‘Oh, Brandan, think what grace divine,
What blessing must true goodness shower,
If semblance of it faint, like mine, 55
Hath such inestimable power!
‘Well-fed, well-clothed, well-friended, I
Did that chance act of good, that one!
Then went my way to kill and lie —
Forgot my good as soon as done. 60
‘That germ of kindness, in the womb
Of mercy caught, did not expire;
Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom,
And friends me in the pit of fire.
‘Once every year, when carols wake, 65
On earth, the Christmas night’s repose,
Arising from the sinners’ lake,
I journey to these healing snows.
‘I stanch with ice my burning breast,
With silence balm my whirling brain. 70
O Brandan! to this hour of rest,
That Joppan leper’s ease was pain!’ ——
Tears started to Saint Brandan’s eyes;
He bow’d his head; he breathed a prayer.
When he look’d up — tenantless lies 75
The iceberg in the frosty air!
A Southern Night
THE SANDY spits, the shore-lock’d lakes,
Melt into open, moonlit sea;
The soft Mediterranean breaks
At my feet, free.
Dotting the fields of corn and vine 5
Like ghosts, the huge, gnarl’d olives stand;
Behind, that lovely mountain-line!
While by the strand
Cette, with its glistening houses white,
Curves with the curving beach away 10
To where the lighthouse beacons bright
Far in the bay.
Ah, such a night, so soft, so lone,
So moonlit, saw me once of yore
Wander unquiet, and my own 15
Vext heart deplore!
But now that trouble is forgot;
Thy memory, thy pain, to-night,
My brother! and thine early lot,
Possess me quite. 20
The murmur of this Midland deep
Is heard to-night around thy grave
There where Gibraltar’s cannon’d steep
O’erfrowns the wave.
For there, with bodily anguish keen, 25
With Indian heats at last fordone,
With public toil and private teen,
Thou sank’st, alone.
Slow to a stop, at morning grey,
I see the smoke-crown’d vessel come; 30
Slow round her paddles dies away
The seething foam.
A boat is lower’d from her side;
Ah, gently place him on the bench!
That spirit — if all have not yet died — 35
A breath might quench.
Is this the eye, the footstep fast,
The mien of youth we used to see,
Poor, gallant boy! — for such thou wast,
Still art, to me. 40
The limbs their wonted tasks refuse,
The eyes are glazed, thou canst not speak;
And whiter than thy white burnous
That wasted check!
Enough! The boat, with quiet shock, 45
Unto its haven coming nigh,
Touches, and on Gibraltar’s rock
Lands thee, to die.
Ah me! Gibraltar’s strand is far,
But farther yet across the brine 50
Thy dear wife’s ashes buried are,
Remote from thine.
For there where Morning’s sacred fount
Its golden rain on earth confers,
The snowy Himalayan Mount 55
O’ershadows hers.
Strange irony of Fate, alas,
Which for two jaded English saves,
When from their dusty life they pass,
Such peaceful graves! 60
In cities should we English lie,
Where cries are rising ever new,
And men’s incessant stream goes by;
We who pursue
Our business with unslackening stride, 65
Traverse in troops, with care-fill’d breast,
The soft Mediterranean side,
The Nile, the East,
And see all sights from pole to pole,
And glance, and nod, and bustle by; 70
And never once possess our soul
Before we die.
Not by those hoary Indian hills,
Not by this gracious Midland sea
Whose floor to-night sweet moonshine fills, 75
Should our graves be!
Some sage, to whom the world was dead,
And men were specks, and life a play;
Who made the roots of trees his bed,
And once a day 80
With staff and gourd his way did bend
To villages and homes of man,
For food to keep him till he end
His mortal span,
And the pure goal of Being reach; 85
Grey-headed, wrinkled, clad in white,
Without companion, without speech,
By day and night
Pondering God’s mysteries untold,
And tranquil as the glacier snows — 90
He by those Indian mountains old
Might well repose!
Some grey crusading knight austere
Who bore Saint Louis company
And came home hurt to death and here 95
Landed to die;
Some youthful troubadour whose tongue
Fill’d Europe once with his love-pain,
Who here outwearied sunk, and sung
His dying strain; 100
Some girl who here from castle-bower,
With furtive step and cheek of flame,
‘Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower
By moonlight came
To meet her pirate-lover’s ship, 105
And from the wave-kiss’d marble stair
Beckon’d him on, with quivering lip
And unbound hair,
And lived some moons in happy trance,
Then learnt his death, and pined away — 110
Such by these waters of romance
‘Twas meet to lay!
But you — a grave for knight or sage,
Romantic, solitary, still,
O spent ones of a work-day age! 115
Befits you ill.
So sang I; but the midnight breeze
Down to the brimm’d moon-charmed main
Comes softly through the olive-trees,
And checks my strain. 120
I think of her, whose gentle tongue
All plaint in her own cause controll’d;
Of thee I think, my brother! young
In heart, high-soul’d;
That comely face, that cluster’d brow, 125
That cordial hand, that bearing free,
I see them still, I see them now,
Shall always see!
