SOME OF

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL POEMS

INSPIRED BY

THE ETERNAL MESSAGE OF GREECE

JOHN STUARD BLACKIE

1880

LAYS AND LEGENDS

INTRODUCTION

I.

Muse of old Hellas, wake again!

Thou wert not born to die –

And mingle sweet the Classic strain

With Gothic minstrelsy!

I feel a tingling in my veins,

My heart is beating strong;

Let novel-writers count their gains,

I’ll pipe my Doric song.

The wood has warblers great and small;

God scatters free; let carpers cavil.

There’s room in Helicon for all

That swell the tuneful revel.

On flaming chariot Shelly soars

Through starry realms serene;

His volleyed thunder Byron pours

With lurid flash between;

Lone in far mountains Wordsworth strolls

And hums a thoughtful lay,

As a deep river slowly rolls

Through beds of fruitful clay.

Like a fair country stretching wide

With woods on woods in leafy pride

And fields of golden grain,

And moors with purple heather glowing,

And healthful breezes bravely blowing,

Spreads Scott his vast domain.

Not with thy learned lay,

Kehama’s bard! Nor prophesy,

With deep oracular bay,

Let him who sate on Highgate hill

And taught, with mystic care,

The suckling priests who owned his skill

To syllogise their prayer.

Far from such eagle-flight be mine!

But while I feel the thrill divine,

I will not clip my wing;

The beetle, ‘neath his horny case,

Hath gauzy pinions that with grace

Uplift the creeping thing.

Though sober friends forbid the verse,

Mt old Greek rhyme I will rehearse,

Like a lone wandering bee

On a hillside, that sips sweet dew

From fragrant blooms of purple hue,

And drones low minstrelsy.

The modest lay be slow to blame,

Piped more for pleasure than for fame:

Music to harmless souls belongs,

Cold worldly hearts are scant of songs.

II.

The old Greek men, the old Greek men,

No blinking fools were they;

But with a free and broad-eyed ken

Looked forth on glorious day.

They looked on the Sun in their cloudless sky,

And they saw that his light was fair;

And they said that the round full-beaming eye

Of a blazing god was there.

They looked on the vast spread Earth, and saw

The various-fashioned forms with awe

Of green and creeping life

And said – “In every moving form

With buoyant breath and pulses warm,

In flowery crowns, and veined leaves

With organising strife.”

They looked and saw the billowy ocean,

With its boundless swell of sleepless motion,

Belting in firm earth, far and wide,

With the flow of its deep untainted tide;

And wondering viewed in its clear blue flood

A quick and scaly-glancing brood,

Sporting innumerous in the deep,

With dart, and plunge, and airy leap;

And said – “Full sure a god doth reign

King of this watery wide domain,

And rides in a car of cerulean hue

O’er bounding billows of green and blue;

And in one hand three-pronged spear

He holds, the sceptre of his fear,

And with the other shakes the reins

Of his steeds, with foamy flowing manes,

And courses o’er the brine;

And when he lifts his trident mace,

Broad Ocean crisps his placid face,

And mutters wrath divine:

The big waves rush with hissing crest,

And beat the shore with ample breast,

And shake the toppling cliff;

A wrathful god hath roused the wave,

Vain is all pilot’s skill to save,

And lo! A deep black-throated grave

Engulfs the reeling skiff.

Anon, the flood less fiercely flows,

The rifted cloud blue ether shows,

The windy buffets cease;

Poseidon chafes his heart no more,

His voice constrains the billowy roar,

And men may sail in peace.”

Thus every power that zones the sphere

With forms of beauty and of fear,

In starry sky, on grassy ground,

And in the fishful brine profound,

Were to the hoar Pelasgic men

That peopled erst each Grecian glen,

Gods, or the functions of a god.

Gods were in every sight and sound.

And every spot was hallowed ground

Where these far-wandering patriarchs trod.

In the old oak a Dryad dwelt,

The fingers of a nymph were felt

In the fine-rippled flood;

At drowsy noon, when all is still,

Faunus lay sleeping on the hill,

And strange and bright-eyed gamesome creatures

With hairy limbs and goat-like features,

Peered from the prickly wood.

Nor less within that mystic realm

Where passions swell and thoughts o’erwhelm,

Strong ruling powers divine

Were worshipped. All-controlling Jove

With clear-discerning eye did prove

Each human heart. The thoughts that move

To pity of the houseless poor,

The kindly hand that opes the door

Of refuge to a wandering wight,

Storm-battered on a starless night,

Obeyed his law benign.

And when unreined wild passion flew,

And deathful blows were given,

Dream not that he who fled from man

Escaped the sleepless eyes that scan

All sinful deeds in Heaven.

Far from the fell avenger’s tread

The pale guilt-haunted murderer fled;

O’er many a blasted heath he sped,

The dewy sky his curtain made,

No sleep might reach his eyes;

For, when he fain would rest, a crew

Of murky-mantled maids from Hell,

Snuffing his blood, his track pursue

And pierce his ears with baleful yell,

That blissful slumber flies:

Haggard he lives a little space,

No fatness rounds his eyes;

The Furies’ mark is on his face;

Grim leaders of the airy chase

Perplex his path from place to place;

Till stumbling with a blinded fall,

With never a god to hear his call,

The wasted outcast dies.

III.

Old fables these and fancies old!

But not, with hasty pride,

Let logic cold and Reason bold

Cast these old dreams aside.

