Classic Poem

One flamelet flickered to and fro
Above the clear vermilion glow;
The house was silent, and the street
Deserted by all echoing feet;
And that small restless tongue of light
Possest my ear and mocked my sight,
While drowsy, happy, warm, I lay
Upon the couch at close of day,
And drowsy, dreamy, more and more,
I floated from the twilight shore
Over the vague vast sea of sleep,
Just conscious of the rest so deep;
Not sinking to the under caves,
But rocking on the surface waves.
When fitfully some muffled sound
Came from the crowded streets around,
It brought no thought of restless life
With wakeful care and passionate strife;
But seemed the booming of a bell
Sweetly ringing tumult's knell,
Slowly chiming far away
The euthanasia of the day.
And then unsummoned by my will
Came floating through this mood so still
The scenes of all my life's past range,
In perfect pictures, fair and strange,
As flowers limned in purest light
Upon a background such as might
Expand beneath some forest-screen
After the sunset, goldbrowngreen.
And then I heard on every side
The shadowy rustling slow and wide
Of night's dim curtains softly drawn
To hush the world asleep till dawn.
I heard the rustling, and my eyes
Were curtained with the curtained skies;
And I lay wrapt as in a fleece
Of warmth and purity and peace;
While consciousness within the stream
Of rippling thought and shadowy dream
Sank slowly to the deepest deep,
Lured by the murmuring Siren, sleep;
When suddenly a little thrill
Of splendour pricked both mind and will,
And brought me tidings grand and strange;
I did not stir with outward change,
But felt with inward royal mirth,
On all this dusk of heaven and earth
The moon may rise or not to-night;
But in my soul she rises bright!

The globe of glory swelling rose
In mighty pulses, solemn throes;
And filled and overfilled me soon
With light and music, with the swoon
Of too much rapture and amaze,
A murmurous hush, a luminous haze.
How long in this sweet swoon I lay,
What hours or years, I cannot say;
Vast arcs of the celestial sphere
Subtend such little angles here.
But after the ineffable,
This first I can remember well:
A Rose of Heaven, so dewy-sweet
Its fragrance was a soul complete,
Came, touched my brow, caressed my lips,
And then my eyes in their eclipse;
And still I stirred not, though there came
A wine of fire through all my frame,
An ecstasy of joy and love,
A vision of the throne above,
A myriad-voiced triumphant psalm
Upswelling through a splendour calm;
Then suddenly, as if a door
Were shut, veiled silence as before.

The sweetest voice said, " True it is!
He does not waken at my kiss!"

I smiled: " Your kisses three and four
Just gave me Heaven, no less, no more;
I held me still, eyes shut, lest bliss
Should overflow and waste a kiss."

Then dreamily my lids I raised,
And with grand joy, small wonder, gazed,
Although the miracle I saw
Might well have made me wan with awe.
" Why have you left your golden hair,
These gorgeous dusky braids to wear?
Why have you left your azure eyes,
To gaze through deep dark mysteries?
Why have you left your robe of white,
And come in cloudy lace bedight?
Or did you think that I could fail
To know you through whatever veil?
As bird or beast, as fish or worm,
In fiendish or angelic form,
As flower or tree, as wave or stone,
Be sure I recognise My Own!"

The sweet sad voice was sad no more,
But sweeter, tenderer, than before;
" Oh, ask no questions yet," said she,
" But answer me, but answer me.

" I now have listened very long
To catch some notes of that great song
Your youth began to sing so well;
Oh, why have none yet reached me? tell!"
" And why is any lamp not bright,
With no more oil to feed its light?
Why does a robe moth-eaten fade
When she is gone whom it arrayed?
Great songs must pulse with lifeful breath,
No hymns mark time for timeless death;
One long keen wail above the bier,
Then smothered moans, then stillness drear."

" I long have listened, all aflame,
For some full echoes of the fame
Youth pledged ripe manhood to achieve:
Why must I, hearing none, still grieve?"
" And why should he who cannot spend
Not make of gold his life's chief end?
O Love, the jewels of renown,
So priceless in a monarch's crown,
What are they when his realm is lost,
And he must wander like a ghost
Alone through wilds of rocky dearth,
But pretty pebbles nothing worth?
And would you have our love's proclaim
In shouts and trumpet-peals of fame;
Or whispered as I whisper here,
In this little pink-shell ear
Still full of echoes from the sea
Of fathomless Eternity?"

" I do not seek thy fame because
Enamoured of the world's applause,
Though even its most reckless shout
Involves some true love-praise no doubt:
But, Dearest, when fame's trumpets blare
Great hearts are battling with despair:
Better the tumult of the strife
Than stillness of lone-wasting life.
If you were working out God's will,
Could all the air around be still?"

" But I am working out God's will
Alike when active and when still;
And work we good or work we ill,
We never work against His will....
All work, work, work! Why must we toil
For ever in the hot turmoil?
God wrought six days, and formed the world;
Then on the seventh His power refurled,
And felt so happy that He blest
That Sabbath day above the rest;
And afterwards, we read, He cursed
The work He thought so good at first;
And surely Earth and Heaven evince
That He has done but little since.

