Poems. Volume 2

ANEURIN’S HARP

I

Prince of Bards was old Aneurin;

He the grand Gododin sang;

All his numbers threw such fire in,

Struck his harp so wild a twang;—

Still the wakeful Briton borrows

Wisdom from its ancient heat:

Still it haunts our source of sorrows,

Deep excess of liquor sweet!

II

Here the Briton, there the Saxon,

Face to face, three fields apart,

Thirst for light to lay their thwacks on

Each the other with good heart.

Dry the Saxon sits, ’mid dinful

Noise of iron knits his steel:

Fresh and roaring with a skinful,

Britons round the hirlas reel.

III

Yellow flamed the meady sunset;

Red runs up the flag of morn.

Signal for the British onset

Hiccups through the British horn.

Down these hillmen pour like cattle

Sniffing pasture: grim below,

Showing eager teeth of battle,

In his spear-heads lies the foe.

IV

—Monster of the sea! we drive him

Back into his hungry brine.

—You shall lodge him, feed him, wive him,

Look on us; we stand in line.

—Pale sea-monster! foul the waters

Cast him; foul he leaves our land.

—You shall yield us land and daughters:

Stay the tongue, and try the hand.

V

Swift as torrent-streams our warriors,

Tossing torrent lights, find way;

Burst the ridges, crowd the barriers,

Pierce them where the spear-heads play;

Turn them as the clods in furrow,

Top them like the leaping foam;

Sorrow to the mother, sorrow,

Sorrow to the wife at home!

VI

Stags, they butted; bulls, they bellowed;

Hounds, we baited them; oh, brave!

Every second man, unfellowed,

Took the strokes of two, and gave.

Bare as hop-stakes in November’s

Mists they met our battle-flood:

Hoary-red as Winter’s embers

Lay their dead lines done in blood.

VII

Thou, my Bard, didst hang thy lyre in

Oak-leaves, and with crimson brand

Rhythmic fury spent, Aneurin;

Songs the churls could understand:

Thrumming on their Saxon sconces

Straight, the invariable blow,

Till they snorted true responses.

Ever thus the Bard they know!

VIII

But ere nightfall, harper lusty!

When the sun was like a ball

Dropping on the battle dusty,

What was yon discordant call?

Cambria’s old metheglin demon

Breathed against our rushing tide;

Clove us midst the threshing seamen:—

Gashed, we saw our ranks divide!

IX

Britain then with valedictory

Shriek veiled off her face and knelt.

Full of liquor, full of victory,

Chief on chief old vengeance dealt.

Backward swung their hurly-burly;

None but dead men kept the fight.

They that drink their cup too early,

Darkness they shall see ere night.

X

Loud we heard the yellow rover

Laugh to sleep, while we raged thick,

Thick as ants the ant-hill over,

Asking who has thrust the stick.

Lo, as frogs that Winter cumbers

Meet the Spring with stiffen’d yawn,

We from our hard night of slumbers

Marched into the bloody dawn.

XI

Day on day we fought, though shattered:

Pushed and met repulses sharp,

Till our Raven’s plumes were scattered:

All, save old Aneurin’s harp.

Hear it wailing like a mother

O’er the strings of children slain!

He in one tongue, in another,

Alien, I; one blood, yet twain.

XII

Old Aneurin! droop no longer.

That squat ocean-scum, we own,

Had fine stoutness, made us stronger,

Brought us much-required backbone:

Claimed of Power their dues, and granted

Dues to Power in turn, when rose

Mightier rovers; they that planted

Sovereign here the Norman nose.

XIII

Glorious men, with heads of eagles,

Chopping arms, and cupboard lips;

Warriors, hunters, keen as beagles,

Mounted aye on horse or ships.

Active, being hungry creatures;

Silent, having nought to say:

High they raised the lord of features,

Saxon-worshipped to this day.

XIV

Hear its deeds, the great recital!

Stout as bergs of Arctic ice

Once it led, and lived; a title

Now it is, and names its price.

This our Saxon brothers cherish:

This, when by the worth of wits

Lands are reared aloft, or perish,

Sole illumes their lucre-pits.

