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--- 문학:영문학:영국:셸리 [2020/09/08 20:27]
clayeryan@gmail.com
+++ 문학:영문학:영국:셸리 [2020/10/08 19:38] (현재)
clayeryan@gmail.com [작품목록]
@@ 줄 54: / 줄 54: @@
 ++++1	Ozymandias|
+<poem>
+I met a traveller from an antique land
+Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
+Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
+Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
+And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
+Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
+Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
+The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
+And on the pedestal these words appear:
+'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
+Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
+Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
+Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
+The lone and level sands stretch far away."
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++2	Good-Night|
+<poem>Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
+Which severs those it should unite;
+Let us remain together still,
+Then it will be good night.
+How can I call the lone night good,
+Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
+Be it not said, thought, understood --
+Then it will be -- good night.
+To hearts which near each other move
+From evening close to morning light,
+The night is good; because, my love,
+They never say good-night.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++3	Love's Philosophy|
+<poem>
+The fountains mingle with the river
+And the rivers with the ocean,
+The winds of Heaven mix for ever
+With a sweet emotion;
+Nothing in the world is single,
+All things by a law divine
+In one spirit meet and mingle -
+Why not I with thine?
+See the mountains kiss high Heaven
+And the waves clasp one another;
+No sister-flower would be forgiven
+If it disdained its brother;
+And the sunlight clasps the earth,
+And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
+What are all these kissings worth
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++4	Time Long Past|
+<poem>
+Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
+Is Time long past.
+A tone which is now forever fled,
+A hope which is now forever past,
+A love so sweet it could not last,
+Was Time long past.
+There were sweet dreams in the night
+Of Time long past:
+And, was it sadness or delight,
+Each day a shadow onward cast
+Which made us wish it yet might last--
+That Time long past.
+There is regret, almost remorse,
+For Time long past.
+'Tis like a child's belovèd corse
+A father watches, till at last
+Beauty is like remembrance, cast
+From Time long past.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++5	Ode To The West Wind|
+<poem>
+I
+O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
+Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
+Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
+Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
+Pestilence-stricken multitudes: 0 thou,
+Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
+The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
+Each like a corpse within its grave,until
+Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
+Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
+(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
+With living hues and odours plain and hill:
+Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
+Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!
+II
+Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
+Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,
+Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
+Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
+On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
+Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
+Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
+Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
+The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
+Of the dying year, to which this closing night
+Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
+Vaulted with all thy congregated might
+Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
+Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!
+III
+Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
+The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
+Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
+Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
+And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
+Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
+All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
+So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
+For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
+Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
+The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
+The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
+Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
+And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
+IV
+If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
+If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
+A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
+The impulse of thy strength, only less free
+Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
+I were as in my boyhood, and could be
+The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
+As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
+Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
+As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
+Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
+I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
+A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
+One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
+V
+Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
+What if my leaves are falling like its own!
+The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
+Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
+Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
+My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
+Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
+Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
+And, by the incantation of this verse,
+Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
+Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
+Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
+The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
+If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
+</poem>
 ++++
-++++6	To A Skylark|
+++++6	To A Skylark|<poem>
+Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
+Bird thou never wert,
+That from heaven, or near it,
+Pourest thy full heart
+In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
+Higher still and higher
+From the earth thou springest
+Like a cloud of fire;
+The blue deep thou wingest,
+And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
+In the golden lightning
+Of the sunken sun,
+O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
+Thou dost float and run,
+Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
+The pale purple even
+Melts around thy flight;
+Like a star of heaven
+In the broad daylight
+Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight --
+Keen as are the arrows
+Of that silver sphere
+Whose intense lamp narrows
+In the white dawn clear
+Until we hardly see -- we feel that it is there.
+All the earth and air
+With thy voice is loud,
+As, when night is bare,
+From one lonely cloud
+The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
+What thou art we know not;
+What is most like thee?
+From rainbow clouds there flow not
+Drops so bright to see
+As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
+Like a poet hidden
+In the light of thought,
+Singing hymns unbidden,
+Till the world is wrought
+To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
+Like a high-born maiden
+In a palace tower,
+Soothing her love-laden
+Soul in secret hour
+With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
+Like a glow-worm golden
+In a dell of dew,
+Scattering unbeholden
+Its aerial hue
+Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
+Like a rose embowered
+In its own green leaves,
+By warm winds deflowered,
+Till the scent it gives
+Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves:
+Sound of vernal showers
+On the twinkling grass,
+Rain-awakened flowers,
+All that ever was
+Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
+Teach us, sprite or bird,
+What sweet thoughts are thine:
+I have never heard
+Praise of love or wine
+That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
+Chorus hymeneal
+Or triumphal chaunt
+Matched with thine would be all
+But an empty vaunt --
+A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
+What objects are the fountains
+Of thy happy strain?
+What fields, or waves, or mountains?
+What shapes of sky or plain?
+What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
+With thy clear keen joyance
+Languor cannot be:
+Shadow of annoyance
+Never came near thee:
+Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
+Waking or asleep,
+Thou of death must deem
+Things more true and deep
+Than we mortals dream,
+Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
+We look before and after,
+And pine for what is not:
+Our sincerest laughter
+With some pain is fraught;
+Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
+Yet if we could scorn
+Hate, and pride, and fear;
+If we were things born
+Not to shed a tear,
+I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
+Better than all measures
+Of delightful sound,
+Better than all treasures
+That in books are found,
+Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
+Teach me half the gladness
+That thy brain must know,
+Such harmonious madness
+From my lips would flow
+The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
+</poem>
 ++++
-++++7	Mutability|++++
+++++7	Mutability|
+<poem>
+We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
+How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
+Streaking the darkness radiantly! -yet soon
+Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:
+Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
+Give various response to each varying blast,
+To whose frail frame no second motion brings
+One mood or modulation like the last.
+We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep;
+We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day;
+We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
+Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:
+It is the same! -- For, be it joy or sorrow,
+The path of its departure still is free:
+Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
+Nought may endure but Mutablilty.
+</poem>
+++++
 ++++8	The Cloud|
+<poem>
+I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
+From the seas and the streams;
+I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
+In their noonday dreams.
+From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
+The sweet buds every one,
+When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
+As she dances about the sun.
+I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
+And whiten the green plains under,
+And then again I dissolve it in rain,
+And laugh as I pass in thunder.
+I sift the snow on the mountains below,
+And their great pines groan aghast;
+And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
+While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
+Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
+Lightning, my pilot, sits;
+In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
+It struggles and howls at fits;
+Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
+This pilot is guiding me,
+Lured by the love of the genii that move
+In the depths of the purple sea;
+Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
+Over the lakes and the plains,
+Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
+The Spirit he loves remains;
+And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
+Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
+The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
+And his burning plumes outspread,
+Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
+When the morning star shines dead;
+As on the jag of a mountain crag,
+Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
+An eagle alit one moment may sit
+In the light of its golden wings.
+And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
+Its ardors of rest and of love,
+And the crimson pall of eve may fall
+From the depth of Heaven above,
+With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
+As still as a brooding dove.
+That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
+Whom mortals call the Moon,
+Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
+By the midnight breezes strewn;
+And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
+Which only the angels hear,
+May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
+The stars peep behind her and peer;
+And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
+Like a swarm of golden bees,
+When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
+Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
+Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
+Are each paved with the moon and these.
+I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
+And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
+The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
+When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
+From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
+Over a torrent sea,
+Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,--
+The mountains its columns be.
+The triumphal arch through which I march
+With hurricane, fire, and snow,
+When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
+Is the million-colored bow;
+The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
+While the moist Earth was laughing below.
+I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
+And the nursling of the Sky;
+I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
+I change, but I cannot die.
+For after the rain when with never a stain
+The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
+And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
+Build up the blue dome of air,
+I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
+And out of the caverns of rain,
+Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
+I arise and unbuild it again.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++9	Music, When Soft Voices Die|
+<poem>
+Music, when soft voices die,
+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's bed;
+And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
+Love itself shall slumber on.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++10	Hymn To Intellectual Beauty|
+<poem>
+The awful shadow of some unseen Power
+Floats through unseen among us, -- visiting
+This various world with as inconstant wing
+As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, --
+Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
+It visits with inconstant glance
+Each human heart and countenance;
+Like hues and harmonies of evening, --
+Like clouds in starlight widely spread, --
+Like memory of music fled, --
+Like aught that for its grace may be
+Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
+Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
+With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
+Of human thought or form, -- where art thou gone?
+Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
+This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
+Ask why the sunlight not for ever
+Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
+Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
+Why fear and dream and death and birth
+Cast on the daylight of this earth
+Such gloom, -- why man has such a scope
+For love and hate, despondency and hope?
+No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
+To sage or poet these responses given --
+Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
+Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
+Frail spells -- whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
+From all we hear and all we see,
+Doubt, chance, and mutability.
+Thy light alone -- like mist oe'er the mountains driven,
+Or music by the night-wind sent
+Through strings of some still instrument,
+Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
+Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
+Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
+And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
+Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
+Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
+Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
+Thou messgenger of sympathies,
+That wax and wane in lovers' eyes --
+Thou -- that to human thought art nourishment,
+Like darkness to a dying flame!
+Depart not as thy shadow came,
+Depart not -- lest the grave should be,
+Like life and fear, a dark reality.
+While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
+Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
+And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
+Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
+I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
+I was not heard -- I saw them not --
+When musing deeply on the lot
+Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
+All vital things that wake to bring
+News of birds and blossoming, --
+Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
+I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
+I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
+To thee and thine -- have I not kept the vow?
+With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
+I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
+Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
+Of studious zeal or love's delight
+Outwatched with me the envious night --
+They know that never joy illumed my brow
+Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
+This world from its dark slavery,
+That thou - O awful Loveliness,
+Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.
+The day becomes more solemn and serene
+When noon is past -- there is a harmony
+In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
+Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
+As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
+Thus let thy power, which like the truth
+Of nature on my passive youth
+Descended, to my onward life supply
+Its calm -- to one who worships thee,
+And every form containing thee,
+Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind
+To fear himself, and love all human kind.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++11	I Arise From Dreams Of Thee|
+<poem>
+I arise from dreams of thee
+In the first sweet sleep of night,
+When the winds are breathing low,
+And the stars are shining bright
+I arise from dreams of thee,
+And a spirit in my feet
+Has led me -- who knows how? --
+To thy chamber-window, sweet!
+The wandering airs they faint
+On the dark, the silent stream, --
+The champak odors fall
+Like sweet thoughts in a dream,
+The nightingale's complaint,
+It dies upon her heart,
+As I must die on thine,
+O, beloved as thou art!
+O, lift me from the grass!
+I die, I faint, I fall!
+Let thy love in kisses rain
+On my lips and eyelids pale,
+My cheek is cold and white, alas!
+My Heart beats loud and fast
+Oh! press it close to thine again,
+Where it will break at last!
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++12	To The Moon|
+<poem>
+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?
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++13	The Triumph of Life|
+<poem>
+Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
+Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
+Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
+Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
+The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
+Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
+Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
+To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
+All flowers in field or forest which unclose
+Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
+Swinging their censers in the element,
+With orient incense lit by the new ray
+Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
+Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
+And in succession due, did Continent,
+Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
+The form & character of mortal mould
+Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
+Their portion of the toil which he of old
+Took as his own & then imposed on them;
+But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
+Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
+The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
+Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
+Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
+Of a green Apennine: before me fled
+The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
+Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
+When a strange trance over my fancy grew
+Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
+Was so transparent that the scene came through
+As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
+O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
+That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
+Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair
+And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
+Under the self same bough, & heard as there
+The birds, the fountains & the Ocean hold
+Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
+And then a Vision on my brain was rolled.
+As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
+This was the tenour of my waking dream.
+Methought I sate beside a public way
+Thick strewn with summer dust, & a great stream
+Of people there was hurrying to & fro
+Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
+All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
+Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
+He made one of the multitude, yet so
+Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
+One of the million leaves of summer's bier.--
+Old age & youth, manhood & infancy,
+Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
+Some flying from the thing they feared & some
+Seeking the object of another's fear,
+And others as with steps towards the tomb
+Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
+And others mournfully within the gloom
+Of their own shadow walked, and called it death ...
+And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
+Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
+But more with motions which each other crost
+Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
+Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
+Upon that path where flowers never grew;
+And weary with vain toil & faint for thirst
+Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew
+Out of their mossy cells forever burst
+Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
+Of grassy paths, & wood lawns interspersed
+With overarching elms & caverns cold,
+And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
+Pursued their serious folly as of old ....
+And as I gazed methought that in the way
+The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
+When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.--
+And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
+But icy cold, obscured with [[blank]] light
+The Sun as he the stars. Like the young moon
+When on the sunlit limits of the night
+Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
+And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might
+Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
+The ghost of her dead Mother, whose dim form
+Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair,
+So came a chariot on the silent storm
+Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
+So sate within as one whom years deform
+Beneath a dusky hood & double cape
+Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
+And o'er what seemed the head, a cloud like crape,
+Was bent a dun & faint etherial gloom
+Tempering the light; upon the chariot's beam
+A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
+The guidance of that wonder-winged team.
+The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
+Were lost: I heard alone on the air's soft stream
+The music of their ever moving wings.
+All the four faces of that charioteer
+Had their eyes banded . . . little profit brings
+Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
+Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
+Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
+Of all that is, has been, or will be done.--
+So ill was the car guided, but it past
+With solemn speed majestically on . . .
+The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
+Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
+And saw like clouds upon the thunder blast
+The million with fierce song and maniac dance
+Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
+As when to greet some conqueror's advance
+Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
+From senatehouse & prison & theatre
+When Freedom left those who upon the free
+Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
+Nor wanted here the true similitude
+Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
+The chariot rolled a captive multitude
+Was driven; althose who had grown old in power
+Or misery,--all who have their age subdued,
+By action or by suffering, and whose hour
+Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
+So that the trunk survived both fruit & flower;
+All those whose fame or infamy must grow
+Till the great winter lay the form & name
+Of their own earth with them forever low,
+All but the sacred few who could not tame
+Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon
+As they had touched the world with living flame
+Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
+Of those who put aside the diadem
+Of earthly thrones or gems, till the last one
+Were there;--for they of Athens & Jerusalem
+Were neither mid the mighty captives seen
+Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them
+Or fled before . . Now swift, fierce & obscene
+The wild dance maddens in the van, & those
+Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,
+Outspeed the chariot & without repose
+Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
+To savage music .... Wilder as it grows,
+They, tortured by the agonizing pleasure,
+Convulsed & on the rapid whirlwinds spun
+Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure
+Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
+Throw back their heads & loose their streaming hair,
+And in their dance round her who dims the Sun
+Maidens & youths fling their wild arms in air
+As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now
+Bending within each other's atmosphere
+Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
+Like moths by light attracted & repelled,
+Oft to new bright destruction come & go.
+Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
+That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
+And die in rain,--the fiery band which held
+Their natures, snaps . . . ere the shock cease to tingle
+One falls and then another in the path
+Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
+Yet ere I can say where the chariot hath
+Past over them; nor other trace I find
+But as of foam after the Ocean's wrath
+Is spent upon the desert shore.--Behind,
+Old men, and women foully disarrayed
+Shake their grey hair in the insulting wind,
+Limp in the dance & strain, with limbs decayed,
+Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
+Farther behind & deeper in the shade.
+But not the less with impotence of will
+They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
+Round them & round each other, and fulfill
+Their work and to the dust whence they arose
+Sink & corruption veils them as they lie
+And frost in these performs what fire in those.
+Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
+Half to myself I said, "And what is this?
+Whose shape is that within the car? & why"-
+I would have added--"is all here amiss?"
+But a voice answered . . "Life" . . . I turned & knew
+(O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
+That what I thought was an old root which grew
+To strange distortion out of the hill side
+Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
+And that the grass which methought hung so wide
+And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
+And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
+Were or had been eyes.--"lf thou canst forbear
+To join the dance, which I had well forborne,"
+Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,
+"I will now tell that which to this deep scorn
+Led me & my companions, and relate
+The progress of the pageant since the morn;
+"If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,
+Follow it even to the night, but I
+Am weary" . . . Then like one who with the weight
+Of his own words is staggered, wearily
+He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
+"First who art thou?" . . . "Before thy memory
+"I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, & died,
+And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
+Earth had with purer nutriment supplied
+"Corruption would not now thus much inherit
+Of what was once Rousseau--nor this disguise
+Stained that within which still disdains to wear it.--
+"If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
+A thousand beacons from the spark I bore."--
+"And who are those chained to the car?" "The Wise,
+"The great, the unforgotten: they who wore
+Mitres & helms & crowns, or wreathes of light,
+Signs of thought's empire over thought; their lore
+"Taught them not this--to know themselves; their might
+Could not repress the mutiny within,
+And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
+"Caught them ere evening." "Who is he with chin
+Upon his breast and hands crost on his chain?"
+"The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
+"The world, and lost all it did contain
+Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; & more
+Of fame & peace than Virtue's self can gain
+"Without the opportunity which bore
+Him on its eagle's pinion to the peak
+From which a thousand climbers have before
+"Fall'n as Napoleon fell."--I felt my cheek
+Alter to see the great form pass away
+Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
+That every pigmy kicked it as it lay--
+And much I grieved to think how power & will
+In opposition rule our mortal day--
+And why God made irreconcilable
+Good & the means of good; and for despair
+I half disdained mine eye's desire to fill
+With the spent vision of the times that were
+And scarce have ceased to be . . . "Dost thou behold,"
+Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
+"Frederic, & Kant, Catherine, & Leopold,
+Chained hoary anarch, demagogue & sage
+Whose name the fresh world thinks already old--
+"For in the battle Life & they did wage
+She remained conqueror--I was overcome
+By my own heart alone, which neither age
+"Nor tears nor infamy nor now the tomb
+Could temper to its object."--"Let them pass"--
+I cried--"the world & its mysterious doom
+"Is not so much more glorious than it was
+That I desire to worship those who drew
+New figures on its false & fragile glass
+"As the old faded."--"Figures ever new
+Rise on the bubble, paint them how you may;
+We have but thrown, as those before us threw,
+"Our shadows on it as it past away.
+But mark, how chained to the triumphal chair
+The mighty phantoms of an elder day--
+"All that is mortal of great Plato there
+Expiates the joy & woe his master knew not;
+That star that ruled his doom was far too fair--
+"And Life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
+Conquered the heart by love which gold or pain
+Or age or sloth or slavery could subdue not--
+"And near [[blank]] walk the [[blank]] twain,
+The tutor & his pupil, whom Dominion
+Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.--
+"The world was darkened beneath either pinion
+Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
+Fame singled as her thunderbearing minion;
+"The other long outlived both woes & wars,
+Throned in new thoughts of men, and still had kept
+The jealous keys of truth's eternal doors
+"If Bacon's spirit [[blank]] had not leapt
+Like lightning out of darkness; he compelled
+The Proteus shape of Nature's as it slept
+"To wake & to unbar the caves that held
+The treasure of the secrets of its reign--
+See the great bards of old who inly quelled
+"The passions which they sung, as by their strain
+May well be known: their living melody
+Tempers its own contagion to the vein
+"Of those who are infected with it--I
+Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!--
+"And so my words were seeds of misery--
+Even as the deeds of others."--"Not as theirs,"
+I said--he pointed to a company
+In which I recognized amid the heirs
+Of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine,
+The Anarchs old whose force & murderous snares
+Had founded many a sceptre bearing line
+And spread the plague of blood & gold abroad,
+And Gregory & John and men divine
+Who rose like shadows between Man & god
+Till that eclipse, still hanging under Heaven,
+Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode
+For the true Sun it quenched.--"Their power was given
+But to destroy," replied the leader--"I
+Am one of those who have created, even
+"If it be but a world of agony."--
+"Whence camest thou & whither goest thou?
+How did thy course begin," I said, "& why?
+"Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
+Of people, & my heart of one sad thought.--
+Speak."--"Whence I came, partly I seem to know,
+"And how & by what paths I have been brought
+To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
+Why this should be my mind can compass not;
+"Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.
+But follow thou, & from spectator turn
+Actor or victim in this wretchedness,
+"And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
+From thee.--Now listen . . . In the April prime
+When all the forest tops began to burn
+"With kindling green, touched by the azure clime
+Of the young year, I found myself asleep
+Under a mountain which from unknown time
+"Had yawned into a cavern high & deep,
+And from it came a gentle rivulet
+Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep
+"Bent the soft grass & kept for ever wet
+The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
+With sound which all who hear must needs forget
+"All pleasure & all pain, all hate & love,
+Which they had known before that hour of rest:
+A sleeping mother then would dream not of
+"The only child who died upon her breast
+At eventide, a king would mourn no more
+The crown of which his brow was dispossest
+"When the sun lingered o'er the Ocean floor
+To gild his rival's new prosperity.--
+Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
+"Ills, which if ills, can find no cure from thee,
+The thought of which no other sleep will quell
+Nor other music blot from memory--
+"So sweet & deep is the oblivious spell.--
+Whether my life had been before that sleep
+The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell
+"Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep,
+I know not. I arose & for a space
+The scene of woods & waters seemed to keep,
+"Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
+Of light diviner than the common Sun
+Sheds on the common Earth, but all the place
+"Was filled with many sounds woven into one
+Oblivious melody, confusing sense
+Amid the gliding waves & shadows dun;
+"And as I looked the bright omnipresence
+Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
+And the Sun's image radiantly intense
+"Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
+Like gold, and threaded all the forest maze
+With winding paths of emerald fire--there stood
+"Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze
+Of his own glory, on the vibrating
+Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
+"A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
+Dew on the earth, as if she were the Dawn
+Whose invisible rain forever seemed to sing
+"A silver music on the mossy lawn,
+And still before her on the dusky grass
+Iris her many coloured scarf had drawn.--
+"In her right hand she bore a crystal glass
+Mantling with bright Nepenthe;--the fierce splendour
+Fell from her as she moved under the mass
+"Of the deep cavern, & with palms so tender
+Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
+Glided along the river, and did bend her
+"Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
+Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
+That whispered with delight to be their pillow.--
+"As one enamoured is upborne in dream
+O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
+To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
+"Partly to tread the waves with feet which kist
+The dancing foam, partly to glide along
+The airs that roughened the moist amethyst,
+"Or the slant morning beams that fell among
+The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
+And her feet ever to the ceaseless song
+"Of leaves & winds & waves & birds & bees
+And falling drops moved in a measure new
+Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze
+"Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
+Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
+Moves up the east, where eagle never flew.--
+"And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
+To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
+The thoughts of him who gazed on them, & soon
+"All that was seemed as if it had been not,
+As if the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
+Her feet like embers, & she, thought by thought,
+"Trampled its fires into the dust of death,
+As Day upon the threshold of the east
+Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath
+"Of darkness reillumines even the least
+Of heaven's living eyes--like day she came,
+Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
+"To move, as one between desire and shame
+Suspended, I said--'If, as it doth seem,
+Thou comest from the realm without a name,
+" 'Into this valley of perpetual dream,
+Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why--
+Pass not away upon the passing stream.'
+" 'Arise and quench thy thirst,' was her reply,
+And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
+Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
+"I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
+Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
+And suddenly my brain became as sand
+"Where the first wave had more than half erased
+The track of deer on desert Labrador,
+Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
+"Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
+Until the second bursts--so on my sight
+Burst a new Vision never seen before.--
+"And the fair shape waned in the coming light
+As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
+From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
+"Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops--
+And as the presence of that fairest planet
+Although unseen is felt by one who hopes
+"That his day's path may end as he began it
+In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
+Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
+"Or the soft note in which his dear lament
+The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
+That turned his weary slumber to content.--
+"So knew I in that light's severe excess
+The presence of that shape which on the stream
+Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
+"More dimly than a day appearing dream,
+The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep
+A light from Heaven whose half extinguished beam
+"Through the sick day in which we wake to weep
+Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost.--
+So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
+"Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;
+But the new Vision, and its cold bright car,
+With savage music, stunning music, crost
+"The forest, and as if from some dread war
+Triumphantly returning, the loud million
+Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.--
+"A moving arch of victory the vermilion
+And green & azure plumes of Iris had
+Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
+"And underneath aetherial glory clad
+The wilderness, and far before her flew
+The tempest of the splendour which forbade
+Shadow to fall from leaf or stone;--the crew
+Seemed in that light like atomies that dance
+Within a sunbeam.--Some upon the new
+"Embroidery of flowers that did enhance
+The grassy vesture of the desart, played,
+Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance;
+"Others stood gazing till within the shade
+Of the great mountain its light left them dim.--
+Others outspeeded it, and others made
+"Circles around it like the clouds that swim
+Round the high moon in a bright sea of air,
+And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
+"The chariot & the captives fettered there,
+But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
+Fell into the same track at last & were
+"Borne onward.--I among the multitude
+Was swept; me sweetest flowers delayed not long,
+Me not the shadow nor the solitude,
+"Me not the falling stream's Lethean song,
+Me, not the phantom of that early form
+Which moved upon its motion,--but among
+"The thickest billows of the living storm
+I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
+Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.--
+"Before the chariot had begun to climb
+The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
+Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
+"Of him whom from the lowest depths of Hell
+Through every Paradise & through all glory
+Love led serene, & who returned to tell
+"In words of hate & awe the wondrous story
+How all things are transfigured, except Love;
+For deaf as is a sea which wrath makes hoary
+"The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
+The sphere whose light is melody to lovers---
+A wonder worthy of his rhyme--the grove
+"Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
+The earth was grey with phantoms, & the air
+Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
+"A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
+Of the tropic sun, bring ere evening
+Strange night upon some Indian isle,--thus were
+"Phantoms diffused around, & some did fling
+Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
+Behind them, some like eaglets on the wing
+"Were lost in the white blaze, others like elves
+Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
+Upon the sunny streams & grassy shelves;
+"And others sate chattering like restless apes
+On vulgar paws and voluble like fire.
+Some made a cradle of the ermined capes
+"Of kingly mantles, some upon the tiar
+Of pontiffs sate like vultures, others played
+Within the crown which girt with empire
+"A baby's or an idiot's brow, & made
+Their nests in it; the old anatomies
+Sate hatching their bare brood under the shade
+"Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
+To reassume the delegated power
+Arrayed in which these worms did monarchize
+"Who make this earth their charnel.--Others more
+Humble, like falcons sate upon the fist
+Of common men, and round their heads did soar,
+"Or like small gnats & flies, as thick as mist
+On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
+Of lawyer, statesman, priest & theorist,
+"And others like discoloured flakes of snow
+On fairest bosoms & the sunniest hair
+Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
+"Which they extinguished; for like tears, they were
+A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained
+In drops of sorrow.--I became aware
+"Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
+The track in which we moved; after brief space
+From every form the beauty slowly waned,
+"From every firmest limb & fairest face
+The strength & freshness fell like dust, & left
+The action & the shape without the grace
+"Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
+With care, and in the eyes where once hope shone
+Desire like a lioness bereft
+"Of its last cub, glared ere it died; each one
+Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
+These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
+"In Autumn evening from a popular tree--
+Each, like himself & like each other were,
+At first, but soon distorted, seemed to be
+"Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
+And of this stuff the car's creative ray
+Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
+"As the sun shapes the clouds--thus, on the way
+Mask after mask fell from the countenance
+And form of all, and long before the day
+"Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven's glance
+The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died,
+And some grew weary of the ghastly dance
+"And fell, as I have fallen by the way side,
+Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past
+And least of strength & beauty did abide."--
+"Then, what is Life?" I said . . . the cripple cast
+His eye upon the car which now had rolled
+Onward, as if that look must be the last,
+And answered .... "Happy those for whom the fold
+Of ...
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++14	To The Men Of England|
+<poem>
+Men of England, wherefore plough
+For the lords who lay ye low?
+Wherefore weave with toil and care
+The rich robes your tyrants wear?
+Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
+From the cradle to the grave,
+Those ungrateful drones who would
+Drain your sweat -- nay, drink your blood?
+Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
+Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
+That these stingless drones may spoil
+The forced produce of your toil?
+Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
+Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
+Or what is it ye buy so dear
+With your pain and with your fear?
+The seed ye sow another reaps;
+The wealth ye find another keeps;
+The robes ye weave another wears;
+The arms ye forge another bears.
+Sow seed, -- but let no tyrant reap;
+Find wealth, -- let no imposter heap;
+Weave robes, -- let not the idle wear;
+Forge arms, in your defence to bear.
+Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
+In halls ye deck another dwells.
+Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
+The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
+With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
+Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
+And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
+England be your sepulchre!
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++15	Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live|
+<poem>
+Lift not the painted veil which those who live
+Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
+And it but mimic all we would believe
+With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear
+And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
+Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
+I knew one who had lifted it--he sought,
+For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
+But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
+The world contains, the which he could approve.
