Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

They made thy sovereignty supreme.
These choristers with lips of stone,
Whose music is not heard, but seen,
Still chant, as from their organ-screen,
Their Maker's praise; nor these alone,
But the more fragile forms of clay,
Hardly less beautiful than they.
These saints and angels that adorn
The walls of hospitals, and tell
The story of good deeds so well
That poverty seems less forlorn,
And life more like a holiday.
Here in this old neglected church,
That long eludes the traveller's search,
Lies the dead bishop on his tomb;
Earth upon earth he slumbering lies,
Life-like and death-like in the gloom;
Garlands of fruit and flowers in bloom
And foliage deck his resting-place;
A shadow in the sightless eyes,
A pallor on the patient face,
Made perfect by the furnace heat;
All earthly passions and desires
Burnt out by purgatorial fires;
Seeming to say, Our years are fleet,
And to the weary death is sweet."

66

But the most wonderful of all
The ornaments on tomb or wall
That grace the fair Ausonian shores
Are those the faithful earth restores,
Near some Apulian town concealed,
In vineyard or in harvest field,—
Vases and urns and bas-reliefs,
Memorials of forgotten griefs,
Of records of heroic deeds
Of demigods and mighty chiefs:
Figures that almost move and speak,
And, buried amid mould and weeds,

Still in their attitudes attest

The presence of the graceful Greek,-
Achilles in his armour dressed,

Alcides with the Cretan bull,

Aphrodite with her boy,

Or lovely Helena of Troy,

Still living and still beautiful.

Turn, turn, my wheel! 'Tis nature's plan

The child should grow into the man,

The man grow wrinkled, old, and gray;

In youth the heart exults and sings,

In

The pulses leap, the feet have wings; age the cricket chirps, and brings The harvest home of day.

And now the winds that southward blow,
And cool the hot Sicilian isle,
Bear me away. I see below

The long line of the Libyan Nile,
Flooding and feeding the parched lands
With annual ebb and overflow,
A fallen palm whose branches lie
Beneath the Abyssinian sky,
Whose roots are in Egyptian sands.
On either bank huge water-wheels,
Belted with jars and dripping weeds,
Send forth their melancholy moans,
As if, in their gray mantles hid,
Dead anchorites of the Thebaid
Knelt on the shore and told their beads,
Beating their breasts with loud appeals
And penitential tears and groans.

This city, walled and thickly set
With glittering mosque and minaret,
Is Cairo, in whose gay bazaars
The dreaming traveller first inhales
The perfume of Arabian gales,
And sees the fabulous earthen jars,
Huge as were those wherein the maid
Morgiana found the Forty Thieves
Concealed in midnight ambuscade;
And seeing, more than half believes
The fascinating tales that run

Through all the Thousand Nights and One,
Told by the fair Scheherezade.

More strange and wonderful than these
Are the Egyptian deities,

Ammon, and Emoth, and the grand
Osiris, holding in his hand

The lotus; Isis, crowned and veiled;
The sacred Ibis, and the Sphinx;
Bracelets with blue enamelled links;
The Scarabee in emerald mailed,
Or spreading wide his funeral wings;

Lamps that perchance their night-watch kept

O'er Cleopatra while she slept,

All plundered from the tombs of kings.

Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,
Of every tongue, of every place,

Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,
All that inhabit this great earth,
Whatever be their rank or worth,
Are kindred and allied by birth,

And made of the same clay.

O'er desert sands, o'er gulf and bay,
O'er Ganges and o'er Himalay,
Bird-like I fly, and flying sing,
To flowery kingdoms of Cathay,
And bird-like poise on balanced wing
Above the town of King-te-tching,
A burning town, or seeming so,-
Three thousand furnaces that glow
Incessantly, and fill the air
With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre,
And painted by the lurid glare,
Of jets and flashes of red fire.

As leaves that in the autumn fall,
Spotted and veined with various hues,
Are swept along the avenues,
And lie in heaps by hedge and wall,
So from this grove of chimneys whirled
To all the markets of the world,

These porcelain leaves are wafted on,-
Light yellow leaves with spots and stains
Of violet and of crimson dye,

Or tender azure of a sky

Just washed by gentle April rains,
And beautiful with celadon.

Nor less the coarser household wares,—
The willow pattern, that we knew
In childhood, with its bridge of blue
Leading to unknown thoroughfares;
The solitary man who stares
At the white river flowing through
Its arches, the fantastic trees
And wild perspective of the view;
And intermingled among these
The tiles that in our nurseries
Filled us with wonder and delight
Or haunted us in dreams at night.

And yonder by Nankin, behold!

The Tower of Porcelain, strange and old
Uplifting to the astonished skies
Its ninefold painted balconies,
With balustrades of twining leaves,
And roofs of tile, beneath whose eaves
Hang porcelain bells that all the time
Ring with a soft, melodious chime;
While the whole fabric is ablaze
With varied tints, all fused in one
Great mass of colour, like a maze
Of flowers illumined by the sun.

Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begun
At daybreak must at dark be done,
To-morrow will be another day,
To-morrrow the hot furnace flame
Will search the heart and try the frame,
And stamp with honour or with shame
These vessels made of clay.

Cradled and rocked in Eastern seas
The islands of the Japanese

Beneath me lie; o'er lake and plain
The stork, the heron, and the crane
Through the clear realms of azure drift,
And on the hillside I can see
The villages of Imari,

Whose thronged and flaming workshops lift
Their twisted columns of smoke on high,
Cloud cloisters that in ruins lie,

With sunshine streaming through each rift,
And broken arches of blue sky.

All the bright flowers that fill the land,
Ripple of waves on rock or sand,

The snow on Fusiyama's cone.

The midnight heaven so thickly sown
With constellations of bright stars,

The leaves that rustle, the reeds that make

A whisper by each stream and lake,
The saffron dawn, the sunset red,
Are painted on these lovely jars;
Again the skylark sings, again
The stork, the heron, and the crane
Float through the azure overhead,
The counterfeit and counterpart
Of Nature reproduced in Art.

Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude,

All her majestic loveliness

Chastened and softened and subdued

Into a more attractive grace,

And with a human sense imbued.

He is the greatest artist, then,

Whether of pencil or of pen,

Who follows Nature. Never man,
As artist or as artisan,

Pursuing his own fantasies,

Can touch the human heart, or please,
Or satisfy our nobler needs,

As he who sets his willing feet,

In Nature's footprints, light and fleet,
And follows fearless where she leads.

Thus mused I on that morn in May,
Wrapped in my visions like the Seer,
Whose eyes behold not what is near,
But only what is far away,

When, suddenly sounding peal on peal,
The church-bell from the neighbouring town
Proclaimed the welcome hour of noon.

The Potter heard, and stopped his wheel,
His apron on the grass threw down,
Whistled his quiet little tune,

Not overloud nor overlong,

And ended thus his simple song:

Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon
The noon will be the afternoon,

Too soon to-day be yesterday;

Behind us in our path we cast
The broken potsherds of the past,
And all are ground to dust at last,
And trodden into clay !

Birds of Passage.

THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD.

[blocks in formation]

For only a sound of lament we discern, And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.

Sing of the air, and the wild delight Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you,

The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight

Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you; Of the landscape lying so far below,

With its towns and rivers and desert places;

And the splendour of light above, and the glow

Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces. Ask him if songs of the Troubadours, Or of Minnesingers in old blackletter,

Sing him the mystical Song of the Sound in his ears more sweet than

Hern,

And the secret that baffles our utmost

seeking;

[blocks in formation]
« AnkstesnisTęsti »