Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor

Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor     Born January 30th, 1775     Died September 17th, 1864     There is delight in singing, though none hear     Beside the singer: and there is delight     In praising, though the praiser sit alone     And see the praised far off him, far above.     - Landor.     Dedication.     To Mrs. Lynn Linton.     Daughter in spirit elect and consecrate     By love and reverence of the Olympian sire     Whom I too loved and worshipped, seeing so great,     And found so gracious toward my long desire     To bid that love in song before his gate     Sound, and my lute be loyal to his lyre,     To none save one it now may dedicate     Song's new burnt-offering on a century's pyre.     And though the gift be light     As ashes in men's sight,     Left by the flame of no ethereal fire,     Yet, for his worthier sake     Than words are worthless, take     This wreath of words ere yet their hour expire:     So, haply, from some heaven above,     He, seeing, may set next yours my sacrifice of love.     May 24, 1880.     Song for the Centenary of Walter Savage Landor 1.     Five years beyond an hundred years have seen     Their winters, white as faith's and age's hue,     Melt, smiling through brief tears that broke between,     And hope's young conquering colours reared anew,     Since, on the day whose edge for kings made keen     Smote sharper once than ever storm-wind blew,     A head predestined for the girdling green     That laughs at lightning all the seasons through,     Nor frost or change can sunder     Its crown untouched of thunder     Leaf from least leaf of all its leaves that grew     Alone for brows too bold     For storm to sear of old,     Elect to shine in time's eternal view,     Rose on the verge of radiant life     Between the winds and sunbeams mingling love with strife. 2.     The darkling day that gave its bloodred birth     To Milton's white republic undefiled     That might endure so few fleet years on earth     Bore in him likewise as divine a child;     But born not less for crowns of love and mirth,     Of palm and myrtle passionate and mild,     The leaf that girds about with gentler girth     The brow steel-bound in battle, and the wild     Soft spray that flowers above     The flower-soft hair of love;     And the white lips of wayworn winter smiled     And grew serene as spring's     When with stretched clouds like wings     Or wings like drift of snow-clouds massed and piled     The godlike giant, softening, spread     A shadow of stormy shelter round the new-born head. 3.     And o'er it brightening bowed the wild-haired hour,     And touched his tongue with honey and with fire,     And breathed between his lips the note of power     That makes of all the winds of heaven a lyre     Whose strings are stretched from topmost peaks that tower     To softest springs of waters that suspire,     With sounds too dim to shake the lowliest flower     Breathless with hope and dauntless with desire:     And bright before his face     That Hour became a Grace,     As in the light of their Athenian quire     When the Hours before the sun     And Graces were made one,     Called by sweet Love down from the aerial gyre     By one dear name of natural joy,     To bear on her bright breast from heaven a heaven-born boy. 4.     Ere light could kiss the little lids in sunder     Or love could lift them for the sun to smite,     His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder     Had risen, perplexing the presageful night     With shadow and glory around her sphere and under     And portents prophesying by sound and sight;     And half the sound was song and half was thunder,     And half his life of lightning, half of light:     And in the soft clenched hand     Shone like a burning brand     A shadowy sword for swordless fields of fight,     Wrought only for such lord     As so may wield the sword     That all things ill be put to fear and flight     Even at the flash and sweep and gleam     Of one swift stroke beheld but in a shuddering dream. 5.     Like the sun's rays that blind the night's wild beasts     The sword of song shines as the swordsman sings;     From the west wind's verge even to the arduous east's     The splendour of the shadow that it flings     Makes fire and storm in heaven above the feasts     Of men fulfilled with food of evil things;     Strikes dumb the lying and hungering lips of priests,     Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings;     Turns dark the lamp's hot light,     And turns the darkness bright     As with the shadow of dawn's reverberate wings;     And far before its way     Heaven, yearning toward the day,     Shines with its thunder and round its lightning rings;     And never hand yet earlier played     With that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, and fire its blade. 6.     As dropping flakes of honey-heavy dew     More soft than slumber's, fell the first note's sound     From strings the swift young hand strayed lightlier through     Than leaves through calm air wheeling toward the ground     Stray down the drifting wind when skies are blue     Nor yet the wings of latter winds unbound,     Ere winter loosen all the olian crew     With storm unleashed behind them like a hound.     