With scarlet berries gemm’d, the fell-fare’s food.
Under the glittering hollies Iseult stands
Watching her children play: their little hands
Are busy gathering spars of quartz, and streams 25
Of stagshorn for their hats: anon, with screams
Of mad delight they drop their spoils, and bound
Among the holly clumps and broken ground,
Racing full speed, and startling in their rush
The fell-fares and the speckled missel-thrush 30
Out of their glossy coverts: but when now
Their cheeks were flush’d, and over each hot brow
Under the feather’d hats of the sweet pair
In blinding masses shower’d the golden hair —
Then Iseult called them to her, and the three 35
Cluster’d under the holly screen, and she
Told them an old-world Breton history.
Warm in their mantles wrapt, the three stood there,
Under the hollies, in the clear still air —
Mantles with those rich furs deep glistering 40
Which Venice ships do from swart Egypt bring.
Long they stayed still — then, pacing at their ease,
Mov’d up and down under the glossy trees;
But still as they pursued their warm dry road
From Iseult’s lips the unbroken story flow’d, 45
And still the children listen’d, their blue eyes
Fix’d on their mother’s face in wide surprise;
Nor did their looks stray once to the sea-side,
Nor to the brown heaths round them, bright and wide,
Nor to the snow which, though ‘twas all away 50
From the open heath, still by the hedgerows lay,
Nor to the shining sea-fowl that with screams
Bore up from where the bright Atlantic gleams,
Swooping to landward; nor to where, quite clear,
The fell-fares settled on the thickets near. 55
And they would still have listen’d, till dark night
Came keen and chill down on the heather bright;
But, when the red glow on the sea grew cold,
And the grey turrets of the castle old
Look’d sternly through the frosty evening air, — 60
Then Iseult took by the hand those children fair,
And brought her tale to an end, and found the path,
And led them home over the darkening heath.
And is she happy? Does she see unmov’d
The days in which she might have liv’d and lov’d 65
Slip without bringing bliss slowly away,
One after one, to-morrow like to-day?
Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will: —
Is it this thought that makes her mien so still,
Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet, 70
So sunk, so rarely lifted save to meet
Her children’s? She moves slow: her voice alone
Has yet an infantine and silver tone,
But even that comes languidly: in truth,
She seems one dying in a mask of youth. 75
And now she will go home, and softly lay
Her laughing children in their beds, and play
Awhile with them before they sleep; and then
She’ll light her silver lamp, which fishermen
Dragging their nets through the rough waves, afar, 80
Along this iron coast, know like a star,
And take her broidery frame, and there she’ll sit
Hour after hour, her gold curls sweeping it,
Lifting her soft-bent head only to mind
Her children, or to listen to the wind. 85
And when the clock peals midnight, she will move
Her work away, and let her fingers rove
Across the shaggy brows of Tristram’s hound
Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground:
Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes 90
Fix’d, her slight hands clasp’d on her lap; then rise,
And at her prie-dieu kneel, until she have told
Her rosary beads of ebony tipp’d with gold,
Then to her soft sleep: and to-morrow’ll be
To-day’s exact repeated effigy. 95
Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall.
The children, and the grey-hair’d seneschal,
Her women, and Sir Tristram’s agèd hound,
Are there the sole companions to be found.
But these she loves; and noisier life than this 100
She would find ill to bear, weak as she is:
She has her children too, and night and day
Is with them; and the wide heaths where they play,
The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore,
The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails, 105
These are to her dear as to them: the tales
With which this day the children she beguil’d
She glean’d from Breton grandames when a child
In every hut along this sea-coast wild.
She herself loves them still, and, when they are told, 110
Can forget all to hear them, as of old.
Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear,
Not suffering, that shuts up eye and ear
To all which has delighted them before,
And lets us be what we were once no more. 115
No: we may suffer deeply, yet retain
Power to be mov’d and sooth’d, for all our pain,
By what of old pleas’d us, and will again.
No: ‘tis the gradual furnace of the world,
In whose hot air our spirits are upcurl’d 120
Until they crumble, or else grow like steel —
Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring —
Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel,
But takes away the power — this can avail,
By drying up our joy in everything, 125
To make our former pleasures all seem stale.
This, or some tyrannous single thought, some fit
Of passion, which subdues our souls to it,
Till for its sake alone we live and move —
Call it ambition, or remorse, or love — 130
This too can change us wholly, and make seem
All that we did before, shadow and dream.
And yet, I swear, it angers me to see
How this fool passion gulls men potently;
Being, in truth, but a diseas’d unrest, 135
And an unnatural overheat at best.
How they are full of languor and distress
Not having it; which, when they do possess,
They straightway are burnt up with fume and care,
And spend their lives in posting here and there 140
Where this plague drives them; and have little ease,
Are fretful with themselves, and hard to please.
Like that bold Caesar, the fam’d Roman wight,
Who wept at reading of a Grecian knight
Who made a name at younger years than he: 145
Or that renown’d mirror of chivalry,
Prince Alexander, Philip’s peerless son,
Who carried the great war from Macedon
Into the Soudan’s realm, and thundered on
To die at thirty-five in Babylon. 150
What tale did Iseult to the children say,
Under the hollies, that bright winter’s day?
She told them of the fairy-haunted land
Away the other side of Brittany,
Beyond the heaths, edg’d by the lonely sea; 155
Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande,
Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps,
Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps.
For here he came with the fay Vivian,
One April
, when the warm days first began; 160
He was on foot, and that false fay, his friend,
On her white palfrey; here he met his end,
In these lone sylvan glades, that April day.
