V
If since eve drew in, I say,
I have sat and brought
(So to speak) my thought
To bear on the woman away,
Till I felt my hair turn grey –
VI
Till I seemed to have and hold,
In the vacancy
’Twixt the wall and me,
From the hair-plait’s chestnut gold
[30] To the foot in its muslin fold –
VII
Have and hold, then and there,
Her, from head to foot,
Breathing and mute,
Passive and yet aware,
In the grasp of my steady stare –
VIII
Hold and have, there and then,
All her body and soul
That completes my whole,
All that women add to men,
[40] In the clutch of my steady ken –
IX
Having and holding, till
I imprint her fast
On the void at last
As the sun does whom he will
By the calotypist’s skill –
X
Then, – if my heart’s strength serve,
And through all and each
Of the veils I reach
To her soul and never swerve,
[50] Knitting an iron nerve –
XI
Command her soul to advance
And inform the shape
Which has made escape
And before my countenance
Answers me glance for glance –
XII
I, still with a gesture fit
Of my hands that best
Do my soul’s behest,
Pointing the power from it,
[60] While myself do steadfast sit –
XIII
Steadfast and still the same
On my object bent,
While the hands give vent
To my ardour and my aim
And break into very flame –
XIV
Then I reach, I must believe,
Not her soul in vain,
For to me again
It reaches, and past retrieve
[70] Is wound in the toils I weave;
XV
And must follow as I require,
As befits a thrall,
Bringing flesh and all,
Essence and earth-attire,
To the source of the tractile fire:
XVI
Till the house called hers, not mine,
With a growing weight
Seems to suffocate
If she break not its leaden line
[80] And escape from its close confine.
XVII
Out of doors into the night!
On to the maze
Of the wild wood-ways,
Not turning to left nor right
From the pathway, blind with sight –
XVIII
Making through rain and wind
O’er the broken shrubs,
’Twixt the stems and stubs,
With a still, composed, strong mind,
[90] Nor a care for the world behind –
XIX
Swifter and still more swift,
As the crowding peace
Doth to joy increase
In the wide blind eyes uplift
Through the darkness and the drift!
XX
While I – to the shape, I too
Feel my soul dilate
Nor a whit abate,
And relax not a gesture due,
[100] As I see my belief come true.
XXI
For, there! have I drawn or no
Life to that lip?
Do my fingers dip
In a flame which again they throw
On the cheek that breaks a-glow?
XXII
Ha! was the hair so first?
What, unfilleted,
Made alive, and spread
Through the void with a rich outburst,
[110] Chestnut gold-interspersed?
XXIII
Like the doors of a casket-shrine,
See, on either side,
Her two arms divide
Till the heart betwixt makes sign,
Take me, for I am thine!
XXIV
‘Now – now’ – the door is heard!
Hark, the stairs! and near –
Nearer – and here –
‘Now!’ and at call the third
[120] She enters without a word.
XXV
On doth she march and on
To the fancied shape;
It is, past escape,
Herself, now: the dream is done
And the shadow and she are one.
XXVI
First I will pray. Do Thou
That ownest the soul,
Yet wilt grant control
To another, nor disallow
[130] For a time, restrain me now!
XXVII
I admonish me while I may,
Not to squander guilt,
Since require Thou wilt
At my hand its price one day!
What the price is, who can say?
A Serenade at the Villa
I
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.
II
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
[10] You heard music; that was I.
III
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning! – where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.
IV
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing’s best was done,
[20] To my lute I left the rest.
V
So wore night; the East was grey,
White the broad-faced hemlock-flowers:
There would be another day;
Ere its first of heavy hours
Found me, I had passed away.
IV
What became of all the hopes,
Words and song and lute as well?
Say, this struck you – ‘When life gropes
Feebly for the path where fell
[30] Light last on the evening slopes,
VII
‘One friend in that path shall be,
To secure my step from wrong;
One to count night day for me,
Patient through the watches long,
Serving most with none to see.’
VIII
Never say – as something bodes –
‘So, the worst has yet a worse!
When life halts ’neath double loads,
Better the taskmaster’s curse
[40] Than such music on the roads!
IX
‘When no moon succeeds the sun,
Nor can pierce the midnight’s tent
Any star, the smallest one,
While some drops, where lightning rent,
Show the final storm begun –
X
‘When the fire-fly bides its spot,
When the garden-voices fail
In the darkness thick and hot, –
Shall another voice avail,
[50] That shape be where these are not?
XI
‘Has some plague a longer lease,
Proffering its help uncouth?
Can’t one even die in peace?
As one shuts one’s eyes on youth,
Is that face the last one sees?’
XII
Oh how dark your villa was,
Windows fast and obdurate!
How the garden grudged me grass
Where I stood – the iron gate
[60] Ground its teeth to let me pass!
‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’
(See Edgar’s song in Lear)
I
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
II
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
[10] And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,
III
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.
IV
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
[20] What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring, –
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
V
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (‘since all is o’er,’ he saith,
[30] ‘And the blow fallen no grieving can amend’;)
VI
While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.
VII
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among ‘The Band’ – to wit,
[40] The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed
Their steps – that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now – should I be fit?
VIII
So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
IX
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
[50] Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.
I might go on; naught else remained to do.
X
So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers – as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
[60] You’d think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.
XI
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. ‘See
Or shut your eyes,’ said Nature peevishly,
‘It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
’Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place,
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.’
XII
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
[70] In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk
All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.
XIII
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!
XIV
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
[80] With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
XV
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
[90] One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
XVI
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!
Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.
XVII
Giles then, the soul of honour – there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
[100] Good – but the scene shifts – faugh! what hangman-hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
XVIII
Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
XIX
[110] A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend’s glowing hoof – to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
XX
So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
[120] Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
XXI
Which, while I forded, – good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
– It may have been a water-rat I
speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.
XXII
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the stragglers, what war did they wage,
[130] Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage –
XXIII
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
XXIV
And more than that – a furlong on – why, there!
[140] What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel – that harrow fit to reel
Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
XXV
Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
[150] Changes and off he goes!) within a rood –
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.
XXVI
Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
XXVII
And just as far as ever from the end!
Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
[160] A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap – perchance the guide I sought.
XXVIII
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
’Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains – with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me, – solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.
XXIX
Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
[170] Of mischief happened to me, God knows when –
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts – you’re inside the den!
XXX
Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,