Eric Mackay

“ The love of all who know the thrall of thine immortal story. [Pg 157] VI.
Thou art the bard whom none discard, but whom all men discover
To be a god, as Orpheus was, albeit a lonely lover;
A king to call the stones to life beside the roaring ocean,
And bid the stars discourse to trees in words of man's emotion. VII.
A king of joys, a prince of tears, an emperor of the seasons,
Whose songs are like the sway of years in Love's immortal reasons;
A bard who knows no life but this: to love and be rejected,
And reproduce in earthly strains the prayers of the elected. VIII.
O poet heart! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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! ”

“ But there's no fall for thee; there is no tomb;
And none shall stab thee, none shall stay thy hand.
Thy face is fair with love's eternal bloom,
And thou shalt have all things at thy command.
A tomb for thee? Ay, when the sun is slain
And lamps and fires make daylight on the plain,
Then may'st thou die, O Freedom! and for thee
A tomb be found where fears and dangers be. ”

“ And none so trancing, none that could compete
With thine for fervour; none, in watery ways
Where Neptune dwelt, so worthy of the praise
Of Thetis' son, the sure and swift of feet. XIX.
He never met upon the plains of Troy
Goddess or maiden so divinely fraught.
Not Helen's self, for whom the Trojans fought,
Was like to thee. Her love had much alloy,
But thine has none. Her beauty was a toy,
But thine's a gem, unsullied and unbought. XX.
And ne'er was seen by poet, in a sweven,
An eye like thine, a face so fair to see
As that which makes the sunlight sweet to me. ”

“ It can be wild, and keep away from home
A thousand ships—and lash itself to foam—
And beat the shore, and all that lies thereon—
And catch the thunder ere the flash has gone
Forth from the cloud that spans it like a dome. XX.
This is the will of Man, and this is mine.
But lo! I love thee more than wealth or fame,
More than myself, and more than those who came
With Christ's commission from the goal divine.
Soul of my soul, and mine as I am thine,
I cling to thee, my Life! as fire to flame.
Miscellaneous Poems. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And none shall touch thy flag, to lay it low;
And none shall rend thy robe, that is to thee
As dawn to day, as sunlight to the sea. XIX.
For love of thee, thou grand, thou gracious thing!
For love of thee all seas, and every shore,
And all domains whereof the poets sing,
Shall merge in Man's requirements evermore. ”

“ Aye, take it, Pablo! Though so poor a thing,
'Twill serve to mind thee of an English spring
When wealth, and worth, and fashion, each and all,
Obey'd thy thrall. XIX.
The lark that sings its love-song in the cloud
Is God-inspired and glad,—but is not proud,—
And soon forgets the salvos of the breeze,
As thou dost these. [Pg 196] XX.
The shouts, the praises, and the swift acclaim,
That men have brought to magnify thy name,
Affect thee barely as an idle cheer
Affects a seer. XXI.
But thou art ours, O Pablo! ”

“ While passionate to an extreme in the "Love-Letters," he is never indelicate; the coarse, almost brutal, allusions made by some writers to certain phases of so-called love, which are best left unsuggested, never defile the pen of our present author, who may almost be called fastidious in such matters. How beautiful and all-sufficing to the mind is the line expressing the utter satisfaction of a victorious lover ”

“ I cannot sing to thee as I would sing
If I were quickened like the holy lark
With fire from Heaven and sunlight on his wing,
Who wakes the world with witcheries of the dark [Pg 216]
Renewed in rapture in the reddening air.
A thing of splendour do I deem him then,
A feather'd frenzy with an angel's throat,
A something sweet that somewhere seems to float
'Twixt earth and sky, to be a sign to men. ”

“ Aye! strong as fate, for good or evil praise?
And how the lord whom all the world obeys,—
The lord of light to whom the stars belong,—
Illumed the track that led thee through the throng? [Pg 233]
Dost thou remember, in the wooded dale,
Beyond the town of Dante the Divine,
How all the air was flooded as with wine?
And how the lark, to drown the nightingale,
Peal'd out sweet notes? I live to tell the tale.
But thou? Oblivion signs thee with a sign!
XV. [Pg 234]
A HERO.
The warrior knows how fitful is the fight,—
How sad to live,—how sweet perchance to die.
Is Fame his joy? ”

“ He is a king though nameless in the towns. VI.
None is so lofty as the sage who prays,
None so unhigh as he who will not kneel.
The breeze is servant to the summer days,
And he is bowed-to most who most obeys. ”