+Through the unheeding many he did move,
+A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
+Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
+For truth, and like the Preacher found it not
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++16	To Wordsworth|
+<poem>
+Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
+That things depart which never may return:
+Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
+Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
+These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
+Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
+Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
+On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
+Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
+Above the blind and battling multitude:
+In honored poverty thy voice did weave
+Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,--
+Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
+Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++17	Bereavement|
+<poem>
+How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner
+As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,
+As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
+And drops to perfection's remembrance a tear;
+When floods of despair down his pale cheeks are streaming,
+When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
+Or, if lulled for a while, soon he starts from his dreaming,
+And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.
+Ah, when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,
+Or summer succeed to the winter of death?
+Rest awhle, hapless victim! and Heaven will save
+The spirit that hath faded away with the breath.
+Eternity points, in its amaranth bower
+Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lour,
+Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
+When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++18	Mont Blanc|
+<poem>
+(Lines written 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 splendor, 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, amon 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.
+Thus thou, Ravine of Arve - dark, deep Ravine-
+Thou many-colored, many voiced vale,
+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; -thou dost lie,
+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 odors, and their mighty swinging
+To hear - an old and solemn harmony;
+Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
+Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
+Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
+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!
+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 unfurled
+The veil of life and death? or do I lie
+In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
+Spread far and round and inaccessibly
+Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
+Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
+That vanishes amon the viewless gales!
+Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
+Mont Blanc appears,-still snowy and serene-
+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's bone,
+And the wolf tracks her there - how hideously
+Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
+Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. -Is this the scene
+Where the old Earthquake-demon 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 reconciled;
+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.
+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 tranquility,
+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 piled: 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 destined path, or in the mangled soil
+Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
+From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
+The limits of the dead and living world,
+Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
+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's stream,
+And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
+Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
+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 vapors to the circling air.
+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 vapor 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?
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++19	A Lament|
+<poem>
+O World! O Life! O Time!
+On whose last steps I climb,
+Trembling at that where I had stood before;
+When will return the glory of your prime?
+No more -Oh, never more!
+Out of the day and night
+A joy has taken flight:
+Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
+Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
+No more -Oh, never more!
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++20	English In 1819|
+<poem>
+An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
+Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who
+Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--
+Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
+But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
+Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
+A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
+An army, which liberticide and prey
+Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
+Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
+Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
+A Senate, Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
+Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
+Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++21	The Invitation|
+<poem>
+Best and brightest, come away,
+Fairer far than this fair day,
+Which, like thee, to those in sorrow
+Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
+To the rough year just awake
+In its cradle on the brake.
+The brightest hour of unborn Spring
+Through the Winter wandering,
+Found, it seems, the halcyon morn
+To hoar February born;
+Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
+It kissed the forehead of the earth,
+And smiled upon the silent sea,
+And bade the frozen streams be free,
+And waked to music all their fountains,
+And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
+And like a prophetess of May
+Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
+Making the wintry world appear
+Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
+Away, away, from men and towns,
+To the wild wood and the downs -
+To the silent wilderness
+Where the soul need not repress
+Its music, lest it should not find
+An echo in another's mind,
+While the touch of Nature's art
+Harmonizes heart to heart.
+Radiant Sister of the Day
+Awake! arise! and come away!
+To the wild woods and the plains,
+To the pools where winter rains
+Image all their roof of leaves,
+Where the pine its garland weaves
+Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
+Round stems that never kiss the sun,
+Where the lawns and pastures be
+And the sandhills of the sea,
+Where the melting hoar-frost wets
+The daisy-star that never sets,
+And wind-flowers and violets
+Which yet join not scent to hue
+Crown the pale year weak and new;
+When the night is left behind
+In the deep east, dim and blind,
+And the blue noon is over us,
+And the multitudinous
+Billows murmur at our feet,
+Where the earth and ocean meet,
+And all things seem only one
+In the universal Sun.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++22	An Exhortation|
+<poem>
+Chameleons feed on light and air:
+Poets' food is love and fame:
+If in this wide world of care
+Poets could but find the same
+With as little toil as they,
+Would they ever change their hue
+As the light chameleons do,
+Suiting it to every ray
+Twenty times a day?
+Poets are on this cold earth,
+As chameleons might be,
+Hidden from their early birth
+In a cave beneath the sea;
+Where light is, chameleons change:
+Where love is not, poets do:
+Fame is love disguised: if few
+Find either, never think it strange
+That poets range.
+Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
+A poet's free and heavenly mind:
+If bright chameleons should devour
+Any food but beams and wind,
+They would grow as earthly soon
+As their brother lizards are.
+Children of a sunnier star,
+Spirits from beyond the moon,
+O, refuse the boon!
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++23	Time|
+<poem>
+Chameleons feed on light and air:
+Poets' food is love and fame:
+If in this wide world of care
+Poets could but find the same
+With as little toil as they,
+Would they ever change their hue
+As the light chameleons do,
+Suiting it to every ray
+Twenty times a day?
+Poets are on this cold earth,
+As chameleons might be,
+Hidden from their early birth
+In a cave beneath the sea;
+Where light is, chameleons change:
+Where love is not, poets do:
+Fame is love disguised: if few
+Find either, never think it strange
+That poets range.
+Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
+A poet's free and heavenly mind:
+If bright chameleons should devour
+Any food but beams and wind,
+They would grow as earthly soon
+As their brother lizards are.
+Children of a sunnier star,
+Spirits from beyond the moon,
+O, refuse the boon!
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++24	When The Lamp Is Shattered|
+<poem>
+When the lamp is shattered
+The light in the dust lies dead --
+When the cloud is scattered,
+The rainbow's glory is shed.
+When the lute is broken,
+Sweet tones are remembered not;
+When the lips have spoken,
+Loved accents are soon forgot.
+As music and splendour
+Survive not the lamp and the lute,
+The heart's echoes render
+No song when the spirit is mute --
+No song but sad dirges,
+Like the wind through a ruined cell,
+Or the mournful surges
+That ring the dead seaman's knell.
+When hearts have once mingled,
+Love first leaves the well-built nest;
+The weak one is singled
+To endure what it once possessed.
+O Love! who bewailest
+The frailty of all things here,
+Why choose you the frailest
+For your cradle, your home, and your bier?
+Its passions will rock thee,
+As the storms rock the ravens on high;
+Bright reason will mock thee,
+Like the sun from a wintry sky.
+From thy nest every rafter
+Will rot, and thine eagle home
+Leave thee naked to laughter,
+When leaves fall and cold winds come.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++25	The Indian Serenade|
+<poem>
+I arise from dreams of thee
+In the first sweet sleep of night,
+When the winds are breathing low,
+And the stars are shining bright.
+I arise from dreams of thee,
+And a spirit in my feet
+Has led me -who knows how?
+To thy chamber-window, Sweet!
+The wandering airs they faint
+On the dark, the silent stream -
+The champak odours fail
+Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
+The nightingale's complaint,
+It dies upon her heart,
+As I must die on thine,
+O beloved as thou art!
+Oh lift me from the grass!
+I die! I faint! I fail!
+Let thy love in kisses rain
+On my lips and eyelids pale.
+My cheek is cold and white, alas!
+My heart beats loud and fast;
+Oh press it close to thine again,
+Where it will break at last!
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++26	On Death|
+<poem>The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
+Which the meteor beam of a starless night
+Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
+Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
+Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
+That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.
+O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
+Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way,
+And the billows of clouds that around thee roll
+Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
+Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free
+To the universe of destiny.
+This world is the nurse of all we know,
+This world is the mother of all we feel,
+And the coming of death is a fearful blow
+To a brain unencompass'd by nerves of steel:
+When all that we know, or feel, or see,
+Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
+The secret things of the grave are there,
+Where all but this frame must surely be,
+Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
+No longer will live, to hear or to see
+All that is great and all that is strange
+In the boundless realm of unending change.
+Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
+Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
+Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
+The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
+Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
+With the fears and the love for that which we see?
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++27	A Widow Bird Sate Mourning For Her Love|
+<poem>
+A widow bird sate mourning for her Love
+Upon a wintry bough;
+The frozen wind crept on above,
+The freezing stream below.
+There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
+No flower upon the ground,
+And little motion in the air
+Except the mill-wheel's sound.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++28	Feelings Of A Republican On The Fall Of Bonaparte|
+<poem>I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan
+To think that a most unambitious slave,
+Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
+Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne
+Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer
+A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept
+In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,
+For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
+Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
+And stifled thee, their minister. I know
+Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
+That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
+Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
+And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++29	To Night|
+<poem>Swiftly walk over the western wave,
+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 sighed for thee;
+When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
+And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
+And the weary Day turned to his rest,
+Lingering like an unloved guest,
+I sighed for thee.
+Thy brother Death came, and cried
+`Wouldst thou me?'
+Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
+Murmured like a noontide bee
+`Shall I nestle near thy side?
+Wouldst thou me?' -- And I replied
+`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!</poem>
 ++++
 ++++30	Asia: From Prometheus Unbound|
+<poem>My soul is an enchanted boat,
+Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
+Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
+And thine doth like an angel sit
+Beside a helm conducting it,
+Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
+It seems to float ever, for ever,
+Upon that many-winding river,
+Between mountains, woods, abysses,
+A paradise of wildernesses!
+Till, like one in slumber bound,
+Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
+Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:
+Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
+In music's most serene dominions;
+Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
+And we sail on, away, afar,
+Without a course, without a star,
+But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
+Till through Elysian garden islets
+By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
+Where never mortal pinnace glided,
+The boat of my desire is guided:
+Realms where the air we breathe is love,
+Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
+Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.
+We have past Age's icy caves,
+And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
+And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
+Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
+Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
+Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
+A paradise of vaulted bowers,
+Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
+And watery paths that wind between
+Wildernesses calm and green,
+Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
+And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
+Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++31	To Jane|
+<poem>The keen stars were twinkling,
+And the fair moon was rising among them,
+Dear Jane.
+The guitar was tinkling,
+But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
+Again.
+As the moon's soft splendour
+O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven
+Is thrown,
+So your voice most tender
+To the strings without soul had then given
+Its own.
+The stars will awaken,
+Though the moon sleep a full hour later
+To-night;
+No leaf will be shaken
+Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
+Delight.
+Though the sound overpowers,
+Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
+A tone
+Of some world far from ours,
+Where music and moonlight and feeling
+Are one.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++32	Adonais|
+<poem>I weep for Adonais -he is dead!
+O, 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, pierced by the shaft which flies
+In darkness? where was lorn Urania
+When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
+Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
+She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
+Rekindled all the fading melodies
+With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
+He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.
+O, 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, dream not that the amorous Deep
+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's pride,
+The priest, the slave, and the liberticide
+Trampled and mocked 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 dared to climb;
+And happier they their happiness who knew,
+Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
+In which suns perished; others more sublime,
+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 perished -
+The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
+Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
+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 nipped 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.
+O, 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 loosened from his brain."
+Lost Angel of a ruined 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
+Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
+Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw
+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
+Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
+And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
+Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
+It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.
+And others came... Desires and Adorations,
+Winged Persuasions and veiled 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 loved, and moulded into thought,
+From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
+Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
+Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
+Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
+Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;
+Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
+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 remembered lay,
+And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
+Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
+Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;
+Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
+Than those for whose disdain she pined 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 waked 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 turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.
+Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale
+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 pierced thy innocent breast,
+And scared 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 Season's bier;
+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 unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.
+Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
+A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst
+As it has ever done, with change and motion,
+From the great morning of the world when first
+God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed,
+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, touched by this spirit tender,
+Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
+Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
+Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death
+And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
+Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
+Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
+By sightless lightning? -the intense atom glows
+A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
+Alas! that all we loved 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 massed 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, "childless Mother, rise
+Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core,
+A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs."
+And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes,
+And all the Echoes whom their sister's song
+Had held in holy silence, cried: "Arise!"
+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
+Our 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 roused, so rapt Urania;
+So saddened round her like an atmosphere
+Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way
+Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
+Our 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'er they fell:
+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,
+Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
+In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
+Shamed by the presence of that living Might,
+Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
+Revisited those lips, and Life's pale light
+Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.
+"Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
+As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
+Leave me not!" cried Urania: her distress
+Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.
+"'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 chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!
+"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 unpastured dragon in his den?
+Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then
+Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?
+Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
+Thy spirit should have filled 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's banner true
+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 smiled! -The spoilers tempt no second blow,
+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 gathered into death without a dawn,
+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 dimmed or shared its light
+Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night."
+Thus ceased 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 Irene 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 gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,
+Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray
+With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
+And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
+Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.
+A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift -
+A Love in desolation masked; -a Power
+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 topped with a cypress cone,
+Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
+Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
+Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
+Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew
+He came the last, neglected and apart;
+A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.
+All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
+Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
+Who in another's fate now wept his own,
+As in the accents of an unknown land
+He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
+The Stranger's mien, and murmured: "Who art thou?"
+He answered not, but with a sudden hand
+Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,
+Which was like Cain's or Christ's -oh! that it should be so!
+What softer voice is hushed 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, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,
+Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,
+The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.
+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's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
+Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
+Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
+Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
+But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
+And ever at thy season be thou free
+To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow:
+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 awakened from the dream of life -
+'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
+With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
+And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
+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 outsoared the shadow of our night;
+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's slow stain
+He is secure, and now can never mourn
+A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;
+Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
+With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
+He lives, he wakes -'tis Death is dead, not he;
+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 abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
+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's sweet bird;
+He is a presence to be felt and known
+In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
+Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
+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's plastic stress
+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 Heavens' light.
+The splendours of the firmament of time
+May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
+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 unfulfilled renown
+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 lived and loved
+Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,
+Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:
+Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.
+And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,
+But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
+So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
+Rose, robed 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 an 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's light
+Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
+Satiate the void circumference: then shrink
+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 lured 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 gathered to the kings of thought
+Who waged 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 shattered mountains rise,
+And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
+The bones of Desolation's nakedness
+Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
+Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
+Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
+A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;
+And grey 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 planned
+This refuge for his memory, doth stand
+Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
+A field is spread, on which a newer band
+Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
+Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.
+Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
+To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
+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's bitter wind
+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's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
+Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
+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's azure sky,
+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 passed 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 invoked in song
+Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
+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.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++33	One Word Is Too Often Profaned|
+<poem>One word is too often profaned
+For me to profane it;
+One feeling too falsely disdained
+For thee to disdain it;
+One hope is too like despair
+For prudence to smother;
+And pity from thee more dear
+Than that from another.
