Poems of Pilgrimage

GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN (March, 1887)

O EPIC-FAMED, god-haunted Central Sea, Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee When from Torino’s track I saw thy face first flash on me.

And multimarbled Genova the Proud, Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed, I first beheld thee clad—not as the Beauty but the Dowd.

Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit On housebacks pink, green, ochreous—where a slit Shoreward ’twixt row and row revealed the classic blue through it.

And thereacross waved fishwives’ high-hung smocks, Chrome kerchiefs, scarlet hose, darned underfrocks; Since when too oft my dreams of thee, O Queen, that frippery mocks:

Whereat I grieve, Superba! . . . Afterhours Within Palazzo Doria’s orange bowers Went far to mend these marrings of thy soul-subliming powers.

But, Queen, such squalid undress none should see, Those dream-endangering eyewounds no more be Where lovers first behold thy form in pilgrimage to thee.

SHELLEY’S SKYLARK (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March, 1887)

SOMEWHERE afield here something lies In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust That moved a poet to prophecies— A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, And made immortal through times to be;— Though it only lived like another bird, And knew not its immortality.

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell— A little ball of feather and bone; And how it perished, when piped farewell, And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view, Maybe it throbs in a myrtle’s green, Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find That tiny pinch of priceless dust, And bring a casket silver-lined, And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein, And consecrate it to endless time; For it inspired a bard to win Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE (April, 1887)

I TRACED the Circus whose gray stones incline Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin, Till came a child who showed an ancient coin That bore the image of a Constantine.

She lightly passed; nor did she once opine How, better than all books, she had raised for me In swift perspective Europe’s history Through the vast years of Cæsar’s sceptred line.

For in my distant plot of English loam ’Twas but to delve, and straightway there to find Coins of like impress. As with one half blind Whom common simples cure, her act flashed home In that mute moment to my opened mind The power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.

ROME: ON THE PALATINE (April, 1887)

WE walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile, And passed to Livia’s rich red mural show, Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico, We gained Caligula’s dissolving pile.

And each ranked ruin tended to beguile The outer sense, and shape itself as though It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.

When lo, swift hands, on strings nigh over-head, Began to melodize a waltz by Strauss: It stirred me as I stood, in Cæsar’s house, Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led,

And blended pulsing life with lives long done, Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.

ROME BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER (April, 1887)

THESE numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.

And cracking frieze and rotten metope Express, as though they were an open tome Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; “Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!”

And yet within these ruins’ very shade The singing workmen shape and set and join Their frail new mansion’s stuccoed cove and quoin With no apparent sense that years abrade, Though each rent wall their feeble works invade Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.

ROME THE VATICAN—SALA DELLE MUSE (1887)

I SAT in the Muses’ Hall at the mid of the day, And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away, And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun, Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.

She was nor this nor that of those beings divine, But each and the whole—an essence of all the Nine; With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place, A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.

“Regarded so long, we render thee sad?” said she. “Not you,” sighed I, “but my own inconstancy! I worship each and each; in the morning one, And then, alas! another at sink of sun.

“To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?” —“Be not perturbed,” said she. “Though apart in fame, As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.

—“But my loves go further—to Story, and Dance, and Hymn, The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim— Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!” —“Nay, wight, thou sway’st not. These are but phases of one;

“And that one is I; and I am projected from thee, One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be— Extern to thee nothing. Grieve not, nor thyself becall, Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!”

ROME AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS (1887)

WHO, then, was Cestius, And what is he to me?— Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word Of anything he did; For me he is a man who died and was interred To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest Not with its first design, Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe, Slew, breathed out threatening; I know not. This I know: in death all silently He does a kindlier thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet With marble finger high To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street, Those matchless singers lie . . .

—Say, then, he lived and died That stones which bear his name Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide; It is an ample fame.

LAUSANNE IN GIBBON’S OLD GARDEN: 11–12 P.M. June 27, 1897

(The 110th anniversary of the completion of the “Decline and Fall” at the same hour and place)

A SPIRIT seems to pass, Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal: He contemplates a volume stout and tall, And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.

Anon the book is closed, With “It is finished!” And at the alley’s end He turns, and soon on me his glances bend; And, as from earth, comes speech—small, muted, yet composed.

“How fares the Truth now?—Ill? —Do pens but slily further her advance? May one not speed her but in phrase askance? Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?

“Still rule those minds on earth At whom sage Milton’s wormwood words were hurled: ‘Truth like a bastard comes into the world Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth’?”

ZERMATT TO THE MATTERHORN (June-July, 1897)

THIRTY-TWO years since, up against the sun, Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight, Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height, And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

They were the first by whom the deed was done, And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight To that day’s tragic feat of manly might, As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.

Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon Thou watch’dst each night the planets lift and lower; Thou gleam’dst to Joshua’s pausing sun and moon, And brav’dst the tokening sky when Cæsar’s power Approached its bloody end: yea, saw’st that Noon When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

THE BRIDGE OF LODI {290} (Spring, 1887)

I

WHEN of tender mind and body I was moved by minstrelsy, And that strain “The Bridge of Lodi” Brought a strange delight to me.

II

In the battle-breathing jingle Of its forward-footing tune I could see the armies mingle, And the columns cleft and hewn

III

On that far-famed spot by Lodi Where Napoleon clove his way To his fame, when like a god he Bent the nations to his sway.

IV

Hence the tune came capering to me While I traced the Rhone and Po; Nor could Milan’s Marvel woo me From the spot englamoured so.

V

And to-day, sunlit and smiling, Here I stand upon the scene, With its saffron walls, dun tiling, And its meads of maiden green,

VI

Even as when the trackway thundered With the charge of grenadiers, And the blood of forty hundred Splashed its parapets and piers . . .

VII

Any ancient crone I’d toady Like a lass in young-eyed prime, Could she tell some tale of Lodi At that moving mighty time.

VIII

So, I ask the wives of Lodi For traditions of that day; But alas! not anybody Seems to know of such a fray.

IX

And they heed but transitory Marketings in cheese and meat, Till I judge that Lodi’s story Is extinct in Lodi’s street.

X

Yet while here and there they thrid them In their zest to sell and buy, Let me sit me down amid them And behold those thousands die . . .

XI

—Not a creature cares in Lodi How Napoleon swept each arch, Or where up and downward trod he, Or for his memorial March!

XII

So that wherefore should I be here, Watching Adda lip the lea, When the whole romance to see here Is the dream I bring with me?

XIII

And why sing “The Bridge of Lodi” As I sit thereon and swing, When none shows by smile or nod he Guesses why or what I sing? . . .

XIV

Since all Lodi, low and head ones, Seem to pass that story by, It may be the Lodi-bred ones Rate it truly, and not I.

XV

Once engrossing Bridge of Lodi, Is thy claim to glory gone? Must I pipe a palinody, Or be silent thereupon?

XVI

And if here, from strand to steeple, Be no stone to fame the fight, Must I say the Lodi people Are but viewing crime aright?

XVII

Nay; I’ll sing “The Bridge of Lodi”— That long-loved, romantic thing, Though none show by smile or nod he Guesses why and what I sing!