Читать книгу Poems. Volume 1 - George Meredith - Страница 24

   Take thy lute and sing

By the ruined castle walls,

Where the torrent-foam falls,

And long weeds wave:

   Take thy lute and sing,

O’er the grey ancestral grave!

   Daughter of a King,

      Tune thy string.

   Sing of happy hours,

In the roar of rushing time;

Till all the echoes chime

To the days gone by;

   Sing of passing hours

To the ever-present sky;—

   Weep—and let the showers

      Wake thy flowers.

   Sing of glories gone:—

No more the blazoned fold

From the banner is unrolled;

The gold sun is set.

   Sing his glory gone,

For thy voice may charm him yet;

   Daughter of the dawn,

      He is gone!

   Pour forth all thy grief!

Passionately sweep the chords,

Wed them quivering to thy words;

Wild words of wail!

   Shed thy withered grief—

But hold not Autumn to thy bale;

   The eddy of the leaf

      Must be brief!

   Sing up to the night:

Hard it is for streaming tears

To read the calmness of the spheres;

Coldly they shine;

   Sing up to their light;

They have views thou may’st divine—

   Gain prophetic sight

      From their light!

   On the windy hills

Lo, the little harebell leans

On the spire-grass that it queens,

With bonnet blue;

   Trusting love instils

Love and subject reverence true;

   Learn what love instils

      On the hills!

   By the bare wayside

Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks,

Softly touch’d with pale green streaks,

Soon, soon, to die;

   On the clothed hedgeside

Bands of rosy beauties vie,

   In their prophesied

      Summer pride.

   From the snowdrop learn;

Not in her pale life lives she,

But in her blushing prophecy.

Thus be thy hopes,

   Living but to yearn

Upwards to the hidden scopes;—

   Even within the urn

      Let them burn!

   Heroes of thy race—

Warriors with golden crowns,

Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns

Stare thee to stone;

   Matrons of thy race

Pass before thee making moan;

   Full of solemn grace

      Is their pace.

   Piteous their despair!

Piteous their looks forlorn!

Terrible their ghostly scorn!

Still hold thou fast;—

   Heed not their despair!—

Thou art thy future, not thy past;

   Let them glance and glare

      Thro’ the air.

   Thou the ruin’s bud,

Be not that moist rich-smelling weed

With its arras-sembled brede,

And ruin-haunting stalk;

   Thou the ruin’s bud,

Be still the rose that lights the walk,

   Mix thy fragrant blood

      With the flood!