from stormy chord to chord.
Now the lyre whose lord’s wise mastery gave its
notes reverberate skill
Whence to give again the grace of golden
gifts or hands long dead,
Now the deep clear soul that all the lore of time
could scarce fulfil,
Now the sovereign voice that spake it, now
the radiant eye that read,
Seem to sleep as sleeps the indomitable imper-
ishable will
Here, that haply lives and sleeps not, though
its word on earth be said.
1894.
MEMORIAL VERSES ON THE DEATH OF KARL BLIND
ACROSS the wide-wing’d years
Whose sound no hearkener hears
Passing in thunder of reverberate flight,
Nor any seer may see
What fruit of them shall be,
Shines from the death-struck past a living light,
And music breathed of memory’s breath
Attunes the darkling silence born of earthly
death.
Through all the thunderous time,
Now silent and sublime,
When Right in hopeless hope waged war on
Wrong,
His head shone high, his hand
Grasped as a burning brand
The sword of faith which weakness makes more
strong,
And they for whom it shines hold fast
The trust that Time bequeaths for truth to
assure at last
Not prison, not the breath
Of doom denouncing death,
Could make the manhood in him burn less high
For one breath’s space than when
It shone for following men,
A sign to show how man might live or die
With freedom in triumphant sight,
And hope elate above all fluctuant chance of
fight
The German fame of old,
By Roman hands inscrolled
As bright beyond all nations else borne down,
Shone round his banished head,
As round the deathless dead
With light bequeathed of one coequal crown:
And now that his and theirs are one
No time shall see the setting of that sovereign
sun.
All this must all time know
While memories ebb and flow
Till out of blind forgetfulness is born
Fame deathless as the day,
When none may think to say
Her light is less than noon and even and morn:
When glories forged in hell-fire fade,
And warrior empires wither in the waste they
made.
When all a forger’s fame
Is shrivelled up in shame;
When all imperial notes of praise and prayer
And hoarse thanksgiving raised
To the abject God they praised
For murderous mercies are but poisonous air;
When Bismarck and his William lie
Low even as he they warred on — damned too
deep to die.
For how should history bid
Their names go free, lie hid,
Stand scathless of her Tacitean brand?
From them forgetfulness,
Too bright a boon to bless
Crime deep as hell, withholds her healing hand;
But while their fame was fresh and rank
The old light of German glory here nor sank
nor shrank.
Here, where all wrongs find aid,
Where all foul strengths are stayed,
Where empire means not evil, here was one
Whose glance, whose smile, whose voice
Bade all their souls rejoice
Who hailed in sight of English sea and sun
A head sublime as theirs who died
For England ere her praise was Freedom’s
crowning pride.
Not even his head shone higher,
Whose only loftiest lyre
Were meet to hail faith pure and proud as his:
A pride all praise must wrong
Less high than soared the song
Wherein the light that was and was not is:
The lyric light whence Milton lit
The darkness of the darkling days that knew
not it
Less high my praise may soar:
But when it lives no more
Silent and fervent in the secret heart
That holds for all time fast
The sense of time long past,
No sense of life will then therein have part.
No thought may speak, no words enshrine,
My thanks to him who gave Mazzini’s hand to
mine.
Our glorious century gone
Beheld no head that shone
More clear across the storm, above the foam,
More steadfast in the fight
Of warring night and light,
True to the truth whose star leads heroes home,
Than his who, loving all things free,
Loved as with English passion of delight our
sea.
The joy of glorious age
To greet the sea’s glad rage
With answering rapture as of bird or boy,
When sundawn thrilled the foam
And bade the sea’s flock home,
Crowned all a foiled heroic life with joy
Bright as the light of living flame,
That glows, a deathless gloriole, round his
deathless name.
1907.
ODE TO MAZZINI
I
A VOICE comes from the far unsleeping years,
An echo from the rayless verge of time,
Harsh, with the gathered weight of kingly
crime,
Whose soul is stained with blood and bloodlike
tears,
And hearts made hard and blind with endless
pain,
And eyes too dim to bear
The light of the free air,
And hands no longer restless in the wonted
chain,
And valiant lives worn out
By silence and the doubt
That comes with hope found weaponless and
vain;
All these cry out to thee,
As thou to Liberty,
All, looking up to thee, take heart and life again.