+I can give not what men call love;
+But wilt thou accept not
+The worship the heart lifts above
+And the heavens reject not, --
+The desire of the moth for the star,
+Of the night for the morrow,
+The devotion to something afar
+From the sphere of our sorrow?</poem>
 ++++
 ++++34	Prometheus Unbound: Act I (excerpt)|
+<poem>SCENE.--A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione areseated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.
+Prometheus.
+Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
+But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
+Which Thou and I alone of living things
+Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
+Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
+Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
+And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
+With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.
+Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
+Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,
+O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
+Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
+And moments aye divided by keen pangs
+Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
+Scorn and despair,--these are mine empire:--
+More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
+From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
+Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
+Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
+Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
+Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
+Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
+Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
+No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
+I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
+I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
+Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
+Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
+Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
+Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
+The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
+Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains
+Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
+Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips
+His beak in poison not his own, tears up
+My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
+The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
+Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
+To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
+When the rocks split and close again behind:
+While from their loud abysses howling throng
+The genii of the storm, urging the rage
+Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
+And yet to me welcome is day and night,
+Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,
+Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
+The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead
+The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom
+--As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim--
+Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood
+From these pale feet, which then might trample thee
+If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.
+Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin
+Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!
+How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
+Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
+Not exultation, for I hate no more,
+As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
+Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
+Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist
+Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!
+Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
+Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
+Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,
+Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
+And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wings
+Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
+As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
+The orbèd world! If then my words had power,
+Though I am changed so that aught evil wish
+Is dead within; although no memory be
+Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!
+What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak....
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++35	Stanzas Written In Dejection Near Naples|
+<poem>The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
+The waves are dancing fast and bright,
+Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
+The purple noon's transparent might,
+The breath of the moist air is light,
+Around its unexpanded buds;
+Like many a voice of one delight,
+The winds', the birds', the ocean floods',
+The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.
+I see the Deep's untrampled floor
+With green and purple seaweeds strown;
+I see the waves upon the shore,
+Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
+I sit upon the sands alone, --
+The lightning of the noontide ocean
+Is flashing round me, and a tone
+Arises from its measured motion,
+How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
+Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
+Nor peace within nor calm around,
+Nor that content surpassing wealth
+The sage in meditation found,
+And walked with inward glory crowned --
+Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
+Others I see whom these surround --
+Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; --
+To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
+Some might lament that I were cold,
+As I, when this sweet day is done,
+Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
+Insults with this untimely moan;
+They might lament -- for I am one
+Whom men love not, -- and yet regret,
+Unlike this day which, when the sun
+Shall on its stainless glory set,
+Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.
+Yet now despair itself is mild,
+Even as the winds and waters are;
+I could lie down like a tired child,
+And weep away the life of care
+Which I have borne and yet must bear,
+Till death like sleep might steal on me,
+And I might feel in the warm air
+My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
+Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++36	The Waning Moon|
+<poem>And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
+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.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++37	Autumn: A Dirge|
+<poem>The warm sun is falling, the bleak wind is wailing,
+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.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++38	The Question|
+<poem>I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
+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's face with Heaven's collected tears,
+When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.
+And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
+Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
+And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
+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's trembling edge
+There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
+And starry river buds among the sedge,
+And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
+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?
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++39	On A Dead Violet|
+<poem>The odor from the flower is gone
+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.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++40	The Two Spirits: An Allegory|
+<poem>FIRST SPIRIT
+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'er they move;
+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</poem>
 ++++
 ++++41	Art Thou Pale For Weariness|
+<poem>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?</poem>
 ++++
 ++++42	Invocation|
+<poem>Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
+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
-++++43	fragment: To The Moo|
+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's, and may be
+Untainted by man's misery.
+I love tranquil solitude,
+And such society
+As is quiet, wise, and good: -
+Between thee and me
+What diff'rence? but thou dost possess
+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!</poem>
+++++
+++++43	fragment: To The Moon|
+<poem>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?</poem>
 ++++
 ++++44	To A Lady, With A Guitar|
+<poem>Ariel to Miranda: -- Take
+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's enchanted cell,
+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's fairest star,
+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.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++45	From the Arabic, an Imitation|
+<poem>MY faint spirit was sitting in the light
+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's flight,
+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.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++46	The Witch Of Atlas|
+<poem>Before those cruel twins whom at one birth
+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,--such clouds as flit
+(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, and bidden
+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's cloven roof; her hair
+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,--through the adamant
+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's flocks
+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,--and lumps neither alive nor dead,
+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:--sounds of air
+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's; and others, white, green, grey, and black,
+And of all shapes:--and each was at her beck.
+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's wizard skill;
+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's power
+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's fountain-lighted roof;
+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, rare gums, and cinnamon.
+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's glance:
+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, she watched it as it came
+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's star, and kept
+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's sceptre a swift flame,
+Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought--
+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's mantle wraps;
+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:--mortal boat
+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 "Hermaphroditus!"--and the pale
+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,--like sunlight, by the prow
+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' banks
+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, underlaid
+With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
+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'erlaid with starlight, caught
+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: and now she grew
+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's back
+Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft-time,
+Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
+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'er she passed,
+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;--within the brazen doors
+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,--'twas her delight
+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, and labyrinth mined
+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's lawless law
+Written upon the brows of old and young.
+"This," said the Wizard Maiden, "is the strife
+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'er its shores extend or billows roll,
+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,--all of one sort,
+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: they
+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's ruining, and shook
+The light out of the funeral-lamps, to be
+A mimic day within that deathy nook;
+And she unwound the woven imagery
+Of second childhood's swaddling-bands, and took
+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's wake
+Which the sand covers. All his evil gain
+The miser, in such dreams, would rise and shake
+Into a beggar's lap; the lying scribe
+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, and pull
+The old cant down: they licensed all to speak
+Whate'er they thought of hawks and cats and geese,
+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, how many kiss the same!
+The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
+Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
+Round the red anvils you might see them stand
+Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
+Beating their swords to ploughshares:--in a band
+The jailors sent those of the liberal schism
+Free through the streets of Memphis--much, I wis,
+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, when we
+Scarcely believe much more than we can see.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++47	Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude|
+<poem>Earth, Ocean, Air, belovèd brotherhood!
+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's tingling silentness;
+If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
+And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns
+Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs;
+If Spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes
+Her first sweet kisses,--have been dear to me;
+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,--no lorn bard
+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, he felt
+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's most secret steps
+He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
+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'er
+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'er of strange,
+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's brazen mystery, and dead men
+Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,
+He lingered, poring on memorials
+Of the world's youth: through the long burning day
+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, and he saw
+The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.
+Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,
+Her daily portion, from her father's tent,
+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, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
+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 sounds that soothed his sleep,
+The mystery and the majesty of Earth,
+The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes
+Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
+As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
+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? Lost, lost, forever lost
+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's blue vault with loathliest vapors hung,
+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's steep
+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's robe
+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's door.
+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:--'Thou hast a home,
+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?' A gloomy smile
+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's waste;
+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's scourge
+Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp.
+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's mountainous waste to mutual war
+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.--'Vision and Love!'
+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's flow;
+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's enormous volume fell
+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, or their own decay
+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's dearest haunt some bank,
+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' eyes,
+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's noontide clearness, mutable
+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, keep
+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, but some inconstant star,
+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.--'O stream!
+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's solemn canopies were changed
+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, stretched athwart the vacancy
+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;--even that voice
+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's verge
+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's grim playmates, on that precipice
+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's sacred couch, the snowy bed
+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's footsteps fell, he knew that death
+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's ebb and flow, grew feebler still;
+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:--till the minutest ray
+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's wondrous alchemy,
+Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
+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's woe
+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," when all
+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's vast frame, the web of human things,
+Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++48	Epipsychidion (excerpt)|
+<poem>Emily,
+A ship is floating in the harbour now,
+A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
+There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
+No keel has ever plough'd that path before;
+The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
+The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
+The merry mariners are bold and free:
+Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
+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's heels, unheededly.
+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'd a solitude
+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'd place. Famine or Blight,
+Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
+Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
+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, soft and bright,
+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's young prime,
+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'd its form, then grown
+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'd, and in the place of it
+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's arms, and dream
+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'd
+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, and the owls flit
+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'd by the pants of their calm sleep.
+Be this our home in life, and when years heap
+Their wither'd hours, like leaves, on our decay,
+Let us become the overhanging day,
+The living soul of this Elysian isle,
+Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile
+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'd by all that is
+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'd night asleep,
+Through which the awaken'd day can never peep;
+A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
+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's melody
+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's inmost cells,
+The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
+Confus'd in Passion's golden purity,
+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, which grows and grew,
+Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
+Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
+Touch, mingle, are transfigur'd; ever still
+Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
+In one another's substance finding food,
+Like flames too pure and light and unimbu'd
+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!</poem>
 ++++
 ++++49	Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills|
+<poem>Many a green isle needs must be
+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's track:
+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'er he may,
+Can he dream before that day
+To find refuge from distress
+In friendship's smile, in love's caress?
+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's bough.
+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's fitful gale
+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's nursling, Venice, lies,
+A peopled labyrinth of walls,
+Amphitrite's destined halls,
+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's child, and then his queen;
+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's own,
+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's hold
+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's hold
+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's rising day
+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, more sublime
+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's unfailing River,
+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's wasting springs;
+As divinest Shakespeare's might
+Fills Avon and the world with light
+Like omniscient power which he
+Imaged 'mid mortality;
+As the love from Petrarch's urn,
+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's foison,
+Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
+To destruction's harvest-home:
+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's rage, the slave's revenge.
+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'er,
+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's might;
+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's glow,
+When a soft and purple mist
+Like a vapourous amethyst,
+Or an air-dissolved star
+Mingling light and fragrance, far
+From the curved horizon's bound
+To the point of Heaven's profound,
+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's evening meets me soon,
+Leading the infantine moon,
+And that one star, which to her
+Almost seems to minister
+Half the crimson light she brings
+From the sunset's radiant springs:
+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.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++50	Song Of Proserpine|
+<poem>Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,
+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.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++51	Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)|
+<poem>I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
+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's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
+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'd, and the tide makes
+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'd friend I love
+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'd to their depths by the awakening north;
+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'd; and the swift thought,
+Winging itself with laughter, linger'd not,
+But flew from brain to brain--such glee was ours,
+Charg'd with light memories of remember'd hours,
+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, but pride
+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's men
+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'd
+Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark rear'd
+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'd into one lake of fire, were seen
+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"--so, o'er the lagune
+We glided; and from that funereal bark
+I lean'd, and saw the city, and could mark
+How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,
+Its temples and its palaces did seem
+Like fabrics of enchantment pil'd to Heaven.
+I was about to speak, when--"We are even
+Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo,
+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'd, and saw between us and the sun
+A building on an island; such a one
+As age to age might add, for uses vile,
+A windowless, deform'd and dreary pile;
+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'd
+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." "As much skill as need to pray
+In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they
+To their stern Maker," I replied. "O ho!
+You talk as in years past," said Maddalo.
+" 'Tis strange men change not. You were ever still
+Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel,
+A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim
+Beware of Providence." I look'd on him,
+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'd tower, must toll
+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." I recall
+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;--into the purple sea
+The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
+We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola
+Convey'd me to my lodgings by the way.
+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'd;
+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: with me
+She was a special favourite: I had nurs'd
+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'd than she was by six months or so;
+For after her first shyness was worn out
+We sate there, rolling billiard balls about,
+When the Count enter'd. Salutations past--
+"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"--thus much I spoke
+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!" said Maddalo:
+"You talk Utopia." "It remains to know,"
+I then rejoin'd, "and those who try may find
+How strong the chains are which our spirit bind;
+Brittle perchance as straw.... We are assur'd
+Much may be conquer'd, much may be endur'd,
+Of what degrades and crushes us. We know
+That we have power over ourselves to do
+And suffer--what, we know not till we try;
+But something nobler than to live and die:
+So taught those kings of old philosophy
+Who reign'd, before Religion made men blind;
+And those who suffer with their suffering kind
+Yet feel their faith, religion." "My dear friend,"
+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'd me--
+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' in things ill
+Or in himself or others, has thus bow'd
+His being. There are some by nature proud,
+Who patient in all else demand but this--
+To love and be belov'd with gentleness;
+And being scorn'd, what wonder if they die
+Some living death? this is not destiny
+But man's own wilful ill."
+As thus I spoke
+Servants announc'd the gondola, and we
+Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
+Sail'd to the island where the madhouse stands.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++52	The Fitful Alternations Of The Rain|
+<poem>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</poem>
 ++++
 ++++53	To|
+<poem>Music, when soft voices die,
+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's bed;
+And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
+Love itself shall slumber on.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++54	Hymn Of Pan|
+<poem>FROM the forests and highlands
+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's shadow, outgrowing
+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.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++55	Remorse|
+<poem>AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
+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, 'Away!'
+Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood:
+Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
+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's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace, may
+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.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++56	Hellas|
+<poem>THE world's great age begins anew,
+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's scroll must be--
+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!
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++57	Mont Blanc: Lines Writen in the Vale of Chamouni|
+<poem>I
+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'd, many-voiced vale,
+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;--thou dost lie,
+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'd across the sweep
+Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil
+Robes some unsculptur'd image; the strange sleep
+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'd
+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, snowy, and serene;
+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's bone,
+And the wolf tracks her there--how hideously
+Its shapes are heap'd around! rude, bare, and high,
+Ghastly, and scarr'd, and riven.--Is this the scene
+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'd;
+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'd path, or in the mangled soil
+Branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down
+From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
+The limits of the dead and living world,
+Never to be reclaim'd. The dwelling-place
+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's stream,
+And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
+Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
+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?</poem>
 ++++
 ++++58	Night|
+<poem>SWIFTLY walk o'er the western wave,
+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,
+'Wouldst thou me?'
+Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
+Murmur'd like a noontide bee,
+'Shall I nestle near thy side?
+Wouldst thou me?'--And I replied,
+'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!</poem>
 ++++
 ++++59	Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats|
+<poem>I weep for Adonais--he is dead!
+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'd by the shaft which flies
+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'd breath,
+Rekindled all the fading melodies,
+With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
+He had adorn'd and hid the coming bulk of Death.
+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, dream not that the amorous Deep
+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's pride,
+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'd; others more sublime,
+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'd,
+The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
+Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherish'd,
+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'd from his brain."