As lightly rose and sank     Beside a green-flowered bank     The clear first notes his burning boyhood found     To sing her sacred praise     Who rode her city's ways     Clothed with bright hair and with high purpose crowned;     A song of soft presageful breath,     Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death; 7.     Who should love two things only and only praise     More than all else for ever: even the glory     Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days     Take light whereby death's self seems transitory;     And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise,     Love that wipes off the miry stains and gory     From Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways,     And lightens with his light the night of story;     Love that lifts up from dust     Life, and makes darkness just,     And purges as with fire of purgatory     The dense disastrous air,     To burn old falsehood bare     And give the wind its ashes heaped and hoary;     Love, that with eyes of ageless youth     Sees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth. 8.     For at his birth the sistering stars were one     That flamed upon it as one fiery star;     Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun,     And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are.     Of all that love not liberty let none     Love her that fills our lips with fire from far     To mix with winds and seas in unison     And sound athwart life's tideless harbour-bar     Out where our songs fly free     Across time's bounded sea,     A boundless flight beyond the dim sun's car,     Till all the spheres of night     Chime concord round their flight     Too loud for blasts of warring change to mar,     From stars that sang for Homer's birth     To these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth 9.     Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave,     Stars of our worship, lights of our desire!     For never man that heard the world's wind rave     To you was truer in trust of heart and lyre:     Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave     Beheld your flame against the wind burn higher:     Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly wave     With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire:     No blast of all that blow     Might bid the torch burn low     That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre,     Indomitable of storm,     That now no flaws deform     Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire,     One light of godlike breath and flame,     To write on heaven with man's most glorious names his name. 10.     The very dawn was dashed with stormy dew     And freaked with fire as when God's hand would mar     Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue     Deep heaven was kindled round her thunderous car,     That saw how swift a gathering glory grew     About him risen, ere clouds could blind or bar     A splendour strong to burn and burst them through     And mix in one sheer light things near and far.     First flew before his path     Light shafts of love and wrath,     But winged and edged as elder warriors' are;     Then rose a light that showed     Across the midsea road     From radiant Calpe to revealed Masar     The way of war and love and fate     Between the goals of fear and fortune, hope and hate. 11.     Mine own twice banished fathers' harbour-land,     Their nursing-mother France, the well-beloved,     By the arduous blast of sanguine sunrise fanned,     Flamed on him, and his burning lips were moved     As that live statue's throned on Lybian sand     When morning moves it, ere her light faith roved     From promise, and her tyrant's poisonous hand     Fed hope with Corsic honey till she proved     More deadly than despair     And falser even than fair,     Though fairer than all elder hopes removed     As landmarks by the crime     Of inundating time;     Light faith by grief too loud too long reproved:     For even as in some darkling dance     Wronged love changed hands with hate, and turned his heart from France. 12.     But past the snows and summits Pyrenean     Love stronger-winged held more prevailing flight     That o'er Tyrrhene, Iberian, and gean     Shores lightened with one storm of sound and light.     From earliest even to hoariest years one pan     Rang rapture through the fluctuant roar of fight,     From Nestor's tongue in accents Achillean     On death's blind verge dominant over night     For voice as hand and hand     As voice for one fair land     Rose radiant, smote sonorous, past the height     Where darkling pines enrobe     The steel-cold Lake of Gaube,     Deep as dark death and keen as death to smite,     To where on peak or moor or plain     His heart and song and sword were one to strike for Spain. 13.     Resurgent at his lifted voice and hand     Pale in the light of war or treacherous fate     Song bade before him all their shadows stand     For whom his will unbarred their funeral grate.     The father by whose wrong revenged his land     Was given for sword and fire to desolate     Rose fire-encircled as a burning brand,     Great as the woes he wrought and bore were great.     Fair as she smiled and died,     Death's crowned and breathless bride     Smiled as one living even on craft and hate:     And pity, a star unrisen,     Scarce lit Ferrante's prison     Ere night unnatural closed the natural gate     That gave their life and love and light     To those fair eyes despoiled by fratricide of sight. 