The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic
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THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY
MURIEL.
Be still, my heart! Grown patient with thine ache, Thou shouldst be dumb, yet needs must speak, or break. The world is empty now that he is gone.AGLAE.
Ay, sweetheart!MURIEL.
None was like him, no, not one. From other men he stood apart, alone In honor spotless as unfallen snow. Nothing all evil was it his to know; His charity still found some germ, some spark Of light in natures that seemed wholly dark. He read men's souls; the lowly and the high Moved on the self-same level in his eye. Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offence he spake the word he meant— His word no trick of tact or courtly art, But the white flowering of the noble heart. Careless he was of much the world counts gain, Careless of self, too simple to be vain, Yet strung so finely that for conscience-sake He would have gone like Cranmer to the stake. I saw—how could I help but love? And you—AGLAE.
At this perfection did I worship too . . . 'Twas this that stabbed me. Heed not what I say! I meant it not, my wits are gone astray, With all that is and has been. No, I lie— Had he been less perfection, happier I!MURIEL.
Strange words and wild! 'Tis the distracted mind Breathes them, not you, and I no meaning find.AGLAE.
Yet 'twere as plain as writing on a scroll Had you but eyes to read within my soul.— How a grief hidden feeds on its own mood, Poisons the healthful currents of the blood With bitterness, and turns the heart to stone! I think, in truth, 'twere better to make moan, And so be done with it. This many a year, Sweetheart, have I laughed lightly and made cheer, Pierced through with sorrow! Then the widowed one With sorrowfullest eyes beneath the sun, Faltered, irresolute, and bending low Her head, half whispered, Dear, how could you know? What masks are faces!—yours, unread by me These seven long summers; mine, so placidly Shielding my woe! No tremble of the lip, No cheek's quick pallor let our secret slip! Mere players we, and she that played the queen, Now in her homespun, looks how poor and mean! How shall I say it, how find words to tell What thing it was for me made earth a hell That else had been my heaven! 'Twould blanch your cheek Were I to speak it. Nay, but I will speak, Since like two souls at compt we seem to stand, Where nothing may be hidden. Hold my hand, But look not at me! Noble 'twas, and meet, To hide your heart, nor fling it at his feet To lie despised there. Thus saved you our pride And that white honor for which earls have died. You were not all unhappy, loving so! I with a difference wore my weight of woe. My lord was he. It was my cruel lot, My hell, to love him—for he loved me not! Then came a silence. Suddenly like death The truth flashed on them, and each held her breath— A flash of light whereby they both were slain, She that was loved and she that loved in vain!THE LAST CAESAR
1851-1870I Now there was one who came in later days To play at Emperor: in the dead of night Stole crown and sceptre, and stood forth to light In sudden purple. The dawn's straggling rays Showed Paris fettered, murmuring in amaze, With red hands at her throat—a piteous sight. Then the new Caesar, stricken with affright At his own daring, shrunk from public gaze In the Elysee, and had lost the day But that around him flocked his birds of prey, Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed. 'Twixt hope and fear behold great Caesar hang! Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang Through the rotunda of the Invalides.II What if the boulevards, at set of sun, Reddened, but not with sunset's kindly glow? What if from quai and square the murmured woe Swept heavenward, pleadingly? The prize was won, A kingling made and Liberty undone. No Emperor, this, like him awhile ago, But his Name's shadow; that one struck the blow Himself, and sighted the street-sweeping gun! This was a man of tortuous heart and brain, So warped he knew not his own point of view— The master of a dark, mysterious smile. And there he plotted, by the storied Seine And in the fairy gardens of St. Cloud, The Sphinx that puzzled Europe, for awhile.III I see him as men saw him once—a face Of true Napoleon pallor; round the eyes The wrinkled care; mustache spread pinion-wise, Pointing his smile with odd sardonic grace As wearily he turns him in his place, And bends before the hoarse Parisian cries— Then vanishes, with glitter of gold-lace And trumpets blaring to the patient skies. Not thus he vanished later! On his path The Furies waited for the hour and man, Foreknowing that they waited not in vain. Then fell the day, O day of dreadful wrath! Bow down in shame, O crimson-girt Sedan! Weep, fair Alsace! weep, loveliest Lorraine! So mused I, sitting underneath the trees In that old garden of the Tuileries, Watching the dust of twilight sifting down Through chestnut boughs just toucht with autumn's brown— Not twilight yet, but that illusive bloom Which holds before the deep-etched shadows come; For still the garden stood in golden mist, Still, like a river of molten amethyst, The Seine slipt through its spans of fretted stone, And, near the grille that once fenced in a throne, The fountains still unbraided to the day The unsubstantial silver of their spray. A spot to dream in, love in, waste one's hours! Temples and palaces, and gilded towers, And fairy terraces!