" Well, I, who am a puny man,
And not a God who all things can,
Have also worked: not six short days
Of work refulgent with self-praise,
Of work " all-good" whose end was blest
With infinite eternal rest:
No, I have worked life after life
Of sorrow, sufferance and strife,
So many ages, that I ask
To rest one lifetime from the task,
To spend these years (forlorn of thee)
Sequestered in passivity;
Observing all things God hath made,
And of no ugliest truth afraid,
But having leisure time enough
To look at both sides of the stuff....
With Shelley to his ocean-doom,
With Dante to his alien tomb;
With Wallace, Raleigh, Sidney, Vane,
All to the axe's bloody stain;
With Socrates until the cup
Of hemlock lifted calmly up,
With Jesus to the fatal tree
After the garden's agony,
With Mohammed in flight and fight,
With Burns in all his fate's deep night,
With Joan to the fiery screen,
With Charlotte to the guillotine,
With Campanella all the while
And Tasso in their dungeons vile,
With Swift slow-dying from the top,
With Rabelais to the curtain's drop,
Cervantes prisoner and slave,
Columbus on the unknown wave,
And Luther through his lifelong war;
With these, and with how many more,
Since poor Eve fell, and as she fell
Of course pulled Adam down as well, —
In these, and in how many more,
Have I outbattled life's stern war,
Endured all hardships, toiled and fought,
Oppressed, sore-wounded, and distraught,
While inwardly consumed with thought;
How long! how long! — Mankind no whit
The better for the whole of it!
And I , look at me, do I need
The little rest I claim, indeed,
With body dwindled, brain outworn,
Soul's pith dried up, and heart forlorn?....
And so I rest me, half-content
That all my active power is spent:
No new campaign till after cure!
Meanwhile I passively endure
The wounds bequeathed by so much strife,
The hopelessness of present life:
And this is much; what further can
Be looked for from a wreck of man?
I bear in silence and alone
What maddened me at first, I own."

" The wounds bequeathed by so much strife,
The hopelessness of present life."
She dwelt upon these words again
With such a look of wistful pain
As made my heart all creep and stir
With pity, not for self, for her.
" O my true Love!" she said (the while
Her poor lips sought and failed to smile),
" O Love! your laugh is like a knell;
Your phantasy is horrible,
Thus calmly plunged a glittering knife
Into the core of your own life!"
And there she broke down; all the grief,
Love, pity powerless for relief,
Yearning to suffer in my stead,
Revulsion against fatal dread,
Long swelling mighty in her soul
O'erflooded now beyond control.
She gave a little laughing cry,
Choked sharply off; then heavily
Flung herself down upon my breast
With passionate weeping unreprest;
A night-dark cloud upon some bleak
And thunder-furrowed mountain peak
Pouring itself in rain and fire;
For now through all the black attire
Heaving about her heaving frame
Fermented flashes of swift flame;
Not tempest-lightnings, but indeed
Auroral splendours such as speed
Battling with gloom before the day,
And herald its triumphant sway.
Her instincts in that mighty hour
Of insurrection grasped at power;
And her true self arrayed in light,
Azure and golden, dazzling-bright,
Was struggling through the mask of night.

The mask remained, — for some good cause
Well emphasised by Heavenly laws;
She sobbed herself to self-control,
Represt the heavings of her soul;
Then stood up, pallid, faint, distraught,
Facing some phantom of dread thought.

" Another spasm like this," I said,
" Will kill me! When we both are dead
I'll use my very first new breath
To thank you for the blissful death,
The torture-rapture utterless,
You dear life-giving murderess!"
I laughed; and yet the while I gazed
Upon her standing wan and dazed:
Would I had bitten out my tongue
Ere any word of mine had stung
With such an unforeboded smart
That purest and most loving heart!

" And do you never kneel and pray
For comfort on your lonely way?
And have you no firm trust in God
To lighten your so-heavy load?"
The voice how strange and sad! the mien
How troubled from its pure serene!
" You good Child! I beseech no more
That one and one may make up four,
When one and one are my assets
And four the total of my debts:
Nor do I now with fervour pray
To cast no shadow in broad day:
Nor even ask (as I asked once)
That laws sustaining worlds and suns
In their eternal path should be
Suspended, that to pleasure me
Some flower I love, — now drooping dead,
May be empowered to lift its head."

" Ah, good pure souls have told me how
You laughed at prayer as you laugh now,
And turned all holy things to mirth,
And made a mock of heaven and earth;
And sometimes seemed to have no faith
In God, in true life after death."
" But God exists, or not, indeed,
Quite irrespective of our creed;
We live, or live not, after death,
Alike whatever be our faith;
And not a single truth, in brief,
Is modified by our belief.
And if God does subsist and act,
Though some men cannot learn the fact,
Who but Himself has made mankind,
Alike the seirs and the blind?
It may be that for some good cause
He loves to rest deep-veiled in laws;
And better likes us who don't ask
Or seek to get behind the mask,
Than those our fellow-insect fry
Who creep and hop and itch and pry,
The Godhead's lice, the swarming fleas
In Jove's great bed of slumbrous ease?"

