University of Virginia Library

My heart is heavy. This it is to speak
On Alpine heights, and with the profane breath
Of innocent words, to bring the avalanche
Upon my human head. I might have known
That he who treads these altitudes must walk
As from the mansions of eternal snow
I have beheld two customary stars
Go forth in sovereign converse, like to gods,
But seen to speak, not heard.

A dread is on me
As in a mortal illness, when the flesh
Knows in the air the coming dart, and shakes
With terror. I have called so loud and long
Into the twilight cave of Mystery;
And now at length, when thro' the cavernous dark
I hear far answering feet, my stout heart sinks.
That Dream! As some wild legendary rhyme
Heard on a grandame's knee, that being at end
Is still again begun, while at each turn
O' the winding tale the listener, cowering low,
Whispers the wonted question, to receive
More cold and pale the expected old reply
That lifts another hair, I ponder o'er
My strange adventure, and do press and wring
The mirk and husk of memory. Once again
I'll fill the cup to the enchanted brim
And drink it slowly. Yesterday I sat
From early morn till dark and strove in vain
To see the face of Death. And in the night
I dreamed. Methought I stood within this room,
As on the day when first I saw it grey
And empty; o'er my head a single branch
Of ivy threaded the high wall and hung
In green possession. And medreamed I stood
Robed like a necromancer, and with spells
Called on the name of Death. The wizard's store
Hung at my girdle, and on this last prize
I spent it sternly with the desperate hand
Of him who will be Prince or Beggar—each
New spell was more tremendous than the last.
At first there was great silence thro' the cell,
And then the cell was moved, tho' nothing stirred,
But under the gross visible I knew
An inner perturbation, as the crowd
Before the curtain feel the viewless scene
Inscrutable which heaves the swaying folds
That roll the mystery from stage to roof,
And roof to stage. And then a hush like death;
And thro' the hush a somewhat in the air
Twisting and falling; and I looked and saw
The ivy-branch, and all the branch was bare,
And the broad leaves lay shrivelled on the ground.
The fourth time the strong silence in the cell
Was as the straining silence of the rack,
When the still-tightening torture wrenches him
Who will not speak. The great veins in my brow
Throbbed with suppression, and such consciousness
I had of coming uproar, rising up
Thro' the containing stillness—as the fire
Of Ætna swells under her dark blind hill
And bursts in desolation—that my lips
Cried out. As if the sudden whip of Hell
Flashed on a pack of demons caught asleep,
The place brake silence, and a naked shriek
Came thro' the right-hand wall and, shrieking, passed
Out on the left, and when I called, returned,
Still shrieking, and so out upon the right,
And to and fro until my deafened brain
Reeled, and I fell down flat and slept as dead.
Then to me, sleeping, in my ear, these words,
Not as from outer nature, yet in voice
Not mine, tho' nearer to me than the ear
That heard it, as if in my head the blood
Along the intricate deep veins did hiss
A whisper and fled shivering to the heart.
‘Bring me the inflated skin thou callest Life,
And I will turn the wind-bag inside out
And clothe me.’

I am not the fool of dreams,
Yet hold it not incredible that things
Are seen before their time, and,—as to-night
In this strange vision, where, while all was still
I felt the undelivered silence swell—
Somewhat to be lies in the womb of Now,
And eyes unstayed by mortal obscuration
Behold at once the Mother and the Child.
A white skin and the sweet fair-seeming flesh
Shut back the common eye-sight; but there be
Who looking fast on the unblushed repose
Of Beauty—where she lieth bright and still
As some spent angel, dead-asleep in light
On the most heavenward top of all this world,
Wing-weary—seized with sudden trance and strong
Thro' the decorous continent and all
The charmed defence of Nature can behold
The circling health beneath them, the red haste
Of the quick heart, and of her heaving breast
The cavernous and windy mysteries;
Yea, all the creeping secrets of her maw,
The busy rot within her, and the worm
That preys upon her vitals. So perchance
I see the Future in the Present. Or
If in the smoothest hour of patent nature
That overhanging weight of Destiny
Which loads the heavy air do brood on us,
What wonder that our tenderer substance take
Impress divine, and show the awful stamp
And parody of Fate?

One can be brave
At noon, and with triumphant logic clear
The demonstrable air, but ne'ertheless,
Sometimes at Hallowe'en when, legends say,
The things that stir among the rustling trees
Are not all mortal, and the sick white moon
Wanes o'er the season of the sheeted dead,
We grow unreasonable and do quake
With more than the cold wind. The very soul,
Sick as the moon, suspects her sentinels,
And thro' her fortress of the body peers
Shivering abroad; our heart-strings over-strung,
Scare us with strange involuntary notes
Quivering and quaking, and the creeping flesh
Knows all the starting horrors of surprise
But that which makes them, and for that, half-wild,
Quickens the winking lids, and glances out
From side to side, as if some sudden chance
Of vision, some unused slant of the eye,
Some accidental focus of the sight
O' th' instant might reveal a peopled world
Crowding about us, and the empty light
Alive with phantoms. Doubtless there are no ghosts;
Yet somehow it is better not to move
Lest cold hands seize upon us from behind,
Or forward thro' the dim uncertain time
Face close with paly face. My ominous Dream
Leaves me in shuddering incredulity
As logically white.