A picture of Cathay, a justice scene;
Pagodas, statues, and a group around;
And, in his sedan chair, the Mandarin,
Reading the scroll of laws to prisoners bound,
Bambooed with canes, and writhing on the ground;
And many more whose veils I will undraw
Some other day, exceeding fresh and fine;
And statues of the Grecian gods divine,
In all their various moods of love and awe:
The Phidean Jove, with calm creative face,
Like Heaven brooding o'er the deeps of Space;
Imperial Juno, Mercury, wingéd-heeled,
Lit with a message. Mars with helm and shield,
Apollo with the discus, bent to throw,
The piping Pan, and Dian with her bow,
And Cytherca just risen from the swell
Of crudded foam, half-stooping on her knee,
Wringing her dripping tresses in the sea
Whose loving billows climb the curvéd shell
Tumultuously, and o'er its edges flow,
And kiss with pallid lips her nakedness of snow!
VII.
My boots may lie and mould,
However rare and old;
I cannot read to-day,
Away! with books, away!
Full-fed with sweets of sense,
I sink upon my couch in honied indolence!
Here are rich salvers full of nectarines,
Dead-ripe pomegranates, sweet Arabian dates,
Peaches and plums, and clusters fresh from vines,
And all imaginable sweets, and cakes,
And here are drinking-cups, and long-necked flasks
In wicker mail, and bottles broached from casks,
In cellars delvéd deep, and winter cold,
Select, superlative, and centuries old.
What more can I desire? what book can be
As rich as Idleness and Luxury?
What lore can fill my heart with joy divine,
Like luscious fruitage, and enchanted wine?
Brimming with Helicon I dash the cup;
Why should I waste my years in hoarding up
The thoughts of eld? Let dust to dust return:
No more for me,—my heart is not an urn!
I will no longer sip from little flasks,
Covered with damp and mould, when Nature yields,
And Earth is full of purple vintage fields;
Nor peer at Beauty dimmed with mortal masks,
When I at will may have them all withdrawn,
And freely gaze in her transfigured face;
Nor limp in fetters in a weary race,
When I may fly unbound, like Mercury's fawn;
No more contented with the sweets of old,
Albeit embalmed in nectar, since the trees,
The Eden bowers, the rich Hesperides,
Droop all around my path, with living fruits of gold!
VIII.
Oh what a life is mine,
A life of joy and mirth,
The sensuous life of Earth,
Forever fresh and fine.
A heavenly worldliness, mortality divine!
When eastern skies, the sea, and misty plain,
Illumined slowly, doff their nightly shrouds,
And Heaven's bright archer Morn begins to rain
His golden arrows through the banded clouds,
I rise and tramp away the jocund hours,
Knee-deep in dewy grass, and beds of flowers;
I race my eager greyhound on the hills,
And climb with bounding feet the craggy steeps,
Peak-lifted, gazing down the cloven deeps,
Where mighty rivers shrink to threaded rills;
The ramparts of the mountains loom around,
Like splintery fragments of a ruined world;
The cliff-bound dashing cataracts, downward hurled
In thunderous volumes, shake the chasms profound:
The imperial eagle, with a dauntless eye
Wheels round the sun, the monarch of the sky;
I pluck his eyrie in the blasted wood
Of ragged pines, and when the vulture screams,
I track his flight along the solitude,
Like some dark spirit in the world of dreams!
When Noon in golden armor, travel spent,
Climbing the azure plains of Heaven, alone,
Pitches upon its topmost steep his tent,
And looks o'er Nature from his burning throne,
I loose my little shallop from its quay,
And down the winding rivers slowly float,
And steer in many a shady cove and bay,
Where birds are warbling with melodious note;
I listen to the humming of the bees,
The water's flow, the winds, the wavy trees,
And take my lute and touch its silver chords,
And set the Summer's melody to words;
Sometimes I rove beside the lonely shore,
Margined and flanked by slanting shelvy ledges,
And caverns echoing Ocean's sullen roar;
Threading the bladdery weeds, and paven shells,
Beyond the line of foam, the jewelled chain,
The largesse of the ever giving main.
