Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol

O for Medea with her poppied spell! O for the secret of the Colchian shrine! O for one leaf of that pale asphodel Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine, And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea, Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased From lily to lily on the level mead, Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed, Ere the black steeds had harried her away Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day. O for one midnight and as paramour The Venus of the little Melian farm! O that some antique statue for one hour Might wake to passion, and that I could charm The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair, Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair! Sing on! sing on! I would be drunk with life, Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth, I would forget the wearying wasted strife, The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth, The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer, The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air! Sing on! sing on! O feathered Niobe, Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal From joy its sweetest music, not as we Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal Our too untented wounds, and do but keep Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and murder pillowed sleep. Sing louder yet, why must I still behold The wan white face of that deserted Christ, Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold, Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed, And now in mute and marble misery Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me? O Memory cast down thy wreathèd shell! Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene! O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly! Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song! Cease, cease, or if ’t is anguish to be dumb Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air, Whose jocund carelessness doth more become This English woodland than thy keen despair, Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay. A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred, Endymion would have passed across the mead Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid. A moment more, the waking dove had cooed, The silver daughter of the silver sea With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope Had thrust aside the branches of her oak To see the lusty gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke. A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis Had bared his barren beauty to the moon, And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile Down leaning from his black and clustering hair, To shade those slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss, Or else on yonder grassy slope with bare High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear. Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still! O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing! O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill Come not with such despondent answering! No more thou wingèd Marsyas complain, Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain! It was a dream, the glade is tenantless, No soft Ionian laughter moves the air, The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness, And from the copse left desolate and bare Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry, Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody So sad, that one might think a human heart Brake in each separate note, a quality Which music sometimes has, being the Art Which is most nigh to tears and memory; Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear? Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here, Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade, No woven web of bloody heraldries, But mossy dells for roving comrades made, Warm valleys where the tired student lies With half-shut book, and many a winding walk Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk. The harmless rabbit gambols with its young Across the trampled towing-path, where late A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight; The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads, Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved sheds Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock, And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill, And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill. The heron passes homeward to the mere, The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees, Gold world by world the silent stars appear, And like a blossom blown before the breeze A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky, Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody. She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed, She knows Endymion is not far away; ’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul is as the reed Which has no message of its own to play, So pipes another’s bidding, it is I, Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery. Ah! the brown bird has ceased: one exquisite trill About the sombre woodland seems to cling Dying in music, else the air is still, So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell Each tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell’s brimming cell. And far away across the lengthening wold, Across the willowy flats and thickets brown, Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold Marks the long High Street of the little town, And warns me to return; I must not wait, Hark! ’t is the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate. WIND FLOWERS IMPRESSION DU MATIN THE Thames nocturne of blue and gold Changed to a Harmony in grey: A barge with ochre-coloured hay Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold The yellow fog came creeping down The bridges, till the houses’ walls Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul’s Loomed like a bubble o’er the town. Then suddenly arose the clang Of waking life; the streets were stirred With country waggons: and a bird Flew to the glistening roofs and sang. But one pale woman all alone, The daylight kissing her wan hair, Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare, With lips of flame and heart of stone. MAGDALEN WALKS THE little white clouds are racing over the sky, And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March, The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by. A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze, The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth, The birds are singing for joy of the Spring’s glad birth, Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees. And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring, And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar, And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring. And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green, And the gloom of the wych-elm’s hollow is lit with the iris sheen Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove. See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there, Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew, And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue! The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air. ATHANASIA TO that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught Of all the great things men have saved from Time, The withered body of a girl was brought Dead ere the world’s glad youth had touched its prime, And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid In the dim womb of some black pyramid. But when they had unloosed the linen band Which swathed the Egyptian’s body,—lo! was found Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand A little seed, which sown in English ground Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air. With such strange arts this flower did allure That all forgotten was the asphodel, And the brown bee, the lily’s paramour, Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell, For not a thing of earth it seemed to be, But stolen from some heavenly Arcady. In vain the sad narcissus, wan and white At its own beauty, hung across the stream, The purple dragon-fly had no delight With its gold dust to make his wings a-gleam, Ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom to kiss, Or brush the rain-pearls from the eucharis. For love of it the passionate nightingale Forgot the hills of Thrace, the cruel king, And the pale dove no longer cared to sail Through the wet woods at time of blossoming, But round this flower of Egypt sought to float, With silvered wing and amethystine throat. While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue A cooling wind crept from the land of snows, And the warm south with tender tears of dew Drenched its white leaves when Hesperos up-rose Amid those sea-green meadows of the sky On which the scarlet bars of sunset lie. But when o’er wastes of lily-haunted field The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune, And broad and glittering like an argent shield High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon, Did no strange dream or evil memory make Each tremulous petal of its blossoms shake? Ah no! to this bright flower a thousand years Seemed but the lingering of a summer’s day, It never knew the tide of cankering fears Which turn a boy’s gold hair to withered grey, The dread desire of death it never knew, Or how all folk that they were born must rue. For we to death with pipe and dancing go, Nor would we pass the ivory gate again, As some sad river wearied of its flow Through the dull plains, the haunts of common men, Leaps lover-like into the terrible sea! And counts it gain to die so gloriously. We mar our lordly strength in barren strife With the world’s legions led by clamorous care, It never feels decay but gathers life From the pure sunlight and the supreme air, We live beneath Time’s wasting sovereignty, It is the child of all eternity. SERENADE (FOR MUSIC) THE western wind is blowing fair Across the dark Ægean sea, And at the secret marble stair My Tyrian galley waits for thee. Come down! the purple sail is spread, The watchman sleeps within the town,