BOOK I.
THE FIRST VIOLETS.
Who that has loved knows not the tender tale
Which flowers reveal, when lips are coy to tell?
Whose youth has paused not, dreaming, in the vale
Where the rath violets dwell?
Lo, where they shrink along the lonely brake,
Under the leafless melancholy tree;
Not yet the cuckoo sings, nor glides the snake,
Nor wild thyme lures the bee;
Yet at their sight and scent entranced and thrall'd,
All June seems golden in the April skies;
How sweet the days we yearn for,—till fulfill'd:
O distant Paradise,
Dear Land to which Desire for ever flees;
Time doth no present to our grasp allow,
Say in the fix'd Eternal shall we seize
At last the fleeting Now?
Dream not of days to come—of that Unknown
Whither Hope wanders—maze without a clue;
Give their true witchery to the flowers;—thine own
Youth in their youth renew.
Avarice, remember when the cowslip's gold
Lured and yet lost its glitter in thy grasp.
Do thy hoards glad thee more than those of old?
Those wither'd in thy clasp,
From these thy clasp falls palsied.—It was then
That thou wert rich—thy coffers are a lie;
Alas, poor fool, Joy is the wealth of men,
And Care their penury.
Come, foil'd Ambition, what hast thou desired?
Empire and power?—O, wanderer, tempest-tost!
These once were thine, when life's gay spring inspired
Thy soul with glories lost.
Let the flowers charm thee back to that rich time
When golden Dreamland lay within thy chart,
When Love bestow'd a realm indeed sublime—
The boundless human heart.
Hark, hark again, the tread of bashful feet!
Hark the boughs rustling round the trysting-place!
Let air again with one dear breath be sweet,
Earth fair with one dear face.
Brief-lived first flowers—first love! The hours steal on
To prank the world in summer's pomp of hue,
But what can flaunt beneath a fiercer sun
Worth what we lose in you?
Oft by a flower, a leaf, in some loved book
We mark the lines that charm us most;—Retrace
Thy life;—recall its loveliest passage;—Look,
Dead violets keep the place!
THE IMAGE ON THE TIDE.
Not a sound is heard
But my heart by thine,
Breathe not a word,
Lay thy hand in mine.
How trembling, yet still,
On the lake's clear tide,
Sleep the distant hill,
And the bank beside.
The near and the far,
Intermingled flow;
The herb and the star
Imaged both below.
So deep and so clear,
Through the shadowy light,
The far and the near
In my soul unite;
The future and past,
Like the bank and hill,
On the surface glass'd,
Though they tremble still;
Disturb not the dream
Of this double whole;
The heav'n in the stream
On my soul thy soul.
The sense cannot count
(As the waters glass
The forest and mount
And the clouds that pass)
The shadows and gleams
In that stilly deep,
Like the tranquil dreams
Of a hermit's sleep.
One shadow alone
On my soul doth fall,—
And yet in the one
It reflects on All.
IS IT ALL VANITY?
Doubting of life, my spirit paused perplext
Let fall its fardell of laborious care,
And the sharp cry of my great trouble vext
Unsympathizing air.
Out on this choice of unrewarded toil,
This upward path into the realm of snow!
Oh for one glimpse of the old happy soil
Fragrant with flowers below!
For what false gold, like alchemists, we yearn,
Wasting the wealth we never can recall,
Joy and life's lavish prime;—and our return?
Ashes, cold ashes, all!
Could youth but dream what narrow burial-urns
Hopes that went forth to conquer worlds should hold,
How in a tomb the lamp Experience burns
Amidst the dust of old!—
Look back, how all the beautiful Ideal,
Sporting in doubtful moonlight, one by one
Fade from the rising of the hard-eyed Real,
Like Fairies from the sun.
Love render'd saintlike by its pure devotion;
Knowledge exulting lone by shoreless seas
And Feelings tremulous to each emotion,
As May leaves to the breeze.
And, oh, that grand Ambition, poet-nurst,
When boyhood's heart swells up to the Sublime,
And on the gaze the towers of Glory first
Flash from the peaks of Time!
Are they then wiser who but nurse the growth
Of joys in life's most common element,
Creeping from hour to hour in that calm sloth
Which Egoists call "Content?"
Who freight for storms no hopeful argosy,
Who watch no beacon wane on hilltops grey,
Who bound their all, where from the human eye
The horizon fades away?
Alas for Labour, if indeed more wise
To drink life's tide unwitting where it flows;
Renounce the arduous palm, and only prize
The Cnidian vine and rose!
Out from the Porch the Stoic cries "For shame!"
What hast thou left us, Stoic, in thy school?
"That pain or pleasure is but in the name?"
