The Germ Part 22

And told the dreary lengths of years I must drag my weight with me; Or be like a mastless ship stuck fast On a deep, stagnant sea.

A man on a dangerous height alone, If suddenly struck blind, Will never his home path find.

When divers plunge for ocean's pearls, And chance to strike a rock, Who plunged with greatest force below Receives the heaviest shock.

With nostrils wide and breath drawn in, I rushed resolved on the race; Then, stumbling, fell in the chase.

Yet with time's cycles forests swell Where stretched a desert plain: Time's cycles make the mountains rise Where heaved the restless main: On swamps where moped the lonely stork, In the silent lapse of time Stands a city in its prime.

I thought: then saw the broadening shade Grow slowly over the mound, That reached with one long level slope Down to a rich vineyard ground: The air about lay still and hushed, As if in serious thought: But I scarcely heeded aught,

Till I heard, hard by, a thrush break forth, Shouting with his whole voice, So that he made the distant air And the things around rejoice.

My soul gushed, for the sound awoke Memories of early joy: I sobbed like a chidden boy.

Sonnet: Early Aspirations

How many a throb of the young poet-heart, Aspiring to the ideal bliss of Fame, Deems that Time soon may sanctify his claim Among the sons of song to dwell apart.-- Time pa.s.ses--pa.s.ses! The aspiring flame Of Hope shrinks down; the white flower Poesy Breaks on its stalk, and from its earth-turned eye Drop sleepy tears instead of that sweet dew Rich with inspiring odours, insect wings Drew from its leaves with every changing sky, While its young innocent petals unsunn'd grew.

No more in pride to other ears he sings, But with a dying charm himself unto:-- For a sad season: then, to active life he springs.

From the Cliffs: Noon

The sea is in its listless chime: Time's lapse it is, made audible,-- The murmur of the earth's large sh.e.l.l.

In a sad blueness beyond rhyme It ends: sense, without thought, can pa.s.s No stadium further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No stagnance that death wins,--it hath The mournfulness of ancient life, Always enduring at dull strife.

As the world's heart of rest and wrath, Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Last utterly, the whole sky stands, Grey and not known, along its path.

Fancies at Leisure

I. In Spring

The sky is blue here, scarcely with a stain Of grey for clouds: here the young gra.s.ses gain A larger growth of green over this splinter Fallen from the ruin. Spring seems to have told Winter He shall not freeze again here. Tho' their loss Of leaves is not yet quite repaired, trees toss Sprouts from their boughs. The ash you called so stiff Curves, daily, broader shadow down the cliff.

II. In Summer

How the rooks caw, and their beaks seem to clank!

Let us just move out there,--(it might be cool Under those trees,) and watch how the thick tank By the old mill is black,--a stagnant pool Of rot and insects. There goes by a lank Dead hairy dog floating. Will Nature's rule Of life return hither no more? The plank Rots in the crushed weeds, and the sun is cruel.

III. The Breadth of Noon

Long time I lay there, while a breeze would blow From the south softly, and, hard by, a slender Poplar swayed to and fro to it. Surrender Was made of all myself to quiet. No Least thought was in my mind of the least woe: Yet the void silence slowly seemed to render My calmness not less calm, but yet more tender, And I was nigh to weeping.--'Ere I go,'

I thought, 'I must make all this stillness mine; The sky's blue almost purple, and these three Hills carved against it, and the pine on pine The wood in their shade has. All this I see So inwardly I fancy it may be Seen thus of parted souls by _their_ sunshine.'

IV. Sea-Freshness

Look at that crab there. See if you can't haul His backward progress to this spar of a ship Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip His clipping feelers hard, and give him all Your hand to gripe at: he'll take care not fall: So,--but with heed, for you are like to slip In stepping on the plank's sea-slime. Your lip-- No wonder--curves in mirth at the slow drawl Of the squat creature's legs. We've quite a shine Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind So fresh it must bode us good luck. How long Boatman, for one and sixpence? Line by line The sea comes toward us sun-ridged. Oh! we sinned Taking the crab out: let's redress his wrong.

