Canto 10Love in Sorrow
Book 1. Part One - England and Baroda 1883 – 1898
England and Baroda, 1883–1898
She kept and bloomed upon its pain,
Then slighted as a broken thing and vile.
Now Mopsus in his unblest arms,
5Mopsus enfolds her heavenlier charms,
Mopsus to whom the Muse averse
Refused her gracious secrets to rehearse.
O plaintive, murmuring reed, breathe yet thy strain.
Ye glades, your bliss I grudge you not,
10Nor would I that my grief profane
Your sacred summer with intruding thought.
Yet since I will no more behold
Your glorious beauty stained with gold
From shadows of her hair, nor by some well
15Made naked of their sylvan dress
The breasts, the limbs I never shall possess,
Therefore, O mother Arethuse, farewell.
For me no place abides
By the green verge of thy belov`ed tides.
20To Lethe let my footsteps go
And wailing waters in the realms below,
Where happier song is none than moaning pain
Nor any lovelier Syrinx than the weed.
Child of the lisping waters, hush thy strain,
25O murmuring, plaintive reed.
Love in Sorrow
Do you remember, Love, that sunset pale
When from near meadows sad with mist the breeze
Sighed like a feverous soul and with soft wail
30The ghostly river sobbed among the trees?
I think that Nature heard our misery
Weep to itself and wept for sympathy.
Songs to Myrtilla
For we were strangers then; we knew not Fate
35In ambush by the solitary stream
Nor did our sorrows hope to find a mate,
Much less of love or friendship dared we dream.
Rather we thought that loneliness and we
Were wed in marble perpetuity.
40For there was none who loved me, no, not one.
Alas, what was there that a man should love?
For I was misery’s last and frailest son
And even my mother bade me homeless rove.
And I had wronged my youth and nobler powers
45By weak attempts, small failures, wasted hours.
Therefore I laid my cheek on the chill grass
And murmured, “I am overborne with grief
And joy to richer natures hopes to pass.
Oh me! my life is like an aspen leaf
50That shakes but will not fall. My thoughts are blind
And life so bitter that death seems almost kind.
“How am I weary of the days’ increase,
Of the moon’s brightness and the splendid stars,
The sun that dies not. I would be at peace,
55Nor blind my soul with images, nor force
My lips to mirth whose later taste is death,
Nor with vain utterance load my weary breath.”
Thus murmured I aloud nor deemed I spoke
To human ears, but you were hidden, sweet,
60Behind the willows when my plaining broke
Upon your lonely muse. Ah kindly feet
That brushed the grass in tender haste to bind
Another’s wounds, you were less wise than kind.
You said, “My brother, lift your forlorn eyes;
65I am your sister more than you unblest.”