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양쪽 이전 판 이전 판 다음 판 | 이전 판 마지막 판 양쪽 다음 판 | ||
문학:영문학:영국:셸리 [2020/09/17 08:37] clayeryan@gmail.com [작품목록] |
문학:영문학:영국:셸리 [2020/10/08 19:22] clayeryan@gmail.com [작품목록] |
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줄 2560: | 줄 2560: | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++36 The Waning Moon| | ++++36 The Waning Moon| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil, | ||
+ | Out of her chamber, led by the insane | ||
+ | And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, | ||
+ | The moon arose up in the murky east, | ||
+ | A white and shapeless mass.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++37 Autumn: | ++++37 Autumn: | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, | ||
+ | And the Year | ||
+ | On the earth is her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, | ||
+ | Is lying. | ||
+ | Come, Months, come away, | ||
+ | From November to May, | ||
+ | In your saddest array; | ||
+ | Follow the bier | ||
+ | Of the dead cold Year, | ||
+ | And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, | ||
+ | The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling | ||
+ | For the Year; | ||
+ | The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone | ||
+ | To his dwelling. | ||
+ | Come, Months, come away; | ||
+ | Put on white, black and gray; | ||
+ | Let your light sisters play-- | ||
+ | Ye, follow the bier | ||
+ | Of the dead cold Year, | ||
+ | And make her grave green with tear on tear.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++38 The Question| | ++++38 The Question| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, | ||
+ | And gentle odours led my steps astray, | ||
+ | Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring | ||
+ | Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay | ||
+ | Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling | ||
+ | Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, | ||
+ | But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. | ||
+ | |||
+ | There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, | ||
+ | Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, | ||
+ | The constellated flower that never sets; | ||
+ | Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth | ||
+ | The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets-- | ||
+ | Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth-- | ||
+ | Its mother' | ||
+ | When the low wind, its playmate' | ||
+ | |||
+ | And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, | ||
+ | Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may, | ||
+ | And cherry-blossoms, | ||
+ | Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day; | ||
+ | And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, | ||
+ | With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; | ||
+ | And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, | ||
+ | Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And nearer to the river' | ||
+ | There grew broad flag-flowers, | ||
+ | And starry river buds among the sedge, | ||
+ | And floating water-lilies, | ||
+ | Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge | ||
+ | With moonlight beams of their own watery light; | ||
+ | And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green | ||
+ | As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Methought that of these visionary flowers | ||
+ | I made a nosegay, bound in such a way | ||
+ | That the same hues, which in their natural bowers | ||
+ | Were mingled or opposed, the like array | ||
+ | Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours | ||
+ | Within my hand,--and then, elate and gay, | ||
+ | I hastened to the spot whence I had come, | ||
+ | That I might there present it!--Oh! to whom? | ||
+ | </ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++39 On A Dead Violet| | ++++39 On A Dead Violet| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Which like thy kisses breathed on me; | ||
+ | The color from the flower is flown | ||
+ | Which glowed of thee and only thee! | ||
+ | |||
+ | A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, | ||
+ | It lies on my abandoned breast; | ||
+ | And mocks the heart, which yet is warm, | ||
+ | With cold and silent rest. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I weep--my tears revive it not; | ||
+ | I sigh--it breathes no more on me: | ||
+ | Its mute and uncomplaining lot | ||
+ | Is such as mine should be.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++40 The Two Spirits: An Allegory| | ++++40 The Two Spirits: An Allegory| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | O thou, who plum'd with strong desire | ||
+ | Wouldst float above the earth, beware! | ||
+ | A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire-- | ||
+ | Night is coming! | ||
+ | Bright are the regions of the air, | ||
+ | And among the winds and beams | ||
+ | It were delight to wander there-- | ||
+ | Night is coming!SECOND SPIRIT | ||
+ | The deathless stars are bright above; | ||
+ | If I would cross the shade of night, | ||
+ | Within my heart is the lamp of love, | ||
+ | And that is day! | ||
+ | And the moon will smile with gentle light | ||
+ | On my golden plumes where' | ||
+ | The meteors will linger round my flight, | ||
+ | And make night day.FIRST SPIRIT | ||
+ | |||
+ | But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken | ||
+ | Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain; | ||
+ | See, the bounds of the air are shaken-- | ||
+ | Night is coming! | ||
+ | The red swift clouds of the hurricane | ||
+ | Yon declining sun have overtaken, | ||
+ | The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain-- | ||
+ | Night is coming!SECOND SPIRIT | ||
+ | |||
+ | I see the light, and I hear the sound; | ||
+ | I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark, | ||
+ | With the calm within and the light around | ||
+ | Which makes night day: | ||
+ | And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark, | ||
+ | Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound, | ||
+ | My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark | ||
+ | On high, far away.---- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Some say there is a precipice | ||
+ | Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin | ||
+ | O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice | ||
+ | Mid Alpine mountains; | ||
+ | And that the languid storm pursuing | ||
+ | That winged shape, for ever flies | ||
+ | Round those hoar branches, aye renewing | ||
+ | Its aëry fountains. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Some say when nights are dry and dear, | ||
+ | And the death-dews sleep on the morass, | ||
+ | Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller, | ||
+ | Which make night day: | ||
+ | And a silver shape like his early love doth pass | ||
+ | Upborne by her wild and glittering hair, | ||
+ | And when he awakes on the frag</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++41 Art Thou Pale For Weariness| | ++++41 Art Thou Pale For Weariness| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, | ||
+ | Wandering companionless | ||
+ | Among the stars that have a different birth, | ||
+ | And ever changing, like a joyless eye | ||
+ | That finds no object worth its constancy?</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++42 Invocation| | ++++42 Invocation| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Spirit of Delight! | ||
+ | Wherefore hast thou left me now | ||
+ | Many a day and night? | ||
+ | Many a weary night and day | ||
+ | 'Tis since thou art fled away. | ||
+ | |||
+ | How shall ever one like me | ||
+ | Win thee back again? | ||
+ | With the joyous and the free | ||
+ | Thou wilt scoff at pain. | ||
+ | Spirit false! thou hast forgot | ||
+ | All but those who need thee not. | ||
+ | |||
+ | As a lizard with the shade | ||
+ | Of a trembling leaf, | ||
+ | Thou with sorrow art dismayed; | ||
+ | Even the sighs of grief | ||
+ | Reproach thee, that thou art not near, | ||
+ | And reproach thou wilt not hear. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Let me set my mournful ditty | ||
+ | To a merry measure; | ||
+ | Thou wilt never come for pity, | ||
+ | Thou wilt come for pleasure; - | ||
+ | Pity then will cut away | ||
+ | Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I love all that thou lovest, | ||
+ | Spirit of Delight! | ||
+ | The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed, | ||
+ | And the starry night; | ||
+ | Autumn evening, and the morn | ||
+ | When the golden mists are born. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I love snow and all the forms | ||
+ | Of the radiant frost; | ||
+ | I love waves, and winds, and storms, | ||
+ | Everything almost | ||
+ | Which is Nature' | ||
+ | Untainted by man's misery. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I love tranquil solitude, | ||
+ | And such society | ||
+ | As is quiet, wise, and good: - | ||
+ | Between thee and me | ||
+ | What diff' | ||
+ | The things I seek, not love them less. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I love Love -though he has wings, | ||
+ | And like light can flee, | ||
+ | But above all other things, | ||
+ | Spirit, I love thee - | ||
+ | Thou art love and life! O come! | ||
+ | Make once more my heart thy home!</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
- | ++++43 fragment: | + | ++++43 fragment: |
- | < | + | < |
+ | Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth, | ||
+ | Wandering companionless | ||
+ | Among the stars that have a different birth,-- | ||
+ | And ever changing, like a joyless eye | ||
+ | That finds no object worth its constancy?</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++44 To A Lady, With A Guitar| | ++++44 To A Lady, With A Guitar| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | This slave of music, for the sake | ||
+ | Of him who is the slave of thee; | ||
+ | And teach it all the harmony | ||
+ | In which thou canst, and only thou, | ||
+ | Make the delighted spirit glow, | ||
+ | Till joy denies itself again | ||
+ | And, too intense, is turned to pain. | ||
+ | For by permission and command | ||
+ | Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, | ||
+ | Poor Ariel sends this silent token | ||
+ | Of more than ever can be spoken; | ||
+ | Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who | ||
+ | From life to life must still pursue | ||
+ | Your happiness, for thus alone | ||
+ | Can Ariel ever find his own. | ||
+ | From Prospero' | ||
+ | As the mighty verses tell, | ||
+ | To the throne of Naples he | ||
+ | Lit you o'er the trackless sea, | ||
+ | Flitting on, your prow before, | ||
+ | Like a living meteor. | ||
+ | When you die, the silent Moon | ||
+ | In her interlunar swoon | ||
+ | Is not sadder in her cell | ||
+ | Than deserted Ariel. | ||
+ | When you live again on earth, | ||
+ | Like an unseen Star of birth | ||
+ | Ariel guides you o'er the sea | ||
+ | Of life from your nativity. | ||
+ | Many changes have been run | ||
+ | Since Ferdinand and you begun | ||
+ | Your course of love, and Ariel still | ||
+ | Has tracked your steps and served your will. | ||
+ | Now in humbler, happier lot, | ||
+ | This is all remembered not; | ||
+ | And now, alas! the poor sprite is | ||
+ | Imprisoned for some fault of his | ||
+ | In a body like a grave -- | ||
+ | From you he only dares to crave, | ||
+ | For his service and his sorrow, | ||
+ | A smile today, a song tomorrow. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The artist who this idol wrought | ||
+ | To echo all harmonious thought, | ||
+ | Felled a tree, while on the steep | ||
+ | The woods were in their winter sleep, | ||
+ | Rocked in that repose divine | ||
+ | On the wind-swept Apennine; | ||
+ | And dreaming, some of Autumn past, | ||
+ | And some of Spring approaching fast, | ||
+ | And some of April buds and showers, | ||
+ | And some of songs in July bowers, | ||
+ | And all of love; and so this tree, -- | ||
+ | O that such our death may be! -- | ||
+ | Died in sleep, and felt no pain, | ||
+ | To live in happier form again: | ||
+ | From which, beneath Heaven' | ||
+ | The artist wrought this loved Guitar; | ||
+ | And taught it justly to reply | ||
+ | To all who question skilfully | ||
+ | In language gentle as thine own; | ||
+ | Whispering in enamoured tone | ||
+ | Sweet oracles of woods and dells, | ||
+ | And summer winds in sylvan cells; | ||
+ | -- For it had learnt all harmonies | ||
+ | Of the plains and of the skies, | ||
+ | Of the forests and the mountains, | ||
+ | And the many-voiced fountains; | ||
+ | The clearest echoes of the hills, | ||
+ | The softest notes of falling rills, | ||
+ | The melodies of birds and bees, | ||
+ | The murmuring of summer seas, | ||
+ | And pattering rain, and breathing dew, | ||
+ | And airs of evening; and it knew | ||
+ | That seldom-heard mysterious sound | ||
+ | Which, driven on its diurnal round, | ||
+ | As it floats through boundless day, | ||
+ | Our world enkindles on its way: | ||
+ | -- All this it knows, but will not tell | ||
+ | To those who cannot question well | ||
+ | The Spirit that inhabits it; | ||
+ | It talks according to the wit | ||
+ | Of its companions; and no more | ||
+ | Is heard than has been felt before | ||
+ | By those who tempt it to betray | ||
+ | These secrets of an elder day. | ||
+ | But, sweetly as its answers will | ||
+ | Flatter hands of perfect skill, | ||
+ | It keeps its highest holiest tone | ||
+ | For one beloved Friend alone.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++45 From the Arabic, an Imitation| | ++++45 From the Arabic, an Imitation| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Of thy looks, my love; | ||
+ | It panted for thee like the hind at noon | ||
+ | For the brooks, my love. | ||
+ | Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest' | ||
+ | Bore thee far from me; | ||
+ | My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, | ||
+ | Did companion thee. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, | ||
+ | Or the death they bear, | ||
+ | The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove | ||
+ | With the wings of care; | ||
+ | In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, | ||
+ | Shall mine cling to thee, | ||
+ | Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, | ||
+ | It may bring to thee. | ||
+ | </ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++46 The Witch Of Atlas| | ++++46 The Witch Of Atlas| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, | ||
+ | Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth | ||
+ | All those bright natures which adorned its prime, | ||
+ | And left us nothing to believe in, worth | ||
+ | The pains of putting into learn?d rhyme, | ||
+ | A Lady Witch there lived on Atlas mountain | ||
+ | Within a cavern by a secret fountain. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Her mother was one of the Atlantides. | ||
+ | The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden | ||
+ | In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas | ||
+ | So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden | ||
+ | In the warm shadow of her loveliness; | ||
+ | He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden | ||
+ | The chamber of gray rock in which she lay. | ||
+ | She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away. | ||
+ | |||
+ | 'Tis said she first was changed into a vapor; | ||
+ | And then into a cloud, | ||
+ | (Like splendor-winged moths about a taper) | ||
+ | Round the red west when the Sun dies in it; | ||
+ | And then into a meteor, such as caper | ||
+ | On hill-tops when the Moon is in a fit; | ||
+ | Then into one of those mysterious stars | ||
+ | Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ten times the Mother of the Months had ben | ||
+ | Her bow beside the folding-star, | ||
+ | With that bright sign the billows to indent | ||
+ | The sea-deserted sand--(like children chidden, | ||
+ | At her command they ever came and went)-- | ||
+ | Since in that cave a dewy splendor hidden | ||
+ | Took shape and motion. With the living form | ||
+ | Of this embodied Power the cave grew warm. | ||
+ | |||
+ | A lovely Lady garmented in light | ||
+ | From her own beauty: deep her eyes as are | ||
+ | Two openings of unfathomable night | ||
+ | Seen through a temple' | ||
+ | Dark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, | ||
+ | Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar; | ||
+ | And her low voice was heard like love, and drew | ||
+ | All living things towards this wonder new. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And first the spotted cameleopard came; | ||
+ | And then the wise and fearless elephant; | ||
+ | Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame | ||
+ | Of his own volumes intervolved. All gaunt | ||
+ | And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame,-- | ||
+ | They drank before her at her sacred fount; | ||
+ | And every beast of beating heart grew bold, | ||
+ | Such gentleness and power even to behold. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The brinded lioness led forth her young, | ||
+ | That she might teach them how they should forego | ||
+ | Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung | ||
+ | His sinews at her feet, and sought to know, | ||
+ | With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue, | ||
+ | How he might be as gentle as the doe. | ||
+ | The magic circle of her voice and eyes | ||
+ | All savage natures did imparadise. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And old Silenus, shaking a green stick | ||
+ | Of lilies, and the Wood-gods in a crew, | ||
+ | Came blithe as in the olive-copses thick | ||
+ | Cicade are, drunk with the noonday dew; | ||
+ | And Dryope and Faunus followed quick, | ||
+ | Teazing the God to sing them something new; | ||
+ | Till in this cave they found the Lady lone, | ||
+ | Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there. | ||
+ | And, though none saw him, | ||
+ | Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air, | ||
+ | And through those living spirits like a want,-- | ||
+ | He passed out of his everlasting lair | ||
+ | Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant, | ||
+ | And felt that wondrous Lady all alone,-- | ||
+ | And she felt him upon her emerald throne. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And every Nymph of stream and spreading tree, | ||
+ | And every Shepherdess of Ocean' | ||
+ | Who drives her white waves over the green sea, | ||
+ | And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks, | ||
+ | And quaint Priapus with his company, | ||
+ | All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks | ||
+ | Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth: | ||
+ | Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The herdsmen and the mountain-maidens came, | ||
+ | And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant-- | ||
+ | Their spirits shook within them, as a flame | ||
+ | Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt: | ||
+ | Pygmies and Polyphemes, by many a name, | ||
+ | Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt | ||
+ | Wet clefts, | ||
+ | Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed. | ||
+ | |||
+ | For she was beautiful. Her beauty made | ||
+ | The bright world dim, and everything beside | ||
+ | Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade. | ||
+ | No thought of living spirit could abide | ||
+ | (Which to her looks had ever been betrayed) | ||
+ | On any object in the world so wide, | ||
+ | On any hope within the circling skies,-- | ||
+ | But on her form, and in her inmost eyes. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Which when the Lady knew; she took her spindle, | ||
+ | And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three | ||
+ | Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle | ||
+ | The clouds and waves and mountains with, and she | ||
+ | As many starbeams, ere their lamps could dwindle | ||
+ | In the belated moon, wound skilfully; | ||
+ | And with these threads a subtle veil she wove-- | ||
+ | A shadow for the splendour of her love. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling | ||
+ | Were stored with magic treasures: | ||
+ | Which had the power all spirits of compelling, | ||
+ | Folded in cells of crystal silence there; | ||
+ | Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling | ||
+ | will never die--yet, ere we are aware, | ||
+ | The feeling and the sound are fled and gone | ||
+ | And the regret they leave remains alone. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And there lay Visions swift and sweet and quaint, | ||
+ | Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis; | ||
+ | Some eager to burst forth; some weak and faint | ||
+ | With the soft burden of intensest bliss | ||
+ | It is their work to bear to many a saint | ||
+ | Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is, | ||
