high uplifted,
that ocean-wanderers oft may hail
Beowulf's Barrow, as back from far
they drive their keels o'er the darkling wave.'
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From his neck he unclasped the collar of gold,
valorous king, to his vassal gave it
with bright-gold helmet, breastplate, and ring,
to the youthful thane: bade him use them in joy.
'Thou art end and remnant of all our race
the Waegmunding name. For Wyrd hath swept them,
all my line, to the land of doom,
earls in their glory: I after them go.'
This word was the last which the wise old man
harbored in heart ere hot death-waves
of balefire he chose. From his bosom fled
his soul to seek the saints' reward.
XXXIX
IT was heavy hap for that hero young
on his lord beloved to look and find him
lying on earth with life at end,
sorrowful sight. But the slayer too,
awful earth-dragon, empty of breath,
lay felled in fight, nor, fain of its treasure,
could the writhing monster rule it more.
For edges of iron had ended its days,
hard and battle-sharp, hammers' leaving;
and that flier-afar had fallen to ground
hushed by its hurt, its hoard all near,
no longer lusty aloft to whirl
at midnight, making its merriment seen,
proud of its prizes: prone it sank
by the handiwork of the hero-king.
Forsooth among folk but few achieve,
- though sturdy and strong, as stories tell me,
and never so daring in deed of valor, the perilous breath of a poison-foe
to brave, and to rush on the ring-board hall,
whenever his watch the warden keeps
bold in the barrow. Beowulf paid
the price of death for that precious hoard;
and each of the foes had found the end
of this fleeting life.
Befell erelong
that the laggards in war the wood had left,
116
trothbreakers, cowards, ten together,
fearing before to flourish a spear
in the sore distress of their sovran lord.
Now in their shame their shields they carried,
armor of fight, where the old man lay;
and they gazed on Wiglaf. Wearied he sat
at his sovran's shoulder, shieldsman good,
to wake him with water. [2] Nowise it availed.
Though well he wished it, in world no more
could he barrier life for that leader-of-battles
nor baffle the will of all-wielding God.
Doom of the Lord was law o'er the deeds
of every man, as it is to-day.
Grim was the answer, easy to get,
from the youth for those that had yielded to fear!
Wiglaf spake, the son of Weohstan, mournful he looked on those men unloved:'Who sooth will speak, can say indeed
that the ruler who gave you golden rings
and the harness of war in which ye stand
- for he at ale-bench often-times
bestowed on hall-folk helm and breastplate,
lord to liegemen, the likeliest gear
which near of far he could find to give, threw away and wasted these weeds of battle,
on men who failed when the foemen came!
Not at all could the king of his comrades-in-arms
venture to vaunt, though the Victory-Wielder,
God, gave him grace that he got revenge
sole with his sword in stress and need.
To rescue his life, 'twas little that I
could serve him in struggle; yet shift I made
(hopeless it seemed) to help my kinsman.
Its strength ever waned, when with weapon I struck
that fatal foe, and the fire less strongly
flowed from its head. - Too few the heroes
in throe of contest that thronged to our king!
Now gift of treasure and girding of sword,
joy of the house and home-delight
shall fail your folk; his freehold-land
every clansman within your kin
shall lose and leave, when lords highborn
117
hear afar of that flight of yours,
a fameless deed. Yea, death is better
for liegemen all than a life of shame!'
XL
THAT battle-toil bade he at burg to announce,
at the fort on the cliff, where, full of sorrow,
all the morning earls had sat,
daring shieldsmen, in doubt of twain:
would they wail as dead, or welcome home,
their lord beloved? Little [1] kept back
of the tidings new, but told them all,
the herald that up the headland rode. 'Now the willing-giver to Weder folk
in death-bed lies; the Lord of Geats
on the slaughter-bed sleeps by the serpent's deed!
And beside him is stretched that slayer-of-men
with knife-wounds sick: [2] no sword availed
on the awesome thing in any wise
to work a wound. There Wiglaf sitteth,
Weohstan's bairn, by Beowulf's side,
the living earl by the other dead,
and heavy of heart a head-watch [3] keeps
o'er friend and foe. - Now our folk may look
for waging of war when once unhidden
to Frisian and Frank the fall of the king
is spread afar. - The strife began
when hot on the Hugas [4] Hygelac fell
and fared with his fleet to the Frisian land.
Him there the Hetwaras humbled in war,
plied with such prowess their power o'erwhelming
that the bold-in-battle bowed beneath it
and fell in fight. To his friends no wise
could that earl give treasure! And ever since
the Merowings' favor has failed us wholly.
Nor aught expect I of peace and faith
from Swedish folk. 'Twas spread afar
how Ongentheow reft at Ravenswood
Haethcyn Hrethling of hope and life,
when the folk of Geats for the first time sought
in wanton pride the Warlike-Scylfings.
Soon the sage old sire [5] of Ohtere,
118
ancient and awful, gave answering blow;
the sea-king [6] he slew, and his spouse redeemed,
his good wife rescued, though robbed of her gold,
mother of Ohtere and Onela.
Then he followed his foes, who fled before him
sore beset and stole their way,
bereft of a ruler, to Ravenswood.
With his host he besieged there what swords had left,
the weary and wounded; woes he threatened
the whole night through to that hard-pressed throng:
some with the morrow his sword should kill,
some should go to the gallows-tree
for rapture of ravens. But rescue came
with dawn of day for those desperate men
when they heard the horn of Hygelac sound,
tones of his trumpet; the trusty king
had followed their trail with faithful band.
XLI
'THE bloody swath of Swedes and Geats
and the storm of their strife, were seen afar,
how folk against folk the fight had wakened.
The ancient king with his atheling band
sought his citadel, sorrowing much:
Ongentheow earl went up to his burg.
He had tested Hygelac's hardihood,
the proud one's prowess, would prove it no longer,
defied no more those fighting-wanderers
nor hoped from the seamen to save his hoard,
his bairn and his bride: so he bent him again,
old, to his earth-walls. Yet after him came
with slaughter for Swedes the standards of Hygelac
o'er peaceful plains in pride advancing,
till Hrethelings fought in the fenced town. [1]
Then Ongentheow with edge of sword,
the hoary-bearded, was held at bay,
and the folk-king there was forced to suffer
Eofor's anger. In ire, at the king
Wulf Wonreding with weapon struck;
and the chieftain's blood, for that blow, in streams
flowed 'neath his hair. No fear felt he,
stout old Scylfing, but straightway repaid
119
in better bargain that bitter stroke
and faced his foe with fell intent.
Nor swift enough was the son of Wonred
answer to render the aged chief;
too soon on his head the helm was cloven;
blood-bedecked he bowed to earth,
and fell adown; not doomed was he yet,
and well he waxed, though the wound was sore.
Then the hardy Hygelac-thane, [2]
when his brother fell, with broad brand smote,
giants' sword crashing through giants'-helm
across the shield-wall: sank the king,
his folk's old herdsman, fatally hurt.
There were many to bind the brother's wounds
and lift him, fast as fate allowed
his people to wield the place-of-war.
But Eofor took from Ongentheow,
earl from other, the iron-breastplate,
hard sword hilted, and helmet too,
and the hoar-chief's harness to Hygelac carried,
who took the trappings, and truly promised
rich fee 'mid folk, - and fulfilled it so.
For that grim strife gave the Geatish lord,
Hrethel's offspring, when home he came,
to Eofor and Wulf a wealth of treasure,
Each of them had a hundred thousand [3]
in land and linked rings; nor at less price reckoned
mid-earth men such mighty deeds!
And to Eofor he gave his only daughter
in pledge of grace, the pride of his home.
'Such is the feud, the foeman's rage,
death-hate of men: so I deem it sure
that the Swedish folk will seek us home
for this fall of their friends, the fighting-Scylfings,
when once they learn that our warrior leader
lifeless lies, who land and hoard
ever defended from all his foes,
furthered his folk's weal, finished his course
a hardy hero. - Now haste is best,
that we go to gaze on our Geatish lord,
and bear the bountiful breaker-of-rings
to the funeral pyre. No fragments merely
120
shall burn with the warrior. Wealth of jewels,
gold untold and gained in terror,
treasure at last with his life obtained,
all of that booty the brands shall take,
fire shall eat it. No earl must carry
memorial jewel. No maiden fair
shall wreathe her neck with noble ring:
nay, sad in spirit and shorn of her gold,
oft shall she pass o'er paths of exile
now our lord all laughter has laid aside,
all mirth and revel. Many a spear
morning-cold shall be clasped amain,
lifted aloft; nor shall lilt of harp
those warriors wake; but the wan-hued raven,
fain o'er the fallen, his feast shall praise
and boast to the eagle how bravely he ate
when he and the wolf were wasting the slain.'
So he told his sorrowful tidings,
and little [4] he lied, the loyal man
of word or of work. The warriors rose;
sad, they climbed to the Cliff-of-Eagles,
went, welling with tears, the wonder to view.
Found on the sand there, stretched at rest,
their lifeless lord, who had lavished rings
of old upon them. Ending-day
had dawned on the doughty-one; death had seized
in woful slaughter the Weders' king.
There saw they, besides, the strangest being,
loathsome, lying their leader near,
prone on the field. The fiery dragon,
fearful fiend, with flame was scorched.
Reckoned by feet, it was fifty measures
in length as it lay. Aloft erewhile
it had revelled by night, and anon come back,
seeking its den; now in death's sure clutch
it had come to the end of its earth-hall joys.
By it there stood the stoups and jars;
dishes lay there, and dear-decked swords
eaten with rust, as, on earth's lap resting,
a thousand winters they waited there.
For all that heritage huge, that gold
of bygone men, was bound by a spell, [5]
121
so the treasure-hall could be touched by none
of human kind, - save that Heaven's King,
God himself, might give whom he would,
Helper of Heroes, the hoard to open, even such a man as seemed to him meet.
XLII
A PERILOUS path, it proved, he [1] trod
who heinously hid, that hall within,
wealth under wall! Its watcher had killed
one of a few, [2] and the feud was avenged
in woful fashion. Wondrous seems it,
what manner a man of might and valor
oft ends his life, when the earl no longer
in mead-hall may live with loving friends.
So Beowulf, when that barrow's warden
he sought, and the struggle; himself knew not
in what wise he should wend from the world at last.
For [3] princes potent, who placed the gold,
with a curse to doomsday covered it deep,
so that marked with sin the man should be,
hedged with horrors, in hell-bonds fast,
racked with plagues, who should rob their hoard.
Yet no greed for gold, but the grace of heaven,
ever the king had kept in view. [4]
Wiglaf spake, the son of Weohstan:'At the mandate of one, oft warriors many
sorrow must suffer; and so must we.
The people's-shepherd showed not aught
of care for our counsel, king beloved!
That guardian of gold he should grapple not, urged we,
but let him lie where he long had been
in his earth-hall waiting the end of the world,
the hest of heaven. - This hoard is ours
but grievously gotten; too grim the fate
which thither carried our king and lord.
I was within there, and all I viewed,
the chambered treasure, when chance allowed me
(and my path was made in no pleasant wise)
under the earth-wall. Eager, I seized
such heap from the hoard as hands could bear
122
and hurriedly carried it hither back
to my liege and lord. Alive was he still,
still wielding his wits. The wise old man
spake much in his sorrow, and sent you greetings
and bade that ye build, when he breathed no more,
on the place of his balefire a barrow high,
memorial mighty. Of men was he
worthiest warrior wide earth o'er
the while he had joy of his jewels and burg.
Let us set out in haste now, the second time
to see and search this store of treasure,
these wall-hid wonders, - the way I show you, where, gathered near, ye may gaze your fill
at broad-gold and rings. Let the bier, soon made,
be all in order when out we come,
our king and captain to carry thither
- man beloved - where long he shall bide
safe in the shelter of sovran God.'
Then the bairn of Weohstan bade command,
hardy chief, to heroes many
that owned their homesteads, hither to bring
firewood from far - o'er the folk they ruled for the famed-one's funeral. ' Fire shall devour
and wan flames feed on the fearless warrior
who oft stood stout in the iron-shower,
when, sped from the string, a storm of arrows
shot o'er the shield-wall: the shaft held firm,
featly feathered, followed the barb.'
And now the sage young son of Weohstan
seven chose of the chieftain's thanes,
the best he found that band within,
and went with these warriors, one of eight,
under hostile roof. In hand one bore
a lighted torch and led the way.
No lots they cast for keeping the hoard
when once the warriors saw it in hall,
altogether without a guardian,
lying there lost. And little they mourned
when they had hastily haled it out,
dear-bought treasure! The dragon they cast,
the worm, o'er the wall for the wave to take,
and surges swallowed that shepherd of gems.
123
Then the woven gold on a wain was laden countless quite! - and the king was borne,
hoary hero, to Hrones-Ness.
XLIII
THEN fashioned for him the folk of Geats
firm on the earth a funeral-pile,
and hung it with helmets and harness of war
and breastplates bright, as the boon he asked;
and they laid amid it the mighty chieftain,
heroes mourning their master dear.
Then on the hill that hugest of balefires
the warriors wakened. Wood-smoke rose
black over blaze, and blent was the roar
of flame with weeping (the wind was still),
till the fire had broken the frame of bones,
hot at the heart. In heavy mood
their misery moaned they, their master's death.
Wailing her woe, the widow [1] old,
her hair upbound, for Beowulf's death
sung in her sorrow, and said full oft
she dreaded the doleful days to come,
deaths enow, and doom of battle,
and shame. - The smoke by the sky was devoured.
The folk of the Weders fashioned there
on the headland a barrow broad and high,
by ocean-farers far descried:
in ten days' time their toil had raised it,
the battle-brave's beacon. Round brands of the pyre
a wall they built, the worthiest ever
that wit could prompt in their wisest men.
They placed in the barrow that precious booty,
the rounds and the rings they had reft erewhile,
hardy heroes, from hoard in cave, trusting the ground with treasure of earls,
gold in the earth, where ever it lies
useless to men as of yore it was.
Then about that barrow the battle-keen rode,
atheling-born, a band of twelve,
lament to make, to mourn their king,
chant their dirge, and their chieftain honor.
124
They praised his earlship, his acts of prowess
worthily witnessed: and well it is
that men their master-friend mightily laud,
heartily love, when hence he goes
from life in the body forlorn away.
Thus made their mourning the men of Geatland,
for their hero's passing his hearth-companions:
quoth that of all the kings of earth,
of men he was mildest and most beloved,
to his kin the kindest, keenest for praise.
~ Charles Baudelaire,

IN CHAPTERS [98/98]



   56 Poetry
   24 Fiction
   15 Integral Yoga
   6 Occultism
   4 Philosophy
   3 Psychology
   2 Mysticism
   1 Philsophy
   1 Integral Theory
   1 Christianity
   1 Alchemy


   22 Sri Aurobindo
   13 H P Lovecraft
   12 Percy Bysshe Shelley
   8 John Keats
   5 William Wordsworth
   5 James George Frazer
   3 The Mother
   3 Robert Browning
   3 Lucretius
   3 Friedrich Schiller
   2 William Butler Yeats
   2 Satprem
   2 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   2 Jordan Peterson
   2 Edgar Allan Poe


   13 Lovecraft - Poems
   12 Shelley - Poems
   8 Keats - Poems
   7 Collected Poems
   5 Wordsworth - Poems
   5 The Golden Bough
   5 5.1.01 - Ilion
   4 Savitri
   4 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   3 Schiller - Poems
   3 Of The Nature Of Things
   3 Browning - Poems
   2 Yeats - Poems
   2 Vedic and Philological Studies
   2 The Secret Of The Veda
   2 The Secret Doctrine
   2 Poe - Poems
   2 Maps of Meaning


0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  is like a lair of banal thoughts and lawless desires.
  One must persist without getting discouraged, and first of all

0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The secret lies in matter. Because Agni is imprisoned in matter and we ourselves are imprisoned there. It is said that Agni is without head or feet, that it conceals its two extremities: above, it disappears into the great heaven of the supraconscient (which the Rishis also called the great ocean), and below, it sinks into the formless ocean of the inconscient (which they also called the rock). We are truncated. But the Rishis were men of a solid realism, a true realism resting upon the Spirit; and since the summits of mind opened out upon a lacuna of lightecstatic, to be sure, but with no hold over the worldthey set upon the downward way.6 Thus begins the quest for the lost sun, the long pilgrimage of descent into the inconscient and the merciless fight against the dark forces, the thieves of the sun, the panis and vritras, pythons and giants, hidden in the dark lair with the whole cohort of usurpers: the dualizers, the confiners, the tearers, the COVERERS. But the divine worker, Agni, is helped by the gods, and in his quest he is led by the intuitive ray, Sarama, the heavenly hound with the subtle sense of smell who sets Agni on the track of the stolen herds (strange, shining herds). Now and again there comes the sudden glimmer of a fugitive dawn then all grows dim. One must advance step by step, digging, digging, fighting every inch of the way against the wolves whose savage fury increases the nearer one draws to their denAgni is a warrior. Agni grows through his difficulties, his flame burns more brilliantly with each blow from the Adversary; for, as the Rishis said, Night and Day both suckled the divine Child; they even said that Night and Day are the two sisters, Immortal, with a common lover [the sun] common they, though different their forms (I.113.2,3). These alternations of night and brightness accelerate until Day breaks at last and the herds of Dawn7 surge upward awakening someone who was dead (I.113.8). The infinite rock of the inconscient is shattered, the seeker uncovers the Sun dwelling in the darkness (III.39.5), the divine consciousness in the heart of Matter. In the very depths of Matter, that is to say, in the body, on earth, the Rishis found themselves cast up into Light that same Light which others sought on the heights, without their bodies and without the earth, in ecstasy. And this is what the Rishis would call the Great Passage. Without abandoning the earth they found the vast dwelling place, that dwelling place of the gods, Swar, the original Sun-world that Sri Aurobindo calls the Supramental World: Human beings [the Rishis emphasize that they are indeed men] slaying the Coverer have crossed beyond both earth and heaven [matter and mind] and made the wide world their dwelling place (I.36.8). They have entered the True, the Right, the Vast, Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the unbroken light, the fearless light, where there is no longer suffering nor falsehood nor death: it is immortality, amritam.
   ***

02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Arousing knowledge from its sleepy lair.
  For knowledge comes not to us as a guest

04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Lifting their heads to hunt a lairlike sky,
  Or travelled in a strange and empty land

07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Or hunt to its lair the bodiless Self or make
  519

10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,
  Its fiery edge of seeing absolute

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  gesture of Soma (Rig Veda II, 12, 1) or of Indra when the latter smote the Serpent in his lair (Rig Veda,
  VI, 17, 9), when his thunderbolt cut off his head (Rig Veda I, 52, 10).287
  --
  for the perplexed and curious is the redemptive jewel in the head of the toad or in the lair of the firebelching dragon. The unknown is the fire, that burns and protects the endlessly mysterious transcendent
  object, that simultaneously gives and takes away. The positive aspect of the unknown, incarnated as the
  --
  depths of a mountain, or who conceals a virgin princess in his lair. He is the fire-breathing winged serpent
  of transformation the undescribable union of everything now discriminated, who constantly schemes to
  --
  underworld (and whose lair is surrounded by the bones of the dead); the hero, armed with the sword, who
  cuts the leviathan into pieces, and makes the world; and the virgin, freed from the dragons clutches, who

1.03 - Hymns of Gritsamada, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    2. The Nights and the Dawns have lowed to thee as the milchcows low towards a calf in their lairs of rest. O Fire of many blessings, thou art the traveller of Heaven through the ages of man and thou shinest self-gathered through his nights.5
    3. The Gods have sent into the foundation of the middle world this great worker and pilgrim of earth and of heaven, whom we must know, like our chariot of white-flaming light, Fire whom we must voice with our lauds like a friend in the peoples.
  --
    11. I pour on him the running light; for the light is his native lair, he is lodged in the light, the light is his plane. According to thy self-nature, bring the Gods and fill them with rapture. O Male of the herd, carry to them our offering blessed with svaha.11
  SUKTA 4
  --
    3. May we worship thee in thy supreme Birth, O Fire; may we worship thee with our chants in the world of thy lower session: I adore with sacrifice thy native lair from which thou hast arisen. The offerings have been cast into thee when thou wert kindled and ablaze.
    4. O Fire, be strong for sacrifice, do worship with my oblation; swiftly voice my thought towards the gift of the Treasure. For thou art the wealth-master who hast power over the riches, thou art the thinker of the brilliant Word.

