CORYDON:
AN ELLEGY
IN MEMORY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD
The
Universal Review 5 (Nov. 1889): 425-437.
[London]
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| ‘While
the still morn went out with sandals grey.’—Lycidas |
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I
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THIS
is the river-land of Acadie,
Their
refuge and their home these hundred years,
To whom mere loyalty was more than gain;
A border land of sunshine and the sea,
Plaintive
and slow and full of love and tears
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5 |
| And
beauty of days, with shadow or trace or stain
Of
never a dream undone.
High June it is, and such a summer-time
Of
mountain-traversing clouds piled up with sun
As
only this far North can know at all, |
10 |
Where
blue streams lure the clover to its prime,
And
all day long hear the brown thrushes call. |
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II
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And
all the livelong night of summer rain,
In
dead-wood cedar swamps, trackless and hoar,
Lorn rain-birds call, and grey mist-foldings loom,
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15 |
As if
the dark-stoled ages’ moving train
Would
free their burden of dirige once more—
That aching threnody which doth consume
The
Cumner nightingales.
Plead, plead for him, my tiny brothers, now,
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20 |
Since
gift of song ye have whose prayer avails
With
the great Mother from our dingles lone!
And where the white veils of the rain sweep low
Let
your wild keening cry forth, lift and blown!
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III
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| For
ye can sing, while I have nought but love; |
25 |
And
he, our brother, walks the earth no more.
Through all the summer rain sing low, sing on,
Sing clear the meadow lily bells above,
The
eternal sad half-unremembered lore,
In blended requiem for Corydon,
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30 |
Dead
in that far-off place.
For love is not of country nor of kin;
And
we shall never know him face to face,
Though
time well on to slake the thirst of time,
And the spent years back from oblivion win
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35 |
| A
little respite in your grief sublime. |
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IV
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For
England now, the rain-sweet flowery isle
Which
bore him, hath reclaimed him unto her
Amidst the azure sea; yet wide and far
His message and his memory must beguile
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40 |
The
days with sundown quiet, and confer
The tranquil beating of a twilight star
Upon
a twilit world.
Surely not hence, where wood-flower and fern
Hear
the long breezes through the pines unfurled,
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45 |
And
the shy whip-poor-will’s reed-flute notes
hover
All night, nor fail, shall that wayfarer turn
Uncheered,
uncherished, whom the June doth cover.
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V
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Yet
those weird grievous cries—hark! lonelily,
The
hurtling utterance of tern and loon,
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50 |
Shrill
forth, and quaver, and search from dome to rim
The white cloud-loft where morn takes wind of the
sea.
Blue,
blue for ever in the shadeless noon,
Down to the fogs of bellowing Fundy’s brim,
Woodland
Welaastook runs,
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55 |
By leagues
of intervale and ripening grass,
Drenched
with the leisure of a thousand suns,
River
of dream, sheltered from haste and fame.
There all day long my yester journey was,
From
Nerepis to Nashwaak; evening came
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60 |
VI
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With
her few stars round the last bluff, and there
The
drowsing city of the shadowy elms!
The reed-birds now, this burning afternoon,
Flood the old garden with a lotus air,
Some
brooding orient spell that half o’erwhelms
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65 |
The
old-time longing with a sense of June.
Stirring
the maple shade,
The yellowbird rebrims his sultry throat;
Day
long the martins, blithe, still-winged, have laid
Their
dizzy circuits on the blue profound;
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70 |
Past
the tall elms, luring the eye to float
Cloudward
and dreamward with the outward-bound,
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VII
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Winds
the untroubled river, broadening on
To
meadow islands grown waist-deep about
Their grey chinked barns with dust-ripe timothy.
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75 |
Shimmering,
hazy, burnished in the sun,
The
limpid reedy thoroughfares shoal out
To glinting silt-beds where the minnows lie,
And
idle heron peer,
And heavy odours set from the marsh at noon;
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Across
the hot low murmur of mid-year
A
swarthy locust drives his creaking cart;
Now and again, breaking the torrid swoon,
Savanna
sparrows lift their dreamy heart;
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VIII
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| A teeming
slumber haunts the iris flowers; |
85 |
And
all God’s creatures have their will together.
Once more, wild spirit, lead us in thy care
To the shy well-heads of the dawn’s rath hours!
Here
did we love him in the old spring weather,
But now the burdened morrow shall us bear
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No
word his lips have said.
Ah, vain! thou hast no part in grief at all,
Nor
any runnel in thy bourns to thread
The
valley of night where lies the moaning sea;
And Corydon is gone beyond recall,
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| Whence
many mourn him lightlier than we. |
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IX
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Yet
Oxford, child of dreams and mother of men,
Too
ill can spare him whose swift-fallen prime
Broke, with the old lost battle half re-won.
