There I heard them in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony,
Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses.
'Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets!
Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee,
Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet!
Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated,
Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable,
Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises,
Thine the North and thine the South and thine the battle-thunder of God.'
So they chanted: how shall Britain light upon auguries happier?
So they chanted in the darkness, and there cometh a victory now.
"Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!
Me the wife of rich Prasutagus, me the lover of liberty,
Me they seized and me they tortured, me they lash'd and humiliated,
Me the sport of ribald Veterans, mine of ruffian violators!
See they sit, they hide their faces, miserable in ignominy!
Wherefore in me burns an anger, not by blood to be satiated.
Lo the palaces and the temple, lo the colony Camulodúne!
There they ruled, and thence they wasted all the flourishing territory,
Thither at their will they haled the yellow-ringleted Britoness-
Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable.
Shout Icenian, Catieuchlanian, shout Coritanian, Trinobant,
Till the victim hear within and yearn to hurry precipitously
Like the leaf in a roaring whirlwind, like the smoke in a hurricane whirl'd.
Lo the colony, there they rioted in the city of Cúnobeline?
There they drank in cups of emerald, there at tables of ebony lay,
Rolling on their purple couches in their tender effeminacy.
There they dwelt and there they rioted; there-there-they dwell no more.
Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary,
Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable,
Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness,
Lash the maiden into swooning, me they lash'd and humiliated,
Chop the breasts from off the mother, dash the brains of the little one out,
Up my Britons, on my chariot, on my chargers, trample them under us."
So the Queen Boadicéa, standing loftily charioted,
Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like,
Yelled and shrieked between her daughters in her fierce volubility,
Till her people all around the royal chariot agitated,
Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous lineaments,
Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January,
Roar'd as when the rolling breakers boom and blanch on the precipices,
Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promontory.
So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries
Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous hand,
Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice,
Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously,
Then her puises at the clamoring of her enemy fainted away.
Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny buds.
Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies.
Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary.
Fell the colony, city and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulodúne.
CMIGHTY-MOUTH'n inventor of harmonies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages,
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset-
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches
Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.
O You chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome.
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty metre.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather-
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment-
As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.
SPECIMEN OF A TRANSLATION OF
THE ILIAD IN BLANK VERSE.
So Hector said, and sea-like roar'd his host;
Then loosed their sweating horses from the yoke
And each beside his chariot bound his own;
And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep
In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine
And bread from out the houses brought, and heap'd
Their firewood, and the winds from off the plain
Roll'd the rich vapor far into the heaven.
And these all night upon the "bridge of war
Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed:
As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And champing golden grain, the horses stood
Hard by their chariots, waiting for the dawn.*
Iliad, viii. 542-561.
And eating hoary grain and pulse, the steeds Stood by their cars, waiting the throned morn.
DOSN'T thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters away?
Proputty, proputty, proputty-that 's what I 'ears 'em saäy.
Proputty, proputty, proputty-Sam, thou 's an ass for thy paains.
Theer 's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braains.
Woä - theer 's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam: yon 's parson's 'ouse —
Dosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eäther a man or a mouse?
Time to think on it then; for thou 'll be twenty to weeäk.*
Proputty, proputty-woä then woa-let ma 'ear mysén speak.
Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as bean a-talkin' o' thee;
Thou 's been talkin' to muther, an' she beän a tellin' it me.
Thou 'll not marry for munny - thou 's sweet upo' parson's lass—
Noa-thou 'll marry for luvv-an' we boäth on us thinks tha an ass.
Seeä'd her todaäy go by-Saäint's-daäy — thay was ringing the bells.
She's a beauty thou thinks-an' soä is scoors o' gells,
Them as 'as munny an' all-wot 's a beauty?-the flower as blaws.
But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws.
Ay, an' thy muther says thou wants to marry the lass,
Cooms of a gentleman burn: an' we boäth on us thinks tha an ass.
Woa then, proputty, wiltha?-an ass as near as mays nowt-*
Woä then, wiltha? dangtha!-the bees is as fell as owt.t
The King was shaken with holy fear;
"The Gods," he said, "would have chosen well; Yet both are near, and both are dear,
And which the dearest I cannot tell!"
But the Priest was happy,
His victim won:
"We have his dearest,
His only son!"
The rites prepared, the victim bared,
The knife uprising toward the blow,
To the altar-stone she sprang alone,
"Me, not my darling, no!"
He caught her away with a sudden cry;
Suddenly from him brake his wife,
And shrieking "I am his dearest, I-
I am his dearest!" rush'd on the knife.
And the Priest was happy,
"O, Father Odin,
We give you a life.
Which was his nearest ?
Who was his dearest?
The Gods have answer'd;
We give them the wife !"
Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with
Spirit can meet-
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands
and feet.
God is law, say the wise, O Soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.
Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;
And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this Vision-were it not He?
FLOWER in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies; -
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
GLORY of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea
Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong
Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.
LUCILIA, wedded to Lucretius, found
Her master cold; for when the morning flusn
Of passion and the first embrace had died
Between them, tho' he loved her none the less,
Yet often when the woman heard his foot
Return from pacings in the field, and ran
To greet him with a kiss, the master took
The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue Small notice, or austerely, for his mind
be dust,
Half buried in some weightier argument,
Would she have heart to endure for the life of the Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just,
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky:
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.
THE HIGHER PANTHEISM.
THE sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?
Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live
Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and
limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from
Him?
And long roll of the Hexameter-he past
To turn and ponder those three hundred scrolls
Left by the Teacher whom he held divine.
She brook'd it not; but wrathful, petulant,
Dreaming some rival, sought and found a witch
Who brew'd the philter which had power, they said,
To lead an errant passion home again.
And this, at times, she mingled with his drink,
And this destroy'd him; for the wicked broth
Confused the chemic labor of the blood,
And tickling the brute brain within the man's,
Made havoc among those tender cells, and check'd
His power to shape: he loath'd himself; and once
After a tempest woke upon a morn
That mock'd him with returning calm, and cried.'
"Storm in the night! for thrice I heard the rain
Rushing: and once the flash of a thunderbolt —
Methought I never saw so fierce a fork-
Struck out the streaming mountain-side, and show'd
A riotous confluence of watercourses
Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it,
Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry.
"Storm, and what dreams, ye holy Gods, what
dreams!
Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason For thrice I waken'd after dreams. Perchance why;
We do but recollect the dreams that come For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel Just ere the waking: terrible! for it seem'd "I am I!"
Glory about thee, without thee: and thou fulfillest thy doom,
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and gloom.
A void was made in Nature; all her bonds
Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom-streams
And torrents of her myriad universe,
Ruining along the illimitable inane,
Fly on to clash together again, and make
Another and another frame of things
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