1.03 - The Void, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
  Find out the silent lairs, though hid in brush,
  Of beasts, the mountain-rangers, when but once

1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  killing an obnoxious laird or minister, how a woman has been slowly
  roasted to death as a witch in Ireland, or how a girl has been

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  east, dies in the west, and passes into the underworld of night (into the lair of the dragon of chaos).
  Nightly, ths sun-hero battles the terrible forces of chaos, cuts himself out of the belly of the beast, and is

1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  this Force, this Warmth, Agni, is till the same whether it animates or illuminates our inner recesses, our mental factory, our vital theater, or our material lair; depending on the level, it takes on a more or less intense light, heavier or lighter vibrations: superconscious, mental,
  vital, physical, but it does link everything together, animates everything. It is the fundamental substance of the universe:

1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  first of them all, in the wool-flecked lair where the Nest is
  ready and the light-offering; lead for the doer of the rite, for

1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There is only one other passage we have now left for examination but it is of considerable importance & interest. It is in the hymn ascribed to the son of Madhuchchhanda, though very probably it isMadhuchchhandas own, the eleventh hymn and the fifth verse. Twam Valasya gomato apavar adrivo bilam, Twam deva abibhyushas tujyamanasa avishuh. Thou, O dweller on the mountain, didst uncover the lair of Vala the luminous, Thee the gods entered unfearing & protected. Indra, the dweller on the mountain of being, he who established in Swarga looks ever upward, has, to assist the strivings of man, uncovered the lair of Vala the luminous. Who is Vala the luminous? Does gomat mean the fellow who has the cows & is Vala a demon of cloud or darkness afflicted with the cow-stealing propensities, the Titanic bovi-kleptomania attributed by tradition to the Panis? He is, I suggest, one of the Titans who deny a higher ascent to man, a Titan who possesses but withholds & hides the luminous realms of ideal truth from man,interposing the hiranmayam patram of the Isha Upanishad, the golden cover or lid, by which the face of truth is concealed, satyasyapihitam mukham. Tat twam Pushan apavrinu, cries the Vedantic sage, using the same word apavri, but he calls to Surya, not to Indra, because he seeks the possession of the Vedanta, the sight of the rupam kalyanatamam which belongs to those who can meet Surya in his own home. The Vedic seer, at an earlier stage of the struggle, is satisfied with the minor conquests of Indra. He does not yet rise to those heights where Indra working in the mind is no longer a supreme helper, but may even be, as the Puranas tell us, an obstacle and an opponentbecause activity of mind even the highest, so long as it is not abandoned and overpassed, interferes with a yet higher attainment. It is only by rejecting Indra that we can dwell with Surya in his luminous halls, Tena tyaktena bhunjithah. Nevertheless the conquest over Bala is for humanity in its present stage a great conquest, and when & because it is accomplished the other gods can enter safely into the mental force & work in it, fearless because protected by Indras victorious might. For he is now Balabhid; he has pierced Bala & is no longer liable to that fear which overtook him when Vritra only had been overthrowna fear due to his perceiving the immensity of the task that still remained & the more formidable enemies beyond. We shall come again to Bala & the Titans & the meaning of these divine battles,viryani yani chakara prathamani vajri.
  All the passages I have quoted proceed from the hymns of Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra, the opening eleven hymns of the Rigveda. This seer is one of the deepest & profoundest of the spirits chosen as vessels & channels of the divine knowledge of the Veda, one of those who least loses the thing symbolised in the material symbol, but who tends rather to let the symbol disappear in that which it symbolises. The comparison of the maker of beautiful images to the milch cow & Indra to the milker is an example of his constant tendency the word gavam is avoided with sudugham, so that the idea of milking or pressing forth may be suggested without insisting on the material image of the cow, & in goduhe, the symbol of the cow melts away into the thing symbolised, knowledge, light, illumination. A comparison with Medhatithi son of Kanwa brings out the difference. In Madhuchchhandas hymns the materialist rendering is often inapplicable & even when applicable yields a much poorer sense than the symbolic renderingbecause the seer is little concerned with the symbol except as the recognised means of suggesting things supramaterial. But Medhatithi is much concerned with the symbol & not indifferent to the outer life; in his hymns the materialist rendering gives us a good sense without excluding the symbolic, but often the symbolic has to be sought for & if we did not know the true Vedic tradition from Madhuchchhanda we could not gather it unaided from Medhatithi. The son of Viswamitra is deeply concerned with knowledge & with immortality & rapture as its attendant circumstances & conditions, the son of Kanwa, though not indifferent to knowledge, with the intoxication of the wine of immortality & its outpouring in mortal life & action. To use Vedic symbolism, one is a herder of kine, the other a herder of horses; Madhuchchhandas totem is the meditative cow, Medhatithis the rapid & bounding horse. There is a great calm, depth & nobility in the first eleven hymns, a great verve, joy, energy & vibrant force in the twelve that follow.

1.18 - The Human Fathers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Truth; what is meant by the footed and hoofed wealth and the field or pasture of the Cow. We begin to see what is the cave of the Panis and why that which is hidden in the lair of Vala is said also to be hidden in the waters released by Indra from the hold of Vritra, the seven rivers possessed by the seven-headed heaven-conquering thought of Ayasya; why the rescue of the sun out of the cave, the separation or choosing of the light out of the darkness is said to be done by an all-discerning knowledge; who are Dakshina and Sarama and what is meant by Indra holding the hoofed wealth in his right hand. And in arriving at
  196

1.19 - The Victory of the Fathers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Vamadeva then goes on to tell us of the birth of this great, first or supreme force, Agni, in the Truth, in its waters, in its original home. "He was born, the first, in the waters, in the foundation of the vast world (Swar), in its womb, (i.e. its seat and birthplace, its original home); without head and feet, concealing his two extremities, setting himself to his work in the lair of the Bull." The Bull is the Deva or Purusha, his lair is the plane of the Truth, and Agni the Seer-Will, working in the truth-consciousness, creates the worlds; but he conceals his two extremities, his head and feet; that is to say, his workings act between the superconscient and the subconscient in which his highest and his lowest states are respectively concealed, one in an utter light, the other in an utter darkness. From that he goes forth as the first and supreme force and is born to the Bull or the
  Lord by the action of the seven powers of the Bliss, the seven
  Beloved. "He went forward by illumined knowledge as the first force, in the seat of the Truth, in the lair of the Bull, desirable, young, full in body, shining wide; the seven Beloved bore him to the Lord."
  The Rishi then comes to the achievement of the human fathers, asmakam atra pitaro manus.ya, abhi pra sedur r.tam asus.an.ah.: "Here our human fathers seeking possession of the

1.20 - Tabooed Persons, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and hungry,
  he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a

1.27 - Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope Boniface VIII., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
  Governs the Lioncel of the white lair,
  Who changes sides 'twixt summer-time and winter;

13.07 - The Inter-Zone, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   As they proceeded, they mounted higher and higher regions of being. And a change was coming on visibly on Savitri. Death was explaining to her that happiness on earth or in earthly life is not the supremely desirable thing. The supreme desirable thing is to discard the maya of earthly life, that vale of tears and rise into the very source, the origin of creation, the infinite peace and silence. As Death was receding towards that ultimate Nothingness, the Divinity that Savitri was, the mighty Godhead that took a human shape, manifested itself more and more shedding all around her a great effulgence, a mighty power. She had entered into Death's own lair and identified herself with Death's self which is the Divine Himself. In that great burning Light Death was consumed and dissolved.
   The dire universal shadow disappeared

1.31 - Adonis in Cyprus, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  their lairs among the rocks saw the red sun of the desert reflected
  in the water, and taking it for the blood, or perhaps rather for an

1.62 - The Fire-Festivals of Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Ramsay, laird of Ochtertyre, near Crieff, the patron of Burns and
  the friend of Sir Walter Scott. He says: "But the most considerable

1.67 - The External Soul in Folk-Custom, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  exclaimed, "The laird's deid noo!" and soon after news came that Fox
  Maule, eleventh Earl of Dalhousie, was dead.

1970 02 23, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   350How shall I know Gods will with me? I have to put egoism out of me, hunting it from every lair and burrow, and ba the my purified and naked soul in His infinite workings; then He himself will reveal it to me.
   351Only the soul that is naked and unashamed can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity.

1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   masonry; that monstrous lair of elder secrets which now echoed for the
   first time, after uncounted epochs, to the tread of human feet. This is
  --
   surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to
   newer and wider conquests.

1f.lovecraft - Out of the Aeons, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   shocking devil-entity in its lair. Of what would follow, he could not
   even guess; but the hope of being mankinds saviour lent strength to

1f.lovecraft - The Diary of Alonzo Typer, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   leading to the Immemorial lair. What guardians live endlessly within,
   flourishing from century to century on an unknown nourishment, only the

1f.lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   in its lair. Three dogs that were with the party had barked furiously
   at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant when near the glen. Someone

1f.lovecraft - The Haunter of the Dark, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   What, anyway, was this abandoned lair of cosmic evil? What had been
   done here, and what might still be lurking in the bird-shunned shadows?

1f.lovecraft - The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   report had not lied concerning the isolation of Anathas lair. The
   cavern-mouth was well-concealed, and over everything an ominous quiet
  --
   he had attained the very opening of the lair, he hesitated no longer,
   for it was evident that the monster was away.

1f.lovecraft - The Mound, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   into their secret lair. As a matter of fact, they were not altogether
   what one could call real Indianshe would explain about that later.

1f.lovecraft - The Shadow out of Time, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   pried out of its forgotten lair amidst the undisturbed dust of a
   million centuries. No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since

1f.lovecraft - The Shadow over Innsmouth, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Cyclopean and many-columned Yha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep
   Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.

1f.lovecraft - The Slaying of the Monster, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   FEARFUL lair SAVING THE LAND FROM A DREADFUL DOOM.
   These words were hard to read when we dug that stone from its deep,

1f.lovecraft - The Temple, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   black interior which might prove the lair of some indescribable marine
   monster or a labyrinth of passages from whose windings I could never

1f.lovecraft - Under the Pyramids, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   further from the cavernous lair beneath me.
   Then it did emerge . . . it did emerge, and at the sight I turned and

1.fs - A Funeral Fantasie, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
    Towards that sad lair the pale procession come
     Where the grave closes on the night below.

1.fs - Hero And Leander, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
  And, loosed from out their rocky lair,
   Sweep all the storms abroad.

1.fs - The Hostage, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
   When from the forest's gloomy lair,
  With ragged club in ruthless hand,

1.jk - Endymion - Book III, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Fainted away in that dark lair of night.
  Think, my deliverer, how desolate

1.jk - Endymion - Book IV, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair.
   The good-night blush of eve was waning slow,

1.jk - Hyperion. Book I, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Still as the silence round about his lair;
  Forest on forest hung about his head

1.jk - Lines Written In The Highlands After A Visit To Burnss Country, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Ring-dove may fly convuls'd across to some high-cedar'd lair;
  But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground,

1.jk - Ode To Apollo, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Rousing them from Pleasure's lair:--
  Then o'er the strings his fingers gently move,

1.jk - Sonnet IX. Keen, Fitful Gusts Are, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair:
  For I am brimfull of the friendliness

1.jk - Sonnet X. To One Who Has Been Long In City Pent, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
      Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
      Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

1.jk - The Cap And Bells; Or, The Jealousies - A Faery Tale .. Unfinished, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  With the sweet princess on her plumag'd lair,
  Speed giving to the winds her lustrous hair;

1.lovecraft - The Outpost, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  He found the Elder Secrets lair.
  Strange turrets rose beyond the plain,

1.pbs - Adonais - An elegy on the Death of John Keats, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
  And love and life contend in it, for what

1.pbs - Bigotrys Victim, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
  When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind

1.pbs - Hellas - A Lyrical Drama, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair:
   But Greece was as a hermit-child,

1.pbs - Love- Hope, Desire, And Fear, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Refuge in the lynxs lair,
  Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear,

1.pbs - Marenghi, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
  And thus thy victims fate is as thine own.

1.pbs - Orpheus, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  And kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair.
  Even the blind worms seem to feel the sound.

1.pbs - Prince Athanase, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  'A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
  O Athanase!in one so good and great,

1.pbs - Prometheus Unbound, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  We make there our liquid lair,
  Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
  --
  So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
  Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
  --
  Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
  The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye

1.pbs - The Mask Of Anarchy, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  Beasts find fare, in woody lair
  When storm and snow are in the air[1].

1.pbs - The Revolt Of Islam - Canto I-XII, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
    Of noon beside the sea, had made a lair
   For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept,
  --
    Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair
   Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits,
  --
    Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood;
   And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,
  --
    As if some living thing had made its lair
   Even in the fountains of my life:a long
  --
    Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast;
    But all that cave and all its shapes, possessed
  --
    By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,
   Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame
  --
   As in a hydra's swarming lair, its crest
    Eminent among those victimseven the Fear

1.pbs - The Wandering Jews Soliloquy, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair,
  And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire,

1.pbs - The Witch Of Atlas, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  He passed out of his everlasting lair
   Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,

1.poe - Al Aaraaf- Part 2, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
     And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
     Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall

1.poe - Ulalume, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Come up through the lair of the Lion,
   With love in her luminous eyes."

1.rb - Introduction: Pippa Passes, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  My being Luigi? While that mossy lair
  Of lizards through the winter-time is stirred

1.rb - Paracelsus - Part II - Paracelsus Attains, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Have my fierce spasms compelled thee from thy lair?
  Art thou the sage I only seemed to be,

1.rb - Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgement of Paris', #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  ``And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
  ``And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine,

1.rmr - The Sonnets To Orpheus - I, #Rilke - Poems, #Rainer Maria Rilke, #Poetry
  unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
  and it was not from any dullness, not

1.rwe - The Adirondacs, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
  And wit to track or take him in his lair.
  Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,

1.wby - The Municipal Gallery Revisited, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
  No fox can foul the lair the badger swept
  (An image out of Spenser and the common tongue).

1.wby - The Wanderings Of Oisin - Book III, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
  When a glow-worm was green on a grass-leaf, lured from his lair in the mould;
  Half wakening, we lifted our eyelids, and gazed on the grass with a sigh.

1.whitman - Europe, The 72d And 73d Years Of These States, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
  Like lightning it le'pt forth, half startled at itself,

1.ww - A Whirl-Blast From Behind The Hill, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
    Your head in this dark lair!"
  But wonder, pity, soon were quelled;

1.ww - Book Fifth-Books, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  And thought that, in the blind and awful lair
  Of such a madness, reason did lie couched.

1.ww - Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland- 1803 X. Rob Roys Grave, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Sheriffs, and lairds and their domains,        
  Would all have seemed but paltry things,

1.ww - The Excursion- VII- Book Sixth- The Churchyard Among the Mountains, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  In which the Scottish laird had long possessed
  An undisturbed abode. Here, then, they met,

2.01 - Mandala One, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  (5) Thou wert the uncoverer of luminous Valas lair, O dweller on the hill; into thee the gods without fear entered forcefully protected (or impelled).
  (6) Voiceful with thy ecstasies, O mighty one, I went towards the sea; the doers of action approached (or resorted to me) in the knowledge of that delighter in my speech.
  --
  (7) Ayasya by the words of light that hymned him uncovered and saw as two the eternal goddesses who lie in one lair; then Indra, a doer of mighty works, held earth and heaven in the highest ether as the Lord of Joy holds his two wives.
  (8) Two young goddesses of differing forms who are ever reborn, circle eternally to each other by their own motions about earth and heaven, Night with her dark, Dawn with her shining limbs.
  --
  (5) Far-moving he goes with the Violent Ones as if with his children and overcomes the unfriendly host in the battle which is a forceful fighting of gods. He makes his way through the things of the Word with the Powers that dwell with him in his lair.
  May that Indra with his retinue of Maruts be with us for our increase.

2.08 - ON THE FAMOUS WISE MEN, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  people as a wolf to dogs. To hound him out of his lair
  -that is what the people have ever called "a sense of

2.19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This awareness, this control are of the utmost importance. For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements. It sustains and reinforces all in us that clings most and refuses to change, our mechanical recurrences of unintelligent thought, our persistent obstinacies of feeling, sensation, impulse, propensity, our uncontrolled fixities of character. The animal in us, - the infernal also, - has its lair of retreat in the dense jungle of the subconscience. To penetrate there, to bring in light and establish a control, is indispensable for the completeness of any higher life, for any integral transformation of the nature.
  The part of us that we have characterised as intraconscient and circumconscient is a still more potent and much more valuable element in the constitution of our being. It includes the large action of an inner intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, even of an inner subtle-physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness, which is not brought to the front, which is subliminal, in the modern phrase. But when we can enter and explore this hidden self, we find that our waking sense and intelligence are for the most part a selection from what we secretly are or can be, an exteriorised and much mutilated and vulgarised edition of our real, our hidden being or an upthrow from its depths. Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help by an evolution out of the Inconscient for the utility of our present mental and physical life on earth; this that is behind is a formation mediating between the Inconscient and the larger planes of Life and Mind which have been created by the involutionary descent and whose pressure has helped to bring about the evolution of mind and life in Matter.

2 - Other Hymns to Agni, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  force, in the native seat of Truth, in the lair of the Bull,
  desirable and young and beautiful of body10 and wide in
  --
  inconscient matter - in the lair of the Bull. This is the Bull which represents the Purusha.
  The lair of the Bull is the original status of Him called at other places, vis.n.oh. paramam
  padam, sada pasyanti surayah..

3.02 - THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  Sinanthropus has been caught in his lair, a filled-up cave littered
  with stone implements mixed with charred bones. Ought we,

3.03 - The Soul Is Mortal, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
  Into its shadowy lairs, the man at first
  Arises reeling, and gradually comes back

3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
   (position of the sun at noon) in Zosimos.588 But at the zenith the descent begins. The mystic traveller goes back to the Nile mouth from which he started. He repeats, as it were, the descent of the soul which had led in the first place to the imprinting of the chirographum. He retraces his steps through the planetary houses until he comes back to the dark Saturn. This means that the soul, which was imprinted with a horoscopic character at the time of its descent into birth, conscious now of its godlikeness, beards the archons in their lairs and carries the light undisguised down into the darkness of the world.
  [310] Here again psychology makes no special claims. What before was a burden unwillingly borne and blamed upon the entire family, is seen by the greatest possible insight (which can be very modest!) to be no more than the possession of ones own personality, and one realizesas though this were not self-evident!that one cannot live from anything except what one is.

3.1.23 - The Rishi, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And leave this lair
  Of gross material flesh which we would keep

37.01 - Yama - Nachiketa (Katha Upanishad), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   As an initial clue to the problem, we must keep in mind that the heavenly world can be attained even without the death of the body, "by pushing away from in front the bonds of death", as the text says, or as in the usual interpretation, before succumbing to death. Nachiketas himself had achieved this feat. The heavenly world has been conceived as just another neighbourhood or abode, a world of delight where there is no old age, death, or sorrow and suffering. But it does not imply any victory gained in a battle with death, any mastery obtained over death. All that seems to happen here is that death has been pushed aside, or evaded perhaps. There is merely an absence of death here, it has not been brought under control. Death may not be present in this abode, but he is sitting in his lair and is free to go where he wills, even if it be within some limits. There has been no annihilation of death.
   In his third boon, Nachiketas wants to know if there is beyond the physical death any surpassing of death. Granted that heaven is attained, but what happens after that, beyond the heavenly world? For, this too is sometimes said that the enjoyment of heaven is only for a time, no matter how long that time be; after the term is over, one has to come back to earth, death has to be encountered over again. In this view, if the soul of man be immortal, the immortality does not go beyond heaven, it is nothing more than the enjoyment of heaven.

3.7.1.03 - Rebirth, Evolution, Heredity, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Two truths, discoveries with an enormous periphery of luminous result and of a considerable essential magnitude, evolution and heredity, figure today in the front of thought, and I suppose we have to take them as a well-established unquenchable light upon our being, lamps of a constant lustre, though not yet very perfectly trimmed, final so far as anything is final in mans constantly changing cinematographic process of the development of intellectual knowledge. They may be said to make up almost the whole fundamental idea of life in the way of seeing peculiar to a mind dominated, fashioned, pressed into its powerful moulds by the exact, curious, multifariously searching, yet in the end singularly limited observation and singularly narrow reason of our modern science. Science is in her own way a great seer and magician; she has both the microscopic and the macroscopic, the closely gazing and the telescopic view, a dissolving power of searching analytic resolution, a creative power of revealing synthetic effectuation. She has hunted to their lair many of the intermediate secret processes of the great creatrix, and even she has been able, by the inventive faculty given to us, to go and do one better. Man, this midget in infinity, locomotive yet nailed to the contiguity of a petty crust of soil by the force of gravitation, has certainly scored by her a goodly number of points against the mother of the universe. But all this has been done in some perfection only in the limits of her lowest obtrusive physical field.
  Face to face with psychic and spiritual secrecies, as in the open elementary world even of mind, Science has still the uninformed gaze and the groping hands of the infant. In that sphere she, so precise, illuminative, compelling in the physical, sees only the big blazing buzzing confusion which James tells us, with a possibly inaccurate vividness of alliterative phrase, is the newborn babys view of the sensible world into which he has dropped down the mysterious stairs of birth. Science, faced with what are still to her the wonderful random accords and unexplained miracles of consciousness, protects herself from the errors of the imagination,but stumbling incidentally by that very fact into plenty of the errors of an inadequate induction,behind an opaque shield of cautelous scepticism. She clings with the grasping firmness of the half-drowned to planks of security she thinks she has got in a few well-tested correspondences,so-styled, though the word as used explains nothing,between mental action and its accompaniment of suggestive or instrumental physical functionings. She is determined, if she can, to explain every supraphysical phenomenon by some physical fact; psychological process of mind must not exist except as result or rendering of physiological process of body. This set resolution, apparently rational and cautious of ascertainable and firmly tangible truth, but really heroic in its paradoxical temerity, shuts up her chance of rapid discovery, for the present at least, in a fairly narrow circle. It taints too her extensions of physical truth into the psychological field with a pursuing sense of inadequacy. And this inadequacy in extended application is very evident in her theories of heredity and evolution when she forces them beyond their safe ground of physical truth and labours to illumine by them the subtle, complex, elusive phenomena of our psychological being.

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  works in the lair of the Bull of Heaven (vr.ishabhasya).
  Text. Sa jayata prathamah pastyasu, maho budhne rajaso asya
  --
  12. Forward he moved, a supreme force, by illumined knowledge, in the womb of Truth, in the lair of the Bull, desirable and
  young and great of body and widely shining. Seven Masters of

4.2 - Karma, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  349. How shall I know God's will with me? I have to put egoism out of me, hunting it from every lair & burrow, and ba the my purified and naked soul in His infinite workings; then He himself will reveal it to me.
  350. Only the soul that is naked and unashamed, can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity.

5.01 - The Dakini, Salgye Du Dalma, #The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, #Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #Buddhism
  into a dark and dreadful lair filled with mournful sounds and
  discordant cries.

5.1.01.2 - The Book of the Statesman, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Planned he a lair for a beast of prey, for a pantheress dire-souled
  Crouched in the hills for her bound or self-gathered against the avenger?

5.1.01.3 - The Book of the Assembly, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Guarding the lair of her young and roaring back at her hunters.
  We who are souls descended from Ilus and seeds of his making,

5.1.01.4 - The Book of Partings, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  So would I hunt the Greeks through the plains to their lair by the Ocean,
  Straight at the throat of my foeman so would I leap in the battle.

5.1.01.5 - The Book of Achilles, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  Sunk to its lair, till the insulter died torn or was kneeling for pardon.
  Fierce was my heart in my youth and exulted in triumph and slaughter.

5.1.01.7 - The Book of the Woman, #5.1.01 - Ilion, #unset, #Zen
  But in his lair alone the godlike doomed Pelides
  Turned to the door of his tent and was striding forth to the battle,

5.2.02 - The Meditations of Mandavya, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Began, wast waiting for me in thy lair.
  O Wild Beast of the ways who torest my soul

6.03 - Extraordinary And Paradoxical Telluric Phenomena, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
  By sniffing nostrils, from their dusky lairs
  The wriggling generations of wild snakes.

