Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (643 page)

“O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.”

Longum illud tempus, quum non ero, magis me movet, quam hoc exiguum-

Cicero, ad Att.,xii. 18.

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence : live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,

And with their mild persistence urge man’s search

To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven :

To make undying music in the world,

Breathing as beauteous order that controls

With growing sway the growing life of man.

So we inherit that sweet purity

For which we struggled, failed, and agonized

With widening retrospect that bred despair.

Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,

A vicious parent shaming still its child

Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved ;

Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,

Die in the large and charitable air.

And all our rarer, better, truer self,

That sobbed religiously in yearning song,

That watched to ease the burthen of the world,

Laboriously tracing what must be,

And what may yet be better — saw within

A worthier image for the sanctuary,

And shaped it forth before the multitude

Divinely human, raising worship so

To higher reverence more mixed with love-

That better self shall live till human Time

Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky

Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb

Unread forever

This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious

For us who strive to follow. May I reach

That purest heaven, be to other souls

The cup of strength in some great agony,

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty —

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,

And in diffusion ever more intense.

So shall I join the choir invisible

Whose music is the gladness of the world

1867

THE SPANISH GYPSY
.

This work was originally written in the wittier of 1864-65 ; after a visit to Spain in 1867.
 
It was rewritten and amplified. The reader conversant with Spanish poetry will see that in two of the Lyrics an attempt has been made to imitate the trochaic measure and assonance of the Spanish Ballad

CONTENTS

BOOK I.

BOOK II

BOOK III

BOOK IV

BOOK V

THE SPANISH GYPSY

BOOK I.

‘T is the warm South, where Europe spreads her lands

Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep :

Broad-breasted Spain, leaning with equal love

(A calm earth-goddess crowned with corn and vines)

On the Mid Sea that moans with memories

And on the untravelled Ocean whose vast tides

Pant dumbly passionate with dreams of youth

This river, shadowed by the battlements

And gleaming silvery towards the northern sky,

Feeds the famed stream that waters Andalus

And loiters, amorous of the fragrant air,

By Cordova and Seville to the bay

Fronting Algarva and the wandering flood

Of Guadiana. This deep mountain gorge

Slopes widening on the olive-plumed plains

Of fair Granada : one far-stretching arm

Points to Elvira, one to eastward heights

Of Alpujarras where the new-bathed Day

With oriflamme uplifted o’er the peaks

Saddens the breasts of northward-looking snows

That loved the night, and soared with soaring stars ;

Flashing the signals of his nearing swiftness

From Almeria’s purple-shadowed bay

On to the far-off rooks that gaze and glow —

On to Alhambra, strong and ruddy heart

Of glorious Morisma, gasping now,

A maimed giant in his agony.

This town that dips its feet within the stream,

And seems to sit a tower-crowned Cybele,

Spreading her ample robe adown the rocks.

Is rich Bedmar : ‘t was Moorish long ago,

But now the Cross is sparkling on the Mosque,

And bells make Catholic the trembling air.

The fortress gleams in Spanish sunshine now

(‘T is south a mile before the rays are Moorish), —

Hereditary jewel, agraffe bright

On all the many-titled privilege

Of young Duke Silva. No Castilian knight

That serves Queen Isabel has higher charge ;

For near this frontier sits the Moorish king,

Not Boabdil the waverer, who usurps

A throne he trembles in, and fawning licks

The feet of conquerors, but that fierce lion

Grisly El Zagal, who has made his lair

In Guadix’ fort, and rushing thence with strength,

Half his own fierceness, half the untainted heart

Of mountain bands that fight for holiday,

Wastes the fair lands that lie by Alcala,

Wreathing his horse’s neck with Christian heads.

To keep the Christian frontier — such high trust

Is young Duke Silva’s ; and the time is great.

(What times are little? To the sentinel

That hour is regal when he mounts on guard)

The fifteenth century since the Man Divine

Taught and was hated in Capernaum

Is near its end — is falling as a husk

Away from all the fruit its years have ripened.

