of the life of Gods.
“Mere phantoms of man’s self-tormenting heart,
Which on the sweets that woo it dares not feed:
Vain dreams, that quench our pleasures, then depart,
When the dup’d soul, self-master’d, claims its meed:
When, on the strenuous just man, Heaven bestows,
Crown of his struggling life, an unjust close.
“Seems it so light a thing then, austere Powers,
To spurn man’s common lure, life’s pleasant things?
Seems there no joy in dances crown’d with flowers,
Love, free to range, and regal banquetings?
Bend ye on these, indeed, an unmov’d eye,
Not Gods but ghosts, in frozen apathy?
“Or is it that some Power, too wise, too strong,
Even for yourselves to conquer or beguile,
Whirls earth, and heaven, and men, and gods along,
Like the broad rushing of the insurged Nile?
And the great powers we serve, themselves may be
Slaves of a tyrannous Necessity?
“Or in mid-heaven, perhaps, your golden cars,
Where earthly voice climbs never, wing their flight,
And in wild hunt, through mazy tracts of stars,
Sweep in the sounding stillness of the night?
Or in deaf ease, on thrones of dazzling sheen,
Drinking deep draughts of joy, ye dwell serene?
“Oh, wherefore cheat our youth, if thus it be,
Of one short joy, one lust, one pleasant dream?
Stringing vain words of powers we cannot see,
Blind divinations of a will supreme;
Lost labour: when the circumambient gloom
But hides, if Gods, Gods careless of our doom?
“The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak,
My sand runs short; and as yon star-shot ray,
Hemm’d by two banks of cloud, peers pale and weak,
Now, as the barrier closes, dies away;
Even so do past and future intertwine,
Blotting this six years’ space, which yet is mine.
“Six years—six little years—six drops of time—
Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane,
And old men die, and young men pass their prime,
And languid Pleasure fade and flower again;
And the dull Gods behold, ere these are flown,
Revels more deep, joy keener than their own.
“Into the silence of the groves and woods
I will go forth; though something would I say—
Something—yet what I know not: for the Gods
The doom they pass revoke not, nor delay;
And prayers, and gifts, and tears, are fruitless all,
And the night waxes, and the shadows fall.
“Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king.
I go, and I return not. But the will
Of the great Gods is plain; and ye must bring
Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil
Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,
The praise of Gods, rich boon! and length of days.”
—So spake he, half in anger, half in scorn;
And one loud cry of grief and of amaze
Broke from his sorrowing people: so he spake;
And turning, left them there; and with brief pause,
Girt with a throng of revellers, bent his way
To the cool region of the groves he lov’d.
There by the river banks he wander’d on,
From palm-grove on to palm-grove, happy trees,
Their smooth tops shining sunwards, and beneath
Burying their unsunn’d stems in grass and flowers:
Where in one dream the feverish time of Youth
Might fade in slumber, and the feet of Joy
Might wander all day long and never tire:
Here came the king, holding high feast, at morn,
Rose-crown’d; and ever, when the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beam’d in the tranquil gloom,
From tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast,
Flush’d guests, and golden goblets, foam’d with wine;
While the deep-burnish’d foliage overhead
Splinter’d the silver arrows of the moon.
It may be that sometimes his wondering soul
From the loud joyful laughter of his lips
Might shrink half startled, like a guilty man
Who wrestles with his dream; as some pale Shape,
Gliding half hidden through the dusky stems,
Would thrust a hand before the lifted bowl,
Whispering: “A little space, and thou art mine.”
It may be on that joyless feast his eye
Dwelt with mere outward seeming; he, within,
Took measure of his soul, and knew its strength,
And by that silent knowledge, day by day,
Was calm’d, ennobled, comforted, sustain’d.
It may be; but not less his brow was smooth,
And his clear laugh fled ringing through the gloom,
And his mirth quail’d not at the mild reproof
Sigh’d out by Winter’s sad tranquillity;
Nor, pall’d with its own fullness, ebb’d and died
In the rich languor of long summer-days;
Nor wither’d, when the palm-tree plumes, that roof’d
With their mild dark his grassy banquet-hall,
Bent to the cold winds of the showerless Spring;
No, nor grew dark when Autumn brought the clouds.
So six long years he revell’d, night and day;
And when the mirth wax’d loudest, with dull sound
Sometimes from the grove’s centre echoes came,
To tell his wondering people of their king;
In the still night, across the steaming flats,
Mix’d with the murmur of the moving Nile.
The Hayswater Boat
A region desolate and wild,
Black, chafing water: and afloat,
And lonely as a truant child
In a waste wood, a single boat:
No mast, no sails are set thereon;
It moves, but never moveth on:
And welters like a human thing
Amid the wild waves weltering.
Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,
Far down the torrent cleaves its way:
In front the dumb rock rises steep,
A fretted wall of blue and grey;
Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone
With many a wild weed overgrown:
All else, black water: and afloat,
One rood from shore, that single boat.
Last night the wind was up and strong;
The grey-streak’d waters labour still:
The strong blast brought a pygmy throng
From that mild hollow in the hill;
From those twin brooks, that beachèd strand
So featly strewn with drifted sand;
From those weird domes of mounded green
That spot the solitary scene.
This boat they found against the shore:
The glossy rushes nodded by.
One rood from land they push’d, no more;
Then rested, listening silently.
The loud rains lash’d the mountain’s crown,
The grating shingle straggled down:
All night they sate; then stole away,
And left it rocking in the bay.
Last night?—I look’d, the sky was clear.
The boat was old, a batter’d boat.
In sooth, it seems a hundred year
Since that strange crew did ride afloat.
The boat hath drifted in the bay—
The oars have moulder’d as they lay—
The rudder swings—yet none doth steer.
What living hand hath brought it here?
The New Sirens
A Palinode
In the cedar shadow sleeping,
Where cool grass and fragrant glooms
Oft at noon had lur’d me, creeping
From your darken’d
