Andrew Lang

“ In wintry weather of lands o’er sea?
Dear white bird, what way art thou winging,
Where no grass grows, and no green tree?
I looked at the far-off fields and grey,
There grew no tree but the cypress tree,
That bears sad fruits with the flowers of May,
And whoso looks on it, woe is he.
And whoso eats of the fruit thereof
Has no more sorrow, and no more love;
And who sets the same in his garden stead,
In a little space he is waste and dead. ”

“ That house, and wife, and lands, and all Troy town,
Are little to lose, if they may keep me here,
And see me flit, a pale and silent shade,
Among the streets bereft, and helpless shrines.
At other hours another life seems mine,
Where one great river runs unswollen of rain,
By pyramids of unremembered kings,
And homes of men obedient to the Dead. ”

“ The shrines of gods and beasts he wandered through,
And mocked not at their godhead, for he knew
Behind all creeds the Spirit that is One.
p. 85GÉRARD DE NERVAL. Of all that were thy prisons—ah, untamed,
Ah, light and sacred soul!—none holds thee now;
No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou
Art free and happy in the lands unnamed,
Within whose gates, on weary wings and maimed,
Thou still would’st bear that mystic golden bough
The Sibyl doth to singing men allow,
Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed. ”

“ Sons of the giant Ocean isle
In sport our friendly foes for long,
Well England loves you, and we smile
When you outmatch us many a while,
So fleet you are, so keen and strong.
You, like that fairy people set
Of old in their enchanted sea
Far off from men, might well forget
An elder nation’s toil and fret,
Might heed not aught but game and glee.
But what your fathers were you are
In lands the fathers never knew,
’Neath skies of alien sign and star
You rally to the English war ”

“ He will not come again, whate’er our need,
He will not come, who is happy, being freed
From the deathly flesh and perishable things,
And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings.
p. 7Nay, somewhere by the sacred River’s shore
He sleeps like those who shall return no more,
No more return for all the prayers of men—
Arthur and Charles—they never come again!
They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem:
Whate’er sick Hope may whisper, vain the dream! ”

“ Χαιρέ μοι, ω βασίλεια, διαμπερες, εις ο κε γηρας
Ελθη και θάνατος, τά τ’ επ’ ανθρώποισι πέλονται.
Odyssey, XIII.
My prayer an old prayer borroweth,
Of ancient love and memory—
‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death,
That come to all men, come to thee.’
Gently as winter’s early breath,
Scarce felt, what time the swallows flee,
To lands whereof no man knoweth
Of summer, over land and sea;
So with thy soul may summer be,
Even as the ancient singer saith,
‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death,
That come to all men, come to thee.’
p. ”

“ Even this, oh Love, for thee to Death!
p. 118RHODOPE. (RUFINUS.)
Thou hast Hera’s eyes, thou hast Pallas’ hands,
And the feet of the Queen of the yellow sands,
Thou hast beautiful Aphrodite’s breast,
Thou art made of each goddess’s loveliest!
Happy is he who sees thy face,
Happy who hears thy words of grace,
And he that shall kiss thee is half divine,
But a god who shall win that heart of thine!
p. 119TO A GIRL. (ASCLEPIADES.)
Believe me, love, it is not good
To hoard a mortal maidenhood ”

“ The gods are careless of the days and death
Of toilsome men, beyond the western seas;
p. 34The gods are heedless of their painful breath,
And love them not, for they are not as these;
But in the golden west they live and lie at ease.
Yet the Phæacians well they love, who live
At the light’s limit, passing careless hours,
Most like the gods ”

“ To soothe us, sleep more terrible than day,
Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray,
To make us weary at our wakening;
And of that long lost path to the Divine
We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing,
Half credulous, of easy Proserpine,
And of the lands that lie ‘beneath the day’s decline.’
p. 79THE SHADE OF HELEN.
Some say that Helen went never to Troy, but abode in Egypt; for the gods, having made in her semblance a woman out of clouds and shadows, sent the same to be wife to Paris. For this shadow then the Greeks and Trojans slew each other. ”

“ In fallen places of our dead delight.
p. 44THE LIMIT OF LANDS. Between the circling ocean sea
And the poplars of Persephone
There lies a strip of barren sand,
Flecked with the sea’s last spray, and strown
With waste leaves of the poplars, blown
From gardens of the shadow land.
With altars of old sacrifice
The shore is set, in mournful wise
The mists upon the ocean brood;
Between the water and the air
The clouds are born that float and fare
Between the water and the wood.
Upon the grey sea never sail
Of mortals passed within our hail,
Where the last weak waves faint and flow ”

