 Ben Johnson entertains a man from Stratford by Edwin Arlington Robinson read for LibriVox.org by Alice You are a friend then as I make it out of our man Shakespeare Who alone of us will put an ass's head in Fairyland as he would add a shilling to more shillings almost harmonious and out of his miraculous inviolable increase fills alien Rome or any town you like of olden time with timeless Englishmen and I must wonder what you think of him I'll you down there where your small avon flows by Stratford and where you're an alderman Some for a guess would have him riding back to be a farrier there or say a dyer Or maybe one of your adept surveyors or like enough the wizard of all tanners Not you no fear of that for I discern in you a kindling of the flame that saves The nimble element the true caloric. I see it and was told of it moreover by our discriminant friend himself. No other Had you been one of the sad average as he would have it Meaning as I take it the sinew and the solvent of our island You'd not be buying beer for this two pandas approved an estimated friend Ben Johnson He'd never forced it as a part of his contingent entertainment of a townsman Well, he goes off rehearsing as he must if he shall ever be the Duke of Stratford and My words are no shadow on your town far from it for one town just like another is all are unlike London Oh, he knows it and there's the Stratford in him. He denies it and there's the Shakespeare in him So God help him. I tell him he needs Greek, but neither God nor Greek will help him Nothing will help that man You see the fates have given him so much. He must have all or parish or like out of London where he sees too many lords They're part of half what ails him. I Suppose there's nothing fowler down among the demons than what it is He feels when he remembers the dust and sweat and ointment of his calling With his lords looking on and laughing at him King as he is he can't be king de facto and that's as well because he wouldn't like it He'd frame a lower rating of men than and he has now and after that would come an abdication or an apoplexy He can't be king not even king of Stratford though half the world if not the whole of it May crown him with a crown that fits no king save Lord Apollo's homesick emissary Not there on Avon or on any stream where niads and their white arms are no more shall he find home again It's all too bad But there's a comfort for all have that house the best you ever saw Until be there and on as you are an alderman Good God. He makes me lie awake at nights and laugh And you have known him from his origin you tell me and a most uncommon Urgent he must have been to the few seeing ones a trifle terrifying. I dare say Discovering a world with his man's eyes quite as another lad might see some finches if he looked hard and had an eye for nature But this one had his eyes and therefore telling and he had you to fairwood and what else? He must have had a father and a mother in fact I've heard him say so and a dog as a boy should I venture and the dog most likely was the only man who knew him a Dog for all I know is what he needs as much as anything right here today To counsel him about his disillusions all the aches and parturations of what's coming A dog of orders and emeritus To wag his tail at him when he comes home and then to put his paws up on his knees and say for God's sake What's it all about? I? Don't know whether he needs a dog or not or what he needs. I tell him he needs Greek I'll talk of rules and Aristotle with him and if his tongues at home will say to that I have your words that Aristotle knows and do you mind that I don't know Aristotle He's all at odds with all the unities and what's yet worse. It doesn't seem to matter He treads along through times old wilderness as if the tramp of all the centuries had left no roads and there are none for him He doesn't see them even with those eyes, and that's a pity or I say it is Accordingly we have him as we have him going his way the way that he goes best a Pleasant animal with no great noise or nonsense anywhere to set him off Save only diverse and inclement devils have made of late his heart their dwelling place a Flame half ready to fly out sometimes that some annoyance may be fanned up in him But soon it falls and when it falls goes out He knows how little room there is in there for crude and futile animosities and how much for the joy of being whole and How much for long sorrow and old pain On our side there are some who may be given to grow old wondering what he thinks of us and some above us Who are in his eyes above himself, and that's quite right in English Yet here we smile or disappoints the gods who made it so The gods have always eyes to see men scratch and they see one down here who itches man are bitten to the bone Albeit he knows himself. Yes. Yes. He knows the Lord of more than England and of more than all the seas of England in all Time she'll ever wash do you wonder that I laugh He sees me and he doesn't seem to care and why the devil should he I can't tell you I'll meet him out alone of a bright Sunday Trim rather spruce and quite the gentleman What home my Lord say I he doesn't hear me before I have to pause and look at him He's not enormous, but one looks at him a Little on the round if you insist for now God save the mark. He's growing old He's five and forty and to hear him talk these days. You'd call him 80 then you'd add more years to that He's old enough to be the father of a world and so he is Then your scholar, what's the time of days as he an air shines out of him again an aged light that has no age Or station the mystery that's his a mischievous half mad serenity that laughs at fame for being one so easy and At friends who laugh at him for what he wants the most and for his duke them down in Warwickshire By which you see we're all a little jealous For green I fear the color of his name was even as that of his ascending soul and he was one where there are many others Some scrivening to the end against their fate their puppets all in ink and all to die there and Some with hands that once would shade an eye this scan deripides and escalus Will reach by this time for a pot house mop to slush their first and last of royalties Poor devils and they all play to his hand for so it was in Athens and old Rome But that's not here or there. I've wandered off Green does it or I'm careful Where's that boy? Yes, he'll go back to Stratford and will miss him dear sir. There'll be no London here without him We'll all be riding one of these fine days down there to see him and his wife won't like us And then we'll think of what he never said of women which have taken all in all with what he did say would buy many horses Though nowadays he's not so much for women so few of them he says are worth the guessing But there's a warm at work when he says that and while he says it one feels in the air and deals Circumambian tocus pocus They've had him dancing till his toes were tender and he can feel him now come chilly rains There's no long cry for going into it. However, and we don't know much about it But you and Stratford like most here in London have more now in the sonnets than you paid for He's put one there with all her poison on to make a singing fiction of a shadow That's in his life of fact and always will be But she's no care of ours though time I fear will have a more reverberant adieu about her than about another one Who seems to have decoyed him married him and sent him scuttling on his way to London With much already learned and more to learn and more to follow Lord how I see him now pretending may be trying to be like us Whatever he may have meant we never had him He failed us or escaped or what you will and there was that about him. God knows what We'd played another had he tried it on us That made as many of us as had wits more fond of all his easy distances Than one another's noise and clap your shoulder But think you not my friend. He'd never talk Talk he was eldritch at it and we listened thereby acquiring much we knew before about ourselves And hitherto had held irrelevant or not prime to the purpose and There were some of course and there be now Disordered and reduced amazingly to resignation by the mystic seal of young finality The gods had laid on everything that made him a young demon and One or two shot looks at him already as he had been their executioner and Once or twice he was not knowing it. We're knowing being sorry for poor clay and saying nothing Yet for all his engines you meet a thousand of an afternoon who struts and sun themselves and see around them a World made out of more that has a reason than his I swear that he sees here today Though he may scarcely give a fool an exit But we mark how he sees in everything a law that's given me flouted once too often Brings fire and iron down on our naked heads To me it looks as if the power that made him for fear of giving all things to one creature Left out the first faith innocence illusion whatever it is that keeps us out of bedlam and thereby for his two consuming vision Empowered him out of nature though to see him you'd never guess what's going on inside him He'll break out someday like a keg of ale with too much independent frenzy in it and all for Sellering what he knows won't keep and what he busts forgets, but that he can't You'll have it and have more than I'm foretelling And they'll be such a roaring at the