Studies in Song | Page 8

for the father in his child undone?Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed?With their sweet image visibly set on?As by God's hand, clear as his own designed?The likeness radiant out of ages gone
That none may now destroy?Of that high Roman boy?Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son
True-born of sovereign seed,?Foredoomed even thence to bleed,?The stately grace of bright C?sarion,?The head unbent, the heart unbowed,?That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud.
47.
With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus?At once by service and similitude,?Service devout and worship emulous?Of the same golden Muses once they wooed,?The names and shades adored of all of us,?The nurslings of the brave world's earlier brood,?Grown gods for us themselves: Theocritus?First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed
With blessings bright like tears?From the old memorial years,?And loves and lovely laughters, every mood
Sweet as the drops that fell?Of their own oenomel?From living lips to cheer the multitude?That feeds on words divine, and grows?More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose.
48.
Peace, the soft seal of long life's closing story,?The silent music that no strange note jars,?Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory?Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars?Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary?With much long warfare, and with gradual bars?Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory,?Broke, and the power came back that passion mars:
And at the lovely last?Above all anguish past?Before his own the sightless eyes like stars
Arose that watched arise?Like stars in other skies?Above the strife of ships and hurtling cars?The Dioscurian songs divine?That lighten all the world with lightning of their line.
49.
He sang the last of Homer, having sung?The last of his Ulysses. Bright and wide?For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung?About the day-star, doubtful to divide,?Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue?Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried,?Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung,?Homer, and grey Laertes at his side
Kingly as kings are none?Beneath a later sun,?And the sweet maiden ministering in pride
To sovereign and to sage?In their more sweet old age:?These things he sang, himself as old, and died.?And if death be not, if life be,?As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he.
50.
Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love?Was pure toward all high poets, all their kind?And all bright words and all sweet works thereof;?Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight kind;?Heart that no fear but every grief might move?Wherewith men's hearts were bound of powers that bind;?The purest soul that ever proof could prove?From taint of tortuous or of envious mind;
Whose eyes elate and clear?Nor shame nor ever fear?But only pity or glorious wrath could blind;
Name set for love apart,?Held lifelong in my heart,?Face like a father's toward my face inclined;?No gilts like thine are mine to give,?Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live.
[1] Thy lifelong works, Napoleon, who shall write?
Time, in his children's blood who takes delight.
From the Greek of Landor.
NOTES.
6. See note to the Imaginary Conversation of Leofric and Godiva for the exquisite first verses extant from the hand of Landor.
10. The Poems of Walter Savage Landor: 1795. Moral Epistle, respectfully dedicated to Earl Stanhope: 1795. Gebir.
13. Count Julian: Ines de Castro: Ippolito di Este.
14, 15. Poems 'on the Dead.'
16. Imaginary Conversations: Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.
17, 18. Idyllia Nova Quinque Heroum atque Heroidum (1815): Corythus; Dryope; Pan et Pitys; Coresus et Callirrhoe; Helena ad Pudoris Aram.
19, 20. Imaginary Conversations: Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble; ?schines and Phocion; Kosciusko and Poniatowski; Milton and Marvell; Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey; Tiberius and Vipsania.
21, 22, 23. Hellenics: To Corinth.
24. Hellenics: Regeneration.
25. The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope.
26. The Shades of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia.
27. Enallos and Cymodameia.
28. The Children of Venus.
29. Cupid and Pan.
30. The Death of Clytemnestra; The Madness of Orestes; The Prayer of Orestes.
32. The Last of Ulysses.
33. Imaginary Conversations. Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt.
35. Pro monumento super milites regio jussu interemptos.
36. The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare.
37. Pericles and Aspasia.
38. The Pentameron.
39. Imaginary Conversations: Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.
40. Marcellus and Hannibal: P. Scipio ?milianus, Polybius, and Pan?tius.
41. Alexander and Priest of Ammon: Bonaparte and the President of the Senate.
42. The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkoff.
43. Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarroti.
44. Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert; a Trilogy: Five Scenes (Beatrice Cenci).
45. Luther's Parents: The Death of Hofer: (Imaginary Conversations) Andrew Hofer, Count Metternich, and the Emperor Francis; Judge Wolfgang and Henry of Melchthal: The Coronation. Tyrannicide (_The Last Fruit off an Old Tree_): Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus: Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn.
46. Essex and Spenser (Imaginary Conversations): Essex and Bacon: Antony and Octavius (Scenes for the Study).
47. Critical Essays on Theocritus and Catullus.
48, 49. Heroic Idyls; Homer, Laertes, and Agatha.
'J'en passe, et des meilleurs.' But who can enumerate all or half our