14.     Tears bright and sweet as fire and incense fell     In perfect notes of music-measured pain     On veiled sweet heads that heard not love's farewell     Sob through the song that bade them rise again;     Rise in the light of living song, to dwell     With memories crowned of memory: so the strain     Made soft as heaven the stream that girdles hell     And sweet the darkness of the breathless plain,     And with Elysian flowers     Recrowned the wreathless hours     That mused and mourned upon their works in vain;     For all their works of death     Song filled with light and breath,     And listening grief relaxed her lightening chain;     For sweet as all the wide sweet south     She found the song like honey from the lion's mouth. 15.     High from his throne in heaven Simonides,     Crowned with mild aureole of memorial tears     That the everlasting sun of all time sees     All golden, molten from the forge of years,     Smiled, as the gift was laid upon his knees     Of songs that hang like pearls in mourners' ears,     Mild as the murmuring of Hymettian bees     And honied as their harvest, that endears     The toil of flowery days;     And smiling perfect praise     Hailed his one brother mateless else of peers:     Whom we that hear not him     For length of date grown dim     Hear, and the heart grows glad of grief that hears;     And harshest heights of sorrowing hours,     Like snows of Alpine April, melt from tears to flowers. 16.     Therefore to him the shadow of death was none,     The darkness was not, nor the temporal tomb:     And multitudinous time for him was one,     Who bade before his equal seat of doom     Rise and stand up for judgment in the sun     The weavers of the world's large-historied loom,     By their own works of light or darkness done     Clothed round with light or girt about with gloom.     In speech of purer gold     Than even they spake of old     He bade the breath of Sidney's lips relume     The fire of thought and love     That made his bright life move     Through fair brief seasons of benignant bloom     To blameless music ever, strong     As death and sweet as death-annihilating song. 17.     Thought gave his wings the width of time to roam,     Love gave his thought strength equal to release     From bonds of old forgetful years, like foam     Vanished, the fame of memories that decrease;     So strongly faith had fledged for flight from home     The soul's large pinions till her strife should cease:     And through the trumpet of a child of Rome     Rang the pure music of the flutes of Greece.     As though some northern hand     Reft from the Latin land     A spoil more costly than the Colchian fleece     To clothe with golden sound     Of old joy newly found     And rapture as of penetrating peace     The naked north-wind's cloudiest clime,     And give its darkness light of the old Sicilian time. 18.     He saw the brand that fired the towers of Troy     Fade, and the darkness at none's prayer     Close upon her that closed upon her boy,     For all the curse of godhead that she bare;     And the Apollonian serpent gleam and toy     With scathless maiden limbs and shuddering hair;     And his love smitten in their dawn of joy     Leave Pan the pine-leaf of her change to wear;     And one in flowery coils     Caught as in fiery toils     Smite Calydon with mourning unaware;     And where her low turf shrine     Showed Modesty divine     The fairest mother's daughter far more fair     Hide on her breast the heavenly shame     That kindled once with love should kindle Troy with flame. 19.     Nor less the light of story than of song     With graver glories girt his godlike head,     Reverted alway from the temporal throng     Of lives that live not toward the living dead.     The shadows and the splendours of their throng     Made bright and dark about his board and bed     The lines of life and vision, sweet or strong     With sound of lutes or trumpets blown, that led     Forth of the ghostly gate     Opening in spite of fate     Shapes of majestic or tumultuous tread,     Divine and direful things,     These foul as priests or kings,     Those fair as heaven or love or freedom, red     With blood and green with palms and white     With raiment woven of deeds divine and words of light. 20.     The thunder-fire of Cromwell, and the ray     That keeps the place of Phocion's name serene     And clears the cloud from Kosciusko's day,     Alternate as dark hours with bright between,     Met in the heaven of his high thought, which lay     For all stars open that all eyes had seen     Rise on the night or twilight of the way     Where feet of human hopes and fears had been.     Again the sovereign word     On Milton's lips was heard     Living: again the tender three days' queen     Drew bright and gentle breath     On the sharp edge of death:     And, staged again to show of mortal scene,     Tiberius, ere his name grew dire,     Wept, stainless yet of empire, tears of blood and fire. 21.     Most ardent and most awful and most fond,     The fervour of his Apollonian eye     Yearned upon Hellas, yet enthralled in bond     Of time whose years beheld her and past by     Silent and shameful, till she rose and donned     The casque again of Pallas; for her cry     Forth of the past and future, depths beyond     This where the present and its tyrants lie,     As one great voice of twain     For him had pealed again,     Heard but of hearts high as her own was high,     High as her own and his     And pure as love's heart is,     That lives though hope at once and memory die:     And with her breath his clarion's blast     Was filled as cloud with fire or future souls with past. 22.     