Eric Mackay

“ The nymphs, I think, were like thee in the glade
Of that Greek valley where the wine was made
For feasts of Bacchus; for I dream at night
Of those creations, kind and calm and bright;
And in my thought, unhallow'd though it be,
The sun-born Muses turn their gaze on me,
And seem to know me as a friend of theirs,
Though all unfit to serve them on my knee.
xi.
They lived and sang. They died as visions die,
Supreme, eternal, offshoots of the sky,
Made and re-made, undraped and draped afresh,
To glad the earth like phantoms made of flesh,
And yet as mistlike as delusions are! ”

“ And drag thee down from glory's seat.
Yea, thou shalt kneel! Thy head shall bow
As mine is bent in anguish now. VIII.
What! for thy sake have I forsworn
My just ambition,—all my joy,
And all my hope from morn to morn,
That seem'd a prize without alloy?
Have I done this? I have; and see!
I weep wild tears for thine and thee. [Pg 178] IX.
But I can school my soul to strength,
And weep and wail as children do;
Be hard as stone, yet melt at length,
And curb my pride as thou can'st, too!
But I have faith, and thou hast none;
And I have joy, but thine is done. X.
No marriage-bells? ”

“ And shrew-like women whom no faith uplifts!
Show me the place where Nature keeps the gifts
She most approves, and where the song-birds dwell,
And I'll forego the land of little thrifts.
xvi.
[89]
The moon is mother and the sun is sire
Of those young planets which, with infant fire,
Have late been found in regions too remote
For quicklier search; and these, in time, will dote
And whirl and wanton in the realms of space.
For there are comets in the nightly chase
Who see strange things untalk'd of by the bards;
And earth herself has found a trysting-place. ”

“ Conduct thee home, before the day was done,
And call thee queen, and crown thee in the throng. VII.
And, like Apollo, I would flash on thee,
And rend thy veil, and call thee by the name
That Daphne lov'd, the loadstar of his fame;
And make myself for thee as white to see
As whitest marble, and as wildly free
As Leda's lover with his look of flame. VIII.
And there should then be fêtes that should not cease
Till I had kiss'd thee, lov'd one! in a trance
Lasting a life-time, through a life's romance ”

“ Rings in the breeze on which a moth has flown. [Pg 66] IX.
I know such things, because to loving hearts
Nature is keen, and pleasures, long delay'd,
Quicken the pulse, and turn a truant shade
Into a sprite, equipp'd with all the darts
That once were Cupid's; and the day departs,
And sun and moon conjoin, as man with maid. X.
The lover knows how grand a thing is love,
How grand, how sweet a thing, and how divine
More than the pouring out of choicest wine;
More than the whiteness of the whitest dove;
More than the glittering of the stars above;
And such a love, O Love! is thine and mine. ”

“ The earth which loves thee, or I much have err'd,
The glad, green earth which waits, as for a word,
The sound of thee, up-shuddering through the morn,
The restive earth is pleased when Day is born,
And soon will take each separate silent beam
As proof of sex,—exulting in the dream
Of joys to come, and quicken'd and convuls'd,
Year after year, by love's triumphant theme.
iv.
[97]
A thousand times the flowers in all the fields
Will bow to thee; and with their little shields
The daisy-folk will muster on the plain. ”

“ From wild to wild, from passion to passion, from cavern to star, are we borne, and as we travel there is music about us—music of the true tone, ringing with all the natural pathos of lyrical carelessness. ”

“ AN ODE TO SWINBURNE.
["We have not, alack! an ally to befriend us,
And the season is ripe to extirpate and end us.
Let the German touch hands with the Gaul,
And the fortress of England must fall.
Louder and louder the noise of defiance
Rings rage from the grave of a trustless alliance,
And bids us beware, and be warn'd,
As abhorr'd of all nations and scorn'd." A Word for the Nation, by A. C. Swinburne.]
I.
Nay, good Sir Poet, read thy rhymes again,
And curb the tumults that are born in thee,
That now thy hand, relentful, may refrain
To deal the blow that Abel had of Cain. ”

“ I fall subservient, as a man in shame
May own a fault; albeit, as with a flame,
I burn all day, abash'd and unforgiven,
And all unfit to touch the hand I claim!
[64]
[65]
[67]
i.
Glory to thee, my Queen! whom far away
My thoughts aspire to,—as the birds of May
Aspire o' mornings,—as in lonely nooks
The gurgling murmurs of neglected brooks
Aspire to moonlight,—aye! as earth aspires
When through the East, alert with wild desires,
The rapturous sun surveys the welkin's height,
And flecks the world with witcheries of his fires.
ii.
[68]
Oh, I should curb my grief. ”

