VIRGIL

This is the tale old Proteus by the sea Erst told of Orpheus and Eurydice. Virgil at Parthenope overheard, And has resung it, if not word by word.

Orpheus had been espoused but one short hour, And went to gather roses for the bower, When a rejected wooer, mad with love, Sprang upon the light-footed nymph, and strove For an embrace; she, heeding nought, alas! Trod on a serpent sleeping in the grass; And when on the instant, answering her cries, Her Bridegroom knelt there, kissing her closed eyes, Half fainting with the sense of all her charms, Sudden he woke, a dead Bride in his arms! Not his alone the woe and misery; Nor he sole mourner for Eurydice; From Rhodope to Pangæa’s peaks, above The cave where Boreas hid his Attic love, Through the fierce realm of Rhesus, echo bore The wail to the wild Getes, to the shore Of Hebrus, while in forest, hill, and dale The tuneful Dryads told the tearful tale. But how conjure by the best ordered show Of grief an irremediable woe! Orpheus fled Pity, and neighbourly Care; All human fellowship but his despair. With but that and his lyre communion still He held, from dawn to sunset, then until The planets rose and sank, banishing sleep, Keeping sad vigils by the moaning deep, Thinking each shadow on the desert shore Was his lost Bride restored to life once more. And was it days, weeks, months, or years?—at last From the ghost-haunted waters coastward passed— Whether Goddess, or Woman—a pale shape, That beckoned to the far Laconian Cape Of Tænarus, where the dread cavern draws Each generation down its hungry jaws. At the first touch of his lyre opened wide The lofty gates of Hell; he paced inside The grove impenetrable by but him; A darkness that might be felt, stark, and grim, Where bide the awful ministers of Dis, With hearts that never beat at prayer but his. And still the notes rose bravely; and still he Came, calling on his lost Eurydice; On her, sole burden of his love-lorn cries— One theme informing countless melodies. At the sweet sorrowing, awhile a hush— Amazement—throughout Hades; then a rush— A quick rustling rather, as when a flight Of birds seeks where to sleep at fall of night, Or, cow’ring, courts, against an icy breeze, Multitudinous foliage of trees. Thus—for the jailers ceased from watch and ward, Witched themselves by the wailing, wandering bard— Flocked, from the unamiable swamp, which feeds Nothing on its black slime but grisly reeds— Where steams and groans Cocytus, and Styx holds Prisoners within its nine coils and folds— A legion of the newly dead, entombed In Limbo, till ripe to be tried and doomed; A fearful gathering, bodies stripped of life, Yet moving; some in pairs, husband and wife, Girls who had virgins died, and beardless youths, With parents’ kisses warm upon their mouths; And some though freed from flesh ignorant where Their dwelling fixed, sad phantoms, thin as air. Each waiting judgment; now forgetting all Griefs in a greater, in the musical Challenge to Dis to yield its prey; while, on And on, the chant rolled, till its way it won Past the black realms of ancient Erebus, Past too the torture cells of Tartarus, Where cold-blue snakes, the Furies’ locks that tied, By the trespassing strain, charmed, stupefied, Drew in their fangs, Ixion’s wheel made pause, And, one shocked wide gape, stood Cerberus’s triple jaws. At last, at last! a Palace flaming high With angry flashes from a mocking sky; And, seated on twin thrones, the King and Queen, Garbed in life-which-is-death’s Infernal sheen; Both silent; but, as whispered soft and low The lyre, stern Proserpine remembered how A girl plucked flowers. As nursery rhymes On dying ears, returned old happy times, Sunshine, and the sweet thought, if mixed with pain, A mother’s toil to have her child again. Paradise for Hell’s Queen once more to know That She had heart to feel for others’ woe!— For her Lord to see, transfigured, ere a crown Burned on her brow, the maid he had brought down To Hell; and she answering his eyes, cried: “Minstrel, depart in peace, and with thy Bride!” The Manes registered the high decree, Adding that, since no mortal eyes may see Spirit take flesh, Orpheus must be resigned, Till Earth was reached, never to look behind. And as they wrote and sealed what their Queen spoke, From unseen instruments weird music broke,— An owlet’s hooting, a swan’s dying cry— A rapture near akin to agony. Orpheus turned, or was led; more felt than heard— Passing the gates—as when a babe has stirred, Dreaming—a sigh; but, venturing no glance Anywhere, or speech, walked as in a trance. Save, as if strings snapt, the lyre stammered out A spasm of jarred notes wandering about, Nor glad nor sad; the harper scarce aware Of the music that he made; or how far He had gone, through what scenes of bale or bliss, Since he quitted the royal halls of Dis; Trembling only lest the whole dream might take Flight, like his rapt girl-Bride, and he awake To find himself, widowed, lost, as before, Companionless upon the wild sea-shore. And yet. Was it not breath, a woman’s breath, Fanning his cheeks? Could even unkind Death Have the heart to cheat, with the goal so near? Was not the light he saw day’s, warm and clear? And, sure, the landscape spread before his view Was of meadows and woods, all which he knew? Phantoms, begone! Here was his spring-tide come, And his Bride with him, out of Hades, home! Sudden, an avalanche—compound—Earth, Hell— Long chained—irresistible passion—fell, Defying thought, fear! his hand left the string But just caressed; his throat forbore to sing— That he might clasp and kiss;—one look behind! A world of travail scattered to the wind! Heav’n forgives seven sins if love the cause; The plea doubles guilt when Hell’s the brok’n laws. Hark how the grinning host of demons howls! And oh! the crash pealing over Hell’s pools! Naught heard he, but that cried Eurydice,— Regained, re-lost: “Alas! for Me and Thee! I feel hands, the inexorable Fates, Speeding back within the Infernal gates; My swimming eyes, just tasting of Earth’s light, I know are being sealed by a large Night. See! how I stretch vain arms around, and grope For thee in darkness, hoping without hope! E’en now how lightly should I life resign, Could I remember I had once been thine!” Silence! From sight, hearing, passed she apart, Leaving measureless void within his heart. He ran, striving to clutch a ghost in vain; Pursuing with vain words; never again Looked he upon her; nor could he prevail Upon Hell’s Ferryman to let him scale The walls, swimming the moat, and again win, By weeping, or by music, his way in, Then move or force its warders to restore His stolen Bride to his fond arms once more. Poor Ghost! No third time destined she to float Over foul Styx in Charon’s crazy boat! But, hapless, doomed to swell the cavalcades Of lifeless bodies, and of fleshless shades; Nor one, nor other she; just borne along, Drift on the tide—refrain to an old song— Yet, flickering, like shadows on a wall, Or rainbow gleaming from a water-fall, A throb, a thrill, a joy though set in dole— For Lethe could not wash away the whole— That she reward had been of each sharp pang By Orpheus borne, theme of each song he sang. Conscious if voiceless, she. And he? The lyre Which, while its master hoped, had quenched its fire, Was ever confidant of his despair, The instrument commissioned to declare His wrongs. They tell who know, that in a cave Humid and bare, desolate as new grave, At the foot of a tall cliff, hung with ice, By Strymon’s gloomy waters, for full twice A hundred days and nights, singing he wept; Like a nightingale cruelly bereft Of all her young ones in the poplar grove, With nothing for her any more to love, Or live for, but to gaze upon her nest, And mourn, the night through, all she once possessed, Till overflows the wood where she complains, With the sweet melancholy of her strains. So longed he, and so played; changing at times To lands yet lonelier, and harsher climes; Arctic ice-fields crossed, forded snowy Don, Camped on Scythian heaths, where yews keep-on Eternal pall of frost;—always in quest Of postern into Hell, whence he might wrest Audience of its Lords, and with his tale Of unreal gifts, all pre-ordained to fail, Oblige them to repeat for very shame A boon Hell granted only to reclaim. No more than this? This his one hope and theme? This, sum of his powers? And this a dream! A dream? And yet the key—magic of Art!— Which could unlock at will a tiger’s heart, And, as notes rose and fell in cadence, made Triumphal arches of each sylvan glade; For true passion a hearing aye commands, And speaks a tongue all Nature understands. No more than that it had killed care to bless More than one life, and left a wilderness! And that it fell on Virgil to recall A legend—would that it lied!—how, when all The land’s women, Bacchus-fired, and distraught By hymns that Orpheus in glad days had taught, Had pressed him into the wild dance they led Nightly through torch-lit forests, and he fled In horror, as at treason to his love, They, infuriate more the more he strove, Followed, reckless of all but the mad chase, Down to the Hebrus from the hills of Thrace, And tore him limb from limb: but still the tongue, As the wild current rolled the head along, Called on “Eurydice”; and till the sea Received it, bank to bank returned “Eurydice”! Pardon, my Master, if I’ve dared re-think A thought, or, standing on the outer brink Of a deep pool, would with a pebble thrown Measure your depth of feeling by my own. But You the cause, the tempter;—who could read A tale like yours, and not pursue each deed From impulse to the act—complete a scene With such small details as there may have been? So cunningly you made romance to live— I trespassed on your stage; You must forgive!

