FAREWELL TO LOVE.
I had a heart that doated once in passion’s boundless pain,
And though the tyrant I abjured, I could not break his chain;
But now that Fancy’s fire is quenched, and ne’er can burn anew,
I’ve bid to Love, for all my life, adieu! adieu! adieu!
I’ve known, if ever mortal knew, the spells of Beauty’s thrall,
And if my song has told them not, my soul has felt them all;
But Passion robs my peace no more, and Beauty’s witching sway
Is now to me a star that’s fall’n—a dream that’s passed away.
Hail! welcome tide of life, when no tumultuous billows roll,
How wondrous to myself appears this halcyon calm of soul!
The wearied bird blown o’er the deep would sooner quit its shore,
Than I would cross the gulf again that time has brought me o’er.
Why say the Angels feel the flame?—Oh, spirits of the skies!
Can love like ours, that doats on dust, in heavenly bosoms rise?—
Ah no; the hearts that best have felt its power, the best can tell,
That peace on earth itself begins, when Love has bid farewell.
LINES
ON A PICTURE OF A GIRL IN THE ATTITUDE OF PRAYER, BY THE ARTIST GRUSE, IN THE POSSESSION OF LADY STEPNEY.
Was man e’er doomed that beauty made
By mimic art should haunt him?
Like Orpheus, I adore a shade,
And doat upon a phantom.
Thou maid that in my inmost thought
Art fancifully sainted,
Why liv’st thou not—why art thou nought
But canvass sweetly painted?
Whose looks seem lifted to the skies,
Too pure for love of mortals—
As if they drew angelic eyes
To greet thee at heaven’s portals.
Yet loveliness has here no grace,
Abstracted or ideal—
Art ne’er but from a living face
Drew looks so seeming real.
What wert thou, maid?—thy life—thy name
Oblivion hides in mystery;
Though from thy face my heart could frame
A long romantic history.
Transported to thy time I seem,
Though dust thy coffin covers—
And hear the songs, in fancy’s dream,
Of thy devoted lovers.
How witching must have been thy breath—
How sweet the living charmer—
Whose very semblance after death
Can make the heart grow warmer!
Adieu, the charms that vainly move
My soul in their possession—
That prompt my lips to speak of love,
Yet rob them of expression.
Yet thee, dear picture, to have praised
Was but a poet’s duty;
And shame to him that ever gazed
Impassive on thy beauty.
STANZAS
ON THE BATTLE OF NAVARINO.
Hearts of oak that have bravely delivered the brave,
And uplifted old Greece from the brink of the grave,
’Twas the helpless to help, and the hopeless to save,
That your thunderbolts swept o’er the brine;
And as long as yon sun shall look down on the wave
The light of your glory shall shine.
For the guerdon ye sought with your bloodshed and toil,
Was it slaves, or dominion, or rapine, or spoil?
No! your lofty emprize was to fetter and foil
The uprooter of Greece’s domain!
When he tore the last remnant of food from her soil,
Till her famished sank pale as the slain!
Yet, Navarin’s heroes! does Christendom breed
The base hearts that will question the fame of your deed
Are they men?—let ineffable scorn be their meed,
And oblivion shadow their graves!—
Are they women?—to Turkish serails let them speed!
And be mothers of Mussulman slaves.
Abettors of massacre! dare ye deplore
That the death-shriek is silenced on Hellas’s shore?
That the mother aghast sees her offspring no more
By the hand of Infanticide grasped?
And that stretched on yon billows distained by their gore
Missolonghi’s assassins have gasped?
Prouder scene never hallowed war’s pomp to the mind,
Than when Christendom’s pennons wooed social the wind,
And the flower of her brave for the combat combined,
Their watch-word, humanity’s vow;—
Not a sea-boy that fought in that cause, but mankind
Owes a garland to honour his brow!
Nor grudge, by our side, that to conquer or fall,
Came the hardy rude Russ, and the high-mettled Gaul;
For whose was the genius, that planned at its call,
Where the whirlwind of battle should roll?
All were brave! but the star of success over all
Was the light of our Codrington’s soul.
That star of the day-spring, regenerate Greek!
Dimmed the Saracen’s moon, and struck pallid his cheek;
In its first flushing morning thy Muses shall speak
When their lore and their lutes they reclaim:
And the first of their songs from Parnassus’s peak
Shall be “Glory to Codrington’s name!”
LINES
ON LEAVING A SCENE IN BAVARIA.
Adieu the woods and waters’ side
Imperial Danube’s rich domain!
Adieu the grotto, wild and wide,
The rocks abrupt, and grassy plain!
For pallid Autumn once again
Hath swelled each torrent of the hill;
Her clouds collect, her shadows sail,
And watery winds that sweep the vale,
Grow loud and louder still.
