Scene. A rock overhanging the Sea.
Man.
A rock and the wild waters! 'Tis a spot
To moralize on life, and strip the world
Of all its gaudy trappings and false gloss,
That like the daubing on a wanton's cheek,
Crimsons the paleness of disease and shame,
And with life's semblance mocks a rotten heart.
O wild, wild sea! eternal wilderness
Of strife and toil and fruitless energy!
Birthplace and Tomb! whence unto being spring
Successive myriads to run their race,
Rage, labour, and grow hoar, then pass away
With all their deeds and memories, and cede
Their petty sphere of inches to another.
O wild, wild sea! thou bosom of all passion,
And thought, and hope, and longing infinite!
That struggling ever from the riven caves,
And fathomless abysses of the Earth,
As from the cells of an awakened soul,
Fling your hoarse murmurs and aspiring groans
To the strong wingëd winds, that puff them on
In sport and in derision; that art stirred
To tumult and to madness by the breath
Of unseen currents, unsubstantial air,
That passes on, and leaves a foaming train
To wonder at the thing that angered them.
O wild, wild sea! soul of indifference!
Lashing eternally the rifted sands
And lonely shores about ye; swallowing
The wreck of man's dependence, and the life
That struggles with ye for the prize of love,
And joy, and sorrow, clinging round its soul;
That flowest on in coldness and self-aim
O'er the dissolving frames of countless waves,
That sink like generations, and so rise,
Pausing or stilling never, numb'ring up
A myriad selfish interests to make
Thy sum of being perfect. Man may read
The lore of human nature in thee, writ
Not with the pen of flattery, that gilds
The base past recognition, but all plain
And coloured only by its truthfulness;
The good and ill alike displayed, that lie
Within the sounding of its inmost soul.
O! thought might wander o'er this briny waste,
Dove-like, without one Ark whereon to rest
From the interminable ebb and flow,
As many a soul has flutter'd o'er the earth,
Weary and faint, as mine did till it found
A haven in the bosom of sweet love.
Spirit.
Then thou hast loved?
Man.
Ay! so that life is bound
About by it, as by a Gordian knot,
Inseparable, until Death's sharp blade
Divide its inmost coil. There is a time
When all that sweeten'd youth and childhood dulls
And fades to nothingness, as the faint moon
Pales at the bright foreshadowing of morn,
And leaves heaven void, when every chord is dumb
That once made music in the soul, and life
Is still and silent, though it be the pause
That presages the storm and bitter strife,
Whose fury ofttimes bends the spirit down,
And strips it of its blossoms; Then to me
O'er the blank chaos of my being came,
As from the haunted chambers of deep thought,
A glorious presence—an imagined grace,
Whose footfalls as she rose pulsed thro' my heart
With tremblings exquisite. It was sweet Love,
The Blessed! the Indwelling! that doth make
A virgin firmament for its pure light,
Then at the pleading of its own deep want,
Shines forth in glory and in tenderness.
Amongst the laughing and the gay I went,
Seeking for one to realize love's dream,
As mid the countless hosts of heaven the sage
Peers for the brightness of a new-born star.
Then, soft hands trembled in my palm, and forms
Graceful and rounded with the bloom of youth,
Flitted about me in the languishment
Of music and sweet motion; voices low,
And modulate from laughter unto sadness,
Hung on the air like perfume on the wind,
And eyes, flashing, and mild, and fond, spake too,
A very Babel of soft speech, and yet—
I sighed. Life seemed to me a painted daub—all glare,
And show, and tinsel, where the eye in vain
Sought some green spot to rest on, till a mist
Swam o'er it as in gazing at the sun.
Spirit.
Man ofttimes palms an artificial life
Upon the heart for that which is the true,
Though to the real it be what a flower
Is to its mimicry, a tinted rag
Unsweetened by the breath of summer's love.
Joy flows alone from an untroubled spring,
Unstirred by the false whirl of giddy dreams,
That send the dregs of passion through its veins.