“ That foemen's wiles, and woes which intervene,
May fade away, as fades a winter's night.
Thine ears have heard us, and Thine eyes have seen.
Wilt Thou not help us, Lord! to find the Light?
XXVII. [Pg 249]
A VETERAN POET.
I knew thee first as one may know the fame
Of some apostle, as a man may know
The mid-day sun far-shining o'er the snow.
I hail'd thee prince of poets! I became
Vassal of thine, and warm'd me at the flame
Of thy pure thought, my spirit all aglow
With dreams of peace, and pomp, and lyric show,
And all the splendours, Master! of thy name. ”

“ But Father Time, old Time with Janus-face
Looks o'er the sphere, and sees no fitting place
For thine acceptance; for the thrones of earth
Are much too mean, and in thy maiden worth
Thou'rt crown'd enough, and throned in very sooth
More than the queens who lord it in their youth
O'er men's convictions; and He names thy name
As one belov'd of Nature and of Truth.
xix.
He sees the nights, he sees the veering days,
The sweet spring season with its hymn of praise,
The summer, frondage-proud, the autumn pale,
The winter worn with withering of the gale,—
All this he sees ”

“ Mackay's is the lark itself, Shelley's is himself listening, with unwearied ears and tightly-stretched imagination, to the lark. Who is surprised that Eric Mackay's lyric, 'The Waking of the Lark,' sent a thrill through the heart of America? This poem, which appeared in the New York Independent, is undoubtedly the lark-poem of the future. From the opening to the closing stanza there is not an imperfect verse, not a commonplace. The sentiment is pure, and the fancy glowing. ”

“ And none shall rob thee of thy vested right.
Where is the man, though fifty times a king,
Shall stay the tide, or countermand the spring?
And where is he, though fifty times a knave,
Shall track thy steps to cast thee in a grave? II.
Old as the sun art thou, and young as morn,
And fresh as April when the breezes blow,
And girt with glory like the growing corn,
And undefiled like mountains made of snow.
Oh, thou'rt the summer of the souls of men,
And poor men's rights, approved by sword and pen,
Are made self-certain as the day at noon,
And fair to view as flowers that grow in June. ”

“ My fervor blinds me to the withering end
Of all good council, and, accurst thereby,
I vaunt anew the faults I cannot mend.
[78]
[79]
[81]
i.
I tell thee Sweet! there lives not on the earth
A love like mine in all the height and girth
And all the vast completion of the sphere.
I should be proud, to-day, to shed a tear
If I could weep. But tears are most denied
When most besought; and joys are sanctified
By joys' undoing in this world of ours
From dusk to dawn and dawn to eventide. ”

“ Oh! bid me sing to thee, my chosen one,
And do thou teach me, Love, to sing aright!
II. [Pg 217]
VISIONS.
The Poet meets Apollo on the hill,
And Pan and Flora and the Paphian Queen,
And infant naïads bathing in the rill,
And dryad maids that dance upon the green,
And fauns and Oreads in the silver sheen
They wear in summer, when the air is still.
He quaffs the wine of life, and quaffs his fill,
And sees Creation through its mask terrene.
The dead are wise, for they alone can see
As see the bards,—as see, beyond the dust,
The eyes of babes. The dead alone are just. ”

“ Why were they bann'd? Oh, why in Reason's name,
Were they abolished? They were good to claim,
And good to dream of, and to crown with bays,
Far-seen of men, far-shining in the haze
Of withering doubts. They were the world's elect,
As thou art mine, to bow to and to praise.
xiii.
Night after night I see thee, in my dreams,
As fair as Daphne, with the morning beams
Of thy bright locks about thee like a cloak,—
Fair as the young Aurora when she woke
At Phæthon's call, athwart the mountain-heights. ”

“ I bow to thee; I keep thee in my sight.
I call thee mine, in love though not in sense
I share with thee the hermitage immense
Of holy dreams which come to us at night,
When, through the medium of the spirit-lens
We see the soul, in its primeval light,
And Reason spares the hopes it cannot blight.
It is the soul of thee, and not the form,
And not the face, I yearn-to in my sleep.
It is thyself. The body is the storm,
The soul the star beyond it in the deep
Of Nature's calm. ”

