The Poetical Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P.

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

To Joy's brisk ear there's music in the throng;
Glorious the life of cities to the strong!
What myriad charms, all differing, smile for all
The hardier Masks in the Great Carnival!
Amidst the vast disguise, some sign betrays
To each the appointed pleasure in the maze;
Ambition, pleasure, love, applause, and gold,
Allure the young, and baby[S] yet the old.
For here, the old, if nerves and stubborn will
Defy Experience, linger, youthful still,
Haunt the same rounds of idlesse, or of toil
That lure the freshest footsteps to the soil,
Still sway the Fashion or control the State,
Gay at the ball, or fierce at the debate.
It is not youth, it is the zest of life }
Surviving youth—in age itself as rife, }
That fits the Babel and enjoys the strife; }
But not for you our world's bright tumults are,
Soft natures, born beneath the Hesperus star,—
To us, the storm is but the native breath;
To you, the quickening of the gale is death;
Leave Strife to battle with its changeful clime,
And seek the peace which saves the weak, in time!
Not Man's but Nature's world be yours!—The shade
Where, all unseen, the cushat's nest is made,
Less lone to you than pomps which but bestow
The tinkling cymbal and the painted show.

The lights of revel flash from Arden's halls;
There, throng the shapes that troop where Comus calls;
But not Sabrina more apart and lone
From the loud joy, on her pure coral throne,
Than thou, sad maiden!—round the holy tide
Swell the gay notes, the airy dancers glide;
But o'er the shadowy grot the waters roll,
And shut the revel from the unconscious soul!

What rank has noblest, manhood's grace most fair,
Bend low to her now hail'd as Arden's heir?
If rumour doubts the birthright to his name,
The father's wealth redeems the mother's shame;
And kindly thoughts o'er lordly pride prevail,
"The Earl's best lands are not in the entail!"

How Arden loved his child!—how spoke that love
Of those dead worlds the light herb waves above;
Layer upon layer—those strata of the past,
Those gone creations buried in the last!
Their bloom, their life, their glory past away,
Speak in this relic of a vanish'd day.
There, in that guileless face, revived anew
The visions glistening through life's morning dew,
Fair Hope, pure Honour, undefilëd Truth—
The young shape stood before him as his youth![T]
And in this love his chastisement was found—
The thorns he had planted, here enclosed him round;
He, whom to see had been to love,—in vain
Here loved; that heart no answer gave again—
It lived upon the past,—it dwelt afar,
This new-found bond from what it loved the bar.
Her conscience chid, yet, while it chid, her thought
Still the cold past, to freeze the present, brought;
How love the sire round whom such shadows throng,
The mother's death-bed and the lover's wrong?
The dazzling gifts, which had through life beguiled
All other souls, are powerless with his child.
Vain the melodious tongue, and vain the mind,
Sparkling and free as wavelets in the wind;
The roseate wreath the handmaid Graces twine
Round sternest hearts,—soft infant, breaks on thine;
Child, candid, simple, frank, to her allied,
Far more, the nature sever'd from her side,
With its fresh instincts and wild verdure, fann'd
By fragrant winds, from haunted Fable-land;
Than all the garden graces which betray
By the bough's riches the worn tree's decay.
What charms the ear of Childhood?—not the page
Of that romance which wins the sober sage;
Not the dark truths, like warning ghosts, which pass
Along the pilgrim path of Rasselas;
Not wit's wrought crystal which, so coldly clear,
Reflects, in Zadig, learning's icy sneer;
Unreasoning, wondering, stronger far the thrall
Of Aimée's cave,[U] or young Aladdin's hall;
And so the childhood of the heart will find }
Charms in the poem of a child-like mind, }
To which the vision of the world is blind! }
Ev'n as the savage, 'midst the desert's gloom,
Sees, hid from us, the golden fruitage bloom,
And, where the arid silence wraps us all,
Lists the soft lapse of the glad waterfall!

