The Idler’s Calendar. Twelve Sonnets For The Months. October
GAMBLING AT MONACO
A jewelled kingdom set impregnable
In gardens green which front the violet sea,
A happy fortress shut and guarded well,
And cradled ever on the mountain's knee:
Here Monsieur Blanc, sad prince of industry,
Has reared the palace which men call his hell:
And here in autumn days, when winds blow free,
Pleasure shall lead us to sin's citadel.
Alas for vice! Yet, who dares moralize,
In the hushed rooms, where fortune reigns alway?
Her solemn priest, with chink of coin, replies
``Messieurs, faites votre jeu. Le jeu est fait.''
Who dares be wise, lest wisdom's self be vexed?
For all who come to preach remain to play.
Nay, leave poor vice, say I, her pleasant text,
Nor grudge her Heaven in this world with the next.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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The Idler’s Calendar. Twelve Sonnets For The Months. January
COVER SHOOTING
The week at Whinwood next to Christmas week.
Six guns, no more, but all good men and true,
Of the clean--visaged sort, with ruddy cheek
Which knows not care. Light--hearted Montagu
At the cover's end, as down the wind they flew,
Has stopped his score of pheasants, every beak,
Without more thought of Juliet than of you;
And still I hear his loud--mouthed Purdeys speak.
Tybalt and Paris, with a bet on hand,
Have fired at the same woodcock. ``Truce,'' say I,
``To civil jars.'' For look, as by command,
Bunch following bunch, a hundred pheasants fly.
Now battle, murder, death on every side!
Right, left, left, right, we pile up agony,
Till night stops all. Then home in chastened pride,
With aching heads, our slaughter satisfied.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Night On Our Lives
Night on our lives, ah me, how surely has it fallen!
Be they who can deceived. I dare not look before.
See, sad years, to your own; your little wealth long hoarded,
How sore it was to win, how soon it perished all!
Beauty, the one face loved, the pure eyes mine so worshipped,
So true, so touching once, so tender in their dreams!
Find me that hour again. I yield the rest uncounted,
Urns for the dust of time, divine in her sole tears.
--Unseen one! Unforgotten! Oh, if your eyes behold it
By chance, this page revealed which trembling hides your name,
Merged in the ultimate wreck of fame and meaner joys!
Co--partner be with me in this my soul's last sorrow,
Pearl of my hidden life, this grief, that not again
Unspoiled love's rose shall blow, the dear love which was ours.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part I: To Manon: XIX
HE PROTESTS, NOTWITHSTANDING, HIS LOVE
To be cast forth from the fair light of heaven
Into the outer darkness and there lie,
Through unrecorded years of agony,
Unseen, unheard, unpitied, unforgiven;
To be forgotten of the earth and sky,
Forgotten of the womb that once did bear,
The eyes that cheered, the voice that comforted,
The very breast where love had laid his head;
To be alone with darkness and despair,
Alone with endless death, and not to die:
All these be punishments within the hand
Of an avenging deity to deal.
To these I bow in weakness as behoves.
Yet not in anger but in love I stand
'Gainst heaven, a new Prometheus, and appeal
From God to my own soul which ceaseless loves.
His be the wrath, the burning and the rod.
Hell shall not make me traitor to my God.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Butterflies
O child of Joy! What idle life is thine!
Thou, in these meadows, while thy skies are blue,
And while thy joys are new to thee like wine,
Chasest mad butterflies as children do.
And lo, thou turnest from them to repine,
Because it was not love thou didst pursue.
O child of Hope! Thou sighest thy sad sighs,
Mourning for that which is not nor can be.
Where is the noon can match with thy sunrise?
Whose is the heart shall win thy constancy?
Thou, with thy foolish loves, mad butterflies,
What dost thou ask of my sad heart and me?
O child of Love, begotten for man's bliss!
O child of Pleasure, nursed for thy own pain!
Needs must I weep the day of thy distress,
The fate that brushes at thy arm in vain,
Thy skies of blue, thy broken happiness,
The hopes thou chasest never to attain.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part III: Gods And False Gods: LVII
ON A LOST OPPORTUNITY
We might, if you had willed, have conquered Heaven.
Once only in our lives before the gate
Of Paradise we stood, one fortunate even,
And gazed in sudden rapture through the grate.
And, while you stood astonished, I, our fate
Venturing, pushed the latch and found it free.
There stood the tree of knowledge fair and great
Beside the tree of life. One instant we
Stood in that happy garden, guardianless.
My hands already turned towards the tree
And in another moment we had known
The taste of joy and immortality
And been ourselves as gods. But in distress
You thrust me back with supplicating arms
And eyes of terror, till the impatient sun
Had time to set and till the heavenly host
Rushed forth on us with clarions and alarms
And cast us out for ever, blind and lost.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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In Memoriam W.M & E.B.J.
Mad are we all, maids, men, young fools alike and old,
All we that wander blind and want the with to dare.
Dark through the world we go, dazed sheep, across life's wold,
Edged from the flowers we loved by our herd's crook of care.
Life? Have we lived it? No. We were not as these were,
Intent, untiring souls who proved time till their death.
Nay we were sluggards, all, how crazed in our despair
Each day of their fame won here nobly witnesseth.
--What is life's wealth? To do. Its loss? To dream and wait.
Years vanish unfulfilled; but work achieved lives on.
Not all Time's beauty died when these two fell asleep.
Dear Madeline, if we grieve our own less strenuous fate,
Heaven send us still this strength, this joy, now they are gone
At least like these to love, even though mad fools we weep.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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An Inscription
At this fair oak table sat
Whilom he our Laureate,
Poet, handicraftsman, sage,
Light of our Victorian age,
William Morris, whose art's plan
Laid its lines in ample span,
Wrought it, trestle board and rib,
With good help of Philip Webb,
For an altar of carouse
In his own home, the Red House.
Thirty years and five here he
Made good cheer and company,
Feasting all with more than bread.
Had men stored the things he said,
Jests profound and foolings wise,
Truths unliveried of lies,
Basenesses chastised and set
Like hounds slain beneath his feet,
Knowledge prodigally poured,
His best wine, at this free board;
[...] Read more
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Lilac And Gold And Green
Lilac and gold and green!
Those are the colours I love the best,
Spring's own raiment untouched and clean,
When the world is awake and yet hardly dressed,
And the stranger sun, her bridegroom shy,
Looks at her bosom and wonders why
She is so beautiful, he so blest.
Lilac and green and gold!
Those were the colours you wore to--day,
Robed you were in them fold on fold,
Clothed in the light of your love's delay.
And I held you thus in my arms, once only,
And wondered still, as you left me lonely,
How the world's beauty was changed to grey.
Lilac and gold and green!
I would die for the truth of those colours true!
Lilac for loyalty, gold for my queen,
And green the faith of my love for you.
[...] Read more
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part I: To Manon: XVIII
HE LAMENTS THAT HIS LOVE IS DEAD
My love is dead, dead and in spite of me,--
Dead while I lived,--while yet my blood was rife
With hope and pleasure and the pride of life.
For my love ended unexpectedly
During the Winter, stricken like a tree
By a night's cold, and frozen to the blood,
Whose leaves fell off and never were renewed
By any promise of the years to be.
And, when the Spring came, and the birds, to mate
Among its branches, lo! they found it bare,
Though all around was Summer in the wood.
Yet they took heart awhile, incredulous
That such a tree should be for ever dead.
``'Tis early yet,'' they cried. ``The Spring is late.
It shall still be as in the days that were.''
But Summer came and went while the tree stood
Bare in the sun like a deserted house.
--Then the birds suddenly despaired and fled.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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