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  ------XIX. IS PLEROMA SATAN'S lair? ... 506
  ------XX. PROMETHEUS, THE TITAN ... 519
  --
  IS PLEROMA SATAN'S lair?
  THE subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other aspects.

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  ------XIX. IS PLEROMA SATAN'S lair? ... 506
  Jehovah's Personating Spirit ... 509

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  dragons. Men bold enough to venture into dragon lairs
  scatter grain that has been doctored to make these beasts
  --
  mauled and bloody, to its lair in the riverbed. The victims
  sweetheart tracked the monster, and with a sword sliced
  --
  slave hides in its lair and steals a cup. On waking, the
  Dragon notices the theft and resolves to kill the thief, but

The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  the monster out o its lair and the deadly gesture with the goal which he proposed to endeavor
  in this difficult and dangerous operation. At least, in this way, we could find a satisfactory and

The Shadow Out Of Time, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  of its lair amidst the dust of a million centuries.
  No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since the advent of man to this planet.

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun lair

The noun lair has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
                      
1. (1) lair, den ::: (the habitation of wild animals)


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun lair

1 sense of lair                            

Sense 1
lair, den
   => habitation
     => habitat, home ground
       => environment, environs, surroundings, surround
         => geographical area, geographic area, geographical region, geographic region
           => region
             => location
               => object, physical object
                 => physical entity
                   => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun lair
                                    


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun lair

1 sense of lair                            

Sense 1
lair, den
   => habitation




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun lair

1 sense of lair                            

Sense 1
lair, den
  -> habitation
   => aerie, aery, eyrie, eyry
   => lair, den




--- Grep of noun lair
anthony charles lynton blair
blair
chocolate eclair
clive sinclair
eclair
eric arthur blair
eric blair
flair
lair
laird
lake saint clair
lake st. clair
sinclair
sir clive marles sinclair
tony blair
upton beall sinclair
upton sinclair