This our world has beauties everywhere; Grand are your forests, Medes, and wondrous fair; Travellers to Blest Araby have told Of sands that grow frankincense, streams of gold; Strange legends run of bulls with fire for breath, Dragons sowing plains with myriad teeth, Till in the place of harvest’s yellow ears A battle field gleamed with steel helms and spears. Leave me the land I live in, where kind earth Yields real grain, a hundredfold at a birth; And purple grapes of every laden vine Laugh with the girls that tread them into wine. Glad all life! In the olive, as each day Ripens its juices; cattle, as they play Amid rich herbage; the warrior steed, Curvetting with arched neck about the mead. Even the snow-white ram, and mighty bull, Joy, as, Clitumnus, on them dashes full Thy hallowed flood, to be chosen to escort A Roman Triumph to Jove’s Temple-Court. Ever; from young Spring, that, keeping the doors Of Winter and of Summer, with soft show’rs Melts March frosts, and returning with a gay, Late Zephyr laughs the Dog-star’s heats away; To Summer, that at call, whate’er the Hour, Re-stocks the fold, and bids the orchard flow’r. Fruitfulness everywhere—all things good; No savage lions, tigers mad for blood, No scaly pythons, gathered, coil on coil, Into one orb, to hurl it on the spoil; No wolf’s-bane, with its mystic-purple bloom Tempting rash herb-collectors to their doom; But Nature, kind in that which She denies, Kind above all whenever She allies With human effort.— Mark how She has filled The vales with rocks that cry: “Come, take, and build!” How, to crown the work, She has bid beside Each citadel’s sheer walls a river glide. No Libyan desert ours, but a land Of many streams, where in cool shadows stand Knee-deep the still kine; and of lakes good store, Como’s to Garda’s sea-imitating roar; Of highways for her navies, east and west, To circulate, world-through, Rome’s high behest; Glorious service theirs, though the salt waves, Sulking outside new ports in echoing caves, Affect to murmur at decrees they know, When Cæsar sets them bounds, they must allow. Even for silver, brass and gold itself, If Italy deigned boast of vulgar pelf, She might just claims to be considered raise. But she has titles, nobler far, to praise. Hers the seed-bed, harvest, ever have been Of men, of fighters, hardened, sharp, and keen, Bred north and south, east and west, with, from Rome, Chiefs to lead forth, and bring them victors home. Band of mighty Shades! Ah! mightiest Thou Who schoolest the insolent Hindoo now, How weak is strength, valour no better than Cowardice, when our Cæsar leads the van! Hail to Giver of wane, and oil, and corn! Hail, Shrine of ancient peace, ere Jove was born! Hail, Mother of Men, real Men, source and spring Of precious arts I love, of all I sing! At thy call, my Italy, parent, nurse, Unsealing primal well-heads, I rehearse Pure rustic themes long since discoursed upon Myrtle-clad slopes of musical Helicon!

Of all rewards that Heav’n bestows on toil, Which is the peer of yours who till the soil! Would you exchange with them who sue the great For place or alms? Read, as they pass the gate, On this face wrath, envy on that, and gall; And, worst, the death of self-respect on all. ’Tis yours to breathe an atmosphere of peace, Suitors of earth that knows not of caprice; That grieves to disappoint a hope, and pours Into expectant laps a choice of stores, Sounding changes high and low, grave and gay, On the vast organ Nature loves to play. Learn from a farm to work, and never tire; An acre is various as a shire; Labour and rest there alternating meet, Each indistinguishably good and sweet; Ah! the murmurous quiet in the wide Homesteads, where, in the intervals, beside Bubbling brooks, in cool valleys, ’neath green boughs You slumber, lullabied by lowing cows. Winter anon, earth’s holiday; and then To rouse the wild boar in his fenny den: Sport dear to youth’s blood racing fast and pure, Content with simple joys, trained to endure. Nor at one season, but throughout the year, Be sure the Gods fail not of love and fear: While no chimney corner but makes a shrine Where to tend a grandsire all but divine. If Justice has not yet forsaken Earth, ’Tis that she lingers on some cottage hearth! Ancestral guardians of my home forgive, Pan, too, and Sylvan, if I do not live The life I praise; but ere I knew its charms, The choir of Muses wooed me to their arms, Taught me an eager child their sacred lore, Arts I still love; and fain had taught me more— To map Heav’n’s paths, number its stars, and trace Why wanes the moon; when veils the sun his face, Hastes purple-clad to sink on Ocean’s breast, And stays Night’s course for him and Man to rest; Where growling earthquakes breed; and why seas feign To roar in wrath, and straightway laugh again.— Something I learned; and blest had been my state, If gifted with the will and powers by Fate To follow Nature to her primal cause, And coax from her the meaning of her laws; Like him, too early lost, who told us how To spurn at all it is not Man’s to know, To count it shame to dread Death, as to weep At putting off our shoes to go to sleep. But my blood chills—poor thing, it cannot find Air it may breathe—where soars aloft sheer Mind. Yet why lament that the Seer’s part is not For me, when mine the sweet, if humbler, lot— To light and feed a poet’s holy fire; Rapt from myself to feel a God inspire The visions that I see, the words I pen— The message that I bring my fellow men— Bound, if the Muse decrees, to soar away Where rolls Spercheios, or girls dance and play On Spartan hills, or to some forest dell Of snowy Hæmus; while, I know it well, That far so ever as I seem to roam, My spirit always will return to home, Predestined to no inglorious themes— My native fields, and woods, and sparkling streams, And the race no less that those vales frequent, Simple husbandmen, wholly innocent Of ill, though shrewd, keen to resent a wrong; For whom I meditate my pastoral song. Fancy will wander oft to lands unknown, But finds the thoughts to dwell on in its own. Italian peasant I, and would rehearse Our peasants’ virtues in Italian verse. Let me recall a neighbour good and kind, Loving the ancient methods, disinclined To quit his fathers’ ways; nor bard nor sage; Who just has served the soil from youth to age. No Mysteries for him; enough to adore The rustic Gods his sires revered of yore. All one to him who shall the Consul be— This or that—our Rome stands eternally. He cares not about Kings; so much he knows; Rome crowned; and, when she wills, Rome can depose. Faint echoes reach the country from the Town Of swarms of Dacian pirates rowing down Ister; and of brothers by brothers slain; Cæsar’s charge that—and his to garner grain. Sometimes the calm is broken by the wealth Of courtiers seeking country air for health; Why envy when the whole that they possess Has not distilled a drop of happiness! Or one may stumble by, diseased and old, With scarce a rag to shield him from the cold; The good-man helps; he pities; does not grieve; Is grateful he can give, need not receive. Statesmen will strive, he counts his orchard’s yield, And reaps his harvest from the willing field. A realm may fall, loud lawyers rule the Court, Heirships be changed by some forgot report, Adventurers new seas explore, or rush On foreign swords in thirst for gold, or push Into proud palace halls; while he instead Drives his curved plough, and mows the yellow mead. Hence herds deserving well their ample cheer, With all the genial labours of the year. Hence too the tribute that he gladly brings To his Penates, modest offerings— Kind “Little People,” blest where’er ye come Compacted of an atmosphere of Home! Hence, above all, what may his native land Of labour, store, nay, of his life demand! True Roman, few as he of Rome so proud; None readier to give her goods and blood! Meantime no season comes without its call; Not one would he away; he loves them all— Cries between laugh and wail from lambs new-born, Sheaves in the close-packed barn of golden corn, Groans of content from home-returning sows, The woodlands’ crackling thuds of severed boughs, Pyramids of red apples, row on row, And vineyards purpling in late Autumn’s glow, Till with the olives’ rendering of oil Winter winds up the victories of toil. Content the master, with glad welcoming eyes, As crop to crop succeeds, each a surprise, Yet taking each its place in order clear, The grand procession of the fruitful year! Harmonious whole, made up, hopes and cares, Mind’s, Body’s work, in not unequal shares; With grateful pauses, as when whirlwinds cease To riot in a wood, and there is peace. Thus Eve; Man’s truce, nor his alone, for play; But Nature’s universal holiday. Stall-wards, devious steps, the cattle pass, Their udders richly furnished; on the grass With harmless horns kids wrestle; while a band, Children and Wife, contend to clasp his hand, And kiss his lips; he happy in the pride Of love which chastity has sanctified. And days as well there are, when the farm feasts, The host reclining amid friends, his guests; High flame the hissing logs, wine-cups are crowned, And vows and healths to Gods and men go round; On equal terms master with shepherds vies, As archer, or as wrestler, for a prize. Thus sprang a race, the wonder of the earth, Suckled by Sabine mothers—as, at birth, Their king by wild werewolf—twin strains with those, Blending of Tuscan lords, high Lucumos; Till from Seven Hills, in one wall, see come, Mistress of a world, Imperial Rome! Noblest of Monsters! beautiful as brave, And strong at once to conquer, and to save. Yet sometimes dream I legends strange and sweet, Ere Nymphs nursed Jove upon a hill of Crete, Of days when Earth, a garden bright and fair, Gave Man fruits as easily as the air He breathed; when all that trod or flew had part In a large brotherhood of sense and heart, And it could scarce have seemed to human mind More hideous to batten on its kind, Than with as unnatural zest to heap Impious boards with flesh of steer and sheep; When no war-bugle blew its summons shrill, Or forge had fitted hands with swords to kill; When Saturn planted here below his throne— The Age of Gold, when Heaven and Earth were one!

