A Dialogue At Fiesole poem – Alfred Austin

HE.

Halt here awhile. That mossy-cushioned seat

Is for your queenliness a natural throne;

As I am fitly couched on this low sward,

Here at your feet.

SHE.

And I, in thought, at yours:

My adoration, deepest.

HE.

Deep, so deep,

I have no thought wherewith to fathom it;

Or, shall I say, no flight of song so high,

To reach the Heaven whence you look down on me,

My star, my far-off star!

SHE.

If far, yet fixed:

No shifting planet leaving you to seek

Where now it shines.

HE.

A little light, if near,

Glows livelier than the largest orb in Heaven.

SHE.

But little lights burn quickly out, and then,

Another must be kindled. Stars gleam on,

Unreached, but unextinguished. . . . Now, the song.

HE.

Yes, yes, the song: your music to my verse.

SHE.

In this sequestered dimple of the hill,

Forgotten by the furrow, none will hear:

Only the nightingales, that misconceive

The mid-day darkness of the cypresses

For curtained night.

HE.

And they will hush to hear

A sudden singing sweeter than their own.

Delay not the enchantment, but begin.

SHE

(singing).

If you were here, if you were here,

The cattle-bells would sound more clear;

The cataracts would flash and leap

More silvery from steep to steep;

The farewell of a rosier glow

Soften the summit of the snow;

The valley take a tenderer green;

In dewy gorge and dim ravine

The loving bramble-flowers embrace

The rough thorn with a gentler grace;

The gentian open bluer eyes,

In bluer air, to bluer skies:

The frail anemone delay,

The jonquil hasten on its way,

The primrose linger past its time,

The violet prolong its prime;

And every flower that seeks the light,

On Alpine lowland, Alpine height,

Wear April’s smile without its tear,

If you were here; if you were here!

If you were here, the Spring would wake

A fuller music in the brake.

The mottled misselthrush would pipe

A note more ringing, rich, and ripe;

The whitethroat peer above its nest

With brighter eye and downier breast;

The cuckoo greet the amorous year,

Chanting its joy without its jeer;

The lark betroth the earth and sky

With peals of heavenlier minstrelsy;

And every wildwood bird rejoice

On fleeter wing, with sweeter voice,

If you were here!

If you were here, I too should feel

The moisture of the Springtide steal

Along my veins, and rise and roll

Through every fibre of my soul.

In my live breast would melt the snow,

And all its channels flush and flow

With waves of life and streams of song,

Frozen and silent all too long.

A something in each wilding flower,

Something in every scented shower,

Something in flitting voice and wing,

Would drench my heart and bid me sing:

Not in this feeble halting note,

But, like the merle’s exulting throat,

With carol full and carol clear,

If you were here, if you were here.

HE.

Hark! How the hills have caught the strain, and seem

Loth to surrender it, and now enclose

Its cadence in the silence of their folds.

Still as you sang, the verses had the wing

Of that which buoyed them, and your aery voice

Lifted my drooping music from the ground.

Now that you cease, there is an empty nest,

From which the full-fledged melody hath flown.

SHE.

Dare I with you contend in metaphor,

It might not be so fanciful to show

That nest, and eggs, and music, all are yours.

But modesty in poets is too rare,

To be reproved for error. Let me then

Be crowned full queen of song, albeit in sooth

I am but consort, owing my degree

To the real sceptred Sovereign at my side.

But now repay my music, and in kind.

Unfolding to my ear the youngest flower

Of song that seems to blossom all the year;

“Delay not the enchantment, but begin.”

HE

(reciting). Yet, you are here; yes, you are here.

There’s not a voice that wakes the year,

In vale frequented, upland lone,

But steals some sweetness from your own.

When dream and darkness have withdrawn,

I feel you in the freshening dawn:

You fill the noonday’s hushed repose;

You scent the dew of daylight’s close.

The twilight whispers you are nigh;

The stars announce you in the sky.

The moon, when most alone in space,

Fills all the heavens with your face.

In darkest hour of deepest night,

I see you with the spirit’s sight;

And slumber murmurs in my ear,

“Hush! she is here. Sleep! she is here.”

SHE.