Tossed at the feet of Earth with surgy swells,
I plunge into the waves, and strike away,
Breasting with vigorous strokes the snowy spray;
Sometimes I lounge in arbors hung with vines,
The which I sip, and sip, with pleasure mute,
O'er mouthful bites of golden-rinded fruit;
When evening comes, I lie in dreamy rest,
Where lifted casements front the glowing west,
And watch the clouds, like banners wide unfurled,
Hung o'er the flaming threshold of the world:
Its mission done, the holy Day recedes,
Borne Heavenward in its car, with fiery steeds,
Leaving behind a lingering flush of light,
Its mantle fallen at the feet of Night;
The flocks are penned, the earth is growing dim;
The moon comes rounding up the welkin's rim,
Glowing through thinnest mist, an argent shell,
Washed up the sky from Night's profoundest cell;
One after one the stars begin to shine
In drifted beds, like pearls through shallow brine;
And lo! through clouds that part before the chase
Of silent winds—a belt of milky white,
The Galaxy, a crested surge of light,
A reef of worlds along the sea of Space:
I hear my sweet musicians far withdrawn,
Below my wreathéd lattice, on the lawn,
With harp, and lute, and lyre,
And passionate voices full of tears and fire;
And envious nightingales with rich disdain
Filling the pauses of the languid strain;
My soul is tranced and bound,
Drifting along the magic sea of sound,
Driving in a barque of bliss from deep to deep,
And piloted at last into the ports of Sleep!
IX.
Nor only this, though this
Might seal a life of bliss,
But something more divine,
For which I once did pine,
The crown of worlds above,
The heart of every heart, the Soul of Being—Love!
I bow obedient to my Lady's sway,
The sovereignty that won my soul of yore,
And linger in her presence night and day,
And feel a heaven around her evermore;
I sit beside her couch in chambers lone,
And soft unbraid, and lay her locks apart,
And take her taper fingers in my own,
And press them to my lips with leaps of heart;
Sometimes I kneel to her with cups of wine,
With pleading eyes, beseeching her to taste,
With long-delaying lips, the draught divine;
And when she sips thereof, I clasp her waist,
And kiss her mouth, and shake her hanging curls,
And in her coy despite unloose her zone of pearls!
I live for Love, for Love alone, and who
Dare chide me for it? who dare call it folly?
It is a holy thing, if aught is holy,
And true indeed, if Truth herself is true:
Earth cleaves to earth, its sensuous life is dear,
Mortals should love mortality while here,
And seize the glowing hours before they fly:
Bright eyes should answer eyes, warm lips should meet,
And hearts enlocked to kindred hearts should beat,
And every soul that lives, in love should live and die!
X.
My dear and gentle wife,
The Angel of my life,
Oppressed with sweetest things,
Has folded up her wings,
And lies in slumber deep,
Like some divinest Dream upon the couch of Sleep!
Nor sound, nor stir profanes the stilly room,
Haunted by Sleep and Silence, linkéd pair;
The very light itself muffled in gloom,
Steals in, and melts the enamored air
Where Love doth brood and dream, while Passion dies,
Breathing his soul out in a mist of sighs!
Lo! where she lies behind the curtains white,
Pillowed on clouds of down,—her golden hair
Braided around her forehead smooth and fair,
Like a celestial diadem of light:—
Her soft voluptuous lips are drawn apart,
Curving in fine repose, and maiden pride;
Her creamy breast,—its mantle brushed aside
Swells with the long pulsation of her heart:
One languid arm rests on the coverlid,
And one beneath the crumpled sheet is hid,
(Ah happy sheets! to hide an arm so sweet!)
Nor all concealed amid their folds of snow,
The soft perfection of her shape below,
Rounded and tapering to her little feet!
Oh Love! if Beauty ever left her sphere,
And sovereign sisters, Art and Poesy,
Moulded in loveliness she slumbers here,
Slumbers, dear love, in thee!
It is thy smile that makes the chamber still;
It is thy breath that fills the scented air;
The light around is borrowed from thy hair,
And all things else are subject to thy will,
And I am so bewildered in this deep
Ambrosial calm, and passionate atmosphere,
I know not whether I am dreaming here,
Or in the world of Sleep!