Astrophel and Other Poems | Page 2

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 that beholds not a cloudlet weep?Imbues and impregnates life with delight more deep?Than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades?Can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep.
The skies may hold not the splendour of sundown fast;?It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day.?And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpast,?Takes pride but awhile in the hours of her stately sway. But the might of the noon, though the light of it pass away, Leaves earth fulfilled of desires and of dreams that last; But if any there be that hath sense of them none can say.
For if any there be that hath sight of them, sense, or trust Made strong by the might of a vision, the strength of a dream, His lips shall straiten and close as a dead man's must, His heart shall be sealed as the voice of a frost-bound stream. For the deep mid