University of Virginia Library

Wrapt in the tender restfulness of home,
In cooling calm, the soft umbrageous dome
Of fluttering foliage, lipped by lambent airs—
Those restless wafts for ever free from cares,
Which wander through the avenues and glades
Of greenery—sheltered by incumbent shades,
I pause. Around me roll the whirl and strife,
The flux and reflux of the sea of life,
Left for a moment. Exiled from the press,
Lapt in the bosom of forgetfulness,
I muse: while gentle rivulets of sound,
Steal through my fancy as forbidden ground,
Meandering, murmurous, musical, divine,
With solemn march and numbers clandestine.
And, ah, to live for ever in the hush
Of haunted hazels, where the rustling rush,
Intruder on the margin of the mere,
Puts forth a fairy foot in waters clear,
And pushes through the mass of singing sedge
Its phalanxes of spears, and waving wedge
Armed and effulgent in the sun. O joy,
To linger in some indolent employ,
While weaving daisy chain and cowslip ball;
To watch the leaflet fluctuate and fall,
From windy tops of trees, that shine, and show
Their movements mirrored in the deeps below;
With half-shut eyes, by links of leisure bound,
To seem the centre of the world of sound—
That hemisphere of separate sense, which fills
The intervals and hollows of the hills,
With mocking echoes multiplied; to hear
The laughing wavelets of the magic mere,
Lapping the edges, lazy—with its freight
Of floating moorhens, silent and sedate,
Scared at a whisper, beating by the bank,
And oft retreating in the herbage rank.
Even so I stay my wandering step, and glean
Some ears of wheat from harvests now unseen.

Not far a monstrous oak-tree, guarled and grim,
The growth of ages nor in grandeur dim,
Planted by Druids for some dreadful rite,
With half a hundred branches breaks the light;
Scarred by the thunder-bolt, beseamed and seared,
The child of Time and under tempests reared,
With ghastly weather-bruises gashed and rent,
Incomparably great, incontinent;
Encroaching on the earth that grudges space,
It crashes down the stems of meaner race.
Primæval is the Forest. Still it swarms
With monuments of past and perished forms,
Gigantic structures, tumulus and camp,
Which echoed back the fierce invaders' tramp,
And treasure heroes. Here the anchorite,
Slept in his coffin quaking through the night;
With circling rope and roughest horsehair girt,
Self-tortured, shivering in his sackcloth shirt;
Or lashed to heights of meritorious pain,
In heaven-assaulting penance, howled again.
Here robbers roved: and many a quiet blow
Of moonlit murder, laid its victim low.

Yet why awaken memories that sleep,
The misery of records buried deep,
Unconsecrated tales? . . . But let me tell,
One legend of a tragedy that fell,
Far in the Forest, on a City fair,
Whose pinnacles rose radiant through the air,
Where all was lovely. It was called, by men
Who rested in its porches, Hazelden.
Thus chanced it. Lo, they built the City ill.
On one side lay the shadow of a hill
Superincumbent, on the other spread
Broad spaces of a circuit dank and dead,
A foul morass; yea, under the fair town,
The quagmire burrowed deep and settled down,
Sapping foundations firm. What could they know?
The awful process moving on below,
Mysterious, baffled all. At times was heard—
As mutterings of some inarticulate word,
Wrested from one that suffers anguish dire,
Extorted by the rack or roasting fire—
An ominous and intermittent sound,
That boded much and grumbled underground,
Tearing the bowels of the tortured earth.
But blinded by the madness of their mirth,
They thought it distant thunder, or the moan
Of sullen earthquakes in the heart of stone
That held them captive, struggling to be free;
Or else the sobbings of a central sea,
Locked in recesses nethermost. In vain,
The rumbling rose and died away with rain,
In premonitious dread. Meanwhile, they bought
And sold, and children to the birth were brought;
They married, feasted; tilled the soil, and sowed;
Made hovels houses; reaped the crops; and rode
With joy to battle; or returned in peace,
Splendid with spoils; waxed wanton and obese,
Like other states . . . The periods passed . . . At length,
Arising in their armies and their strength,
The prisoned waters burst their brittle bands,
And superseded the reluctant lands.
Down sank the City bright, in pomp and pride,
With tossing arms and faces warped and wried,
With agonizing limbs of wailing men,
And angry surges swallowed Hazelden.
Now nodding flags and crested speargrass wave,
While withered beldams mutter o'er its grave.

