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I
THE SOVEREIGNS
THEY who create rob death of half its stings; | |
| They, from the dim inane and vague opaque | |
| Of nothingness, build with their thought, and make | |
| Enduring entities and beauteous things; | |
| They are the Poets—they give airy wings | 5 |
| To shapes marmorean; or they overtake | |
| The Ideal with the brush, or, soaring, wake | |
| Far in the rolling clouds their glorious strings. | |
| The Poet is the only potentate; | |
| His sceptre reaches o’er remotest zones; | 10 |
| His thought remembered and his golden tones | |
| Shall, in the ears of nations uncreate, | |
| Roll on for ages and reverberate | |
| When Kings are dust beside forgotten thrones. | |
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MILTON
HIS feet were shod with music and had wings | 15 |
| Like Hermes: far upon the peaks of song | |
| His sandals sounded silverly along; | |
| The dull world blossomed into beauteous things | |
| Where’er he trod; and Heliconian springs | |
| Gushed from the rocks he touched; round him a throng | 20 |
| Of fair invisibles, seraphic, strong, | |
| Struck Orphean murmurs out of golden strings; | |
| But he, spreading keen pinions for a white | |
| Immensity of radiance and of peace, | |
| Up-looming to the Empyrean infinite, | 25 |
| Far through ethereal fields, and zenith seas, | |
| High, with strong wing-beats and with eagle ease, | |
| Soared in a solitude of glorious light! | |
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II
THE SHIP
I LAY on Delos of the Cyclades | |
| At evening, on a cape of golden land; | 30 |
| The blind Bard’s book was open in my hand, | |
| There where the Cyclops makes the Odyssey’s | |
| Calm pages tremble as Odysseus flees. | |
| Then, stately, like a mirage o’er the sand, | |
| A phantom ship across the sunset strand | 35 |
| Rose out of dreams and clave the purple seas; | |
| Straight on that city’s bastions did she run— | |
| Whose toppling turrets on their donjons hold | |
| Bells that to mortal ears have never tolled— | |
| Then drifted down the gateways of the sun | 40 |
| With fading pennon and with gonfalon, | |
| And cast her anchors in the pools of gold. | |
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TO AN OLD VENETIAN WINE-GLASS
DAUGHTER of Venice, fairer than the moon! | |
| From thy dark casement leaning, half divine, | |
| And to the lutes of love that low repine | 45 |
| Across the midnight of the hushed lagoon | |
| Listening with languor in a dreamful swoon— | |
| On such a night as this thou didst entwine | |
| Thy lily fingers round this glass of wine, | |
| And clasped thy climbing lover—none too soon! | 50 |
| Thy lover left, but ere he left thy room | |
| From this he drank, his warm lips at the brim; | |
| Thou kissed it as he vanished in the gloom; | |
| That kiss, because of thy true love for him— | |
| Long, long ago, when thou wast in thy bloom,— | 55 |
| Hath left it ever rosy round the rim! | |
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III
THESEUS AND ARIADNE
Thes. Nay, I have loved thee! | |
| Ari. Thou hast loved, didst say? | |
| Thes. I loved thee well at Crete. | |
| Ari. Lov’st me no more? | 60 |
| Thes. Ah! who can hold the wave upon the shore? | |
| Ari. Thou, if thou wouldst; and, oh! is that the way | |
| Thou speak’st to me, who gave thee, on that day, | |
| My flower of life? | |
| Thes. My ship is ready—sail and oar!… | 65 |
| Ari. Did I not save thee from the Minotaur,— | |
| And wilt thou leave me? | |
| Thes. Who can make love stay? … | |
| Wax is my heart and takes full easily | |
| The last print on ’t. Past love is past recall. | 70 |
| Adieu!… Love has the helm—he guides, not we … | |
| Ari. Beloved Traitor! May thy black sail pall | |
| Deep in the brine, thee, and thy maidens all!… | |
| Ye gods! he leaves me and my babe to be! | |
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IV
TO THE MILKWEED
NONE call thee flower!… I will not so malign | 75 |
| The satin softness of thy plumëd seed, | |
| Nor so profane thee as to call thee weed, | |
| Thou tuft of ermine down, fit to entwine | |
| About a queen; or, fitter still, to line | |
| The nest of birds of strange exotic breed. | 80 |
| The orient cunning, and the somnolent speed | |