This tale of Merlin and the lovely fay
Was the one Iseult chose, and she brought clear 165
Before the children’s fancy him and her.
Blowing between the stems the forest air
Had loosen’d the brown curls of Vivian’s hair,
Which play’d on her flush’d cheek, and her blue eyes
Sparkled with mocking glee and exercise. 170
Her palfrey’s flanks were mired and bath’d in sweat,
For they had travell’d far and not stopp’d, yet.
A brier in that tangled wilderness
Had scor’d her white right hand, which she allows
To rest unglov’d on her green riding-dress; 175
The other warded off the dropping boughs.
But still she chatted on, with her blue eyes
Fix’d full on Merlin’s face, her stately prize:
Her ‘haviour had the morning’s fresh clear grace,
The spirit of the woods was in her face; 180
She look’d so witching fair, that learnèd wight
Forgot his craft, and his best wits took flight,
And he grew fond, and eager to obey
His mistress, use her empire as she may.
They came to where the brushwood ceas’d, and day 185
Peer’d ‘twixt the stems; and the ground broke away
In a slop’d sward down to a brawling brook,
And up as high as where they stood to look
On the brook’s further side was clear; but then
The underwood and trees began again. 190
This open glen was studded thick with thorns
Then white with blossom; and you saw the horns,
Through the green fern, of the shy fallow-deer
Which come at noon down to the water here.
You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along 195
Under the thorns on the green sward; and strong
The blackbird whistled from the dingles near,
And the light chipping of the woodpecker
Rang lonelily and sharp: the sky was fair,
And a fresh breath of spring stirr’d everywhere. 200
Merlin and Vivian stopp’d on the slope’s brow
To gaze on the green sea of leaf and bough
Which glistering lay all round them, lone and mild,
As if to itself the quiet forest smil’d.
Upon the brow-top grew a thorn; and here 205
The grass was dry and moss’d, and you saw clear
Across the hollow: white anemonies
Starr’d the cool turf, and clumps of primroses
Ran out from the dark underwood behind.
No fairer resting-place a man could find. 210
‘Here let us halt,’ said Merlin then; and she
Nodded, and tied her palfrey to a tree.
They sate them down together, and a sleep
Fell upon Merlin, more like death, so deep.
Her finger on her lips, then Vivian rose, 215
And from her brown-lock’d head the wimple throws,
And takes it in her hand, and waves it over
The blossom’d thorn-tree and her sleeping lover.
Nine times she wav’d the fluttering wimple round,
And made a little plot of magic ground. 220
And in that daisied circle, as men say,
Is Merlin prisoner till the judgement-day,
But she herself whither she will can rove,
For she was passing weary of his love.
Memorial Verses
APRIL, 1850
GOETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron’s struggle cease.
But one such death remain’d to come.
The last poetic voice is dumb.
What shall be said o’er Wordsworth’s tomb? 5
When Byron’s eyes were shut in death,
We bow’d our head and held our breath.
He taught us little: but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder’s roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw 10
Of Passion with Eternal Law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch’d the fount of fiery life
Which serv’d for that Titanic strife.
When Goethe’s death was told, we said — 15
Sunk, then, is Europe’s sagest head.
Physician of the Iron Age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear — 20
And struck his finger on the place
And said — Thou ailest here, and here. —
He look’d on Europe’s dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plung’d down the weltering strife, 25
The turmoil of expiring life;
He said — The end is everywhere:
Art still has truth, take refuge there.
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below 30
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.
And Wordsworth! — Ah, pale Ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice 35
Been to your shadowy world convey’d,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us — and ye, 40
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we.
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen — on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound 45
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loos’d our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth;
Smiles broke from us and we had ease. 50
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o’er the sun-lit fields again:
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth return’d: for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead, 55
Spirits dried up and closely-furl’d,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah, since dark days still bring to light
Man’s prudence and man’s fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course 60
Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force:
But where will Europe’s latter hour
Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel: 65
Others will strengthen us to bear —
But who, ah who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly —
But who, like him, will put it by? 70
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha! with thy living wave.
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.
Courage
TRUE, we must tame our rebel will:
True, we must bow to Nature’s law:
Must bear in silence many an ill;
Must learn to wait, renounce, withdraw.
Yet now, when boldest wills give place, 5
When Fate and Circumstance are strong,
And in their rush the human race
Are swept, like huddling sheep, along;
Those sterner spirits let me prize,
&
nbsp; Who, though the tendence of the whole 10
They less than us might recognize,
Kept, more than us, their strength of soul.
Yes, be the second Cato prais’d!
Not that he took the course to die —
But that, when ‘gainst himself he rais’d 15
His arm, he rais’d it dauntlessly.
And, Byron! let us dare admire,
If not thy fierce and turbid song,
Yet that, in anguish, doubt, desire,
Thy fiery courage still was strong. 20
The sun that on thy tossing pain
Did with such cold derision shine,
He crush’d thee not with his disdain —
He had his glow, and thou hadst thine.
Our bane, disguise it as we may, 25
Is weakness, is a faltering course.
Oh that past times could give our day,
Join’d to its clearness, of their force!
Self-Dependence
WEARY of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At the vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire 5
O’er the sea and to the stars I send:
‘Ye who from my childhood up have calm’d me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end.
‘Ah, once more,’ I cried, ‘ye Stars, ye Waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew: 10
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you.’
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea’s unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer — 15
‘Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.
‘Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 20
‘And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silver’d roll.
For alone they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.
‘Bounded by themselves, and unobservant 25
In what state God’s other works may be,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Page 13
