Tiresias, and Other Poems

Front matter

TIRESIAS

AND OTHER POEMS

TIRESIAS

To E. Fitzgerald

TO E. FITZGERALD.

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, Where once I tarried for a while, Glance at the wheeling Orb of change, And greet it with a kindly smile; Whom yet I see as there you sit Beneath your sheltering garden-tree, And while your doves about you flit, And plant on shoulder, hand and knee, Or on your head their rosy feet, As if they knew your diet spares Whatever moved in that full sheet Let down to Peter at his prayers;

Who live on milk and meal and grass; And once for ten long weeks I tried Your table of Pythagoras, And seem'd at first 'a thing enskied' (As Shakespeare has it) airy-light To float above the ways of men, Then fell from that half-spiritual height Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again One night when earth was winter-black, And all the heavens flash'd in frost; And on me, half-asleep, came back That wholesome heat the blood had lost, And set me climbing icy capes And glaciers, over which there roll'd To meet me long-arm'd vines with grapes Of Eshcol hugeness; for the cold Without, and warmth within me, wrought

To mould the dream; but none can say That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought, Who reads your golden Eastern lay, Than which I know no version done In English more divinely well; A planet equal to the sun Which cast it, that large infidel Your Omar; and your Omar drew Full-handed plaudits from our best In modern letters, and from two, Old friends outvaluing all the rest, Two voices heard on earth no more; But we old friends are still alive, And I am nearing seventy-four, While you have touch’d at seventy-five, And so I send a birthday line Of greeting; and my son, who dipt

In some forgotten book of mine With sallow scraps of manuscript, And dating many a year ago, Has hit on this, which you will take My Fitz, and welcome, as I know Less for its own than for the sake Of one recalling gracious times, When, in our younger London days, You found some merit in my rhymes, And I more pleasure in your praise.

Tiresias

TIRESIAS.

I wish I were as in the years of old, While yet the blessed daylight made itself Ruddy thro' both the roofs of sight, and woke These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek The meanings ambush'd under all they saw, The flight of birds, the flame of sacrifice, What omens may foreshadow fate to man And woman, and the secret of the Gods. My son, the Gods, despite of human prayer, Are slower to forgive than human kings. The great God, Arês, burns in anger still Against the guiltless heirs of him from Tyre,

Our Cadmus, out of whom thou art, who found Beside the springs of Dircê, smote, and still'd Thro' all its folds the multitudinous beast The dragon, which our trembling fathers call'd The God's own son. A tale, that told to me, When but thine age, by age as winter-white As mine is now, amazed, but made me yearn For larger glimpses of that more than man Which rolls the heavens, and lifts and lays the deep, Yet loves and hates with mortal hates and loves, And moves unseen among the ways of men. Then, in my wanderings all the lands that lie Subjected to the Heliconian ridge Have heard this footstep fall, altho' my wont Was more to scale the highest of the heights With some strange hope to see the nearer God.

One naked peak—the sister of the sun Would climb from out the dark, and linger there To silver all the valleys with her shafts— There once, but long ago, five-fold thy term Of years, I lay; the winds were dead for heat; The noonday crag made the hand burn; and sick For shadow—not one bush was near—I rose Following a torrent till its myriad falls Found silence in the hollows underneath. There in a secret olive-glade I saw Pallas Athene climbing from the bath In anger; yet one glittering foot disturb'd The lucid well; one snowy knee was prest Against the margin flowers; a dreadful light Came from her golden hair, her golden helm And all her golden armour on the grass, And from her virgin breast, and virgin eyes

Remaining fixt on mine, till mine grew dark For ever, and I heard a voice that said 'Henceforth be blind, for thou hast seen too much, And speak the truth that no man may believe.' Son, in the hidden world of sight, that lives Behind this darkness, I behold her still, Beyond all work of those who carve the stone, Beyond all dreams of Godlike womanhood, Ineffable beauty, out of whom, at a glance, And as it were, perforce, upon me flash'd The power of prophesying—but to me No power—so chain'd and coupled with the curse Of blindness and their unbelief, who heard And heard not, when I spake of famine, plague, Shrine-shattering earthquake, fire, flood, thunderbolt, And angers of the Gods for evil done

And expiation lack'd—no power on Fate, Theirs, or mine own! for when the crowd would roar For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom, To cast wise words among the multitude Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb The madness of our cities and their kings. Who ever turn'd upon his heel to hear My warning that the tyranny of one Was prelude to the tyranny of all? My counsel that the tyranny of all Led backward to the tyranny of one? This power hath work'd no good to aught that lives, And these blind hands were useless in their wars.