+ | Even Love' | ||
+ | And of all shapes: | ||
+ | |||
+ | And odours in a kind of aviary | ||
+ | Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, | ||
+ | Clipped in a floating net a love-sick Fairy | ||
+ | Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept. | ||
+ | As bats at the wired window of a dairy, | ||
+ | They beat their vans; and each was an adept-- | ||
+ | When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds-- | ||
+ | To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might | ||
+ | Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, | ||
+ | And change eternal death into a night | ||
+ | Of glorious dreams--or, if eyes needs must weep, | ||
+ | Could make their tears all wonder and delight-- | ||
+ | She in her crystal phials did closely keep: | ||
+ | If men could drink of those clear phials, 'tis said | ||
+ | The living were not envied of the dead. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, | ||
+ | The works of some Saturnian Archimage, | ||
+ | Which taught the expiations at whose price | ||
+ | Men from the Gods might win that happy age | ||
+ | Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice,-- | ||
+ | And which might quench the earth-consuming rage | ||
+ | Of gold and blood, till men should live and move | ||
+ | Harmonious as the sacred stars above:-- | ||
+ | |||
+ | And how all things that seem untameable, | ||
+ | Not to be checked and not to be confined, | ||
+ | Obey the spells of Wisdom' | ||
+ | Time, earth, and fire, the ocean and the wind, | ||
+ | And all their shapes, and man's imperial will;-- | ||
+ | And other scrolls whose writings did unbind | ||
+ | The inmost lore of love--let the profane | ||
+ | Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And wondrous works of substances unknown, | ||
+ | To which the enchantment of her Father' | ||
+ | Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone, | ||
+ | Were heaped in the recesses of her bower; | ||
+ | Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone | ||
+ | In their own golden beams--each like a flower | ||
+ | Out of whose depth a firefly shakes his light | ||
+ | Under a cypress in a starless night. | ||
+ | |||
+ | At first she lived alone in this wild home, | ||
+ | And her own thoughts were each a minister, | ||
+ | Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam, | ||
+ | Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire, | ||
+ | To work whatever purposes might come | ||
+ | Into her mind: such power her mighty Sire | ||
+ | Had girt them with, whether to fly or run | ||
+ | Through all the regions which he shines upon. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades, | ||
+ | Oreads, and Naiads with long weedy locks, | ||
+ | Offered to do her bidding through the seas, | ||
+ | Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks, | ||
+ | And far beneath the matted roots of trees, | ||
+ | And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks; | ||
+ | So they might live for ever in the light | ||
+ | Of her sweet presence--each a satellite. | ||
+ | |||
+ | "This may not be," the Wizard Maid replied. | ||
+ | "The fountains where the Naiades bedew | ||
+ | Their shining hair at length are drained and dried; | ||
+ | The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew | ||
+ | Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide; | ||
+ | The boundless ocean like a drop of dew | ||
+ | Will be consumed; the stubborn centre must | ||
+ | Be scattered like a cloud of summer dust. | ||
+ | |||
+ | "And ye, with them, will perish one by one. | ||
+ | If I must sigh to think that this shall be, | ||
+ | If I must weep when the surviving Sun | ||
+ | Shall smile on your decay--oh ask not me | ||
+ | To love you till your little race is run; | ||
+ | I cannot die as ye must.--Over me | ||
+ | Your leaves shall glance--the streams in which ye dwell | ||
+ | Shall be my paths henceforth; and so farewell." | ||
+ | |||
+ | She spoke and wept. The dark and azure well | ||
+ | Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears, | ||
+ | And every little circlet where they fell | ||
+ | Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres | ||
+ | And intertangled lines of light. A knell | ||
+ | Of sobbing voices came upon her ears | ||
+ | From those departing forms, o'er the serene | ||
+ | Of the white streams and of the forest green. | ||
+ | |||
+ | All day the Wizard Lady sat aloof; | ||
+ | Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity | ||
+ | Under the cavern' | ||
+ | Or broidering the pictured poesy | ||
+ | Of some high tale upon her growing woof, | ||
+ | Which the sweet splendor of her smiles could dye | ||
+ | In hues outshining heaven--and ever she | ||
+ | Added some grace to the wrought poesy:-- | ||
+ | |||
+ | While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece | ||
+ | Of sandal-wood, | ||
+ | Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is; | ||
+ | Each flame of it is as a precious stone | ||
+ | Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this | ||
+ | Belongs to each and all who gaze thereon.' | ||
+ | The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand | ||
+ | She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand. | ||
+ | |||
+ | This Lady never slept, but lay in trance | ||
+ | All night within the fountain--as in sleep. | ||
+ | Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty' | ||
+ | Through the green splendour of the water deep | ||
+ | She saw the constellations reel and dance | ||
+ | Like fireflies--and withal did ever keep | ||
+ | The tenor of her contemplations calm, | ||
+ | With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And, when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended | ||
+ | From the white pinnacles of that cold hill, | ||
+ | She passed at dewfall to a space extended, | ||
+ | Where, in a lawn of flowering asphodel | ||
+ | Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended, | ||
+ | There yawned an inextinguishable well | ||
+ | Of crimson fire, full even to the brim, | ||
+ | And overflowing all the margin trim:-- | ||
+ | |||
+ | Within the which she lay when the fierce war | ||
+ | Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor, | ||
+ | In many a mimic moon and bearded star, | ||
+ | O'er woods and lawns. The serpent heard it flicker | ||
+ | In sleep, and, dreaming still, he crept afar. | ||
+ | And, when the windless snow descended thicker | ||
+ | Than autumn-leaves, | ||
+ | Melt on the surface of the level flame. | ||
+ | |||
+ | She had a boat which some say Vulcan wrought | ||
+ | For Venus, as the chariot of her star; | ||
+ | But it was found too feeble to be fraught | ||
+ | With all the ardours in that sphere which are, | ||
+ | And so she sold it, and Apollo bought | ||
+ | And gave it to this daughter: from a car, | ||
+ | Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat | ||
+ | Which ever upon mortal stream did float. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And others say that, when but three hours old, | ||
+ | The firstborn Love out of his cradle leapt, | ||
+ | And clove dun chaos with his wings of gold, | ||
+ | And, like a horticultural adept, | ||
+ | Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould, | ||
+ | And sowed it in his mother' | ||
+ | Watering it all the summer with sweet dew, | ||
+ | And with his wings fanning it as it grew. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The plant grew strong and green--the snowy flower | ||
+ | Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began | ||
+ | To turn the light and dew by inward power | ||
+ | To its own substance: woven tracery ran | ||
+ | Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er | ||
+ | The solid rind, like a leaf's veined fan,-- | ||
+ | Of which Love scooped this boat, and with soft motion | ||
+ | Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean. | ||
+ | |||
+ | This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit | ||
+ | A living spirit within all its frame, | ||
+ | Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. | ||
+ | Couched on the fountain--like a panther tame | ||
+ | (One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit, | ||
+ | Or as on Vesta' | ||
+ | Or on blind Homer' | ||
+ | In joyous expectation lay the boat. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow | ||
+ | Together, tempering the repugnant mass | ||
+ | With liquid love--all things together grow | ||
+ | Through which the harmony of love can pass; | ||
+ | And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow-- | ||
+ | A living image which did far surpass | ||
+ | In beauty that bright shape of vital stone | ||
+ | Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion. | ||
+ | |||
+ | A sexless thing it was, and in its growth | ||
+ | It seemed to have developed no defect | ||
+ | Of either sex, yet all the grace of both. | ||
+ | In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked; | ||
+ | The bosom lightly swelled with its full youth; | ||
+ | The countenance was such as might select | ||
+ | Some artist that his skill should never die, | ||
+ | lmaging forth such perfect purity. | ||
+ | |||
+ | From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings | ||
+ | Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere, | ||
+ | Tipped with the speed of liquid lightenings, | ||
+ | Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere. | ||
+ | She led her creature to the boiling springs | ||
+ | Where the light boat was moored, and said "Sit here," | ||
+ | And pointed to the prow, and took her seat | ||
+ | Beside the rudder with opposing feet. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And down the streams which clove those mountains vast, | ||
+ | Around their inland islets, and amid | ||
+ | The panther-peopled forests (whose shade cast | ||
+ | Darkness and odors, and a pleasure hid | ||
+ | In melancholy gloom) the pinnace passed; | ||
+ | By many a star-surrounded pyramid | ||
+ | Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky, | ||
+ | And caverns yawning round unfathomably. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The silver noon into that winding dell, | ||
+ | With slanted gleam athwart the forest-tops, | ||
+ | Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell; | ||
+ | A green and glowing light, like that which drops | ||
+ | From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell | ||
+ | When Earth over her face Night' | ||
+ | Between the severed mountains lay on high, | ||
+ | Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And, ever as she went, the Image lay | ||
+ | With folded wings and unawakened eyes; | ||
+ | And o'er its gentle countenance did play | ||
+ | The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies, | ||
+ | Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, | ||
+ | And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs | ||
+ | Inhaling, which with busy murmur vain | ||
+ | They has aroused from that full heart and brain. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud | ||
+ | Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went: | ||
+ | Now lingering on the pools, in which abode | ||
+ | The calm and darkness of the deep content | ||
+ | In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road | ||
+ | Of white and dancing waters, all besprent | ||
+ | With sand and polished pebbles: | ||
+ | In such a shallow rapid could not float. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And down the earthquaking cataracts, which shivcr | ||
+ | Their snow-like waters into golden air, | ||
+ | Or under chasms unfathomable ever | ||
+ | Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear | ||
+ | A subterranean portal for the river, | ||
+ | It fled. The circling sunbows did upbear | ||
+ | Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray, | ||
+ | Lighting it far upon its lampless way. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And, when the Wizard Lady would ascend | ||
+ | The labyrinths of some many-winding vale | ||
+ | Which to the inmost mountain upward tend, | ||
+ | She called " | ||
+ | And heavy hue which slumber could extend | ||
+ | Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale | ||
+ | A rapid shadow from a slope of grass, | ||
+ | Into the darkness of the stream did pass | ||
+ | |||
+ | And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions; | ||
+ | With stars of fire spotting the stream below, | ||
+ | And from above into the Sun's dominions | ||
+ | Flinging a glory like the golden glow | ||
+ | In which Spring clothes her emerald-winged minions, | ||
+ | All interwoven with fine feathery snow, | ||
+ | And moonlight splendour of intensest rime | ||
+ | With which frost paints the pines in winter-time. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And then it winnowed the elysian air | ||
+ | Which ever hung about that Lady bright, | ||
+ | With its etherial vans: and, speeding there, | ||
+ | Like a star up the torrent of the night, | ||
+ | Or a swift eagle in the morning glare | ||
+ | Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight, | ||
+ | The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings, | ||
+ | Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The water flashed, | ||
+ | Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to heaven; | ||
+ | The still air seemed as if its waves did flow | ||
+ | In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven, | ||
+ | The Lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro; | ||
+ | Beneath, the billows, having vainly striven | ||
+ | Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel | ||
+ | The swift and steady motion of the keel. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Or, when the weary moon was in the wane, | ||
+ | Or in the noon of interlunar night, | ||
+ | The Lady Witch in visions could not chain | ||
+ | Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light | ||
+ | Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain | ||
+ | Its storm-outspeeding wings the Hermaphrodite; | ||
+ | She to the austral waters took her way, | ||
+ | Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, | ||
+ | Which rain could never bend or whirlblast shake, | ||
+ | With the antarctic constellations paven, | ||
+ | Canopus and his crew, lay the austral lake-- | ||
+ | There she would build herself a windless haven | ||
+ | Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make | ||
+ | The bastions of the storm, when through the sky | ||
+ | The spirits of the tempest thundered by:-- | ||
+ | |||
+ | A haven beneath whose translucent floor | ||
+ | The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably; | ||
+ | And around which the solid vapours hoar, | ||
+ | Based on the level waters, to the sky | ||
+ | Lifted their dreadful crags, and, like a shore | ||
+ | Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly | ||
+ | Hemmed-in with rifts and precipices grey, | ||
+ | And hanging crags, many a cove and bay. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And, whilst the outer lake beneath the lash | ||
+ | Of the wind's scourge foamed like a wounded thing | ||
+ | And the incessant hail with stony clash | ||
+ | Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing | ||
+ | Of the roused cormorant in the lightningflash | ||
+ | Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering | ||
+ | Fragment of inky thunder-smoke--this haven | ||
+ | Was as a gem to copy heaven engraven. | ||
+ | |||
+ | On which that Lady played her many pranks, | ||
+ | Circling the image of a shooting star | ||
+ | (Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' | ||
+ | Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are) | ||
+ | In her light boat; and many quips and cranks | ||
+ | She played upon the water; till the car | ||
+ | Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, | ||
+ | To journey from the misty east began. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And then she called out of the hollow turrets | ||
+ | Of those high clouds, white, golden, and vermilion, | ||
+ | The armies of her ministering spirits. | ||
+ | In mighty legions million after million | ||
+ | They came, each troop emblazoning its merits | ||
+ | On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion | ||
+ | Of the intertexture of the atmosphere | ||
+ | They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere. | ||
+ | |||
+ | They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen | ||
+ | Of woven exhalations, | ||
+ | With lambent lightning-fire, | ||
+ | A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid | ||
+ | With crimson silk. Cressets from the serene | ||
+ | Hung there, and on the water for her tread | ||
+ | A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn, | ||
+ | Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And on a throne o' | ||
+ | Upon those wandering isles of aery dew | ||
+ | Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not, | ||
+ | She sate, and heard all that had happened new | ||
+ | Between the earth and moon since they had brought | ||
+ | The last intelligence: | ||
+ | Pale as that moon lost in the watery night, | ||
+ | And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. | ||
+ | |||
+ | These were tame pleasures.--She would often climb | ||
+ | The steepest ladder of the crudded rack | ||
+ | Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, | ||
+ | And like Arion on the dolphin' | ||
+ | Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft-time, | ||
+ | Following the serpent lightning' | ||
+ | She ran upon the platforms of the wind, | ||
+ | And laughed to hear the fireballs roar behid. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And sometimes to those streams of upper air | ||
+ | Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round | ||
+ | She would ascend, and win the Spirits there | ||
+ | To let her join their chorus. Mortals found | ||
+ | That on those days the sky was calm and fair, | ||
+ | And mystic snatches of harmonious sound | ||
+ | Wandered upon the earth where' | ||
+ | And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last. | ||
+ | |||
+ | But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, | ||
+ | To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads | ||
+ | Egypt and Ethiopia from the steep | ||
+ | Of utmost Axume until he spreads, | ||
+ | Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep, | ||
+ | His waters on the plain,--and crested heads | ||
+ | Of cities and proud temples gleam amid, | ||
+ | And many a vapour-belted pyramid: | ||
+ | |||
+ | By MÏris and the Mareotid lakes, | ||
+ | Strewn with faint blooms like bridal-chamber floors, | ||
+ | Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes, | ||
+ | Or charioteering ghastly alligators, | ||
+ | Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes | ||
+ | Of those huge forms; | ||
+ | Of the Great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast, | ||
+ | Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And where within the surface of the river | ||
+ | The shadows of the massy temples lie, | ||
+ | And never are erased, but tremble ever | ||
+ | Like things which every cloud can doom to die,-- | ||
+ | Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever | ||
+ | The works of man pierced that serenest sky | ||
+ | With tombs and towers and fanes, | ||
+ | To wander in the shadow of the night. | ||
+ | |||
+ | With motion like the spirit of that wind | ||
+ | Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet | ||
+ | Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind, | ||
+ | Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,-- | ||
+ | Through fane and palace-court, | ||
+ | With many a dark and subterranean street | ||
+ | Under the Nile; through chambers high and deep | ||
+ | She passed, observing mortals in their sleep. | ||
+ | |||
+ | A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see | ||
+ | Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. | ||
+ | Here lay two sister-twins in infancy; | ||
+ | There a lone youth who in his dreams did weep; | ||
+ | Within, two lovers linked innocently | ||
+ | In their loose locks which over both did creep | ||
+ | Like ivy from one stem; and there lay calm | ||
+ | Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm. | ||
+ | |||
+ | But other troubled forms of sleep she saw, | ||
+ | Not to be mirrored in a holy song,-- | ||
+ | Distortions foul of supernatural awe, | ||
+ | And pale imaginings of visioned wrong, | ||
+ | And all the code of Custom' | ||
+ | Written upon the brows of old and young. | ||
+ | " | ||
+ | Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life." | ||
+ | |||
+ | And little did the sight disturb her soul. | ||
+ | We, the weak mariners of that wide lake, | ||
+ | Where' | ||
+ | Our course unpiloted and starless make | ||
+ | O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal; | ||
+ | But she in the calm depths her way could take, | ||
+ | Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide | ||
+ | Beneath the weltering of the restless tide. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And she saw princes couched under the glow | ||
+ | Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court | ||
+ | In dormitories ranged, row after row, | ||
+ | She saw the priests asleep, | ||
+ | For all were educated to be so. | ||
+ | The peasants in their huts, and in the port | ||
+ | The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, | ||
+ | And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And all the forms in which those spirits lay | ||
+ | Were to her sight like the diaphanous | ||
+ | Veils in which those sweet ladies oft array | ||
+ | Their delicate limbs who would conceal from us | ||
+ | Only their scorn of all concealment: | ||
+ | Move in the light of their own beauty thus. | ||
+ | But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, | ||
+ | And little thought a Witch was looking on them. | ||
+ | |||
+ | She all those human figures breathing there | ||
+ | Beheld as living spirits. To her eyes | ||
+ | The naked beauty of the soul lay bare, | ||
+ | And often through a rude and worn disguise | ||
+ | She saw the inner form most bright and fair: | ||
+ | And then she had a charm of strange device, | ||
+ | Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, | ||
+ | Could make that spirit mingle with her own. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given | ||
+ | For such a charm, when Tithon became grey-- | ||
+ | Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven | ||
+ | Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina | ||
+ | Had half (oh why not all?) the debt forgiven | ||
+ | Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay-- | ||
+ | To any witch who would have taught you it | ||
+ | The Heliad doth not know its value yet. | ||
+ | |||
+ | 'Tis said in after times her spirit free | ||
+ | Knew what love was, and felt itself alone. | ||
+ | But holy Dian could not chaster be | ||
+ | Before she stooped to kiss Endymion | ||
+ | Than now this Lady,--like a sexless bee, | ||
+ | Tasting all blossoms and confined to none: | ||
+ | Among those mortal forms the Wizard Maiden | ||
+ | Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen. | ||
+ | |||
+ | To those she saw most beautiful she gave | ||
+ | Strange panacea in a crystal bowl. | ||
+ | They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, | ||
+ | And lived thenceforward as if some control, | ||
+ | Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave | ||
+ | Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul, | ||
+ | Was as a green and overarching bower | ||
+ | Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. | ||
+ | |||
+ | For, on the night when they were buried, she | ||
+ | Restored the embalmer' | ||
+ | The light out of the funeral-lamps, | ||
+ | A mimic day within that deathy nook; | ||
+ | And she unwound the woven imagery | ||
+ | Of second childhood' | ||
+ | The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche, | ||
+ | And threw it with contempt into a ditch, | ||
+ | |||
+ | And there the body lay, age after age, | ||
+ | Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, | ||
+ | Like one asleep in a green hermitage, | ||
+ | With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing, | ||
+ | And living in its dreams beyond the rage | ||
+ | Of death or life; while they were still arraying | ||
+ | In liveries ever new the rapid, blind, | ||
+ | And fleeting generations of mankind. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And she would write strange dreams upon the brain | ||
+ | Of those who were less beautiful, and make | ||
+ | All harsh and crooked purposes more vain | ||
+ | Than in the desert is the serpent' | ||
+ | Which the sand covers. All his evil gain | ||
+ | The miser, in such dreams, would rise and shake | ||
+ | Into a beggar' | ||
+ | Would his own lies betray without a bribe. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The priests would write an explanation full, | ||
+ | Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, | ||
+ | How the God Apis really was a bull, | ||
+ | And nothing more; and bid the herald stick | ||
+ | The same against the temple-doors, | ||
+ | The old cant down: they licensed all to speak | ||
+ | Whate' | ||
+ | By pastoral letters to each diocese. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The king would dress an ape up in his crown | ||
+ | And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, | ||
+ | And on the right hand of the sunlike throne | ||
+ | Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat | ||
+ | The chatterings of the monkey. Every one | ||
+ | Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet | ||
+ | Of their great emperor when the morning came; | ||
+ | And kissed--alas, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, | ||
+ | Walked out of quarters in somnambulism; | ||
+ | Round the red anvils you might see them stand | ||
+ | Like Cyclopses in Vulcan' | ||
+ | Beating their swords to ploughshares: | ||
+ | The jailors sent those of the liberal schism | ||
+ | Free through the streets of Memphis--much, | ||
+ | To the annoyance of king Amasis. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And timid lovers, who had been so coy | ||
+ | They hardly knew whether they loved or not, | ||
+ | Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, | ||
+ | To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; | ||
+ | And, when next day the maiden and the boy | ||
+ | Met one another, both, like sinners caught, | ||
+ | Blushed at the thing which each believed was done | ||
+ | Only in fancy--till the tenth moon shone; | ||
+ | |||
+ | And then the Witch would let them take no ill; | ||
+ | Of many thousand schemes which lovers find, | ||
+ | The Witch found one,--and so they took their fill | ||
+ | Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. | ||
+ | Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, | ||
+ | Were torn apart (a wide wound, mind from mind) | ||
+ | She did unite again with visions clear | ||
+ | Of deep affection and of truth sincere. | ||
+ | |||
+ | These were the pranks she played among the cities | ||
+ | Of mortal men. And what she did to Sprites | ||
+ | And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties, | ||
+ | To do her will, and show their subtle sleights, | ||
+ | I will declare another time; for it is | ||
+ | A tale more fit for the weird winter-nights | ||
+ | Than for these garish summer-days, | ||
+ | Scarcely believe much more than we can see.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++47 Alastor: | ++++47 Alastor: | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | If our great Mother has imbued my soul | ||
+ | With aught of natural piety to feel | ||
+ | Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; | ||
+ | If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, | ||
+ | With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, | ||
+ | And solemn midnight' | ||
+ | If Autumn' | ||
+ | And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns | ||
+ | Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs; | ||
+ | If Spring' | ||
+ | Her first sweet kisses, | ||
+ | If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast | ||
+ | I consciously have injured, but still loved | ||
+ | And cherished these my kindred; then forgive | ||
+ | This boast, belovèd brethren, and withdraw | ||
+ | No portion of your wonted favor now! | ||
+ | |||
+ | Mother of this unfathomable world! | ||
+ | Favor my solemn song, for I have loved | ||
+ | Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched | ||
+ | Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, | ||
+ | And my heart ever gazes on the depth | ||
+ | Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed | ||
+ | In charnels and on coffins, where black death | ||
+ | Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, | ||
+ | Hoping to still these obstinate questionings | ||
+ | Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, | ||
+ | Thy messenger, to render up the tale | ||
+ | Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, | ||
+ | When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, | ||
+ | Like an inspired and desperate alchemist | ||
+ | Staking his very life on some dark hope, | ||
+ | Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks | ||
+ | With my most innocent love, until strange tears, | ||
+ | Uniting with those breathless kisses, made | ||
+ | Such magic as compels the charmèd night | ||
+ | To render up thy charge; and, though ne'er yet | ||
+ | Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, | ||
+ | Enough from incommunicable dream, | ||
+ | And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, | ||
+ | Has shone within me, that serenely now | ||
+ | And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre | ||
+ | Suspended in the solitary dome | ||
+ | Of some mysterious and deserted fane, | ||
+ | I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain | ||
+ | May modulate with murmurs of the air, | ||
+ | And motions of the forests and the sea, | ||
+ | And voice of living beings, and woven hymns | ||
+ | Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. | ||
+ | |||
+ | There was a Poet whose untimely tomb | ||
+ | No human hands with pious reverence reared, | ||
+ | But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds | ||
+ | Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid | ||
+ | Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness: | ||
+ | A lovely youth,--no mourning maiden decked | ||
+ | With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, | ||
+ | The lone couch of his everlasting sleep: | ||
+ | Gentle, and brave, and generous, | ||
+ | Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh: | ||
+ | He lived, he died, he sung in solitude. | ||
+ | Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, | ||
+ | And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined | ||
+ | And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. | ||
+ | The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, | ||
+ | And Silence, too enamoured of that voice, | ||
+ | Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. | ||
+ | |||
+ | By solemn vision and bright silver dream | ||
+ | His infancy was nurtured. Every sight | ||
+ | And sound from the vast earth and ambient air | ||
+ | Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. | ||
+ | The fountains of divine philosophy | ||
+ | Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great, | ||
+ | Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past | ||
+ | In truth or fable consecrates, | ||
+ | And knew. When early youth had passed, he left | ||
+ | His cold fireside and alienated home | ||
+ | To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. | ||
+ | Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness | ||
+ | Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought | ||
+ | With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, | ||
+ | His rest and food. Nature' | ||
+ | He like her shadow has pursued, where' | ||
+ | The red volcano overcanopies | ||
+ | Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice | ||
+ | With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes | ||
+ | On black bare pointed islets ever beat | ||
+ | With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves, | ||
+ | Rugged and dark, winding among the springs | ||
+ | Of fire and poison, inaccessible | ||
+ | To avarice or pride, their starry domes | ||
+ | Of diamond and of gold expand above | ||
+ | Numberless and immeasurable halls, | ||
+ | Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines | ||
+ | Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. | ||
+ | Nor had that scene of ampler majesty | ||
+ | Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven | ||
+ | And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims | ||
+ | To love and wonder; he would linger long | ||
+ | In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, | ||
+ | Until the doves and squirrels would partake | ||
+ | From his innocuous band his bloodless food, | ||
+ | Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, | ||
+ | And the wild antelope, that starts whene' | ||
+ | The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend | ||
+ | Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form | ||
+ | More graceful than her own. | ||
+ | |||
+ | His wandering step, | ||
+ | Obedient to high thoughts, has visited | ||
+ | The awful ruins of the days of old: | ||
+ | Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste | ||
+ | Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers | ||
+ | Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, | ||
+ | Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe' | ||
+ | Sculptured on alabaster obelisk | ||
+ | Or jasper tomb or mutilated sphinx, | ||
+ | Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills | ||
+ | Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, | ||
+ | Stupendous columns, and wild images | ||
+ | Of more than man, where marble daemons watch | ||
+ | The Zodiac' | ||
+ | Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, | ||
+ | He lingered, poring on memorials | ||
+ | Of the world' | ||
+ | Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon | ||
+ | Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades | ||
+ | Suspended he that task, but ever gazed | ||
+ | And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind | ||
+ | Flashed like strong inspiration, | ||
+ | The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, | ||
+ | Her daily portion, from her father' | ||
+ | And spread her matting for his couch, and stole | ||
+ | From duties and repose to tend his steps, | ||
+ | Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe | ||
+ | To speak her love, and watched his nightly sleep, | ||
+ | Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips | ||
+ | Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath | ||
+ | Of innocent dreams arose; then, when red morn | ||
+ | Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home | ||
+ | Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie, | ||
+ | And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, | ||
+ | And o'er the aërial mountains which pour down | ||
+ | Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, | ||
+ | In joy and exultation held his way; | ||
+ | Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within | ||
+ | Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine | ||
+ | Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, | ||
+ | Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched | ||
+ | His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep | ||
+ | There came, a dream of hopes that never yet | ||
+ | Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd maid | ||
+ | Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. | ||
+ | Her voice was like the voice of his own soul | ||
+ | Heard in the calm of thought; its music long, | ||
+ | Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held | ||
+ | His inmost sense suspended in its web | ||
+ | Of many-colored woof and shifting hues. | ||
+ | Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, | ||
+ | And lofty hopes of divine liberty, | ||
+ | Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, | ||
+ | Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood | ||
+ | Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame | ||
+ | A permeating fire; wild numbers then | ||
+ | She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs | ||
+ | Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands | ||
+ | Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp | ||
+ | Strange symphony, and in their branching veins | ||
+ | The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. | ||
+ | The beating of her heart was heard to fill | ||
+ | The pauses of her music, and her breath | ||
+ | Tumultuously accorded with those fits | ||
+ | Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, | ||
+ | As if her heart impatiently endured | ||
+ | Its bursting burden; at the sound he turned, | ||
+ | And saw by the warm light of their own life | ||
+ | Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil | ||
+ | Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare, | ||
+ | Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, | ||
+ | Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips | ||
+ | Outstretched, | ||
+ | His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess | ||
+ | Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled | ||
+ | His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet | ||
+ | Her panting bosom:--she drew back awhile, | ||
+ | Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, | ||
+ | With frantic gesture and short breathless cry | ||
+ | Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. | ||
+ | Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night | ||
+ | Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep, | ||
+ | Like a dark flood suspended in its course, | ||
+ | Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Roused by the shock, he started from his trance-- | ||
+ | The cold white light of morning, the blue moon | ||
+ | Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, | ||
+ | The distinct valley and the vacant woods, | ||
+ | Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled | ||
+ | The hues of heaven that canopied his bower | ||
+ | Of yesternight? | ||
+ | The mystery and the majesty of Earth, | ||
+ | The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes | ||
+ | Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly | ||
+ | As ocean' | ||
+ | The spirit of sweet human love has sent | ||
+ | A vision to the sleep of him who spurned | ||
+ | Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues | ||
+ | Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade; | ||
+ | He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas! | ||
+ | Were limbs and breath and being intertwined | ||
+ | Thus treacherously? | ||
+ | In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, | ||
+ | That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death | ||
+ | Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, | ||
+ | O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds | ||
+ | And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake | ||
+ | Lead only to a black and watery depth, | ||
+ | While death' | ||
+ | Where every shade which the foul grave exhales | ||
+ | Hides its dead eye from the detested day, | ||
+ | Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms? | ||
+ | This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart; | ||
+ | The insatiate hope which it awakened stung | ||
+ | His brain even like despair. | ||
+ | |||
+ | While daylight held | ||
+ | The sky, the Poet kept mute conference | ||
+ | With his still soul. At night the passion came, | ||
+ | Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, | ||
+ | And shook him from his rest, and led him forth | ||
+ | Into the darkness. As an eagle, grasped | ||
+ | In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast | ||
+ | Burn with the poison, and precipitates | ||
+ | Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, | ||
+ | Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight | ||
+ | O'er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven | ||
+ | By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, | ||
+ | Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, | ||
+ | Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, | ||
+ | Startling with careless step the moon-light snake, | ||
+ | He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, | ||
+ | Shedding the mockery of its vital hues | ||
+ | Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on | ||
+ | Till vast Aornos seen from Petra' | ||
+ | Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud; | ||
+ | Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs | ||
+ | Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind | ||
+ | Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, | ||
+ | Day after day, a weary waste of hours, | ||
+ | Bearing within his life the brooding care | ||
+ | That ever fed on its decaying flame. | ||
+ | And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair, | ||
+ | Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, | ||
+ | Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand | ||
+ | Hung like dead bone within its withered skin; | ||
+ | Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone, | ||
+ | As in a furnace burning secretly, | ||
+ | From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, | ||
+ | Who ministered with human charity | ||
+ | His human wants, beheld with wondering awe | ||
+ | Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, | ||
+ | Encountering on some dizzy precipice | ||
+ | That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind, | ||
