SWEET EVENINGS COME AND GO, LOVE."
But now beneath the sky the watchers all,
Angels that keep the homes of Israel
Or on high purpose wander o'er the world
Leading the Gentiles, felt a dark eclipse:
The greatest ruler among men was gone.
And from the westward sea was heard a wail,
A dirge as from the isles of Javanim,
Crying, "Who now is left upon the earth
Like him to teach the right and smite the wrong?"
And from the East, far o'er the Syrian waste,
Came slowlier, sadlier, the answering dirge:
"No prophet like him lives or shall arise
In Israel or the world for evermore."
But Israel waited, looking toward the mount,
Till with the deepening eve the elders came
Saying, "His burial is hid with God.
We stood far off and saw the angels lift
His corpse aloft until they seemed a star
That burnt itself away within the sky."
The people answered with mute orphaned gaze
Looking for what had vanished evermore.
Then through the gloom without them and within
The spirit's shaping light, mysterious speech,
Invisible Will wrought clear in sculptured sound,
The thought-begotten daughter of the voice,
Thrilled on their listening sense: "He has no tomb.
He dwells not with you dead, but lives as Law."
"SWEET EVENINGS COME AND GO, LOVE”
"La noche buena se viene,
La noche buèna se va,
Y nosotros nos iremos
Y no volveremos mas."-Old Villancico.
SWEET evenings come and go, love,
They came and went of yore:
This evening of our life, love,
Shall go and come no more.
When we have passed away, love,
All things will keep their name;
But yet no life on earth, love,
With ours will be the same.
The daisies will be there, love,
The stars in heaven will shine:
I shall not feel thy wish, love,
Nor thou my hand in thine.
A better time will come, love,
And better souls be born:
I would not be the best, love,
To leave thee now forlorn.
ARION, whose melodic soul
Taught the dithyramb to roll
Like forest fires, and sing
Olympian suffering,
Had carried his diviner lore
From Corinth to the sister shore
Where Greece could largelier be,
Branching o'er Italy.
Then weighted with his glorious name
And bags of gold, aboard he came
'Mid harsh seafaring men
To Corinth bound again.
The sailors eyed the bags and thought: "The gold is good, the man is noughtAnd who shall track the wave That opens for his grave?"
With brawny arms and cruel eyes
They press around him where he lies
In sleep beside his lyre,
Hearing the Muses quire.
He waked and saw this wolf-faced Death Breaking the dream that filled his breath With inspiration strong
Of yet unchanted song.
"Take, take my gold and let me live!" He prayed, as kings do when they give Their all with royal will,
Holding born kingship still.
To rob the living they refuse,
One death or other he must choose,
Either the watery pall
Or wounds and burial.
"My solemn robe then let me don,
Give me high space to stand upon,
That dying I may pour
A song unsung before."
It pleased them well to grant this prayer,
To hear for nought how it might fare
With men who paid their gold
For what a poet sold.
In flowing stole, his eyes aglow
With inward fire, he neared the prow
And took his god-like stand,
The cithara in hand.
The wolfish men all shrank aloof,
And feared this singer might be proof
Against their murderous power.
After his lyric hour.
But he, in liberty of song,
Fearless of death or other wrong,
With full spondaic toll
Poured forth his mighty soul:
Poured forth the strain his dream had taught,
A nome with lofty passion fraught
Such as makes battles won
On fields of Marathon.
The last long vowels trembled then
As awe within those wolfish men:
They said, with mutual stare,
Some god was present there.
But lo! Arion leaped on high
Ready, his descant done, to die;
Not asking, "Is it well?"
Like a pierced eagle fell.
"O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.”
Longum illud tempus, quum non ero, magis me movet, quam hoc exiguum.-CICERO, ad Att. xii. 18.
O MAY I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scoru
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's scarch
To vaster issues.
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better-saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love-
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever.
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony.
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
[This work was originally written in the winter of 1864–65; after a visit to Spain in 1867 it was rewritten and amplified. The reader conversant with Spanish poetry will see that in two of the lyrics an attempt has been made to imitate the trochaic measure and assonance of the Spanish ballad.-May, 1868.]
"Tis the warm South, where Europe spreads her lauds
Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep:
Broad-breasted Spain, leaning with equal love
On the Mid Sea that moans with memories,
And on the untravelled Ocean's restless tides.
This river, shadowed by the battlements
And gleaming silvery towards the northen sky,
Feeds the famed stream that waters Andalus
And loiters, amorous of the fragrant air,
By Córdova and Seville to the bay
Fronting Algarva and the wandering flood
Of Guadiana. This deep mountain gorge
Slopes widening on the olive-plumèd plains
Of fair Granáda: one far-stretching arm
Points to Elvira, one to eastward heights
Of Alpujarras where the new-bathed Day:
With oriflamme uplifted o'er the peaks
Saddens the breasts of northward-looking snows
That loved the night, and soared with soaring stars;
Flashing the signals of his nearing swiftness
From Almería's purple-shadowed bay
On to the far-off rocks that gaze and glow
On to Alhambra, strong and ruddy heart
Of glorious Morisma, gasping now,
A maimèd giant in his agony.
This town that dips its feet within the stream,
And seems to sit a tower-crowned Cybele,
Spreading her ample robe adown the rocks,
Is rich Bedmár: 'twas Moorish long ago,
But now the Cross is sparkling on the Mosque,
And bells make Catholic the trembling air.
The fortress gleams in Spanish sunshine now
(Tis south a mile before the rays are Moorish)-
Hereditary jewel, agraffe bright
On all the many-titled privilege
Of young Duke Silva. No Castilian knight
That serves Queen Isabel has higher charge;
For near this frontier sits the Moorish king,
Not Boabdil the waverer, who usurps
|