ODE TO SHELLEY.
———
BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.
———
Why art thou dead? Upon the hills once more
The golden mist of waning Autumn lies;
The slow-pulsed billows wash along the shore,
And phantom isles are floating in the skies.
They wait for thee: a spirit in the sand
Hushes, expectant, for thy lingering tread;
The light wind pants to lift thy trembling hair;
Inward, the silent land
Lies with its mournful woods—why art thou dead,
When Earth demands that thou shalt call her fair?
Why art thou dead? O, glorious Child of Song,
Whose brother-spirit ever dwells with mine,
Feeling, twin-doomed, the burning hate of Wrong,
And Beauty’s worship, deathless and divine!
Thou art afar—wilt thou not soon return,
To tell me that which thou hast never told?
To grasp my throbbing hand, and by the shore
Or dewy mountain-fern,
Pour out thy heart as to a friend of old,
Tearful with twilight sorrow? Nevermore.
Why art thou dead? My years are full of pain—
The pain sublime of thought that has no word;
And Truth and Beauty sing within my brain
Diviner songs than men have ever heard.
Wert thou but here, thine eye might read the strife—
The solemn burthen of immortal song—
And hear the music, that can find no lyre;
For thou hast known a life,
Lonely, amid the Poets’ mountain-throng—
Whose cloudy snows concealed eternal fire!
I could have told thee all the sylvan joy
Of trackless woods; the meadows, far apart,
Within whose fragrant grass, a lonely boy,
I thought of God; the trumpet at my heart,
When on bleak mountains roared the midnight storm
And I was bathed in lightning, broad and grand:—
Oh, more than all, with low and sacred breath
And forehead flushing warm,
I would have led thee through the summer land
Of my young love, and past my dreams of Death!
In thee, immortal Brother! had I found
That voice of Earth for which my spirit pines;
The awful speech of Rome’s sepulchral ground,
The dusky hymn of Vallambrosa’s pines!
From thee the noise of ocean would have taken
A grand defiance round the moveless shores,
And vocal grown the mountain’s silent head.
Canst thou not still awaken
Beneath the funeral cypress? Earth implores
Thy presence for her son—why art thou dead?
I do but rave—for it is better thus:
Were once thy starry heart revealed to mine,
In the twin-life which would encircle us,
My soul would melt, my voice be lost in thine!
Better to mask the agony of thought
Which through weak human lips would make its way,
’Neath lone endurance, such as men must learn:
The Poet’s soul is fraught
With mightiest speech, when loneliest the day;
And fires are brightest, that in midnight burn.