And while her cloister garths and halls again
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Cheer
festal throngs at this memorial time,
With murmuring croons for little Oriel’s son
The
Merton ringdoves mourn.
She only smiles, beyond the depth of tears:
How
many a time she held the world in scorn!
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She
saw what ages panoplied and fade!
Go forth how many a retinue, the peers
Of
red-cross Templars on a last crusade!
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X
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And
he … Why muse of Oxford and the dead?
‘Look
where the slow ripe moon breaks from the hill,
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110 |
Thrusting
above the pine-blue barrier
That crocus crest up, and the first white shred
Of
fairy noonlight falls across the sill
Of our open door. What threshold wanderer
Allures
on what pale track?
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Come,
friend, the wilds are calling, let us go;
There
is no resting here.’ … Down from the
rack
I
took a paddle, saw the roses dun,
Shouldered the long brown birch canoe, and so
Came
where the circling river voyages on
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120 |
XI
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Beneath
the grey-leaved willows, in whose guard
The
drone-a-day, the frustrate, dead-alive,
Deluded world amidst her moonlit spires
Lay foiled by sleep. Before us was unbarred
That
long bright path the wind and moon contrive
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To bridge
the gulf for stifled heart desires;
Let
soul awhile slip sheath.
Out this wide reach, escaping the world’s
hand,
A
surge of the dark blood—some wild keen breath—
Made
the rock-maple spring and glitter and spring;
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And
the slim ruddy birch flew clear from land
Right
for the orient like a wonder-thing.
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XII
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Until,
at Nashwaak Bridge, on the tranced air
From
shore to shore a bugle sounds retreat,
Nor stirs the moonlight upon Christ Church tower.
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135 |
After
the feud and tourney-stress, we fare
By
quiet river paths beyond defeat,
Far out of hurry, where silent hour by hour
The
brave tall rushes grow.
From this time-service in the courts of men
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140 |
Unhand
thy foemen, World, and let them go!
Back
to the brown sweet forest, her own seed,
The pines and poplars welcome us again,
And
nature’s silences all need.
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XIII
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| So we
float in between the grey log piers, |
145 |
And
the hush deepens, melts, and drowns all nose;
Fever and babble and haste no more prevail
To fret the holy spirit with full tears;
And
past all bounds of June the soul deploys
To scour the naked starlands for a trail
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Of
vanished things unbound—
Mother, and father, and lost May twilights drenched
With
wake-robin and dream, scraps of brook sound,
And
broken words, and kisses, and brave friends—
Cherished, then blown abroad like wind and quenched
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| In
shifting snow dunes at red evening ends. |
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XIV
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And
Corydon is made a name, a breath
Of
sundown ruddying the maple seeds,
Less than a swallow’s wing against the sun,
Less than a cricket braving frosty death,
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Or
yonder bittern boomling in the reeds.
His warfare unto peace and light is one
Before
the Sphinx’s gaze
With Israel’s bondage and Napoleon’s
fame,
A
sigh whereon the dead Nile sands and days
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165 |
Lift
and are sown upon the earth with sleep;
Seedtime and seed and sower without name,
Where
never a harvester sets hand to reap.
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XV
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Too
foolish boy, why grieve for death at all,
Or
any more repine for Corydon?
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170 |
He lies
with Tristram and dark Iseult dream,
Within the reed-strewn gusty Breton hall;
From
the sad poor Bokhara’s king is gone.
Time drinks the sorrow upon Oxus stream;
Peace
wraps Balder the Good,
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175 |
Balder
the Beautiful, whom all things loved,
Regathered
to his kindlier brotherhood;
Across
another Cumner, night long passed,
Failure and doubt—haply, who knows?—disproved,
The
Scholar-Gipsy cheers his mate at last.
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175 |
XVI
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Here
only (let the paddle rest and drip)
We
wrong the patient mother of us all,
And violate her beauty with much grief.
Lean on the gunwale. Summer’s knee and lip
Are
at the stream; she drinks a long recall
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180 |
Of infinite
leisure and full-sighed relief.
Ere
the grass-flowers are old,
We come before the morning, and depart
Before
the evening shadows; with a fold
Of
those white arms we are for ever hers:
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We long;
she comes with shy desire at heart;
Above
our grave in the pines a squirrel chirs.
