The Poetical Works Of Robert Bridges Part 2

PR. There is, O king, fire on the earth this day: But not as thou dost seek it to be found.

IN. How seeking wrongly shall I seek aright? 380

PR. Thou prayest here to Zeus, and him thou callest Almighty, knowing he could grant thy prayer: That if 'twere but his will, the journeying sun Might drop a spark into thine outstretched hand: That at his breath the splashing mountain brooks That fall from Orneae, and cold Lerne's pool Would change their element, and their chill streams Bend in their burning banks a molten flood: That at his word so many messengers Would bring thee fire from heaven, that not a hearth 390 In all thy land but straight would have a G.o.d To kneel and fan the flame: and yet to him, It is to him thou prayest.

IN. Therefore to him.

PR. Is this thy wisdom, king, to sow thy seed Year after year in this unsprouting soil?

Hast thou not proved and found the will of Zeus A barren rock for man with prayer to plough?

IN. His anger be averted! we judge not G.o.d Evil, because our wishes please him not.

Oft our shortsighted prayers to heaven ascending 400 Ask there our ruin, and are then denied In kindness above granting: were 't not so, Scarce could we pray for fear to pluck our doom Out of the merciful withholding hands.

PR. Why then provokest thou such great goodwill In long denial and kind silence shown?

IN. Fie, fie! Thou lackest piety: the G.o.d's denial Being nought but kindness, there is hope that he Will make that good which is not:--or if indeed Good be withheld in punishment, 'tis well 410 Still to seek on and pray that G.o.d relent.

PR. O Sire of Argos, Zeus will not relent.

IN. Yet fire thou say'st is on the earth this day.

PR. Not of his knowledge nor his gift, O king.

IN. By kindness of what G.o.d then has man fire?

PR. I say but on the earth unknown to Zeus.

IN. How boastest thou to know, not of his knowledge?

PR. I boast not: he that knoweth not may boast.

IN. Thy daring words bewilder sense with sound.

PR. I thought to find thee ripe for daring deeds. 420

IN. And what the deed for which I prove unripe?

PR. To take of heaven's fire.

IN. And were I ripe, What should I dare, beseech you?

PR. The wrath of Zeus.

IN. Madman, pretending in one hand to hold The wrath of G.o.d and in the other fire.

PR. Thou meanest rather holding both in one.

IN. Both impious art thou and incredible.

PR. Yet impious only till thou dost believe.

IN. And what believe? Ah, if I could believe!

It was but now thou saidst that there was fire, 430 And I was near believing; I believed: Now to believe were to be mad as thou.

CHORUS. He may be mad and yet say true--maybe The heat of prophecy like a strong wine Shameth his reason with exultant speech.

PR. Thou say'st I am mad, and of my sober words Hast called those impious which thou fearest true, Those which thou knowest good, incredible.

Consider ere thou judge: be first a.s.sured All is not good for man that seems G.o.d's will. 440 See, on thy farming skill, thy country toil Which bends to aid the willing fruits of earth, And would promote the seasonable year, The face of nature is not always kind: And if thou search the sum of visible being To find thy blessing featured, 'tis not there: Her best gifts cannot brim the golden cup Of expectation which thine eager arms Lift to her mouthed horn--what then is this Whose wide capacity outbids the scale 450 Of prodigal beauty, so that the seeing eye And hearing ear, retiring unamazed Within their quiet chambers, sit to feast With dear imagination, nor look forth As once they did upon the varying air?

Whence is the fathering of this desire Which mocks at fated circ.u.mstance? nay though Obstruction lie as c.u.mbrous as the mountains, Nor thy particular hap hath armed desire Against the brunt of evil,--yet not for this 460 Faints man's desire: it is the unquenchable Original cause, the immortal breath of being: Nor is there any spirit on Earth astir, Nor 'neath the airy vault, nor yet beyond In any dweller in far-reaching s.p.a.ce, n.o.bler or dearer than the spirit of man: That spirit which lives in each and will not die, That wooeth beauty, and for all good things Urgeth a voice, or in still pa.s.sion sigheth, And where he loveth draweth the heart with him. 470 Hast thou not heard him speaking oft and oft, Prompting thy secret musings and now shooting His feathered fancies, or in cloudy sleep Piling his painted dreams? O hark to him!

For else if folly shut his joyous strength To mope in her dark prison without praise, The hidden tears with which he wails his wrong Will sour the fount of life. O hark to him!

Him may'st thou trust beyond the things thou seest.

For many things there be upon this earth 480 Unblest and fallen from beauty, to mislead Man's mind, and in a shadow justify The evil thoughts and deeds that work his ill; Fear, hatred, l.u.s.t and strife, which, if man question The heavenborn spirit within him, are not there.

