II. THE MEETING-PLACE OF OLD
Glides the brooklet through the rushes, Now with dipping boughs at play, Now with quicker music-gushes Where the pebbles chafe the way.
Lonely from the lonely meadows Slopes the undulating hill; And the slowness of its shadows But at sunset gains the rill:
Not a sign of man's existence, Not a glimpse of man's abode, Yet the church-spire in the distance Links the solitude with God.
All so quiet, all so glowing, In the golden hush of noon; Nature's still heart overflowing From the breathless lips of June.
Song itself the bird forsaketh, Save from wooded deeps remote, Mellowly and singly breaketh, Mellowly, the cuckoo's note.
'Tis the scene where youth beheld thee; 'Tis the trysting-place of yore; Yes, my mighty grief hath spell'd thee, Blooming--living--mine once more!
III. LOVE UNTO DEATH
Hand in hand we stood confiding, Boy and maiden, hand in hand, Where the path, in twain dividing, Reach'd the Undiscover'd Land.
Oh, the Hebe then beside me, Oh, the embodied Dream of Youth, With an angel's soul to guide me, And a woman's heart to soothe!
Like the Morning in the gladness Of the smile that lit the skies; Liker Twilight in the sadness Lurking deep in starry eyes!
Gaudier flowerets had effaced thee In the formal garden set; Nature in the shade had placed thee With thy kindred violet;
As the violet to completeness Coming even ere the day; All thy life a silent sweetness Waning with a warmer ray.
So, upon the verge of sorrow Stood we, blindly, hand in hand, Whispering of a happy morrow In that undiscover'd land.
Thou, O meek one, fame foretelling, Grown ambitious but for me; While my heart, if proudly swelling, Beat--ah, not for Fame, but thee!
In that summer-noon we parted, Life redundant over all. Once again--O broken-hearted-- When the autumn leaves did fall,
Meeting--life from life to sever! Parting,--as depart the dead, When the dark "Farewell for ever," Fades from marble lips, unsaid;
As upon a bark that slowly Lessens lone adown the sea, Looks abandon'd Melancholy-- Did thy still eyes follow me!
Wilful in thy self devotion, Patient on the desert shore, Gazing, gazing, till from ocean Waned thy last hope evermore.
Gentle victim, they might bind thee, But to fetter was to slay; As a statue they enshrined thee, At a sepulchre to pray;
Bade the bloodless lips not falter; Bade the cold despair be brave; Yes, the next morn at the altar! But the next moon in the grave!
Little dream'd they when they bore thee To the nuptial funeral shrine, That to ME they did restore thee, And release thy soul to mine!
Well thy noble heart might smother Nature's agonizing cry, What can perjure to another Faith--if firm eno' to die!
Yet can ev'n the grave regain thee? Gain as human love would see? Darling--Pardon, I profane thee; Angel, bend and comfort me!
IV. LOVE AFTER DEATH
Cold the loiterer who refuseth At the well of life to drink, Till the wave a sparkle loseth, And the silver cord a link.
But the flagging of the forces In the journey of the soul, If the first draught waste the sources, If the first touch break the bowl!--
On the surface bright with pleasure Still thy distant shade was cast; Ah! the heart was where the treasure, And the Present with the Past.
If from Fame, the all-deceiver, Toil contending garlands sought, Oft our force if but our fever, And our swiftness flight from Thought.
Hollow Pleasure, vain Ambition, Give me back the impulse free-- Hope that seem'd its own fruition, Life contented but to be,
When the earth with Heaven was haunted In the shepherd age of gold, And the Venus rose enchanted From the sunny seas of old.
Cease, not mine the ignoble moral Of an unresisted grief; Can the lightning sear the laurel, Or the winter fade its leaf?
Flowerless, fruitless, to the dying, Green as when the sap began, Bolt and winter both defying,-- So be manhood unto man.
Once I wander'd forth dejected In the later times of gloom; And the icy moon reflected One still shadow o'er thy tomb.
There, in desolation kneeling, Snows around me, stars above, Came that second world of feeling, Came that second birth of Love,
When regret grows aspiration, When o'er chaos moves the breath; And a new-born dim creation Rising, wid'ning, dawns from death.
Then methought my soul was lifted From the anguish and the strife; With a finer vision gifted For the Spirituals of Life;
For the links that, while they thrall us, Upward mount in just degree, Knitting even, if they gall us, Life to Immortality;
For the subtler glories blending With the common air we know, Ansel hosts to heaven ascending Up the ladder based below.
Straight each harsher iron duty Did the sudden light illume; Oh, what streams of solemn beauty Take their sources in the tomb!
V. THE PANTHEISM OF LOVE PASSING INTO THE IDEAL
Then I rose, at dawn departing, Wan the dead earth, wan the snow, Wan the frost-beam dimly darting Where the corn-seed lurk'd below;
From that night, as streams dividing At the fountain till the sea, Wildly chafing, gently gliding, Life has twofold lives for me;
One by mart and forum passing, Vex'd reflection of the crowd; One the hush of forests glassing, Or the changes of the cloud.
By the calmer stream, for ever Dwell the ghosts that haunt the heart, And the phantoms and the river Make the Poet-World of Art.
There in all that Fancy gildeth, Still thy vanish'd smile I see; And each airy hall it buildeth Is a votive shrine to thee!
Do men praise the labour?--gladden'd That the homage may endure; Do they scorn it?--only sadden'd That thine altar is so poor.
If the Beautiful be clearer As the seeker's days decline, Should the Ideal not be nearer As my soul approaches thine?
Thus the single light bereft me Fused through all creation flows; Gazing where a sun had left me, Lo, the myriad stars arose!
Part VI
THE MEMORY OF LOVE ASSOCIATES ITS CONSOLATIONS WITH ITS HOPES.
Now the eastern hill-top fadeth From the arid wastes forlorn, And the only tree that shadeth Has the scant leaves of the thorn.
Not a home to smile before me, Not a voice to cheer is heard; Hush! the thorn-leaves tremble o'er me,-- Hark, the carol of a bird!
Unto air what charm is given? Angel, as a link to thee, Midway between earth and heaven Hangs the delicate melody!
How it teacheth while it chideth, Is the pathway so forlorn? Mercy over man presideth, And--the bird sings from the thorn.
Floating on, the music leads me, As the pausing-place I leave, And the gentle wing precedes me Through the lulled airs of eve.
Stay, O last of all the number, Bathing happy plumes in light, Till the deafness of the slumber, Till the blindness of the night.
Only for the vault to leave thee, Only with my life to lose; Let my closing eyes perceive thee, Fold thy wings amid the yews.
MIND AND SOUL.
Hark! the awe-whisperd'd prayer, "God spare my mind!" Dust unto dust, the mortal to the clod; But the high place, the altar that has shrined Thine image,--spare, O God!
Thought, the grand link from human life to Thee, The humble reed that by the Shadowy River Responds in music to the melody Of spheres that hymn for ever,--
The order of the mystic world within, The airy girth of all things near and far; Sense, though of sorrow,--memory, though of sin,-- Gleams through the dungeon bar,--
Vouchsafe me to the last!--Though none may mark The solemn pang, nor soothe the parting breath, Still let me seek for God amid the dark, And face, unblinded, Death!
Whence is this fine distinction twixt the twain Rays of the Maker in the lamp of clay Spirit and Mind?--strike the material brain, And soul seems hurl'd away.
Touch but a nerve, and Brutus is a slave; A nerve, and Plato drivels! Was it mind, Or soul, that taught the wise one in the cave, The freeman in the wind?
If mind--O Soul! what is thy task on earth? If soul! O wherefore can a touch destroy, Or lock in Lethe's Acherontian dearth, The Immortal's grief and joy?
Hark, how a child can babble of the cells Wherein, beneath the perishable brow, Fancy invents, and Memory chronicles, And Reason asks--as now:
Mapp'd are the known dominions of the thought, But who shall find the palace of the soul? Along what channels shall the source be sought, The well-spring of the whole?
Look round, vain questioner,--all space survey, Where'er thou lookest, lo, how clear is Mind! The laws that part the darkness from the day, And the sweet Pleiads bind,
The thought, the will, the art, the elaborate power Of the Great Cause from whence the All began, Gaze on the star, or bend above the flower, Still speak of Mind to man.
But the arch soul of soul--from which the law Is but the shadow, who on earth can see? What guess cleaves upward through the deeps of awe, Unspeakable, to thee?
As in Creation lives the Father Soul, So lives the soul He breathed amidst the clay; Round it the thoughts on starry axles roll, Life flows and ebbs away.
If chaos smote the universe again, And new Chaldeans shudder'd to explore Amidst the maddening elements in vain The harmonious Mind of yore,
Would not God live the same?--the Unseen Spirit, Whether that life or wills or wrecks Creation?-- So lives, distinct, the god-spark we inherit, When Mind is desolation.
THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.
From Heaven what fancy stole The dream of some good spirit, aye at hand, The seraph whispering to the exile soul Tales of its native land?
Who to the cradle gave The unseen watcher by the mother's side, Born with the birth, companion to the grave, The holy angel-guide?
Is it a fable?--"No," I hear LOVE answer from the sunlit air, "Still where my presence gilds the darkness--know Life's angel-guide is there?"
Is it a fable?--Hark, FAITH hymns from deeps beyond the palest star, "I am the pilot to thy wandering bark, Thy guide to shores afar."
Is it a fable?--sweet From wave, from air, from every forest tree, The murmur spoke, "Each thing thine eyes can greet An angel-guide can be.
"From myriads take thy choice, In all that lives a guide to God is given; Ever thou hear'st some angel guardian's voice When Nature speaks of Heaven!"
THE LOVE OF MATURER YEARS.
Nay, soother, do not dream thine art Can altar Nature's stern decree; Or give me back the younger heart, Whose tablets had been clear to thee.
Why seek, fair child, to pierce the dark That wraps the giant wrecks of old? Thou wert not with me in the ark, When o'er my life the deluge roll'd.
To thee, reclining by the verge, The careless waves in music flow To me the ripple sighs the dirge Of my lost native world below.
Her tranquil arch as Iris builds Above the Anio's torrent roar, Thy life is in the life it gilds, Born of the wave it trembles o'er.
For thee a glory leaves the skies If from thy side a step depart; Thy sunlight beams from human eyes, Thy world is in one human heart.
And in the woman's simple creed Since first the helpmate's task began, Thou ask'st what more than love should need The stern insatiate soul of Man.
No more, while youth with vernal gale Breathes o'er the brief Arcadia still;-- But when the Wanderer quits the vale, But when the footstep scales the hill,
But when with awe the wide expanse, The Pilgrim's earnest eyes explore, How shrinks the land of sweet Romance, A speck--it was the world before!
And, hark, the Dorian fifes succeed The pastoral reeds of Arcady: Lo, where the Spartan meets the Mede, Near Tempe lies--Thermopyle!
Each onward step in hardy life, Each scene that memory halts to scan, Demands the toil, records the strife,-- And love but once is all to man.
Weep'st thou, fair infant, wherefore weep? Long ages since the Persian sung "The zephyr to the rose should keep, And youth should only love the young."
Ay, lift those chiding eyes of thine; The trite, ungenerous moral scorn! The diamond's home is in the mine, The violet's birth beneath the thorn;
There, purer light the diamond gives Than when to baubles shaped the ray; There, safe at least the violet lives From hands that clasp--to cast away.
Bloom still beside the mournful heart, Light still the caves denied the star; Oh Eve, with Eden pleased to part, Since Eden needs no comforter!
My soft Arcadian, from thy bower I hear thy music on the hill; And bless the note for many an hour When I too--am Arcadian still.
Whene'er the face of Heaven appears, As kind as once it smiled on me, I'll steal adown the mount of years, And come--a youth once more, to thee.
From bitter grief and iron wrong When Memory sets her captive free, When joy is in the skylark's song, My blithesome steps shall bound to thee;
When Thought, the storm-bird, shrinks before The width of nature's clouded sea, A voice shall charm it home on shore, To share the halcyon's nest with thee:
Lo, how the faithful verse escapes The varying chime that laws decree, And, like my heart, attracted, shapes Each wandering fancy back--to thee.
THE EVERLASTING GRAVE-DIGGER.
Methought I stood amidst a burial-place And saw a phantom ply the sexton's trade, Pale o'er the charnel bow'd the phantom's face, Noiseless the phantom spade Gleam'd in the stars.
Wondering I ask'd, "Whose grave dost thou prepare?" The labouring ghost disdainful paused and said, "To dig the grave is Death my father's care, I disinter the dead Under the stars."
Therewith he cast a skull before my feet, A skull with worms encircled, and a crown, And mouldering shreds of Beauty's winding-sheet. Chilling and cheerless down Shimmer'd the stars.