+ | With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet | ||
+ | Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused | ||
+ | In its career; the infant would conceal | ||
+ | His troubled visage in his mother' | ||
+ | In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, | ||
+ | To remember their strange light in many a dream | ||
+ | Of after times; but youthful maidens, taught | ||
+ | By nature, would interpret half the woe | ||
+ | That wasted him, would call him with false names | ||
+ | Brother and friend, would press his pallid hand | ||
+ | At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path | ||
+ | Of his departure from their father' | ||
+ | |||
+ | At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore | ||
+ | He paused, a wide and melancholy waste | ||
+ | Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged | ||
+ | His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, | ||
+ | Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. | ||
+ | It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings | ||
+ | Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course | ||
+ | High over the immeasurable main. | ||
+ | His eyes pursued its flight: | ||
+ | Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home, | ||
+ | Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck | ||
+ | With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes | ||
+ | Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. | ||
+ | And what am I that I should linger here, | ||
+ | With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, | ||
+ | Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned | ||
+ | To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers | ||
+ | In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven | ||
+ | That echoes not my thoughts?' | ||
+ | Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. | ||
+ | For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly | ||
+ | Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, | ||
+ | Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, | ||
+ | With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around. | ||
+ | There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight | ||
+ | Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. | ||
+ | A little shallop floating near the shore | ||
+ | Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. | ||
+ | It had been long abandoned, for its sides | ||
+ | Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints | ||
+ | Swayed with the undulations of the tide. | ||
+ | A restless impulse urged him to embark | ||
+ | And meet lone Death on the drear ocean' | ||
+ | For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves | ||
+ | The slimy caverns of the populous deep. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The day was fair and sunny; sea and sky | ||
+ | Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind | ||
+ | Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. | ||
+ | Following his eager soul, the wanderer | ||
+ | Leaped in the boat; he spread his cloak aloft | ||
+ | On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, | ||
+ | And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea | ||
+ | Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. | ||
+ | |||
+ | As one that in a silver vision floats | ||
+ | Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds | ||
+ | Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly | ||
+ | Along the dark and ruffled waters fled | ||
+ | The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on, | ||
+ | With fierce gusts and precipitating force, | ||
+ | Through the white ridges of the chafèd sea. | ||
+ | The waves arose. Higher and higher still | ||
+ | Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest' | ||
+ | Like serpents struggling in a vulture' | ||
+ | Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war | ||
+ | Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast | ||
+ | Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven | ||
+ | With dark obliterating course, he sate: | ||
+ | As if their genii were the ministers | ||
+ | Appointed to conduct him to the light | ||
+ | Of those belovèd eyes, the Poet sate, | ||
+ | Holding the steady helm. Evening came on; | ||
+ | The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues | ||
+ | High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray | ||
+ | That canopied his path o'er the waste deep; | ||
+ | Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, | ||
+ | Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks | ||
+ | O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of Day; | ||
+ | Night followed, clad with stars. On every side | ||
+ | More horribly the multitudinous streams | ||
+ | Of ocean' | ||
+ | Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock | ||
+ | The calm and spangled sky. The little boat | ||
+ | Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam | ||
+ | Down the steep cataract of a wintry river; | ||
+ | Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave; | ||
+ | Now leaving far behind the bursting mass | ||
+ | That fell, convulsing ocean; safely fled-- | ||
+ | As if that frail and wasted human form | ||
+ | Had been an elemental god. | ||
+ | |||
+ | At midnight | ||
+ | The moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs | ||
+ | Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone | ||
+ | Among the stars like sunlight, and around | ||
+ | Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves | ||
+ | Bursting and eddying irresistibly | ||
+ | Rage and resound forever.--Who shall save?-- | ||
+ | The boat fled on,--the boiling torrent drove,-- | ||
+ | The crags closed round with black and jagged arms, | ||
+ | The shattered mountain overhung the sea, | ||
+ | And faster still, beyond all human speed, | ||
+ | Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, | ||
+ | The little boat was driven. A cavern there | ||
+ | Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths | ||
+ | Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on | ||
+ | With unrelaxing speed.--' | ||
+ | The Poet cried aloud, 'I have beheld | ||
+ | The path of thy departure. Sleep and death | ||
+ | Shall not divide us long.' | ||
+ | |||
+ | The boat pursued | ||
+ | The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone | ||
+ | At length upon that gloomy river' | ||
+ | Now, where the fiercest war among the waves | ||
+ | Is calm, on the unfathomable stream | ||
+ | The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven, | ||
+ | Exposed those black depths to the azure sky, | ||
+ | Ere yet the flood' | ||
+ | Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound | ||
+ | That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass | ||
+ | Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm; | ||
+ | Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, | ||
+ | Circling immeasurably fast, and laved | ||
+ | With alternating dash the gnarlèd roots | ||
+ | Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms | ||
+ | In darkness over it. I' the midst was left, | ||
+ | Reflecting yet distorting every cloud, | ||
+ | A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm. | ||
+ | Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, | ||
+ | With dizzy swiftness, round and round and round, | ||
+ | Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose, | ||
+ | Till on the verge of the extremest curve, | ||
+ | Where through an opening of the rocky bank | ||
+ | The waters overflow, and a smooth spot | ||
+ | Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides | ||
+ | Is left, the boat paused shuddering.--Shall it sink | ||
+ | Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress | ||
+ | Of that resistless gulf embosom it? | ||
+ | Now shall it fall?--A wandering stream of wind | ||
+ | Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail, | ||
+ | And, lo! with gentle motion between banks | ||
+ | Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, | ||
+ | Beneath a woven grove, it sails, and, hark! | ||
+ | The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar | ||
+ | With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. | ||
+ | Where the embowering trees recede, and leave | ||
+ | A little space of green expanse, the cove | ||
+ | Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers | ||
+ | Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes, | ||
+ | Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave | ||
+ | Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task, | ||
+ | Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, | ||
+ | Or falling spear-grass, | ||
+ | Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed | ||
+ | To deck with their bright hues his withered hair, | ||
+ | But on his heart its solitude returned, | ||
+ | And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid | ||
+ | In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame, | ||
+ | Had yet performed its ministry; it hung | ||
+ | Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud | ||
+ | Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods | ||
+ | Of night close over it. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The noonday sun | ||
+ | Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass | ||
+ | Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence | ||
+ | A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, | ||
+ | Scooped in the dark base of their aëry rocks, | ||
+ | Mocking its moans, respond and roar forever. | ||
+ | The meeting boughs and implicated leaves | ||
+ | Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as, led | ||
+ | By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, | ||
+ | He sought in Nature' | ||
+ | Her cradle and his sepulchre. More dark | ||
+ | And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, | ||
+ | Expanding its immense and knotty arms, | ||
+ | Embraces the light beech. The pyramids | ||
+ | Of the tall cedar overarching frame | ||
+ | Most solemn domes within, and far below, | ||
+ | Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, | ||
+ | The ash and the acacia floating hang | ||
+ | Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed | ||
+ | In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, | ||
+ | Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around | ||
+ | The gray trunks, and, as gamesome infants' | ||
+ | With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, | ||
+ | Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, | ||
+ | These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs, | ||
+ | Uniting their close union; the woven leaves | ||
+ | Make network of the dark blue light of day | ||
+ | And the night' | ||
+ | As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns | ||
+ | Beneath these canopies extend their swells, | ||
+ | Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms | ||
+ | Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen | ||
+ | Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine | ||
+ | A soul-dissolving odor to invite | ||
+ | To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell | ||
+ | Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, | ||
+ | Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades, | ||
+ | Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well, | ||
+ | Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, | ||
+ | Images all the woven boughs above, | ||
+ | And each depending leaf, and every speck | ||
+ | Of azure sky darting between their chasms; | ||
+ | Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves | ||
+ | Its portraiture, | ||
+ | Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, | ||
+ | Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, | ||
+ | Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, | ||
+ | Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings | ||
+ | Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld | ||
+ | Their own wan light through the reflected lines | ||
+ | Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth | ||
+ | Of that still fountain; as the human heart, | ||
+ | Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, | ||
+ | Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard | ||
+ | The motion of the leaves--the grass that sprung | ||
+ | Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel | ||
+ | An unaccustomed presence--and the sound | ||
+ | Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs | ||
+ | Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed | ||
+ | To stand beside him--clothed in no bright robes | ||
+ | Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, | ||
+ | Borrowed from aught the visible world affords | ||
+ | Of grace, or majesty, or mystery; | ||
+ | But undulating woods, and silent well, | ||
+ | And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom | ||
+ | Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming, | ||
+ | Held commune with him, as if he and it | ||
+ | Were all that was; only--when his regard | ||
+ | Was raised by intense pensiveness--two eyes, | ||
+ | Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, | ||
+ | And seemed with their serene and azure smiles | ||
+ | To beckon him. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Obedient to the light | ||
+ | That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing | ||
+ | The windings of the dell. The rivulet, | ||
+ | Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine | ||
+ | Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell | ||
+ | Among the moss with hollow harmony | ||
+ | Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones | ||
+ | It danced, like childhood laughing as it went; | ||
+ | Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, | ||
+ | Reflecting every herb and drooping bud | ||
+ | That overhung its quietness.--' | ||
+ | Whose source is inaccessibly profound, | ||
+ | Whither do thy mysterious waters tend? | ||
+ | Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, | ||
+ | Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs, | ||
+ | Thy searchless fountain and invisible course, | ||
+ | Have each their type in me; and the wide sky | ||
+ | And measureless ocean may declare as soon | ||
+ | What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud | ||
+ | Contains thy waters, as the universe | ||
+ | Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched | ||
+ | Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste | ||
+ | I' the passing wind!' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Beside the grassy shore | ||
+ | Of the small stream he went; he did impress | ||
+ | On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught | ||
+ | Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one | ||
+ | Roused by some joyous madness from the couch | ||
+ | Of fever, he did move; yet not like him | ||
+ | Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame | ||
+ | Of his frail exultation shall be spent, | ||
+ | He must descend. With rapid steps he went | ||
+ | Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow | ||
+ | Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now | ||
+ | The forest' | ||
+ | For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. | ||
+ | Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed | ||
+ | The struggling brook; tall spires of windlestrae | ||
+ | Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, | ||
+ | And nought but gnarlèd roots of ancient pines | ||
+ | Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots | ||
+ | The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here | ||
+ | Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, | ||
+ | The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin | ||
+ | And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes | ||
+ | Had shone, gleam stony orbs:--so from his steps | ||
+ | Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade | ||
+ | Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds | ||
+ | And musical motions. Calm he still pursued | ||
+ | The stream, that with a larger volume now | ||
+ | Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there | ||
+ | Fretted a path through its descending curves | ||
+ | With its wintry speed. On every side now rose | ||
+ | Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, | ||
+ | Lifted their black and barren pinnacles | ||
+ | In the light of evening, and its precipice | ||
+ | Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, | ||
+ | 'Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves, | ||
+ | Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues | ||
+ | To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands | ||
+ | Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, | ||
+ | And seems with its accumulated crags | ||
+ | To overhang the world; for wide expand | ||
+ | Beneath the wan stars and descending moon | ||
+ | Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, | ||
+ | Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom | ||
+ | Of leaden-colored even, and fiery hills | ||
+ | Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge | ||
+ | Of the remote horizon. The near scene, | ||
+ | In naked and severe simplicity, | ||
+ | Made contrast with the universe. A pine, | ||
+ | Rock-rooted, | ||
+ | Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast | ||
+ | Yielding one only response at each pause | ||
+ | In most familiar cadence, with the howl, | ||
+ | The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams | ||
+ | Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river | ||
+ | Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, | ||
+ | Fell into that immeasurable void, | ||
+ | Scattering its waters to the passing winds. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Yet the gray precipice and solemn pine | ||
+ | And torrent were not all;--one silent nook | ||
+ | Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, | ||
+ | Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, | ||
+ | It overlooked in its serenity | ||
+ | The dark earth and the bending vault of stars. | ||
+ | It was a tranquil spot that seemed to smile | ||
+ | Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped | ||
+ | The fissured stones with its entwining arms, | ||
+ | And did embower with leaves forever green | ||
+ | And berries dark the smooth and even space | ||
+ | Of its inviolated floor; and here | ||
+ | The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore | ||
+ | In wanton sport those bright leaves whose decay, | ||
+ | Red, yellow, or ethereally pale, | ||
+ | Rivals the pride of summer. 'T is the haunt | ||
+ | Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach | ||
+ | The wilds to love tranquillity. One step, | ||
+ | One human step alone, has ever broken | ||
+ | The stillness of its solitude; one voice | ||
+ | Alone inspired its echoes; | ||
+ | Which hither came, floating among the winds, | ||
+ | And led the loveliest among human forms | ||
+ | To make their wild haunts the depository | ||
+ | Of all the grace and beauty that endued | ||
+ | Its motions, render up its majesty, | ||
+ | Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm, | ||
+ | And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould, | ||
+ | Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, | ||
+ | Commit the colors of that varying cheek, | ||
+ | That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The dim and hornèd moon hung low, and poured | ||
+ | A sea of lustre on the horizon' | ||
+ | That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist | ||
+ | Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank | ||
+ | Wan moonlight even to fulness; not a star | ||
+ | Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds, | ||
+ | Danger' | ||
+ | Slept, clasped in his embrace.--O storm of death, | ||
+ | Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night! | ||
+ | And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still | ||
+ | Guiding its irresistible career | ||
+ | In thy devastating omnipotence, | ||
+ | Art king of this frail world! from the red field | ||
+ | Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, | ||
+ | The patriot' | ||
+ | Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, | ||
+ | A mighty voice invokes thee! Ruin calls | ||
+ | His brother Death! A rare and regal prey | ||
+ | He hath prepared, prowling around the world; | ||
+ | Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men | ||
+ | Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, | ||
+ | Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine | ||
+ | The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. | ||
+ | |||
+ | When on the threshold of the green recess | ||
+ | The wanderer' | ||
+ | Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, | ||
+ | Did he resign his high and holy soul | ||
+ | To images of the majestic past, | ||
+ | That paused within his passive being now, | ||
+ | Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe | ||
+ | Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place | ||
+ | His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk | ||
+ | Of the old pine; upon an ivied stone | ||
+ | Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest, | ||
+ | Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink | ||
+ | Of that obscurest chasm;--and thus he lay, | ||
+ | Surrendering to their final impulses | ||
+ | The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair, | ||
+ | The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear | ||
+ | Marred his repose; the influxes of sense | ||
+ | And his own being, unalloyed by pain, | ||
+ | Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed | ||
+ | The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there | ||
+ | At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight | ||
+ | Was the great moon, which o'er the western line | ||
+ | Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, | ||
+ | With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed | ||
+ | To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills | ||
+ | It rests; and still as the divided frame | ||
+ | Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, | ||
+ | That ever beat in mystic sympathy | ||
+ | With Nature' | ||
+ | And when two lessening points of light alone | ||
+ | Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp | ||
+ | Of his faint respiration scarce did stir | ||
+ | The stagnate night: | ||
+ | Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. | ||
+ | It paused--it fluttered. But when heaven remained | ||
+ | Utterly black, the murky shades involved | ||
+ | An image silent, cold, and motionless, | ||
+ | As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. | ||
+ | Even as a vapor fed with golden beams | ||
+ | That ministered on sunlight, ere the west | ||
+ | Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame-- | ||
+ | No sense, no motion, no divinity-- | ||
+ | A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings | ||
+ | The breath of heaven did wander--a bright stream | ||
+ | Once fed with many-voicèd waves--a dream | ||
+ | Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever-- | ||
+ | Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Oh, for Medea' | ||
+ | Which wheresoe' | ||
+ | With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale | ||
+ | From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh, that God, | ||
+ | Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice | ||
+ | Which but one living man has drained, who now, | ||
+ | Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels | ||
+ | No proud exemption in the blighting curse | ||
+ | He bears, over the world wanders forever, | ||
+ | Lone as incarnate death! Oh, that the dream | ||
+ | Of dark magician in his visioned cave, | ||
+ | Raking the cinders of a crucible | ||
+ | For life and power, even when his feeble hand | ||
+ | Shakes in its last decay, were the true law | ||
+ | Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled, | ||
+ | Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn | ||
+ | Robes in its golden beams,--ah! thou hast fled! | ||
+ | The brave, the gentle and the beautiful, | ||
+ | The child of grace and genius. Heartless things | ||
+ | Are done and said i' the world, and many worms | ||
+ | And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth | ||
+ | From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, | ||
+ | In vesper low or joyous orison, | ||
+ | Lifts still its solemn voice:--but thou art fled-- | ||
+ | Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes | ||
+ | Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee | ||
+ | Been purest ministers, who are, alas! | ||
+ | Now thou art not! Upon those pallid lips | ||
+ | So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes | ||
+ | That image sleep in death, upon that form | ||
+ | Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear | ||
+ | Be shed--not even in thought. Nor, when those hues | ||
+ | Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, | ||
+ | Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone | ||
+ | In the frail pauses of this simple strain, | ||
+ | Let not high verse, mourning the memory | ||
+ | Of that which is no more, or painting' | ||
+ | Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery | ||
+ | Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, | ||
+ | And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain | ||
+ | To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. | ||
+ | It is a woe "too deep for tears," | ||
+ | Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, | ||
+ | Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves | ||
+ | Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, | ||
+ | The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; | ||
+ | But pale despair and cold tranquillity, | ||
+ | Nature' | ||
+ | Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++48 Epipsychidion (excerpt)| | ++++48 Epipsychidion (excerpt)| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | A ship is floating in the harbour now, | ||
+ | A wind is hovering o'er the mountain' | ||
+ | There is a path on the sea's azure floor, | ||
+ | No keel has ever plough' | ||
+ | The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; | ||
+ | The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; | ||
+ | The merry mariners are bold and free: | ||
+ | Say, my heart' | ||
+ | Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest | ||
+ | Is a far Eden of the purple East; | ||
+ | And we between her wings will sit, while Night, | ||
+ | And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, | ||
+ | Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, | ||
+ | Treading each other' | ||
+ | It is an isle under Ionian skies, | ||
+ | Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, | ||
+ | And, for the harbours are not safe and good, | ||
+ | This land would have remain' | ||
+ | But for some pastoral people native there, | ||
+ | Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air | ||
+ | Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, | ||
+ | Simple and spirited; innocent and bold. | ||
+ | The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, | ||
+ | With ever-changing sound and light and foam, | ||
+ | Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar; | ||
+ | And all the winds wandering along the shore | ||
+ | Undulate with the undulating tide: | ||
+ | There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; | ||
+ | And many a fountain, rivulet and pond, | ||
+ | As clear as elemental diamond, | ||
+ | Or serene morning air; and far beyond, | ||
+ | The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer | ||
+ | (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year) | ||
+ | Pierce into glades, caverns and bowers, and halls | ||
+ | Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls | ||
+ | Illumining, with sound that never fails | ||
+ | Accompany the noonday nightingales; | ||
+ | And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; | ||
+ | The light clear element which the isle wears | ||
+ | Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, | ||
+ | Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, | ||
+ | And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; | ||
+ | And from the moss violets and jonquils peep | ||
+ | And dart their arrowy odour through the brain | ||
+ | Till you might faint with that delicious pain. | ||
+ | And every motion, odour, beam and tone, | ||
+ | With that deep music is in unison: | ||
+ | Which is a soul within the soul--they seem | ||
+ | Like echoes of an antenatal dream. | ||
+ | It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth and Sea, | ||
+ | Cradled and hung in clear tranquillity; | ||
+ | Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, | ||
+ | Wash'd by the soft blue Oceans of young air. | ||
+ | It is a favour' | ||
+ | Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light | ||
+ | Upon its mountain-peaks; | ||
+ | Sail onward far upon their fatal way: | ||
+ | The wingèd storms, chanting their thunder-psalm | ||
+ | To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm | ||
+ | Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, | ||
+ | From which its fields and woods ever renew | ||
+ | Their green and golden immortality. | ||
+ | And from the sea there rise, and from the sky | ||
+ | There fall, clear exhalations, | ||
+ | Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, | ||
+ | Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside, | ||
+ | Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride | ||
+ | Glowing at once with love and loveliness, | ||
+ | Blushes and trembles at its own excess: | ||
+ | Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less | ||
+ | Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, | ||
+ | An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile | ||
+ | Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen | ||
+ | O'er the gray rocks, blue waves and forests green, | ||
+ | Filling their bare and void interstices. | ||
+ | But the chief marvel of the wilderness | ||
+ | Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how | ||
+ | None of the rustic island-people know: | ||
+ | 'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height | ||
+ | It overtops the woods; but, for delight, | ||
+ | Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime | ||
+ | Had been invented, in the world' | ||
+ | Rear'd it, a wonder of that simple time, | ||
+ | An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house | ||
+ | Made sacred to his sister and his spouse. | ||
+ | It scarce seems now a wreck of human art, | ||
+ | But, as it were, Titanic; in the heart | ||
+ | Of Earth having assum' | ||
+ | Out of the mountains, from the living stone, | ||
+ | Lifting itself in caverns light and high: | ||
+ | For all the antique and learned imagery | ||
+ | Has been eras' | ||
+ | The ivy and the wild-vine interknit | ||
+ | The volumes of their many-twining stems; | ||
+ | Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems | ||
+ | The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky | ||
+ | Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery | ||
+ | With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, | ||
+ | Or fragments of the day's intense serene; | ||
+ | Working mosaic on their Parian floors. | ||
+ | And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers | ||
+ | And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem | ||
+ | To sleep in one another' | ||
+ | Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we | ||
+ | Read in their smiles, and call reality. | ||
+ | |||
+ | This isle and house are mine, and I have vow' | ||
+ | Thee to be lady of the solitude. | ||
+ | And I have fitted up some chambers there | ||
+ | Looking towards the golden Eastern air, | ||
+ | And level with the living winds, which flow | ||
+ | Like waves above the living waves below. | ||
+ | I have sent books and music there, and all | ||
+ | Those instruments with which high Spirits call | ||
+ | The future from its cradle, and the past | ||
+ | Out of its grave, and make the present last | ||
+ | In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, | ||
+ | Folded within their own eternity. | ||
+ | Our simple life wants little, and true taste | ||
+ | Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste | ||
+ | The scene it would adorn, and therefore still, | ||
+ | Nature with all her children haunts the hill. | ||
+ | The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet | ||
+ | Keeps up her love-lament, | ||
+ | Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance | ||
+ | Between the quick bats in their twilight dance; | ||
+ | The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight | ||
+ | Before our gate, and the slow, silent night | ||
+ | Is measur' | ||
+ | Be this our home in life, and when years heap | ||
+ | Their wither' | ||
+ | Let us become the overhanging day, | ||
+ | The living soul of this Elysian isle, | ||
+ | Conscious, inseparable, | ||
+ | We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, | ||
+ | Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, | ||
+ | And wander in the meadows, or ascend | ||
+ | The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend | ||
+ | With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; | ||
+ | Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, | ||
+ | Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea, | ||
+ | Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy-- | ||
+ | Possessing and possess' | ||
+ | Within that calm circumference of bliss, | ||
+ | And by each other, till to love and live | ||
+ | Be one: or, at the noontide hour, arrive | ||
+ | Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep | ||
+ | The moonlight of the expir' | ||
+ | Through which the awaken' | ||
+ | A veil for our seclusion, close as night' | ||
+ | Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights; | ||
+ | Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain | ||
+ | Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again. | ||
+ | And we will talk, until thought' | ||
+ | Become too sweet for utterance, and it die | ||
+ | In words, to live again in looks, which dart | ||
+ | With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, | ||
+ | Harmonizing silence without a sound. | ||
+ | Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, | ||
+ | And our veins beat together; and our lips | ||
+ | With other eloquence than words, eclipse | ||
+ | The soul that burns between them, and the wells | ||
+ | Which boil under our being' | ||
+ | The fountains of our deepest life, shall be | ||
+ | Confus' | ||
+ | As mountain-springs under the morning sun. | ||
+ | We shall become the same, we shall be one | ||
+ | Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two? | ||
+ | One passion in twin-hearts, | ||
+ | Till like two meteors of expanding flame, | ||
+ | Those spheres instinct with it become the same, | ||
+ | Touch, mingle, are transfigur' | ||
+ | Burning, yet ever inconsumable: | ||
+ | In one another' | ||
+ | Like flames too pure and light and unimbu' | ||
+ | To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, | ||
+ | Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away: | ||
+ | One hope within two wills, one will beneath | ||
+ | Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, | ||
+ | One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, | ||
+ | And one annihilation. Woe is me! | ||
+ | The winged words on which my soul would pierce | ||
+ | Into the height of Love's rare Universe, | ||
+ | Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- | ||
+ | I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++49 Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills| | ++++49 Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | In the deep wide sea of Misery, | ||
+ | Or the mariner, worn and wan, | ||
+ | Never thus could voyage on - | ||
+ | Day and night, and night and day, | ||
+ | Drifting on his dreary way, | ||
+ | With the solid darkness black | ||
+ | Closing round his vessel' | ||
+ | Whilst above the sunless sky, | ||
+ | Big with clouds, hangs heavily, | ||
+ | And behind the tempest fleet | ||
+ | Hurries on with lightning feet, | ||
+ | |||
+ | He is ever drifted on | ||
+ | O'er the unreposing wave | ||
+ | To the haven of the grave. | ||
+ | What, if there no friends will greet; | ||
+ | What, if there no heart will meet | ||
+ | His with love's impatient beat; | ||
+ | Wander wheresoe' | ||
+ | Can he dream before that day | ||
+ | To find refuge from distress | ||
+ | In friendship' | ||
+ | Then 'twill wreak him little woe | ||
+ | Whether such there be or no: | ||
+ | Senseless is the breast, and cold, | ||
+ | Which relenting love would fold; | ||
+ | Bloodless are the veins and chill | ||
+ | Which the pulse of pain did fill; | ||
+ | Every little living nerve | ||
+ | That from bitter words did swerve | ||
+ | Round the tortured lips and brow, | ||
+ | Are like sapless leaflets now | ||
+ | Frozen upon December' | ||
+ | |||
+ | On the beach of a northern sea | ||
+ | Which tempests shake eternally, | ||
+ | As once the wretch there lay to sleep, | ||
+ | Lies a solitary heap, | ||
+ | One white skull and seven dry bones, | ||
+ | On the margin of the stones, | ||
+ | Where a few grey rushes stand, | ||
+ | Boundaries of the sea and land: | ||
+ | Nor is heard one voice of wail | ||
+ | But the sea-mews, as they sail | ||
+ | O'er the billows of the gale; | ||
+ | Or the whirlwind up and down | ||
+ | Howling, like a slaughtered town, | ||
+ | When a king in glory rides | ||
+ | Through the pomp and fratricides: | ||
+ | Those unburied bones around | ||
+ | There is many a mournful sound; | ||
+ | There is no lament for him, | ||
+ | Like a sunless vapour, dim, | ||
+ | Who once clothed with life and thought | ||
+ | What now moves nor murmurs not. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ay, many flowering islands lie | ||
+ | In the waters of wide Agony: | ||
+ | To such a one this morn was led, | ||
+ | My bark by soft winds piloted: | ||
+ | 'Mid the mountains Euganean | ||
+ | I stood listening to the paean | ||
+ | With which the legioned rooks did hail | ||
+ | The sun's uprise majestical; | ||
+ | Gathering round with wings all hoar, | ||
+ | Through the dewy mist they soar | ||
+ | Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven | ||
+ | Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, | ||
+ | Flecked with fire and azure, lie | ||
+ | In the unfathomable sky, | ||
+ | So their plumes of purple grain, | ||
+ | Starred with drops of golden rain, | ||
+ | Gleam above the sunlight woods, | ||
+ | As in silent multitudes | ||
+ | On the morning' | ||
+ | Through the broken mist they sail, | ||
+ | And the vapours cloven and gleaming | ||
+ | Follow, down the dark steep streaming, | ||
+ | Till all is bright, and clear, and still, | ||
+ | Round the solitary hill. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Beneath is spread like a green sea | ||
+ | The waveless plain of Lombardy, | ||
+ | Bounded by the vaporous air, | ||
+ | Islanded by cities fair; | ||
+ | Underneath Day's azure eyes | ||
+ | Ocean' | ||
+ | A peopled labyrinth of walls, | ||
+ | Amphitrite' | ||
+ | Which her hoary sire now paves | ||
+ | With his blue and beaming waves. | ||
+ | Lo! the sun upsprings behind, | ||
+ | Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined | ||
+ | On the level quivering line | ||
+ | Of the waters crystalline; | ||
+ | And before that chasm of light, | ||
+ | As within a furnace bright, | ||
+ | Column, tower, and dome, and spire, | ||
+ | Shine like obelisks of fire, | ||
+ | Pointing with inconstant motion | ||
+ | From the altar of dark ocean | ||
+ | To the sapphire-tinted skies; | ||
+ | As the flames of sacrifice | ||
+ | From the marble shrines did rise, | ||
+ | As to pierce the dome of gold | ||
+ | Where Apollo spoke of old. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Sea-girt City, thou hast been | ||
+ | Ocean' | ||
+ | Now is come a darker day, | ||
+ | And thou soon must be his prey, | ||
+ | If the power that raised thee here | ||
+ | Hallow so thy watery bier. | ||
+ | A less drear ruin then than now, | ||
+ | With thy conquest-branded brow | ||
+ | Stooping to the slave of slaves | ||
+ | From thy throne, among the waves | ||
+ | Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew | ||
+ | Flies, as once before it flew, | ||
+ | O'er thine isles depopulate, | ||
+ | And all is in its ancient state, | ||
+ | Save where many a palace gate | ||
+ | With green sea-flowers overgrown | ||
+ | Like a rock of Ocean' | ||
+ | Topples o'er the abandoned sea | ||
+ | As the tides change sullenly. | ||
+ | The fisher on his watery way, | ||
+ | Wandering at the close of day, | ||
+ | Will spread his sail and seize his oar | ||
+ | Till he pass the gloomy shore, | ||
+ | Lest thy dead should, from their sleep | ||
+ | Bursting o'er the starlight deep, | ||
+ | Lead a rapid masque of death | ||
+ | O'er the waters of his path. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Those who alone thy towers behold | ||
+ | Quivering through aereal gold, | ||
+ | As I now behold them here, | ||
+ | Would imagine not they were | ||
+ | Sepulchres, where human forms, | ||
+ | Like pollution-nourished worms, | ||
+ | To the corpse of greatness cling, | ||
+ | Murdered, and now mouldering: | ||
+ | But if Freedom should awake | ||
+ | In her omnipotence and shake | ||
+ | From the Celtic Anarch' | ||
+ | All the keys of dungeons cold, | ||
+ | Where a hundred cities lie | ||
+ | Chained like thee, ingloriously, | ||
+ | Thou and all thy sister band | ||
+ | Might adorn this sunny land, | ||
+ | Twining memories of old time | ||
+ | With new virtues more sublime; | ||
+ | If not, perish thou ldering: | ||
+ | But if Freedom should awake | ||
+ | In her omnipotence and shake | ||
