Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Philip James Bailey b. 1816From “Festus”
Lucifer. A
The world was made for nothing but love, love.
Now I think it was made most to be burn’d.
Festus. The night is glooming on us. It is the hour
When lovers will speak lowly, for the sake
Of being nigh each other; and when love
Shoots up the eye, like morning on the east,
Making amends for the long northern night
They pass’d, ere either knew the other lov’d;
The hour of hearts! Say gray-beards what they please,
The heart of age is like an emptied wine-cup;
Its life lies in a heel-tap: how can age judge?
’T were a waste of time of ask how they wasted theirs;
But while the blood is bright, breath sweet, skin smooth,
And limbs all made to minister delight;
Ere yet we have shed our locks, like trees their leaves,
And we stand staring bare into the air;
He is a fool who is not for love and beauty.
It is I, the young, to the young speak. I am of them,
And always shall be. What are years to me?
You traitor years, that fang the hands ye have lick’d,
Vicelike; henceforth your venom-sacs are gone.
I have conquer’d. Ye shall perish: yea, shall fall
Like birdlets beaten by some resistless storm
’Gainst a dead wall, dead. I pity ye, that such
Mean things should have rais’d in man or hope or fear;
Those Titans of the heart that fight at heaven,
And sleep, by fits, on fire, whose slightest stir’s
An earthquake. I am bound and bless’d to youth.
None but the brave and beautiful can love.
Oh give me to the young, the fair, the free,
The brave, who would breast a rushing, burning world
Which came between him and his heart’s delight.
Mad must I be, and what’s the world? Like mad
For itself. And I to myself am all things, too.
If my heart thunder’d would the world rock? Well,
Then let the mad world fight its shadow down.
Soon there may be nor sun nor world nor shadow.
But thou, my blood, my bright red running soul,
Rejoice thou like a river in thy rapids.
Rejoice, thou wilt never pale with age, nor thin;
But in thy full dark beauty, vein by vein
Serpent-wise, me encircling, shalt to the end
Throb, bubble, sparkle, laugh, and leap along.
Make merry, heart, while the holidays shall last.
Better than daily dwine, break sharp with life;
Like a stag, sunstruck, top thy bounds and die.
Heart, I could tear thee out, thou fool, thou fool,
And strip thee into shreds upon the wind.
What have I done that thou shouldst maze me thus?
Lucifer. Let us away; we have had enough of hearts.
Festus. Oh for the young heart like a fountain playing,
Flinging its bright fresh feelings up to the skies
It loves and strives to reach; strives, loves in vain.
It is of earth, and never meant for heaven,
Let us love both and die. The sphinx-like heart
Loathes life the moment that life’s riddle is read.
The knot of our existence solv’d, all things
Loose-ended lie, and useless. Life is had,
And lo! we sigh, and say, can this be all?
It is not what we thought; it is very well,
But we want something more. There is but death.
And when we have said and seen, done, had, enjoy’d
And suffer’d, maybe, all we have wish’d or fear’d,
From fame to ruin, and from love to loathing,
There can come but one more change—try it—death.
Oh! it is great to feel that nought of earth,
Hope, love, nor dread, nor care for what’s to come,
Can check the royal lavishment of life;
But, like a streamer strown upon the wind,
We fling our souls to fate and to the future.
For to die young is youth’s divinest gift;
To pass from one world fresh into another,
Ere change hath lost the charm of soft regret,
And feel the immortal impulse from within
Which makes the coming life cry alway, on!
And follow it while strong, is heaven’s last mercy.
There is a fire-fly in the south, but shines
When on the wing. So is’t with mind. When once
We rest, we darken. On! saith God to the soul,
As unto the earth for ever. On it goes,
A rejoicing native of the infinite,
As is a bird, of air; an orb, of heaven.
Festus. T
And self-sworn loyalty to truth. For know,
Poets are all who love, who feel, great truths,
And tell them: and the truth of truths is love.