globe is never stunned the bleeding gladiators They'll have to change the color of its hair, but for now he calls it Cleopatra Black hair would never do for Cleopatra But you and I are not yet two old women and you're a man of office What he does is more to you than how it is he does it and that's what the Lord God has never told him They work together and the devil helps them They do it to the morning or if not they do it to the night in which event he's peevish of a morning He seems old He's not the proper stomach or the sleep and there are two sovereign agents to conserve him Against the fiery art that has no mercy, but what's in that prodigious grand new house? I Gather something happening in his boyhood fulfilled him with a boy's determination to make all stratford wear of him Well, well, I hope at last you'll have his joy of it and all his pigs and sheep and belling bees and Frogs and owls and unicorns moreover be less than held to his attendants ears Oh past it out. Well, I'll go down to see him He may be wise with London two days off down there some wind of heaven may at revive him But there's no quickening breath from anywhere She'll make of him again the poised young fawn from Warwickshire who'd made it seems already a legend of himself Before I came to blink before the last of his first lightning Whatever there be there will be no more of that The coming on of his old monster time has made him a still man And he has dreams were fair to think on once and all found hollow He knows how much of what men paint themselves with blister in the light of what they are He sees how much of what was great now shares in eminence transforms and ordinary He knows too much of what the world has hushed in others to be allowed now for himself He knows now at what height low enemies may reach his heart and high friends let him fall But what not even such as he may know be doubles him the worst His lark may sing at heaven's gate how he will and for as long as joy may listen But he sees no gate save one where at the spent clay waits a little before the churchyard has it and the worm Not long ago late in an afternoon. I came on him on scene down Lambeth way and on my life I was a feared of him He gloomed and mumbled like a soul from Tofit his hands behind him and his head bent solemn What is it now said I another woman? That made him sorry for me and he smiled No, Ben. He used it's nothing. It's all nothing We come we go and when we're done. We're done Spiders and flies were mostly one or the other We come we go and when we're done. We're done By God you sing that song as if you knew it said I by way of cheering him was Alesi. I Think I must have come down here to think says he to that and pulls his little beard Your fly will serve as well as anybody and what's his hour? He flies and flies and flies and in his flies mind has a brave appearance And then your spider gets him in her net and eats him out and hangs them up to dry That's nature the kind mother of a song And then your slatter and housemaid swings her broom and wears your spider And that's nature also. It's nature and it's nothing. It's all nothing It's the world where bugs and emperors go singularly back to the same dust each in his time and the old ordered stars That sang together Ben will sing the same old stave tomorrow When he talks like that There's nothing for a human man to do but lead him to some grateful nook like this where we be now and There to make him drink He'll drink for love of me and then be sick a sad sign always in a man of parts and always very ominous The great should be as large and liquor as in love and our great friend is not so large in either One disaffects him and the other fails him What so he drinks that has an antique in it. He's wondering what's to pay in his insides And while his eyes are on the Cyprian. He's fiddling all the time with that damned house We laugh here at his thrift, but after all it may be thrift that saves him from the devil God gave us anyhow and we'll suppose he knew the compound of his handiwork Today the clouds are with him But a non he'll out of them enough to shake the tree of life itself and bring down fruits unheard of and Throwing in the bruised and whole together Prepare a wine to make a strump with wonder And if he lives there'll be a sunset spell Thrown over him is over a glassed lake that yesterday was all black wild water God sent he lived to give us if no more with snow a rampage in him and exhibits With a decent half allegiance to the ages an earnest of at least a casual of I Turned once on what he owes to Gutenberg and to the fealty of more centuries that are is yet a picture in our vision There's time enough i'll do it when i'm old and we're immortal men He says to that And then he says to me Then what's immortal? Thank you by any force of ordination It may be nothing of a sort more noisy than a small oblivion of component ashes That have a dream addicted world was once a moving atomy much like your friend here Nothing will help that man To make him laugh I said then he was a mad mountain bank and by the lord I near him made him cry I could have etched an aft then on my knees Tail claws and all of him where I had stung the king of men who had no sting for me And I'd hurt him in his memories And I say now as I shall say again. I love the man this side idolatry He'll do it when he's old he says I wonder he may not be so ancient as all that For such as he the thing that is to do will do itself But there's a reckoning The sessions that are now too much his own The roiling inward of a stilled outside The churning out of all those blood-fed lines The nights of many schemes and little sleep The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking The vexed heart overworn with too much aching This weary jangling of conjoined affairs made out of elements that have no end and all confused at once I understand it's not what makes a man to live forever Oh no not now he'll not be going now There'll be time yet for god knows what explosions before he goes he'll stay a while Just wait just wait a year or two for Cleopatra For she's to be a balsam and a comfort and that's not all a jade of mine now either For granted once the old boy of Apollo sings in a man He may then if he's able Streck unafraid whatever strings he will upon the last and wildest of new liars Nor out of his new music though it's him the shrieks of dungeon tell Shall he create a madness or a gloom to shut quite out a cleaving daylight And the last great calm triumphant over shipwreck and all storms He might have given Aristotle creeps, but surely would have given him his catharsis He'll not be going yet. There's too much yet unsung within the man But when he goes I'd stake he coin to the realm his only care for a phantom world He sounded and found wanting will be a portion here a portion there Of this or that thing or some other thing that has a patent and intrinsical equivalence in those egregious Dillings And yet he knows god help him Tell me now if ever there was anything let loose on earth by gods or devils here to for Like this mad careful proud indifferent Shakespeare Where was it if it ever was? By heaven twist never yet in roads or progam in thieves or niniva a thing like this No thing like this was ever out of england and that he knows I wonder if he cares Perhaps he does Oh lord that house in strafford end of poem This recording is in the public domain Child Roland to the dark tower came by robert browning read for LibriVox.org by morgan schlicker My first thought was he lied in every word that hoary cripple With malicious eye a scans to watch the working of his lie on mine And mouth scarce able to afford suppression of the glee That pursed and scored its edge at one more victim gained thereby What else should he be set for with his staff? What save to way lay with his lies in snare all travelers who might find him posted there and ask the road I guessed what skull like laugh would break What crutch can write my epitaph for pastime and the dusty thoroughfare If at his council I should turn aside into that ominous tract which all agree hides the dark tower Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed Neither pride nor hope rekindling at the end described so much as gladness that some end might be For what with my whole world wide wandering What with my search drawn out through years my hope dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope with that Obstroperous joy success would bring I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring my heart made finding failure in its scope As when a sick man very near to death seems dead indeed And feels begin and end the tears and takes the farewell of each friend And hears one bid the other go draw breath freely or outside Since all is o'er he saith and the blow fallen no grieving can amend While some discuss if near the other graves be room enough for this And when a day suits best for carrying the corpse away With care about the banners scarves and staves And still the man hears all and only craves he may not shame such tender love and stay Thus I had so long suffered in this quest heard failure prophesied so oft Been writ so many times among the band to wit the knights who to the dark tower search addressed their steps That just to fail as they seemed best and all the doubt was now should I be fit So quiet as despair I turned from him that hateful cripple