" They said you scorned all wise restraints,
And loved the sinners, not the saints;
And mocking these, still dwelt with those
The friends who are the worst of foes."

" They told you something like the truth,
These dear tale-bearers full of ruth.
How proffer mere coarse human love
To hearts sole-set on things above?
And furthermore, although of old
Wolves ravaged dreadfully the fold,
Yet now Christ's tender lambs indeed
Securely frisk, unstinted feed.
To us poor goats they freely give
The dreariest tracts, but they — they live
In pastures green, by rivers clear,
Quite sleek and happy even here:
And when these lambs that frisk and leap
Are all staid, stout, and well-clothed sheep,
The shepherd, having taken stock,
Will lead away the whole white flock
To bleat and batten in galore
Of Heavenly clover evermore!
The dear saints want no earthly friend,
Having their Jesus: but, perpend;
What of the wild goats? what of us,
A hundred times more numerous,
Poor devils, starving wretched here
On barren tracts and wild rocks drear,
And in the next life (as they tell)
Roasted eternally in Hell?"

" But when you join the multitude
Of sinners, is it for their good;
To hale them from the slough of sin,
Or but to plunge your own soul in?"
" And what they are, must I not be?
The dear Lord made them Who made me?
If God did make us, this is sure,
We all are brothers, vile and pure.
I've known some brilliant saints who spent
Their lives absorbed in one intent,
Salvation each of his own soul;
The race they ran had just one goal,
And just one modest little prize,
A wicket-gate in Paradise,
A sneaking-in there through the wall
To bliss eternal; that was all.
Some of them thought this bliss would too
Be spiced by the contrasting view
Of Hell beneath them surging crammed
With all the tortures of the damned.
Their alms were loans to poor God lent,
Interest infinity-per-cent,
(And God must be hard-up indeed
If of such loans He stands in need);
Their earnest prayers were coward cries,
Their holy doctrines blasphemies;
Their faith, hope, love, no more, no less,
Than sublimated selfishness.

" Now my gross, earthly, human heart
With man and not with God takes part;
With men, however vile, and not
With Seraphim I cast my lot:
With those poor ruffian thieves, too strong
To starve amidst our social wrong,
And yet too weak to wait and earn
Dry bread by honest labour stern;
With those poor harlots steeping sin
And shame and woe in vitriol-gin:
Shall these, so hardly dealt with here,
Be worse off in a future sphere;
And I, a well-fed lounger, seek
To " cut " them dead, to cringe and sneak
Into that bland beau monde the sky,
Whose upper circles are so high? . .
If any human soul at all
Must die the second death, must fall
Into that gulph of quenchless flame
Which keeps its victims still the same,
Unpurified as unconsumed,
To everlasting torments doomed;
Then I give God my scorn and hate,
And turning back from Heaven's gate
(Suppose me got there!) bow, Adieu!
Almighty Devil, damn me too!"

As lightnings from dusk summer skies,
Mirth dazzled from her brow and eyes;
A charming chiming silvery laughter
Accompanied my speech, and after
Still tinkled when the speech was done
Its symphony of fairy fun:
And then her lips superbly smiled.
" You are the child, the naughty child,
Screaming and kicking on its back,
And choking with convulsions black,
At these old-bogey tales of Hell
Its hard-pressed priestly nurses tell!"
And gaylier, sweetlier yet she laughed,
Till I was drunken, dizzy, daft.
" You wicked holy one!" I cried,
" You changeling seraph! you black-eyed
Black-hearted scoffer! Heaven itself
Has only made you worse, made elf,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Well, I confess that I deserve
Your arrowy laugh, your lip's grand curve,
For foaming out in such a rage
Of boyish nonsense at my age,
Anent this stupid Hell and Heaven
Some half-believe one day in seven.
Let all who stickle for a Hell
Have it; they deserve it well....
Not often in these latter years
Am I, my darling, moved to tears
Or joyous laughter or hot scorn,
While plodding to the quiet bourne;
'Tis you have brought me back a part
Of my old youthful passionate heart."

" And do you feel no bitter grief
Of penitence for unbelief?
No stings of venomous remorse
In tracing backward to its source
This wicked godless lifetime's course?"

" I half remember, years ago,
Fits of despair that maddened woe,
Frantic remorse, intense self-scorn,
And yearnings harder to be borne
Of utter loneliness forlorn;
What passionate secret prayers I prayed!
What futile firm resolves I made!
As well a thorn might pray to be
Transformed into an olive-tree;
As well a weevil might determine
To grow a farmer hating vermin;
The I am that I am of God
Defines no less a worm or clod.
My penitence was honest guile;
My inmost being all the while
Was laughing in a patient mood
At this externe solicitude,
Was waiting laughing till once more
I should be sane as heretofore;
And in the pauses of the fits
That rent my heart and scared my wits,
Its pleasant mockery whispered through —
Oh, what can Saadi have to do
With penitence? and what can you?
Are Shiraz roses wreathed with rue?
" Now tell me, ere once more we turn
To things which us alone concern,
Of all the prosperous saints you see
Has none a kindly word for me?"
" First S HELLEY , parting for above,
Left you a greeting full of love."