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Wikipedia - Clairtone -- Canadian audiovisual equipment manufacturer
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Wikipedia - clairvoyance
Wikipedia - Clairvoyance -- Ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through extrasensory perception
Wikipedia - Clairvoyant
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Wikipedia - Claude Dallaire -- Canadian weightlifter
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Wikipedia - Clay Blair -- American historian
Wikipedia - C. Ledyard Blair -- American investment banker and yachtsman
Wikipedia - Colin St Clair Oakes -- British architect
Wikipedia - College station (MetroLink) -- St. Louis MetroLink Red Line station serving Southwestern Illinois College in Saint Clair County, Illinois
Wikipedia - Commission scolaire de Chomedey-Laval -- Historical school district in Quebec, Canada
Wikipedia - Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys -- Canadian school board
Wikipedia - Commission scolaire Marie-Victorin -- French-language school board in Quebec, Canada
Wikipedia - Conus belairensis -- Species of sea snail
Wikipedia - Crack-Up (1936 film) -- 1936 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Cyrielle Clair -- French actress
Wikipedia - Dance of the Clairvoyants -- 2020 single by Pearl Jam
Wikipedia - Dangerously Yours (1937 film) -- 1937 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Dan Locklair -- American composer
Wikipedia - Daphne Clair -- New Zealand writer and activist
Wikipedia - David Andrew Sinclair -- Australian biogerontologist
Wikipedia - David Blair (athlete) -- American Paralympic athlete
Wikipedia - David Blair (golfer) -- Scottish golfer
Wikipedia - David Blair (information technologist)
Wikipedia - David Blair (physicist)
Wikipedia - David Laird Adams -- Scottish academic
Wikipedia - Dean S. Laird -- WWII Ace
Wikipedia - Death of Blair Peach -- Anti-Nazi protestor killed by the police in 1979
Wikipedia - Deborah Sinclair -- Canadian social worker
Wikipedia - Debra Sinclair -- American sports shooter
Wikipedia - Declan Michael Laird -- Scottish actor
Wikipedia - Delairea -- Species of flowering plant in the daisy family Asteraceae
Wikipedia - Dennis Blair (comedian) -- American stand-up comedian
Wikipedia - Dennis C. Blair -- US Navy admiral and 3rd Director of National Intelligence
Wikipedia - Destination Big House -- 1950 film by George Blair
Wikipedia - Dewi Claire Schreefel -- Dutch professional golfer
Wikipedia - Diane Blair -- American political scientist
Wikipedia - Disappearance of Helen Claire Frost -- missing person, British Columbia, Canada
Wikipedia - Division of Blair -- Australian federal electoral division
Wikipedia - Donald Sinclair (hotel owner) -- British hotel owner
Wikipedia - Doris Blair -- British artist
Wikipedia - Dorothy Chan -- Poet and author based in Eau Claire
Wikipedia - Down in San Diego -- 1941 film by Robert B. Sinclair
Wikipedia - Down on the Farm (1938 film) -- 1938 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Draft:Claire MacLeary -- Scottish writer
Wikipedia - Draft:Richard H Blair -- Adopted son of George Orwell
Wikipedia - Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp -- 1991 video game
Wikipedia - Dragon's Teeth (novel) -- Book by Upton Sinclair
Wikipedia - Dramatic School (film) -- 1938 film directed by Robert B. Sinclair
Wikipedia - Duncan G. Sinclair
Wikipedia - Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs israelites de France -- Jewish Scouting and Guiding organization in France
Wikipedia - ECLAIR
Wikipedia - Eclair -- Cream-filled pastry
Wikipedia - Edgemont Memorial Park -- Municipal park in Montclair, New Jersey
Wikipedia - Edme-Jean Leclaire -- French businessman
Wikipedia - Edward Sinclair (cricketer) -- English cricketer and Royal Navy officer
Wikipedia - Edward Sinclair -- English actor
Wikipedia - Eileen Blair -- British writer
Wikipedia - Eleanour Sinclair Rohde -- British horticulturalist and author
Wikipedia - Elizabeth Laird (author) -- British children's writer
Wikipedia - Elizabeth Laird (physicist) -- Canadian physicist
Wikipedia - Elizabeth Sinclair -- British farmer and plantation owner in New Zealand and Hawaii
Wikipedia - Elmer Gantry -- 1926 satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis
Wikipedia - Emilie-Claire Barlow -- Canadian jazz singer and voice actress
Wikipedia - Emmanuel Saint-Hilaire -- Haitian athlete
Wikipedia - Entr'acte (film) -- 1924 film by Rene Clair
Wikipedia - Erroll Sinclair -- English cricketer, tea merchant
Wikipedia - Eugene Blair -- United States Navy sailor
Wikipedia - Euphemia Sinclair -- Twentieth-century British aristocrat and socialite
Wikipedia - Everard Blair -- Indian-born English cricketer and soldier
Wikipedia - Everina Sinclair -- Irish woodworker and teacher
Wikipedia - ExcelAire -- Airline of the United States
Wikipedia - Fatima Gallaire -- French--Algerian playwright
Wikipedia - Federal Agent at Large -- 1950 film by George Blair
Wikipedia - Find Your Man -- 1924 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - First Blair ministry -- Government of the United Kingdom
Wikipedia - Flair Airlines -- Canadian airline
Wikipedia - Flair (horse) -- British Thoroughbred racehorse
Wikipedia - Flair (miniseries) -- 1990 Australian miniseries
Wikipedia - Fontana (Schooner) -- Ship sunk in the St. Clair river in 1900
Wikipedia - Francis Preston Blair Jr. -- Union Army general, politician
Wikipedia - Frank Blair (journalist) -- American broadcast journalist
Wikipedia - Gaston Allaire -- Canadian musician
Wikipedia - Georges-Hilaire Dupont -- Catholic bishop
Wikipedia - George W. Blair -- American politician
Wikipedia - Gerard of Clairvaux
Wikipedia - Gloriana St. Clair -- American librarian
Wikipedia - Goldie Gets Along -- 1933 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Gregory Blair -- American actor, director, and playwright
Wikipedia - Gwenda Blair -- American author and journalist
Wikipedia - G. W. Scott Blair
Wikipedia - H3 (film) -- 2001 film by Les Blair
Wikipedia - Harry Ford Sinclair -- American businessman and oilman
Wikipedia - Helen Laird -- Irish actress, costumier, teacher and feminist
Wikipedia - Henry Blair (inventor) -- American inventor (1807 - 1860)
Wikipedia - Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney -- Scottish and Norwegian nobleman
Wikipedia - Henry John Sinclair, 2nd Baron Pentland
Wikipedia - High Life (2018 film) -- 2018 film by Claire Denis
Wikipedia - Hilaire Belloc bibliography -- Wikipedia bibliography
Wikipedia - Hilaire Belloc's books
Wikipedia - Hilaire Belloc -- English writer (1870-1953)
Wikipedia - Hilaire Bernard de La Riviere -- Canadian architect, attorney, and notary
Wikipedia - Hilaire-Bernard de Longepierre -- French playwright
Wikipedia - Hilaire de Chardonnet
Wikipedia - Hilaire Deprez -- Belgian canoeist
Wikipedia - Hit the Saddle -- 1937 film by Mack V. Wright, George Blair
Wikipedia - How To Become Clairvoyant
Wikipedia - How to Become Clairvoyant
Wikipedia - Hugh Blair (composer) -- English composer and organist (1864-1932)
Wikipedia - Hugh Blair -- Scottish philosopher
Wikipedia - Iain Sinclair
Wikipedia - Ian Sinclair -- Australian politician
Wikipedia - I'll Wait for You (film) -- 1941 film directed by Robert B. Sinclair
Wikipedia - I Married a Witch -- 1942 film by Rene Clair
Wikipedia - Immaculate Conception High School (Montclair, New Jersey) -- Private high school in Essex County, New Jersey, United States
Wikipedia - Ina Claire -- American stage and film actress
Wikipedia - Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire -- Wife-and-husband illustrator and children's writer duo
Wikipedia - Isaac von Sinclair -- German writer and diplomat
Wikipedia - Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair -- Scottish born Hawaiian botanist (1842-1900)
Wikipedia - Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Wikipedia - Isla Blair -- British actress
Wikipedia - It Can't Happen Here -- 1935 dystopian novel by Sinclair Lewis
Wikipedia - Jack St. Clair Kilby
Wikipedia - Jacques Mauclair -- French actor
Wikipedia - James Blair-Cunynghame -- Scottish banker (1913-1990)
Wikipedia - James Blair Down -- Canadian citizen
Wikipedia - James Blair (farmer) -- Scottish-born Canadian farmer
Wikipedia - James Blair (Indian Army officer) -- Recipient of the Victoria Cross
Wikipedia - James Matthews (racing driver) -- British former professional racing driver, hedge fund manager, and heir to the Scottish title of Laird of Glen Affric
Wikipedia - James Sinclair (botanist) -- Scottish botanist
Wikipedia - Jamie Sinclair -- Canadian-American curler
Wikipedia - Jane Claire Dirks-Edmunds -- American ecologist and biologist
Wikipedia - Jane Sinclair Wells -- British composer and saxophonist
Wikipedia - Janet Blair -- American singer and actress
Wikipedia - J. Anthony Blair -- Canadian philosopher
Wikipedia - Jasmin St. Claire -- American pornographic actress
Wikipedia - Jayson Blair (actor) -- American actor
Wikipedia - Jayson Blair -- American journalist
Wikipedia - Jean Dallaire -- Canadian painter
Wikipedia - Jim Sinclair (activist) -- Autism rights activist
Wikipedia - Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President -- 1939 film directed by Robert B. Sinclair
Wikipedia - Joe Clair -- American comedian
Wikipedia - John Bellairs -- American author
Wikipedia - John Blair Deaver -- American surgeon
Wikipedia - John Blair (historian)
Wikipedia - John Blair Jr. -- Justice on the US Supreme Court
Wikipedia - John Blair (Northern Ireland politician) -- Northern Irish politician
Wikipedia - John Blair (pastor) -- Irish American minister (1720-1771)
Wikipedia - John Blair Scribner -- American publisher
Wikipedia - John Blair Sr. -- American politician (1687-1771)
Wikipedia - John Dallaire -- American artist
Wikipedia - John E. Laird
Wikipedia - John Laird (philosopher)
Wikipedia - John McHardy Sinclair
Wikipedia - John Sinclair, 1st Baron Pentland -- Scottish politician
Wikipedia - John St. Clair Boyd -- Irish doctor and Gaelic League activist
Wikipedia - Jonathan Blair -- American photographer
Wikipedia - Jordan-Claire Green -- American actress, a musician and singer
Wikipedia - Jordan Claire Robbins -- Bermudian-Canadian actress and model
Wikipedia - Jordie Bellaire -- American comic book colorist
Wikipedia - Jose Maria Lamamie de Clairac y Colina -- Spanish politician
Wikipedia - Joseph J. Allaire -- Co-founder of several companies including Allaire Corporation and RStudio
Wikipedia - Joseph Philippe de Clairville
Wikipedia - Jovellana sinclairii -- Species of plant
Wikipedia - Joyce Blair -- English actress and dancer
Wikipedia - Julie Claire -- American actress
Wikipedia - June Blair -- American model and actress
Wikipedia - Karine Claireaux -- French politician
Wikipedia - Katherine Laird Cox -- Member of the Bloomsbury set
Wikipedia - Katie Blair -- American actress, model and beauty queen
Wikipedia - KDCV-FM -- Former radio station in Blair, Nebraska
Wikipedia - Keith Sinclair -- New Zealand historian and poet
Wikipedia - Kelly Blair LaBounty -- American track and field athlete
Wikipedia - Kerry Blair -- American author
Wikipedia - Kevin Sinclair -- Hong Kong journalist
Wikipedia - King of the Gamblers -- 1948 film directed by George Blair
Wikipedia - Klairon Davis Novice Chase -- Steeplechase horse race in Ireland
Wikipedia - KLM Interinsulair Bedrijf -- defunct airline
Wikipedia - KOBM-FM -- Oldies radio station in Blair, Nebraska
Wikipedia - Laira (comics)
Wikipedia - Laird & Company -- Distillery
Wikipedia - Laird Barron -- American author and poet
Wikipedia - Laird Cregar -- American actor (1913-1944)
Wikipedia - Laird Glacier -- Glacier in Antarctica
Wikipedia - Laird Sloan -- Canadian athlete
Wikipedia - Laird Stirling -- Canadian politician
Wikipedia - Lairet River -- Tributary of Saint-Charles River in QuM-CM-)bec, Canada
Wikipedia - Lairiere -- Commune in Occitanie, France
Wikipedia - Lairig an Laoigh -- Major mountain pass in Cairngorms, Scotland
Wikipedia - Lake Saint Clair (North America)
Wikipedia - Layla Claire -- Canadian soprano opera singer
Wikipedia - Lee Blair (artist) -- American artist
Wikipedia - Leesha Eclairs -- Indian actress
Wikipedia - Lenora Claire (casting director) -- American Casting director
Wikipedia - Leo Blair -- English barrister and father of Tony Blair
Wikipedia - Les Fleurs du mal -- Volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire
Wikipedia - Les Hotesses d'Hilaire -- Canadian rock band
Wikipedia - Lesley Laird -- Former Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party
Wikipedia - Ligne claire -- Drawing style
Wikipedia - Linda Blair -- American actress and animal rights activist
Wikipedia - Linda Johnson-Blair -- Canadian speed skater
Wikipedia - Lindi St Clair -- British madam
Wikipedia - Lionel Palairet
Wikipedia - List of awards and nominations received by Claire Foy -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Fabulous Five and Taffy Sinclair books -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of international goals scored by Christine Sinclair -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Marie Claire Australia cover models -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Marie Claire cover models -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Nouvelair destinations -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of people from Montclair, New Jersey -- Notable people from Montclair, New Jersey, United States
Wikipedia - List of schools of the Conseil scolaire Viamonde -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Sinclair calculators -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Sinclair QL clones -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Sinclair QL software -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of stations owned or operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of The Lair episodes -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire people -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - Little Secrets (2001 film) -- 2001 independent comedy-drama film by Blair Treu
Wikipedia - LM-CM-)o FerrM-CM-) chante Baudelaire -- 1967 studio album by LM-CM-)o FerrM-CM-)
Wikipedia - Lord Sinclair -- British noble title
Wikipedia - Lorne Blair -- English film director and producer
Wikipedia - M-136 (Michigan highway) -- State highway in St. Clair County, Michigan, United States
Wikipedia - M-146 (Michigan highway) -- Former state highway in St. Clair County, Michigan, United States
Wikipedia - M-154 (Michigan highway) -- State highway on Harsens Island in St. Clair County, Michigan, United States
Wikipedia - Macon Blair -- American film actor, line producer and screenwriter
Wikipedia - Madeline Blair -- American prostitute
Wikipedia - Madge Sinclair -- Jamaican actress
Wikipedia - Malcolm St. Clair (filmmaker) -- Hollywood film director, writer, producer and actor
Wikipedia - Marcel Hillaire -- character actor
Wikipedia - Marcelle Auclair
Wikipedia - Margaret Sinclair (nun) -- Scottish Roman Catholic nun
Wikipedia - Maria Claire Adorna -- Filipino triathlete
Wikipedia - Marie-Claire Faray -- Women's activist
Wikipedia - Marie-Claire Heureuse FM-CM-)licitM-CM-) -- Haitian empress
Wikipedia - Marie-Claire Restoux -- French judoka
Wikipedia - Marie Claire Uwumuremyi -- Rwandan politician
Wikipedia - Marie Claire van Stevens -- Belgian archer
Wikipedia - Marie Claire
Wikipedia - Mark Lair -- American bridge player
Wikipedia - Martin Laird -- Scottish professional golfer
Wikipedia - Mary Blair Moody -- American physician, anatomist and editor (1837-1919)
Wikipedia - Mary Burns Laird -- Scottish activists
Wikipedia - Mary-Claire King -- American geneticist
Wikipedia - Maurice LeClair
Wikipedia - Maxime Bousselaire -- French shot putter
Wikipedia - Maybelle Blair -- American softball player
Wikipedia - May Sinclair
Wikipedia - M-CM-^@ la claire fontaine -- Traditional French song
Wikipedia - Melissa Claire Egan -- American actress
Wikipedia - Michael Sinclair (British Army officer) -- British Army officer
Wikipedia - Michel Auclair -- French actor of Serbian descent
Wikipedia - Moll Pitcher -- American clairvoyant
Wikipedia - Montclair-Boonton Line -- Commuter rail line in New Jersey
Wikipedia - Montclair High School (New Jersey) -- High school in Essex County, New Jersey, United States
Wikipedia - Montclair Kimberley Academy -- Private school in Essex County, New Jersey, United States
Wikipedia - Montclair, New Jersey -- Township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States
Wikipedia - Montclair Place (California) -- Shopping mall in Montclair, California
Wikipedia - Montclair Public Schools -- School district in Essex County, New Jersey, United States
Wikipedia - Montclair State University -- Public university in New Jersey, United States
Wikipedia - Morrison & Sinclair -- Australian ship-building company
Wikipedia - Mount Blair (Antarctica) -- Mountain in Antarctica
Wikipedia - Mount Blair (Scotland) -- Hill
Wikipedia - Mr. and Mrs. North (film) -- 1942 film by Robert B. Sinclair
Wikipedia - Murder of Claire Tiltman -- Murder in Kent, United Kingdom in 1993
Wikipedia - Nan Blair -- American screenwriter
Wikipedia - Nancy Laird Chance -- American pianist and composer
Wikipedia - Nan Laird
Wikipedia - Natalie Blair -- Australian actress
Wikipedia - Nathalie Sinclair -- Canadian mathematician
Wikipedia - Neeyum Naanum -- 2010 film directed by S. V. Solairaja
Wikipedia - News Central -- Television news format created by Sinclair Broadcast Group
Wikipedia - Niall Blair -- Australian politician
Wikipedia - Nick Laird -- Northern Irish novelist and poet
Wikipedia - Night Parade -- 1929 film directed by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Nils Daulaire -- American physician, government official
Wikipedia - Normalair
Wikipedia - Norman St. Clair -- English-born American painter and architect
Wikipedia - Olga Sinclair -- Panamanian painter
Wikipedia - Olsen's Big Moment -- 1933 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Ontario-Montclair School District -- School district in San Bernardino County, California
Wikipedia - Over My Dead Body (1942 film) -- 1942 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Palairac -- Commune in Occitanie, France
Wikipedia - Parallel 59 -- Doctor Who novel by Stephen Cole and Natalie Dallaire
Wikipedia - Parti national populaire -- Defunct political party in Quebec
Wikipedia - Pat Blair -- American calligrapher
Wikipedia - Paula Claire -- British Poet-Artist
Wikipedia - Paul Allaire -- Paul Allaire
Wikipedia - Paul Bazelaire -- French cellist and composer
Wikipedia - Paul Bellair -- American sociologist
Wikipedia - Paul Blair (swimming) -- American swimming coach
Wikipedia - Peter Hunter Blair
Wikipedia - Peter J. N. Sinclair -- British economist
Wikipedia - Phantom of the Megaplex -- 2000 television film directed by Blair Treu
Wikipedia - Philip Clairmont -- New Zealand artist
Wikipedia - Philip Johnson-Laird
Wikipedia - Philippe Clair -- French film director
Wikipedia - Picture Claire -- 2001 film by Bruce McDonald
Wikipedia - Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs -- Book by photojournalist Joan Sinclair
Wikipedia - Pointe-Claire -- Suburban municipality of Montreal, Canada
Wikipedia - Pointe-Claire Windmill -- Montreal windmill built in 1710
Wikipedia - Polaire -- French actress
Wikipedia - Quick Millions (1939 film) -- 1939 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Ralph Blair -- American psychotherapist
Wikipedia - Rebecca Sinclair (snowboarder) -- New Zealand Snowboarder
Wikipedia - Red Sky in the Morning -- 1988 novel by Elizabeth Laird
Wikipedia - RenM-CM-) Clair -- French filmmaker and writer
Wikipedia - Ric Flair Drip -- 2017 single by Offset and Metro Boomin
Wikipedia - Richard Horatio Blair -- Son of George Orwell
Wikipedia - Richard Laird -- American politician
Wikipedia - RM-CM-)ginald BM-CM-)lair -- Canadian politician
Wikipedia - Robert Blair (astronomer)
Wikipedia - Robert Blair (poet)
Wikipedia - Robert Blair (VC) -- Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross
Wikipedia - Robert B. Sinclair -- American film director
Wikipedia - Robert J. Sinclair -- automotive industry executive
Wikipedia - Robert Sinclair Knox -- Decorated British soldier from Northern Ireland
Wikipedia - Robert Sinclair Scott -- Scottish shipbuilder.(1853 - 1905)
Wikipedia - Ron Laird -- American racewalker
Wikipedia - Roy Sinclair (curler) -- Scottish male curler
Wikipedia - Ruth Blair -- American librarian and archivist
Wikipedia - Ryan Blair -- American entrepreneur and author
Wikipedia - Ryan Sinclair -- Fictional character in the TV series Doctor Who
Wikipedia - Safety in Numbers (1938 film) -- 1938 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Saint Clair (disambiguation)
Wikipedia - Saint Claire of Assisi
Wikipedia - Saint-Hilaire, Aude -- Commune in Occitanie, France
Wikipedia - Saint-Hilaire, Essonne -- Commune in M-CM-^Nle-de-France, France
Wikipedia - Saint-Hilaire, Haute-Loire
Wikipedia - Saint-Hilaire-la-Plaine -- Commune in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
Wikipedia - Saint-Hilaire-le-ChM-CM-"teau -- Commune in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
Wikipedia - Saint-Hilaire, Paris -- Former church in Paris, France
Wikipedia - Saint-Hilaire-sous-Romilly -- Commune in Grand Est, France
Wikipedia - Samuel Blair (pastor) -- Irish American minister (1712-1751)
Wikipedia - Selma Blair -- American actress
Wikipedia - Serge Leclaire
Wikipedia - She Had to Eat -- 1937 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Sherlock Holmes (Eclair film series) -- Silent movie
Wikipedia - Simon Allaire -- Canadian politician
Wikipedia - Sinclair BASIC -- Dialect of the programming language BASIC
Wikipedia - Sinclair Black -- American architect
Wikipedia - Sinclair Broadcast Group
Wikipedia - Sinclair C5 -- One-person electric vehicle
Wikipedia - Sinclair Cambridge
Wikipedia - Sinclair Cutcliffe -- Canadian politician from Prince Edward Island
Wikipedia - Sinclair Executive -- Pocket calculator
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Wikipedia - Sinclair Hill -- British film director and screenwriter
Wikipedia - Sinclair Lewis
Wikipedia - Sinclair Oil Corporation -- American petroleum corporation
Wikipedia - Sinclair QL
Wikipedia - Sinclair Research -- British consumer electronics company
Wikipedia - Sinclairs Hotels Limited
Wikipedia - Sinclair (singer) -- French singer-songwriter
Wikipedia - Sinclair-Stevenson
Wikipedia - Sinclair Stevens -- Canadian politician
Wikipedia - Sinclair Township, Clearwater County, Minnesota -- Township in Minnesota, United States
Wikipedia - Sinclair ZX-80
Wikipedia - Sinclair ZX-81
Wikipedia - Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Wikipedia - Sir John Sinclair, 1st Baronet
Wikipedia - Sister Claire Marie Wick
Wikipedia - Sofia (Clairo song) -- 2019 single by Clairo
Wikipedia - Solaire of Astora -- Fictional knight from Dark Souls
Wikipedia - Sonja Morawetz Sinclair -- Czecheslovakian-Canadian journalist, author, and cryptographer
Wikipedia - Sophie Sinclair -- Scottish curler
Wikipedia - S. Robert Blair -- Canadian engineer and businessman.
Wikipedia - St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church
Wikipedia - St. Clair Balfour -- Canadian businessman
Wikipedia - St. Clair County Courthouse (Illinois) -- local government building in the United States
Wikipedia - St. Clair County (disambiguation)
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Wikipedia - St Clair Donaldson
Wikipedia - St Clair Leacock -- Vincentian politician
Wikipedia - St. Clair Pinckney -- American saxophonist
Wikipedia - St. Clair River
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Wikipedia - St. Clairsville, Ohio
Wikipedia - St. Clair Township, Monona County, Iowa -- Township in Iowa, USA
Wikipedia - St. Clair West station -- Toronto subway station
Wikipedia - Stephanie St. Clair -- Caribbean-French mobster and community activist
Wikipedia - Stephen Blair Hedges
Wikipedia - Stephen Sinclair -- New Zealand playwright, screenwriter and novelist
Wikipedia - Steven Blair -- American exercise scientist
Wikipedia - Strathblair -- British television show
Wikipedia - Sunset Terrace/Montclair, Houston
Wikipedia - Suzanna Sablairolles -- Dutch stage actress
Wikipedia - Suzy Delair -- French actress and singer
Wikipedia - Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1916 film) -- 1916 film by James Young
Wikipedia - Sweet Kitty Bellairs -- 1930 film
Wikipedia - Talairan -- Commune in Occitanie, France
Wikipedia - Tan Tjin Kie -- Bureaucrat and Majoor-titulair der Chinezen of Cirebon
Wikipedia - Teddy Sinclair -- English actress and singer
Wikipedia - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in film -- Film franchise based on the comic book series of the same name by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird
Wikipedia - Terre Blair -- Broadcast journalist
Wikipedia - That's My Gal -- 1947 film by George Blair
Wikipedia - The Bad Child's Book of Beasts -- Book by Hilaire Belloc
Wikipedia - The Blaireau Case (1923 film) -- 1923 film
Wikipedia - The Blaireau Case (1932 film) -- 1932 film
Wikipedia - The Blair Witch Project -- Film by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez
Wikipedia - The Breaking of Bumbo -- 1970 film by Andrew Sinclair
Wikipedia - The Captain Is a Lady -- 1940 film directed by Robert B. Sinclair
Wikipedia - The Clairvoyant (1924 film) -- 1924 film
Wikipedia - The Clairvoyant (1935 film) -- 1935 film by Maurice Elvey
Wikipedia - The Crazy Ray -- 1925 film by RenM-CM-) Clair
Wikipedia - The Fleet's In (1928 film) -- 1928 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - The Guns of Loos -- 1928 film by Sinclair Hill
Wikipedia - The Hunt for Tony Blair -- Episode of The Comic Strip Presents
Wikipedia - The Intruder (2004 film) -- 2004 film directed by Claire Denis
Wikipedia - The Italian Straw Hat (film) -- 1928 film by RenM-CM-) Clair
Wikipedia - The Jones Family in Hollywood -- 1939 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - The Jungle -- Novel by Upton Sinclair
Wikipedia - Thelaira -- Genus of flies
Wikipedia - The Laird o Drum -- Traditional song
Wikipedia - The Laird o Logie -- Traditional song
Wikipedia - The Last Billionaire -- 1935 French comedy film by RenM-CM-) Clair
Wikipedia - The Luck of Geraldine Laird -- 1920 film directed by Edward Sloman
Wikipedia - The Man in the Trunk -- 1942 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire
Wikipedia - The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge -- 1925 film by RenM-CM-) Clair
Wikipedia - The Price of Milk -- 2000 film by Harry Sinclair
Wikipedia - The Sapphires (film) -- 2012 film directed by Wayne Blair
Wikipedia - The Show-Off (1926 film) -- 1926 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - The Wild Bull's Lair -- 1925 film
Wikipedia - The Wild Man of Borneo (film) -- 1941 film directed by Robert B. Sinclair
Wikipedia - The Woman Upstairs (novel) -- 2013 novel by Claire Messud
Wikipedia - Thomas the Rhymer -- 13th-century Scottish laird and reputed prophet from Earlston
Wikipedia - Tia-Clair Toomey -- Australian weightlifter
Wikipedia - Time Out for Romance -- 1937 film by Malcolm St. Clair
Wikipedia - Titanic Sinclair -- American musician and YouTube personality
Wikipedia - To Be the Man -- Book by Ric Flair
Wikipedia - Today with Claire Byrne -- Irish radio program
Wikipedia - Tony Blair -- Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007
Wikipedia - Tony Moclair -- Australian comedy actor, writer, performer and radio broadcaster
Wikipedia - Tony's Cronies -- Pejorative phrase against Tony Blair
Wikipedia - Trevor Laird -- English actor
Wikipedia - Trouble Every Day (film) -- 2001 French erotic horror film directed by Claire Denis
Wikipedia - Tu as criM-CM-): Let me go -- 1997 film by Anne Claire Poirier
Wikipedia - Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend -- 2020 interactive film directed by Claire Scanlon
Wikipedia - Union pour un mouvement populaire
Wikipedia - University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire - Barron County -- University branch campus in Rice Lake, Wisconsin
Wikipedia - University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire -- Public university in Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Wikipedia - Upton Sinclair -- 20th-century American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist
Wikipedia - User talk:LairdKeir
Wikipedia - USS St. Clair (1862) -- Civil War era gunboat
Wikipedia - Valeria Sinclair-Chapman -- American political scientist
Wikipedia - Walter Blair (folklorist) -- American academic and folklorist
Wikipedia - Walter Dabney Blair -- American architect
Wikipedia - Warren Keith Sinclair -- New Zealand medical researcher
Wikipedia - WBGI-FM -- Radio station in Bellaire, Ohio
Wikipedia - WEAU -- NBC affiliate in Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Wikipedia - W. E. N. Sinclair -- Canadian politician and barrister
Wikipedia - Wesley Clair Mitchell
Wikipedia - W. Frank Blair