O therefore that the unfulfill'd desire, The grief for ever born from griefs to be, The boundless yearning of the Prophet's heart— Could that stand forth, and like a statue, rear'd To some great citizen, win all praise from all Who past it, saying, 'That was he!' In vain! Virtue must shape itself in deed, and those Whom weakness or necessity have cramp'd Within themselves, immerging, each, his urn In his own well, draws solace as he may. Menaceus, thou hast eyes, and I can hear Too plainly what full tides of onset sap Our seven high gates, and what a weight of war Rides on those ringing axles! jingle of bits, Shouts, arrows, tramp of the hornfooted horse That grind the glebe to powder! Stony showers

Of that ear-stunning hail of Arês crash Along the sounding walls. Above, below, Shock after shock, the song-built towers and gates Reel, bruised and butted with the shuddering War-thunder of iron rams; and from within The city comes a murmur void of joy, Lest she be taken captive—maidens, wives, And mothers with their babblers of the dawn, And oldest age in shadow from the night, Falling about their shrines before their Gods, And wailing, 'Save us.' And they wail to thee! These eyeless eyes, that cannot see thine own, See this, that only in thy virtue lies The saving of our Thebes; for, yesternight, To me, the great God Arês, whose one bliss Is war and human sacrifice—himself

Blood-red from battle, spear and helmet tipt With stormy light as on a mast at sea, Stood out before a darkness, crying, 'Thebes, Thy Thebes shall fall and perish, for I loathe The seed of Cadmus—yet if one of these By his own hand—if one of these——' My son, No sound is breathed so potent to coerce, And to conciliate, as their names who dare For that sweet mother land which gave them birth Nobly to do, nobly to die. Their names, Graven on memorial columns, are a song Heard in the future; few, but more than wall And rampart, their examples reach a hand Far thro' all years, and everywhere they meet And kindle generous purpose, and the strength To mould it into action pure as theirs.

Fairer thy fate than mine, if life's best end Be to end well! and thou refusing this, Unvenerable will thy memory be While men shall move the lips: but if thou dare— Thou, one of these, the race of Cadmus—then No stone is fitted in yon marble girth Whose echo shall not tongue thy glorious doom, Nor in this pavement but shall ring thy name To every hoof that clangs it, and the springs Of Dircê laving yonder battle-plain, Heard from the roofs by night, will murmur thee To thine own Thebes, while Thebes thro' thee shall stand Firm-based with all her Gods. The Dragon's cave Half hid, they tell me, now in flowing vines— Where once he dwelt and whence he roll'd himself

At dead of night—thou knowest, and that smooth rock Before it, altar-fashion'd, where of late The woman-breasted Sphinx, with wings drawn back, Folded her lion paws, and look'd to Thebes. There blanch the bones of whom she slew, and these Mixt with her own, because the fierce beast found A wiser than herself, and dash'd herself Dead in her rage: but thou art wise enough, Tho' young, to love thy wiser, blunt the curse Of Pallas, hear, and tho' I speak the truth Believe I speak it, let thine own hand strike Thy youthful pulses into rest and quench The red God's anger, fearing not to plunge Thy torch of life in darkness, rather—thou Rejoicing that the sun, the moon, the stars

Send no such light upon the ways of men As one great deed. Thither, my son, and there Thou, that hast never known the embrace of love, Offer thy maiden life. This useless hand! I felt one warm tear fall upon it. Gone! He will achieve his greatness. But for me, I would that I were gather'd to my rest, And mingled with the famous kings of old, On whom about their ocean-islets flash The faces of the Gods—the wise man's word, Here trampled by the populace underfoot, There crown'd with worship—and these eyes will find The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl About the goal again, and hunters race

The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings, In height and prowess more than human, strive Again for glory, while the golden lyre Is ever sounding in heroic ears Heroic hymns, and every way the vales Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume Of those who mix all odour to the Gods On one far height in one far-shining fire.

'One height and one far-shining fire' And while I fancied that my friend For this brief idyll would require A less diffuse and opulent end, And would defend his judgment well, If I should deem it over nice— The tolling of his funeral bell

Broke on my Pagan Paradise, And mixt the dream of classic times, And all the phantoms of the dream, With present grief, and made the rhymes, That miss'd his living welcome, seem Like would-be guests an hour too late, Who down the highway moving on With easy laughter find the gate Is bolted, and the master gone. Gone onto darkness, that full light Of friendship! past, in sleep, away By night, into the deeper night! The deeper night? A clearer day Than our poor twilight dawn on earth— If night, what barren toil to be! What life, so maim'd by night, were worth Our living out? Not mine to me

Remembering all the golden hours Now silent, and so many dead, And him the last; and laying flowers, This wreath, above his honour'd head, And praying that, when I from hence Shall fade with him into the unknown, My close of earth's experience May prove as peaceful as his own.

