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I URIEL, you that in the ageless sun | |
| Sit in the awful silences of light, | |
| Singing of vision hid from human sight,— | |
| Prometheus, beautiful rebellious one! | |
| And you, Deucalion, | 5 |
| For whose blind seed was brought the illuming spark. | |
| Are you not gathered, now his day is done, | |
| Beside the brink of that relentless dark— | |
| The dark where your dear singer’s ghost is gone? | |
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II Imagined beings, who majestic blend | 10 |
| Your forms with beauty!—questing, unconfined, | |
| The mind conceived you, though the quenchèd mind | |
| Goes down in dark where you in dawn ascend. | |
| Our songs can but suspend | |
| The ultimate silence: yet could song aspire | 15 |
| The realms of mortal music to extend | |
| And wake a Sibyl’s voice or Seraph’s lyre— | |
| How should it tell the dearness of a friend? | |
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III The simplest is the inexpressible; | |
| The heart of music still evades the Muse, | 20 |
| And arts of men the heart of man suffuse, | |
| And saddest things are made of silence still. | |
| In vain the senses thrill | |
| To give our sorrows glorious relief | |
| In pyre of verse and pageants volatile, | 25 |
| And I, in vain, to speak for him my grief | |
| Whose spirit of fire invokes my waiting will. | |
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IV To him the best of friendship needs must be | |
| Uttered no more; yet was he so endowed | |
| That Poetry because of him is proud | 30 |
| And he more noble for his poetry, | |
| Wherefore infallibly | |
| I obey the strong compulsion which this verse | |
| Lays on my lips with strange austerity— | |
| Now that his voice is silent—to rehearse | 35 |
| For my own heart how he was dear to me. | |
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V Not by your gradual sands, elusive Time, | |
| We measure your gray sea, that never rests; | |
| The bleeding hour-glasses in our breasts | |
| Mete with quick pangs the ebbing of our prime, | 40 |
| And drip, like sudden rime | |
| In March, that melts to runnels from a pane | |
| The south breathes on—oblivion of sublime | |
| Crystallizations, and the ruthless wane | |
| Of glittering stars, that scarce had range to climb. | 45 |
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VI Darkling those constellations of his soul | |
| Glimmered, while racks of stellar lightning shot | |
| The white, creative meteors of thought | |
| Through that last night, where—clad in cloudy stole— | |
| Beside his ebbing shoal | 50 |
| Of life-blood, stood Saint Paul, blazing a theme | |
| Of living drama from a fiery scroll | |
| Across his stretchèd vision as in dream— | |
| When Death, with blind dark, blotted out the whole. | |
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VII And yet not all: though darkly alien | 55 |
| Those uncompleted worlds of work to be | |
| Are waned; still, touched by them, the memory | |
| Gives afterglow; and now that comes again | |
| The mellow season when | |
| Our eyes last met, his kindling currents run | 60 |
| Quickening within me gladness and new ken | |
| Of life, that I have shared his prime with one | |
| Who wrought large-minded for the love of men. | |
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VIII But not alone to share that large estate | |
| Of work and interchange of communings— | 65 |
| The little human paths to heavenly things | |
| Were also ours: the casual, intimate | |
| Vistas, which consecrate— | |
| With laughter and quick tears—the dusty noon | |
| Of days, and by moist beams irradiate | 70 |
| Our plodding minds with courage, and attune | |
| The fellowship that bites its thumb at fate. | |
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IX Where art thou now, mine host Guffanti?—where | |
| The iridescence of thy motley troop! | |
| Ah, where the merry, animated group | 75 |
| That snuggled elbows for an extra chair, | |
| When space was none to spare, | |
| To pour the votive Chianti for a toast | |
| To dramas dark and lyrics debonair, | |
| The while, to Bella Napoli, mine host | 80 |
| Exhaled his Parmazan, Parnassan air! | |
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X Thy Parmazan, immortal laird of ease, | |
