must be careful now. I have such plots—
Such war plots, peace plots, love plots—every side;
I cannot go into the bloodless land
Among the whimpering ghosts.
| Time |
Mate thus.
|
| Vivien |
Already?
Chance hath a skill!
|
|
She dies. |
Kanva on Himself
Now wherefore hast thou tears innumerous?
Hast thou not known all sorrow and delight
Wandering of yore in forests rumorous,
Beneath the flaming eyeballs of the night,
And as a slave been wakeful in the halls
Of Rajas and Mahrajas beyond number?
Hast thou not ruled among the gilded walls?
Hast thou not known a Raja’s dreamless slumber?
Hast thou not sat of yore upon the knees
Of myriads of beloveds, and on thine
Have not a myriad swayed below strange trees
In other lives? Hast thou not quaffed old wine
By tables that were fallen into dust
Ere yonder palm commenced his thousand years?
Is not thy body but the garnered rust
Of ancient passions and of ancient fears?
Then wherefore fear the usury of Time,
Or Death that cometh with the next life-key?
Nay, rise and flatter her with golden rhyme,
For as things were so shall things ever be.
The Phantom Ship
Flames the shuttle of the lightning across the driving sleet,
Ay, and shakes in sea-green waverings along the fishers’ street;
Gone the stars and gone the white moon, gone and puffed away and dead.
Never storm arose so swiftly; scarce the children were in bed,
Scarce the old and wizen houses had their doors and windows shut.
Ah! it dwelt within the twilight as the worm within the nut.
“Waken, waken, sleepy fishers; no hour is this for sleep,”
Cries a voice at roaring midnight beside the moonless deep.
Half dizzy with the lightning there runs a gathering band—
“Watcher, wherefore have ye called us?” Eyes go after his lean hand,
And the fisher men and women from the dripping harbour wall
See the darkness slow disgorging a vessel blind with squall.
“Bring the ropes now! Stand ye by now! See, she rounds the harbour clear.
God! they’re mad to fly such canvas!” Ah! what bell-notes do they hear?
Say what ringer rings at midnight; for, in the belfry high,
Slow the chapel bell is tolling as though the dead passed by.
Round she comes in stays before them; cease the winds, and on their poles
Cease the sails their flapping uproar, and the hull no longer rolls.
Now a scream from all those fishers, for there on deck there be
All the drowned that ever were drowned from that village by the sea;
And the ghastly ghost-flames glimmer all along the taffrail rails
On the drowned men’s hands and faces, on the spars and on the sails.
Hush’d the fishers, till a mother calls by name her drownèd son;
Then each wife and maid and mother calls by name some drownèd one.
Stands each grey and silent phantom on the same regardless spot—
Joys and fears in their grey faces that the live earth knoweth not;
Down the vapours fall and hide them from the children of a day,
And the winds come down and blow them with the vapours far away.
Hang the mist-threads for a little while like cobwebs in the air;
Then the stars grow out of heaven with their countenances fair.
“Pray for the souls in purgatory,” the pale priest trembling cries.
Prayed those forgotten fishers, till in the eastern skies
Came olive fires of morning and on the darkness fed,
By the slow heaving ocean—mumbling mother of the dead.
A Lover’s Quarrel Among the Fairies
A moonlit moor. Fairies leading a child.
| Male Fairies. |
Do not fear us, earthly maid!
We will lead you hand in hand
By the willows in the glade,
By the gorse on the high land,
By the pasture where the lambs
Shall awake with lonely bleat,
Shivering closer to their dams
From the rustling of our feet.
You will with the banshee chat,
And will find her good at heart,
Sitting on a warm smooth mat
In the green hill’s inmost part.
We will bring a crown of gold,
Bending humbly every knee,
Now thy great white doll to hold—
Oh, so happy would we be!
Ah! it is so very big,
And we are so very small!
So we dance a fairy jig
To the fiddle’s rise and fall.
Yonder see the fairy girls
All their jealousy display,
Lift their chins and toss their curls,
Lift their chins and turn away.
See you, brother, Cranberry Fruit—
Ho! ho! ho! the merry blade!—
Hugs and pets and pats yon newt,
Teasing every wilful maid.
|
| Girl Fairies. |
Lead they one with foolish care,
Deafening us with idle sound—
One whose breathing shakes the air,
One whose footfall shakes the ground.
Come you, Coltsfoot, Mousetail, come!
Come I know where, far away,
Owls there be whom age makes numb;
Come and tease them till the day
Puffed like puff-balls on a tree,
Scoff they at the modern earth—
Ah! how large mice used to be
In their days of youthful mirth!
Come, beside a sandy lake,
Feed a fire with stems of grass;
Roasting berries steam and shake—
Talking hours swiftly pass!
Long before the morning fire
Wake the larks upon the green.
Yonder foolish ones will tire
Of their tall, new-fangled queen.
They will lead her home again
To the orchard-circled farm;
At the house of weary men
Raise the door-pin with alarm,
And come kneeling on one knee,
While we shake our heads and scold
This their wanton treachery,
And our slaves be as of old.
|
How Ferencz Renyi Kept Silent
Hungary, 1848
We, too, have seen our bravest and our best
To prisons go, and mossy ruin rest
Where homes once whitened vale and mountain crest;
Therefore, O nation of the bleeding breast,
Libations, from the Hungary of the West.
Before his tent the General sips his wine,
Waves off the flies, and warms him in the shine.
The Austrian Haynau he, in many lands
Famous, a man of rules, a victor. Stands
Before him one well guarded, with bound hands;
Schoolmaster he, a dreamer, fiddler, first
In every dance, by children sought. “Accurst,
Thy name is?”
“Renyi.”
“Of?”
“This village.”
“Good!
Hiding the rebels worm in yonder wood
Or yonder mountains. Where? Thou shalt be free—
Silence! Thou shalt be dead!”
Now suddenly
The spirit of young Renyi has grown old.
He turns where, hung like drops of dripping gold,
Flashing and flickering with