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XVII
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The
echo wakes where the last cadence ran,
Though
the dead player is a rifted reed,
Broken, unstopped. Ages ago one said,
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190 |
‘My
life is wind. My days are swifter than
A
weaver’s shuttle.’ And to-night we heed
That quick unfriended cry, though he is dead
In
the Arabian waste,
And the winds shift his burial sand to keep
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195 |
The
measure of time … See these birch twigs o’er-laced
Upon
the stars; I peel this bark, and scrawl
(The text of life in a broad margin of sleep)
The
white waif with blind characters, and call
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XVIII
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| The
script my work, my beam in the house of Art, |
200 |
My
wonder of jetsam on the hither shore,
My rune of life, my something more than nought.
And why? It touches you—my friend—in
the heart
With
a moment’s thrill you had not known before,
Joyous and full; so it is amply wrought,
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205 |
Being
the best of me.
As well, were I the peer of Corydon,
It
might outlast this night of ours and be
The
inspiration of a thousand Junes
To lovers where the far Saskatchewan
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210 |
| Lures
the old way with immemorial croons. |
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XIX
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But
now you toss it on the stream, and this
My
gnome-built argosy of spirit and dream
Makes port to-morrow night with sand-bar strays.
Woven at dawn with calm and fire and bliss
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215 |
Upon
the Nornies’ loom where shadows gleam,
We fill the pattern of a length of days
With
mummery and mime.
We love and pas, toil, harvest, earn, and build
(You
with your bridges, Corydon with rhyme,
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220 |
To
span and dome this tent-shade in the dawn)
Till evening, then (nor arch nor line fulfilled)
The
fellow-craftsmen of a day are gone.
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XX
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The
sad suspirium of a lone sunrise
On
winter wind-trails from the sweet austere
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225 |
Fir-barriered
saffron east, on river plain
And smothered rosland stirs the snow and dies:
This
is the nether tone-drift, stern and sheer,
Breathed under Corydon’s most summer strain;
The
note of long surcease;
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230 |
The
yearning of dayrise, wilding fresh unblown,
Where
the wood-song has rapture of release;
The
tenuous lull where the hushed soul gets free;
Or to wild roses of Manan the moan
Where
some thrush-hunted foreland takes the sea.
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XXI
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Death
holds a smile most like foreknowledge of life.
For
they who are of the world shall rule it not,
And those who are other-world’s it will destroy.
The illumined only, with a scorn of strife,
Await
that smile’s break, victors, since God wrought
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240 |
Strength
out of calm and reverence out of joy.
Through
ever-journeying prime
The last young Greek lifts up his choric song,
A
lyric marble on the frieze of time.
Born
of a day, until the stars unfold
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245 |
Beauty
is mother of tears; but man ere long
Bows
with a sleep, and passes, being old.
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XXII
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We
give to Art the white imperial sway,
A
poised unhasting meteor-flight to shroud
The escaping mute undominated soul,
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250 |
And
find therein—no rest nor any stay.
Then
love turns home, and tired heads are bowed
On the breast of Night, under the broad blue stole
In
forest Acadie,
And baffled hands are loosed in the grass, until—
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255 |
Another
year something of you and me,
Vernal
through all the hyacinthine verge,
Shall stir the windflowers when the wind is still,
And
upward with the summer at full surge.
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XXIII
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| Hark
to the gold-mouthed veery answering |
260 |
His
brother pilgrim where the east grows wan!
Thou Chrysostom of silence and repose,
Glad eremite from the unbordered spring,
Who
tarriest here in the pine waste with man,
Dearer than Sophoclean chorus close!
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265 |
In
the High Court of Night
Be thou essoiner for us unto Death:
With
de servitio Regis let him write
Us
down defaulting, yet exempt and free
(Even we who go as a wind wandereth)
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270 |
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With
Orpheus and with Corydon and thee. |
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XXIV
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April
and death: I thought not ever again
The
unprisoned summer could thy charm restore,
Nor June be more than June. Alluring, clear—
Ah, the old burst up-welling! Sorrow and stain
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275 |
Fleet
as a grey dew on the wind once more;
And thou, heart’s joy, with solace and with
cheer
Wilt
stay the slackening wrist
Of many a voyager swerving his light bark
By
shingly beaches, where the river mist—
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280 |
The
Indian spirit—hears thee from the stream
Pierce all the woodsy starlight and the dark:
Alluring,
clear, the wells of the dawn gleam!
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XXV
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A
kernel of joy athrob in the blue dusk
Unfolds
and spreads; from core to rim of June
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285 |
The
aspiration and the lift of things
Prevail through earth, and fear is a riven husk;
The
windflaws in the pines awake and croon;
The northern streamers upon rosied wings
Shimmer
and wheel and fade:
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290 |
No
grief is in the borders of thy song,
Nor
any failure, nor a thing mismade—
Only
the impulse of unslaked desire,
Athirst for life where thy calm brethren throng,
Whose
dreams out-journey Sirius nor tire.
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