Hark how you bare your secret when you sing!

Imagination’s universal scope

Can swift endue this gray and shapeless world

With the designs and colour of the sky.

What want you with our fixed and lumpish forms,

You, unconditioned arbiter of air?

“Yet, you are here; yes, you are here.” The span

Of nimble fancy leaps the interval,

And brings the distant nearer than the near.

HE.

Distance is nearer than proximity,

When distance longs, proximity doth not.

SHE.

The near is always distant to the mind

That craves for satisfaction of its end;

Nor doth the distance ever feel so far

As when the end is touched. Retard that goal,

Prolonging appetite beyond the feast

That feeds anticipation.

HE.

Specious foil!

That parries every stroke before ’tis made.

Yet surfeit’s self doth not more surely cloy

Than endless fasting.

SHE.

Still a swifter cure

Waits on too little than attends too much.

While disappointment merely woundeth Hope,

The deadly blow by disenchantment dealt

Strikes at the heart of Faith. O happy you,

The favourites of Fancy, who replace

Illusion with illusion, and conceive

Fresh cradles in the dark womb of the grave.

While we, prosaic victims, prove that time

Kills love while leaving loveless life alive,

You still, divinely duped, sing deathless love,

And with your wizard music, once again,

Make Winter Spring. Yet surely you forgive

That I have too much pity for the flowers

Children and poets cull to fling away,

To be an April nosegay.

HE.

How you swell

The common chorus! Women, who are wronged

So roughly by men’s undiscerning word,

As though one pattern served to show them all,

Should be more just to poets. These, in truth,

Diverge from one another nowise less

Than “women,” vaguely labelled: children some,

With childish voice and nature, lyric bards,

Weaklings that on life’s threshold sweetly wail,

But never from that silvery treble pass

Into the note and chant of manliness.

Their love is like their verse, a frail desire,

A fluttering fountain falling feebly back

Into its shallow origin. Next there are

The poets of contention, wrestlers born,

Who challenge iron Circumstance, and fail:

Generous and strong, withal not strong enough,

Since lacking sinewy wisdom, hard as life.

The love of these is like the lightning spear,

And shrivels whom it touches. They consume

All things within their reach, and, last of all,

Their lonely selves; and then through time they tower,

Sublime but charred, and wear on their high fronts

The gloomy glory of the sunlit pine.

But the great gods of Song, in clear white light,

The radiance of their godhead, calmly dwell,

And with immutable cold starlike gaze

Scan both the upper and the under world,

As it revolves, themselves serenely fixed.

Their bias is the bias of the sphere,

That turns all ways, but turns away from none,

Save to return to it. They have no feud

With gods or men, the living or the dead,

The past or present, and their words complete

Life’s incompleteness with a healing note.

For they are not more sensitive than strong,

More wise than tender; understanding all,

At peace with all, at peace with life and death,

And love that gives a meaning unto life

And takes from death the meaning and the sting:

At peace with hate, and every opposite.

Were I but one of these-presumptuous thought!-

Even you, the live fulfilment of such dreams

As these secrete, would hazard well your love

On my more largely loving. ‘Twould be you,

Yes, even you, that first would flag and fail

In either of my choosing; you, whose wing

Would droop on mine and pray to be upborne.

And when my pinions did no more suffice

For that their double load, then softly down,

Softly and smoothly as descending lark

That hath fulfilled its rhapsody in Heaven,

And with diminished music must decline

To earthy sounds and concepts, I should curb

Illimitable longings to the range

Of lower aspiration. Were I such!-

But, since I am not-

SHE.

Am not? Who shall say,

Save she who tests, and haply to her loss?

‘Tis better left untested. Strange that you,

Who can imagine whatso thing you will,

Should lack imagination to appraise

Imagination at its topmost worth.

Now wield your native sceptre and extend

Your fancy forth where Florence overbrims

In eddies fairer even than herself.

Look how the landscape smiles complacently

At its own beauty, as indeed it may;

Villa and vineyard each a separate home,

Containing possibilities unseen,

Materials for your pleasure. Now disport!

Which homestead may it please my lord of song

To chalk for his, as those rough Frenchmen did

Who came with bow-legged Charles to justify

Savonarola’s scourgeful prophecies?