+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'd her profuse locks, and threw
+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'd its caress upon his icy lips;
+And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
+Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
+It flush'd through his pale limbs, and pass'd to its eclipse.
+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, and her hair unbound,
+Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
+Dimm'd the aëreal eyes that kindle day;
+Afar the melancholy thunder moan'd,
+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'd lay,
+And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
+Or amorous birds perch'd on the young green spray,
+Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;
+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's sister, the lorn nightingale
+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'd thy innocent breast,
+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' bier;
+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'd flames, out of their trance awake.
+Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
+A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst
+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'd,
+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'd by this spirit tender,
+Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
+Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
+Is chang'd to fragrance, they illumine death
+And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
+Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
+Be as a sword consum'd before the sheath
+By sightless lightning?--the intense atom glows
+A moment, then is quench'd in a most cold repose.
+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, "childless Mother, rise
+Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core,
+A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs."
+And all the Dreams that watch'd Urania's eyes,
+And all the Echoes whom their sister's song
+Had held in holy silence, cried: "Arise!"
+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'd, so rapt Urania;
+So sadden'd round her like an atmosphere
+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'er they fell:
+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'd to annihilation, and the breath
+Revisited those lips, and Life's pale light
+Flash'd through those limbs, so late her dear delight.
+"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'd, and met her vain caress.
+"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'd to Time, and cannot thence depart!
+"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'd dragon in his den?
+Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then
+Wisdom the mirror'd shield, or scorn the spear?
+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's banner true
+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'd! The spoilers tempt no second blow,
+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'd into death without a dawn,
+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's awful night."
+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's naked loveliness,
+Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray
+With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
+And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
+Pursu'd, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.
+A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift--
+A Love in desolation mask'd--a Power
+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's noonday dew,
+Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
+Shook the weak hand that grasp'd it; of that crew
+He came the last, neglected and apart;
+A herd-abandon'd deer struck by the hunter's dart.
+All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
+Smil'd through their tears; well knew that gentle band
+Who in another's fate now wept his own,
+As in the accents of an unknown land
+He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scann'd
+The Stranger's mien, and murmur'd: "Who art thou?"
+He answer'd not, but with a sudden hand
+Made bare his branded and ensanguin'd brow,
+Which was like Cain's or Christ's--oh! that it should be so!
+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'd, lov'd, honour'd the departed one,
+Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,
+The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.
+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's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
+Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
+Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
+Thou noteless blot on a remember'd name!
+But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
+And ever at thy season be thou free
+To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow;
+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'd from the dream of life;
+'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
+With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
+And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
+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'd the shadow of our night;
+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's slow stain
+He is secure, and now can never mourn
+A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
+Nor, when the spirit's self has ceas'd to burn,
+With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
+He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he;
+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'd Earth, now leave it bare
+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's sweet bird;
+He is a presence to be felt and known
+In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
+Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
+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's plastic stress
+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's light.
+The splendours of the firmament of time
+May be eclips'd, but are extinguish'd not;
+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'd renown
+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'd
+Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,
+Arose; and Lucan, by his death approv'd:
+Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reprov'd.
+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's light
+Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
+Satiate the void circumference: then shrink
+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'd to the kings of thought
+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'd mountains rise,
+And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
+The bones of Desolation's nakedness
+Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
+Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
+Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
+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'd
+This refuge for his memory, doth stand
+Like flame transform'd to marble; and beneath,
+A field is spread, on which a newer band
+Have pitch'd in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
+Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguish'd breath.
+Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
+To have outgrown the sorrow which consign'd
+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's bitter wind
+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's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
+Life, like a dome of many-colour'd glass,
+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's azure sky,
+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'd in song
+Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven,
+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.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++60	Song|
+<poem>Rarely, rarely comest thou,
+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 her.
+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's, and may be
+Untainted by man's misery.
+I love tranquil solitude,
+And such society
+As is quiet, wise, and good;
+Between thee and me
+What difference? but thou dost possess
+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!</poem>
 ++++
 ++++61	Queen Mab: Part VI (excerpts)|
+<poem>"Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
+Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
+A Spirit of activity and life,
+That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
+That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
+Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
+Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
+In the dim newness of its being feels
+The impulses of sublunary things,
+And all is wonder to unpractis'd sense:
+But, active, steadfast and eternal, still
+Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
+Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
+Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
+And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly
+Rolls round the eternal universe and shakes
+Its undecaying battlement, presides,
+Apportioning with irresistible law
+The place each spring of its machine shall fill;
+So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap
+Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven
+Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords,
+Whilst, to the eye of shipwreck'd mariner,
+Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,
+All seems unlink'd contingency and chance,
+No atom of this turbulence fulfils
+A vague and unnecessitated task,
+Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
+Even the minutest molecule of light,
+That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow
+Fulfils its destin'd, though invisible work,
+The universal Spirit guides; nor less,
+When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
+Has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield,
+That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves,
+And call the sad work glory, does it rule
+All passions: not a thought, a will, an act,
+No working of the tyrant's moody mind,
+Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
+Their servitude to hide the shame they feel,
+Nor the events enchaining every will,
+That from the depths of unrecorded time
+Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass
+Unrecogniz'd or unforeseen by thee,
+Soul of the Universe! eternal spring
+Of life and death, of happiness and woe,
+Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
+That floats before our eyes in wavering light,
+Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,
+Whose chains and massy walls
+We feel, but cannot see.
+"Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
+Necessity! thou mother of the world!
+Unlike the God of human error, thou
+Requir'st no prayers or praises; the caprice
+Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
+Than do the changeful passions of his breast
+To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,
+Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
+And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
+His being in the sight of happiness
+That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
+Beneath whose shade all life is wither'd up,
+And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
+A temple where the vows of happy love
+Are register'd, are equal in thy sight:
+No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
+And favouritism, and worst desire of fame
+Thou know'st not: all that the wide world contains
+Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
+Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
+Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
+Because thou hast not human sense,
+Because thou art not human mind.
+"Yes! when the sweeping storm of time
+Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruin'd fanes
+And broken altars of the almighty Fiend
+Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood
+Through centuries clotted there has floated down
+The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
+Unchangeable! A shrine is rais'd to thee,
+Which, nor the tempest-breath of time,
+Nor the interminable flood
+Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
+Availeth to destroy--
+The sensitive extension of the world.
+That wondrous and eternal fane,
+Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
+To do the will of strong necessity,
+And life, in multitudinous shapes,
+Still pressing forward where no term can be,
+Like hungry and unresting flame
+Curls round the eternal columns of its strength."
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++62	And like a Dying Lady, Lean and Pale|
+<poem>And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
+Who totters forth, wrapp'd 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</poem>
 ++++
 ++++63	Lines|
+<poem>WHEN the lamp is shatter'd,
+The light in the dust lies dead;
+When the cloud is scatter'd,
+The rainbow's glory is shed;
+When the lute is broken,
+Sweet tones are remember'd not
+When the lips have spoken,
+Loved accents are soon forgot.
+As music and splendour
+Survive not the lamp and the lute,
+The heart's echoes render
+No song when the spirit is mute--
+No song but sad dirges,
+Like the wind through a ruin'd cell,
+Or the mournful surges
+That ring the dead seaman's knell.
+When hearts have once mingled,
+Love first leaves the well-built nest;
+The weak one is singled
+To endure what it once possest.
+O Love, who bewailest
+The frailty of all things here,
+Why choose you the frailest
+For your cradle, your home, and your bier?
+Its passions will rock thee,
+As the storms rock the ravens on high:
+Bright reason will mock thee,
+Like the sun from a wintry sky.
+From thy nest every rafter
+Will rot, and thine eagle home
+Leave thee naked to laughter,
+When leaves fall and cold winds come.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++64	To Coleridge|
+<poem>Oh! there are spirits of the air,
+And genii of the evening breeze,
+And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
+As star-beams among twilight trees:
+Such lovely ministers to meet
+Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
+With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
+And moonlight seas, that are the voice
+Of these inexplicable things,
+Thou dost hold commune, and rejoice
+When they did answer thee, but they
+Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.
+And thou hast sought in starry eyes
+Beams that were never meant for thine,
+Another's wealth: tame sacrifice
+To a fond faith ! still dost thou pine?
+Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
+Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?
+Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
+On the false earth's inconstancy?
+Did thine own mind afford no scope
+Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?
+That natural scenes or human smiles
+Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles?
+Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled
+Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;
+The glory of the moon is dead;
+Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed;
+Thine own soul still is true to thee,
+But changed to a foul fiend through misery.
+This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
+Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
+Dream not to chase: the mad endeavour
+Would scourge thee to severer pangs.
+Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,
+Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++65	Song: Rarely, rarely, comest thou|
+<poem>Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
+Spirit of Delight!
+Wherefore hast thou left me now
+Many a day and night?
+Many a weary night and day
+'Tis since thou are 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 dismay'd;
+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 dress'd,
+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's, and may be
+Untainted by man's misery.
+I love tranquil solitude,
+And such society
+As is quiet, wise, and good;
+Between thee and me
+What difference? but thou dost possess
+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! Oh come,
+Make once more my heart thy home.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++66	A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire|
+<poem>THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
+Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray,
+And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair
+In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:
+Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,
+Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.
+They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
+Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
+Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway,
+Responding to the charm with its own mystery.
+The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
+Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
+Thou too, aerial pile, whose pinnacles
+Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
+Obey'st I in silence their sweet solemn spells,
+Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
+Around whose lessening and invisible height
+Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
+The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
+And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,
+Half sense half thought, among the darkness stirs,
+Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,
+And, mingling with the still night and mute sky,
+Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.
+Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
+And terrorless as this serenest night.
+Here could I hope, like some enquiring child
+Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
+Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
+That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++67	One sung of thee who left the tale untold|
+<poem>One sung of thee who left the tale untold,
+Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;
+Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,
+Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++68	Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici|
+<poem>She left me at the silent time
+When the moon had ceas'd to climb
+The azure path of Heaven's steep,
+And like an albatross asleep,
+Balanc'd on her wings of light,
+Hover'd in the purple night,
+Ere she sought her ocean nest
+In the chambers of the West.
+She left me, and I stay'd alone
+Thinking over every tone
+Which, though silent to the ear,
+The enchanted heart could hear,
+Like notes which die when born, but still
+Haunt the echoes of the hill;
+And feeling ever--oh, too much!--
+The soft vibration of her touch,
+As if her gentle hand, even now,
+Lightly trembled on my brow;
+And thus, although she absent were,
+Memory gave me all of her
+That even Fancy dares to claim:
+Her presence had made weak and tame
+All passions, and I lived alone
+In the time which is our own;
+The past and future were forgot,
+As they had been, and would be, not.
+But soon, the guardian angel gone,
+The daemon reassum'd his throne
+In my faint heart. I dare not speak
+My thoughts, but thus disturb'd and weak
+I sat and saw the vessels glide
+Over the ocean bright and wide,
+Like spirit-winged chariots sent
+O'er some serenest element
+For ministrations strange and far,
+As if to some Elysian star
+Sailed for drink to medicine
+Such sweet and bitter pain as mine.
+And the wind that wing'd their flight
+From the land came fresh and light,
+And the scent of winged flowers,
+And the coolness of the hours
+Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day,
+Were scatter'd o'er the twinkling bay.
+And the fisher with his lamp
+And spear about the low rocks damp
+Crept, and struck the fish which came
+To worship the delusive flame.
+Too happy they, whose pleasure sought
+Extinguishes all sense and thought
+Of the regret that pleasure leaves,
+Destroying life alone, not peace!</poem>
 ++++
 ++++69	From "Adonais," 49-52|
+<poem>49
+Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise,
+The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
+And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
+And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
+The bones of Desolation's nakedness
+Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
+Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
+Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
+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 planned
+This refuge for his memory, doth stand
+Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
+A field is spread, on which a newer band
+Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
+Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.
+Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
+To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
+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's bitter wind
+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's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
+Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
+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's azure sky,
+Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
+The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.</poem>
 ++++
 ++++70	Archy's Song from Charles the First|
+<poem>Heigho! the lark and the owl!
+One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:
+Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
+Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
+"A widow bird sate mourning for her love
+Upon a wintry bough;
+The frozen wind crept on above,
+The freezing stream below.
+"There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
+No flower upon the ground,
+And little motion in the air
+Except the mill-wheel's sound."</poem>
 ++++
 ++++71	Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue|
+<poem>ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child.
+SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como.
+HELEN
+Come hither, my sweet Rosalind.
+'T is long since thou and I have met;
+And yet methinks it were unkind
+Those moments to forget.
+Come, sit by me. I see thee stand
+By this lone lake, in this far land,
+Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
+Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
+United, and thine eyes replying
+To the hues of yon fair heaven.
+Come, gentle friend! wilt sit by me?
+And be as thou wert wont to be
+Ere we were disunited?
+None doth behold us now; the power
+That led us forth at this lone hour
+Will be but ill requited
+If thou depart in scorn. Oh, come,
+And talk of our abandoned home!
+Remember, this is Italy,
+And we are exiles. Talk with me
+Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
+Barren and dark although they be,
+Were dearer than these chestnut woods;
+Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
+And the blue mountains, shapes which seem
+Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream;
+Which that we have abandoned now,
+Weighs on the heart like that remorse
+Which altered friendship leaves. I seek
+No more our youthful intercourse.
+That cannot be! Rosalind, speak,
+Speak to me! Leave me not! When morn did come,
+When evening fell upon our common home,
+When for one hour we parted,--do not frown;
+I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken;
+But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token
+Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,
+Turn, as 't were but the memory of me,
+And not my scornèd self who prayed to thee!
+ROSALIND
+Is it a dream, or do I see
+And hear frail Helen? I would flee
+Thy tainting touch; but former years
+Arise, and bring forbidden tears;
+And my o'erburdened memory
+Seeks yet its lost repose in thee.
+I share thy crime. I cannot choose
+But weep for thee; mine own strange grief
+But seldom stoops to such relief;
+Nor ever did I love thee less,
+Though mourning o'er thy wickedness
+Even with a sister's woe. I knew
+What to the evil world is due,
+And therefore sternly did refuse
+To link me with the infamy
+Of one so lost as Helen. Now,
+Bewildered by my dire despair,
+Wondering I blush, and weep that thou
+Shouldst love me still--thou only!--There,
+Let us sit on that gray stone
+Till our mournful talk be done.