| Can never mold, thy caviare is blest, | |
| While still our glowing Uriel greets the rest | |
| Around thy royal board of memories, | 85 |
| Where sit, the salt of these, | |
| He of the laughter of a Hundred Lights, | |
| Blithe Eldorado of high poesies, | |
| And he—of enigmatic gentle knights | |
| The kindly keen—who sings of Calverly’s. | 90 |
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XI Because he never wore his sentient heart | |
| For crows and jays to peck, ofttimes to such | |
| He seemed a silent fellow, who o’ermuch | |
| Held from the general gossip-ground apart, | |
| Or tersely spoke, and tart: | 95 |
| How should they guess what eagle tore, within, | |
| His quick of sympathy for humblest smart | |
| Of human wretchedness, or probed his spleen | |
| Of scorn against the hypocritic mart! | |
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XII Sometimes insufferable seemed to come | 100 |
| That wrath of sympathy: One windy night | |
| We watched through squalid panes, forlornly white,— | |
| Amid immense machines’ incessant hum— | |
| Frail figures, gaunt and dumb, | |
| Of overlabored girls and children, bowed | 105 |
| Above their slavish toil; “O God!—A bomb, | |
| A bomb!” he cried, “and with one fiery cloud | |
| Expunge the horrible Cæsars of this slum!” | |
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XIII Another night dreams on the Cornish hills: | |
| Trembling within the low moon’s pallid fires, | 110 |
| The tall corn-tassels lift their fragrant spires; | |
| From filmy spheres, a liquid starlight fills— | |
| Like dew of daffodils— | |
| The fragile dark, where multitudinous | |
| The rhythmic, intermittent silence thrills, | 115 |
| Like song, the valleys.—”Hark!” he murmurs, “Thus | |
| May bards from crickets learn their canticles!” | |
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XIV Now Morning, not less lavish of her sweets, | |
| Leads us along the woodpaths—in whose hush | |
| The quivering alchemy of the pure thrush | 120 |
| Cools from above the balsam-dripping heats— | |
| To find, in green retreats, | |
| ’Mid men of clay, the great, quick-hearted man | |
| Whose subtle art our human age secretes, | |
| Or him whose brush, tinct with cerulean, | 125 |
| Blooms with soft castle-towers and cloud-capped fleets. | |
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XV Still to the sorcery of August skies | |
| In frillèd crimson flaunt the hollyhocks, | |
| Where, lithely poised along the garden walks, | |
| His little maid enamoured blithe outvies | 130 |
| The dipping butterflies | |
| In motion—ah, in grace how grown the while, | |
| Since he was wont to render to her eyes | |
| His knightly court, or touch with flitting smile | |
| Her father’s heart by his true flatteries! | 135 |
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XVI But summer’s golden pastures boast no trail | |
| So splendid as our fretted snowshoes blaze | |
| Where, sharp across the amethystine ways, | |
| Iron Ascutney looms in azure mail, | |
| And, like a frozen grail, | 140 |
| The frore sun sets, intolerably fair; | |
| Mute, in our homebound snow-tracks, we exhale | |
| The silvery cold, and soon—where bright logs flare— | |
| Talk the long indoor hours, till embers fail. | |
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XVII Ah, with the smoke what smouldering desires | 145 |
| Waft to the starlight up the swirling flue!— | |
| Thoughts that may never, as the swallows do, | |
| Nest circling homeward to their native fires! | |
| Ardors the soul suspires | |
| The extinct stars drink with the dreamer’s breath; | 150 |
| The morning-song of Eden’s early choirs | |
| Grows dim with Adam; close at the ear of death | |
| Relentless angels tune our earthly lyres! | |
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XVIII Let it be so: More sweet it is to be | |
| A listener of love’s ephemeral song, | 155 |
| And live with beauty though it be not long, | |
| And die enamoured of eternity, | |
| Though in the apogee | |
| Of time there sit no individual | |
| Godhead of life, than to reject the plea | 160 |
| Of passionate beauty: loveliness is all, | |
| And love is more divine than memory. | |
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