Classic Poem

" Throughout this wholesome air, Tiresias,
Refreshed and cleansed by rinsing midnight rain,
On every treetop, roof, or drifting cloud,
I hear the songsters twit and trill their lays
In notes so high and variably attuned
The morning's beauty brightens with their joy.
Altho' responsive to their dainty songs,
To me they are as babblings of a babe
That laughs for gladness, but can tell no more;
Disclosing no intelligible tale,
As unto thee, Tiresias, who hear'st
Of innocent sweet love, and woodland wiles
Where sunlight plays within illumined shade. "

" My well-loved Mother, as the Gods revered!
Truth brightly shines in jealous secrecy,
And clouds hang heavy round her dwelling place,
But oft a momentary ray escapes,
And tempts conjecture thro' the tangled gloom,
We must await fair breezes to dispel.
Thus checked perforce, tho' happily I scan
The tales these songsters to each other sing,
I can translate them into words of speech
But haltingly, and with imperfect tongue,
That sounds as twittering noised at early dawn
To lusty warblings in the risen day. "

" Describe, Tiresias, tho' in halting speech,
This linnet's rapturous trilling overhead;
His throbbing throat just seen among the leaves. "

" To his blithe mate, shaking her feathers free,
After a lengthened sitting on her nest,
He tells the fury of the storm, and sings,

" " I saw thee, as the storm grew nigh,
Half unclose a dreamy eye
And let a moonbeam enter there.
Ah, was it fair
The moon should dare
To let her beams thus peer and pry!

" " And when the storm grew nearer still,
Thee I saw uplift thy bill
And sink down deeper in the nest;
Not for the rest
To thy warm breast,
But saving thy loved eggs from chill!

" " The raging storm upon us came;
Thunder-voiced, in rosy flame
A vivid instantaneous glow;
When up, down low,
Then to and fro
Wildly it swayed thy shivering frame.

" " Within thy nest I watched thee cling,
Stretching either side a wing;
Thy fragile treasure fast concealing!
Thunder pealing,
Fire revealing
How fiercely swirling branches swing!

" " The tempest, fearing bright-faced day,
Fled in gusty sighs away;
Ah, yet wert thou affright, or shy,
And did'st not vie
With me and fly
To sit and dance our favourite spray!" "

" The fretful creature, jealous of the moon,
Could never understand, Tiresias,
That in no terror for herself she clung,
But over-anxious for the babes unhatched! "

" Showing, dear Mother, tho' the tale is told,
It carries only vague significance,
Save thro' experience and sympathy
At easy ranges aye these triflers flit
Round bush and tree; and, haunting in the spring
Our upper lands, weave unregarded nests,
And utter little songs from hour to hour.
" On yestereven, ere the sun went down,
I scaled the crags, for ever sacred, where
Pallas Athena's voice foretold my doom
I lay and meditated feats unwrought
By daring men of parents yet unborn:
As one, while musing, sees a city rise,
Whose paven streets slope down to massive quays;
The rock, meanwhile, whence hewn the stone must come,
For temples, towers, and palaces superb,
Untouched as yet of chisel, pick, or bar.
A city airy as a morning dream,
That grows to shape and harbours multitudes!
While thus I saw this phantom populace,
Urging alway in ceaseless ebb and flow,
I heard a haughty pair of eagles croon;
In trouble for a nestling that had fallen,
Breaking its unfledged winglet on the rock,
And marked for death; as, thralled with damaged limb;
Tho' haply it might forage and escape,
Escape were hopeless, should perchance it catch
A shepherd's eye; as shepherds ever kill,
Or maim with cruel torture creatures rare.
" This danger lit ungovernable ire
In those grim parents: loudly then cried one:

" " Woe to these sheepclad, hard, unsatisfied;
Who stintless slay all born of earth and tide;
Pursuing savagely through day and night,
For food and raiment less than for delight.

" " They grow not feathers, hair, nor hardened scales,
And naked are unsightly, lacking tails.
The veils they wear are torn from slaughtered beasts,
Whose mangled carcases they burn for feasts.

" " They crouch bewildered when the tempest flies;
They hear in thunder threats and mockeries!
But stalk and stare on every tranquil day,
As they would dare the sun to disobey!

" " When hunger shrinks their empty maws in pain,
Like wolves, or rats, or monsters of the main,
Should any chance or purpose make him bleed,
Straightway they seize and on their brother feed.

" " But late, within a boat, of oars unfinned,
Three were borne far from shore by stress of wind,
Adrift without a sail. Two wore their prime;
The other lacked some years of mating time.

" " With foodless days and weakness grew desire
To quell the hunger gnawing them like fire;
And where the famished boy exhausted lay,
I saw their glances ravenously play,

" " Then meet each other's; when the boldest spake,
" We must not let him die ere he awake,
For his good blood we lose if he go dead: "
" Then wake and eat him now, " the other said.

