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CLXXVIII. | CLXXVIII.PRINCE AMADIS.
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Poems | ||
529
CLXXVIII.PRINCE AMADIS.
A BIOGRAPHY.
I
Prince Amadis lay in a flowery brake,By the side of Locarno's silver lake:
It seems a very long while ago,
Or else it may be that time goes slow.
II
Those were the days when the world of spiritFilled the old earth to the brim, or near it;
And marvels were wrought by wizard elves,
Which happen but rarely among ourselves.
III
The heart of Prince Amadis did not pantWith an indwelling love, or blameless want
Of chivalrous friendship, or thirst of power;
His youth was enough for its own bright hour.
IV
He floated o'er life like a noon-tide breeze,Or cradled vapor on sunny seas,
Or an exquisite cloud, in light arrayed,
Which sails through the sky and can throw no shade.
V
Wishes he had, but no hopes and no fears;He smiled, but his smiles were not gendered of tears:
Like a beautiful mute he played his part,
Too happy by far in his own young heart!
530
VI
His twentieth summer was well nigh past,Each was more golden and gay than the last;
The glory of earth, which to others grows dim,
Through his unclouded years glittered fresher to him.
VII
And oh how he loved! From the hour of his birth,He was gentle to all the bright insects of earth;
He sate by the green gilded lizards for hours,
And laughed, for pure love, at the shoals of pied flowers.
VIII
As he walked through the woods in the cool of the day,He stooped to each blossom that grew by the way;
He tapped at the rind of the old cedar trees,
When its weak breath had sweetened the evening breeze.
IX
He knew all the huge oaks, the wide forest's gems,By their lightning-cleft branches or sisterly stems;
He knew the crowned pines where the starlight is best,
And the likeliest banks where the moon would rest.
X
He studied with joy the old mossy walls,And probed with his finger their cavernous halls,
Where the wren builds her nest, and the lady-bird slumbers,
While winter his short months of icy wind numbers.
XI
All things were holy and dear to his mind,All things,—except the hot heart of his kind,
And that seemed a flower in a withered hood,
Which the cold spring cankered within the bud.
531
XII
The wrongs of the peasant, the woes of the peer,Ne'er wrung from the prince a true sigh or a tear;
The strife of his fellows seemed heartlessly bright,
Like the laurels in winter in cold moonlight.
XIII
He cared for no sympathy, living in throngsOf his own sunny thoughts, and his mute inward songs;
And if in the sunset his spirit was weary,
Sleep was hard by him, young health's sanctuary.
XIV
'Twould not have been so had he e'er known his mother,Or had had, save the green earth, a playmate and brother;
For deep in his heart a most wonderful power
Of loving lay hid, like an unopened flower.
XV
Ah! luckless it is when a spirit is hauntedBy all kindly powers, but attractions are wanted,
Life's outward attractions, by calm, pensive law
Love, sorrow, and pity, from shy hearts to draw!
XVI
Yet mid all the natural forms of delight,Whose footfalls stole round him by day or by night,
He was pure as the white lily's dew-beaded cup,
Which, bold because stainless, to heaven looks up.
XVII
His mind was a fair desert temple of beauty,Unshaded by sorrow, unhallowed by duty;
A dream in a garden, a midsummer bliss
Was the youth, the bright youth, of Prince Amadis.
532
XVIII
Prince Amadis lay in the chestnut shadeWhere the flickering light through the green leaves played,
And the summer lake, with its blue heart throbbing,
Chafed the white sand with a reedy sobbing.
XIX
He saw not the hills through his half-closed eye,But their presence was felt like a spirit nigh;
To the spell of the noon-tide he gave himself up,
And his heart overflowed like wine in a cup.
XX
He smiled at the silence that stole o'er the day,While the singing birds slumbered upon the spray,
Till moss-scented airs o'er the green sward did creep,
And tremulous mallow-leaves fanned him asleep.
XXI
And dreams whispered to him, the tongues of sweet flowers,Striking the chimes of the uncounted hours;
And, as though he were sinless, the wood-haunting creatures
Bent o'er the sleeper with love in their features.
XXII
Sleeping or waking, his vision was one,—That the knots of the world might by him be undone,
That the Natures below and the Spirits above
Might with man be confused in one Eden of love.
XXIII
Beautiful dreamer! how far hadst thou strayedFrom the love at thy doors by the pensive earth laid,
And the household chains of our true love rent,
Which were forged for the soul's enfranchisement!
533
XXIV
The day drifted out, like the ebb of the ocean,From the havens of earth with a quiet motion;
And a cool flapping breeze grew out of the air,
Which the mallow-leaves fanned to the sleeper there.
XXV
Prince Amadis rose from the flowery brake,While, imaged serenely down in the lake,
The roseate sky, with gold bars freaked,
By a flight of wild swans was duskily streaked.
XXVI
In a stiff-bending line through the rich sunsetThey wavered like cloud-spots of glossy jet,
And with rude piping they marshalled their rear
In a phalanx above the tranquil mere.
XXVII
There for one moment their huge wings they shake,Then in wide spiral circuits drop down to the lake;
The dark water gurgles, thus suddenly cloven,
In wakes of white bubbles interwoven.
XXVIII
Are there deep instincts that lurk belowIn those dipping breasts of driven snow?
Or why do they steer their conscious way
To the Prince in the mallow-curtained bay?
