[BNP/E3, 77 – 3-46]
A. Search.
Early fragments.
Alexander Search.
[4r]
Early Fragments.
I.
– “What is fame after death?
A life that’s not a life, my dearest boy,
A life we live and yet cannot enjoy,
A name writ at the corner of a street,
A bust that we can crush beneath our feet,
A light wind that a tempest makes forget:
That is fame after death. Cursed they who fret
But to attain it; and they who die for it
Kill themselves twice, Marino. Therefore, hear,…
1903.
___
II.
‘Tis pleasant to be loved by all,
‘Tis sweetest to be loved by one,
But there’s in life no greater gall
Than to be loved by none.
1903.
- III -
The blackest clouds are never packed so tight
That we see not some blue,
The sky is ne’er so dark some ray of light
May not break trough.
1903.
[5r]
Early Fragments. 2.
- IV. -
Nought is more cold than ashes are,
Yet there a fire hath star
The night around a lonely star
More dark than all is seen.
– V –
Song of the Obscure.
What care I for the fame of the glorious and great?
What care I for the stars that on other worlds glow?
Though I’m poor, and unknown, and is humble my state.
If I have but few friends, yet I have not a foe.
–1903–
– VI –
“Say thou not so.
The meanest wretch is human and can feel
E’en as thou canst; has heart and head like thine;
Can calculate, can suffer, laugh or weep;
And thou he loves and hates, and is as thou
Strong in his virtues and in his faults weak.
And nothing can distinguish high or low
But birth, a matter of a wav’ring chance;
But as for heart, Marino, ‘twold be well
If all our nobles and plebeian hearts.
[6r]
Early Fragments 3.
Mar. Too true thou speakest, and I see I err;
If all our mighty men had nearer hearts
Would Satan have a nearer following.
1903.
– VII –
- Who art thou? I pray thee and stand not there
As if hadst thy mind to go no farther.
Mar. Who am I?
Thou askest well indeed, since I know not.
A month – a week ago I could have said
With ready mind and joyous – “I’m Marino”…
But now I cannot speak;
My mind is so much stronger than my tongue,
That wags is not, but rather holds it back.
Who am I?
Indeed thou askest well. Full many a time
I asked myself that question, and no answer
Could my mind give to what my tongue did speak.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
My mind’s so whriklèd, dashed and spun around,
That what it knows it cannot state aright,
And what it states aright it does not know.
Ah! Foolish me who thought
That logic could have soothed my sad heart
And I could less my sufferings by reason;
[7r]
Early Fragments 4.
That gayest mirth could choke and make forget
The deepest agonies of saddest heart;
That wine and sleep could dull.
What themselves keep not off.
How can I reason when no reason’s left?
How can I think when more I bend my mind
Towards one object it doth show another?
When mem’ry fiendish grows and doth neglect
To give the secrets that it treasured up.
Thou sayest I’m Marino… Art thou right?
Resolve me then, since I cannot resolve
The simplest problems of a querying mind.
To-day a friend did pass and called to me,
Saying “Marino, thou art changed indeed”;
I looked full well at him and saw him not,
But saw a black and yawning awful chasm
And knew that I was looking in my brain.
1903.
– VIII –
Ye spirits of the horrid night,
Ye phantoms of eternal space,
Spectres of time, that hold your place
Beyond the scope of human light!
Listen unto this song of woe.
1904.
[8r]
Early Fragments – 5.
IX.
His powers were great but faulty, for in fact
Though he had feeling yet he wanted tact;
Clever he was, but spent his easy rhymes
In being the scandal-monger of his times;
None was so safe his tooth might not indent;
Slander he used so well that, by indent,
Became mere slander in a few small hours.
Who would deny therefore his useful powers?
1904.
X.
Here lies old Jones, now gone to endless light;
All day he idled and he slept all night,
But of his time the rest he spent aright.
1904.
XI.
Marino: The mystery of all – it lies around,
It lies beneath, above, in all the earth,
In all the sky and more – why, dear Vincenzo,
Lies it not here within – in our own heart?
Its answer too is written on all earth,
On all the sky and more, but we do lack
To know the language wherein it is written.
That we shall never know.
[9r]
Early Fragments –. 6
Vin: A giant cypher
Whereby the key is death.
1904.
XII.
Vincenzo: Verily there is not
A thing more greater than the mind of man:
All worlds that are it hath long visitèd,
All worlds are not it hath long visitèd,
All worlds would be it hath long visitèd.
Marino: Yet how much lacks it and what imperfection
At every thought appear! Why then my friend,
If that thy mind hath space then let it grasp
Duly the greatness of this ambient space
In which that clouds are but as grains of dust,
The sun a candle and the moon a match
If that they mind hath bound let it confine
All this and state where space doth have its bourne.
Let is find limits to the reign of night, and end
To that of day. Let it but think, weak particle,
And feel the unbounded greatness of the around,
Symbolic of its God and unaccountable,
Beyond the understanding; sight, imagination
Beyond all man.