out of his highway into the path appointed All the day had been a dreary one at best and dim was settling to its close yet shot one grim red lear to see the plane catch it to stray For mark no sooner was I fairly found pledged to the plane after a pace or two Then pausing to throw backward a last view over the safe road was gone Gray plane all round nothing but plane to the horizon's bound I might go on not else remain to do So on I went I think I never saw such starved ignoble nature Nothing throw for flowers as well expect a cedar grove But cockle spurge according to their law might propagate their kind with none to awe you'd think A burr had been a treasure trove No Penury at nertness and grimace in the strange sort were the land's portion See or shut your eyes and nature peevishly it nothing skills I cannot help my case Tis the last judgment's fire must cure this place cal sign its clods and set my prisoners free If they're pushed any ragged thistle stock above its mates the head was chopped the bents were jealous elves What made those holes and rents and the docks harsh swath leaves bruised as to balk all hope of greenness Tis a brute must walk patching their life out with a brute's intense As for the grass it grew as scant as hair in leprosy Thin dry blades pricked the mud which underneath looked kneaded up with blood One stiff blind horse his every bonus stare stood stupefied however he came there Thrust out past service from the devil's stud Alive he might be dead for ought I know with that red gaunt and callop neck a strain And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe I never saw a brute I hated so he must be wicked to deserve such pain I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart As a man calls for wine before he fights I asked one draught of earlier happier sights Air fitly I could hope to play my part Think first fight afterwards the soldier's art One taste of the old time sets all to rights Not it I fancied cuthbert's reddening face beneath its garniture of curly gold Dear fellow till I almost felt him fold an arm in mine to fix me to the place the way he used Alas one night's disgrace out went my heart's new fire and left it cold Giles then the soul of honor There he stands frank as ten years ago when nighted first What honest man should dare he said he durst Good but the scene shifts foul what hangman hands pinned to his breast apartment His own bands read it poor traitor spit upon and cursed Better this present than a past like that back therefore to my darkening path again No sound no sight as far as I could strain Will the night send a howlet of a bat I asked when something on the dismal flat came to arrest my thoughts and change their train A sudden little river crossed my path as unexpected as a serpent comes No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms this as it froth by Might have been a bath for the fiend's glowing hoof To see the wrath of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spews So petty yet so spiteful all along low scrubby alders kneel down over it Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit of mute despair A suicidal throng the river which had done them all the wrong whatever that was rolled by Deterred no wit Which while I forded good saints how I fear to set my foot upon a dead man's cheek each step Or feel the spear I thrust to seek for hollows tangled in his hair or beard It may have been a water rat I speared but uh it sounded like a baby's shriek Glad was I when I reached the other bank now for a better country Vane presage who were the strugglers what war did they wage who savage trample thus could pad the dank soil to a plash toads in a poisoned tank or wild cats in a red hot iron cage The fight must so have seemed in that fell-circ what penned them there with all the plain to choose No footprint leading to that horrid muse none out of it Mad bruise set to work their brains no doubt Like galley slaves the Turk pits for his pastime Christians against Jews And more than that a furlong on why there What bad use was that engine for that wheel or brake not wheel that harrow fit to real men's bodies out like silk With all the air of Toffett's tool on earth left unaware Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel Then came a bit of stubbed ground once a wood Next a marsh it would seem and now mere earth desperate and done with So a fool finds mirth makes a thing and then marrs it till his mood changes and off he goes Within a rude bog clay and rubble sand and stark black dirt Now blotches wrangling colored gay and grim Now patches were some leanness of the soils broke into moss or substances like thus Then came some palsied oak a cleft in him like a distorted mouth that splits its rim gaping at death And dies while it recoils And just as far as ever from the end Not in the distance but the evening not to point my footstep further At the thought a great black bird a polyons bosom friend Sailed past nor beat his wide wing dragon pen that brushed my cap per chance the guide i sought For looking up aware i somehow grew spite of the dusk the plane had given place all round to mountains With such name to grace mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view How thus they had surprised me solve it you how to get from them was no clearer case Yet half i seemed to recognize some trick of mischief happened to me god knows when In a bad perhaps here ended then progress this way When in the very nick of giving up one time more came a click as when a trap shuts You're inside the den Burningly it came on me all at once. This was the place those two hills on the right Couched like two bulls locked horn and horn in fight while to the left a tall scalped mountain Dunce dotted a dozing at the very nonce after a life spent training for the site What in the midst lay but the tower itself The round squat turret blind as the fool's heart Built of brown stone without a counterpart in the whole world The tempest smocking elf points to the shipment thus the unseen shelf he strikes on only when the timbers start Not see because of night perhaps Why day came back again for that before it left the dying sunset kindled through a cleft The hills like giants at a hunting lay chin upon hand to see the game at bay Now stab and end the creature to the heft Not here when noise was everywhere It told increasing like a bell Names in my ears of all the lost adventurers my peers How such a one was strong and such was bold And such was fortunate Yet each of old lost lost One moment knelt the woe of years There they stood ranged along the hillsides Met to view the last of me a living frame for one more picture In a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all And yet dauntless the slug horn to my lips I set And blue child Roland to the dark tower came End of poem this recording is in the public domain The deserted village by Oliver Goldsmith Read for LibriVox.org by Algie Pug Dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds Dear sir, I can have no expectations in an address of this kind Either to add to your reputation or to establish my own You can gain nothing from my admiration as I am ignorant of that art In which you are said to excel And I may lose much by the severity of your judgment As few have adjust the taste in poetry than you Setting interest therefore aside to which I never paid much attention I must be indulged at present in following my affections The only dedication I ever made was to my brother Because I loved him better than most other men He is since dead Permit me to inscribe this poem to you How far you may be pleased with the versification and mere mechanical parts of this attempt I don't pretend to inquire But I know you will object And indeed several of our best and wisest friends concur in the opinion That the depopulation it deplores is nowhere to be seen And the disorders it laments are only to be found in a poet's own imagination To this I can scarce make any other answer Than that I sincerely believe what I have written That I have taken all possible pains in my country excursions For these four or five years past to be certain of what I allege And that all my views and inquiries have led me to believe those miseries real Which I hear attempt to display But this is not the place to enter into an inquiry Whether the country be depopulating or not The discussion would take up much room And I should prove myself at best an indifferent politician To tie the reader with a long preface when I want his un-fatigued detention to a long poem In regretting the depopulation of the country I invade against the increase of our luxuries And here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me For twenty or thirty years past it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages And all the wisdom of antiquity in that particular has erroneous Still however I must remain a professed ancient on that head And continue to think those luxuries prejudicial to states by which so many vices are introduced And so many kingdoms have been undone Indeed so much has been poured out of late on the other side of the question That merely for the sake of novelty and variety one would sometimes wish to be in the right I am, dear sir, your sincere friend and ardent admirer, Oliver Goldsmith The deserted village Sweet Orban, loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid And parting summers lingering