"And of the Past," I sigh'd, "are these alone The things disburied? spare the dread repose, Or bring once more the monarch to his throne, To Beauty's cheek the rose." Cloud wrapt the stars,
While the pale sexton answer'd, "Fool, away! Thou ask'st of Memory that which Faith must give; Mine is the task to disinter the clay, Hers to bid life revive,"-- Cloud left the stars.
THE DISPUTE OE THE POETS.
An idyll scene of happy Sicily! Out from its sacred grove on grassy slopes Smiles a fair temple, vow'd to some sweet Power Of Nature deified. In broad degrees From flower-wreath'd porticos the shining stairs, Through tiers of Myrtle in Corinthian urns, Glide to the shimmer of an argent lake. Calm rest the swans upon the glassy wave, Save where the younger cygnets, newly-pair'd, Through floating brakes of water-lilies, sail Slowly in sunlight down to islets dim. But farther on, the lake subsides away Into the lapsing of a shadowy rill Melodious with the chime of falls as sweet As (heard by Pan in Arethusan glades) The silvery talk of meeting Naiades.
Where cool the sunbeam slants through ilex-boughs, The fane above them and the rill below, Two forms recline; nor, e'er in Arcady Did fairer Manhood win an Oread's love, Or lift diviner brows to earliest stars.
The one of brighter hues, and darker curls Clustering and purple as the fruit o' the vine, Seem'd like that Summer-Idol of rich life Whom sensuous Greece, inebriate with delight, From Orient myth and symbol-worship brought To blue Cithaeron blithe with bounding faun And wood-nymph wild,--Nature's young Lord, Iacchus! Bent o'er the sparkling brook, with careless hand From sedge or sward, he pluck'd or reed or flower, Casting away light wreaths on playful waves; While,--as the curious ripple murmur'd round Its odorous prey, and eddying whirl'd it on O'er pebbles glancing sheen to sunny falls,-- He laugh'd, as childhood laughs, in such frank glee The very leaves upon the ilex danced Joyous, as at some mirthful wind in May.
The other, though the younger, more serene, And to the casual gaze severer far, To that bright comrade-shape; by contrast seem'd As serious Morn, star-crown'd on Spartan hills, To Noon, when hyacinths flush through Enna's vales, Or murmurous winglets hum 'mid Indian palms. Such beauty his as the first Dorian bore From the far birthplace of Homeric men, Beyond the steeps of Boreal Thessaly, When to the swart Pelasgic Autocthon The blue-eyed Pallas came with lifted spear, And, her twin type of the fair-featured North. Phoebus, the archer with the golden hair. Bright was the one as Syrian Adon-ai, Charming the goddess born from roseate seas; And while the other, leaning on his lyre, Lifted the azure light of earnest eyes From flower and wave to the remotest hill On which the soft horizon melted down, Ev'n so methought had gazed Endymion, With looks estranged from the luxuriant day, To the far Latmos steep--where holy dreams Nightly renew'd the kisses of the Moon.
Entranced I stood, and held my breath to hear The words that seem'd to warm upon their lips, As if such contest as two Nightingales Wage, emulous in music, on the peace That surely dwelt between them, had anon Forced its mellifluous anger:--
Then I learn'd That the fair Two were orphans, rear'd to youth Song and the lyre, where ringdoves coo remote, And loitering bees cull sweets in Hyblan dells: And that their discord, as their union, grew Out of their rivalry in lyre and song. Therewith did each in the accustom'd war Of pastoral singers in Sicilian noons Strive for his Right--(O Memory aid me now!) In the sweet quarrel of alternate hymns.
ANTHIOS.
As the sunlight that plays on a stream, As the zephyr that rustles a leaf, On my soul comes the joy of the beam, And a zephyr can stir it to grief.
Whether pleasure or pain be decreed, My voice but in music is heard; By the sunny wave murmurs the reed; From the sighing leaf carols the bird.--
LYKEGENES.
Unto her hierarch Nature's voices come But through the labyrinthine cells of Thought, Not at the Porch, doth Isis hold her home, Not to the Tyro are her mysteries taught;
The secret dews of many a starry night Feed the vast ocean's stately ebb and flow; The leaf is restless where the branch is slight, Still are the boughs whose shades stretch far below.
ANTHIOS.
As the skylark that mounts With the dawn to the sun, As the flash from the founts Of the swift Helicon,
Song comes;--and I sing! Wouldst thou question me more? Ask the wave or the wing Why it sparkle or soar!
LYKEGENES.
Full be the soul if swift the inspiration! The corn-flower opens as the sheaves are rife; Song is the twin of golden Contemplation The harvest-flower of life.
The Cloud-compeller's bolt the eagle bears, But when the wings the strength divine have won, Full many a flight around the rock prepares The Aspirer towards the Sun;
Progressive heights to gradual effort given, Till, all the plumes in light supreme unfurl'd, It halts;--and knits unto the dome of heaven This pendant ball--the World.
ANTHIOS.
Hail, O hail, Pierides, Free Harmonia's zoneless daughters, Whom abrupt the Moenad sees By the marge of moonlit waters,
Weaving joy in choral measure To no law but your sweet pleasure; Wanton winds in loosen'd hair Lifting gold that gilds the air;
Say, beneath what starry skies Lurk the herbs that purge the eyes? On what hill-tops should we cull The moly of the Beautiful? What the charm the soul to capture In the cestus-belt of rapture, When the senses, trembling under, Glass the Shadow-land of Wonder, And no human hand is stealing O'er the music-scale of Feeling?
As ceased the question rose delicious winds Stirring the waves that kiss'd the tuneful reeds, And all the wealth of sweets in bells of flowers; So that, methought, out from all life, the Muse Murmur'd responses low, and echo'd "FEELING!"
LYKEGENES.
Divine Corycides, Whose chosen haunts are in mysterious cells, And alleys dim through gleaming laurel-trees Dusking the shrine of Delphian oracles,-- Under whose whispering shade Sits the lone Pythian Maid, Whose soul is as the glass of human things; While up from bubbling streams In mists arise the Dreams Pale with the future of tiara'd kings-- Say, what the charm which from ambrosial domes Draws the Immortal to Time's brazen towers, When on the soul the gentle Thunderer comes-- Comes but in golden showers? When, through the sealed portals of the sense, Fluent as air the Glory glides unsought; And the serene effulgent Influence Rains all the wealth of heaven upon the thought?
And as the questions ceased, fell every wind. The ilex-boughs droop'd heavy as the hush In which the prophet Doves brood weird and calm Amid Dodonian groves;--the broken light On crisped waves grew smooth; on earth, in heaven, The inexpressive majesty of Silence Pass'd as some Orient sovereign to his throne, When all the murmurs cease, and every brow Bends down in awe, and not a breath is heard. Yet spoke that stillness of the Eternal Mind That thinks, and, thinking, evermore creates; And Nature seem'd to answer Poesy From her deep heart, in thought re-echoing "THOUGHT."
ANTHIOS.
Thou, whose silver lute contended With the careless reed of Pan-- Thou whose wanton youth descended To the vales Arcadian, At whose coming heavenlier joy Lighteth even Jove's abode, Ever blooming as the boy Through thine ages as the god; Fair Apollo, if the singer Be like thee the gladness-bringer; If the nectar he distil Make the worn earth useful still; As thyself when thou wert driven To the Tempe from the heaven, As the infant over whom Saturn bends his brows of gloom, Roves he not the world a-maying, From his Idan halls exiled; Or with Time repose in playing As with Saturn's looks the child.
Therewith from far, where unseen hamlets lay In wooded valleys green, came mellowly Laughter and infant voices, borne perchance From the light hearts of happy Children, sporting Round some meek Mother's knee;--ev'n so, methought Did the familiar, human, innocent, gladness Through golden Childhood answer Song, "THE CHILD."
LYKEGENES.
Lord of lustrating streams, And altars pure, appalling secret Crime, Eternal Splendour, whose all-searching beams Illume with life the universe of Time, All our own fates thy shrine reveals to us; Thither comes Wisdom from the thrones of earth, The unraveller of the sphinx--blind Oedipus, Who knows not ev'n his birth! On whom, Apollo, does thy presence shine Through the clear daylight of translucent song? Only to him who serveth at the shrine, The priesthood can belong! After due and deep probation, Only dawns thy revelation Unto the devout beseecher Taught by thee to grow the teacher: Shall the bearer of thy bow Let the shafts at random go? If the altar be divine, Is the sacrifice a feast? Should our hands the garland twine For the reveller or the priest?
Therewith from out the temple on the hill Broke the rich swell of fifes and choral lyres, And the long melody of such large hymns, As to the conquest of the Python-slayer, Hallow'd thy lofty chant, Calliope! Thus from the penetralian aisles divine The solemn God replied to Song, "THE PRIEST."
ANTHIOS.
And who can bind in formal duty The Protean shapes of airy Beauty? Who tune the Teian's lyre of gold To priestly hymns in temples cold? Accept the playmate by thy side, Ordain'd to charm thee, not to guide. The stream reflects each curve on shore, And Song alike thy good and error; Let Wisdom be the monitor, But Song should be the mirror. To truth direct while Science goes With measured pace and sober eye; The simplest wild-flower more bestows Than Egypt's lore, on Poesy.
The Magian seer who counts the stars, Regrets the cloud that veils his skies; To me, the Greek, the clouds are cars From which bend down divinities!
Like cloud itself this common day Let Fancy make awhile the duller, Its iris in the cloud shall play, And weave thy world the pomp of colour.
He paused; as if in concord with the Song Seem'd to flash forth the universe of hues In the Sicilian summer: on the banks Crocus, and hyacinth, and anemone, Superb narcissus, Cytherea's rose, And woodbine lush, and lilies silver-starr'd; And delicate cloudlets blush'd in lucent skies; And yellowing sunbeams shot through purple waves; And still from bough to bough the wings of birds, And still from flower to flower the gorgeous dyes Of the gay insect-revellers wandering went-- And as I look'd I murmur'd, "Singer, yes, As COLOUR to the world, so song to life!"
LYKEGENES.
Conceal'd from Saturn's deathful frown The wild Curetes strove, By chant and cymbal clash, to drown The infant cries of Jove. But when, full-grown, the Thunder-king, Triumphant o'er the Titan's fall, And throned in Ida, look'd on all, And all subjected saw; Saw the sublime Uranian Ring, And every joyous living thing, Calm'd into love beneath his tranquil law;-- Then straight above, below, around, His voice was heard in every sound; The mountain peal'd it through the cave; The whirlwind to the answering wave; By loneliest stream, by deepest dell, It murmur'd in mysterious Pan; No less than in the golden shell From which the falls of music well O'er floors Olympian! For Jove in all that breathes must dwell, And speak through all to Man.
Singer, who asketh Hermes for his rod, To lead men's souls into Elysian bowers, To whose belief the alter'd earth is trod Still by Kronidian Powers, If through thy veins the purer tide hath been Pour'd from the nectar-streams in Hebe's urn, That thou mightst both without thee and within Feel the pervading Jove--wouldst thou return To the dark time of old, When Earth-born Force the Heir of Heaven controll'd, And with thy tinkling brass aspire To stifle Nature's music-choir, And drown the voice of God?
O Light, thou poetry of Heaven, That glid'st through hollow air thy way, That fill'st the starry founts of Even, And all the azure seas of Day; Give to my song thy glorious flow, That while it glads it may illume, Whether it gild the iris' bow, And part its rays amid the gloom; Or whether, one broad tranquil stream, It break in no fantastic dyes, But calmly weaving beam on beam, Make Heaven distinct to human eyes; A truth that floats serene and clear, 'Twixt Gods and men an atmosphere; Less seen itself than bringing all to sight, And to man's soul what to man's world is Light.
Then, as the Singer ceased, the western sun Halted a moment o'er the roseate hill Hush'd in pellucent air; and all the crests Of the still groves, and all the undulous curves Of far-off headlands stood distinctly soft Against the unfathomable purple skies, And linking in my thought the outward shows Of Beauty with the inward types sublime, By which through Beauty poets lead to Knowledge, And are the lamps of Nature, "Yes," I murmur'd, "Song is to soul what unto life is LIGHT!"
But gliding now behind the steeps it flush'd, The disk of day sunk gradual, gradual down, And in the homage of the old Religion To the departing Sun,--the rival two Ceased their dispute, and bent sweet serious brows In chorus with the cusps of bended flowers, Sighing their joint "Farewell, O golden Sun!" Now Hesper came, the gentle shepherd-star, Bright as when Moschus sung to it;--along The sacred grove, and through the Parian shafts Of the pale temple, shot the glistening rays, And trembled in the tremor of the wave:-- Then the fair rivals, as they silent rose, Turn'd each to each in brotherlike embrace; Lone amid starry solitude they stood, In equal beauty clasp'd,--and both divine.[D]
[D] The reader will perceive that this poem is intended to illustrate a dispute which can never, perhaps, be critically solved--viz., whether the true business of the poet be to delight or to instruct;--and he will therefore be disposed to forgive me if he recognize certain thoughts or expressions freely borrowed from the various poets, who may be said to represent either side of the question. Among the moderns, SCHILLER especially has suggested ideas and illustrations on behalf of the more earnest creed professed by LYKEGENES--while GOETHE has been pressed to the aid of ANTHIOS. The Greek poets have here and there suggested a line on either side. After this general acknowledgment of obligation, it would be but pedantic to specify each special instance of imitative paraphrase or direct translation.
