Eugene Lee-Hamilton

“ Her skirt was tattered, and the sea-breeze played
With her brown loosened hair a ceaseless play.
A poet chanced to pass as there she lay;
Her sun-burnt face, her tatters he surveyed;
A golden coin between her lips he laid,
And, letting her sleep on, he went his way.
What came of that gold windfall? Did it breed
Those long-loved coins which patient thrift can show
With proud pure smile to meet the household need?
Or stolen gold? or those curst coins which grow
Each year more sought, more loathed, and are the meed
Of women’s loveless kisses? Who can know? ”

“ The ox, unyoked, kneels chewing near the wain;
In one sound blent
The voices of the insect-swarms that fill
Each furrow, indefatigably trill
And chirp and hum; until the bright day spent,
Invokes the dusk to make the lone fields still.
MARSYAS.
What voice-like sounds
Off the Trinacrian coast, low, plaintive, sweet,
Blend with the breeze? or is it Fancy’s cheat?
There seem no grounds
For watch or fear: the waves have sunk to sleep
In twilight on the bosom of the deep.
The ship seems half becalmed, and eve surrounds
The crew with dolphins in perpetual leap.{8}
But hark again! ”

“ Sucks unperceived those spell-bound men along:
Awake, awake! the whirlpool grasps the boat!
It seethes, it roars, it drowns the Sirens’ song!
APOLLO.
Out on thy strife
Of winds and birds!—See, see the golden spears
Gleam through the dust, and desperate charioteers
And Death and Life{9}
Sweep by all wildly blent!—See, see how flash
The helmets in the sun, as onward dash
The waves of war! The very air seems rife
With goading Gods who wield an unseen lash!
O Sun, shine down
On Freedom’s ranks; pour strength into their hearts,
And blind the foe with thy resistless darts! ”

“ High above the seething water
From the mast that still withstands.{70}
But then hate is blind: they know not
What each human prey is worth:
Not more cruel than impartial
Is their elemental mirth:
And their fury is not keener
O’er the greater than the meaner,
Though their victim were a Shelley
And the glory of the earth.
Look around thee in the sunshine;
Watch this satin-surfaced deep,
Which alone some rolling dolphins
Stir out yonder in its sleep,
Till upon the sea shall settle
Sunset hues of molten metal,
Red and bright as crater gleamings,
And the noon shall cease to creep. ”

“ Ye who fight with sword or song
For the weak against the strong:
Give your help for justice’ sake,
Caring no reward to take.
Freedom’s face is not less fair
For remembering not your share;
And the sheaves of sacred wheat,
Which spring up beneath her feet
From the liberated plain,
Not less full of golden grain.
Years ago one day I stood,
In the autumn’s sunset flood,
Looking down with sweeping sight
From a bastion’s terraced height{78}
On the then unconquered plain
Of the fair and French Lorraine.
Scarce was autumn’s first leaf yellow;
Ripened Earth had made air mellow. ”

“ Thou never more wilt stand at dusk alone
Girt round by gurgling waters, in the cool,
While dance the flies, and make the trout thy own!
{131} SUNKEN GOLD.
In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships,
While gold doubloons that from the drowned hand fell
Lie nestled in the ocean-flower’s bell
With Love’s gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips.
And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips
And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell,
Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell,
And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips. ”

“ Wild Phrygian woods, hot gusts of storm-wind moan.
Each shadow shrouds
Some unknown conscious harm; and all around
Glide unseen rustling things upon the ground.
The air seems full of grabbing hands, and crowds
Of evil fancies wake at every sound.
Now in the night
The sorceress prowls, while others slumber deep,
Cursing the God who robs her of her sleep.
The moon’s vague light{13}
Makes her knife gleam, as, muttering low,
She seeks the thrice-curst mandrake which uprooted shrieks,
Such shrieks as drive the unexpecting wight
Who hears them, mad, and blanch her own white cheeks. ”

“ More mortal sin than anyone
Who says his prayers in Venice here!
And yet by stealth I only tried
To kill my enemy, God knows;
And who on earth has e’er denied
A man the right to kill his foes?
He won the race of the Gondoliers;
I hate him and the skin he wears—
I hate him and the shade he throws.
I hate him through each day and hour;
All ills that curse me seem his fault:
He makes my daily soup taste sour,
He makes my daily bread taste salt;{109}
And so I hung upon his track
At dusk to stab him in the back
In some lone street or archway vault. ”