" " Refreshed, consoled, they with a cheery laugh
The boy divided, taking each a half;
Then gorged him day by day till all was gone,
And only bones left bleaching in the sun.

" " Then covertly, as hunger gnawed again,
And nought but dry white bones between the twain,
They watched each others' eyes with steadfast gaze,
But neither spake. And thus for many days

" " Neither dared sleep, the other open-eyed!
Ofttimes would they so gradually slide
Near to each other, each would start and grip
His weapon's haft, and slowly backward slip.

" " Hunger and watch were weighted agony;
They both were cursed; and neither dared to die
And end his torture, for the sickening dread
His foe would gladden on his flesh when dead.

" " Made blind by watching, deafened by fell hate,
They cared for nothing but each other's fate;
Nor saw a high-decked vessel by them pause,
Nor heard the sailors shout, and ask the cause

" " Those bones were lying there. Vaguely they clutched,
And fell down both aswoon when they were touched.
At length in harbour, carried by the gale,
They told the citizens their ghastly tale.

" " Tears ran amain in pity for their crime,
And dreadful issue during famine time.
No pity for the murdered boy was raised,
But all his murderers' endurance praised.

" " Laws rule the sheepclad; law must be obeyed!
Forth sounds their hollow judgment, long delayed,
" Both must a little while in durance be,
Then, as the winds of heaven, may both go free! "

" The other eagle snapped her angry beak,
" I grieve these sheepclad know the use of bows,
Or we might rule them as befits their worth!"
Scoffed she, and flapped her widespread wings. I heard
Both then wing inland to the mountains far. "

" 'Tis well, Tiresias, to learn how men's
Free actions falter seen by visions clear:
But fondly held illusions thus assailed,
May make us wiser tho' they make us sad.
Those solitary birds of kingly strength,
Watchful and sternly tender to their young,
Complete and perfect in the world they range,
Can feel but scanty tolerance for sin.
" Now loved one, read me those rich melodies,
Thrown unrestrained, of yonder nightingales,
Singing in rival ardour for her love
Who waits, bright-eyed, with keen attentive ear. "

" " O could I mightily stretch wings of power,
And beat with tempests thro' the sapphire sky,
To gather every sight
Seen by enraptured eagles soaring high!
Then thro' thy dreams at night,
When moonbeams glorify the slumbering hour,
To thee in consecrated apple-flower,
Warble the treasures of my stored delight!

" " How Iris strode athwart a stormy wood
And flushed with magic hues each trembling tree;
And from the mountain shone
Brighter than princess in array, when she
Before her father's throne,
Outshining all around her, wondering stood
'Mid dames and damosels, in timorous mood
Lest he, her chosen, failed to claim his own!

" " Or I would, sunrise-warmed, and passion-strong,
Flit near and supplicate thee, Love, for grace,
Of thine accorded smile.
But should'st thou coldly from me turn thy face,
I would in gloom the while
There soothe an aching heart in lonely song,
In utterance swifter as the sorrows throng
On me, poor outcast of a flowerless isle!

" " And should some falcon peering thro' the day,
In search of plunder for his greedy bill,
Perchance my Love espy,
With startling cries would I the coppice fill,
That her irradiant eye
Marking the peril, she might speed away,
And nestled close in odorous safety stay,
Till death there hovering had relieved the sky.

" " Responsive then in flight; or side by side
While swayed around the palpitating glow
Of fervid noontide sun,
Where gem-bespangled insects to and fro
Flashed meteors, one by one,
In trackless webs to net some fiery bride;
We would spray-seated watch them glancing wide,
A sylphic pageant, till their fates were spun!

" " And next in secret fastness disappear
When forests slumber under shadowing night;
And wearied things asleep
May sleep and dread no predatory flight
O'er water dark and deep,
Where fallen, drowned, the rounded moon lies sheer;
Slipt down with all her glory from the sphere,
Her clouds about her in a shining heap!

" " Amid vast branches, blissful then to rest,
Where sighs the whispering hush of solitude.
When flowers their beauty close
And dream in sweetness, when no fingers rude
Can pluck their drooped repose.
Rejoicing then in an unburthened breast,
I'd sing how hearts that love are most unblessed
When hordes of doubt their loving hopes oppose!