Wikipedia - Wilfried de Beauclair -- German mathematician and engineer
Wikipedia - William Angus Sinclair -- Scottish philosopher
Wikipedia - William Blair (American politician) -- Wisconsin politician (1820-1880)
Wikipedia - William McCormick Blair Jr. -- American diplomat
Wikipedia - William R.N. Blair -- Canadian psychologist
Wikipedia - William Sinclair, 10th Earl of Caithness -- Scottish nobleman
Wikipedia - William St Clair
Wikipedia - Wish Upon a Star -- 1996 television film directed by Blair Treu
Wikipedia - WLIE -- Classic country radio station in Bellaire, Ohio
Wikipedia - WMSC (FM) -- Radio station at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey
Wikipedia - Wolfslair MMA Academy -- A mixed martial arts team in Widnes, England
Wikipedia - Woman Against Woman -- 1938 film directed by Robert B. Sinclair
Wikipedia - Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair -- 1988 arcade video game
Wikipedia - WQOW -- ABC/CW affiliate in Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Wikipedia - WTPA (AM) -- Radio station in Palm River-Clair Mel, Florida, United States
Wikipedia - Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center -- Museum at Montclair State University, NJ to honor Yogi Berra
Wikipedia - Yvette Gastauer-Claire -- Luxembourgian sculptor
Wikipedia - Zac Blair -- American professional golfer
Wikipedia - ZoM-CM-) Allaire-Bourgie -- Canadian artistic gymnast
Wikipedia - ZX81 character set -- Character encoding used in the Sinclair ZX81 computers
Wikipedia - ZX81 -- Home computer produced by Sinclair Research
Claire Messud ::: Born: October 8, 1966; Occupation: Novelist;
Charles Baudelaire ::: Born: April 9, 1821; Died: August 31, 1867; Occupation: Poet;
Hilaire Belloc ::: Born: July 27, 1870; Died: July 16, 1953; Occupation: Writer;
Upton Sinclair ::: Born: September 20, 1878; Died: November 25, 1968; Occupation: Author;
Dennis C. Blair ::: Born: February 4, 1947;
Jayson Blair ::: Born: March 23, 1976; Occupation: Journalist;
Linda Blair ::: Born: January 22, 1959; Occupation: Actress;
Selma Blair ::: Born: June 23, 1972; Occupation: Film actress;
Tony Blair ::: Born: May 6, 1953; Occupation: Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom;
Blair Underwood ::: Born: August 25, 1964; Occupation: Film actor;
Roméo Dallaire ::: Born: June 25, 1946; Occupation: Canadian Senator;
Sinclair B. Ferguson ::: Born: 1948;
Laird Barron ::: Born: 2013; Occupation: Author;
Bernard of Clairvaux ::: Born: 1090; Died: August 20, 1153;
Laird Hamilton ::: Born: March 2, 1964; Occupation: Surfer;
Iain Sinclair ::: Born: June 11, 1943; Occupation: Writer;
Claire Bloom ::: Born: February 15, 1931; Occupation: Film actress;
Claire Holt ::: Born: June 11, 1988; Occupation: Actress;
Claire Foy ::: Born: April 16, 1984; Occupation: Film actress;
Claire Trevor ::: Born: March 8, 1910; Died: April 8, 2000; Occupation: Film actress;
Claire Danes ::: Born: April 12, 1979; Occupation: Actress;
Cherie Blair ::: Born: September 23, 1954; Occupation: Barrister;
Nick Laird ::: Born: 1975; Occupation: Novelist;
Claire Keegan ::: Born: 1968; Occupation: Writer;
Jeffrey St. Clair ::: Born: 1959; Occupation: Journalist;
Cameron Sinclair ::: Born: November 16, 1973;
Ric Flair ::: Born: February 25, 1949; Occupation: Professional Wrestler;
Melvin Laird ::: Born: September 1, 1922; Died: November 16, 2016; Occupation: Former U.S. Secretary of Defense;
Claire Forlani ::: Born: July 1, 1972; Occupation: Actress;
Claire Shipman ::: Born: October 4, 1962; Occupation: Journalist;
May Sinclair ::: Born: August 24, 1863; Died: November 14, 1946; Occupation: Writer;
Claire Vaye Watkins ::: Born: 1984; Occupation: Author;
Claire Denis ::: Born: April 21, 1946; Occupation: Film director;
Claire Tomalin ::: Born: June 20, 1933; Occupation: Author;
Peter Blair Henry ::: Born: July 30, 1969; Occupation: Economist;
Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville ::: Born: March 11, 1818; Died: July 1, 1881; Occupation: Chemist;
Sinclair Lewis ::: Born: February 7, 1885; Died: January 10, 1951; Occupation: Novelist;
Claire McCaskill ::: Born: July 24, 1953; Occupation: United States Senator;
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http://fr.religion.wikia.com/wiki/Clairvoyance
http://fr.religion.wikia.com/wiki/Vocabulaire_et_concepts_du_bouddhisme
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Blair_County,_Pennsylvania
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Brice_Blair_Shade_(1851-1934)
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/John_Sinclair-Wemyss_Arbuthnot_(1912-1992)
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/User:Elrondlair
https://images.wikia.com/banjokazooie/images//4/4b/Lair-Furnace_Fun.ogg
https://images.wikia.com/banjokazooie/images//4/4b/Lair-Wood.ogg
https://images.wikia.com/banjokazooie/images//4/4e/Gruntildas_Lair.ogg
https://images.wikia.com/banjokazooie/images//7/77/Lair-Swamp.ogg
https://images.wikia.com/banjokazooie/images//8/84/Lair-Beach.ogg
https://lanormejuridique.wikia.org/wiki/Circulaires_et_Instructions
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Arthur_St._Clair
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bulair
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Clairvaux
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Clairvoyants
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Clairvoyants
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Clairalience_.28smelling.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Clairaudience_.28hearing.2Flistening.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Claircognizance_.28knowing.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Clairgustance_.28tasting.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Clairsentience_.28feeling.2Ftouching.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Clairvoyance_and_related_phenomena_throughout_history
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Further_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Other_related_terms
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Parapsychological_research
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Skepticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Status_of_clairvoyance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Usage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Bernhard_von_Clairvaux_(Initiale-B).jpg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Ferguson
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Clairvoyance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Tobacco#HNPGuindonBoisclair
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/User:Drboisclair
Kheper - clairvoyance -- 38
auromere - sri-aurobindo-and-the-mother-on-clairvoyance
Integral World - Integral Blair? A Preliminary Assessment of Tony Blair's Integral Leadership Qualities, Jose Vergara
Claire Zammit
selforum - baudelaire baudrillardbourdieu badiou
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/09/clairvoyance.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/10/clairvoyance.html
dedroidify.blogspot - tony-blair-gave-order-to-kill-diana-al
wiki.auroville - Clairaudience
wiki.auroville - Claire
wiki.auroville - Clairvoyance
Dharmapedia - Clairvoyance
Psychology Wiki - Clairvoyance
Occultopedia - clairaudience
Occultopedia - clairsentience
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/ClaireFoy
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/ClaireHolt
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/ClaireRankin
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/EdmundBlairLeighton
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/EmilieClaireBarlow
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/HilaireBelloc
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/IanSinclair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/JazSinclair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/JohnBellairs
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/LinneaSinclair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/MaconBlair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/MaySinclair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/SinclairLewis
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/UptonSinclair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ClairDeLune
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ClaireTheKind
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/BlairWitch
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/BookOfShadowsBlairWitch2
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/ClairesKnee
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Populaire
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/SanFranciscoInternationalAirport
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheBlairWitchProject
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheLairOfTheWhiteWorm
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/CoolAir
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/LairForRent
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/PaulSinclair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheClairvoyantCountess
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Clairvoyance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClairvoyantSecurityForce
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CollapsingLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CombatClairvoyance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CoolAirship
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExploringTheEvilLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FlairBartending
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GlobalAirship
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KungFuClairvoyance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NearDeathClairvoyance
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperVillainLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SupervillainLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VolcanoLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Choclair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Clairity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Clairo
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS1E10LairOfGrievous
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheGoodPlaceS1E12MindyStClaire
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TonyBlair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/BlairWitch
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/DragonsLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Videogame/DragonsLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Lair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/MasterOfTheMonsterLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SorcerersLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheBlairWitchProject
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/YookaLayleeAndTheImpossibleLair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/PhoenixFlair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/SisterClaire
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebVideo/HoganVsFlair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Wrestling/BiancaBelair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Wrestling/CharlotteFlair
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Wrestling/RicFlair
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/AinuLaire
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Claire89
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/ClaireDAubigne
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/edundblairleighton
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Flairina
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/KlausBaudelaire
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/StClair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Clairvaux
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blair_Imani
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Screenplays_by_Stephen_Sinclair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cherie_Blair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claire_Berlinski
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claire_Danes
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claire_Rayner
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clairvoyance
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clairvoyant
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair_(TV_series)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Baudelaire_1844_cropped.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Baudelaire_-_Jeanne_Duval.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Baudelaire_signatur.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:%C3%89tienne_Carjat,_Portrait_of_Charles_Baudelaire,_circa_1862.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:C%C3%A9notaphe_de_Baudelaire.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Charles_Baudelaire_1855_Nadar.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Charles_Baudelaire_by_Manet.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Charles_Baudelaire_-_Jardin_du_Luxembourg_-_Paris.JPG
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Charles_Baudelaire.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Chbaudelaire.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Eric_Blair_(George_Orwell)_from_his_Metropolitan_Police_file.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Halo_solaire_21112006_003.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Tombe_Baudelaire.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frederick_Blair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hilaire_Belloc
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hugh_Blair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jeffrey_St._Clair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jim_Sinclair_(activist)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Blair_Moore
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linda_Blair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marion_Sinclair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Blair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Romo_Dallaire
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/St._Clair_Drake
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tony_Blair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_St_Clair
https://allpoetry.com/Carrie-Bell-Sinclair
https://allpoetry.com/Charles-Baudelaire
https://allpoetry.com/Hilaire-Belloc
https://allpoetry.com/May-Sinclair
https://allpoetry.com/Robert-Blair
https://allpoetry.com/Wilfrid-Blair
Dinosaurs (1991 - 1994) - A family of Dinosaurs, in the stone age, where dinosaurs are the masters of the world and the Sinclairs are the focus of the show. There is: Earl (the father), Fran (the mother), and three kids (one brother, one sister and the famous Baby Sinclair). It is similar to the Flintstones except it is in...
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990 - 1996) - A wealthy family living in Bel-Air, California, receives a dubious gift from their poorer relations in Philadelphia when Grammy Award-winner Will Smith arrives as The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. His mother wants him to learn some good old-fashioned values from his successful relatives. But Will shatter...
Disney's Fluppy Dogs (1986 - 1986) - Intelligent dog-like creatures arrive on our planet via an interdimensional portal and are captured by animal control Two children, Claire and Jamie find them at the pound and they become friends. The key allows them to enter new worlds. The world they are desperately looking for is their home. Thei...
Dragon's Lair (1984 - 1984) - Modeled after the very popular video game of the same name, Dirk would battle the dragon Cinge, often in the Dragon's Lair. Dirk is the best knight in King Ethelred's kingdom, performing all sorts of great deeds and protects the kingdom and his love, Princess Daphne.
Radioactive (1998 - 2001) - This series deals a bunch of teenagers in High School (should be in Grade 12 by the end of the third season), who runs a Radio Broadcasts about news around the school, and contains edutainment shows and factors and music. In all three seasons, George Goodwin, Morgan Leigh, Tanya Panda, Blaire Resnic...
Debt (1996 - 1998) - Host Wink Martindale and the Announcer Julie Claire.
The Amazing World Of Gumball (2011 - Current) - Meet the Wattersons: Mom, Dad, Anais, Darwin and of course Gumball! He's a twelve-year-old cat with a flair for misadventure
The Persuaders (1971 - 1972) - English Lord Brett Sinclair and American Danny Wilde are both wealthy playboys, they are teamed together by Judge Fullton to investigate crimes which the police can't solve. These two men are complete opposites, but become great friends through their adventures and constantly risk their own lives fo...
The Slayers Next (1996 - 1996) - Lina, Gourry, Zelgadis, and Amelia coincidently meet up again and begin to search for the Clair Bible. During their search they run into a mysterious priest named Xelloss who seems to know a thing or two about the passages they're looking for, but he tends to get them into more trouble instead of ou...
Leg Work (1987 - 1987) - This American detective drama series about a former New York City assistant D.A. turned private investigator named Claire McCarron (Margaret Colin), who works for her fledging detective agency.
Promised Land (1996 - 1999) - When Russell Greene loses his job, he decides to go on the road with his family. So he gathers his wife, Claire, his son, Josh, his daughter, Dinah, his mother, Hattie, and his nephew, Nathaniel and hits the road. With only an old Suburban, a trailer, and a dream, Russell and his family are now trav...
The Breakfast Club(1985) - Five students: Allison, a basket case, Brian, a nerd, John, a criminal, Claire, a princess, and Andy, a jock, are forced to spend the day in Saturday detention. At first they are quiet, but later they start talking and learn that behind the exterior, they are all th
The Blair Witch Project(1999) - Combining Hi-8 video with black and white 16mm film, this film presents a raw look at what can happen when college students forego common sense and enter the world of voodoo and witchcraft. Presented as a straight-forward documentary, the film opens with a title card explaining that in 1994, three s...
Krush Groove(1985) - Russell (Blair Underwood), a manager of struggling rap artists, borrows money from villain Jay in order to make ends meet. But after his clients become successful, Russell can't pay back the loan -- much to Jay's consternation. A groovy musical about a struggling record company in a large city, this...
Savage Streets(1984) - Brenda (Blair) is a rough-hewn teenager from the mean streets of L.A. But beneath her cold exterior, she dotes on her deaf-mute kid sister Heather (Linnea Quigley). When a prank against a gang of drug-dealing punks goes sour, Heather and Brenda's best friend Francine pay the price. Out for revenge,...
Summer of Fear(1978) - Teenager Rachel (Linda Blair) has her world turned upside down when her cousin Julia (Lee Purcell) comes to live with the family. As Julia steals away Rachel's friends and family, Rachel comes to the realization that Julia is a witch -- and she may not really be he
Stella(1990) - Bette Midler stars in the title role of "Stella," a 1990's update of two previous tearjerkers. Brassy barmaid Stella Claire charms the pants off blueblood Stephen Dallas, and eventually they have a child. Because of their different values and personalities, Stella and Stephen do not marry. She, howe...
Just Cause(1995) - The novel by John Katzenbach becomes this legal thriller starring Sean Connery as Harvard Law School professor Paul Armstrong. A legal expert whose days of trying cases are long behind him, Armstrong is moved by a plea he receives from a Florida death row inmate, Bobby Earl (Blair Underwood). It see...
The Bogus Witch Project(1999) - In the spring of 1999, two filmmakers entered the Maryland woods to shoot a mock-documentary called The Blair Witch Project. It quickly became one of the most profitable independent films of all times. A number of other filmmakers soon followed the original filmmakers into the woods, creating a numb...
Hell Night(1981) - This plodding, derivative slasher opus a surprise box-office hit stars Exorcist vet Linda Blair as one of a quartet of sorority and fraternity pledges required to spend the title evening of their initiation inside the spooky Garth Manor. The mansion was the site of a gruesome multiple murder,...
Repossessed(1990) - This is almost a follow-up to its relative The Exorcist, since it stars Linda Blair, also the leading lady in the '70s head-spinner tale. In Repossessed, a grown-up Blair plays a housewife who becomes possessed by the Devil while watching TV. Leslie Nielsen plays Father Mayii, who gets called to exo...
The Lair Of The White Worm(1988) - In a remote corner of England's Peak District, a mysterious skull is unearthed. But even weirder is that Lady Sylvia steals the skull for use in worshiping - very erotically - her pagan god, The White Worm, who hungers for the taste of virginal flesh.
Continental Divide(1981) - Ernie Souchak (John Belushi) is a Chicago newspaper man known for stirring up controversy. He's sent to Wyoming for his own safety after a very controversial story. Up on the mountains, he befriends an environmentalist named Nell Porter (Blair Brown)...Well, it isn't friendship at first, but eventua...
Ruby(1977) - In 1935, a lowlife mobster, Nicky Rocco, is betrayed and executed in the swampy backwoods as his pregnant gun-moll, Ruby Claire, watches. He swears vengeance with his dying breath, and then she suddenly goes into labor. In 1951, Ruby runs a backwoods drive-in theater, employees some ex-mobsters, and...
Chained Heat(1983) - Carol (Linda Blair) accidentally killed a man, and as such, she must serve an 18 month jail sentence, despite the circumstances of the situation. Although her fellow inmates are very angry (Example: White prisoner Ericka [Sybil Danning] and black prisoner Dutchess [Tamara Dobson] seem to be engaged...
Someone To Watch Over Me(1987) - Det. Mike Keegan (Tom Berenger) protects socialite and murder witness Claire Gregory (Mimi Rogers). Although Keegan has a lovely wife named Ellie (Lorraine Bracco) and a good job, he falls in love with Claire and puts many things in jeopardy.
Dead Ringers(1988) - Jeremy Irons plays twin brothers in this movie. The Mantle brothers, Beverly and Elliot, are accomplished gynecologists who play a rather odd game with women. When the confident twin ends a relationship with a woman, he passes her on to the shy one. When an actress named Claire Niveau (Genevieve Buj...
Making Love(1982) - Zach and Claire, an upwardly mobile middle class couple living in Los Angeles seem to be living the fairy tale marriage most people can only dream about. With successful careers, a new Beverly Hills home, a good circle of friends, and a deep love for each other, the couple seems to have it all. Howe...
Roller Boogie(1979) - A group of friends band together to keep their favorite Roller Disco from being closed.Starring Linda Blair,Jim Bray,Mark Goddard,and Beverly Garland.
Less Than Zero(1987) - Clay (Andrew McCarthy) won't be having that merry of a Christmas when he visits California this year. His family is financially rich but emotionally broken and his ex-girlfriend Blair (Jami Gertz) is now going steady with his former friend Julian (Robert Downey Jr.). Despite this, Blair needs Clay's...
Q(1982) - David Carradine,Michael Moriarty,Richard Roundtree,and Candy Clark star in this 1982 cult classic.A New York cult resurrects the Aztec god"Quetzalcoatl"(a mythological,flying serpent,monster).The monster sets up it's lair,inside the"Chrysler Building",and begins murdering rooftop sunbathers.Two cops...
Limelight(1952) - A washed up comedian(Charles Chaplin)helps a despondent young dancer(Claire Bloom)realize her dreams of stardom.
Marty(1955) - A lonely butcher(Ernest Borgnine)finds a soulmate in a shy school teacher(Betsy Blair)
On the Town(1949) - Fun-loving sailors Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra) and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) have 24 hours of shore leave in New York City, and they want to make every second count. While Chip hooks up with loudmouth cab driver Brunhilde (Betty Garrett) and Ozzie swoons for prim anthropologist Claire (Ann...
Bride Wars(2009) - Liv and Emma have been inseparable best friends for 20 years. Together they share a dream of having June weddings at New York City's Plaza Hotel. And when they get engaged and with the help of the most sought after wedding planner Marion St. Claire, their dreams are finally coming true...or so they...
Revolt of the Zombies(1936) - Armand falls in love with Claire, who accepts his proposal of marriage to spite Clifford, whom she really loves. Later, when Claire runs to Cliff for comfort following an accident, Armand breaks the engagement, leaving her free to marry Cliff. Further accidents caused by Mazovia result in the native...
Aquamarine(2006) - Two teenagers think they have problems until they come to the rescue of a girl with a fishy story to tell in this teen-oriented comedy. Thirteen-year-old Claire and same-aged Hailey are two close friends living in Tampa, Florida, who are facing a separation in a few weeks -- Claire's mother is a mar...
Jurassic World(2015) - In this thrilling fourth installment of the "Jurassic Park" franchise, two young brothers visit their Aunt Claire who's an executive at Jurassic World, a theme park populated with genetically resurrected dinosaurs. But chaos erupts when a newly created dino escapes its enclosure, forcing the park's...
Claire Of The Moon(1992) - Female authors gather at a small northern coastal retreat to work on their writing skills. A first-time guest who lives for the moment finds herself struggling with her sexuality after discovering her roommate is a lesbian.
Sin: The Movie(2000) - In Sin, Blade must unravel a series of mysterious kidnappings. As he delves into the city's merciless underworld, an elaborate mystery unfold; at is heart, the SinTEK corporation and its leader, the ruthless and beautiful Elexis Sinclair. A Brilliant biochemist, Sinclair will stop at nothing to achi...
Rough Night(2017) - Jess is an engaged politician who reunites with college friends Alice, Blair, and Frankie for a wild bachelorette weekend in Miami. That evening, the trio are also introduced to Jess' Australian friend Pippa which causes some friction between them and maid of honor Alice. The night of hard partying...
Christmas with the Kranks(2004) - Nora and Luther Krank are in for a Christmas alone this year. Their daughter Blair is going away on a Peace Corps assignment in Peru over the holidays. After looking at how much money was spent last Christmas, the two decide to skip Christmas and instead attend a ten-day cruise over the holidays. Th...
The Psychic(1977) - A clairvoyant woman, inspired by a vision, smashes open a section of wall in her husband's home and finds a skeleton behind it. Along with her psychiatrist, she seeks to find the truth about who the person was and who put her there. Soon enough, she starts to realize the possibility that she may sha...
The Mod Squad(1999) - Police Capt. Adam Greer (Dennis Farina) needs some new cops who can go where other cops can't. Greer finds three young people on their way to jail: Lincoln Hayes (Omar Epps), the black one, is up for arson; Pete Cochrane (Giovanni Ribisi), the white one, is up for robbery; and Julie Barnes (Claire D...
The Classic Nursery Rhymes Collection(1982) - Nursery Rhymes 2 is a Children's video directed by Mike Milburn-Foster and also sung and told by Isla St Clair, Floella Benjamin, Mike Berry, Martin Carthy, Valentine Dyall and the Children of Britannia Row, It was released by Screen Legends and Longman Video in 1982 in the United Kingdom. It includ...
The Real Blonde(1997) - Joe and Mary have been living together in Manhattan for six years. Joe is an actor, who has no agent and no thesping credits, but whose ambitions are very high. He works as a waiter at a cafe. Mary works as a make-up stylist for hot fashion photographer Blair, and she pays most of the pair's bills....
Austin Powers in Goldmember(2002) - Dr. Evil returns in 2002 with a new lair behind the Hollywood sign where he reveals a new plan for world domination: He plans to go back to 1975 and kidnap Johan van der Smut, better known as "Goldmember" who has developed a cold fusion unit for a tractor beam. Dr. Evil plans to use the tractor beam...
Ready to Rumble(2000) - Sewage workers Gordie Boggs and Sean Dawkins watch their favorite wrestler, WCW World Heavyweight Champion Jimmy King cheated out of the title by Diamond Dallas Page (playing himself), a corrupt WCW promoter named Titus Sinclair, and DDP's partners. After the match, the two wrestling fans humorously...
