Poems Lyrical and Dramatic :: :: University of Virginia Library

I dreamed once of a city
Of marble and of gold,
Where pity melts to pity
And love for love is sold,
Where hot light smokes and shivers
Round endless sweeps of rivers,
A home of high endeavours
For the stately men of old.

O'er it no cloud's umbration,
No stain of tempest hue,
But throbbing and pulsation
Of endless depths of blue:
No fume nor vapour hoary,
Only a mist of glory
Inveiled it like a story
Of the beautiful and true.

All round were cattle browsing
On grassy slope and bank,
And bronzèd youths carousing
With maids of snowy flank:
Or down in cool green places
They wrestled with grim faces
To the Muses and the Graces,
To the gods that loved and drank.

In the broad and breezy highlands
Lay blue lakes mountain-bound,
And, blossoming with islands,
The deep sea circled round,
Kissing the long thin reaches
Of the silvery shell-strewn beaches,
Which the sunny salt wind bleaches
And the white waves fill with sound.

There the hill-side smiles and glistens
With the olive and the vine,
And the dim and purple distance
Kisses the purpler brine,
And the gold corn bends and surges
By the fruitful vales and verges,

Where the rivulet emerges
And the flowers begin to shine.

Far along the green sea's edges
The gold hills bask and burn,
With their shelving saffron ledges
And vales of moss and fern,
And the sun sinks on the pillows
Of their gilded cloud-like billows
When the mountain's bosom yellows
And the twilight fires return.

And the moon at night comes scaling
The spire-like westward peaks,
Her pale blue raiment trailing
Over the hills and creeks:
From her lap the stars like flowers
She flings in sea-green showers,
And across the icy towers
She walks with silver streaks.

And the temple's fluted column
Rears its pediment on high,
Where the gods, serene and solemn,
Gaze on the passer-by,

And the beauty of their faces
Lights the city's quiet places,
And their ample love embraces
All the earth and sea and sky.

And under tower and temple,
By minarets and domes,
With burning waves a-tremble
The stately river foams,
Lapping the granite arches
Of the bridges, while it marches
Through rows of limes and larches,
By many hearths and homes.

By buttresses and basements
And pillared colonnade,
By open doors and casements
In festal wreaths arrayed,
By stair and terrace wending,
In windings without ending,
Sunlight or moonlight blending
With massy squares of shade.

By gardens full of fountains
And statues white as snow,

Nymphs of the seas and mountains,
And goddesses a-row,
Where the deep heart of the roses
Its secret sweet uncloses,
And the scent, like heat, reposes
On the beds that bask and glow.

By palaces of pleasure
With spires and vanes a-glare,
Where many a sculptured treasure
Lies bathed in smiles, and where
Sound's ebbing waves go fainting
Through galleries of painting,
No angry colour tainting
Their halls of rosy air.

And the silken-sailèd galleys
Keep soaring up and down
Through the long and leafy alleys
Of the river-threaded town;
And they moor their gilded barges
By the flecked and flowery marges,
Where the river-bed enlarges
To the seaside and the sun.

They be happy men that dwell there
In that serene abode;
They have no heaven nor hell there,
Nor fear of fiend or god;
Each by his soul's light steering,
Not resting, neither veering,
Nor coveting nor fearing
The recompense or rod.

Though seasons shift and alter,
No change their weather mars,
But the struggling sunbeams falter
Through the cloud-rack's golden bars;
And when clouds are rent asunder
The moon smiles blandly under,
Mixing the light of thunder
With the icy light of stars.

There gorgeous Plato's spirit
Hangs brooding like a dove,
And all men born inherit
Love free as gods above;
There each one is to other
A sister or a brother,

A father or a mother,
A lover or a love.

And the maids amid the shadows
At eve come forth to play,
And along the moonlight meadows
The manly lovers stray,
And the woodland chirps and hisses
With the laughter and the kisses,
And their fiery long-drawn blisses
Scarce spare the blush of day.

And they bathe amid the shallows
Of the rain-pools in the glade,
Where the fane of Eros hallows
The broad and spreading shade;
And they gambol free and tameless,
In their naked beauty shameless,
In a land where all is blameless,
Hand in hand, sweet youth and maid.

For with them no strife of ages,
No war of old and young,
But the poets and the sages
Give forth one fiery tongue;

And when some young Apollo
Awakes the shell's mute hollow,
The old men weeping follow
For the days when they too sung.

And the seer's words take measure,
And thought is music-shod,
And the young man sings of pleasure
With the wisdom of a god,
And the old man's mystic dreaming
Is of faith beyond the seeming,
Of the shifting ocean teeming
With the isles where Truth has trod.

Of the dim-eyed captives fettered
In the cave of spectral night,
And the rays on darkness scattered
By the sun of truth and light,
Of the Love that leads us higher,
And nigher still and nigher
To the fount of light and fire,
To the source of Good and Right.

And they feast in many an arbour
Of the passion-flower and vine,

In a cool sweet shady harbour
From the broad and bright sunshine,
And each glowing maiden cowers
By the youth her love devours,
And they spread the fruit and flowers,
And they draw the beamy wine.