XV

Know we not our wrongs, unwritten

Though they be, Aneurin?  Sword,

Song, and subtle mind, the Briton

Brings to market, all ignored.

’Gainst the Saxon’s bone impinging,

Still is our Gododin played;

Shamed we see him humbly cringing

In a shadowy nose’s shade.

XVI

Bitter is the weight that crushes

Low, my Bard, thy race of fire.

Here no fair young future blushes

Bridal to a man’s desire.

Neither chief, nor aim, nor splendour

Dressing distance, we perceive.

Neither honour, nor the tender

Bloom of promise, morn or eve.

XVII

Joined we are; a tide of races

Rolled to meet a common fate;

England clasps in her embraces

Many: what is England’s state?

England her distended middle

Thumps with pride as Mammon’s wife;

Says that thus she reads thy riddle,

Heaven! ’tis heaven to plump her life.

XVIII

O my Bard! a yellow liquor,

Like to that we drank of old—

Gold is her metheglin beaker,

She destruction drinks in gold.

Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing

Hotly for his dues this hour;

Tell her that no drunken blessing

Stops the onward march of Power.

XIX

Has she ears to take forewarnings

She will cleanse her of her stains,

Feed and speed for braver mornings

Valorously the growth of brains.

Power, the hard man knit for action,

Reads each nation on the brow.

Cripple, fool, and petrifaction

Fall to him—are falling now!

MEN AND MAN

I

Men the Angels eyed;

And here they were wild waves,

And there as marsh descried;

Men the Angels eyed,

And liked the picture best

Where they were greenly dressed

In brotherhood of graves.

II

Man the Angels marked:

He led a host through murk,

On fearful seas embarked;

Man the Angels marked;

To think without a nay,

That he was good as they,

And help him at his work.

III

Man and Angels, ye

A sluggish fen shall drain,

Shall quell a warring sea.

Man and Angels, ye,

Whom stain of strife befouls,

A light to kindle souls

Bear radiant in the stain.

THE LAST CONTENTION

I

Young captain of a crazy bark!

O tameless heart in battered frame!

Thy sailing orders have a mark,

   And hers is not the name.

II

For action all thine iron clanks

In cravings for a splendid prize;

Again to race or bump thy planks

   With any flag that flies.

III

Consult them; they are eloquent

For senses not inebriate.

They trust thee on the star intent,

   That leads to land their freight.

IV

And they have known thee high peruse

The heavens, and deep the earth, till thou

Didst into the flushed circle cruise

   Where reason quits the brow.

V

Thou animatest ancient tales,

To prove our world of linear seed:

Thy very virtue now assails,

   A tempter to mislead.

VI

But thou hast answer I am I;

My passion hallows, bids command:

And she is gracious, she is nigh:

   One motion of the hand!

VII

It will suffice; a whirly tune

These winds will pipe, and thou perform

The nodded part of pantaloon

   In thy created storm.

VIII

Admires thee Nature with much pride;

She clasps thee for a gift of morn,

Till thou art set against the tide,

   And then beware her scorn.

IX

Sad issue, should that strife befall

Between thy mortal ship and thee!

It writes the melancholy scrawl

   Of wreckage over sea.

X

This lady of the luting tongue,

The flash in darkness, billow’s grace,

For thee the worship; for the young

   In muscle the embrace.

XI

Soar on thy manhood clear from those

Whose toothless Winter claws at May,

And take her as the vein of rose

   Athwart an evening grey.

PERIANDER

I

How died Melissa none dares shape in words.

A woman who is wife despotic lords

Count faggot at the question, Shall she live!

Her son, because his brows were black of her,

Runs barking for his bread, a fugitive,

And Corinth frowns on them that feed the cur.

II

There is no Corinth save the whip and curb

Of Corinth, high Periander; the superb

In magnanimity, in rule severe.

Up on his marble fortress-tower he sits,

The city under him: a white yoked steer,

That bears his heart for pulse, his head for wits.

III

Bloom of the generous fires of his fair Spring

Still coloured him when men forbore to sting;

Admiring meekly where the ordered seeds

Of his good sovereignty showed gardens trim;

And owning that the hoe he struck at weeds

Was author of the flowers raised face to him.