XXIX
A pale-feathered cygnet was with them, and heSwam centre of all the company,
And round him they anchored in that calm pool,
A vision solemn and beautiful.
534
XXX
He wore on his head a black diadem,Looped to a clasp of orange gem;
His plumage gleamed in the dusk star-bright,
Of purple but faintly muffled with white.
XXXI
There needed no voices: Prince Amadis readA dream in that show interpreted;
He strode the fair cygnet, and rose from the ground
With those wild white swans on a voyage bound.
XXXII
Young prince! they will search for thee all through the night,And the lake and the bush will gleam wan with torchlight;
And there will be weeping and wailing then,
If monarchs have hearts like other men.
XXXIII
But away and away in the midnight blueThat fleet of white creatures went steering through;
And away and away through the sweet day-break,
From the white Alps flashed, their road they take:
XXXIV
Through the tingling noon and the evening vapor,Which Hesper lights with his little taper,
Through the tremulous smiles of moonlight mirth,
And the balmy descents of dew to the earth,
XXXV
Through the calms, through the winds, when the hailstones ring,The convoy passed with untiring wing,
And oft from their course for hours they drove,
As though they winnowed the air for love.
535
XXXVI
And now they would mount and now they would stoop,And almost to earth or river droop,
And harshly would pipe through the sheer delight
Of their boisterous wings, and their strength of flight.
XXXVII
They saw the young Save in the next night's moon,They were over Belgrade by the afternoon,
And ere the sun set their journey was o'er
On a willow-isle by the Danube's shore.
XXXVIII
They left the young prince, (for their mission was done,)There on the green willow-island alone;
And, in their hoarse language they bade him farewell,
And swept o'er the sun-bleached Bulgarian fell.
XXXIX
More and more sadly as daylight died,The breeze-troubled marsh-plants sobbed and sighed,
And the pulse of the river with panting sound
Beat in the swamps and the hollows round.
XL
But the stream travelled on like a pilgrim wearyIn search of his eastern sanctuary,
Through the heart of old Europe guiding his floods
From beneath the green boughs of the Freybourg woods.
XLI
The lone swampy island lay down in the river,Whose strong nervous waves made the ground and trees quiver;
It swung with its head up the stream, anchored lightly
By the tree roots and marsh-plants that just held it tightly.
536
XLII
It trembles for ever as the ruffled stream rushes,And the mud-bubbles splutter and quake in the bushes;
Nay, it seemed in the twilight to float by the marge,
Uneasily slow, like a half-sunken barge.
XLIII
He looked to the shore,—faded herbage, wild swamp,One ruined old mosque, all begreened with the damp;
The willows leaned over in half-fallen ranks,
And the cold river gurgled under the banks.
XLIV
The moon could scarce rise, and she rose all of blood,And with lurid reflection bedabbled the flood;
And the night-wind fled frightenedly past with a wail,
As if some deed of murder had freighted the gale.
XLV
Then when the wind had passed on out of hearing,Came an audible hush, as if spirits were nearing
The lone willow-island, and made the Prince shiver,
And long to seek rest in that black rushing river.
XLVI
Then straightway wild music played over the scene,The moon became white, and the earth moonlit green,
And the breaths from the mosses like incense rose up,
And each still open flower caught the dew in its cup.
XLVII
What is it? the features of earth seem uncommon;His heart glows with thoughts that are wilder than human;
And surely that music, those waves of bright light,
Are more than the charm of a beautiful night.
537
XLVIII
He felt the strange wail of the music dissolvingThe life that was in him, and new life evolving;
His innermost being turned fluent, and fled,
As if magnets were drawing it out of its bed.
XLIX
He saw it go forth in thin streams of gray light,Which was greedily drunk by the darkness of night;
For a moment he seemed to flow out upon nature,
Without personality, substance, or feature.
L
Then back came his life like a tide-wave sublime;It had circled the world in that moment of time.
But what was it like? Was it matter, or spirit?
Should he welcome it, love it? or shun it, and fear it?
LI
He felt all at once viewless arms were around him;Flesh and blood had no sinews like those that now bound him;
He felt hands within him,—then all things gave way,
His soul lay down and fluttered in extatic dismay.
LII
His heart turned to stone; a strange panic had chilled him;His old life died out, as this new terror filled him;
He felt as if through some ordeal he was winning
His way to some grand but terrific beginning.
LIII
He was colder than ice, with an inward cold pain,And his blood left his heart, and encircled his brain;
Man's life was unmade in him, crossed by new sections,
With mind for a centre instead of affections.
538
LIV
We are plants, we are beasts, we are metals, and earth,And the life of the stars too went in us at birth;
We are all things in one thing, life's manifold flame
Chaos gave us, when out of its bosom we came.
LV
So now in Prince Amadis, down in his being,The plant to the plant-life was evermore fleeing,
The beasts to the beast-life; star, metal, and gem
Paired off with the inner life suited to them.
LVI
And now they flowed into him, now they flowed out,And mingled and circled and wavered about;
One life now repelled, now invited another,
But the pulses that beat in them answered each other.
LVII
New unity too did his nature discover;He had but one sense, he was eye-sight all over:
He saw tastes, he saw touches, strange mortal was he!
He saw sounds, he saw scents,—he did nothing but see!