" The burning Seraph of the Throne!
Not for my worship deep and lone
Of him, but for my love of you,
He loves and greets me; in his view
I stand all great and glorified,
The bridegroom worthy of the bride
For whom the purest soul in Heaven
Might wait and serve long lifetimes seven,
And other seven when these were past,
Nor deem the service long at last,
Though after all he failed for ever
In his magnificent endeavour."

" Then that dear Friend of yours, who came
Uncouthly shrinking, full of shame,
Hopeless and desolate, at first,
Dismayed that he was not accurst;
But when his essence shone out clear
Was found the noblest of our sphere;
Beautiful, faithful, valiant, wise,
With tenderest love that may suffice
When once with equal power unfurled
To sway and bless a whole bad world:
Is it for my own sake that he
Bows down, Sir, half-adoring me?"

" The great deep heart of purest gold,
Ever o'erflowing as of old
From the eternal source divine
With Heaven's most rich and cordial wine!
Enough: the loneliest on earth,
Famishing in affection's dearth,
Who found but two such friends above
Would banquet evermore on love."

" Now ask me what you wish to ask;
Your slave is eager for her task."
" Then, firstly, I who never mix
With our vile nether politics,
Have also ceased for many years
To study those of your high spheres.
Who now is, under God and Fate,
The Steward of the world-estate,
The Grand Vizier, Prime Minister,
Or (if you will) sole Manager
Of this bewildering Pantomime
Whose scenes and acts fill Space and Time?"

" I have heard many and many a name;
The laws seem evermore the same,
The operation of the laws
Reveals no variance in the cause."

" A learned politician, you!
Well, any name perchance will do;
And we will take an old one, say
That Demiurgos still bears sway.
I want a prayer to reach his throne,
And you can bear it, you alone;
For neither God nor fiend nor man
(Nay, scarcely any woman) can
Resist that voice of tenderest pleading,
Or turn away from it unheeding.
Not in this mystic mask of night,
But in your dazzling noonday light;
Not with this silent storm of hair,
But crowned with sunbeams you shall fare,
Not with these darkest Delphian eyes,
But with your luminous azure skies;
For powers of solemn awe and gloom
Love loveliness and joy and bloom.
Only your voice you must not change;
It is not, where all else is, strange;
The sweetest voice in all the world,
The soul of cosmic music furled
In such a little slender sound,
Delighting in its golden bound;
The evening star of melody,
The morning star of harmony;
When I can catch its faintest tone
In sighing breeze, in dim wave's moan,
I feel you near, my Love, my Own."

" And who shall guide me to the throne
Whose place is unto all unknown?"
" By one at least the path is known:
To Demogorgon's awful throne,
Down, down, through all the mysteries
He led the Oceanides:
Where Demogorgon dwelleth deep
There Demiurgos watch doth keep,
Though Vesta sleeps aeonian sleep:
S HELLEY himself shall be your guide,
Since I must still on earth abide:
Down, down, into the deepest deep;
Down, down, and through the shade of sleep;
Down, down, beyond the cloudy strife
Of interwoven death and life;
Down, down, unto the central gloom
Whose darkness radiates through the tomb
And fills the universal womb.

" Then he shall leave thee lonely there,
And thou shalt kneel and make thy prayer,
A childish prayer for simple boon:
That soon and soon and very soon
Our Lady of Oblivious Death
May come and hush my painful breath,
And bear me thorough Lethe-stream,
Sleeping sweet sleep without a dream;
And bring you also from that sphere
Where you grow sad without me, Dear;
And bear us to her deepest cave
Under the Sea without a wave,
Where the eternal shadows brood
In the Eternal Solitude,
Stirring never, breathing never,
Silent for ever and for ever;
And side by side and face to face,
And linked as in a death-embrace,
Leave us absorbing thus the balm
Of most divinely perfect calm,
Till ten full years have overflowed
For each wherein we bore the load
Of heavy life upon this earth
From birth to death from death to birth:
That when this cycle shall be past
We may wake young and pure at last,
And both together recommence
The life of passion, thought and sense,
Of fear and hope, of woe and bliss; —
But in another world than this.

" For I am infinitely tired
With this old sphere we once admired,
With this old earth we loved too well;
Disgusted more than words can tell,
And would not mind a change of Hell.
The same old stolid hills and leas,
The same old stupid patient trees,
The same old ocean blue and green,
The same sky cloudy or serene;
The old two-dozen hours to run
Between the settings of the sun,
The old three hundred sixty-five
Dull days to every year alive;
Old stingy measure, weight and rule,
No margin left to play the fool;
The same old way of getting born
Into it naked and forlorn,
The same old way of creeping out
Through death's low door for lean and stout;
Same men with the old hungry needs,
Puffed up with the old windy creeds;
Old toil, old care, old worthless treasures,
Old gnawing sorrows, swindling pleasures:
The cards are shuffled to and fro,
The hands may vary somewhat so,
The dirty pack's the same we know
Played with long thousand years ago;
Played with and lost with still by Man, —
Fate marked them ere the game began;
I think the only thing that's strange
Is our illusion as to change.

