Ave! (An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, 1892)

I
  O tranquil meadows, grassy Tantramar,
    Wide marshes ever washed in clearest air,
  Whether beneath the sole and spectral star
    The dear severity of dawn you wear,
  Or whether in the joy of ample day
    And speechless ecstasy of growing June
  You lie and dream the long blue hours away
      Till nightfall comes too soon,
  Or whether, naked to the unstarred night,
 You strike with wondering awe my inward sight, —
II

 You know how I have loved you, how my dreams
   Go forth to you with longing, though the years
 That turn not back like your returning streams
   And fain would mist the memory with tears,
 Though the inexorable years deny
   My feet the fellowship of your deep grass,
 O'er which, as o'er another, tenderer sky,
     Cloud phantoms drift and pass, —
 You know my confident love, since first, a child,
 Amid your wastes of green I wandered wild.
III

 Inconstant, eager, curious, I roamed;
   And ever your long reaches lured me on;
 And ever o'er my feet your grasses foamed,
   And in my eyes your far horizons shone.
 But sometimes would you (as a stillness fell
   And on my pulse you laid a soothing palm)
 Instruct my ears in your most secret spell;
     And sometimes in the calm
 Initiate my young and wondering eyes
 Until my spirit grew more still and wise.
IV

 Purged with high thoughts and infinite desire
   I entered fearless the most holy place,
 Received between my lips the secret fire,
   The breath of inspiration on my face.
 But not for long these rare illumined hours,
   The deep surprise and rapture not for long.
 Again I saw the common, kindly flowers,
     Again I heard the song
 Of the glad bobolink, whose lyric throat
 Peeled like a tangle of small bells afloat.
V

 The pounce of mottled marsh-hawk on his prey;
   The flicker of sand-pipers in from sea
 In gusty flocks that puffed and fled; the play
   Of field-mice in the vetches, — these to me
 Were memorable events. But most availed
   Your strange unquiet waters to engage
 My kindred heart's companionship; nor failed
     To grant this heritage, —
 That in my veins forever must abide
 The urge and fluctuation of the tide.
VI

 The mystic river whence you take your name,
   River of hubbub, raucous Tantramar,
 Untamable and changeable as flame,
   It called me and compelled me from afar,
 Shaping my soul with its impetuous stress.
   When in its gaping channel deeps withdrawn
 Its waves ran crying of the wilderness
     And winds and stars and dawn,
 How I companioned them in speed sublime,
 Led out a vagrant on the hills of Time!
VII

 And when the orange flood came roaring in
   From Fundy's tumbling troughs and tide-worn caves,
 While red Minudie's flats were drowned with din
   And rough Chignecto's front oppugned the waves,
 How blithely with the refluent foam I raced
   Inland along the radiant chasm, exploring
 The green solemnity with boisterous haste;
     My pulse of joy outpouring
 To visit all the creeks that twist and shine
 From Beauséjour to utmost Tormentine.
VIII

 And after, when the tide was full, and stilled
   A little while the seething and the hiss,
 And every tributary channel filled
   To the brim with rosy streams that swelled to kiss
 The grass-roots all awash and goose-tongue wild
   And salt-sap rosemary, — then how well content
 I was to rest me like a breathless child
     With play-time rapture spent, —
 To lapse and loiter till the change should come
 And the great floods turn seaward, roaring home.
IX

 And now, O tranquil marshes, in your vast
   Serenity of vision and of dream,
 Wherethrough by every intricate vein have passed
   With joy impetuous and pain supreme
 The sharp, fierce tides that chafe the shores of earth
   In endless and controlless ebb and flow,
 Strangely akin you seem to him whose birth
     One hundred years ago
 With fiery succour to the ranks of song
 Defied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong.
X

 Like yours, O marshes, his compassionate breast,
   Wherein abode all dreams of love and peace,
 Was tortured with perpetual unrest.
   Now loud with flood, now languid with release,
 Now poignant with the lonely ebb, the strife
   Of tides from the salt sea of human pain
 That hiss along the perilous coasts of life
     Beat in his eager brain;
 But all about the tumult of his heart
 Stretched the great calm of his celestial art.
XI


 Therefore with no far flight, from Tantramar
   And my still world of ecstasy, to thee,
 Shelley, to thee I turn, the avatar
   Of Song, Love, Dream, Desire, and Liberty;
 To thee I turn with reverent hands of prayer
   And lips that fain would ease my heart of praise,
 Whom chief of all whose brows prophetic wear
     The pure and sacred bays
 I worship, and have worshipped since the hour
 When first I felt thy bright and chainless power.
XII


