University of Virginia Library

Who is He
To whom this toilsome and producing earth
Is as a cunning workman? what are they
Whose lot is to enjoy as ours to lose?
To what fair soil do they transplant our bliss
And batten on the harvests that did sprout
In blood of ours?

Where be those planted fields
Wherein the everlasting flowers are full
That budded here;—whose tender germs, forsooth,
In all the universe could find no place
Warm as this bosom, and that would not root
Save in a human heart?

Where art thou, joy
Of yesterday? In whatsoever world
Whatever eyes inherit thee, what lips
Would taste, what hands majestical possess,
What breast contain, I interdict them all!
Thou art mine! Do thou but bless them with thy least
Enjoyment and I curse thee with my curse,
A Father's! What! am I but dung, you Heavens,
To grow your lush delights?

Fool, fool, fool, fool!
What is the flower but that on which it fed?
The same continued atoms now reset
In fashion to be glorious! Are we not
As he who lay a hundred years ago
In yon cross road, an elm-stake thro' his midst
That burgeoned, and he went up thro' its veins
Out of his prison into the bright air
And laughed green leaves, and so his felon shame,
His rotting shame, dark in the wormy earth,
Sprang to a tree, that with ten thousand hands
Greets the familiar winds, and first and last
Salutes the sun?

Ay, if I could go up!
If all these whirling passions lifted me
As whirlwinds lift the sea or the Simoom,
Dust such as I!

Oh Earth, that every year
Conceivest and hast no power to bring forth,
And year by year beginnest a psalm unsung,
So as with thee is it with all of thine?
As one who in a crowd of recreant men
Begins a chant of freedom, and with brow
Lift to the glowing sun, sings the first stave
Triumphant, but no ring of bold refrain
Surrounds him pausing for the wonted shout,
And he looks down to pallid lips and eyes
And all the silent treason, and, undone,
Sinks on the sward, and hides his shamèd face;
So ever looking to a golden time
At each new year, impatient, thou criest out
‘There shall be!’—and art silent, casting dust
Upon thine head.

Oh, season ever new,
Oh Spring that risest with us, sun by sun!
Whither thine hurrying stream, where thy full tide,
Thy neap excess, and overflow? What vale
Far off in heaven, dost thou yearly flood
With rainbow waters worthy of thy well,
Ah fountain Arethuse? For never here
Thy consummation; but what time we hail
Thine outleap, and the pulsing channels sing,
Somewhat beyond the verdurous verge drinks down
The sudden waters, leaving yellow sands
That autumn gathers, till the rock beneath
Shines in the frost of winter.

Where on earth
Is the unknown meridian of that day
Which to the Morn I met upon the east,
Should be as man to babe? Doth the young moon
Complete her promised light or multiply
Her beauty by her days?

Where is that rose
Which he who gave its bud as hieroglyph
Of budding love would own the equal sign
Of love's full-flowered perfection?

Of what blood
And changeling race are we who fill this earth,
Whereunto, hour by hour of every day
And night of all its fruitful centuries,
Children are born?

