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303

TASSO TO LEONORA

FROM HIS DUNGEON; IN MISERY AND DISTRACTION.

“Ha! thy frozen pulses flutter
With a love thou dar'st not utter. . . .
Lady, whose imperial brow
Is endiademed with woe!
All the wide world beside us
Show like multitudinous
Puppets passing from a scene;
What but mockery can they mean?”
Shelley—Misery; a Fragment.

Noblest Lady, throned above
All my soaring hopes of love;
Could you read my fate's dark truth,
You would give me scornless ruth.
Dawn by dawn I wake to say,—
I will drive all thought away
Of Her I cannot hope to win;
Vain regret is coward sin.
Yet each night I yearn to be
Wandering far alone with thee,
Through still Dreamland's dimmest grove
Moonlit by thy heavenly love.
304

Ah, the long days dark and cold!
Life, bereft of thee, unsouled—
Save for Memory!—crawls on slow,
One sick swoon of barren woe.
Ah, the long nights dreadly still!
When sleep flies my frantic will;
When through filmy dreams its sting
Consciousness darts quivering.
But when rich Sleep's nectared balm
Bathes my weary heart in calm;
Life, Strength, Joy are all re-found,
With thy pure love glory-crowned.
Thus thou hast my soul unsphered;
Waking life is dead and weird;
Deathlike trance is life:—ah me!
All our being seems to be
Interfused with mockery.
Yes—as Love is truer far
Than all other things; so are
Life and Death, the World and Time,
Mere false shows in some great Mime,
By dreadful mystery sublime.
305

Do not scorn me, Sweet, I crave;
Perhaps this woe may somewhat rave:
Yet how should It?—I can feel
Truth itself at times less real.
Do not scorn me,—for behold!
Near and nearer swiftly rolled
Solemn glooms of that great Night
No false Day shall dawn to blight.
Then the everlasting sleep,
Shall our souls in rapture steep,
Then in tranced Eternity
Thou shalt be made One with me!
Play our parts out in this Mime!—
Spectres mocking spectral Time,
Whose grim mockery keeps us hurled
Reeling through our spectral World.
What a Theatre expands!
For its Stage all seas and lands;
By the moon and high stars lit;
Vaulted by the Infinite.
Heavens! and I must bear a part,
With my restless passionate heart
Coffined in this foul dead den
From the surging seas of men.
306

Well . . . we all must act our time
On the unreal Stage sublime;
None of us is what he seems,
Dramatising frenzy-dreams.
By such monsters fleered, stung, tost,
In such wildering mazes lost;
How superbly serious all
Threads the restless, senseless brawl
Of our rabid Carnival!
Noble, beautiful, serene,
Thou must play the part of Queen;
Crowned with unreal gems and gold,
Phantom purples round thee rolled.
Sweep with stately step the stage;
Act great passions, love and rage,
With yon crowd of half-souled things
Masked as nobles, princes, kings.
I must act a wretch forlorn,
Wealthless, rankless, lowly born;
Cursed more with a soul and sense
Bounteous, regal, too intense:
307

Ay, a woeful Wretch indeed;
Say a starved incarnate Need,
Ever with consummate art
In his strange half-tragic part
Living on an empty heart!
Well, Dear, brief must be our task;
Little matters in what mask
We may rant our mimic rage
On our unsubstantial Stage.
So, Sweet Love, sustain your rôle,
Freeze the pulses of your soul;
Fair, grand, queenly dignified,
Case yourself in marble pride.
I—the while,—by evidence
Of my purest love intense,
Sure that when the Play is o'er
You are mine for evermore—
I will madly waste and moan,
Pouring out against thy throne
All my life of love,—flung back
In wild foam o'er gulfs of black.
308