Shall it be that one gazing in our face,

Not jealous of its beauty, but exposed

To all the wantonness of sun and air,

With roses girt, with roses garlanded,

And balustraded terrace topped with jars

Of clove carnations; unambitious roof,

Italian equivalent to house

Love in a cottage? Why, the very place

For her you once described! Wait! Let me see,

Can I recall the lines? Yes, thus they ran.

Do you remember them? Or are they now

A chronicle forgotten and erased

From that convenient palimpsest, the heart?

In dewy covert of her eyes

The secret of the violet lies;

The sun and wind caress and pair

In the lithe wavelets of her hair;

The fragrance of the warm soft south

Hovers about her honeyed mouth;

And, when she moves, she floats through air

Like zephyr-wafted gossamer.

Hers is no lore of dumb dead books;

Her learning liveth in her looks;

And still she shows, in meek replies,

Wisdom enough to deem you wise.

Her voice as soothing is and sweet

As whispers of the waving wheat,

And in the moisture of her kiss

Is April-like deliciousness.

Like gloaming-hour, she doth inspire

A vague, an infinite desire;

And, like the stars, though out of sight,

Filleth the loneliness of night.

Come how she may, or slow or fleet,

She brings the morning on her feet;

Gone, leaves behind a nameless pain,

Like the sadness of a silenced strain.

HE.

A youthful dream.

SHE.

Yet memory can surmise

That young dream fruited to reality,

Then, like reality, was dream no more.

All dreams are youthful; you are dreaming still.

What lovely visions denizen your sleep!

Let me recall another; for I know

All you have written, thought, and felt, and much

You neither thought nor felt, but only sang.

A wondrous gift, a godlike gift, that breathes

Into our exiled clay unexiled lives,

Manlier than Adam, comelier than Eve.

That massive villa, we both know so well,

With one face set toward Settignano, one

Gazing at Bellosguardo, and its rear

Locked from the north by clustered cypresses,

That seem like fixed colossal sentinels,

And tower above its tower, but look not in,

Might be abode for her whom you conceived

In tropes so mystical, you must forgive

If recollection trips.

To dwell with her is calmly to abide

Through every change of time and every flux of tide.

In her the Present, Past, and Future meet,

The Father, and the Son, and dovelike Paraclete.

She holdeth silent intercourse with Night,

Still journeying with the stars, and shining with their light.

Her love, illumination; her embrace,

The sweep of angels’ wings across a mortal’s face.

Her lap is piled with autumn fruits, her brow

Crowned with the blossoming trails that smile from April’s bough.

Like wintry stars that shine with frosty fire,

Her loftiness excites to elevate desire.

To love her is to burn with such a flame

As lights the lamp which bears the Sanctuary’s name.

That lamp burns on for ever, day and night,

Before her mystic shrine. I am its acolyte.

HE.

The merest foam of fancy; foam and spray.

SHE.

Foam-drift of fancy that hath ebbed away.

See how the very simile rebukes

Man’s all unsealike longings! For confess,

While ocean still returns, the puny waves

Of mortal love are sucked into the sand,

Their motion felt, their music heard, no more.

Look when the vines are linking hands, and seem

As pausing from the dance of Spring, or just

Preparing to renew it, round and round,

On the green carpet of the bladed corn,

That spreads about their feet: corn, vine, and fig,

Almond and mulberry, cherry, and pear, and peach,

Not taught to know their place, but left to range

Up to the villa’s walls, windows, and doors,

And peep into its life and smile good-day,

A portion of its homeliness and joy:

A poet’s villa once, a poet’s again,

If you but dream it such; a roof for her,

To whom you wrote-I wonder who she was-

This saucy sonnet; saucy, withal sweet,

And O, how true of the reflected love

You poets render to your worshippers.

TRUE AS THE DIAL TO THE SUN.

You are the sun, and I the dial, sweet,

So you can mark on me what time you will.

If you move slowly, how can I move fleet?

And when you halt, I too must fain be still.

Chide not the cloudy humours of my brow,

If you behold no settled sunshine there:

Rather upbraid your own, sweet, and allow,

My looks cannot be foul if yours be fair.