So Lucy loved not Arden!—vainly yearn
His moisten'd eyes;—Can softness be so stern?
That soul how gentle! but that smile how cold!
A marble shape the parent arms enfold!
No hurrying footstep bounds his own to meet,
No joyous smiles with morning's welcome greet,
Not him that heart—so bless'd with love—can bless, }
Lost the pure Eden of a child's caress; }
He saw—he felt, and suffer'd powerless! }
Remorse seized on him;—his gay spirit quail'd;
The cloud crept on,—it gather'd, it prevail'd.
The spectre of the past—the martyr bride,
Sat at his board, and glided by his side;
Sigh'd, "With the dead, Love the Consoler dies,"
And spoke his sentence in his child's cold eyes!
And now a strange and strong desire was born, }
With the young instinct of life's credulous morn, }
In that long sceptic-breast, so world-corrupt and worn. }

From the rank soil in which grim London shrouds
Her dead,—the green halls of the ghastly crowds—
To bear his Mary's dust; the dust to lay
By the clear rill, beside her father's clay,
Amidst those scenes which saw the rapture-strife
And growth of passion—life's sweet storm of life,
Consign the silent pulse, the mouldering heart,
Deaf to the joy to meet—the woe to part;
Rounding and binding there as into one
Sad page, the tale of all beneath the sun;
And there, before that grave—beneath the beam
Of the lone stars, and by that starlit stream,
To lead the pledge of the fresh morn of love,
And while the pardoning skies seem'd soft above,
Murmur, "For her sake, her, who, reconciled,
Hears us in heaven, give me thy heart, my child!"
But first—before his conscious soul could dare
For the consoling balm to pour the prayer,
Alone the shadows of the past to brave,
Alone to commune with the accusing grave,
And shrive repentance of its haunting gloom
Before Life's true Confessional—the Tomb;—
Such made his dream!—Oh! not in vain the creed
Of old that knit atonement with the dead!
The penitent offering, the lustrating tide,
The wandering, haunted, hopeful homicide,
Who sees the spot to which the furies urge,
Where halt the hell-hounds, and where drops the scourge,
And the appeased Manes pitying sigh—
"Thou hast atoned! once more enjoy the sky!"

Such made the dream he rushes to fulfil!—
Round the new mound babbled the living rill;
A name, the name that Arden's wife should bear,
Sculptured the late and vain repentance there.
O'er the same bridge which once to rapture led,
Went the same steps their pathway to the dead:
Night after night the same lone shadow gave
A tremulous darkness to the hurrying wave;
Lost,—and then, lengthening from the neighbouring yews,
Dimm'd the wan shimmer of the moonlit dews,
Then gain'd a grave;—and from the mound was thrown,
Still as the shadow of yon funeral stone!

II.

Meanwhile to Morvale!—Sorrow, like the wind
Through trees, stirs varying o'er each human mind;
Uprooting some, from some it doth but strew
Blossom and leaf, which spring restores anew;
From some, but shakes rich powers unknown in calm,
And wakes the trouble to extract the balm.
Let weaker natures suffer and despair,
Great souls snatch vigour from the stormy air;
Grief not the languor,—Grief the action brings;
And clouds the horizon but to nerve the wings.

Up from his heavy thought, one dawning day,
The Indian, silent, rose, and went his way;
Palace and pomp and wealth and ease resign'd, }
As one new-born, he plunged amidst his kind, }
Whither, with what intent, he scarce divined. }
He turn'd to see, through mists obscure and dun,
The domes and spires of the vex'd Babylon;
Before him smiled the mead and waved the corn,
And Nature's music swell'd the hymns of Morn.
A sense of freedom, of the large escape
From the pent walls our customs round us shape;
The imperfect sympathies which curse the few,
Who ne'er the chase the many join pursue;
The trite convention, with its cold control,
Which thralls the habit, yet not links the soul;
—The sense of freedom pass'd into his breast,
But found no hope it flatter'd and caress'd;
So the sad captive, when at length made free,
Shrinks from the sunlight he had pined to see;
Feels on the limb the custom of the chain,
Each step a struggle and each breath a pain,
And knows—return'd unto the world too late,
No smile shall greet him at his lonely gate;
Seal'd every eye, of old that watch'd and wept;
The world he knew has vanish'd while he slept!