Go, prick thy finger, fool!
Never grave Pallas, never Muse severe
Charm'd this hard life like the free, zoneless Grace;
Pleasure is sweet, in spite of every sneer
On Zeno's wrinkled face.
What gain'd and left ye to this age of ours
Ye early priesthoods of the Isis, Truth,—
When light first glimmer'd from the Cuthite's towers;
When Thebes was in her youth?
When to the weird Chaldæan spoke the seer,
When Hades open'd at Heraclean spells,
When Fate made Nature her interpreter
In leaves and murmuring wells?
When the keen Greek chased flying Science on,
Upward and up the infinite abyss?—
Like perish'd stars your arts themselves have gone
Noiseless to nothingness!
And what is knowledge but the Wizard's ring,
Kindling a flame to circumscribe a ground?
The belt of light that lures the spirit's wing
Hems the invoker round.
Ponder and ask again "what boots our toil?"
Can we the Garden's wanton child gainsay,
When from kind lips he culls their rosy spoil
And lives life's holiday?
Life answers "No—if ended here be life,
Seize what the sense can give—it is thine all;
Disarm thee, Virtue, barren is thy strife;
Knowledge, thy torch let fall.
"Seek thy lost Psyche, yearning Love, no more!
Love is but lust, if soul be only breath;
Who would put forth one billow from the shore
If the great sea be—Death?"
But if the soul, that slow artificer
For ends its instinct rears from life hath striven,
Feeling beneath its patient webwork stir
Wings only freed in Heaven,
Then and but then to toil is to be wise;
Solved is the riddle of the grand desire
Which ever, ever, for the Distant sighs,
And must perforce aspire.
Rise, then, my soul, take comfort from thy sorrow;
Thou feel'st thy treasure when thou feel'st thy load;
Life without thought, the day without the morrow,
God on the brute bestow'd;
Longings obscure as for a native clime,
Flight from what is to live in what may be,
God gave the Soul.—Thy discontent with Time
Proves thine eternity.
THE TRUE JOY-GIVER.
Oh Œvoë, liber Pater,
Oh, the vintage feast divine,
When the God was in the bosom
And his rapture in the wine;
When the Faun laugh'd out at morning;
When the Mænad hymn'd the night;
And the Earth itself was drunken
With the worship of delight;
Oh Œvoë, liber Pater,
Whose orgies are upon
The hilltops of Parnassus,
The banks of Helicon;—
How often have I hail'd thee!
How often have I been
The bearer of the thyrsus,
When its wither'd leaves were green.
Then the boughs were purple gleaming
With the dewdrop and the star;
And chanting came the wood-nymph,
And flashing came the car.
Long faded are the garlands
Of the thyrsus that I bore,
When the wood-nymph chanted "Follow"
In the vintage-feast of yore.
My vineyards are the richest
Falernian slopes bestow;
Has the vineherd lost his cunning?
Has the summer lost its glow?
Oh, never on Falernium
The Care-Dispeller trod,
Its vine-leaves wreathe no thyrsus,
Its fruits allure no god.
For ever young, Lyæus;
For ever young his priest;
The Boy-god of the Morning,
The conqueror of the East,
His wine is Nature's life-blood;
His vineyards bloom upon
The hilltops of Parnassus,
The banks of Helicon.
But the hilltops of Parnassus
Are free to every age;
I have trod them with the Poet,
I have mapp'd them with the Sage;
And I'll take my pert disciple
To see, with humble eyes,
How the Gladness-bringer honours
The worship of the wise.
Lo, the arching of the vine-leaves;
Lo, the sparkle of the fount;
Hark, the carol of the Mænads;
Lo, the car is on the Mount!
"Ho, room, ye thyrsus-bearers,
Your playmate I have been!"
"Go, madman," laughs Lyæus,
"Thy thyrsus then was green."
And adown the gleaming alleys
The gladness-givers glide;
And the wood-nymph murmurs "Follow,"
To the young man by my side.
BELIEF; THE UNKNOWN LANGUAGE.
AN IDYLL.
By summer-reeds a music murmur'd low,
And straight the Shepherd-age came back to me;
When idylls breathed where Himera's waters flow,
Or on the Hœmus hill, or Rhodopè;[A]
As when the swans, by Moschus heard at noon,
Mourn'd their lost Bion on the Thracian streams;[B]
Or when Simæthea murmur'd to the moon
Of Myndian Delphis,[C]—old Sicilian themes.
Then softly turning, on the margent-slope
Which back as clear translucent waters gave,
Behold, a Shape as beautiful as Hope,
And calm as Grief, bent, singing o'er the wave.
