The Sisters Tragedy | Page 6

and pray, and gnash their teeth--
"God save the Tsar!"
The soft reiterations sweep
Across the horror of their sleep,
<1> "Little Father," or "Dear Little Father,"
a term of endearment
applied
to the Tsar in Russian folk-song.
As if some daemon in his
glee
Were mocking at their misery--
"God save the Tsar!"
In his Red Palace over there,
Wakeful, he needs must hear the prayer.

How can it drown the broken cries
Wrung from his children's
agonies?--
"God save the Tsar!"
Father they called him from of old--
Batuschka! . . . How his heart is
cold!
Wait till a million scourged men
Rise in their awful might,
and then--
God save the Tsar!

ACT V
[Midnight.]
First, two white arms that held him very close,
And ever closer as he
drew him back
Reluctantly, the loose gold-colored hair
A thousand
delicate fibres reaching out
Still to detain him; then some twenty
steps
Of iron staircase winding round and down,
And ending in a
narrow gallery hung
With Gobelin tapestries--Andromeda
Rescued
by Perseus, and the sleek Diana
With her nymphs bathing; at the
farther end
A door that gave upon a starlit grove
Of citron and clipt
palm-trees; then a path
As bleached as moonlight, with the shadow of
leaves
Stamped black upon it; next a vine-clad length
Of solid
masonry; and last of all
A Gothic archway packed with night, and
then--
A sudden gleaming dagger through his heart.
TENNYSON
I
Shakespeare and Milton--what third blazoned name
Shall lips of after-ages link to these?
His who, beside the wild
encircling seas,
Was England's voice, her voice with one acclaim,

For threescore years; whose word of praise was fame,
Whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities.
II
What strain was his in that Crimean war?
A bugle-call in battle; a low breath,
Plaintive and sweet, above the
fields of death!
So year by year the music rolled afar,
From Euxine
wastes to flowery Kandahar,
Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath.

III
Others shall have their little space of time,
Their proper niche and bust, then fade away
Into the darkness, poets
of a day;
But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme,
Thou shalt not
pass! Thy fame in every clime
On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway.
IV
Waft me this verse across the winter sea,
Through light and dark, through mist and blinding sleet, O winter
winds, and lay it at his feet;
Though the poor gift betray my poverty,

At his feet lay it: it may chance that he
Will find no gift, where reverence is, unmeet.
THE SHIPMAN'S TALE
Listen, my masters! I speak naught but truth.
From dawn to dawn
they drifted on and on,
Not knowing whither nor to what dark end.

Now the North froze them, now the hot South scorched.
Some called
to God, and found great comfort so;
Some gnashed their teeth with
curses, and some laughed
An empty laughter, seeing they yet lived,

So sweet was breath between their foolish lips.
Day after day the
same relentless sun,
Night after night the same unpitying stars.
At
intervals fierce lightnings tore the clouds,
Showing vast hollow
spaces, and the sleet
Hissed, and the torrents of the sky were loosed.

From time to time a hand relaxed its grip,
And some pale wretch
slid down into the dark
With stifled moan, and transient horror seized

The rest who waited, knowing what must be.
At every turn strange
shapes reached up and clutched
The whirling wreck, held on awhile,
and then
Slipt back into that blackness whence they came.
Ah,

hapless folk, to be so tost and torn,
So racked by hunger, fever, fire,
and wave,
And swept at last into the nameless void--
Frail girls,
strong men, and mothers with their babes!
And was none saved?
My masters, not a soul!
O shipman, woful, woful is thy tale!
Our hearts are heavy and our
eyes are dimmed.
What ship is this that suffered such ill fate?
What ship, my masters? Know ye not?--The World!
"I VEX ME NOT WITH BROODING ON THE YEARS"
I vex me not with brooding on the years
That were ere I drew breath: why should I then
Distrust the darkness
that may fall again
When life is done? Perchance in other spheres--

Dead planets--I once tasted mortal tears,
And walked as now among a throng of men,
Pondering things that lay
beyond my ken,
Questioning death, and solacing my fears.
Ofttimes
indeed strange sense have I of this,
Vague memories that hold me with a spell,
Touches of unseen lips
upon my brow,
Breathing some incommunicable bliss!
In years foregone, O Soul, was all not well?
Still lovelier life awaits
thee. Fear not thou!
MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS
I
One by one they go
Into the unknown dark--
Star-lit brows of the
brave,
Voices that drew men's souls.
Rich is the land, O Death!


Can give you dead like our dead!--
Such as he from whose hand

The magic web of romance
Slipt, and the art was lost!
Such as he
who erewhile--
The last of the Titan brood--
With his thunder the
Senate shook;
Or he who, beside the Charles,
Untoucht of envy or
hate,
Tranced the world with his song;
Or that other, that gray-eyed
seer
Who in pastoral