The Wreck

THE WRECK.

<>I. Hide me, Mother! my Fathers belong'd to the church of old, I am driven by storm and sin and death to the ancient fold, I cling to the Catholic Cross once more, to the Faith that saves, My brain is full of the crash of wrecks, and the roar of waves, My life itself is a wreck, I have sullied a noble name, I am flung from the rushing tide of the world as a waif of shame,

I am roused by the wail of a child, and awake to a livid light, And a ghastlier face than ever has haunted a grave by night, I would hide from the storm without, I would flee from the storm within, I would make my life one prayer for a soul that died in his sin, I was the tempter, Mother, and mine was the deeper fall; I will sit at your feet, I will hide my face, I will tell you all.

<>II. He that they gave me to, Mother, a heedless and innocent bride— I never have wrong'd his heart, I have only wounded his pride—

Spain in his blood and the Jew——dark-visaged, stately and tall— A princelier-looking man never stept thro' a Prince's hall. And who, when his anger was kindled, would venture to give him the nay? And a man men fear is a man to be loved by the women they say. And I could have loved him too, if the blossom can doat on the blight, Or the young green leaf rejoice in the frost that sears it at night; He would open the books that I prized, and toss them away with a yawn, Repell'd by the magnet of Art to the which my nature was drawn, The word of the Poet by whom the deeps of the world are stirr'd,

The music that robes it in language beneath and beyond the word! My Shelley would fall from my hands when he cast a contemptuous glance From where he was poring over his Tables of Trade and Finance; My hands, when I heard him coming would drop from the chords or the keys, But ever I fail'd to please him, however I strove to please— All day long far-off in the cloud of the city, and there Lost, head and heart, in the chances of dividend, consol, and share— And at home if I sought for a kindly caress, being woman and weak, His formal kiss fell chill as a flake of snow on the cheek:

And so, when I bore him a girl, when I held it aloft in my joy, He look'd at it coldly, and said to me 'Pity it isn't a boy.' The one thing given me, to love and to live for, glanced at in scorn! The child that I felt I could die for—as if she were basely born! I had lived a wild-flower life, I was planted now in a tomb; The daisy will shut to the shadow, I closed my heart to the gloom; I threw myself all abroad—I would play my part with the young By the low foot-lights of the world—and I caught the wreath that was flung.

<>III. Mother, I have not—however their tongues may have babbled of me— Sinn'd thro' an animal vileness, for all but a dwarf was he, And all but a hunchback too; and I look'd at him, first, askance, With pity—not he the knight for an amorous girl's romance! Tho' wealthy enough to have bask'd in the light of a dowerless smile, Having lands at home and abroad in a rich West-Indian isle; But I came on him once at a ball, the heart of a listening crowd— Why, what a brow was there! he was seated—speaking aloud

To women, the flower of the time, and men at the helm of state— Flowing with easy greatness and touching on all things great, Science, philosophy, song—till I felt myself ready to weep For I knew not what, when I heard that voice,—as mellow and deep As a psalm by a mighty master and peal'd from an organ,—roll Rising and falling—for, Mother, the voice was the voice of the soul; And the sun of the soul made day in the dark of his wonderful eyes. Here was the hand that would help me, would heal me—the heart that was wise! And he, poor man, when he learnt that I hated the ring I wore,

He helpt me with death, and he heal'd me with sorrow for evermore.

<>IV. For I broke the bond. That day my nurse had brought me the child. The small sweet face was flush'd, but it coo'd to the Mother and smiled. 'Anything ailing,' I ask'd her, 'with baby?' She shook her head, And the Motherless Mother kiss'd it, and turn'd in her haste and fled.

<>V. Low warm winds had gently breathed us away from the land— Ten long sweet summer days upon deck, sitting hand in hand—

When he clothed a naked mind with the wisdom and wealth of his own, And I bow'd myself down as a slave to his intellectual throne, When he coin'd into English gold some treasure of classical song, When he flouted a statesman's error, or flamed at a public wrong, When he rose as it were on the wings of an eagle beyond me, and past Over the range and the change of the world from the first to the last, When he spoke of his tropical home in the canes by the purple tide, And the high star-crowns of his palms on the deep-wooded mountain-side, And cliffs all robed in lianas that dropt to the brink of his bay,

And trees like the towers of a minster, the sons of a winterless day. 'Paradise there!' so he said, but I seem'd in Paradise then With the first great love I had felt for the first and greatest of men, Ten long days of summer and sin—if it must be so— But days of a larger light than I ever again shall know— Days that will glimmer, I fear, thro' life to my latest breath; 'No frost there,' so he said, 'as in truest Love no Death.'

