Tiresias, and Other Poems/To E. Fitzgerald
TO E. FITZGERALD.
Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,Where once I tarried for a while,Glance at the wheeling Orb of change,And greet it with a kindly smile;Whom yet I see as there you sitBeneath your sheltering garden-tree,And while your doves about you flit,And plant on shoulder, hand and knee,Or on your head their rosy feet,As if they knew your diet sparesWhatever moved in that full sheetLet down to Peter at his prayers; Who live on milk and meal and grass;And once for ten long weeks I triedYour table of Pythagoras,And seem'd at first 'a thing enskied'(As Shakespeare has it) airy-lightTo float above the ways of men,Then fell from that half-spiritual heightChill'd, till I tasted flesh againOne night when earth was winter-black,And all the heavens flash'd in frost;And on me, half-asleep, came backThat wholesome heat the blood had lost,And set me climbing icy capesAnd glaciers, over which there roll'dTo meet me long-arm'd vines with grapesOf Eshcol hugeness; for the coldWithout, and warmth within me, wrought To mould the dream; but none can sayThat Lenten fare makes Lenten thought,Who reads your golden Eastern lay,Than which I know no version doneIn English more divinely well;A planet equal to the sunWhich cast it, that large infidelYour Omar; and your Omar drewFull-handed plaudits from our bestIn modern letters, and from two,Old friends outvaluing all the rest,Two voices heard on earth no more;But we old friends are still alive,And I am nearing seventy-four,While you have touch’d at seventy-five,And so I send a birthday lineOf greeting; and my son, who dipt In some forgotten book of mineWith sallow scraps of manuscript,And dating many a year ago,Has hit on this, which you will takeMy Fitz, and welcome, as I knowLess for its own than for the sakeOf one recalling gracious times,When, in our younger London days,You found some merit in my rhymes,And I more pleasure in your praise.