+HELEN
+Alas! not there; I cannot bear
+The murmur of this lake to hear.
+A sound from there, Rosalind dear,
+Which never yet I heard elsewhere
+But in our native land, recurs,
+Even here where now we meet. It stirs
+Too much of suffocating sorrow!
+In the dell of yon dark chestnut wood
+Is a stone seat, a solitude
+Less like our own. The ghost of peace
+Will not desert this spot. To-morrow,
+If thy kind feelings should not cease,
+We may sit here.
+ROSALIND
+Thou lead, my sweet,
+And I will follow.
+HENRY
+'T is Fenici's seat
+Where you are going? This is not the way,
+Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow
+Close to the little river.
+HELEN
+Yes, I know;
+I was bewildered. Kiss me and be gay,
+Dear boy; why do you sob?
+HENRY
+I do not know;
+But it might break any one's heart to see
+You and the lady cry so bitterly.
+HELEN
+It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home,
+Henry, and play with Lilla till I come.
+We only cried with joy to see each other;
+We are quite merry now. Good night.
+The boy
+Lifted a sudden look upon his mother,
+And, in the gleam of forced and hollow joy
+Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee
+Of light and unsuspecting infancy,
+And whispered in her ear, 'Bring home with you
+That sweet strange lady-friend.' Then off he flew,
+But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile,
+Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while,
+Hiding her face, stood weeping silently.
+In silence then they took the way
+Beneath the forest's solitude.
+It was a vast and antique wood,
+Through which they took their way;
+And the gray shades of evening
+O'er that green wilderness did fling
+Still deeper solitude.
+Pursuing still the path that wound
+The vast and knotted trees around,
+Through which slow shades were wandering,
+To a deep lawny dell they came,
+To a stone seat beside a spring,
+O'er which the columned wood did frame
+A roofless temple, like the fane
+Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
+Man's early race once knelt beneath
+The overhanging deity.
+O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,
+Now spangled with rare stars. The snake,
+The pale snake, that with eager breath
+Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,
+Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
+Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,
+When he floats on that dark and lucid flood
+In the light of his own loveliness;
+And the birds, that in the fountain dip
+Their plumes, with fearless fellowship
+Above and round him wheel and hover.
+The fitful wind is heard to stir
+One solitary leaf on high;
+The chirping of the grasshopper
+Fills every pause. There is emotion
+In all that dwells at noontide here;
+Then through the intricate wild wood
+A maze of life and light and motion
+Is woven. But there is stillness now--
+Gloom, and the trance of Nature now.
+The snake is in his cave asleep;
+The birds are on the branches dreaming;
+Only the shadows creep;
+Only the glow-worm is gleaming;
+Only the owls and the nightingales
+Wake in this dell when daylight fails,
+And gray shades gather in the woods;
+And the owls have all fled far away
+In a merrier glen to hoot and play,
+For the moon is veiled and sleeping now.
+The accustomed nightingale still broods
+On her accustomed bough,
+But she is mute; for her false mate
+Has fled and left her desolate.
+This silent spot tradition old
+Had peopled with the spectral dead.
+For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold
+And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told
+That a hellish shape at midnight led
+The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,
+And sate on the seat beside him there,
+Till a naked child came wandering by,
+When the fiend would change to a lady fair!
+A fearful tale! the truth was worse;
+For here a sister and a brother
+Had solemnized a monstrous curse,
+Meeting in this fair solitude;
+For beneath yon very sky,
+Had they resigned to one another
+Body and soul. The multitude,
+Tracking them to the secret wood,
+Tore limb from limb their innocent child,
+And stabbed and trampled on its mother;
+But the youth, for God's most holy grace,
+A priest saved to burn in the market-place.
+Duly at evening Helen came
+To this lone silent spot,
+From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow
+So much of sympathy to borrow
+As soothed her own dark lot.
+Duly each evening from her home,
+With her fair child would Helen come
+To sit upon that antique seat,
+While the hues of day were pale;
+And the bright boy beside her feet
+Now lay, lifting at intervals
+His broad blue eyes on her;
+Now, where some sudden impulse calls,
+Following. He was a gentle boy
+And in all gentle sorts took joy.
+Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,
+With a small feather for a sail,
+His fancy on that spring would float,
+If some invisible breeze might stir
+Its marble calm; and Helen smiled
+Through tears of awe on the gay child,
+To think that a boy as fair as he,
+In years which never more may be,
+By that same fount, in that same wood,
+The like sweet fancies had pursued;
+And that a mother, lost like her,
+Had mournfully sate watching him.
+Then all the scene was wont to swim
+Through the mist of a burning tear.
+For many months had Helen known
+This scene; and now she thither turned
+Her footsteps, not alone.
+The friend whose falsehood she had mourned
+Sate with her on that seat of stone.
+Silent they sate; for evening,
+And the power its glimpses bring,
+Had with one awful shadow quelled
+The passion of their grief. They sate
+With linkèd hands, for unrepelled
+Had Helen taken Rosalind's.
+Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds
+The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair
+Which is twined in the sultry summer air
+Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre,
+Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,
+And the sound of her heart that ever beat
+As with sighs and words she breathed on her,
+Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,
+Till her thoughts were free to float and flow;
+And from her laboring bosom now,
+Like the bursting of a prisoned flame,
+The voice of a long-pent sorrow came.
+ROSALIND
+I saw the dark earth fall upon
+The coffin; and I saw the stone
+Laid over him whom this cold breast
+Had pillowed to his nightly rest!
+Thou knowest not, thou canst not know
+My agony. Oh! I could not weep.
+The sources whence such blessings flow
+Were not to be approached by me!
+But I could smile, and I could sleep,
+Though with a self-accusing heart.
+In morning's light, in evening's gloom,
+I watched--and would not thence depart--
+My husband's unlamented tomb.
+My children knew their sire was gone;
+But when I told them, 'He is dead,'
+They laughed aloud in frantic glee,
+They clapped their hands and leaped about,
+Answering each other's ecstasy
+With many a prank and merry shout.
+But I sate silent and alone,
+Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.
+They laughed, for he was dead; but I
+Sate with a hard and tearless eye,
+And with a heart which would deny
+The secret joy it could not quell,
+Low muttering o'er his loathèd name;
+Till from that self-contention came
+Remorse where sin was none; a hell
+Which in pure spirits should not dwell.
+I 'll tell thee truth. He was a man
+Hard, selfish, loving only gold,
+Yet full of guile; his pale eyes ran
+With tears which each some falsehood told,
+And oft his smooth and bridled tongue
+Would give the lie to his flushing cheek;
+He was a coward to the strong;
+He was a tyrant to the weak,
+On whom his vengeance he would wreak;
+For scorn, whose arrows search the heart,
+From many a stranger's eye would dart,
+And on his memory cling, and follow
+His soul to its home so cold and hollow.
+He was a tyrant to the weak,
+And we were such, alas the day!
+Oft, when my little ones at play
+Were in youth's natural lightness gay,
+Or if they listened to some tale
+Of travellers, or of fairyland,
+When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand
+Flashed on their faces,--if they heard
+Or thought they heard upon the stair
+His footstep, the suspended word
+Died on my lips; we all grew pale;
+The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear
+If it thought it heard its father near;
+And my two wild boys would near my knee
+Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully.
+I 'll tell thee truth: I loved another.
+His name in my ear was ever ringing,
+His form to my brain was ever clinging;
+Yet, if some stranger breathed that name,
+My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast.
+My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame,
+My days were dim in the shadow cast
+By the memory of the same!
+Day and night, day and night,
+He was my breath and life and light,
+For three short years, which soon were passed.
+On the fourth, my gentle mother
+Led me to the shrine, to be
+His sworn bride eternally.
+And now we stood on the altar stair,
+When my father came from a distant land,
+And with a loud and fearful cry
+Rushed between us suddenly.
+I saw the stream of his thin gray hair,
+I saw his lean and lifted hand,
+And heard his words--and live! O God!
+Wherefore do I live?--'Hold, hold!'
+He cried, 'I tell thee 't is her brother!
+Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod
+Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold;
+I am now weak, and pale, and old;
+We were once dear to one another,
+I and that corpse! Thou art our child!'
+Then with a laugh both long and wild
+The youth upon the pavement fell.
+They found him dead! All looked on me,
+The spasms of my despair to see;
+But I was calm. I went away;
+I was clammy-cold like clay.
+I did not weep; I did not speak;
+But day by day, week after week,
+I walked about like a corpse alive.
+Alas! sweet friend, you must believe
+This heart is stone--it did not break.
+My father lived a little while,
+But all might see that he was dying,
+He smiled with such a woful smile.
+When he was in the churchyard lying
+Among the worms, we grew quite poor,
+So that no one would give us bread;
+My mother looked at me, and said
+Faint words of cheer, which only meant
+That she could die and be content;
+So I went forth from the same church door
+To another husband's bed.
+And this was he who died at last,
+When weeks and months and years had passed,
+Through which I firmly did fulfil
+My duties, a devoted wife,
+With the stern step of vanquished will
+Walking beneath the night of life,
+Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain
+Falling forever, pain by pain,
+The very hope of death's dear rest;
+Which, since the heart within my breast
+Of natural life was dispossessed,
+Its strange sustainer there had been.
+When flowers were dead, and grass was green
+Upon my mother's grave--that mother
+Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make
+My wan eyes glitter for her sake,
+Was my vowed task, the single care
+Which once gave life to my despair--
+When she was a thing that did not stir,
+And the crawling worms were cradling her
+To a sleep more deep and so more sweet
+Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee,
+I lived; a living pulse then beat
+Beneath my heart that awakened me.
+What was this pulse so warm and free?
+Alas! I knew it could not be
+My own dull blood. 'T was like a thought
+Of liquid love, that spread and wrought
+Under my bosom and in my brain,
+And crept with the blood through every vein,
+And hour by hour, day after day,
+The wonder could not charm away
+But laid in sleep my wakeful pain,
+Until I knew it was a child,
+And then I wept. For long, long years
+These frozen eyes had shed no tears;
+But now--'t was the season fair and mild
+When April has wept itself to May;
+I sate through the sweet sunny day
+By my window bowered round with leaves,
+And down my cheeks the quick tears ran
+Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves,
+When warm spring showers are passing o'er.
+O Helen, none can ever tell
+The joy it was to weep once more!
+I wept to think how hard it were
+To kill my babe, and take from it
+The sense of light, and the warm air,
+And my own fond and tender care,
+And love and smiles; ere I knew yet
+That these for it might, as for me,
+Be the masks of a grinning mockery.
+And haply, I would dream, 't were sweet
+To feed it from my faded breast,
+Or mark my own heart's restless beat
+And watch the growing soul beneath
+Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,
+Half interrupted by calm sighs,
+And search the depth of its fair eyes
+For long departed memories!
+And so I lived till that sweet load
+Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed
+The stream of years, and on it bore
+Two shapes of gladness to my sight;
+Two other babes, delightful more,
+In my lost soul's abandoned night,
+Than their own country ships may be
+Sailing towards wrecked mariners
+Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea.
+For each, as it came, brought soothing tears;
+And a loosening warmth, as each one lay
+Sucking the sullen milk away,
+About my frozen heart did play,
+And weaned it, oh, how painfully--
+As they themselves were weaned each one
+From that sweet food--even from the thirst
+Of death, and nothingness, and rest,
+Strange inmate of a living breast,
+Which all that I had undergone
+Of grief and shame, since she who first
+The gates of that dark refuge closed
+Came to my sight, and almost burst
+The seal of that Lethean spring--
+But these fair shadows interposed.
+For all delights are shadows now!
+And from my brain to my dull brow
+The heavy tears gather and flow.
+I cannot speak--oh, let me weep!
+The tears which fell from her wan eyes
+Glimmered among the moonlight dew.
+Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs
+Their echoes in the darkness threw.
+When she grew calm, she thus did keep
+The tenor of her tale:--
+He died;
+I know not how; he was not old,
+If age be numbered by its years;
+But he was bowed and bent with fears,
+Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,
+Which, like fierce fever, left him weak;
+And his strait lip and bloated cheek
+Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers;
+And selfish cares with barren plough,
+Not age, had lined his narrow brow,
+And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed
+Upon the withering life within,
+Like vipers on some poisonous weed.
+Whether his ill were death or sin
+None knew, until he died indeed,
+And then men owned they were the same.
+Seven days within my chamber lay
+That corse, and my babes made holiday.
+At last, I told them what is death.
+The eldest, with a kind of shame,
+Came to my knees with silent breath,
+And sate awe-stricken at my feet;
+And soon the others left their play,
+And sate there too. It is unmeet
+To shed on the brief flower of youth
+The withering knowledge of the grave.
+From me remorse then wrung that truth.
+I could not bear the joy which gave
+Too just a response to mine own.
+In vain. I dared not feign a groan;
+And in their artless looks I saw,
+Between the mists of fear and awe,
+That my own thought was theirs; and they
+Expressed it not in words, but said,
+Each in its heart, how every day
+Will pass in happy work and play,
+Now he is dead and gone away!
+After the funeral all our kin
+Assembled, and the will was read.
+My friend, I tell thee, even the dead
+Have strength, their putrid shrouds within,
+To blast and torture. Those who live
+Still fear the living, but a corse
+Is merciless, and Power doth give
+To such pale tyrants half the spoil
+He rends from those who groan and toil,
+Because they blush not with remorse
+Among their crawling worms. Behold,
+I have no child! my tale grows old
+With grief, and staggers; let it reach
+The limits of my feeble speech,
+And languidly at length recline
+On the brink of its own grave and mine.
+Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty
+Among the fallen on evil days.
+'T is Crime, and Fear, and Infamy,
+And houseless Want in frozen ways
+Wandering ungarmented, and Pain,
+And, worse than all, that inward stain,
+Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers
+Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears
+First like hot gall, then dry forever!
+And well thou knowest a mother never
+Could doom her children to this ill,
+And well he knew the same. The will
+Imported that, if e'er again
+I sought my children to behold,
+Or in my birthplace did remain
+Beyond three days, whose hours were told,
+They should inherit nought; and he,
+To whom next came their patrimony,
+A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,
+Aye watched me, as the will was read,
+With eyes askance, which sought to see
+The secrets of my agony;
+And with close lips and anxious brow
+Stood canvassing still to and fro
+The chance of my resolve, and all
+The dead man's caution just did call;
+For in that killing lie 't was said--
+'She is adulterous, and doth hold
+In secret that the Christian creed
+Is false, and therefore is much need
+That I should have a care to save
+My children from eternal fire.'
