Oh, who will give me, chained to Thought’s dull strand,
A draught of Lethe, salt with final tears,
Were it no more than fills the hollow hand?
Oh, who will rid me of the wasted years,
The thought of Life’s fair structure vainly planned,
And each false hope, that mocking re-appears?
ACHERON.
Where rolls in silent speed through cave on cave
Soul-freighted Acheron, and no other light
Evokes the rocks from an eternal night
Than the pale phosphorescence of the wave,
Shall men not meet, and have one chance to crave
Forgiveness for rash deeds—one chance to right
Old earthly quarrels, and in Death’s despite
Unsay the said, and kill the pang they gave?
See, see! there looms from yonder soul-filled bark
That passes ours, a long-loved, long-lost face,
And with a cry we stretch our ghostly arms.
But heeding not, they whirl into the dark,
Bound for a sea beyond all time and space,
Which neither life nor love nor sunlight warms.
ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE RESURRECTION.
I saw a vast bare plain; with, overhead,
A half-chilled sun, that shed a sickly light;
And all around, till out of reach of sight,
The earth’s thin crust heaved with the rising dead,
Who, as they struggled from their dusty bed,
At first mere bones, by countless years made white,
Took gradual flesh, and stood all huddled tight
In mute, dull groups, as yet too numb to dread.
And all the while the summoning trump on high
With rolling thunder never ceased to shake
The livid vault of that unclouded sky,
Calling fresh hosts of penitents to take
Each his identity; until well-nigh
The whole dry worn-out earth appeared to wake.
ON SIGNORELLI’S FRESCO OF THE BINDING OF THE LOST.
In boundless caves, lit only by the glare
Of pools of molten stone, the lost are pent
In countless herds, inextricably blent,
Yet each alone with his own black despair;
While, through the thickness of the lurid air,
The bat-winged fiends, from some far, unseen vent,
Bring on their backs the damned in swift descent,
To swell the crowds that wait in silence there.
And then begins the binding of the lost
With snaky thongs, before they be transferred
To realms of utter flame or utter frost;
And, like a sudden ocean boom, is heard,
Uprising from the dim and countless host,
Pain’s first vague roar, Hell’s first wild useless word.