To the sweet lips, sweet music seem'd a thing
Natural as perfume to the violet.
All else was silent; not a zephyr's wing
Stirr'd from the magic of the charmer's net.
What was the sense beneath the silver tone?
What the fine chain that link'd the floating measure?
Not mine, to say,—the language was unknown,
And sense was lost in undistinguish'd pleasure.
Pleasure, dim-shadow'd with a gentle pain
As twilight Hesper with a twilight shroud;
Or like the balm of a delicious rain
Press'd from the fleeces of a summer cloud.
When the song ceased, I knelt before the singer
And raised my looks to soft and childlike eyes,
Sighing? "What fountain, O thou nectar-bringer
Feeds thy full urn with golden melodies?
"Interpret sounds, O Hebé of the soul,
Oft heard, methinks, in Ida's starry grove,
When to thy feet the charmèd eagle stole,
And the dark thunder left the brows of Jove!"
Smiling, the Beautiful replied to me,
And still the language flow'd in words unknown;
Only in those pure eyes my sense could see
How calm the soul that so perplex'd my own.
And while she spoke, symphonious murmurs rose;
Dryads from trees, Nymphs murmur'd from the rills;
Murmur'd Mænalian Pan from dim repose
In the lush coverts of Pelasgic hills;
Murmur'd the voice of Chloris in the flower;
Bent, murmuring from his car, Hyperion;
Each thing regain'd the old Presiding Power,
And spoke,—and still the language was unknown.
Dull listener, placed amidst the harmonious Whole,
Hear'st thou no voice to sense divinely dark?
The sweetest sounds that wander to the soul
Are in the Unknown Language.—Pause, and hark!
THE PILGRIM OF THE DESERT.
Wearily flaggeth my Soul in the Desert;
Wearily, wearily.
Sand, ever sand, not a gleam of the fountain;
Sun, ever sun, not a shade from the mountain;
Wave after wave flows the sea of the Desert,
Drearily, drearily.
Life dwelt with life in my far native valleys,
Nightly and daily;
Labour had brothers to aid and beguile;
A tear for my tear, and a smile for my smile;
And the sweet human voices rang out; and the valleys
Echoed them gaily.
Under the almond-tree, once in the spring-time,
Careless reclining;
The sigh of my Leila was hush'd on my breast,
As the note of the last bird had died in its nest;
Calm look'd the stars on the buds of the spring-time,
Calm—but how shining!
Below on the herbage there darken'd a shadow;
Stirr'd the boughs o'er me;
Dropp'd from the almond-tree, sighing, the blossom;
Trembling the maiden sprang up from my bosom;
Then the step of a stranger came mute through the shadow,
Pausing before me.
He stood grey with age in the robe of a Dervise,
As a king awe-compelling;
And the cold of his eye like the diamond was bright,
As if years from the hardness had fashion'd the light,
"A draught from thy spring for the way-weary Dervise,
And rest in thy dwelling."
And my herds gave the milk, and my tent gave the shelter;
And the stranger spell-bound me
With his tales, all the night, of the far world of wonder,
Of the ocean of Oman with pearls gleaming under;
And I thought, "O, how mean are the tents' simple shelter
And the valleys around me!"
I seized as I listen'd, in fancy, the treasures
By Afrites conceal'd;
Scared the serpents that watch in the ruins afar
O'er the hoards of the Persian in lost Chil-Menar;—
Alas! ill that night happy youth had more treasures
Than Ormus can yield.
Morn came, and I went with my guest through the gorges
In the rock hollow'd;
The flocks bleated low as I pass'd them ungrieving,
The almond-buds strew'd the sweet earth I was leaving;
Slowly went Age through the gloom of the gorges,
Lightly Youth follow'd.
We won through the Pass—the Unknown lay before me,
Sun-lighted and wide;
Then I turn'd to my guest, but how languid his tread,
And the awe I had felt in his presence was fled,
And I cried, "Can thy age in the journey before me
Still keep by my side?"
"Hope and Wisdom soon part; be it so," said the Dervise,
"My mission is done."
As he spoke, came the gleam of the crescent and spear,
Chimed the bells of the camel more sweet and more near;—
"Go, and march with the Caravan, youth," sigh'd the Dervise,
"Fare thee well!"—he was gone.
What profits to speak of the wastes I have traversed
Since that early time?
One by one the procession, replacing the guide,
Have dropp'd on the sands, or have stray'd from my side;
And I hear never more in the solitudes traversed
The camel-bell's chime.
How oft I have yearn'd for the old happy valley,
But the sands have no track;
He who scorn'd what was near must advance to the far,
Who forsaketh the landmark must march by the star,
And the steps that once part from the peace of the valley
Can never come back.
