Ballades in Blue China Part 7

ORONTE--Ce ne sont point de ces grands vers pompeux, Mais de pet.i.ts vers!

"Le Misanthrope," Acte i., Sc. 2.

A PORTRAIT OF 1783.

Your hair and chin are like the hair And chin Burne-Jones's ladies wear; You were unfashionably fair In '83; And sad you were when girls are gay, You read a book about Le vrai Merite de l'homme, alone in May.

What CAN it be, Le vrai merite de l'homme? Not gold, Not t.i.tles that are bought and sold, Not wit that flashes and is cold, But Virtue merely!

Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know), You bade the crowd of foplings go, You glanced severely, Dreaming beneath the spreading shade Of 'that vast hat the Graces made;' {5} So Rouget sang--while yet he played With courtly rhyme, And hymned great Doisi's red perruque, And Nice's eyes, and Zulme's look, And dead canaries, ere he shook The sultry time With strains like thunder. Loud and low Methinks I hear the murmur grow, The tramp of men that come and go With fire and sword.

They war against the quick and dead, Their flying feet are dashed with red, As theirs the vintaging that tread Before the Lord.

O head unfashionably fair, What end was thine, for all thy care?

We only see thee dreaming there: We cannot see The breaking of thy vision, when The Rights of Man were lords of men, When virtue won her own again In '93.

THE MOON'S MINION.

(FROM THE PROSE OF C. BAUDELAIRE.)

Thine eyes are like the sea, my dear, The wand'ring waters, green and grey; Thine eyes are wonderful and clear, And deep, and deadly, even as they; The spirit of the changeful sea Informs thine eyes at night and noon, She sways the tides, and the heart of thee, The mystic, sad, capricious Moon!

The Moon came down the shining stair Of clouds that fleck the summer sky, She kissed thee, saying, "Child, be fair, And madden men's hearts, even as I; Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet, That know me and are known of me; The lover thou shalt never meet, The land where thou shalt never be!"

She held thee in her chill embrace, She kissed thee with cold lips divine, She left her pallor on thy face, That mystic ivory face of thine; And now I sit beside thy feet, And all my heart is far from thee, Dreaming of her I shall not meet, And of the land I shall not see!

IN ITHACA.

"And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me."--Letter of Odysseus to Calypso. Luciani Vera Historia.

'Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o'er With all the waves and wars, a weary while, Grew restless in his disenchanted isle, And still would watch the sunset, from the sh.o.r.e, Go down the ways of gold, and evermore His sad heart followed after, mile on mile, Back to the G.o.ddess of the magic wile, Calypso, and the love that was of yore.

Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet To look across the sad and stormy s.p.a.ce, Years of a youth as bitter as the sea, Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet, Because, within a fair forsaken place The life that might have been is lost to thee.

HOMER.

Homer, thy song men liken to the sea With all the notes of music in its tone, With tides that wash the dim dominion Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown That gla.s.ses Egypt's temples overthrown In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.

No wiser we than men of heretofore To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast; Enough, thy flood makes green our human sh.o.r.e, As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore Of G.o.ds dethroned, and empires in the past.

THE BURIAL OF MOLIERE.

(AFTER J. TRUFFIER.)

Dead--he is dead! The rouge has left a trace On that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear, Even while the people laughed that held him dear But yesterday. He died,--and not in grace, And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear, And gold must win a pa.s.sage for his bier, And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.

Ah, Moliere, for that last time of all, Man's hatred broke upon thee, and went by, And did but make more fair thy funeral.

Though in the dark they hid thee stealthily, Thy coffin had the cope of night for pall, For torch, the stars along the windy sky!

BION.

The wail of Moschus on the mountains crying The Muses heard, and loved it long ago; They heard the hollows of the hills replying, They heard the weeping water's overflow; They winged the sacred strain--the song undying, The song that all about the world must go, - When poets for a poet dead are sighing, The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.

And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping For Adonais by the summer sea, The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping Far from 'the forest ground called Thessaly'), These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping, And are but echoes of the moan for thee.

SPRING.

(AFTER MELEAGER.)

Now the bright crocus flames, and now The slim narcissus takes the rain, And, straying o'er the mountain's brow, The daffodilies bud again.

The thousand blossoms wax and wane On wold, and heath, and fragrant bough, But fairer than the flowers art thou, Than any growth of hill or plain.

Ye gardens, cast your leafy crown, That my Love's feet may tread it down, Like lilies on the lilies set: My Love, whose lips are softer far Than drowsy poppy petals are, And sweeter than the violet!

BEFORE THE SNOW.

(AFTER ALBERT GLATIGNY.)

The winter is upon us, not the snow, The hills are etched on the horizon bare, The skies are iron grey, a bitter air, The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.

One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow, Like some strange b.u.t.terfly, uncla.s.sed and rare.

Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, where The black trees seem to shiver as you go.

Beyond lie church and steeple, with their old And rusty vanes that rattle as they veer, A sharper gust would shake them from their hold, Yet up that path, in summer of the year, And past that melancholy pile we strolled To pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.