 About thy sheltered cradle in the green
   Untroubled groves of Sussex, brooded forms
 That to the mother's eye remained unseen, —
   Terrors and ardours, passionate hopes, and storms
 Of fierce retributive fury, such as jarred
   Ancient and sceptred creeds, and cast down kings,
 And oft the holy cause of Freedom marred,
     With lust of meaner things,
 With guiltless blood, and many a frenzied crime
 Dared in the face of unforgetful Time.
XIII


 The star that burns on revolution smote
   Wild heats and change on thine ascendant sphere,
 Whose influence thereafter seemed to float
   Through many a strange eclipse of wrath and fear,
 Dimming awhile the radiance of thy love.
   But still supreme in thy nativity,
 All dark, invidious aspects far above,
     Beamed one clear orb for thee, —  
 The star whose ministrations just and strong
 Controlled the tireless flight of Dante's song.
XIV


 With how august contrition, and what tears
   Of penitential unavailing shame,
 Thy venerable foster-mother hears
   The sons of song impeach her ancient name,
 Because in one rash hour of anger blind
   She thrust thee forth in exile, and thy feet
 Too soon to earth's wild outer ways consigned, —
     Far from her well-loved seat,
 Far from her studious halls and storied towers
 And weedy Isis winding through his flowers.
XV


 And thou, thenceforth the breathless child of change,
   Thine own Alastor, on an endless quest
 Of unimagined loveliness didst range,
   Urged ever by the soul's divine unrest.
 Of that high quest and that unrest divine
   Thy first immortal music thou didst make,
 Inwrought with fairy Alp, and Reuss, and Rhine,
     And phantom seas that break
 In soundless foam along the shores of Time,
 Prisoned in thine imperishable rhyme.
XVI


 Thyself the lark melodious in mid-heaven;
   Thyself the Protean shape of chainless cloud,
 Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven
   Through deeps of quivering light, and darkness loud
 With tempest, yet beneficent as prayer;
   Thyself the wild west wind, relentless strewing
 The withered leaves of custom on the air,
     And through the wreck pursuing
 O'er lovelier Arnos, more imperial Romes,
 Thy radiant visions to their viewless homes.
XVII


 And when thy mightiest creation thou
   Wert fain to body forth, — the dauntless form,
 The all-enduring, all-forgiving brow
   Of the great Titan, flinchless in the storm
 Of pangs unspeakable and nameless hates,
   Yet rent by all the wrongs and woes of men,
 And triumphing in his pain, that so their fates
     Might be assuaged, — oh then
 Out of that vast compassionate heart of thine
 Thou wert constrained to shape the dream benign.
XVIII


  — O Baths of Caracalla, arches clad
   In such transcendent rhapsodies of green
 That one might guess the sprites of spring were glad
   For your majestic ruin, yours the scene,
 The illuminating air of sense and thought;
   And yours the enchanted light, O skies of Rome,
 Where the giant vision into form was wrought;
     Beneath your blazing dome
 The intensest song our language ever knew
 Beat up exhaustless to the blinding blue! —
XIX


 The domes of Pisa and her towers superb,
   The myrtles and the ilexes that sigh
   O'er San Giuliano, where no jars disturb
 The lonely aziola's evening cry,
   The Serchio's sun-kissed waters, — these conspired
 With Plato's theme occult, with Dante's calm
   Rapture of mystic love, and so inspired
 Thy soul's espousal psalm,
     A strain of such elect and pure intent
 It breathes of a diviner element.
XX


 Thou on whose lips the word of Love became
   A rapt evangel to assuage all wrong,
 Not Love alone, but the austerer name
   Of Death engaged the splendours of thy song.
 The luminous grief, the spacious consolation
   Of thy supreme lament, that mourned for him
 Too early haled to that still habitation
     Beneath the grass-roots dim, —
 Where his faint limbs and pain-o'erwearied heart
 Of all earth's loveliness became a part,
XXI


 But where, thou sayest, himself would not abide, —
   Thy solemn incommunicable joy
 Announcing Adonais has not died,
   Attesting death to free but not destroy,
 All this was as thy swan-song mystical.
   Even while the note serene was on thy tongue
 Thin grew the veil of the Invisible,
     The white sword nearer swung, —
 And in the sudden wisdom of thy rest
 Thou knewest all thou hadst but dimly guessed.
XXII