“ For the streets o’ the New Jerusalem.
And the streets are never like Sheffield, here,
Nor the smoke don’t cling like a smut to them;
But the water o’ life flows cool and clear
Through the streets o’ the New Jerusalem. ”

“ Around me, then again the shriek of arms,
And all the turmoil of the Ilian men.
What are they? even shadows such as I.
What make they? Even this—the sport of gods—
The sport of gods, however free they seem. ”

“ If dreams depart, and men awake,
If face to face at length we see,
Be thine the voice to welcome me.
p. 31HESPEROTHEN By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phæacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the Vanity of Melancholy. And by the land of Phæacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures ”

“ With the blest
Buds of summer manifold.
April, with thy gracious wiles,
Like the smiles,
Smiles of Venus; and thy breath
Like her breath, the gods’ delight,
(From their height
They take the happy air beneath;) ”

“ And the chimes of the rhymes that sing sweet as they go,
A fan, and a folio, a ringlet, a glove,
’Neath a dance by Laguerre on the ceiling above,
And a dream of the days when the bard was in love,
A scent of dead roses, a glance at a pun,
A toss of old powder, a glint of the sun,
They meet in the volume that Dobson has done!
If there’s more that the heart of a man can desire,
He may search, in his Swinburne, for fury and fire;
If he’s wise—he’ll alight ‘At the Sign of the Lyre!’
p. 63COLINETTE. FOR A SKETCH BY MR. G. LESLIE, R.A.
France your country, as we know ”

“ Men brood on buried loves, and unforgot,
Or break themselves on some divine decree,
Or would o’erleap the limits of their lot,
There, in the tombs and deathless, dwelleth SHE!
p. 84HERODOTUS IN EGYPT. He left the land of youth, he left the young,
The smiling gods of Greece ”

“ For they are neat of kin to gods, and undismayed.
Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nigh
The dreamy isles that the Immortals keep!
But with a mist they hide them wondrously,
And far the path and dim to where they sleep,—
The loved, the shadowy lands, along the shadowy deep.
p. 35A SONG OF PHÆACIA. The languid sunset, mother of roses,
Lingers, a light on the magic seas,
The wide fire flames, as a flower uncloses,
Heavy with odour, and loose to the breeze.
The red rose clouds, without law or leader,
Gather and float in the airy plain ”

“ I bring, and later rhymes I bring
That flit upon as weak a wing,
But still for you, for yours, they sing!
p. viiMany of the verses and translations in this volume were published first in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872) . Though very sensible that they have the demerits of imitative and even of undergraduate rhyme, I print them again because people I like have liked them. The rest are of different dates, and lack (though doubtless they need) the excuse of having been written, like some of the earlier pieces, during College Lectures. ”

“ It once had seemed a little thing
To lay our lives down at their feet,
That dying we might hear them sing,
And dying see their faces sweet;
But now, we glanced, and passing by,
No care had we to tarry long;
Faint hope, and rest, and memory
Were more than any Siren’s song.
p. 42CIRCE’S ISLE REVISITED. Ah, Circe, Circe! in the wood we cried;
Ah, Circe, Circe! but no voice replied ”

“ Wet from the war and the wave,
Shall waft men’s thoughts through the dust of the years,
Back to their lonely grave!
p. 13RHODOCLEIA p. 15TO RHODOCLEIA
ON HER MELANCHOLY SINGING. (Rhodocleia was beloved by Rufinus, one of the late poets of the Greek Anthology.)
Still, Rhodocleia, brooding on the dead,
Still singing of the meads of asphodel,
Lands desolate of delight? ”

“ The apple of the Hesperides.
p. 122THE LIMIT OF LIFE. Thirty-six is the term that the prophets assign,
And the students of stars to the years that are mine;
Nay, let thirty suffice, for the man who hath passed
Thirty years is a Nestor, and he died at last!
p. 123TO DANIEL ELZEVIR. (FROM THE LATIN OF MÉNAGE.)
What do I see! Oh gods divine
And goddesses,—this Book of mine,—
This child of many hopes and fears,—
Is published by the Elzevirs! ”