My helm points landwards; and yet would I fain Re-commission my Muse, and sail again. The breezes, as I coast by Pæstum, bring Its twice-blowing rosebeds’ scent; I would sing, But for emulous themes, how to inlay A garden’s borders with a rich array Of rainbow-hued gems that a loving care Joys to persuade them in due course to wear. Use and delight will play an equal part, Where’er the garden’s master has a heart. How fresh the curly endive there! how green The parsley on the bank! Almost is seen A melon swell, as with good cheer it fills Itself ’mid the grass from glistening rills! Everywhere a hand and head that know, To harvest in its season, we must sow, And from a sense no less of order, will Take heed that the late-blooming daffodil, Pliant acanthus, myrtles from sea-wave Drawing the pungent fragrance that they have, And grey-green ivies, form each its own zone In one plot—many gardens out of one. For I have marked what wonders may be wrought By gardeners mixing seeds and roots with thought.— In shadows craggy Tarentum’s tow’rs throw, An old Cilician, cast up, who knows how, By war, or vagrant mood, had grant, or none— Some waste acres—to live or starve upon. Though black Galeso waters a wide space Of yellow cornfields, and rich gardens grace Villas hard by, the scrub of this poor Stray Would, it might seem, have not sufficed to pay, As rough ploughland, a yoke of oxen’s keep, Or meanly pastured half a dozen sheep. As for potherbs, its thorns as likely would Have brought forth grapes as a man’s simplest food. Yet somehow sprang, to share with them the ground, Colewort, vervain, with, here and there, around, Lilies, and poppies—scant crop; but not great The Stranger’s hopes. At night returning late To the cheerless hut his own hands had raised, Laden with unbought dainties these, he praised His happy fortune from a more grateful breast Than a king seated at his unearned feast! I marked how he began; when next I came, Transformed the garden! Gardener the same. His the first roses, though an unkind spring, And ripe apples ere leaves were yellowing. While frost splintered the rocks, and ice and snow— Winter fighting March—bridled Galeso’s flow, He plucked Iris tresses, in mock distress At missing Zephyrs, Summer’s tardiness! Not his hives to fail in queen bees; no swarm Of his was ever known to come to harm; Earliest the honey from his combs pressed; For who judged like him which flow’rs bees love best? Master the old man in tree-craft as well; His, choicest stone-pines, limes; for he could tell By instinct where to plant; and as for yield Of fruit, spring’s promise autumn aye fulfilled! He planted, and transplanted, as he chose Full-grown elms, hardwood pears, plum-grafted sloes; Even a leafy plane he dared to move— Nor hurt—to a fresh home within the grove. Two thousand years ago the old man died; And Nature that, with some laws, he defied, Will, patient, not forgetful, at his death Have returned arcades, flow’r beds, to waste heath. Tradition shadows not their place.— His name? The Bard has not handed it down to fame. A sudden vision of his youth, no more Than a parenthesis of lines, some score. In words how little we are told;—and yet How impossible for us to forget That haunting figure, in his parterres made Out of the wild with his own brain for spade! For not in Virgil’s verse alone he lives; In all Earth’s gardens the “Corycian” survives!

Muses of Sicily, if I rehearse Our peasants’ pleasures, toils, in Latin verse, I owe your idylls that my heart beats true To the kind honest lot that once I knew; And frames visions I have seen, Still, in woods and pastures green. Nature, changed, lives. Ages-leaves in a blast— Flutter away, in dreams, all dead and past;— Fleeting, alike ease that pays righteous toll, And triumphs won from agonies of soul. For when Fancy plays at Thought In Dreamland, Time, Space are nought. Slumber I, or wake? Is it that the long Iron Age dies, as in the Sibyl’s song? Does Justice return? Saturn wear his crown? From high Heaven does a God-child come down? Does Pollio’s Consulate The Golden Age reinstate? Reconciler of old friends! Yours the care To efface bloodstains of the past, prepare For the advent of a Peace-maker, heal Aches—foreboding fresh horrors—that we feel. He comes! be a path paved, meet To be trod by Holy feet! A noble task to clear and keep a space Where you shall model a heroic race On yourself—fit, if few, companions made For their future Chief, nor without the aid Of Gods visible, as he In his Paradise shall be. In the womb now! and in their charge the Birth, Sun’s, Moon’s, of the most precious Thing on Earth! Not for ten full months must the Babe see light! Keep watch and ward, Day’s Lord, Lady of Night! Be Peace throughout! hold your breath, Thunders above, fires beneath! Born! you lie, Babe, lapped in the calm, warm air; Earth laughs with blissfulness to see you there. Goats fain would suckle you; while you are near, They feel they have nought from wild beasts to fear. Snakes die; nightshade bids its root Nurture no fair traitor fruit. Touch the ground; flowers of all hues will spring; Of sweetest scent, and with no thorns to sting; Such as the common wayside thickets know, Or nowhere but in palace gardens blow. Ivy, Assyrian nard Sue alike for your regard; And grateful you for each; the mean, the rare To your frank childishness as welcome are. Tossing your naked limbs on the glad sod You know not you will be—perhaps are—a God! Yea, Child, who, than you all love, More Divine in Heav’n above! Ev’n when babyhood becomes boyhood, still Nature spreads her bounty in sheer good-will. Honey from the sturdy oak, like dew, drips; Briers press purple grapes on thirsting lips; And from unploughed fields are borne Yellow sheaves of beardless corn. But stifle human wants with plenty, lust Of unneighbourliness creeps from the dust. Merchants here and there about ocean roam, Snatching subsistence given free at home; Robbers build forts whence to spoil; Shares rend the protesting soil. Germs, mixed—crude, human restlessness—its need For peril and adventure—or rank greed, That had hid underground, from shame to break “God’s Truce,” and keep the wondrous Babe awake, Had been struggling to survive; The spell is lifted; they live. A fresh Argo will seek another Fleece; Sin of a second Paris murder peace; A new Achilles set streams in wroth flood Rushing to the sea red with Trojan blood. No more, Boy, know ye of it Than in brave tales poets writ. Of Earth, not of it, you move to and fro, A mystery; wherever you may go, Carrying a blessing! Your one main care To learn what Heroes, like your Father, are; What, Virtue;—revealed to them Who prize it ere priced a gem. Then, your eyes, a boy’s, that had closed at night On a garden-land bathed in crimson light, Open to find yourself of man’s estate, Named Dictator of a mad world by Fate;— Grasping no steel sword in hand; With no Armies to command. My vision is blurred. As from graves, a host, Chaos, rose, went back at dawn a ghost. But mortal may not, ev’n in sleep, behold Heaven at work Man’s being to remould. Enough to witness when Earth Has undergone its new birth; How without pruning hook, or drudging bull, The press ran wine, the granaries were full; And traders finding wares from foreign lands They had risked life to store, left on their hands, Gave up voyaging abroad; Let alone the Ocean road. Ah! Joy, the world ’twas given me to view! All that’s fair in the Old, kind in the New! How Nature, impelled by but one desire To grant her loved children all they require, Never tires to please them; still Paints the lily at their will, Varies the rainbow’s order, gilds the gold On Ebro’s banks, dyes the wool in the fold, Wooes by soft stratagems her nursling, Man, To feel motherliness in all her plan Of change for him, while she shows Her own bliss in a dog-rose! Fate has decreed; the Destinies obey Eternal laws, and bid their spindles play: “March, Ages, without break!” Time presses on! You, of race Divine, Jove’s adopted Son, High honours, great tasks await; Swerve not at the call of Fate! The arched world bows; the sea’s long currents raise Glad crests; Heaven’s blue depths chant hymns of praise For the good days coming. With one consent The Universe prepares for merriment. Winter was it? Now, ’tis Spring; Hark! the woods are carolling! “May it be given me to outstay death— If I but keep so much of life as breath To tell, my Prince, your deeds! My theme, not I, Will Orpheus and Linus in song defy, Though Muse-Mother, and God-Sire Stand by, and their sons inspire. Nay, I range in Arcady; and should Pan Grace by a challenge on the pipe a man, I must take up the glove—the meanest clod, On equal terms competing with a God— And win! for I you acclaim; Then, what can he but the same?” A smile! and, Babe, I would that I could deem You meant it for pleasure at my Day-dream. I know ’tis a return for those on you; And that you can ne’er repay debts thus due. Blest you so to have learned, while In your cradle, how to smile! Alas for the child who, by guilt, or guile, Lives disinherited of parents’ smile. For whom no fellowship of Gods or grace, From birth condemned, an outcast of his race! In your Palace, at your call Shall not welcome be for all?

