Where I made One-turn down an empty
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH (1819-1861)
IN A LECTURE-ROOM
Away, haunt thou not me,
Thou vain Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head,
And leave the spirit dead.
Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
Fed by the skyey shower,
While from the secret treasure-depths below,
And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,
Wisdom at once, and Power,
Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,
And the strong current flowing,
When the fresh breeze is blowing,
Right onward to the Eternal Shore?
Yon rising Moon that looks for us againHow oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter rising look for us
To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
Through this same Garden-and for one in Through winds and tides one compass guides
And when like her, oh Sákí, you shall pass Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass, And in your joyous errand reach the spot
To that, and your own selves, be true.
But O blithe breeze! and O great seas,
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last.
One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where 'er they fare,-
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas!
At last, at last, unite them there!
SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT
AVAILETH
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.†
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright.
ITE DOMUM SATURE, VENIT
HESPERUS‡
Or may it be that I shall find my mate,
And he returning see himself too late?
For work we must, and what we see, we see,
16 And God he knows, and what must be, must be,
When sweethearts wander far away from me. 40
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La
Palie1),
The rainy clouds are filing fast below,
And wet will be the path, and wet shall we.
The sky behind is brightening up anew
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La
Palie),
The rain is ending, and our journey too:
Heigho! aha! for here at home are we:-
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie.
Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone,
Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on?
My sweetheart wanders far away from me,
In foreign land or on a foreign sea,
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky
Whate'er you dream, with doubt possessed,
Keep, keep it snug within your breast,
And lay you down and take your rest;
Forget in sleep the doubt and pain,
And when you wake, to work again.
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La The wind it blows, the vessel goes,
And through the vale the rains go sweeping by;
Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be?
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
"The Pale One"-a name of obvious significance,
like "Blanche" or "Brindle."
4 "Perhaps Clough's greatest title to poetic fame
Is this exquisite and exquisitely expressed
image of the rising tide." George Saintsbury.
1 "66 home, now that you have fed, evening
Virgil, Eclog. x. 77.
Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
* This poem is based on a legend which is found in the literature of various nations. Eng. Lit., p. 311.
Round the world for ever and aye? When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday?
Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away? Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea, And the youngest sate on her knee.
She combed its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of a far-off bell. She sighed, she looked up through the clear
To the little gray church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold blowing
We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were sealed to the holy book!
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!
Down, down, down!
Down to the depths of the sea!
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its The kings of the sea."
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
Who prop, thou ask 'st, in these bad days, my mind?
He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,
She steals to the window, and looks at the And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh;
Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
100 Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son Cleared Rome of what most shamed him. But
For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden
And the gleam of her golden hair.
Come away, away children; Come children, come down! The hoarse wind blows coldly; Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.
110 Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask-Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-
But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starred with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanched sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hillside-
And then come back down.
Didst tread on earth unguessed at.-Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow. * This sonnet gives expression to Arnold's steady reliance, for mental and moral support, upon the great poets and philosophers-his constant recourse to "the best that is known and thought in the world." The three "props" mentioned here are Homer, the blind bard whom the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor claimed as her son; Epictetus, the lame philosopher who had been a slave, and who, when Domitian banished the philosophers from Rome, went to Nicopolis in Greece and taught his Stoic principles to Arrian; and Sophocles, the Athenian dramatist, author of Edipus at Colonus and other tragedies. nold explains the third line by pointing out that the name Europe means "the wide prospect," and Asia probably means "marshy." The twelfth line has passed into familiar quotation.
AUSTERITY OF POETRY
That son of Italy who tried to blow,1
Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song,
In his light youth amid a festal throng
Sat with his bride to see a public show.
Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow
Youth like a star; and what to youth belong-
Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong.
A prop gave way! crash fell a platform! lo,
'Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she
lay!
Shuddering, they drew her garments off-and
A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin. Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young,
Radiant, adorned outside; a hidden ground Of thought and of austerity within.
MEMORIAL VERSES
APRIL, 1850
Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb—
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
When Goethe's death was told, we said:
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
He looked on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life-
He said: The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
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And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.
And Wordsworth!-Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us-and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen-on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth,
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hil's were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly-
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha,1 with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
1 The stream which flows past the churchyard of Grasmere where Wordsworth is buried.
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