GANYMEDE.
"When Ganymede was caught up to Heaven, he let fall his pipe, on which he was playing to his sheep."--ALEXANDER ROSS, Myst. Poet.
Upon the Phrygian hill He sate, and on his reed the shepherd play'd. Sunlight and calm: noon in the dreamy glade, Noon on the lulling rill.
He saw not, where on high The noiseless eagle of the Heavenly King Rested,--till rapt upon the rushing wing Into the golden sky.
When the bright Nectar Hall And the still brows of bended gods he saw, In the quick instinct both of shame and awe His hand the reed let fall.
Soul! that a thought divine Bears into heaven,--thy first ascent survey! What charm'd thee most on earth is cast away;-- To soar--is to resign!
MEMNON.
Where Morning first appears, Waking the rathe flowers in their Eastern bed, Aurora still with her ambrosial tears, Weeps for her Memnon dead.
Him the Hesperides Nursed on the marge of their enchanted shore, And still the smile that then the Mother wore Dimples the orient seas.
He died; and lo, the while The fire consumed his ashes, glorious things With joyous songs, and rainbow-tinted wings, Rose from the funeral pile.
He died; and yet became A music; and his Theban image broke Into sweet sounds that with each sunrise spoke The Mighty Mother's name.
O type, thy truth declare! Who is the Child of the Melodious Morn? Who bids the ashes earth receives--adorn With new-born choirs the air?
What can the Statue be That ever answers with enchanted voices Each rising sun that on its front rejoices? Speak!--"I AM POETRY!"
THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD.
Upon a barren steep, Above a stormy deep, I saw an Angel watching the wild sea; Earth was that barren steep, Time was that stormy deep, And the opposing shore--Eternity!
"Why dost thou watch the wave? Thy feet the waters lave, The tide engulfs thee if thou dost delay." "Unscathed I watch the wave, Time not the Angel's grave, I wait until the ocean ebbs away."
Hush'd on the Angel's breast I saw an Infant rest, Smiling upon the gloomy hell below. "What is the Infant press'd, O Angel, to thy breast?" "The child God gave me, in The Long Ago.
"Mine all upon the earth, The Angel's angel-birth, Smiling each terror from the howling wild." Never may I forget The dream that haunts me yet, OF PATIENCE NURSING HOPE--THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD
TO A WITHERED TREE IN JUNE.
Desolate tree! why are thy branches bare? What hast thou done To win strange winter from the summer air, Frost from the sun?
Thou wert not churlish in thy palmier year Unto the herd; Tenderly gav'st thou shelter to the deer, Home to the bird.
And ever once, the earliest of the grove, Thy smiles were gay, Opening thy blossoms with the haste of love To the young May.
Then did the bees, and all the insect wings Around thee gleam; Feaster and darling of the gilded things That dwell i' the beam.
Thy liberal course, poor prodigal, is sped; How lonely now! How bird and bee, light parasites, have fled The leafless bough!
"Tell me, sad tree, why are thy branches bare? What hast thou done To win strange winter from the summer air, Frost from the sun?"
"Never," replied that forest-hermit lone (Old truth and endless!) "Never for evil done, but fortune flown, Are we left friendless.
"Yet wholly, nor for winter nor for storm Doth Love depart! We are not all forsaken till the worm Creeps to the heart!
"Ah, nought without, within thee if decay, Can heal or hurt thee. Nor boots it, if thy heart itself betray, Who may desert thee!"
ON THE REPERUSAL OF LETTERS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.
Strange, as when vaguely through the autumn haze Loom the pale scenes last view'd in summer skies, Out from the mist the thoughts of sunny days And golden youth arise.
Were ye, in truth, my thoughts?--along the years Flies back the wondering and incredulous Mind, In the still archives of lost hopes and fears Your date and tale to find.
Gradual and slow, reweaving link to link, Epoch, and place, and image it recalls, And owns the thoughts it never more can think,-- Dim pictures in dim halls!
Dim pictures now; and once ye breathed and moved, And took your life as proudly from the sun As if immortals!--schemed, aspired, and loved, And sunk to rest;--sleep on!
On a past self the present self amazed Looks, and beholds no likeness!--Canst thou see In the pale features of the phantom raised One trace still true to thee?
'Twas said "The child is father to the man," By one whose world was but the shepherd's range. What seas beyond thy vale, Arcadian, Ebb and reflow with change!
In the great deeps of reason, heart, and soul, Through shine or storm still roll the tides unfailing; Each separate globule in the restless whole In daily airs exhaling.
Thus evermore, albeit to erring eyes, The same wild surface dash to shore the spray, That seeming oneness every moment dies, Drop after drop, away.
And stern indeed the prison of our doom If self from self had no divine escape; If each dead passion slept not in the tomb; If childhood, age could shape.
Happy the man in whom with every year New life is born, re-baptized in the past,-- In whom each change doth but as growth appear, The loveliest change the last!
Full many a sun shall vanish from the skies And still the aloe show but leaves of thorn; Leaf upon leaf, and thorn on thorn, arise, And lo--the flower is born!
THE DESIRE OF FAME.
WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF THIRTY.
I do confess that I have wish'd to give My land the gift of no ignoble name. And in that holier air have sought to live, Sunn'd with the hope of Fame.
Do I lament that I have seen the bays Denied my own, not worthier brows above,-- Foes quick to scoff, and friends afraid to praise,-- More active hate than love?
Do I lament that roseate youth has flown In the hard labour grudged its niggard meed, And cull from far and juster lands alone Few flowers from many a seed?
No! for whoever with an earnest soul Strives for some end from this low world afar, Still upward travels, though he miss the goal, And strays--but towards a star.
Better than fame is still the wish for fame, The constant training for a glorious strife: The athlete nurtured for the Olympian Game Gains strength at least for life.
The wish for Fame is faith in holy things That soothe the life, and shall outlive the tomb-- A reverent listening for some angel wings That cower above the gloom.
To gladden earth with beauty, or men's lives To serve with action, or their souls with truth,-- These are the ends for which the hope survives The ignobler thirsts of youth.
No, I lament not, though these leaves may fall From the sered branches on the desert plain, Mock'd by the idle winds that waft; and all Life's blooms, its last, in vain!
If vain for others, not in vain for me,-- Who builds an altar let him worship there; What needs the crowd? though lone the shrine may be, Not hallow'd less the prayer.
Eno' if haply in the after days, When by the altar sleeps the funeral stone, When gone the mists our human passions raise, And Truth is seen alone:
When causeless Hate can wound its prey no more, And fawns its late repentance o'er the dead, If gentle footsteps from some kindlier shore Pause by the narrow bed.
Or if yon children, whose young sounds of glee Float to mine ear the evening gales along, Recall some echo, in their years to be, Of not all-perish'd song!
Taking some spark to glad the hearth, or light The student lamp, from now neglected fires,-- And one sad memory in the sons requite What--I forgive the sires.
THE LOYALTY OF LOVE.
I love thee, I love thee; In vain I endeavour To fly from thine image; It haunts me for ever.
All things that rejoiced me Now weary and pall; I feel in thine absence Bereft of mine all.
My heart is the dial; Thy looks are the sun; I count but the moments Thou shinest upon.
Oh, royal, believe me, It is to control Two mighty dominions, The Heart and the Soul.
To know that thy whisper Each pang can beguile; And feel that creation Is lit by thy smile.
Yet every dominion Needs care to retain-- Dost thou know when thou pain'st me Or smile at the pain?
Alas! the heart-sickness, The doubt and the dread, When some word that we pine for Cold lips have not said!
When no pulses respond to The feelings we prove; And we tremble to question "If this can be love;"
At moments comparing Thy heart with mine own, I mourn not my bondage, I sigh for thy throne.
For if thou forsake me, Too well I divine That no love could defend thee From sorrow like mine.
And this, O ungrateful, I most should deplore-- That the heart thou hadst broken Could shield thee no more!
A LAMENT.
I stand where I last stood with thee! Sorrow, O sorrow! There is not a leaf on the trysting-tree; There is not a joy on the earth to me; Sorrow, O sorrow! When shalt thou be once again what thou wert? Oh, the sweet yesterdays fled from the heart! Have they a morrow?-- Here we stood, ere we parted, so close side by side; Two lives that once part, are as ships that divide When, moment on moment, there rushes between The one and the other, a sea;-- Ah, never can fall from the days that have been A gleam on the years that shall be!
LOST AND AVENGED.
O God, give me rest from a thought! I cannot escape it nor brave; Dread ghost of a joy that I sought To harrow my soul from its grave!
Farewell to the smile of the sun, The cheerful Religion of Trust! I centred my future in One, And wake as it crumbles to dust!
Oh, blest are the tears that are shed For love that was true to the last. The future restores us the dead, The false we expel from the past.--
Yet all, when I summon my pride Thyself as I find thee to see, Again there descends to my side The angel I dreamt thee to be.
Again thou enchantest my ear; My soul hangs again on thy breath, And murmurs that melt in a tear Repeat "I am thine unto death!"
Again is the light of thine eyes The limpid reflection of Truth; Thy smile gives me back to the skies That lit the ideals of youth.
Oh, is it thyself that I mourn, Or is it that dream of my heart Which glides from the reach of my scorn, And soars from the clay that thou art?
Well, go--take this comfort with thee, (I know thou art vain of thy power,) Thou hast blighted existence for me, Thou hast left not a germ for the flower;
My star may escape the eclipse, The music that tuned it is o'er; The smile may return to my lips-- It fades from my heart evermore;
Yet dark on thy being will fall A shade from the wreck of my own, Long years shalt thou sigh over all Thou hast in a day overthrown.
For none shall exalt thee as I! Ah, none whom thy spells may control Shall deck thee in hues from the sky, And breathe in thy statue his soul.--
None build from the glories of song The brighter existence above, The realm which to poets belong, The throne they bestow where they love.
Let earth its chill colours regain, The moonlight depart from thy sea, Explore through creation in vain The fairy land vanish'd with me.
I take back the all I had given: Thy charm, with my folly is o'er; From the rank I assign'd thee in heaven Descend to thy level once more.
O grief!--whether here or above, Must my soul thus be sever'd from thine? Ah, mourn--though I had not thy love-- The sin that bereaves thee of mine.
THE TREASURES BY THE WAYSIDE.
A TALE FOR SORROW.
The sky was dull, the scene was wild, I wander'd up the mountain way; And with me went a joyous child, The man in thought, the child at play,
My heart was sad with many a grief; Mine eyes with former tears were dim; The child!--a stone, a flower, a leaf, Had each its fairy wealth to him!
From time to time, unto my side He bounded back to show the treasure; I was not hard enough to chide, Nor wise enough to share his pleasure.
We paused at last--the child began Again his sullen guide to tease; "They say you are a learned man-- So look, and tell me what are these?"
Aroused with pain, my listless eyes The various spoils scarce wander o'er; Than straight they hail a sage's prize In what seem'd infant toys before:
This herb was one the glorious Swede Had given a garden's wealth to find; That stone had harden'd round a weed The earliest deluge left behind.
Fit stores for science, Discontent Had pass'd unheeding on the wild; And Nature had her wonders lent As things of gladness to the child!
Thus, through the present, Sorrow goes, And sees its barren self alone; While healing in the leaflet grows, And Time blooms back within the stone.
O THOU, so prodigal of good, Whose wisdom with delight is clad; How clear should be to Gratitude The golden duty--to be glad!
ADDRESS TO THE SOUL IN DESPONDENCY.
No, Soul! not in vain thou hast striven, Unless thou abandon the strife; Forsworn to the banners of Heaven, If false in the battle of life.
Why--counting the gain or the loss-- The badge of the temple assume? March on! if thy sign be the Cross, Thy triumph must be at the Tomb.
Say, doth not the soldier rejoice If placed by his chief at the van? As spirit, submit to the choice The noble would welcome as man.
"Farewell to the splendour of light!" The Greek could exulting exclaim, Resign'd to the Hades of Night, To live in the air as A NAME.
Could he, for a future so vain, Every pang in the present control, Yet thou of a moment complain In thine infinite life as a soul?
Like thee, do not millions receive Their chalice embitter'd with gall? If good be creation--believe That good which is common to all!
