The Poetical Works Of Robert Bridges Part 70

As when the storm doth cease, The loving sun the clouds dispelleth, And woodland walks are sweet in spring; The birds they merrily sing And every flower-bud swelleth.

Or where the heav'ns o'erspan The lonely downs When summer is high: Below their breezy crowns And gra.s.sy steep Spreadeth the infinite smile of the sunlit sea; Whereon the white ships swim, And steal to havens far Across the horizon dim, Or lie becalm'd upon the windless deep, Like thoughts of beauty and peace, When the storm doth cease, And fair desire, companion of man, Leadeth the children of earth.

IV

Man, born to toil, in his labour rejoiceth; His voice is heard in the morn: He armeth his hand and sallieth forth To engage with the generous teeming earth, And drinks from the rocky rills The laughter of life.

Or else, in crowded cities gathering close, He traffics morn and eve In thronging market-halls; Or within echoing walls Of busy a.r.s.enals Weldeth the stubborn iron to engines vast; Or tends the thousand looms Where, with black smoke o'ercast, The land mourns in deep glooms.

Life is toil, and life is good: There in loving brotherhood Beateth the nation's heart of fire.

Strife! Strife! The strife is strong!

There battle thought and voice, and spirits conspire In joyous dance around the tree of life, And from the ringing choir Riseth the praise of G.o.d from hearts in tuneful song.

V

Hark! What spirit doth entreat The love-obedient air?

All the pomp of his delight Revels on the ravisht night, Wandering wilful, soaring fair: There! 'Tis there, 'tis there.

Like a flower of primal fire Late redeem'd by man's desire.

Away, on wings away My spirit far hath flown, To a land of love and peace, Of beauty unknown.

The world that earth-born man, By evil undismay'd, Out of the breath of G.o.d Hath for his heaven made.

Where all his dreams soe'er Of holy things and fair In splendour are upgrown, Which thro' the toilsome years Martyrs and faithful seers And poets with holy tears Of hope have sown.

There, beyond power of ill, In joy and blessing crown'd, Christ with His lamp of truth Sitteth upon the hill Of everlasting youth, And calls His saints around.

VI

Sweet compa.s.sionate tears Have dimm'd my earthly sight, Tears of love, the showers wherewith The eternal morn is bright: Dews of the heav'nly spheres.

With tears my eyes are wet, Tears not of vain regret, Tears of no lost delight, Dews of the heav'nly spheres Have dimm'd my earthly sight, Sweet compa.s.sionate tears.

VII

Gird on thy sword, O man, thy strength endue, In fair desire thine earth-born joy renew.

Live thou thy life beneath the making sun Till Beauty, Truth, and Love in thee are one.

Thro' thousand ages hath thy childhood run: On timeless ruin hath thy glory been: From the forgotten night of loves fordone Thou risest in the dawn of hopes unseen.

Higher and higher shall thy thoughts aspire, Unto the stars of heaven, and pa.s.s away, And earth renew the buds of thy desire In fleeting blooms of everlasting day.

Thy work with beauty crown, thy life with love; Thy mind with truth uplift to G.o.d above: For whom all is, from whom was all begun, In whom all Beauty, Truth, and Love are one.

POEMS IN CLa.s.sICAL PROSODY

[Ill.u.s.tration: decoration]

_PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS_

_Fp. I._ Daniel Press. 1903.

_" II._ _Monthly Review. July, 1903, with an abstract of Stone's Prosody, as there used._

_No. 3._ _Printed by C. H. Daniel. 1903._

_" 8._ _In 'Pelican,' C.C.C., Oxford._

_" 9._ _English Review. March, 1912._

_" 21._ _New Quarterly. Jan. 1909, with an essay on the Virgilian Hexameter, &c._ /# These experiments in quant.i.tive verse were made in fulfilment of a promise to William Johnson Stone that I would some day test his theory. His premature death converted my consent into a serious obligation. This personal explanation is due to myself for two reasons: because I might otherwise appear firstly as an advocate of the system, secondly as responsible for Stone's determination of the lengths of English syllables. Before writing quant.i.tive verse it is necessary to learn to _think_ in quant.i.ties. This is no light task, and a beginner requires fixed rules. Except for a few minor details, which I had disputed with Mr. Stone, I was bound to take his rules as he had elaborated them; and it was not until I had made some progress and could think fairly well in his prosody that I seriously criticized it. The two chief errors that I find in it are that he relied too much on the quality of a vowel in determining its syllabic length, and that he regarded the _h_ as _always_ consonantal in quality. His valuation of the _er_ sound is doubtful, but defensible and convenient, and I have never discarded it. My earlier experiments contain therefore a good many 'false quant.i.ties', and these, where they could not be very easily (though _inconsistently_) amended, I have left, and marked most of them in the text: a few false quant.i.ties do not make a poem less readable.