Sad with thoughts of Carthage, its Lady fair, Weary and worn with wanderings and care, Mourning his father still, Æneas lay Sleepless, when lo! visible as in day, Though up the heavens drove her car black Night, Anchises, lit with an unearthly light: “My Son,” he said, “here am I by Jove’s grace; He pities, late, the sorrows of our race, And has sent me to comfort and advise. Let a new Troy in Sicily arise, Peopled by many who would stay behind. With the young and bravest, sail thou, and find A realm in Latium; make its rude tribes feel The temper of their Trojan Master’s steel. But, first, thou to the Nether World descend, And traverse from the threshold to the end In search of me; not that I dwell in Dis, With the curst, but the pleasant fields of bliss. Thither, with, for thy guide, the Sibyl, come To learn thy sons’ deeds in their destined home. But past midnight; the horses of the Sun Pant to speed on their course;—I must be gone!” Full well were Jove’s commands he brought obeyed, And the foundations of the city laid— “Acesta”—as its lord, Acestes hailed; And, wept now by those it left, the fleet sailed.— For Italy sailed; there arrived; and moored Off Cumæ;— but with Pilot none on board. Whether marine God, jealous of a skill In seamanship like his, or, spite of will, Worn out with toil, he failed at last to keep His eyelids from the poppy dew of sleep; Who knows? but he woke, rudder in his hand, Drifting, shouts unheard, to an unknown strand. Vain to trace Palinurus and his fate! But all knew where the Sibyl kept her state. In a shrine that Latona’s Children hold, Their joint domain, and Dædalus of old Adorned with various art, a huge cliff-wall Recedes into a cavern; and thence call, Rushing tumultuous through a hundred doors, As many voices. One roar, the whole, pours. Æneas touched the threshold, when a cry Came from within: “Ask, and I will reply! Hear! the God!”— And the Sibyl herself there; She, yet not herself; breathing not our air; No mortal accents from a mortal tongue; Visage, complexion changed, fillet unstrung; Breast stormily heaving; heart all but broke In yet untamed resistance to the yoke The God would fix, to break mind—human birth— To bind his messenger from Heav’n to Earth; While She, though pure, adoring, how not repine, Identity lost, e’en to be Divine! ’Twas instinct in her that rebelled; not she, The Prophetess, the Sibyl; for now see Her wrathful for her master’s honour:— “Thou, Trojan at His altar, and not a vow! Deemest mighty mouth of His awful shrine Will open but to answer prayer from thine?” Æneas had kept silence, not from fear, Or shame, but reverence; now he drew near, Entreating from the bottom of his heart: “Phœbus, Troy’s champion, when few took our part; Through whom Achilles died—whose kindly hands Led us o’er false seas, past perilous lands— O turn the shores where we have anchor cast, From the mirage they were to homes at last. And adverse Gods and Goddesses, to all, I pray, if e’er Troy’s glory stirred your gall, Does not down-fallen Pergamus atone— Is Envy not content with heaps of stone— With Priam’s House uprooted? What are we, Mere remnant tossed till now on every sea? Thee also, holy Prophetess, I ask; Free thy God’s cloudy riddles from their mask; In pity for me, who already know I am to rule Ausonia, unveil how, Where, and when, to found my City, replace Troy’s exiled Gods, Genii of our race; Nor trust thy renderings of what Fate weaves To the chance flutterings of autumn leaves; Chant; and be all transcribed; then, when, in pure Marble fanes, thy God is worshipped, be sure Kings after me shall treasure what is writ, And train up scholars to interpret it.” God and Prophetess listened no more;— will Was wrestling to be its own mistress still. A woman with a God! In vain she raves; Subduing lips that foam, breast swollen, waves Of inspiration stamp, rolling along, Apollo’s dictates on the Sibyl’s tongue, Till—again the hundred doors open wide— Phœbus to Æneas by her replied: “Think not thy work is done because at length Ocean’s dangers are escaped. All thy strength Will be tasked on land; though Latium’s lord Prepares to hail the offer of thy sword, Thou’llt wish thyself soon afar! Look! a flood— Tiber foaming to the sea—of men’s blood. Horrors Simois, Xanthus showed might seem Repeated by thy loath fancy in a dream. Nor even wanting to this war—fell war— An Achilles, Goddess born; Troy’s ill star, Queen Juno; and, of worse augury yet For Trojans, or, of snares that Fate has set For thy feet a surer than all beside— A foreign hostess, and a foreign bride. Face trials; turn thy back upon no foe; By paths, however strait, Chance-opened, go. Where wilt thou not in Italy beg aid? If to no purpose, be not thou dismayed. Fortune loves strange means; how but for me have known Thy dawn would break first from forth a Greek town?” Æneas spoke not; for again the jar, Bellowing, shrieking, roaring—civil war Between Spirit, Divine, and human—This, In last contest to stand by what it is; Planning passages that lead nowhere, in or out, Darkening truths, perversities of doubt; Phœbus, if thundering, resolved and cold, Certain of victory, ne’er quitting hold; The other, a wild mare on a wild plain. You heard the cold calm trainer shake the rein, Tear mutinous mouth with the cruel bit, Mock at the passion that resented it. Then quiet; Æneas once more began: “Speak not of risks endurable by man; None daunt me; long since I foresaw the whole, Rehearsed what worst could happen in my soul. I fear no ordeal; if Hell’s gate be here, As they say, and it front the darksome mere— Acheron’s wash—I crave it of thy grace, Holy One, to meet my sire face to face. Never had I been parted from his side Till in an evil hour for me he died. Not in the agony of that dread night, Troy’s ruin, did I lose him from my sight; On these shoulders bore I him ’mid the wreck, Though all Hell’s hounds were barking at my back. On my voyagings best of comrades he, In mortal terrors, on every sea; Minding nothing how elements might rage— A heart that defied weaknesses of age! Tell me the foemen that I would not dare To see him once more, pain I would not bear. In the dead watches of the night he came, And bade me supplicate Thee in his name To unbar Hell’s gates, and to be my Guide. Oh think that he is kneeling by my side! Thy will is law; whate’er Thou wilt is done; Mercy we pray; rejoin us, Father, Son. Others have been to whom was given the right, Living, to travel through the world of night. Its doors, as Orpheus sounded lute and song, Opened to let the minstrel pass along; Fraternal tenderness has paved a way To and from twilight to radiant day; Alcides—did not friendship bring him down? Theseus also—if but that!— Me, love’s crown, The noblest, filial piety, draws, Though into Tartarus’s very jaws! By no bare title holdest thou in fee Avernus by gift from great Hecate; Thine leave to grant, with me the right of love To visit Hell—and I too count from Jove!” “Easy,” replied the Sibyl, “the descent To Avernus; welcome all thither bent; Dis shuts none out; the task is, when the taste For sunshine revives, measure back the waste Wooded wilderness that Cocytus holds In its innumerable black-slime folds. What hope for mortals flesh-clogged to retrace Their way! A few by Jupiter’s good grace, Or saints on earth, with blood Divine to aid, Of brief sojourn there stepping-stones have made To the skies.— But enough! Well that the sight Of thy Sire is a passionate delight; That thy fond heart’s self-satisfying sense Of duty done is a full recompense For risking the mad liberty to float Twice across noisome Styx in Charon’s boat; And twice view Tartarus,— Yet first receive The terms on which alone Thou hast thy leave; In a nest of dells retired is a grove, Darkened by shadows of the hills above; And a tree, sun-proof, whose dense branches hold Ever among them one of purest gold; Gold leafage, gold saplings supple, yet tough; Vain for any, though brave, and fond enough, To plunge in the Underworld; unless he Have tracked and plucked the Gold Bough off the Tree. The Queen of Hades, Proserpine the Fair, Chooses offerings thence for her to wear, Never loses the tree glory; instead Of branch plucked a second straightway is bred, Thou, high and low, explore; and, if Thou find, Lay hold on it; should Fate have Thee designed, It will yield with ease, even joy; if not, Nor strength, nor steel could tear it from the spot. And ’tis not all; another duty still Rests on thee, and a sadder, to fulfil. While thou would’st learn the future in my cave, A friend has been lying dead, with no grave— To the entire Fleet a reproach, a shame. First give his relics tomb, and rites, they claim. So, may’st thou with clean hands thy way pursue; And realms forbid shall open to thy view.” A tangled maze! With a past bleak and bare, A future of dim hopes, and certain care;— A corse blurring the foreground! And of whom? Then, as Æneas paced the shore in gloom, Achates with him, see! a Body there! Misenus, trumpeter, charioteer! He drowned, and how? that horseman tried and good, Hard and intrepid spearman, who had stood The brunt of battle, as of rough sea-wave, Of Hector and Æneas comrade brave— There, like worthless seaweed, see! Misenus dead! In eyes stark staring might almost be read An appeal as if to Heaven, and Fate, Against false friends who left him desolate! And, true, ’twas pity touching on remorse, Which swept through the armament, when the corse Was drawn to the encampment on the shore. The first thought, the Prince led, was to deplore A comrade; the next, the pyre, to proceed To raise, as to One who could intercede In Heaven, what an altar might have been. A primeval forest that had never seen Woodman, or, profaning its silence, heard The horn of huntsman chasing beast or bird, Suddenly awoke to the frequent crash Of pitch-pine, ilex, and the mountain-ash, While heart of oak had to admit a wedge, And giants rolled down many a hill ledge. In all the toil none bore sturdier part Than Æneas; for he, and with full heart, Grieved for a loyal ally; but his brain, With that central thought, took a wider train: “Forests as this,” he mused, “the whole land through! How to track to one tree a single bough! Yet”—as of Misenus—“could the Maid tell Ill news so truly, why not good as well?” And ah! that instant, in his joyful sight, Alighting from blue sky, in soft, smooth flight, On the green turf a pair of milk-white doves Such as flit where his Mother, Venus, moves. “After them! Oh! to guess whither they make, And match their speed whatever course they take!” Fain would he think the rate was, as they flew, Ruled for pursuit to keep them just in view, To the dark arbour where a yellow glow Should flicker on the verdant turf below. Hope not in vain; the pair, after brief pause For circling Avernus, and its death-jaws, Tower swiftly aloft; next, in straight line Glide to a tree, settle as by design. The Hero arrives, and with heart aflame Marks, checkering green shadows, a gold gleam. Upon a foreign stem the mistletoe Will in the woods a cluster of sprays grow, With berries saffron-hued in winter’s cold. Thus, on the holm-oak swayed the Branch of Gold, Rustling its slight leafage in the soft wind; Coy—rather than resisting, disinclined— As Æneas plucked, in hot haste to bear His prize, and trust it to the Sibyl’s care. Meanwhile, the Trojans thronged, the Dead to mourn With rites for which no thanks could it return. First, they build, a marvel for bulk, the pyre— Pitch-pine for flame, split oak to feed the fire, Cypress, Death’s tribute, armour to remind Of the warrior, twigs the logs to bind. Vast the heap; but, with oil and incense, soon Fire had done its work; and when it died down, All being gone that of the mass could burn, They closed the ashes, wine-washed, in the urn. Then Chorinœus sprinkled thrice the ring Of mourners with pure water from the spring, And bade the Shade, leaving the world above, Last farewell words of sorrowing and love. Yet was the debt the Prince was proud to owe But half-paid to a friend in weal and