“ Let us bow to the oracular voice, for in Swinburne we find all requisites for the work—fertility of thought, grace of language, ingenuity, skill in the ars poetica, wealth of words, sensuous nature, classic resources. [Pg xiv] * * * The writer of the 'Love-Letters' is manifestly imbued with the tone and tune of Italian poetry, and has the merit of proving the English tongue capable of rivalling the Italian 'Canzoni d'Amore.' * * * * He is a master of versification, so is Swinburne—he is praiseworthy for freshness of thought, novelty, and aptness in imagery, so is Swinburne. ”

“ I had a mother, too, but now have none. IX.
Our hopes are brave.
Our faiths are braver still.
The soul shall no man kill;
For God will find us, each one in his grave. X.
A land more vast
Than Europe's kingdoms are,—
A brighter, nobler star
Than victory's fearful light,—is thine at last. XI.
And should'st thou meet
Yon Germans up on high,—
Thy foes when death was nigh,—
Nor thou nor they will sound the soul's retreat. [Pg 144] XII.
For all are just,
Yea, all are patriots there,
And thou, O Fils de Pierre!
Hast found thy marshal's baton in the dust. XIII.
Oh, farewell, friend ”

“ Mine most of all,—so heed them not.
Brave thoughts will die, though men complain,
And mine was bold! 'Tis now forgot.
Well; let me bless thee, ere I sleep,
And give thee all my joys to keep. XXVIII.
I bless the house where thou wast born,
I bless the hours of every night,
And every hour from flush of morn
Till death of day, for thy delight;
I bless the sunbeams as they shine,—
So like those golden locks of thine. ”

“ There are no laws but mine on land and sea,
And men shall crown me when their kings are dead.
THE WAKING OF THE LARK. [Pg 129]
I.
O bonnie bird, that in the brake, exultant, dost prepare thee—
As poets do whose thoughts are true, for wings that will upbear thee—
Oh! tell me, tell me, bonnie bird,
Canst thou not pipe of hope deferred?
Or canst thou sing of naught but Spring among the golden meadows? II.
Methinks a bard (and thou art one) should suit his song to sorrow,
And tell of pain, as well as gain, that waits us on the morrow ”

“ Death is the Sword of Fate,
Death is the Golden Gate
That opens up to glory, through the sod. [Pg 145] XVI.
And thou that road,
O Sachal! thou hast found;
A king is not so crown'd
As thou art, soldier! in thy blest abode. ”

“ That all true lovers of the earth have claim'd him of their nation. IV.
He had a Juliet in his youth, as Romeo had before him,
And, Romeo-like, he sought to die that she might then adore him;
But she was weak, as women are whose faith has not been proven,
And would not change her name for his—Guiciardi for Beethoven. V.
O minstrel, whom a maiden spurned, but whom a world has treasured! ”

“ My lov'd Amati! At a word of thine
I can be brave, and dash away the brine
From off my cheek, and neutralise the fire
That makes me mad, and use thee as a lyre
To curb the anguish of this soul of mine.
[Pg 17]
XII.
Wood as thou art, my treasure, with the strings
Fair on thy form, as fits thy parentage,
I cannot deem that in a gilded cage
Thy spirit lives. The bird that in thee sings
Is not a mortal. No! Enthralment flings
Its charms about thee like a poet's rage. XIII.
Thou hast no sex ”

“ The sighs I breathe are fragrant as the rhymes
Of men and maids whose hearts are overthrown.
I am the God for whom all maidens pray,
But none shall have me for herself alone. XI.
No; I have love enough, here where I stand,
To marry fifty maids in their degree;
Aye, fifty times five thousand in a band,
And every bride the proxy of a score.
Want ye a mate for millions? I am he.
Glory is mine, and glee-time evermore. [Pg 127] XII.
O men! ”

“ And none shall know the pangs I feel.
If prayers could alter night to day,—
Or black to white,—I might appeal;
I might attempt to sway thy heart,
And prove it mine, or claim a part. II.
I might attempt to urge on thee
At least the chance of some redress:—
An hour's revoke,—a moment's plea,—
A smile to make my sorrows less.
I might indeed be taught in time
To blush for hope, as for a crime! [Pg 176] III.
But thou art stone, though soft and fleet,—
A statue, not a maiden, thou!
A man may hear thy bosom beat
When thou hast sworn some idle vow.
But not for love, no! not for this ”

“ At the same time no one in all England does more justice and honor to Swinburne's genius than Eric Mackay.
His own strength as a poet suggests to the reader the idea of a spirited horse reined in tightly and persistently,—a horse which prances wildly at times and frets and foams at the bit, and might, on the least provocation, run wild in a furious and headlong career, sweeping all conventionalities out of its road by a sheer, straight-ahead gallop. ”