Thus a long mark over a syllable means that Stone reckoned it as long, and that the verse requires it to be so p.r.o.nounced, but that I regard it as short, or at least as _doubtful_. For example on p.

414 _Ruin_ is thus written. Of all accented long vowels in 'open'

position the long _u_ seems perhaps to retain its quant.i.ty best, but there is evidence that Tennyson held it to be shortened, and I do not know whether it might be an exception or go with theory, piety, poetry, &c. Again, where a final syllable should be lengthened or not shortened by position, but lacks its consonantal support, I have put a [v] in the gap: these weak places are chiefly due to my accepting Stone's unchanging valuation of _h_. My emanc.i.p.ation from Stone's rules was gradual, so that I have not been able to distinguish definitely my earlier experiments from the later, in which the quant.i.ties are such as I have now come to approve of: but my line-for-line paraphrase of Virgil is such a later experiment. It was accompanied in the _New Quarterly_ by a long examination of the Virgilian hexameter, to which I would refer any one who is interested in the subject. In these English hexameters I have used and advocate the use of Miltonic elision.

The mark ' in the text shows where I have purposely allowed a short syllable to sustain a long place. Though the difficulty of adapting our English syllables to the Greek rules is very great, and even deterrent--for I cannot pretend to have attained to an absolutely consistent scheme--yet the experiments that I have made reveal a vast unexplored field of delicate and expressive rhythms. .h.i.therto unknown in our poetry: and this amply rewarded me for my friendly undertaking.

1

EPISTLE I

TO L. M.

WINTRY DELIGHTS

Now in wintry delights, and long fireside meditation, 'Twixt studies and routine paying due court to the Muses, My solace in solitude, when broken roads barricade me Mudbound, unvisited for months with my merry children, Grateful t'ward Providence, and heeding a slander against me Less than a rheum, think of me to-day, dear Lionel, and take This letter as some account of Will Stone's versification.

We, whose first memories reach half of a century backward, May praise our fortune to have outliv'd so many dangers,-- Faultiness of Nature's unruly machinery or man's--; 10 For, once born, whatever 'tis worth, LIFE is to be held to, Its mere persistence esteem'd as real attainment, Its crown of silver reverenc'd as one promise of youth Fruiting, of existence one needful purpose accomplish'd: And 'twere worth the living, howe'er unkindly bereft of Those joys and comforts, throu' which we chiefly regard it: Nay,--set aside the pleasant unhinder'd order of our life, Our happy enchantments of Fortune, easy surroundings, Courteous acquaintance, dwelling in fair homes, the delight of Long-plann'd excursions, the romance of journeying in lands Historic, of seeing their glory, the famous adornments 21 Giv'n to memorial Earth by man, decorator of all-time, (--As we saw with virginal eyes travelling to behold them,--) Her gorgeous palaces, [v]her tow'rs and stately cathedrals; Where the turrets and domes of pictured Tuscany slumber, Or the havoc'd splendours of Rome imperial, or where Glare the fretted minarets and mosks of trespa.s.sing Islam, And old Nilus, amid the mummied suzerainty of Egypt, Glideth, a G.o.dly presence, consciously regardless of all things, Save his unending toil and eternal recollections:-- 30

Set these out of account, and with them too put away ART, Those ravishings of mind, those sensuous intelligences, By whose grace the elect enjoy their sacred aloofness From Life's meagre affairs, in beauty's regenerate youth Reading immortality's sublime revelation, adoring Their own heav'nly desire; nor alone in worship a.s.sist they, But take, call'd of G.o.d, part and pleasure in creation Of that beauty, the first of His first purposes extoll'd:--

Yea, set aside with these all NATURE'S beauty, the wildwood's Flow'ry domain, the flushing, softcrowding loveliness of Spring, 40 Lazy Summer's burning dial, the serenely solemn spells Of Sibylline Autumn, with gay-wing'd Plenty departing; All fair change, whether of seasons or bright recurrent day, Morning or eve; the divine night's wonderous empyrean; High noon's melting azure, his thin cloud-country, the landscape Mountainous or maritime, blue calms of midsummer Ocean, Broad corn-grown champaign goldwaving in invisible wind, Wide-water'd pasture, with shade of whispering aspen; All whereby Nature winneth our love, fondly appearing As to caress her children, or all that in exaltation 50 Lifteth aloft our hearts to an unseen glory beyond her:--

Put these out of account; yea, more I say, banish also From the credit sum of enjoyment those simple AFFECTIONS, Whose common exercise informs our natural instinct; That, set in our animal flesh-fabric, of our very lifeblood Draw their subsistence, and even in ungenerous hearts Root, like plants in stony deserts and 'neath pitiless snows.