Once forth I wandered, in the great calm night,
By restless rage to see again the sight,
Hounded; and hurrying past the river's rush,
With many a quahn, I sought the solemn hush,
Where lay the buried city, stern and still.
I heard the foxes barking from the hill.
Earth slept. The lights and shadows played. A dance
Of fairy figures fled. A wild romance,
And awful consecration, seemed to sway
The land with sweetness. I compelled my way,
Dogged by nocturnal noices, and the shades
That shimmered in the moonlit forest glades,
Inconstant. But the sense of something weird,
Besieged my heart with fables. And I feared.
Before me, stretched the water; while behind,
I was aware of God's unfettered wind,
Bewailing in the pines and drawing near,
Most melancholy, terrible and drear.
Around appeared to rise a presence strange,
Which stole upon me with a wondrous change,
Unearthly. In a moment, through the gloom,
The resurrection of the city's doom
Gleamed. And I saw the agony renewed,
Of all that miserable multitude.
The surface of the boiling pool was strown,
With dead and dying bodies eddying down—
With corpses—faces spent, yet spared to life,
Cadaverous, and in the tumbling strife,
More woe-begone than all—with bloated bulks,
That wallowed in the waves like mastless hulks—
With frames of frantic wretches, showing then
Decomposition's tooth—with sinking men,
And reappearing. How they strove for breath!
And wrestling with the tyranny of death,
They prayed, implored, and with no words besought;
Clutched at each other, clung, in frenzy fought;
Entreated, gasped and glared, for mercy wrung
Their strained and struggling hands, with lolling tongue,
But all in silence desperate and deep,
Like men that close with fiends in frightful sleep.
Then they subsided but to rise again,
And re-enact that carnival of pain.
It seemed the Devil's own peculiar den,
That dreadful water choked with drowning men:
Faces on which the anguish of despair,
In every form was stamped—the ghastly stare,
The writhing horror, and the livid look—
Unutterable woe, that hugged and shook
Its strangled prey. Then suddenly as sin,
The waves prevailed and sucked the sufferers in,
And washed them down and whirled them underneath,
Tormented in the unrelaxing teeth
Of furious currents. Camly as of old,
The playful ripples in the twilight rolled
Their tribute to the banks. That hideous store,
The horrid wrinkles which the ruin bore,
Had vanished. But I saw the well-known view,
And felt my forehead wet with midnight dew.
The frolic rabbit frisked. The beetle boomed.
Through silver mists the silver birches loomed,
Gigantic, ghostly. While the aspen sighed
And shivered, willows wept, and owlets cried.
The clouds looked frosty. Swimming in a swoon,
Earth glimmered through the glorious plenilune.