+Friend, he was sheltered by the grave,
+And therefore dared to be a liar!
+In truth, the Indian on the pyre
+Of her dead husband, half consumed,
+As well might there be false as I
+To those abhorred embraces doomed,
+Far worse than fire's brief agony.
+As to the Christian creed, if true
+Or false, I never questioned it;
+I took it as the vulgar do;
+Nor my vexed soul had leisure yet
+To doubt the things men say, or deem
+That they are other than they seem.
+All present who those crimes did hear,
+In feigned or actual scorn and fear,
+Men, women, children, slunk away,
+Whispering with self-contented pride
+Which half suspects its own base lie.
+I spoke to none, nor did abide,
+But silently I went my way,
+Nor noticed I where joyously
+Sate my two younger babes at play
+In the courtyard through which I passed;
+But went with footsteps firm and fast
+Till I came to the brink of the ocean green,
+And there, a woman with gray hairs,
+Who had my mother's servant been,
+Kneeling, with many tears and prayers,
+Made me accept a purse of gold,
+Half of the earnings she had kept
+To refuge her when weak and old.
+With woe, which never sleeps or slept,
+I wander now. 'T is a vain thought--
+But on yon Alp, whose snowy head
+'Mid the azure air is islanded,
+(We see it--o'er the flood of cloud,
+Which sunrise from its eastern caves
+Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,
+Hung with its precipices proud--
+From that gray stone where first we met)
+There--now who knows the dead feel nought?--
+Should be my grave; for he who yet
+Is my soul's soul once said: ''T were sweet
+'Mid stars and lightnings to abide,
+And winds, and lulling snows that beat
+With their soft flakes the mountain wide,
+Where weary meteor lamps repose,
+And languid storms their pinions close,
+And all things strong and bright and pure,
+And ever during, aye endure.
+Who knows, if one were buried there,
+But these things might our spirits make,
+Amid the all-surrounding air,
+Their own eternity partake?'
+Then 't was a wild and playful saying
+At which I laughed or seemed to laugh.
+They were his words--now heed my praying,
+And let them be my epitaph.
+Thy memory for a term may be
+My monument. Wilt remember me?
+I know thou wilt; and canst forgive,
+Whilst in this erring world to live
+My soul disdained not, that I thought
+Its lying forms were worthy aught,
+And much less thee.
+HELEN
+Oh, speak not so!
+But come to me and pour thy woe
+Into this heart, full though it be,
+Aye overflowing with its own.
+I thought that grief had severed me
+From all beside who weep and groan,
+Its likeness upon earth to be--
+Its express image; but thou art
+More wretched. Sweet, we will not part
+Henceforth, if death be not division;
+If so, the dead feel no contrition.
+But wilt thou hear, since last we parted,
+All that has left me broken-hearted?
+ROSALIND
+Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn
+Of their thin beams by that delusive morn
+Which sinks again in darkness, like the light
+Of early love, soon lost in total night.
+HELEN
+Alas! Italian winds are mild,
+But my bosom is cold--wintry cold;
+When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves,
+Soft music, my poor brain is wild,
+And I am weak like a nursling child,
+Though my soul with grief is gray and old.
+ROSALIND
+Weep not at thine own words, though they must make
+Me weep. What is thy tale?
+HELEN
+I fear 't will shake
+Thy gentle heart with tears. Thou well
+Rememberest when we met no more;
+And, though I dwelt with Lionel,
+That friendless caution pierced me sore
+With grief; a wound my spirit bore
+Indignantly--but when he died,
+With him lay dead both hope and pride.
+Alas! all hope is buried now.
+But then men dreamed the aged earth
+Was laboring in that mighty birth
+Which many a poet and a sage
+Has aye foreseen--the happy age
+When truth and love shall dwell below
+Among the works and ways of men;
+Which on this world not power but will
+Even now is wanting to fulfil.
+Among mankind what thence befell
+Of strife, how vain, is known too well;
+When Liberty's dear pæan fell
+'Mid murderous howls. To Lionel,
+Though of great wealth and lineage high,
+Yet through those dungeon walls there came
+Thy thrilling light, O Liberty!
+And as the meteor's midnight flame
+Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth
+Flashed on his visionary youth,
+And filled him, not with love, but faith,
+And hope, and courage mute in death;
+For love and life in him were twins,
+Born at one birth. In every other
+First life, then love, its course begins,
+Though they be children of one mother;
+And so through this dark world they fleet
+Divided, till in death they meet;
+But he loved all things ever. Then
+He passed amid the strife of men,
+And stood at the throne of armèd power
+Pleading for a world of woe.
+Secure as one on a rock-built tower
+O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro,
+'Mid the passions wild of humankind
+He stood, like a spirit calming them;
+For, it was said, his words could bind
+Like music the lulled crowd, and stem
+That torrent of unquiet dream
+Which mortals truth and reason deem,
+But is revenge and fear and pride.
+Joyous he was; and hope and peace
+On all who heard him did abide,
+Raining like dew from his sweet talk,
+As where the evening star may walk
+Along the brink of the gloomy seas,
+Liquid mists of splendor quiver.
+His very gestures touched to tears
+The unpersuaded tyrant, never
+So moved before; his presence stung
+The torturers with their victim's pain,
+And none knew how; and through their ears
+The subtle witchcraft of his tongue
+Unlocked the hearts of those who keep
+Gold, the world's bond of slavery.
+Men wondered, and some sneered to see
+One sow what he could never reap;
+For he is rich, they said, and young,
+And might drink from the depths of luxury.
+If he seeks fame, fame never crowned
+The champion of a trampled creed;
+If he seeks power, power is enthroned
+'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed
+Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil
+Those who would sit near power must toil;
+And such, there sitting, all may see.
+What seeks he? All that others seek
+He casts away, like a vile weed
+Which the sea casts unreturningly.
+That poor and hungry men should break
+The laws which wreak them toil and scorn
+We understand; but Lionel,
+We know, is rich and nobly born.
+So wondered they; yet all men loved
+Young Lionel, though few approved;
+All but the priests, whose hatred fell
+Like the unseen blight of a smiling day,
+The withering honey-dew which clings
+Under the bright green buds of May
+Whilst they unfold their emerald wings;
+For he made verses wild and queer
+On the strange creeds priests hold so dear
+Because they bring them land and gold.
+Of devils and saints and all such gear
+He made tales which whoso heard or read
+Would laugh till he were almost dead.
+So this grew a proverb: 'Don't get old
+Till Lionel's Banquet in Hell you hear,
+And then you will laugh yourself young again.'
+So the priests hated him, and he
+Repaid their hate with cheerful glee.
+Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died,
+For public hope grew pale and dim
+In an altered time and tide,
+And in its wasting withered him,
+As a summer flower that blows too soon
+Droops in the smile of the waning moon,
+When it scatters through an April night
+The frozen dews of wrinkling blight.
+None now hoped more. Gray Power was seated
+Safely on her ancestral throne;
+And Faith, the Python, undefeated
+Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on
+Her foul and wounded train; and men
+Were trampled and deceived again,
+And words and shows again could bind
+The wailing tribes of humankind
+In scorn and famine. Fire and blood
+Raged round the raging multitude,
+To fields remote by tyrants sent
+To be the scornèd instrument
+With which they drag from mines of gore
+The chains their slaves yet ever wore;
+And in the streets men met each other,
+And by old altars and in halls,
+And smiled again at festivals.
+But each man found in his heart's brother
+Cold cheer; for all, though half deceived,
+The outworn creeds again believed,
+And the same round anew began
+Which the weary world yet ever ran.
+Many then wept, not tears, but gall,
+Within their hearts, like drops which fall
+Wasting the fountain-stone away.
+And in that dark and evil day
+Did all desires and thoughts that claim
+Men's care--ambition, friendship, fame,
+Love, hope, though hope was now despair--
+Indue the colors of this change,
+As from the all-surrounding air
+The earth takes hues obscure and strange,
+When storm and earthquake linger there.
+And so, my friend, it then befell
+To many,--most to Lionel,
+Whose hope was like the life of youth
+Within him, and when dead became
+A spirit of unresting flame,
+Which goaded him in his distress
+Over the world's vast wilderness.
+Three years he left his native land,
+And on the fourth, when he returned,
+None knew him; he was stricken deep
+With some disease of mind, and turned
+Into aught unlike Lionel.
+On him--on whom, did he pause in sleep,
+Serenest smiles were wont to keep,
+And, did he wake, a wingèd band
+Of bright Persuasions, which had fed
+On his sweet lips and liquid eyes,
+Kept their swift pinions half outspread
+To do on men his least command--
+On him, whom once 't was paradise
+Even to behold, now misery lay.
+In his own heart 't was merciless--
+To all things else none may express
+Its innocence and tenderness.
+'T was said that he had refuge sought
+In love from his unquiet thought
+In distant lands, and been deceived
+By some strange show; for there were found,
+Blotted with tears--as those relieved
+By their own words are wont to do--
+These mournful verses on the ground,
+By all who read them blotted too.
+'How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire;
+I loved, and I believed that life was love.
+How am I lost! on wings of swift desire
+Among Heaven's winds my spirit once did move.
+I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire
+My liquid sleep; I woke, and did approve
+All Nature to my heart, and thought to make
+A paradise of earth for one sweet sake.
+'I love, but I believe in love no more.
+I feel desire, but hope not. Oh, from sleep
+Most vainly must my weary brain implore
+Its long lost flattery now! I wake to weep,
+And sit through the long day gnawing the core
+Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep--
+Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure--
+To my own soul its self-consuming treasure.'
+He dwelt beside me near the sea;
+And oft in evening did we meet,
+When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee
+O'er the yellow sands with silver feet,
+And talked. Our talk was sad and sweet,
+Till slowly from his mien there passed
+The desolation which it spoke;
+And smiles--as when the lightning's blast
+Has parched some heaven-delighting oak,
+The next spring shows leaves pale and rare,
+But like flowers delicate and fair,
+On its rent boughs--again arrayed
+His countenance in tender light;
+His words grew subtle fire, which made
+The air his hearers breathed delight;
+His motions, like the winds, were free,
+Which bend the bright grass gracefully,
+Then fade away in circlets faint;
+And wingèd Hope--on which upborne
+His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,
+Like some bright spirit newly born
+Floating amid the sunny skies--
+Sprang forth from his rent heart anew.
+Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien,
+Tempering their loveliness too keen,
+Past woe its shadow backward threw;
+Till, like an exhalation spread
+From flowers half drunk with evening dew,
+They did become infectious--sweet
+And subtle mists of sense and thought,
+Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet,
+Almost from our own looks and aught
+The wild world holds. And so his mind
+Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear;
+For ever now his health declined,
+Like some frail bark which cannot bear
+The impulse of an altered wind,
+Though prosperous; and my heart grew full,
+'Mid its new joy, of a new care;
+For his cheek became, not pale, but fair,
+As rose-o'ershadowed lilies are;
+And soon his deep and sunny hair,
+In this alone less beautiful,
+Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare.
+The blood in his translucent veins
+Beat, not like animal life, but love
+Seemed now its sullen springs to move,
+When life had failed, and all its pains;
+And sudden sleep would seize him oft
+Like death, so calm,--but that a tear,
+His pointed eye-lashes between,
+Would gather in the light serene
+Of smiles whose lustre bright and soft
+Beneath lay undulating there.
+His breath was like inconstant flame
+As eagerly it went and came;
+And I hung o'er him in his sleep,
+Till, like an image in the lake
+Which rains disturb, my tears would break
+The shadow of that slumber deep.
+Then he would bid me not to weep,
+And say, with flattery false yet sweet,
+That death and he could never meet,
+If I would never part with him.
+And so we loved, and did unite
+All that in us was yet divided;
+For when he said, that many a rite,
+By men to bind but once provided,
+Could not be shared by him and me,
+Or they would kill him in their glee,
+I shuddered, and then laughing said--
+'We will have rites our faith to bind,
+But our church shall be the starry night,
+Our altar the grassy earth outspread,
+And our priest the muttering wind.'
+'T was sunset as I spoke. One star
+Had scarce burst forth, when from afar
+The ministers of misrule sent
+Seized upon Lionel, and bore
+His chained limbs to a dreary tower,
+In the midst of a city vast and wide.
+For he, they said, from his mind had bent
+Against their gods keen blasphemy,
+For which, though his soul must roasted be
+In hell's red lakes immortally,
+Yet even on earth must he abide
+The vengeance of their slaves: a trial,
+I think, men call it. What avail
+Are prayers and tears, which chase denial
+From the fierce savage nursed in hate?
+What the knit soul that pleading and pale
+Makes wan the quivering cheek which late
+It painted with its own delight?
+We were divided. As I could,
+I stilled the tingling of my blood,
+And followed him in their despite,
+As a widow follows, pale and wild,
+The murderers and corse of her only child;
+And when we came to the prison door,
+And I prayed to share his dungeon floor
+With prayers which rarely have been spurned,
+And when men drove me forth, and I
+Stared with blank frenzy on the sky,--
+A farewell look of love he turned,
+Half calming me; then gazed awhile,
+As if through that black and massy pile,
+And through the crowd around him there,
+And through the dense and murky air,
+And the thronged streets, he did espy
+What poets know and prophesy;
+And said, with voice that made them shiver
+And clung like music in my brain,
+And which the mute walls spoke again
+Prolonging it with deepened strain--
+'Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever,
+Or the priests of the bloody faith;
+They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
+Whose waves they have tainted with death;
+It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
+Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,
+And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
+Like wrecks, in the surge of eternity.'
+I dwelt beside the prison gate;
+And the strange crowd that out and in
+Passed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate,
+Might have fretted me with its ceaseless din,
+But the fever of care was louder within.
+Soon but too late, in penitence
+Or fear, his foes released him thence.
+I saw his thin and languid form,
+As leaning on the jailor's arm,
+Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while
+To meet his mute and faded smile
+And hear his words of kind farewell,
+He tottered forth from his damp cell.
