Two Occasional Poems

Dawn calls, the wedding bed is in the hall,
Each star puts out its light reluctantly.
Rise Earth, fling wide the flowers you warmed all
Winter; you, thawing waters, lead the dance;
Air, sound the trumpet; and fire, while the sun
Still lingers, burn bright in the muted lamps.

You, Prince of Germany and here, come on
And gladden heaven with your countenance.
Those looks you wore in council or in war
Discard, and shine now in your lady's eyes.

Eliza, with rare loveliness appear,
Jewel of our Isles, and Indies of our North:
Take in the whole world with your happy gaze
So all men wonder at the cloudless day.
May risen Phoebus now no brighter blaze
Than you, nor evening blush more beautifully.



On the Death of the Incomparable Francis Bacon

As you lie groaning, wasted with disease,
As your lost last days stagger in a maze,
It comes to me what fate foresaw and meant:
That with the month of April you should die,
That flowers' tears and nightingales' complaints
Could lead your learning's lonely obsequies.

Two Occasional Poems

En Aurora vocat, lectus genialis in aula est,
Invitoque fugit singula stella pede:
Exere terra caput, servatos projice flores,
Flumina caelestem ducite lenta chorum:
Tuque aer inflato tubam, dum plurimus ignis
Incendat tacitas, sole morante, faces:

Interea precede Comes Germano-britanne
Et coelum vultus exhilarato tui,
Nec qua consuleres, populumve ad bella vocares,
Hac facie dominae conspiciare tuae:

Et tu gemma etiam Britonum, Septentrionum
India, non solitum profer Eliza decus:
Perstringas homines vultu, miretur ut orbis
Hos oculos laetos, hunc sine nube diem:
Sic non Phobeus jam plus te splendeat ortus
Nec plus te rubeat vesper, Eliza, precor.



In obitum incomparabilis Francisci Vicecomitis Sancti Albani, Baronis Verulamii.

Dum longi lentique gemis sub pondere morbi
Atque haeret dubio tabida vita pede,
Quid voluit prudens Fatum, jam sentio tandem:
Constat, Aprile uno te potuisse mori:
Ut Flos hinc lacrimis, illinc Philomela querelis,
Deducant linguae funera sola tuae.

From A Passion in Tatters

III [On his blood and sweat]

Your blood exultant in its own expense for sin
Can barely keep the merest droplet in.



IV On his Side Pierced

Christ, where the steel has torn your side apart
I hope it made a pathway for my heart.



XI On the Good Thief

A superthief, you stole a-plenty from the rest,
And now up close you've stolen in Christ's breast.



XV On the Bowing of the Head: John 19.30

Foxes have holes, and birds a nest:
All things have beds to lay them in,
Yet Christ no friend to take him in,
But on a cross his only rest.



XVI On the Eclipse of the Sun

Are you then faint, you who fill up the sky,
Lord of the kindly dancing light,
Unlocking heaven, bringing a bright world out
With dawn, and hiding it at night?
But now you're tired. And our spendthrift master
Has left his store provisionless;
And that bright spangle which he would not keep,
He would not have his kin possess.
Let the houseboys flounder in the same dark
Our lord has made for his own eyes.
And yet do not by any means despair:
Our failing lord again will rise,
Those empty stores be stocked with richer beams
And we washed over in their shining streams.

From Passio Discerpta

III In sudorem sanguineum

Sic tuus effundi gestat pro crimine sanguis,
Ut nequeat paulo se cohibere domi.



IV In latus perfossum.

Christe, ubi tam duro pates in te semita ferro,
Spero meo cordi posse patere viam.



XI In pium Latronem.

O nimium latro! reliquis furatus abunde,
Nunc etiam Christum callidus aggrederis.



XV Inclinato capite. Joh. 19.

Vulpibus antra feris, nidique volucribus adsunt,
Quodque suum novit stroma, cubile suum.
Qui tamen excipiat, Christus caret hospite: tantum
In cruce suspendens, unde reclinet, habet.



XVI Ad Solem deficientem.

Quid hoc? et ipse deficis, caeli gigas,
Almi choragus luminis?
Tu promis orbem mane, condis vesperi,
Mundi fidelis claviger:
At nunc fatiscis. Nempe Dominus aedium
Prodegit integrum penu,
Quamque ipse lucis tesseram sibi negat,
Negat familiae suae.
Carere discat verna, quo summus caret
Paterfamilias luminis.
Tu vero mentem neutiquam despondeas,
Resurget occumbens Herus:
Tunc instruetur lautius radiis penu,
Tibi supererunt et mihi.

