12.06.2008, 15:04
Rastatt
I
Yet morning comes with pageantry of fire,
And evening falls with majesty of flame,
And every hour hath something to reclaim
The waste of life, slow wilting behind wire.
It were a doleful dungeon that could tire
Nature's incessant carefulness to shame
Sheer stalemate from each thing that lives, and claim
All motion for her universal choir.
Thus day by dreary day the chargèd hours
Pass influence from the sweetness of the hills
Across these cages, and the scent of flowers
Is wafted, and the fragant dew distils,
And unimaginable stir of powers
From the deep sense of woods divinely thrills.
II
Two silent influences mainly move
The captive's mind, not wholly sunk in sloth,
Nor lost in carnal craving - dangers both
That to the core the sterling manhood prove.
One is the sense of shrinkage, of the groove
In which the soul enshuttled - O how loth! -
Feels stoppage of life's pulse, arrested growth,
Heart-sickness which no medicine can remove.
The other wakens when departing night
Throws up the windows of the spacious morn
Upon a new day pulsing with new light;
And from the hill the hunter with his horn
Sends down imagined valleys strains that smite
The spirit with the sense of something born.
III
Within these cages day by day we pace
The bitter shortness of the meted span;
And this and that way variously we plan
Our poor excursions over the poor place,
Cribbed to extinction. Yet remains one grace.
For neither bars nor tented wir can ban
Full many a roving glance that dares to scan
The roomy hill, and wanders into space.
Yea, and remains for ever unrepealed
And unimpaired the free impetuous quest
Of the mind's soaring eye, at length unsealed
To the full measure of a life possessed
Awhile, but never counted, now revealed
Inestimable, wonderful, unguessed.
IV
The long day waned beneath refulgent skies,
And evening sunshine bathed the hilltops round,
Where on the sudden from the level ground
Pine-vestured, solemn, summit by summit rise
The tops of the Black Forest. Wistful eyes
Wandered from peak to peak, as if to sound
Their mystery, if perchance there might be found
Some healing essence there, some glad surprise.
Long strove the puzzled spirit, vainly yearned
Into that alien soul to force its way;
When suddenly - the mystic rune was learned!
And in an upland glen remote and gray
There moved a presence known and last discerned
In Glendaruel on a morn of May.
V
O May! O month of months divinely dear,
Which severest, amidst the toil and strife
Of Nature's round, as with a glittering knife,
A perfect segment from the varying year!
Month of entrancing spaces, wide and clear,
Calling us to the open, thick with life,
All leaf and lamb and freshness, welling, rife
With blossom-can it be that thou art here?
O that it were in some sweet Scottish strath,
Backed by the mountains, watered, green and wide,
Where the Tay laves in shallow crystal bath
His pebbles, or the Forth's meandering tide
Receives Dumyat's shadow o'er his path,
And young light breaks down Ochill's mottled side.
VI
As the lone searcher, crouching o'er his glass,
Beside the window while the light is high,
Doth moved therin the forms of things descry
Invisible else to common vision crass;
Spirilla, the amoeba's sprawling mass,
With gliding infusoria sailing by -
And marks each vestige with entranced eye,
Glimmer, emerge and clear, dissolve and pass;
So in that optic lens, where never yet
The sun prevailed, beneath my prison wall,
One-windowed to the past, but brightly lit
By the eye's own pure light, a swarm of small
And fleeting memories, else forgotten, flit,
Trivial, yet entrancing to recall.
VII
Oft at the hour when night's aerial spring
Waters with dew the beauty of the morn,
What time another rory day is born,
Along these lanes the echoing footsteps ring
Of marching men, who to their marching sing,
Deep-voiced, light-hearted. Yet they do not scorn
Due pause and measure, and the theme well-worn
From the full heart of Germany they bring.
But we, whose fathers once in songs as fine
Unburdened hearts as full, and with the power
Of our dear country pulsing in each line,
Scorn to remember England, and to our
Incomparable heritage of song
Prefer the tinkle of some mean ding-dong.
VIII
All is not well with England. Her great heart
Beats faultily and to no music set.
She hath her moods, suspicions, and doth fret
The daylong hour, by night doth toss and start.
Oft she stands dreaming in the crowded mart.
'Tis true that this distemper doth not yet
The deeper functions of her life beset,
And mightily she plays her mighty part.
Ye´t sometimes in this tempest the heart fears
Whether, so faulted, the old anchor grips.
And shall we find, we ask, when the sky clears,
England still mightier than England's slips?
Let our own past proclaim it. Let the years
Advance and set their trumpets to their lips.
IX
The root of our infirmity is found
In English liberty, grandly achieved,
Yet little understood and ill conceived,
And sprouding rank from the uncultured ground.
Too much the thought prevails that man unbound
Is man made free, a life oft unretrieved
From chaos by a content; undeceived
Only when licence runs the ship aground.
O England! Mother! whom thine every child
Loves, surely, to the last, forgive that some
Must fear the loss of thy benignant strength
Through the mind's error - lest, too freely wild,
Thy liberty of indifference become
A liberty of impotence at length.
X
There is no single foot of English soil,
Howe'er defaced, that is not holy ground.
There is no spot where great souls more abound,
Or whrere man's greatness is more truly royal.
Who hath o'ertopped our Shakespeare? Who by toil
Of kingly thought more loftly, more profound,
Than Newton e'er from heaven's majestic round
Brought home at night a more stupendous spoil?
One thing I find not well. In our reserve
We oft-times cloak our exellence, ashamed
Not of our imperfections, but our Best;
And what is finest, most our own, we serve
In some mean dish, or pass it by unclaimed,
Leaving the noble in us unexpressed.