+Many had never wept before,
+From whom fast tears then gushed and fell;
+Many will relent no more,
+Who sobbed like infants then; ay, all
+Who thronged the prison's stony hall,
+The rulers or the slaves of law,
+Felt with a new surprise and awe
+That they were human, till strong shame
+Made them again become the same.
+The prison bloodhounds, huge and grim,
+From human looks the infection caught,
+And fondly crouched and fawned on him;
+And men have heard the prisoners say,
+Who in their rotting dungeons lay,
+That from that hour, throughout one day,
+The fierce despair and hate which kept
+Their trampled bosoms almost slept,
+Where, like twin vultures, they hung feeding
+On each heart's wound, wide torn and bleeding,--
+Because their jailors' rule, they thought,
+Grew merciful, like a parent's sway.
+I know not how, but we were free;
+And Lionel sate alone with me,
+As the carriage drove through the streets apace;
+And we looked upon each other's face;
+And the blood in our fingers intertwined
+Ran like the thoughts of a single mind,
+As the swift emotions went and came
+Through the veins of each united frame.
+So through the long, long streets we passed
+Of the million-peopled City vast;
+Which is that desert, where each one
+Seeks his mate yet is alone,
+Beloved and sought and mourned of none;
+Until the clear blue sky was seen,
+And the grassy meadows bright and green.
+And then I sunk in his embrace
+Enclosing there a mighty space
+Of love; and so we travelled on
+By woods, and fields of yellow flowers,
+And towns, and villages, and towers,
+Day after day of happy hours.
+It was the azure time of June,
+When the skies are deep in the stainless noon,
+And the warm and fitful breezes shake
+The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row briar;
+And there were odors then to make
+The very breath we did respire
+A liquid element, whereon
+Our spirits, like delighted things
+That walk the air on subtle wings,
+Floated and mingled far away
+'Mid the warm winds of the sunny day.
+And when the evening star came forth
+Above the curve of the new bent moon,
+And light and sound ebbed from the earth,
+Like the tide of the full and the weary sea
+To the depths of its own tranquillity,
+Our natures to its own repose
+Did the earth's breathless sleep attune;
+Like flowers, which on each other close
+Their languid leaves when daylight's gone,
+We lay, till new emotions came,
+Which seemed to make each mortal frame
+One soul of interwoven flame,
+A life in life, a second birth
+In worlds diviner far than earth;--
+Which, like two strains of harmony
+That mingle in the silent sky,
+Then slowly disunite, passed by
+And left the tenderness of tears,
+A soft oblivion of all fears,
+A sweet sleep:--so we travelled on
+Till we came to the home of Lionel,
+Among the mountains wild and lone,
+Beside the hoary western sea,
+Which near the verge of the echoing shore
+The massy forest shadowed o'er.
+The ancient steward with hair all hoar,
+As we alighted, wept to see
+His master changed so fearfully;
+And the old man's sobs did waken me
+From my dream of unremaining gladness;
+The truth flashed o'er me like quick madness
+When I looked, and saw that there was death
+On Lionel. Yet day by day
+He lived, till fear grew hope and faith,
+And in my soul I dared to say,
+Nothing so bright can pass away;
+Death is dark, and foul, and dull,
+But he is--oh, how beautiful!
+Yet day by day he grew more weak,
+And his sweet voice, when he might speak,
+Which ne'er was loud, became more low;
+And the light which flashed through his waxen cheek
+Grew faint, as the rose-like hues which flow
+From sunset o'er the Alpine snow;
+And death seemed not like death in him,
+For the spirit of life o'er every limb
+Lingered, a mist of sense and thought.
+When the summer wind faint odors brought
+From mountain flowers, even as it passed,
+His cheek would change, as the noonday sea
+Which the dying breeze sweeps fitfully.
+If but a cloud the sky o'ercast,
+You might see his color come and go,
+And the softest strain of music made
+Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade
+Amid the dew of his tender eyes;
+And the breath, with intermitting flow,
+Made his pale lips quiver and part.
+You might hear the beatings of his heart,
+Quick but not strong; and with my tresses
+When oft he playfully would bind
+In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses
+His neck, and win me so to mingle
+In the sweet depth of woven caresses,
+And our faint limbs were intertwined,--
+Alas! the unquiet life did tingle
+From mine own heart through every vein,
+Like a captive in dreams of liberty,
+Who beats the walls of his stony cell.
+But his, it seemed already free,
+Like the shadow of fire surrounding me!
+On my faint eyes and limbs did dwell
+That spirit as it passed, till soon--
+As a frail cloud wandering o'er the moon,
+Beneath its light invisible,
+Is seen when it folds its gray wings again
+To alight on midnight's dusky plain--
+I lived and saw, and the gathering soul
+Passed from beneath that strong control,
+And I fell on a life which was sick with fear
+Of all the woe that now I bear.
+Amid a bloomless myrtle wood,
+On a green and sea-girt promontory
+Not far from where we dwelt, there stood,
+In record of a sweet sad story,
+An altar and a temple bright
+Circled by steps, and o'er the gate
+Was sculptured, 'To Fidelity;'
+And in the shrine an image sate
+All veiled; but there was seen the light
+Of smiles which faintly could express
+A mingled pain and tenderness
+Through that ethereal drapery.
+The left hand held the head, the right--
+Beyond the veil, beneath the skin,
+You might see the nerves quivering within--
+Was forcing the point of a barbèd dart
+Into its side-convulsing heart.
+An unskilled hand, yet one informed
+With genius, had the marble warmed
+With that pathetic life. This tale
+It told: A dog had from the sea,
+When the tide was raging fearfully,
+Dragged Lionel's mother, weak and pale,
+Then died beside her on the sand,
+And she that temple thence had planned;
+But it was Lionel's own hand
+Had wrought the image. Each new moon
+That lady did, in this lone fane,
+The rites of a religion sweet
+Whose god was in her heart and brain.
+The seasons' loveliest flowers were strewn
+On the marble floor beneath her feet,
+And she brought crowns of sea-buds white
+Whose odor is so sweet and faint,
+And weeds, like branching chrysolite,
+Woven in devices fine and quaint;
+And tears from her brown eyes did stain
+The altar; need but look upon
+That dying statue, fair and wan,
+If tears should cease, to weep again;
+And rare Arabian odors came,
+Through the myrtle copses, steaming thence
+From the hissing frankincense,
+Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam,
+Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome--
+That ivory dome, whose azure night
+With golden stars, like heaven, was bright
+O'er the split cedar's pointed flame;
+And the lady's harp would kindle there
+The melody of an old air,
+Softer than sleep; the villagers
+Mixed their religion up with hers,
+And, as they listened round, shed tears.
+One eve he led me to this fane.
+Daylight on its last purple cloud
+Was lingering gray, and soon her strain
+The nightingale began; now loud,
+Climbing in circles the windless sky,
+Now dying music; suddenly
+'T is scattered in a thousand notes;
+And now to the hushed ear it floats
+Like field-smells known in infancy,
+Then, failing, soothes the air again.
+We sate within that temple lone,
+Pavilioned round with Parian stone;
+His mother's harp stood near, and oft
+I had awakened music soft
+Amid its wires; the nightingale
+Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale.
+'Now drain the cup,' said Lionel,
+'Which the poet-bird has crowned so well
+With the wine of her bright and liquid song!
+Heard'st thou not sweet words among
+That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
+Heard'st thou not that those who die
+Awake in a world of ecstasy?
+That love, when limbs are interwoven,
+And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
+And thought, to the world's dim boundaries clinging,
+And music, when one beloved is singing,
+Is death? Let us drain right joyously
+The cup which the sweet bird fills for me.'
+He paused, and to my lips he bent
+His own; like spirit his words went
+Through all my limbs with the speed of fire;
+And his keen eyes, glittering through mine,
+Filled me with the flame divine
+Which in their orbs was burning far,
+Like the light of an unmeasured star
+In the sky of midnight dark and deep;
+Yes, 't was his soul that did inspire
+Sounds which my skill could ne'er awaken;
+And first, I felt my fingers sweep
+The harp, and a long quivering cry
+Burst from my lips in symphony;
+The dusk and solid air was shaken,
+As swift and swifter the notes came
+From my touch, that wandered like quick flame,
+And from my bosom, laboring
+With some unutterable thing.
+The awful sound of my own voice made
+My faint lips tremble; in some mood
+Of wordless thought Lionel stood
+So pale, that even beside his cheek
+The snowy column from its shade
+Caught whiteness; yet his countenance,
+Raised upward, burned with radiance
+Of spirit-piercing joy whose light,
+Like the moon struggling through the night
+Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break
+With beams that might not be confined.
+I paused, but soon his gestures kindled
+New power, as by the moving wind
+The waves are lifted; and my song
+To low soft notes now changed and dwindled,
+And, from the twinkling wires among,
+My languid fingers drew and flung
+Circles of life-dissolving sound,
+Yet faint; in aëry rings they bound
+My Lionel, who, as every strain
+Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien
+Sunk with the sound relaxedly;
+And slowly now he turned to me,
+As slowly faded from his face
+That awful joy; with look serene
+He was soon drawn to my embrace,
+And my wild song then died away
+In murmurs; words I dare not say
+We mixed, and on his lips mine fed
+Till they methought felt still and cold.
+'What is it with thee, love?' I said;
+No word, no look, no motion! yes,
+There was a change, but spare to guess,
+Nor let that moment's hope be told.
+I looked,--and knew that he was dead;
+And fell, as the eagle on the plain
+Falls when life deserts her brain,
+And the mortal lightning is veiled again.
+Oh, that I were now dead! but such--
+Did they not, love, demand too much,
+Those dying murmurs?--he forbade.
+Oh, that I once again were mad!
+And yet, dear Rosalind, not so,
+For I would live to share thy woe.
+Sweet boy! did I forget thee too?
+Alas, we know not what we do
+When we speak words.
+No memory more
+Is in my mind of that sea-shore.
+Madness came on me, and a troop
+Of misty shapes did seem to sit
+Beside me, on a vessel's poop,
+And the clear north wind was driving it.
+Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers,
+And the stars methought grew unlike ours,
+And the azure sky and the stormless sea
+Made me believe that I had died
+And waked in a world which was to me
+Drear hell, though heaven to all beside.
+Then a dead sleep fell on my mind,
+Whilst animal life many long years
+Had rescued from a chasm of tears;
+And, when I woke, I wept to find
+That the same lady, bright and wise,
+With silver locks and quick brown eyes,
+The mother of my Lionel,
+Had tended me in my distress,
+And died some months before. Nor less
+Wonder, but far more peace and joy,
+Brought in that hour my lovely boy.
+For through that trance my soul had well
+The impress of thy being kept;
+And if I waked or if I slept,
+No doubt, though memory faithless be,
+Thy image ever dwelt on me;
+And thus, O Lionel, like thee
+Is our sweet child. 'T is sure most strange
+I knew not of so great a change
+As that which gave him birth, who now
+Is all the solace of my woe.
+That Lionel great wealth had left
+By will to me, and that of all
+The ready lies of law bereft
+My child and me,--might well befall.
+But let me think not of the scorn
+Which from the meanest I have borne,
+When, for my child's belovèd sake,
+I mixed with slaves, to vindicate
+The very laws themselves do make;
+Let me not say scorn is my fate,
+Lest I be proud, suffering the same
+With those who live in deathless fame.
+She ceased.--'Lo, where red morning through the woods
+Is burning o'er the dew!' said Rosalind.
+And with these words they rose, and towards the flood
+Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves, now wind
+With equal steps and fingers intertwined.
+Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore
+Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses
+Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies
+And with their shadows the clear depths below,
+And where a little terrace from its bowers
+Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon flowers
+Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er
+The liquid marble of the windless lake;
+And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar
+Under the leaves which their green garments make,
+They come. 'T is Helen's home, and clean and white,
+Like one which tyrants spare on our own land
+In some such solitude; its casements bright
+Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,
+And even within 't was scarce like Italy.
+And when she saw how all things there were planned
+As in an English home, dim memory
+Disturbed poor Rosalind; she stood as one
+Whose mind is where his body cannot be,
+Till Helen led her where her child yet slept,
+And said, 'Observe, that brow was Lionel's,
+Those lips were his, and so he ever kept
+One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.
+You cannot see his eyes--they are two wells
+Of liquid love. Let us not wake him yet.'
+But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept
+A shower of burning tears which fell upon
+His face, and so his opening lashes shone
+With tears unlike his own, as he did leap
+In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.
+So Rosalind and Helen lived together
+Thenceforth--changed in all else, yet friends again,
+Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather
+They wandered in their youth through sun and rain.
+And after many years, for human things
+Change even like the ocean and the wind,
+Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,
+And in their circle thence some visitings
+Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene.
+A lovely child she was, of looks serene,
+And motions which o'er things indifferent shed
+The grace and gentleness from whence they came.
+And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed
+From the same flowers of thought, until each mind
+Like springs which mingle in one flood became;
+And in their union soon their parents saw
+The shadow of the peace denied to them.
+And Rosalind--for when the living stem
+Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall--
+Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe
+The pale survivors followed her remains
+Beyond the region of dissolving rains,
+Up the cold mountain she was wont to call
+Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice
+They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,
+Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,
+Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
+The last, when it had sunk; and through the night
+The charioteers of Arctos wheelèd round
+Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home,
+Whose sad inhabitants each year would come,
+With willing steps climbing that rugged height,
+And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound
+With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite,
+Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light;
+Such flowers as in the wintry memory bloom
+Of one friend left adorned that frozen tomb.
+Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,
+Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led
+Into the peace of his dominion cold.
+She died among her kindred, being old.
+And know, that if love die not in the dead
+As in the living, none of mortal kind
+Are blessed as now Helen and Rosalind.
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++72	Chorus from Hellas|
+<poem>The world`s great age begins anew,
+The golden years return,
+The earth doth like a snake renew
+Her winter weeds outworn:
+Heaven smiles, and faith and empires gleam,
+Like a 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 Ulyssses leaves once more
+Calypso for his native shore...
+</poem>
 ++++
 ++++73	Poetical Essay|
+<poem>
+Millions to fight compell'd, to fight or die
+In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie . . .
+When the legal murders swell the lists of pride;
+When glory's views the titled idiot guide
+Lost Shelley poem found after 200 years
+</poem>
 ++++

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