From The Grove

V On the Holy Scriptures

What breath is it mastering me, what heat
Melting my bowels? What is it has deranged
The meditations of my deepest heart?
That other evening sitting at the door
Did I perhaps gulp down some shooting star
And is it - restless in this vile new home -
Already pondering its prompt return?
Did I suck honey and take in the bee
Have I swallowed the builder with the comb?
Yet neither bees or stars have stung me through
But, Holy Scripture, it was surely you
Paced through my heart's close-hidden places
And you who tested all its cul-de-sacs,
The lanes and wynds of fading appetite.
How well how wisely you perambulate
These twisting and entangled alleys.
The power that built the city knows its ways.



XII The Storm with Christ Sleeping

The sea runs high with you asleep. But when you wake
The waves nod off. You have them well in check.



XV Martha and Mary

'Now Christ has come, quick with your brooms,
Shake out the sheets, make the hearth bright,
Scrub and polish through all the rooms,
Spare the lamps, make the house a light.
Sluggards! Here's something needs a duster'.
'Your heart. All else is clean, dear sister'.



XVIII [On the Proud Man]

We are all of one mould, sons of the earth:
Valleys of plenty or mountains of dearth.



XXIV On the Angels

How unlike ours the perfect intellect
Of angels: ours limited by nature
To beg the senses what they know.
Until our seeing lights unseal the door
Until our mills have ground the grist to flour
We work away most times to no effect.
Far off, removed from us, the rivers flow
Of all or anything that we might know.
What in ourselves we are, we should not guess
Unless we had it by appearances.
Angels need no such circuit to their sea:
They are rushed in upon by what they know;
By windows open always to the air
Of what they are they're painlessly apprised,
Themselves at once the grinding and the grist.



XXIX Reasonable Sacrifice

Altars and men are built both from the sod,
Alive in man, and in the altar dead;
Such noxious origins, by Christ once wed,
Make man the living altar of his God.



XXXV To the Lord

Beauty and sweets, and a hundred Hyblas,
My heart's summit, and my soul's war and peace:
Grant me, each time I ask, full sight of you,
And in your eyes, my life, so let me die.
So let me die. For if meeting you is life,
Why must I stay, and pray without relief?
But let me see; if you escape my gaze,
Can you who healed the blind think I have eyes?
I'm blind, I swear; if I may not swear so,
Prevent my wrong with the full sight of you.

From Lucus

V. In Sacras Scripturas

Heu, quis spiritus, igneusque turbo
Regnat visceribus, measque versat
Imo pectore cogitationes?
Numquid pro foribus sedendo nuper
Stellam vespere suxerim volantem,
Haec autem hospitio latere turpi
Prorsus nescia, cogitat recessum?
Nunquid mel comedens, apem comedi
Ipsi cum domini domum vorando?
Imo, me nec apes, nec astra pungunt:
Sacratissima Charta, tu fuisti
Quae cordis latebras sinusque caecos
Atque omnes peragrata es angiportus
Et flexus fugientis appetitus.
Ah, quam docta perambulare calles
Maeandrosque plicasque, quam perita es!
Quae vis condidit, ipsa novit aedes.



XII. Tempestas Christo dormiente

Cum dormis, surgit pelagus: olim, Christe, resurgis,
Dormitat pelagus: quam bene frena tenes.



XV. Martha: Maria

Christus adest: crebris aedes percurrite scopis,
Excutite aulaea, et luceat igne focus.
Omnia purgentur, niteat mihi tota supellex,
Parcite luminibus, sitque lucerna domus:
O cessatrices! eccum pulvisculus illic!
Corde tuo forsan, caetera munda, SOROR.



XVIII. [In Superbum]

Unusquisque hominum, Terra est; et filius arvi.
Dic mihi, mons sterilis, vallis an uber eris?



XXXV. Ad Dominum

Christe, decus, dulcedo, et centum circiter Hyblae,
Cordis apex, animae pugnique paxque meae,
Quin, sine, te cernam; quoties iam dixero, cernam;
Immoriarque oculis, O mea vita, tuis.
Si licet, immoriar: vel si tua visio vita est,
Cur sine te, votis immoriturus, ago?
Ah, cernam; tu, qui caecos sanare solebas,
Cum te non videam, mene videre putas?
Non video, certum est jurare; aut si hoc vetuisti,
Praevenias vultu non facienda tuo.

