Ballads And Verses Vain by Andrew Lang
He seemed to fair Pisidice !
She saw, she loved him, and her heart
Before Achilles, Peleus' son,
Threw all its guarded gates apart,
A maiden fortress lightly won !
And, ere that day of fight was done,
No more of land or faith recked she,
But joyed in her new life begun, â
Her life of love, Pisidice !
POST HOMERICA.
She took a gift into her hand,
.s one that had a boon to crave ;
She stole across the ruined land
Where lay the dead without a grave,
And to Achilles' hand she gave
Her gift, the secret postern's key.
" To-morrow let me be thy slave ! "
Moaned to her love Pisidice.
Ere dawn the Argives' clarion call
Rang down Methymna's burning street ;
They slew the sleeping warriors all,
They drove the women to the fleet,
Save one, that to Achilles' feet
Clung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he :
" For her no doom but death is meet."
And there men stoned Pisidice.
In havens of that haunted coast.
Amid the myrtles of the shore.
The moon sees many a maiden ghost, â
Love's outcast now and evermore.
The silence hears the shades deplore
Tlicir hour of dear-bought love ; but thee
The waves lull, 'neath thine olives hoar.
To dreamless rest, Pisidice !
SONNETS
119
THE ODYSSEY.
AS one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that ^aean isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine,
As such aa one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again, â
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers.
And through the music of the languid hours.
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
TWO SONNETS OF THE SIRENS.
' Les Sirenes estoient tant intimes amies et fideUes compagnes de Proserpine,
qu' elles estoient toujours ensemble. Esmues du juste deuil de la perte de
leur chere compagne, et enuy6es jusques au desespoir, elles s'arresterent a
la mer Sicilienne, oil par leurs chants elles attiroient les navigans, mais
I'unique fin de la volupte de leur musique est la Mort." â Pontus de Tyard
1570-
THE Sirens once were maidens innocent
That through the water-meads with Proserpine
Plucked no fire-hearted flowers, but were content
Cool fritillaries and flag-flowers to twine,
With lilies woven and with wet woodbine ;
Till forth to seek vEtneean buds they went,
And their kind lady from their choir was rent
By Hades, down the irremeable decline.
And they have sought her all the wide world through,
Till many years, and wisdom, and much wrong,
Have filled and changed their song, and o'er the blue
Rings deadly sweet the magic of the song,
And whoso hears must listen till he die
Far on the flowery shores of Sicily.
SONNETS.
II.
So is it with this singing art of ours,
That once with maids went, maidenhke, and played
With woven dances in the poplar-shade,
And all her song was but of lady's bowers
And the returning swallows, and spring-flowers,
Till forth to seek a shadow-queen she strayed,
A shadowy land ; and now hath overweighed
Her singing chaplet with the snow and showers.
And running rivers for the bitter brine
She left, and by the margin of life's sea
Sings, and her song is full of the sea's moan,
And wild with dread, and love of Proserpine ;
And whoso once has listened to her, he
His whole life long is slave to her alone.
LOVE'S EASTER.
i
SONNET.
LOVE died here
Long ago ;
O'er his bier,
Lying low,
Poppies throw ;
Shed no tear;
Year by year,
Roses blow !
Year by year,
Adon â dear
To Love's Queen â
Does not die !
Wakes when green
May is nigh !
TWILIGHT.
SONNET.
(after RICHEPIN.)
LIGHT has flown !
Through the grey
The wind's way
The sea's moan
Sound alone !
For the day
These repay
And atone !
Scarce I know,
Listening so
To the streams
Of the sea,
If old dreams
Sing to me !
IZ5
BION.
THE wail of Moschus on the mountains crying
The Muses heard, and loved it long ago;
They heard the hollows of the hills replying,
They heard the weeping water's overflow;
They winged the sacred strain â the song undying,
The song that all about the world must go, â
When poets for a poet dead are sighing,
The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.
And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping
For Adonais by the summer sea,
The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping
Far from " the forest ground called Thessaly"),â
These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping.
And are but echoes of the moan for thee.
136
SAN TERENZO.
(The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before the
wreck of the Don Juan.)
MID April seemed like some November day,
When through the glassy waters, dull as lead,
Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead,
Slipped down the curved shores of the Spezian bay,
Rounded a point, â and San Terenzo lay
Before us, that gay village, yellow and red.
With walls that covered Shelley's homeless head, â
His house, a place deserted, bleak and grey.
The waves broke on the door-step; fishermen
Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again.
Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free,
When suddenly the forest glades were stirred
With waving pinions, and a great sea bird
Flew forth, like Shelley's spirit, to the sea !
o
NATURAL THEOLOGY.
enei Koi toCtoi- biofiai aOavdroKTiv
eup^ecrOaf Havre'; Sk 0eii^ aTiov(T' av6punroi-
Od. III. 47.