In evil itself, to the glance Of the wise, half the riddles are clear Were wisdom but perfect, perchance, The rest might in love disappear.
The thunder that scatters the pest May be but a type of the whole; And storms which have darken'd the breast May bring but its health to the soul.
Can earth, where the harrow is driven, The sheaf in the furrow foresee,-- Or thou guess the harvest of heaven Where iron has enter'd in thee?
* * * * *
CORN-FLOWERS.
II. THE SABBATH
Fresh glides the brook and blows the gale, Yet yonder halts the quiet mill; The whirring wheel, the rushing sail, How motionless and still!
Six days of toil, poor child of Cain, Thy strength the slave of Want may be; The seventh thy limbs escape the chain-- A God hath made thee free!
Ah, tender was the law that gave This holy respite to the breast, To breathe the gale, to watch the wave, And know--the wheel may rest!
But where the waves the gentlest glide What image charms, to lift, thine eyes? The spire reflected on the tide Invites thee to the skies.
To teach the soul its nobler worth This rest from mortal toils is given; Go, snatch the brief reprieve from earth And pass--a guest to Heaven.
They tell thee, in their dreaming school, Of Power from old dominion hurl'd, When rich and poor, with juster rule, Shall share the alter'd world.
Alas! since Time itself began, That fable hath but fool'd the hour; Each age that ripens Power in Man, But subjects Man to Power.
Yet every day in seven, at least, One bright republic shall be known;-- Man's world awhile hath surely ceased, When God proclaims his own!
Six days may Rank divide the poor, O Dives, from thy banquet-hall-- The seventh the Father opes the door, And holds His feast for all!
THE HOLLOW OAK.
Hollow is the oak beside the sunny waters drooping; Thither came, when I was young, happy children trooping; Dream I now, or hear I now--far, their mellow whooping?
Gay below the cowslip bank, see the billow dances, There I lay beguiling time--when I lived romances; Dropping pebbles in the wave, fancies into fancies;--
Farther, where the river glides by the wooded cover, Where the merlin singeth low, with the hawk above her Came a foot and shone a smile--woe is me, the Lover!
Leaflets on the hollow oak still as greenly quiver, Musical amid the reeds murmurs on the river; But the footstep and the smile?--woe is me for ever!
LOVE AND FAME.
WRITTEN IN EARLY YOUTH.
I.
It was the May when I was born, Soft moonlight through the casement stream'd, And still, as it were yestermorn, I dream the dream I dream'd. I saw two forms from fairy land, Along the moonbeam gently glide, Until they halted, hand in hand, My infant couch beside.
II.
With smiles, the cradle bending o'er, I heard their whisper'd voices breathe-- The one a crown of diamond wore, The one a myrtle wreath; "Twin brothers from the better clime, A poet's spell hath lured to thee; Say which shall, in the coming time, Thy chosen fairy be?"
III.
I stretch'd my hand, as if my grasp Could snatch the toy from either brow; And found a leaf within my clasp, One leaf--as fragrant now! If both in life may not be won, Be mine, at least, the gentler brother-- For he whose life deserves the one, In death may gain the other.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.
I.
Into my heart a silent look Flash'd from thy careless eyes, And what before was shadow, took The Light of summer skies. The first-born love was in that look; The Venus rose from out the deep Of those inspiring eyes.
II.
My life, like some lone solemn spot A spirit passes o'er, Grew instinct with a glory not In earth or heaven before. Sweet trouble stirr'd the haunted spot, And shook the leaves of every thought Thy presence wander'd o'er!
III.
My being yearn'd, and crept to thine, As if in times of yore Thy soul had been a part of mine, Which claim'd it back once more. Thy very self no longer thine, But merged in that delicious life, Which made us ONE of yore!
IV.
There bloom'd beside thee forms as fair, There murmur'd tones as sweet, But round thee breathed the enchanted air 'Twas life and death to meet. And henceforth thou alone wert fair, And though the stars had sung for joy, Thy whisper only sweet!
LOVE'S SUDDEN GROWTH.
I.
But yestermorn, with many a flower The garden of my heart was dress'd; A single tree has sprung to bloom, Whose branches cast a tender gloom, That shadows all the rest.
II.
A jealous and a tyrant tree, That seeks to reign alone; As if the wind's melodious sighs, The dews and sunshine of the skies, Were only made for One!
III.
A tree on which the Host of Dreams Low murmur mystic things, While hopes, those birds of other skies, To dreams themselves chant low replies-- Ah, wherefore have they wings?
IV.
The seasons nurse the blight and storm, The glory leaves the air-- The dreams and birds will pass away, The blossom wither from the spray-- One day--the stem be bare--
V.
But mine has grown the Dryad's life, Coeval with the tree; The sun, the frost, the bloom, the fall, My fate, sweet tree, must share them all, To live and die with thee!
THE LOVE-LETTER.
As grains of gold that in the sands Of Lydian waters shine, The welcome sign of mountain lands That veil the silent mine;
Thus may the river of my thought, That glideth now to thee, Reveal the wealth as yet unwrought, Which Love has heap'd in me!
So strove I to enrich the scroll To thy dear hands consign'd; I thought to leave the lavish soul No golden wish behind!
Ah, fool! to think an hour could drain What life can scarce explore-- Enough, if guided by the grain, Thy heart should seek the ore!
THE LANGUAGE OF THE EYES.
Those eyes--those eyes--how full of Heaven they are! When the calm twilight leaves the heaven most holy; Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star Did ye drink in your liquid melancholy? Tell me, beloved eyes!
Was it from yonder orb that ever by The quiet moon, like Hope by Patience, hovers, The star to which hath sped so many a sigh, Since lutes in Lesbos hallow'd it to Lovers? Was that your Fount, sweet Eyes?
Ye Sibyl books, in which the truths foretold Inspire the Heart, your dreaming priest, with gladness, Bright Alchemists that turn to thoughts of gold The leaden cares ye steal away from sadness, Teach only me, sweet Eyes!
Hush! when I ask ye how, at length, to gain The cell where Love, the sleeper, yet lies hidden, Loose not those arch lips from their rosy chain; Be every answer, save your own, forbidden-- Feelings are words for Eyes!
DOUBT.
Bright laughs the sun; the birds, that are to air Like song to life, are gaily on the wing; In every mead the handmaid hours prepare The delicates of spring;[E] But, if she love me not! To me at this fair season still hath been In every wild-flower an exhaustless treasure, And, when the young-eyed violet first was seen, Methought to breathe was pleasure;-- But, if she love me not! How, in thy twilight, Doubt, at each unknown Dim shape, the superstitious Love will start; How Hope itself will tremble at its own Light shadow on the heart!-- Ah, if she love me not! Well; I will know the worst, and leave the wind To drift or drown the venture on the wave; Life has two friends in grief itself most kind-- Remembrance and the Grave-- Mine, if she love me not!
[E] "The choicest delicates from yonder mead."--The Faithful Shepherdess.
THE ASSURANCE.
I am loved, I am loved--Jubilate! Hark! hark! how the happy note swells To and fro from the fairy bells, With which the flowers melodiously To their banquet halls invite the bee!-- "He is loved, he is loved--Jubilate!"
The echo at rest on her mountain-keep Murmurs the sound in her broken sleep-- "He is loved, he is loved--Jubilate!" And those gossips, the winds, have come to scout What the earth is so happy about, And they catch the sound, and circle it round-- "He is loved, he is loved--Jubilate!"
And the rivers, who, all the world must know, Were in love with the stars ever since they could flow, With a dimpled cheek and a joyous sigh, Whisper it up to the list'ning sky, "He is loved, he is loved--Jubilate!"
It is not the world that I knew before; Where is the gloom that its glory wore? Not a foe could offend, nor a friend betray, Old Hatred hath gone to his grave to-day! Hark! hark! his knell we toll, Here's to the peace of his sinful soul! On the earth below, in the heaven above, Nothing is left me now but Love. Love, Love, honour to Love, I am loved, I am loved--Jubilate!
MEMORIES, THE FOOD OF LOVE.
When shall we come to that delightful day, When each can say to each, "Dost thou remember?" Let us fill urns with rose-leaves in our May, And hive the thrifty sweetness for December!
For who may deem the throne of love secure, Till o'er the Past the conqueror spreads his reign? That only land where human joys endure, That dim elysium where they live again!
Swell'd by a thousand streams the deeps that float The bark on which we risk our all, should be. A rill suffices for the idler's boat: It needs an ocean for the argosy.
The heart's religion keeps, apart from time, The sacred burial-ground of happy hours; The past is holy with the haunting chime Of dreamy sabbath bells from distant towers.
Oft dost thou ask me, with that bashful eye, "If I shall love thee evermore as now!" Feasting as fondly on the sure reply, As if my lips were virgin of the vow.
Sweet does that question, "Wilt thou love me?" fall Upon the heart that has forsworn its will: But when the words hereafter we recall, "Dost thou remember?" shall be sweeter still.
ABSENT, YET PRESENT.
As the flight of a river That flows to the sea, My soul rushes ever In tumult to thee.
A twofold existence I am where thou art; My heart in the distance Beats close to thy heart.
Look up, I am near thee, I gaze on thy face; I see thee, I hear thee, I feel thine embrace.
As a magnet's control on The steel it draws to it, Is the charm of thy soul on The thoughts that pursue it.
And absence but brightens The eyes that I miss, And custom but heightens The spell of thy kiss.
It is not from duty, Though that may be owed,-- It is not from beauty, Though that be bestow'd;
But all that I care for, And all that I know, Is that, without wherefore, I worship thee so.
Through granite as breaketh A tree to the ray, As a dreamer forsaketh The grief of the day,
My soul in its fever Escapes unto thee; O dream to the griever, O light to the tree!
A twofold existence I am where thou art; Hark, hear in the distance The beat of my heart!
LOVERS' QUARRELS.
AN OLD MAXIM REFUTED.
They never loved as thou and I, Who preach'd the laughing moral, That aught which deepens love can lie In true love's lightest quarrel.
They never knew, in times of fear, The safety of affection, Nor sought, when angry fate drew near, Love's altar for protection.
They never knew how kindness grows A vigil and a care, Nor watch'd beside the heart's repose In silence and in prayer;
For weaker love be storms enough To frighten back desire; We have no need of gales so rough To fan our steadier fire.
'Twere sweet to kiss thy tears away, If tears those eyes must know; But sweeter still to hear thee say, "Thou never badst them flow."
The wrongful word will rankling live When wrong itself has ceased, And love, that all things may forgive, Can ne'er forget the least.
If pain can not from life depart, There's pain enough around us; The rose we wear upon the heart Should have no thorn to wound us.
And hollow sounds the wildest vow, If memory wake, the while, The bitter taunt--the darken'd brow, The stinging of a smile.
There is no anguish like the hour, Whatever else befall us, When one the heart has raised to power Exerts it but to gall us.
Yet if--this calm too blest to last-- Some cloud, at times, must be, I'm not so proud but I would cast The fault alone on me.
So deeply blent with thy dear thought, All faith in human kindness, Methinks if thou couldst change in aught, The only bliss were blindness.
But no--if rapture may not last, It ne'er shall bring regret, Nor leave one look in all the past 'Twere mercy to forget.
Repentance often finds, too late, To wound us is to harden; And love is on the verge of hate, Each time it stoops for pardon.
THE LAST SEPARATION.
We shall not rest together, love, When death has wrench'd my heart from thine; The sun may smile thy grave above, When clouds are dark on mine!
I know not why, since in the tomb No instinct fires the silent heart-- And yet it seems a thought of gloom, That even dust should part;
That, journeying through the toilsome past, Thus hand in hand and side by side, The rest we reach should, at the last, The shapes we wore divide;
That the same breezes should not sigh The self-same funeral boughs among,-- Nor o'er one grave, at daybreak, die The night-bird's lonely song!
A foolish thought! the spirit goal Is not where matter wastes away; If soul at last regaineth soul, What boots it where the dust decay?
A foolish thought, yet human too! For love is not the soul's alone: It winds around the form we woo-- The mortal we have known!
The eyes that speak such tender truth, The lips that every care assuage, The hand that thrills the heart in youth, And smoothes the couch in age;
With these--The Human,--human love Will twine its thoughts and weave its doom, And still confound the life above With death beneath the tomb!
And who shall tell, in yonder skies, What earthlier instincts we retain; What link, to souls released, supplies The old material chain?
The stars that pierced this darksome state May fade in that meridian shore; And human love, like human hate, Be memory--and no more!
Away the doubt! alas, how cold Would all the promised heaven appear, Did yearning love no more behold What made its Eden here!
But wheresoe'er the spirit flies, It haunts us in the shape it wore; We give the angel in the skies The mortal's smile of yore;
Yet, ah, when souls from life escape, Material forms no more they know; Not Heaven itself restores the shape So fondly loved below!