“ Spite all my sins there were some better strings
In my weak heart; the wind of angels’ wings
Made them vibrate—but with faint echo, like
Æolian chords that gusts too fitful strike.
Mine is a double nature, which depends
Wholly on its surroundings, and which blends
With good or evil, with the low or high,
With the same drifting weak facility.
In Strongclyffe’s hands my nature’s worthier side
Alone found vent; pure tastes that had not died
Grew strong, while half-forgotten culture found
A sudden use, and from all things around
Increased its wealth. ”

“ What walking sleeper hast thou made, to hold
A stony head and an unbloody blade?
In thine own savage days, wast thou afraid
To paint such Judiths as thou mightst behold
In open street, and paint the heads that rolled
Beneath the axe, in every square displayed?
No, no; not such was Judith, on the night
When, in the silent camp, she watched alone,
Like some dumb tigress, in the tent’s dim light
Her sleeping prey ”

“ Half-leafless glens, which Autumn’s plaint repeat
From tree to tree; I love the shy fawn’s bleat;
The cry of lynx and wood-cat safe from man;
The fox’s short sharp bark from sure retreat.{6}
The deep lone woods
Which men call silent teem with voice: I hear
Vague wails, low calls, weird notes, now far, now near.
The storm-born floods
That sweep the glens, the gurgling hurrying springs
Impart dim secrets, vague prophetic things;
The whispering winds awake strange wistful moods.
But hush, my flute! Apollo, strike thy strings! ”

“ During my sleep, and strove to tempt the flesh
In woman’s guise—yea, in thy very shape—
And sought to lure me to caress and kiss,
Taking thy face, thy eyes, thy very voice
In all their beauty and their blandishment;
But I defied him, and he howling fled,
And changed his plan. He made the solid ground
Lurch ever and anon beneath my feet;{43}
He made me shiver in the blazing sun
With mortal cold; and sometimes, in the dusk
He made the huge stone heads of sphinxes nod
And gibber as I passed them. Oh, for years
I wrestled with him in the awful waste ”

“ O’er the boundless sea and the endless plain,
With driven hail and sheeted rain
Thick shaken from thy wing,{116}
Thou hurriest on, black cloud of wrath,
Thou hater of human walls,
Shaking men’s souls upon thy path
As thou dost shake the beams, like lath,
In battlemented halls;
Or pausing, broodest o’er the night,
In silence gathering strength;
While, ever and anon, the light
Quivers from out thee, dazzling bright,
And shows earth’s breadth and length. ”

“ When the earth by his squadrons is shaken,
And the thunder of man o’er God’s thunder is heard,
And there runs from the Alps to the Tiber one word,
And the lands from their torpor awaken!
“So the couriers shall spur and the miles disappear
From the Oder, the Elbe, and the Po,
When the victories follow each other so near
That the bearers of tidings are filled with a fear
Lest another their tidings outdo! ”

“ Kisses and sobs of love whose sound appals
Beyond all shrieks, all moanings and all cries,
While passion grows as deeper shadow falls.
APOLLO.
A golden haze
Has made the bright sea dreamy; and near coasts
Look far, and faint as sunshine-faded ghosts.
From neighbouring bays
A mingled sense of odoriferous wood
And fallen blossoms floats upon the flood
That scarcely heaves, save where the dolphins play;
While some few sea-gulls motionlessly brood.{14}
And o’er that sea,
Bright, tepid, calm, the sunset breezes waft
A chant of sailors from a home-bound craft ”

“ But threatening and terrific, kneeling o’er
My prostrate body, with red eyes that gleamed
So fiery in the darkness, that it seemed
As if one of the Furies had put on
Her golden panoply. Then, wild and wan,
I saw the face of Strongclyffe looming out
From a black whirling gulf; and heard him shout
Like some spent swimmer half sucked down.
And there
I think I woke, and with a vague despair
Resumed the pleadings of each adverse side;
While, ever louder, something in me cried:
“Choose death, choose death! ”

“ The open book, and leave two thirds uncut?
Who dares to tell me that a living man
Whom God has made, who feels the cool winds fan
His heated brow, is not in God’s sight worth
A thing that is man’s work, upon this earth?
My life is mended now; each passing day
Now rolls, though idly, harmlessly away.
The bright green fields, the flowers and the trees,
The rippling streams, the sun, the passing breeze,{105}
The million things that in their life rejoice
And gladden mine, call out with mighty voice,
“Choose life, choose life!” ”

