Studies in Song | Page 4

girdles hell
And
sweet the darkness of the breathless plain,
And with Elysian flowers
Recrowned the wreathless hours
That
mused and mourned upon their works 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