Well, if my heart must break, Dear love, for your sake, It will break in music, I know, Poets’ hearts break so.
But strange that I was not told That the brain can hold In a tiny ivory cell God’s heaven and hell.
[_In this poem the author laments the growth of materialism in the nineteenth century_. _He hails Keats and Shelley and some of the poets and artists who were his contemporaries_, _although his seniors_, _as the torch-bearers of the intellectual life_. _Among these are Swinburne_, _William Morris_, _Rossetti_, _and Brune-Jones_.]
NAY, when Keats died the Muses still had left One silver voice to sing his threnody, { 128} But ah! too soon of it we were bereft When on that riven night and stormy sea Panthea claimed her singer as her own, And slew the mouth that praised her; since which time we walk alone,
Save for that fiery heart, that morning star { 129} Of re-arisen England, whose clear eye Saw from our tottering throne and waste of war The grand Greek limbs of young Democracy Rise mightily like Hesperus and bring The great Republic! him at least thy love hath taught to sing,
And he hath been with thee at Thessaly, And seen white Atalanta fleet of foot In passionless and fierce virginity Hunting the tuskèd boar, his honied lute Hath pierced the cavern of the hollow hill, And Venus laughs to know one knee will bow before her still.
And he hath kissed the lips of Proserpine, And sung the Galilæan’s requiem, That wounded forehead dashed with blood and wine He hath discrowned, the Ancient Gods in him Have found their last, most ardent worshipper, And the new Sign grows grey and dim before its conqueror.
Spirit of Beauty! tarry with us still, It is not quenched the torch of poesy, The star that shook above the Eastern hill Holds unassailed its argent armoury From all the gathering gloom and fretful fight— O tarry with us still! for through the long and common night,
Morris, our sweet and simple Chaucer’s child, Dear heritor of Spenser’s tuneful reed, With soft and sylvan pipe has oft beguiled The weary soul of man in troublous need, And from the far and flowerless fields of ice Has brought fair flowers to make an earthly paradise.
We know them all, Gudrun the strong men’s bride, Aslaug and Olafson we know them all, How giant Grettir fought and Sigurd died, And what enchantment held the king in thrall When lonely Brynhild wrestled with the powers That war against all passion, ah! how oft through summer hours,