If that thy mind hath number, let it count
The unnumbered worlds that gem the silent air,
[10r]
Early Fragments – 7.
And the untold stars, in cohorts bright and long,
That blink at night, as if in sleepy joy.
If that thy mind hath depth, then let it pierce
This earth of matter and distinguish what then
Doth lie within its core. Of thy mind hath thought,
Then let it pounder on its own existence
And lay thy hand upon thy head and say
“Here is a head”, upon thy heart and think
“Here is a heart”, and glance upon thy limbs,
And know what all that means. For thou wilt find
That man so droll is in his strange existence,
So strange his fate, so obscure his procedence,
That with so simple problem we are dumb.
So laughable, so quaint, so real, unreal
And yet so sad! How to express it all?
Had I a thousand tongues, a thousand ways
To say my thought, and but a thought to say,
Yet should my mind oppress me with a thought
That curses language.
Ay, sometimes I think
I am upon the answer of it all; yet then
There doth appear something too horrid in’t
A widening madness, a sickness of light,
And I am dumb.
When I do ponder on
This great, this silent, this unending space,
[11r]
Early Fragments – 8.
I feel as feels the traveller in dizziness
Who looks upon some pit of bottom reft,
In darkness clad, from which sounds horrid clang –
So clangs upon my mind the solemn sound
Of weighted thought.
I’ll give thee aught to think, take but one word
A small word, friend; take thou the word “God”
And tell me all that’s in it. Nay do not tell
But think alone.
1904.
XIII.
Minstrel: I know thee so well, Giles Attom, that thou
Know’st not thyself as well as I know thee;
Thy childhood and thy youth, thy manliness,
Are all to me cognite; thy fathers too
Were both well-known to me; e’en of thy life
I know the secrets all – thy passions, cares,
Thy loves and woes, thy rages and thy calms,
Thy flames and colds, thy present life I know,
And likewise is thy future known to me.
Giles: How? Who and what are thou that canst thus speak?
And claimst knowledge of all?
Min: It matters not
Who and what I am. ‘Tis enough to tell thee…
1903.
[12r]
Early Fragments – 9.
Marino: Back, back, back, back! Thou treacherous sea, move back!
Dost thou not see Marino? Move thou back!
How canst thou be so silent when thou cam’st
To mine own death? Yet now see, Master, see
There is a way down there – dost thou not see
Down there, down there; see how the water shirks it!
Alas, it is a rock! Ah, let me climb
Up this steep cliff; ah, surely I can hold…
Alas I – creep back – rush back, thou awful sea!
Seest thou not I am here – I Marino –
I am not going to die – move back, move back!
(Curses everything. Sees demons and faces. Strives to climb the vertical cliff).....
‘Tis but the last hope of extreme despair!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Their arms are gripping me and I move back!
Master, thy help! Accurst be thou! Thy help!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I die, I die! Curst be thou, Master.
Cursèd be Hell, cursed be Heaven, twice curst be God!
1904.
XV.
Happy so soon to die! Thou canst not know
Base human cares and woes and lusts and fears,
[13r]
Early Fragments – 10
And all that hate and love make here below
Of horrors, pains and soul-exhaling sighs
And unavailing cares and useless tears.
Never shall human woes offend thine eyes,
Nor horrid doubtings of another world.
Nor ever shalt thou mourn a careless youth,
Nor shall thy soul be torn, thy thoughts be hurled
Beyond the mazes of a confused truth,
Nor shall thy soul at last in vain seek pity and ruth.
Ah, never shalt thou known what ‘tis to strain
A mind to language and to speak a soul,
When every newer feeling brings a pain
And every thought yields not its glowing whole
But breaks the lands of self and runs from thy control.
Nor ever canst thou thirst for aught above
Things of this earth, fair to thee while didst live;
Thou never shalt require a heavenly love
Nor ask from earth what earth can never give.
1904.
XVI.
Small is the grief can find its vent in tears;
When thou canst weep is marked thy sorrow’s fate:
Mark how the rolling thunder doth abate
[14r]
Early Fragments – 11.
When fresh’ning rain the sultry weather clears.
Tears are the taxes paid on joys bygone
And joys to come (if joys do e’er return);
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1903.
XVII.
One hopeless love another love can smother,
Lost love another love can make forget,
And e’en although thy grief seem endless, yet
Thou’lt cease to weep one day, unhappy mother!
Time heals all woes, and thou wilt find it so
When years have past, in hours of happiness,
Thou wilt forget, nor wilt thou laugh the less,
Thou wilt forget, as if thou hadst no woe.
When raven night brings down her thoughtful
Upon her wing, ‘tis then the time to weep.
Thou’lt wonder how thou e’er couldst laugh and keep
Attentive ear to mirthful joke and song.
And yet ‘tis thus and well: the human mind
Dwells not for e’er upon one thing alone;
Nightly resolve and midnight tear and moan
[15r]
Early Fragments – 12.
Fly with the shadows as a straw in wind.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And yet ‘tis better thus, to leave the world
And not have known how sweet is life to man,
Not to have known its brief, unequal span
Not to have seen those golden dreams unfurled.
