Poems

by Alexander Smith

He was with Nature on the sabbath-days;
Far from the dressed throngs and the city bells
He gave his hot brows to the kissing wind,
While restless thoughts were stirring in his heart.
"These worldly men will kill me with their scorns,
But Nature never mocks or jeers at me;
Her dewy soothings of the earth and air
Do wean me from the thoughts that mad my brain.
Our interviews are stolen, I can look,
Nature! in thy serene and griefless eyes
But at long intervals; yet, Nature! yet,
Thy silence and the fairness of thy face
Are present with me in the booming streets.
Yon quarry shattered by the bursting fire,
And disembowelled by the biting pick,
Kind Nature! thou hast taken to thyself;
Thy weeping Aprils and soft-blowing Mays,
Thy blossom-buried Junes, have smoothed its scars,
And hid its wounds and trenches deep in flowers.
So take my worn and passion-wasted heart,
Maternal Nature! Take it to thyself,
Efface the scars of scorn, the rents of hate,
The wounds of alien eyes, visit my brain
With thy deep peace, fill with thy calm my heart,
And the quick courses of my human blood."
Thus would he muse and wander, till the sun
Reached the red west, where all the waiting clouds,
Attired before in homely dun and grey,
Like Parasites that dress themselves in smiles
To feed a great man's eye, in haste put on
Their purple mantles rimmed with ragged gold,
And congregating in a shining crowd,
Flattered the sinking orb with faces bright.
As slow he journeyed home, the wanderer saw
The labouring fires come out against the dark,
For with the night the country seemed on flame:
Innumerable furnaces and pits,
And gloomy holds, in which that bright slave, Fire,
Doth pant and toil all day and night for man,
Threw large and angry lustres on the sky,
And shifting lights across the long black roads.

Dungeoned in poverty, he saw afar
The shining peaks of fame that wore the sun,
Most heavenly bright, they mocked him through his bars,
A lost man wildered on the dreary sea,
When loneliness hath somewhat touched his brain,
Doth shrink and shrink beneath the watching sky,
Which hour by hour more plainly doth express
The features of a deadly enemy,
Drinking his woes with a most hungry eye.
Ev'n so, by constant staring on his ills,
They grew worse-featured; till, in his great rage,
His spirit, like a roused sea, white with wrath,
Struck at the stars. "Hold fast! Hold fast! my brain!
Had I a curse to kill with, by yon Heaven!
I'd feast the worms to-night." Dreadfuller words,
Whose very terror blanched his conscious lips,
He uttered in his hour of agony.
With quick and subtle poison in his veins,
With madness burning in his heart and brain,
With words, like lightnings, round his pallid lips,
He rushed to die in the very eyes of God.
'Twas late, for as he reached the open roads,
Where night was reddened by the drudging fires,
The drowsy steeples tolled the hour of One.
The city now was left long miles behind,
A large black hill was looming 'gainst the stars,
He reached its summit. Far above his head,
Up there upon the still and mighty night,
God's name was writ in worlds. Awhile he stood,
Silent and throbbing like a midnight star,
He raised his hands, alas! 'twas not in prayer—
He long had ceased to pray. "Father," he said,
"I wished to loose some music o'er Thy world,
To strike from its firm seat some hoary wrong,
And then to die in autumn with the flowers,
And leaves, and sunshine I have loved so well.
Thou might'st have smoothed my way to some great end—
But wherefore speak? Thou art the mighty God.
This gleaming wilderness of suns and worlds
Is an eternal and triumphant hymn,
Chanted by Thee unto Thine own great self!
Wrapt in Thy skies, what were my prayers to Thee?
My pangs? My tears of blood? They could not move
Thee from the depths of Thine immortal dream.
Thou hast forgotten me, God! Here, therefore, here,
To-night upon this bleak and cold hill-side,
Like a forsaken watch-fire will I die,
And as my pale corse fronts the glittering night,
It shall reproach Thee before all Thy worlds."
His death did not disturb that ancient Night.
Scornfullest Night! Over the dead there hung
Greats gulfs of silence, blue, and strewn with stars—
No sound—no motion—in the eternal depths.

EDWARD.

Now, what a sullen-blooded fool was this,
At sulks with earth and Heaven! Could he not
Out-weep his passion like a blustering day,
And be clear-skied thereafter? He, poor wretch,
Must needs be famous! Lord! how Poets geck
At Fame, their idol. Call 't a worthless thing,
Colder than lunar rainbows, changefuller
Than sleeked purples on a pigeon's neck,
More transitory than a woman's loves,
The bubbles of her heart—and yet each mocker
Would gladly sell his soul for one sweet crumb
To roll beneath his tongue.

WALTER.

Alas! the youth
Earnest as flame, could not so tame his heart
As to live quiet days. When the heart-sick Earth
Turns her broad back upon the gaudy sun,
And stoops her weary forehead to the night,
To struggle with her sorrow all alone,
The moon, that patient sufferer, pale with pain,
Presses her cold lips on her sister's brow,
Till she is calm. But in his sorrow's night
He found no comforter. A man can bear
A world's contempt when he has that within
Which says he's worthy—when he contemns himself,
There burns the hell. So this wild youth was foiled
In a great purpose—in an agony,
In which he learned to hate and scorn himself,
He foamed at God, and died.

MR. WILMOTT.

Rain similes upon his corse like tears—
The youth you spoke of was a glowing moth,
Born in the eve and crushed before the dawn.

VIOLET.

He was, methinks, like that frail flower that comes
Amid the nips and gusts of churlish March,
Drinking pale beauty from sweet April's tears,
Dead on the hem of May.