woe, Till rose a sepulchre, stately and high, For th’ honoured dust enshrined therein to lie. Topped by oar and horn, sword, and spear, and shield, To proclaim the champion of sea and field, It crowns the airy Cape that boasts the name, And through the ages seals a Trojan’s fame. So, drowned Misenus need not wander more Between two worlds on Styx’s groaning shore, Dragging soulless flesh—choke in a foul fen, Companionless for Shadows, and for Men. No more an unburied suppliant this, But Hero, Pilot trumpeting in bliss! And, their consciences purged, with duties done, All turned to fresh cares, leaving Misenus alone. The Prince and men, the Sibyl guiding, went By a rough track until a yawning rent In a grim cliff disclosed a cavern; day Was blocked by a dense grove; and in front lay A dim dark pool; from its black lips a breath Steamed into the arched sky, carrying death. On its banks sounded never a bird’s song; Whence “Avernus,” “birdless” in the Greek tongue. Hard-by the Sibyl hallowed victims, four Steers dusk-coloured; proceeding first to pour Wine on their heads, and on the altar burn Bristles from between the horns she had shorn; Next, by blood calling Hecate, Divine In Heaven as Hell, to further their design. The Prince then to the Furies’ kith and kin— Vain to try their Three vengeful selves to win— Slaughtered a black-fleeced lamb; to Hades’ Queen A cow untaught what mother’s joys had been; And, lastly, after sunset, to the King Of Tartarus, a vast, rich offering— Whole bulls’ entrails upon the altars thrown, With oil to sting the flames to hiss and groan. But the sun rose, and earth began to growl Underfoot, dogs in the grey dawn to howl, And on wooded heights leaves waved in still air, As Nature felt the Goddess coming there. “Away, unsanctified; far from the grove,” Threatens the Sibyl; “as your lives ye love! Alone, Æneas, sword unsheathed, come Thou; Need for stout heart, for all thy courage now!” Prophetess possessed, she dared the dark cave; Step by step followed he, with soul as brave. Gods, whose the Spirit-empire, and, ye, hosts— Chaos, Phlegethon, Powers too—of ghosts, Dumb in a dumb world, grant I may unfold Things, of which my spirit by yours is told. Cloudy must my story needs be to him Who reads. All to the pilgrims’ selves was dim! Phantom-like, and alone with night, they passed Through Dis’s kingdom, lifeless, joyless, waste, As, pale and ghostly will a forest seem, Between pale clouds and the moon’s grudging beam. The first stage Orcus, where before the gate, In forecourt, watchful, if with closed eyes, wait— Padlocks on Hell’s jaws—Mourning, vengeful Care, In many aspects; pale Disease and Fear, Age looking back, Hunger counselling ill, With Neediness that numbs the nerve of will:— Forms of terror they all; and, no less dread, Death, and Sleep, his cousin, sharing one bed; Labour with a lash, and ill joys that taste Like honey in the mouth, and lay Mind waste; While in guard-houses opposite lodge War, And Carnage driving a funeral car; The Furies too—each in iron-barred cell— Police-runners on Earth, hangmen in Hell; And mad Discord, wreathing her locks of gore With vipers borrowed from her neighbours’ store. For centre an old elm, immense in girth, Keeps sunless, barren, a wide space of earth. Rumour gives it to idle Dreams, which browze Upon the leaves, and hang from all the boughs. Nor far away in the same region dwells Many a strange freak of whom legend tells; Centaurs in the doorway, Scylla, fish, maid, Briareus hundred-headed, arrayed In flames, Chimæra, and, bellowing beast, The Hydra, Harpies that pollute a feast, Gorgons looking cold death, and the Earth-King, Who grew a fresh third body at each fling. No stain on Æneas if monsters made Him grip and wave at the dour crew his blade, Until warned by the Sibyl that they were Bodiless Shades, invulnerable as air. Passing unharmed, they now approached the shore Where Acheron, Styx, Cocytus meet, and pour, In one vast whirlpool, mingled filth and sand, And saw upon the bank old Charon stand. Squalid ferryman, he keeps watch and ward Over all these waters and streams; a beard Shaggy, dirty-white, from his chin flows down; Frowzy his cloak tied by a knot; a frown Sits on his brow, o’er eyes twin pools of fire. The barge, poled, sails to help, is, like the sire, In iron-rusty age, but crude-green, good To ship Shades numberless across the flood. In truth masses rush pell-mell to the bank, Dead of all sorts, without order, or rank; Heroes that in their country’s cause had bled, Aged wives and husbands, boys, girls unwed, Youths leaving parents to inscribe the stone, And linger through unwelcome years alone:— As many as the leaves Autumn’s first frost Brings down; as winged swarms that have ocean crossed To escape in warm lands harsh winter’s blasts. Pitiful the entreaties to be passed Over. Some Charon takes, rejects the rest— Perhaps with “sad” heart hid inside that rugged breast! Well might Æneas wonder at the haste To reach o’er those waters yon gloomy waste. “Cocytus this,” the Maid, “that Styx, in whose Name Gods dare not swear, and then break their vows; They mark the boundaries of life and death, Between the world above, the world beneath; Spirit cannot claim to pass either flood While it must drag behind it flesh and blood. A way has been appointed and decreed, By funeral rites, for it to be freed From that now mere burden; who lack them pray The Ferryman in vain; driven away, They tread a hundred years the same dull track, Till, less in hope than apathy straying back, They are—disbodied—afloat! It may be, If rarely, that friendship, or charity, Late informed, or remorse for crime, has laid White bones in earth, and thus a debt repaid. Æneas heard, believed; for by him stood, Witnesses to fortune of storm and flood, And Hell’s hard rules, two whom he recognised As of Troy’s remnant, but at sea surprised; By a wild south wind robbed of life and tomb. Leucaspis, Orontes, they; and in doom Alike, though companionless, save for woe, Palinurus!” Exclaimed Æneas: “So Diedst?” but Phœbus promised: “None lost at sea, And all to disembark in Italy?” “The Oracle spoke truth;” the Pilot said: “Clinging to the helm, the fourth morn I made Italy; the while, by the Seas I swear, I feared not for myself; my only care Was for thy ship, its steersman lost, and helm, A prey for waves and gales to overwhelm. But I landed, began to climb the cliff, When brute shore-men taking me, soaked and stiff, And unarmed, for sea-prize, attacked and slew. Then, stripping my body naked, they threw Into the sea, by turns there to abide, And on the beach, at pleasure of the tide. Oh, by the heaven’s cheerful light and airs, By thy Sire’s memory, thy hopes and cares For thy son! to Velia, returning, steer— My body floats hard-by—give it a bier! Or why, my Prince, not take a shorter mode Of lifting my intolerable load? Whate’er thou wilt, thou canst, with, by thy side, A Divine Mother for thy shield and guide. How else could living mortal hope to pass Such rivers, and the Stygian morass? Let me cross with thee; all my griefs will cease; I shall have died at last, and be at peace;”— “Unburied,” cried the Maid: “without command From the Furies, presume to tread their strand! Stop importuning for what Fate denies; Heaven has not forgotten thy death-cries; Thy murderers shall avow their foul crime, And thou be honoured to the end of time; For I can teach thee more, to ease the ache Of waiting:—the Cape o’er thy tomb shall take Thy name; seamen, as, doubling it, they sail, Shall muse upon thy death, and tell the tale.” They parted, he to tramp those marshes drear, Where years are moments, a moment a year. And living spirits to dead bodies bound Pace in a tedious circle round and round; Still, with his pain a joy—“My Cape, my name!” For Death is ne’er so dead as to be dead to Fame! Farewell to him. Æneas, with his Guide, Approached, not unobserved, the black stream’s side Charon was on the watch as they pursued Their way along the sad and silent wood. Scarcely had they emerged when he began To scold, and Æneas first: “Halt, armed man, Whoever thou art! No step further! Why Wouldest thou cross? For ghosts alone I ply Bound for the realms of slumb’rous Night and Sleep. Not for live bodies do I ferry keep! Do I not well remember how I crossed With Hercules on board, much to my cost?— Think! Zeus’s son, incomparably strong, Fastened Cerberus with a leathern thong, And drew trembling from under Pluto’s throne! Who paid for the sacrilege? I alone. When Theseus and Pirithous dared try To carry off our Queen, who culprit? I!” “Waste wrath!” quoth the Sibyl: “Thy hound may save His bark to fright the pale Shades from his cave. Pluto’s honour is safe; feel no alarms; ’Tis Æneas famed for piety and arms! Hither has he descended from above To pay his Sire the homage of his love. Though not moved thou by tenderness like his, See the Branch! Render fealty to This!” At the sight rarely seen the anger sank, Awe followed; straight backed Charon for the bank, Clearing bench and deck of many a Shade To make room for Æneas and the Maid. Starting with its unwonted weight once more, The coracle groaned, leaked at every pore; But lasted out, and at the water’s edge, Landed in clammy mud and grey-green sedge. From where against the landing-place he lay, Cerberus opened his three jaws to bay Strangers, when the Sibyl, seeing the snakes Round the neck arching, threw drugged honey-cakes. The ravening throats licked the whole up; then— While the monstrous limbs grovelled o’er the den— Bidding the rivers none re-cross farewell, The Pair are through the gate, and inside Hell. The Underworld, an Empire manifold, Is famed within it two main States to hold;— For the Damned, and Fiends to torment them, Dis, The Elysian fields for Saints in bliss.— But Spirits of the Dead, ere they can come Before their Judge to be assigned a home Among the Blest or Sinners, undergo Two stages of probation; first, we know, For it to be on due inspection clear They are qualified as Ghosts; and, next, where To prepare for trial.— From graves men rise Shadows, bodiless, but as Death’s surprise Caught them; and therefore shadows of the whole, Of Body with its accidents, and Soul. Such—Ghosts—they wake on Acheron’s dark shore: Such by grim Charon are they ferried o’er; As such they show when rapping at Hell’s gate; And are sorted in vestibules to wait. A few mortals, and living, there have been Who, by the Gods’ leave, in a day have seen The whole Nether World; but e’en its wide marge, Reserved for Untried, would take men at large Their lives to traverse. Reckon! the huge space Needed to lodge the dead of human race! Expectants of a summons to be tried For the lives they led, and the deaths they died! On probation for abjuring Earth and Sun When their work above was not fully done! For being here before it had begun! Causes peopling this land of Little Ease Myriad! body’s accidents, disease, A wild beast’s claws, a sudden east-wind’s blight; Riches, poverty; daring and affright; Jealousies of nations, brothers; the smart Of love rejected, and a broken heart: Hope become despair, as past, present schemes Melt all into the fairy-land of dreams. The victims—“Legion”—seeming still alive— Wait here, distributed in Circles five; Creatures of strange aspect, Earth’s rust inlaid On spirit bearing it without flesh to aid. Wanted a world to lodge the whole; and still Continual accretions, plain, vale, hill, Forest, are reclaimed from Immensity, To hold this wreckage of humanity. The first Circle to which were drawing near Æneas and his Guide, might force a tear From hearts of iron; for the entire air Was but a storm of infantile despair; One scream—plaints of robbery of the share In sweet life to which each is born an heir. Only, clasped to their mother’s breasts, of all Promised at birth, they have—a funeral! In the next Circle, less by one degree Adverse their lot who died through perjury; For they can claim revision of their cause By eternal justice, if not man’s laws. Minos holds his high Court; sifts hearts and lives; A mute jury through Urns its verdict gives. Acquittal will not breath of life restore; But the appellant shuns his fellow Shades no more. In the third Circle a sad folk abide, Who go always wondering why they died. Their hands are wet and red with blood they spilt; And yet no neighbour charges them with guilt. Accusers, sternest, themselves keep, within; “Guilty,” they plead; unpardonable sin. If a joy, ’tis but to avow their shame; The story’s essence always is the same: “Fool I! So wholly hateful did it seem— Torture to my eyes—slant of a sun beam; Needs shut it out forthwith—so simply how, As by sending soul, body straight below?”