Let some hollow princely mask,
In thine Alpine sunshine bask;
Blight me with well-feignèd scorn
Let me pine and rage forlorn:
Have it counted lunacy,
My audacious love for Thee!
In a lazar-dungeon thrust,
Make me mad to prove you just.
Brava, Dearest! noble, grand!
Played with wondrous self-command!
O great Theatre world-filled,
Whom her spell holds rapt and thrilled,
Shout the plaudits too long stilled!
I, too,—do not I act well
All the horrors of this Hell?
Act so well, Love, that I feel
Sometimes as if all were real!
What a sickly, foolish fear!
Love soon re-assures me, Dear:
I must ape such anguish vile
With an inward settled smile.
309

Do I seem to writhe with pain
Under thy assumed disdain?
Do I seem, indeed, to be
Far too mean for hope of thee?
Do I really seem to brood
In this dark den's solitude,
Frenzied by the fœtid gloom
Of such hideous living tomb?
Do I seem to cringe, and crave
Mercy from the poor dull slave,
Who, disguised in sceptered power,
Acts thy brother for the hour?
Yet I scorn him: and serene,
Far above this mimic scene
With its shows of Space and Time,
Dwell with thee in love sublime.
Ah! your part so grand and fine
Must be harder yet than mine;
Bitter, but to seem, in sooth,
False to love's eternal truth:
Ah! you have my saddest ruth.
310

Still, our parts are so forth writ
In this Mime whose venomed wit
Our poor wits so far transcends.
On its acting life depends,
Wild it is, but soon it ends.
Joy! the Play must soon be done!
Then the lamps called Stars and Sun
Shall be quenched in perfect gloom
By the grand foreclosing Doom;
Then the Stage of land and sea
Shall down-vanish utterly;
Then the fretted azure roof
Roll off like a burning woof;
Then the serried multitude
Surge out in a vast dim flood;—
All, all fade and vanish quite,
Leaving void and silent Night.
Then, once more alone, my Sweet,
We shall in the strange dark meet:
You will doff your tinselled pride,
I shall throw my rags aside.
311

Then in silent darkness deep
Comes the everlasting sleep,
Comes the inexpressive bliss
Of our union's perfectness!
Time's loud turbid stream shall flow,
With its perils, strife and woe,
Far from where our Soul then lies
Tranced in still Eternities:
Tho', soft breathed from far away,
Its dim soothing murmurs may
Lull us to profounder rest,
Swaying with the Ocean's breast.
For we seek home after this;
Clinging with a fonder kiss
For the parting which so pained,
For the cold neglect you feigned.
We two only,—Woman, Man,
Wedded ere the Mime began,
Heaven-created Man and Wife
For our whole true timeless life:
Soul of soul and heart of heart;
Each alone a wretched part,
Lifeless, useless, maimed, unright,
Ever yearning to unite
312

In the perfect spheral Whole,
Living, self-sufficient Soul,
Swayed through Æther crystalline
Circling restful in the shine
Of the central Sun Divine. . . .
What, although this trance at times
Must be broken by such mimes?
What, though we must earn by these
Our reposeful ecstasies?
Dearest, all the false cold days,
With their bitter mocking Plays,
Swiftly die to glorious Night
When we meet in new delight.
So two actors, Man and Wife,
Mimic freely rage and strife,
Suffering, terror, madness, death
Whatsoe'er the fable saith:
Earning thus wherewith to feed
That which is their life indeed,—
Long, calm, rich with love intense,
Secret from the shallow sense
Of the blatant audience.
313

Ah, my weak bewildered heart!
Do I act my monstrous part
With too earnest lifelike truth?—
Darling, bless me with thy ruth.
Yes, at times my heart is torn
By thy well-pretended scorn:
Soothe this foolish heart of mine
With some secret loving sign.
Perhaps it feeleth Love to be
Of such sacred verity,
That thy merely feigned untruth
Frets it like a serpent-tooth.
Grant it some dear secret sign
Which no other can divine,—
But a word, a flower, to prove
That you are my own, own Love.
Act thy strange part not so well;—
Even now, with pangs of Hell,
I dread that your neglect is true,
Doubting you, my Soul's Soul, you!
But I strangle such base doubt. . . .
How the drear plot lingers out!
What a Chaos, baffling thought;
Real with spectral interwrought! . . .
314