" This is the favour I would ask:
Can you submit to such a task?"

" All you have told me I will do,
Rejoicing to give joy to you:
Oh, I will plead, will win the boon,
That we may be united soon. . . .
But sameness palls upon you so,
That to relieve you I will go."

" By no means! wait a little, Dear!
The change is in your being here.
Besides, I have not finished yet —
How stupid of me to forget!
Sh! I shall think of it just now. . . .
Your kiss, my Angel, on my brow!
Your kiss that through the dullest pain
Flashed inspiration on my brain!"

Her face was fulgent with clear bliss;
She bent down o'er me with the kiss
As bends a dawn of golden light
To kiss away the earth's long night.
The splendour of her beauty made
Me blind, and in the rapturous shade
From head to foot my being thrilled
As if with mighty music filled,
To feel that kiss come leaning down
Upon me like a radiant crown.
Her royal kiss was on my brow
A burning ruby, burning now
As then, and burning evermore;
A Star of Love above the roar
And fever of this life's long war:
And suddenly my brain was bright
With glowing fire and dancing light,
A rich intoxicating shine
Like wave on wave of noble wine,
The Alcahest of joy supreme
Dissolving all things into dream.

So when at length I found a tongue
Bell-clear and bold my voice outrung:
" Dearest, all thanks were out of place
For this thine overwhelming grace.
The kiss of tenderness, the kiss
Of truth, you gave me erst; but this
Is consecration; to the man
Who wears this burning talisman
The veil of Isis melts away
To woven air, the night is day,
That he alone in all the shrine
May see the lineaments divine:
And Fate the marble Sphinx, dumb, stern,
Terror of Beauty cold, shall yearn
And melt to flesh, and blood shall thrill
The stony heart, and life shall fill
The statue: it shall follow him
Submissive to his every whim,
Ev'n as the lion of the wild
Followed pure Una, meek and mild.

" Now, I can tell you what we two
Before we part this night will do.
There is a dance — I wish it were
Some brilliant night-fête rich and rare,
With gold-and-scarlet uniforms
Far-flashing through the music-storms;
Some Carnival's last Masquerade,
Wherein our parts were fitly played.
This is another sort of thing,
The mere tame weekly gathering
Of humble tradesmen, lively clerks,
And fair ones who befit such sparks:
Few merry meetings could look duller;
No wealth, no grandeur, no rich colour.
Yet they enjoy it: give a girl
Some fiddle-screech to time her twirl,
And give a youth the limpest waist
That wears a gown to hold embraced;
Then dance, dance, dance! both girl and boy
Are overbrimmed and drunk with joy;
Because young hearts to love's own chime
Beat passionate rhythms all the time.

" This is the night, and we will go,
For many of the Class I know;
Young friendly fellows, rather rough,
But frank and kind and good enough
For this bad world: how all will stare
To see me with a dark Queen there!
I went last winter twice or thrice,
As dull as lead, as cold as ice,
Amidst the flushed and vivid crowd
Of youths and maidens laughing loud;
For thought retraced the long sad years
Of pallid smiles and frozen tears
Back to a certain festal night,
A whirl and blaze of swift delight,
When we together danced, we two!
I live it all again!... Do you
Remember how I broke down quite
In the mere polka?... Dressed in white,
A loose pink sash around your waist,
Low shoes across the instep laced,
Your moonwhite shoulders glancing through
Long yellow ringlets dancing too,
You were an Angel then; as clean
From earthly dust-speck, as serene
And lovely and beyond my love,
As now in your far world above.

" You shall this night a few more hours
Be absent from your heavenly bowers;
With leave or not, 'tis all the same,
I keep you here and bear the blame.
Your Star this night must take its chance
Without you in the spheral dance,
For you shall waltz and whirl with me
Amidst a staider companie;
The Cherubim and Seraphim
And Saintly Hosts may drown their hymn
With tenfold noise of harp and lyre;
The sweetest voice of all the quire
Shall sing to me, shall make my room,
This little nutshellful of gloom,
A Heaven of Heavens, the best of all,
While I am dressing for the Ball!...

