post

Allotted by the Gods: but he that holds The Gods are careless, wherefore need he

Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm! and such,
Not all so fine, nor so divine a calm,
Not such, nor all unlike it, man may gain
Letting his own life go. The Gods, the
Gods!

If all be atoms, how then should the Gods
Being atomic not be dissoluble,
Not follow the great law? My master held
That Gods there are, forall men so believe.
1 prest my footsteps into his, and meant
Surely to lead my Memmius in a train
Of flowery clauses onward to the proof
That Gods there are, and deathless.
Meant? I meant ?

I have forgotten what I meant : my mind
Stumbles, and all my faculties are lamed.

"Look where another of our Gods, the
Sun,

Apollo, Delius, or of older use
All-seeing Hyperion - what you will-
Has mounted yonder; since he never

care

Greatly for them, nor rather plunge at

once,

Being troubled, wholly out of sight, and sink

Past earthquake-ay, and gout and stone, that break

Body toward death, and palsy, death-inlife,

And wretched age- and worst disease of all,

These prodigies of myriad nakednesses,
And twisted shapes of lust, unspeakable,
Abominable, strangers at my hearth
Not welcome, harpies miring every dish,
The phantom husks of something foully
done,

And fleeting thro' the boundless universe,
And blasting the long quiet of my breast
With animal heat and dire insanity?

"How should the mind, except it loved

them, clasp

These idols to herself? or do they fly Now thinner, and now thicker, like the flakes

In a fall of snow, and so press in, perforce Of multitude, as crowds that in an hour Of civic tumult jam the doors, and bear The keepers down, and throng, their rags

and they,

The basest, far into that council-hall Where sit the best and stateliest of the land?

Totters; a noiseless riot underneath Strikes through the wood, sets all the tops quivering

The mountain quickens into Nymph and Faun;

And here an Oread-how the sun delights To glance and shift about her slippery sides,

And rosy knees and supple roundedness, And budded bosom-peaks - who this way runs

Before the rest- A satyr, a satyr, see,
Follows; but him I proved impossible;
Twy-natured is no nature: yet he draws
Nearer and nearer, and I scan him now
Beastlier than any phantom of his kind
That ever butted his rough brother-brute
For lust or lusty blood or provender:
I hate, abhor, spit, sicken at him; and she
Loathes him as well; such a precipitate
heel,

Fledged as it were with Mercury's anklewing,

Whirls her to me: but will she fling herself,

Shameless upon me? Catch her, goatfoot: nay,

Hide, hide them, million-myrtled wilder

ness,

And cavern-shadowing laurels, hide! do I wish

What? that the bush were leafless? or to whelm

All of them in one massacre? O ye Gods,
I know you careless, yet, behold, to you
From childly wont and ancient use I call
I thought I lived securely as yourselves
No lewdness, narrowing envy, monkey-
spite,

No madness of ambition, avarice, none:
No larger feast than under plane or pine
With neighbors laid along the grass, to
take

Only such cups as left us friendly-warm,
Affirming each his own philosophy-
Nothing to mar the sober majesties
Of settled, sweet, Epicurean life.
But now it seems some unseen monster
lays

His vast and filthy hands upon my will, Wrenching it backward into his; and spoils

My bliss in being; and it was not great; For save when shutting reasons up in rhythm,

Or Heliconian honey in living words,

Tired of so much within our little life,
Or of so little in our little life
Poor little life that toddles half an hour
Crown'd with a flower or two, and there
an end-

And since the nobler pleasure seems to fade,

Why should I, beastlike as I find myself, Not manlike end myself? —our privilege

What beast has heart to do it? And what man,

What Roman would be dragg'd in triumph thus ?

Not I; not he, who bears one name with her

Whose death-blow struck the dateless doom of kings,

When, brooking not the Tarquin in her veins,

She made her blood in sight of Collatine And all his peers, flushing the guiltless air, Spout from the maiden fountain in her heart.

And from it sprang the Commonwealth, which breaks

As I am breaking now!

"And therefore now Let her, that is the womb and tomb of all, Great Nature, take, and forcing far apart Those blind beginnings that have made

me man

Dash them anew together at her will Through all her cycles—into man once

more,

Or beast or bird or fish, or opulent flower: But till this cosmic order everywhere Shatter'd into one earthquake in one day Cracks all to pieces, and that hour perhaps

Is not so far when momentary man Shall seem no more a something to himself,

But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes,

And even his bones long laid within the

grave,

The very sides of the grave itself shall pass, Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void, Into the unseen for ever, till that hour, My golden work in which I told a truth That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel, And numbs the Fury's ringlet-snake, and plucks

wrong;

Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it;

Who loved one only and who clave to her-'

Her

over all whose realms to their last isle, Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,

The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse, Darkening the world. We have lost

him he is gone:

We know him now: all narrow jealousies Are silent; and we see him as he moved, How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd, wise,

With what sublime repression of himself, And in what limits, and how tenderly Not swaying to this faction or to that;

Not making his high place the lawless perch

Ofwing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-ground For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of years

Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,

Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which beats upon a
throne,

And blackens every blot: for where is he,
Who dares foreshadow for an only son
A lovelier life, a more unstain'd, than his?
Or how should England dreaming of his

sons

Hope more for these than some inheritance Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine, Thou noble Father of her Kings to be, Laborious for her people and her poorVoice in the rich dawn of an ampler day Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peaceSweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art, Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed,

Beyond all titles, and a household name, Hereafter, thro' all times, Albert the Good.

Break not, O woman's-heart, but still

endure;

Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure, Remembering all the beauty of that star

Came night and day, and rooted in the fields,

And wallow'd in the gardens of the king. And ever and anon the wolf would steal The children and devour, but now and then,

Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat

To human sucklings; and the children, housed

In her foul den, there at their meat would growl,

And mock their foster-mother on four feet, Till, straighten'd, they grew up to wolflike men,

Worse than the wolves. And King Leodogran

Groan'd for the Roman legions here again, And Cæsar's eagle: then his brother king, Rience, assail'd him: last a heathen horde, Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood,

And on the spike that split the mother's heart

Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed,

He knew not whither he should turn for aid.

fell'd

For while he linger'd there, A doubt that ever smoulder'd in the hearts Of those great Lords and Barons of his realm

Flash'd forth and into war: for most of these

Made head against him, crying, "Who is he

That he should rule us? who hath proven him,

King Uther's son ? for lo! we look at him And find nor face nor bearing, limbs nor voice,

Are like to those of Uther whom we knew. This is the son of Gorloïs, not the king; This is the son of Anton, not the king."

And Arthur, passing thence to battle, felt

Travail, and throes and agonies of the life, Desiring to be join'd with Guinevere; And thinking as he rode, "Her father said

That there between the man and beast they die.

Shall I not lift her from this land of beasts Up to my throne, and side by side with

me?

What happiness to reign a lonely king, Vext O ye stars that shudder over me, O earth that soundest hollow under me, Vext with waste dreams? for saving I be join'd

To her that is the fairest under heaven, I seem as nothing in the mighty world, And cannot will my will, nor work my work

Wholly, nor make myself in mine own realm

Victor and lord. But were I join'd with her,

Then might we live together as one life, And reigning with one will in everything Have power on this dark land to lighten it, And power on this dead world to make it live."

And Arthur from the field of battle sent Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere,

gran,

Saying, "If I in aught have served thee well,

Give me thy daughter Guinevere to wife.”

Whom when he heard, Leodogran in heart