Oh little child, girl-child,
Last daughter of the old manorial house
In the green village, thou who when the sun
Is rising, and above, below, around,
The dew-drops shine, as every bough and spray,
Blade, leaf, small petal and least acrospire,
Yea, the unbodied joyance of the air
Had eyes, and smiled to see him, comest forth
Into the morning as an element
Of such etherial season duly sweet
And sweetly due, while singing birds and bees
Sound like the bubbling of that stream of day
Whereby thou, tripping, givest song for song!
Fair happy child, who goest at thy will
Into the sunny midst as a white bird
Into the crystal water that reflects
Spotless a spotless image, pure in pure,
And each unlessened still enhancing each,—
The image whitens the white wave, the wave
Adds the pure image to the floating snow;—
Thou who art native to the good of all;
For whom the unsullied fairness of the earth
Guards not herself, nor deprecating hands
Mystic arise out of the Beautiful
To put thee from the beauty; who dost tread
The daisies like a morning-wind and spill
Dews from lithe buttercups that fill again
With drops of pleasure; Oh thou unknown essence!
So near the eyes, so distant from the heart,
When dost thou take our nature, and become
No more than we? Something within her looks
A strange light through her lashes, and a joy
Beyond our throb. It cannot be that this
Abideth with her, for such bliss fulfilled
Thro' all the coming seasons that must yet
Accomplish woman, and increasing still
Within the ampler temple, were a sight
To breed rebellion in the universe,
Burn every world with jealousy of her's,
Summer this earth, and make the schooldame Nature
Break thro' the ill-assumed severity
Of her enforcèd aspect, with a cry
Be all the mother, catch thee to her heart,
Begin the golden ages, and in thee
Restore mankind. Therefore, thou most fair child,
Here thou hast no completion. In what hour
Of what set night wilt thou give up this ghost,
Exhaled as the last fragrance from a flower
Unchanged in hue? Upon what destined morn
Shall she come down a stranger to the board
Where the same face and form shall take a place
Not hers, and answer to familiar names
That have no owner upon earth? Of them
Who loved her is there one who shall be grave
With an unconscious sorrow, knowing nought,
But saying in himself, since such a day
My heart is poorer? Is there one of all,
Who thinking of a blissful time gone by
That floats in on his day-dream, like sweet air
From heaven, sun-bright and full of golden sounds
Going and coming, at one happy voice
Among the choir, starting, shall cry ‘Ah whose?’
And muse, and pass his hand across his brow
Perplexed? Will they be sodden with a spell,
Nor lift astonished eyes and hands to see
Her shining crescent fill no fuller moon
Than others? Nor so much as droop a lid
Sighing, as when the pulsing heart of youth
In mere abundance of young life's excess
Beats an unknown approach that never comes,
And we look up expecting, and look down
With melancholy wisdom mildly sad,
Smiling moralities?

They will behold,
And she shall grow and marry, breed and die,
Even as her mother, and of many none
Shall question her. Nevertheless at last
Truth shall be justified. Of them who deck
Her bier, or chant her thro' the pompous aisle,
Or load the blazoned marble with her broad
And gravid virtues, or in sable grief
Swell the dark progress winding long and slow,
Stately to honourable tombs, no hand
Will write upon her coffin, ‘This is she
Who played among the roses.’

Bitter heart,
That art so sternly just, is she as far
From the dear promise of her youth as thou
From yesterday?

Thou little phantom child,
That merely passing thro' my trancèd soul,
Hast left thy bright path, like the quivering track
Of any fleeting star, what is that scheme
Of life where this divine emotion finds
Its equal place, and in the balanced whole
Of still renewed proportion gives and takes
Worthy consent? Where doth the Man complete
The Poet? My chief impulse, and king-thought,
Capital virtue, and consummate act,
To what consorted system, yet unknown,
Do these belong? Of what colossal frame
Do I, like some rude hewer of the rock,
Dishume the giant limb from my rent heart,
And cannot guess its fellows?

Mystery
Of mysteries, like some great vapouring cloud
Topping a cumulous Heaven of mysteries! [A long pause.

Have we been all at fault? Are we the sons
Of pilgrim sires who left their lovelier land,
And do we call inhospitable climes
By names they brought from home?

Who shall declare?
Which of us hath beheld what first was called
‘Order’? Since bad hath worse, who testifies
That our serenest spectacle is not
The prime Confusion? Where the human sight
That ever looked on what they name in Heaven
Beauty and Good?

That which we fondly deem
A happy universe of part with part
Well-placed, and call it the full countenance
And noblest front of things, I could believe
To be upon the very skirts of God,
Ay where they roll in tumult, and do flap
In the wind of his going.

This is Chaos,
The Chaos whereof Poets sang, and sing
Unconscious, never having seen or heard
The harmony of Nature. This broad light
Is darkness. I who speak of me and mine,
Am but a living hand rent from its trunk
In the black vortex, and amid the waste
Of loaded disproportion and the foul
Incongruous ferment of these elements
Which might be worlds and men, touching at once
The grains of all unlikeness, to and fro
And up and down among the seething mass
For ever lifted, grasping dust or flame,
Each while I hold it Me, and each alike
Put out for any other. Nought between
A god's heart and the abominable extremes
Of the worst brood of sin's most lcathsome world
Impossible; nought certain but the pain
Of finding all unsure.