^^ / â NCE Cagn was like a father, kind and good,
But He was spoiled by fighting many things;
He wars upon the lions in the wood,
And breaks the Thunder-bird's tremendous wings ;
But still we cry to Him, â PVe are thy brood â
O Cagn, be merciful / and us He brings
To herds of elands, and great store of food,
And in the desert opens water-springs."
So Qing, King Nqsha's B
Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair.
When all were weary, and soft clouds of smoke
Were fading, fragrant, in the twilit air :
And suddenly in each man's heart there woke
A pang, a sacred memory of prayer.
128
HOMER.
HOMER, thy song men liken to the sea,
With all the notes of music in its tone,
With tides that wash the dim dominion
Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee
Around the isles enchanted ; nay, to me
Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown
That glasses Egypt's temples overthrown
In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.
No wiser we than men of heretofore
To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast ;
Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,
As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast
His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore
Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.
M
RONSARD.
ASTER, I see thee with the locks of grey,
Crowned by the Muses with the laurel- wreath ;
I see the roses hiding underneath,
Cassandra's gift ; she was less dear than they.
Thou, Master, first hast roused the lyric lay,
The sleeping song that the dead years bequeath,
Hast sung thine answer to the songs that breathe
Through ages, and through ages far away.
And thou hast heard the pulse of Pindar beat.
Known Horace by the fount Bardusian !
Their deathless line thy living strains repeat,
But ah, thy voice is sad, thy roses wan,
But ah, thy honey is not cloying sweet.
Thy bees have fed on yews Sardinian.
GERARD DE NERVAL.
OF all that were thy prisons â ah, untamed,
Ah, light and sacred soul ! â -none holds thee now;
No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou
Art free and happy in the lands unnamed.
Within whose gates, with weary wings and maimed,
Thou still would'st bear that mystic golden bough
The Sibyl doth to singing men allow.
Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed.
And they would smile and wonder, seeing where
Thou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind,
Dreamily murmuring a ballad air.
Caught from the Valois peasants ; dost thou find
A new life gladder than the old times were,
A love as fair as Sylvie, and more kind ?
IN ITHACA,
' And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the
immortality thou didst promise me." â Letter of Odysseus to Calypso.
Luciani Vera Historia.
'^ I ""IS thought Odysseus when the strife was o'er
1 With all the waves and wars, a weary while,
Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,
And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,
Go down the ways of gold, and evermore
His sad heart followed after, mile on mile,
Back to the Goddess of the magic wile.
Calypso, and the love that was of yore.
Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet
To look across the sad and stormy space.
Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,
Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet.
Because, within a fair forsaken place
The life that might have been is lost to thee.
132
DREAMS.
HE spake not truth, however wise,* who said
" That happy, and that hapless men in sleep
Have equal fortune, fallen from care as deep
As countless, careless, races of the dead."
Not so, for alien paths of dreams we tread,
And one beholds the faces that he sighs
In vain to bring before his daylit eyes.
And waking, he remembers on his bed ;
And one with fainting heart and feeble hand
Fights a dim battle in a doubtful land,
Where strength and courage were of no avail ;
And one is borne on fairy breezes far
To the bright harbours of a golden star
Down fragrant fleeting waters rosy pale.
* Aristotle.
HOMERIC UNITY.
THE sacred keep of Ilion is rent
With trench and shaft ; foiled waters wander slow
Through plains where Simois and Scamander went
To war with Gods and heroes long ago.
Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low
In rich Mycenae, do the Fates relent :
The bones of Agamemnon are a show,
And ruined is his royal monument.
The dust and awful treasures of the Dead,
Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee.
Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead,
And strives to rend thy songs ; too blind to see
The crown that burns on thine immortal head
Of indivisible supremacy !
«34
IDEAL.
Suggested by a female head in wax, of unknown date, but supposed to be either
of the best Greek age, or a work of Raphael or Leonardo. It is now in the
Lille Museum.
AH, mystic child of Beauty, nameless maid,
Dateless and fatherless, how long ago,
A Greek, with some rare sadness overweighed,
Shaped thee, perchance, and quite forgot his woe !
Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow,
While magical his fingers o'er thee strayed,
Or that great pupil of Verrocchio
Redeemed thy still perfection from the shade
That hides all fair things lost, and things unborn.
Where one has fled from me, that wore thy grace.
And that grave tenderness of thine awhile ;
Nay, still in dreams I see her, but her face
Is pale, is wasted with a touch of scorn,
And only on thy lips I find her smile.
TRANSLATIONS.
137
HYMN TO THE WINDS.
The winds are invoked by the winnowers of com.
Du Bellay, 1550.
TO you, troop so fleet,
That with winged wandering feet
Through the wide world pass,
And with soft murmuring