—and yet, and yet Here in her woe came Marie Antoinette, Came sweet Corday, Du Barry with shrill cry, Not learning from her betters how to die! Here, while the Nations watched with bated breath, Was held the saturnalia of Red Death! For where that slim Egyptian shaft uplifts Its point to catch the dawn's and sunset's drifts Of various gold, the busy Headsman stood. . . . Place de la Concorde—no, the Place of Blood! And all so peaceful now! One cannot bring Imagination to accept the thing. Lies, all of it! some dreamer's wild romance— High-hearted, witty, laughter-loving France! In whose brain was it that the legend grew Of Maenads shrieking in this avenue, Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard, Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard! What ruder sound this soft air ever smote Than a bird's twitter or a bugle's note? What darker crimson ever splashed these walks Than that of rose-leaves dropping from the stalks? And yet—what means that charred and broken wall, That sculptured marble, splintered, like to fall, Looming among the trees there? . . . And you say This happened, as it were, but yesterday? And here the Commune stretched a barricade, And there the final desperate stand was made? Such things have been? How all things change and fade! How little lasts in this brave world below! Love dies; hate cools; the Caesars come and go; Gaunt Hunter fattens, and the weak grow strong. Even Republics are not here for long! Ah, who can tell what hour may bring the doom, The lighted torch, the tocsin's heavy boom!IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poet's Corner."
DEAN STANLEY.
TREAD softly here; the sacredest of tombs Are those that hold your Poets. Kings and queens Are facile accidents of Time and Chance. Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there! But he who from the darkling mass of men Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne To finer ether, and becomes a voice For all the voiceless, God anointed him: His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine. Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread. Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns Lies richer dust than ever nature hid Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart, Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand— The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul. How vain and all ignoble seems that greed To him who stands in this dim claustral air With these most sacred ashes at his feet! This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this— The spark that once illumed it lingers still. O ever-hallowed spot of English earth! If the unleashed and happy spirit of man Have option to revisit our dull globe, What august Shades at midnight here convene In the miraculous sessions of the moon, When the great pulse of London faintly throbs, And one by one the stars in heaven pale!ALEC YEATON'S SON
GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720 The wind it wailed, the wind it moaned, And the white caps flecked the sea; "An' I would to God," the skipper groaned, "I had not my boy with me!" Snug in the stern-sheets, little John Laughed as the scud swept by; But the skipper's sunburnt cheek grew wan As he watched the wicked sky. "Would he were at his mother's side!" And the skipper's eyes were dim. "Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide, What would become of him! "For me—my muscles are as steel, For me let hap what may; I might make shift upon the keel Until the break o' day. "But he, he is so weak and small, So young, scarce learned to stand— O pitying Father of us all, I trust him in Thy hand! "For Thou, who markest from on high A sparrow's fall—each one!— Surely, O Lord, thou'lt have an eye On Alec Yeaton's son!" Then, helm hard-port; right straight he sailed Towards the headland light: The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed, And black, black fell the night. Then burst a storm to make one quail Though housed from winds and waves— They who could tell about that gale Must rise from watery graves! Sudden it came, as sudden went; Ere half the night was sped, The winds were hushed, the waves were spent, And the stars shone overhead. Now, as the morning mist grew thin, The folk on Gloucester shore Saw a little figure floating in Secure, on a broken oar! Up rose the cry, "A wreck! a wreck! Pull, mates, and waste no breath!"— They knew it, though 'twas but a speck Upon the edge of death! Long did they marvel in the town At God his strange decree, That let the stalwart skipper drown And the little child go free!AT THE FUNERAL OF A MINOR POET
[One of the Bearers soliloquizes:]
