Smooth-sliding waters, pure and crystalline!
Trees, that reflect your image in their breast!
Green pastures, full of fountains and fresh shades!
Birds, that here scatter your sweet serenades!
Mosses, and reverend ivies serpentine,
That wreathe your verdurous arms round beech and pine,
And, climbing, crown their crest!
Can I forget, ere grief my spirit changed,
With what delicious ease and pure content
Your peace I wooed, your solitudes I ranged,
Enchanted and refreshed where'er I went!
How many blissful noons I here have spent
In luxury of slumber, couched on flowers,
And with my own fond fancies, from a boy,
Discoursed away the hours,
Discovering nought in your delightful bowers,
But golden dreams, and memories fraught with joy!
And in this very valley where I now
Grow sad, and droop, and languish, have I lain
At ease, with happy heart and placid brow;
Oh pleasure fragile, fugitive, and vain!
Here, I remember, waking once at noon,
I saw Eliza standing at my side;
Oh cruel fate! oh finespun web, too soon
By Death's sharp scissors clipt! sweet, suffering bride,
In womanhood's most interesting prime,
Cut off, before thy time!
How much more suited had his surly stroke
Been to the strong thread of my weary life!
Stronger than steel, since in the parting strife
From thee, it has not broke.
Where are the eloquent mild eyes that drew
My heart where'er they wandered? where the hand,
White, delicate, and pure as melting dew,
Filled with the spoils that, proud of thy command,
My feelings paid in tribute? the bright hair
That paled the shining gold, that did contemn
The glorious opal as a meaner gem,
The bosom's ivory apples, where, ah where?
Where now the neck, to whiteness overwrought,
That like a column with genteelest scorn
Sustained the golden dome of virtuous thought?
Gone! ah, for ever gone
To the chill, desolate, and dreary pall,
And mine the grief—the wormwood and the gall!
Who would have said, my love, when late through this
Romantic valley, we from bower to bower
Went gathering violets and primroses,
That I should see the melancholy hour
So soon arrive that was to end my bliss,
And of my love destroy both fruit and flower?
Heaven on my head has laid a heavy hand;
Sentencing, without hope, without appeal,
To loneliness and ever-during tears
The joyless remnant of my future years;
But that which most I feel,
Is to behold myself obliged to bear
This condemnation to a life of care;
Lone, blind, forsaken, under sorrow's spell,
A gloomy captive in a gloomy cell.
Since thou hast left us, fulness, rest, and peace
Have failed the starveling flocks; the field supplies
To the toiled hind but pitiful increase;
All blessings change to ills; the clinging weed
Chokes the thin corn, and in its stead arise
Pernicious darnel, and the fruitless reed.
The enamelled earth, that from her verdant breast
Lavished spontaneously ambrosial flowers,
The very sight of which can soothe to rest
A thousand cares, and charm our sweetest hours,
That late indulgence of her bounty scorns,
And in exchange shoots forth but tangled bowers,
But brambles rough with thorns;
Whilst with the tears that falling steep their root,
My swollen eyes increase the bitter fruit.
As at the set of sun the shades extend,
And when its circle sinks, that dark obscure
Rises to shroud the world, on which attend
The images that set our hair on end,
Silence, and shapes mysterious as the grave;
Till the broad sun sheds once more from the wave
His lively lustre, beautiful and pure:
Such shapes were in the night, and such ill gloom
At thy departure; still tormenting fear
Haunts, and must haunt me, until death shall doom
The so much wished-for sun to re-appear
Of thine angelic face, my soul to cheer,
Resurgent from the tomb.
As the sad nightingale in some green wood,
Closely embowered, the cruel hind arraigns
Who from their pleasant nest her plumeless brood
Has stolen, whilst she with pains
Winged the wide forest for their food, and now
Fluttering with joy, returns to the loved bough,
The bough, where nought remains:
Dying with passion and desire, she flings
A thousand concords from her various bill,
Till the whole melancholy woodland rings
With gurglings sweet, or with philippics shrill.
Throughout the silent night she not refrains
Her piercing note, and her pathetic cry,
But calls, as witness to her wrongs and pains,
The listening stars and the responding sky.
So I in mournful song pour forth my pain;
So I lament,—lament, alas, in vain—
The cruelty of death! untaught to spare,
The ruthless spoiler ravished from my breast
Each pledge of happiness and joy, that there
Had its beloved home and nuptial nest.
Swift-seizing death! through thy despite I fill
The whole world with my passionate lament,
Impórtuning the skies and valleys shrill
My tale of wrongs to echo and resent.