" What book is this I held before,
The gloaming glooming more and more,
Eyes dreamed and hand drooped on the floor?
The Lieder — Heine's — what we want!
A lay of Heine's you shall chant;
Our poor Saint Heinrich! for he was
A saint here of the loftiest class,
By martyrdom more dreadly solemn
Than that of Simeon on the column.
God put him to the torture; seven
Long years beneath unpitying heaven,
The body dead, the man at strife
With all the common cares of life:
A living Voice intense and brave
Issuing from a Mattress-grave.
At length the cruel agony wrung
Confessions from that haughty tongue;
Confessions of the strangest, more
Than ever God had bargained for;
With prayers and penitential psalms
That gave the angels grinning qualms,
With jests when sharp pangs cut too deep
That made the very devils weep
Enough of this! the Monarch cried;
Fear gave what Mercy still denied;
Torture committed suicide
To quench that voice; the victim died
Victorious over Heaven and Doom;
The Mattress-grave became a tomb
Deep in our Mother's kindly womb,
Oblivion tranced the painful breath,
The Death-in-Life grew perfect Death."

" Is it the mere quaint German type,
Or is it from some blackened pipe?
The volume seems without a joke
A volume of tobacco-smoke!"

" The choice is difficult in sooth;
But sing that song of love and ruth
The Princess Ilse sang his youth:
And sing it very softly sweet,
As not to ravish all the street;
And sing it to what air you will,
Your voice in any tune must thrill. . . .
Yet stay, there was a certain hymn
Which used at Sunday School to brim
Our hearts with holy love and zeal,
Our eyes with tears they yearned to feel:
Mild Bishop Heber shall embrace
Wild Heine by sweet music's grace,
The while you sing the verses fair
To Greenland's icy mountains ' air;
A freezing name! but icy mountains
Were linked with Afric's sunny fountains."

Ich bin die Prinsessin Ilse,
Und wohne im Ilsenstein;
Komm mit nach meinem Schlosse,
Wir wollen selig sein.
" Dear Princess, I will come with thee
Into thy cavern's mystery,
And both of us shall happy be."

In meinen weissen Armen,
An meiner weissen Brust,
Da sollst du liegen und träumen
Von alter Märchenlust.
" In your white arms, on your white breast,
I'll lie and dream in perfect rest,
With more than fairy blessings blest."

Es bleiben todt die Todten,
Und nur der Lebendige lebt;
Und ich bin schon und blühend,
Mein lachendes Herze bebt.
" Yes, dead the dead for ever lie;
But you my Love and your Love I
Are of the souls that cannot die."

Doch dich soll mein Arm umschlingen,
Wie er Kaiser Heinrich umschlang; —
Ich hielt ihm zu die Ohren,
Wenn die Trompet erklang.
" Roll drum, plead lute, blare trumpet-call;
Our ears shall be fast closed to all,
Beneath divine Oblivion's pall."

Oh what a quaintly coupled pair
The poem and the music were!
The Sunday School's old simple air,
The heathen verses rich and rare!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wan ghosts have risen from the grave
To flit across the midnight wave;
Pale phantoms started from the tomb
To hurry through the wildwood gloom;
Cold corpses left their wormy bed
To mingle in high feasts, 'tis said;
But never since old Noah's flood
Turned Eden into sand and mud,
(Relieving thus the Heavenly guard
From its long spell of duty hard?)
Has any Angel left the sphere
Of Heaven to dance with mortals here:
Though earthly angels crowd each ball,
Since women are such angels all.

My partner was no icy corse,
No phantom of a wild remorse,
No Lamia of delirious dream,
No nymph of forest, sea, or stream:
A soul of fire, a lovely form
Lithe to the dance and breathing warm;
A face that flushed with cordial pleasure,
Dove-feet that flew in perfect measure;
A little hand so soft and fine,
Whose touch electric thrilled through mine;
A heart that beat against my breast
Full pulses of triumphant zest;
Deep eyes, pure eyes, as dark as night,
Yet full of liquid love and light
When their moon-soul came floating through
The clouds of mystery into view,
And myriad star-rays glittering keen
Were tempered in its mystic sheen;
Soft lips full curved in ruddy glow,
And swift as young Apollo's bow, —
What arrowy laughters flashing free
With barbs of pleasant mockery
Pierced through and through the whirling rout,
And let thought in where life flew out,
And made the world a happy dream
" Where nothing is, but all things seem!"

The splendid beauty of her face,
Her dancing's proud and passionate grace,
Her soul's eternal life intense
Lavishly poured through every sense,
Intoxicated all the air,
Inspiring every dancer there:
Never again shall that old Hall
Spin round with such another Ball;
The human whirlwind might have whirled
It through the heights of air and hurled
It down at last into the sea,
Nor yet disturbed the revelry.
The violin and the violoncello,
The flute that withered little fellow,
The red-faced cornet always mellow,
Our noble Orchestra of four,
Played as they never played of yore,
Played as they will play nevermore,
As if the rushing air were cloven
By all the legions of Beethoven.

In one of the eternal trances
(Five minutes long) between two dances,
The Brown whom one meets everywhere
Came smug and grinning to me there,
And " May I have the pleasure, — honour?"
A glance (encouraging) upon her.

" My dear good Brown, you understand
This lady's from a foreign land,
And does not comprehend a word
You speak so well: nay, I have heard
That one may search all England through,
And not find twenty scholars who
Can speak or write her language clearly,
Though once our great men loved it dearly.
The little of it I know still
(Read well, write badly, speak so ill!)
I first learnt many years ago
From her, and one you do not know,
A restless wanderer, one of these
You call damned doubtful refugees,
Enthusiasts, whom while harboured here
All proper folk dislike and fear."

