Waring

I. I.     Whats become of Waring     Since he gave us all the slip,     Chose land-travel or seafaring,     Boots and chest or staff and scrip,     Rather than pace up and down     Any longer London town? II.     Whod have guessed it from his lip     Or his brows accustomed bearing,     On the night he thus took ship     Or started landward? little caring     For us, it seems, who supped together     (Friends of his too, I remember)     And walked home thro the merry weather,     The snowiest in all December.     I left his arm that night myself     For whats-his-names, the new prose-poet     Who wrote the book there, on the shelf     How, forsooth, was I to know it     If Waring meant to glide away     Like a ghost at break of day?     Never looked he half so gay! III.     He was prouder than the devil:     How he must have cursed our revel!     Ay and many other meetings,     Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,     As up and down he paced this London,     With no work done, but great works undone,     Where scarce twenty knew his name.     Why not, then, have earlier spoken,     Written, bustled? Whos to blame     If your silence kept unbroken?     True, but there were sundry jottings,     Stray-leaves, fragments, blurrs and blottings,     Certain first steps were achieved     Already which (is that your meaning?)     Had well borne out whoeer believed     In more to come! But who goes gleaning     Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved     Stand cornfields by him? Pride, oerweening     Pride alone, puts forth such claims     Oer the days distinguished names. IV.     Meantime, how much I loved him,     I find out now Ive lost him.     I who cared not if I moved him,     Who could so carelessly accost him,     Henceforth never shall get free     Of his ghostly company,     His eyes that just a little wink     As deep I go into the merit     Of this and that distinguished spirit     His cheeks raised colour, soon to sink,     As long I dwell on some stupendous     And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)     Monstr-inform-ingens-horrend-ous     Demoniaco-seraphic     Penmans latest piece of graphic.     Nay, my very wrist grows warm     With his dragging weight of arm.     Een so, swimmingly appears,     Through ones after-supper musings,     Some lost lady of old years     With her beauteous vain endeavour     And goodness unrepaid as ever;     The face, accustomed to refusings,     We, puppies that we were . . . Oh never     Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled     Being aught like false, forsooth, to?     Telling aught but honest truth to?     What a sin, had we centupled     Its possessors grace and sweetness     No! she heard in its completeness     Truth, for truths a weighty matter,     And truth, at issue, we cant flatter!     Well, tis done with; shes exempt     From damning us thro such a sally;     And so she glides, as down a valley,     Taking up with her contempt,     Past our reach; and in, the flowers     Shut her unregarded hours. V.     Oh, could I have him back once more,     This Waring, but one half-day more!     Back, with the quiet face of yore,     So hungry for acknowledgment     Like mine! Id fool him to his bent.     Feed, should not he, to hearts content?     Id say, to only have conceived,     Planned your great works, apart from progress,     Surpasses little works achieved!     Id lie so, I should be believed.     Id make such havoc of the claims     Of the days distinguished names     To feast him with, as feasts an ogress     Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!     Or as one feasts a creature rarely     Captured here, unreconciled     To capture; and completely gives     Its pettish humours license, barely     Requiring that it lives. VI.     Ichabod, Ichabod,     The glory is departed!     Travels Waring East away?     Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,     Reports a man upstarted     Somewhere as a god,     Hordes grown European-hearted,     Millions of the wild made tame     On a sudden at his fame?     In Vishnu-land what Avatar?     Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,     With the demurest of footfalls     Over the Kremlins pavement bright     With serpentine and syenite,     Steps, with five other Generals     That simultaneously take snuff,     For each to have pretext enough     And kerchiefwise unfold his sash     Which, softness self, is yet the stuff     To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,     And leave the grand white neck no gash?     Waring in Moscow, to those rough     Cold northern natures born perhaps,     Like the lambwhite maiden dear     From the circle of mute kings     Unable to repress the tear,     Each as his sceptre down he flings,     To Dians fane at Taurica,     Where now a captive priestess, she alway     Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech     With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach     As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands     Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands     Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry     Amid their barbarous twitter!     