Grass of Parnassus - Andrew Lang

The years will pass, and hearts will range,
You conquer Time, and Care, and Change.
Though Time doth still delight to shed
The dust on many a younger head;
Though Care, oft coming, hath the guile
From younger lips to steal the smile;
Though Change makes younger hearts wax cold,
And sells new loves for loves of old,
Time, Change, nor Care, hath learned the art
To fleck your hair, to chill your heart,
To touch your tresses with the snow,
To mar your mirth of long ago.
Change, Care, nor Time, while life endure,
Shall spoil our ancient friendship sure,
The love which flows from sacred springs,
In old unhappy far-off things,
From sympathies in grief and joy,
Through all the years of man and boy.

Therefore, to you, the rhymes I strung
When even this brindled head was young
I bring, and later rhymes I bring
That flit upon as weak a wing,
But still for you, for yours, they sing!

Pale star that by the lochs of Galloway,
   In wet green places twixt the depth and height
Dost keep thine hour while Autumn ebbs away,
   When now the moors have doffed the heather bright,
   Grass of Parnassus, flower of my delight,
How gladly with the unpermitted bay
Garlands not mine, and leaves that not decay
   How gladly would I twine thee if I might!

The bays are out of reach!  But far below
   The peaks forbidden of the Muses Hill,
Grass of Parnassus, thy returning snow
   Between September and October chill
Doth speak to me of Autumns long ago,
   And these kind faces that are with me still.

To you, who know the face of war,
You, that for England wander far,
You that have seen the Ghazis fly
From English lads not sworn to die,
You that have lain where, deadly chill,
The mist crept oer the Shameful Hill,
You that have conquered, mile by mile,
The currents of unfriendly Nile,
And cheered the march, and eased the strain
When Politics made valour vain,
Ian, to you, from banks of Ken,
We send our lays of Englishmen!

ToCorinth leads one road, you say:
Is there a Corinth, or a way?
Each bland or blatant preacher hath
His painful or his primrose path,
And not a soul of all of these
But knows the city twixt the seas,
Her fair unnumbered homes and all
Her gleaming amethystine wall!

Blind are the guides who know the way,
The guides who write, and preach, and pray,
I watch their lives, and I divine
They differ not from yours and mine!

One man we knew, and only one,
Whose seeking for a citys done,
For what he greatly sought he found,
A city girt with fire around,
A city in an empty land
Between the wastes of sky and sand,
A city on a river-side,
Where by the folk he loved, he died. 1

Alas! it is not ours to tread
That path wherein his life he led,
Not ours his heart to dare and feel,
Keen as the fragrant Syrian steel;
Yet are we not quite city-less,
Not wholly left in our distress
Is it not said by One of old,
Sheep have I of another fold?
Ah! faint of heart, and weak of will,
For us there is a city still!

Dear city of Zeus, the Stoic says, 2
The Voice from Romes imperial days,
In Thee meet all things, and disperse,
In Thee, for Thee, O Universe!
To me alls fruit thy seasons bring,
Alike thy summer and thy spring;
The winds that wail, the suns that burn,
From Thee proceed, to Thee return.

Dear city of Zeus, shall we not say,
Home to which none can lose the way!
Born in that citys flaming bound,
We do not find her, but are found.
Within her wide and viewless wall
The Universe is girdled all.
All joys and pains, all wealth and dearth,
All things that travail on the earth,
Gods will they work, if God there be,
If not, what is my life to me?

Seek we no further, but abide
Within this city great and wide,
In her and for her living, we
Have no less joy than to be free;
Nor death nor grief can quite appal
The folk that dwell within her wall,
Nor aught but with our will befall!

Vain is the dream!  However Hope may rave,
He perished with the folk he could not save,
And though none surely told us he is dead,
And though perchance another in his stead,
Another, not less brave, when all was done,
Had fled unto the southward and the sun,
Had urged a way by force, or won by guile
To streams remotest of the secret Nile,
Had raised an army of the Desert men,
And, waiting for his hour, had turned again
And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know
Gordon is dead, and these things are not so!
Nay, not for Englands cause, nor to restore
Her trampled flag for he loved Honour more
Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,
Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.
He will not come again, whateer our need,
He will not come, who is happy, being freed
From the deathly flesh and perishable things,
And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings.
Nay, somewhere by the sacred Rivers shore
He sleeps like those who shall return no more,
No more return for all the prayers of men
Arthur and Charles they never come again!
They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem:
Whateer sick Hope may whisper, vain the dream!

To-morrow is a year since Gordon died!
   A year ago to-night, the Desert still
   Crouched on the spring, and panted for its fill
Of lust and blood.  Their old art statesmen plied,
And paltered, and evaded, and denied;
   Guiltless as yet, except for feeble will,
   And craven heart, and calculated skill
In long delays, of their great homicide.

A year ago to-night twas not too late.
   The thought comes through our mirth, again, again;
Methinks I hear the halting foot of Fate
   Approaching and approaching us; and then
Comes cackle of the House, and the Debate!
   Enough; he is forgotten amongst men.