Immortal spirits meet above; But mine is still the human heart; And in its faithful human love, It mourns that dust should part!
THE POPE AND THE BEGGAR.
THE DESIRES THE CHAINS, THE DEEDS THE WINGS.
I saw a soul beside the clay it wore, When reign'd that clay the Hierarch-Sire of Rome; A hundred priests stood ranged the bier before, Within St. Peter's dome.
And all was incense, solemn dirge, and prayer, And still the soul stood sullen by the clay: "O soul, why to thy heavenlier native air Dost thou not soar away?"
And the soul answer'd, with a ghastly frown, "In what life loved, death finds its weal or woe; Slave to the clay's Desires, they drag me down To the clay's rot below!"
It spoke, and where Rome's purple ones reposed, They lower'd the corpse; and downwards from the sun Both soul and body sunk--and darkness closed Over that twofold one!
Without the church, unburied on the ground, There lay, in rags, a beggar newly dead; Above the dust no holy priest was found, No pious prayer was said!
But round the corpse unnumber'd lovely things, Hovering unseen by the proud passers by, Form'd, upward, upward, upward, with bright wings, A ladder to the sky!
"And what are ye, O beautiful?" "We are," Answer'd the choral cherubim, "His Deeds!" Then his soul, sparkling sudden as a star, Flash'd from its mortal weeds,
And, lightly passing, tier on tier, along The gradual pinions, vanish'd like a smile! Just then, swept by the solemn-visaged throng From the Apostle's pile.
"Knew ye this beggar?" "Knew! a wretch, who died Under the curse of our good Pope, now gone!" "Loved ye that Pope?" "He was our Church's pride, And Rome's most holy son!"
Then did I muse: such are men's judgments; blind In scorn or love! In what unguess'd-of things, Desires or Deeds--do rags and purple find The fetters or the wings!
THE BEAUTIFUL DESCENDS NOT.
In Cyprus, looking on the lovely sky, Lone by the marge of music-haunted streams, A youthful poet pray'd: "Descend from high, Thou of whose face each youthful poet dreams. Once more, Urania, to the earth be given The beauty that makes beautiful the heaven."
Swift to a silver cloudlet, floating o'er, A rushing Presence rapt him as he pray'd; What he beheld I know not, but once more The midnight heard him sighing to the shade, "Again, again unto the earth be given The beauty that makes beautiful the heaven."
"In vain," a sweet voice answer'd from the star, "Her grace on thee Urania did bestow: Unworthy he the loftier realms afar, Who woos the gods above to earth below; Rapt to the Beautiful thy soul must be, And not the Beautiful debased to thee!"
THE LONG LIFE AND THE FULL LIFE.
IMITATED FROM CLAUDIAN'S "OLD MAN OF VERONA."
In mine own hamlet, where, amidst the green, By moss-grown pales white gleaming cots are seen, There dwelt a peasant in his eightieth year, Dear to my childhood--now to memory dear; In the same hut in which his youth had pass'd Dwelt his calm age, till earth received at last; Where first his infant footsteps tottering ran, Propp'd on his staff crawl'd forth the hoary man; That quiet life no varying fates befell, The patriarch sought no Laban's distant well; Of Rothschild's wealth, of Wellesley's mighty name To that seal'd ear no faintest murmur came. His grand event was when the barn took fire, His world the parish, and his king the squire. Nor clock nor kalend kept account with time, Suns told his days, his weeks the sabbath chime; His spring the jasmine silvering round his door, And reddening apples spoke of summer o'er. To him the orb that set o'er yonder trees, Tired like himself, lit no antipodes; And the vast world of human fears and hopes Closed to his sight where yon horizon slopes,-- That beech which now o'ershadows half the way, He saw it planted in my grandsire's day; Rooted alike where first they braved the weather, He and the oaks he loved grew old together. Not ten miles distant stands our County-hall-- To him remoter than to thee Bengal; And the next shire appear'd to him to be What seas that closed on Franklin seem to thee.
Thus tranquil on that happy ignorance bore The green old age still hearty at fourscore; To him, or me--with half the world explored, And half his years--did life the more afford? There the grey hairs, and here the furrow'd breast! Ask, first--is life a journey or a rest? If rest, old Man, long life indeed was thine; But if a journey--oh, how short to mine!
THE MIND AND THE HEART.
"MA VIE C'EST UN COMBAT."
Why, ever wringing life from art Do men my patient labour find? I still the murmur of my heart, My one consoler is my mind.
Though every toil but wakes the spell To rouse the Falsehood and the Foe, Can all the storms that chafe the well, Disturb the silent TRUTH below?
The Mind can reign in Mind alone.-- O Pride, the hollow boast confess! What slave would not reject a throne If built amidst a wilderness?
Before my gaze I see my youth, The ghost of gentler years, arise, With looks that yearn'd for every truth, And wings that sought the farthest skies.
Fresh from the golden land of dreams, Before this waking world began, How bright the radiant phantom seems Beside the time-worn weary man!
How, then, the Heart rejoiced in all That roused the quick aspiring Mind! What glorious music Hope could call From every Memory left behind!
Experience drew not then to earth The looks that Fancy rear'd above, And all that took their kindred birth From thought or feeling,--blent in love.
In vain a seraph's hand had raised The mask from Falsehood's fatal brow; And still as fondly I had gazed On looks that freeze to marble now.
Can aught that Mind bestows on toil Replace the earlier heavenly ray, That did but tremble o'er the soil, To warm creation into May?
But now, in Autumn's hollow sigh, The heart its waning season shows, And all the clearness of the sky Foretells the coming of the snows.
Farewell, sweet season of the Heart, And come, O iron rule of Mind, I see the Golden Age depart, And face the war it leaves behind.
Me nevermore may Feeling thrall, Resign'd to Reason's stoic reign-- But oh, how much of what we call Content--is nothing but Disdain!
THE LAST CRUSADER.
Left to the Saviour's conquering foes, The land that girds the Saviour's grave; Where Godfrey's crosier-standard rose, He saw the crescent-banner wave.
There, o'er the gently-broken vale, The halo-light on Zion glow'd; There Kedron, with a voice of wail, By tombs[F] of saints and heroes flow'd;
There still the olives silver o'er The dimness of the distant hill; There still the flowers that Sharon bore, Calm air with many an odour fill.
Slowly THE LAST CRUSADER eyed The towers, the mount, the stream, the plain, And thought of those whose blood had dyed The earth with crimson streams in vain!
He thought of that sublime array, The Hosts, that over land and deep The Hermit marshall'd on their way, To see those towers, and halt to weep![G]
Resign'd the loved familiar lands, O'er burning wastes the cross to bear, And rescue from the Paynim's hands The empire of a sepulchre!
And vain the hope, and vain the loss, And vain the famine and the strife; In vain the faith that bore the Cross, The valour prodigal of life!
And vain was Richard's lion-soul, And guileless Godfrey's patient mind-- Like waves on shore, they reach'd the goal, To die, and leave no trace behind!
"O God!" the last Crusader cried, "And art thou careless of thine own? For us thy Son in Salem died, And Salem is the scoffer's throne!
"And shall we leave, from age to age, To godless hands the Holy Tomb? Against thy saints the heathen rage-- Launch forth thy lightnings, and consume!"
Swift, as he spoke, before his sight A form flash'd, white-robed, from above; All Heaven was in those looks of light, But Heaven, whose native air is love.
"Alas!" the solemn Vision said, "Thy God is of the shield and spear-- To bless the Quick and raise the Dead, The Saviour-God descended here!
"Ask not the Father to reward The hearts that seek, through blood, the Son; O warrior! never by the sword The Saviour's Holy Land is won!"
[F] The valley Jehoshaphat, through which rolls the torrent of the Kedron, is studded with tombs.
[G] See Tasso, Ger. Lib. cant. iii. st. vi.
FOREBODINGS.
What are ye?--Strangers from the Phantom shore? Lights that precede Funereal Destinies, Ev'n as the Spectres of the Sun, before He rises from the dearth of Arctic seas? What demon presence haunts the haggard air? What ice-wind checks the blood and lifts the hair?
What are ye?--"Nightmares known not to the sane, A sick man's sickly dreams"--the Leech replies, Then prates he much of viscera, spleen, and brain, And lays the Ghost with Galen;--"To the wise All things are matter;" well, we would be taught, Come, Leech, dissect the brain;--Now show me Thought!
Shame!--to the body, must the soul fulfil A slavery thus subjected and entire? Must every crevice into light be still Choked with the clod? Each dread, and each desire Of things unknown, be track'd unto its germ In some crazed fibre rotting to the worm?
Trust we the dry philosophies that sneer Back every guess into the world of spirit, And what were left the present to revere? And where would fade the future we inherit? Try Heaven and Hell by the physician's test, And men know neither--while they well digest!
What mortal hand the airy line can draw 'Twixt Superstition in its shadowy terror And still Religion in its starry awe?-- Truth when sublime flows least distinct from error; Light of itself eludes our human eyes; Let it take colour, and it spans the skies!
Doubtful Foreshadows, have ye then of yore Never been prophets, murmuring weal or woe? Beckoning no Sylla over seas of gore? Warning no Julius of the fatal blow? Seen in no mother-guise by that pale son Who led the Mede, and sleeps in Marathon?[H]
You, the Earth-shakers from whose right hands war Falls, as from Jove's the thunderbolt, obey; Gaul's sceptic Caesar had his guardian star, Stout Cromwell's iron creed its chosen day. 'Tis in proportion as men's lives are great, That, fates themselves,--they glass the shades of Fate.
The wisest sage the antique wisdom knew, Gazing into blue space long silent hours, Would commune with his Genius: as the dew Recruits the river, so the unseen Powers Of Nature feed with thoughts spiritual, soul.-- Belief alone links knowledge to The Whole.
Hail, then, each gleam, albeit of angry skies, Terrible never to the noble sight! Hail the dread lightning, if it lift the eyes Up from the dust into the Infinite! Look through thy grate, thou saddest captive, Doubt, And thank the flash that shows a Heaven without.
[H] Hippias, before the battle of Marathon, in which he was slain, dreamt a dream that he slept with his mother.--See Herodotus.
ORAMA; OR, FATE AND FREEWILL.
Thin, shadowy, scarce divided from the light, I saw a phantom at the birth of morn: Its robe was sable, but a fleecy white Flow'd silvering o'er the garb of gloom; a horn It held within its hand; no faintest breath Stirr'd its wan lips--death-like, it seem'd not Death.
My heart lay numb within me; and the flow Of life, like water under icebergs, crept; The pulses of my being seem'd to grow One awe;--voice fled the body as it slept, But from its startled depth arose the soul And king-like spoke:-- "What art thou, that dost seem To have o'er Immortality control?" And the Shape answer'd, not by sound, "A Dream! A Dream, but not a Dream: the Shade of things To come--a herald from the throne of Fate. I ruled the hearts of earth's primaeval kings, I gave their life its impulse and its date: Grey Wisdom paled before me, and the stars Were made my weird interpreters--my hand Aroused the whirlwind of the destined wars, And bow'd the nations to my still command. A Dream, but not a Dream;--a type, a sign, Pale with the Future, do I come to thee. The lot of Man is twofold; gaze on thine, And choose thy path into eternity."
Thus spoke the Shade; and as when autumn's haze Rolls from a ghostly hill, and gives to view The various life of troubled human days, So round the phantom, pale phantasma grew, And landscapes rose on either side the still River of Time, whose waves are human hours.-- "What," said my soul, "doth not the Omniscient Will Foreshape, foredoom; if so, what choice is ours?" The Ghost replied:-- "Deem'st thou the art divine Less than the human? Doth inventive Man All adverse means in one great end combine, And close each circle where the thought began, So that his genius, bent on schemes sublime, Scarce notes the obstructions to its purposed goal, But turns each discord of the changeful time Into the music of a changeless whole? And deem'st thou Him who breathes, and worlds arise, But the blind agent of His own cold law? Fool! doth yon river less reflect the skies Because some wavelet eddies round a straw? Still to Man's choice is either margin given Beside the Stream of Time to wander free: And still, as nourish'd by the dews of Heaven, Glides the sure river to the solemn sea. Choose as thou wilt!"-- Then luminously clear Flash'd either margin from the vapoury shade; What I beheld unmeet for mortal ear,-- Nor dare I tell the choice the mortal made. But when the Shape had left me, and the dawn Smote the high lattice with a starbeam pale, As a blind man when from his sight withdrawn The film of dark,--or as unto the gale Leaps the live war-ship from the leaden calm,-- So joyous rose, look'd forth, and on to Fate Bounded my soul! Yet nor the Olympian palm Which fierce contestors hotly emulate, Nor roseate blooms in Cytherean dell, Nor laurel shadowing murmurous Helicon, Strain'd my desire divinely visible In the lone course it was my choice to run. Wherefore was then my joy?--THAT I WAS FREE! Not my life doom'd, as I had deem'd till then, An iron link of grim Necessity,-- A sand-grain wedged amidst the walls of men; The good, the ill, the happiness or woe, That waited, not a thraldom pre-decreed, But from myself as from their germ to grow,-- Let the Man suffer, still the Slave was freed! Predestine earth, and heavenly Mercy dies; The voice of sorrow wastes its wail on air; Freewill restores the Father to the skies, Unlocks from ice the living realm of prayer, And gives creation what the human heart Gives to the creature, life to life replying. O epoch in my being, and mine art, Known but to me!--How oft do thoughts undying Like rainbows, spring between the cloud and beam, Colouring the world yet painted on--a dream.