  Lament, Lerici, mourn for the world's loss!
   Mourn that pure light of song extinct at noon!
 Ye waves of Spezzia that shine and toss
   Repent that sacred flame you quenched too soon!
 Mourn, Mediterranean waters, mourn
   In affluent purple down your golden shore!
 Such strains as his, whose voice you stilled in scorn,
     Our ears may greet no more,
 Unless at last to that far sphere we climb
 Where he completes the wonder of his rhyme!
XXIII


 How like a cloud she fled, thy fateful bark,
   From eyes that watched to hearts that waited, till
 Up from the ocean roared the tempest dark —  
   And the wild heart Love waited for was still!
 Hither and thither in the slow, soft tide,
   Rolled seaward, shoreward, sands and wandering shells
 And shifting weeds thy fellows, thou didst hide
     Remote from all farewells,
 Nor felt the sun, nor heard the fleeting rain,
 Nor heeded Casa Magni's quenchless pain.
XXIV


 Thou heedest not? Nay, for it was not thou,
   That blind, mute clay relinquished by the waves
 Reluctantly at last, and slumbering now
   In one of kind earth's most compassionate graves!
 Not thou, not thou, — for thou wert in the light
   Of the Unspeakable, where time is not.
 Thou sawest those tears; but in thy perfect sight
     And thy eternal thought
 Were they not even now all wiped away
 In the reunion of the infinite day!
XXV


 There face to face thou sawest the living God
   And worshippedst, beholding Him the same
 Adored on earth as Love, the same whose rod
   Thou hadst endured as Life, whose secret name
 Thou now didst learn, the healing name of Death.
   In that unroutable profound of peace,
 Beyond experience of pulse and breath,
     Beyond the last release
 Of longing, rose to greet thee all the lords
 Of Thought, with consummation in their words:
XXVI


 He of the seven cities claimed, whose eyes,
   Though blind, saw gods and heroes, and the fall
 Of Ilium, and many alien skies,
   And Circe's Isle; and he whom mortals call
 The Thunderous, who sang the Titan bound
   As thou the Titan victor; the benign
 Spirit of Plato; Job; and Judah's crowned
     Singer and seer divine;
 Omar; the Tuscan; Milton, vast and strong;
 And Shakespeare, captain of the host of Song.
XXVII


 Back from the underworld of whelming change
   To the wide-glittering beach thy body came;
 And thou didst contemplate with wonder strange
   And curious regard thy kindred flame,
 Fed sweet with frankincense and wine and salt,
   With fierce purgation search thee, soon resolving
 Thee to the elements of the airy vault
     And the far spheres revolving,
 The common waters, the familiar woods,
 And the great hills' inviolate solitudes.  
XXVIII


 Thy close companions there officiated
   With solemn mourning and with mindful tears, —  
 The pained, imperious wanderer unmated
   Who voiced the wrath of those rebellious years;
 Trelawney, lion-limbed and high of heart;
   And he, that gentlest sage and friend most true,
 Whom Adonais loved. With these bore part
   One grieving ghost, that flew
 Hither and thither through the smoke unstirred
 In wailing semblance of a wild white bird.
XXIX


 O heart of fire, that fire might not consume,
   Forever glad the world because of thee;
 Because of thee forever eyes illume
   A more enchanted earth, a lovelier sea!
 O poignant voice of the desire of life,
   Piercing our lethargy, because thy call
 Aroused our spirits to a nobler strife
     Where base and sordid fall,
 Forever past the conflict and the pain
 More clearly beams the goal we shall attain!
XXX


 And now once more, O marshes, back to you
   From whatsoever wanderings, near or far,
 To you I turn with joy forever new,
   To you, O sovereign vests of Tantramar!
 Your tides are at the full. Your wizard flood,
   With every tribute stream and brimming creek,
 Ponders, possessor of the utmost good,
     With no more left to seek, —
 But the hour wanes and passes; and once more
 Resounds the ebb with destiny in its roar.
XXXI


 So might some lord of men, whom force and fate
   And his great heart's unvanquishable power
 Have thrust with storm to his supreme estate,
   Ascend by night his solitary tower
 High o'er the city's lights and cries uplift.
   Silent he ponders the scrolled heaven to read
 And the keen stars' conflicting message sift,
     Till the slow signs recede,
 And ominously scarlet dawns afar
 The day he leads his legions forth to war.