LVIII
He had sympathies too, but not after man's fashion;He loved, but his love was a cold shiny passion:
Father-love, sister-love, all were effaced,
And all his old home-idols rudely displaced.
LIX
In spite of himself his whole being must hastenIts affections on wholly new objects to fasten;
He must speak a new language which nature will teach,
But a many-tongued silentness now must be speech.
539
LX
Darkness was to him what sorrow had been,And light was his joy, with its smiles of white sheen;
And colour was pathos, and sympathy flowers,
And his homes were unnumbered,—all beautiful bowers.
LXI
Alas! I much fear that poetic desireHad grown in his heart, like a cosmical fire;
He had burned for a change, and had found the change there,
And a dream had been answered as if it were prayer!
LXII
From the deeps of the Danube there rose right before himA glorious spirit, with a light-halo o'er him,
Whose heart was transparent, yet visibly heaving,
With the light shining through, and yet real and living.
LXIII
'Twas the essence of beauty, the spirit of earth,The Kosmos, that lurked in the marvellous birth
Of the outlying universe, orbs without number,
Nothingness waked from its unmeaning slumber.
LXIV
O who shall define this strange life of the world,That for ever unfurls all the things that are furled,
A power unfatigued, and a life ever vernal,
Immaterial matter, and almost eternal.
LXV
Like angel he seemed, with a look on his featureOf a human sort, dashed with the lowlier creatures,
And he seemed at each winnow to shake from his wings
The splendour of all terrestrial things.
540
LXVI
He spoke,—what a voice of most musical sweetness,Like streams in their flowing, like winds in their fleetness!
It was wildest enchantment, incredible bliss
To the listening heart of the Prince Amadis.
LXVII
Art thou weary, he cried, of that intricate strife,Which for lack of a better sad mortals call life;
Then change places with me, and deep shalt thou drink
Of the fountain that springs on eternity's brink.
LXVIII
I will give thee my powers; thou wilt need to be brave;My far-reaching subtlety too thou shalt have;
My science infused in thy spirit shall be;
Thou shalt beat as the world-soul awhile, 'stead of me.
LXIX
Thy mind shall be filled with all sweet shapes and shows;Mute creation shall watch o'er thine equal repose;
And unmoral beauty shall be to thy soul
An incessant delight while the weary worlds roll.
LXX
Beauty shall feed thee at heaven's own portals,With an exquisite influx unknown to poor mortals;
Thou shalt drink of the sunstream of light as it flows,
And the sight of fair things be thy spirit's repose.
LXXI
Art thou weary of wills, of hearts sinful and rude,Of earth's dark and bright mixtures, and curses that brood
O'er a whole stricken race, and the service they need,
Where the eyes ever weep, and the hearts ever bleed?
541
LXXII
Art thou sick of distractions from self, and would fainLet thy soul walk at large in a world without pain,
Where law, not caprice, shall direct every force,
And the absence of sin make you free of remorse?
LXXIII
Lo! I am the Kosmos! such beauty is mine,Where all things in truth and in harmony shine,
Where no word of command, since the first one, is spoken,
Where no work is unmeaning, no decree ever broken,
LXXIV
Where the swerving of systems is the rising and fallingOf unmeasured epochs to each other calling,
Where change and variety blend without flaw,
And calm and catastrophe are but one law.
LXXV
But, if this grand life is to go into thee,Impassible, passionless, cold, must thou be;
A single stray tenderness quick would dispel
The new life thou hast on, and which fits thee so well.
LXXVI
I cannot put from thee thy flesh-and-blood heart;I have set it alone in a corner apart;—
Only see that earth's pity wake it not up again,—
If thou sheddest one tear, my gift is all vain.
LXXVII
Magnificence cannot be meek in a creature:'Tis a stretch that would wear out and break up his nature;
To be high,—high above all our kind we must dwell;
He who longs to be grand must be cruel as well.
542
LXXVIII
He spoke, and there came on the earth such a hush!He threw off from himself a scarce visible flush
Of the rosiest light, that passed into the heart
Of the wondering Prince, with an exquisite smart.
LXXIX
For a moment a mist-shadow seemed just to hover—The low stars looked through it—the moonlit stream over,
Then Kosmos unsouled, earth's king dispossessed,
Laid down in the bed of the Danube to rest.
LXXX
The stars ceased to twinkle, the moon shed no beam,There came a strange murmur all over the stream;
Earth felt just the slightest vibration,—then tore
Right away through cold space unconcerned as before.
LXXXI
For a moment the Prince in astonishment mused,Till he felt his whole being without effort diffused
Thro' the unsurveyed universe, and his new wings
Seemed to drop life for ever into the nature of things.
LXXXII
Then away, and away, and away,—from the hauntsOf poor moping man, and his numberless wants,
Away o'er the regions of beauty that lie
Beneath and beyond the wide dome of the sky!
LXXXIII
Sense of power was the very first thought that possessed him,And infinite space, he expected, would rest him;
So he darted aloft on the wings of the night,
And in secret the soundless air closed on his flight.
543
LXXXIV
O grand was the hush of sidereal space,Mid the huge orbs that looked at him full in the face;
There his mind worked in greatness, unlimited then
By the shrill interruptions of frivolous men.
LXXXV
Majestic he traversed our own Milky Way,Tracked each winding current, and sounded each bay;
Its collections of worlds are the neighbours, next door
To the planet that lies on Sol's furthermost shore.