IV

His Corinth, to each mood subservient

In homage, made he as an instrument

To yield him music with scarce touch of stops.

He breathed, it piped; he moved, it rose to fly:

At whiles a bloodhorse racing till it drops;

At whiles a crouching dog, on him all eye.

V

His wisdom men acknowledged; only one,

The creature, issue of him, Lycophron,

That rebel with his mother in his brows,

Contested: such an infamous would foul

Pirene!  Little heed where he might house

The prince gave, hearing: so the fox, the owl!

VI

To prove the Gods benignant to his rule,

The years, which fasten rigid whom they cool,

Reviewing, saw him hold the seat of power.

A grey one asked: Who next? nor answer had:

One greyer pointed on the pallid hour

To come: a river dried of waters glad.

VII

For which of his male issue promised grip

To stride yon people, with the curb and whip?

This Lycophron! he sole, the father like,

Fired prospect of a line in one strong tide,

By right of mastery; stern will to strike;

Pride to support the stroke: yea, Godlike pride!

VIII

Himself the prince beheld a failing fount.

His line stretched back unto its holy mount:

The thirsty onward waved for him no sign.

Then stood before his vision that hard son.

The seizure of a passion for his line

Impelled him to the path of Lycophron.

IX

The youth was tossing pebbles in the sea;

A figure shunned along the busy quay,

Perforce of the harsh edict for who dared

Address him outcast.  Naming it, he crossed

His father’s look with look that proved them paired

For stiffness, and another pebble tossed.

X

An exile to the Island ere nightfall

He passed from sight, from the hushed mouths of all.

It had resemblance to a death: and on,

Against a coast where sapphire shattered white,

The seasons rolled like troops of billows blown

To spraymist.  The prince gazed on capping night.

XI

Deaf Age spake in his ear with shouts: Thy son!

Deep from his heart Life raved of work not done.

He heard historic echoes moan his name,

As of the prince in whom the race had pause;

Till Tyranny paternity became,

And him he hated loved he for the cause.

XII

Not Lycophron the exile now appeared,

But young Periander, from the shadow cleared,

That haunted his rebellious brows.  The prince

Grew bright for him; saw youth, if seeming loth,

Return: and of pure pardon to convince,

Despatched the messenger most dear with both.

XIII

His daughter, from the exile’s Island home,

Wrote, as a flight of halcyons o’er the foam,

Sweet words: her brother to his father bowed;

Accepted his peace-offering, and rejoiced.

To bring him back a prince the father vowed,

Commanded man the oars, the white sails hoist.

XIV

He waved the fleet to strain its westward way

On to the sea-hued hills that crown the bay:

Soil of those hospitable islanders

Whom now his heart, for honour to his blood,

Thanked.  They should learn what boons a prince confers

When happiness enjoins him gratitude!

XV

In watch upon the offing, worn with haste

To see his youth revived, and, close embraced,

Pardon who had subdued him, who had gained

Surely the stoutest battle between two

Since Titan pierced by young Apollo stained

Earth’s breast, the prince looked forth, himself looked through.

XVI

Errors aforetime unperceived were bared,

To be by his young masterful repaired:

Renewed his great ideas gone to smoke;

His policy confirmed amid the surge

Of States and people fretting at his yoke.

And lo, the fleet brown-flocked on the sea-verge!

XVII

Oars pulled: they streamed in harbour; without cheer

For welcome shadowed round the heaving bier.

They, whose approach in such rare pomp and stress

Of numbers the free islanders dismayed

At Tyranny come masking to oppress,

Found Lycophron this breathless, this lone-laid.

XVIII

Who smote the man thrown open to young joy?

The image of the mother of his boy

Came forth from his unwary breast in wreaths,

With eyes.  And shall a woman, that extinct,

Smite out of dust the Powerful who breathes?

Her loved the son; her served; they lay close-linked!

XIX

Dead was he, and demanding earth.  Demand

Sharper for vengeance of an instant hand,

The Tyrant in the father heard him cry,

And raged a plague; to prove on free Hellenes

How prompt the Tyrant for the Persian dye;

How black his Gods behind their marble screens.