blooms delayed Dear lovely boughs of innocence and ease Seats of my youth, when every sport could please How often have I loitered o'er thy green Where humble happiness endeared each scene How often have I paused on every charm The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm The never-failing brook, the busy mill The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade For talking age and whispering lovers made How often have I blessed the coming day When toil-remitting lent its turn to play And all the village-train from labour-free Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree While many a pastime circled in the shade The young contending as the old surveyed And many a gamble frolic'd o'er the ground And slates of art and feats of strength went round And still as each repeated pleasure-tired Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired The dancing pair that simply sought renown By holding out to tire each other down The swain mistrustless of his smutted face While secret laughter titted round the place The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love The matron's glance that would those looks reprove These were thy charms, sweet village Sports like these, with sweet succession Taught in toil to please These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed These were thy charms, but all these charms are fled Sweet-smiling village, loveliest of the lawn Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen And desolation saddens all thy green One only master grasped the whole domain And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain No more thy glassy brook reflects the day But choked with sedges works its weedy way Along thy glades a solitary guest The hollow-sounding-bitten guards to nest Amidst thy desert walks the lap-wing flies And ties their echoes with unverified cries Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all And the long grass o'er tops the mouldering wall And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand Far, far away thy children leave the land It all fares the land To hastening yules a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay Princes and lords may flourish or may fade A breath can make them as a breath has made But a bold peasantry their country's pride When once destroyed can never be supplied A time there was ere England's griefs began When every root of ground maintained its man For him light labours spread her wholesome store Just gave what life required, but gave no more His best companions innocence and health And his best riches ignorance of wealth But times are altered Trades unfeeling train usurp the land And dispossess the swain Along the lawn where scattered hamlets rose Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose And every want to opulence allied And every pang that folly pays to pride Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom Those calm desires that asked but little room Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene Lived in each look and brightened all the green These, far departing, seek a kind ashore And rural mirth and manners are no more Sweet Orban, parent of the blissful hour, Thy glades for lawn confess the tyrant's power Here as I take my solitary rounds Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds And many a year elapsed return to view Where, once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew Remembrance wakes with all her busy train Swells at my breast and turns the past to pain In all my wanderings round this world of care In all my griefs and God has given my share I still had hopes my latest hours to crown Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down To husband outlives taper at the close And keep the flame from wasting by repose I still had hopes for pride attends us still Amidst the swaying to show my book-learned skill Around my fire an evening grip to draw Until of all I felt and all I saw And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue Pants to the place from whence at first she flew I still had hopes my long vexations passed Here to return and die at home at last O blessed retirement friend to life's decline Retreats from care that never must be mine O happy he who crowns in shades like these A youth of labour with an age of ease Who quits a world where strong temptations try And since it is hard to combat learns to fly For him no wretches born to work and weep Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep No surly porter stands in guilty state To spurn imploring famine from negate But on he moves to meet his latter end Angels around befriending virtue's friend Bends to the grave with unperceived decay While resignation gently slips the way And all his prospects brightening to the last His heaven commences ere the world be passed Sweet was the sound went off at evening's close Up yonder hill the village murmur rose There as I passed with careless steps and slow The mingling notes came softened from below The swaying response of as the milk-maid sung The sober heard that lode to meet their young The noisy geese that gabbled o' the pool The playful children just let loose from school The watchdog's voice that bade the whispering wind And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind These all in sweet confusion sought the shade And filled each pause the nighting-gale had made But now the sounds of population fail No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread For all the bloomy flush of life is fled Or but yon widow's solitary thing That feebly bends beside the plashy spring She, wretched matron, forced in age for bread To strip the brook with mantling crests spread To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn To seek her nightly shed and weep till mourn She only left of all the harmless train The sad historian of the pince of plain Neander Copps where once the garden smiled And still where many a garden flower grows wild There were a few torn shrubs the place disclosed The village preacher's modest mansion rose A man he was to all the country dear And passing rich with forty pounds a year Remote from towns he ran his godly race Nor ere had changed nor wished to change his place And practised he to fawn or seek for power By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour For other aims his heart had learned to prize More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise His house was known to all the vagrant train He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain The long-remembered beggar was his guest Whose beard descending swept his aged breast The ruined at Spenthrift, now no longer proud Claimed kindred there and had his claims allowed The broken soldier kindly bade to stay Sat by his fire and talked the night away Wept o'er his wounds or tales of sorrow done Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won Pleased with his guests the good man learned to glow And quite forgot their vices in their woe Careless their merits or their faults to scan His pity gave ere charity began Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride And in his failings leaned to virtue's side But in his duty prompted every call He watched and wept he prayed and felt for all And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds and led the way Beside the bed where parting life was laid And sorrow, guilt, and pain By turns dismayed the reverend champion stood At his control despair and anguish fled the struggling soul Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise And his last faltering accents whispered praise At church with meek and unaffected grace His looks adorned the venerable place Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway And fools who came to scoff remained to pray The service passed around the pious man With steady zeal each honest rustic ran Even children followed with endearing wile And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile His ready smile appearance warmth expressed Their welfare pleased him and their cares distressed To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form Swells from the veil and midway leaves the storm There round its breast the rolling clouds have spread Eternal sunshine settles on its head Beside Yon straggling fence that skirts the way With blossomed furs unprofitably gay There in his noisy mansion skilled to rule The village master taught his little school A man severe he was and stern to view I knew him well, and every truant knew Well had the boating tremblers learned To trace the day's disasters in his morning face For well they laughed with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he For well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned Yet he was kind, or if severe in ought The love he brought to learning was in fault The village all declared how much he knew While certain he could write and cipher too Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage And in the story ran that he could gauge In arguing too the parson to earn his skill And in though vanquished he could argue still While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed that gazing rustics ranged around And still they gazed and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew But past is all his fame The very spot where many a time he triumphed is forgot Neanderthorn that lifts its head on high Where once the signpost caught the passing