I
Yet morning comes with pageantry of fire,
And evening falls with majesty of flame,
And every hour hath something to reclaim
The waste of life, slow wilting behind wire.
It were a doleful dungeon that could tire
Nature's incessant carefulness to shame
Sheer stalemate from each thing that lives, and claim
All motion for her universal choir.
Thus day by dreary day the chargèd hours
Pass influence from the sweetness of the hills
Across these cages, and the scent of flowers
Is wafted, and the fragant dew distils,
And unimaginable stir of powers
From the deep sense of woods divinely thrills.
II
Two silent influences mainly move
The captive's mind, not wholly sunk in sloth,
Nor lost in carnal craving - dangers both
That to the core the sterling manhood prove.
One is the sense of shrinkage, of the groove
In which the soul enshuttled - O how loth! -
Feels stoppage of life's pulse, arrested growth,
Heart-sickness which no medicine can remove.
The other wakens when departing night
Throws up the windows of the spacious morn
Upon a new day pulsing with new light;
And from the hill the hunter with his horn
Sends down imagined valleys strains that smite
The spirit with the sense of something born.
III
Within these cages day by day we pace
The bitter shortness of the meted span;
And this and that way variously we plan
Our poor excursions over the poor place,
Cribbed to extinction. Yet remains one grace.
For neither bars nor tented wir can ban
Full many a roving glance that dares to scan
The roomy hill, and wanders into space.
Yea, and remains for ever unrepealed
And unimpaired the free impetuous quest
Of the mind's soaring eye, at length unsealed
To the full measure of a life possessed
Awhile, but never counted, now revealed
Inestimable, wonderful, unguessed.
IV
The long day waned beneath refulgent skies,
And evening sunshine bathed the hilltops round,
Where on the sudden from the level ground
Pine-vestured, solemn, summit by summit rise
The tops of the Black Forest. Wistful eyes
Wandered from peak to peak, as if to sound
Their mystery, if perchance there might be found
Some healing essence there, some glad surprise.
Long strove the puzzled spirit, vainly yearned
Into that alien soul to force its way;
When suddenly - the mystic rune was learned!
And in an upland glen remote and gray
There moved a presence known and last discerned
In Glendaruel on a morn of May.
V
O May! O month of months divinely dear,
Which severest, amidst the toil and strife
Of Nature's round, as with a glittering knife,
A perfect segment from the varying year!
Month of entrancing spaces, wide and clear,
Calling us to the open, thick with life,
All leaf and lamb and freshness, welling, rife
With blossom-can it be that thou art here?
O that it were in some sweet Scottish strath,
Backed by the mountains, watered, green and wide,
Where the Tay laves in shallow crystal bath
His pebbles, or the Forth's meandering tide
Receives Dumyat's shadow o'er his path,
And young light breaks down Ochill's mottled side.
VI
As the lone searcher, crouching o'er his glass,
Beside the window while the light is high,
Doth moved therin the forms of things descry
Invisible else to common vision crass;
Spirilla, the amoeba's sprawling mass,
With gliding infusoria sailing by -
And marks each vestige with entranced eye,
Glimmer, emerge and clear, dissolve and pass;
So in that optic lens, where never yet
The sun prevailed, beneath my prison wall,
One-windowed to the past, but brightly lit
By the eye's own pure light, a swarm of small
And fleeting memories, else forgotten, flit,
Trivial, yet entrancing to recall.
VII
Oft at the hour when night's aerial spring
Waters with dew the beauty of the morn,
What time another rory day is born,
Along these lanes the echoing footsteps ring
Of marching men, who to their marching sing,
Deep-voiced, light-hearted. Yet they do not scorn
Due pause and measure, and the theme well-worn
From the full heart of Germany they bring.
But we, whose fathers once in songs as fine
Unburdened hearts as full, and with the power
Of our dear country pulsing in each line,
Scorn to remember England, and to our
Incomparable heritage of song
Prefer the tinkle of some mean ding-dong.
VIII
All is not well with England. Her great heart
Beats faultily and to no music set.
She hath her moods, suspicions, and doth fret
The daylong hour, by night doth toss and start.
Oft she stands dreaming in the crowded mart.
'Tis true that this distemper doth not yet
The deeper functions of her life beset,
And mightily she plays her mighty part.
Ye´t sometimes in this tempest the heart fears
Whether, so faulted, the old anchor grips.
And shall we find, we ask, when the sky clears,
England still mightier than England's slips?
Let our own past proclaim it. Let the years
Advance and set their trumpets to their lips.
IX
The root of our infirmity is found
In English liberty, grandly achieved,
Yet little understood and ill conceived,
And sprouding rank from the uncultured ground.
Too much the thought prevails that man unbound
Is man made free, a life oft unretrieved
From chaos by a content; undeceived
Only when licence runs the ship aground.
O England! Mother! whom thine every child
Loves, surely, to the last, forgive that some
Must fear the loss of thy benignant strength
Through the mind's error - lest, too freely wild,
Thy liberty of indifference become
A liberty of impotence at length.
X
There is no single foot of English soil,
Howe'er defaced, that is not holy ground.
There is no spot where great souls more abound,
Or whrere man's greatness is more truly royal.
Who hath o'ertopped our Shakespeare? Who by toil
Of kingly thought more loftly, more profound,
Than Newton e'er from heaven's majestic round
Brought home at night a more stupendous spoil?
One thing I find not well. In our reserve
We oft-times cloak our exellence, ashamed
Not of our imperfections, but our Best;
And what is finest, most our own, we serve
In some mean dish, or pass it by unclaimed,
Leaving the noble in us unexpressed.