Poem: Humanitad

It is full winter now: the trees are bare,     Save where the cattle huddle from the cold     Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear     The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold     Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true     To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew     From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay     Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain     Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day     From the low meadows up the narrow lane;     Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep     Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep     From the shut stable to the frozen stream     And back again disconsolate, and miss     The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;     And overhead in circling listlessness     The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,     Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack     Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds     And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,     And hoots to see the moon; across the meads     Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;     And a stray seamew with its fretful cry     Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.     Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings     His load of faggots from the chilly byre,     And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings     The sappy billets on the waning fire,     And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare     His children at their play, and yet, the spring is in the air;     Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,     And soon yon blanched fields will bloom again     With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,     For with the first warm kisses of the rain     The winter's icy sorrow breaks to tears,     And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers     From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,     And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs     Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly     Across our path at evening, and the suns     Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see     Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery     Dance through the hedges till the early rose,     (That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)     Burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose     The little quivering disk of golden fire     Which the bees know so well, for with it come     Pale boy's-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.     Then up and down the field the sower goes,     While close behind the laughing younker scares     With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,     And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,     And on the grass the creamy blossom falls     In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals     Steal from the bluebells' nodding carillons     Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,     That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons     With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine     In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed     And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed     Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,     And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,     Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy     Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,     And violets getting overbold withdraw     From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.     O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!     Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock     And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,     Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock     Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon     Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon.     Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,     The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns     Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture     Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations     With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,     And straggling traveller's-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind.     Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring,     That canst give increase to the sweet-breath'd kine,     And to the kid its little horns, and bring     The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,     Where is that old nepenthe which of yore     Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!     There was a time when any common bird     Could make me sing in unison, a time     When all the strings of boyish life were stirred     To quick response or more melodious rhyme     By every forest idyll; do I change?     Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?     Nay, nay, thou art the same: 'tis I who seek     To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,     And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek     Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;     Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare     To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!     Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul     Takes discontent to be its paramour,     And gives its kingdom to the rude control     Of what should be its servitor, for sure     Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea     Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ''Tis not in me.'     To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect     In natural honour, not to bend the knee     In profitless prostrations whose effect     Is by itself condemned, what alchemy     Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed     Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?     The minor chord which ends the harmony,     And for its answering brother waits in vain     Sobbing for incompleted melody,     Dies a swan's death; but I the heir of pain,     A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,     Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.     The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,     The little dust stored in the narrow urn,     The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb,     Were not these better far than to return     To my old fitful restless malady,     Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?     Nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned god     Is like the watcher by a sick man's bed     Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod     Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,     Death is too rude, too obvious a key     To solve one single secret in a life's philosophy.     And Love! that noble madness, whose august     And inextinguishable might can slay     The soul with honeyed drugs, alas! I must     From such sweet ruin play the runaway,     Although too constant memory never can     Forget the arched splendour of those brows Olympian     Which for a little season made my youth     So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence     That all the chiding of more prudent Truth     Seemed the thin voice of jealousy, O hence     Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis!     Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss.     My lips have drunk enough, no more, no more,     Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow     Back to the troubled waters of this shore     Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now     The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,     Hence! Hence! I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.     More barren ay, those arms will never lean     Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul     In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;     Some other head must wear that aureole,     For I am hers who loves not any man     Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian.     Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,     And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair,     With net and spear and hunting equipage     Let young Adonis to his tryst repair,     But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell     Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel.     Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy     Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud     Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy     And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed     In wonder at her feet, not for the sake     Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take.     Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!     And, if my lips be musicless, inspire     At least my life: was not thy glory hymned     By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre     Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon,     And died to show that Milton's England still could bear a son!     And yet I cannot tread the Portico     And live without desire, fear and pain,     Or nurture that wise calm which long ago     The grave Athenian master taught to men,     Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,     To watch the world's vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.     Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,     Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,     Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse     Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne     Is childless; in the night which she had made     For lofty secure flight Athena's owl itself hath strayed.     Nor much with Science do I care to climb,     Although by strange and subtle witchery     She drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time     Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry     To no less eager eyes; often indeed     In the great epic of Polymnia's scroll I love to read     How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war     Against a little town, and panoplied     In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar,     White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede     Between the waving poplars and the sea     Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylae     Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,     And on the nearer side a little brood     Of careless lions holding festival!     And stood amazed at such hardihood,     And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore,     And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o'er     Some unfrequented height, and coming down     The autumn forests treacherously slew     What Sparta held most dear and was the crown     Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew     How God had staked an evil net for him     In the small bay at Salamis, and yet, the page grows dim,     Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel     With such a goodly time too out of tune     To love it much: for like the Dial's wheel     That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon     Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes     Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies.     O for one grand unselfish simple life     To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills     Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife     Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,     Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly     Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!     Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he     Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul     Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty     Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal     Where love and duty mingle! Him at least     The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom's feast;     But we are Learning's changelings, know by rote     The clarion watchword of each Grecian school     And follow none, the flawless sword which smote     The pagan Hydra is an effete tool     Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now     Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?     One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!     Gone is that last dear son of Italy,     Who being man died for the sake of God,     And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,     O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto's tower,     Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour     Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or     The Arno with its tawny troubled gold     O'er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror     Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old     When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty     Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery     Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell     With an old man who grabbled rusty keys,     Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell     With which oblivion buries dynasties     Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast,     As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.     He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome,     He drave the base wolf from the lion's lair,     And now lies dead by that empyreal dome     Which overtops Valdarno hung in air     By Brunelleschi O Melpomene     Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!     Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies     That Joy's self may grow jealous, and the Nine     Forget awhile their discreet emperies,     Mourning for him who on Rome's lordliest shrine     Lit for men's lives the light of Marathon,     And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!     O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto's tower!     Let some young Florentine each eventide     Bring coronals of that enchanted flower     Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide,     And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies     Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes;     Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings,     Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim     Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings     Of the eternal chanting Cherubim     Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away     Into a moonless void, and yet, though he is dust and clay,     He is not dead, the immemorial Fates     Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain.     Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!     Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain     For the vile thing he hated lurks within     Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.     Still what avails it that she sought her cave     That murderous mother of red harlotries?     At Munich on the marble architrave     The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas     Which wash AEgina fret in loneliness     Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless     For lack of our ideals, if one star     Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust     Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war     Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust     Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe     For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,     What Easter Day shall make her children rise,     Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet     Shall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes     Shall see them bodily? O it were meet     To roll the stone from off the sepulchre     And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her,     Our Italy! our mother visible!     Most blessed among nations and most sad,     For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell     That day at Aspromonte and was glad     That in an age when God was bought and sold     One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,     See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves     Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty     Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives     Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,     And no word said:- O we are wretched men     Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen     Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword     Which slew its master righteously? the years     Have lost their ancient leader, and no word     Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears:     While as a ruined mother in some spasm     Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm     Genders unlawful children, Anarchy     Freedom's own Judas, the vile prodigal     Licence who steals the gold of Liberty     And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real     One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp     That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp     Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed     For whose dull appetite men waste away     Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed     Of things which slay their sower, these each day     Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet     Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.     What even Cromwell spared is desecrated     By weed and worm, left to the stormy play     Of wind and beating snow, or renovated     By more destructful hands: Time's worst decay     Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,     But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.     Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing     Through Lincoln's lofty choir, till the air     Seems from such marble harmonies to ring     With sweeter song than common lips can dare     To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now     The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow     For Southwell's arch, and carved the House of One     Who loved the lilies of the field with all     Our dearest English flowers? the same sun     Rises for us: the seasons natural     Weave the same tapestry of green and grey:     The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away.     And yet perchance it may be better so,     For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,     Murder her brother is her bedfellow,     And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene     And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;     Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!     For gentle brotherhood, the harmony     Of living in the healthful air, the swift     Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free     And women chaste, these are the things which lift     Our souls up more than even Agnolo's     Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o'er the scroll of human woes,     Or Titian's little maiden on the stair     White as her own sweet lily and as tall,     Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,     Ah! somehow life is bigger after all     Than any painted angel, could we see     The God that is within us! The old Greek serenity     Which curbs the passion of that level line     Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes     And chastened limbs ride round Athena's shrine     And mirror her divine economies,     And balanced symmetry of what in man     Would else wage ceaseless warfare, this at least within the span     Between our mother's kisses and the grave     Might so inform our lives, that we could win     Such mighty empires that from her cave     Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin     Would walk ashamed of his adulteries,     And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes.     To make the body and the spirit one     With all right things, till no thing live in vain     From morn to noon, but in sweet unison     With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain     The soul in flawless essence high enthroned,     Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,     Mark with serene impartiality     The strife of things, and yet be comforted,     Knowing that by the chain causality     All separate existences are wed     Into one supreme whole, whose utterance     Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance     Of Life in most august omnipresence,     Through which the rational intellect would find     In passion its expression, and mere sense,     Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind,     And being joined with it in harmony     More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,     Strike from their several tones one octave chord     Whose cadence being measureless would fly     Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord     Return refreshed with its new empery     And more exultant power, this indeed     Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed.     Ah! it was easy when the world was young     To keep one's life free and inviolate,     From our sad lips another song is rung,     By our own hands our heads are desecrate,     Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed     Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest.     Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown,     And of all men we are most wretched who     Must live each other's lives and not our own     For very pity's sake and then undo     All that we lived for it was otherwise     When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies.     But we have left those gentle haunts to pass     With weary feet to the new Calvary,     Where we behold, as one who in a glass     Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity,     And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze     Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise.     O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn!     O chalice of all common miseries!     Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne     An agony of endless centuries,     And we were vain and ignorant nor knew     That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew.     Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds,     The night that covers and the lights that fade,     The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds,     The lips betraying and the life betrayed;     The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we     Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.     Is this the end of all that primal force     Which, in its changes being still the same,     From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course,     Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame,     Till the suns met in heaven and began     Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man!     Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though     The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain     Loosen the nails we shall come down I know,     Staunch the red wounds we shall be whole again,     No need have we of hyssop-laden rod,     That which is purely human, that is godlike, that is God.