eye Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired Where graybeard mirth and smiling toil retired Where village statesmen talked with looks profound And knew as much older than their ale went round Imagination fondly stooped to trace The parlour splendours of that festive place The white-washed wall, the nicely sanded floor The varnished clock that clicked behind the door The chest-contrived double debt to pay A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day The pictures placed for ornament and use The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose The heath, except when winter chilled the day With aspen bowels and flowers and fennel-gay While broken teacups wisely kept for show Ranged all the chimney glistened in a row Vane transitory splendours could not all reprieve The tottering mansion from its fall Obscure its sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour's importance to the poor man's heart Thither no more the peasant shall repair To sweet oblivion of his daily care No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail No more the smith his dusky brown shall clear Relax his ponderous strength and lean to hear The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see that mantling bliss go round Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest Yes, let the rich deride, the proud disdain These simple blessings of the lowly train To me more dear, congenial to my heart One native charm than all the gloss of art Spontaneous joys where nature has its play The soul adopts and owns their first-born sway Lightly they frolic awe the vacant mind Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade With all the freaks of wanton-wealth arrayed In these air trifles half their wish obtain The toiling pleasure sickenes into pain And in, while fashion's brightest arts decoy The heart distrusting asks if this be joy He friends to truth, he statesmen Who survey the rich man's joys increase The poor's decay, it is yours to judge How, why the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted awe And shouting folly hails them from her shore Hordes in beyond the miser's wish abound And rich men flock from all the world around Yet count our gains, this wealth is but a name That leaves our useful products still the same Not so the loss, the man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supply Space for his lake, his parks extended bounds Space for his horses, equipage and hounds The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth His seat, where solitary sports is seen Indignates burns the cottage from the green Around the world each needful product flies For all the luxuries the world supplies While thus the land adorned for pleasure All in barren splendour feebly waits the fall As some fair female, unadorned and plain Secure to please, while youth confirms her reign Slides every borrowed charm that dress supplies Nor she is without the triumph of her eyes But when those charms are past Her charms are frail When time advances and when lovers fail She then shines forth, solicitous to bless In all the glaring impotence of dress Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed But verging to decline its splendours rise Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise While scourged by famine from the smilting land The mournful peasant leads his humble band And while he sinks without one arm to save The country blooms a garden and a grave Where then are, where shall poverty reside To escape the pressure of continuous pride If to some common fence-less limits strayed He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade Those fence-less fields, the sons of wealth divide And in the bare-worn common is denied If to the city sped, what waits him there? To see profusion that he must not share To see ten thousand baneful arts Combined to pamper luxury and thin mankind To see those joys the sons of pleasure know Extorted from his fellow creatures' woe Here, while a courtier glitters in brocade There the pale artist plies the sickly trade Here, while a proud their long-drawn pumps display There the black jibbit glooms beside the way The dome where pleasure holds her midnight rain Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare Sure, scenes like this know troubles ere annoy Sure, these denote one universal joy Are these thy serious thoughts? Ah, turn thine eyes, the way the poor, houseless, shivering, female lies She once, perhaps, in village plenty blessed Has wept at tales of innocence distressed Her modest looks, the cottage-mighted dawn Sweet as a primrose peeps beneath the thorn Now lost to all, her friends, her virtue fled Near her betrayer's door she lays her head And pinched with cold and shrinking criminal shower With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel and robes of country brown Do thine, sweet Orban, thine the loveliest train Do thy fair tribes participate her pain? In now, perhaps by cold and hunger led, At proud men's doors they ask a little bread Ah, no! to distant climes, a dreary scene Where half the convict's world intrudes between Through torrid tracks with fainting steps they go Well, wild Altama murmurs to their woe Far different there from all that charm and before The various terrors of that horrid shore Those blazing suns that darted downward ray And fiercely shed intolerable day Those matted woods where birds forget to sing But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling Those poisonous fields with ranked luxuriance crown Where the dark scorpion gathers death around Where at each step the stranger fears to wake The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey And savage men more murderous still than they While often whirls the mad tornado flies Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies Far different there from every former scene The cooling brook, the grassy vested green The breezy covert of the warbling grove That only sheltered thefts of harmless love Good heaven, what sorrows gloomed that parting day That called them from their native walks away When the poor exiles, every pleasure past Hung round their bowers and fondly looked their last And took a long farewell and wished in vain For seats like these beyond the western main And shuddering still to face the distant deep Returned and wept and still returned to weep The good old sire, the first prepared to go To newfound worlds and wept for others' woe But for himself, in conscious virtue brave, He only wished for worlds beyond the grave His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears The fond companion of his helpless years Silent went next, neglectful of her charms And left the lovers for her father's arms With louder planks the mother spoke her woes And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear And clasped them close in sorrow doubly dear Whilst her font husband strobe to lend relief In all the silent manliness of grief O luxury, thou cursed by heaven's decree How ill-exjainter things like these for thee How do thy potions with insidious joy Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy Kingdoms by thee to sickly greatness grown Boast of a florid vigor, not their own At every draught more large and large they grow A bloated mess of rank unwieldy woe Till sap their strength, and every part unsound Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round In now the devastation is begun And half the business of destruction done In now, me thinks, as pondering here I stand I see the rural virtues leave the land Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail That idly waiting flaps with every gale Down would they move a melancholy band Pass from the shore and darken all the strand Contented toil and hospitable care And kind, conubial tenderness are there And piety with wishes placed above And steady loyalty and faithful love And thou, sweet poetry, thou loveliest made Still first to fly where sensual joys invade Unfit in these degenerate times of shame To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried My shaming crowds, my solitary pride Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe Thou foundst me poor at first, and keepst me so Thou guide by which the noble arts excel Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well Farewell, and oh, where thy voice be tried On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarka's side Whether where equinoctial fervours glow Or winter wraps the polar world in snow Still let thy voice prevailing over time Redress the vigours of the inclement climb Aid's slighted truth, with thy persuasive strain Teach earring man to spurn the rage of gain Teach him that states of native strength possessed Though very poor, may still be very blessed The trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away While self-dependent power can time defy As rocks resist the billows and the sky End of Poem This recording is in the public domain The Execution of Montrose by William Edmund Stone A. Tune Read for Librebox.org by Tricia G. Toronto, Ontario January 2011 Note James Graham Marquis of Montrose was executed in Edinburgh, May 21, 1650 for an attempt to overthrow the Commonwealth and restore Charles II. Come hither, Evan Cameron! Come stand behind my knee! I hear the river roaring down toward the wintery sea There's shouting on the mountain side There's war within the blast Old faces look upon me Old forms go