Then from the heaven of your high witchery shine,

And I with smiles shall watch the hours glide by;

You have no mood that is not straightway mine;

My cheek but takes complexion from your eye.

All that I am dependeth so on you,

What clouds the sun must cloud the dial too.

HE.

No man should quarrel with his Past, and I

Maintain no feud with mine. Do we not ripen,

Ripen and mellow in love, unto the close,

Thanks no more to the present than the past?

First love is fresh but fugitive as Spring,

A wilding flower no sooner plucked than faded;

And summer’s sultry fervour ends in storm,

Recriminating thunder, wasteful tears,

And angry gleam of lightning menaces.

Give me October’s meditative haze,

Its gossamer mornings, dewy-wimpled eves,

Dewy and fragrant, fragrant and secure,

The long slow sound of farmward-wending wains,

When homely Love sups quiet ‘mong its sheaves,

Sups ‘mong its sheaves, its sickle at its side,

And all is peace, peace and plump fruitfulness.

SHE.

Picture of all we dream and we desire:

Autumn’s grave cheerfulness and sober bliss,

Rich resignation, humble constancy.

For, prone to bear the load piled up by life,

We, once youth’s pasture season at an end,

Submit to crawl. Unbroken to the last,

You spurn the goad of stern taskmaster Time.

Even ‘mid autumn harvest you demand

Returning hope and blossom of the Spring,

All seasons and sensations, and at once,

Or in too quick succession. Do we blame?

We envy rather the eternal youth

We cannot share. But youth is pitiless,

And, marching onward, neither asks nor seeks

Who falls behind. Thus women who are wise,

Beside their thresholds knitting homely gear,

Wave wistful salutation as you pass,

And think of you regretfully, when gone:

A soft regret, a sweet regret, that is

Only the mellow fruit of unplucked joy.

Now improvise some other simple strain,

That with harmonious cadence may attune

The vain and hazard discords of discourse.

HE.

When Love was young, it asked for wings,

That it might still be roaming;

And away it sped, by fancy led,

Through dawn, and noon, and gloaming.

Each daintiness that blooms and blows

It wooed in honeyed metre,

And when it won the sweetest sweet,

It flew off to a sweeter:

When Love was young.

When Love was old, it craved for rest,

For home, and hearth, and haven;

For quiet talks round sheltered walks,

And long lawns smoothly shaven.

And what Love sought, at last it found,

A roof, a porch, a garden,

And from a fond unquestioning heart

Peace, sympathy, and pardon,

When Love was old.

SHE.

Simple, in sooth, and haply true: withal,

Too, too autumnal even for my heart.

I never weary of your vernal note.

Carol again, and sing me back my youth

With the redundant melodies of Spring.

HE.

I breathe my heart in the heart of the rose,

The rose that I pluck and send you,

With a prayer that the perfume its leaves enclose

May kiss, and caress, and tend you:

Caress and tend you till I can come,

To the garden where first I found you,

And the thought that as yet in the rose is dumb

Can ripple in music round you.

O rose, that will shortly be her guest,

You may well look happy, at leaving:

Will you lie in the cradle her snowy breast

Doth rock with its gentle heaving?

Will you mount the throne of her hazel hair,

That waves like a summer billow,

Or be hidden and hushed, at nightfall prayer,

In the folds of her dimpled pillow?

And when she awakes at dawn to feel

If you have been dreaming with her,

Then the whole of your secret, sweet rose, reveal,

And say I am coming thither:

And that when there is silence in earth and sky,

And peace from the cares that cumber,

She must not ask if your leaves or I

Be clasped in her perfumed slumber.

SHE.

Give me your hand; and, if you will, keep mine

Engraffed in yours, as slowly thus we skirt

La Doccia’s dark declivity, and make

Athwart Majano’s pathless pines a path

To lead us onward haply where it may.

Lo! the Carrara mountains flush to view,

That in the noonday were not visible.

Shall we not fold this comfort to our hearts,

Humbly rejoiced to think as there are heights

Seen only in the sunset, so our lives,

If that they lack not loftiness, may wear

A glow of glory on their furrowed fronts,

Until they faint and fade into the night!