Brown muttered, " I've a little knowledge
Of French, — the Working Man's New College."

" Ah, yes; your French is doubtless good,
And French we know is understood
By polished people everywhere;
But then her land though rich and fair
Lies far beyond the continents
Of civilised accomplishments;
And she could sooner learn to speak
Persian or Sanskrit, Norse or Greek,
Than this delightful brilliant witty
Tongue of delightful Paris city
( The devils' paradise, the hell
Of angels , — Heine loved it well!).
And finally, my dearest Brown,
The customs of her folk would frown
Austere rebukes on her if she
Dared dance with any one but me!"

Brown went and whispered strange remarks
To eager girls and staring clerks. . . .
We are caught up and swept away
In the cyclone-gallop's sway
And round and round and round and round
Go whirling in a storm of sound.

But in the next brief perfect trance
That followed the impassioned dance,
The Jones whom one too rarely sees
Came rushing on me like a breeze;
" What miracle! what magic might! —
But have you seen yourself to-night?"

" Oh yes! twin-mirrored in the skies
Of these my Lady's glorious eyes!
In our rude days of kingly fear,
If any monarch drawing near
The palace saw so bright and clear
His picture in the windows shine,
He well might say, Auspicious sign
That still this noble home is mine! "

" But you are half as tall again,
And stately as a King of Men;
And in the prime of health and youth,
Younger by twenty years, in sooth;
Your face, the pale and sallow, glows
As fresh as any morning rose;
Your voice rings richly as a bell,
Resonant as a trumpet-swell;
Your dull and mournful dreamy eyes
Now dazzle, burn, and mesmerise:
Thus gazed, thus spoke, thus smiled, thus trod,
Apollo the immortal God!"

" Dear Jones, as usual, you are right;
I stand revealed Myself to-night,
The God of Poesy, Lord of Light. . . .
But you would learn now whence the change:
Listen; it is and is not strange.

" There was a Fountain long ago,
A fountain of perpetual flow,
Whose purest springlets had their birth
Deep in the bosom of the earth.
Its joyous wavering silvery shaft
To all the beams of morning laughed,
Its steadfast murmurous crystal column
Was loved by all the moonbeams solemn;
From morn to eve it fell again
A singing many-jewelled rain,
From eve to morn it charmed the hours
With whispering dew and diamond showers;
Crowned many a day with sunbows bright,
With moonbows halo'd many a night;
And so kept full its marble urn,
All fringed with fronds of greenest fern,
O'er which with timeless love intent
A pure white marble Goddess leant:
And overflowing aye the urn
In rillets that became a burn,
It danced adown the verdant slope
As light as youth, as gay as hope,
And " wandered at its own sweet will; "
And here it was a lakelet still,
And there it was a flashing stream;
And all about it was a dream
Of beauty, such a Paradise
As rarely blooms beneath our skies;
The loveliest flowers, the grandest trees,
The broadest glades, the fairest leas;
And double music tranced the hours, —
The countless perfumes of the flowers,
The countless songs of swift delight
That birds were singing day and night.

" But suddenly there fell a change;
So suddenly, so sad, so strange!
The fountain ceased to wave its lance
Of silver to the spheral dance;
The runnels were no longer fed,
And each one withered from its bed;
The stream fell stagnant, and was soon
A bloated marsh, a pest-lagoon;
The sweet flowers died, the noble trees
Turned black and gaunt anatomies;
The birds all left the saddened air
To seek some other home as fair;
The pure white Goddess and her urn
Were covered with the withered fern, —
The red and yellow fans outworn,
And red and yellow leaves forlorn,
Slow drifting round into a heap
Till the fair shapes were buried deep:
The happy Eden rich and fair
Became a savage waste, a lair
Where Silence with broad wings of gloom
Brooded above a nameless tomb. . . .
And thus it was for years and years;
And only there were bitter tears
Beneath those dark wings shed alway
Instead of the bright fountain's play,
And in the stead of sweet bird-tones
Low unheard solitary moans.

" Ah, sudden was that ruin sad;
As sudden, resurrection glad!
Unheralded one quiet night
There came an Angel darkly bright,
An Angel from the Heavenly Throne,
Or else that Goddess carved in stone
Enraptured into life by power
Of her most marvellous beauty's dower:
And from her long robe's sweeping pride
The dead leaves all were scattered wide;
And from a touch of her soft hand,
Without one gesture of command,
All suddenly was rolled away
A mighty stone, whose broad mass lay
Upon the urn, as on a tomb
There lies a stone to seal its gloom:
And straightway sprang into the night
That joyous Fountain's shaft of light,
Singing its old unwearied tune
Of rapture to the quiet moon,
As strong and swift and pure and high
As ere it ever seemed run dry:
For never since that Long-ago
Had its deep springlets ceased to flow;
But shut down from the light of day
Their waters sadly oozed away
Through pores of the dim underearth,
Bereft of splendour, speed, and mirth;
Yet ever ready now as then
To leap into the air again."