trooping past I hear the peabrock wailing Amidst the din of fight And my dim spirit wakes again Upon the verge of night Twas I that led the Highland host Through wild Lockabur's snows What time the platted clans came down To battle with Montrose I've told thee how the Southerlands fell Beneath the broad claymore And how we smote the Campbell clan By Inverlocky's shore I've told thee how we swept Dundee And tamed the Lindsay's pride But never have I told thee yet How the great Marquis died A traitor sold him to his foes O deed of deathless shame I charge thee, boy, if ere thou meet With one of Assen's name Be it upon the mountain side Or yet within the Glen Stand he in martial gear alone Or backed by armoured men Face him as thou would face the man Who wrung thy sire's renown Remember of what blood thou art And strike the Catef down They brought him to the Watergate Hard bound with hemp and span As though they held a lion there And not a fenceless man They set him high upon a cart The hangman rode below They drew his hands behind his back And bared his noble brow Then, as a hound is slipped from leash They cheered the common throng And blew the note with yell and shout And bait him pass along It would have made a brave man's heart Grow sad and sick that day To watch the keen malignant eyes Bent down on that array There stood the wig west country lords In balcony and bow There sat their gaunt and withered dames And their daughters all a-row And every open window was full As full might be With black-robed covenanting carls That goodly sport to see But when he came, though pale and wan He looked so great and high So noble was his manly front So calm his steadfast eye The rabble rout forbore to shout And each man held his breath For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept And some that came to scoff at him Now turned aside and wept But onward, always onward In silence and in gloom The dreary pageant labored Till it reached the house of doom Then first a woman's voice was heard In jeer and laughter loud And an angry cry and a hiss arose From the heart of the tossing crowd Then as the grim looked upward He saw the ugly smile Of him who sold his king for gold The master fiend Argyle The marquee gazed a moment And nothing did he say But the cheek of Argyle grew ghastly pale And he turned his eyes away The painted harlot by his side She shook through every limb For a roar like thunder swept the street And hands were clenched at him And a Saxon soldier cried aloud Back cowered from my place For seven long years Thou hast not dared to look him in the face Had I been there with sword in hand And fifty Camerons by That day through high Dunedin's streets Had peeled the slogan cry Not all their troops of trampling horse Nor might of maled men Not all the rebels in the south Had borne us backward then Once more his foot on Highland Heath Had trod as free as air Or I and all who bore my name Been laid around him there It might not be They placed him next within the solemn hall Where once the Scottish kings were thrown Amidst their nobles all But there was dust of vulgar feet On that polluted floor And perjured traitors filled the place Where good men sate before With savage glee came Wareston To read the murderous doom And then up rose the great mantros In the middle of the room Now by my faith as belted night And by the name I bear And by the bright St Andrew's cross That waves above us there Ye by a greater mightier oath And oh that such should be By that dark stream of royal blood That lies twixed you and me I have not sought in battlefield A wreath of such renown Nor dared I hope on my dying day To win the martyr's crown There is a chamber far away Where sleep the good and brave But a better place ye have named for me Than by my father's grave For truth and right Against treason's might This hand has always striven And ye raise it up for a witness still In the eye of earth and heaven Then nail my head on yonder tower Give every town a limb And God who made shall gather them I go from you to him The morning dawned full darkly The rain came flashing down And the jagged streak of the leaven bolt Lit up the gloomy town The thunder crashed across the heaven The fatal hour was calm Yet I broke in with muffled beat The lairum of the drum There was madness on the earth below And anger in the sky And young and old and rich and poor Came forth to see him die Ah, God, that ghastly gibbet! How dismal it is to see The great tall spectral skeleton The ladder and the tree Hark, hark, it is the clash of arms The bells begin to toll He is coming, he is coming God's mercy on his soul One last long peel of thunder The clouds are cleared away And the glorious sun once more looks down Amidst the dazzling day He is coming, he is coming Like a bridegroom from his room Came the hero from his prison To the scaffold and the doom There was glory on his forehead There was luster in his eye And he never walked to battle More proudly than to die There was color in his visage Though the cheeks of all were wan And they marveled as they saw him pass That great and goodly man He mounted up the scaffold And he turned him to the crowd But they dared not trust the people So he might not speak aloud But he looked upon the heavens And they were clear and blue And in the liquid ether The eye of God shone through Yet a black and murky battlement Lay resting on the hill As though the thunder slept within All else was calm and still The grim Geneva ministers With anxious scowl drew near As you have seen the ravens flock Around the dying deer He would not deign them word or sign But alone he bent the knee And veiled his face for Christ's dear grace Beneath the gallows tree Then radiant and serene he rose And cast his cloak away For he had taken his last look Of earth and sun and day A beam of light fell o'er him Like a glory round the shriven And he climbed the lofty ladder As it were the path to heaven Then came a flash from out the cloud And a stunning thunder roll And no man dared to look aloft Fear was on every soul There was another heavy sound A hush and then a groan And darkness swept across the sky The work of death was done End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Fall of Hyperion A Dream By John Keats Read for LibriVox.org By Katie Riley May 2010 The Fall of Hyperion Canto 1 Fanatics have their dreams Wherewith they weave A paradise for a sect The savage too Fromforth the loftiest fashion of his sleep Gesses at heaven Pity these have not Tressed upon vellum or wild Indian leaf The shadows of melodious utterance But bear of laurel they live, dream, and die For Posey alone can tell her dreams With a fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment Who alive can say Thou art no poet Mayest not tell thy dreams Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions and would speak If he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse Be poets or fanatics Will be known When this warm scribe My hand is in the grave Methought I stood were trees of every climb Palm, myrtle, oak, and sycamore, and beech With plantain and spice blossoms made a screen In neighborhood of fountains by the noise Soft showering in my ears and by the touch Of scent not far from roses Turning round I saw an arbor with a drooping roof Of trellis vines and bells and larger blooms Like floral sensors swinging light in air Before its wreath doorway on a mound of moss Was spread a feast of summer fruits Which, never seen, seemed refuse of a meal By angel-tasted or our mother eve For empty shells were scattered on the grass And grape stalks but half bare And remnants more sweet-smelling Whose pure kinds I could not know Still was more plenty than the fabled horn Thrice emptied could pour forth at banqueting For prosopine returned to her own fields Where the white heifers low And appetite more yearning than on earth I ever felt Growing within I ate deliciously And after not long thirsted for thereby Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice Sipped by the wondered bee which I took And pledging all the mortals of the world And all the dead whose names are in our lips drank That full-draught is parent of my theme No Asian poppy nor elixir fine Of the soon-fading, jealous caliphate No poison-gendered in close, monkish cell To thin the scarlet conclave of old men Could so have wrapped unwilling life away Among the fragrant husks and berries crushed Upon the grass I struggled hard against The domineering potion But in vain The cloudy swoon came on and down I sunk Like a selenus on an antique vase How long I slumbered to the chance to gas When sense of life returned I started up As if with wings, but the fair trees were gone The mossy mound and arbor were no more I looked around upon the carved sides Of an old sanctuary with roof august Built it so high it seemed that filmed clowns Might spread beneath as were the stars of heaven So old the place was I remembered none The like upon the earth would I had seen Of gray cathedrals, buttressed walls, rent towers The superannutations of sunk realms Or nature's rocks, toiled hard in waves and winds Seemed but the falcher of decrepit things To that eternal doomed monument Upon the marble at my feet there lay Store of strange vessels and large draperies Which needs had been of died asbestos wove Or in that place the moth could not corrupt So white the linen, so in some distinct Ran imageries from a