SOLON

I

The Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eye

On the great man of Athens, whom for foe

He knew, than on the sycophantic fry

That broke as waters round a galley’s flow,

Bubbles at prow and foam along the wake.

Solidity the Thunderer could not shake,

Beneath an adverse wind still stripping bare,

His kinsman, of the light-in-cavern look,

From thought drew, and a countenance could wear

Not less at peace than fields in Attic air

Shorn, and shown fruitful by the reaper’s hook.

II

Most enviable so; yet much insane

To deem of minds of men they grow! these sheep,

By fits wild horses, need the crook and rein;

Hot bulls by fits, pure wisdom hold they cheap,

My Lawgiver, when fiery is the mood.

For ones and twos and threes thy words are good;

For thine own government are pillars: mine

Stand acts to fit the herd; which has quick thirst,

Rejecting elegiacs, though they shine

On polished brass, and, worthy of the Nine,

In showering columns from their fountain burst.

III

Thus museful rode the Tyrant, princely plumed,

To his high seat upon the sacred rock:

And Solon, blank beside his rule, resumed

The meditation which that passing mock

Had buffeted awhile to sallowness.

He little loved the man, his office less,

Yet owned him for a flower of his kind.

Therefore the heavier curse on Athens he!

The people grew not in themselves, but, blind,

Accepted sight from him, to him resigned

Their hopes of stature, rootless as at sea.

IV

As under sea lay Solon’s work, or seemed

By turbid shore-waves beaten day by day;

Defaced, half formless, like an image dreamed,

Or child that fashioned in another clay

Appears, by strangers’ hands to home returned.

But shall the Present tyrannize us? earned

It was in some way, justly says the sage.

One sees not how, while husbanding regrets;

While tossing scorn abroad from righteous rage,

High vision is obscured; for this is age

When robbed—more infant than the babe it frets!

V

Yet see Athenians treading the black path

Laid by a prince’s shadow! well content

To wait his pleasure, shivering at his wrath:

They bow to their accepted Orient

With offer of the all that renders bright:

Forgetful of the growth of men to light,

As creatures reared on Persian milk they bow.

Unripe! unripe!  The times are overcast.

But still may they who sowed behind the plough

True seed fix in the mind an unborn NOW

To make the plagues afflicting us things past.

BELLEROPHON

I

Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod

Of palsy doing task of thanks for bread;

   Upon the stature of a God,

He whom the Gods have struck bends low his head.

II

Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongue

Deformed, like his great frame: a broken arc:

   Once radiant as the javelin flung

Right at the centre breastplate of his mark.

III

Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look,

Some undermountain narrative he tells,

   As gapped by Lykian heat the brook

Cut from the source that in the upland swells.

IV

The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust

With patient inattention hear him prate:

   And comes the snow, and comes the dust,

Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late.

V

A crazy beggar grateful for a meal

Has ever of himself a world to say.

   For them he is an ancient wheel

Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day.

VI

He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect;

For never singer in the land had been

   Who him for theme did not reject:

Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene.

VII

Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight

The snorting white-winged brother of the wave,

   They hear him as a thing by fate

Cursed in unholy babble to his grave.

VIII

As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort,

Their sires have told; and of a martial prince

   Bestriding him; and old report

Speaks of a monster slain by one long since.

IX

There is that story of the golden bit

By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed:

   A mortal who could mount, and sit

Flying, and up Olympus midway speed.

X

He rose like the loosed fountain’s utmost leap;

He played the star at span of heaven right o’er

   Men’s heads: they saw the snowy steep,

Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more.

XI

He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell:

And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins;

   And in his breast a mouthless well

Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins.

XII

Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs

Of recollections richer than our skies

   To feed the flow of tuneful strings,

Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies.

PHAÉTHÔN

ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC MEASURE

At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer,

Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,

And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent!

For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to black;

In the light of him there is music thro’ the poplar and river-sedge,

Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest—an ocean-song.

Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly,

In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios.

Who usurps his place there, rashest?  Aphrodite’s loved one it is!

To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon,

Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary,

Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage,

He would grant his son’s petition, whatsoever the sign thereof.

Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: ‘Rule of day give me; give it me,

Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and transcendingly

I, divine, proclaim my birthright.’  Darkened Helios, and his utterance

Choked prophetic: ‘O half mortal!’ he exclaimed in an agony,

‘O lost son of mine! lost son!  No! put a prayer for another thing:

Not for this: insane to wish it, and to crave the gift impious!

Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee? miraculous

Mighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a joy?

Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods beneficently;

As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them;

Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine origin

Shall be known even as when

I

 strike on the string’d shell with melody,

And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to the cavities,

Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the ships thereon.’

Thus intently urged the Sun-God; but the force of his eloquence

Was the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocks away.

What shall move a soul from madness?  Lost, lost in delirium,

Rock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent,

‘By the oath! the oath! thine oath!’ cried.  The effulgent foreseër then,

Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy’s beaming countenance

Looked and moaned, and urged him for love’s sake, for sweet life’s sake, to yield the claim,

To abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity.

But he, vehement, passionate, called out: ‘Let me show I am what I say,

That the taunts I hear be silenced: I am stung with their whispering.

Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving wheels,

How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremptorily,

Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial,

And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear dew-drinkers:

Yea, for this I gaze on life’s light; throw for this any sacrifice.’

All the end foreseeing, Phoebus to his oath irrevocable

Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless.

Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so decreed.

They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries.

Swift the ripple ripples follow’d, as of aureate Helicon,

Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the distances,

And the bit with fury champed.  Oh! unimaginable delight!

Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air!

Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory!

Chafed the youth with their spirit súrcharged, as when blossom is shaken by winds,

Marked that labour by his sister Phaethontiades finished, quick

On the slope of the car his forefoot set assured: and the morning rose:

Seeing whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvest fields,

When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs it:

Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to indicate

(If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil),

Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to manipulate:

Named the horses fondly, fearful, caution’d urgently betweenwhiles:

Their diverging tempers dwelt on, and their wantonness, wickedness,

That the voice of Gods alone held in restraint; but the voice of Gods;

None but Gods can curb.  He spake: vain were the words: scarcely listening,

Mounted Phaethon, swinging reins loose, and, ‘Behold me, companions,

It is I here, I!’ he shouted, glancing down with supremacy;

‘Not to any of you was this gift granted ever in annals of men;

I alone what only Gods can, I alone am governing day!’

Short the triumph, brief his rapture: see a hurricane suddenly

Beat the lifting billow crestless, roll it broken this way and that;—

At the leap on yielding ether, in despite of his reprimand,

Swayed tumultuous the fire-steeds, plunging reckless hither and yon;

Unto men a great amazement, all agaze at the Troubled East:—

Pitifully for mastery striving in ascension, the charioteer,

Reminiscent, drifts of counsel caught confused in his arid wits;

The reins stiff ahind his shoulder madly pulled for the mastery,

Till a thunder off the tense chords thro’ his ears dinnèd horrible.

Panic seized him: fled his vision of inviolability;

Fled the dream that he of mortals rode mischances predominant;

And he cried, ‘Had I petitioned for a cup of chill aconite,

My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I go

With the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate.

Oh, my sisters!  Thou, my Goddess, in whose love I was enviable,

From whose arms I rushed befrenzied, what a wreck will this body be,

That admired of thee stood rose-warm in the courts where thy mysteries

Celebration had from me, me the most splendidly privileged!

Never more shall I thy temple fill with incenses bewildering;

Not again hear thy half-murmurs—I am lost!—never, never more.

I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel of flame!

Hither, sisters!  Father, save me!  Hither, succour me, Cypria!’

Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus the Thunderer

Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car superimpending

Over Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales;

Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately;

Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow move

With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable,

The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the firmament.

For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon-fire,

And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day’s apparition forth.

Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering:

Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate hours:

Lo, the ravish’d beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the chariot-wheels:

Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets!

Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo,

Torrid brilliancies thro’ the vapours lighten swifter, penetrate them,

Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth’s frame crackling busily.

He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe,

Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft:

Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him.

Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under their paws.

White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human-kind:

Inarticulate creatures of earth dumb all await the ultimate shock.

To the bolt he launched,