Death, ah! the very word is lek a moan
In ghostly darkness, when all men are still.
All that it means, or may, is ‘nough to chill
My very mind and choke my rising tone.
1903.
XVIII.
Death came and took him who lived by my side.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Methinks (so near and known he was to me)
In this so near appearance of cold death,
I felt upon my cheeks the sultry heath
Of the great vortex of eternity.
So near to me, Death’s hand seemed e’en to touch
My starting frame; it seems to me in pain
That Death near to me will not come again
Unless ‘tis for myself....
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[16r]
Early Fragments – 13.
Some die upon the bloody battlefield,
Some doth the scaffold take, and some the knife,
Others resign their being without strife;
Martyrs yet others do their being yield.
Some on a couch of pain resign their breath,
Others by deepest grief are torn away,
Some go e’er they have known the lovely day,
Some die too late. But death is always death.
October, 1904.
XIX.
To-morrow shall become to-day,
To-day for e’er shall go;
The passèd sun of yesterday
Was far a year ago.
And yesterday was once to-morrow;
Those days of joy or days of sorrow
That hundred years or so
And distant yet from us, shall come
And pass for ever to their tomb.
The modern times of no romance
More modern times shall follow…
Frail things of earth, so strange and sad,
[17r]
Early Fragments – 14.
Shall ye all pass away?
Must all these things of love and glad....
1904.
XX.
Do thou amid the laugh and song
In stately halls and fair
Remember that despisèd throng
That lingers in despair.
Amid the dance, when tuneful sound
Doth sway the pleasèd mind,
Mind thee how many lie around
To pain and grief confined.
Last virtue of a wicked man
Is pity: have it thou!...
1904.
XXI.
On those hill-tops sombre foliage crowned
There rules the beauty of a castle old
Whose towers torn still sway the heated air,
Whose walls in ruin bare
Grin at the beauty of the world around
And ‘neath the sun itself are turned cold;
[18r]
Early Fragments – 15.
For what avails it if the sun’s live gold
Can stain the blackness of the dungeon’s night?
It makes it but less bright…
1904.
Woman (to Marino):
Some men have darkness in their countenance,
Their eyes respond not to the glancing light
But are in shadows bathed. But thine seems
The sultry darkness of the tropic night
Where lightning is to be…
1904.
XXIII
Thus when I rove along the fragrant field
Everything to me such pleasure yields.
The blades of grass, in graceful curve aslant,
Have their sweet, springful and melodious chant.
Nothing is dumb: with furious voice enorm
Its rude advice doth give the staggering storm;
The trees, whose rustling ceaseless to the breeze
Seems as the hissing of the summer seas,
Tell wonderous tales of easy, pleasant bowers,
Which also tell the bright and early flowers.
These pleasures do thou but allow thy mind
[19r]
Early Fragments – 16.
And when thou readest thou wilt surely find
Books are but Nature’s thoughts in dress diverse,
Though never better, yet too often worse.
1904.
XXIV
Nothing is dumb; the smallest thing can speak
In varied tones, in accent strong or weak;
Learn then to hear and then shalt thou rejoice
To find in ev’ry thing a pleasing voice;
The storm to thee will speak, the changeful wind
Shall tell thee secretes running unconfined;
The book shall babble many a joyous tale,
The trees shall whisper and the sea shall wail,
Every field and plain in every land
Shall tell its tale – if thou but understand.
And silence too can speak and, if thou hear,
When night falls slowly on the landscape drear,
Voices unheard shall wonderous secrets tell
And dead men jabber in a curious spell.
Commune with Nature; let thy thought be one
With Nature’s voice…
Wonder not then that I love solitude:
Men’s voices are insipid and are rude,
Most to me, on whose grave this should be seen
Thought was his curse, expression was his bane.
[20r]
Early Fragments – 17.
XXV.
The Atheist – I.
Slow rises in the East the glorious golden orb
And the whole earth and sky he seems now to absorb
In his fertile embrace; he rests on field and town
Wreathing them in his glee with a flammif’rous crown.
How gleams the sea beneath his fiery, joyful light!
How both mountain and vale seem so superbly bright!
With what joy too the peasant greets the merry sun,
For comrades old they are: their morn’s always begun
At the same hour, and, when Apollo sinks to rest
With all his galas in the far and ruddy west,
He too his fireside seeks, his happy rustic home,
Where nought may be but bliss, where but the pure may roam;
More than an epopee is worth their simple story.
How like the dreams of youth is the sun in its glory!
In grandiose pump he sails the azure firmament,
Like an angel of light, by God’s command us sent;
But slow – more slow – he sinks: no vestige of his light
Is seen and earth fall the awing shades of night.[1]
So in our soul it is: our youthful dreams pass by,
Raising our hopes to heav’n, our expectations high;
But soon they disappear – not even their pale ghost
Can we see, for they are in utter darkness lost.
But in common one thing with the red sun they lack:
[21r]
Early Fragments – 18.
After the cold, dark night the shining orb comes back,
But they return no more.