And they add sweet woodland berries
To their meal of milk and cheese,
And ripe figs and cornel cherries
From the overladen trees,
With their oaten bread and wheaten
In the new mulse steeped and eaten,
And the oil-cakes which they sweeten
With fresh honey from the bees.

And the poet in the pauses
Of the laughter and the love
Sings the honey-worded clauses
Of the lofty Lesbian dove;
And amid the harp's wild clangour,
Free of jealousy and anger,
All may look with fiery languor
In the eyes they famish of.

And the spray of myrtle chases
The bowl around the board,
And they chant with glowing faces,
And they smite the thrilling chord
To the love of youth and woman,
To the goddess of the true man,
To the Freedom of all human,
And her champion the sword.

For once they had a tyrant,
Who ate, and slept, and drank,
And abased each high aspirant
To the slaves who cringed and shrank:
But the youth arose and sought him,
In the market-place they caught him,
To the water-side they brought him,
And they nailed him to a plank.

And now in ease and quiet,
In melody and play,
And passion's amorous riot
They pass sweet hours away:
The battle of the sexes
Alone their spirit vexes:

Nor war nor wealth perplexes
The Elysium of their day.

But when foeman's foot impinges
On the pasture of their flocks,
They don their purple fringes
And they comb their golden locks,
And the maids, with tightened kirtle
And foreheads bound with myrtle,
Stalk where the death-shafts hurtle,
And drive them to the rocks.

Not half of heart and listless,
As men with loves less free,
But headlong and resistless
As the lightnings and the sea;
For in face of all the chances
Of the whirling blades and lances,
Amid love's approving glances
Weak men as gods would be.

Strong-sinewed as the lion,
Fleet-footed as the deer,
The sire beside the scion,
The maid her mother near,

All good or evil calling
Alike each thing befalling,
One family appalling,
One heart that knows not fear.

Nor, when their banners vanquish
And triumph wreathes their arms,
In joyless sloth they languish,
Once free of foes' alarm,
But, ne'er till darkness steeping
The soul in love or sleeping,
In running, wrestling, leaping,
All freely bare their charms.

Their spirits frank and truthful,
No spite, no lusts defile,
And the grey chide not the youthful,
And the youth forbear to smile
At the old man's wheezy coughing
And the crone her vesture doffing,
At the evil only scoffing,
That only deeming vile.

For the base is food for laughter,
And the evil only base,

And if virtue lead, thereafter
Can follow no disgrace:
Not in the raiment's measure
Dwells Temperance the treasure,
But in him whom pain nor pleasure,
Can move not from his place.

Some scour o'er measured courses
With oiled and naked limbs,
One tames unbroken horses,
And one the torrent swims;
Or they try their fleet mares' paces
For the steed and chariot races,
Straining the tightened traces
Bound to the brazen rims.

How sweet the cool limbs sunning
Under the elms to lie,
Or 'neath the olives running
In the fair Academy,
Crowned with white yew or rushes
And poplar leaf that brushes
The brow no passion flushes,
To let sweet hours go by!

They hurl the spear together
And cast the disc with might,
Or case their arms in leather
And join in Pollux' fight;
With blunted blades they bicker
On osier shields and wicker:
Their hearts beat thick and thicker
With conflict's high delight.

And now behold advancing,
Brought forth from field and stall,
Great chargers proudly prancing,
By nimble youths and tall;
With eager looks they stroke them,
Who bred them, fed them, broke them,
And to the cars they yoke them,
Obedient to their call.

The rounded lists lie ready,
Fenced in and strawn with bark,
The steeds stand close and steady,
Straining to cross the mark,
With arched necks forward bended
And nostrils wide distended,

Great-flanked, and strong, and splendid,
And for the signal hark.

Now from the barriers bursting
They give them to the course,
Like men for glory thirsting,
In fiery fearless force;
And each youth with back-blown tresses
And form that forward presses
With lashes and caresses
Hangs o'er his flying horse.

Ah! who of gods shall hinder
Their thunder-swift career?
Well sang the glorious Pindar,
And Horace, less severe,
Of the wheels the hot goal grazing,
And the crown of all men's praising,
E'en to the god's feet raising
The champion charioteer!

And by the hot Palæstras
In converse with the youth,
Or mingling with the feasters
In rhymes and jests uncouth,

The sage, not sad and tearful,
Nor full of doubts and fearful,
Like Socrates the cheerful
Teaches eternal truth.

With ardours unabating
He strings his thoughts like pearls,
Till, child of his creating,
The flower of truth uncurls;
He plants not briars nor nettles,
But blooms of fragrant petals,
Where the bee for pleasure settles
And the moth her bright wing furls.

Oh happy, happy nation!
What else so favoured state
Hath Time's untold duration
Won yet for man from Fate?—
Time, that with slow devotion
Wrests from Fate's gulfy ocean
Like sands of shifting motion
Empires of little date.

Not in Athens, Lacedæmon,
Not in Rome's most happy age

Stood that city of the free man,
Nor in Plato's golden page;
But sweet slumber came and mingled
All the dreams wherewith I tingled,
From all lands and ages singled,
And built it stage on stage.

And I woke, and lo! my vision
Was gone on wings of air,
And morn with cold derision
Spread abroad her pallid glare;
And I rose and penned this ditty,
And wept on it for pity
That no man shall see my city
And no Christian enter there.