BALLADE OF DEAD CITIES

EDMUND GOSSE

[For the ballade form, see note on page 350. Here the writer has in mind Villon's famous ballade on Dead Ladies, with the refrain, "Where are the snows of yester-year?"]

Where are the cities of the plain?

And where the shrines of rapt Bethel?1 And Calah2 built of Tubal-Cain?

And Shinar3 whence King Amraphel Came out in arms, and fought, and fell, Decoyed into the pits of slime

By Siddim, and sent sheer to hell; Where are the cities of old time?

While the anchors that faith had cast
Are dragging in the gale,

I am quietly holding fast
To the things that cannot fail.

I know that right is right,
That it is not good to lie;
That love is better than spite,
And a neighbor than a spy;
I know that passion needs

The leash of a sober mind;
I know that generous deeds
Some sure reward will find;
That the rulers must obey;

That the givers shall increase;
That Duty lights the way

ΤΟ

For the beautiful feet of Peace;- 20

In the darkest night of the year,

When the stars have all gone out, That courage is better than fear,

That faith is truer than doubt;

And fierce though the fiends may fight, And long though the angels hide,

I know that Truth and Right

Have the universe on their side;

And that somewhere, beyond the stars, Is a Love that is better than fate; When the night unlocks her bars

I shall see Him, and I will wait.

(1879)

THE MARSHES OF GLYNN SIDNEY LANIER

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Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fire,

Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,

Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,

Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,

Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,

Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,

While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine

Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine;

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But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,

And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,

And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem

Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,

Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,

And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,

And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,

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That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the Marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore

When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain

Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band

Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. 50 Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl

As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,

Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,

Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main. 60

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,

Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies

In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:

Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within

The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea

Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: 80

Look how the grace of the sea doth go,
About and about through the intricate
channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,

Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,

And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,

That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow

In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!

The creeks overflow; a thousand rivulets 90

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