And what but gentleness untired,
And what but noble feeling warm, 130
Wherever shown, howe’er attired,
Is grace, is charm?
What else is all these waters are,
What else is steep’d in lucid sheen,
What else is bright, what else is fair, 135
What else serene?
Mild o’er her grave, ye mountains, shine!
Gently by his, ye waters, glide!
To that in you which is divine
They were allied. 140
Thyrsis
A MONODY, to commemorate the author’s friend, ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, who died at Florence, 1861
HOW changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village-street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla’s na
me,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks; 5
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, ‘tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays
Here came I often, often, in old days;
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then. 10
Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Up past the wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,
The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames? — 15
This winter-eve is warm,
Humid the air; leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and briers;
And that sweet City with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening, 20
Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!
Only, methinks, some loss of habit’s power
Befalls me wandering through this upland dim;
Once pass’d I blindfold here, at any hour,
Now seldom come I, since I came with him. 25
That single elm-tree bright
Against the west — I miss it! is it gone?
We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,
Our friend, the Scholar-Gipsy, was not dead;
While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. 30
Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here!
But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;
And with the country-folk acquaintance made
By barn in thresting-time, by new-built rick.
Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay’d. 35
Ah me! this many a year
My pipe is lost, my shepherd’s-holiday!
Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart
Into the world and wave of men depart;
But Thyrsis of his own will went away. 40
It irk’d him to be here, he could not rest.
He loved each simple joy the country yields,
He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,
For that a shadow lower’d on the fields,
Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. 45
Some life of men unblest
He knew, which made him droop, and fill’d his head.
He went; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;
He could not wait their passing, he is dead! 50
So, some tempestuous morn in early June,
When the year’s primal burst of bloom is o’er,
Before the roses and the longest day —
When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor,
With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May, 55
And chestnut-flowers are strewn —
So have I heard the cuckoo’s parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:
The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I. 60
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-William with its homely cottage-smell, 65
And stocks in fragrant blow;
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening-star. 70
He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!
What matters it? next year he will return,
And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days,
With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,
And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways, 75
And scent of hay new-mown.
But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see!
See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,
And blow a strain the world at last shall heed —
For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer’d thee. 80
Alack, for Corydon no rival now! —
But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate,
Some good survivor with his flute would go,
Piping a ditty sad for Bion’s fate,
And cross the unpermitted ferry’s flow, 85
And relax Pluto’s brow,
And make leap up with joy the beauteous head
Of Proserpine, among whose crownèd hair
Are flowers, first open’d on Sicilian air,
And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead. 90
O easy access to the hearer’s grace
When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!
For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,
She knew the Dorian water’s gush divine,
She knew each lily white which Enna yields, 95
Each rose with blushing face;
She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.
But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!
Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr’d!
And we should tease her with our plaint in vain. 100
Well! wind-dispers’d and vain the words will be,
Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour
In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp’d hill!
Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?
I know the wood which hides the daffodil, 105
I know the Fyfield tree,
I know what white, what purple fritillaries
The grassy harvest of the river-fields,
Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields,
And what sedg’d brooks are Thames’s tributaries; 110
I know these slopes; who knows them if not I? —
But many a dingle on the loved hill-side,
With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom’d trees,
Where thick the cowslips grew, and, far descried,
High tower’d the spikes of purple orchises, 115
Hath since our day put by
The coronals of that forgotten time.
Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy’s team,
And only in the hidden brookside gleam
Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. 120
Where is the girl, who, by the boatman’s door,
Above the locks, above the boating throng,
Unmoor’d our skiff, when, through the Wytham flats,
Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among,
And darting swallows, and light water-gnats, 125
We track’d the shy Thames shore?
Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell
Of our boat passing heav’d the river-grass,
Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass? —
They all are gone, and thou art gone as well. 130
Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.
I see her veil draw soft across the day,
I feel her slowly chilling breath invade
The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey; 135
I feel her finger light
Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train;
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again. 140
And long the way appears, which seem’d so short
To the unpractis’d eye of sanguine youth;
And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air,
The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,
Tops in life’s morning-sun so bright and bare! 145
Unbreachable the fort
Of the long-batter’d w
orld uplifts its wall.
And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,
And near and real the charm of thy repose,
And night as welcome as a friend would fall. 150
But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss
Of quiet; — Look! adown the dusk hill-side,
A troop of Oxford hunters going home,
As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!
From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come — 155
Quick, let me fly, and cross
Into yon further field!— ‘Tis done; and see,
Back’d by the sunset, which doth glorify
The orange and pale violet evening-sky,
Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree! 160
I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,
The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,
The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,
And in the scatter’d farms the lights come out.
I cannot reach the Signal-Tree to-night, 165
Yet, happy omen, hail!
Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno vale
(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep
The morningless and unawakening sleep
Under the flowery oleanders pale), 170
Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our Tree is there! —
Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him.
To a boon southern country he is fled, 175
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mother’s train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see!)
Within a folding of the Apennine, 180
Thou hearest the immortal strains of old.
Putting his sickle to the perilous grain
In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king,
For thee the Lityerses song again
Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing; 185
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Page 37