LXXXVI
He was lonely as poet could e'er wish to be,From all outward entanglement blessedly free
As second-rate greatness could covet, whose charm
Is in license that startles, and power to do harm.
LXXXVII
He was where the wistfullest vacancy broodsO'er the great empty stars and their bright solitudes,
Where space, running over, petitioned for bounds,
And silence itself almost ached for sweet sounds.
LXXXVIII
Yet the Milky Way world is our own, and his homeWas not far enough off; he must still further roam;
For the sense of magnificence o'er his soul stealing
Was narrowed, he felt, by some patriot feeling.
LXXXIX
Yes! the Milky Way world is but one step in space:It is but as France is to England, a place
Scarcely foreign when seen o'er the sun-misty strait,
With the wild German ocean crowding in at the gate.
544
XC
The worlds where poor man hath got nothing to do,—There are plenty of such in the neighbouring blue!—
Will not meet what he wants; oh no! he must be
In a world which not telescopes even can see.
XCI
There are plenty of such, ere we come to the endWhere the actual things with the possible blend,
Other oceans of blue, a conceivable place;—
But it burdens my heart to imagine such space!
XCII
Art thou sure, gentle Prince! there is no sorrow there,No laws helping laws, no angelical care?
Art thou sure that obedience and duty intrude
Not at all in that viewless and far solitude?
XCIII
For the lonely have duties, thyself mid the rest;Like a wounded bird bleeding, the heart in thy breast
Sheds remorse on the air, and unkings thee when highest,
While duties undone mark the track where thou fliest.
XCIV
Then away, in thy striving to get clear of strife!There is nought youth loves more than an unwitnessed life.
Thou art gone, out of sight amid nameless worlds fleeing,
With the earth-string of conscience at work in thy being.
XCV
When he came to the edge of the Milky Way worldTracts of space lay before him in silence unfurled;
But he winged his way o'er the blue gulfs without check
To worlds far beyond, from which this looked a speck.
545
XCVI
All the systems of suns that we see in the nightDwindled down to a point, and then vanished from sight;
Then came fresh sets of worlds, and more inlets of space,
Old types disappearing, new forms in their place.
XCVII
They rose up to view, like the tall masts of shipsOut at sea, when the sky-line of dark ocean dips;
Worlds round him, above, and beneath him, were seen,
Like woods in a mist with abysses between.
XCVIII
Huge nebular regions, oases of light,Strewed thickly or thinly the void infinite;
Each of which in itself countless worlds can compress,
As thick as the sands of the wide wilderness;—
XCIX
Long islands of worlds, far apart in the blue,Now so near that a bridge of great suns joins the two;
Now an isthmus of orbs, now a wide continent
Where the numberless worlds in a bright patch are blent:—
C
Worlds made, worlds preparing, worlds then and there making,And inchoate spirals their white tresses shaking,
Worlds liquid, worlds solid, worlds vapour all over,
Worlds with or without atmospherical cover.
CI
He went, horror hushing the songs in his mouth,To that drear restless universe down in the south,
And he trembled to see reeling Argus so flicker,
Like a torch as we wave it, now slower, now quicker.
546
CII
He had favourite tracts out in space where he toured,And, from old childish longings, he deftly explored
Those dark mottled patches, once scorned as delusion,
Molten light, molten darkness, in orderly fusion.
CIII
Creation, so deemed he, was scarcely begun,A grandeur in childhood, a race yet to run,
A hymn that this moment through new space has rung,
The first strophe of which has yet scarcely been sung.
CIV
He saw rings part from centres in flaming projection,Worlds weltering wildly towards their perfection,
Where the work that was done appeared more like undoing,
Contraction, explosion, dark deluge, and ruin.
CV
He met rays of light falling earthward, like tears,That had been on their travels thirty millions of years,
Cleaving like lightning the thin purple gloom,
Yet would hardly reach earth until after the Doom.
CVI
What is distance but nature's best poem, that singsAs it lengthens its flight, throwing off from its wings
The most magical softness, which veils and discloses,
Bringing out, filling up, wheresoe'er it reposes.
CVII
It is distance which robes far and near with their tints,Excites by concealing, and heightens by hints,
On earth blends green forests and indigo mountains,
And above presses star-worlds tosinglelight-fountains.
547
CVIII
His home was the poet's home, space, and beyond,All the worlds knit in one world, with thought for a bond,
Strong musical thought to repel and to draw,
With metre for ether, and song for a law.
CIX
For his thoughts peopled space, or at times drew it inTo itself, making all things its kith and its kin;
The bleakest of nebulas gave him as much
Of a home as the lake which the alp-shadows touch.
CX
He was not more at home, where his own Lombard skyLooks down through the chestnuts, than when he might lie
On forlorn wisps of stars that with pendulous motion
Writhe about over space, like the wrecks on the ocean.
CXI
When his boat on Locarno scarce heaved in the calm,Things around him were clothed not in more homely charm,
Than the gulfs where gaunt systems in awful embrace
Put forth arms made of worlds, like huge feelers, in space.
CXII
The universe taught him that space was less vastThan the world of his soul, which all time will outlast;
And mind, more colossal than matter, can come
In the world of Orion to be straitened for room.