II
Too long the world has waited. Year on year
Has died in voiceless fear.
Since tyranny began the silent ill,
And Slaughter satiates yet her ravenous will.
Surely the time is near —
The dawn grows wide and clear;
And fiercer beams than pave the steps of day
Pierce all the brightening air
And in some nightly lair
The keen white lightning hungers for his prey,
Against his chain the growing thunder yearns
With hot swift pulses all the silence burns,
And the earth hears, and maddens with delay.
III
Dost thou not hear, thro’ the hushed heart of
night,
The voices wailing for thy help, thy sight,
The souls, that call their lord?
“We want the voice, the sword,
We want the hand to strike, the love to share
The weight we cannot bear;
The soul to point our way, the heart to do and
dare.
We want the unblinded eye,
The spirit pure and high,
And consecrated by enduring care:
For now we dare not meet
The memories of the past;
They wound us with their glories bright and
fleet,
The fame tha
t would not last,
The hopes that were too sweet;
A voice of lamentation
Shakes the high places of the thronèd nation,
The crownless nation sitting wan and bare
Upon the royal seat.”
IV
Too long the world has waited. Day by day
The noiseless feet of murder pass and stain
Palace and prison, street and loveliest plain,
And the slow life of freedom bleeds away.
Still bleached in sun and rain,
Lie the forgotten slain
On bleak slopes of the dismal mountain-range.
Still the wide eagle-wings
Brood o’er the sleep of Kings,
Whose purples shake not in the wind of change.
Still our lost land is beautiful in vain,
Where priests and kings defile with blood and lies
The glory of the inviolable skies;
Still from that loathsome lair
Where crawls the sickening air,
Heavy with poison, stagnant as despair,
Where soul and body moulder in one chain
Of inward-living pain:
From wasted lives, and hopes proved unavailing;
In utterance harsh and strange,
With many a fitful change,
In laughter and in tears,
In triumph and in fears,
The voice of earth goes heavenward for revenge:
And all the children of her dying year
Fill up the unbroken strains
From priestly tongues that scathe with lies and vailing
The Bourbons’ murderous dotard, sick of blood,
To the “How-long” of stricken spirits, wailing
Before the throne of God.
V
Austria! The voice is deepening in thine ears
And art thou still asleep,
Drunken with blood and tears!
A murderer’s rest should hardly be so deep
Till comes the calm unbroken by the years,
And those, whose life crawls on thro’ dying
shame,
A thing made up of lies and fears, more vile
Than aught that lives and bears a hateful
name
For the crowned serpent, skilled in many a wile,
Charmed with the venomous honey of its guile
The guards until they slept,
And only fawned and crept
Till Fortune gave it leave to sting and smile!
Have not the winds of Heaven and the free
waves
A voice to bear the curses of thy slaves
And the loud hatred of the world! O thou
Upon whose shameless brow
The crown is as a brand,
The sceptre trembles in thy trothless hand,
Shrinks not thy soul before the shame it braves,
The gathered anger of a patient land,
The loathing scorn that hardly bears to name
thee?
By all the lies that cannot shame thee,
By all the memories thou must bear
In hushed unspeakable despair;
By the Past that follows thee,
By the Future that shall be
We curse thee by the freedom living still,
We curse thee by the hopes thou canst not kill,
We curse thee in the name of the wronged earth
That gave thy treasons birth.
VI
Out of a court alive with creeping things
A stench has risen to thicken and pollute
The inviolate air of heaven that clad of
yore
Our Italy with light, because these Kings
Gather like wasps about the tainted fruit,
And eat their venomous way into its core,
And soil with hateful hands its golden hue;
Till on the dead branch clings
A festering horror blown with poison-dew;
Then laugh “So Freedom loses her last name
And Italy is shamèd with our shame!”
For blindness holds them still
And lust of craving will:
A mist is on their souls who cannot see
The ominous light, nor hear the fateful
sounds;
Who know not of the glory that shall be,
And was, ere Austria loosed her winged
hounds
These double-beak’d and bloody-plumaged
things,
Whose shadow is the hiding-place of kings.
