Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
HolidayJohn Davidson (18571909)
L
Other knight of sword or pen
Shall not, while the planets shine,
Spend a holiday like mine.
Thrice I won and lost the main;
Thrice I died the death, and thrice
By my will I lived again.
As a careless woman can,
Ere the aureoles depart
From the woman and the man.
Anywhere: beneath, above,
Worms nor stars transpierced the gloom
Of the sepulchre of love.
Festal songs, the funeral dole;
Joyful ladies, gallant knights,
Comrades of my buried soul.
In a common sepulchre,
On an Easter morn I sped
Upward where the world ’s astir.
Donn’d the livery of the hour,
And atoning diverse ends
Bridged the gulf to place and power.
Crush’d by me, with honey’d breath
Fawn’d upon me till I fell,
By pretenders done to death.
Long I rotted in the mould,
Though the virgin woodland lack’d
Nothing of the age of gold.
Nightly falling of decay;
Dawn and sunset lit the lamps
Where entomb’d I deeply lay.
Were the flowers, the growing grass;
Larks intoned a morning stave;
Nightingales a midnight mass.
Did my spirit gibe and scoff:
Then the gravecloth from my head
And my shroud—I shook them off.
Out of ruin’s husk and core,
Through the earth I ran a shaft
Upward to the light once more.
Donn’d the livery of the age;
And atoning many ends,
Reign’d as sovereign, priest, and mage.
Puissance and supreme device,
Crumbled on the cast of Fate—
Fate, that plays with loaded dice.
Naked faced a heavenly host:
Carved with countless wounds I fell,
Sadly yielding up the ghost.
(Titans such a tomb attain),
Many a grisly age had flown
Ere I rose and lived again.
Shook and rent the mountain-side;
Lustres, decades, centuries
Fled while daily there I died.
Ripen’d in the smelting fire;
Flame became my element,
Agony my soul’s desire.
Mightier than Love or Art,
Woke the meaning in my brain
And the purpose of my heart.
Through the mountain’s sulphurous sty:
Not eternal death could damn
Such a hardy soul as I.
Like a god I come again,
And with an immortal zest
Challenge Fate to throw the main.