Dreams are not false in all their scope;

Oft from the sleepy lair

Start giant shapes of fear and hope

That, aptly read, declare

Our deepest nature. God in dreams

Hath spoken to the wise;

And in a people’s mythic themes

A people’s wisdom lies.

O’er the brown moor some love to roam,

And with the hammer’s dint

To strike from its old chalky home

The curious-rounded flint;

Or they with brightening eye will bring,

From bed of dingy clay,

Some bony frame of a scaly thing

Unused to garish day,

Lizard or crocodile or snake,

Or mingled of the three;

Creatures of huge unwieldy make

That in primal sea

Paddled, or through the marsh did stalk

With round and staring eyes,

Before the Serpent learned to talk

With Eve in Paradise.

Others there be that love to soar

Sublime in starry realms,

’Mid seas of worlds without a shore

Where vasty space o’erwhelms

Man’s shrinking soul. From star to star

With glass in hand at leisure

They wander, and can tell how far

The blue highway doth measure

From Earth to Phoebus, and from him

To the star that wears a belt,

And to our system’s extreme rim

Where never a ray was felt

Of throbbing heat. These men can write

The Moon’s authentic history,

And from its mass, here dark, there bright,

Expound the spotted mystery;

How like an apple by the fire

It swells and cracks, and bubbles,

That no live creature can aspire

’Mid its volcanic troubles

To breathe; it hath no atmosphere

For men or salamanders,

But with obedient pale career

Through old grey Space it wanders

To lamp our Earth. I cannot say

If this be true or no;

But in a far-diverging way

My best-loved fancies go.

Man is my theme; Earth is my sphere!

The struggling fates pursuing

Of earth-born men, I would not hear

What Sun and Moon are doing.

Give me a tale of human passion,

Of oldest or of newest fashion,

Hard facts, or fictions that contain

Deep-pondered truth’s clear-running well,

Like mysteries hid from ken profane

In evangelic parable;

Hoariest oracles that linger

Round Parnassus’ rifted hollow,

Where the pale tripod-seated singer

Raved out thy mystic will, Apollo,

Ballad or song, or plaintive ditty

Chanted through the drizzly night,

Amid the hum of peopled city,

By some maimed and woe-worn wight.

Tell me how erst the Lydian king,

Whom Pelops called his father,

Was borne immortal gather

To eat ambrosia, and to quaff

The nectared cup at leisure:

There sate the king at jovial board,

With Heaven’s dark-locked high-thundering lord,

And shared Olympian jest and laugh,

And blew dull care away like chaff,

And sipped the deathless pleasure.

O Tantalus! Thou wert a man

More blessed than all, since Earth began

Its weary round to travel;

But placed in Paradise, like Eve,

Thine own damnation thou didst weave

Without help from the Devil.

Alas! I fear thy tale to tell,

Thou’rt in the deepest pool of Hell,

And shalt be there for ever.

For why? – When thou on lofty seat

Didst sit, and eat immortal meat

With Jove, the bounteous Giver,

The gods before thee loosed their tongue,

And many a mirthful ballad sung,

And all their secrets open flung

Into thy mortal ear.

And thou didst know what no man knows,

How gossip in Olympus goes

When radiant glasses circle round,

And tinkling Muses beat the ground,

And gods to music’s thrilling sound

Relax their brows severe.

Then Hermes spins his finest fibs,

And grinning Momus splits his ribs,

And Phoebus bright recounts his loves

On grassy slopes, in laurel-groves.

Thou saw’st, when awful Jove unbent

O’er cups of sparkling sheen,

And on the rounded shoulder leant

Of Juno, white-armed queen;

But she, with jealous reprobation,

Rated his partial conversation

With Thetis, not unseen;

Which, when he heard, the Olympian Sire

Gathered his brows in anger dire,

And straight was hushed the festive lyre;

No sound of joyaunce shook the hall,

Dumb fear sate on the lips of all,

And the sweet nectar turned to gall.

And thou didst see how every god

Quailed at the wrathful father’s nod;

But sooty Vulcan then,

With cup in hand and napkin white,

Tired like a waiting knave,

On that divine assembly bright

Such rare attendance gave,

And limped with such quaint grace, that they

With peals of unextinguished laughter

Shook the wide welkin’s beamy rafter;

Nor frowned again, while all were gay,

The king of gods and men.

All this, and of the heavenly place

More secrets rare were known

Of mortal men, by Jove’s high grace,

To Tantalus alone.

But witless he such grace to prize;

And with licentious babble,

He blazed the secrets of the skies

Through all the human rabble,

And fed the greed of tattlers vain

With high celestial scandal,

And lent to every itching brain

And wanton tongue a handle

Against the gods. For which great sin,

By righteous Jove’s command

In Hell’s black pool, up to the chin,

The thirsty king doth stand:

With parched throat, he longs to drink,

But, when he bends to sip,

The envious waves receding sink,

And cheat his pining lip.

Such tales delight me roaming free,

At dusky eve o’er heathy common;

And such I’ve rhymed – a few – for thee,

Of kindred fancy, man or woman.

There’s labour in a learned life

And many a tome with dullness rife

The patient scholar reads;

He scrapes the ground, and breaks the crust,

And from deep heaps of choking dust

Redeems the buried seeds;

But here I’ve cropped the bloom for thee:

Accept these old Greek flowers, free

From thorns and hateful weeds.

TO BE CONTINUED