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A LEAVE-TAKING

[1866.]

LET us go hence, my songs: she will not hear.

Let us go hence together without fear; Keep silence now, for singing-time is over, And over all old things and all things dear. She loves not you nor me as all we love her.

Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help
is here?

There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye
strove to show,

She would not know.

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VICISTI, GALILÆE I HAVE lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.

Thou art more than the day or the morrow,

the seasons that laugh or that weep; For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.

Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;

But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.

Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,

A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?

I am sick of singing; the bays burn deep and chafe; I am fain

To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.

For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,

We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.

O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day!

From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say. New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods; They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.

But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;

Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.

Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,

Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.

I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,

Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease,

Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,

The laurel, the palms and the pæan, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake: Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;

And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;

All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre, Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.

More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?

Nay, for a little we live, and life hath

mutable wings.

A little while and we die: shall life not thrive as it may?

For no man under the sky lives twice, out

living his day.

And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears: Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years? Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.

Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;

But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.

Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end; For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.

Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;

But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.

O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!

O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!

Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,

I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.

All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast

Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past: Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates, Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:

Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings, And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things, White-eyed and poisonous-finned, sharktoothed and serpentine-curled, Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world. The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;

In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;

In its sides is the north-wind bound: and its salt is of all men's tears; With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:

With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;

And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour: And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;

And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea: And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air: And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare. Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods? Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods? All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past:

Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last. In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things, Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and

the world shall forget you for kings. Though the feet of thine high priests tread

where thy lords and our forefathers trod,

Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God, Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head, Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead. Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around; Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she crowned.

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Yea, once we had sight of another; but now she is queen, say these.

Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas, Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam, And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.

For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,

Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,

White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,

Bent down unto us that, besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name. For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea. And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,

And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.

Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall. Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.

But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.

O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,

I am also, I also, thy brother: I go as I came unto earth.

In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where thou art, Where the silence is more than all tunes,

where sleep overflows from the heart, Where the poppies are sweet as the rose

in our world, and the red rose is white, And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night, And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar

Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,

In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,

Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone. Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath; For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.

Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know

I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.

For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;

A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.

So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.

For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

A MATCH [1866.]

IF love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,

Green pleasure or grey grief; If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf.

If I were what the words are,

And love were like the tune, With double sound and single Delight our lips would mingle,

With kisses glad as birds are
That get sweet rain at noon;
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune.

If you were life, my darling,

And I your love were death, We'd shine and snow together Ere March made sweet the weather With daffodil and starling

And hours of fruitful breath;
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow,

And I were page to joy,
We'd play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.

If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May, We'd throw with leaves for hours And draw for days with flowers, Till day like night were shady

And night were bright like day; If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We'd hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.

IN MEMORY OF WALTER SAVAGE
LANDOR
[1866.]

BACK to the flower-town, side by side,
The bright months bring,
New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,
Freedom and spring.

The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,
Filled full of sun;

All things come back to her, being free,-
All things but one.

In many a tender wheaten plot
Flowers that were dead

Live, and old suns revive; but not
That holier head.

By this white wandering waste of sea, Far north, I hear

One face shall never turn to me

As once this year:

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SWEET life, if life were stronger,
Earth clear of years that wrong her,
Then two things might live longer,

Two sweeter things than they;
Delight, the rootless flower,
And love, the bloomless bower;
Delight that lives an hour,

And love that lives a day.

From evensong to daytime,
When April melts in Maytime,
Love lengthens out his playtime,
Love lessens breath by breath,
And kiss by kiss grows older
On listless throat or shoulder
Turned sideways now, turned colder
Than life that dreams of death.

This one thing once worth giving Life gave, and seemed worth living; Sin sweet beyond forgiving

And brief beyond regret:

To laugh and love together
And weave with foam and feather
And wind and words the tether

Our memories play with yet.

Ah, one thing worth beginning, One thread in life worth spinning, Ah sweet, one sin worth sinning

With all the whole soul's will; To lull you till one stilled you, To kiss you till one killed you, To feed you till one filled you,

Sweet lips, if love could fill; To hunt sweet Love and lose him Between white arms and bosom, Between the bud and blossom,

Between your throat and chin; To say of shame - what is it? Of virtue - we can miss it, Of sin we can but kiss it, And it's no longer sin:

To feel the strong soul, stricken
Through fleshly pulses, quicken
Beneath sweet sighs that thicken,

Soft hands and lips that smite;
Lips that no love can tire,
With hands that sting like fire,
Weaving the web Desire

To snare the bird Delight.
But love so lightly plighted,
Our love with torch unlighted,
Paused near us unaffrighted,

Who found and left him free; None, seeing us cloven in sunder, Will weep or laugh or wonder; Light love stands clear of thunder,

And safe from winds at sea. As, when late larks give warning Of dying lights and dawning, Night murmurs to the morning,

"Lie still, O love, lie still;" And half her dark limbs cover The white limbs of her lover, With amorous plumes that hover

And fervent lips that chill;
As scornful day represses
Night's void and vain caresses,
And from her cloudier tresses
Unwinds the gold of his,
With limbs from limbs dividing
And breath by breath subsiding;
For love has no abiding,

But dies before the kiss;
So hath it been, so be it;
For who shall live and flee it?
But look that no man see it
Or hear it unaware;

Lest all who love and choose him
See Love, and so refuse him;
For all who find him lose him,
But all have found him fair.

THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE
[1866.]

HERE, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter

For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,

And no such things grow here.
No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes

For dead men deadly wine.
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated

Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,

Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,

Crowned with calm leaves, she stands

Who gathers all things mortal

With cold immortal hands;

Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,

She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother,

The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,

Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;

Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful

Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,

Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal

In an eternal night.

HESPERIA

[1866.]

OUT of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,

Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,

As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of stories, Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy,

Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,

Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,

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