Be sure it shall not save.
Thou, when the night falls deep,
Thou, though the mount be won,
High heart, thou shalt but sleep
The sleep denied to none.
Others, or ever thou,
To scale those heights were sworn;
And some achieved, but now
They never see the morn.
How shouldst thou keep the prize?
Thou wast not born for aye.
Content thee if thine eyes
Behold it in thy day.
O youth that wilt attain,
On, for thine hour is short.
It may be thou shalt gain
The hell-defended fort.
V
Diffugere Nives
Horace: Odes iv 7
The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth.
The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.
Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn, with his apples scattering;
Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.
But oh, whate’er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams:
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are,
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.
Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
The fingers of no heir will ever hold.
When thou descendest once the shades among,
The stern assize and equal judgment o’er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.
Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithöus in the chain
The love of comrades cannot take away.
VI
I to my perils
Of cheat and charmer
Came clad in armour
By stars benign.
Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her,
But man’s deceiver
Was never mine.
The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers’ meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.
VII
Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea
And still the sea is salt.
VIIIA
Give me a land of boughs in leaf,
A land of trees that stand;
Where trees are fallen, there is grief;
I love no leafless land.
VIIIB
Alas, the country whence I fare,
It is where I would stay;
And where I would not, it is there
That I shall be for aye.
VIIIC
And one remembers, and one forgets,
But ’tis not found again,
Not though they hale in crimsoned nets
The sunset from the main.
IX
When green buds hang in the elm like dust
And sprinkle the lime like rain,
Forth I wander, forth I must
And drink of life again.
Forth I must by hedgerow bowers
To look at the leaves uncurled
And stand in the fields where cuckoo-flowers
Are lying about the world.
X
The weeping Pleiads wester,
And the moon is under seas;
From bourn to bourn of midnight
Far sighs the rainy breeze:
It sighs from a lost country
To a land I have not known;
The weeping Pleiads wester,
And I lie down alone.
XI
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases,
And I lie down alone.
The rainy Pleiads wester
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of,
And ’twill not dream of me.
XII
I promise nothing: friends will part;
All things may end, for all began;
And truth and singleness of heart
Are mortal even as is man.
But this unlucky love should last
When answered passions thin to air;
Eternal fate so deep has cast
Its sure foundation of despair.
XIII
I lay me down and slumber
And every morn revive.
Whose is the night-long breathing
That keeps a man alive?
When I was off to dreamland
And left my limbs forgot,
Who stayed at home to mind them,
And breathed when I did not?
[
]
For oh, ’twas never I.
If I were you, young fellow,
I’d save what breath I had,
For sleepers cut the waking:
Oh, spare your pains, my lad.
– I waste my time in talking,
No heed at all takes he,
My kind and foolish comrade
That breathes all night for me.
XIV
The farms of home lie lost in even,
I see far off the steeple stand;
West and away, from here to heaven,
Still is the land.
There if I go no girl will greet me,
No comrade hollo from the hill,
No dog run down the yard to meet me:
The land is still.
The land is still by farm and steeple,
And still for me the land may stay:
There I was friends with perished people,
[And] there lie they.
XV
Tarry, delight; so seldom met,
So sure to perish, tarry still.
Forbear to cease or languish yet,
Though soon you must and will.
By Sestos town, in Hero’s tower,
On Hero’s heart Leander lies;
The signal torch has burned its hour
And sputters as it dies.
Beneath him, in the nighted firth,
Between two continents complain
The seas he swam from earth to earth
And he must swim again.
XVI
How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play,
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.
To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.
—Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound,
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.
XVII
Bells in tower at evening toll,
And the day forsakes the soul;
Soon will evening’s self be gone
And the whispering night come on.
Blame not thou the faulting light
Nor the whispers of the night:
Though the whispering night were still,
Yet the heart would counsel ill.
XVIII
Delight it is in youth and May
To see the morn arise,
And more delight, or so they say,
To read in lovers’ eyes.
Oh maiden, let your distaff be,
And pace the flowery meads with me,
And I will tell you lies.
’Tis blithe to see the sunshine fail,
And hear the land grow still
And listen till the nightingale
Is heard beneath the hill.
Oh follow me where she is flown
Into the leafy woods alone,
And I will work you ill.
XIX
The mill-stream, now that noises cease,
Is all that does not hold its peace;
Under the bridge it murmurs by,
And here are night and hell and I.
Who made the world I cannot tell:
’Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
And so, no doubt, in time gone by,
Some have suffered more than I,
Who only spend the night alone
And strike my fist upon the stone.
XX
Like mine, the veins of these that slumber
Leapt once with dancing fires divine;
The blood of all this noteless number
Ran red like mine.
How still, with every pulse in station,
Frost in the founts that used to leap,
The thralls of night, the perished nation,
How sound they sleep!
These too, these veins which life convulses,
Wait but a while, shall cease to bound;
I with the ice in all my pulses
Shall sleep as sound.