Enough! The sun’s bright beams
That shine on the gay world, on rivers and on streams,
Alike in the poor’s roof as on the palace dome,
Rest beautiful and clear on the city of Rome, -
Call’d city of the Lord, but ownèd by the devil,
Termed city of the good, but the den of the evil –,
And its solacing light to cottage and to hall
Makes stand out bold and grand that wonderous cathedral…
1903.
XXVI.
Coul I, oh orb of deathless light, be constant as thou art,
And joy and kindliness could I to every home impart,
Coul I be bright and bring always a blessing to each man,
I might not weep, with vain despair, my life’s too shortened span;
But I am not, as thou art, gay, nor constant as thou art,
To do good I’ve no power, oh sun, but have a kindly heart;
I waste in tears from man the power that I have to do good…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Oh, glorious orb that fillst the sky in spring when man is gay,
Who most remembered art by us, when thou art gone away;
How do I yearn for thee to-day; in winter’s cheerless sky
I find a something like myself…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[22r]
Early Fragments – 19.
Immortal orb, oh thou hast too, full many a year ago,
What sights hast seen, what horrors seen, along the times’ cold flow?
Thou show’st perhaps one day upon the bloody Grecian green,
Thy orb when Troy’s old fleet was broke along the sky was seen;
Thou’st seen the rise of powers immense and shone upon their fall;
Thou’st marked the birth of emperors and smiled upon their fall.
Thy blazing car maintained its speed when man in tears was found.
Tell me the tales, oh sun, thou’st learnt in earth’s far distant round.
1904 (October).
XXVII
… The doctrines too of
Pythagoras, of holy Socrates,
Of spokesman Plato, shallow Cicero
And many more. Have I not pored in vain
On antique texts of dark and woeful lore. Have not sages
Spoken to me from woe-wrought solemn pages?
And yet I nothing know; the more I read
The more I am confused and bewildered…
-1904-
XXVIII.
– Old James is dead, who did his work full well;
Ought he to go to heaven or to hell?
- James was a thief; his work was done too well;
So, unless into heav’n he stole, to hell.
– 1904 –
[23r]
Early Fragments – 20.
XXIX.
Translation from Catullus (70).
My sweet swears to love none but me,
That Jove would beg her grace in vain;
But what a woman tells her hungering swain –
Oh, write it on the winds that flee
And on the swift waves of the sea.
January 1905.
XXX.
There was a time when sacred things
Existed, but modernizings
Have made them all go wrong and hookèd,
Twisted, doubled-up and crooked.
Before, divine things were not made
The articles of scribbling trade;
Now, for the good of halls and hovels,
They put the Passion into novels.
- 1904. –
XXXI.
With gesture slow and deathsome eyes she came
As with some sultriness and languid limbs,
Her from half-nude, her half-dishevelled hair
Beauteous in its disorder, and her face
Half-calm, half-flushed, as from an amorous couch.
– 1904 –
[24r]
Early Fragments – 21.
XXXII.
Translation of Fourth Georgic, lines 116 et seq.
Myself, so near my labour’s end were I not even now,
Furling my sails, and eager too to turn to land my prow,
Perchance those fertile gardens fair which the careful tendings clear
Would sing, and Paestum’s rosetrees too, which blossom twice a year;
And in what way the endives joy to drink the rills that pass,
And green banks in their parsley, and how, trailing through the grass,
The gourd doth round him to a paunch; nor had I held my tongue
Of blooming-late narcissus, or acanthus supply-swung,
And white-streaked ivy, and myrtles too, their lovèd banks among.
- 1904 –.
XXXIII.
Many and great the things that men have said
But those are greater that remain unspoken –
The night holds more than noisy day of dread
And loves and woes and torments sweet or dire,
Of passions hushed in climax, and of broken
Hearts in the breaking silence…
– 1904 –
XXXIV.
Translation of the Fourth Georgic, lines 149-152.
Come now, th’instincts which Jove himself gave bees I will explain
At once, as reward for that they, following in the train
Of the Curetes’ tuneful sounds and clanging cymbals, gave
The food they brought to Heaven’s King in the Dictaean cave.
- 1904 –
[25r]
Early Fragments – 22.
XXXV.
Nothing is mute; all nature speaks to me,
The crashing waters and the silent tree,
The sea, the birds, the dumb and curious flowers
And little insects whose life is but hours.
To me they speak, they sing, their voices rise
To me in varied accents doubly wise;
With many a worthy thought and precept gay
To me their voices rise in glad array.
1904.
XXXVI.
But with no settled thought on Nature look
Else ‘t will but echo what thou think’st…
And some sweet rose in fragrance plenteous spread
Will tell thy mind some tale of sorrow dread;
Approach this altar with a vacant mind
And yet prepared; too soon then shalt thou find
How ev’ry thing can speak in its true voice…
But Nature though it speak thus, thus always,
Yet but one thing in many ways doth say.
1904.
XXXVII.
(translated very freely)
Doctor Jack Augustus Carr,
[26r]
Early Fragments – 23
A lawyer in phases deft,
Defends prisoner at the bar
Who is accusèd of theft.
