Aubrey de Vere

“ None dared to grave it, lore from age to age
Transmitted by white lips of trembling seers,
Spared not to wing, like arrow sped from God,
That word to man, "Valhalla's Gods must die!"
The Gods and Giant Race that strove so long,
Met in their last and mightiest battle field,
Must die, and die one death. That prophet-voice
The Gods have heard. ”

“ Happiest of nations should that nation be
Which died His willing victim!'
'King, and Son,'
With voice a moment troubled he resumed,
'Thy future rests with God! Yet shake, Oh shake
One boding grief—'tis causeless—from thy breast,
Deeming thy race less valiant than the North:
Faithfuller they stand and nearer to their sires!
Remorseless less to others and to self
I grant them; that implies not valiant less:
The brave are still in spirit the merciful;
Far down within their being stirs a sense
Of more than race or realm. ”

“ PART III. I. In vain thine altars do they heap With blooms of violated May Who fail the words of Christ to keep; Thy Son who love not, nor obey. Their songs are as a serpent's hiss; Their praise a poniard's poisoned edge; Their offering taints, like Judas' kiss, Thy shrine; their vows are sacrilege. Sadly from such thy countenance turns: Thou canst not stretch thy Babe to such (Albeit for all thy pity yearns) As greet Him with a leper's touch. Who loveth thee must love thy Son. Weak Love grows strong thy smile beneath: But nothing comes from nothing; none Can reap Love's harvest out of Death. ”

“ The orbits of our life and thought In Thee their little arcs describe. In the dead calm, at cool of day, We hear Thy voice, and turn, and flee:— Thy love outstrips us on our way: From Thee, O God, we fly—to Thee. ”

“ That sin had found me out! He knew my mission:
When in mine absence slander sought my name,
Mine honour he had cleared. Yet now—yet now—
That hour the iron passed into my soul:
Yea, well nigh all was lost. I wept, “Not one,
No heart of man there is that knows my heart,
Or in its anguish shares.”
Yet, O my God!
I blame him not: from Thee that penance came:
Not for man’s love should Thine Apostle strive,
Thyself alone his great and sole reward.
Thou laid’st that hour a fiery hand of love
Upon a faithless heart; and it survived. ”

“ Come fair and fairer than the day! Our hearts are wounded with thine eyes: They character in words of light Thereon the mystery of the skies: The "Name o'er every name" they write. Come from thy Lebanonian peaks Whose sacerdotal cedars nod Above the world, when morning breaks— The Mountain of the House of God. The land thou lov'st—well is she! The ploughers on her back may plough; But in her vales upgrows the Tree Of Life, and binds the bleeding brow. ”

“ She stood: she sang a death-song centuries old,
The dirge prophetic both of Gods and men:
'The iron age shall make an iron end:
The men who lived in hate, or impious love,
Shall meet in one red battle field. That day
The forests of the earth, blackening, shall die;
The stars down-fall; the Wingèd Hound of Heaven,
That chased the Sun from age to age, shall close
O'er it at last; the Ash Tree, Ygdrasil,
Whose boughs o'er-roof the skies, whose roots descend
To Hell, whose leaves are lives of men, whose boughs
The destined empires that o'er-awe the world,
Shall drop its fruit unripe. ”

“ From kneeling Secknall rose
And stood, and singing, raised his hand as when
Her cymbal by the Red Sea Miriam raised
While silent stood God’s hosts, and silent lay
Those host-entombing waters. Shook, like hers,
His slight form wavering ’mid the gusts of song.
He sang the Saint of God, create from nought
To work God’s Will. ”

“ XXX. The sunless day is sweeter yet Than when the golden sun-showers danced On bower new-glazed or rivulet; And Spring her banners first advanced. By wind unshaken hang in dream The wind-flowers o'er their dark green lair; And those thin poppy cups that seem Not bodied forms, but woven of air. Nor bird is heard; nor insect flits. A tear-drop glittering on her cheek, Composed but shadowed, Nature sits— Yon primrose not more staid and meek. The light of pensive hope unquenched On those pathetic brows and eyes, She sits, by silver dew-showers drenched, Through which the chill spring-odours rise. ”

