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

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

So dawn'd her youth:—Youth, Nature's holiday!
Fair time, which dreams so gently steal away;
When Life—dark volume, with its opening leaf
Of Joy,—through fable dupes us into grief—
Tells of a golden Arcady;—and then
Read on,—comes truth;—the Iron world of men!
But from her life thy opening poet page
Was torn!—Its record had no Golden Age.

Behold her by the couch, on bended knees!
There the wan mother—there the last disease!
Dread to the poor the least suspense of health,—
Their hands their friends, their labour all their wealth:
Let the wheel rest from toil a single sun,
And all the humble clock-work is undone.
The custom lost, the drain upon the hoard,
The debt that sweeps the fragment from the board,
How mark the hunger round thee, and be brave—
Foresee thy orphan, and not fear the grave?
Lower and ever lower in the grade
Of penury fell the mother and the maid,
Till the grim close; when, as the midnight rain
Drove to the pallet through the broken pane,
The dying murmur'd: "Near,—thy hand,—more near!
I am not what scorn deem'd,—yet not severe
The doom which leaves me, in the hour of death,
The right to bless thee with my parting breath—
These, worn till now, wear thou, his daughter. Live
To see thy sire, and tell him—I forgive!"
Cold the child thrills beneath the hands that press
Her bended neck—slow slackens the caress—
Loud the roof rattles with the stormy gust;
The grief is silent, and the love is dust;
From the spent fuel God's bright spark is flown;
And there the Motherless, and Death—alone!

Then fell a happy darkness o'er the mind;—
That trance, that pause, the tempest leaves behind:
Still, with a timid step, around she crept,
And sigh'd, "She sleeps!" and smiled. Too well she slept!
Dark strangers enter'd in the squalid cell;
Rude hirelings placed the pauper in the shell;
Harsh voices question'd of the name and age;
Ev'n paupers live upon the parish page.
She answers not, or sighs, and smiles, and keeps
The same meek language:—"Hush! my mother sleeps."
They thrust some scanty pence into her palm,
And led her forth, scarce marv'ling at her calm;
And bade her work, not beg—be good, and shun
All bad companions—so their work was done,
And the wreck left to drift amidst the roar
Of the Great Ocean with the rocky shore.

And thou hast found the shelter!—from thine eyes
Melt the long shadows. Dawn is in the skies.
Low on the earth, while Night endures,—unguess'd
Hope folds the wing and slumbers on its nest;
Let but a sunbeam to the world be given—
And hark—it singeth at the gates of Heaven!

III.

Yet o'er that house there hung a solemn gloom;
The step fell timid in each gorgeous room,
Vast, sumptuous, dreary as some Eastern pile,
Where mutes keep watch—a home without a smile;
Still as if silence reign'd there, like a law,
And left to pomp no attribute but awe;
Save when the swell of sombre festival
Jarr'd into joy the melancholy hall,
So some chance wind in mournful autumn wrings
Discordant notes, although from music-strings.
Wild were the wealthy master's moods and strange,
As one whose humour found its food in change;
Now for whole days content apart to dwell
With books and thought—his world the student's cell;
And now, with guests around the glittering board,
The hermit-Timon shone the Athenian lord.
There bloom'd the bright ephemerals of the hour,
Whom the fierce ferment forces into flower,
The gorgeous nurslings of the social life,
Sprung from our hotbeds—Vanity and Strife!
Lords of the senate, wrestlers for the state,
Grey-hair'd in youth, exhausted, worn,—and great;
Pale Book-men,—charming only in their style;
And Poets, jaundiced with eternal bile;—
All the poor Titans our Cocytus claims,
With tortured livers, and immortal names:—
Such made the guests, Amphitryons well may boast,
But still the student travail'd in the host;—
These were the living books he loved to read,
Keys to his lore, and comments on his creed.
From them he rose with more confirm'd disdain
Of the thorn-chaplet and the gilded chain.
Oft, from such stately revels, to the shed
Where Hunger couch'd, the same dark impulse led;
Intent, the Babel, Art has built, to trace,
Here scan the height, and there explore the base;
That structure call'd "The Civilized," as vain
As its old symbol on the Shinar plain,
Where Pride collects the bricks and slime, and then
But builds the city to divide the men;
Swift comes the antique curse,—smites one from one,
Rends the great bond, and leaves the pile undone.

Man will o'er muse—when musing on mankind:
The vast expanse defeats the searching mind,
Blent in one mass each varying height and hue:—
Wouldst thou seize Nature, Artist?—bound the view!
But He, in truth, is banish'd from the ties
That curb the ardent, and content the wise;
From the pent heart the bubbling passions sweep,
To spread in aimless circles o'er the deep.

Still in extremes—in each was still betray'd
A soul at discord with the part it play'd;
A soul in social elements misplaced,
Bruised by the grate and yearning for the waste,
And wearing custom, as a pard the chain,
Now with dull torpor, now with fierce disdain.

All who approach'd him by that spell were bound,
Which nobler natures weave themselves around:
Those stars which make their own charm'd atmosphere;
Not wholly love, but yet more love than fear,
A mystic influence, which, we know not why,
Makes some on earth seem portions of our sky.

In truth, our Morvale (such his name) could boast
Those kinglier virtues which subject us most;
The ear inclined to every voice of grief,
The hand that oped spontaneous to relief,
The heart, whose impulse stay'd not for the mind }
To freeze to doubt what charity enjoin'd, }
But sprang to man's warm instinct for mankind; }
Honour, truth's life-sap, with pervading power
Nurturing the stem to crown it with the flower;
And that true daring not alone to those
Whom fault or fate has marshall'd into foes;
But the rare valour that confronts with scorn
The monster shape, of Vice and Folly born,
Which some "the World," and some "Opinion," call,
Own'd by no heart, and yet enslaving all;
The bastard charter of the social state,
Which crowns the base to ostracise the great;
The eternal quack upon the itinerant stage,
This the "good Public," that "the enlighten'd Age,"
Ready alike to worship and revile,
To build the altar, or to light the pile;
Now "Down with Stuart and the Reign of Sin,"
Now "Long live Charles the Second and Nell Gwynne;"
Now mad for patriots—hot for revolution,
Now all for hanging and the Constitution.
Honour to him, who, self-complete, if lone,
Carves to the grave one pathway all his own;
And, heeding nought that men may think or say,
Asks but his soul if doubtful of the way.