THE IDEAL WORLD.

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.

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 Até 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 Cæsar'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.

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!

FOOTNOTES

[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.

[B] "Comus."

[C] "Gulliver's Travels."

[D] Plut. in "Vit. Cim."

[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.

[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 Æschylus, is that of having introduced female love upon the stage! Æschylus, 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, οικεΐα πράγματα). 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.

[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.

[L] Thucyd. lib. 1, c. 68-71 (The Speech of the Corinthians).

[M] Herod. lib. 6, c. 120.

[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.