Again, by day, in search of summer flowers,
I rambled through the radiancy of bowers,
By noontide fired. Here shy forget-me-nots,
Sequestered grew; and there the crimson spots
Of clover blazed. God knows, I gladly found
His gracious footsteps graven on the ground,
And walking in the wind . . . Anon, by chance,
I lighted on the lake of pale romance.
The sun was hot, and cooling looked the wave,
Inviting weary travellers to lave
Their languid limbs. So boldly swimming out,
To satisfy the cravings of a doubt
Importunate, I dived through fathoms deep,
Prone to disturb the City's oozy sleep,
And solve the secret . . . Unexpected truth,
Fair forms of perished things and faded youth,
Broke on bewildered eyes. I saw, I saw,
The level lengths of streets with little flaw,
And tops of towers; the palaces of pride,
The marble mansions wonderful and wide,
And most intact by time; some aptly graced
For entertainments, miracles of taste;
Some desolate by funerals, or worn
By frequent feet of dancers—all forlorn.
And many seemed not finished: slain as fools,
The builders worked and gripped their grimy tools;
Piled heavy burdens, blocks of granite shaped,
Or quarried; while their ribs in ruin gaped.
Tall edifices framed of costly stone,
Abominable things had made their own,
And paddled in them; on the portals sprawled
Weeds of corruption; loathsome reptiles crawled,
Within the comely precincts—leaving still
A line of slime and slaughter, at their will—
Upon each other feeding; and the walls,
Were scribbled over with no human scrawls.
But skeletons of mighty men untold,
Bleached by the bitter waters there were rolled,
Or lay reposing . . . One was rising up,
And in his hand he clasped a golden cup,
In act of drinking . . . Here a citizen,
With crooked fingers crushed an iron pen,
Convulsed by death when writing . . . By him prest,
A mother with a baby at her breast,
Feeding and fondling it; and in her look
Life lingered still, that never love forsook.
The market-place stood: huddled in a heap,
Were bones of cattle death had rendered cheap;
And by them idly lay the butcher's blade,
Among the victims it so newly made,
Fallen with the butcher . . . Horrid hands would peep,
From open windows, clenched; as though to keep
Doom and destruction off . . . Behind them peered,
The ghosts of men that eyeless sockets reared,
Fantastic . . . And with senseless skulls askance,
Seemed figures frozen in a frightful dance,
With twisted limbs . . . I marvelled much . . . At length,
Stretched out a giant stricken in his strength,
Who rent a lion in his grasp of steel;
Yet he succumbed . . . And one with iron heel,
A mighty serpent mangled; but it curled
Circumvolutions vast . . . The water-world
Teemed with the fragments of the broken past,
And forms heroic . . . There a boy had cast
A winning disc, in beautiful address;
He had no shadow of the sharp distress,
That stiffened him; but like Apollo stood,
Erect and instant, pointing . . . Where a wood
Once sacred grew, a furious athlete strove,
Against a stubborn ilex which he clove,
Horribly grinning, with his hands. . . . Anear,
Two combatants had shattered shield and spear,
And menacingly struggled foot to foot,
Indignant . . . Elsewhere, lo, an artist put
The last fair finish to his pictured dream,
In contemplation rapt. . . A song supreme,
Seemed hovering round the mouth of one that clung
About a stringéd instrument, and swung
In swirling eddies, where a swollen jet
Bubbled and broke . . . I saw the currents fret
The sexless remnants of a wretched knave,
Who laid another in the wormy grave,
With frantic gestures . . . . One had stabbed behind
His fellow; turning fugitive, to find
The death he meted . . . . Here a sufferer sat;
And there a warrior fell, supine and flat.
But many prone, with grim confusion crowned,
With buried faces grovelled on the ground.
Some in defiant manner fixed their feet,
And grappled with their hands; for life was sweet;
They peradventure young, and wooing maids
Who waited for them in the shuddering shades,
Constant and calm . , . . A frame of slender mould,
With bridal gifts and ornaments of gold,
Crumbled—unsexed by death: I tore a tress,
(On her blanched forehead's lingering loveliness,)
From which the summer sunshine had not fled,
Where frost and fire in mockery seem to wed.

And still I laboured on . . . . I scarcely freed
My body from the shackling water-weed.
The clammy leech had fastened in my blood,
And vile abortions of the pregnant mud
Embraced me . . . Ever painfully I went,
Bathing with creatures cross and imminent,
That plagued my path. Why notice them? I saw,
I felt alone, the mystery and awe,
Which like a thunder-cloud with gloomy wing,
Had swallowed up the thought of every thing,
And every sight but one . . . An iron room,
Made populous with engines dire of doom,
Encountered me . . . I paused . . . The prisoners rude,
In nameless orgies overtaken, strewed
The dismal depths; and some in made despair,
Had burst the bars to find destruction there—
Infatuate . . . I swept through golden gleams,
Lost in the lustre of forbidden dreams;
And found a store-house, piled with precious stones—
The amethyst, the emerald, and thrones
Inlaid with rubies, shapely—yellow crowns
With diamonds garnished, fretted into frowns
Of frosted art, by cunning workmanship—
And pitchers bossed with pearls, whose lucent lip
Once priceless liquors drank . . . In wild amaze,
I stood within the green and golden blaze,
While starry lightnings flashed . . . But then a skull
A regal head, but empty now and dull,
Wherein the maggot fed and mawworms played,
By sudden afflux at my feet was laid.
I started . . . Soon a gaunt and hungry arm
That held a dazzling sceptre, snapt the charm,
And challenged by a touch . . . Away I turned,
To fly a seething whirlpool, as it churned
A charnel-house to foam . . . I spied a bed,
Whereon an infant pressed its pretty head,
And one was watching; in her hand a bowl,
Of silver fine . . . A terror seized my soul
I rose . . . But in a minute brief I wrung
The treasured truths from secret Nature's tongue,
Reluctant . . . Round me rustled, as before,
The bulrush; laughing waters washed the shore;
And sedge-birds sang . . . The City slept below,
In dreamless rest, and weltering in woe.
And often now, when stormy grow the nights,
Belated wanderers catch those solemn sights,
That haunt the mere; and through the troubled gale,
They hear afar the sad and searching wail.