" Ah yes," said Jones, " I understand."
Then with his smile of sadness bland,
" My fountain never got a chance
To spring into the sunlight's glance,
And wave its mystic silver lance
In time with all the starry dance;
Yet I believe 'tis ever there
Heart-pulsing in its secret lair,
Until the Goddess some fine day
Shall come and roll the stone away. . . .
Nor have you startled me; I knew
Quite well it was a Goddess too."

" Because so well you know and speak
Her esoteric Persian-Greek."

" Or shall we say (a truth of wine,
If falsehood in the nectar-shine),
Because a beauty so divine
Has stirred no envy, grudge, or pine
In any girl's or woman's breast,
But only love and joyous zest? —
For if the beauty dazzling thus
Were nubile and not nebulous?"

" This beauty is more real far
Than all the other beauties are;
And such a beauty's bridal kiss
Transcends all other bridal bliss;
And such a marriage-love will last
When all the other loves are past.
You know this well, dear friend of mine,
When drinking nectar and not wine."

" I know it, — know it not: we rhyme
The petals of the Flower of Time;
And rhyming strip them off, perplext
For every leaflet by the next
Is contradicted in its turn;
And thus we yearning ever yearn,
And ever learning never learn;
For while we pluck, from hour to hour
New petals spring to clothe the flower,
And till we strip the final one
Can final answer fall to none. . . .
To strip and strip the living bloom,
Nor learn the oracle of Doom
Until the fulgent Flower o' the Day
Is altogether stripped away;
Then with the dead stem leave the light,
And moulder in eternal night!"

" The sad old truth of earthly wine;
The joyous fable in the shine
Of nectar at the feast divine! ...
Love a near maid, love a far maid,
But let Hebe be your barmaid;
When she proffers you the cup,
Never fear to drink it up;
Though you see her crush her wine
From a belladonna vine,
Drink it, pouring on the clods
Prelibation to the gods.
Reck this rede unto the end:
It is my good night, good friend."

The music 'gan again arise;
A music of delicious sighs,
A music plaintive with a grief
More exquisite than all relief;
Music impassioned, but subdued
To a sweet sad dreamy mood. . . .
And now a swift and sudden stream
Of melody breaks through the dream:
The still air trembles, and the whole
Night-darkness fills with life and soul,
And keen stars listen throbbing pale
The drama of the nightingale. . . .
The nightingale is now a thrush. . . .
And now a soaring skylark. . . . Hush!
Never a song in all the world!
But low clouds floating soft and furled,
And rivers winding far away,
And ripples weaving fairy spray,
And mists far-curving swelling round

Dim twilight hills that soon are drowned,
And breezes stirring solemn woods,
And seas embracing solitudes;
Interminable intervolving,
Weaving webs for redissolving;
The intertwining, interblending
Of spirals evermore ascending;
The floating hither, wheeling thither,
Without a whence, without a whither;
And still we whirl and wheel and float,
But how the dancers are remote!

" Is that the wonderful waltz-tune,
Or is it the full-shining moon?
And are those notes, so far and far?
Each seems to me a brilliant star!
Can we be dancing in the ball,
And yet not see the earth at all? ...
The starry notes are round us whirling,
Beneath the great moon-waltz is twirling;
And thus without our own endeavour
May we float and float for ever?"

" When six long days of toil are past,
The holy Sabbath comes at last."

Oh better than a battle won,
And better than a great deed done,
And better than a martyr's crown,
And better than a king's renown,
And better than a long calm life
With lovely bairns and loving wife,
And better than the sweetest thought
That tearful Memory ever brought
From searching with her rapturous woe
Within the moonlit Long-ago,
And better than the stillest sleep
To him who wakes to moan and weep,
And better than the trance of death
To him who yearning suffereth;
Better than this, than these, than all
That mortals joys and triumphs call,
Was last night's Meeting, last night's Ball!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The tongue of flame had ceased to play,
The steadfast glow long died away;
The house was grave-still, and the street
Re-echoed to no wandering feet;
And still and chill as any stone
I lay upon the couch alone,
Drest to the white kid-gloves in all
The dress I put on for the Ball:
And there, that glorious flower you see,
She fixed it in my breast for me;
Could such a flower of flowers have birth
Upon our worn-out frigid earth?
That golden-hearted amethyst
Her own hand held, her own mouth kissed.

The clocks struck one and two and three,
And each stroke fell as aimed at me;
For none should muse or read or write
So late into the awful night,
None dare awake the deep affright
That pulseth in the heart of night,
None venture save sleep-shrouded quite
Into the solemn dead of night,
None wander save in dreams of light
Through the vast desert of black night;
And none at three be dressed at all,
Unless mere night-clothes dress you call
Or underlinen of a pall;
Therefore, my friend, in bidding you
And all the rest a long adieu,
For I am weary, Alleleu! —
Yourself and all I re-advise,
Early to bed and early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise!