Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon
Page 29
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Red rose leaves will never make wine;
Between her brows she is grown red,
That was full white in the fields by Tyne.
‘O what is this thing ye have on,
Show me now, sweet daughter of mine?’
‘O father, this is my little son
That I found hid in the sides of Tyne.
‘O what will ye give my son to eat,
Red rose leaves will never make wine?’
‘Fen-water and adder’s meat.’
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The ways are sair fra’ the Till to the Tyne.
‘Or what will ye get my son to wear?’
(Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
‘A weed and a web of nettle’s hair.’
The ways are sair fra’ the Till to the Tyne.
‘Or what will ye take to line his bed?’
(Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
‘Two black stones at the kirkwall’s head.’
The ways are sair fra’ the Till to the Tyne.
‘Or what will ye give my son for land?’
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(Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
‘Three girl’s paces of red sand.’
The ways are sair fra’ the Till to the Tyne.
‘Or what will ye give me for my son?’
(Red rose leaves will never make wine.)
‘Six times to kiss his young mouth on.’
The ways are sair fra’ the Till to the Tyne.
‘But what have ye done with the bearing-bread,
And what have ye made of the washing-wine?
Or where have ye made your bearing-bed,
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To bear a son in the sides of Tyne?’
‘The bearing-bread is soft and new,
There is no soil in the straining wine;
The bed was made between green and blue,
It stands full soft by the sides of Tyne.
‘The fair grass was my bearing-bread,
The well-water my washing-wine;
The low leaves were my bearing-bed,
And that was best in the sides of Tyne.’
‘O daughter, if ye have done this thing,
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I wot the greater grief is mine;
This was a bitter child-bearing,
When ye were got by the sides of Tyne.
‘About the time of sea-swallows
That fly full thick by six and nine,
Ye’ll have my body out of the house,
To bury me by the sides of Tyne.
‘Set nine stones by the wall for twain,’
(Red rose leaves will never make wine)
‘For the bed I take will measure ten.’
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The ways are sair fra’ the Till to the Tyne.
‘Tread twelve girl’s paces out for three,’
(Red rose leaves will never make wine)
‘For the pit I made has taken me.’
The ways are sair fra’ the Till to the Tyne.
The Year of Love
There were four loves that one by one,
Following the seasons and the sun,
Passed over without tears, and fell
Away without farewell.
The first was made of gold and tears,
The next of aspen-leaves and fears,
The third of rose-boughs and rose-roots,
The last love of strange fruits.
These were the four loves faded. Hold
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Some minutes fast the time of gold
When our lips each way clung and clove
To a face full of love.
The tears inside our eyelids met,
Wrung forth with kissing, and wept wet
The faces cleaving each to each
Where the blood served for speech.
The second, with low patient brows
Bound under aspen-coloured boughs
And eyes made strong and grave with sleep
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And yet too weak to weep –
The third, with eager mouth at ease
Fed from late autumn honey, lees
Of scarce gold left in latter cells
With scattered flower-smells –
Hair sprinkled over with spoilt sweet
Of ruined roses, wrists and feet
Slight-swathed, as grassy-girdled sheaves
Hold in stray poppy-leaves –
The fourth, with lips whereon has bled
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Some great pale fruit’s slow colour, shed
From the rank bitten husk whence drips
Faint blood between her lips –
Made of the heat of whole great Junes
Burning the blue dark round their moons
(Each like a mown red marigold)
So hard the flame keeps hold –
These are burnt thoroughly away.
Only the first holds out a day
Beyond these latter loves that were
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Made of mere heat and air.
And now the time is winterly
The first love fades too: none will see,
When April warms the world anew,
The place wherein love grew.
Dedication
1865
The sea gives her shells to the shingle,
The earth gives her streams to the sea;
They are many, but my gift is single,
My verses, the firstfruits of me.
Let the wind take the green and the grey leaf,
Cast forth without fruit upon air;
Take rose-leaf and vine-leaf and bay-leaf
Blown loose from the hair.
The night shakes them round me in legions,
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Dawn drives them before her like dreams;
Time sheds them like snows on strange regions,
Swept shoreward on infinite streams;
Leaves pallid and sombre and ruddy,
Dead fruits of the fugitive years;
Some stained as with wine and made bloody,
And some as with tears.
Some scattered in seven years’ traces,
As they fell from the boy that was then;
Long left among the idle green places,
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Or gathered but now among men;
On seas full of wonder and peril,
Blown white round the capes of the north;
Or in islands where myrtles are sterile
And loves bring not forth.
O daughters of dreams and of stories
That life is not wearied of yet,
Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,
Félise and Yolande and Juliette,
Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you,
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When sleep, that is true or that seems,
Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you,
O daughters of dreams?
They are past as a slumber that passes,
As the dew of a dawn of old time;
More frail than the shadows on glasses,
More fleet than a wave or a rhyme.
As the waves after ebb drawing seaward,
When their hollows are full of the night,
So the birds that flew singing to me-ward
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Recede out of sight.
The songs of dead seasons, that wander
On wings of articulate words;
Lost leaves that the shore-wind may squander,
Light flocks of untameable birds;
Some sang to me dreaming in class-time
And truant in hand as in tongue;
For the youngest were born of boy’s pastime,
The eldest are young.
Is there shelter while life in them lingers,
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Is there hearing for songs that recede,
Tunes touched from a harp with man’s fingers
Or blown with boy’s m
outh in a reed?