The latter, whose name is Black,
A gent of suspicious fame,
In the lands of Doctor Jack
Had placed his case and good name.
Doctor Jack, a clever man,
When it was his turn to speak,
In his usual way began
Calmly addressing the beak.
“My client, your worship, is
A good man. A soul as true
You will never find as his
If you travel till Peru.”
With a happy gesture slack
Gracing this discourse most able,
He gives the inkstand a thwack
And spills the ink on the table.
Then, with a finger all dark,
While making a motion sleek,
[27r]
Early Fragments – 24.
He leaves an inky black mark
Branded plain on his left cheek.
Then on the ink he had spilt
He places his hand in full,
Leaning forward and the guilt
Of his client thus makes null:
“The prisoner who here, I ween,
Through spiteful enemies stands,
Shows a past life just as clean
As are at present my hands.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1903.
XXXVIII.
So great his will he nothing left undone
Unless it were that which he ne’er begun;
So great his powers he everything embraced
From an intention to a woman’s waist;
To everything he got he ever clung,
So may the halter to his neck when hung.
1904/1
XXXIX.
Laid under leafy canopy at noon
[28r]
Early Fragments – 25.
The lonely poet, in half-waking dreams,
Mayhap in sloth shall hear
Sounds such as night doth offer to the moon
And childly songs of morn,
Sounds not of earth and many a heart-heard moan
And music such as draws the sudden tear,
Receding foam from shadowy rocks lovelorn
On murmurous seas by gleamless shores unknown.
1904/2.
XL.
The day is bright, the skies in glory smile,
In verdant dress the cheerful woods beguile;
The bees at work expect no early showers
But reap their harvest from the purple flowers,
The many birds in graceful discord join
And all their joys in varying song define;
In whispering joy the zephirs’ breath inspires
The youthful lovers into laughing quires.
1904/IV.
XLI.
{…}
[29r]
Old Castle – 1.
Fragments of a poem called
The Old Castle.
I.
Man, strange embodiment of Nature, proud,
Ephemeral creation, can I look
Untouched upon thee, can I calm survey
Thy joys and pains, thy struggle through this world
And last long closing of thine eyes in death?
I love to contemplate thy ways, to gaze
Upon thy haunts, to search thy home, to find
In all thy little actions aught of great.
For I can feel in me a sense sublime
That I was born to think, was born to feel
And not to look in vain at all that is;
In hours of rest and coolness I have felt
A noble exaltation, in my heart
A joy unknown arose, and thankfulness,
And in my eyes the sudden tears’ surprise;
Wherefore I do not know, but when I gaze
Upon this compact and emmoving all
I see behind some force of power enorm
Whose face is as a music strange and full
That lifts my heart above, and moves me past
The bounds of human reason; ‘tis a music
[30r]
Old Castle – 2.
That wraps me round with a forgetfulness
Of common things and thoughts common as they.
(1904).
II.
…oh, man…
Thou wast not made for pain, unthinking fool,
In thy true state, thy mind not made to attempt
To grasp the limits of mending space;
Wherefore shouldst thou, that dost not know thyself
Nor know thine earth, survey the upper air,
The varied changes, life and death and all
In curious query? Oh thou wast not made
For useless thought; thy fame is not attuned
To hold the ravage of all thought, or sway
Creation; yet thou art so very great!
Has not thy mind enslaved all earth again?
Rulest thou not all beasts, thyself a beast?
Oh, thou art strange indeed! Could I explain
Thy meanest action, could I mete thy thought
Or claim thy heart I’d hold myself too great!
Had I an epic’s force, inspirèd might,
I’d sing of thee, but the sublime fits not
A modern soul. Yet I have loved to think.
III.
On that fair land
[31r]
Old Castle – 3.
That flanks the blue Tyrrhenean, or the shores
Of dark Arabia, or fair Illyrian land,
Or where the warlike hosts that met at Ilium
Were born; or where mayhap the brutish Goth
Or brutal Avar, or the fiendish Frank
Had risen, or whence arose the race enorm
Of Boadicea? Themes too strong for me.
No, I shall sing of one long-shattered castle
I once beheld in beauteous Spanish land;
A castle old it was, in times of old
This was no broken race, the strong Iberian
Lay not beneath the yoke of years. Now age
Has broken all his might. Yet let me tell
Thy worthless tale in worthless numbers, I
May thus at length unburden my sad soul.
(1904)
(1904)
IV.
A meanly strain
Fits best a little mind; I shall not wish
To grasp great things; I shall not tell of souls
Or wars and jars and horrid faction rent
In myriad atoms! I can better sing
Of some small matter, of an ancient castle
I once beheld in pleasant Spain, which crowned
A steep, long will, amid the foliage thick
Adorning, lording the subjected vale.
[32r]
Old Castle – 4.
V.
One summer’s day when scalding noon had rung
Across the fields, when lovely cottages
Grew whiter in his gleams, when songs of birds
Broke through the natural stillness, I betook
Myself to a valley, in the Spanish land.
