Classic Poem

ODE WRITTEN AT WILTON HOUSE

Last night, amazed, I trod on holy ground
Breathing an air that ancient poets knew,
Where, in a valley compassed with sweet sound,
Beneath a garden's alley'd shades of yew,
With eager feet passed that singer sweet
Who Stella loved, whom bloody Zutphen slew
In the starred zenith of his knightly fame.
There too a dark-stoled figure I did meet:
Herbert, whose faith burned true
And steadfast as the altar candle's flame.

Under the Wilton cedars, pondering
Upon the pains of Beauty and the wrong
That sealeth lovely lips, fated to sing,
Before they reach the cadence of their song,
I mused upon dead poets: mighty ones
Who sang and suffered: briefly heard were they
As Lybyan nightingales weary of wing
Fleeing the temper of Saharan suns
To gladden our moon'd May,
And with the broken blossom vanishing.

So to my eyes a sorrowful vision came
Of one whose name was writ in water: bright
His cheeks and eyes burned with a hectic flame;
And one, alas! I saw whose passionate might
Was spent upon a fevered fen in Greece;
One shade there was who, starving, choked with bread;
One, a drown'd corpse, through stormy water slips;
One in the numbing poppy-juice found peace;
And one, a youth, lay dead
With powdered arsenic upon his lips.

O bitter were the sorrow that could dull
The sombre music of slow evening
Here, where the old world is so beautiful
That even lesser lips are moved to sing
How the wide heron sails into the light
Black as the cedarn shadows on the lawns
Or stricken woodlands patient in decay,
And river water murmurs through the night
Until autumnal dawns
Burn in the glass of Nadder's watery way.

Nay, these were they by whom the world was lost,
To whom the world most richly gave: forlorn
Beauty they worshipp'd, counting not the cost
If of their torment beauty might be born;
And life, the splendid flower of their delight,
Loving too eagerly, they broke, and spill'd
The perfume that the folded petals close
Before its prime; yet their frail fingers white
From that bruised bloom distill'd
Uttermost attar of the living rose.

Wherefore, O shining ones, I will not mourn
You, who have ravish'd beauty's secret ways
Beneath death's impotent shadow, suffering scorn,
Hatred, and desolation in her praise. . . .
Thus as I spoke their phantom faces smiled,
As brooding night with heavy downward wing
Fell upon Wilton's elegiac stone,
On the dark woodlands and the waters wild
And every living thing —
Leaving me there amazed and alone.