Lo, the wondrous Universe!
Hear its mystic powers rehearse
Sweet and subtle melodies,
Vast and solemn harmonies.
Glorious shifting sceneries, see;
And the dome's infinity,
Lamp'd by all the rhythmic quires
Of those unconsuming fires!
Mark the stony Fate that broods,
Mark the angel multitudes,
Watching for the tragic range
Of impassioned strife and change.
O sublimest Theatre!
Vexed with the insensate stir
Of this doleful Mime distraught,
By such pigmy puppets wrought.
Pigmies: and they feel it well,
While their hollow vauntings swell:
How uneasily they roam
Through its grandeurs, not at home!—
Restless in its crystal calms,
Trembling at its thunder-psalms,
Cowering from its noon-poured light,
Shuddering through its scenic night.
315

How their poor rants quail and die
Far beneath its solemn sky!
How their clouds of passion all,
Tumid grandeurs, burst and fall
From its deep-based mountain-wall!
Blood and filth defile the Stage,
Filth of lust and blood of rage;
Which they will not understand
Are but self-pollution, and
Suicide at second-hand.
Every one there, bad or good,
Is by all misunderstood,
Knowing not himself,—yet strives
To scheme the law for countless lives.
Each is different from each,
None hears right another's speech:
Yet all fume and fight for aye,
With anguish, hatred, death, dismay,
To make others be as they.
Every step they take perplext
Taints the freedom of the next;
Every thought and word and deed
Curbeth all that shall succeed:
316

Yet they still must move, nor pause,
By the Drama's rigorous laws;
Yet no true Life can there be
Save in thoughts and deeds quite free.
There work foolish Hate and Ill,
Eager, subtle, fierce of will;
Good and Love, alas, behold,
Flagging, wavering, languish cold.—
Love!—O Seraphs looking down,
Who of all that wear the crown,
That have won the sacred kiss
Which should symbol Love's pure bliss,
Even dream what true Love is?
Sternly real the galling pain
Of the vanquished bondman's chain;
But the Victor's diadem
Ever lacks its crowning gem.
Nearly all the noblest parts
Ruined by bad heads or hearts;
Those in whom redemption lies
Chained, with cankering energies,
From sublime activities.
317

Each aspiring burst, swayed back,
Soon plods round the old drear track;
Hope dies,—strangled in the knot
Of such ever-ravelled plot.
Did no sequent acts extend
On unto a perfect End
Far beyond these brief life-days,
What a hopeless, ghastly maze!
Yes! did'st Thou not light the scene,
Leonora, O my Queen!
One deep sigh would rend my heart,
“Oh, that I had had no part!” . . .
As it is,—to keep, perchance,
Sane amid the dizzy dance—
Muse I this fixed truth sublime,
All is but a mocking Mime.
Yet foul demons in my ear
Hiss most wordless hints of fear,—
That this hideous dream's wild strife
Is our soul's substantial life!
318

How the moment's thought appals!—
That these stifling dungeon-walls
Are of real during stone;
That I fester here alone;
That you cannot be my own!
No; it is a fiendish lie.
God our Father reigns on high:
You are truer than my faith. . . .
Oh, were life untwined from death!
But, you cannot scorn me, Dear,
Though I sink in doubt and fear?
You too know, this mad Mime done,
We shall evermore be one?
Cling, cling fast to this dear faith,
Rock of life in sea of death:
Our mazed web of doom is wrought
Under God's directing thought.
For were life no flitting dream,
Were things truly what they seem,
Were not all this World-scene vast
But a shade in Time's stream glass'd;
319

Were the moods we now display
Less phantasmal than the clay,
In which our poor spirits clad
Act this Vision, wild and sad,
I must be mad, mad,—how mad!
November 1856.
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