somber loom All in a mingled heap confused their lay Robes, golden tongs, censor and chafing dish Girdles and chains, and holy jewellries Turning from these with awe once more I raised My eyes to fathom the space every way The embossed roof, the silent massy range Of columns north and south, ending in mist of nothing Then to eastward where black gates Were shut against the sunrise evermore Then to the west I looked and saw far off An image, huge a feature as a cloud At level of whose feet an altar slept To be approached on either side by steps And marble ballast dredd and patient travail To count with toil the innumerable degrees Towards the altar sober pace I went Repressing haste as too unholy there And coming nearer saw beside the shrine One ministering and there arose a flame When in mid-May the sickening east wind Shifts sudden to the south the small warm rain Melt out the frozen incense from all flowers And fills the air with so much pleasant health That even the dying man forgets his shroud Even so that lofty sacrificial fire Sending forth Mayan incense spread around Forgetfulness of everything but bliss And clouded all the altar with soft smoke From whose weight fragrant curtains thus I heard Language pronounced If thou canst not ascend these steps Die on that marble where thou art Thy flesh, near cousin to the common dust Will perch for lack of nutriment thy bones Will wither in few years and vanish so That not the quickest eye could find a grain Of what thou now art on that pavement coals The sands of thy short life are spent this hour And no hand in the universe can turn Thy hourglass if these gummed leaves be burnt ere thou canst mount up these immortal steps I heard, I looked, two senses both at once So fine, so subtle Felt the tyranny of that fierce threat And the hard task proposed Preditious seemed the toil, the leaves were yet Burning when suddenly appalsied chill Struck from the paved level up my limbs And was ascending quick to put cold grasp Upon those streams that pulsed beside the throat I shrieked, in the sharp anguish of my shriek Stung my own ears, I strove hard to escape the numbness Strove to gain the lowest step Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace The cold grew stifling, suffocating at the heart And when I clasped my hands I felt them not One minute before death My iced foot touched the lowest stair And as it touched life seemed to pour in at the toes I mounted up as once fair angels on a ladder flew From the green turf to heaven Holy power! cried I, approaching near the horned shrine What am I that should so be saved from death? What am I that another death come not To choke my utterance sacrilegious here? Then said the veiled shadow Thou hast felt what is to die and live again Before thy fated hour That thou hast power to do so is thy own safety Thou hast dated on thy doom High prophetess, said I Purge off, benign, if so it pleas thee My mind's film None can you serp this height Returned that shade But those to whom the mysteries of the world are misery And will not let them rest All else who find a haven in the world Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days If by a chance into this fame they come Rot on the pavement where thou rottedest half Are there not thousands in the world? Said I, encouraged by the soothed voice of the shade Who love their fellows even to the death Who feel the giant agony of the world And more, like slaves to poor humanity Labor for mortal good I sure should see other men here But I am here alone Those whom thou speckest of are no visionaries Rejoined that voice They are no dreamers weak They seek no wonder but the human face No music but a happy noted voice They come not here They have no thought to come And thou art here For thou art less than they What benefit canst thou do Or all thy tribe to the great world Thou art a dreaming thing A fever of thyself think of the earth What bliss even in hope is there for thee What haven? Every creature hath its home Every soul man hath days of joy and pain Whether his labours be sublime or low The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct Only the dreamer venoms all his days Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve Therefore that happiness be somewhat shared Such things as thou art admitted oft Into like gardens thou dist past erewhile And suffered in these temples For that cause thou standest safe beneath the statue's knees That I am favoured for unworthiness By such propitious partly medicines In sickness not ignoble I rejoice I could weep for love of such award So answered I continuing If it please majestic shadow Tell me, sure not all Those melodies sung into the world dear Are useless Sure a poet is a sage A humanist Physician to all men That I am none I feel as vultures feel They are no birds when eagles are abroad What am I then, thou spakest of my tribe What tribe The tall shade veiled in drooping white Then spake, so much more earnest That the breath moved the thin linen folds That drooping hung about a golden censor From the hands pendent Art thou not of the dreamer tribe The poets in the dreamer are distinct Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes The one pours out a bomb upon the world The other vexes it Then shouted I, spite of myself, And with a pietyous spleen Apollo, fated, oh far-flown Apollo Where is thy misty pestilence to creep Into the dwellings Through the door crannies Of all mocklerists, large self-worshippers And careless hectares in proud bad verse Though I breathe death with them it will be life To see them sprawl before me into graves Majestic shadow, tell me where I am Whose altar this, for whom this incense curls What image this whose face I cannot see For the broad marble knees and who art thou Of accent feminine, so courteous Then the tall shade in drooping linen veiled Spoke out, so much more earnest, that her breath Stirred the thin folds of gauze that drooping hung About a golden censor from her hand pendent And by her voice I knew she shed long treasured tears This temple, sad and lone, is all spared From the thunder of a war Foughten long since by giant hierarchy Against rebellion, this old image here Whose carved features wrinkled as he fell Is Saturn's eye monitor Left supreme sole priestess of this desolation I had no words to answer for my tongue useless Could find about his roofed home no syllable Of a fit majesty to make rejoinder to monitor's mourn There was a silence while the altar's blaze Was fainting for sweet food I looked thereon and on the paved floor Where nigh were piled, feckets of cinnamon and many heaps Of other crisp spice wood then again I looked upon the altar and its horns Whitened with ashes and its languorous flame And then upon the offerings again And so by turns till sad monitor cried The sacrifice is done, but not the less Will I be kind to thee for thy good will My power which to me is still a curse Shall be to thee a wonder For the scenes still swooning vivid through my globed brain With an electoral changing misery Thou shalt with those dull mortal eyes Behold, free from all pain, if wonder painly not As near as an immortal's feared words Could to a mother's soften were these last And yet I had a terror of her robes And chiefly of the veils That from her brow hung pale And curtained her in mysteries That made my heart too small to hold its blood This saw that goddess, and with sacred hand, parted the veils Then I saw a wan face Not pined by human sorrows But bright blanched by an immortal sickness Which kills not It works a constant change Which happy death can put no end to Deathwards progressing To no death was that visage It had passed the lily and the snow And beyond these I must not think now Though I saw that face But for her eyes I should have fled away They held me back with a benign and light Soft mitigated by divine slids Half closed and visionless entire they seemed Of all external things They saw me not But in blank splendor beamed like the mild moon Who comforts those she sees not Who knows not what eyes are upward cast As I had found a grain of gold upon a mountain side And twinge with avarice strained out my eyes To search its sullen entrails rich with oar So at the view of sad monitor's brow I ache to see what things the hollow brain Behind and wombed What high tragedy in the dark secret chambers of her skull Was acting that could give so dread a stress To her cold lips and with such a light Her planetary eyes and touch her voice With such a sorrow Shade of memory cried I With act adornant at her feet By all the gloom hung round I fell in house By this last temple, by the golden age By great Apollo thy dear foster child And by thyself, forlorn divinity The pale omega of a withered race Let me behold, according as thou saidst What in thy brain so for ments to and fro No sooner had this conjuration passed My devout lips than side by side we stood Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine Deep in the shady sadness of a veil Far sunken from the healthy breath of mourn Far from the fiery noon and eaves one star Onward I looked beneath the gloomy bowels And saw what first I thought an image huge Like two the image pedestal'd so high In Saturn's temple Then monitor's voice came brief upon my near So Saturn sat when he had lost his realm Whereon there grew a power within me Of enormous ken to see as a god sees And take the depth of things as nimbly