Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Page 23
(Lands are swayed by a King on a throne.)
’Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
Yet the tale can be told by none but me. 150
(The sea hath no King but God alone.)
And now the end came o’er the waters’ womb
Like the last great Day that’s yet to come.
With prayers in vain and curses in vain,
The White Ship sundered on the mid-main: 155
And what were men and what was a ship
Were toys and splinters in the sea’s grip.
I Berold was down in the sea;
And passing strange though the thing may be,
Of dreams then known I remember me. 160
Blithe is the shout on Harfleur’s strand
When morning lights the sails to land:
And blithe is Honfleur’s echoing gloam
When mothers call the children home:
And high do the bells of Rouen beat 165
When the Body of Christ goes down the street.
These things and the like were heard and shown
In a moment’s trance ‘neath the sea alone;
And when I rose, ’twas the sea did seem,
And not these things, to be all a dream. 170
The ship was gone and the crowd was gone,
And the deep shuddered and the moon shone:
And in a strait grasp my arms did span
The mainyard rent from the mast where it ran;
And on it with me was another man. 175
Where lands were none ‘neath the dim sea-sky
We told our names, that man and I.
‘O I am Godefroy de l’Aigle hight,
And son I am to a belted knight.’
‘And I am Berold the butcher’s son 180
Who slays the beasts in Rouen town.’
Then cried we upon God’s name, as we
Did drift on the bitter winter sea.
But lo! a third man rose o’er the wave,
And we said, ‘Thank God! us three may He save!’ 185
He clutched to the yard with panting stare,
And we looked and knew Fitz-Stephen there.
He clung, and ‘What of the Prince?’ quoth he.
‘Lost, lost!’ we cried. He cried, ‘Woe on me!’
And loosed his hold and sank through the sea. 190
And soul with soul again in that space
We two were together face to face:
And each knew each, as the moments sped,
Less for one living than for one dead:
And every still star overhead 195
Seemed an eye that knew we were but dead.
And the hours passed; till the noble’s son
Sighed, ‘God be thy help! my strength’s foredone!
‘O farewell, friend, for I can no more!’
‘Christ take thee!’ I moaned; and his life was o’er. 200
Three hundred souls were all lost but one,
And I drifted over the sea alone.
At last the morning rose on the sea
Like an angel’s wing that beat tow’rds me.
Sore numbed I was in my sheepskin coat; 205
Half dead I hung, and might nothing note,
Till I woke sun-warmed in a fisher-boat.
The sun was high o’er the eastern brim
As I praised God and gave thanks to Him.
That day I told my tale to a priest, 210
Who charged me, till the shrift were releas’d,
That I should keep it in mine own breast.
And with the priest I thence did fare
To King Henry’s court at Winchester.
We spoke with the King’s high chamberlain, 215
And he wept and mourned again and again,
As if his own son had been slain:
And round us ever there crowded fast
Great men with faces all aghast:
And who so bold that might tell the thing 220
Which now they knew to their lord the King?
Much woe I learnt in their communing.
The King had watched with a heart sore stirred
For two whole days, and this was the third:
And still to all his court would he say, 225
‘What keeps my son so long away?’
And they said: ‘The ports lie far and wide
That skirt the swell of the English tide;
‘And England’s cliffs are not more white
Than her women are, and scarce so light 230
Her skies as their eyes are blue and bright;
‘And in some port that he reached from France
The Prince has lingered for his pleasaùnce.’
But once the King asked: ‘What distant cry
Was that we heard ‘twixt the sea and sky?’ 235
And one said: ‘With suchlike shouts, pardie!
Do the fishers fling their nets at sea.’
And one: ‘Who knows not the shrieking quest
When the sea-mew misses its young from the nest?’
’Twas thus till now they had soothed his dread, 240
Albeit they knew not what they said:
But who should speak to-day of the thing
That all knew there except the King?
Then pondering much they found a way,
And met round the King’s high seat that day: 245
And the King sat with a heart sore stirred,
And seldom he spoke and seldom heard.
’Twas then through the hall the King was ‘ware
Of a little boy with golden hair,
As bright as the golden poppy is 250
That the beach breeds for the surf to kiss:
Yet pale his cheek as the thorn in Spring,
And his garb black like the raven’s wing.