Yea, put away all LOVE, the blessings and pieties[v]of home, All delicate heart-bonds, vital tendernesses untold, Joys that fear to be named, feelings too holy to gaze on; 60 And with his inviolate peace-triumph his pa.s.sionate war Be forgone, his mighty desire, thrilling ecstasies, ardours Of mystic reverence, his fierce flame-eager emotions, Idolatrous service, blind faith and ritual of fire.

If from us all these things were taken away, (that is all art And all beauty whate'er, and all love's varied affection,) Yet would enough subsist in other concerns to suffice us, And feed intelligence, and make life's justification.

What this is, if you should ask me, beyond or above the rejoicing In vegetant or brute existence, answer is easy; 70 'Tis the reflective effort of mind that, conscious of itself, Fares forth exploring nature for principle and cause, Keenly with all the cunning pleasure and instinct of a hunter, Who, in craft fashioning weapon and sly snare, tracketh after His prey fl[=y]ing afield, and that which his arm killeth eateth.

History and SCIENCE our playthings are: what an untold Wealth of inexhaustive treasure is stored up for amus.e.m.e.nt!

Shall the ama.s.s'd Earth-structure appeal to me less than in early Childhood an old fives-ball, whose wraps I wondering unwound, Untwining the ravel'd worsted, that mere rubbish and waste Of leather and shavings had bound and moulded elastic 81 Into a perfect sphere? Shall not the celestial earth-ball Equally entertain a mature enquiry, reward our Examination of its contexture, conglomerated Of layer'd debris, the erosion of infinite ages?

Tho' I lack the wizard Darwin's scientific insight On the barren sea-beaches of East Patagonia gazing, I must wond'ring attend, nay learn myself to decipher Time's rich hieroglyph, with vast elemental pencil Scor'd upon Earth's rocky crust,--minute sh.e.l.ls slowly collecting 90 Press'd to a stone, uprais'd to a mountain, again to a fine sand Worn, burying the remains of an alien organic epoch, In the flat accretions of new sedimentary strata; All to be crush'd, crumpled, confused, contorted, abandon'd, Broke, as a child's puzzle is, to be recompos'd with attention; Nature's history-book, which she hath torn as asham'd of; And lest those pictures on[v]her fragmentary pages Should too lightly reveal frustrate Antiquity, hath laid Ruin upon ruin, revolution upon revolution: Yet no single atom, no least insignificant grain 100 But, having order alike of fate, and faulty disorder, Holds a record of Time, very vestiges of the Creation; Which who will not attend scorns blindly the only commandments By G.o.d's finger of old inscribed on table of earth-stone.

This for me wer' enough: yet confin'd Geology's field Counts not in all Science more than the planet to the Cosmos; Where our central Sun, almighty material author, And sustainer, appears as a half-consumed vanishing spark, Bearing along with it, entangled in immensity's onward Spiral eddies, the blacken'd dust-motes whirl'd off from around it. 110 But tho' man's microscopical functions measure all things By his small footprints, finger-spans and ticking of clocks, And thereby conceive the immense--such multiple extent As to defy Ideas of imperative cerebration,-- None the less observing, measuring, patiently recording, He mappeth out the utter wilderness of unlimited s.p.a.ce; Carefully weigheth a weight to the sun, reckoneth for it its path Of trackless travelling, the precise momentary places Of the planets and their satellites, their annual orbits, Times, perturbations of times, and orbit of orbit. 120 What was Alexander's subduing of Asia, or that Sheep-worry of Europe, when pigmy Napoleon enter'd Her sovereign chambers, and her kings with terror eclips'd?

His footsore soldiers inciting across the ravag'd plains, Thro' b.l.o.o.d.y fields of death tramping to an ugly disaster?

Shows any crown, set above the promise (so rudely accomplisht) Of their fair G.o.dlike young faces, a glory to compare With the immortal olive that circles bold Galileo's Brows, the laurel'd halo[v]of Newton's unwithering fame? 129 Or what a child's surmise, how trifling a journey Columbus Adventur'd, to a land like that which he sail'd from arriving, If compar'd to Bessel's magic divination, awarding Magnificent Sirius[v]his dark and invisible bride; Or when Adams by Cam, (more nearly Leverrier in France,) From the minutely measur'd vacillation of Ura.n.u.s, augur'd Where his mighty brother Neptune went wandering unnamed, And thro' those thousand-million league-darknesses of s.p.a.ce Drew him slowly whene'er he pa.s.s'd, and slowly released him!

_Nil admirari!_ 'Tis surely a most shabby thinker 139 Who, looking on Nature, finds not the reflection appalling