“ Of song! My father, do I vainly dream
Oft thinking that the bards, perchance the birds,
Sing something vaster than they think or know?
Some fire immortal lives within their strings:
Therefore the people love them. War divine,
God’s war on sin—true love-song best and sweetest—
Perforce they chaunt in spirit, not wars of clans:
Yea, one day, conscious, they shall sing that song;
One day by river clear of south or north,
Pagan no more, the laurelled head shall rise,
And chaunt the Warfare of the Realm of Souls,
The anguish and the cleansing, last the crown—
Prelude of songs celestial! ”

“ The swallow, winter's rage o'erblown, Again, on warm May breezes borne, Revisiteth her haunts well-known; The lark is faithful to the morn. The whirlwind, missioned with its wings To drown the fleet and fell the tower, Obeys thee as the bird that sings Her love-chant in a fleeting shower. Amid an ordered universe Man's spirit only dares rebel:— With light, O God, its darkness pierce! ”

“ Who Is ignorant that from Godhead's height To what is loftiest here below The interval is infinite? O Mary! with that smile thrice-blest Upon their petulance look down;— Their dull negation, cold protest— Thy smile will melt away their frown! Show them thy Son! That hour their heart Will beat and burn with love like thine; Grow large; and learn from thee that art Which communes best with things divine. The man who grasps not what is best In creaturely existence, he Is narrowest in the brain; and least Can grasp the thought of Deity. ”

“ Things earthly perish: life to death And death to life in turn succeeds. The spirit never perisheth: The chrysalis its Psyche breeds. True life alone is that which soars To Him who triumphed o'er the grave: With Him, on life's eternal shores, I trust one day a part to have. Ah, hark! above the springing corn That chime; in every breeze it swells! Ye bells that wake the Ascension morn, Ye give us back our Paschal bells! ”

“ From room to room those children roam, Heart-stricken by the unwonted black: Their house no longer seems their home: They search; yet know not what they lack. Years pass: Self-Will and Passion strike Their roots more deeply day by day; Old servants weep; and "how unlike" Is all the tender neighbours say. And yet at moments, like a dream, A mother's image o'er them flits: Like her's their eyes a moment beam; The voice grows soft; the brow unknits. Such, Mary, are the realms once thine, That know no more thy golden reign. Hold forth from heaven thy Babe divine! O make thine orphans thine again! ”

“ The airs of midnight hurt no more: The young maids love thee. Come at last: Thou lingerest at the garden-door. "Blow over all the garden; blow, Thou wind that breathest of the south, Through all the alleys winding low, With dewy wing and honeyed mouth. "But wheresoever thou wanderest, shape Thy music ever to one Name:— Thou too, clear stream, to cave and cape Be sure thou whisper of the same. "By every isle and bower of musk Thy crystal clasps, as on it curls, We charge thee, breathe it to the dusk; We charge thee, grave it in thy pearls." ”

“ Yet Nature's virginal suspense Is not forgetfulness nor sloth: Where'er we wander, soul and sense Discern a blindly working growth. Her throne once more the daisy takes, That white star of our dusky earth; And the sky-cloistered lark down-shakes Her passion of seraphic mirth. Twixt barren hills and clear cold skies She weaves, ascending high and higher, Songs florid as those traceries Which took, of old, their name from fire. Sing! thou that need'st no ardent clime To sun the sweetness from thy breast; And teach us those delights sublime Wherein ascetic spirits rest! ”

“ PROLOGUE. That sun-eyed Power which stands sublime Upon the rock that crowns our globe, Her feet on all the spoils of time, With light eternal on her robe, She, sovereign of the orb she guides, On Truth's broad sun may root a gaze That deepens, onward as she rides, And shrinks not from the fontal blaze: But they—her daughter Arts—must hide Within the cleft, content to see Dim skirts of glory waving wide, And steps of parting Deity. 'Tis theirs to watch Religion break In types from Nature's frown or smile, The legend rise from out the lake, The relic consecrate the isle. ”

“ Since first He made thee, thy Creator’s praise,
Sing, sing, thy Saviour’s! Myriad-minded sea,
How that bright secret thrills thy rippling lips
Which shake, yet speak not! Thou that mad’st the worlds,
Man, too, Thou mad’st; within Thy Hands the life
Of each was shapen, and new-wov’n ran out,
New-willed each moment. What makes up that life?
Love infinite, and nothing else save love!
Help ere need came, deliverance ere defeat;
At every step an angel to sustain us,
An angel to retrieve! ”