Nothing heard but his foot through the hall,
For now the lords were silent all. 255
And the King wondered, and said, ‘Alack!
Who sends me a fair boy dressed in black?
‘Why, sweet heart, do you pace through the hall
As though my court were a funeral?’
Then lowly knelt the child at the dais, *60
And looked up weeping in the King’s face.
‘O wherefore black, O King, ye may say,
For white is the hue of death to-day.
‘Your son and all his fellowship
Lie low in the sea with the White Ship.’ 265
King Henry fell as a man struck dead;
And speechless still he stared from his bed
When to him next day my rede I read.
There’s many an hour must needs beguile
A King’s high heart that he should smile, - 270
Full many a lordly hour, full fain
Of his realm’s rule and pride of his reign: -
But this King never smiled again.
By none but me can the tale be told,
The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold. 275
(Lands are swayed by a King on a throne.)
’Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
Yet the tale can be told by none but me.
(The sea hath no King but God alone.)
FIVE ENGLISH POETS
I. THOMAS CHATTERTON
With Shakspeare’s manhood at a boy’s wild heart, -
Through Hamlet’s doubt to Shakspeare near allied,
And kin to Milton through his Satan’s pride, -
At Death’s sole door he stooped, and craved a dart;
And to the dear new bower of England’s art, - 5
Even to that shrine Time else had deified,
The unuttered heart that soared against his side, -
Drove the fell point, and smote life’s seals apart.
Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton;
The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace 10
Up Redcliffe’s spire; and in the world’s armed space
Thy gallant sword-pl
ay: - these to many an one
Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown
And love-dream of thine unrecorded face.
II. WILLIAM BLAKE
TO FREDERICK SHIELDS, ON HIS SKETCH OF BLAKE’S WORKROOM AND DEATH-ROOM, 3, FOUNTAIN COURT, STRAND
This is the place. Even here the dauntless soul,
The unflinching hand, wrought on; till in that nook,
As on that very bed, his life partook
New birth, and passed. Yon river’s dusky shoal,
Whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll, 5
Faced his work-window, whence his eyes would stare,
Thought-wandering, unto nought that met them there,
But to the unfettered irreversible goal.
This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud
Of his soul writ and limned; this other one, 10
His true wife’s charge, full oft to their abode
Yielded for daily bread the martyr’s stone,
Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone,
The words now home-speech of the mouth of God.
III. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove
The father-songster plies the hour-long quest,)
To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest;
But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above
Their callow fledgling progeny still hove 5
With tented roof of wings and fostering breast
Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest
From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love.
Yet ah! Like desert pools that show the stars
Once in long leagues, - even such the scarce-snatched hours 10
Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers: -
Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars.
Six years, from sixty saved! Yet kindling skies
Own them, a beacon to our centuries.
IV. JOHN KEATS
The weltering London ways where children weep
And girls whom none call maidens laugh, - strange road
Miring his outward steps, who inly trode
The bright Castalian brink and Latmos’ steep: -
Even such his life’s cross-paths; till deathly deep 5
He toiled through sands of Lethe; and long pain,
Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,
In dead Rome’s sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.
O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon’s eclipse,- 10
Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o’er, -
Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ
But rumour’d in water, while the fame of it
Along Time’s flood goes echoing evermore.
V. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
INSCRIPTION FOR THE COUCH, STILL PRESERVED, ON WHICH HE PASSED THE LAST NIGHT OF HIS LIFE
‘Twixt those twin worlds, - the world of Sleep, which gave
No dream to warn, - the tidal world of Death,
Which the earth’s sea, as the earth, replenisheth, -
Shelley, Song’s orient sun, to breast the wave,
Rose from this couch that morn. Ah! did he brave 5
Only the sea? - or did man’s deed of hell
Engulph his bark ‘mid mists impenetrable?
No eye discerned, nor any power might save.
When that mist cleared, O Shelley! what dread veil
Was rent for thee, to whom far-darkling Truth 10
Reigned sovereign guide through thy brief ageless youth?
Was the Truth thy Truth, Shelley? - Hush! All-Hail,
Past doubt, thou gav’st it; and in Truth’s bright sphere
Art first of praisers, being most praisèd here.