There was a time—oh, I remember well!
When, like a sea-shell with its sea-born strain,
My soul aye rang with music of the lyre,
And my heart shed its lore as leaves their dew—
A honey dew, and throve on what it shed.
All things I lov’d; but song I lov’d in chief.
Imagination is the air of mind,
Judgment its earth and memory its main,
Passion its fire. I was at home in heaven.
Swiftlike, I liv’d above; once touching earth,
The meanest thing might master me: long wings
But baffled. Still and still I harp’d on song.
Oh! to create within the mind is bliss,
And shaping forth the lofty thought, or lovely,
We seek not, need not heaven: and when the thought,
Cloudy and shapeless, first forms on the mind,
Slow darkening into some gigantic make,
How the heart shakes with pride and fear, as heaven
Quakes under its own thunder; or as might,
Of old, the mortal mother of a god,
When first she saw him lessening up the skies.
And I began the toil divine of verse,
Which, like a burning bush, doth guest a god.
But this was only wing-flapping—not flight;
The pawing of the courser ere he win;
Till by degrees, from wrestling with my soul,
I gather’d strength to keep the fleet thoughts fast,
And made them bless me. Yes, there was a time
When tomes of ancient song held eye and heart;
Were the sole lore I reck’d of: the great bards
Of Greece, of Rome, and mine own master land,
And they who in the holy book are deathless;
Men who have vulgariz’d sublimity,
And bought up truth for the nations; held it whole;
Men who have forged gods—utter’d—made them pass:
Sons of the sons of God, who in olden days
Did leave their passionless heaven for earth and woman,
Brought an immortal to a mortal breast,
And, rainbowlike the sweet earth clasping, left
A bright precipitate of soul, which lives
Ever, and through the lines of sullen men,
The dump array of ages, speaks for all;
Flashing by fits, like fire from an enemy’s front;
Whose thoughts, like bars of sunshine in shut rooms,
Mid gloom, all glory, win the world to light;
Who make their very follies like their souls,
And like the young moon with a ragged edge,
Still in their imperfection beautiful;
Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths,
Like the white nebulous matter between stars,
Which, if not light, at least is likest light;
Men whom be build our love round like an arch
Of triumph, as they pass us on their way
To glory, and to immortality;
Men whose great thoughts possess us like a passion,
Through every limb and the whole heart; whose words
Haunt us, as eagles haunt the mountain air;
Whose thoughts command all coming times and minds,
As from a tower, a warden—fix themselves
Deep in the heart as meteor stones in earth,
Dropp’d from some higher sphere: the words of gods,
And fragments of the undeem’d tongues of heaven;
Men who walk up to fame as to a friend,
Or their own house, which from the wrongful heir
They have wrested, from the world’s hard hand and gripe;
Men who, like death, all bone but all unarm’d,
Have ta’en the giant world by the throat, and thrown him,
And made him swear to maintain their name and fame
At peril of his life; who shed great thoughts
As easily as an oak looseneth its golden leaves
In a kindly largesse to the soil it grew on;
Whose names are ever on the world’s broad tongue,
Like sound upon the falling of a force;
Whose words, if wing’d, are with angels’ wings;
Who play upon the heart as on a harp,
And make our eyes bright as we speak of them;
Whose hearts have a look southwards, and are open
To the whole noon of nature; these I have wak’d,
And wept o’er, night by night; oft pondering thus:
Homer is gone: and where is Jove? and where
The rival cities seven? His song outlives
Time, tower, and god—all that then was, save heaven.
T
The nightingale;
And he is flying fast above,
To her he will not fail.
Already golden eve appears;
He wings his way along;
Ah! look, he comes to kiss her tears,
And soothe her with his song.
The still blue air;
The rose hath ceas’d to droop and weep,
For lo! her love is there;
He sings to her, and o’er the trees
She hears his sweet notes swim;
The world may weary; she but sees
Her love, and hears but him.
Elissa.Nigh one year ago,