The Ballad of Reading Gaol

RAVENNA

POEMS

HÉLAS!

To drift with every passion till my soul

Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play ,

Is it for this that I have given away

Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control ?

Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll

Scrawled over on some boyish holiday

With idle songs for pipe and virelay ,

Which do but mar the secret of the whole .

Surely there was a time I might have trod

The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance

Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God :

Is that time dead ? lo ! with a little rod

I did but touch the honey of romance —

And must I lose a soul’s inheritance ?

ELEUTHERIA

SONNET TO LIBERTY

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes

See nothing save their own unlovely woe,

Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,—

But that the roar of thy Democracies,

Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,

Mirror my wildest passions like the sea

And give my rage a brother—!  Liberty!

For this sake only do thy dissonant cries

Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings

By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades

Rob nations of their rights inviolate

And I remain unmoved—and yet, and yet,

These Christs that die upon the barricades,

God knows it I am with them, in some things.

AVE IMPERATRIX

Set in this stormy Northern sea,

   Queen of these restless fields of tide,

England! what shall men say of thee,

   Before whose feet the worlds divide?

The earth, a brittle globe of glass,

   Lies in the hollow of thy hand,

And through its heart of crystal pass,

   Like shadows through a twilight land,

The spears of crimson-suited war,

   The long white-crested waves of fight,

And all the deadly fires which are

   The torches of the lords of Night.

The yellow leopards, strained and lean,

   The treacherous Russian knows so well,

With gaping blackened jaws are seen

   Leap through the hail of screaming shell.

The strong sea-lion of England’s wars

   Hath left his sapphire cave of sea,

To battle with the storm that mars

   The stars of England’s chivalry.

The brazen-throated clarion blows

   Across the Pathan’s reedy fen,

And the high steeps of Indian snows

   Shake to the tread of armèd men.

And many an Afghan chief, who lies

   Beneath his cool pomegranate-trees,

Clutches his sword in fierce surmise

   When on the mountain-side he sees

The fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes

   To tell how he hath heard afar

The measured roll of English drums

   Beat at the gates of Kandahar.

For southern wind and east wind meet

   Where, girt and crowned by sword and fire,

England with bare and bloody feet

   Climbs the steep road of wide empire.

O lonely Himalayan height,

   Grey pillar of the Indian sky,

Where saw’st thou last in clanging flight

   Our wingèd dogs of Victory?

The almond-groves of Samarcand,

   Bokhara, where red lilies blow,

And Oxus, by whose yellow sand

   The grave white-turbaned merchants go:

And on from thence to Ispahan,

   The gilded garden of the sun,

Whence the long dusty caravan

   Brings cedar wood and vermilion;

And that dread city of Cabool

   Set at the mountain’s scarpèd feet,

Whose marble tanks are ever full

   With water for the noonday heat:

Where through the narrow straight Bazaar

   A little maid Circassian

Is led, a present from the Czar

   Unto some old and bearded khan,—

Here have our wild war-eagles flown,

   And flapped wide wings in fiery fight;

But the sad dove, that sits alone

   In England—she hath no delight.

In vain the laughing girl will lean

   To greet her love with love-lit eyes:

Down in some treacherous black ravine,

   Clutching his flag, the dead boy lies.

And many a moon and sun will see

   The lingering wistful children wait

To climb upon their father’s knee;

   And in each house made desolate

Pale women who have lost their lord

   Will kiss the relics of the slain—

Some tarnished epaulette—some sword—

   Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain.

For not in quiet English fields

   Are these, our brothers, lain to rest,

Where we might deck their broken shields

   With all the flowers the dead love best.

For some are by the Delhi walls,

   And many in the Afghan land,

And many where the Ganges falls

   Through seven mouths of shifting sand.

And some in Russian waters lie,

   And others in the seas which are

The portals to the East, or by

   The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.

O wandering graves!  O restless sleep!

   O silence of the sunless day!

O still ravine!  O stormy deep!

   Give up your prey!  Give up your prey!