Music And Lyrics(2007) - A washed up singer is given a couple days to compose a chart-topping hit for an aspiring teen sensation. Though he's never written a decent lyric in his life, he sparks with an offbeat younger woman with a flair for words.
China Moon(1994) - Detective Kyle Bodine falls for Rachel Munro who is trapped in a violent marriage. After shooting her husband, Kyle reluctantly agrees to help hide the body, but Kyle's partner is showing an unusual flair for finding clues.
The Resurrected(1991) - Private investigator John March is hired by Claire Ward to investigate her husband's recent mysterious activities. Upon investing deeper into Charles Dexter Ward's experiments in his abandoned ancestral farmhouse it turns out to be more horrors come from Charles's famil
Unfriended(2015) - One night, while teenagers Blaire, Mitch, Jess, Adam Ken and Val take part in an online group chat session, they are suddenly joined by a user known only as "Billie227." Thinking it's just a technical glitch, the friends carry on their conversation... until Blaire begins receiving messages from some...
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom(2018) - Set on the fictional Central American island of Isla Nublar, off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica three years after the previous film, Owen Grady and Claire Dearing rescue the remaining dinosaurs before a volcanic eruption destroys the island. Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, BD Wong, and Jeff Goldb...
Lambada(1990) - Kevin Laird is a Beverly Hills school teacher by day and a mystery man by night. Using his lambada dance moves to first earn the kid's respect and acceptance, Kevin then teaches them academics. But when a jealous student exposes Kevin's double life, his two worlds collide, threatening his job and re...
Best Night Ever(2013) - In a parody of "The Hangover" series, Claire is about to get married, but her bachelorette party quickly spirals out of control.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/2570/Ochame_na_Futago__Claire_Gakuin_Monogatari --
https://myanimelist.net/anime/6653/Ginga_Tetsudou_999__Glass_no_Clair -- Drama, Sci-Fi, Space
https://myanimelist.net/manga/103012/clair__Anata_ni_Hibiku_Yuri_Anthology
A Discovery of Witches ::: TV-MA | 1h | Drama, Fantasy, Romance | TV Series (2018 ) -- Diana Bishop, historian and witch, accesses Ashmole 782 and knows she must solve its mysteries. She is offered help by the enigmatic Matthew Clairmont, but he's a vampire and witches should never trust vampires. Stars:
Alex Strangelove (2018) ::: 6.3/10 -- TV-MA | 1h 39min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 8 June 2018 (USA) -- Alex, high school class president, nerd and a straight A student, has been dating Claire a long time. They decide to sleep together but then he meets a gay guy and he's confused. Director: Craig Johnson Writer:
And Then There Were None (1945) ::: 7.5/10 -- Approved | 1h 37min | Crime, Drama, Mystery | 31 October 1945 (USA) -- Seven guests, a newly hired secretary and two staff are gathered at a manor house on an isolated island by an unknown absentee host and are killed off one-by-one. They work together to determine who the killer is before it's too late. Director: Ren Clair (as Rene Clair) Writers: Agatha Christie (novel), Dudley Nichols (screenplay)
A Series of Unfortunate Events ::: TV-PG | 50min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama | TV Series (20172019) -- After the loss of their parents in a mysterious fire, the three Baudelaire children face trials and tribulations attempting to uncover dark family secrets. Stars:
A Series of Unfortunate Events ::: TV-PG | 50min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama | TV Series (2017-2019) Episode Guide 25 episodes A Series of Unfortunate Events Poster -- After the loss of their parents in a mysterious fire, the three Baudelaire children face trials and tribulations attempting to uncover dark family secrets. Stars:
Breathe (2017) ::: 7.2/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 58min | Biography, Drama, Romance | 27 October 2017 (UK) -- The inspiring true love story of Robin (Andrew Garfield) and Diana Cavendish (Claire Foy), an adventurous couple who refuse to give up in the face of a devastating disease. Their heartwarming celebration of human possibility marks the directorial debut of Andy Serkis. Director: Andy Serkis Writer:
Cake (2014) ::: 6.4/10 -- R | 1h 42min | Drama | 23 January 2015 (USA) -- The acerbic, hilarious Claire Bennett becomes fascinated by the suicide of a woman in her chronic pain support group. As she uncovers the details of Nina's suicide and develops a poignant relationship with Nina's husband, she also grapples with her own, very raw personal tragedy. Director: Daniel Barnz
Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) ::: 7.0/10 -- Approved | 1h 26min | Comedy, Drama, Family | April 1950 (USA) -- "Cheaper By the Dozen", based on the real-life story of the Gilbreth family, follows them from Providence, Rhode Island to Montclair, New Jersey, and details the amusing anecdotes found in ... S Director: Walter Lang Writers:
Dead Alive (1992) ::: 7.5/10 -- Braindead (original title) -- Dead Alive Poster A young man's mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey. She gets sick and dies, at which time she comes back to life, killing and eating dogs, nurses, friends, and neighbors. Director: Peter Jackson Writers: Stephen Sinclair (story), Stephen Sinclair (screenplay) | 2 more credits
Dodsworth (1936) ::: 7.8/10 -- Passed | 1h 41min | Drama, Romance | 23 September 1936 (USA) -- A retired auto manufacturer and his wife take a long-planned European vacation only to find that they want very different things from life. Director: William Wyler Writers: Sinclair Lewis (novel), Sidney Howard (dramatisation) | 1 more credit Stars:
Flaming Star (1960) ::: 6.5/10 -- Approved | 1h 41min | Action, Drama, Romance | 6 February 1961 (Sweden) -- When fighting breaks out between two cultures in West Texas, the mixed-blood Pacer tries to act as a peacemaker, but the "flaming star of death" pulls him irrevocably into the deadly violence. Director: Don Siegel Writers: Clair Huffaker (screenplay), Nunnally Johnson (screenplay) | 1 more credit
From Hell (2001) ::: 6.8/10 -- R | 2h 2min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller | 19 October 2001 (USA) -- In Victorian-era London, a troubled clairvoyant police detective investigates the murders of Jack the Ripper. Directors: Albert Hughes (as The Hughes Brothers), Allen Hughes (as The Hughes Brothers) Writers:
Hellfighters (1968) ::: 6.6/10 -- G | 2h 1min | Action, Adventure, Drama | 27 November 1968 (USA) -- The telling of Chance Buckman an oil rig fire fighter who becomes hospitalized and has to come to grips with how his job interfered with his marriage, after being laid up in a hospital bed ... S Director: Andrew V. McLaglen Writer: Clair Huffaker (screenplay)
High Crimes (2002) ::: 6.4/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 55min | Crime, Drama, Mystery | 5 April 2002 (USA) -- High powered lawyer Claire Kubik finds her world turned upside down when her husband, who has been living under a false name, is arrested by military police and placed on trial for the murder of villagers while he was in the Marines. Director: Carl Franklin Writers:
High Maintenance -- 30min | Comedy | TV Series (20122015) ::: A nameless cannabis delivery guy delivers his much-needed medication to stressed-out New Yorkers. Stars: Ben Sinclair, Avery Monsen, Helne Yorke
High Maintenance ::: TV-MA | 30min | Comedy, Drama | TV Series (2016 ) -- A comedy that explores the private lives of unique New York individuals through a common thread: their weed deliveryman. Creators: Ben Sinclair, Katja Blichfeld
I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore. (2017) ::: 6.9/10 -- TV-MA | 1h 33min | Comedy, Crime, Drama | 24 February 2017 (USA) -- When a depressed woman is burgled, she finds a new sense of purpose by tracking down the thieves alongside her obnoxious neighbour. But they soon find themselves dangerously out of their depth against a pack of degenerate criminals. Director: Macon Blair Writer:
I Married a Witch (1942) ::: 7.1/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 17min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance | 30 October 1942 (USA) -- A beautiful 17th-century witch returns to life to plague politician Wallace Wooley, descendant of her persecutor. Director: Ren Clair (as Rene Clair) Writers: Robert Pirosh (screen play), Marc Connelly (screen play) | 2 more
Jamestown -- Not Rated | 1h | Drama, History | TV Series (20172019) ::: A drama about English settlers in America in 1617. Stars: Naomi Battrick, Max Beesley, Claire Cox
Jane by Design -- 44min | Comedy, Drama | TV Series (2012) ::: A case of mistaken identity has a dateless high school outsider living a double life as a twenty-something career girl in the fashion world. Creator: April Blair
Lili Marleen (1981) ::: 7.2/10 -- R | 2h | Drama, Music, Romance | 14 January 1981 (West Germany) -- In 1938, a German singer falls in love with a Jewish composer in Zurich, who helps Jews flee Nazi Germany. She wants to help but is forced back to Germany. Her song "Lili Marleen" becomes a hit with soldiers and the Nazi top. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Writers: Manfred Purzer (original screenplay), Joshua Sinclair (screenplay contributor) | 4 more credits
Little Secrets (2001) ::: 6.4/10 -- PG | 1h 36min | Comedy, Drama, Family | 23 August 2002 (USA) -- A fourteen-year-old aspiring violinist finds herself under an increasing amount of pressure to keep secrets for herself, her family and her newfound best friend. Director: Blair Treu Writer:
Mama's Family ::: TV-PG | 30min | Comedy | TV Series (19831990) -- Mama's Family originated with Thelma "Mama" Harper, and her younger sister Fran living together in Mama's House. Creators: Dick Clair, Jenna McMahon
Meet the Feebles (1989) ::: 6.7/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 37min | Comedy, Music, Musical | 1 September 1995 (USA) -- Multiple animals and insects experience the sleazier side of show business while working on a variety show. Director: Peter Jackson Writers: Fran Walsh (as Frances Walsh), Stephen Sinclair | 2 more credits
Music and Lyrics (2007) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 44min | Comedy, Music, Romance | 14 February 2007 (USA) -- A washed up singer is given a couple days to compose a chart-topping hit for an aspiring teen sensation. Though he's never written a decent lyric in his life, he sparks with an offbeat younger woman with a flair for words. Director: Marc Lawrence Writer:
My Wife and Kids ::: TV-PG | 30min | Comedy, Family | TV Series (20012005) -- Michael Kyle longs for a traditional life, but his day-trader wife Janet, gangsta rap-worshipping son Michael Jr., and brooding daughters Claire and Kady make his dream just that ... a dream. Creators:
Nobody Knows I'm Here (2020) ::: 6.4/10 -- Nadie Sabe Que Estoy Aqu (original title) -- Nobody Knows I'm Here Poster -- Memo lives on a remote Chilean sheep farm, hiding a beautiful singing voice from the outside world. A recluse with a glittery flair, he can't stop dwelling on the past, but what will happen once someone finally listens? Director: Gaspar Antillo
Odd Thomas (2013) ::: 6.8/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 37min | Comedy, Fantasy, Horror | 28 February 2014 (USA) -- In a California desert town, a short-order cook with clairvoyant abilities encounters a mysterious man with a link to dark, threatening forces. Director: Stephen Sommers Writers:
Ophelia (2018) ::: 6.6/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 54min | Drama, Romance, Thriller | 28 June 2019 (USA) -- A re-imagining of Hamlet, told from Ophelia's perspective. Director: Claire McCarthy Writers: Semi Chellas (adaptation), Semi Chellas | 3 more credits
Outnumbered ::: TV-14 | 30min | Comedy, Drama | TV Series (20072016) -- A part-improvised comedy about a couple bringing up their three young children. Stars: Hugh Dennis, Claire Skinner, Tyger Drew-Honey
Phantom of the Megaplex (2000) ::: 6.4/10 -- TV-G | 1h 29min | Action, Comedy, Family | TV Movie 10 November 2000 -- A young man working at a cinema on a special premiere night, finds that the films being shown are full of strange and eerie occurrences. Director: Blair Treu Writer: Stu Krieger Stars:
Populaire (2012) ::: 6.9/10 -- R | 1h 51min | Comedy, Romance, Sport | 6 September 2013 (USA) -- 1958. Rose is a terrible secretary but a demon typist. Her handsome boss resolves to turn her into the fastest girl in the world. Director: Rgis Roinsard Writers: Rgis Roinsard (scenario), Daniel Presley (scenario) | 1 more credit
Purple Violets (2007) ::: 6.4/10 -- 1h 43min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 20 February 2009 (Mexico) -- Patti Petalson (Blair) struggles with the pressure of becoming the next important American writer. Director: Edward Burns Writer: Edward Burns Stars:
ReBoot ::: TV-Y7 | 30min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (19942001) -- In the inner computer world of Mainframe, a guardian program sprite and his friends defend the system from threats from viruses and the User. Creators: Gavin Blair, John Grace, Philip Mitchell | 1 more credit
Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) ::: 6.5/10 -- Biohazard Regeneration (original title) -- Resident Evil: Degeneration Poster -- Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield must battle a rogue warrior seeking revenge after unleashing the deadly G-Virus, whilst a mutated monster goes on a rampage. Director: Makoto Kamiya Writers:
Set It Up (2018) ::: 6.5/10 -- TV-14 | 1h 45min | Comedy, Romance | 15 June 2018 (USA) -- Two corporate executive assistants hatch a plan to match-make their two bosses. Director: Claire Scanlon Writer: Katie Silberman
Shake Hands with the Devil (2007) ::: 7.6/10 -- R | 1h 52min | Drama, History, War | 28 September 2007 (Canada) -- The story of General Romeo Dallaire's frustrated efforts to stop the madness of the Rwandan Genocide, despite the complete indifference of his superiors. Director: Roger Spottiswoode Writers:
Take Me Home (2011) ::: 6.8/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 37min | Comedy, Romance | 4 October 2013 (Turkey) -- Soon after Thom starts operating as an illegal taxi driver in New York City, Claire hires him to drive her to California after her estranged father suffers a heart attack. Director: Sam Jaeger Writer:
Take the Money and Run (1969) ::: 7.3/10 -- PG | 1h 25min | Comedy, Crime | 10 July 1970 (Ireland) -- The life and times of Virgil Starkwell, inept bank robber. Director: Woody Allen Writers: Woody Allen (original screenplay), Mickey Rose (original screenplay) Stars: Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire
Teenage Bounty Hunters ::: TV-MA | Comedy, Crime, Drama | TV Series (2020) -- After joining forces with a veteran bounty hunter, sixteen-year-old fraternal twin sisters Sterling and Blair dive into the world of bail skipping baddies while still navigating the high stakes of teenage life. Creator:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) ::: 6.8/10 -- PG | 1h 33min | Action, Adventure, Comedy | 30 March 1990 (USA) -- Four teenage mutant ninja turtles emerge from the shadows to protect New York City from a gang of criminal ninjas. Director: Steve Barron Writers: Kevin Eastman (characters), Peter Laird (characters) | 3 more credits
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ::: TV-Y7 | 23min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (19871996) -- The adventures of a quartet of humanoid warrior turtles and their friends. Creators: Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, David Wise | 1 more credit
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ::: TV-Y7 | 30min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (20032010) -- The continuing adventures of a quartet of turtle superheroes. Creators: Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Lloyd Goldfine
The Blair Witch Project (1999) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 1h 21min | Horror, Mystery | 30 July 1999 (USA) -- Three film students vanish after traveling into a Maryland forest to film a documentary on the local Blair Witch legend, leaving only their footage behind. Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Snchez (as Eduardo Sanchez) Writers:
The Blair Witch Project (1999) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 1h 21min | Horror, Mystery | 30 July 1999 (USA) -- Three film students vanish after traveling into a Maryland forest to film a documentary on the local Blair Witch legend, leaving only their footage behind.
The Comancheros (1961) ::: 6.9/10 -- Approved | 1h 47min | Action, Adventure, Romance | 29 November 1961 -- The Comancheros Poster Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves dealing with the Comanches known as Comancheros. Directors: Michael Curtiz, John Wayne (uncredited) Writers: James Edward Grant (screenplay), Clair Huffaker (screenplay) | 1 more
The House of the Spirits (1993) ::: 6.9/10 -- R | 2h 20min | Drama, Romance | 1 April 1994 (USA) -- A rancher, his clairvoyant wife and their family face turbulent years in South America in this adaptation of Isabel Allende's best-seller. Director: Bille August Writers: Isabel Allende (novel), Bille August
The Lodger (1944) ::: 7.1/10 -- Approved | 1h 24min | Crime, Horror, Mystery | 19 January 1944 (USA) -- A landlady suspects her new lodger is Jack the Ripper. Director: John Brahm Writers: Barr Lyndon (screen play), Marie Belloc Lowndes (from the novel by) Stars: Laird Cregar, Merle Oberon, George Sanders
The Other Sister (1999) ::: 6.5/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 9min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 26 February 1999 (USA) -- A mentally challenged young woman seeks independence by obtaining her own apartment and attending college while her family plans her sister's wedding. Director: Garry Marshall Writers: Alexandra Rose (story), Blair Richwood (story) | 4 more credits Stars:
The Persuaders! -- 1h | Action, Adventure, Comedy | TV Series (19711972) ::: Two worlds collide when the titled Englishman, Lord Brett Sinclair, and the Bronx-raised, self-made American Danny Wilde, reluctantly join forces to right wrongs, and to protect the innocent. Stars:
There Will Be Blood (2007) ::: 8.2/10 -- R | 2h 38min | Drama | 25 January 2008 (USA) -- A story of family, religion, hatred, oil and madness, focusing on a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business. Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Writers: Paul Thomas Anderson (written for the screen by), Upton Sinclair
The Sapphires (2012) ::: 7.0/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 43min | Biography, Comedy, Drama | 9 August 2012 (Australia) -- It's 1968, and four young, talented Australian Aboriginal girls learn about love, friendship and war when their all-girl group The Sapphires entertain the US troops in Vietnam. Director: Wayne Blair Writers:
The Special Relationship (2010) ::: 6.7/10 -- TV-14 | 1h 33min | Biography, Drama, History | TV Movie 29 May 2010 -- A dramatization that traces former UK prime minister Tony Blair's relationships with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Director: Richard Loncraine Writer: Peter Morgan Stars:
The Trip ::: TV-14 | 2h 52min | Comedy | TV Series (2010 ) Steve is asked to review restaurants for the UK's Observer who is joined on a working road trip by his friend Rob who fills in at the last minute when Coogan's romantic relationship falls apart. Stars: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Claire Keelan
The Wages of Fear (1953) ::: 8.1/10 -- Le salaire de la peur (original title) -- (USA) The Wages of Fear Poster -- In a decrepit South American village, four men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment without the equipment that would make it safe. Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Turtles Forever (2009) ::: 7.8/10 -- G | 1h 30min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Movie 21 November 2009 -- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meet their match -- Literally! The modern, gritty Ninja Turtles must team up with their classic cartoon counterparts to stop two Shredders and their plans of multi-dimensional scale. Directors: Roy Burdine, Lloyd Goldfine (co-director) Writers: Kevin Eastman (character), Peter Laird (character) | 3 more credits
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend (2020) ::: 7.0/10 -- TV-14 | 1h 20min | Comedy | TV Movie 12 May 2020 -- Kimmy sets off on her biggest adventure yet. Three states. Explosions. A dancing hamburger. And you, the viewer, get to decide how the story goes. Director: Claire Scanlon Writers:
Until the End of the World (1991) ::: 6.8/10 -- Bis ans Ende der Welt (original title) -- Until the End of the World Poster -- In 1999, Claire's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash. She rescues Sam and starts traveling around the world with him. Writer Eugene follows them and writes their story, as a way of recording dreams is being invented. Director: Wim Wenders
Wedding Crashers (2005) ::: 6.9/10 -- R | 1h 59min | Comedy, Romance | 15 July 2005 (USA) -- John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey, a pair of committed womanizers who sneak into weddings to take advantage of the romantic tinge in the air, find themselves at odds with one another when John meets and falls for Claire Cleary. Director: David Dobkin Writers:
Wish Upon a Star (1996) ::: 6.7/10 -- PG | 1h 30min | Comedy, Family, Fantasy | TV Movie 12 November 1996 -- A younger sister wishes to switch places with her popular older sister and the two bickering siblings awaken to find the wish has come true. Director: Blair Treu Writer: Jessica Barondes Stars:
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https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lair_of_Fire
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Besender_Melairkyn
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Book_of_Lairs
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Clairaudience
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Clairaudience/clairvoyance
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Claire
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Hoffman
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Clairsentience
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Clairvoyance
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Clan_Melairkyn
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Into_the_Dragon's_Lair
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Klaire_Gatewood
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_Assault
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_of_the_Hidden
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Melair
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Melairbode
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Relair's_Mistake
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Tiamat's_Lair
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Ualair
https://fullhouse.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Mahan
https://fullhouse.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Tanner
https://fusionfall.fandom.com/wiki/Fuse's_Lair
https://giana-sisters.fandom.com/wiki/Gurglewocky's_Lair
https://glee.fandom.com/wiki/Jayson_Blair
https://gloryofheracles.fandom.com/wiki/Glory_of_Heracles:_Legend_of_the_Fighting_Demon's_Lair
https://godeater.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Victorious
https://happytogether.fandom.com/wiki/Claire
https://happytogether.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Davis
https://heroes.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Bennet
https://hollyoaks.fandom.com/wiki/Sally_St._Claire
https://hollywood-netflix.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Wood
https://houseofcards.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Underwood
https://imagine.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_III_of_New_Herswick
https://izombie.fandom.com/wiki/Claire
https://jurassicpark.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Dearing
https://jurassicpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Claire
https://jurassicworld-evolution.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Dearing
https://jurassicworld-evolution.fandom.com/wiki/Claire's_Sanctuary
https://killzone.fandom.com/wiki/Thomas_Sinclair
https://lawandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Kincaid
https://liverpoolfc.fandom.com/wiki/Jerome_Sinclair
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Entertainment
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Cadbury_Eclairs
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Claire's
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Clairol
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Laird_&_Partners
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Logopedia:Theme/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Marie_Claire
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group
https://macromedia.fandom.com/wiki/Allaire_JRun_3
https://macromedia.fandom.com/wiki/Allaire_Kawa
https://magicarena.fandom.com/wiki/Cards/Ikoria_Lair_of_Behemoths
https://magicarena.fandom.com/wiki/Ikoria_Lair_of_Behemoths
https://marvel.fandom.com/hu/wiki/Alison_Blaire_(Ultimate)
https://marvel.fandom.com/hu/wiki/Farkas_(Rahne_Sinclair)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Alison_Blaire_(Earth-1048)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Alison_Blaire_(Earth-15513)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Alison_Blaire_(Earth-616)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Alison_Blaire_(Earth-TRN414)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Hudson_(Earth-616)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Temple_(Earth-199999)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Clairvoyant_(Item)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Craig_Sinclair_(Earth-TRN414)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Rahne_Sinclair_(Earth-616)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Rahne_Sinclair_(Earth-TRN414)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Sadie_Sinclair_(Earth-616)
https://marvel-movies.fandom.com/wiki/Rahne_Sinclair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Alex_Sinclair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bill_Blair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Valk
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Qute
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Rankin
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Jan_Claire
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Karin_Blair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Karl_Laird
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Lair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Laira
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Laira's_father_001
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Laird_Macintosh
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Lamont_Laird
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Madge_Sinclair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Montgomery_Blair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Mylaira_system
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ronnie_Claire_Edwards
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sainte_Claire
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Theresa_St._Clair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tony_Blair
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/William_Powell-Blair
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_(Chameloid)
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Dru_Blair
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Elizabeth_Laird
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Tony_Blair
https://miraculousladybug.fandom.com/wiki/Hawk_Moth's_lair
https://miriadic.fandom.com/wiki/Clairaudience
https://miriadic.fandom.com/wiki/Clairsentience
https://miriadic.fandom.com/wiki/Clairvoyance
https://modernfamily.fandom.com/wiki/Claire
https://modernfamily.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Dunphy
https://monster-prom.fandom.com/wiki/Blobert_Blaubelaire
https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Joey_Claire
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Ikoria:_Lair_of_Behemoths
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Lair
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Secret_Lair
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Secret_Lair_Drop_Series
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Secret_Lair:_Ultimate_Edition_2