“ Each age its garland found:
Fair shone on trustful childhood faith divine:
Eld, once a weight of wrinkles now upsoared
In venerable lordship of white hairs,
Seer-like and sage. Healed was a nation’s wound:
All men believed who willed not disbelief;
And sat in that oppugnancy steel-mailed:
They cried, “Before thy priests our bards shall bow,
And all our clans put on thy great Clan Christ!”
For your sake, O my brethren, and my sons
These things have I recorded. Something I wrought:
Strive ye in loftier labours; strive, and win:
Your victory shall be mine: my crown are ye. ”

“ Yet, glancing through our misty clime, Some sparkles from that loftier sphere Make way to earth;—then most what time The annual spring-flowers re-appear. Amid the coarser needs of earth All shapes of brightness, what are they But wanderers, exiled from their birth, Or pledges of a happier day? Yea, what is Beauty, judged aright, But some surpassing, transient gleam; Some smile from heaven, in waves of light, Rippling o'er life's distempered dream? ”

“ The sceptre of His empery Subdues the worlds from end to end. Yet still the sword goes through her heart, For still on earth His Church survives. In her that woman holds a part: In her she suffers, wakes, and strives. ”

“ Who feels not, when the Spring once more, Stepping o'er Winter's grave forlorn With winged feet, retreads the shore Of widowed Earth, his bosom burn? As ordered flower succeeds to flower, And May the ladder of her sweets Ascends, advancing hour by hour From scale to scale, what heart but beats? ”

“ To Rome her Idol fanes and pilfered Gods.
I see you, O my People, year by year
Strengthened by sufferings; pains that crush the weak,
Your helpers. Men have been that, poison-fed,
Grew poison-proof: on pain and wrong feed ye! ”

“ A dying moon beneath her wanes: But he that letteth still must let: The Power accurst awhile remains. Break up, strong Earth, thy stony floors, And snatch to penal caverns dun That Dragon from the pit that wars Against the woman and her Son! ”

“ Let no one, Mary, name thy name, While, aping God, upon his heart Pride sits, a demon robed in flame. Proud Vices, die! Where Sin has place Be Sin's familiar self-disgust. Proud Virtues, doubly die; that Grace At last may burgeon from your dust. ”

“ Was theirs; old sea-beat Cornwall's granite cliffs,
And purple hills of Cambria; northward thence
Strathclyde, from towered Carnegia's winding Dee
To Morecombe's shining sands, and those fair vales,
Since loved by every muse, where silver meres
Slept in the embrace of yew-clad mountain walls ”

“ But when, like some supreme of hills, Whose feet shut out its summit's snow, That, hid no longer, heavenward swells As further from its base we go, Abroad His perfect Godhead shone, Each hour more plainly kenned on high, And clothed His Manhood with the sun, And, cleansing, hurt the adoring eye ”

“ The perfect work of May is done: Hard by a new perfection waits:— The twain, a sister and a nun, A moment parley at the grates. The whiter Spirit turns in peace To hide her in the cloistral shade:— 'Tis time that you should also cease, Slight carols in her honour made. ”

“ XII. Fall back, all worlds, into the abyss, That man may contemplate once more That which He ever was Who is:— The Eternal Essence we adore. Angelic hierarchies! recede Beyond extinct creation's shade! What were ye at the first? Decreed:— Decreed, not fashioned; thought, not made! Like wind the untold Millenniums passed. Sole-throned He sat; yet not alone: Godhead in Godhead still was glassed;— The Spirit was breathed from Sire and Son. ”

“ To make the noon-tide sloth's excuse. Panting, but pleased, the cattle stand Knee-deep in water-weed and sedge, And scarcely crop the greener band Of osiers round the river's edge. But hark! Far off the south wind sweeps The golden-foliaged groves among, Renewed or lulled, with rests and leaps— Ah! how it makes the spirit long To drop its earthly weight, and drift Like yon white cloud, on pinions free, Beyond that mountain's purple rift, And o'er that scintillating sea! ”

“ Strong as the breeze of morning, rolled O'er answering woodlands from the sea, That matutinal anthem vast Which winds, like sunrise, round the globe, Following the sunrise, far and fast, And trampling on his fiery robe. Once more the Pentecostal torch Lights on the courses of the year: The "upper chamber" of the Church Is thrilled once more with joy and fear. Who lifts her brow from out the dust? Who fixes on a world restored A gaze like Eve's, but more august? ”