The Moslem faith, now flickering like a torch

In a night struggle on this shore of Spain,

Glares, a broad column of advancing flame,

Along the Danube and the Illyrian shore

Far into Italy, where eager monks,

Who watch in dreams and dream the while they watch,

See Christ grow paler in the baleful light,

Crying again the cry of the forsaken.

But faith, the stronger for extremity,

Becomes prophetic, hears the far-off tread

Of western chivalry, sees downward sweep

The archangel Michael with the gleaming sword,

And listens for the shriek of hurrying fiends

Chased from their revels in God’s sanctuary.

So trusts the monk, and lifts appealing eyes

To the high dome, the Church’s firmament,

Where the blue light-pierced curtain, rolled away,

Reveals the throne and Him who sits thereon.

So trust the men whose best hope for the world

Is ever that, the world is near its end :

Impatient of the stars that keep their course

And make ho pathway for the coming Judge.

But other futures stir the world’s great heart

Europe is come to her majority,

And enters on the vast inheritance

Won from the tombs of mighty ancestors,

The seeds, the gold, the gems, the silent harps

That lay deep buried with the memories

Of old renown.

No more, as once in sunny Avignon,

The poet-scholar spreads the Homeric page,

And gazes sadly, like the deaf at song ;

For now the old epic voices ring again

And vibrate with the beat and melody

Stirred by the warmth of old Ionian days.

The martyred sage, the Attic orator,

Immortally incarnate, like the gods,

In spiritual bodies, winged words

Holding a universe impalpable,

Find a new audience. Forevermore,

With gander resurrection than was feigned

Of Attila’s fierce Huns, the soul of Greece

Conquers the bulk of Persia. The maimed form

Of calmly joyous beauty, marble-limbed,

Yet breathing with the thought that shaped its lips,

Looks mild reproach from out its open grave

At creeds of terror ; and the vine-wreathed god

Fronts the pierced Image with the crown of thorns.

The soul of man is widening towards the past:

No longer hanging at the breast of life

Feeding in blindness to bin parentage, —

Quenching all wonder with Omnipotence,

Praising a name with indolent piety —

He spells the record of his long descent,

More largely conscious of the life that was.

And from the height that shows where morning shone

On far-off summits pale and gloomy now,

The horizon widens round him, and the west

Looks vast with untracked waves whereon his gaze

Follows the flight of the swift-vanished bird

That like the sunken sun is mirrored still

Upon the yearning soul within the eye.

And so in Cordova through patient nights

Columbus watches, or he sails in dreams

Between the setting stars and finds new day;

Then wakes again to the old weary days,

Girds on the cord and frock of pale Saint Francis,

And like him zealous pleads with foolish men.

“ I ask but for a million maravedis :

Give me three caravels to find a world.

New shores, new realms, new soldiers for the Cross.

Son cosas grandes ! “ Thus he pleads in vain ;

Yet faints not utterly, but pleads anew,

Thinking, “ God means it, and has chosen me.”

For this man is the pulse of all mankind

Feeding an embryo future, offspring strange

Of the fond Present, that with mother-prayers

And mother-fancies looks for championship

Of all her loved beliefs and old-world ways

From that young Time she bears within her womb.

The sacred places shall be purged again,

The Turk converted, and the Holy Church,

Like the mild Virgin with the outspread robe,

Shall fold all tongues and nations lovingly

But since God works by armies, who shall be

The modern Cyrus? Is it France most Christian

Who with his lilies and brocaded knights,

French oaths, French vices, and the newest style

Of out-puffed sleeve, shall pass from west to east,

A winnowing fan to purify the seed

For fair millennial harvests soon to come?

Or is not Spain the land of chosen warriors? —

Crusaders consecrated from the womb,

Carrying the sword-cross stamped upon their souls

By the long yearnings of a nation’s life,

Through all the seven patient centuries

Since first Pelayo and his resolute band

Trusted the God within their Gothic hearts

At Covadunga, and defied Mahound ;

Beginning so the Holy War of Spain

That now is panting with the eagerness

Of labour near its end. The silver cross

Glitters o’er Malaga and streams dread light