" " Of worship, would I sing, that laughs at time,
And, winning gracious worth by added years,
Is loveliest in age!
By shouts would I disperse insidious fears
That deadly battle wage,
And swarm the hazards of a longed-for prime;
For love shouts loudest in our happy clime
When flowers of spring wear greenest equipage!" "

" Now tell me what the rival sang, who ceased
Long ere the loudest plained his final notes. "

" He sang of boundless food at his command,
That he would barter in exchange for love;
And sang of freshets overhung with boughs
So dense in leaves they offered safe retreat
When danger down in drenching torrents fell.
To keep her fledgelings plump and satisfied,
He promised labour while the day endured,
When fondness kept her prisoner on the nest! "

" Thus sings no slender graceful nightingale,
But some wag bullfinch, in a stolen disguise,
Fat, plain, and round, and justly prosperous! "
" Birds varying, O Mother, each from each,
As other two-legged beings of this world,
The poet nightingales are not exempt.
One sings the nuptials of the earth and air;
The other praises forage without stint:
Proving an old saw, " Many make a world";
And most are busiest in their own concerns,
As this near wren now twittering in the twigs.
" " In and out the boughs about,
Every leaf to scan;
Dot and tittle, large and little,
Peck I what I can
" " Neat and small, the pirates all,
Hunting pass me over;
Brisk and shy, alert and sly,
Tricked the hungry rover!
" " Oft she, when my pretty hen
Sits upon her nest,
Hints to me, tho' I am free,
Basking there is best!
" " Then in and out the boughs about,
Every leaf we scan;
Dot and tittle, large and little,
Pecking what we can." "

" The wren is saved by insignificance,
And safe as humble-bees from stoop of kite.
Tell me, Tiresias, what yon throstle sings;
Whose rich, soft-throated notes are pacifying,
And reach us thro' the stillness winged with peace! "

" He cheers his sitting partner with a tale
Of how her thrushlets will, when dauntless grown,
Outsing their rivals in the strife of song! "

" " I laud, I laud my speckle-bosomed Love!
O tawny-tinted, swart, and bounteous breast
Sheltering our blue delights! In their warm nest
Unbroken, pure; fair as the noon above
The world of shadowy leaves that whisper and play,
Where I, beside her sitting, sing alway;
A heart unburthening that never tires
In grateful utterance of fulfilled desires;
And passionate longing not to be betrayed,
Onwardly urged, enjoyably delayed!

" " I laud, I laud in tenderest strain, and trill
The rapture in thy rounded eyes, that fill
My fond heart full, such lustrous orbs are thine
To beam upon me with their love divine!
Divinest love: in silent transport there
Patiently brooding on thy treasured care;
Each warmly cherished fivefold counterpart
Concentred safe beneath thy happy heart,
That soon astir, will feel the throbbing beat
Thro' broken walls, responsive and complete!

" O bliss to eager breasts! The bliss, when first
From riven and shattered azure mansions burst
Our long-loved hoped-for joys! Starkly in view
Pale-pink, and shuddering 'mid the fragments blue!
How brief the yearning glance thou wilt allow,
In thy fluff-feathered, fostering zeal, I know
Truly, O Love! But when thy callow brood
Stretch wide their yellow mouths agape for food,
My fondness then will overhanging doat
While filling wistfully each tittering throat.

" " When flush and fashioned they have outgrown home;
And duly feathered fit for enterprise;
Luring them craftily with the thrilling cries
To trial of their timorous wings, we roam
Hushed unfrequented hollows, hour by hour;
Then, as their little limbs wax lithe in power,
Thro' dewy grass we follow shining trails,
And finding, pounce upon the wanderer snails,
Then crush their spiral palaces, and slay
The rich inhabitants, our unctuous prey.

" When strong and capable, they seek to dare
Whatever chances fly 'twixt dawn and night,
We drive them from our haunts to forage, where
Conquering the risks of danger with delight,
They shape to comely creatures. When wild spring
Bursts into bright innumerable green,
Thro' silvery showers and sunshine widening
On wood and copse throughout the boundless scene;
Impassioned then clear from the gathered crowd
Of flitting wings, shall rise their voices loud!

" Apart on loftiest boughs we'll hear them sing,
Pouring their rivalries from dulcet throats,
Sustained in long successive throbbing notes,
Liquid and flashing; while the woodlands ring
With flattered leaves playing choral minstrelsy;
When many a sidelong ear, a glancing eye
Will scan the singers while they list their lays;
And then, in prompt unhesitating praise,
Fluttering around they all alight anear
For sweet selection of the mates most dear.

" As both, O Darling, in the days agone,
Were pleased and fluttered, when, becoming one,
The sun for us threw wonder in the leaves;
And winds blew sweeter thro' the swifter day.
My heart then filled with love, on summer eves,
Thy charms in music running thro' my lay,
Feeling far lovelier things than I could say,
I sang no rising sun could ever see
In tangled greenwood or on noblest tree
A bird so beautiful to rival thee!" "

" His lay confined to praises of his dame,
And what she loves: what fitter theme for song!
With what high argument, Tiresias,
Rend they the air, yon cloud of heavy rooks,
Now holding troubled session in the sky? "

" Driven by mischance from wonted feeding-ground,
They shout and boast their prudent management
And rearrange some disconcerted plans.
" " Car-r, caw-w, we live by law;
Caw-w, car-r, a toiling crowd
Seeking grubs, or eating grain,
Haunting hollows, over plain,
And flocking furrows ploughed.