<>VI. Mother, one morning a bird with a warble plaintively sweet

Perch'd on the shrouds, and then fell fluttering down at my feet; I took it, he made it a cage, we fondled it, Stephen and I, But it died, and I thought of the child for a moment, I scarce know why.

<>VII. But if sin be sin, not inherited fate, as many will say, My sin to my desolate little one found me at sea on a day, When her orphan wail came borne in the shriek of a growing wind, And a voice rang out in the thunders of Ocean and Heaven 'Thou hast sinn'd.' And down in the cabin were we, for the towering crest of the tides

Plunged on the vessel and swept in a cataract off from her sides, And ever the great storm grew with a howl and a hoot of the blast In the rigging, voices of hell—then came the crash of the mast. 'The wages of sin is death,' and there I began to weep, 'I am the Jonah, the crew should cast me into the deep, For ah God, what a heart was mine to forsake her even for you.' 'Never the heart among women,' he said, 'more tender and true.' 'The heart! not a mother's heart, when I left my darling alone.' 'Comfort yourself, for the heart of the father will care for his own.'

'The heart of the father will spurn her,' I cried, 'for the sin of the wife, The cloud of the mother's shame will enfold her and darken her life.' Then his pale face twitch'd; 'O Stephen, I love you, I love you, and yet'— As I lean'd away from his arms—'would God, we had never met!' And he spoke not—only the storm; till after a little, I yearn'd For his voice again, and he call'd to me 'Kiss me!' and there—as I turn'd— 'The heart, the heart!' I kiss'd him, I clung to the sinking form, And the storm went roaring above us, and he—was out of the storm.

<>VIII. And then, then, Mother, the ship stagger'd under a thunderous shock, That shook us asunder, as if she had struck and crash'd on a rock; For a huge sea smote every soul from the decks of The Falcon but one; All of them, all but the man that was lash'd to the helm had gone; And I fell—and the storm and the days went by, but I knew no more— Lost myself—lay like the dead by the dead on the cabin floor, Dead to the death beside me, and lost to the loss that was mine, With a dim dream, now and then, of a hand giving bread and wine,

Till I woke from the trance, and the ship stood still, and the skies were blue, But the face I had known, O Mother, was not the face that I knew.

<>IX. The strange misfeaturing mask that I saw so amazed me, that I Stumbled on deck, half mad. I would fling myself over and die! But one—he was waving a flag—the one man left on the wreck— 'Woman'—he graspt at my arm—'stay there'—I crouch'd upon deck— 'We are sinking, and yet there's hope look yonder,' he cried, 'a sail' In a tone so rough that I broke into passionate tears, and the wail

Of a beaten babe, till I saw that a boat was nearing us—then All on a sudden I thought, I shall look on the child again.

<>X. They lower'd me down the side, and there in the boat I lay With sad eyes fixt on the lost sea-home, as we glided away, And I sigh'd, as the low dark hull dipt under the smiling main, 'Had I stay'd with him, I had now—with him—been out of my pain.'

<>XI. They took us aboard: the crew were gentle, the captain kind; But I was the lonely slave of an often-wandering mind;

For whenever a rougher gust might tumble a stormier wave, 'O Stephen,' I moan'd, 'I am coming to thee in thine Ocean-grave.' And again, when a balmier breeze curl'd over a peacefuller sea, I found myself moaning again 'O child, I am coming to thee.'

<>XII. The broad white brow of the Isle—that bay with the colour'd sand— Rich was the rose of sunset there, as we drew to the land; All so quiet the ripple would hardly blanch into spray At the feet of the cliff; and I pray'd—'my child'—for I still could pray—

'May her life be as blissfully calm, be never gloom'd by the curse Of a sin, not hers!' Was it well with the child? I wrote to the nurse Who had borne my flower on her hireling heart; and an answer came Not from the nurse—nor yet to the wife—to her maiden name! I shook as I open'd the letter—I knew that hand too well— And from it a scrap, clipt out of the 'deaths' in a paper, fell. 'Ten long sweet summer days' of fever, and want of care! And gone—that day of the storm—O Mother, she came to me there.

Despair

DESPAIR.

A man and his wife having lost faith in a God, and hope of a life to come, and being utterly miserable in this, resolve to end themselves by drowning. The woman is drowned, but the man rescued by a minister of the sect he had abandoned.