+ | From the Celtic Anarch' | ||
+ | All the keys of dungeons cold, | ||
+ | Where a hundred cities lie | ||
+ | Chained like thee, ingloriously, | ||
+ | Thou and all thy sister band | ||
+ | Might adorn this sunny land, | ||
+ | Twining memories of old time | ||
+ | With new virtues more sublime; | ||
+ | If not, perish thou and they! - | ||
+ | Clouds which stain truth' | ||
+ | By her sun consumed away - | ||
+ | Earth can spare ye; while like flowers, | ||
+ | In the waste of years and hours, | ||
+ | From your dust new nations spring | ||
+ | With more kindly blossoming. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Perish -let there only be | ||
+ | Floating o'er thy heartless sea | ||
+ | As the garment of thy sky | ||
+ | Clothes the world immortally, | ||
+ | One remembrance, | ||
+ | Than the tattered pall of time, | ||
+ | Which scarce hides thy visage wan; - | ||
+ | That a tempest-cleaving Swan | ||
+ | Of the sons of Albion, | ||
+ | Driven from his ancestral streams | ||
+ | By the might of evil dreams, | ||
+ | Found a nest in thee; and Ocean | ||
+ | Welcomed him with such emotion | ||
+ | That its joy grew his, and sprung | ||
+ | From his lips like music flung | ||
+ | O'er a mighty thunder-fit, | ||
+ | Chastening terror: -what though yet | ||
+ | Poesy' | ||
+ | Which through Albion winds forever | ||
+ | Lashing with melodious wave | ||
+ | Many a sacred Poet's grave, | ||
+ | Mourn its latest nursling fled? | ||
+ | What though thou with all thy dead | ||
+ | Scarce can for this fame repay | ||
+ | Aught thine own? oh, rather say | ||
+ | Though thy sins and slaveries foul | ||
+ | Overcloud a sunlike soul? | ||
+ | As the ghost of Homer clings | ||
+ | Round Scamander' | ||
+ | As divinest Shakespeare' | ||
+ | Fills Avon and the world with light | ||
+ | Like omniscient power which he | ||
+ | Imaged 'mid mortality; | ||
+ | As the love from Petrarch' | ||
+ | Yet amid yon hills doth burn, | ||
+ | A quenchless lamp by which the heart | ||
+ | Sees things unearthly; -so thou art, | ||
+ | Mighty spirit -so shall be | ||
+ | The City that did refuge thee. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Lo, the sun floats up the sky | ||
+ | Like thought-winged Liberty, | ||
+ | Till the universal light | ||
+ | Seems to level plain and height; | ||
+ | From the sea a mist has spread, | ||
+ | And the beams of morn lie dead | ||
+ | On the towers of Venice now, | ||
+ | Like its glory long ago. | ||
+ | By the skirts of that gray cloud | ||
+ | Many-domed Padua proud | ||
+ | Stands, a peopled solitude, | ||
+ | 'Mid the harvest-shining plain, | ||
+ | Where the peasant heaps his grain | ||
+ | In the garner of his foe, | ||
+ | And the milk-white oxen slow | ||
+ | With the purple vintage strain, | ||
+ | Heaped upon the creaking wain, | ||
+ | That the brutal Celt may swill | ||
+ | Drunken sleep with savage will; | ||
+ | And the sickle to the sword | ||
+ | Lies unchanged, though many a lord, | ||
+ | Like a weed whose shade is poison, | ||
+ | Overgrows this region' | ||
+ | Sheaves of whom are ripe to come | ||
+ | To destruction' | ||
+ | Men must reap the things they sow, | ||
+ | Force from force must ever flow, | ||
+ | Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe | ||
+ | That love or reason cannot change | ||
+ | The despot' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Padua, thou within whose walls | ||
+ | Those mute guests at festivals, | ||
+ | Son and Mother, Death and Sin, | ||
+ | Played at dice for Ezzelin, | ||
+ | Till Death cried, "I win, I win!" | ||
+ | And Sin cursed to lose the wager, | ||
+ | But Death promised, to assuage her, | ||
+ | That he would petition for | ||
+ | Her to be made Vice-Emperor, | ||
+ | When the destined years were o' | ||
+ | Over all between the Po | ||
+ | And the eastern Alpine snow, | ||
+ | Under the mighty Austrian. | ||
+ | She smiled so as Sin only can, | ||
+ | And since that time, ay, long before, | ||
+ | Both have ruled from shore to shore, - | ||
+ | That incestuous pair, who follow | ||
+ | Tyrants as the sun the swallow, | ||
+ | As Repentance follows Crime, | ||
+ | And as changes follow Time. | ||
+ | |||
+ | In thine halls the lamp of learning, | ||
+ | Padua, now no more is burning; | ||
+ | Like a meteor, whose wild way | ||
+ | Is lost over the grave of day, | ||
+ | It gleams betrayed and to betray: | ||
+ | Once remotest nations came | ||
+ | To adore that sacred flame, | ||
+ | When it lit not many a hearth | ||
+ | On this cold and gloomy earth: | ||
+ | Now new fires from antique light | ||
+ | Spring beneath the wide world' | ||
+ | But their spark lies dead in thee, | ||
+ | Trampled out by Tyranny. | ||
+ | As the Norway woodman quells, | ||
+ | In the depth of piny dells, | ||
+ | One light flame among the brakes, | ||
+ | While the boundless forest shakes, | ||
+ | And its mighty trunks are torn | ||
+ | By the fire thus lowly born: | ||
+ | The spark beneath his feet is dead, | ||
+ | He starts to see the flames it fed | ||
+ | Howling through the darkened sky | ||
+ | With a myriad tongues victoriously, | ||
+ | And sinks down in fear: so thou, | ||
+ | O Tyranny, beholdest now | ||
+ | Light around thee, and thou hearest | ||
+ | The loud flames ascend, and fearest: | ||
+ | Grovel on the earth; ay, hide | ||
+ | In the dust thy purple pride! | ||
+ | |||
+ | Noon descends around me now: | ||
+ | 'Tis the noon of autumn' | ||
+ | When a soft and purple mist | ||
+ | Like a vapourous amethyst, | ||
+ | Or an air-dissolved star | ||
+ | Mingling light and fragrance, far | ||
+ | From the curved horizon' | ||
+ | To the point of Heaven' | ||
+ | Fills the overflowing sky; | ||
+ | And the plains that silent lie | ||
+ | Underneath the leaves unsodden | ||
+ | Where the infant Frost has trodden | ||
+ | With his morning-winged feet, | ||
+ | Whose bright print is gleaming yet; | ||
+ | And the red and golden vines, | ||
+ | Piercing with their trellised lines | ||
+ | The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; | ||
+ | The dun and bladed grass no less, | ||
+ | Pointing from this hoary tower | ||
+ | In the windless air; the flower | ||
+ | Glimmering at my feet; the line | ||
+ | Of the olive-sandalled Apennine | ||
+ | In the south dimly islanded; | ||
+ | And the Alps, whose snows are spread | ||
+ | High between the clouds and sun; | ||
+ | And of living things each one; | ||
+ | And my spirit which so long | ||
+ | Darkened this swift stream of song, - | ||
+ | Interpenetrated lie | ||
+ | By the glory of the sky: | ||
+ | Be it love, light, harmony, | ||
+ | Odour, or the soul of all | ||
+ | Which from Heaven like dew doth fall, | ||
+ | Or the mind which feeds this verse | ||
+ | Peopling the lone universe. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Noon descends, and after noon | ||
+ | Autumn' | ||
+ | Leading the infantine moon, | ||
+ | And that one star, which to her | ||
+ | Almost seems to minister | ||
+ | Half the crimson light she brings | ||
+ | From the sunset' | ||
+ | And the soft dreams of the morn | ||
+ | (Which like winged winds had borne | ||
+ | To that silent isle, which lies | ||
+ | Mid remembered agonies, | ||
+ | The frail bark of this lone being) | ||
+ | Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, | ||
+ | And its ancient pilot, Pain, | ||
+ | Sits beside the helm again. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Other flowering isles must be | ||
+ | In the sea of Life and Agony: | ||
+ | Other spirits float and flee | ||
+ | O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps, | ||
+ | On some rock the wild wave wraps, | ||
+ | With folded wings they waiting sit | ||
+ | For my bark, to pilot it | ||
+ | To some calm and blooming cove, | ||
+ | Where for me, and those I love, | ||
+ | May a windless bower be built, | ||
+ | Far from passion, pain, and guilt, | ||
+ | In a dell mid lawny hills, | ||
+ | Which the wild sea-murmur fills, | ||
+ | And soft sunshine, and the sound | ||
+ | Of old forests echoing round, | ||
+ | And the light and smell divine | ||
+ | Of all flowers that breathe and shine: | ||
+ | We may live so happy there, | ||
+ | That the Spirits of the Air, | ||
+ | Envying us, may even entice | ||
+ | To our healing Paradise | ||
+ | The polluting multitude; | ||
+ | But their rage would be subdued | ||
+ | By that clime divine and calm, | ||
+ | And the winds whose wings rain balm | ||
+ | On the uplifted soul, and leaves | ||
+ | Under which the bright sea heaves; | ||
+ | While each breathless interval | ||
+ | In their whisperings musical | ||
+ | The inspired soul supplies | ||
+ | With its own deep melodies; | ||
+ | And the love which heals all strife | ||
+ | Circling, like the breath of life, | ||
+ | All things in that sweet abode | ||
+ | With its own mild brotherhood: | ||
+ | They, not it, would change; and soon | ||
+ | Every sprite beneath the moon | ||
+ | Would repent its envy vain, | ||
+ | And the earth grow young again. | ||
+ | </ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++50 Song Of Proserpine| | ++++50 Song Of Proserpine| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Thou from whose immortal bosom | ||
+ | Gods and men and beasts have birth, | ||
+ | Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, | ||
+ | Breathe thine influence most divine | ||
+ | On thine own child, Proserpine. | ||
+ | |||
+ | If with mists of evening dew | ||
+ | Thou dost nourish these young flowers | ||
+ | Till they grow in scent and hue | ||
+ | Fairest children of the Hours, | ||
+ | Breathe thine influence most divine | ||
+ | On thine own child, Proserpine. | ||
+ | </ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++51 Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)| | ++++51 Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow | ||
+ | Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand | ||
+ | Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand, | ||
+ | Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, | ||
+ | Such as from earth' | ||
+ | Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, | ||
+ | Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, | ||
+ | Abandons; and no other object breaks | ||
+ | The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes | ||
+ | Broken and unrepair' | ||
+ | A narrow space of level sand thereon, | ||
+ | Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down. | ||
+ | This ride was my delight. I love all waste | ||
+ | And solitary places; where we taste | ||
+ | The pleasure of believing what we see | ||
+ | Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be: | ||
+ | And such was this wide ocean, and this shore | ||
+ | More barren than its billows; and yet more | ||
+ | Than all, with a remember' | ||
+ | To ride as then I rode; for the winds drove | ||
+ | The living spray along the sunny air | ||
+ | Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare, | ||
+ | Stripp' | ||
+ | And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth | ||
+ | Harmonizing with solitude, and sent | ||
+ | Into our hearts aëreal merriment. | ||
+ | So, as we rode, we talk' | ||
+ | Winging itself with laughter, linger' | ||
+ | But flew from brain to brain--such glee was ours, | ||
+ | Charg' | ||
+ | None slow enough for sadness: till we came | ||
+ | Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. | ||
+ | This day had been cheerful but cold, and now | ||
+ | The sun was sinking, and the wind also. | ||
+ | Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be | ||
+ | Talk interrupted with such raillery | ||
+ | As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn | ||
+ | The thoughts it would extinguish: 'twas forlorn, | ||
+ | Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell, | ||
+ | The devils held within the dales of Hell | ||
+ | Concerning God, freewill and destiny: | ||
+ | Of all that earth has been or yet may be, | ||
+ | All that vain men imagine or believe, | ||
+ | Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, | ||
+ | We descanted, and I (for ever still | ||
+ | Is it not wise to make the best of ill?) | ||
+ | Argu'd against despondency, | ||
+ | Made my companion take the darker side. | ||
+ | The sense that he was greater than his kind | ||
+ | Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind | ||
+ | By gazing on its own exceeding light. | ||
+ | Meanwhile the sun paus'd ere it should alight, | ||
+ | Over the horizon of the mountains--Oh, | ||
+ | How beautiful is sunset, when the glow | ||
+ | Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, | ||
+ | Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! | ||
+ | Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers | ||
+ | Of cities they encircle! It was ours | ||
+ | To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, | ||
+ | Just where we had dismounted, the Count' | ||
+ | Were waiting for us with the gondola. | ||
+ | As those who pause on some delightful way | ||
+ | Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood | ||
+ | Looking upon the evening, and the flood | ||
+ | Which lay between the city and the shore, | ||
+ | Pav'd with the image of the sky.... The hoar | ||
+ | And aëry Alps towards the North appear' | ||
+ | Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark rear' | ||
+ | Between the East and West; and half the sky | ||
+ | Was roof'd with clouds of rich emblazonry | ||
+ | Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew | ||
+ | Down the steep West into a wondrous hue | ||
+ | Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent | ||
+ | Where the swift sun yet paus'd in his descent | ||
+ | Among the many-folded hills: they were | ||
+ | Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, | ||
+ | As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles, | ||
+ | The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles-- | ||
+ | And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been | ||
+ | Dissolv' | ||
+ | Those mountains towering as from waves of flame | ||
+ | Around the vaporous sun, from which there came | ||
+ | The inmost purple spirit of light, and made | ||
+ | Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade," | ||
+ | Said my companion, "I will show you soon | ||
+ | A better station" | ||
+ | We glided; and from that funereal bark | ||
+ | I lean' | ||
+ | How from their many isles, in evening' | ||
+ | Its temples and its palaces did seem | ||
+ | Like fabrics of enchantment pil'd to Heaven. | ||
+ | I was about to speak, when--" | ||
+ | Now at the point I meant," | ||
+ | And bade the gondolieri cease to row. | ||
+ | "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well | ||
+ | If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." | ||
+ | I look' | ||
+ | A building on an island; such a one | ||
+ | As age to age might add, for uses vile, | ||
+ | A windowless, deform' | ||
+ | And on the top an open tower, where hung | ||
+ | A bell, which in the radiance sway'd and swung; | ||
+ | We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue: | ||
+ | The broad sun sunk behind it, and it toll' | ||
+ | In strong and black relief. "What we behold | ||
+ | Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower," | ||
+ | Said Maddalo, "and ever at this hour | ||
+ | Those who may cross the water, hear that bell | ||
+ | Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, | ||
+ | To vespers." | ||
+ | In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they | ||
+ | To their stern Maker," | ||
+ | You talk as in years past," said Maddalo. | ||
+ | " 'Tis strange men change not. You were ever still | ||
+ | Among Christ' | ||
+ | A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim | ||
+ | Beware of Providence." | ||
+ | But the gay smile had faded in his eye. | ||
+ | "And such," he cried, "is our mortality, | ||
+ | And this must be the emblem and the sign | ||
+ | Of what should be eternal and divine! | ||
+ | And like that black and dreary bell, the soul, | ||
+ | Hung in a heaven-illumin' | ||
+ | Our thoughts and our desires to meet below | ||
+ | Round the rent heart and pray--as madmen do | ||
+ | For what? they know not--till the night of death, | ||
+ | As sunset that strange vision, severeth | ||
+ | Our memory from itself, and us from all | ||
+ | We sought and yet were baffled." | ||
+ | The sense of what he said, although I mar | ||
+ | The force of his expressions. The broad star | ||
+ | Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill, | ||
+ | And the black bell became invisible, | ||
+ | And the red tower look'd gray, and all between | ||
+ | The churches, ships and palaces were seen | ||
+ | Huddled in gloom; | ||
+ | The orange hues of heaven sunk silently. | ||
+ | We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola | ||
+ | Convey' | ||
+ | |||
+ | The following morn was rainy, cold and dim: | ||
+ | Ere Maddalo arose, I call'd on him, | ||
+ | And whilst I waited with his child I play' | ||
+ | A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made, | ||
+ | A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being, | ||
+ | Graceful without design and unforeseeing, | ||
+ | With eyes--Oh speak not of her eyes!--which seem | ||
+ | Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam | ||
+ | With such deep meaning, as we never see | ||
+ | But in the human countenance: | ||
+ | She was a special favourite: I had nurs' | ||
+ | Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first | ||
+ | To this bleak world; and she yet seem'd to know | ||
+ | On second sight her ancient playfellow, | ||
+ | Less chang' | ||
+ | For after her first shyness was worn out | ||
+ | We sate there, rolling billiard balls about, | ||
+ | When the Count enter' | ||
+ | "The word you spoke last night might well have cast | ||
+ | A darkness on my spirit--if man be | ||
+ | The passive thing you say, I should not see | ||
+ | Much harm in the religions and old saws | ||
+ | (Though I may never own such leaden laws) | ||
+ | Which break a teachless nature to the yoke: | ||
+ | Mine is another faith" | ||
+ | And noting he replied not, added: "See | ||
+ | This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free; | ||
+ | She spends a happy time with little care, | ||
+ | While we to such sick thoughts subjected are | ||
+ | As came on you last night. It is our will | ||
+ | That thus enchains us to permitted ill. | ||
+ | We might be otherwise. We might be all | ||
+ | We dream of happy, high, majestical. | ||
+ | Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek | ||
+ | But in our mind? and if we were not weak | ||
+ | Should we be less in deed than in desire?" | ||
+ | "Ay, if we were not weak--and we aspire | ||
+ | How vainly to be strong!" | ||
+ | "You talk Utopia." | ||
+ | I then rejoin' | ||
+ | How strong the chains are which our spirit bind; | ||
+ | Brittle perchance as straw.... We are assur' | ||
+ | Much may be conquer' | ||
+ | Of what degrades and crushes us. We know | ||
+ | That we have power over ourselves to do | ||
+ | And suffer--what, | ||
+ | But something nobler than to live and die: | ||
+ | So taught those kings of old philosophy | ||
+ | Who reign' | ||
+ | And those who suffer with their suffering kind | ||
+ | Yet feel their faith, religion." | ||
+ | Said Maddalo, "my judgement will not bend | ||
+ | To your opinion, though I think you might | ||
+ | Make such a system refutation-tight | ||
+ | As far as words go. I knew one like you | ||
+ | Who to this city came some months ago, | ||
+ | With whom I argu'd in this sort, and he | ||
+ | Is now gone mad--and so he answer' | ||
+ | Poor fellow! but if you would like to go | ||
+ | We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show | ||
+ | How vain are such aspiring theories." | ||
+ | "I hope to prove the induction otherwise, | ||
+ | And that a want of that true theory, still, | ||
+ | Which seeks a 'soul of goodness' | ||
+ | Or in himself or others, has thus bow' | ||
+ | His being. There are some by nature proud, | ||
+ | Who patient in all else demand but this-- | ||
+ | To love and be belov' | ||
+ | And being scorn' | ||
+ | Some living death? this is not destiny | ||
+ | But man's own wilful ill." | ||
+ | |||
+ | As thus I spoke | ||
+ | Servants announc' | ||
+ | Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea | ||
+ | Sail'd to the island where the madhouse stands.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++52 The Fitful Alternations Of The Rain| | ++++52 The Fitful Alternations Of The Rain| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | When the chill wind, languid as with pain | ||
+ | Of its own heavy moisture, here and there | ||
+ | Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++53 To| | ++++53 To| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Vibrates in the memory - | ||
+ | Odours, when sweet violets sicken, | ||
+ | Live within the sense they quicken. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, | ||
+ | Are heaped for the beloved' | ||
+ | And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, | ||