* * * * *
EARLIER POEMS.
CHIEFLY CRITICAL OR REFLECTIVE.[A]
[A] These Poems, with one exception, have received but little alteration since they were first composed, and are taken from the little volume called "Eva, &c." The Poem called "THE IDEAL WORLD," to which I refer as an exception, appeared in a much ruder form in the earlier editions of the "Pilgrims of the Rhine," to which it served as a Preface. I recast, and, indeed, re-wrote it for the last edition of that work, from which (with slight corrections, and the omission of the verses which connected the poem with the tale by which it was first accompanied) it is now reprinted.
THE SOULS OF BOOKS.
I.
Sit here and muse!--it is an antique room-- High-roof'd with casements, through whose purple pane Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom, Shy as a fearful stranger. There THEY reign (In loftier pomp than waking life had known), The Kings of Thought!--not crown'd until the grave. When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb, The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne! Ye ever-living and imperial Souls, Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe, All that divide us from the clod ye gave! Law--Order--Love--Intelligence--the Sense Of Beauty--Music and the Minstrel's wreath!-- What were our wanderings if without your goals? As air and light, the glory ye dispense, Becomes our being--who of us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought-- Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?-- Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspeare sung!
II.
Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard The various murmur of the labouring crowd, How still, within those archive-cells interr'd, The Calm Ones reign!--and yet they rouse the loud Passions and tumults of the circling world! From them, how many a youthful Tully caught The zest and ardour of the eager Bar; From them, how many a young Ambition sought Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar-- By them each restless wing has been unfurl'd, And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car! They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth; They made yon Poet wistful for the star; Gave Age its pastime--fired the cheek of Youth-- The unseen sires of all our beings are,--
III.
And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart; I hear it beating through each purple line. This is thyself, Anacreon--yet thou art Wreath'd, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine. I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground! Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old, "It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;"[B] These are yourselves--your life of life! The Wise (Minstrel or Sage) out of their books are clay; But in their books, as from their graves, they rise, Angels--that, side by side, upon our way, Walk with and warn us! Hark! the world so loud And they, the movers of the world, so still!
What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease Envy and Hate! "Nine cities claim him dead, Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread!" And what the charm that can such health distil From wither'd leaves--oft poisons in their bloom? We call some books immoral! Do they live? If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure. In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace-- God wills that nothing evil should endure; The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole, As the dust leaves the disembodied soul! Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb! Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint? No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er, And linger only on the hues that paint The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore. None learn from thee to cavil with their God; None commune with thy genius to depart Without a loftier instinct of the heart. Thou mak'st no Atheist--thou but mak'st the mind Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute-- FANCY AND THOUGHT! 'Tis these that from the sod Lift us! The life which soars above the brute Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute! Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred;[C]--born Of him--the Master-Mocker of Mankind, Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen, Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,-- Do we not place it in our children's hands, Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?-- God's and man's libel in that foul yahoo!-- Well, and what mischief can the libel do? O impotence of Genius to belie Its glorious task--its mission from the sky! Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn On aught the man should love or Priest should mourn-- And lo! the book, from all its ends beguiled, A harmless wonder to some happy child!
IV.
All books grow homilies by time; they are Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we Who but for them, upon that inch of ground We call "THE PRESENT," from the cell could see No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar; Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round, Traverse all space, and number every star, And feel the Near less household than the Far! There is no Past, so long as Books shall live! A disinterr'd Pompeii wakes again For him who seeks yon well; lost cities give Up their untarnish'd wonders, and the reign Of Jove revives and Saturn:--At our will Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill; Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe;[D]--along Leucadia's headland sighs the Lesbian's song; With Egypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile, And learn how worlds are barter'd for a smile:-- Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er, Ope but that page--lo, Babylon once more!
V.
Ye make the Past our heritage and home: And is this all? No: by each prophet-sage-- No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star That rose on Bethlehem--by thy golden page, Melodious Plato--by thy solemn dreams, World-wearied Tully!--and above ye all, By THIS, the Everlasting Monument Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams Flash glory-breathing day--our lights ye are To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent The types of Truths whose life is THE TO-COME; In you soars up the Adam from the fall; In you the FUTURE as the PAST is given-- Ev'n in our death ye bid us hail our birth;-- Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven, Without one grave-stone left upon the Earth!
[B] "Comus."
[C] "Gulliver's Travels."
[D] Plut. in "Vit. Cim."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD AND CONDORCET
Led by the Graces, through a court he moved, "All men revered him, and all women loved;"[E]-- Happier than Paris, when to him there came The three Celestials--Learning, Love, and Fame, He found the art to soothe them all, and see The Golden Apple shared amidst the Three. Yet he, this man, for whom the world assumed Each rose that in Gargettian[F] gardens bloom'd, Left to mankind a legacy of all That from earth's sweetness can extract a gall. With him, indeed, poor Love is but a name-- Virtue a mask--Beneficence a game. The Eternal Egotist, the Human Soul, Sees but in Self the starting-post and goal. Nipp'd in the frost of that cold, glittering air, High thoughts are dwarf'd, and youth's warm dreams despair! He lived in luxury, and he died in peace, And saints in powder wept at his decease! Man loves this sparkling satire on himself;-- Gaze round--see Rochefoucauld on every shelf! Look on the other;--Penury made him sour, His learned youth the hireling slave of power; His Manhood cast amidst the stormiest time, A hideous stage, half frenzy and all crime:-- Upon the Dungeon's floor of stone he died, With Life's last Friend, his Horace, by his side! Yet he--this Sage--who found the world so base, Left what?--His "Progress of the Human Race." A golden dream of man without a sin; All virtue round him and all peace within! Man does not love such portraits of himself, And thrusts the unwelcome Flatterer from the shelf.
[E] "The men respect you, and the women love you."--Such was the subtle compliment paid by Prior to one equally ambitious of either distinction; viz. Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke.
[F] Epicurean.
JEALOUSY AND ART.
If bright Apollo be the type of Art, So is flay'd Marsyas that of Jealousy: With the bare fibres which for ever smart Under the sunbeams that rejoice the sky. Had Marsyas ask'd not with the god to vie, The god had praised the cunning of his flute. Thou stealest half Apollo's melody, Tune but thy reed in concert with his lute. Each should enrich the other--each enhance By his own gift the common Beautiful: That every colour more may charm the glance, All varying flowers the garland-weavers cull; Adorn'd by Contrast, Art no rival knows,-- The violet steals not perfume from the rose.
THE MASTER TO THE SCHOLAR.
Write for the pedant Few, the vein shall grow Cold at its source and meagre in its flow; But for the vulgar Many wouldst thou write, How coarse the passion, and the thought how trite! "Nor Few, nor Many--riddles from thee fall?" Author, as Nature smiles--so write;--for ALL!
THE TRUE CRITIC.
Taste is to sense, as Charity to soul, A bias less to censure than to praise; A quick perception of the arduous whole, Where the dull eye some careless flaw surveys. Every true critic--from the Stagirite To Schlegel and to Addison--hath won His fame by serving a reflected light, And clearing vapour from a clouded sun. Who envies him whose microscopic eyes See but the canker in the glorious rose? Not much I ween the Zoilus we prize, Though even Homer may at moments doze. Praise not to me the sharp sarcastic sneer, Mocking the Fane which Genius builds to Time. High works are Sabbaths to the Soul! Revere Even some rare discord in the solemn chime. When on the gaze the Venus dawns divine, The Cobbler comes the slipper to condemn; The Slave alone descends into the mine To work the dross--the Monarch wears the gem.
TALENT AND GENIUS.
Talent convinces--Genius but excites; This tasks the reason, that the soul delights. Talent from sober judgment takes its birth, And reconciles the pinion to the earth; Genius unsettles with desires the mind, Contented not till earth be left behind; Talent, the sunshine on a cultured soil; Ripens the fruit, by slow degrees, for toil; Genius, the sudden Iris of the skies, On cloud itself reflects its wondrous dyes: And to the earth, in tears and glory, given, Clasps in its airy arch the pomp of Heaven! Talent gives all that vulgar critics need-- And frames a horn-book for the Dull to read; Genius, the Pythian of the Beautiful, Leaves its large truths a riddle to the Dull-- From eyes profane a veil the Isis screens, And fools on fools still ask--"What Hamlet means?"
EURIPIDES.
If in less stately mould thy thoughts were cast Than thy twin Masters of the Grecian stage, Lone, 'mid the loftier wonders of the Past, Thou stand'st--more household to the Modern Age;-- Thou mark'st that change in Manners when the frown Of the vast Titans vanish'd from the earth, When a more soft Philosophy stole down From the dark heavens to man's familiar hearth. With thee came Love and Woman's influence o'er Her sterner Lord; and Poesy, till then A Sculpture, warm'd to Painting;[G] what before Glass'd but the dim-seen Gods, grew now to men Clear mirrors, and the Passions took their place, Where a serene if solemn Awe had made The scene a temple to the elder race: The struggles of Humanity became Not those of Titan with a God, nor those Of the great Heart with that unbodied Name By which our ignorance would explain our woes And justify the Heavens,--relentless FATE;-- But, truer to the human life, thine art Made thought with thought, and will with will debate, And placed the God and Titan in the Heart; Thy Phaedra and thy pale Medea were The birth of that most subtle wisdom, which Dawn'd in the world with Socrates, to bear Its last most precious offspring in the rich And genial soul of Shakspeare. And for this Wit blamed thee living, Dulness taunts thee dead.[H] And yet the Pythian did not speak amiss When in thy verse the latent truths she read, And hail'd thee wiser than thy tribe.[I] Of thee All genius in our softer times hath been The grateful echo; and thy soul we see Still through our tears--upon the later Scene. Doth the Italian for his frigid thought Steal but a natural pathos,--hath the Gaul To mimes that ape the form of heroes taught One step that reels not underneath the pall Of the dark Muse--this praise we give, nor more They just remind us--thou hast lived before! But that which made thee wiser than the Schools Was the long sadness of a much-wrong'd life; The sneer of satire, and the gibe of fools, The broken hearth-gods and the perjured wife. For Sorrow is the messenger between The Poet and Men's bosoms:--Genius can Fill with unsympathizing Gods the Scene, But Grief alone can teach us what is Man!
[G] The celebrated comparison between Sculpture and the Ancient Painting and the Modern Dramatic Poetry, is not applicable to Euripides, who has a warmth and colour of passion which few, indeed, of the moderns have surpassed, and from which most of the modern writers have mediately, if not directly, borrowed their most animated conceptions.
[H] Among the taunting accusations which Aristophanes, in his Comedy of the Frogs, lavishes upon Euripides, through the medium of AEschylus, is that of having introduced female love upon the stage! AEschylus, indeed, is made, very inconsistently, considering his Clytemnestra (Ran. 1. 1042) to declare that he does not know that he ever represented a single woman in love. At a previous period of the comedy, Euripides is also ridiculed, through a boast ironically assigned to his own lips, for having debased Tragedy by the introduction of domestic interest--(household things, [Greek: oikeia pragmata]). Upon these and similar charges have later critics, partly in England, especially in Germany, sought by duller diatribes to perpetuate a spirit of depreciation against the only ancient tragic poet who has vitally influenced the later stage. The true merit of Euripides is seen in the very ridicule of Aristophanes.
[I] "Wise Sophocles, wiser Euripides, wisest of all, Socrates," was the well-known decision of the Delphian Oracle. Yet the wisdom of Euripides was not in the philosophical sentences with which he often mars the true philosophy of the drama. His wisdom is his pathos.
THE BONES OF RAPHAEL.
When the author was in Rome, in the year 1833, the bones of Raphael were discovered, and laid for several days in state in one of the churches.