V. The Fire Smouldering

I look into the burning coals, and see Faces and forms of things; but they soon pa.s.s, Melting one into other: the firm ma.s.s Crumbles, and breaks, and fades gradually, Shape into shape as in a dream may be, Into an image other than it was: And so on till the whole falls in, and has Not any likeness,--face, and hand, and tree, All gone. So with the mind: thought follows thought, This hastening, and that pressing upon this, A mighty crowd within so narrow room: And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come, The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss Their way, and what was so alive is nought.

Papers of "The M.S. Society" {12}

{12} The Editor is requested to state that "M. S." does not here mean Ma.n.u.script.

No. I. An Incident in the Siege of Troy, seen from a modern Observatory

Sixteen Specials in Priam's Keep Sat down to their mahogany: The League, just then, had made _busters_ cheap, And Hesiod writ his "Theogony,"

A work written to prove "that, if men would be men, And demand their rights again and again, They might live like G.o.ds, have infinite _smokes_, Drink infinite rum, drive infinite _mokes_, Which would come from every part of the known And civilized globe, twice as good as their own, And, finally, Ilion, the work-shop should be Of the world--one vast manufactory!"

From arrow-slits, port-holes, windows, what not, Their sixteen quarrels the Specials had shot From sixteen arblasts, their daily task; Why they'd to do it they didn't ask, For, after they'd done it, they sat down to dinner; The sixteen Specials they didn't get thinner; But kept quite loyal, and every day Asked no questions but fired away.

Would you like me to tell you the reason why These sixteen Specials kept letting fly From eleven till one, as the Chronicle speaks?

They did it, my boys, to annoy the Greeks, Who kept up a perpetual cannonade On the walls, and threaten'd an escalade.

The sixteen Specials were so arranged That the shots they shot were not shots exchanged, But every shot so told on the foe The Greeks were obliged to draw it mild: Diomedes--"A fix," Ulysses--"No go"

Declared it, the "king of men" cried like a child; Whilst the Specials, no more than a fine black Tom I keep to serenade Mary from The tiles, where he lounges every night, Knew nor cared what they did, and were perfectly right.

But the fact was thus: one Helenus, A man much faster than any of us, More fast than a gent at the top of a "bus,"

More fast than the coming of "Per col. sus."

Which Shakespeare says comes galloping, (I take his word for anything) This Helenus had a cure of souls-- He had cured the souls of several Greeks, Achilles sole or heel,--the rolls Of fame (not French) say Paris:--speaks Anatomist Quain thereof. Who seeks May read the story from z to a; He has handled and argued it every way;-- A subject on which there's a good deal to say.

His work was ever the best, and still is, Because of this note on the Tendo Achillis.

This Helenus was a man well bred, He was _up_ in Electricity, Fortification, Theology, aesthetics and Pugilicity; Celsus and Gregory he'd read; Knew every "dodge" of _glove and fist;_ Was a capital curate, (I think I've said) And Transcendental Anatomist: _Well up_ in Materia Medica, _Right up_ in Toxicology, And Medical Jurisprudence, that sell!

And the _dead sell_ Physiology: Knew what and how much of any potation Would get him through any examination: With credit not small, had pa.s.sed the Hall And the College----and they couldn't _pluck_ him at all.

He'd written on Rail-roads, delivered a lecture Upon the Electric Telegraph, Had played at single-stick with Hector, And written a paper on half-and-half.

With those and other works of note He was not at all a "_people's man_,"

Though public, for the works he wrote Were not that sort the people can Admire or read; they were Mathematic The most part, some were Hydrostatic; But Algebraic, in the main, And full of a, b, c, and n-- And other letters which perplex-- The last was full of double x!

In fact, such stuff as one may easily Imagine, didn't go down greasily, Nor calculated to produce Such heat as "cooks the public goose,"

And does it of so brown a hue Men wonder while they relish too.