As the outward eye can size and shape pervade The lofty theme, at those few words Hung vast before my mind with half unraveled web I set myself upon an eagle's watch That I might see and seeing near forget No stir of life was in this shrouded veil Not so much air as in the zoning of a summer's day Rom's not one light seed from the feathered grass But with a deadly fell there did it rest A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more By reason of the fallen divinity Spreading more shade the niad mid her reeds Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips Along the margin sand large foot marks went No farther than to where old Saturn's feet Had rested and there slept, how long asleep Degraded cold upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nervous, listless, dead Unceptored, and his realmless eyes were closed While his bowed head seemed listening to the earth His ancient mother, for some comfort yet It seemed no force could wake him from his place But there came one, who with a kindred hand Touched his wide shoulders after bending low With reverence, though to one who knew it's not Then came the grieved voice of Nemesine And grieved I harkened That divinity whom thou sawest stabbed From yon forlornst wood And with slow pace approach our fallen king Is Thea, softest natured of our brood I marked the goddess in fair statuary Surpassing when moneta by the head And in her sorrows nearer woman's tears There was a listening fear in her regard As if calamity had but begun As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice and the sullen rear Was with it stored thunder laboring up One hand she pressed upon the aching spot Where beats the human heart as if just there Though an immortal she felt cruel pain The other upon Saturn's bended neck she laid And to the level of his hollow ear Leaning with parted lips some were she spake In solemn tenor and deep organ tune Some mourning words which in our feeble tongue Would come in this like accenting How frail to that large utterance of the early gods Saturn, look up and for what, poor lost king? I have no comfort for thee, no not one I cannot cry, wherefore thou sleepest thou? For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth knows thee not So afflicted for a god, and ocean too, with all its solemn noise As from thy scepter past and all the air Is emptied of thine hoary majesty Thy thunder capitches at the new command Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands Scorches and burns are one serene domain With such remorseless speed still come new woes That unbelief has not a space to breathe Saturn, sleep on Me thoughtless, why should I thus violate thy slumber solitude? Why should I open thy melancholy eyes? Saturn, sleep on While at thy feet I weep As when upon a tranced summer night Forests, branched charmed by the earnest stars Dream, and so dream all night without a noise Save from one gradual solitary gust Swelling upon the silence, dying off As if the ebbing air had but one wave So came these words, and went The while in tears She pressed her fair large forehead to the earth Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet Long, long those two were postured motionless Like sculpture built it up upon the grave Of their own power A long awful time I looked upon them Still they were the same The frozen god still bending to the earth And the sad goddess weeping at his feet Monetous silent Without stay or prop But my own weak mortality I bore The load of this eternal quietude The unchanging gloom And the three fixed shapes Pondrous upon my senses A whole moon For by my burning brain I measured shore Her silver seasons shedded on the night And every day by day Me thought I grew More gaunt and ghostly Oftentimes I prayed Intense That death would take me from the veil And all its burdens gasping with despair Of change, hour after hour I cursed myself Until old Saturn raised his faded eyes And looked around and saw his kingdom gone And all the gloom and sorrow of the place And that fair kneeling goddess at his feet As the moist scent of flowers and grass and leaves Fills forest dells with a pervading air Known to the woodland nostril So the words of Saturn filled the mossy glooms around Even to the hollows of time-eaten oaks And to the windings of the fox's hole With sad low tones while thus he spake And sent strange musings to the solitary pan Moan, brethren moan, for we are swallowed up And buried from all godlike exercise Of influence benign on planet's pale And peaceful sway above man's harvesting And all those acts which deity supreme Doth ease its heart of love in Moan and wail, moan, brethren moan For low the rebels fares spin round The stars their ancient courses keep Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon Still buds the tree and still the seashore's murmur There is no death in all the universe No smell of death there shall be death Moan, moan, moan Sabley, moan, for thy pernicious babes Have changed a god into a shaking palsy Moan, brethren moan, for I have no strength left Weak as the reed, weak feeble as my voice Oh, oh, the pain, the pain of feebleness Moan, moan, for still I thaw or give me help Throw down those imps and give me victory Let me hear other groans and trumpets blown Of triumph calm and hymns of festival From the gold peaks of heaven's high piled clouds Voices of soft proclaim and silver stir Of strings and hollow shells and let there be beautiful things Made new for the surprise of the sky children So he feebly ceased with such a poor and sickly sounding pause Me thought I heard some old man of the earth bewailing earthly laws Nor could my eyes and ears act with that pleasant unison of sense Which marries sweet sound with a grace of form And dollars accents from a tragic harp With large limb divisions, more I scrutinized Still fixed he sat beneath the sable trees Whose arms spread straggling in wild serpent forms With leaves all hushed, his awful presence there Now all was silent Gave a deadly lie to what I airwile heard only his lips Trembled amid the white curls of his beard They told the truth, though around the snowy locks Hung nobly as upon the face of heaven A midday fleece of clouds Thea arose and stretched her white arm through the hullor dark Pointing some wither, whereas he too rose Like a vast giant seen by men at sea To grow pale from the waves and dull midnight They melted from my sight into the woods Air I could turn, monitor cried These twain are speeding to the families of grief Where, roofed in by black rocks, they waste in pain And darkness for no hope And she's begone, as ye may read, who can unwearyed pass Onward from the antechamber of the stream Where, even at the open doors a while, I must delay And glean my memory of her high phrase Perhaps no further dare Canto 2 Mortal, that thou mayst understand a rite I humanize my sayings to thine ear Making comparisons of earthly things Or thou mightest better listen to the wind Whose language is to the aberrant noise Though it blows legend laden through the trees In melancholy realms big tears are shed More sorrow like to this And such like woe Too huge for mortal tongue Or pen of scribe The titans fierce, self-hit or prison-bound Grown for the old allegiance once more Listening in their doom for Saturn's voice But one of our whole eagle brood still keeps His sovereignty and rule and majesty Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire Still sits, still snuffs the incense teaming up From man to the sun's god, yet unsecure For as upon the earth dire prodigies Fright and perplex So also shutters he Nor at dog's howl or gloom birds even screech Or the familiar visitings of one Upon the first toll of his passing bell But horrors, portion to a giant's nerve Make great Hyperion ache His palace bright, bastioned with pyramids of glowing gold And touched with shade of bronzed obelisks Glare's a blood red through all the thousand courts Arches and domes and fiery galleries And all its curtains of aurorian clowns Flush angrily, when he would taste the reeds Of incense breathed aloft from sacred hills Instead of sweets his ample palette takes Savor of poisonous brass and metal sick Wherefore, when harbored in the sleepy west After the full completion of fair day For rest divine upon exalted couch And slumber in the arms of melody He paces through the pleasant hours of ease With strides colossal, on from hall to hall While far within each aisle and deep recess His winged millions in close clusters stand Amazed and full of fear, like anxious men Who on a wide plain gather in sand troops When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers Even now, while Saturn rouse from icy trance Goes step for step with Thea, from yon woods Hyperion, leaving twilight in the rear Is sloping to the threshold of the west Thither we tend Now in clear light I stood, relieved from the dusk veil Nimasini was sitting on a square edged polished stone That in its lucid depth reflected pure her priestess garments My quick eyes ran on from stately nave to nave From vault to vault Through bowers of fragrant and enraised light And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades Anon rushed by the bright Hyperion His flaming robes streamed out beyond his heels And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire That scared away the meek ethereal hours And made their dove wings tremble On, he flared End of poem