THE DAY-DREAM
(FOR A PICTURE)
The thronged boughs of the shadowy sycamore
Still bear young leaflets half the summer through;
From when the robin ‘gainst the unhidden blue
Perched dark, till now, deep in the leafy core,
The embowered throstle’s urgent wood-notes soar 5
Through summer silence. Still the leaves come new;
Yet never rosy-sheathed as those which drew
Their spiral tongues from spring-buds heretofore.
Within the branching shade of Reverie
Dreams even may spring till autumn; yet none be 10
Like woman’s budding day-dream spirit-fann’d.
Lo! tow’rd deep skies, not deeper than her look,
She dreams; till now on her forgotten book
Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.
FOR ‘SPRING’ BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI IN THE ACCADEMIA OF FLORENCE
What masque of what old wind-withered New-Year
Honours this Lady?
Flora, wanton-eyed
For birth, and with all flowrets prankt and pied:
Aurora, Zephyrus, with mutual cheer
Of clasp and kiss: the Graces circling near, 5
‘Neath bower-linked arch of white arms glorified:
And with those feathered feet which hovering glide
O’er Spring’s brief bloom, Hermes the harbinger.
Birth-bare, not death-bare yet, the young stems stand,
This Lady’s temple-columns: o’er her head 10
Love wings his shaft. What mystery here is read
Of homage or of hope? But how command
Dead Springs to answer? And how question here
These mummers of that wind-withered New-Year?
‘SPRING’ BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI
THE LAST THREE FROM TRAFALGAR AT THE ANNIVERSARY BANQUET, 21ST OCTOBER 187—
In grappled ships around The Victory,
Three boys did England’s Duty with stout cheer,
While one dread truth was kept from every ear,
More dire than deafening fire that churned the sea:
For in the flag-ship’s weltering cockpit, he 5
Who was the Battle’s Heart without a peer,
He who had seen all fearful sights save Fear,
Was passing from all life save Victory.
And round the old memorial board to-day,
Three greybeards - each a warworn British Tar- 10
View through the mist of years that hour afar:
Who soon shall greet, ‘mid memories of fierce fray,
The impassioned soul which on its radiant way
Soared through the fiery cloud of Trafalgar.
INSOMNIA
Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit’s wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll 5
And still remember and forget,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.
Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart, 10
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now and now more clear.
To-night Love claims his full control,
And with desire and with regret
My soul this hour has drawn your soul 15
A little nearer yet.
Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love’s new birth? 20
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
For ever nearer yet.
TIBER, NILE, AND THAMES
The head and hands of murdered Cicero,
Above his seat high in the Forum hung,
Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rung
>
Of a swift-mounted ladder, all aglow,
Fulvia, Mark Antony’s shameless wife, with show 5
Of foot firm-poised and gleaming arm upflung,
Bade her sharp needle pierce that god-like tongue
Whose speech fed Rome even as the Tiber’s flow.
And thou, Cleopatra’s Needle, that hadst thrid
Great skirts of Time ere she and Antony hid 10
Dead hope! - hast thou too reached, surviving death,
A city of sweet speech scorned, - on whose chill stone
Keats withered, Coleridge pined, and Chatterton,
Breadless, with poison froze the God-fired breath?
ALAS, SO LONG!
Ah! dear one, we were young so long,
It seemed that youth would never go,
For skies and trees were ever in song
And water in singing flow
In the days we never again shall know. 5
Alas, so long!
Ah! then was it all Spring weather?
Nay, but we were young and together.
Ah! dear one, I’ve been old so long,
It seems that age is loth to part, 10
Though days and years have never a song,
And oh! have they still the art
That warmed the pulses of heart to heart?
Alas, so long!
Ah! then was it all Spring weather? 15
Nay, but we were young and together.
Ah! dear one, you’ve been dead so long,-
How long until we meet again,
Where hours may never lose their song
Nor flowers forget the rain 20
In glad noonlight that never shall wane?
Alas, so long!
Ah! shall it be then Spring weather,
And ah! shall we be young together?
FOUND
(FOR A PICTURE)
‘There is a budding morrow in midnight:’ -
So sang our Keats, our English nightingale.
And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale
In London’s smokeless resurrection-light,
Dark breaks to dawn. But o’er the deadly blight 5
Of Love deflowered and sorrow of none avail,
Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail,
Can day from darkness ever again take flight?
Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
Under one mantle sheltered ‘neath the hedge 10
In gloaming courtship? And, O God! to-day