| Of looms of dusky Ind weave not so fine | |
| A gossamer … Ah me! could he who sings, | |
| On such adventurous and aërial wings | |
| Far over lands and undiscovered seas | 85 |
| Waft the dark seeds of his imaginings, | |
| That, flowering, men might say, Lo! look on these | |
| Wild Weeds of Song—not all ungracious things! | |
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TO A MAPLE SEED
ART thou some wingëd Sprite, that, fluttering round, | |
| Exhausted on the grass at last doth lie, | 90 |
| Or wayward Fay? Ah, weakling, by and by | |
| Thyself shalt grow a giant, strong and sound, | |
| When, like Antaeus, thou dost touch the ground. | |
| O happy Seed! it is not thine to die; | |
| Thy wings bestow thine immortality, | 95 |
| And thou canst bridge the deep and dark profound. | |
| I hear the ecstatic song the wild bird flings, | |
| In future summers, from thy leafy head! | |
| What hopes! what fears! what rapturous sufferings! | |
| What burning words of love will there be said! | 100 |
| What sobs—what tears! what passionate whisperings! | |
| Under thy boughs, when I, alas! am dead. | |
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V
SESOSTRIS
SOLE Lord of Lords and very King of Kings, | |
| He sits within the desert, carved in stone; | |
| Inscrutable, colossal, and alone, | 105 |
| And ancienter than memory of things. | |
| Graved on his front the sacred beetle clings; | |
| Disdain sits on his lips; and in a frown | |
| Scorn lives upon his forehead for a crown. | |
| The affrighted ostrich dare not dust her wings | 110 |
| Anear this Presence. The long caravan’s | |
| Dazed camels stop, and mute the Bedouins stare. | |
| This symbol of past power more than man’s | |
| Presages doom. Kings look—and Kings despair: | |
| Their sceptres tremble in their jewelled hands, | 115 |
| And dark thrones totter in the baleful air! | |
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THE DOORS
AS through the Void we went I heard his plumes | |
| Strike on the darkness. It was passing sweet | |
| To hold his hand and feel that thin air beat | |
| Against our pinions as we winged those glooms | 120 |
| Of Ebon, through which Atropos still dooms | |
| Each soul to pass. Then presently our feet | |
| Found footing on a ledge of dark retreat, | |
| And opposite appeared two doors of tombs | |
| Seen by the star upon the angel’s head | 125 |
| That made dim twilight; there I caught my breath: | |
| “Why pause we here?” The angel answering said, | |
| “The journey ends. These are the Doors of Death; | |
| Lo, now they open, inward, for the dead.” | |
| And then a Voice,—“Who next that entereth?” | 130 |
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THE FLIGHT
UPON a cloud among the stars we stood. | |
| The angel raised his hand and looked and said, | |
| “Which world, of all yon starry myriad, | |
| Shall we make wing to?” The still solitude | |
| Became a harp whereon his voice and mood | 135 |
| Made spheral music round his haloed head. | |
| I spake—for then I had not long been dead— | |
| “Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood | |
| A moment on these orbs ere I decide … | |
| What is yon lower star that beauteous shines | 140 |
| And with soft splendor now incarnadines | |
| Our wings?—There would I go and there abide.” | |
| He smiled as one who some child’s thought divines: | |
| “That is the world where yesternight you died.” | |
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FIAT LUX
THEN that dread angel near the awful throne, | 145 |
| Leaving the seraphs ranged in flaming tiers, | |
| Winged his dark way through those unpinioned spheres, | |
| And on the void’s black beetling edge, alone, | |
| Stood with raised wings, and listened for the tone | |
| Of God’s command to reach his eager ears, | 150 |
| While Chaos wavered, for she felt her years | |
| Unsceptred now in that convulsive zone. | |
| Night trembled. And, as one hath oft beheld | |
| A lamp lit in a vase light up its gloom, | |
| So God’s voice lighted him, from heel to plume: | 155 |
| Let there be Light, It said, and Darkness, quelled, | |
| Shrunk noiseless backward in her monstrous womb | |
| Through vasts unwinnowed by the wings of eld! | |
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