+ | Love itself shall slumber on.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++54 Hymn Of Pan| | ++++54 Hymn Of Pan| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | We come, we come; | ||
+ | From the river-girt islands, | ||
+ | Where loud waves are dumb | ||
+ | Listening to my sweet pipings. | ||
+ | The wind in the reeds and the rushes, | ||
+ | The bees on the bells of thyme, | ||
+ | The birds on the myrtle-bushes, | ||
+ | The cicale above in the lime, | ||
+ | And the lizards below in the grass, | ||
+ | Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, | ||
+ | Listening to my sweet pipings. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Liquid Peneus was flowing, | ||
+ | And all dark Temple lay | ||
+ | In Pelion' | ||
+ | The light of the dying day, | ||
+ | Speeded by my sweet pipings. | ||
+ | The Sileni and Sylvans and fauns, | ||
+ | And the Nymphs of the woods and wave | ||
+ | To the edge of the moist river-lawns, | ||
+ | And the brink of the dewy caves, | ||
+ | And all that did then attend and follow, | ||
+ | Were silent with love,--as you now, Apollo, | ||
+ | With envy of my sweet pipings. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I sang of the dancing stars, | ||
+ | I sang of the dedal earth, | ||
+ | And of heaven, and the Giant wars, | ||
+ | And love, and death, and birth. | ||
+ | And then I changed my pipings, | ||
+ | Singing how down the vale of Maenalus | ||
+ | I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed: | ||
+ | Gods and men, we are all deluded thus; | ||
+ | It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed. | ||
+ | All wept--as I think both ye now would, | ||
+ | If envy or age had not frozen your blood-- | ||
+ | At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++55 Remorse| | ++++55 Remorse| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even: | ||
+ | Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, | ||
+ | And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. | ||
+ | Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries, ' | ||
+ | Tempt not with one last tear thy friend' | ||
+ | Thy lover' | ||
+ | Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Away, away! to thy sad and silent home; | ||
+ | Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; | ||
+ | Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, | ||
+ | And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. | ||
+ | The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head, | ||
+ | The blooms of dewy Spring shall gleam beneath thy feet: | ||
+ | But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, | ||
+ | Ere midnight' | ||
+ | meet. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose, | ||
+ | For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep; | ||
+ | Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows; | ||
+ | Whatever moves or toils or grieves hath its appointed sleep. | ||
+ | Thou in the grave shalt rest:--yet, till the phantoms flee, | ||
+ | Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile, | ||
+ | Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are not free | ||
+ | From the music of two voices, and the light of one sweet smile.</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++56 Hellas| | ++++56 Hellas| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | The golden years return, | ||
+ | The earth doth like a snake renew | ||
+ | Her winter weeds outworn; | ||
+ | Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam | ||
+ | Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. | ||
+ | |||
+ | A brighter Hellas rears its mountains | ||
+ | From waves serener far; | ||
+ | A new Peneus rolls his fountains | ||
+ | Against the morning star; | ||
+ | Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep | ||
+ | Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. | ||
+ | |||
+ | A loftier Argo cleaves the main, | ||
+ | Fraught with a later prize; | ||
+ | Another Orpheus sings again, | ||
+ | And loves, and weeps, and dies; | ||
+ | A new Ulysses leaves once more | ||
+ | Calypso for his native shore. | ||
+ | |||
+ | O write no more the tale of Troy, | ||
+ | If earth Death' | ||
+ | Nor mix with Laian rage the joy | ||
+ | Which dawns upon the free, | ||
+ | Although a subtler Sphinx renew | ||
+ | Riddles of death Thebes never knew. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Another Athens shall arise, | ||
+ | And to remoter time | ||
+ | Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, | ||
+ | The splendour of its prime; | ||
+ | And leave, if naught so bright may live, | ||
+ | All earth can take or Heaven can give. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Saturn and Love their long repose | ||
+ | Shall burst, more bright and good | ||
+ | Than all who fell, than One who rose, | ||
+ | Than many unsubdued: | ||
+ | Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, | ||
+ | But votive tears and symbol flowers. | ||
+ | |||
+ | O cease! must hate and death return? | ||
+ | Cease! must men kill and die? | ||
+ | Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn | ||
+ | Of bitter prophecy! | ||
+ | The world is weary of the past-- | ||
+ | O might it die or rest at last! | ||
+ | </ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++57 Mont Blanc: Lines Writen in the Vale of Chamouni| | ++++57 Mont Blanc: Lines Writen in the Vale of Chamouni| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | The everlasting universe of things | ||
+ | Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, | ||
+ | Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom-- | ||
+ | Now lending splendour, where from secret springs | ||
+ | The source of human thought its tribute brings | ||
+ | Of waters--with a sound but half its own, | ||
+ | Such as a feeble brook will oft assume, | ||
+ | In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, | ||
+ | Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, | ||
+ | Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river | ||
+ | Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. | ||
+ | II | ||
+ | |||
+ | Thus thou, Ravine of Arve--dark, deep Ravine-- | ||
+ | Thou many-colour' | ||
+ | Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail | ||
+ | Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, | ||
+ | Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down | ||
+ | From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, | ||
+ | Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame | ||
+ | Of lightning through the tempest; | ||
+ | Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, | ||
+ | Children of elder time, in whose devotion | ||
+ | The chainless winds still come and ever came | ||
+ | To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging | ||
+ | To hear--an old and solemn harmony; | ||
+ | Thine earthly rainbows stretch' | ||
+ | Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil | ||
+ | Robes some unsculptur' | ||
+ | Which when the voices of the desert fail | ||
+ | Wraps all in its own deep eternity; | ||
+ | Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, | ||
+ | A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame; | ||
+ | Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, | ||
+ | Thou art the path of that unresting sound-- | ||
+ | Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee | ||
+ | I seem as in a trance sublime and strange | ||
+ | To muse on my own separate fantasy, | ||
+ | My own, my human mind, which passively | ||
+ | Now renders and receives fast influencings, | ||
+ | Holding an unremitting interchange | ||
+ | With the clear universe of things around; | ||
+ | One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings | ||
+ | Now float above thy darkness, and now rest | ||
+ | Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, | ||
+ | In the still cave of the witch Poesy, | ||
+ | Seeking among the shadows that pass by | ||
+ | Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, | ||
+ | Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast | ||
+ | From which they fled recalls them, thou art there! | ||
+ | III | ||
+ | |||
+ | Some say that gleams of a remoter world | ||
+ | Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber, | ||
+ | And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber | ||
+ | Of those who wake and live.--I look on high; | ||
+ | Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl' | ||
+ | The veil of life and death? or do I lie | ||
+ | In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep | ||
+ | Spread far around and inaccessibly | ||
+ | Its circles? For the very spirit fails, | ||
+ | Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep | ||
+ | That vanishes among the viewless gales! | ||
+ | Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, | ||
+ | Mont Blanc appears--still, | ||
+ | Its subject mountains their unearthly forms | ||
+ | Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between | ||
+ | Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, | ||
+ | Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread | ||
+ | And wind among the accumulated steeps; | ||
+ | A desert peopled by the storms alone, | ||
+ | Save when the eagle brings some hunter' | ||
+ | And the wolf tracks her there--how hideously | ||
+ | Its shapes are heap'd around! rude, bare, and high, | ||
+ | Ghastly, and scarr' | ||
+ | Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young | ||
+ | Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea | ||
+ | Of fire envelop once this silent snow? | ||
+ | None can reply--all seems eternal now. | ||
+ | The wilderness has a mysterious tongue | ||
+ | Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, | ||
+ | So solemn, so serene, that man may be, | ||
+ | But for such faith, with Nature reconcil' | ||
+ | Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal | ||
+ | Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood | ||
+ | By all, but which the wise, and great, and good | ||
+ | Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. | ||
+ | IV | ||
+ | |||
+ | The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, | ||
+ | Ocean, and all the living things that dwell | ||
+ | Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain, | ||
+ | Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, | ||
+ | The torpor of the year when feeble dreams | ||
+ | Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep | ||
+ | Holds every future leaf and flower; the bound | ||
+ | With which from that detested trance they leap; | ||
+ | The works and ways of man, their death and birth, | ||
+ | And that of him and all that his may be; | ||
+ | All things that move and breathe with toil and sound | ||
+ | Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. | ||
+ | Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, | ||
+ | Remote, serene, and inaccessible: | ||
+ | And this, the naked countenance of earth, | ||
+ | On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains | ||
+ | Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep | ||
+ | Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, | ||
+ | Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice | ||
+ | Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power | ||
+ | Have pil'd: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, | ||
+ | A city of death, distinct with many a tower | ||
+ | And wall impregnable of beaming ice. | ||
+ | Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin | ||
+ | Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky | ||
+ | Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing | ||
+ | Its destin' | ||
+ | Branchless and shatter' | ||
+ | From yon remotest waste, have overthrown | ||
+ | The limits of the dead and living world, | ||
+ | Never to be reclaim' | ||
+ | Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; | ||
+ | Their food and their retreat for ever gone, | ||
+ | So much of life and joy is lost. The race | ||
+ | Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling | ||
+ | Vanish, like smoke before the tempest' | ||
+ | And their place is not known. Below, vast caves | ||
+ | Shine in the rushing torrents' | ||
+ | Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling | ||
+ | Meet in the vale, and one majestic River, | ||
+ | The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever | ||
+ | Rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves, | ||
+ | Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. | ||
+ | V | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:--the power is there, | ||
+ | The still and solemn power of many sights, | ||
+ | And many sounds, and much of life and death. | ||
+ | In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, | ||
+ | In the lone glare of day, the snows descend | ||
+ | Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, | ||
+ | Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, | ||
+ | Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend | ||
+ | Silently there, and heap the snow with breath | ||
+ | Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home | ||
+ | The voiceless lightning in these solitudes | ||
+ | Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods | ||
+ | Over the snow. The secret Strength of things | ||
+ | Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome | ||
+ | Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! | ||
+ | And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, | ||
+ | If to the human mind's imaginings | ||
+ | Silence and solitude were vacancy?</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++58 Night| | ++++58 Night| | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Spirit of Night! | ||
+ | Out of the misty eastern cave,-- | ||
+ | Where, all the long and lone daylight, | ||
+ | Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear | ||
+ | Which make thee terrible and dear,-- | ||
+ | Swift be thy flight! | ||
+ | |||
+ | Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, | ||
+ | Star-inwrought! | ||
+ | Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; | ||
+ | Kiss her until she be wearied out. | ||
+ | Then wander o'er city and sea and land, | ||
+ | Touching all with thine opiate wand-- | ||
+ | Come, long-sought! | ||
+ | |||
+ | When I arose and saw the dawn, | ||
+ | I sigh'd for thee; | ||
+ | When light rode high, and the dew was gone, | ||
+ | And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, | ||
+ | And the weary Day turn'd to his rest, | ||
+ | Lingering like an unloved guest, | ||
+ | I sigh'd for thee. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Thy brother Death came, and cried, | ||
+ | ' | ||
+ | Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, | ||
+ | Murmur' | ||
+ | 'Shall I nestle near thy side? | ||
+ | Wouldst thou me?' | ||
+ | 'No, not thee!' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Death will come when thou art dead, | ||
+ | Soon, too soon-- | ||
+ | Sleep will come when thou art fled. | ||
+ | Of neither would I ask the boon | ||
+ | I ask of thee, beloved Night-- | ||
+ | Swift be thine approaching flight, | ||
+ | Come soon, soon!</ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++59 Adonais: | ++++59 Adonais: | ||
- | < | + | < |
+ | Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears | ||
+ | Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! | ||
+ | And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years | ||
+ | To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, | ||
+ | And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me | ||
+ | Died Adonais; till the Future dares | ||
+ | Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be | ||
+ | An echo and a light unto eternity!" | ||
+ | |||
+ | Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, | ||
+ | When thy Son lay, pierc' | ||
+ | In darkness? where was lorn Urania | ||
+ | When Adonais died? With veiled eyes, | ||
+ | 'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise | ||
+ | She sate, while one, with soft enamour' | ||
+ | Rekindled all the fading melodies, | ||
+ | With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, | ||
+ | He had adorn' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Oh, weep for Adonais--he is dead! | ||
+ | Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! | ||
+ | Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed | ||
+ | Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep | ||
+ | Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep; | ||
+ | For he is gone, where all things wise and fair | ||
+ | Descend--oh, | ||
+ | Will yet restore him to the vital air; | ||
+ | Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Most musical of mourners, weep again! | ||
+ | Lament anew, Urania! He died, | ||
+ | Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, | ||
+ | Blind, old and lonely, when his country' | ||
+ | The priest, the slave and the liberticide, | ||
+ | Trampled and mock'd with many a loathed rite | ||
+ | Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified, | ||
+ | Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite | ||
+ | Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Most musical of mourners, weep anew! | ||
+ | Not all to that bright station dar'd to climb; | ||
+ | And happier they their happiness who knew, | ||
+ | Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time | ||
+ | In which suns perish' | ||
+ | Struck by the envious wrath of man or god, | ||
+ | Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime; | ||
+ | And some yet live, treading the thorny road, | ||
+ | Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. | ||
+ | |||
+ | But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perish' | ||
+ | The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, | ||
+ | Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherish' | ||
+ | And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew; | ||
+ | Most musical of mourners, weep anew! | ||
+ | Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, | ||
+ | The bloom, whose petals nipp'd before they blew | ||
+ | Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste; | ||
+ | The broken lily lies--the storm is overpast. | ||
+ | |||
+ | To that high Capital, where kingly Death | ||
+ | Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, | ||
+ | He came; and bought, with price of purest breath, | ||
+ | A grave among the eternal.--Come away! | ||
+ | Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day | ||
+ | Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still | ||
+ | He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay; | ||
+ | Awake him not! surely he takes his fill | ||
+ | Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. | ||
+ | |||
+ | He will awake no more, oh, never more! | ||
+ | Within the twilight chamber spreads apace | ||
+ | The shadow of white Death, and at the door | ||
+ | Invisible Corruption waits to trace | ||
+ | His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place; | ||
+ | The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe | ||
+ | Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface | ||
+ | So fair a prey, till darkness and the law | ||
+ | Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Oh, weep for Adonais! The quick Dreams, | ||
+ | The passion-winged Ministers of thought, | ||
+ | Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams | ||
+ | Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught | ||
+ | The love which was its music, wander not-- | ||
+ | Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, | ||
+ | But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot | ||
+ | Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, | ||
+ | They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again. | ||
+ | |||
+ | And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, | ||
+ | And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries, | ||
+ | "Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead; | ||
+ | See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, | ||
+ | Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies | ||
+ | A tear some Dream has loosen' | ||
+ | Lost Angel of a ruin'd Paradise! | ||
+ | She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain | ||
+ | She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. | ||
+ | |||
+ | One from a lucid urn of starry dew | ||
+ | Wash'd his light limbs as if embalming them; | ||
+ | Another clipp' | ||
+ | The wreath upon him, like an anadem, | ||
+ | Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; | ||
+ | Another in her wilful grief would break | ||
+ | Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem | ||
+ | A greater loss with one which was more weak; | ||
+ | And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Another Splendour on his mouth alit, | ||
+ | That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath | ||
+ | Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, | ||
+ | And pass into the panting heart beneath | ||
+ | With lightning and with music: the damp death | ||
+ | Quench' | ||