In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!     Ay, most likely tis in Spain     That we and Waring meet again     Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane     Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid     All fire and shine, abrupt as when theres slid     Its stiff gold blazing pall     From some black coffin-lid.     Or, best of all,     I love to think     The leaving us was just a feint;     Back here to London did he slink,     And now works on without a wink     Of sleep, and we are on the brink     Of something great in fresco-pain:     Some garrets ceiling, walls and floor,     Up and down and oer and oer     He splashes, as none splashed before     Since great Caldera Polidore.     Or Music means this land of ours     Some favour yet, to pity won     By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,     Give me my so-long promised son,     Let Waring end what I begun!     Then down he creeps and out he steals     Only when the night conceals     His face, in Kent tis cherry-time,     Or hops are picking: or at prime     Of March he wanders as, too happy,     Years ago when he was young,     Some mild eve when woods grew sappy     And the early moths had sprung     To life from many a trembling sheath     Woven the warm boughs beneath;     While small birds said to themselves     What should soon be actual song,     And young gnats, by tens and twelves,     Made as if they were the throng     That crowd around and carry aloft     The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,     Out of a myriad noises soft,     Into a tone that can endure     Amid the noise of a July noon     When all Gods creatures crave their boon,     All at once and all in tune,     And get it, happy as Waring then,     Having first within his ken     What a man might do with men:     And far too glad, in the even-glow,     To mix with the world he meant to take     Into his hand, he told you, so,     And out of it his world to make,     To contract and to expand     As he shut or oped his hand.     Oh Waring, whats to really be?     A clear stage and a crowd to see!     Some Garrick, say, out shall not he     The heart of Hamlets mystery pluck?     Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,     Some Junius, am I right? shall tuck     His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!     Some Chatterton shall have the luck     Of calling Rowley into life!     Some one shall somehow run a muck     With this old world for want of strife     Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive     To rouse us, Waring! Whos alive?     Our men scarce seem in earnest now.     Distinguished names! but tis, somehow,     As if they played at being names     Still more distinguished, like the games     Of children. Turn our sport to earnest     With a visage of the sternest!     Bring the real times back, confessed     Still better than our very best!     II. I.     When I last saw Waring . . .     (How all turned to him who spoke!     You saw Waring? Truth or joke?     In land-travel or sea-faring?) II.     We were sailing by Triest     Where a day or two we harboured:     A sunset was in the West,     When, looking over the vessels side,     One of our company espied     A sudden speck to larboard.     And as a sea-duck flies and swims     At once, so came the light craft up,     With its sole lateen sail that trims     And turns (the water round its rims     Dancing, as round a sinking cup)     And by us like a fish it curled,     And drew itself up close beside,     Its great sail on the instant furled,     And oer its thwarts a shrill voice cried,     (A neck as bronzed as a Lascars)     Buy wine of us, you English Brig?     Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?     A pilot for you to Triest?     Without one, look you neer so big,     Theyll never let you up the bay!     We natives should know best.     I turned, and just those fellows way,     Our captain said, The long-shore thieves     Are laughing at us in their sleeves. III.     In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;     And one, half-hidden by his side     Under the furled sail, soon I spied,     With great grass hat and kerchief black,     Who looked up with his kingly throat,     Said somewhat, while the other shook     His hair back from his eyes to look     Their longest at us; then the boat,     I know not how, turned sharply round,     Laying her whole side on the sea     As a leaping fish does; from the lee     Into the weather, cut somehow     Her sparkling path beneath our bow     And so went off, as with a bound,     Into the rosy and golden half     Of the sky, to overtake the sun     And reach the shore, like the sea-calf     Its singing cave; yet I caught one     Glance ere away the boat quite passed,     And neither time nor toil could mar     Those features: so I saw the last     Of Waring! You? Oh, never star     Was lost here but it rose afar!     Look East, where whole new thousands are!     In Vishnu-land what Avatar?