VII
Behold, even they whose shade is black around,
Whose names make dumb the nations in their
hate,
Tremble to other tyrants; Naples bows
Aghast, and Austria cowers like a scourged
hound
Before the priestly hunters: ’tis their fate,
Whose fear is as a brand-mark on men’s
brows,
Themselves to shrink beneath a fiercer dread;
The might of ancient error
Round royal spirits folds its shroud of terror,
And at a name the imperial soul is dead.
Rome! as from thee the primal curse came forth
So comes the retribution:
As the flushed murderers of the ravening north
Crouch for thine absolution.
Exalt thyself, that love or fear of thee
Hath shamed thine Austrian bondsmen, and
their shame
Avenges the vext spirits of the free,
Repays the trustless lips, the bloody hands,
And all the sin that makes the Austrian name
A bye-word among liars — fit to be
Thy herald, Rome, among the wasted lands!
VIII
For wheresoe’er thou lookest, death is there,
And a slow curse that stains the sacred air:
Such as must hound Italia till she learn
Whereon to lean the weight of reverent
trust
Learn to see God within her, and not bare
Her glories to the ravenous eyes of lust;
Vain of dishonour that proclaims her fair.
Such insolence of listless pride must earn
The scourge of Austria — till mischance in
turn
Defile her eagles with fresh blood and dust.
For tho’ the faint heart burn
In silence: yet a sullen flame is there
Which yet may leap into the sunless air
And gather in the embrace of its wide wings
The shining spoil of kings.
IX
But now the curse lies heavy. Where art thou,
Our Italy, among all these laid low
Too powerless or too desperate to speak —
Thou, robed in purple for a priestly show,
Thou, buffeted and stricken, blind and weak!
Doth not remembrance light thine utter woe?
Thine eyes beyond this Calvary look, altho’
Brute-handed Austria smite thee on the cheek
And her thorns pierce thy forehead, white
and meek;
In lurid mist half-strangled sunbeams pine,
Yet purer than the flame of tainted altars;
And tho’ thy weak hope falters,
It clings not to the desecrated shrine.
Tho’ thy blank eyes look wanly thro’ dull tears,
And thy weak soul is heavy with blind fears,
Yet art thou greater than thy sorrow is,
Yet is thy spirit nobler than of yore,
Knowing the keys thy reverence used to kiss
Were forged for emperors to bow down
before,
Not for free men to worship: So that Faith,
Blind portress of the gate which opens death,
Shall never prate of Freedom any more;
For on a priest�
��s tongue such a word is strange,
And when they laud who did but now revile,
Shall we believe? Rome’s lying lips defile
The graves of heroes, giving us in change
Enough of Saints and Bourbons. Dare ye now
Receive her who speaks pleasant words and
bland
And 9tretches out the blessing of her hand
While the pure blood of freemen stains her
brow?
O dream not of such reconcilement! Be
At least in spirit free
When the great sunrise floods your glorious land.
X
For yet the dawn is lingering white and far,
And dim its guiding star;
There is a sorrow in the speechless air,
And in the sunlight a dull painful glare;
The winds, that fold around
That soft enchanted ground
Their wings of music, sadden into song;
The holy stars await
Some dawn of glimmering fate
In silence — but the time of pain seems long,
But here no comfort stills
This sorrow that o’erclouds the purple hills.
XI
The sun is bright, and fair the foamless sea;
The winds are loud with light and liberty:
But when shall these be free?
These hearts that beat thro’ stifled pain, these
eyes
Strained thro’ dim prison-air toward the free
skies:
When shall their light arise?
XII
Thou! whose best name on earth
Is Love — whose fairest birth
The freedom of the fair world thou hast made;
Whose light in Heaven is life,
Whose rest above our strife —
Whose bright sky overvaults earth’s barren
shade;
Who hearest all ere this weak prayer can rise,
Before whose viewless eyes
Unrolled and far the starry future lies;
Behold what men have done,
What is beneath thy sun —
What stains the sceptred hand, sin lifts to thee
In prayer-like mockery —
What binds the heart Thou madest to be free.
Since we are blind, give light —
Since we are feeble, smite —
How long shall man be scornful in thy sight,
“Fear not — He cares not, or He does not see?”
XIII
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 166