— Next moment! if penury, mean toil were The price for breathing once more Earth’s free air, Gladly would all accept Man’s vilest lot, But Hell’s and Heaven’s laws permit it not. Slow Acheron is their eternal bound, With unamiable Styx coiled ninefold around! A fourth Circle holds within confines wide “I Campi Dolorosi”; therein hide In secluded alleys, and myrtle grove, Those eaten through with leprosy of love. Death kills it not; for a multitude haunt The bowers, melancholy music chant. With Procris, Laodamia, the rest, The wound, unhealed, still bleeding in her breast, Tyrian Dido roamed in a great wood. Æneas in the leafy twilight stood, Uncertain; as, at the month’s dawn, we doubt If it be moon, or cloud flitting about. Soon recognition, love; and, with them both, Tears, shame, remembrance of his plighted troth: “Then, ’twas truth,” he cried, “floated o’er the sea— Dead—and by thy own hand—and, Queen, for Me! But by the Stars, by all the Gods I know, By what Pow’rs punish perjuries below— Against, I swear, my heart’s will, by commands Divine, I left thy shore for other lands. To please, not myself, but because I must, I pace Shadow-land, mouldy with the rust, Miseries, aches of folly and of crime,— Accumulated hoardings of old Time. An instrument I of the Gods’ fixed plan; Yet even thus would have rebelled as man, Faced the penalties, had I been so vain As to imagine the excess of pain My parting would cause thee! In pity, stay! Whom flyest thou? I have so much to say! And only one poor moment Fate allows! Rob not of this, the last it grants our vows!” As fruitless task to seek by words to slake Fury of a furnace, as to re-make A broken heart, or back to life surprise Killed fondness.—On earth she fixed sullen eyes; Moved by his prayers no more than by a smile Of Venus would be cliff on Paros’ isle. At last, though long his sad remorse pursued, Gathering her strength, she regained the wood. Their route resumed, they reached a land where air Had a stir as of life; hither repair War lords; here the heroes of old fights meet— Adrastus, Parthenopæus; here greet Æneas friends from Ilium, whose doom Himself had witnessed, wept for, at the tomb; And now re-wept, beholding each a Shade, Though, like Idæus, in bright armour clad, And charioteering. On left and right, Not with one look content, they throng; delight To find pretexts to keep him, walk beside; Question why he came, and how long might bide. Not so with the Greeks Agamemnon led; Seeing Æneas’s drawn sword, some fled As once to their Fleet; all quaked; some would shout, Mouths gaped, and the cry, a ghost, quavered out. Shamed at the sight, Æneas, gazing there As they shrank before him, became aware Of a Ghost intent upon their dismay— A Shade continuing the disarray In which life had fled; hands, nostrils and ears Lopped off by vengeful, jealous swords and spears; Lace-work of gashes; the Shade shivered o’er Dishonouring wounds, and bent, striving sore To hide them, and himself.— Hardly, at last Æneas knew; and, with tears flowing fast, Forced him to turn: “Knight, Prince, Deiphobus, Whose the force, will, to have outraged thee thus? I had heard, on the death-night of our Town, On a pile slain thou laid’st thee dying down. Thy body I found not, but I addressed Thrice farewell, consigning thy soul to rest.” “No pious kindness,” answered Priam’s son, “Friendship could require, hast thou left undone. To Fate, and the Greek Murderess I owe Horrors I bore on earth, my shame below; She made my flesh my tomb, epitaph writ Thereon, and on my ghost has graven it! Thou knowest—how forget?—the lying joy Of the last, the funeral night of Troy. The Traitress through the festal city led A chorus of Bacchantes, at its head Waving a flaming torch; and, with the cry Of ‘Evan,’ from the Citadel on high, Summoned her ambushed Argives.— I meanwhile, Worn with the day’s cares, unsuspecting guile— Least of all in my new-made Wife—in sleep, Unbroken as quiet death’s self, sweet, deep, Lay in my baleful chamber, whence my Bride Had stolen all arms, even from my side My trusty sword.— Then she invites within Menelaus—purgation for old sin! Lo! he, and Ulysses, arch fiend, and She, With Me unarmed—Why more?—Dost thou not see? Gods, whom I worshipped, have not I a right To claim like for like? Will Ye not requite? But Thou; say, what mischance on sea or land, Caprice of Fortune, or the Gods’ command, Has sentenced thee in life to wander here, Away from sunlight, and glad household cheer?” A story long to tell; and longer still Had been, were time Below, for good or ill, Not measured for guests from the Upper Air By speed of rosy Dawn’s four horses there. But for Æneas, with half Day’s course run, Not yet had the decisive stage begun. Perforce the Sibyl warned against delay; Nor thought Deiphobus his friend to stay. Though bowed by unimaginable ill, He faded into the Dark, to fulfil His fate, with Adieu; “a high lot enjoy! Be glory thine, and found a greater Troy!” The fifth Circle left, they desired by haste To pay time lost in grieving for the past. Where the road forked, they took the right, that led To Elysium; but, turning his head, Æneas stood—bewildered, and in awe; For, backed by a huge range of cliffs, he saw, Extending far, behind a triple wall, A city that one might a kingdom call, Girt by waters—Phlegethon their dread name— That whirl echoing rocks, and floods of flame. Then, if that torrent of fire could be crossed, What of the adamantine gates? Where host Of men, nay, Gods of high Heaven, with pow’r To tear those from their storm-defying tow’r? And, as if this were not enough to keep Dis safe, Tisiphone, who needs no sleep, Sits guard in blood-red robe beside the door, Reckoning each pulsation of the roar, Every whizz of the lash, moan of pain, Grating of iron, rattling of the chain. Æneas heard too; his feet in fear clove To the ground as frozen; he could not move From the spot he trod. “What sins punished there, And how? Whose those hoarse wailings of despair?” Repelled—attracted: his unuttered thought She answered: “Ask not of me to be brought Within; none guiltless enter but, like me, They set in charge under Queen Hecate. Herself, installing me, vouchsafed to tell The system on which Heaven peoples Hell. Committals hither are on sentence giv’n By Rhadamanthus, righteous as Heav’n. A sinner joys in craft that has concealed His crime in life; but here it stands revealed Blazing as the Sun; how vain cunning when Tisiphone hauls the convict, grieved then For old triumphs; in her right hand the scourge, In her left snakes. She screams the while to urge Her savage pair of sisters to make haste From banks of dim Cocytus for a feast! The Trials living men may not attend, Or the dire chastisements in which they end, But—for so much is lawful—thou shalt see The Prison’s threshold. At a sign from me, Look! Gates of Adamant have opened wide, Shrieking in loud protest; on either side, The Fury, and a Hydra, grisly sight, That hisses from fifty black jaws its spite; While Tartarus beyond them plunges down Full twice the space from red-hot Phlegethon To the blue vault of Ether.— Mark the twain, And thank thy fate for being spared my pain Of visiting the dungeons they control. Noting unending torturings of soul!” “Far from me, were I able, to express Agonies of the Lost, their hopelessness! Enough their names who sinned;— here, hurled to Dis By lightning at bottom of the abyss Roll Earth’s sons the Titans; and I saw there The Aloeid Twins, who scaled upper air, Piling mount on mount; by brute strength alone Tried to storm Olympus, and Jove dethrone Salmoneus too, and the price his pride Cost him, for choosing impious to ride Mimicking lightnings’ flash, the thunder’s roar Fool! to ape Jove with his steeds as they bore His car through Elis, torches as they cast Their smoky gleams, trumpets’ quavering blast. Brief the trickeries of that crazed career, Joy for man on Earth’s stage to act God’s peer; And swift climax when, amid storms, there fell Bolts that drove the pretender down to Hell! Near him Earth’s nursling, Tityus, I saw, Stretched o’er nine acres, with, to fill its maw, A hook-beaked vulture clawing at his breast For the liver e’er eaten, ne’er at rest; Since growing ever, putting on new flesh; So, the Thing gropes for dainties ever fresh. Myriad Crime’s forms—Dis for all has room. Kinship that should nurse kindness, rings its doom; Virtues that have turned strangers into friends, Oft change brothers and sisters into fiends. Children, instead of vying to maintain Parents, have beaten them, and even slain. A traitor to human nature and hearth Seduces her who owes to him her birth. Lawyers, snapping ties sacred as of blood, Have spun about their clients webs of fraud. Misers have gone on hatching gold from gold— A host of them—refusing to withhold Grains from the hoard, although it were to save Nearest that should be dearest from the grave. Guests—till schooled here—have thought theft of a wife Well worth the risk of forfeiture of life. Liegemen, loved, aggrandized, have drawn the sword, Himself had girded on, to stab their Lord. Statesmen have abused a fond people’s trust, To sell and tread its freedom in the dust. Others, having dammed law-making at the source, Opened, closed locks as gapes or shuts a purse. The course of life cannot be ruled so straight, Homes so pure, opportunities so great, Reasons so full and plain for doing well, But that they may be used as roads to Hell. ”Penalties”?— As manifold, various. The Lapithæ know it, Pirithous, Tantalus, Ixion. I have held my breath At black rock threatening, not, welcome Death, But—for Shadows may feel—mangled, crushed bones, Dragging eternally over jagged stones.— That, in act to fall, ever seemed in air.— And I have seen Hell’s cooks a feast prepare; Spread couches with purple, and on gold-rests. Then—dainties in view—as the famished guests Seated themselves in hungry haste to sup, The eldest Fury, screaming, started up From where she lay, and, waving torch alight Swept banquet, banqueters, into cold night. On some the doom to push a mass up hill, And, when it slips, as slip it ever will, Still push; for some, e’en worse, the Wheel; and then— Limbs healed—to be broken again, again. There hapless Theseus sits, and will aye sit; Phlegyas there, whose cry—might I deaden it!— Is in mine ears: ‘Men, be warned! Scorn not Heav’n; Never is sin against the Gods forgiv’n!’” “More”? Yea; had I a hundred mouths; in each A tongue of iron to give forth my speech; And thou weeks to listen, I could not tell Of all the guilt, its chastisements in Hell. Enough for thee to know all there have dared To break God’s laws, and in like kind have fared. The deeds have been done; and now, fast shut in, The doers take the wages of their sin. But time presses; hasten, wouldst thou fulfil Duties charged by Heaven’s grace, thy own good-will. Courage; for we have left behind the Pit Of sin and torture, and are soon to quit Even the melancholy Precincts, where The dead still mourn the Past, the Future fear. Already I see the walls Cyclopian, built To shut off lands of misery and guilt From the happier one to which we wend. Lo the Arch! there must thou thy Branch suspend!” Crossing the intervening twilight space, They stood ’neath the vault of the gate in face. Then, sprinkled with fresh water from a spring, Æneas hung up his gold offering. Elysium’s doors opened; he was free, Having paid her due to its Deity.