A grief so vast no consolation knows,
Ne'er can the agony my brain forsake,
Till suffering consciousness in frenzy close,
Or till the shattered chords of being break.
Poor, lost Eliza! of thy locks of gold,
One treasured ringlet in white silk I keep
For ever at my heart, which, when unrolled,
Fresh grief and pity o'er my spirit creep;
And my insatiate eyes, for hours untold,
O'er the dear pledge will, like an infant's, weep:
With sighs more warm than fire anon I dry
The tears from off it, number one by one
The radiant hairs, and with a love-knot tie;
Mine eyes, this duty done,
Give over weeping, and with slight relief
I taste a short forgetfulness of grief.
But soon, with all its first-felt horrors fraught,
That gloomy night returns upon my brain,
Which ever wrings my spirit with the thought
Of my deep loss, and thine unaided pain;
Ev'n now, I seem to see thee pale recline
In thy most trying crisis, and to hear
The plaintive murmurs of that voice divine,
Whose tones might touch the ear
Of blustering winds, and silence their dispute;
That gentle voice (now mute)
Which to the merciless Lucina prayed,
In utter agony, for aid—for aid!
Alas, for thine appeal! Discourteous power,
Where wert thou gone in that momentous hour?
Or wert thou in the grey woods hunting deer?
Or with thy shepherd boy entranced? Could aught
Palliate thy rigorous cruelty, to turn
Away thy scornful, cold, indifferent ear
From my moist prayers, by no affliction moved,
And sentence one, so beauteous and beloved,
To the funereal urn!
Oh, not to mark the throes
Thy Nemoroso suffered, whose concern
It ever was, when pale the morning rose,
To drive the mountain beasts into his toils,
And on thy holy altars heap the spoils;
And thou, ungrateful! smiling with delight,
Could'st leave my nymph to die before my sight.
Divine Eliza! since the sapphire sky
Thou measurest now on angel-wings, and feet
Sandalled with immortality, oh why
Of me forgetful? Wherefore not entreat
To hurry on the time when I shall see
The veil of mortal being rent in twain,
And smile that I am free?
In the third circle of that happy land,
Shall we not seek together, hand in hand,
Another lovelier landscape, a new plain,
Other romantic streams and mountains blue,
Fresh flowery vales, and a new shady shore,
Where I may rest, and ever in my view
Keep thee, without the terror and surprise
Of being sundered more!
Ne'er had the shepherds ceased these songs, to which
The hills alone gave ear, had they not seen
The sun in clouds of gold and crimson rich
Descend, and twilight sadden o'er the green;
But noting now, how rapidly the night
Rushed from the hills, admonishing to rest,
The sad musicians, by the blushful light
Of lingering Hesperus, themselves addressed
To fold their flocks, and step by step withdrew,
Through bowery lawns and pastures wet with dew.
ECLOGUE II.
SILVA I.
ALBANIO. SALICIO.
ALBANIO.
Temperate, when winter waves its snowy wing,
Is the sweet water of this sylvan spring;
And when the heats of summer scorch the grass,
More cold than snow: in your clear looking-glass,
Fair waves! the memory of that day returns,
With which my soul still shivers, melts, and burns;
Gazing on your clear depth and lustre pure,
My peace grows troubled, and my joy obscure;
Recovering you, I lose all self-content:
To whom, alas, could equal pains be sent!
Scenes that would soothe another's pangs to peace,
Add force to mine, or soothe but to increase.
This lucid fount, whose murmurs fill the mind,
The verdant forests waving with the wind,
The odours wafted from the mead, the flowers
In which the wild bee sits and sings for hours,
These might the moodiest misanthrope employ,
Make sound the sick, and turn distress to joy;
I only in this waste of sweetness pine
To death! oh beauty, rising to divine!
Oh curls of gold! oh eyes that laughed with light!
Oh swanlike neck! oh hand as ivory white!
How could an hour so mournful ever rise
To change a life so blest to tears and sighs,
Such glittering treasures into dust! I range
From place to place, and think, perhaps the change,
The change may partly temper and control
The ceaseless flame that thus consumes my soul.
Deceitful thought! as though so sharp a smart
By my departure must itself depart:
Poor languid limbs, the grief is but too deep
That tires you out! Oh that I could but sleep
Here for awhile! the heart awake to pain,
Perchance in slumbers and calm dreams might gain
Glimpse of the peace with which it pants to meet,
Though false as fair, and fugitive as sweet.
Then, amiable kind Sleep, descend, descend!
To thee my wearied spirit I commend.
SALICIO.