Wave upon wave, the human ocean stream'd Along the chancel of the solemn pile; And, with a softer day, the tapers beam'd Upon the Bier within the vaulted aisle:-- And, mingled with the crowd, I halted there And ask'd a Roman scholar by my side, What sainted dust invoked the common prayer? "Stranger!" the man, as in disdain, replied, "Nine days already hath the Disinterr'd Been given again to mortal eye, and all The great of Rome, the Conclave and the Pope, Have flock'd to grace the second funeral Of him whose soul, until it fled, like Hope, Gave Beauty to the World:--But haply thou, A dweller of the North, hast never heard Of one who, if no saint in waking life, Communed in dreams with angels, and transferr'd The heaven in which we trust his soul is now To the mute canvas.--Underneath that pall Repose the bones of Raphael!" Not a word I answer'd, but in awe I drew more near, And saw the crowd toil on in busy strife, Eager which first should touch the holy bier, I ask'd a boor, more earnest than the rest, "Whose bones are these?" "I know not what his name; But, since the Pope and Conclave have been here, Doubtless a famous Saint!" The Boor express'd The very thought the wandering stranger guess'd. Which wiser, he, the Scholar, who had sneer'd To hear the Stranger canonize the Dead; Or they, the Boor, the Stranger, who revered The Saint, where he the Artist?--Answer, Fame, Whose Saints are not the Calendar's! Perchance Tasso and Raphael, age to age, have given The earth a lustre more direct from Heaven Than San Gennaro, or thy Dennis, France; Or English George!--Read History.[J]-- When the crowd Were gone, I slipp'd some coins into the hand Of a grave-visaged Priest, who took his stand Beside the Bier, and bade him lift the shroud; And there I paused, and gazed upon the all The Worm had spared to Raphael.--He had died, As sang the Alfieri of our land, In the embrace of Beauty[K]--beautiful Himself as Cynthia's lover!--That, the skull Once pillow'd on soft bosoms, which still rise With passionate life, in canvas;--in the void Of those blank sockets shone the starry eyes, That, like the stars, found home in heaven! The pall With its dark hues, gave forth, in gleaming white, The delicate bones; for still an undestroy'd Beauty, amidst decay, appear'd to dwell About the mournful relics; and the light, In crownlike halo, lovingly did fall On the broad brow,--the hush'd and ruin'd cell Of the old Art--Nature's sweet Oracle! Believe or not, no horror seem'd to wrap What has most horror for our life--the Dead: The sleep slept soft, as in a mother's lap, As if the Genius of the Grecian Death, That with a kiss inhaled the parting breath, That, wing'd for Heaven, stood by the charnel porch, Lowering, with looks of love, th' extinguish'd torch, Had taken watch beside the narrow bed; And from the wrecks of the beloved clay Had scared, with guardian eyes, each ghastlier shape away! Come, Moralist, with truths of tritest worth, And tell us how "to this complexion" all That beautify the melancholy earth "Must come at last!" The little and the low, The mob of common men, rejoice to know How the grave levels with themselves the great: For something in the envy of the small Still loves the vast Democracy of Death! But flatter not yourselves--in death the fate Of Genius still divides itself from yours: Yea, ev'n upon the earth! For Genius lives Not in your life--it does not breathe your breath, It does not share your charnels;--but insures In death itself the life that life survives! Genius to you what most you value gave, The noisy forum and the glittering mart, The solid goods and mammon of the world, In these your life--and these with life depart! Grudge not what Genius to itself shall claim-- A life that lived but in the dreams of Art, A world whose sunshine was the smile from Fame. These die not, Moralist, when all are hurl'd, Fasces and sceptre, in the common grave:-- Genius, in life or death, is still the same-- Death but makes deathless what Life ask'd--THE NAME.
[J] Gibbon, after a powerful sketch of the fraud, the corruption, and the vices of George the Cappadocian, thus concludes:--"The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and the garter."--Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. iv. c. xxiii.
[K] "Italian Beauty! didst thou not inspire Raphael, who died in thy embrace?"--BYRON.
THE ATHENIAN AND THE SPARTAN.
A DIALOGUE.
THE ATHENIAN.
Stern Prisoner in thy rites of old, To Learning blind, to Beauty cold,-- Never for thee, with garlands crown'd, The lyre and myrtle circle round; Dull to the Lesbian ruby's froth, Thou revellest in thy verjuice broth. With Phidian art our temples shine, Like mansions meet for gods divine; Thou think'st thy gods despise such toys, And shrines are made--for scourging boys, As triflers, thou canst only see The Drama's Kings--our glorious Three. No Plato fires your youth to thinking, Your nobler school,--in Helots drinking! Contented as your sires before-- The Little makes ye loathe The More. We, ever pushing forward, still Take power, where powerless, from the will; We, ever straining at the All, With hands that grasp when feet may fall,[L]-- Earth, ocean,--near and far,--we roam, Where Fame, where Fortune,--there a home! You hold all progress degradation, Improvement but degeneration, And only wear your scarlet coat When self-defence must cut a throat. Yet ev'n in war, your only calling, A snail would beat your best at crawling; We slew the Mede at Marathon, While you were gazing at the moon![M] Pshaw, man, lay by these antique graces, True wisdom hates such solemn faces! Spartans, if only livelier fellows, Would make ev'n US a little jealous!
THE SPARTAN (calmly).
Friend, Spartans when they need improvement Take models not from endless movement. We found our sires the lords of Greece;-- Ask'd why? this answer--"Laws and Peace." Enough for us to hold our own; Who grasps at shadows risks the bone. You're ever up, and ever down,-- There's something fix'd in True Renown. The New has charms for men, I'm told; Granted,--but all our gods are old. Better to imitate a god Than shift like men.
THE ATHENIAN (impatiently).
You are so odd! There is no sense in these laconics. Ho, Dromio! bring my last Platonics. This mode of arguing, though emphatic, Is quite eclipsed by the Socratic.
SPARTAN.
Friend--
ATHENIAN.
You have said. Now listen! Peace!
SPARTAN.
Friend--
ATHENIAN.
Gods! his tongue will never cease! I tell you, man is made for walking, Not standing still.
SPARTAN.
My friend--
ATHENIAN.
And talking! Forward's my motto--life and motion!
SPARTAN.
Mine be the Rock, as thine the Ocean.
TIME.
Discuss, ye symbols of the twain Great Creeds--THE STEADFAST AND IMPROVING; The one shall rot that would remain, The one wear out in moving!
[L] Thucyd. lib. 1, c. 68-71 (The Speech of the Corinthians).
[M] Herod. lib. 6, c. 120.
THE PHILANTHROPIST AND THE MISANTHROPE.
A DIALOGUE.
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
Yes, thou mayst sneer, but still I own A love that spreads from zone to zone: No time the sacred fire can smother! Where breathes the man, I hail the brother. Man! how sublime,--from Heaven his birth-- The God's bright Image walks the earth! And if, at times, his footstep strays, I pity where I may not praise.
THE MISANTHROPE.
Thou lov'st mankind. Pray tell me, then, What history best excuses men? Long wars for slight pretences made, See murder but a glorious trade; Each landmark from the savage state, Doth virtue or a vice create? Do ships speed plenty o'er the main?-- What swells the sail? The lust of gain! What makes a law where laws were not? Strength's wish to keep what Strength has got! If rise a Few--the true Sublime, Who lend the light of Heaven to Time, What the return the Many make? The poison'd bowl! the fiery stake! Thou lov'st mankind,--come tell me, then, Lov'st thou the past career of men?
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
Nay, little should I love mankind, If their dark PAST my praise could find, It is because--
THE MISANTHROPE.
A moment hold! Enough gone times: our own behold! What lessons doth a past of woe And crime upon our age bestow? How few amongst the tribes of earth Are rescued from the primal wild; What countless lands the ocean's girth, By savage rites and gore defil'd! Afric--a mart of human flesh; Asia--a satrapy of slaves! And yonder tracts from Nature fresh, Worn empires fill with knaves? Are men at home more good and wise? My friend, thou read'st the daily papers; Perchance, thou seest but laughing skies, Where I but mists and vapours. But much the same seems each disease. What most improved? The doctor's fees! The Law can still oppress the Weak, The Proud still march before the Meek. Still crabbed Age and heedless Youth; Still Power perplex'd, asks "What is Truth?" To no result our squabbles come: To some what's best is worst to some. The few the cake amongst them carve, And labourers sweat and poets starve; And Envy still on Genius feeds, And not one modest man succeeds. All much the same for prince and peasant-- I've done.--How dost thou love the PRESENT?
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
'Tis not man's Present or man's Past; Beyond, man's friend his eye must cast. Must see him break each galling fetter; To gain the best, desire the better-- From Discontent itself we borrow The glorious yearnings for the morrow; Science and Truth like waves advance Upon the antique Ignorance.
THE MISANTHROPE.
Like waves--the image not amiss! They gain on that side--lose on this; Pleased, after fifty ages, if They gulp at last an inch of cliff.
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
You really cannot think by satire, To mine the truths you cannot batter; Man's destinies are brightening slowly, With them entwined each thought most holy. What though the PAST my horror moves, No Eden though the PRESENT seems, Who loves Mankind, their FUTURE loves, And trusts, and lives--
THE MISANTHROPE.
In dreams!
WISDOM.
In both extremes there seems convey'd, A truth to own, and yet deny; But what between the extremes has made The master-difference?
HOPE.
I!-- What wert thou, Wisdom, but for me? Though thou the Past, the Present see, Through ME alone, the eye can mark The Future dawning on the dark. I plant the tree, and till the soil; I show the fruit,--where thou the toil; Where thou despondest, I aspire-- Thine sad Content, mine bright Desire. Under my earthlier name of HOPE, The love to things unborn is given, But call me FAITH--behold I ope The flaming gates of Heaven! Take ME from Man, and Man is both The Dastard and the Slave; And Love is lust, and Peace a sloth, And all the Earth a Grave!
THE IDEAL WORLD.
ARGUMENT.
SECTION I.
The Ideal World--Its realm is everywhere around us--Its inhabitants are the immortal personifications of all beautiful thoughts--To that World we attain by the repose of the senses.
SECTION II.
Our dreams belong to the Ideal--The diviner love for which youth sighs, not attainable in life--But the pursuit of that love, beyond the world of the senses, purifies the soul, and awakes the Genius--Instances in Petrarch--Dante.
SECTION III.
Genius, lifting its life to the Ideal becomes itself a pure idea--It must comprehend all existence: all human sins and sufferings--But, in comprehending, it transmutes them--The Poet in his twofold being--The actual and the ideal--The influence of Genius over the sternest realities of earth--Over our passions--wars and superstitions--Its identity is with human progress--Its agency, even where unacknowledged, is universal.
SECTION IV.
Forgiveness to the errors of our benefactors.
SECTION V.
The Ideal is not confined to Poets--Algernon Sydney recognizes his Ideal in liberty, and believes in its triumph where the mere practical man could behold but its ruins--Yet liberty in this world must ever be an Ideal, and the land that it promises can be found but in death.
SECTION VI.
Yet all have two escapes into the Ideal World; viz. Memory and Hope--Example of Hope in youth, however excluded from action and desire--Napoleon's son.
SECTION VII.
Example of Memory as leading to the Ideal--Amidst life, however humble, and in a mind however ignorant--the village widow.
SECTION VIII.
Hence in Hope, Memory, and Prayer, all of us are Poets.
I.
Around "this visible diurnal sphere," There floats a world that girds us like the space; On wandering clouds and gliding beams career Its ever-moving, murmurous Populace. There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below, Ascending live, and in celestial shapes. To that bright World, O Mortal, wouldst thou go?-- Bind but thy senses, and thy soul escapes: To care, to sin, to passion close thine eyes; Sleep in the flesh, and see the Dreamland rise! Hark, to the gush of golden waterfalls, Or knightly tromps at Archimagian walls! In the green hush of Dorian Valleys mark The River Maid her amber tresses knitting:-- When glow-worms twinkle under coverts dark, And silver clouds o'er summer stars are flitting, With jocund elves invade "the Moone's sphere, Or hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear;"[N] Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves Joy into song--the blithe Arcadian Faun Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves, While, slowly gleaming through the purple glade, Come Evian's panther car, and the pale Naxian Maid.
Such, O Ideal World, thy habitants! All the fair children of creative creeds-- All the lost tribes of Phantasy are thine-- From antique Saturn in Dodonian haunts, Or Pan's first music waked from shepherd reeds, To the last sprite when heaven's pale lamps decline, Heard wailing soft along the solemn Rhine.
II.
