Corfu.

  A Vision

  Two crownèd Kings, and One that stood alone

  With no green weight of laurels round his head,

  But with sad eyes as one uncomforted,

  And wearied with man’s never-ceasing moan

  For sins no bleating victim can atone,

  And sweet long lips with tears and kisses fed.

  Girt was he in a garment black and red,

  And at his feet I marked a broken stone

  Which sent up lilies, dove-like, to his knees.

  Now at their sight, my heart being lit with flame,

  I cried to Beatricé, “Who are these?”

  And she made answer, knowing well each name,

  “Aeschylos first, the second Sophokles,

  And last (wide stream of tears!) Euripides.”

  Impression de Voyage

  The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky

  Burned like a heated opal through the air;

  We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair

  For the blue lands that to the eastward lie.

  From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye

  Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek,

  Ithaca’s cliff, Lycaon’s snowy peak,

  And all the flower-strewn hills of Arcady.

  The flapping of the sail against the mast,

  The ripple of the water on the side,

  The ripple of girls’ laughter at the stern,

  The only sounds:—when ’gan the West to burn,

  And a red sun upon the seas to ride,

  I stood upon the soil of Greece at last!

  Katakolo.

  The Grave of Shelley

  Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed

  Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;

  Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,

  And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.

  And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,

  In the still chamber of yon pyramid

  Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,

  Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

  Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb

  Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,

  But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb

  In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,

  Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom

  Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

  Rome.

  By the Arno

  The oleander on the wall

  Grows crimson in the dawning light,

  Though the grey shadows of the night

  Lie yet on Florence like a pall.

  The dew is bright upon the hill,

  And bright the blossoms overhead,

  But ah! the grasshoppers have fled,

  The little Attic song is still.

  Only the leaves are gently stirred

  By the soft breathing of the gale,

  And in the almond-scented vale

  The lonely nightingale is heard.

  The day will make thee silent soon,

  O nightingale sing on for love!

  While yet upon the shadowy grove

  Splinter the arrows of the moon.

  Before across the silent lawn

  In sea-green vest the morning steals,

  And to love’s frightened eyes reveals

  The long white fingers of the dawn

  Fast climbing up the eastern sky

  To grasp and slay the shuddering night,

  All careless of my heart’s delight,

  Or if the nightingale should die.

  Impressions de Théâtre

  Fabien Dei Franchi

  To My Friend Henry Irving

  The silent room, the heavy creeping shade,

  The dead that travel fast, the opening door,

  The murdered brother rising through the floor,

  The ghost’s white fingers on thy shoulders laid,

  And then the lonely duel in the glade,

  The broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore,

  Thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o’er—

  These things are well enough—but thou wert made

  For more august creation! frenzied Lear

  Should at thy bidding wander on the heath

  With the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo

  For thee should lure his love, and desperate fear

  Pluck Richard’s recreant dagger from its sheath—

  Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare’s lips to blow!

  Phèdre

  To Sarah Bernhardt

  How vain and dull this common world must seem

  To such a One as thou, who should’st have talked

  At Florence with Mirandola, or walked

  Through the cool olives of the Academe:

  Thou should’st have gathered reeds from a green stream

  For Goat-foot Pan’s shrill piping, and have played

  With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade

  Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.

  Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay

  Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again

  Back to this common world so dull and vain,

  For thou wert weary of the sunless day,

  The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,

  The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.

  Written at the Lyceum Theatre

  I

  Portia

  To Ellen Terry

  I marvel not Bassanio was so bold

  To peril all he had upon the lead,

  Or that proud Aragon bent low his head

  Or that Morocco’s fiery heart grew cold:

  For in that gorgeous dress of beaten gold

  Which is more golden than the golden sun

  No woman Veronesé looked upon

  Was half so fair as thou whom I behold.

  Yet fairer when with wisdom as your shield

  The sober-suited lawyer’s gown you donned,

  And would not let the laws of Venice yield

  Antonio’s heart to that accursèd Jew—

  O Portia! take my heart: it is thy due:

  I think I will not quarrel with the Bond.