“ When earth was young, and love without alloy
Made all things glad and all the thoughts of things.
And like a man who wonders when he sings,
And knows not whence the power that in him lies,
I made a madrigal of all my sighs
And bade thee heed them; and I join'd therewith
The texts of these my follies that I prize.
xii.
[17]
I spoke of men, long dead, who wooed in vain
And yet were happy,—men whose tender pain
Was fraught with fervor, as the night with stars.
And then I spoke of heroes' battle-scars
And lordly souls who rode from land to land
To win the love-touch of a lady's hand ”

“ Thou art the minion of the sun that rises in his splendour,
And canst not spare for Dian fair the songs that should attend her.
The moon, so sad and silver-pale,
Is mistress of the nightingale;
And thou wilt sing on hill and dale no ditties in the darkness. V.
For Queen and King thou wilt not spare one note of thine outpouring;
Thou art as free as breezes be on Nature's velvet flooring.
The daisy, with its hood undone,
The grass, the sunlight, and the sun—
These are the joys, thou holy one, that pay thee for thy singing. [Pg 131] VI.
Oh, hush! ”

“ And far from memory of his land's defence.
vii.
Be this my meed,—to die for love of thee,
As when the sun goes down upon the sea
And finds no mate in all the realms of earth.
I, too, have look'd on Nature in its worth
And found no resting-place in all the spheres,
And no relief beyond my sonnet-tears,—
The soul-fed shudderings of my lonely harp
That knows the gamut now of all my fears.
viii.
[57]
I wear thy colours till the day I die:
A glove, a ribbon, and a rose thereby,
All join'd in one. I revel in these things ”

“ I.
O Lady mine! O Lady of my Life!
Mine and not mine, a being of the sky
Turn'd into Woman, and I know not why—
Is't well, bethink thee, to maintain a strife
With thy poor servant? War unto the knife,
Because I greet thee with a lover's eye? II.
Is't well to visit me with thy disdain,
And rack my soul, because, for love of thee,
I was too prone to sink upon my knee,
And too intent to make my meaning plain,
And too resolved to make my loss a gain
To do thee good, by Love's immortal plea?
[Pg 44]
III.
O friend! ”

“ The bath, the plunge, the combing of the hair,
All this I view,—a sight beyond compare
Since Daphne died in all the varied charms
Of her chaste body,—rounded regal arms,
And shape supreme, too fair for human gaze,
But not too fair to win the mirror's praise
That throbs to see thee in thy déshabille
And loves thee well through all the nights and days.
vii.
I see thee thus in fancy, as in books
A man may see the naïads of the brooks;—
As one entranced by potions aptly given
May see the angels where they walk in Heaven,
And may not greet them in their high estate. ”

“ Aye! on thy face, and on the rippling hair
That makes a mantle round thee in the night,
A royal robe, a network of the light,
Which fairies brought for thee, to keep thee fair,
And hide the glories of a beauty rare
As those of sylphs, whereof the poets write.
[Pg 7]
XII.
I thought, by token of thy matchless form,
To curb thy will, and make thee mine indeed,
From head to foot. There is no other creed
For men and maids, in safety or in storm,
Than this of love. Repentance may be warm,
But love is best, though broken like a reed. XIII.
"She shall be mine till death!" ”

“ I was ordain'd thy minstrel, but alas!
I dare not greet thee when I see thee pass;
I scarce, indeed, may hope at any time,
To work my will, or triumph in a rhyme
To do thee honour; no, nor make amends
For unsought fervor, in the tangled ends
Of my despair. How sad, how dark to me
All things have grown since thou and I were friends!
viii.
[43]
It is the fault of thy despotic glance,
It is the memory of a day's romance
When, true to thee, though taunted for my truth,
I dared to solemnise the joys of youth
In one wild chant. It is thy fault, I say! ”

“ Beethoven wrote; and thine shall be the praise,
And thine the frenzy like a soldier's sword
Flashing therein; and thine, O thou adored
And bright true Lady! all the poet's lays. X.
To thee, to thee, the songs of all my joy,
To thee the songs that wildly seem to bless,
And those that mind thee of a past caress. ”

“ I knew 'twas thine; its color, creamy-pale,
Fill'd me with joy. "A prize!" I cried aloud,
And snatch'd it up, as zealous then, and proud,
As one who wins a knighthood in his youth;
And I was moved thereat, in very sooth,
And kiss'd it oft, and call'd on kindly Heaven
To be the sponsor of mine amorous truth. ”