As a wave only obsequious to the wind     Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap,     Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned     By the strong god's breath moving on the deep     From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind     That shakes the plain where no men sow nor reap,     So, moved with wrath toward men that ruled and sinned     And pity toward all tears he saw men weep,     Arose to take man's part     His loving lion heart,     Kind as the sun's that has in charge to keep     Earth and the seed thereof     Safe in his lordly love,     Strong as sheer truth and soft as very sleep;     The mightiest heart since Milton's leapt,     The gentlest since the gentlest heart of Shakespeare slept. 23.     Like the wind's own on her divided sea     His song arose on Corinth, and aloud     Recalled her Isthmian song and strife when she     Was thronged with glories as with gods in crowd     And as the wind's own spirit her breath was free     And as the heaven's own heart her soul was proud,     But freer and prouder stood no son than he     Of all she bare before her heart was bowed;     None higher than he who heard     Medea's keen last word     Transpierce her traitor, and like a rushing cloud     That sundering shows a star     Saw pass her thunderous car     And a face whiter and deadlier than a shroud     That lightened from it, and the brand     Of tender blood that falling seared his suppliant hand. 24.     More fair than all things born and slain of fate,     More glorious than all births of days and nights,     He bade the spirit of man regenerate,     Rekindling, rise and reassume the rights     That in high seasons of his old estate     Clothed him and armed with majesties and mights     Heroic, when the times and hearts were great     And in the depths of ages rose the heights     Radiant of high deeds done     And souls that matched the sun     For splendour with the lightnings of their lights     Whence even their uttered names     Burn like the strong twin flames     Of song that shakes a throne and steel that smites;     As on Thermopyl when shone     Leonidas, on Syracuse Timoleon. 25.     Or, sweeter than the breathless buds when spring     With smiles and tears and kisses bids them breathe,     Fell with its music from his quiring string     Fragrance of pine-leaves and odorous heath     Twined round the lute whereto he sighed to sing     Of the oak that screened and showed its maid beneath,     Who seeing her bee crawl back with broken wing     Faded, a fairer flower than all her wreath,     And paler, though her oak     Stood scathless of the stroke     More sharp than edge of axe or wolfish teeth,     That mixed with mortals dead     Her own half heavenly head     And life incorporate with a sylvan sheath,     And left the wild rose and the dove     A secret place and sacred from all guests but Love. 26.     But in the sweet clear fields beyond the river     Dividing pain from peace and man from shade     He saw the wings that there no longer quiver     Sink of the hours whose parting footfalls fade     On ears which hear the rustling amaranth shiver     With sweeter sound of wind than ever made     Music on earth: departing, they deliver     The soul that shame or wrath or sorrow swayed;     And round the king of men     Clash the clear arms again,     Clear of all soil and bright as laurel braid,     That rang less high for joy     Through the gates fallen of Troy     Than here to hail the sacrificial maid,     Iphigeneia, when the ford     Fast-flowing of sorrows brought her father and their lord. 27.     And in the clear gulf of the hollow sea     He saw light glimmering through the grave green gloom     That hardly gave the sun's eye leave to see     Cymodameia; but nor tower nor tomb,     No tower on earth, no tomb of waves may be,     That may not sometime by diviner doom     Be plain and pervious to the poet; he     Bids time stand back from him and fate make room     For passage of his feet,     Strong as their own are fleet,     And yield the prey no years may reassume     Through all their clamorous track,     Nor night nor day win back     Nor give to darkness what his eyes illume     And his lips bless for ever: he     Knows what earth knows not, sings truth sung not of the sea. 28.     Before the sentence of a curule chair     More sacred than the Roman, rose and stood     To take their several doom the imperial pair     Diversely born of Venus, and in mood     Diverse as their one mother, and as fair,     Though like two stars contrasted, and as good,     Though different as dark eyes from golden hair;     One as that iron planet red like blood     That bears among the stars     Fierce witness of her Mars     In bitter fire by her sweet light subdued;     One, in the gentler skies     Sweet as her amorous eyes:     One proud of worlds and seas and darkness rude     Composed and conquered; one content     With lightnings from loved eyes of lovers lightly sent. 29.     