# Astrophel and Other Poems/Astrophel

First published (accompanied by two illustrations) in The Pall Mall Magazine, May, 1893, pp. 1-7.
ASTROPHEL.
AFTER READING SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S ARCADIA IN THE GARDEN OF AN OLD ENGLISH MANOR-HOUSE.
I.
The song of the death of the sun Speaks music in heaven, and the hollows And heights of the world are as one; One lyre that outsings and outlightens The rapture of sunset, and thrills Mute night till the sense of it brightens The soul that it fills.
The flowers of the sun that is sunken Hang heavy of heart as of head; The bees that have eaten and drunken The soul of their sweetness are fled; But a sunflower of song, on whose honey My spirit has fed as a bee, Makes sunnier than morning was sunny The twilight for me.
The letters and lines on the pages That sundered mine eyes and the flowers Wax faint as the shadows of ages That sunder their season and ours; As the ghosts of the centuries that sever A season of colourless time From the days whose remembrance is ever, As they were, sublime.
The season that bred and that cherished The soul that I commune with yet,
Had it utterly withered and perished To rise not again as it set, Shame were it that Englishmen living Should read as their forefathers read The books of the praise and thanksgiving Of Englishmen dead.
O light of the land that adored thee And kindled thy soul with her breath, Whose life, such as fate would afford thee, Was lovelier than aught but thy death, By what name, could thy lovers but know it, Might love of thee hail thee afar, Philisides, Astrophel, poet Whose love was thy star?
A star in the moondawn of Maytime, A star in the cloudland of change; Too splendid and sad for the daytime To cheer or eclipse or estrange;
Too sweet for tradition or vision To see but through shadows of tears Rise deathless across the division Of measureless years.
The twilight may deepen and harden As nightward the stream of it runs Till starshine transfigure a garden Whose radiance responds to the sun's: The light of the love of thee darkens The lights that arise and that set: The love that forgets thee not hearkens If England forget.
II.
of thy lifetime shone, Seen and felt by the gifts it dealt, the grace it gave, and again was gone:
Ay, but now it is death, not thou, whom time has
conquered as years pass on.
Ay, not yet may the land forget that bore and loved thee
and praised and wept, Sidney, lord of the stainless sword, the name of names
that her heart's love kept Fast as thine did her own, a sign to light thy life till it
sank and slept.
Bright as then for the souls of men thy brave Arcadia
resounds and shines, Lit with love that beholds above all joys and sorrows
the steadfast signs, Faith, a splendour that hope makes tender, and truth,
whose presage the soul divines.
All the glory that girds the story of all thy life as with
sunlight round,
All the spell that on all souls fell who saw thy spirit,
and held them bound, Lives for all that have heard the call and cadence yet of
its music sound.
Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle,
for notes a dove, Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethrough
thy soul from afar above Shone and sang till the darkness rang with light whose
fire is the fount of love.
Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows
and joys and fears, Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal
with thy peerless peers, Feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that
lightens the rayless years.
Dark as sorrow though night and morrow may lower
with presage of clouded fame, How may she that of old bare thee, may Sidney's
England, be brought to shame? How should this be, while England is? What need of
answer beyond thy name?
III.
From the light of the dawn of thy death, The life of thy song and thy story Took subtler and fierier breath. And we, though the day and the morrow Set fear and thanksgiving at strife, Hail yet in the star of thy sorrow The sun of thy life.
Shame and fear may beset men here, and bid
thanksgiving and pride be dumb:
Faith, discrowned of her praise, and wound about with
toils till her life wax numb, Scarce may see if the sundawn be, if darkness die not
and dayrise come.
But England, enmeshed and benetted With spiritless villainies round, With counsels of cowardice fretted, With trammels of treason enwound, Is yet, though the season be other Than wept and rejoiced over thee, Thine England, thy lover, thy mother, Sublime as the sea.
Hers wast thou: if her face be now less bright, or seem
for an hour less brave, Let but thine on her darkness shine, thy saviour spirit
revive and save, Time shall see, as the shadows flee, her shame entombed
in a shameful grave.
If death and not life were the portal That opens on life at the last, If the spirit of Sidney were mortal And the past of it utterly past, Fear stronger than honour was ever, Forgetfulness mightier than fame, Faith knows not if England should never Subside into shame.
Yea, but yet is thy sun not set, thy sunbright spirit of
trust withdrawn: England's love of thee burns above all hopes that darken
or fears that fawn: Hers thou art: and the faithful heart that hopes begets
upon darkness dawn.
The sunset that sunrise will follow Is less than the dream of a dream: The starshine on height and on hollow Sheds promise that dawn shall redeem:
The night, if the daytime would hide it, Shows lovelier, aflame and afar, Thy soul and thy Stella's beside it, A star by a star.
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