A land for joyance made; blest for the blest; Happy in being chosen for their rest; For nowhere greener lawns, more bow’ry glades Inviting into more reposeful shades Of arched romantic groves, with, ev’rywhere, Steeped in a purple glow, a larger air Than Earth’s; for the lower world owes no debt To sun or stars with which our skies are set; It has them of its own, as real as ours. Real too its grass, the fragrance of its flow’rs; Real they to Spirit as to them It seems, Though for mortals unsubstantial as are dreams. On turf or yellow sand some test the skill, That earned them fame in life; and is theirs still. The woods are full of revellers, who beat Time to gay dancers and their flying feet; Or banqueting sit, garlanded with bays, Singing in chorus legends of old days; While others proud of battle-fields afar Conduct a mimic spectacle of war; Spears waiting to be snatched, and the broad shield To be slung, chargers harnessed for the field;— Shadows to terrestrial men, who call Earthly things real, when shadows most of all;— Shadows these of the busy lives they led On earth, which pursue them now they are dead; Nought palpable, unless that through a grove Eridanus rolls to the world above. Here ignorantly happy dwell in joy Princes like Dardanus who founded Troy; With Teucer father of a royal race, Gallant as noble, and most fair of face; Ilus, Assaracus, of blood divine, Through whom Æneas proudly traced his line. Here stood showing glorious wounds a band Of heroes fall’n to save its native land; Though other arts could equal entrance gain,— To give life charm, or steal a pang from pain. Priests too, who as they at the altar stood Offered pure lives as well as victims’ blood: And seers, who ne’er falsified Heav’n’s truth, But spoke as they heard from Apollo’s mouth:— A various tribe, yet all alike in this, That, having served, they have deserved their bliss. The Maid led where the white-filleted throng Was thickest; for Musæus’s the song, Responsive to the lyre’s seven sweet chords, That vied with all the magic of the words. High he by head and shoulders o’er the ring Around. The Sibyl, when he ceased to sing, Besought him of his courtesy to tell Where might Anchises in that blest land dwell; Their search for him had many labours cost; Dread sights been seen, perilous rivers crossed; Their grace was brief, they must not longer bide; How, clogged with flesh, find him without a guide? Quick answer made the sage: “We count no home As you on earth; wheresoever we roam At home are we; for our repose at noon, Or eve, no couch can equal with its down A meadow bank, that rills unfailing heap With flow’rs wooing irresistible sleep. But flesh and blood aye move the heart and will, And ye are here their purpose to fulfil; So, follow me beyond this hanging peak, And I will point your path to him you seek.” Under his lead they climbed the height, and thence Down into a wide, smiling champaign, whence Opened a wooded valley: in a glade Anchises stood, and deep in thought surveyed A host of hurrying Shades. As he gazed, He heard steps, his Son’s! Eagerly he raised, Both hands, while eyes and heart joined in the burst Of love and joy; each struggling to be first Its welcome to express: “Dearest! at last I see Thee; at what cost of perils passed! Yet never feared I that the utmost pow’rs Of Earth and Hell could bar a love like ours From meeting, as in old times, face to face, In full converse, however brief the space. With trust undoubting traced I to its goal Thy devious course; for well I knew thy soul; Each stage I numbered; tempests on what seas; Unfriendly lands; kindnesses worse than these!” “And could’st Thou,” cried Æneas “more repine, Missing my presence than I longed for thine? Thy image warned me on the island shore, To ask thy counsels, as, on earth, of yore, So, I am here! Once more to feel thy heart Beating to my own!— Nay; my Father, why, When I would clasp hands, kiss thy face, deny The embrace I dared Hell’s alarms to gain?” Of no avail his prayers, tears; all vain; Thrice in his arms the image melted away— As flutter of breeze; dream at break of day. Near where Anchises and Æneas stood Shades swarmed, dense, ever denser, in a wood Which rustled all its bushes with the press— As of a migrant nation numberless— Of Spirits emulous to be the first To reach grey Lethe’s edge, and quench their thirst— —Thus, in languorous stillness of noontide, Sudden the slumb’rous calm is swept aside By an inrush of bees; in wild descent, Like pirates from the main, on nothing bent But spoil they seem; yet each has its own flow’r, To which sure instinct guides it hour by hour,— Æneas saw the haste, knew not th’ excuse; For him it seemed to be Hell broken loose. Even when he heard the marvellous tale That the myriads gathered in that vale Were no unwilling, mourning outcasts there, Condemned to breathe once more the upper air, But after their secular repose full fain Flesh to resume, links in an endless chain, The world-worn hero shuddered none the less It might be his to count it happiness To exchange the peace of the myrtle grove For stark sunshine and gross body above; To be of those whom Lethe should wash clear Of all they once had been, and all they were:— That Elysium’s a waiting-room for life; Life a dust-heap for trials, failures, strife That men are Shadows all, expecting doom, Whether flesh, or to shift it in a tomb. “Forbear,” replied Anchises, old and wise, “To measure laws of Fate by earthly eyes. From the beginning of the sky and land, The stars where once the Titans held command, The sun and moon that share the day and night, Air’s liquid fields;—all owe their charm and light To eternal Spirit. That feeds the whole, Breathes into bodies, lifeless else, a soul. Mankind and beasts, winged Things, and monster strange, That ’neath the level plains of Ocean range, Draw hence their fire, the instinct of a birth Elsewhere;—alas! for the burdensome bulk Of limbs diseased, and joints that creak and sulk For the foul lusts they stir, the scares, affrights, The cowardly griefs, and as vain delights, The Dark through which flesh stumbles, halt and blind The dungeon where it keeps shut close the Mind, Lest at one breath of air it should in scorn Of earth fly back to Heaven where ’twas born. Meanwhile an evil partnership for both!— Spirit incorporate, however loth To be associate with sores and blains, Vice’s parasites, must bear fleshly pains To be cleansed; for death is itself no cure; Body, Soul with it, share in the Impure. Some, carcasses, swing, split open, for breeze To scour and wring, to bleach, and scorch, or freeze For some a mill-stream whirls a crime about, Or a furnace roars a rich baseness out. Just the Judgment, every judgment true; Each of us bears no more than is his due; High as the merits of our kith and kin, None but himself can carry his own sin. Blest the sharp ordeal for the few who thence Pass, not in sheer spiritual innocence, But in no worse than such affections dressed As leave the pure celestial spark at rest, And free in these fair fields to dream away Any chance taint surviving from earth’s clay To dull the sereneness of the fire giv’n To infants, that they may remember Heav’n.” “And now behold the final stage:— this rout, Its cycle—a thousand years—being out— Called by God’s Messenger of Life and Death, Descends where Lethe, in the cleft beneath, Will make it, drinking of the troubled flood, Conscious it once was clothed with flesh and blood. And yearn to take them back, and to return Rude air to breathe, and feel a rude sun burn. Nearer now draw with me, that from this bank Thou mayest watch the comers rank by rank; Read, as I point, the future in each face; See, as I see, the glory of our race— Great as it was, and greater still to be, Graft on Troy’s stock, the bud of Italy. Mark him who leans upon a bloodless spear; ’Tis thy own son; but look upon him here; On earth Thou wilt not; for, when thy long life Is all but spent, Lavinia thy Wife Shall conceive a child, and in full time bear Silvius in the woods to be thy heir; King of Alba, like many of his line, As Procas and Æneas, namesake thine. And still kings come—I cannot number them, Each adding to old a fresh diadem! But stay! who advances crested like to Mars— For whom Jove keeps a place among the stars? Romulus—City maker? Tenfold more! From him Earth’s arbiter, matchless in war, With no limits to empire but the Pole, And none below Olympus to the soul!— —As Joys Cybele to have peopled Heav’n, Rome boasts a breed to which Earth is giv’n! Turn thy eyes; regard this Company; know What a full tide of grandeur is to flow Hence of thy name; how from Thyself, and from Iulus, in time shall Julius come, And one as great, long destined to be born By Fate’s decree—else were Fate’s self forsworn— That, where King Saturn reigned in days of yore, Augustus shall the Golden Age restore. Marches still; already his edicts sway Where our day is night, and our night is day; Among the Gætuli; beyond them; far Outside the orbit, light, of any star; Outside track of Sun and dancing Hours, where Atlas swings the world’s axis, with its gear. Rumours of his approaching overwhelm Quaking Mæotis and the Caspian realm; While sevenfold Nile offers fealty, Trembling for what the Master shall decree. Have we not heard in legends or romance How God or Hero has made his advance, Victor throughout Earth?— Of him who laid low Lerna’s fire-breathing Dragon with his bow, Shot the brazen-footed Hind, and stilled the roar In Arcady of Erymanthian boar!