  II

  Queen Henrietta Maria

  To Ellen Terry

  In the lone tent, waiting for victory,

  She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain,

  Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain:

  The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky,

  War’s ruin, and the wreck of chivalry

  To her proud soul no common fear can bring:

  Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord the King,

  Her soul a-flame with passionate ecstasy.

  O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips! O Face

  Made for the luring and the love of man!

  With thee I do forget the toil and stress,

  The loveless road that knows no resting place,

  Time’s straitened pulse, the soul’s dread weariness,

  My freedom, and my life republican!

  III

  Camma

  To Ellen Terry

  As one who poring on a Grecian urn

  Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made,

  God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid,

  And for their beauty’s sake is loth to turn

  And face the obvious day, must I not yearn

  For many a secret moon of indolent bliss,

  When in midmost shrine of Artemis

  I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?

  And yet—methinks I’d rather see thee play

  That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery

  Made Emperors drunken—come, great Egypt, shake

  Our stage with all thy mimic pageants! Nay,

  I am grown sick of unreal passions, make

  The world thine Actium, me thine Anthony!

  Panthea

  Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,

  From passionate pain to deadlier delight—

  I am too young to live without desire,

  Too young art thou to waste this summer night

  Asking those idle questions which of old

  Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

  For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,

  And wisdom is a childless heritage,

  One pulse of passion—youth’s first fiery glow—

  Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:

  Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,

  Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see!

  Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale,

  Like water bubbling from a silver jar,

  So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,

  That high in heaven she is hung so far

  She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune—

  Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring moon.

  White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,

  The fallen snow of petals where the breeze

  Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam

  Of boyish limbs in water—are not these

  Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?

  Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store.

  For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown

  Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour

  For wasted days of youth to make atone

  By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,

  Hearken they now to either good or ill,

  But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.

  They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,

  Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,

  They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees

  Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,

  Mourning the old glad days before they knew

  What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

  And far beneath the brazen floor they see

  Like swarming flies the crowd of little men,

  The bustle of small lives, then wearily

  Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again

  Kissing each others’ mouths, and mix more deep

  The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep.

  There all day long the golden-vestured sun,

  Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch ablaze,

  And, when the gaudy web of noon is spun

  By its twelve maidens, through the crimson haze

  Fresh from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon,

  And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.

  There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead,

  Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust

  Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede

  Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,

  His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare

  The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

  There in the green heart of some garden close

  Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,

  Her warm soft body like the briar rose

  Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,

  Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis

  Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

  There never does that dreary north-wind blow

  Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,

  Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,

  Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare

  To wake them in the silver-fretted night

  When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

  Alas! they know the far Lethaean spring,

  The violet-hidden waters well they know,

  Where one whose feet with tired wandering

  Are faint and broken may take heart and go,

  And from those dark depths cool and crystalline

  Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

  But we oppress our natures, God or Fate

  Is our enemy, we starve and feed

  On vain repentance—O we are born too late!

  What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed

  Who crowd into one finite pulse of time

  The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

  O we are wearied of this sense of guilt,

  Wearied of pleasure’s paramour despair,

  Wearied of every temple we have built,

  Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer,

  For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high:

  One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die.

  Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole

  Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand,

  No little coin of bronze can bring the soul

  Over Death’s river to the sunless land,

  Victim and wine and vow are all in vain,

  The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.

  We are resolved into the supreme air,

  We are made one with what we touch and see,

  With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair,

  With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree

  Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range

  The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

  With beat of systole and of diastole

  One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart,

  And mighty waves of single Being roll

  From nerveless germ to man, for we are part

  Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,

  One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill.

  From lower cells of waking life we pass

  To full perfection; thus the world grows old:

  We who are godlike now were once a mass

  Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold,

  Unsentient or of joy or misery,

  And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

  This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn

  Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil,

  Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn

  To water-lilies; the brown fields men till

  Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,

  Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death’s despite.

  The boy’s first kiss, the hyacinth’s first bell,

  The man’s last passion, and the last red spear

  That from the lily leaps, the asphodel

  Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear

  Of too much beauty, and the timid shame

  Of the young bridegroom at his lover’s eyes—these with the same

  One sacrament are consecrate, the earth

  Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,

  The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth

  At daybreak know a pleasure not less real

  Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood,

  We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good.