XXI
The world goes none the lamer,
For aught that I can see,
Because this cursed trouble
Has struck my days and me.
The stars of heaven are steady,
The founded hills remain,
Though I to earth and darkness
Return in blood and pain.
Farewell to all belongings
I won or bought or stole;
Farewell, my lusty carcass,
Farewell, my aery soul.
Oh worse remains for others
And worse to fear had I
Than so at four-and-twenty
To lay me down and die.
XXII
Ho, everyone that thirsteth
And hath the price to give,
Come to the stolen waters,
Drink and your soul shall live.
Come to the stolen waters,
And leap the guarded pale,
And pull the flower in season
Before desire shall fail.
It shall not last for ever,
No more than earth and skies;
But he that drinks in season
Shall live before he dies.
June suns, you cannot store them
To warm the winter’s cold,
The lad that hopes for heaven
Shall fill his mouth with mould.
XXIII
Crossing alone the nighted ferry
With the one coin for fee,
Whom, on the far quayside in waiting,
Count you to find? not me.
The fond lackey to fetch and carry,
The true, sick-hearted slave,
Expect him not in the just city
And free land of the grave.
XXIV
Stone, steel, dominions pass,
Faith too, no wonder;
So leave alone the grass
That I am under.
All knots that lovers tie
Are tied to sever.
Here shall your sweetheart lie
Untrue for ever.
XXV
Yon flakes that fret the eastern sky
Lead back my day of birth;
The far, wide-wandered hour when I
Came crying upon earth.
Then came I crying, and to-day,
With heavier cause to plain,
Depart I into death away,
Not to be born again.
XXVI
I Counsel You Beware
Good creatures, do you love your lives
And have you ears for sense?
Here is a knife like other knives,
That cost me eighteen pence.
I need but stick it in my heart
And down will come the sky,
And earth’s foundations will depart
And all you folk will die.
XXVII
To stand up straight and tread the turning mill,
To lie flat and know nothing and be still,
Are the two trades of man; and which is worse
I know not, but I know that both are ill.
XXVIII
He, standing hushed, a pace or two apart,
Among the bluebells of the listless plain,
Thinks, and remembers how he cleansed his heart
And washed his hands in innocence in vain.
XXIX
From the wash the laundress sends
My collars home with ravelled ends:
I must fit, now these are frayed,
My neck with new ones, London-made.
Homespun collars, homespun hearts,
Wear to rags in foreign parts.
Mine at least’s as good as done,
And I must get a London one.
XXX
Shake hands, we shall never be friends; give over:
I only vex you the more I try.
All’s wrong that ever I’ve done and said,
And nought to help it in this dull head:
Shake hands, goodnight, goodbye.
But if you come to a road where danger
Or guilt or anguish or shame’s to share,
Be good to the lad that loves you true
And the soul that was born to die for you,
And whistle and I’ll be there.
XXXI
Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
I’d throw the thought away.
To put the world between us
We parted stiff and dry:
‘Farewell,’ said you, ‘forget me.’
‘Fare well, I will,’ said I.
If e’er, where clover whitens
The dead man’s knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,
Halt by the headstone shading
The heart you have not stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.
XXXII
Their seed the sowers scatter
Behind them as they go.
Poor lads, ’tis little matter
How many sorts they sow,
For only one will grow.
The charlock on the fallow
Will take the traveller’s eyes,
And gild the ploughland sallow
With flowers before it dies,
But twice ’twill not arise.
The stinging-nettle only
Will aye be found to stand:
The numberless, the lonely,
The filler of the land,
The leaf that h
urts the hand.
That thrives, come sun, come showers;
Blow east, blow west, it springs;
It peoples towns, and towers
About the courts of Kings,
And touch it and it stings.
XXXIII
On forelands high in heaven,
’Tis many a year gone by,
Amidst the fall of even
Would stand my friends and I.
Before our foolish faces
Lay lands we did not see;
Our eyes were in the places
Where we should never be.
‘Oh, the pearl seas are yonder,
The gold and amber shore;
Shires where the girls are fonder,
Towns where the pots hold more.
And here fust we and moulder
By grange and rick and shed
And every moon are older,
And soon we shall be dead.’
Heigho, ’twas true and pity;
But there we lads must stay.
Troy was a steepled city,
But Troy was far away.
And home we turned lamenting
To plains we longed to leave
And silent hills indenting
The orange band of eve.
I see the air benighted
And all the dusking dales,
And lamps in England lighted,
And evening wrecked on Wales.
And starry darkness paces
The road from sea to sea,
And blots the foolish faces
Of my poor friends and me.
XXXIV
Young is the blood that yonder
Strides out the dusty mile
And breasts the hill-side highway
And whistles loud the while
And vaults the stile.
Yet backs, I think, have burdens
And shoulders carry care:
So fell to flesh its portion
When I and not my heir
Was young and there.
On miry meads in winter
The football sprang and fell,
May stuck the land with wickets: