AVE!
AN
ODE FOR THE CENTENARY OF SHELLEY'S BIRTH
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I
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O TRANQUIL
meadows, grassy Tantramar,
Wide marshes ever washed
in clearest air,
Whether beneath the sole and spectral star
The dear severity of dawn
you wear,
Or whether in the joy of ample day |
5 |
And
speechless ecstasy of growing June
You lie and dream the long blue hours away
Till
nightfall comes too soon,
Or whether, naked to the unstarred night,
You strike with wondering awe my inward sight,— |
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II
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You
know how I have loved you, how my dreams
Go forth to you with longing,
through the years
That turn not back like your returning streams
And fain would mist the
memory with tears,
Though the inexorable years deny |
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My
feet the fellowship of your deep grass,
O'er which, as o'er another, tenderer sky,
Cloud
phantoms drift and pass,—
You know my confident love, since first, a child,
Amid your wastes of green I wandered wild. |
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III
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Inconstant,
eager, curious, I roamed;
And ever your long reaches
lured me on;
And ever o'er my feet your grasses foamed,
And in my eyes your far
horizons shone.
But sometimes would you (as a stillness fell |
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And
on my pulse you laid a soothing palm),
Instruct my ears in your most secret spell;
And
sometimes in the calm
Initiate my young and wondering eyes
Until my spirit grew more still and wise. |
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IV
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Purged
with high thoughts and infinite desire
I entered fearless the most
holy place,
Received between my lips the secret fire,
The breath of inspiration
on my face.
But not for long these rare illumined hours, |
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The
deep surprise and rapture not for long.
Again I saw the common, kindly flowers,
Again
I heard the song
Of the glad bobolink, whose lyric throat
Pealed like a tangle of small bells afloat. |
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V
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The
pounce of mottled marsh-hawk on his prey;
The flicker of sand-pipers
in from sea
In gusty flocks that puffed and fled; the play
Of field-mice in the vetches;—these
to me
Were memorable events. But most availed |
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Your
strange unquiet waters to engage
My kindred heart's companionship; nor failed
To
grant this heritage,—
That in my veins for ever must abide
The urge and fluctuation of the tide. |
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VI
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The
mystic river whence you take your name,
River of hubbub, raucous
Tantramar,
Untamable and changeable as flame,
It called me and compelled
me from afar,
Shaping my soul with its impetuous stress. |
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When
in its gaping channel deep withdrawn
Its waves ran crying of the wilderness
And
winds and stars and dawn,
How I companioned them in speed sublime,
Led out a vagrant on the hills of Time! |
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VII
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And
when the orange flood came roaring in
From Fundy's tumbling troughs
and tide-worn caves,
While red Minudie's flats were drowned with din
And rough Chignecto's front
oppugned the waves,
How blithely with the refluent foam I raced |
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Inland
along the radiant chasm, exploring
The green solemnity with boisterous haste;
My
pulse of joy outpouring
To visit all the creeks that twist and shine
From Beauséjour to utmost Tormentine. |
70 |
VIII
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And
after, when the tide was full, and stilled
A little while the seething
and the hiss,
And every tributary channel filled
To the brim with rosy streams
that swelled to kiss
The grass-roots all a-wash and goose-tongue wild |
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And
salt-sap rosemary,—then how well content
I was to rest me like a breathless child
With
play-time rapture spent,—
To lapse and loiter till the change should come
And the great floods turn seaward, roaring home. |
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IV
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And
now, O tranquil marshes, in your vast
Serenity of vision and of
dream,
Wherethrough by every intricate vein have passed
With joy impetuous and pain
supreme
The sharp fierce tides that chafe the shores of
earth |
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In
endless and controlless ebb and flow,
Strangely akin you seem to him whose birth
One
hundred years ago
With fiery succour to the ranks of song
Defied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong. |
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X
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Like
yours, O marshes, his compassionate breast,
Wherein abode all dreams
of love and peace,
Was tortured with perpetual unrest.
Now loud with flood, now
languid with release,
Now poignant with the lonely ebb, the strife |
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Of
tides from the salt sea of human pain
That hiss along the perilous coasts of life
Beat
in his eager brain;
But all about the tumult of his heart
Stretched the great calm of his celestial art. |
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XI
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Therefore
with no far flight, from Tantramar
And my still world of ecstasy,
to thee,
Shelley, to thee I turn, the avatar
Of Song, Love, Dream, Desire
and Liberty;
To thee I turn with reverent hands of prayer |
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And
lips that fain would ease my heart of praise,
Whom chief of all whose brows prophetic wear
The
pure and sacred bays
I worship, and have worshipped since the hour
When first I felt thy bright and chainless power. |
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XII
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About
thy sheltered cradle, in the green
Untroubled groves of Sussex,
brooded forms
That to the mother's eye remained unseen,—
Terrors and ardours, passionate
hopes, and storms
Of fierce retributive fury, such as jarred |
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Ancient
and sceptred creeds, and cast down kings.
And oft the holy cause of Freedom marred
With
lust of meaner things,
With guiltless blood, and many a frenzied crime
Dared in the face of unforgetful Time. |
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XIII
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The
star that burns on revolution smote
Wild heats and change on
thine ascendant sphere,
Whose influence thereafter seemed to float
Through many a strange eclipse
of wrath and fear,
Dimming awhile the radiance of thy love. |
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But
still supreme in thy nativity,
All dark, invidious aspects far above,
Beamed
one clear orb for thee,—
The star whose ministrations just and strong
Controlled the tireless flight of Dante's song. |
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XIV
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With
how august contrition, and what tears
Of penitential unavailing
shame,
Thy venerable foster-mother hears
The songs of song impeach
her ancient name,
Because in one rash hour of anger blind |
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She
thrust thee forth in exile, and thy feet
Too soon to earth's wild outer ways consigned,—
Far
from her well-loved seat,
Far from her studious halls and storied towers
And weedy Isis winding through his flowers. |
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XV
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And
thou, thenceforth the breathless child of change,
Thine own Alastor, on an
endless quest
Of unimagined loveliness, didst range,
Urged ever by the soul's
divine unrest.
Of that high quest and that unrest divine |
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Thy
first immortal music thou didst make,
Inwrought with fairy Alp, and Reuss, and Rhine,
And
phantom seas that break
In soundless foam along the shores of Time,
Prisoned in thine imperishable rhyme. |
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XVI
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Thyself
the lark melodious in mid-heaven;
Thyself the Protean shape
of chainless cloud,
Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven
Through deeps of quivering
light, and darkness loud
With tempest, yet beneficent as prayer; |
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Thyself
the wild west wind, relentless strewing
The withered leaves of custom on the air,
And
through the wreck pursuing
O'er lovelier Arnos, more imperial Romes,
Thy radiant visions to their viewless homes. |
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XVII
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And
when thy mightiest creation thou
Wert fain to body forth,—the
dauntless form,
The all-enduring, all-forgiving brow
Of the great Titan, flinchless
in the storm
Of pangs unspeakable and nameless hates, |
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Yet
rent by all the wrongs and woes of men,
And triumphing in his pain, that so their fates
Might
be assuaged,—oh then
Out of that vast compassionate heart of thine
Thou wert constrained to shape the dream benign. |
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XVIII
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—O
Baths of Caracalla, arches clad
In such transcendent rhapsodies
of green
That one might guess the sprites of spring were
glad
For your majestic ruin,
yours the scene,
The illuminating air of sense and thought; |
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And
yours the enchanted light, O skies of Rome,
Where the giant vision into form was wrought;
Beneath
your blazing dome
The intensest song our language ever knew
Beat up exhaustless to the blinding blue!— |
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XIX
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The
domes of Pisa and her towers superb,
The myrtles and the ilexes
that sigh
O'er San Giuliano, where no jars disturb
The lonely aziola's evening
cry,
The Serchio's sun-kissed waters,—these conspired |
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With
Plato's theme occult, with Dante's calm
Rapture of mystic love, and so inspired
Thy
soul's espousal psalm,
A strain of such elect and pure intent
It breathes of a diviner element. |
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XX
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Thou
on whose lips the word of Love became
A rapt evangel to assuage
all wrong,
Not Love alone, but the austerer name
Of Death engaged the splendours
of thy song.
The luminous grief, the spacious consolation |
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Of
thy supreme lament, that mourned for him
Too early haled to that still habitation
Beneath
the grass-roots dim,—
Where his faint limbs and pain-o'erwearied heart
Of all earth's loveliness became a part, |
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XXI
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But
where, thou sayest, himself would not abide,—
Thy solemn incommunicable
joy
Announcing Adonais has not died,
Attesting death to free
but not destroy,
All this was as thy swan-song mystical. |
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Even
while the note serene was on thy tongue
Thin grew the veil of the Invisible,
The
white sword nearer swung,—
And in the sudden wisdom of thy rest
Thou knewest all thou hadst but dimly guessed. |
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XXII
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—Lament,
Lerici, mourn for the world's loss!
