Creep into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.
5Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired; best be still.
They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee?
10Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot and pass'd,
Hotly charged—and sank at last.
[p.97] Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
15When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall!
[PALLADIUM][°]
°[1]Set where the upper streams of Simois° flow
Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;
°[3]And Hector° was in Ilium° far below,
And fought, and saw it not—but there it stood!
5It stood, and sun and moonshine rain'd their light
On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.
Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight
Round Troy—but while this stood, Troy could not fall.
So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.
10Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!
We shall renew the battle in the plain
°[14]To-morrow;—red with blood will Xanthus° be;
°[15]Hector and Ajax° will be there again,
°[16]Helen° will come upon the wall to see.
Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,
And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs,
And fancy that we put forth all our life,
20And never know how with the soul it fares.
[p.98] Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,
Upon our life a ruling effluence send.
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die;
And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.
[REVOLUTIONS]
Before man parted for this earthly strand,
While yet upon the verge of heaven he stood,
God put a heap of letters in his hand,
And bade him make with them what word he could.
5And man has turn'd them many times; made Greece,
Rome, England, France;—yes, nor in vain essay'd
Way after way, changes that never cease!
The letters have combined, something was made.
But ah! an inextinguishable sense
10Haunts him that he has not made what he should;
That he has still, though old, to recommence,
Since he has not yet found the word God would.
And empire after empire, at their height
Of sway, have felt this boding sense come on;
15Have felt their huge frames not constructed right,
And droop'd, and slowly died upon their throne.
One day, thou say'st, there will at last appear
The word, the order, which God meant should be.
Ah! we shall know that well when it comes near;
20The band will quit man's heart, he will breathe free.
[p.99]
[SELF-DEPENDENCE][°]
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
5And a look of passionate desire
O'er the sea and to the stars I send:
"Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,
10On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you!"
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
15In the rustling night-air came the answer:
"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
20Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.
"And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.
[p.100] 25"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see."
O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,
30A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he,
Who finds himself, loses his misery!"
A SUMMER [NIGHT]
In the deserted, moon-blanch'd street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
5Repellent as the world;—but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and, lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity
Down at the far horizon's rim,
10Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!
And to my mind the thought
Is on a sudden brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene.
Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
15As clearly as at noon;
The spring-tide's brimming flow
Heaved dazzlingly between;
Houses, with long white sweep,
[p.101] Girdled the glistening bay;
20Behind, through the soft air,
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away,
The night was far more fair—
But the same restless pacings to and fro,
And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
25And the same bright, calm moon.
And the calm moonlight seems to say:
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,
Which neither deadens into rest,
Nor ever feels the fiery glow
30That whirls the spirit from itself away,
But fluctuates to and fro,
Never by passion quite possess'd
And never quite benumb'd by the world's sway?—
And I, I know not if to pray
35Still to be what I am, or yield and be
Like all the other men I see.
For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun's hot eye,
With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
40Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall.
And as, year after year,
Fresh products of their barren labour fall
From their tired hands, and rest
45Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast;
A while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
[p.102] And the rest, a few,
50Escape their prison and
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart
Listeth, will sail;
Nor doth he know how these prevail,
55Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarr'd
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves
60And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning-bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck.
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguished face and flying hair,
65Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
70Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom
And he, too, disappears and comes no more.
Is there no life, but there alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one?
Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!
75Clearness divine.
Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate;
Who though so noble, share in the world's toil.
80And, though so task'd, keep free from dust and soil!
[p.103] I will not say that your mild deeps retain
A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain
Who have longed deeply once, and longed in vain—
But I will rather say that you remain
85A world above man's head, to let him see
How boundless might his soul's horizon be,
How vast, yet of which clear transparency!
How it were good to live there, and breathe free!
How fair a lot to fill
90Is left to each man still!