Satires of Circumstance Part 4

--'Twas a day of latter summer, hot and dry; Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked on, she and I, By this spot where, calmly quite, She informed me what would happen by and by.

III

This hanging map depicts the coast and place, And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case All distinctly to my sight, And her tension, and the aspect of her face.

IV

Weeks and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue, Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too, While she told what, as by sleight, Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue.

V

For the wonder and the wormwood of the whole Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soul Wore a torrid tragic light Under order-keeping's rigorous control.

VI

So, the map revives her words, the spot, the time, And the thing we found we had to face before the next year's prime; The charted coast stares bright, And its episode comes back in pantomime.

WHERE THE PICNIC WAS

Where we made the fire, In the summer time, Of branch and briar On the hill to the sea I slowly climb Through winter mire, And scan and trace The forsaken place Quite readily.

Now a cold wind blows, And the gra.s.s is gray, But the spot still shows As a burnt circle--aye, And stick-ends, charred, Still strew the sward Whereon I stand, Last relic of the band Who came that day!

Yes, I am here Just as last year, And the sea breathes brine From its strange straight line Up hither, the same As when we four came.

- But two have wandered far From this gra.s.sy rise Into urban roar Where no picnics are, And one--has shut her eyes For evermore.

THE SCHRECKHORN (With thoughts of Leslie Stephen) (June 1897)

Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim; Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams Upon my nearing vision, less it seems A looming Alp-height than a guise of him Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb, Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe, Of semblance to his personality In its quaint glooms, keen lights, and rugged trim.

At his last change, when Life's dull coils unwind, Will he, in old love, hitherward escape, And the eternal essence of his mind Enter this silent adamantine shape, And his low voicing haunt its slipping snows When dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose?

A SINGER ASLEEP (Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909)

I

In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea, That sentrys up and down all night, all day, From cove to promontory, from ness to bay, The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally.

II

- It was as though a garland of red roses Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun, In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes, Upon Victoria's formal middle time His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.

III

O that far morning of a summer day When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay Gla.s.sing the sunshine into my bent eyes, I walked and read with a quick glad surprise New words, in cla.s.sic guise, -

IV

The pa.s.sionate pages of his earlier years, Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears; Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who Blew them not naively, but as one who knew Full well why thus he blew.

V

I still can hear the brabble and the roar At those thy tunes, O still one, now pa.s.sed through That fitful fire of tongues then entered new!

Their power is spent like spindrift on this sh.o.r.e; Thine swells yet more and more.

VI

- His singing-mistress verily was no other Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother Of all the tribe that feel in melodies; Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep Into the rambling world-encircling deep Which hides her where none sees.

VII

And one can hold in thought that nightly here His phantom may draw down to the water's brim, And hers come up to meet it, as a dim Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere, And mariners wonder as they traverse near, Unknowing of her and him.

VIII

One dreams him sighing to her spectral form: "O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line; Where are those songs, O poetess divine Whose very arts are love incarnadine?"

And her smile back: "Disciple true and warm, Sufficient now are thine." . . .

IX

So here, beneath the waking constellations, Where the waves peal their everlasting strains, And their dull subterrene reverberations Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains - Him once their peer in sad improvisations, And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes - I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines Upon the capes and chines.

BONCHURCH, 1910.

A PLAINT TO MAN

When you slowly emerged from the den of Time, And gained percipience as you grew, And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,

Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you The unhappy need of creating me - A form like your own--for praying to?

My virtue, power, utility, Within my maker must all abide, Since none in myself can ever be,