Thine are the Dreams that pass the Ivory Gates, With prophet shadows haunting poet eyes! Thine the beloved illusions youth creates From the dim haze of its own happy skies. In vain we pine--we yearn on earth to win The being of the heart, our boyhood's dream. The Psyche and the Eros ne'er have been, Save in Olympus, wedded!--As a stream Glasses a star, so life the ideal love; Restless the stream below--serene the orb above! Ever the soul the senses shall deceive; Here custom chill, there kinder fate bereave: For mortal lips unmeet eternal vows! And Eden-flowers for Adam's mournful brows! We seek to make the moment's angel-guest The household dweller at a human hearth; We chase the bird of Paradise, whose nest Was never found amid the bowers of earth.[O] Yet loftier joys the vain pursuit may bring, Than sate the senses with the boons of time; The bird of Heaven hath still an upward wing, The steps it lures are still the steps that climb, And in the ascent, although the soil be bare, More clear the daylight and more pure the air. Let Petrarch's heart the human mistress lose, He mourns the Laura, but to win the Muse: Could all the charms which Georgian maids combine Delight the soul of the dark Florentine, Like one chaste dream of childlike Beatrice Awaiting Hell's stern pilgrim in the skies, Snatch'd from below to be the guide above, And clothe Religion in the form of Love?[P]
III.
O, thou true Iris! sporting on thy bow Of tears and smiles--Jove's herald, Poetry! Thou reflex image of all joy and woe-- Both fused in light by thy dear phantasy! Lo! from the clay how Genius lifts its life, And grows one pure Idea--one calm soul! True, its own clearness must reflect our strife; True, its completeness must comprise our whole: But as the sun transmutes the sullen hues Of marsh-grown vapours into vermeil dyes, And melts them later into twilight dews, Shedding on flowers the baptism of the skies; So glows the Ideal in the air we breathe-- So from the fumes of sorrow and of sin, Doth its warm light in rosy colours wreathe Its playful cloudland, storing balms within.
Survey the Poet in his mortal mould Man amongst men, descended from his throne! The moth that chased the star now frets the fold, Our cares, our faults, our follies are his own. Passions as idle, and desires as vain, Vex the wild heart, and dupe the erring brain. From Freedom's field the recreant Horace flies To kiss the hand by which his country dies; From Mary's grave the mighty Peasant turns, And hoarse with orgies rings the laugh of Burns. While Rousseau's lips a lackey's vices own,-- Lips that could draw the thunder on a throne! But when, from Life the Actual, GENIUS springs, When, self-transform'd by its own Magic rod, It snaps the fetters and expands the wings, And drops the fleshly garb that veil'd the god, How the mists vanish as the form ascends!-- How in its aureole every sunbeam blends! By the Arch-Brightener of Creation seen, How dim the crowns on perishable brows! The snows of Atlas melt beneath the sheen, Through Thebaid caves the rushing splendour flows, Cimmerian glooms with Asian beams are bright, And Earth reposes in a belt of light. Now stern as Vengeance shines the awful form, Arm'd with the bolt and glowing through the storm; Sets the great deeps of human passion free, And whelms the bulwarks that would breast the sea. Roused by its voice the ghastly Wars arise, Mars reddens earth, the Valkyrs pale the skies; Dim Superstition from her hell escapes, With all her shadowy brood of monster shapes; Here Life itself lie scowl of Typhon[Q] takes; There Conscience shudders at Alecto's snakes; From Gothic graves at midnight yawning wide, In gory cerements gibbering spectres glide; And where o'er blasted heaths the lightnings flame, Black secret hags "do deeds without a name!" Yet through its direst agencies of awe, Light marks its presence and pervades its law, And, like Orion when the storms are loud, It links creation while it gilds a cloud. By ruthless Thor, free Thought, frank Honour stand, Fame's grand desire, and zeal for Fatherland; The grim Religion of Barbarian Fear, With some Hereafter still connects the Here, Lifts the gross sense to some spiritual source, And thrones some Jove above the Titan Force, Till, love completing what in awe began, From the rude savage dawns the thoughtful man. Then, O behold the glorious Comforter! Still bright'ning worlds, but gladd'ning now the hearth, Or like the lustre of our nearest star, Fused in the common atmosphere of earth. It sports like hope upon the captive's chain; Descends in dreams upon the couch of pain; To wonder's realm allures the earnest child; To the chaste love refines the instinct wild; And as in waters the reflected beam, Still where we turn, glides with us up the stream; And while in truth the whole expanse is bright, Yields to each eye its own fond path of light, So over life the rays of Genius fall,-- Give each his track because illuming all.
IV.
Hence is that secret pardon we bestow In the true instinct of the grateful heart, Upon the Sons of Song. The good they do In the clear world of their Uranian art Endures for ever; while the evil done In the poor drama of their mortal scene, Is but a passing cloud before the sun; Space hath no record where the mist hath been. Boots it to us, if Shakspeare err'd like man? Why idly question that most mystic life? Eno' the giver in his gifts to scan; To bless the sheaves with which thy fields are rife, Nor, blundering, guess through what obstructive clay The glorious corn-seed struggled up to day.
V.
But not to you alone, O Sons of Song, The wings that float the loftier airs along. Whoever lifts us from the dust we are, Beyond the sensual to spiritual goals; Who from the MOMENT and the SELF afar By deathless deeds allures reluctant souls, Gives the warm life to what the Limner draws, Plato but thought what godlike Cato was.[R] Recall the wars of England's giant-born, Is Elyot's voice--is Hampden's death in vain? Have all the meteors of the vernal morn But wasted light upon a frozen main? Where is that child of Carnage, Freedom, flown? The Sybarite lolls upon the Martyr's throne, Lewd, ribald jests succeed to solemn zeal; And things of silk to Cromwell's men of steel. Cold are the hosts the tromps of Ireton thrill'd, And hush'd the senates Vane's large presence fill'd. In what strong heart doth the old manhood dwell? Where art thou Freedom?--Look--in Sidney's cell! There still as stately stands the living Truth, Smiling on age as it had smiled on youth. Her forts dismantled, and her shrines o'erthrown, The headsman's block her last dread altar-stone, No sanction left to Reason's vulgar hope-- Far from the wrecks expands her prophet's scope. Millennial morns the tombs of Kedron gild, The hands of saints the glorious walls rebuild,-- Till, each foundation garnish'd with its gem, High o'er Gehenna flames Jerusalem!
O thou blood-stain'd Ideal of the free, Whose breath is heard in clarions--Liberty! Sublimer for thy grand illusions past, Thou spring'st to Heaven--Religion at the last. Alike below, or commonwealths, or thrones, Where'er men gather some crush'd victim groans; Only in death thy real form we see, All life is bondage--souls alone are free. Thus through the waste the wandering Hebrews went, Fire on the march, but cloud upon the tent. At last on Pisgah see the prophet stand, Before his vision spreads the PROMISED LAND; But where reveal'd the Canaan to his eye?-- Upon the mountain he ascends to die.
VI.
Yet whatsoever be our bondage here, All have two portals to the Phantom sphere,-- Who hath not glided through those gates that ope, Beyond the Hour, to MEMORY or to HOPE! Give Youth the Garden,--still it soars above-- Seeks some far glory--some diviner love. Place Age amidst the Golgotha--its eyes Still quit the graves, to rest upon the skies; And while the dust, unheeded, moulders there, Track some lost angel through cerulean air.
Lo! where the Austrian binds, with formal chain, The crownless son of earth's last Charlemain-- Him, at whose birth laugh'd all the violet vales (While yet unfallen stood thy sovereign star, O Lucifer of Nations)--hark, the gales Swell with the victor-shout from hosts, whose war Rended the Alps, and crimson'd Memphian Nile-- "Way for the coming of the Conqueror's Son: Woe to the Merchant-Carthage of the Isle! Woe to the Scythian Ice-world of the Don! O Thunder Lord, thy Lemnian bolts prepare, The Eagle's eyrie hath its eagle heir!" Hark, at that shout from north to south, grey Power Quails on its weak, hereditary thrones; And widow'd mothers prophesy the hour Of future carnage to their cradled sons. What! shall our race to blood be thus consign'd, And Ate claim an heirloom in mankind? Are these red lots unshaken in the urn? Years pass--approach, pale Questioner--and learn Chain'd to his rock, with brows that vainly frown, The fallen Titan sinks in darkness down! And sadly gazing through his gilded grate, Behold the child whose birth, was as a fate! Far from the land in which his life began; Wall'd from the healthful air of hardy man; Rear'd by cold hearts, and watch'd by jealous eyes, His guardians jailors, and his comrades spies. Each trite convention courtly fears inspire To stint experience and to dwarf desire, Narrows the action to a puppet stage, And trains the eaglet to the starling's cage. On the dejected brow and smileless cheek, What weary thought the languid lines bespeak: Till drop by drop, from jaded day to day, The sickly life-streams ooze themselves away.
Yet oft in HOPE a boundless realm was thine, That vaguest Infinite--the Dream of Fame; Son of the sword that first made kings divine, Heir to man's grandest royalty--a Name! Then didst thou burst upon the startled world, And keep the glorious promise of thy birth; Then were the wings that bear the bolt unfurl'd, A monarch's voice cried, "Place upon the Earth!" A new Philippi gain'd a second Rome, And the Son's sword avenged the greater Caesar's doom.
VII.
But turn the eye to Life's sequester'd vale, And lowly roofs remote in hamlets green. Oft in my boyhood where the moss-grown pale Fenced quiet graves, a female form was seen; Each eve she sought the melancholy ground, And lingering paused, and wistful look'd around; If yet some footstep rustled through the grass, Timorous she shrunk, and watch'd the shadow pass. Then, when the spot lay lone amidst the gloom, Crept to one grave too humble for a tomb, There silent bow'd her face above the dead, For, if in prayer, the prayer was inly said; Still as the moonbeam, paused her quiet shade, Still as the moonbeam, through the yews to fade. Whose dust thus hallow'd by so fond a care? What the grave saith not--let the heart declare.
On yonder green two orphan children play'd; By yonder rill two plighted lovers stray'd. In yonder shrine two lives were blent in one, And joy-bells chimed beneath a summer sun. Poor was their lot--their bread in labour found; No parent bless'd them, and no kindred own'd; They smiled to hear the wise their choice condemn; They loved--they loved--and love was wealth to them! Hark--one short week--again the holy bell! Still shone the sun, but dirge-like boom'd the knell; And when for that sweet world she knew before Look'd forth the bride,--she saw a grave the more. Full fifty years since then have pass'd away, Her cheek is furrow'd, and her hair is grey. Yet when she peaks of him (the times are rare), Hear in her voice how youth still trembles there! The very name of that young life that died, Still heaves the bosom, and recalls the bride. Lone o'er the widow's hearth those years have fled, The daily toil still wins the daily bread; No books deck sorrow with fantastic dyes: Her fond romance her woman heart supplies; And, to the sabbath of still moments given, (Day's taskwork done)--to memory, death, and heaven, There may--(let poets answer me!) belong Thoughts of such pathos as had beggar'd song.
VIII.
Yes, while thou hopest, music fills the air; While thou rememberest, life reclothes the clod; While thou canst feel the electric chain of prayer, Breathe but a thought, and be a soul with God! Let not these forms of matter bound thine eye, He who the vanishing point of Human things Lifts from the landscape--lost amidst the sky, Has found the Ideal which the poet sings-- Has pierced the pall around the senses thrown, And is himself a poet--though unknown.
[N] Midsummer's Night Dream.
[O] According to a belief in the East, which is associated with one of the loveliest and most familiar of Oriental superstitions the bird of Paradise is never seen to rest upon the earth--and its nest is never to be found.
[P] It is supposed by many of the commentators on Dante, that in the form of his lost Beatrice, who guides him in his Vision of Heaven, the poet allegorizes Religious Faith.
[Q] The gloomy Typhon of Egypt assumes many of the mystic attributes of the Principle of Life which, in the Grecian Apotheosis of the Indian Bacchus, is represented in so genial a character of exuberant joy and everlasting youth.
[R] "What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was."--POPE.
EPIGRAPH.
"COGITO--ERGO SUM."
Self of myself, unto the future age Pass, murmuring low whate'er thine own has taught, "I think, and therefore am,"--exclaim'd the Sage: As now the Man, so henceforth be the page; A life, because a thought.
Through various seas, exploring shores unknown, A soul went forth, and here bequeaths its chart-- Here Doubt retains the question, Grief the groan, And here may Faith still shine, as when she shone And saved a sinking heart.
From the lost nectar-streams of golden youth, From rivers loud with Babel's madding throng, From wells whence Lore invokes reluctant Truth, And that blest pool the wings of angels smooth, Life fills mine urns of song.
Calmly to time I leave these images Of things experienced, suffer'd, felt, and seen; Fruits shed or tempest-torn from changeful trees, Shells murmuring back the tides in distant seas-- Signs where a Soul has been.
As for the form Thought takes--the rudest hill Echoes denied to gardens back may give; Life speaks in all the forms which Thought can fill; If thought once born can perish not--here still I think, and therefore live!
* * * * *
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. Passages in italics are surrounded by underscores.
2. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the poem or section in which they are referred. The endnotes for King Arthur have been moved to the end of individual books.
3. Certain words use "oe" ligature in the original.
4. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.
5. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.