It was a lovely scene, the grass beneath
Of violent greenness fertile, ornamented
With flowers, the bills that girdled all the plain
Seemed as the tiers of seats that piled rose
Within a Roman circus. Near to me
Thickwooded stood a hill, on whose high top
A miserable vestige of ruin
Could scarce be seen, seemed a passage cut
Through all the foliage, yet I thought my steps
Might tread with profit that untrodden ground.
(1904)
VI.
I mind me now
To have heard a tale they know throughout the land.
An old man told it me, I well remember,
An old man, to the village he belonged
That whitens yonder hill-side, and he said
His fathers knew the rustic, simple tale.
The old man it me, and, while he spoke,
He wept I wept to hear him too. He said
[33r]
Old Castle – 5.
That when these castle walls, which I now see,
Were but half-ruined, here lived a gentle maid.
She was the last of that long line, the proud
Line of the Spanish knights, and here she lived
Alone, her father in the boiling sea
Sought for his fame and died – the strong indeed
Sinks to the stronger – and her mother too
Long years of toil had torn from lovely earth.
This maid was named Dolores – ah, that name,
That sad, strange name Dolores! Ah, that name!
There lived here too a cousin; he was one
Of a collateral branch, and he was too
Eager for fame, for love, unfearing death.
She loved him and he loved her; they alone
Remained on earth to each other, and the sky
Might from a smile, and Fortune be adverse –
But what was that to them? At morn they walked
Along the flowery dales and rivers’ banks
Speaking their dreams, he tall and proud of mien,
She tender leaning on his shoulders’ breadth.
And so their morn was past, and when the sun
Stood high in heaven and made the trees more green,
Some bower awaited, and they there would rest
And talk of trifles and of war and lore.
When evening came then they went forth and roamed
Again upon the fields, while coolly came
[34r]
Old Castle – 6
The night’s slow mantle o’er the earth, and then
Hatless they trod the dales again for home.
But ah! What time it was when night did come;
Then by the moonlight, softly pausing lightly
Over the adjoining ruins, they there walked
And dreamed again. These shattered stones recalled
To his mind the deeds the men whose castle this
Had been had wrought, and in his mind his land
Against the invading Moor did bear a lance;
Or now his eyes perceived in dream the boil
Of battle and he walked with joyous strides
The crumbling earth, while she sat near adoring,
Admired his aminated gait; she too
Dreamed oft of her fair cavaliero’s fame
Which, borne upon the wings of language, reached
The distant shores of Albion. Thus they passed
The days and nights their lovèd ruins among;
And yet to him it seemed that fame had called
Him to the fight, and on a summer’s day
He said farewell to her, for he had heard
The neighbouring Lusian on the hated Moor
Was to advance. He kissed her by a stile
Yet not a stile, but something like a stile
That bordered on the long-drawn road, where they
Were wont to sit before, and then he went,
Turning at every step, and waving back
[35r]
Old Castle – 7.
To her whose mind was filled with joy and woe.
He joined the Lusian host, that Lusian host
Which young Sebastian led in joy, which soon
Came to the land it sought, and ere the night
Lay torn and scattered in the Arabian plain.
She heard and wept not, for his beaten corse
They did not find, nor had he fled away
Whitter he could return, and her sad mind,
Tortured with hope and fearing soon did lapse
Into slow madness, which none did perceive.
She used to smile at times, at others frown;
She never wept. And every day she went
And sat in silence at the rustic stile.
And there she work’d or dreamt; now and then
Looked up and down the road, then worked again;
Now, when some distant sound upon her ears
Struck, she leaned over with her listening head
At a sad poise, while o’er her countenance came
A sad expression of expectancy,
Which faded soon, and left her disappointed.
Yet she desisted not, and when the day
Merged slowly into darkness, she retired –
Retired, but sat till midnight’s sullen hour
Struck to her heart, at that small window which
O’erlooked the road from far. Then to her sleep,
Her troubled sleep she went and dreamed of him.
[36r]
Old Castle – 8
And so in hopelessness she grew to age
In quite madness ever, till at length
She died and as she died the two first tears
Of all that silent woe down her pale cheeks
Trembled. Even as they took her to her grave,
Even as in the dark earth her coffin sank,
Out of the extreme sinking of the road
An old man came with hurrying steps unsure.
‘Twas he… And here, explaining no more, they
Who told the tale did sob.
Frail things of earth
Useless and frail, unless at times to point
Their awkward moral, or at least to show
The littleness of life and love, to mask
Man’s great, persistent, cruel vanity.
(1904).
VII.
This was the happy joyous throng. One was
Of whom I have not spoken; he indeed
Far diff’rent to them; nor had he the strength
Which as their ancient boast; his countenance
Adorned him not, his limbs and head disform
Provoked the scorn of all. Nor was this all,
For when he spoke he halted, and his words
Hung, like a fool’s, upon his thin-lipt mouth.
None had for him a word of comfort; he
[37r]
Old Castle – 9.
Wandered alone along the fields; the birds,
They fled not at his touch, for he was kind.
