Poems New and Old. John Freeman

Their breaking wickers home, too full to float.

       And opening the earth's rich womb they wrought

       Arms from the sullied ore; and labouring smote

       The mountain's bosom, till a path was seen

       Stony amid the flushed snow and flushed green.

      Then first upon earth's wave the silver share

       Floated, by the teamed oxen drawn; then first

       Were seed-time rites, and harvest rites when bare

       The cropped fields lay, and gathered tumult—nurst

       Long in the breasts of men that laboured there—

       Now in the broad ease of fulfilment burst;

       And when the winter tasks failed in days chill,

       Weaving of bright-hued yarn, and chattering shrill;

      And the loved tones of music sounded sweet

       Unwonted, when the new-stopped pipe was heard

       Rising and falling, and the falling feet

       Of sudden dancers. And old men were stirred

       With old men's memories of ancient heat

       When youth sang in their bosoms like a bird. …

       Sweet that divine musician, Memory,

       Fingering her many-reeded melody.

      Then as he stared into the wasting glow

       And watched the fire faint in the whitening wood,

       Came starker shadows moving vast and slow,

       And echoes of wild strife and smell of blood,

       Twitching of slain men, cries of parting woe,

       Bruised bodies ghastly in the mountain flood;

       Burials and burnings, triumph with terrors blent,

       And widowed languors and night-long lament.

      Like seeds long buried, these dead memories

       Upthrust in their new green and spread to flower:

       An eager child against his father's knees

       Leaning, he had listened many an evening hour.

       Now these remote reworded histories

       Entangled with his own renewed their power,

       Breathing an antique virtue through his mind,

       As through dense yew boughs breathes the undying wind.

      Sighing, he rose up softly. On the wall

       A dark shape shambled aimless to and fro;

       Head bent, eyes inward-seeing, rugged, tall,

       Himself a shadow moved with musings slow

       Amid his cumbered past, and heard sweet call

       Of mother voice, and mother folk, and flow

       Of gentle and proud speech and tender laughter,

       Story and song, fault and forgiveness after;

      And a voice graver, gentler than a man

       Might hear from any but a woman beloved,

       Stilling and awakening the blood that ran

       Like ocean tide, as neared she or removed …

       Faded that music. Then a voice began

       Paining within his heart, yet unreproved;

       For dear the anguish is that steals upon

       A father's spirit lamenting his lost son.

      —The latest born and latest lost of those

       Of his strong and her gentle being born.

       By earthquake, pestilence, by human foes

       Long were they dead; and yet not all forlorn

       He grieved, for at his side the youngest rose

       Bright as a willow gilded by dewy morn. …

       Felled now the tree, silent that music, still

       The motion that did all the vale-air fill.

      Once more they bore the body from the hunt

       Where he alone had died. Once more he heard

       The wail and sigh, and saw once more their front

       Of drooping grief; once more the wailing stirred

       Old hounds to baying wilder than was wont;

       Fell once more like slow, sullen rain each word

       Reluctant, telling to his senses strayed,

       How while the gods drowsed and men hung afraid.

      Slain was the Prince unwary by the paw

       Of a springing beast that died in giving death.

       Again the featureless torn face he saw,

       The ribboned bosom emptied of warm breath;

       Again the circle sudden hush'd with awe,

       And smothered moaning heard the hush beneath.

       Again, again, and every night again,

       Vision renewed and voice recalled in vain.

      Again those dear and lamentable rites

       Within the winter stems of forest shade,

       The pile, the smokeless flame, the thousand lights,

       The one light that in all the thousand played;

       Deep burthened voices while, around the heights

       Lifting, young trebles their wild echo made;

       Then the returning torches at the pyre

       Lit, when the eye glowed faint within the fire.

      Even as a man that by slow steps may climb

       An unknown mountain path with tired tread

       By ice-fringed brook and close herb white with rime,

       Sees sudden far below a strange land spread

       Immense; so from his lonely crag of Time

       The Prince, his eye bewildered and adread,

       Gazed at the vast, with mist and storm confused,

       Cloud-racked, and changing even while he mused.

      Ending were the old wise and stable ways.

       Adventurers into distant lands had fared,

       From distant lands adventurers with gaze

       Proud and unenvying on his kingdom stared,

       And sojourning had shaken quiet days

       With restless knowledge, and strange worship reared

       Of foreign altars, idols, prayers and songs

       And sacrifice as to such gods belongs.

      And all unsatisfied his people grown

       Would move from this rejected mountain range

       By yearlong valley journeys slowly down,

       Sun-following, till surfeited with change,

       Mid idle pastures pitched or fabled town,

       Subdued to climes and kings and customs strange,

       At length their very name should die away

       And all their remnant be a vague "Men say."

      "Men say!" he sighed, and from that lofty verge

       Of inward seeing drooped his doubtful sight.

       Sweet was it from such reverie to emerge

       And breathe once more the thoughtless air of night,

       And watch the