“ Let those who hope for brighter shores no more
Not mourn, but turning inland, bravely seek
What hidden wealth redeems the shapeless shore.
The strong must build stout cabins for the weak;
Must plan and stint; must sow and reap and store;
For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak.
{126} SPRING.
For those who note the fate of earthly things
There lurks a sadness in the April air,
A dreamy sense of what the future brings
To things too good, too hopeful, and too fair.
The spring brings greenness to the recent grave,
But brings no solace to the mourning heart ”

“ No quaking of the earth hath helped my cause,
And God hath left me only earthly means
To prove to men that what they call a crime
I did by His command.
It came, it came,
That dread command! I had not long to wait;
I seemed to feel it coming; day and night
The frightful expectation filled my soul ”

“ The whole vast square is by the bright silk fanned,
And they have marched before the great Town Hall
Where stand the city’s rulers one and all.
Then comes, drawn by six bullocks of huge size
All white as milk, with many-coloured strings
About their horns, broad brows and large black eyes,
The old Republic’s standard-bearing wain,{85}
With its great Martinella bell that rings
Oft o’er the battle’s roar, and whose sound brings
Fear to the heart of her who plots in vain,
Perfidious Florence. From its high mast flies
Siena’s She-Wolf’s standard of huge size. ”

“ But heeding not, they whirl into the dark,
Bound for a sea beyond all time and space,
Which neither life nor love nor sunlight warms.
{122} ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE RESURRECTION.
I saw a vast bare plain; with, overhead,
A half-chilled sun, that shed a sickly light;
And all around, till out of reach of sight,
The earth’s thin crust heaved with the rising dead,
Who, as they struggled from their dusty bed,
At first mere bones, by countless years made white,
Took gradual flesh, and stood all huddled tight
In mute, dull groups, as yet too numb to dread. ”

“ The gold of bridal gifts which guest-friends brought,
Than was the heart that waited to be thine.
PORPHYRION.
Upon thy bridal morn my heart was filled
With doubt and fear. My hounded spirit groped
Like one who fears pursuers in the dark
And knows no issue. Yea, within my breast,
Like captive eagles in a cage too narrow,
The love of God, the love of thee, did fight. ”

“ Hurry on to the chopper-shaped square of Varennes
Where your fellow-postillions await!
Hurry on! hurry on, ye dull whip-cracking men!
For each stride that ye take, there is one who takes ten,
And who gallops like Death and like Fate! ”

“ With their patches of wood and their patches of grain,
Grew more solemn and lone by degrees.
Like the hurrying ghosts of two riders they rode,—
For the few whom they met, indistinct;
And the lights that sprang up few and far away showed
Where, to right or to left, lay a human abode ”

“ The Nile flower is closing with the day;
The Nile bird hastens to her bulrush nest;
All Nature that is not of night and evil
Is seeking rest; and why should not I too,
If I am weary, find repose at dusk
Where rolls the deep dark stream? ”

“ Woman, once more, what brings thee here at dusk—
Here by the deep lone Nile, when rise the mists
Heavy with death, when prowl devouring beasts,
And when God’s lonely dweller in the waste
Alone has nought to fear?
DIOCLEA.
What brings me here? ”

“ Alone where yearning makes the bosom heave.
Often in tones more passionate he wails,
Pensive no more but fiercely wild and shrill,
And fills the soul with rapture as it quails,
And charms us with the very fear of ill.
Wherever lonely Nature claims her right
Upon man’s love, and her wild fitful voice
With flute-like wailings makes his ear rejoice
In the wild music of a stormy night ”

“ And the heads of a many more humble!
“O Thou God for a doubt that shall bring to a stop,
For a stone in the shoe to retard,
Or more heads in the basket of sawdust will drop
Than the bunches of grapes that the vintagers lop
On a day that their labour is hard;{54}
“And the fields will be lashed not by tempests of rain,
But by tempests of iron and lead;
And manured year by year with fresh blood all in vain,
And each summer will bring not a harvest of grain,
But a harvest of cripples and dead;
“And the nations in carnage will ceaselessly strive
With a roar that disperses the clouds ”