CXIII
What hope for the future, he thought, when he sawOrbs condense and compress themselves, plainly by law,
Worlds by millions slow gathering in dread concentration,
To some marvellous oneness of undreamed creation!
548
CXIV
He watched giant systems break up, and re-form,Like nations renewed by a popular storm:
It was fearful to see how they cracked, swang asunder,
And closed up in new systems of order and wonder.
CXV
He beheld with glad terror our own Milky WayAt its north and south poles self-unrivet, out-sway,
And some world-groups heave anchor, like icebergs sublime,
Thawed out in the lapse of unwriteable time.
CXVI
So the Clouds of Magellan drifted off and dipped downTowards earth, as a cloud settles over a town,
Mighty realms of white worlds, their soft tremulous shining
With the sunsets of earth most fraternally twining.
CXVII
All is change and advance, not a cyclical race;Love only survives wrecks of Time, Force, and Space;
Love only shall see out of all revolution
How creation shall perfect its grand constitution.
CXVIII
All around us is Home; the heart owns no AbroadIn the lap of this beautiful Free Act of God;
His Love is the instinct that pilots its Course,
And His sweet Will its true Imperceptible Force.
CXIX
O how his heart grew with the largeness of things!His sights were all thoughts, and his thoughts were all wings;
Yet one look of love from his sister were bliss
More eternal, more infinite surely than this.
549
CXX
Then went he, and stood in the face of the sun,At the end of the race which that orb has to run,
An invisible goal in ethereal seas,
Which lies to the north of the bright Hercules.
CXXI
But ah! when the sun that far home hath attained,We may hope that our souls better homes will have gained,
Fairer heavens above, where earth's troubles will cease,
But not without winning us glory and peace.
CXXII
The Prince goes on hunting for beauty, nor dreamsThat the beauty of earth is above what it seems,
That the heart is the trial of what we are worth,
And the best of all heavens is made out of earth!
CXXIII
He watched the swift moon, when her shadow first nipsThe bright edge of the sun in a total eclipse;
And he flew to those strange rosy thumbs that protrude
From the moon-darkened rim, when the light is subdued.
CXXIV
He went near the sun to see comets unbindTheir long lucent ringlets now flowing behind,
And saw the scared things, as they looked in the glass,
Ruffle back their light tresses the moment they pass.
CXXV
Near the grand double stars he would watch with delightThe beautiful quarrel between day and night,
Blue sunset, red sunrise, both striving together,
Weird landscapes, weird foliage, and the weirdest of weather.
550
CXXVI
He loved to see planets in sweet occultationPass under the moon, while the double vibration,
Like an echo of light, makes the planet start back,
As if frightened to let the moon ride o'er its track.
CXXVII
He watched Jupiter's moon jumping back in alarm,Keeping step with its mother, who put forth her arm,
And drew the young child with herself into night,
Herself more to blame than the poor satellite!
CXXVIII
Then right in the flames of the sun would he go,Where an unconsumed planet lies dazzling and low,
Deeper down in the sunshine than Hermes, all drowned
To mortal research in the light-floods around.
CXXIX
He trod the outskirts of the last solar seas,Where the cold is not measured by human degrees,
Where the orbs seem uncertain on what line to venture,
Lest the sun might not prove their legitimate centre,—
CXXX
Far out in the dreary cold, far, far away,Beyond Neptune, where outlying planets obey,
Reluctant and sluggish, the suck of the sun,
But who drag in their orbits rather than run.
CXXXI
Then for change would he seek the least jewels of night,The gardens of crystal that swing into sight
Every year, 'twixt the lines on which Jupiter rolls,
And Mars with the white cap of snow on his poles.
551
CXXXII
He saw little earth hold its atmosphere down,While space-matter strove the poor orb to uncrown;
Outside its crisp top he hung poised in the sky
To see with what fleetness the planet flew by.
CXXXIII
In all the wide worlds, great and little, he saw,With sweet re-assurance one beautiful law,—
That each world to itself its own centre should seem,
An honest untruth, a self-realized dream.
CXXXIV
He saw that the people's large language was betterThan the phrases of science, and for common use meeter;
For thus all the orbs, through the vastness that roam,
Feel themselves in each nook of creation at home.
CXXXV
For what is each heart, wheresoe'er it may live,But the centre of all the love God has to give,
As dear to its Father, whatever its station,
As if it by itself were the whole of creation?
CXXXVI
O Prince! hast thou not in thy heart some misgivingOf the centreless life that thy selfwill is living?
For where self is the centre, all life is abroad,
Unrooted in home, and unfastened to God.
CXXXVII
O good for the soul is the merciful strainOf a grave obligation; still better the pain
Of repentance, whose tears are professions of faith
In the God who forgives, in the life after death.
552
CXXXVIII
Then wander no longer, thou sunshiny cloud!With thy shadow just dappling the fields on thy road;
Weep away to the earth in soft rain, and the shower
Shall at least make one green spot more green than before.
CXXXIX
Life that lives for itself in an unrooted youthMust one day do penance for all its untruth,
Must revenge on itself what it slighted before,
In old age cast away on a desolate shore.
CXL
There are plants in the woods of Brazil, parasites,Who give out their fragrances only at nights,
Fresh rooted each moment in wandering airs,
Which are solid enough for such thin roots as theirs.
