XXXII Ballades in Blue China [1885]

To pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.

VILLANELLE

TO LUCIA

Apollo left the golden Muse
And shepherded a mortal’s sheep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

To mock the giant swain that woo’s
The sea-nymph in the sunny deep,
Apollo left the golden Muse.

Afield he drove his lambs and ewes,
Where Milon and where Battus reap,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

To watch thy tunny-fishers cruise
Below the dim Sicilian steep
Apollo left the golden Muse.

Ye twain did loiter in the dews,
Ye slept the swain’s unfever’d sleep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

That Time might half with his confuse
Thy songs, – like his, that laugh and leap, —
Theocritus of Syracuse,
Apollo left the golden Muse!

THE MYSTERY OF QUEEN PERSEPHONE

St. Paul and the Devil disputing about the Immortality of Man’s Soul, and St. Paul maintaining the same, (from the similitude of the corn-seed sown, which again sprouteth,) the Devil refutes him by his atheistic subtlety, but is put to shame by the evidence of three witnesses, namely, Persephone, Hela, and St. Lucy.

The Scene is Mount Gerizim

Intrabunt Sanctus Paulus, et Diabolus, inter

se de immortalitate Animae disputantes

SANCTUS PAULUS

Ye say that when a man is dead
He never more shall lift his head,
As doth the flower perishèd,
Nor break ne sweet ne bitter bread.
I hold you much in scorn!
Lo, if you cast in earth a seed
That seemeth to be dead indeed,
I wot ye shall have corn;
And all men shall rejoice and reap:
And so it fares with them that sleep,
The narrow house doth them but keep
Until the judgment morn.

DIABOLUS

There is an end of grief and mirth,
There is an end of all things born,
And if ye sow into the earth
A seed, ye shall have corn;
But if ye sow its withered root
It shall not bear you any fruit,
It will not sprout and spring again;
And if ye look to gather grain,
Of men mote ye have scorn.
Man’s body buried is the sown
Dead root, whose flower is over-blown.

SANCTUS PAULUS

Beshrew thee for thy subtleties
That melt the hearts of men with lies,
An evil task hath he that tries
To still thy subtle tongue!
But look ye round and ye shall see
The Dames that Queens of dead men be,
I wot there are no mo than three,
When all is said and sung.

Hic intrabunt et cantabunt tres Reginæ.

PERSEPHONE

I am the Queen Persephone.
The lips of Grecians prayed to me,
Saying, I give men sleep;
But I would have ye well to know
That with me none do slumber so;
But there be some that weep,
And juster souls content to dwell
Among the fields of asphodel,
By the Nine Waters deep.

HELA

I am the Queen of Hela’s House,
Great clouds I bind upon my brows;
Night for a covering.