+ | And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath | ||
+ | Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips, | ||
+ | It flush' | ||
+ | |||
+ | And others came . . . Desires and Adorations, | ||
+ | Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies, | ||
+ | Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations | ||
+ | Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies; | ||
+ | And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, | ||
+ | And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam | ||
+ | Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, | ||
+ | Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem | ||
+ | Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. | ||
+ | |||
+ | All he had lov'd, and moulded into thought, | ||
+ | From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, | ||
+ | Lamented Adonais. Morning sought | ||
+ | Her eastern watch-tower, | ||
+ | Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, | ||
+ | Dimm'd the aëreal eyes that kindle day; | ||
+ | Afar the melancholy thunder moan' | ||
+ | Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, | ||
+ | And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, | ||
+ | And feeds her grief with his remember' | ||
+ | And will no more reply to winds or fountains, | ||
+ | Or amorous birds perch' | ||
+ | Or herdsman' | ||
+ | Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear | ||
+ | Than those for whose disdain she pin'd away | ||
+ | Into a shadow of all sounds: a drear | ||
+ | Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down | ||
+ | Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, | ||
+ | Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown, | ||
+ | For whom should she have wak'd the sullen year? | ||
+ | To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear | ||
+ | Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both | ||
+ | Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere | ||
+ | Amid the faint companions of their youth, | ||
+ | With dew all turn'd to tears; odour, to sighing ruth. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Thy spirit' | ||
+ | Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; | ||
+ | Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale | ||
+ | Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain | ||
+ | Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, | ||
+ | Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, | ||
+ | As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain | ||
+ | Light on his head who pierc' | ||
+ | And scar'd the angel soul that was its earthly guest! | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, | ||
+ | But grief returns with the revolving year; | ||
+ | The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; | ||
+ | The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear; | ||
+ | Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' | ||
+ | The amorous birds now pair in every brake, | ||
+ | And build their mossy homes in field and brere; | ||
+ | And the green lizard, and the golden snake, | ||
+ | Like unimprison' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean | ||
+ | A quickening life from the Earth' | ||
+ | As it has ever done, with change and motion, | ||
+ | From the great morning of the world when first | ||
+ | God dawn'd on Chaos; in its stream immers' | ||
+ | The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light; | ||
+ | All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst; | ||
+ | Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight, | ||
+ | The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The leprous corpse, touch' | ||
+ | Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; | ||
+ | Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour | ||
+ | Is chang' | ||
+ | And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath; | ||
+ | Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows | ||
+ | Be as a sword consum' | ||
+ | By sightless lightning? | ||
+ | A moment, then is quench' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Alas! that all we lov'd of him should be, | ||
+ | But for our grief, as if it had not been, | ||
+ | And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me! | ||
+ | Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene | ||
+ | The actors or spectators? Great and mean | ||
+ | Meet mass'd in death, who lends what life must borrow. | ||
+ | As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, | ||
+ | Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, | ||
+ | Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. | ||
+ | |||
+ | He will awake no more, oh, never more! | ||
+ | "Wake thou," cried Misery, " | ||
+ | Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart' | ||
+ | A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs." | ||
+ | And all the Dreams that watch' | ||
+ | And all the Echoes whom their sister' | ||
+ | Had held in holy silence, cried: " | ||
+ | Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, | ||
+ | From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung. | ||
+ | |||
+ | She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs | ||
+ | Out of the East, and follows wild and drear | ||
+ | The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, | ||
+ | Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, | ||
+ | Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear | ||
+ | So struck, so rous' | ||
+ | So sadden' | ||
+ | Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way | ||
+ | Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Out of her secret Paradise she sped, | ||
+ | Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, | ||
+ | And human hearts, which to her aery tread | ||
+ | Yielding not, wounded the invisible | ||
+ | Palms of her tender feet where' | ||
+ | And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they, | ||
+ | Rent the soft Form they never could repel, | ||
+ | Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, | ||
+ | Pav'd with eternal flowers that undeserving way. | ||
+ | |||
+ | In the death-chamber for a moment Death, | ||
+ | Sham'd by the presence of that living Might, | ||
+ | Blush' | ||
+ | Revisited those lips, and Life's pale light | ||
+ | Flash' | ||
+ | "Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, | ||
+ | As silent lightning leaves the starless night! | ||
+ | Leave me not!" cried Urania: her distress | ||
+ | Rous'd Death: Death rose and smil' | ||
+ | |||
+ | "Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again; | ||
+ | Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; | ||
+ | And in my heartless breast and burning brain | ||
+ | That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, | ||
+ | With food of saddest memory kept alive, | ||
+ | Now thou art dead, as if it were a part | ||
+ | Of thee, my Adonais! I would give | ||
+ | All that I am to be as thou now art! | ||
+ | But I am chain' | ||
+ | |||
+ | "O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, | ||
+ | Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men | ||
+ | Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart | ||
+ | Dare the unpastur' | ||
+ | Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then | ||
+ | Wisdom the mirror' | ||
+ | Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when | ||
+ | Thy spirit should have fill'd its crescent sphere, | ||
+ | The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer. | ||
+ | |||
+ | "The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; | ||
+ | The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead; | ||
+ | The vultures to the conqueror' | ||
+ | Who feed where Desolation first has fed, | ||
+ | And whose wings rain contagion; how they fled, | ||
+ | When, like Apollo, from his golden bow | ||
+ | The Pythian of the age one arrow sped | ||
+ | And smil' | ||
+ | They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low. | ||
+ | |||
+ | "The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; | ||
+ | He sets, and each ephemeral insect then | ||
+ | Is gather' | ||
+ | And the immortal stars awake again; | ||
+ | So is it in the world of living men: | ||
+ | A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight | ||
+ | Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when | ||
+ | It sinks, the swarms that dimm'd or shar'd its light | ||
+ | Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Thus ceas'd she: and the mountain shepherds came, | ||
+ | Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent; | ||
+ | The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame | ||
+ | Over his living head like Heaven is bent, | ||
+ | An early but enduring monument, | ||
+ | Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song | ||
+ | In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent | ||
+ | The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, | ||
+ | And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, | ||
+ | A phantom among men; companionless | ||
+ | As the last cloud of an expiring storm | ||
+ | Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, | ||
+ | Had gaz'd on Nature' | ||
+ | Actaeon-like, | ||
+ | With feeble steps o'er the world' | ||
+ | And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, | ||
+ | Pursu' | ||
+ | |||
+ | A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift-- | ||
+ | A Love in desolation mask' | ||
+ | Girt round with weakness--it can scarce uplift | ||
+ | The weight of the superincumbent hour; | ||
+ | It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, | ||
+ | A breaking billow; even whilst we speak | ||
+ | Is it not broken? On the withering flower | ||
+ | The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek | ||
+ | The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. | ||
+ | |||
+ | His head was bound with pansies overblown, | ||
+ | And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; | ||
+ | And a light spear topp'd with a cypress cone, | ||
+ | Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew | ||
+ | Yet dripping with the forest' | ||
+ | Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart | ||
+ | Shook the weak hand that grasp' | ||
+ | He came the last, neglected and apart; | ||
+ | A herd-abandon' | ||
+ | |||
+ | All stood aloof, and at his partial moan | ||
+ | Smil'd through their tears; well knew that gentle band | ||
+ | Who in another' | ||
+ | As in the accents of an unknown land | ||
+ | He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scann' | ||
+ | The Stranger' | ||
+ | He answer' | ||
+ | Made bare his branded and ensanguin' | ||
+ | Which was like Cain's or Christ' | ||
+ | |||
+ | What softer voice is hush'd over the dead? | ||
+ | Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? | ||
+ | What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed, | ||
+ | In mockery of monumental stone, | ||
+ | The heavy heart heaving without a moan? | ||
+ | If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, | ||
+ | Taught, sooth' | ||
+ | Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs, | ||
+ | The silence of that heart' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Our Adonais has drunk poison--oh! | ||
+ | What deaf and viperous murderer could crown | ||
+ | Life's early cup with such a draught of woe? | ||
+ | The nameless worm would now itself disown: | ||
+ | It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone | ||
+ | Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong, | ||
+ | But what was howling in one breast alone, | ||
+ | Silent with expectation of the song, | ||
+ | Whose master' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! | ||
+ | Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, | ||
+ | Thou noteless blot on a remember' | ||
+ | But be thyself, and know thyself to be! | ||
+ | And ever at thy season be thou free | ||
+ | To spill the venom when thy fangs o' | ||
+ | Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee; | ||
+ | Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, | ||
+ | And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt--as now. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Nor let us weep that our delight is fled | ||
+ | Far from these carrion kites that scream below; | ||
+ | He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; | ||
+ | Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. | ||
+ | Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow | ||
+ | Back to the burning fountain whence it came, | ||
+ | A portion of the Eternal, which must glow | ||
+ | Through time and change, unquenchably the same, | ||
+ | Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep, | ||
+ | He hath awaken' | ||
+ | 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep | ||
+ | With phantoms an unprofitable strife, | ||
+ | And in mad trance, strike with our spirit' | ||
+ | Invulnerable nothings. We decay | ||
+ | Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief | ||
+ | Convulse us and consume us day by day, | ||
+ | And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. | ||
+ | |||
+ | He has outsoar' | ||
+ | Envy and calumny and hate and pain, | ||
+ | And that unrest which men miscall delight, | ||
+ | Can touch him not and torture not again; | ||
+ | From the contagion of the world' | ||
+ | He is secure, and now can never mourn | ||
+ | A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; | ||
+ | Nor, when the spirit' | ||
+ | With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. | ||
+ | |||
+ | He lives, he wakes--' | ||
+ | Mourn not for Adonais. Thou young Dawn, | ||
+ | Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee | ||
+ | The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; | ||
+ | Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! | ||
+ | Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air, | ||
+ | Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown | ||
+ | O'er the abandon' | ||
+ | Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! | ||
+ | |||
+ | He is made one with Nature: there is heard | ||
+ | His voice in all her music, from the moan | ||
+ | Of thunder, to the song of night' | ||
+ | He is a presence to be felt and known | ||
+ | In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, | ||
+ | Spreading itself where' | ||
+ | Which has withdrawn his being to its own; | ||
+ | Which wields the world with never-wearied love, | ||
+ | Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. | ||
+ | |||
+ | He is a portion of the loveliness | ||
+ | Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear | ||
+ | His part, while the one Spirit' | ||
+ | Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there | ||
+ | All new successions to the forms they wear; | ||
+ | Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight | ||
+ | To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; | ||
+ | And bursting in its beauty and its might | ||
+ | From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven' | ||
+ | |||
+ | The splendours of the firmament of time | ||
+ | May be eclips' | ||
+ | Like stars to their appointed height they climb, | ||
+ | And death is a low mist which cannot blot | ||
+ | The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought | ||
+ | Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, | ||
+ | And love and life contend in it for what | ||
+ | Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there | ||
+ | And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The inheritors of unfulfill' | ||
+ | Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, | ||
+ | Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton | ||
+ | Rose pale, his solemn agony had not | ||
+ | Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought | ||
+ | And as he fell and as he liv'd and lov' | ||
+ | Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, | ||
+ | Arose; and Lucan, by his death approv' | ||
+ | Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reprov' | ||
+ | |||
+ | And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, | ||
+ | But whose transmitted effluence cannot die | ||
+ | So long as fire outlives the parent spark, | ||
+ | Rose, rob'd in dazzling immortality. | ||
+ | "Thou art become as one of us," they cry, | ||
+ | "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long | ||
+ | Swung blind in unascended majesty, | ||
+ | Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song. | ||
+ | Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!" | ||
+ | |||
+ | Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth, | ||
+ | Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright. | ||
+ | Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; | ||
+ | As from a centre, dart thy spirit' | ||
+ | Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might | ||
+ | Satiate the void circumference: | ||
+ | Even to a point within our day and night; | ||
+ | And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink | ||
+ | When hope has kindled hope, and lur'd thee to the brink. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, | ||
+ | Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought | ||
+ | That ages, empires and religions there | ||
+ | Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; | ||
+ | For such as he can lend--they borrow not | ||
+ | Glory from those who made the world their prey; | ||
+ | And he is gather' | ||
+ | Who wag'd contention with their time's decay, | ||
+ | And of the past are all that cannot pass away. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Go thou to Rome--at once the Paradise, | ||
+ | The grave, the city, and the wilderness; | ||
+ | And where its wrecks like shatter' | ||
+ | And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress | ||
+ | The bones of Desolation' | ||
+ | Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead | ||
+ | Thy footsteps to a slope of green access | ||
+ | Where, like an infant' | ||
+ | A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; | ||
+ | |||
+ | And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time | ||
+ | Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; | ||
+ | And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, | ||
+ | Pavilioning the dust of him who plann' | ||
+ | This refuge for his memory, doth stand | ||
+ | Like flame transform' | ||
+ | A field is spread, on which a newer band | ||
+ | Have pitch' | ||
+ | Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguish' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet | ||
+ | To have outgrown the sorrow which consign' | ||
+ | Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, | ||
+ | Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, | ||
+ | Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find | ||
+ | Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, | ||
+ | Of tears and gall. From the world' | ||
+ | Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. | ||
+ | What Adonais is, why fear we to become? | ||
+ | |||
+ | The One remains, the many change and pass; | ||
+ | Heaven' | ||
+ | Life, like a dome of many-colour' | ||
+ | Stains the white radiance of Eternity, | ||
+ | Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die, | ||
+ | If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! | ||
+ | Follow where all is fled!--Rome' | ||
+ | Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak | ||
+ | The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? | ||
+ | Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here | ||
+ | They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! | ||
+ | A light is pass'd from the revolving year, | ||
+ | And man, and woman; and what still is dear | ||
+ | Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. | ||
+ | The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: | ||
+ | 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, | ||
+ | No more let Life divide what Death can join together. | ||
+ | |||
+ | That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, | ||
+ | That Beauty in which all things work and move, | ||
+ | That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse | ||
+ | Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love | ||
+ | Which through the web of being blindly wove | ||
+ | By man and beast and earth and air and sea, | ||
+ | Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of | ||
+ | The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me, | ||
+ | Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The breath whose might I have invok' | ||
+ | Descends on me; my spirit' | ||
+ | Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng | ||
+ | Whose sails were never to the tempest given; | ||
+ | The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! | ||
+ | I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; | ||
+ | Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, | ||
+ | The soul of Adonais, like a star, | ||
+ | Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. | ||
+ | </ | ||
++++ | ++++ | ||
++++60 Song| | ++++60 Song| |