Astrophel and Other Poems | Page 2

the sun's:
The light of the love of thee darkens
The lights that arise
and that set:
The love that forgets thee not hearkens
If England forget.
II
Bright and brief in the sight of grief and love the light of thy
lifetime shone,
Seen and felt by the gifts it dealt, the grace it gave,
and again
was gone:
Ay, but now it is death, not thou, whom time has
conquered as years
pass on.
Ay, not yet may the land forget that bore and loved thee and
praised and wept,
Sidney, lord of the stainless sword, the name of
names that her
heart's love kept
Fast as thine did her own, a sign to light thy life till it
sank

and slept.
Bright as then for the souls of men thy brave Arcadia resounds and
shines,
Lit with love that beholds above all joys and sorrows the
steadfast
signs,
Faith, a splendour that hope makes tender, and truth, whose
presage
the soul divines.
All the glory that girds the story of all thy life as with sunlight
round,
All the spell that on all souls fell who saw thy spirit, and held
them bound,
Lives for all that have heard the call and cadence yet of
its music
sound.
Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle, for notes a
dove,
Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough thy soul
from
afar above
Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose fire
is the
fount of love.
Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys
and fears,
Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal with
thy
peerless peers,
Feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that
lightens the

rayless years.
Dark as sorrow though night and morrow may lower with presage of
clouded fame,
How may she that of old bare thee, may Sidney's
England, be brought
to shame?
How should this be, while England is? What need of
answer beyond
thy name?
III
From the love that transfigures thy glory,
From the light of the dawn
of thy death,
The life of thy song and thy story
Took subtler and
fierier breath.
And we, though the day and the morrow
Set fear and
thanksgiving at strife,
Hail yet in the star of thy sorrow
The sun of thy life.
Shame and fear may beset men here, and bid thanksgiving and pride
be dumb:
Faith, discrowned of her praise, and wound about with toils
till
her life wax numb,
Scarce may see if the sundawn be, if darkness die
not and dayrise
come.
But England, enmeshed and benetted
With spiritless villainies round,

With counsels of cowardice fretted,
With trammels of treason
enwound,
Is yet, though the season be other
Than wept and rejoiced
over thee,
Thine England, thy lover, thy mother,
Sublime as the sea.

Hers wast thou: if her face be now less bright, or seem for an hour
less brave,
Let but thine on her darkness shine, thy saviour spirit
revive and
save,
Time shall see, as the shadows flee, her shame entombed in a
shameful grave.
If death and not life were the portal
That opens on life at the last,
If
the spirit of Sidney were mortal
And the past of it utterly past,
Fear
stronger than honour was ever,
Forgetfulness mightier than fame,

Faith knows not if England should never
Subside into shame.
Yea, but yet is thy sun not set, thy sunbright spirit of trust
withdrawn:
England's love of thee burns above all hopes that darken
or fears
that fawn:
Hers thou art: and the faithful heart that hopes begets upon
darkness dawn.
The sunset that sunrise will follow
Is less than the dream of a dream:

The starshine on height and on hollow
Sheds promise that dawn
shall redeem:
The night, if the daytime would hide it,
Shows
lovelier, aflame and afar,
Thy soul and thy Stella's beside it,
A star by a star.
A NYMPHOLEPT
Summer, and noon, and a splendour of silence, felt,
Seen, and heard
of the spirit within the sense.
Soft through the frondage the shades of
the sunbeams melt, Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen

and dense, Cleave, as discharged from the string of the God's bow,
tense As a war-steed's girth, and bright as a warrior's belt. Ah, why
should an hour that is heaven for an hour pass hence?
I dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour,
Lest God be wroth that
his gift should be scorned of man. The face of the warm bright world is
the face of a flower, The word of the wind and the leaves that the light
winds fan As the word that quickened at first into flame, and ran,
Creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power,
Through darkness
and cloud, from the breath of the one God, Pan.
The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades
The chaster air
that he soothes but with sense of sleep. Soft, imminent, strong as desire
that prevails and fades, The passing noon