Sons of the giant Ocean isle
   In sport our friendly foes for long,
Well England loves you, and we smile
When you outmatch us many a while,
   So fleet you are, so keen and strong.

You, like that fairy people set
   Of old in their enchanted sea
Far off from men, might well forget
An elder nations toil and fret,
   Might heed not aught but game and glee.

But what your fathers were you are
   In lands the fathers never knew,
Neath skies of alien sign and star
You rally to the English war;
   Your hearts are English, kind and true.

And now, when first on England falls
   The shadow of a darkening fate,
You hear the Mother ere she calls,
You leave your ocean-girdled walls,
   And face her foemen in the gate.

Thou that on every field of earth and sky
   Didst hunt for Death, who seemed to flee and fear,
How great and greatly fallen dost thou lie
   Slain in the Desert by some wandering spear:
Not here, alas! may England say, not here
   Nor in this quarrel was it meet to die,
   But in that dreadful battle drawing nigh
To thunder through the Afghan passes sheer:

Like Aias by the ships shouldst thou have stood,
   And in some glen have stayed the stream of flight,
   The bulwark of thy people and their shield,
When Indus or when Helmund ran with blood,
   Till back into the Northland and the Night
   The smitten Eagles scattered from the field.

Dead, with their eyes to the foe,
   Dead, with the foe at their feet,
Under the sky laid low
   Truly their slumber is sweet,
Though the wind from the Camp of the Slain Men blow,
   And the rain on the wilderness beat.

Dead, for they chose to die
   When that wild race was run;
Dead, for they would not fly,
   Deeming their work undone,
Nor cared to look on the face of the sky,
   Nor loved the light of the sun.

Honour we give them and tears,
   And the flag they died to save,
Rent from the rain of the spears,
   Wet from the war and the wave,
Shall waft mens thoughts through the dust of the years,
   Back to their lonely grave!

Still, Rhodocleia, brooding on the dead,
Still singing of the meads of asphodel,
   Lands desolate of delight?
Say, hast thou dreamed of, or rememberèd,
   The shores where shadows dwell,
      Nor know the sun, nor see the stars of night?

There, midst thy music, doth thy spirit gaze
   As a girl pines for home,
   Looking along the way that she hath come,
Sick to return, and counts the weary days!
So wouldst thou flee
   Back to the multitude whose days are done,
Wouldst taste the fruit that lured Persephone,
The sacrament of death; and die, and be
   No more in the wind and sun!

Thou hast not dreamed it, but rememberèd
   I know thou hast been there,
Hast seen the stately dwellings of the dead
   Rise in the twilight air,
And crossed the shadowy bridge the spirits tread,
   And climbed the golden stair!

Nay, by thy cloudy hair
   And lips that were so fair,
Sad lips now mindful of some ancient smart,
   And melancholy eyes, the haunt of Care,
I know thee who thou art!
   That Rhodocleia, Glory of the Rose,
Of Hellas, ere her close,
   That Rhodocleia who, when all was done
   The golden time of Greece, and fallen her sun,
Swayed her last poets heart.

With roses did he woo thee, and with song,
   With thine own rose, and with the lily sweet,
      The dark-eyed violet,
      Garlands of wind-flowers wet,
And fragrant love-lamps that the whole night long
      Burned till the dawn was burning in the skies,
      Praising thy golden eyes,
   And feet more silvery than Thetis feet!

But thou didst die and flit
   Among the tribes outworn,
      The unavailing myriads of the past:
   Oft he beheld thy face in dreams of morn,
And, waking, wept for it,
         Till his own time came at last,
      And then he sought thee in the dusky land!
Wide are the populous places of the dead
Where souls on earth once wed
      May never meet, nor each take others hand,
Each far from the other fled!

So all in vain he sought for thee, but thou
   Didst never taste of the Lethæan stream,
         Nor that forgetful fruit,
   The mystic pomgranate;
But from the Mighty Warden fledst; and now,
   The fugitive of Fate,
   Thou farest in our life as in a dream,
         Still wandering with thy lute,
Like that sweet paynim lady of old song,
Who sang and wandered long,
   For love of her Aucassin, seeking him!
So with thy minstrelsy
   Thou roamest, dreaming of the country dim,
Below the veilèd sky!

There doth thy lover dwell,
   Singing, and seeking still to find thy face
   In that forgetful place:
      Thou shalt not meet him here,
      Not till thy singing clear
Through all the murmur of the streams of hell
      Wins to the Maidens ear!
May she, perchance, have pity on thee and call
      Thine eager spirit to sit beside her feet,
Passing throughout the long unechoing hall
   Up to the shadowy throne,
      Where the lost lovers of the ages meet;
   Till then thou art alone!

      Our Faith and Troth
   All time and space controules
Above the highest sphere we meet
Unseen, unknowne, and greet as Angels greet.