From Chaucer to Tennyson Part 19

[From _The False One._]

O thou conqueror, Thou glory of the world once, now the pity: Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus?

What poor fate followed thee and plucked thee on To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian?

The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger That honorable war ne'er taught a n.o.bleness, Nor worthy circ.u.mstance showed what a man was?

That never heard thy name sung but in banquets And loose lascivious pleasures? To a boy That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness, No study of thy life to know thy goodness?...

Egyptians, dare you think your high pyramides, Built to out-dure the sun, as you suppose, Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes, Are monuments fit for him? No, brood of Nilus, Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven; No pyramid set off his memories, But the eternal substance of his greatness, To which I leave him.

JOHN MILTON.

FAME.

[From _Lycidas._]

Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?

Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of n.o.ble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,[121]

And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears: "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he p.r.o.nounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed."

THE PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY.

[From _Il Penseroso._]

Sweet bird that shun'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among I woo, to hear thy even-song; And, missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wandering moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew sound, Over some wide-watered sh.o.r.e, Swinging slow with sullen roar; Or, if the air will not permit, Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth, Or the bellman's drowsy charm[122]

To bless the doors from nightly harm....

But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high embowed roof.

With antique pillars ma.s.sy-proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light.

There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced quire below, In service high and anthem clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.

And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth shew, And every herb that sips the dew, Till old experience do attain To something like prophetic strain.

These pleasures, Melancholy, give; And I with thee will choose to live.

[Footnote 121: Atropos, the fate who cuts the thread of life.]

[Footnote 122: The watchman's call.]

THE PROTECTION OF CONSCIENCE.

[From _Comus_.]

Scene: A wild wood; night.

_Lady_: My brothers, when they saw me wearied out With this long way, resolving here to lodge Under the spreading favor of these pines, Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit As the kind hospitable woods provide.

They left me then when the grey-hooded Even, Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed, Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.

But where they are, and why they came not back, Is now the labor of my thoughts. 'Tis likeliest They had engaged their wandering steps too far; And envious darkness, ere they could return, Had stolen them from me. Else, O thievish Night, Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps With everlasting oil, to give due light To the misled and lonely traveller?

This is the place, as well as I may guess, Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear; Yet nought but single darkness do I find.

What might this be? A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands and sh.o.r.es and desert wildernesses.

These thoughts may startle well, but not astound The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion, Conscience.

O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings, And thou unblemished form of Chast.i.ty!

I see ye visibly, and now believe That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, Would send a glistening guardian, if need were, To keep my life and honor una.s.sailed....

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

I did not err: there does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night, And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

INVOCATION TO LIGHT.

[From _Paradise Lost_.]

Thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene[123] hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget Those other two equalled with me in fate, I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,[124]

And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark, Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

So much the rather thou, celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.

[Footnote 123: The _gutta serena_, or cataract.]

[Footnote 124: Homer.]

SATAN.

[From _Paradise Lost_.]

He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the sh.o.r.e: his ponderous shield, Etherial temper, ma.s.sy, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circ.u.mference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic gla.s.s the Tuscan artist[125] views At evening from the top of Fesole,[126]

Or in Valdamo, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains on her spotty globe.

His spear (to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand) He walked with, to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle, not like those steps On heaven's azure; and the torrid clime Smote on him sore beside, vaulted with fire.

Nathless he so endured, till on the beach Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called His legions, angel-forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High over-arched embower, or scattered sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe sh.o.r.e their floating carca.s.ses And broken chariot-wheels: so thick bestrewn, Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change.

[Footnote 125: Galileo.]

[Footnote 126: A hill near Florence.]

ON THE LATE Ma.s.sACRE IN PIEDMONT.[127]

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the b.l.o.o.d.y Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant,[128] that from these may grow A hundred-fold, who, having learnt thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe.[129]

[Footnote 127: This sonnet refers to the persecution inst.i.tuted in 1655 by the Duke of Savoy against the Vaudois Protestants.]

[Footnote 128: The Pope, who wore the triple crown or tiara.]

[Footnote 129: The Papacy, with which the Protestant reformers identified Babylon the Great, the "Scarlet Woman" of Revelation.]