https://muppet.fandom.com/index.php?title=Baby+Sinclair&action=history
https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Baby_Sinclair
https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Fran_Sinclair
https://mywifeandkids.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Kyle
https://nexoknights.fandom.com/wiki/70323_Jestro's_Volcano_Lair
https://nexoknights.fandom.com/wiki/Chef_Eclair
https://nexoknights.fandom.com/wiki/Volcano_Lair
https://nfs.fandom.com/wiki/Fox_Lair_Pass
https://ninjago.fandom.com/wiki/70631_Garmadon's_Volcano_Lair
https://ninjago.fandom.com/wiki/Claire
https://ninjago.fandom.com/wiki/Garmadon's_Volcano_Lair
https://ninjago.fandom.com/wiki/Lost_Generals'_Lair
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon's_Lair
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Magus'_Lair
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Magus's_Lair
https://noblesse.fandom.com/wiki/Clairvoyance
https://non-aliencreatures.fandom.com/wiki/Alison_Blaire
https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Clairaudience/clairvoyance
https://ogres.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ogre_Lair
https://onelifetolive.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Cramer
https://onelifetolive.fandom.com/wiki/Todd_&_Blair
https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Finn
https://outlander.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Fraser
https://outlander.fandom.com/wiki/Claire's_wedding_rings
https://outlast.fandom.com/wiki/Hugo_Dallaire
https://pact-web-serial.fandom.com/wiki/Laird_Behaim
https://piny-institute-of-new-york.fandom.com/wiki/Ms._Montclair
https://prettylittleliars.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Hotchkiss
https://prey.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Whitten
https://prototype.fandom.com/wiki/Infected_Lair
https://pspree.fandom.com/wiki/Mike_St._Clair
https://quantico.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Underwood
https://renandstimpy.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_Of_The_Lummox
https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Redfield
https://riseoftheguardians.fandom.com/wiki/Pitch's_Lair
https://riverdale.fandom.com/wiki/Jaz_Sinclair
https://rom.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_of_the_Demon_Dragon
https://salem.fandom.com/wiki/Bloody_Lair
https://salem.fandom.com/wiki/Clairvoyance
https://silenthill.fandom.com/wiki/Lair
https://sintek.fandom.com/wiki/Elexis_Sinclaire
https://sixfeetunder.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Fisher
https://slightlydamned.fandom.com/wiki/Heathcliff_"Cliff"_Sinclair
https://slightlydamned.fandom.com/wiki/Miranda_Sinclair
https://spyro.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_of_Kaos
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_near_the_Blair_Cluster
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blair
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Bess
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Davenport
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Richardson
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Karina's_lair
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_of_Grievous
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nightsister_lair
https://stc.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Ryan
https://strangerthings.fandom.com/wiki/Erica_Sinclair
https://strangerthings.fandom.com/wiki/Lucas_Sinclair
https://sylvanianfamilies.fandom.com/wiki/Flair
https://sylvanianfamilies.fandom.com/wiki/Flair/Item_Codes
https://talesofarcadia.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Nu
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Aaron_Sinclair
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Bidmead
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Mowat
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Shedd
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Clairmont
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Finnett
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Huckle
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_(Night_Terrors)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Pritchard
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Pritchard-Jones
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Rees
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Summerfield
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Summerfield_(Dalek_duplicate)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Destroying_the_Lair_(documentary)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Heathcliff_Blair
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Helen_Sinclair
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Helen_Sinclair's_TARDIS_bedroom
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Izzy_Sinclair
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Jessica_Claire_Preddy
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_of_the_Zenith_(comic_story)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Natalie_Dallaire
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Ryan_Sinclair
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Ryan_Sinclair_-_list_of_appearances
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Ryan_Sinclair's_mother
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Laird_of_McCrimmon_(TV_story)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lair_of_Zarbi_Supremo_(short_story)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Tom_Laird
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Tony_Blair
https://taylorswift.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Kislinger
https://teenagebountyhunters.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Wesley
https://teen-wolf-pack.fandom.com/wiki/Dread_Doctors_Lair
https://texasrangers.fandom.com/wiki/Gerald_Laird
https://the100.fandom.com/wiki/Jacapo_Sinclair
https://the-crown.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Foy
https://the-fine-bros.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Fowler
https://thegifted.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Redford
https://the-good-doctor.fandom.com/wiki/Claire
https://the-good-doctor.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Browne
https://the-incredibles.fandom.com/wiki/Screenslaver's_Lair
https://thepeculiarchildren.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Densmore
https://the-resident.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Thorpe
https://thesaboteur.fandom.com/wiki/Skylar_Saint_Claire
https://thesecretlifeofpets.fandom.com/wiki/The_Flushed_Pets'_Lair
https://theunwanteds.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Morning
https://theyoungandtherestless.fandom.com/wiki/Amanda_Sinclair
https://theyoungandtherestless.fandom.com/wiki/Hilary_Sinclair
https://toarumajutsunoindex.fandom.com/wiki/Tazuma_Claire
https://tuffpuppy.fandom.com/wiki/Evil_Lair_Hill
https://tugsfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Eclair_Fleet
https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Eastman_and_Laird's_Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles
https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Eastman_and_Laird's_Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_Adventures
https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Peter_Laird
https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Turtle_Lair
https://ukpolitics.fandom.com/wiki/Tony_Blair
https://utau.fandom.com/wiki/Anne_Claire
https://vampirediaries.fandom.com/wiki/Davina_Claire
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Blair_Witch
https://vr.fandom.com/wiki/VR_Union_Claire
https://vwars.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_O'Hagan
https://we-bare-bears-fanon.fandom.com/wiki/Life_of_the_Lairds
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Clairsentience
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Clairsentient
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Heloise_de_Claire
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_(BTP)
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_of_the_Hidden
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Mark_Sinclair
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Neville_Sinclair
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Sisterhood_of_St._Claire
https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Beauclair
https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Beauclair_Palace
https://wonderboy.fandom.com/wiki/Wonder_Boy_III:_Monster_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Abyssion's_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Blackwing_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Blackwing_Lair_loot
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Deathwing's_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Gruul's_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Gruul's_Lair_loot
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_of_the_Earth-Warder
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Lair_of_the_Jade_Witch
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Magtheridon's_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Magtheridon's_Lair_loot
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Neltharion's_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Noxious_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Obsidian_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Onyxia's_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Onyxia's_Lair_loot
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Onyxia's_Lair_loot_(original)
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Onyxia's_Lair_(original)
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Rygna's_Lair
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Server:Blackwing_Lair_US
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Server:Les_Clairvoyants_Europe
https://writers.fandom.com/wiki/Claire_Nixon
https://www.fandom.com/u/Blair Marnell
https://ykwtni.fandom.com/wiki/Gary's_Lair/Cashier's_Store
https://yooka-laylee.fandom.com/wiki/Yooka-Laylee_and_the_Impossible_Lair
Aku no Hana -- -- Zexcs -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Psychological Drama Romance School Shounen -- Aku no Hana Aku no Hana -- Kasuga Takao is a boy who loves reading books, particularly Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. A girl at his school, Saeki Nanako, is his muse and his Venus, and he admires her from a distance. One day, he forgets his copy of Les Fleurs du Mal in the classroom and runs back alone to pick it up. In the classroom, he finds not only his book, but Saeki's gym uniform. On a mad impulse, he steals it. -- -- Now everyone knows "some pervert" stole Saeki's uniform, and Kasuga is dying with shame and guilt. Furthermore, the weird, creepy, and friendless girl of the class, Nakamura, saw him take the uniform. Instead of revealing it was him, she recognizes his kindred deviant spirit and uses her knowledge to take control of his life. Will it be possible for Kasuga to get closer to Saeki, despite Nakamura's meddling and his dark secret? What exactly does Nakamura intend to do with him? -- -- (Source: MangaHelpers) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Apr 5, 2013 -- 168,662 7.16
Aku no Hana -- -- Zexcs -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Psychological Drama Romance School Shounen -- Aku no Hana Aku no Hana -- Kasuga Takao is a boy who loves reading books, particularly Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. A girl at his school, Saeki Nanako, is his muse and his Venus, and he admires her from a distance. One day, he forgets his copy of Les Fleurs du Mal in the classroom and runs back alone to pick it up. In the classroom, he finds not only his book, but Saeki's gym uniform. On a mad impulse, he steals it. -- -- Now everyone knows "some pervert" stole Saeki's uniform, and Kasuga is dying with shame and guilt. Furthermore, the weird, creepy, and friendless girl of the class, Nakamura, saw him take the uniform. Instead of revealing it was him, she recognizes his kindred deviant spirit and uses her knowledge to take control of his life. Will it be possible for Kasuga to get closer to Saeki, despite Nakamura's meddling and his dark secret? What exactly does Nakamura intend to do with him? -- -- (Source: MangaHelpers) -- TV - Apr 5, 2013 -- 168,662 7.16
Charlotte: Tsuyoimono-tachi -- -- P.A. Works -- 1 ep -- Original -- Super Power Drama School -- Charlotte: Tsuyoimono-tachi Charlotte: Tsuyoimono-tachi -- Takehito Kumagami's clairvoyance leads his group of friends to another child with supernatural powers: Iori Sekiguchi, a mind reader. However, as they try to approach her, they realize her power makes her nearly impossible to pin down. Having been chosen by the club to handle this case, Nao Tomori and Yuu Otosaka must find a way to get around the child's unique ability before it is too late. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- Special - Mar 30, 2016 -- 129,991 7.48
Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi -- -- Amuse, Group TAC -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Ecchi Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi -- Loudmouthed martial artist Junpei Ryuzouji, elegant actress Airi Komiyama, and cheery but artillery-obsessed student Ritsuko Inoue all find themselves transported from their homeland of Japan to an unfamiliar, magical world. When the elven priestess Celcia Marieclaire casts the spell to send them home, she is interrupted, and the spell is broken into parts that scatter throughout the world. The spell fragments imprint themselves onto the skin of various elves. -- -- The trio travels in Ritsuko's tank, searching for elves who might carry the spell fragments so that Celcia can transfer them to her own body and make the spell whole again. As they adventure, people begin to refer to them as "Those Who Hunt Elves," gaining a reputation as warriors that put a stop to evil-doers with their miraculous cannon, terrifying elves by stripping any that they find. Though they're not the smartest group, they make up for it with enthusiasm and their strong determination to get back to Japan. -- -- 21,535 7.02
Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi -- -- Amuse, Group TAC -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Ecchi Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi -- Loudmouthed martial artist Junpei Ryuzouji, elegant actress Airi Komiyama, and cheery but artillery-obsessed student Ritsuko Inoue all find themselves transported from their homeland of Japan to an unfamiliar, magical world. When the elven priestess Celcia Marieclaire casts the spell to send them home, she is interrupted, and the spell is broken into parts that scatter throughout the world. The spell fragments imprint themselves onto the skin of various elves. -- -- The trio travels in Ritsuko's tank, searching for elves who might carry the spell fragments so that Celcia can transfer them to her own body and make the spell whole again. As they adventure, people begin to refer to them as "Those Who Hunt Elves," gaining a reputation as warriors that put a stop to evil-doers with their miraculous cannon, terrifying elves by stripping any that they find. Though they're not the smartest group, they make up for it with enthusiasm and their strong determination to get back to Japan. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, Sentai Filmworks -- 21,535 7.02
Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko -- -- A-1 Pictures, Satelight -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko -- In the mountains of north Fiore lies the Fire Village, where a lush-blue relic known as the Phoenix Stone is preserved. Entrusted to a mystifying woman named Éclair, it is said to contain the power of an ancient phoenix. She wanders the land alone and protects the stone from harm, despite having no memory of why it was left in her care and only the faintest recollection of where she must take it. -- -- After encountering the wizard guild Fairy Tail, Éclair receives an offer from Natsu Dragneel and his friends to help her uncover the mysteries surrounding the stone. However, in the midst of the group's journey, Éclair is suddenly attacked and the stone is taken from her. With this, nefarious intentions to revive the blazing phoenix for its unparalleled power come to light, and the wizards of Fairy Tail find themselves in a situation that could spell calamity. They must now work together to prevent the revival of the phoenix and save the world from ruin. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Aug 18, 2012 -- 171,203 7.39
Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko -- -- A-1 Pictures, Satelight -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko -- In the mountains of north Fiore lies the Fire Village, where a lush-blue relic known as the Phoenix Stone is preserved. Entrusted to a mystifying woman named Éclair, it is said to contain the power of an ancient phoenix. She wanders the land alone and protects the stone from harm, despite having no memory of why it was left in her care and only the faintest recollection of where she must take it. -- -- After encountering the wizard guild Fairy Tail, Éclair receives an offer from Natsu Dragneel and his friends to help her uncover the mysteries surrounding the stone. However, in the midst of the group's journey, Éclair is suddenly attacked and the stone is taken from her. With this, nefarious intentions to revive the blazing phoenix for its unparalleled power come to light, and the wizards of Fairy Tail find themselves in a situation that could spell calamity. They must now work together to prevent the revival of the phoenix and save the world from ruin. -- -- Movie - Aug 18, 2012 -- 171,203 7.39
Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko - Hajimari no Asa -- -- A-1 Pictures, Satelight -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko - Hajimari no Asa Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko - Hajimari no Asa -- This special is showing a day of Eclair's life as a prologue to the movie Houou no Miko. -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Special - Feb 15, 2013 -- 74,983 7.33
Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko - Hajimari no Asa -- -- A-1 Pictures, Satelight -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko - Hajimari no Asa Fairy Tail Movie 1: Houou no Miko - Hajimari no Asa -- This special is showing a day of Eclair's life as a prologue to the movie Houou no Miko. -- Special - Feb 15, 2013 -- 74,983 7.33
Ginga Tetsudou 999: Glass no Clair -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Drama Sci-Fi Space -- Ginga Tetsudou 999: Glass no Clair Ginga Tetsudou 999: Glass no Clair -- This short movie is a remake of the first half of episode 3 of Ginga Tetsudou 999. -- Movie - Mar 15, 1980 -- 2,189 6.58
Gleipnir -- -- Pine Jam -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Mystery Supernatural Ecchi Seinen -- Gleipnir Gleipnir -- Shuuichi Kagaya is what one would consider an average high school student, but sometimes, he turns into a monster. He doesn't know how or why he got his abilities, only that he would prefer no one knows about them. One night, he finds a building ablaze with a girl trapped inside. Deciding to save her, he transforms and carries her to safety, but accidentally drops his phone. -- -- The next day, the girl he saved—Claire Aoki—finds him and confronts him about his monster identity. She even goes so far as to push him off the school roof to prove her theory after Shuuichi denies her allegations. Desperate to save himself, he transforms, and Claire snaps a picture in order to blackmail him into telling her everything he knows about monsters, which, ironically, isn't much. -- -- As it turns out, Claire has a secret of her own: she has been searching for her sister, who also became a monster. She enlists Shuuichi's help to track her down, but they aren't the only ones searching for answers. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 299,638 7.01
Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino -- -- Artland -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Drama Military Sci-Fi -- Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino -- When the Social Welfare Agency investigates the disappearance of an operative, their inquiry leads them right into the lair of their rival, the Five Republics. The assassin Triela infiltrates the hostile organization, but her search is cut short when she finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun... -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Jan 7, 2008 -- 54,352 7.16
Hataraku Saibou (TV) -- -- David Production -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Shounen -- Hataraku Saibou (TV) Hataraku Saibou (TV) -- Inside the human body, roughly 37.2 trillion cells work energetically 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Fresh out of training, the cheerful and somewhat airheaded Sekkekkyuu AE3803 is ready to take on the ever-so-important task of transporting oxygen. As usual, Hakkekkyuu U-1146 is hard at work patrolling and eliminating foreign bacteria seeking to make the body their new lair. Elsewhere, little platelets are lining up for a new construction project. -- -- Dealing with wounds and allergies, getting lost on the way to the lungs, and bickering with similar cell types, the daily lives of cells are always hectic as they work together to keep the body healthy! -- -- 471,853 7.62
Hataraku Saibou (TV) -- -- David Production -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Shounen -- Hataraku Saibou (TV) Hataraku Saibou (TV) -- Inside the human body, roughly 37.2 trillion cells work energetically 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Fresh out of training, the cheerful and somewhat airheaded Sekkekkyuu AE3803 is ready to take on the ever-so-important task of transporting oxygen. As usual, Hakkekkyuu U-1146 is hard at work patrolling and eliminating foreign bacteria seeking to make the body their new lair. Elsewhere, little platelets are lining up for a new construction project. -- -- Dealing with wounds and allergies, getting lost on the way to the lungs, and bickering with similar cell types, the daily lives of cells are always hectic as they work together to keep the body healthy! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 471,853 7.62
HeatGuy J -- -- Satelight -- 25 eps -- Original -- Action Adventure Mecha Police Sci-Fi -- HeatGuy J HeatGuy J -- In the city of Judoh, Claire Leonelli has inherited leadership of the Mafia group "Vampire" following the death of his father. To keep Claire's and other criminal activities in check, the city's Bureau of Urban Safety has Special Services Division operative Daisuke Aurora and the super android codenamed "J" (whose identity is apparently kept in secrecy, as androids are banned in the city). With both of them around, crime now has little room to breathe in Judoh. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation, Geneon Entertainment USA -- 15,840 7.16
Injuu Alien -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Adventure Hentai Horror Sci-Fi -- Injuu Alien Injuu Alien -- The all female crew of the transport ship Muse is on a mission in deep space. They pick up an SOS signal and discover a derelict space cruiser where all the women have died mysteriously. They take the only survivor, a young woman named Flair, and detonate the ghost ship. However, the danger is just beginning. With Flair on the Muse, the romances between the women begin to take a new turn. One by one, the crewmembers are attacked by a mysterious alien presence, desperate to find a way to reproduce with human women. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Kitty Media -- OVA - Jan 24, 1997 -- 2,882 5.24
Kiddy GiRL-AND -- -- Satelight -- 24 eps -- Original -- Action Comedy Sci-Fi Super Power -- Kiddy GiRL-AND Kiddy GiRL-AND -- Twenty-five years after Éclair and Lumière, (from the flagship Kiddy Grade series), rescued the galaxy from destruction's doorstep, the GTO (Galactic Trade Organization), created after the defeat of the GOTT (Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs), act on behalf of universal peace by combating criminal activity. -- -- Their special ES division mirrored after the GOTT's ES (Encounter of Shadow-work) force, now includes publicly acknowledged ES member candidates. The series follows two such trainees, Ascoeur and Q-feuille, as they work their way to ES membership. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Oct 16, 2009 -- 16,353 6.87
Kiddy Grade -- -- Gonzo -- 24 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Super Power Ecchi Mecha -- Kiddy Grade Kiddy Grade -- In the distant future, humanity has taken to the skies and colonized many planets throughout the universe. An agency known as the Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs (GOTT) has been formed to maintain order. Within GOTT, a secret squad of enhanced human beings—known as the ES Unit—carry out secret missions to put a stop to major galactic crimes. Two such operatives are the lowly C-ranked Éclair and Lumière. -- -- Despite being on the bottom of the totem pole, the pair wield formidable powers: Éclair's superhuman strength and lipstick whip and Lumière's ability to take control of any computer. Together, they can take on any mission that GOTT throws at them. But as they complete more and more missions, the duo begin to uncover a major conspiracy that leaves them questioning everything they know about themselves and the entire galaxy. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Oct 9, 2002 -- 40,723 7.21
Nodame Cantabile: Finale -- -- J.C.Staff -- 11 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Josei Music Romance -- Nodame Cantabile: Finale Nodame Cantabile: Finale -- Shinichi Chiaki is quickly making a name for himself as the principal conductor of the revitalized Roux-Marlet Orchestra, and Megumi "Nodame" Noda has made leaps and bounds as a pianist at the Conservatoire de Paris. However, tensions mount between the two as Nodame feels left behind by Chiaki's growing success and his close friendship with legendary piano prodigy Rui Son. Disregarding her teacher Professor Charles Auclair's advice, Nodame enters another piano competition in an attempt to jumpstart her own performance career. -- -- Meanwhile, those around Chiaki and Nodame are at their own crossroads. Rui begins to doubt herself after hearing Nodame's playing and being denied tutelage from Auclair; Maestro Franz von Stresemann faces the reality of his mortality; pianists Yunlong Li and Tatiana Vishneva feverishly prepare for a competition, while the latter also struggles with her growing feelings for oboist and fellow student Yasunori Kuroki. -- -- As Chiaki, Nodame, and their friends continue on their respective journeys, they must not only strive to stay true to themselves, but also remember where it all started. -- -- 112,686 8.26
Nodame Cantabile: Paris-hen -- -- J.C.Staff -- 11 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Josei Music Romance Slice of Life -- Nodame Cantabile: Paris-hen Nodame Cantabile: Paris-hen -- Shinichi Chiaki conquers his fear of flying, and Megumi "Nodame" Noda's exceptional performance at a piano competition earns her an invitation to study at the prestigious Conservatoire de Paris. The pair go to Paris together to take the next step in their careers: Chiaki as a new rising conductor under the wing of the great maestro Franz von Stresemann, and Nodame as a pupil of the esteemed piano professor Charles Auclair. -- -- But, of course, the music world is much bigger than the two of them could have ever imagined. Chiaki and Nodame, alongside old friends and new rivals, must fight and persevere to reach the dazzling musical heights that await them while never losing sight of what matters most. -- -- 109,163 8.17
One Piece: Straw Hat Theater -- -- Toei Animation -- 5 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Shounen -- One Piece: Straw Hat Theater One Piece: Straw Hat Theater -- Straw Hat Theater is made up of five shorts that aired alongside One Piece episodes 279 through 283 in October 2006. They are based on Oda Eiichiro's side comics that were drawn when he was given three sheets of blank paper by his editor and told to draw anything. -- -- The first short is about Chopper Man infiltrating the lair of the evil Dr. Usodabada. The second short is a news report on what food was like for the Straw Hats before Sanji joined the crew. The third short investigates the hypothetical situation of "if the Straw Hat Pirates were Obahan, who would be the strongest?" The fourth short is about the bosses of the Luffione, Zorocia, and Sanjino families fighting for control. In the fifth short, all of the Straw Hats are carefree monsters. -- Special - Oct 1, 2006 -- 24,323 7.37