Mourn that pure light of
song extinct at noon!
Ye waves of Spezzia that shine and toss
Repent that sacred flame
you quenched too soon!
Mourn, Mediterranean waters, mourn |
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In
affluent purple down your golden shore!
Such strains as his, whose voice you stilled in
scorn,
Our
ears may greet no more,
Unless at last to that far sphere we climb
Where he completes the wonder of his rhyme! |
220 |
XXIII
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How
like a cloud she fled, thy fateful bark,
From eyes that watched to
hearts that waited, till
Up from the ocean roared the tempest dark—
And the wild heart love
waited for was still!
Hither and thither in the slow, soft tide, |
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Rolled
seaward, shoreward, sands and wandering shells
And shifting weeds thy fellows, thou didst hide
Remote
from all farewells,
Nor felt the sun, nor heard the fleeting rain,
Nor heeded Casa Magni's quenchless pain. |
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XXIV
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Thou
heedest not? Nay, for it was not thou,
That blind, mute clay relinquished
by the waves
Reluctantly at last, and slumbering now
In one of kind earth's most
compassionate graves!
Not thou, not thou,—for thou wert in the light |
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Of
the Unspeakable, where time is not.
Thou sawest those tears; but in thy perfect sight
And
thy eternal thought
Were they not even now all wiped away
In the reunion of the infinite day! |
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XXV
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There
face to face thou sawest the living God
And worshipedst, beholding
Him the same
Adored on earth as Love, the same whose rod
Thou hadst endured as Life,
whose secret name
Thou now didst learn, the healing name of Death. |
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In
that unroutable profound of peace,
Beyond experience of pulse and breath,
Beyond
the last release
Of longing, rose to greet thee all the lords
Of Thought, with consummation in their words. |
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XXVI
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He of
the seven cities claimed, whose eyes,
Though blind, saw gods and
heroes, and the fall
Of Ilium, and many alien skies,
And Circe's Isle; and he
whom mortals call
The Thunderous, who sang the Titan bound |
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As
thou the Titan victor; the benign
Spirit of Plato; Job; and Judah's crowned
Singer
and seer divine;
Omar; the Tuscan; Milton vast and strong;
And Shakspeare, captain of the host of Song. |
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XXVII
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Back
from the underworld of whelming change
To the wide-glittering beach
thy body came;
And thou didst contemplate with wonder strange
And curious regard thy kindred
flame,
Fed sweet with frankincense and wine and salt, |
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With
fierce purgation search thee, soon resolving
Thee to the elements of the airy vault
And
the far spheres revolving,
The common waters, the familiar woods,
And the great hills' inviolate solitudes. |
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XXVIII
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Thy
close companions there officiated
With solemn mourning and
with mindful tears;—
The pained, imperious wanderer unmated
Who voiced the wrath of
those rebellious years;
Trelawney, lion limbed and high of heart; |
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And
he, that gentlest sage and friend most true,
Whom Adonais loved. With these bore part
One
grieving ghost, that flew
Hither and thither through the smoke unstirred
In wailing semblance of a wild white bird. |
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XXIX
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O heart
of fire, that fire might not consume,
For ever glad the world
because of thee;
Because of thee for ever eyes illume
A more enchanted earth,
a lovelier sea!
O poignant voice of the desire of life, |
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Piercing
our lethargy, because thy call
Aroused our spirits to a nobler strife
Where
base and sordid fall,
For ever past the conflict and the pain
More clearly beams the goal we shall attain! |
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XXX
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And
now once more, O marshes, back to you
From whatsoever wanderings,
near or far,
To you I turn with joy for ever new,
To you, O sovereign vasts
of Tantramar!
Your tides are at the full. Your wizard flood, |
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With
every tribute stream and brimming creek,
Ponders, possessor of the utmost good,
With
no more left to seek;—
But the hour wanes and passes; and once more
Resounds the ebb with destiny in its roar. |
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XXXI
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So might
some lord of men, whom force and fate
And his great heart's unvanquishable
power
Have thrust with storm to his supreme estate,
Ascend by night his solitary
tower
High o'er the city's lights and cries uplift. |
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Silent
he ponders the scrolled heaven to read
And the keen stars' conflicting message sift,
Till
the slow signs recede,
And ominously scarlet dawns afar
The day he leads his legions forth to war. |
315 |
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