George Santayana

I Calm was the sea to which your course you kept, Oh, how much calmer than all southern seas! Many your nameless mates, whom the keen breeze Wafted from mothers that of old have wept. All souls of children taken as they slept Are your companions, partners of your ease, And the green souls of all these autumn trees Are with you through the silent spaces swept. Your virgin body gave its gentle breath Untainted to the gods. Why should we grieve, But that we merit not your holy death? We shall not loiter long, your friends and I; Living you made it goodlier to live, Dead you will make it easier to die. II With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, your mellow ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,— What I keep of you, or you rob of me. III Your bark lies anchored in the peaceful bight Until a kinder wind unfurl her sail; Your docile spirit, wingèd by this gale, Hath at the dawning fled into the light. And I half know why heaven deemed it right Your youth, and this my joy in youth, should fail; God hath them still, for ever they avail, Eternity hath borrowed that delight. For long ago I taught my thoughts to run Where all the great things live that lived of yore, And in eternal quiet float and soar; There all my loves are gathered into one, Where change is not, nor parting any more, Nor revolution of the moon and sun. IV In my deep heart these chimes would still have rung To toll your passing, had you not been dead; For time a sadder mask than death may spread Over the face that ever should be young. The bough that falls with all its trophies hung Falls not too soon, but lays its flower-crowned head Most royal in the dust, with no leaf shed Unhallowed or unchiselled or unsung. And though the after world will never hear The happy name of one so gently true, Nor chronicles write large this fatal year, Yet we who loved you, though we be but few, Keep you in whatsoe’er is good, and rear In our weak virtues monuments to you.

There may be chaos still around the world, This little world that in my thinking lies; For mine own bosom is the paradise Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled. Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled, Unmindful of the changing outer skies, Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies, Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled. I heed them not; or if the subtle night Haunt me with deities I never saw, I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw To hide their myriad faces from my sight. They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.

As in the midst of battle there is room For thoughts of love, and in foul sin for mirth; As gossips whisper of a trinket’s worth Spied by the death-bed’s flickering candle-gloom; As in the crevices of Caesar’s tomb The sweet herbs flourish on a little earth: So in this great disaster of our birth We can be happy, and forget our doom. For morning, with a ray of tenderest joy Gilding the iron heaven, hides the truth, And evening gently woos us to employ Our grief in idle catches. Such is youth; Till from that summer’s trance we wake, to find Despair before us, vanity behind.

Hold high the woof, dear friends, that we may see The cunning mixture of its colours rare. Nothing in nature purposely is fair,— Her beauties in their freedom disagree; But here all vivid dyes that garish be, To that tint mellowed which the sense will bear, Glow, and not wound the eye that, resting there, Lingers to feed its gentle ecstacy. Crimson and purple and all hues of wine, Saffron and russet, brown and sober green Are rich the shadowy depths of blue between; While silver threads with golden intertwine, To catch the glimmer of a fickle sheen,— All the long labour of some captive queen.

Sonnet VII I would I might forget that I am I, And break the heavy chain that binds me fast, Whose links about myself my deeds have cast. What in the body’s tomb doth buried lie Is boundless; ’tis the spirit of the sky, Lord of the future, guardian of the past, And soon must forth, to know his own at last. In his large life to live, I fain would die. Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food, But calling not his suffering his own; Blessèd the angel, gazing on all good, But knowing not he sits upon a throne; Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood, And doomed to know his aching heart alone.

The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine, The wide reach of bay and the long sky line,— O, I am sick for home! The salt, salt smell of the thick sea air, And the smooth round stones that the ebbtides wear,— When will the good ship come? The wretched stumps all charred and burned, And the deep soft rut where the cartwheel turned,— Why is the world so old? The lapping wave, and the broad gray sky Where the cawing crows and the slow gulls fly, Where are the dead untold? The thin, slant willows by the flooded bog, The huge stranded hulk and the floating log, Sorrow with life began! And among the dark pines, and along the flat shore, O the wind, and the wind, for evermore! What will become of man?

I Behoild Pelides with his yellow hair, Proud child of Thetis, hero loved of Jove; Above the frowning of his brows of wove A crown of gold, well combed, with Spartan care. Who might have seen him, sullen, great, and fair, As with the wrongful world he proudly strove, And by high deeds his wilder passion shrove, Mastering love, resentment, and despair. He knew his end, and Phoebus’ arrow sure He braved for fame immortal and a friend, Despising life; and we, who know our end, Know that in our decay he shall endure And all our children’s hearts to grief inure, With whose first bitter battles his shall blend. II Who brought thee forth, immortal vision, who In Phthia or in Tempe brought thee forth? Out of the sunlight and the sapful earth What god the simples of thy spirit drew? A goddess rose from the green waves, and threw Her arms about a king, to give thee birth; A centaur, patron of thy boyish mirth, Over the meadows in thy footsteps flew. Now Thessaly forgets thee, and the deep Thy keeled bark furrowed answers not thy prayer; But far away new generations keep Thy laurels fresh; where branching Isis hems The lawns of Oxford round about, or where Enchanted Eton sits by pleasant Thames. III I gaze on thee as Phidias of old Or Polyclitus gazed, when first he saw These hard and shining limbs, without a flaw, And cast his wonder in heroic mould. Unhappy me who only may behold, Nor make immutable and fix in awe A fair immortal form no worm shall gnaw, A tempered mind whose faith was never told! The godlike mien, the lion’s lock and eye, The well-knit sinew, utter a brave heart Better than many words that part by part Spell in strange symbols what serene and whole In nature lives, nor can in marble die. The perfect body itself the soul.