— Of Bacchus in tipsy triumph, a yoke Of spotted tigers in his chariot, broke To obey, for reins, tendrils of a vine— His Mænads leaping down the long incline Of Nysa, wildly singing, their locks curled With vine leaves, following to win a world? Yet what in tales of Gods and men can match For scorn of space, and ardour of despatch, Delight in braving peril, grasp of mind, Our Cæsar’s progress to the verge of Ind! Wilt, Son, in view of all thy future Rome, With her chiefs destined from thyself to come, And while ancestral fire of Troy burns high In thy own veins, put off the hour to try Valour in act, and hesitate to prove Thy right to lordship given Thee by Jove?” “Observe, as they pass by us, one by one, Those who will glorify thy Rome, my Son. Illegible to them, for us the whole Of their careers is writ as on a scroll, See, the grey-bearded King, the Priest, the Sage, Of many years, though not bowed down with age, Whose laws devised to rule a petty town Will fit it when into an empire grown; Next, Tullus, warrior-prince, and Ancus, near, Boasting his wit to catch the popular ear: Then the proud Tarquins; and, of soul as proud, Brutus, grudging not Freedom his sons’ blood— Careless if fainter hearts, a feebler time Brand a patriot’s sacrifice as crime! Ah! changes—leaps and bounds—so fast surprise Brains, toned here to calm, that my aged eyes Are dazzled as forms pass, and then repass, And straight are lost—reflections in a glass. No smoother course for this, thy Rome to be, Than now, my Son, for Thee in Italy. A whirl of arms ere the fair land will deign To grant thy offspring’s right divine to reign; An age-long wrestle; yet a rope of sand Makes a poor rival of an iron band.— Hide from my sight those lictors, and a Son! But they tell how Latium shall be won.— A will inflexible, a discipline Making a religion of a straight line, A consuming, passionate, red-hot force Never prisoned in its volcanic source— Pride in the City of the Seven Hills— Will merge all other passions, heal all ills. These the fire inspired, that in fateful war Gave Cossus and Jove arms of Tuscan Lar. Maligned and banned Camillus their first call Brought as through air to save Rome from the Gaul Fabricius taught the Epirot King Thus, that Rome wounded rises on the wing. From them Serranus learned the art to guide The State, and victor o’er the billows ride As straight as he his furrow erewhile ploughed. Regard these visages serene and proud To do whate’er is Rome’s behest, content To go whithersoever they are sent. See, war’s twin thunderbolts, the Scipios, Their oracle Rome, their one mark her foes. See them to whom Achaia bows the head, With Macedon’s monarch in triumph led;— Avenging on Mycenæ, and the race Of Atreus, on Achilles, the disgrace They heaped upon Troy, and the outraged shrine Of Pallas, their own patroness Divine. Nor fail note that old man, heeding no jeer, No hint of blood slow and sluggish, e’en fear: Resolved throughout of one thing—ne’er, from haste In clutching popular applause, to waste A chance on Fortune’s wheel for his Rome’s Shield To foil War’s cross-eyed Master in the field; And, near to him, in Britomart’s royal spoils,— Like a brave boar, trapped in a huntsman’s toils, Unconquerable else—the battle’s lord— Confess it, Gaul, Carthage, and Syracuse—Rome’s Sword! But who is this, Thou askest, in the pride Of arms and youth, advancing by his side? Thou mark’st the likeness; well might he be son: From the same stock he springs, a noble one. Strange, in the changeless calm of these blest groves The shadow of a brooding sorrow moves.... Well might I weep, if Spirit could, the fate Of good as fair, and not more good than great. Earth will have but seen to lose him! Heaven, Wert thou jealous, lest, thinking him given To this our mighty Rome, not just on loan, But to live her life, be her very own, She would wax overweening? Yet the woe Must surely wake thy pity, when, below, Thou hear’st the wails numberless for such charms Borne to their pyre upon the Field of Arms; And Thou, old Tiber, as thou flowest by The tomb in which the loved One’s ashes lie, Wilt not forget how thou hast seen him play Oft on thy banks young, beautiful, and gay. Never will hope be raised so high by boy Blending the blood of Latium and Troy; And, when shall our earth ever find again Such loyalty and faith in living men— A right hand so approved in every art, On horse, or foot, to do a soldier’s part? I pity, praise, love! Arrest but the chain Of Fate; and lo! Marcellus come again! —Armfuls of lilies bring; for Soul as sweet! Spread crimson flow’rs, fit carpet for his feet! —Grief for a Shadow, from a Shadow grief; Yet Shadows find a Shadow of relief For boundless loss in Shadows e’en of grief!” “But now for the near future—I will show How to surmount, and how to bear with, woe; Faint not, endure, and earn renown! On Earth, What, without store of fame, is living worth! Weigh not the toils and snares, that, I foresee, Impend, ere Thou shalt reign in Italy. Remember thy reward, the noble end Tow’rds which thy trials and thy hardships tend. Teach a world-empire how its Founder bears The load of war, and, worse, intestine cares; For these must be, though I spare Thee the sight Of brothers against brothers armed for fight— Decii, Drusi, Gracchi—each House moved By jealous passion for the Rome all loved. And when the All-Conquering shall have hurled Her legions to the confines of the world, Lo! Chiefs—allied by blood, and leagued to share Two continents between them—arm to tear Their country’s entrails piecemeal! Baleful strife! Will not one victim serve—Great Cato’s life? Joy! God grants my prayer! There is brave steel Of double virtue, both to wound and heal; And of that heav’nly temper, Youth, is thine, Second founder of the Julian line! Hail to Olympian Cæsar! Who would Not guard dear life at cost of Roman blood; And ere—too soon—he parts, will choose an heir Of skill divine the ship of State to steer Clear of the breakers; Kind and keen to know His fellow Romans, with the rush and flow, The genius for sovereignty; their fate To be Earth’s lords, and Earth’s to stand and wait! Let others wile the furnace with its heat To warm the heart within the bronze to beat, Cunningly lift th’ imprisoning stone away, And lead nymphs forth to blush in rosy day; Dissemble truth with nimble tongues; and call Stars by their names; tell when they rise and fall. Others Rome’s Arts;— To speak her mistress will: Fight if it please her; bid the world keep still! See that her vassals nowhere suffer wrong; —Make Pride her Right; be Valiant, and be Strong!” Death, and her brother, Sleep, rule side by side Realms that shadowy boundaries divide, Yet none can cross but through gates twain; and these Are in the charge of Death, who keeps the keys. Now and again a Spirit will repair For love or hate back to the upper air, To commune with Spirit, so far as whole Can become two parts, Soul be just a Soul. Of dull, dun horn the gate such use; hard by Gleams the other, perfect of ivory. Thence from the Under-world Imps float above Freaks that in spite or idlesse they have wove, To raid and wilder slumber, let it close Men’s eyes, and cheat their senses of repose. Anchises, for whom Space and Time were nought, Had through the gate of horn Æneas sought By night on the Etruscan sea; he now With last words, and many a longing vow Of love, confessed his child was due to part— Though truer no Son, kinder no Sire’s heart— By the ivory door; the horn gate stood Fast locked and sealed against all flesh and blood. Though soul there—a thistle-down Man, wind-tost With life; a night-mare; less real than a ghost!

Thou camest in the Darkness, and the Darkness Light became— Not a word was ever spoken, and yet I heard Thy name, I care not whither I must go; to worship at what shrine; I know but that Thy servant I; that Thou art Master mine. No Priest I need to lead me; for when Thou goest before, How can I aught but follow, to love Thee, and to adore! Who can ever fail to find Thee, or miss of Thy abode? For where Thou art is Holiness,—and Holiness is God!

Sleep, and his Sister, Death; Twins ever with Us; and theirs the keys Of Past and Present, the Above, and the Beneath; And, as Brother and Sister please, Forth flutter Falsehood. Truth, Changed, according as they pass the Gate Of Horn or of Ivory into Joy or Ruth, Even dreamed kindness into Hate!

Ah! We at the behest, Poor human mortals! of numberless shadowy hosts Weaving Men’s dooms to amuse the tedium of Rest! And nought abides but Ghosts!

As a queenly daffodil in the springtide of its bloom, Falls, whelmed beneath the plough-share, and wondering at its doom; Or as a scarlet poppy, laying weary neck on earth, Yields its breath to the full shower it welcomed at its birth; So, all too fair to die, star of a life, Euryalus Left for Nisus nought but despair, with dire revenge; and thus Sank Pallas, young and brave;—as, under a girl’s heedless feet, Drop violets, soft and shy, or hyacinths, faint and sweet, Appealing from Fate to Heav’n, with all of their grace and sheen, Telling—the more that life has fled—of what its charms have been; Or as Babe on its Mother’s breast, who cannot, will not, think Rosy lips half open are cold, and presses them to drink.

There is spirit immortal that mounts up on high, Yet reaches longing hands back to hopes left to die; There are things that are tears; there are tears that are things; There are tears that are water, and tears that are wings!