The kings our fathers knew,
We fight but as they fought for:
We seek the goal they sought for,
The chance they hailed and knew,
The praise they strove and wrought for,
To leave their blood as dew
On fields that flower anew.
Men live that serve the stranger;
Hounds live that huntsmen tame:
These life-days of our living
Are days of God’s good giving
Where death smiles soft on danger
And life scowls dark on shame.
And what would you do other,
Sweet wife, if you were I?
And how should you be other,
My sister, than your brother,
If you were man as I,
Born of our sire and mother,
With choice to cower and fly,
And chance to strike and die?
No churl’s our oldworld name is,
The lands we leave are fair:
But fairer far than these are,
But wide as all the seas are,
But high as heaven the fame is
That if we die we share.
Our name the night may swallow,
Our lands the churl may take:
But night nor death may swallow,
Nor hell’s nor heaven’s dim hollow,
The star whose height we take,
The star whose light we follow
For faith’s unfaltering sake
Till hope that sleeps awake.
Soft hope’s light lure we serve not,
Nor follow, fain to find:
Dark time’s last word may smite her
Dead, ere man’s falsehood blight her,
But though she die, we swerve not,
Who cast not eye behind.
Faith speaks when hope dissembles:
Faith lives when hope lies dead:
If death as life dissembles,
And all that night assembles
Of stars at dawn lie dead,
Faint hope that smiles and trembles
May tell not well for dread:
But faith has heard it said.
Now who will fight, and fly not,
And grudge not life to give?
And who will strike beside us,
If life’s or death’s light guide us?
For if we live, we die not,
And if we die, we live.
THE BALLAD OF DEAD MEN’S BAY
The sea swings owre the slants of sand,
All white with winds that drive;
The sea swirls up to the still dim strand,
Where nae man comes alive.
At the grey soft edge of the fruitless surf
A light flame sinks and springs;
At the grey soft rim of the flowerless turf
A low flame leaps and clings.
What light is this on a sunless shore,
What gleam on a starless sea?
Was it earth’s or hell’s waste womb that bore
Such births as should not be?
As lithe snakes turning, as bright stars burning,
They bicker and beckon and call;
As wild waves churning, as wild winds yearning,
They flicker and climb and fall.
A soft strange cry from the landward rings —
“What ails the sea to shine?”
A keen sweet note from the spray’s rim springs —
“What fires are these of thine?”
A soul am I that was born on earth
For ae day’s waesome span:
Death bound me fast on the bourn of birth
Ere I were christened man.
“A light by night, I fleet and fare
Till the day of wrath and woe;
On the hems of earth and the skirts of air
Winds hurl me to and fro.”
“O well is thee, though the weird be strange
That bids thee flit and flee;
For hope is child of the womb of change,
And hope keeps watch with thee.
“When the years are gone, and the time is come,
God’s grace may give thee grace;
And thy soul may sing, though thy soul were dumb,
And shine before God’s face.
“But I, that lighten and revel and roll
With the foam of the plunging sea,
No sign is mine of a breathing soul
That God should pity me.
“Nor death, nor heaven, nor hell, nor birth
Hath part in me nor mine:
Strong lords are these of the living earth
And loveless lords of thine.
“But I that know nor lord nor life
More sure than storm or spray,
Whose breath is made of sport and strife,
Whereon shall I find stay?”
“And wouldst thou change thy doom with me,
Full fain with thee would I:
For the life that lightens and lifts the sea
Is more than earth or sky.
“And what if the day of doubt and doom
Shall save nor smite not me?
I would not rise from the slain world’s tomb
If there be no more sea.
“Take he my soul that gave my soul,
And give it thee to keep;
And me, while seas and stars shall roll
Thy life that falls on sleep.”
That word went up through the mirk mid sky,
And even to God’s own ear:
And the Lord was ware of the keen twin cry,
And wroth was he to hear.
He’s tane the soul of the unsained child
That fled to death from birth;
He’s tane the light of the wan sea wild,
And bid it burn on earth.
He’s given the ghaist of the babe new-born
The gift of the water-sprite,
To ride on revel from morn to morn
And roll from night to night.
He’s given the sprite of the wild wan sea
The gift of the new-born man,
A soul for ever to bide and be
When the years have filled their span.
When a year was gone and a year was come,
O loud and loud cried they —
“For the lee-lang year thou hast held us dumb
Take now thy gifts away!”
O loud and lang they cried on him,
And sair and sair they prayed:
“Is the face of thy grace as the night’s face grim
For those thy wrath has made?”
A cry more bitter than tears of men
From the rim of the dim grey sea; —
“Give me my living soul again,
The soul thou gavest me,
The doom and the dole of kindly men,
To bide my weird and be!”
A cry more keen from the wild low land
Than the wail of waves that roll; —
“Take back the gift of a loveless hand,
Thy gift of doom and dole,
The weird of men that bide on land;
Take from me, take my soul!”
The hands that smite are the hands that spare;
They build and break the tomb;
They turn to darkness and dust and air
The fruits of the waste earth’s womb;
But never the gift of a granted prayer,
The dole of a spoken doom.
Winds may change at a word unheard,
But none may change the tides:
The prayer once heard is as God’s own word;
The doom once dealt abides.
And ever a cry goes up by day,
And ever a wail by night;
And nae ship comes by the weary bay
But her shipmen hear them wail and pray,
And see with earthly sight
The twofold flames of the twin ligh
ts play
Where the sea-banks green and the sea-floods grey
Are proud of peril and fain of prey,
And the sand quakes ever; and ill fare they
That look upon that light.
DEDICATION
1893
The sea of the years that endure not
Whose tide shall endure till we die
And know what the seasons assure not,
If death be or life be a lie,
Sways hither the spirit and thither,
A waif in the swing of the sea
Whose wrecks are of memories that wither
As leaves of a tree.