CXLI
Even such is thy round in this beautiful ring,An air-rooted, windshaken, unlife-like thing,
Perfuming for no one night's untrodden bowers,
With no holier pain than a headache of flowers.
CXLII
When could others awaken fond youth from a dream?It must wake of itself: for it flows like a stream,—
It is gone while we speak, its swift currents unbinding;
Its home is in seeking, its exile in finding!
CXLIII
In love have we spoken; for this Prince is our brother;But one beauty reminds him far off of another,
And, ere we had time our advice to rehearse,
Twice or thrice has he gone round the whole universe.
553
CXLIV
O see how he wheels up aloft in the air!Heavy wisdom from earth cannot reach to him there;
Now he drops, but it is in the thick of yon wood,
Where precipitous rocks overhang the dark flood.
CXLV
There again! he has left us in lightning-like flight,And is hidden far up in the whiteness of light,
Whence faint sparkles fall like a rocket-shower breaking,
Where from pinions unseen the soft motes he is shaking.
CXLVI
Then down the blue waters of islandless oceanHe dives, like the gale, with exulting emotion,
Now passively floats as the frolic wind blows him,
Now tunnels the crests of cold brine that oppose him.
CXLVII
When he teases the earth in his low-drooping flightIt is not home draws him, he will not alight;
He but skims, like a swallow, in swift mazy rings,
And feeds, like the bird, on invisible things.
CXLVIII
When he hovers o'er earth it is only to sing,Beating time for himself with his vibrating wing;
While the hot spell is on him perforce must he roam,
For an uneasy heart is most homeless at home.
CXLIX
He has thoughts, so he thinks, above all thoughts of ours,Inconceivable echoes from heavenly bowers;
He has words, so he says, which we always mistake,
And a silence of song which we rude mortals break.
554
CL
Ah! little he deems how much deeper a thingIs the action of life, a more bountiful spring
Of beauty, of wonder, of truth, and of power,
A joy more long-lived, a more heavenly dower.
CLI
Tears shed for others are waters that riseTo their levels above in the grace-giving skies:
Time wasted for others is paid back at last,
Counted out in eternities, future and past.
CLII
Though thy life may be fretful and swift, yet delayTo soothe the least sorrow that comes in thy way;
For sympathy, happily choosing its times,
Cheers the long nights of grief with its beautiful chimes.
CLIII
More tall than the stars is the wonderful heightOf unselfishness, always reposing in light,
On whose glorious summits the night falleth never,
But the seen Face of God is its sunrise for ever.
CLIV
How great is the gift to have sisters and brothers!They only who lose them can estimate mothers!
For to hearts, where the world would fain fling its first spell,
A home can be almost religion as well.
CLV
Souls only sell dear in the markets of heaven,And on earth for hearts only high prices are given:
Men who love while they suffer, and work while they grieve,
Heaven and earth in their one web of life interweave.
555
CLVI
They only who love, and love meekly, are blest;And true love is nothing but self dispossessed;
They only who labour at last win the prize;
They only who sorrow can ever be wise.
CLVII
All these beauties are toys to thee, Prince Amadis!Thy chase is not life; it was ne'er meant for this.
A schoolboy at play will outweigh thy worth soon,
If he gives and takes kindly one whole afternoon.
CLVIII
Hast thou got any purse in the which thou canst treasureThe fine glowing sunsets that give thee such pleasure?
Do the angels in heaven hoard the scents of the flowers,
Or photograph all the fair lights of the hours?
CLIX
The secrets of children, who whisper and chatter,Are worth half a score of the secrets of matter,
Unless they can make us still more the world's master,
To sail our ships safer, or go our way faster.
CLX
If too much is made of them, earth, sun, and moonAre but sights at a theatre, songs out of tune;
And the round stars are only like hoops up on high,
Which child-poets trundle though infinite sky.
CLXI
O man is the beauty, and hearts are the gloryOf all the world's science and all the world's story;
And sorrow is softness, a heavenly birth,
To prevent our becoming as hard as the earth.
556
CLXII
These far worlds astonish the mind out of breath,So vastly outstretched in magnificent death;
But grandeur wants something more changeful to rest it;
It aches when one vision a long while hath pressed it.
CLXIII
Homely earth, solar system, Milky Way all around us,Worlds beyond the horizon with which weak science bounds us,—
In and out of all these will he fitfully wander,
In his speed blending strangely the Here and the Yonder.
CLXIV
Of all changing things far the loveliest is life,And with that, of all places, the earth is most rife;
For awhile then at least will the Prince now descend,
And exhaust all the beauty of earth to its end.
CLXV
But earth is so beautiful, he who is greedyMay take all he wants, and leave more to the needy;
For its lights and its shadows are fair to excess,
But its fairness is least of its happiness!
CLXVI
Where the red Aurora wavily quivers,He saw winter arrest the Siberian rivers,
And the glaciers bear on their patient backs
Huge boulders, and move in their slow stiff tracks.
CLXVII
He saw open sea round the silent pole,Neath the arctic moon watched the waters roll,
Felt the earth nod with a rocking motion,
Like a ship at anchor on the ocean.
557
CLXVIII
From the leaning top of the world's north towerHe gazed entranced for many an hour,
Looked out into space, and wished there were bars
To hinder his leaping among the stars.
CLXIX
Then he went over lakes that so deeply lieThe sun has to drink their waters dry,
Where the rivers of central Asia flow,
By the steppes which the salt-rime powders with snow.