His weakly frame and his sick mind were not
Much fit for arms, and he indeed abhorred
The lust of man for man’s flesh, when he heard
The chronicles of fights.
(1904).
VIII.
He had learnt
To look on Nature well; and fields and flowers
And handiwork of God and man he thought
Had that no meaning; he would often pore
On man, would list in stillness to strange sounds
In dead of night; until, one fatal day,
As he had looked, the sudden meaning flashed
With lightning violence on his open mind,
Till he recoiled before it. Now he knew
And was more deep in ignorance than before.
[1904.]
IX.
Then o’er his mind and soul there crept
A sighing weariness of life, that spread
From mind to mouth and limb, that madness brought,
And sullen silence and torpidity.
[1904]
[38r]
Old Castle – 10.
X.
“I go from thee,
My native land, in pain, as one that leans
Dim-eyed and chill upon the vessel’s poop,
Leaning and watching with an unknown dread
The rushing waters and receding shore.
But through that mist of motion yet do come
Memories of life abandoned, sweer as sounds
To lonely ear the intermitted chime
Of distant merry songs, which now the blast
Cuts off, now leaves to pass, as it grows slack”.
(1904).
December
XI.
As doth a tree, silent and sure they grew –
Their deeds soon rang along the wide, long land
Until they reached their climax, when they fell,
As they were human; swift indeed yet long
Was their own fall, and dread; for those that rise
Higher, the greater is their fall at last.
And as these were but men so did they fall.
Whither by prowess they had risen, thence
They fell, even as that over-bold sun-child
Who with misguided chariot wrought to earth
Varying mischief, whom all-potent Jove,
With madden flash that darked his parent orb
Struck, when from thence he fell in headlong flight -
[39r]
Old Castle – 11.
Sheer downwards fell, and in his sweeping train
The lesser orbs he drew; from th’upper air
On to the clouds, from cloud to cloud he fell,
And from the clouds along the cloudy air
Crashed with a splash enorm into that stream
Which ever bears his name, whose spray upbeat
Assuaged the dust along the Lybian plains.
(1904, June)
XII.
Things of earth,
Oh, they are frail and useless, but in them
Musing I can forget my many pains;
All thought that aches, all tears I shed for man,
All woes, all longings do I sink among them.
Considering them my thought more pains, hence I
Through fearing, long to close mine eyes in easy death,
But, as I know not death, I suffer more.
Oh, mystery of man, how thou art sad
In all thy depth! How horrid is thy face
Wound with the veiling of mortality;
A thing too deep for words, too great for thoughts,
The life of man, and dreadful to the mind
That cannot grasp. Consider well thyself,
Thy frame and everything around, thy joys,
Thy pains and all – is there not something droll,
Horrid beyond expression in thyself.
[40r]
Old Castle – 12.
Say not therefore: “these are but things of earth
And things of small import”, for mortal things,
Full of sadness of all mortal things,
Have taught me much; from them I learnt to think
Sweet-bitter thoughts, I learnt from them to weep
The cruel fate of man. – Put upon earth,
Swayed by a thousand passions, cares and woes
Shown all his joys, by taste acceptable –
Yet often ruled by tears; though born a fool,
Raised to the highest point of natural thought,
Thrust into thinking’s light, and then at last
Plunged into eternal darkness… What! to die!
‘Tis sad indeed, to shake from us in pain
This garb of life and keep an inner cold;
We scarce can deem it true. What! that this frame
Thrilling with pleasant sense shall e’ver be cold!
And shall these veins, that bear the blood that makes
The lust of life, be dead also and gone?
… To think that we –
We, in whose throbbing veins the lust of life
Runs ever, bubbling in its pleasing sway,
Must turn to nought and lies us dead and cold!
Horrible thought! to rest us cold and stark!
Myself I wish not heaven, save that in death
I were imprisoned in the lengthening winds
Sensèd to blow about; I would desire
[41r]
Old Castle – 13.
Ever to taste the feeling of the earth,
To feel the glow of life, warmly to see,
As if with eyes, the myriad things that joy
Our sensuous vision, to perceive allwhere
The scattered perfume of all flowers, to hear
The sounds conjoining of a mighty world.
But that it must be so, I would not lose,
Racked as I am with pain, this glowing frame,
The senses’ pleasure, and this boundless mind,
These unexampled instincts, and these thoughts
That think to stagger through futurity.
Alas! to lose with mind that knows it well
The sweetest pleasures of the teeming earth,
The soft spiced winds that murmur through the spring,
The sight of vernal flowers, or the voice
Of the far river flowing through the trees.
And if all here on earth be dust and nought
And shall be lost in some uncertain end
And lost for e’er, wherefore the dear creations
Of costly minds, wherefore these minds themselves,
Wherefore a Milton’s or an Homer’s fame?
Nay nought shall die! All liveth and shall live
Looked in an immortality past through…
I lose expression in my thought’s excess
And my words fail out of desire to speak
Things I conceive not. But I know not death.
[42r]
Old Castle – 14.