From To My Mother's Memory

IV

Why scribble when I should be still?
Wet with the dew of everlasting happiness
My mother tends (no little plot)
An Eden where the cold North blasts are powerless.
But my own Heavens are now
The beauty and the obligations of her name;
And while I watch these (as I do)
At night, I join the stars and leave the body's frame.
And then I urge my special star
And then I strain my fingers busily to write,
Dear mother, your last eulogy,
By day or night I write, both equal in your light.
Into this world you brought me:
Now leaving it, you bring me to another.
Wherefore these twofold verses sound
Double for you, who were twice to me a mother.



V

You gardens, you who once made your mistress happy,
Should wither now you have made beautiful her bier
And you are free to die; look how your loveliness
Is thick with thorns, and desperate for a gardener's shears.
They smell of loam and death, the flowers. Your lady's dead,
And sours the roots grow by her grave; and they the roses.
The violets bend their dark heads, heavy, to the earth,
As if they showed which way their mistress' new home lies.
Gardens no more, but dormitory of the dead,
Each bank is like a pillow for its absent lady.
Now you have done, so perish all. Nor ever let
A bud or leaf look now to her for remedy.
Let them shrink to their roots in the graves they grew from
(God gives his children gratis a last resting place).
Die, or rather live until the dew at evening
Weep some sad drops and grant us mourners here some grace.



VII

Pale she looks, my mother's ghost, and bloodless.
What made me happy once has turned to mist,
A mimicry of you, a lying likeness,
Air, not food, for a disappointed child,
Only a cloud, heavy with rain not milk,
Mocking my weeping, grey like rain, and cold.
You leave? My Juno was not cloud like this,
Slow, as if she never saw an April dawn,
Pale, as if she lay in wavering ash.
Rather she looked a saint, at home in heaven:
As Astraea when she resolved to quit
Her wasteland fens, or on her ancient throne
The kindly Themis poised with her true scales.
Appear again like this, with such a dream
I'll live what time is left me, my years I'll
Hitch, unmurmuring, to your star alone.
My wasted days and my aborted effort,
Pale as I am from books, I'll not complain.
For hopes unrealised and dreams grown old,
I'll blame the barren world. It can have back
Its lying comets and its stars grown cold.
I have a hut in the country, with twice
Five timbers beamed, and a small garden plot
Of narrow paths with flowers overfleeced,
Such as wise gardeners love, where plants set close
Make one perfume, and the untrodden beds
A single posy grown, a nest of spice.
Here we will live, and daily feast on scents
The herbs give out. But come to me as when
I loved you best: and do not come so faint
When I recall so clear. The differing
Would divide us, make the flowers dizzy,
And with the garden blossom, our growing
Gladnesses suffer their own withering.



VIII

Gladly I follow the strait path of truth,
And shun the broad highway of vice:
But evil stars corrupted my good faith
And mixed my wine with bitterness.
I bustle now and murmur and make threats:
Enraged against the sun and moon.
But then a friendly presence takes my coat
And whispers in my ear a sound:
This is the drink your Lord drank long ago.
I taste the wine, I let it flow.



IX

Mother, lay by your hymns and read these lines
Sent by an anxious son. It is like song
For the new sainted dead to hear home news:
Where once you loved, abides your care in heaven.
Two clouds created by our flowing eyes
Darken the kindly days. We are all tears.
Our navy's readied for great enterprise,
But weeping is our only real business.
The ships are still in port and blame the wind:
But had they wanted rain we could have wept it.
Tilly is on the Dane, France gone to sea;
And still we weep. Tears are our only coin.
The days run slow, Time's busy cogs and wheels
Falter in all this watery excess.
I would have written more (for what is praise
To me, or what delight, not shared with you),
But while my lines give tears a part to play,
The ink grows faint from their transparency.



X

Travellers have till now complained
Of rain-soaked gloomy skies
With little cause, of dreary wind,
Of slithery British soil.
But now, since you are dead my dear,
Well might they curse and spit aside
The soaking and contagious air.
Fields, city, court are all in black,
England, the homelands of the Scots;
And Wales, millennia old, shakes
Lest the ancient tears she weeps
Should join your obsequies too late.
No corner of the sky is clear,
The sea around has drowned the air.

From Memoriae Matris Sacrum

IV

Quid nugor calamo favens?
Mater perpetuis uvida gaudiis,
Horto pro tenui colit
Edenem Boreae flatibus invium.
Quin caeli mihi sunt mei,
Materni decus, et debita nominis,
Dumque his invigilo frequens
Stellarum socius, pellibus exuor.
Quare sphaeram egomet meam
Connixus, digitis impiger urgeo:
Te, Mater, celebrans diu,
Noctu te celebrans luminis aemulo.
Per te nascor in hunc globum
Exemploque tuo nascor in alterum:
Bis tu mater eras mihi,
Ut currat paribus gloria tibiis.



V

Horti, deliciae Dominae, marcescite tandem;
Ornastis capulum, nec superesse licet.
Ecce decus vestrurn spinis horrescit, acuta
Cultricem revocans anxietate manum:
Terram et funus olent flores: Dominaeque cadaver
Contiguas stirpes afflat, eaeque rosas.
In terram. violae capite inclinantur opaco,
Quaeque domus Dominae sit, gravitate docent.
Quare haud vos hortos, sed coemeteria dico,
Dum torus absentem quisque reponit heram.
Euge perite omnes; nec posthac exeat ulla
Quaesitum Dominam gemma vel herba suam.
Cuncta ad radices redeant, tumulosque paternos;
(Nempe sepulcra satis numen inempta dedit.)
Occidite; aut sane tantisper vivite, done
Vespere ros maestis funus honestet aquis.



VII

Pallida materni Genii atque exsanguis imago,
In nebulas similesque tui res gaudia numquid
Mutata? et pro matre mihi phantasma dolosum
Uberaque aerea hiscentem fallentia natum?
Vae nubi pluvia gravidae, non lacte, measque
Ridenti lacrimas quibus unis concolor unda est.
Quin fugias? mea non fuerat tam nubila Juno,
Tam segnis facies aurorae nescia vernae,
Tam languens genitrix cineri supposta fugaci:
Verum augusta parens, sanctum os caeloque locandum,
Quale paludosos jamjam lictura recessus
Praetulit Astraea, aut solio Themis alma vetusto
Pensilis, atque acri dirimens examine lites.
Hunc vultum ostendas, et tecum, nobile spectrum,
Quod superest vitae, insumam: Solisque jugales
Ipse tuae solum adnectam, sine murmure, tensae.
Nec querar ingratos, studiis dum tabidus insto,
Effluxisse dies, suffocatamve Minervam,
Aut spes productas, barbataque somnia vertam
In vitium mundo sterili, cui cedo cometas
Ipse suos tanquam digno pallentiaque astra.
Est mihi bis quinis laqueata domuncula tignis
Rure; brevisque hortus, cujus cum vellere florum
Luctatur spatium, qualem tamen eligit aequi
Judicii dominus, flores ut junctius halent
Stipati, rudibusque volis impervius hortus
Sit quasi fasciculus crescens, et nidus odorum.
Hic ego tuque erimus, variae suffitibus herbae
Quotidie pasti: tantum verum indue vultum
Affectusque mei similem; nec languida misce
Ora meae memori menti: ne dispare cultu
Pugnaces, teneros florum turbemus odores,
Atque inter reliquos horti crescentia foetus
Nostra etiam paribus marcescant gaudia fatis.



VIII.

Parvam piamque dum lubenter semitam
Grandi reaeque praefero,
Carpsit malignum sidus hanc modestiam
Vinumque felle miscuit.
Hinc fremere totus et minari gestio
Ipsis severus orbibus;
Tandem prehensa comiter lacernula
Susurrat aure quispiam,
Haec fuerat olim potio Domini tui.
Gusto proboque dolium.



IX

Hoc Genitrix, scriptum proles tibi sedula mittit.
Siste parum cantus, dum legis ista, tuos.
Nosse sui quid agant, quaedam est quoque musica sanctis
Quaeque olim fuerat cura, manere potest.
Nos misere flemus, solesque obducimus almos
Occiduis, tanquam duplice nube, genis.
Interea classem magnis Rex instruit ausis:
Nos autem flemus: res ea sola tuis.
Ecce solutura est, ventos causata morantes:
Sin pluviam, fletus suppeditasset aquas.
Tillius incumbit Dano Gallusque marinis,
Nos flendo: haec nostrum tessera sola ducum.
Sic aevum exigitur tardum, dum praepetis anni
Mille rotae nimiis impediuntur aquis.
Plura tibi missurus eram (nam quae mihi laurus,
Quod nectar, nisi cum te celebrare diem?)
Sed partem in scriptis etiam dum lacrima poscit,
Diluit oppositas candidus humor aquas.