Seireitsukai no Blade Dance -- -- TNK -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Harem Comedy Supernatural Romance Ecchi Fantasy School -- Seireitsukai no Blade Dance Seireitsukai no Blade Dance -- On his way to Areishia Spirit Academy, Kamito Kazehaya runs into a naked Claire Rouge, a student who had been bathing as part of a purification ceremony. She had been preparing to form a contract with a powerful spirit in order to acquire more power as an "elementalist." Her efforts are wasted, however, when Kamito ends up with the spirit despite the fact that only shrine maidens can become elementalists. Yet to be discouraged, Claire then announces that Kamito must become her contracted spirit instead! -- -- After reaching the school grounds, Kamito escapes from Claire and meets Headmaster Greyworth Ciel Mais, who invites him to enroll at the academy. Although his life at Areishia will be far from easy as the only male student among the shrine princesses-in-training, he begrudgingly accepts in exchange for information about his former contracted spirit, Restia Ashdoll. Adding on to that, he also must fulfill Greyworth's main request: to win in the Blade Dance, a battle festival occurring in two months, where he will face the strongest elementalist rumored to be contracted with a darkness spirit. -- -- 293,324 6.79
Seireitsukai no Blade Dance -- -- TNK -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Harem Comedy Supernatural Romance Ecchi Fantasy School -- Seireitsukai no Blade Dance Seireitsukai no Blade Dance -- On his way to Areishia Spirit Academy, Kamito Kazehaya runs into a naked Claire Rouge, a student who had been bathing as part of a purification ceremony. She had been preparing to form a contract with a powerful spirit in order to acquire more power as an "elementalist." Her efforts are wasted, however, when Kamito ends up with the spirit despite the fact that only shrine maidens can become elementalists. Yet to be discouraged, Claire then announces that Kamito must become her contracted spirit instead! -- -- After reaching the school grounds, Kamito escapes from Claire and meets Headmaster Greyworth Ciel Mais, who invites him to enroll at the academy. Although his life at Areishia will be far from easy as the only male student among the shrine princesses-in-training, he begrudgingly accepts in exchange for information about his former contracted spirit, Restia Ashdoll. Adding on to that, he also must fulfill Greyworth's main request: to win in the Blade Dance, a battle festival occurring in two months, where he will face the strongest elementalist rumored to be contracted with a darkness spirit. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 293,324 6.79
Senkou no Night Raid -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 13 eps -- Original -- Action Military Historical Super Power -- Senkou no Night Raid Senkou no Night Raid -- The year is 1931. The city is Shanghai. Ten years before America will enter World War II, the hydra's teeth planted by the first great global conflict are beginning to germinate. Hatching like spiders, they weave the complex web of plots and conspiracies destined to inevitably draw entire nations to the brink of destruction. Caught in the heart of these webs, desperately seeking to separate lies from truth, is "Sakurai Kikan," an ultra-secret intelligence agency staffed by extraordinarily talented individuals with abilities far beyond those of normal humans. Their duty: to stop the darkest plots and eliminate the greatest threats. But in a city built on intrigue, can even a team of clairvoyants, telepaths and espers stand against the ultimate forces of destiny? -- -- (Source: Sentai Filmworks) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 40,094 6.87
Sin: The Movie -- -- Phoenix Entertainment -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Sci-Fi Horror Police Supernatural -- Sin: The Movie Sin: The Movie -- In Sin, Blade must unravel a series of mysterious kidnappings. As he delves into the city's merciless underworld, an elaborate mystery unfold; at is heart, the SinTEK corporation and its leader, the ruthless and beautiful Elexis Sinclair. A Brilliant biochemist, Sinclair will stop at nothing to achieve her goal: a plan that could force the next step of human evolution-or spell doom for mankind. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- OVA - Oct 24, 2000 -- 4,550 5.15
Slayers Next -- -- E&G Films -- 26 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Demons Magic Fantasy -- Slayers Next Slayers Next -- In the kingdom of Xoana, Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev unexpectedly come across their old companions, Zelgadis Graywords and Princess Ameilia Wil Tesla Saillune. Upon their reunion, the friends end up easily foiling the King of Xoana and his daughter's dastardly plans of world conquest. -- -- Soon after, it is revealed that Zelgadis is in search of the world's most valuable magical tome, the Claire Bible, hoping to discover a method to recover his human body among the many secrets sheltered within it. Despite his protests, the rest of the group decides to join in the quest after hearing of his mission. However, just when they were wondering where to start looking for the legendary book, they stumble upon a mysterious priest by the name of Xellos, who claims that he may be of some help in their pursuit. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Central Park Media, Enoki Films, Funimation -- 60,410 8.03
Tiger Mask W -- -- Toei Animation -- 38 eps -- Manga -- Action Sports Drama Shounen -- Tiger Mask W Tiger Mask W -- Two young wrestlers face each other in a recently revived underground wrestling organization, the Tiger's Lair, which destroyed the wrestling dojo they grew up in. One took over the training facilities of Naoto Date at the foot of Mount Fuji, as well as the mask he left behind. The other dared to enter the Tiger's Lair and won a fierce competition, receiving a jet-black tiger mask. One tiger walks the path of light, while the other walks the path of shadows. Neither one knows the other's face. On the ring, they are natural enemies, but they have the same purpose—destroy the Tiger's Lair! -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- 18,815 6.97
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2010 Filair Let L-410 crash
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2016 L'Open Emeraude Solaire de Saint-Malo Doubles
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2017 L'Open Emeraude Solaire de Saint-Malo Doubles
2017 L'Open Emeraude Solaire de Saint-Malo Singles
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Circulaire
Cit Scolaire Internationale de Lyon
Cit Scolaire Internationale Europole
Clair
Clair Alan Brown
Clair Armstrong Callan
Clair Aubrey Houston
Clairaut
Clairaut's equation
Clairaut's theorem
Clair Bee
Clair Bee Coach of the Year Award
Clair Bidez
Clair Blank
Clair Burgener
Clair Cameron Patterson
Clair de Lune
Clair de lune (Faur)
Clair de Lune (Flight Facilities song)
Clair de lune (poem)
Claire's
Claire's Camera
Claire's Knee
Claire's mouse lemur
Claire Adams
Claire Alexander
Claire Allen
Claire and Antoinette Cann
Claire Anderson
Claire Anderson (DJ)
Claire and Friends
Claire Annabel Caroline Grant Duff
Claire Askew
Claire Atherton
Claire Baker
Claire Barrow
Claire Beaugrand-Champagne
Claire Beckett
Claire Beck Loos
Claire Benedict
Claire Bennet
Claire Berger
Claire Betz
Claire Bloom
Claire Bolderson
Claire Bowern
Claire Brady
Claire Breay
Claire Bretcher
Claire Brialey
Claire Brooks
Claire Brosseau
Claire Brown
Claire Byrne
Claire Cameron
Claire C. Cecchi
Claire Celsi
Claire Chandler
Claire Chao
Claire Charters
Claire Chiang
Claire Christian
Claire City, South Dakota
Claire Clairmont
Claire Clancy
Claire-Clmence de Maill-Brz
Claire Clivaz
Claire Colebrook
Claire Colinet
Claire Cook
Claire Cronin
Claire Cronin (camogie)
Claire Crowther
Claire Curtis-Thomas
Claire Danes
Claire Darke
Claire Darling
Claire D. Ayer
Claire de Duras
Claire de Gubernatis
Claire de la Fuente
Claire Delbos
Claire Deluca
Claire Dmar
Claire Denis Film Scores 19962009
Claire de Pourtales
Claire Deschnes
Claire Diaz-Ortiz
Claire Dinsmore
Claire Du Brey
Claire Eagan
Claire Edun
Claire E. Eyers
Claire Egtvedt
Claire E. Hutchin Jr.
Claire Ellen Max
Claire E. Sterk
Claire Etaugh
Claire Fagin
Claire Falkenstein
Claire F. Gmachl
Claire Finkelstein
Claire Fontaine
Clairefontaine
Clairefontaine Abbey
Claire Forlani
Claire Foster
Clairefougre
Claire Fox
Claire Foy
Claire Fraser
Claire Fraser (character)
Claire Fraser (cyclist)
Claire (given name)
Claire Goll
Claire Goose
Claire Grogan
Claire Guion-Firmin
Claire Hamill
Claire Hamilton
Claire Hanna
Claire Hardaker (linguist)
Claire Harman
Claire Harris (disambiguation)
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro
Claire-Hlne Hovington
Claire Heliot
Claire Hennessy
Claire Holley
Claire Holt
Claire Holt (art historian)
Claire Hooper
Claire Hooper (artist)
Claire Horton
Claire House Children's Hospice
Claire Hsu
Claire Huangci
Claire Ighodaro
Claire IsaBelle
Claire Jean Kim
Claire J. Tomlin
Claire Katz
Claire Keane
Claire Keefer
Claire Kelly Schultz
Claire King
Claire King (author)
Claire Konold
Claire Kuo
Claire L'Heureux-Dub
Claire Lacombe
Claire Lee Chennault
Claire Lehmann
Claire L. Felbinger
Claire Littleton
Claire Liu
Claire Loewenfeld
Claire Lovett
Claire L. Ramsey
Claire Lutz
Claire Lynch
Claire Mackay
Claire Madden
Claire Mahl Moore
Claire Marshall
Claire Martin
Claire Martin (writer)
Claire Maxwell
Claire Maxwell (netball)
Claire McCardell
Claire McCarthy
Claire McCaskill
Claire McDowell
Claire McNab
Claire Meghnagi
Claire Merritt Ruth
Claire Messud
Claire M. Fraser
Claire Michel
Clairemont
Clairemont Great Lakes (Decatur)
Clairemont, San Diego
Claire Moore
Claire Moore (singer)
Claire Nebout
Clair Engle
Claire O'Connor
Claire O'Riordan
Claire of the Moon
Claire Panosian
Claire Parkinson
Claire Peacock
Claire Perraux
Claire Perry
Claire Phillips
Claire Pratt
Claire Praux
Claire Prieto
Claire (programming language)
Claire Ptak
Claire Rachel Wilkinson
Claire Rafferty
Claire Rankin
Claire Rayner
Claire Redfield
Claire Richards
Claire R. Kelly
Clair E. Robb
Claire Robinson (academic)
Claire Rosen
Claire Ruiz
Claire Saffitz
Claire Schillace
Claire Scovell LaZebnik
Claire Shulman
Claire Smith
Claire Smith (journalist)
Claire Sproule
Claire Stansfield
Claire Sterling
Claire Sutherland
Claire Sutton
Claire Sweeney
Claire Swire email
Claire Szab
Clairet
Claire Tabouret
Claire Tallent
Claire Tancons
Claire Taylor
Claire Thomas
Claire Trvien
Claire Trevor
Clairette
Clairette blanche
Clairette de Die AOC
Clairette Oddera
Clairette rose
Claire Tyler, Baroness Tyler of Enfield
Claire van der Boom
Claire V. Broome
Clairve Grandjouan
Claireville Conservation Area
Claire Voyant
Claire Voyant (comic strip)
Claire Waldoff
Claire Wang
Claire Ward
Claire Waters Ferguson
Claire Wathes
Claire Watt-Smith
Claire Weekes
Claire Williams
Claire Williams (disambiguation)
Claire Wilson
Claire Windsor
Claire Wineland
Claire Wong
Claire Wright
Claire Zulkey
Clair Fearnley
ClairFort Kent Bridge
Clair George
Clair Global
Clair Huxtable
Clairin
Clairinsh
Clair Isbister
Clair Kenamore
Clair Lake
Clairlea
Clairmarais
Clairmarais aerodrome
Clair-Mel City, Florida
Clair Mills Callan
Clairmont
Clairmont, Alberta
Clairmonte Depeiaza
Clairmont Park
Clairmont the Second
Clairmont, U.S. Virgin Islands
Clair, New Brunswick
Clairo
Clair Obscur
Clair-obscur (album)
Clair of Nantes
Clair oilfield
Clairol
Clair (song)
Clair S. Tappaan
Clair Stevens
Clair Tisseur
Clairtone
Clairton-Glassport Bridge
Clairton Netto
Clairton, Pennsylvania
Clairvaux
Clairvaux Abbey
Clairvaux MacKillop College
Clairview, Queensland
Clairville
Clairville, Toronto
Clairvillia biguttata
Clairvoyance
Clairvoyance (album)
Clairvoyant (disambiguation)
Clairwood Shree Siva Soobramoniar Temple
Clairy Browne & the Bangin' Rackettes
Clancy Blair
Clan Sinclair
Clara Clairbert
Clarence Sinclair Bull
ClarkLeClair Stadium
Clay Blair
C. Ledyard Blair
Clement Laird Brumbaugh
Clive Sinclair
Clive Sinclair (author)
Clyde Edwards-Helaire
CNFE Clairefontaine
Cobblestone House (Eau Claire, Wisconsin)
Coca Codo Sinclair Dam
Colin Sinclair
Colin Sinclair (tennis)
Colin St Clair Oakes
CombellackBlair House
Comhaltan mac Maol Claird
Commission scolaire de langue franaise
Commission scolaire de la Rivire-du-Nord
Commission scolaire de la Seigneurie-des-Mille-les
Commission scolaire des Trois-Lacs
Commission scolaire Jacques-Cartier
Commission scolaire Jrme-Le Royer
Commission scolaire Sainte-Croix
Conseil scolaire acadien provincial
Conseil scolaire catholique de district des Grandes-Rivires
Conseil scolaire catholique du Nouvel-Ontario
Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir
Conseil scolaire catholique Providence
Conseil scolaire de district catholique de l'Est ontarien
Conseil scolaire de district catholique des Aurores borales
Conseil scolaire de district du Grand Nord de l'Ontario
Conseil scolaire de district du Nord-Est de l'Ontario
Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique
Conseil scolaire Viamonde
Corilair
Corwin Clairmont
Cteaux Beauclair (Paris Mtro)
Cowlairs F.C.
Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park
Cross Lake (Charlie Sinclair Memorial) Airport
Cultural depictions of Tony Blair
Cy McClairen
Daniel Sinclair
Daniel St Clair
Danny Blair
Daphne Clair
Dave Sinclair
Davey Claire
David Alexander-Sinclair
David Andrew Sinclair
David Blair
David Blair (filmmaker)
David Blair (journalist)
David Blair (mariner)
David Blair McClosky
David Blair Motorsports
David Flair
David Laird
David Laird Dungan
David Sinclair
David Sinclair (Numbers)
Davie Laird
Death of Blair Peach
Death of Brian Sinclair
Deauville-Clairefontaine Racecourse
DeJuan Blair
Delair
Delair Bridge
Delaire
Delairea
Demon's Lair
Denise LeClair Cobb
Dennis Blair
Dennis C. Blair
Derry Irvine, Baron Irvine of Lairg
Dtecteur Grande Acceptance pour la Physique Photonuclaire Exprimentale
Devil's Lair
Dewi Claire Schreefel
Diane Sinclair
Disappearance of Helen Claire Frost
Division of Blair
Donald Maclean, 1st Laird of Brolas
Donald Sinclair
Donald Sinclair (hotel owner)
Donald Sinclair (veterinary surgeon)
Don Blair
Doris Blair
Dorothy Blair
Draft:Claire Williams (author)
Dragon's Lair
Dragon's Lair (1983 video game)
Dragon's Lair (1990 video game)
Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair
Dragon's Lair III
Dragon's Lair III: The Curse of Mordread
Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp
Dragons Lair Nv
Dudley Blair Menzies
Earl St. Clair
Eau Claire
Eau Claire Bears
Eau Claire, Calgary
Eau ClaireChippewa Falls metropolitan area
Eau Claire Commissioners
Eau Claire Dam
Eau Claire Leader-Telegram
Eau Claire Masonic Center
Eau Claire Masonic Temple
Eau Claire, Michigan
Eau Claire, Pennsylvania
Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Eaux Claires, Edmonton
Eborilaira
clair
clair AC
Eclair (company)
clair (disambiguation)
claires
Eclaireurs Neutres de France
claireurs of the Guard
claireuses et claireurs de France
Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs isralites de France
Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs Unionistes de France
clairs sur l'au-del...
Edith Claire Bryce Cram
Edwin F. Blair
Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair
glise Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand
Eileen Blair
Eleanour Sinclair Rohde
Eleutherodactylus blairhedgesi
lie Saint-Hilaire
Elizabeth Laird
Elizabeth Laird (author)
Elizabeth Laird (physicist)
Elizabeth Sinclair
Ella St. Clair Thompson
Elle and Blair Fowler
Emile Sinclair
Emilie-Claire Barlow
Emil Matthew Laird
E. M. Laird Airplane Company
Emma Blair
Emma Helen Blair
Emmanuel Saint-Hilaire
Ensemble Scolaire Jean-Baptiste de La Salle - Notre-Dame de la Compassion
Ensemble scolaire Le Bon Sauveur
Ensemble Scolaire Saint Michel de Picpus
Entre gris clair et gris fonc
pinay-sur-Duclair
Episcopal Diocese of Eau Claire
ric Baudelaire
Eric Sinclair
tablissement scolaire franais Blaise-Pascal
tienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
tival-Clairefontaine
Euphemia Sinclair
Eva Sinclair
Evie Clair
Ewen Sinclair-Maclagan
Ewondo Populaire
Ezell Blair Jr.
Fairview Pointe-Claire
Falcon Lair
Fatima Gallaire
Fdration des Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs
Fdration Franaise des claireuses
Fdration Libanaise des Eclaireuses et des Guides
Fdration Nationale des Eclaireurs et Eclaireuses du Luxembourg
Ferrires-Saint-Hilaire
Finlay Sinclair-Smith
First Blair ministry
Flair
Flair Airlines
Flair bartending
Flairjet
Fort KentClair Border Crossing
Fort St. Clair
Francis Blair
Francis Preston Blair
Francis Preston Blair Jr.
Franois Allaire
Franois Baillairg
Franois-Joseph de Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire
Franois Xavier Bon de Saint Hilaire
Frank Blair (journalist)
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune
Fred Basset Blair
Fred Claire
Freddie McClair
Frederick Blair
French gun-vessel Eclair (1793)
Front Populaire (Paris Mtro)
Funiculaire de Pau
Funiculaire de Saint-Hilaire du Touvet
Funiculaire de Thonon-les-Bains
Funiculaire du Havre
Funiculaire du Pic du Jer
Gabrielle Sinclair
Gairy St. Clair
Gaston Allaire
Gavin Laird
Geoffrey of Clairvaux
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
George A. Blair
George Bellairs
George Blair
George Blair (director)
George Blair Imrie
George Brian Sinclair
George-Frdric-Thophile Baillairg
George LeClair
George Sinclair
George Sinclair, 15th Earl of Caithness
George Sinclair (horticulturist)
George Sinclair (mathematician)
George Sinclair (mercenary)
George Young Blair
Geovana Peres vs. Claire Hafner
Gerard de Lairesse
Gerard of Clairvaux
Gilbert Sinclair
Glenblair, California
Glenlair House
Godefroid de Claire
Gordon Blair
Gordon Sinclair
Governor Blair
Governor Sinclair
Grande-Clairire
Groupe Banque Populaire
Groupement des scientifiques pour l'information sur l'nergie nuclaire
Groupe Scolaire Jean Charcot
Groupe Scolaire La Rsidence
Groupe Scolaire Le Dtroit
Groupe Scolaire Mamonide Rambam
Groupe Scolaire Marie Reine Rwaza
Groupe Scolaire Officiel de Butare
Groupe scolaire Paul Gauguin
Guido Sinclair
Guy St. Clair
Gwenda Blair
G. W. Scott Blair
H & Claire
Haplothrix blairi
Harold Sinclair
Harry Blair
Harry Ford Sinclair
Harry F. Sinclair House
Harry Sinclair
Harry Sinclair Drago
H. A. Sinclair de Rochemont
H. Blair Neatby
Hector Maclean, 2nd Laird of Torloisk
Hector Munro, 8th laird of Novar
Hector Reaganach Maclean, 1st Laird of Lochbuie
Helen Blair Barlett
Henri Beauclair
Henri tienne Sainte-Claire Deville
Henry Blair
Henry Blair (inventor)
Henry Harbinson Sinclair
Henry II Sinclair, Earl of Orkney
Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney
Henry Laird
Henry Sinclair
Henry Sinclair, 2nd Baron Pentland
Henry Sinclair (bishop)
Henry St Clair Wilkins
Henry W. Blair
Hrouville-Saint-Clair
Hilaira
Hilaire
Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc bibliography
Hilaire Bernard de La Rivire
Hilaire de Chardonnet
Hilaire du Berrier
Hilaire Kdigui
Hilaire Onwanll-Ozimo
Hilaire Rouelle
Hilaire Spanoghe
Hillair Fettes
HirschbergSinclair algorithm
Hiyangthang Lairembi Temple
HMCS Blairmore
HMY Iolaire
Hollands & Blair F.C.
Hotel Montclair
How to Become Clairvoyant
Hugh Blair
Hugh Blair (composer)
Hugh Sinclair
Hunter-Blair baronets
Iain Sinclair
Ian Blair
Ian Sinclair
Ian Sinclair (lawyer)
Identity (Blair St. Clair album)
Immanuel Lutheran College (Eau Claire)
Immunity (Clairo album)
Ina Claire
INF Clairefontaine
Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
Ingrid Sinclair
Institut de biologie molculaire et cellulaire
Institut de radioprotection et de sret nuclaire
Institut national de physique nuclaire et de physique des particules
Institut national des sciences et techniques nuclaires
Interstellaires
Iolair
Isabella McHutcheson Sinclair
Isaria sinclairii
Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Isla St Clair
Italair Pegaso
Izzy Sinclair
Jack Sinclair
Jacob B. Blair
Jalairs
James Alexander Wedderburn St. Clair-Erskine
James Blair
James Blair (Australian judge)
James Blair (clergyman)
James Blair-Cunynghame
James Blair Down
James Blair (Indian Army officer)
James Blair Jr.
James Boisclair
James Clair Flood
James D. St. Clair
James Ferguson, 1st Laird of Pitfour
James H. Sinclair
James Hunter Blair
James Hunter-Blair (MP)
James Laird
James P. Allaire
James P. Blair
James S. Blair
James Sinclair
James Sinclair (botanist)
James Sinclair (fur trader)
James St Clair
James St Clair-Erskine, 2nd Earl of Rosslyn
James St Clair-Erskine, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn
James St Clair Wade
James T. Blair Jr.
James William Lair
James W. St. Clair
Jane Claire Dirks-Edmunds
Janet Blair
Janet Blair (singer-songwriter)
Jasmin St. Claire
Jason Blair
Jawaharlal Nehru Rajkeeya Mahavidyalaya, Port Blair
Jayson Blair
Jaz Sinclair
J. Blair Seaborn
J. D. Blair
Jean Baillairg
Jean-Baptiste Glaire
Jean Bernard Tarb de Vauxclairs
Jean Clair
Jean-Clair Todibo
Jean Dallaire
Jean Helen St. Clair Campbell
Jean Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire
Jean Hilaire Ast
Jean-Hilaire Aubame
Jean-Hilaire Belloc
Jean-Marie Clairet
Jean-Marie Leclair
Jeanne Auclair
Jean St Clair
Jean St. Clair (deaf actress)
Jean Talairach
Jeffrey Sinclair
Jeffrey St. Clair
Jenny Eclair
Jerome Sinclair
Jerry Blair
Jeunesse Populaire Franaise
Jim LeClair
Jimmy Blair (soldier)
Jimmy Sinclair
Jim Sinclair
J. J. Blair
Joe Blair
John Alexander Sinclair
John Bellairs
John Blair
John Blair Jr.
John Blair (priest)
John Blair Smith Todd
John Blair Sr.
John Blair (writer)
John Dallaire
John Dubh Maclean, 1st Laird of Morvern
John Ewen Sinclair
John Glair
John Gordon Sinclair
John Hamilton Blair
John Howard Sinclair
John Insley Blair
John Keith McBroom Laird
John Laird
John Laird, Baron Laird
John Laird (shipbuilder)
John LeClair
John Mitchell Sinclair
John Rutherford Blair
John Sinclair
John Sinclair, 1st Baron Pentland
John Sinclair (Ayr Burghs MP)
John Sinclair (bishop)
John Sinclair (environmentalist)
John Sinclair Freedom Rally
John Sinclair Morrison
John Sinclair (New Zealand)
John Sinclair (priest)
John Smith House (Le Claire, Iowa)
John St Clair
John St Clair, Master of Sinclair
Jonathan Blair
Jonathan Sinclair
Jonathan Sinclair (disambiguation)
Jon Blair
Jon Blair Hunter
Jordan Claire Robbins
Jose Auclair
Joseph Blair
Joseph J. Allaire
Joseph Mauclair
Joseph Philippe de Clairville
Jo Sinclair
JP Auclair
J. Sinclair Armstrong
Judi St. Hilaire
Jules Barthlemy-Saint-Hilaire
Julia (clairvoyant)
Julie St. Claire
Julyan Sinclair
Jumbolair Airport
Katherine Blair
Katherine Laird Cox
Katie Blair
Keith Sinclair
Keith Sinclair (bishop)
Kelly Blair LaBounty
Kenneth Blair
Kevin Sinclair
Kinloch, Blairgowrie
KLM Interinsulair Bedrijf
L'Anse-au-Clair
L'clair
La Bastide-Clairence
La Caillre-Saint-Hilaire
Lachlan Og Maclean, 1st Laird of Torloisk
Lackawanna Terminal (Montclair, New Jersey)
LaClaire
La Clairon
Lacs de Clairvaux
Lair
LAIR1
LAIR2
Laira Traction & Rolling Stock Maintenance Depot
Lairawn Baptist Association
Laird
Laird & Company
Laird A. Thompson
Laird B-4
Laird Barron
Laird Hill, Texas
Laird Howard Barber
Laird LC-B
Laird LC-EW
Laird Mackintosh
Laird of Brolas
Laird of Burnbrae
Laird of Torloisk
Laird, Ontario
Laird plc
Laird Schober Shoes
Laird Solution
Laird Super Solution
Laird Township
Laird Township, Michigan
Laird-Turner Meteor LTR-14
Laird v. Tatum
Laird Wilcox
Lairg
Lairire
Lairig an Laoigh
Lairig Ghru
Lairmont Manor
Lair (novel)
Lair of the Lion
Lair of the Minotaur
Lair Point
Lair (video game)
Lake Beauclair
Lake Claire
Lake Claire (Alberta)
Lake Claire, Atlanta
Lake Sinclair
Lake St. Clair
Lake St. Clair Metropark
Lake St Clair (Tasmania)
Larry Blair
Lauchlan Maclean, 2nd Laird of Brolas
Laura Sinclair
Laurence Sinclair
Laure Sainclair
La Vie Claire
Lawrence Blair
Lawrence Blair (bishop)
Leclair
LeClaire Apartments
LeClaire Historic District
Le Claire, Iowa
LeClaire Park Bandshell
Lee Blair
Lee Blair (artist)
Lee St Hilaire
Lemlair House
Leni Sinclair
Leo Blair
Lo Ferr chante Baudelaire
Le Populaire (French newspaper)
Le Populaire (Senegalese newspaper)
Les Blair
Les Clairs-Soleils
Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse
Lesley Laird
Lester Basil Sinclair
Les villes tentaculaires
Ligne claire
Linda Blair
Linda Johnson-Blair
Lindi St Clair
Linnea Sinclair
Lionel Palairet
Lister Sinclair
List of international goals scored by Christine Sinclair
List of Nouvelair destinations
List of Sinclair QL software
List of songs recorded by Teddy Sinclair
List of University of WisconsinEau Claire people
Loc-Brvalaire
Lord Sinclair
Louis de Beaupoil de Saint-Aulaire
Louis de Gonzague Baillairg
Louis-Vincent-Joseph Le Blond de Saint-Hilaire
Lowell Blair Nesbitt
Lucia St. Clair Robson
Luke Laird
Luke Laird discography
Lyce La Clairefontaine
Mabel St Clair Stobart
Macdonald Duck Eclair
Madeleine Blair
Madeline Blair
Malcolm Sinclair
Malcolm Sinclair, 20th Earl of Caithness
Malcolm Sinclair (Swedish nobleman)
Malcolm St. Clair
Malcolm St. Clair (filmmaker)
Maloney Field at Laird Q. Cagan Stadium
Man: Whence, How and Whither, a Record of Clairvoyant Investigation
Marcus St Hilaire
Margaret Blair Young
Margaret Laird
Margaret Nicholl Laird
Margaret Sinclair
Margaret Sinclair (nun)
Margaret St. Clair
Maria Claire Adorna
Marie Claire
Marie-Claire Alain
Marie-Claire Blais
Marie-Claire Foblets
Marie-Claire Heureuse Flicit
Marie-Claire Houard
Marie-Claire Kirkland
Marie Claire Villeval
Marjorie Sinclair, Baroness Pentland
Mark Blair
Mark Lair
Mark Sinclair
Martine St. Clair
Martin Sinclair
Mary Blair Moody
Mary Burns Laird
Mary Caroline Blair
Mary Claire Helldorfer
Mary-Claire King
Mary Craig Sinclair
Massachusetts v. Laird
Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker
Mathew Sinclair
Matas Abelairas
Matthew Blair
Matthew Laird
Matthew Wesley Clair
Matty Blair
Maurice LeClair
Maurice Sinclair
Maynard Sinclair
May Sinclair
Megalobulimus popelairianus
Melvin Laird
Melvin R. Laird Sr.
Mercury Montclair
Meryta sinclairii
Mesosa blairi
Metalair electrochemical cell
Mia Sinclair Jenness
Michael Blair
Michael Dellaira
Michael Palairet
Michael Sinclair
Michael Sinclair (British Army officer)
Michle Auclair
Michelle Claire Edwards
Michelle Leclaire O'Neill
Michel Pignolet de Montclair
Mike Blair
Mindy St. Claire
Monochamus blairi
Montclair
Montclair Art Museum
Montclair-Boonton Line
Montclair, California
Montclair, Denver
Montclair, Fayetteville, North Carolina
Montclair Film
Montclair History Center
Montclair, Indiana
Montclair Kimberley Academy
Montclair, New Jersey
Montclair, North Carolina
Montclair, Oakland, California
Montclair Place (California)
Montclair (Quincy, Massachusetts)
Montclair Transcenter
Montgomery Blair
Montilaira
Mont Saint-Hilaire
Mont-Saint-Hilaire line
Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Quebec
Montsecret-Clairefougre
Morrison & Sinclair
Mountainlair
Mount Blair
Mount Blair (Antarctica)
Mount Hebron Cemetery (Montclair, New Jersey)
Mouvement de Rsistance Populaire pour la Refondation de la Centrafrique
Mouvement des Guides et Eclaireuses du Niger
Multani v Commission scolaire MargueriteBourgeoys
Murder of Claire Tiltman
Murray Sinclair
Muse national des Arts et Traditions Populaires
Muse national des Arts et Traditions Populaires (France)
Nancy Laird Chance
Neil Sinclair
Newman-Sinclair
NewtonAllaire House
Niall Blair
Nicholas Sinclair
Nick Laird
Nicky Blair's
Nikki Sinclaire
Nona Bellairs
Nord 1500 Norclair
Nord clair
North Wing Solairus
Nouvelair
Oliver Sinclair
On a Claire Day
Ordinary Dreams; or How to Survive a Meltdown with Flair
Owen Park (Eau Claire, Wisconsin)
Paddy Moclair
Palair
Palairos
Pamela Blair
Parc Saint-Clair
Parliamentary motion to impeach Tony Blair
Parti national populaire
Pascal Leclaire
Patrick Blair
Patrick Blair (surgeon)
Patrick Sinclair
Paula Claire
Paul Blair
Paul Laird
Perdita Hyde-Sinclair
Peter Blair
Peter Blair Henry
Peter Hunter Blair
Peter J. N. Sinclair
Peter Laird
Peter Sinclair
Peter Sinclair (environmental activist)
Peter Sinclair (governor)
Peter Sinclair Jr.
Peter Sinclair Sr.
Peter St Clair-Erskine, 7th Earl of Rosslyn
Phellodon sinclairii
Philip Clairmont
Philip Johnson-Laird
Phoebe Blair-White
Phoenix Sinclair
Picture Claire
Pierre-Florent Baillairg
Pierre-Jacques Volaire
Pierre-Julien Leclair
Pierre-Marie Hilaire
Planet Claire
Pointe-Claire
Pointe-Claire (electoral district)
Polaire
Populaire
Port Blair
Port Blair mean time
Port Blair tehsil
Premiership of Tony Blair
Princess Claire of Belgium
Princess Claire of Luxembourg
Proutiella ilaire
Pseudohilaira
Quintin Blair House
RailAir
Randy St. Claire
Ratthapark Wilairot
Ray v. Blair
Rebecca Sinclair
Red Blair
Red Laird
Rginald Blair
Reginald Blair
Reg Sinclair
Reid Flair
Ren Clair
Ren Clair Award
Ren Lepage de Sainte-Claire
RFA Wave Laird (A119)
Rhodopina blairi
Ric Flair
Richard Blair-Oliphant
Richard Chanlaire
Richard Palairet
Richard Sinclair
Rikki Beadle-Blair
Rivire aux clairs
Rivire Claire
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TONY! The Blair Musical
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