And where Alpheus and where Ladon ran     Radiant, by many a rushy and rippling cove     More known to glance of god than wandering man,     He sang the strife of strengths divine that strove,     Unequal, one with other, for a span,     Who should be friends for ever in heaven above     And here on pastoral earth: Arcadian Pan,     And the awless lord of kings and shepherds, Love:     All the sweet strife and strange     With fervid counterchange     Till one fierce wail through many a glade and grove     Rang, and its breath made shiver     The reeds of many a river,     And the warm airs waxed wintry that it clove,     Keen-edged as ice-retempered brand;     Nor might god's hurt find healing save of godlike hand. 30.     As when the jarring gates of thunder ope     Like earthquake felt in heaven, so dire a cry,     So fearful and so fierce'Give the sword scope!'     Rang from a daughter's lips, darkening the sky     To the extreme azure of all its cloudless cope     With starless horror: nor the God's own eye     Whose doom bade smite, whose ordinance bade hope,     Might well endure to see the adulteress die,     The husband-slayer fordone     By swordstroke of her son,     Unutterable, unimaginable on high,     On earth abhorrent, fell     Beyond all scourge of hell,     Yet righteous as redemption: Love stood nigh,     Mute, sister-like, and closer clung     Than all fierce forms of threatening coil and maddening tongue. 31.     All these things heard and seen and sung of old,     He heard and saw and sang them. Once again     Might foot of man tread, eye of man behold     Things unbeholden save of ancient men,     Ways save by gods untrodden. In his hold     The staff that stayed through some tnean glen     The steps of the most highest, most awful-souled     And mightiest-mouthed of singers, even as then     Became a prophet's rod,     A lyre on fire of God,     Being still the staff of exile: yea, as when     The voice poured forth on us     Was even of schylus,     And his one word great as the crying of ten,     Crying in men's ears of wrath toward wrong,     Of love toward right immortal, sanctified with song. 32.     Him too whom none save one before him ever     Beheld, nor since hath man again beholden,     Whom Dante seeing him saw not, nor the giver     Of all gifts back to man by time withholden,     Shakespearehim too, whom sea-like ages sever,     As waves divide men's eyes from lights upholden     To landward, from our songs that find him never,     Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden     Him too this one song found,     And raised at its sole sound     Up from the dust of darkling dreams and olden     Legends forlorn of breath,     Up from the deeps of death,     Ulysses: him whose name turns all songs golden,     The wise divine strong soul, whom fate     Could make no less than change and chance beheld him great. 33.     Nor stands the seer who raised him less august     Before us, nor in judgment frail and rathe,     Less constant or less loving or less just,     But fruitful-ripe and full of tender faith,     Holding all high and gentle names in trust     Of time for honour; so his quickening breath     Called from the darkness of their martyred dust     Our sweet Saints Alice and Elizabeth,     Revived and reinspired     With speech from heavenward fired     By love to say what Love the Archangel saith     Only, nor may such word     Save by such ears be heard     As hear the tongues of angels after death     Descending on them like a dove     Has taken all earthly sense of thought away but love. 34.     All sweet, all sacred, all heroic things,     All generous names and loyal, and all wise,     With all his heart in all its wayfarings     He sought, and worshipped, seeing them with his eyes     In very present glory, clothed with wings     Of words and deeds and dreams immortal, rise     Visible more than living slaves and kings,     Audible more than actual vows and lies:     These, with scorn's fieriest rod,     These and the Lord their God,     The Lord their likeness, tyrant of the skies     As they Lord Gods of earth,     These with a rage of mirth     He mocked and scourged and spat on, in such wise     That none might stand before his rod,     And these being slain the Spirit alone be lord or God. 35.     For of all souls for all time glorious none     Loved Freedom better, of all who have loved her best,     Than he who wrote that scripture of the sun     Writ as with fire and light on heaven's own crest,     Of all words heard on earth the noblest one     That ever spake for souls and left them blest:     Gladly we should rest ever, had we won     Freedom: we have lost, and very gladly rest.     O poet hero, lord     And father, we record     Deep in the burning tablets of the breast     Thankfully those divine     And living words of thine     For faith and comfort in our hearts imprest     With strokes engraven past hurt of years     And lines inured with fire of immemorial tears. 36.     But who being less than thou shall sing of thee     Words worthy of more than pity or less than scorn?     Who sing the golden garland woven of three,     Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the morn,     More godlike than the graven gods men see     Made all but all immortal, human born     And heavenly natured? With the first came He,     Led by the living hand, who left forlorn     Life by his death, and time     More by his life sublime     Than by the lives of all whom all men mourn,     And even for mourning praise     Heaven, as for all those days     These dead men's lives clothed round with glories worn     By memory till all time lie dead,     And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare's head. 37.     