I pounder, and my being fails. These flowers,
These summer fields, these birds whose festive song
Perfumes the aural sense – these are to me
A joy immense that fills my crazy soul,
Intoxicated with its melancholy,
Even to overflowing, till the tears
Unasked, unchecked must gush from my sad eyes –
And then my life is sweet. Ah fields and flowers,
Yet that enthral my senses, can I think
You must be lost to me or I to you?
That I one day shall part from ye, that I
Shall e’er again you meet; ah, all perdition!
Here lies all pain! I would with pleasure die
If with my breath and being I lost not
These things of earth that are my pain and joy,
That fill my soul with sweet and sad content.
I would fain die – ay – if death were not death,
Or if… I know well… My weighted thoughts
My straining mind desert and fail my lips
And fly the efforts of the scribbling pen.
(1904, 1905)
It may be good
To live for e’er in heaven, to live among
Angles and saints, but I would live on earth,
On sinful earth would live.
[43r]
Old Castle – 15.
XIII
All things that are on earth and form a part
Of the great visual universe I thought
At one time natural and true. But now
I have awakened to the emptiness
Of their truth. Now do I feel all within me
Inspired. My frame and soul I keep apart
For me I leave behind, with th’other soar
The pinnacles of rapture.
There is something in Nature that outweighs
My poor expression and to which e’en thought
Seems small and weak; how great then must it be!
I know not what it is, but I can feel
Its power and hear its voice in everything.
Thus when I walk the fields at early morn
It finds expression in the meanest sight.
The blades of grass, the flowers that raised glow
Upon the sward, the gentle plants, the trees,
The housewife ants and working bees, the birds,
The simple flocks and grazing herds disperst.
Nothing is dumb, for everything can speak
And all but gives expression to that voice
That lies in Nature, from the smallest atom
Seen by the mind alone, to the rough sea’s
Tremendous voice that howls, and the rude storm’s
Might terrific that sways the growing trees.
[44r]
Old Castle – 16.
Nothing is dumb: the winds in fearful rush
Speak and so speaks the river’s gentle flow.
Nor need these voice to speak; to the mind’s ear
Alone oft is the voice perceptible –
Thus if the things I see can so well speak
Many a thing can speak that is unseen.
Day, morn and eve and night can speak to me;
All tell me secrets and all are conjoint
In being the expression of great Nature’s voice.
And yet though everything can have a voice
And through that voice to me be far more great
Than any voice, it is yet strange to say
That silence speaks far more than anything.
When sleep or death relieves the world around,
Some giant voice within me moves its tones
Awful and dread, and kindles in my mind
A thousand trains of thought, makes me to see
How weak is man, then in a whisper full
Of strangest power that weighs my troubled heart
Tells me how great man is and forces tears
Up to my frightened eyes. When I retire
Within myself, and think to be alone
Lo! from within me comes that awful voice
And higher rises till ‘tis torturing. I
Cannot fly from it for it is my conscience.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[45r]
Old Castle – 17.
Oh, voice immense, whose voice art thou? whose tones
Are those that speak in emptiness and rise
Above all sounds, above the storm’s great might.
To which the sea must yield in majesty?
And who art Thou whose might all earth pervades
And all space, time and all eternity?...
[1904, June].
XIV.
But I had learnt, closeted with my soul,
To observe and feel the inward soul of things,
And treasured vaguely intuitions. Feeling,
I thought – for feeling is unfeatured thought –
Often, and withing me a melody
Of thinking wandered, as a careless hand
With backward sweep that strikes the many chords
Of a harp idly makes.
At length I felt
One day a sourceless joy, because I saw
In all around the vestige of a Thing
That never dies, a Being that pervades
All things that are, whose thought is allwhere seen.
And I have wept with joy for that I found
This soul that gives the lustre to the sun,
That makes the rose to bloom, that stirs the stream,
That moves the sea and dwells in inner man,
That gives life to the world and shines the stars
[46r]
Old Castle – 18.
Is one; and I have found all things that are
In form but differ, are embodiments
Of this great soul that thrills the universe.
And I, grown wise, have seen, have felt, nor dared
To soil by thought, the fulness of this life;
And I have learnt to look upon all things
As doubtful forms, and I have noticèd
In them that soul that interpenetrates
The mazy ways and laboured labyrinths
Of man and all the world, and of which they
Are but the forms material, as this frame,
This mortal frame that rots when it hath gone.
Can I more happy be? is aught more great
Than is the presence of these thoughts sublime
That elevates my heart; to feel and touch
The spirit-essence magic that instils
Its thought and love into all things, that dwells
Alike in field and crag and work of man,
That never leaves the light of suns etern
Nor e’er the sunless end of fallen worlds.
[1904][October]
XV.
What is a flower?
To thee a thing that buds and blooms and dies,
Emblem perhaps of human things; to me
An atom colour-gist[2] of life etern.
[1904][December]
[1] Is seen and earth fall the awing shades of night. /[V-Is seen and earth now feels the oppressing gay of night.]\
[2] colour-gist /known\