X

Nempe huc usque notos tenebricosos
Et maestum nimio madore caelum
Tellurisque Britannicae salivam
Injuste satis arguit viator.
At te commoriente, magna mater,
Recte, quem trahit, aerem repellit
Cum probro madidum, reumque difflat.
Nam te nunc ager, urbs, et aula plorant:
Te nunc Anglia, Scotiaeque binae,
Quin te Cambria pervetusta deflet,
Deducens lacrimas prioris aevi
Ne serae meritis tuis venirent.
Non est angulus uspiam serenus,
Nec cingit mare, nunc inundat omnes.

From Poems in Answer

V On the Metre

When to so many measures verse could dance
Why single out effeminate sapphics?
Did the packed heroic line not entrance
Your musing mood? Or could elegiacs
Not have wept for you, or quick iambics
Stung? The one weeping measure would have served
Your brainsick turn, the other well bespeaks
The straight road you walk while the vulgar swerved.
But you sent heroes and healers packing,
And work away to woo the frail fair sex
In unarmed measures, while blandly taking
Their tender ears with sweeter tetrastichs.



XXXV Scotland: An Exhortation to Peace

You Scotsmen shiver under the icy Bear,
So why your unchecked flames of zeal?
Is it contrariness that feeds the fire,
As when numb hands are scalded by a chill?
Or as coal burns keener in deep winter,
Is it the cold provokes your calentures?
Put out those flaming torches, for they kill
(The sea's at hand, it rolls its waters close,
And for a surer cure, there Christ's blood flows
Down from above, yet nearer and more sweet)
And if a fresh stray breeze the fire renews
The world will shatter early in the heat.



XL To God

Once you Great God have blessed
With your quiet dew my inky hand
I am not sad and sleepless
To no end, nor sore at my fingers' ends
With chewing of my nails,
Nor does my pen droop. Now I am well:
A rich and active vein
Of versing has baptised my mood.
To its dykes indifferent
A Nile spills out its amiable flood.
O sweetest Breath who plant
In me these holy groans. From you,
The Dove, what I write pours,
And if I please the graciousness is yours.

From Musae Responsoriae

V In metri genus.

Cur, ubi tot ludat numeris antiqua poesis,
Sola tibi Sappho, feminaque una placet?
Cur tibi tam facile non arrisere poetae
Heroum grandi carmina fulta pede?
Cur non lugentes Elegi? non acer Iambus?
Commotos animos rectius ista decent.
Scilicet hoc vobis proprium, qui purius itis,
Et populi spurcas creditis esse vias:
Vos ducibus missis, missis doctoribus, omnes
Femineum blanda fallitis arte genus:
Nunc etiam teneras quo versus gratior aures
Mulceat, imbelles complacuere modi.



XXXV Ad Scotiam. Protrepticon ad Pacem.

Scotia quae frigente jaces porrecta sub Arcto,
Cur adeo immodica relligione cales?
Anne tuas flammas ipsa antiperistasis auget
Ut nive torpentes incaluere manus?
Aut ut pruna gelu summo mordacius urit,
Sic acuunt zelum frigora tanta tuum?
Quin nocuas extingue faces, precor: unda propinqua est
Et tibi vicinas porrigit aequor aquas:
Aut potius Christi sanguis demissus ab alto
Vicinusque magis nobiliorque fluit:
Ne, si flamma nouis adolescat mota flabellis,
Ante diem vestro mundus ab igne ruat.



XL Ad Deum

Quem tu, summe Deus, semel
Scribentem placido rore beaueris,
Illum non labor irritus
Exercet miserum; non dolor unguium
Morsus increpat anxios.
Non maeret calamus; non queritur caput.
Sed fecunda poesews
Vis, et vena sacris regnat in artubus.
Qualis nescius aggerum
Exundat fluvio Nilus amabili.
O dulcissime Spiritus
Sanctos qui gemitus mentibus inseris
A te turture defluos
Quod scribo, et placeo, si placeo, tuum est.