So on, ever on, spreads the path of the Desert,
Wearily, wearily;
Sand, ever sand—not a gleam of the fountain;
Sun, ever sun—not a shade from the mountain;
As a sea on a sea, flows the width of the Desert,
Drearily, drearily.
How narrow content, and how infinite knowledge!
Lost vale, and lost maiden!
Enclosed in the garden the mortal was blest:
A world with its wonders lay round him unguest;
That world was his own when he tasted of knowledge—
Was it worth Aden?
THE KING AND THE WRAITH.
king.
Who art thou, who art thou, indistinct as the spray
Rising up from a torrent in vapour and cloud?
Ghastly Phantom, obscuring the splendour of day
And enveloped in awe, as a corpse with a shroud?
wraith.
King, my form is thy shade,
And my life is thy breath;
Lo, thy likeness display'd
In the mirror of Death!
king.
My veins are as ice! 'Tis my voice that I hear!
'Tis my form coming forth from the cloud that I see!
My voice?—can its sound be so dread to my ear?
My form?—can myself be so loathly to me?
wraith.
Never Man comes in sight
Of himself till the last;
In the flicker of light
When the fuel is past!
king.
Nay, avaunt, lying Spectre, my fears are dispell'd,
For the likeness that fool'd me is fading away,
And I see, where the shape of a king was beheld,
But the coil of an earthworm that creeps into clay.
wraith.
As thy shade I began;
As thyself I depart;
And thy last looks, O Man,
See the worm that thou art!
LOVE AND DEATH.
O Strong as the eagle,
O mild as the dove,
How like and how unlike
O Death and O Love!
Knitting earth to the heaven,
The near to the far,
With the step in the dust,
And the eye on the star.
Ever changing your symbols
Of light or of gloom;
Now the rue on the altar,
The rose on the tomb.
From Love, if the infant
Receiveth his breath,
The love that gave life
Yields a subject to Death.
When Death smites the aged,
Escaping above
Flies the soul re-deliver'd
By Death unto Love.
And therefore in wailing
We enter on life;
And therefore in smiling
Depart from its strife.
Thus Love is best known
By the tears it has shed;
And Death's surest sign
Is the smile of the dead.
The purer the spirit,
The clearer its view,
The more it confoundeth
The shapes of the two;
For, if thou lov'st truly,
Thou canst not dissever
The grave from the altar,
The Now from the Ever;
And if, nobly hoping,
Thou gazest above,
In Death thou beholdest
The aspect of Love.
THE POET TO THE DEAD.
PART I.
RETROSPECTION FROM THE HALTING-PLACE.
Let me pause, for I am weary,
Weary of the trodden ways;
And the landscape spreads more dreary
Where it stretches from my gaze.
Many a prize I deem'd a blessing
When I started for the goal,
Midway in the course possessing
Adds a burthen to the soul.
By the thorn that scantly shadeth
From the slopèd sun reclin'd,
Let me look, before it fadeth
On the eastern hill behind;—
On the hill that life ascended,
While the dewy morn was young;
While the mist with light contended
And the early skylark sung.
Then, as when at first united,
Rose together Love and Day;
Nature with her sun was lighted,
And my soul with Viola!
O my young earth's lost Immortal!
Naiad vanish'd from the streams!
Eve, torn from me at the portal
Of my Paradise of Dreams!
On thy name, with lips that quiver,
With a voice that chokes, I call.—
Well! the cave may hide the river,
But the ocean merges all.
Yet, if but in self-deceiving,
Can no magic charm thy shade?
Come unto my human grieving,
Come, but as the human maid!
By the fount where love was plighted
Where the lone wave glass'd the skies;
By the hands that once united;
By the welcome of the eyes;
By the silence sweetly broken
When the full heart murmur'd low,
And with sighs the words were spoken
Ere the later tears did flow;
By the blush and soft confession;
By the wanderings side by side;
By the love-denied possession;
And the heavenlier, so denied;
By the faith yet undiverted;
By the worship sacred yet;
To the soul so long deserted,
Come, as when of old we met;
Blooming as my youth beheld thee
In the trysting-place of yore,—
Hark a footfall! I have spell'd thee,
Lo, thy living smile once more!
PART 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!
PART 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 Hebé 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 evèn 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!
PART 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!
PART 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 lullèd 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 Lethé'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 Pleïads 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 Tempé lies—Thermopylé!
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 Naïades.
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 Cithæron 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.
Phœbus, 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 Mœnad 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 sealèd 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 crispèd 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 Tempè 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 Œdipus,
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, Calliopé!
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 anemoné,
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 Hebé'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]
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 learnèd 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?