And thou whose wounds are never healed,

   Whose weary race is never won,

O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield

   For every inch of ground a son?

Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head,

   Change thy glad song to song of pain;

Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,

   And will not yield them back again.

Wave and wild wind and foreign shore

   Possess the flower of English land—

Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more,

   Hands that shall never clasp thy hand.

What profit now that we have bound

   The whole round world with nets of gold,

If hidden in our heart is found

   The care that groweth never old?

What profit that our galleys ride,

   Pine-forest-like, on every main?

Ruin and wreck are at our side,

   Grim warders of the House of Pain.

Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet?

   Where is our English chivalry?

Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,

   And sobbing waves their threnody.

O loved ones lying far away,

   What word of love can dead lips send!

O wasted dust!  O senseless clay!

   Is this the end! is this the end!

Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead

   To vex their solemn slumber so;

Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head,

   Up the steep road must England go,

Yet when this fiery web is spun,

   Her watchmen shall descry from far

The young Republic like a sun

   Rise from these crimson seas of war.

TO MILTON

Milton!  I think thy spirit hath passed away

From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;

   This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours

Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,

And the age changed unto a mimic play

   Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:

   For all our pomp and pageantry and powers

We are but fit to delve the common clay,

Seeing this little isle on which we stand,

   This England, this sea-lion of the sea,

   By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,

Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land

   Which bare a triple empire in her hand

   When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

LOUIS NAPOLEON

Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings

   When far away upon a barbarous strand,

   In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,

Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!

Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,

   Or ride in state through Paris in the van

   Of thy returning legions, but instead

Thy mother France, free and republican,

Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place

   The better laurels of a soldier’s crown,

   That not dishonoured should thy soul go down

To tell the mighty Sire of thy race

That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty,

   And found it sweeter than his honied bees,

   And that the giant wave Democracy

Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.

SONNET

ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA

Christ, dost Thou live indeed? or are Thy bones

Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre?

And was Thy Rising only dreamed by her

Whose love of Thee for all her sin atones?

For here the air is horrid with men’s groans,

The priests who call upon Thy name are slain,

Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain

From those whose children lie upon the stones?

Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom

Curtains the land, and through the starless night

Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see!

If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb

Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might

Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!

QUANTUM MUTATA

There was a time in Europe long ago

   When no man died for freedom anywhere,

   But England’s lion leaping from its lair

Laid hands on the oppressor! it was so

While England could a great Republic show.

   Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care

   Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair

The Pontiff in his painted portico

Trembled before our stern ambassadors.

   How comes it then that from such high estate

   We have thus fallen, save that Luxury

With barren merchandise piles up the gate

Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by:

   Else might we still be Milton’s heritors.

LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES

Albeit nurtured in democracy,

   And liking best that state republican

   Where every man is Kinglike and no man

Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,

Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,

   Better the rule of One, whom all obey,

   Than to let clamorous demagogues betray

Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.

Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane

   Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street

   For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign

Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade,

   Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,

   Or Murder with his silent bloody feet.

THEORETIKOS

This mighty empire hath but feet of clay:

   Of all its ancient chivalry and might

   Our little island is forsaken quite:

Some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay,

And from its hills that voice hath passed away

   Which spake of Freedom: O come out of it,

   Come out of it, my Soul, thou art not fit

For this vile traffic-house, where day by day

   Wisdom and reverence are sold at mart,

   And the rude people rage with ignorant cries

Against an heritage of centuries.

   It mars my calm: wherefore in dreams of Art

   And loftiest culture I would stand apart,

Neither for God, nor for his enemies.

THE GARDEN OF EROS

It is full summer now, the heart of June;

   Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir

Upon the upland meadow where too soon

   Rich autumn time, the season’s usurer,

Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,

And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze.

Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,

   That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on

To vex the rose with jealousy, and still

   The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,

And like a strayed and wandering reveller

Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June’s messenger

The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,

   One pale narcissus loiters fearfully

Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid

   Of their own loveliness some violets lie

That will not look the gold sun in the face

For fear of too