We hear not and hail not with greeting
The sound of the wings of the years,
The storm of the sound of them beating,
That none till it pass from him hears:
But tempest nor calm can imperil
The treasures that fade not or fly;
Change bids them not change and be sterile,
Death bids them not die.
Hearts plighted in youth to the royal
High service of hope and of song,
Sealed fast for endurance as loyal,
And proved of the years as they throng,
Conceive not, believe not, and fear not
That age may be other than youth;
That faith and that friendship may hear not
And utter not truth.
Not yesterday’s light nor to-morrow’s
Gleams nearer or clearer than gleams,
Though joys be forgotten and sorrows
Forgotten as changes of dreams,
The dawn of the days unforgotten
That noon could eclipse not or slay,
Whose fruits were as children begotten
Of dawn upon day.
The years that were flowerful and fruitless,
The years that were fruitful and dark,
The hopes that were radiant and rootless,
The hopes that were winged for their mark,
Lie soft in the sepulchres fashioned
Of hours that arise and subside,
Absorbed and subdued and impassioned,
In pain or in pride.
But far in the night that entombs them
The starshine as sunshine is strong,
And clear through the cloud that resumes them
Remembrance, a light and a song,
Rings lustrous as music and hovers
As birds that impend on the sea,
And thoughts that their prison-house covers
Arise and are free.
Forgetfulness deep as a prison
Holds days that are dead for us fast
Till the sepulchre sees rearisen
The spirit whose reign is the past,
Disentrammelled of darkness, and kindled
With life that is mightier than death,
When the life that obscured it has dwindled
And passed as a breath.
But time nor oblivion may darken
Remembrance whose name will be joy
While memory forgets not to hearken,
While manhood forgets not the boy
Who heard and exulted in hearing
The songs of the sunrise of youth
Ring radiant above him, unfearing
And joyous as truth.
Truth, winged and enkindled with rapture
And sense of the radiance of yore,
Fulfilled you with power to recapture
What never might singer before —
The life, the delight, and the sorrow
Of troublous and chivalrous years
That knew not of night or of morrow,
Of hopes or of fears.
But wider the wing and the vision
That quicken the spirit have spread
Since memory beheld with derision
Man’s hope to be more than his dead.
From the mists and the snows and the thunders
Your spirit has brought for us forth
Light, music, and joy in the wonders
And charms of the north.
The wars and the woes and the glories
That quicken and lighten and rain
From the clouds of its chronicled stories,
The passion, the pride, and the pain,
Whose echoes were mute and the token
Was lost of the spells that they spake,
Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken
Of ages that break.
For you, and for none of us other,
Time is not: the dead that must live
Hold commune with you as a brother
By grace of the life that you give.
The heart that was in them is in you,
Their soul in your spirit endures:
The strength of their song is the sinew
Of this that is yours.
Hence is it that life, everlasting
As light and as music, abides
In the sound of the surge of it, casting
Sound back to the surge of the tides,
Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen
Watch, hurtling to windward and lee,
Round England, unbacked of her horsemen,
The steeds of the sea.
THE HEPTALOGIA
CONTENTS
THE HEPTALOGIA
THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL
JOHN JONES’S WIFE
THE POET AND THE WOODLOUSE
THE PERSON OF THE HOUSE
LAST WORDS OF A SEVENTH-RATE POET
SONNET FOR A PICTURE
NEPHELIDIA
DISGUST
THE HEPTALOGIA
OR, THE SEVEN AGAINST SENSE
A CAP WITH SEVEN BELLS
THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL
One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is:
Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this.
What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under:
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.
Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt:
We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?
Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover:
Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over.
Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight:
Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate.
Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels:
God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.
Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which:
The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.
More is the whole than a part: but half is more than the whole:
Clearly, the soul is the body: but is not the body the soul?
One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two:
Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.
Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks:
Then the mammoth was God: now is He a prize ox.
Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew:
You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you.
Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock:
Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock.
God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see:
Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.
JOHN JONES’S WIFE
I
AT THE PIANO
I
Love me and leave me; what love bids retrieve me? can June’s fist grasp May?
Leave me and love me; hopes eyed once above me like spring’s sprouts decay;
Fall as the snow falls, when summer leaves grow false — cards packed for storm’s play
!
II
Nay, say Decay’s self be but last May’s elf, wing shifted, eye sheathed —
Changeling in April’s crib rocked, who lets ‘scape rills locked fast since frost breathed —
Skin cast (think!) adder-like, now bloom bursts bladder-like, — bloom frost bequeathed?
III
Ah, how can fear sit and hear as love hears it grief’s heart’s cracked grate’s screech?
Chance lets the gate sway that opens on hate’s way and shews on shame’s beach
Crouched like an imp sly change watch sweet love’s shrimps lie, a toothful in each.
IV
Time feels his tooth slip on husks wet from Truth’s lip, which drops them and grins —
Shells where no throb stirs of life left in lobsters since joy thrilled their fins —
Hues of the prawn’s tail or comb that makes dawn stale, so red for our sins!
V
Years blind and deaf use the soul’s joys as refuse, heart’s peace as manure,
Reared whence, next June’s rose shall bloom where our moons rose last year, just as pure:
Moons’ ends match roses’ ends: men by beasts’ noses’ ends mete sin’s stink’s cure.
VI
Leaves love last year smelt now feel dead love’s tears melt — flies caught in time’s mesh!
Salt are the dews in which new time breeds new sin, brews blood and stews flesh;
Next year may see dead more germs than this weeded and reared them afresh.
VII
Old times left perish, there’s new time to cherish; life just shifts its tune;
As, when the day dies, earth, half afraid, eyes the growth of the moon;
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 132