<>I. Is it you, that preach'd in the chapel there looking over the sand? Follow'd us too that night, and dogg'd us, and drew me to land?

<>II. What did I feel that night? You are curious. How should I tell?

Does it matter so much what I felt? You rescued me—yet—was it well That you came unwish'd for, uncall'd, between me and the deep and my doom, Three days since, three more dark days of the Godless gloom Of a life without sun, without health, with out hope, without any delight In anything here upon earth? but ah God, that night, that night When the rolling eyes of the light-house there on the fatal neck Of land running out into rock—they had saved many hundreds from wreck— Glared on our way toward death, I remember I thought, as we past, Does it matter how many they saved? we are all of us wreck'd at last—

'Do you fear?' and there came thro' the roar of the breaker a whisper, a breath, 'Fear? am I not with you? I am frighted at life not death.'

<>III. And the suns of the limitless Universe sparkled and shone in the sky, Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light was a lie— Bright as with deathless hope—but, however they sparkled and shone, The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our own— No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below, A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe.

<>IV. See, we were nursed in the drear night-fold of your fatalist creed, And we turn'd to the growing dawn, we had hoped for a dawn indeed, When the light of a Sun that was coming would scatter the ghosts of the Past, And the cramping creeds that had madden'd the peoples would vanish at last, And we broke away from the Christ, our human brother and friend, For He spoke, or it seem'd that He spoke, of a Hell without help, without end.

<>V. Hoped for a dawn and it came, but the promise had faded away;

We had past from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier day; He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire, The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire— Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the weak trodden down by the strong, Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre, murder, and wrong.

<>VI. O we poor orphans of nothing—alone on that lonely shore— Born of the brainless Nature who knew not that which she bore! Trusting no longer that earthly flower would be heavenly fruit—

Come from the brute, poor souls—no souls—and to die with the brute——

<>VII. Nay, but I am not claiming your pity: I know you of old— Small pity for those that have ranged from the narrow warmth of your fold, Where you bawl'd the dark side of your faith and a God of eternal rage, Till you flung us back on ourselves, and the human heart, and the Age.

<>VIII. But pity—the Pagan held it a vice—was in her and in me, Helpless, taking the place of the pitying God that should be!

Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power, And pity for our own selves on an earth that bore not a flower; Pity for all that suffers on land or in air or the deep, And pity for our own selves till we long'd for eternal sleep.

<>IX. 'Lightly step over the sands! the waters—you hear them call! Life with its anguish, and horrors, and errors—away with it all!' And she laid her hand in my own—she was always loyal and sweet— Till the points of the foam in the dusk came playing about our feet.

There was a strong sea-current would sweep us out to the main. 'Ah God' tho' I felt as I spoke I was taking the name in vain— 'Ah God' and we turn'd to each other, we kiss'd, we embraced, she and I, Knowing the Love we were used to believe everlasting would die: We had read their know-nothing books and we lean'd to the darker side— Ah God, should we find Him, perhaps, perhaps, if we died, if we died; We never had found Him on earth, this earth is a fatherless Hell— 'Dear Love, for ever and ever, for ever and ever farewell,' Never a cry so desolate, not since the world began,

Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the coming of man!

<>X. But the blind wave cast me ashore, and you saved me, a valueless life. Not a grain of gratitude mine! You have parted the man from the wife. I am left alone on the land, she is all alone in the sea; If a curse meant ought, I would curse you for not having let me be.

<>XI. Visions of youth—for my brain was drunk with the water, it seems; I had past into perfect quiet at length out of pleasant dreams,

And the transient trouble of drowning—what was it when match'd with the pains Of the hellish heat of a wretched life rushing back thro' the veins?

<>XII. Why should I live? one son had forged on his father and fled, And if I believed in a God, I would thank him, the other is dead, And there was a baby-girl, that had never look'd on the light: Happiest she of us all, for she past from the night to the night.

<>XIII. But the crime, if a crime, of her eldest-born, her glory, her boast,

Struck hard at the tender heart of the mother, and broke it almost; Tho', glory and shame dying out for ever in endless time, Does it matter so much whether crown'd for a virtue, or hang'd for a crime?

<>XIV. And ruin'd by him, by him, I stood there, naked, amazed In a world of arrogant opulence, fear'd myself turning crazed, And I would not be mock'd in a madhouse! and she, the delicate wife, With a grief that could only be cured, if cured, by the surgeon's knife,—

<>XV. Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of pain, If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain, And the homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space, Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race, When the worm shall have writhed its last, and its last brother-worm will have fled From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth that is dead?