CLXX
He dwelt with delight for many a dayMid the fabulous trees of the Himalay,
Where earth comes nearest to heaven, more near
Than the Andes come with their burning spear.
CLXXI
The bountiful life of the jungles was his,Its grand vegetation, its animal bliss;
The day-life, the night-life of forests he knew,
And the monster-life of the waters blue.
CLXXII
He floated down Chinese rivers that lieAbove the champaign threateningly;
He slumbered mid opiate spices in bays
Near the pirate barks of the vile Malays.
CLXXIII
O sweet were the trees! O wild was the scene,In the centre of Africa peopled and green,
With beautiful rivers that shun the sea,
And die in the sands without agony.
558
CLXXIV
The heart of Australia was known to him,And the Southern Pole with its coast-line dim,
With its tall volcanoes that ruddily glare
Over deserts of snow in the silent air,
CLXXV
Where the icebergs flash and grow dark again,And black crevices streak the horrible plain,
Where the fiery reflection flickers and pants
In caves where not even the white bear haunts.
CLXXVI
He swung in the air o'er the hanging washOf the two worlds of waters that fearfully clash
Round the Horn, where the grim cape with passionate soul
Ever strains its wild eyes to behold the South Pole.
CLXXVII
He loved most those regions which man had least trammelled,The southern Pacific, with islands enamelled,
An old world submerged, with conjectural climes
Whose glory was passed ere historical times.
CLXXVIII
The chief lands of the planet now seem to unroll,Like a cincture with pendants, around the North Pole;
Time was when the world was antarctic, but now
The silent Pacific keeps that drowned world below.
CLXXIX
He loved the sweet dream-lands that rise to viewFrom the soft warm deep, with their mountains of blue,
With the palm groves and inlets and scent-laden bays,
That lie evermore in a fairy-land haze.
559
CLXXX
He could almost have worshipped, when noon was stillMid the populous forests of green Brazil,
Where incredible creepers hang from the trees
Their huge-blossomed flags in the stifled breeze.
CLXXXI
For a while he was witched by the wind that yieldsFaint fragrance out of vanilla fields,
And watched the pendulous humming-bird cling
To the rocking flower, like a golden thing.
CLXXXII
In the sultry noon there were palaces coolIn the weedy depths of a crystal pool,
All pillared with juicy stalks, and their eaves
Translucently roofed with lotus-leaves.
CLXXXIII
Then he would drowsily float for hoursOver leagues and leagues of prairie flowers,
And find in the wide horizons round
Something that made his spirit bound,—
CLXXXIV
A dash of the Tartar-like impulse, that leapsThe perilous dykes of the Asian steppes,
And goes mad with the wind, and the swiftness, and stretch
Of the glorious sky-line he gallops to reach.
CLXXXV
He has leaned his face on the desert sandTo feel the hot breath of the sunburnt land;
He has counted the pulses that sob in the wind,
Which always seems fainting and lagging behind.
560
CLXXXVI
He found a strange magic in noxious shades,In poisonous plants, and the stilted arcades
Of mangrove roots, and the cedar swamps,
And the growths of the equatorial damps.
CLXXXVII
In the rain he watched for the sun to come out,And he shifted the ends of the rainbows about;
The lightning obeyed him, and startled the night
With most beautiful tempests and wild plays of light.
CLXXXVIII
After sunset he marked where the light of a starFirst struck with its thin shaft the ground from afar,
And listened, if haply shrill sound it might yield,
As a spear may ring on the boss of a shield.
CLXXXIX
When weary of colour, and dazzled with light,He thickened the darkness of palpable night;
And his soul floated out of him, sweetly unbound
By the measured concourse of silence and sound.
CXC
There were times when he hungered for sunsets, and pressed'Gainst the motion of earth to the up-rolling west,
And thus draughts of beautiful light he kept drinking,
Where the sun, that he hunted, was evermore sinking.
CXCI
But eastward sometimes with the earth he was borne,And lived the day long in perpetual morn,
Where the down-dipping rim of the planet gave way
Evermore in the white light, the fountain of day.
561
CXCII
Sometimes he would hang up in space for a year,And move without toil with the huge atmosphere;
Suns rose not and set not, no star shone, nor moon—
He enjoyed the green blaze of a shadowless noon.
CXCIII
In wild hours he rushed through earth's body and seas,Up from, and down to, the antipodes,
So swiftly that darkness and light flashed together,
With the beauty of both, and the sameness of neither.
CXCIV
What a study was earth, so terrific, so tender,Such a dove-tailing process of blackness and splendour,
An orb so mature, with what time had done for her,
Gentle beauty, stern beauty, and beautiful horror.
CXCV
She told all her secrets to Prince Amadis,Of her secular ages, uninhabited bliss;
She unveiled her vapour-wheels, always at play,
The machinery that makes her phenomena,—
CXCVI
The grim whistling avalanche, rough breath of the mountains,The strange intermittance that sobs in some fountains,
The tiny frost-atoms, that are stronger than thunder,
Which creep into rocks and then thrust them asunder,—
CXCVII
The life of volcanoes, with the lava all seething,And the fire and the sulphur the fierce earth is breathing,
With craters disposed round the globe in long rows
Over veins of dread fire-life whose tide ebbs and flows,—
562
CXCVIII
The tortuous suck of the huge water-spout,And unorbited meteor-globes, wheeling about,
The geysers, the mud-lakes, the fountains of naphtha,
Earth's roof falling in through the slip of a rafter,—
CXCIX
The new mountain-range that yet neath the sea lingers,Just lifting among the cold waters its fingers,
The mixtures, the gases, the forces, the glories,
Of the subterranean laboratories.