But not the storm, dethroning fast
Yon monarch oak of massy pile;
Nor river roaring to the blast
Around its dark and desert isle;
Nor church-bell[86] tolling to beguile
The cloud-born thunder passing by,
Can sound in discord to my soul:
Roll on, ye mighty waters, roll!
And rage, thou darkened sky!
Thy blossoms now no longer bright;
Thy withered woods no longer green
Yet, Eldurn shore, with dark delight
I visit thy unlovely scene!
For many a sunset hour serene
My steps have trod thy mellow dew;
When his green light the fire-fly gave,
When Cynthia from the distant wave
Her twilight anchor drew,
And ploughed, as with a swelling sail,
The billowy clouds and starry sea:
Then while thy hermit nightingale
Sang on his fragrant apple-tree,—
Romantic, solitary, free,
The visitant of Eldurn’s shore,
On such a moonlight mountain strayed
As echoed to the music made
By Druid harps of yore.
Around thy savage hills of oak,
Around thy waters bright and blue,
No hunter’s horn the silence broke,
No dying shriek thine echo knew;
But safe, sweet Eldurn woods, to you
The wounded wild deer ever ran.
Whose myrtle bound their grassy cave,
Whose very rocks a shelter gave
From blood-pursuing man.
Oh heart effusions, that arose
From nightly wanderings cherished here;
To him who flies from many woes,
Even homeless deserts can be dear!
The last and solitary cheer
Of those that own no earthly home,
Say—is it not, ye banished race,
In such a loved and lonely place
Companionless to roam?
Yes! I have loved thy wild abode,
Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore;
Where scarce the woodman finds a road,
And scarce the fisher plies an oar:
For man’s neglect I love thee more;
That art nor avarice intrude
To tame thy torrent’s thunder-shock,
Or prune thy vintage of the rock
Magnificently rude.
Unheeded spreads thy blossomed bud
Its milky bosom to the bee;
Unheeded falls along the flood
desolate and aged tree.
Forsaken scene, how like to thee
The fate of unbefriended Worth!
Like thine her fruit dishonoured falls,
Like thee in solitude she calls
A thousand treasures forth.
O! silent spirit of the place,
If, lingering with the ruined year,
Thy hoary form and awful face
I yet might watch and worship here!
Thy storm were music to mine ear,
Thy wildest walk a shelter given
Sublimer thoughts on earth to find,
And share, with no unhallowed mind,
The majesty of heaven.
What though the bosom friends of Fate,—
Prosperity’s unweanèd brood,—
Thy consolations cannot rate,
O self-dependent solitude!
Yet with a spirit unsubdued,
Though darkened by the clouds of Care,
To worship thy congenial gloom,
A pilgrim to the Prophet’s tomb
Misfortune shall repair.
On her the world hath never smiled
Or looked but with accusing eye;
All-silent goddess of the wild,
To thee that misanthrope shall fly!
I hear her deep soliloquy,
I mark her proud but ravaged form,
As stern she wraps her mantle round,
And bids, on winter’s bleakest ground,
Defiance to the storm.
Peace to her banished heart, at last,
In thy dominions shall descend,
And, strong as beechwood in the blast,
Her spirit shall refuse to bend;
Enduring life without a friend,
The world and falsehood left behind,
Thy votary shall bear elate
(Triumphant o’er opposing Fate),
Her dark inspirèd mind.
But dost thou, Folly, mock the muse
A wanderer’s mountain walk to sing,
Who shuns a warring world, nor wooes
The vulture cover of its wing?
Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing,
Back to the fostering world beguiled
To waste in self-consuming strife
The loveless brotherhood of life,
Reviling and reviled!
Away, thou lover of the race
That hither chased yon weeping deer!
If Nature’s all majestic face
More pitiless than man’s appear;
Or if the wild winds seem more drear
Than man’s cold charities below,
Behold around his peopled plains,
Where’er the social savage reigns,
Exuberance of woe!
His art and honours wouldst thou seek
Embossed on grandeur’s giant walls?
Or hear his moral thunders speak
Where senates light their airy halls,
Where man his brother man enthralls;
Or sends his whirlwind warrants forth
To rouse the slumbering fiends of war,
To dye the blood-warm waves afar,
And desolate the earth?
From clime to clime pursue the scene,
And mark in all thy spacious way,
Where’er the tyrant man has been,
There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay;
In wilds and woodlands far away
She builds her solitary bower,
Where only anchorites have trod,
Or friendless men, to worship God,
Have wandered for an hour.
In such a far forsaken vale,—
And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine,—
Afflicted nature shall inhale
Heaven-borrowed thoughts and joys divine:
No longer wish, no more repine
For man’s neglect or woman’s scorn;—
Then wed thee to an exile’s lot,
For if the world hath loved thee not,
Its absence may be borne.
[86] In Catholic countries you often hear the church bells rung to propitiate Heaven during thunder storms.