Yet are they bold of face, and Zeus himself, Seeing that Mischief held her head on high, Lest she should go beyond his power to quell And draw the inevitable Fate that waits On utmost ill, himself preventing Fate 490 Hasted to drown the world, and now would crush Thy little remnant: but among the G.o.ds Is one whose love and courage stir for thee; Who being of manlike spirit, by many shifts Has stayed the hand of the enemy, who crieth Thy world is not destroyed, thy good shall live: Thou hast more power for good than Zeus for ill, More courage, justice, more abundant art, More love, more joy, more reason: though around thee Rank-rooting evil bloom with poisonous crown, 500 Though wan and dolorous and crooked things Have made their home with thee, thy good shall live.

Know thy desire: and know that if thou seek it, And seek, and seek, and fear not, thou shall find.

SEM. (_youths_). Is this a G.o.d that speaketh thus?

SEM. (_maidens_). He speaketh as a man In love or great affliction yields his soul.

IN. Thou, whencesoe'er thou comest, whoe'er thou art, Who breakest on our solemn sacrifice With solemn words, I pray thee not depart 510 Till thou hast told me more. This fire I seek Not for myself, whose thin and silvery hair Tells that my toilsome age nears to its end, But for my children and the aftertime, For great the need thereof, wretched our state; Nay, set by what has been, our happiness Is very want, so that what now is not Is but the measure of what yet may be.

And first are barest needs, which well I know Fire would supply, but I have hope beyond, 520 That Nature in recovering her right Would kinder prove to man who seeks to learn Her secrets and unfold the cause of life.

So tell me, if thou knowest, what is fire?

Doth earth contain it? or, since from the sun Fire reaches us, since in the glimmering stars And pallid moon, in lightning, and the glance Of tracking meteors that at nightfall show How in the air a thousand sightless things Travel, and ever on their windswift course 530 Flame when they list and into darkness go,-- Since in all these a fiery nature dwells, Is fire an airy essence, a thing of heaven, That, could we poise it, were an alien power To make our wisdom less, our wonder more?

PR. Thy wish to know is good, and happy is he Who thus from chance and change has launched his mind To dwell for ever with undisturbed truth.

This high ambition doth not prompt his hand To crime, his right and pleasure are not wronged 540 By folly of his fellows, nor his eye Dimmed by the griefs that move the tears of men.

Son of the earth, and citizen may be Of Argos or of Athens and her laws, But still the eternal nature, where he looks, O'errules him with the laws which laws obey, And in her heavenly city enrols his heart.

IN. Thus ever have I held of happiness, The child of heavenly truth, and thus have found it In prayer and meditation and still thought, 550 And thus my peace of mind based on a floor That doth not quaver like the joys of sense: Those I possess enough in seeing my slaves And citizens enjoy, having myself Tasted for once and put their sweets away.

But of that heavenly city, of which thou sayest Her laws o'errule us, have I little learnt, For when my wandering spirit hath dared alone The unearthly terror of her voiceless halls, She hath fallen from delight, and without guide 560 Turned back, and from her errand fled for fear.

PR. Think not that thou canst all things know, nor deem Such knowledge happiness: the all-knowing Fates No pleasure have, who sit eternally Spinning the unnumbered threads that Time hath woven, And weaves, upgathering in his furthest house To store from sight; but what 'tis joy to learn Or use to know, that may'st thou ask of right.

IN. Then tell me, for thou knowest, what is fire?

PR. Know then, O king, that this fair earth of men, 570 The Olympus of the G.o.ds, and all the heavens Are lesser kingdoms of the boundless s.p.a.ce Wherein Fate rules; they have their several times, Their seasons and the limit of their thrones, And from the nature of eternal things Springing, themselves are changed; even as the trees Or birds or beasts of earth, which now arise To being, now in turn decay and die.

The heaven and earth thou seest, for long were held By Fire, a raging power, to whom the Fates 580 Decreed a slow diminishing old age, But to his daughter, who is that gentle G.o.ddess, Queen of the clear and azure firmament, In heaven called Hygra, but by mortals Air, To her, the child of his slow doting years, Was given a beauteous youth, not long to outlast His life, but be the pride of his decay, And win to gentler sway his lost domains.

And when the day of time arrived, when Air Took o'er from her decrepit sire the third 590 Of the Sun's kingdoms, the one-mooned earth, Straight came she down to her inheritance.

Gaze on the sun with thine unshaded eye And shrink from what she saw. Forests of fire Whose waving trunks, sucking their fuel, reared In branched flame roaring, and their torrid shades Aye underlit with fire. The mountains lifted And fell and followed like a running sea, And from their swelling flanks spumed froth of fire; Or, like awakening monsters, mighty mounds 600 Rose on the plain awhile.

SEM. (_maidens_). He discovers a foe.

SEM. (_youths_). An enemy he paints.

PR. These all she quenched, Or charmed their fury into the dens and bowels Of earth to smoulder, there the vital heat To hold for her creation, which then--to her aid Summoning high Reason from his home in heaven,-- She wrought anew upon the temperate lands.

SEM. (_maidens_). 'Twas well Air won this kingdom of her sire.

SEM. (_youths_). Now say how made she green this home of fire.