Studies in Song | Page 4

in vain;
For all their works of death?Song filled with light and breath,?And listening grief relaxed her lightening chain;?For sweet as all the wide sweet south?She found the song like honey from the lion's mouth.
15.
High from his throne in heaven Simonides,?Crowned with mild aureole of memorial tears?That the everlasting sun of all time sees?All golden, molten from the forge of years,?Smiled, as the gift was laid upon his knees?Of songs that hang like pearls in mourners' ears,?Mild as the murmuring of Hymettian bees?And honied as their harvest, that endears
The toil of flowery days;?And smiling perfect praise?Hailed his one brother mateless else of peers:
Whom we that hear not him?For length of date grown dim?Hear, and the heart grows glad of grief that hears;?And harshest heights of sorrowing hours,?Like snows of Alpine April, melt from tears to flowers.
16.
Therefore to him the shadow of death was none,?The darkness was not, nor the temporal tomb:?And multitudinous time for him was one,?Who bade before his equal seat of doom?Rise and stand up for judgment in the sun?The weavers of the world's large-historied loom,?By their own works of light or darkness done?Clothed round with light or girt about with gloom.
In speech of purer gold?Than even they spake of old?He bade the breath of Sidney's lips relume
The fire of thought and love?That made his bright life move?Through fair brief seasons of benignant bloom?To blameless music ever, strong?As death and sweet as death-annihilating song.
17.
Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam,?Love gave his thought strength equal to release?From bonds of old forgetful years, like foam?Vanished, the fame of memories that decrease;?So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home?The soul's large pinions till her strife should cease:?And through the trumpet of a child of Rome?Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece.
As though some northern hand?Reft from the Latin land?A spoil more costly than the Colchian fleece
To clothe with golden sound?Of old joy newly found?And rapture as of penetrating peace?The naked north-wind's cloudiest clime,?And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time.
18.
He saw the brand that fired the towers of Troy?Fade, and the darkness at Oenone's prayer?Close upon her that closed upon her boy,?For all the curse of godhead that she bare;?And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toy?With scathless maiden limbs and shuddering hair;?And his love smitten in their dawn of joy?Leave Pan the pine-leaf of her change to wear;
And one in flowery coils?Caught as in fiery toils?Smite Calydon with mourning unaware;
And where her low turf shrine?Showed Modesty divine?The fairest mother's daughter far more fair?Hide on her breast the heavenly shame?That kindled once with love should kindle Troy with flame.
19.
Nor less the light of story than of song?With graver glories girt his godlike head,?Reverted alway from the temporal throng?Of lives that live not toward the living dead.?The shadows and the splendours of their throng?Made bright and dark about his board and bed?The lines of life and vision, sweet or strong?With sound of lutes or trumpets blown, that led
Forth of the ghostly gate?Opening in spite of fate?Shapes of majestic or tumultuous tread,
Divine and direful things,?These foul as priests or kings,?Those fair as heaven or love or freedom, red?With blood and green with palms and white?With raiment woven of deeds divine and words of light.
20.
The thunder-fire of Cromwell, and the ray?That keeps the place of Phocion's name serene?And clears the cloud from Kosciusko's day,?Alternate as dark hours with bright between,?Met in the heaven of his high thought, which lay?For all stars open that all eyes had seen?Rise on the night or twilight of the way?Where feet of human hopes and fears had been.
Again the sovereign word?On Milton's lips was heard?Living: again the tender three days' queen
Drew bright and gentle breath?On the sharp edge of death:?And, staged again to show of mortal scene,?Tiberius, ere his name grew dire,?Wept, stainless yet of empire, tears of blood and fire.
21.
Most ardent and most awful and most fond,?The fervour of his Apollonian eye?Yearned upon Hellas, yet enthralled in bond?Of time whose years beheld her and past by?Silent and shameful, till she rose and donned?The casque again of Pallas; for her cry?Forth of the past and future, depths beyond?This where the present and its tyrants lie,
As one great voice of twain?For him had pealed again,?Heard but of hearts high as her own was high,
High as her own and his?And pure as love's heart is,?That lives though hope at once and memory die:?And with her breath his clarion's blast?Was filled as cloud with fire or future souls with past.
22.
As a wave only obsequious to the wind?Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap,?Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned?By the strong god's breath moving on the deep?From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind?That shakes the plain where no men sow nor reap,?So, moved with wrath toward men that ruled and sinned?And pity toward