Then, fairer than the fairest Grace of ours,     Came girt with Grecian gold the second Grace,     And verier daughter of his most perfect hours     Than any of latter time or alien place     Named, or with hair inwoven of English flowers     Only, nor wearing on her statelier face     The lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers     That graced and guarded round that holiest race,     That heavenliest and most high     Time hath seen live and die,     Poured all their power upon him to retrace     The erased immortal roll     Of Love's most sovereign scroll     And Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace,     The scroll that on Aspasia's knees     Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles. 38.     Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air,     Came laughing like Etrurian spring the third,     With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her hair     Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird     Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair     As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that engird     The walls engirdling with a circling stair     My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word     Fell from her flowerlike mouth     Not sweet with all the south;     As though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred     And spake, as o'er it shone     That bright Pentameron,     And his own vines again and chestnuts heard     Boccaccio: nor swift Elsa's chime     Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca's rhyme. 39.     No lovelier laughed the garden which receives     Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes     With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves,     Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies,     Bowed like a flowering reed when May's wind heaves     The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs,     In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes     What yet the wisest of the starriest wise     Whom Greece might ever hear     Speaks in the gentlest ear     That ever heard love's lips philosophize     With such deep-reasoning words     As blossoms use and birds,     Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they rise     Far off, in no wise over far,     Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star. 40.     What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire,     Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night,     Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre     That makes time's face pale with its reflex light     And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire,     A shadow of red remembrance? Right nor might     Alternating wore ever shapes more dire     Nor manifest in all men's awful sight     In form and face that wore     Heaven's light and likeness more     Than these, or held suspense men's hearts at height     More fearful, since man first     Slaked with man's blood his thirst,     Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight,     Till tower on ruining tower was hurled     Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world. 41.     Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand     Who carved their several praise in words of gold     To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand,     Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold     For price of blood or incense, dust or sand,     Triumph or terror. He that sought of old     His father Ammon in a stranger's land,     And shrank before the serpentining fold,     Stood in our seer's wide eye     No higher than man most high,     And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold     Fast as a scripture furled     The scroll of all the world     Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold     First thief of empire, round whose head     Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed.1 42.     As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss,     He saw the light of death, riotous and red,     Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis     Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead,     Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice,     The steely snows of Russia, for the tread     Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss     The snaky lines of blood violently shed.     Like living creeping things     That writhe but have no stings     To scare adulterers from the imperial bed     Bowed with its load of lust,     Or chill the ravenous gusts     That made her body a fire from heel to head;     Or change her high bright spirit and clear,     For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear. 43.     As light that blesses, hallowing with a look;     He saw the godhead in Vittoria's face     Shine soft on Buonarroti's, till he took,     Albeit himself God, a more godlike grace,     A strength more heavenly to confront and brook     All ill things coiled about his worldly race,     From the bright scripture of that present book     Wherein his tired grand eyes got power to trace     Comfort more sweet than youth,     And hope whose child was truth,     And love that brought forth sorrow for a space,     Only that she might bear     Joy: these things, written there,     Made even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place,     Perused with eyes whose glory and glow     Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo. 44.     