Poems. Edward Dowden

Odysseus lay

      Surge-swept to his Ionian bay.

      IN THE GALLERIES

      I. THE APOLLO BELVEDERE

      Radiance invincible! Is that the brow

      Which gleamed on Python while thy arrow sped?

      Are those the lips for Hyacinthus dead

      That grieved? Wherefore a God indeed art thou:

      For all we toil with ill, and the hours bow

      And break us, and at best when we have bled,

      And are much marred, perchance propitiated

      A little doubtful victory they allow:

      We sorrow, and thenceforth the lip retains

      A shade, and the eyes shine and wonder less.

      O joyous Slayer of evil things! O great

      And splendid Victor! God, whom no soil stains

      Of passion or doubt, of grief or languidness,

      —Even to worship thee I come too late.

      II. THE VENUS OF MELOS

      Goddess, or woman nobler than the God,

      No eyes a-gaze upon Ægean seas

      Shifting and circling past their Cyclades

      Saw thee. The Earth, the gracious Earth, wastrod

      First by thy feet, while round thee lay her broad

      Calm harvests, and great kine, and shadowing trees,

      And flowers like queens, and a full year’s increase,

      Clusters, ripe berry, and the bursting pod.

      So thy victorious fairness, unallied

      To bitter things or barren, doth bestow

      And not exact; so thou art calm and wise;

      Thy large allurement saves; a man may grow

      Like Plutarch’s men by standing at thy side,

      And walk thenceforward with clear-visioned eyes!

      III. ANTINOUS CROWNED AS BACCHUS

(In the British Museum)

      Who crowned thy forehead with the ivy wreath

      And clustered berries burdening the hair?

      Who gave thee godhood, and dim rites? Beware

      O beautiful, who breathest mortal breath,

      Thou delicate flame great gloom environeth!

      The gods are free, and drink a stainless air,

      And lightly on calm shoulders they upbear

      A weight of joy eternal, nor can Death

      Cast o’er their sleep the shadow of her shrine.

      O thou confessed too mortal by the o’er-fraught

      Crowned forehead, must thy drooped eyes ever see

      The glut of pleasure, those pale lips of thine

      Still suck a bitter-sweet satiety,

      Thy soul descend through cloudy realms of thought?

      IV. LEONARDO’S “MONNA LISA”

      Make thyself known, Sibyl, or let despair

      Of knowing thee be absolute; I wait

      Hour-long and waste a soul. What word of fate

      Hides ’twixt the lips which smile and still forbear?

      Secret perfection! Mystery too fair!

      Tangle the sense no more lest I should hate

      Thy delicate tyranny, the inviolate

      Poise of thy folded hands, thy fallen hair.

      Nay, nay,—I wrong thee with rough words; still be

      Serene, victorious, inaccessible;

      Still smile but speak not; lightest irony

      Lurk ever ’neath thine eyelids’ shadow; still

      O’ertop our knowledge; Sphinx of Italy

      Allure us and reject us at thy will!

      V. ST LUKE PAINTING THE VIRGIN

(By Van der Weyden)

      It was Luke’s will; and she, the mother-maid,

      Would not gainsay; to please him pleased her best;

      See, here she sits with dovelike heart at rest

      Brooding, and smoothest brow; the babe is laid

      On lap and arm, glad for the unarrayed

      And swatheless limbs he stretches; lightly pressed

      By soft maternal fingers the full breast

      Seeks him, while half a sidelong glance is stayed

      By her own bosom and half passes down

      To reach the boy. Through doors and window-frame

      Bright airs flow in; a river tranquilly

      Washes the small, glad Netherlandish town.

      Innocent calm! no token here of shame,

      A pierced heart, sunless heaven, and Calvary.

      ON THE HEIGHTS

      Here are the needs of manhood satisfied!

      Sane breath, an amplitude for soul and sense,

      The noonday silence of the summer hills,

      And this embracing solitude; o’er all

      The sky unsearchable, which lays its claim,—

      A large redemption not to be annulled,—

      Upon the heart; and far below, the sea

      Breaking and breaking, smoothly, silently.

      What need I any further? Now once more

      My arrested life begins, and I am man

      Complete with eye, heart, brain, and that within

      Which is the centre and the light of being;

      O dull! who morning after morning chose

      Never to climb these gorse and heather slopes

      Cairn-crowned, but last within one seaward nook

      Wasted my soul on the ambiguous speech

      And slow eye-mesmerism of rolling waves,

      Courting oblivion of the heart. True life

      That was not which possessed me while I lay

      Prone on the perilous edge, mere eye and ear,

      Staring upon the bright monotony,

      Having let slide all force from me, each thought

      Yield to the vision of the gleaming blank,

      Each nerve of motion and of sense grow numb,

      Till to the bland persuasion of some breeze,

      Which played across my forehead and my hair,

      The lost volition would efface itself,

      And I was mingled wholly in the sound

      Of tumbling billow and upjetting surge,

      Long reluctation, welter and refluent moan,

      And the reverberating tumultuousness

      ’Mid shelf and hollow and angle black with spray.

      Yet under all oblivion there remained

      A sense of some frustration, a pale dream

      Of Nature mocking man, and drawing