Is there place in the land of your labour,
Is there room in your world of delight,
Where change has not sorrow for neighbour
And day has not night?
In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers,
Will you spare not a space for them there
Made green with the running of rivers
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And gracious with temperate air;
In the fields and the turreted cities,
That cover from sunshine and rain
Fair passions and bountiful pities
And loves without stain?
In a land of clear colours and stories,
In a region of shadowless hours,
Where earth has a garment of glories
And a murmur of musical flowers;
In woods where the spring half uncovers
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The flush of her amorous face,
By the waters that listen for lovers,
For these is there place?
For the song-birds of sorrow, that muffle
Their music as clouds do their fire:
For the storm-birds of passion, that ruffle
Wild wings in a wind of desire;
In the stream of the storm as it settles
Blown seaward, borne far from the sun,
Shaken loose on the darkness like petals
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Dropt one after one?
Though the world of your hands be more gracious
And lovelier in lordship of things
Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious
Warm heaven of her imminent wings,
Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,
For the love of old loves and lost times;
And receive in your palace of painting
This revel of rhymes.
Though the seasons of man full of losses
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Make empty the years full of youth,
If but one thing be constant in crosses,
Change lays not her hand upon truth;
Hopes die, and their tombs are for token
That the grief as the joy of them ends
Ere time that breaks all men has broken
The faith between friends.
Though the many lights dwindle to one light,
There is help if the heaven has one;
Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight
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And the earth dispossessed of the sun,
They have moonlight and sleep for repayment,
When, refreshed as a bride and set free,
With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,
Night sinks on the sea.
ATALANTA IN CALYDON
A TRAGEDY
EUR. Fr. Mel. 20 (537)
TO THE MEMORY
OF
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
I NOW DEDICATE, WITH EQUAL AFFECTION, REVERENCE, AND REGRET, A FORM INSCRIBED TO HIM WHILE YET ALIVE IN WORDS WHICH ARE NOW RETAINED BECAUSE THEY WERE LAID BEFORE HIM; AND TO WHICH, RATHER THAN CANCEL THEM, I HAVE ADDED SUCH OTHERS AS WERE EVOKED BY THE NEWS OF HIS DEATH: THAT THOUGH LOSING THE PLEASURE I MAY NOT LOSE THE HONOUR OF INSCRIBING IN FRONT OF MY WORK THE HIGHEST OF CONTEMPORARY NAMES.
THE ARGUMENT
Althæa, daughter of Thestius and Eurythemis, queen of Calydon, being with child of Meleager her first-born son, dreamed that she brought forth a brand of burning; and upon his birth came the three Fates and prophesied of him three things, namely these; that he should have great strength of his hands, and good fortune in this life, and that he should live no longer when the brand then in the fire were consumed: wherefore his mother plucked it forth and kept it by her. And the child being a man grown sailed with Jason after the fleece of gold, and won himself great praise of all men living; and when the tribes of the north and west made war upon Ætolia, he fought against their army and scattered it. But Artemis, having at the first stirred up these tribes to war against Œneus king of Calydon, because he had offered sacrifice to all the gods saving her alone, but her he had forgotten to honour, was yet more wroth because of the destruction of this army, and sent upon the land of Calydon a wild boar which slew many and wasted all their increase, but him could none slay, and many went against him and perished. Then were all the chief men of Greece gathered together, and among them Atalanta daughter of Iasius the Arcadian, a virgin; for whose sake Artemis let slay the boar, seeing she favoured the maiden greatly; and Meleager having despatched it gave the spoil thereof to Atalanta, as one beyond measure enamoured of her; but the brethren of Althæa his mother, Toxeus and Plexippus, with such others as misliked that she only should bear off the praise whereas many had borne the labour, laid wait for her to take away her spoil; but Meleager fought against them and slew them: whom when Althæa their sister beheld and knew to be slain of her son, she waxed for wrath and sorrow like as one mad, and taking the brand whereby the measure of her son’s life was meted to him, she cast it upon a fire; and with the wasting thereof his life likewise wasted away, that being brought back to his father’s house he died in a brief space; and his mother also endured not long after for very sorrow; and this was his end, and the end of that hunting.
THE PERSONS
CHIEF HUNTSMAN
CHORUS
ALTHÆA
MELEAGER
ŒNEUS
ATALANTA
TOXEUS
PLEXIPPUS
HERALD
MESSENGER
SECOND MESSENGER
ÆSCH. Cho. 602–612.
ATALANTA IN CALYDON
CHIEF HUNTSMAN
Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars
Now folded in the flowerless fields of heaven,
Goddess whom all gods love with threefold heart,
Being treble in thy divided deity,
A light for dead men and dark hours, a foot
Swift on the hills as morning, and a hand
To all things fierce and fleet that roar and range
Mortal, with gentler shafts than snow or sleep;
Hear now and help and lift no violent hand,
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But favourable and fair as thine eye’s beam
Hidden and shown in heaven; for I all night
Amid the king’s hounds and the hunting men
Have wrought and worshipped toward thee; nor shall man
See goodlier hounds or deadlier edge of spears;
But for the end, that lies unreached at yet
Between the hands and on the knees of gods.
O fair-faced sun, killing the stars and dews
And dreams and desolation of the night!
Rise up, shine, stretch thine hand out, with thy bow
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Touch the most dimmest height of trembling heaven,
And burn and break the dark about thy ways,
Shot through and through with arrows; let thine hair
Lighten as flame above that flameless shell
Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world
And thy lips kindle with swift beams; let earth