. . . Room in your heart for him, O Mother Earth, Who loved each flower and leaf that made you fair, And sang your praise in verses manifold And delicate, with here and there a line From end to end in blossom like a bough The May breathes on, so rich it was. Some thought The workmanship more costly than the thing Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments Found at Mycaene. And yet Nature's self Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass, Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush, Lavishing endless patience. He was born Artist, not artisan, which some few saw And many dreamed not. As he wrote no odes When Croesus wedded or Maecenas died, And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows, He missed the glare that gilds more facile men— A twilight poet, groping quite alone, Belated, in a sphere where every nest Is emptied of its music and its wings. Not great his gift; yet we can poorly spare Even his slight perfection in an age Of limping triolets and tame rondeaux. He had at least ideals, though unreached, And heard, far off, immortal harmonies, Such as fall coldly on our ear to-day. The mighty Zolaistic Movement now Engrosses us—a miasmatic breath Blown from the slums. We paint life as it is, The hideous side of it, with careful pains, Making a god of the dull Commonplace. For have we not the old gods overthrown And set up strangest idols? We could clip Imagination's wing and kill delight, Our sole art being to leave nothing out That renders art offensive. Not for us Madonnas leaning from their starry thrones Ineffable, nor any heaven-wrought dream Of sculptor or of poet; we prefer Such nightmare visions as in morbid brains Take shape and substance, thoughts that taint the air And make all life unlovely. Will it last? Beauty alone endures from age to age, From age to age endures, handmaid of God. Poets who walk with her on earth go hence Bearing a talisman. You bury one, With his hushed music, in some Potter's Field; The snows and rains blot out his very name, As he from life seems blotted: through Time's glass Slip the invisible and magic sands That mark the century, then falls a day The world is suddenly conscious of a flower, Imperishable, ever to be prized, Sprung from the mould of a forgotten grave. 'Tis said the seeds wrapt up among the balms And hieroglyphics of Egyptian kings Hold strange vitality, and, planted, grow After the lapse of thrice a thousand years. Some day, perchance, some unregarded note Of our poor friend here—some sweet minor chord That failed to lure our more accustomed ear— May witch the fancy of an unborn age. Who knows, since seeds have such tenacity? Meanwhile he's dead, with scantiest laurel won And little of our Nineteenth Century gold. So, take him, Earth, and this his mortal part, With that shrewd alchemy thou hast, transmute To flower and leaf in thine unending Springs!BATUSCHKA.<1>
From yonder gilded minaret Beside the steel-blue Neva set, I faintly catch, from time to time, The sweet, aerial midnight chime— "God save the Tsar!" Above the ravelins and the moats Of the white citadel it floats; And men in dungeons far beneath Listen, and pray, and gnash their teeth— "God save the Tsar!" The soft reiterations sweep Across the horror of their sleep, <1> "Little Father," or "Dear Little Father," a term of endearment applied to the Tsar in Russian folk-song. As if some daemon in his glee Were mocking at their misery— "God save the Tsar!" In his Red Palace over there, Wakeful, he needs must hear the prayer. How can it drown the broken cries Wrung from his children's agonies?— "God save the Tsar!" Father they called him from of old— Batuschka! . . . How his heart is cold! Wait till a million scourged men Rise in their awful might, and then— God save the Tsar!ACT V
[Midnight.]
First, two white arms that held him very close, And ever closer as he drew him back Reluctantly, the loose gold-colored hair A thousand delicate fibres reaching out Still to detain him; then some twenty steps Of iron staircase winding round and down, And ending in a narrow gallery hung With Gobelin tapestries—Andromeda Rescued by Perseus, and the sleek Diana With her nymphs bathing; at the farther end A door that gave upon a starlit grove Of citron and clipt palm-trees; then a path As bleached as moonlight, with the shadow of leaves Stamped black upon it; next a vine-clad length Of solid masonry; and last of all A Gothic archway packed with night, and then— A sudden gleaming dagger through his heart.TENNYSON
I Shakespeare and Milton—what third blazoned name Shall lips of after-ages link to these? His who, beside the wild encircling seas, Was England's voice, her voice with one acclaim, For threescore years; whose word of praise was fame, Whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities.II What strain was his in that Crimean war? A bugle-call in battle; a low breath, Plaintive and sweet, above the fields of death! So year by year the music rolled afar, From Euxine wastes to flowery Kandahar, Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath.III Others shall have their little space of time, Their proper niche and bust, then fade away Into the darkness, poets of a day; But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme, Thou shalt not pass! Thy fame in every clime On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway.IV Waft me this verse across the winter sea, Through light and dark, through mist and blinding sleet, O winter winds, and lay it at his feet; Though the poor gift betray my poverty, At his feet lay it: it may chance that he Will find no gift, where reverence is, unmeet.THE SHIPMAN'S TALE