" " Arisen from darkness when the sun adorns
Awakened earth on dewy summer morns,
Our penetrated feathers gleam and glow
In purple splendour shifting, like the bow
Born of bright showers all little children know.

" " When our battalions load the darkened air,
And clouds are turbulent, dull herdsmen stare,
To weave our movements into prophecies,
What time in fury gloomy storms shall rise
And plunge with fire and thunder thro' the skies.

" " Simple are hinds; O, often have we laughed
To see them slowly creep with bow and shaft
To end our need of feeding while we fed;
Unwitting any watcher overhead
Had made a signal when away we fled!

" " But evil are they; oft some dreadful sin
Charging against each other, they begin
By hurling curses from their haughtiest breath,
Ere each with sword or axe encountereth
And hacks and hews his opposite to death.

" " We live by law. We punish evil tricks,
As they discover who purloin the sticks
From nest of neighbour; for, the theft made plain,
Warned are the sinners once; but if again
They're caught while sinning straightway they are slain.

" " When for debate at eventide we rise
Should eagles gaze down from the tranquil skies
Upon us purposeful while hovering high;
Clamorous, and yelling with concerted cry,
We mass our forces on them rapidly,

" " Till flustered and confounded, they, affright,
Escape our uproar in precipitate flight!
Victorious, we float on our homeward quest,
Sublimely sailing upper regions blest
In the enjoyment of approaching rest.
" " Car-r, caw-w, we live by law;
Caw-w, car-r, a toiling folk,
Closing eyes but in the night,
Labouring ever thro' the light,
As oxen under yoke." "

" 'Tis clear to man they pay scant reverence,
Tho' round his homes they ever congregate. "
" Yes, they despise but never scorn to use
The toil of men, born but to turn the soil
And lay exposed the luscious worms for them!
Strange notions move them: singly, each conceives
Himself a cypher; but the commonwealth,
Ardent and daring, will they all uphold,
And their awakened anger in assault
As they have boasted, even eagles flee! "

" These shrewd substantial feeders will we leave:
A more engaging life, Tiresias,
Yon lark, whose shrill rejoicing in the sky
Flatters attention with attuned reproach,
Singing in ears dulled by continual care:
The purport of his warbling would I know! "

" As you may well divine, O Chariclo,
Few are the cares lodged in that buoyant breast:
His mate, the sunshine, and his little ones;
His transport in the light when ether-poised,
The cadences that alternate his song!

" " Farewell awhile, O earth, my gladness
Rising in delicious madness
Thro' the sunshine deigns no pause
Because
The wells of joy rise faster than my flight,
And overflow in sparkles of delight,
Around the air
And every where,
Till quivering downward tremblingly they fall
On gazing listeners, and their hearts enthrall.

" " She watches me, my mate, admiring
While higher yet I soar untiring,
Till evanishing in day's
Bright rays,
She can but hear a rapturous voice she knows
Her praises tuning, and with praising grows
Prouder, and sings
The tender things
Of her first shyness, my approaches keen;
She best loves hearing as I sing unseen.

" " But love is lost in loftiest air,
The scenes of earth however fair!
Where, as often they distress
As bless.
I range the blue illimitable dome,
Smiling familiarity of home;
Here I forget
The fowler's net,
And by immortal longing flushed, aspire
To ever mount, urged onward winged with fire!

" " But no; tho' very heaven is near,
Temptations of the earth are dear!
I must take the pleasant heed
To feed
The mouths agape so wide and frequently,
With her cool sheltered under canopy
Of playful sheen
Where grasses lean
Over the little nest that rings her scope
Of happiness anear, and steadfast hope.

" " Now sing I downward and behold
Her wings our callow young enfold.
In suspense I poise above
My Love,
Her soft contented eye upon me fixt;
As shaking trills of exultation mixt
With plainings lone
Of something gone,
I chant of glory that may never come;
Or come when wings are closed and utterance dumb!

" " So peacefully she sits her nest,
Alighting would her calm molest;
Therefore now again aloft,
Where oft
Have I beheld the sinking sun, I rise!
I bathe my being in these golden skies,
Where fire and gloom
Announce the doom
Of yet another day to sink in night,
Bequeathing traces of celestial light.

" " Now pallid gleams of twilight shrink
In dusk beyond the ocean's brink;
And from the ocean gloom assails
The vales,
And lies a level blank on tended crops,
And masses mountains to their wooded tops.
So I will cease
And, deep in peace
Nestle beside my Love to rest, and dream
My flight to-morrow hails the morning beam!" "