With balms and dews of blessing he consoled     The fair fame wounded by the black priest's fang,     Giovanna's, and washed off her blithe and bold     Boy-bridegroom's blood, that seemed so long to hang     On her fair hand, even till the stain of old     Was cleansed with healing song, that after sang     Sharp truth by sweetest singers' lips untold     Of pale Beatrice, though her death-note rang     From other strings divine     Ere his rekindling line     With yet more piteous and intolerant pang     Pierced all men's hearts anew     That heard her passion through     Till fierce from throes of fiery pity sprang     Wrath, armed for chase of monstrous beasts,     Strong to lay waste the kingdom of the seed of priests. 45.     He knew the high-souled humbleness, the mirth     And majesty of meanest men born free,     That made with Luther's or with Hofer's birth     The whole world worthier of the sun to see:     The wealth of spirit among the snows, the dearth     Wherein souls festered by the servile sea     That saw the lowest of even crowned heads on earth     Thronged round with worship in Parthenope.     His hand bade Justice guide     Her child Tyrannicide,     Light winged by fire that brings the dawn to be;     And pierced with Tyrrel's dart     Again the riotous heart     That mocked at mercy's tongue and manhood's knee:     And oped the cell where kinglike death     Hung o'er her brows discrowned who bare Elizabeth. 46.     Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind     He bared the heart of Essex, twain and one,     For the base heart that soiled the starry mind     Stern, for the father in his child undone     Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed     With their sweet image visibly set on     As by God's hand, clear as his own designed     The likeness radiant out of ages gone     That none may now destroy     Of that high Roman boy     Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son     True-born of sovereign seed,     Foredoomed even thence to bleed,     The stately grace of bright Csarion,     The head unbent, the heart unbowed,     That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud. 47.     With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus     At once by service and similitude,     Service devout and worship emulous     Of the same golden Muses once they wooed,     The names and shades adored of all of us,     The nurslings of the brave world's earlier brood,     Grown gods for us themselves: Theocritus     First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed     With blessings bright like tears     From the old memorial years,     And loves and lovely laughters, every mood     Sweet as the drops that fell     Of their own nomel     From living lips to cheer the multitude     That feeds on words divine, and grows     More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose. 48.     Peace, the soft seal of long life's closing story,     The silent music that no strange note jars,     Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory     Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars     Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary     With much long warfare, and with gradual bars     Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory,     Broke, and the power came back that passion mars:     And at the lovely last     Above all anguish past     Before his own the sightless eyes like stars     Arose that watched arise     Like stars in other skies     Above the strife of ships and hurtling cars     The Dioscurian songs divine     That lighten all the world with lightning of their line. 49.     He sang the last of Homer, having sung     The last of his Ulysses. Bright and wide     For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung     About the day-star, doubtful to divide,     Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue     Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried,     Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung,     Homer, and grey Laertes at his side     Kingly as kings are none     Beneath a later sun,     And the sweet maiden ministering in pride     To sovereign and to sage     In their more sweet old age:     These things he sang, himself as old, and died.     And if death be not, if life be,     As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he. 50.     Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love     Was pure toward all high poets, all their kind     And all bright words and all sweet works thereof;     Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight kind;     Heart that no fear but every grief might move     Wherewith men's hearts were bound of powers that bind;     The purest soul that ever proof could prove     From taint of tortuous or of envious mind;     Whose eyes elate and clear     Nor shame nor ever fear     But only pity or glorious wrath could blind;     Name set for love apart,     Held lifelong in my heart,     Face like a father's toward my face inclined;     No gilts like thine are mine to give,     Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live.