Listen, my masters! I speak naught but truth. From dawn to dawn they drifted on and on, Not knowing whither nor to what dark end. Now the North froze them, now the hot South scorched. Some called to God, and found great comfort so; Some gnashed their teeth with curses, and some laughed An empty laughter, seeing they yet lived, So sweet was breath between their foolish lips. Day after day the same relentless sun, Night after night the same unpitying stars. At intervals fierce lightnings tore the clouds, Showing vast hollow spaces, and the sleet Hissed, and the torrents of the sky were loosed. From time to time a hand relaxed its grip, And some pale wretch slid down into the dark With stifled moan, and transient horror seized The rest who waited, knowing what must be. At every turn strange shapes reached up and clutched The whirling wreck, held on awhile, and then Slipt back into that blackness whence they came. Ah, hapless folk, to be so tost and torn, So racked by hunger, fever, fire, and wave, And swept at last into the nameless void— Frail girls, strong men, and mothers with their babes!And was none saved?My masters, not a soul! O shipman, woful, woful is thy tale! Our hearts are heavy and our eyes are dimmed. What ship is this that suffered such ill fate?What ship, my masters? Know ye not?—The World!"I VEX ME NOT WITH BROODING ON THE YEARS"
I vex me not with brooding on the years That were ere I drew breath: why should I then Distrust the darkness that may fall again When life is done? Perchance in other spheres— Dead planets—I once tasted mortal tears, And walked as now among a throng of men, Pondering things that lay beyond my ken, Questioning death, and solacing my fears. Ofttimes indeed strange sense have I of this, Vague memories that hold me with a spell, Touches of unseen lips upon my brow, Breathing some incommunicable bliss! In years foregone, O Soul, was all not well? Still lovelier life awaits thee. Fear not thou!MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS
I One by one they go Into the unknown dark— Star-lit brows of the brave, Voices that drew men's souls. Rich is the land, O Death! Can give you dead like our dead!— Such as he from whose hand The magic web of romance Slipt, and the art was lost! Such as he who erewhile— The last of the Titan brood— With his thunder the Senate shook; Or he who, beside the Charles, Untoucht of envy or hate, Tranced the world with his song; Or that other, that gray-eyed seer Who in pastoral Concord ways With Plato and Hafiz walked.II Not of these was the man Whose wraith, through the mists of night, Through the shuddering wintry stars, Has passed to eternal morn. Fit were the moan of the sea And the clashing of cloud on cloud For the passing of that soul! Ever he faced the storm! No weaver of rare romance, No patient framer of laws, No maker of wondrous rhyme, No bookman wrapt in his dream. His was the voice that rang In the fight like a bugle-call, And yet could be tender and low As when, on a night in June, The hushed wind sobs in the pines. His was the eye that flashed With a sabre's azure gleam, Pointing to heights unwon!III Not for him were these days Of clerkly and sluggish calm— To the petrel the swooping gale! Austere he seemed, but the hearts Of all men beat in his breast; No fetter but galled his wrist, No wrong that was not his own. What if those eloquent lips Curled with the old-time scorn? What if in needless hours His quick hand closed on the hilt? 'Twas the smoke from the well-won fields That clouded the veteran's eyes. A fighter this to the end! Ah, if in coming times Some giant evil arise, And Honor falter and pale, His were a name to conjure with! God send his like again!INTERLUDES
ECHO-SONG
A MOOD
A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness— Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness; A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence; A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone existence; A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken— Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when a blossomed bough is broken.GUILIELMUS REX
The folk who lived in Shakespeare's day And saw that gentle figure pass By London Bridge, his frequent way— They little knew what man he was. The pointed beard, the courteous mien, The equal port to high and low, All this they saw or might have seen— But not the light behind the brow! The doublet's modest gray or brown, The slender sword-hilt's plain device, What sign had these for prince or clown? Few turned, or none, to scan him twice. Yet 'twas the king of England's kings! The rest with all their pomps and trains Are mouldered, half-remembered things— 'Tis he alone that lives and reigns!"PILLARED ARCH AND SCULPTURED TOWER"
Pillared arch and sculptured tower Of Ilium have had their hour; The dust of many a king is blown On the winds from zone to zone; Many a warrior sleeps unknown. Time and Death hold each in thrall, Yet is Love the lord of all; Still does Helen's beauty stir Because a poet sang of her!THRENODY
I Upon your hearse this flower I lay. Brief be your sleep! You shall be known When lesser men have had their day: Fame blossoms where true seed is sown, Or soon or late, let Time wrong what it may.II Unvext by any dream of fame, You smiled, and bade the world pass by: But I—I turned, and saw a name Shaping itself against the sky— White star that rose amid the battle's flame!III Brief be your sleep, for I would see Your laurels—ah, how trivial now To him must earthly laurel be Who wears the amaranth on his brow! How vain the voices of mortality!