CC
Now he changes the silence of pure pathless snows,For the crunching and grinding of icebergs and floes,
And he watches the isotherms waver and blend
With the line of the iceblink all round the world's end.
CCI
He revolved in the wheels of the circular gales,When they lash the deep sea with invisible flails,
And was splashed by the salt foam the ocean with clangour,
Like rockets of water, up-threw in its anger.
CCII
He found out the hearts of the wide-spreading rains,In the glens of the mountains, or wood-mantled plains;
He drew the wet curtains around him in glee,
And rode, like a king, in sublime privacy.
CCIII
He examined the laws which the snow-drifts follow,As they lie amphitheatre-wise round the hollow,
As if water congealed on the uneven land
Took the patterns the sea-water makes on the sand.
563
CCIV
O what beauty there was in the crystallized grains,Each with its prism, and its deftly joined veins;
And he laughed at the voices of clocks and of bells,
As they quaked through the drift with their querulous swells.
CCV
There was beauty in fogs, in their white fleecy gloom,With each nook of earth curtained off like a room,
With the seemingly mist-echoed sounds that up-roll,
As if from another world down in a hole.
CCVI
He heard the ice yawn in the still winter night,As if the frost's slumber were broken and light,
And, in spite of his science, was startled at times
By the firs flinging off their light loads of snow-rimes.
CCVII
Now he spans all at once fifty leagues of a storm,Till he comes where its outskirts a frontier may form
Twixt the calm and itself, and he halts and looks through
Silver windows of white mist, and beyond them the blue.
CCVIII
O see how yon hills fold their green arms and sleepWhere the cataract faints summer-dried on the steep;
Go, find out the ear of the echo, and there
Rest awhile, and dream well, in the soft tingling air.
CCIX
Now he rouses tired nature and bids her awake,For his beauty-palled spirit hath craved an earthquake;
And he races his thonghts 'gainst the shock, in his mirth,
Thro' the sinuous veins of elastic old earth.
564
CCX
He knocks at the hollow of purple midnight,To see if his knocking will make it strike light,
Or if the jarred planets will vibrate and quiver,
As they seem to do down in the tremulous river.
CCXI
When he yearned for deep silence he dwelt in the moon,Where the earth looked like thirteen moons melted in one;
If his eyes ached with this, earthless homes he could find
In the side that looks always away from mankind.
CCXII
Then he dived thro' the holes in the black-spotted vestOf bright blinding matter around the sun's breast;
And he might have learned lessons there,—how hearts of pride
May be colder than ice, with their fire all outside.
CCXIII
The world was all written, without and within,With wonderful sciences, such as might win
A philosopher's heart to a glorious excess
Of intellectual blessedness.
CCXIV
No cloud rode more softly than he rode in air;He could live under water; the thin void could bear
Of sidereal spaces; and such was the bliss
Of the untoilsome travel of Prince Amadis.
CCXV
Are you hungry, Prince Amadis, hungry for kindness;Are you dazzled with matter-light, praying for blindness,—
A blindness that sees a sweet twilight all round it,
Earth's sorrows, earth's hopes, earth's affections that bound it.
565
CCXVI
Wilt thou come, gentle Amadis, down from thy mountain,And be bathed straightaway in the Lethe-like fountain,
Where men's hearts forget all the grand world outside,
And in humbling and human things cast off their pride.
CCXVII
The waters will be in thee fountains of tears,To brighten dim eyes, break the hard hearts of fears,
And teach thee that he 'bove all poets is blest,
To whom beauty is second thought, duty is best.
CCXVIII
Through the love of our neighbour we go to love God,Or it may be that God to our kind is the road;
And of all the fair things in the broad human mind
The most lovely by far is the love of our kind.
CCXVII
Do good to thy fellows, and thy heart shall not missThese visions of matter, fancy's riot and bliss;
Thou wilt think it almost waste of time to unravel
This star-moon-and-earthly confusion of travel.
CCXX
It is vain to upbraid him; the time is not come:He is drunken with sunshine; he will not seek home;
There is no earth as yet in his heart; we must wait,
And sit up for our traveller, should he be late.
CCXXI
It must be some outward thing only will reachTo the depths of his soul, and some outward thing teach
That wisdom which lies beneath thoughts, words, and years,
Whose meaning is worship, whose language is tears.
566
CCXXII
He has lost his old habit of looking within;He is deafened by elements, hears not his kin,
As they wail from the earth's distant surface below him,
Yet fear his return, lest their hearts should not know him.
CCXXIII
Let him drink his wild fill of material charms:Some accident doubtless will wake sweet alarms
In a nature fast losing itself, and astray;
For accidents work the best wonders alway!
CCXXIV
It was beauty he sought and beauty he found,On the earth, in the air, and under the ground:
Time was one beauty, and space was another,
And a man has no griefs who is not man's brother.
CCXXV
He could pass through the planet diameter-wise,Where the granite arch o'er the centre lies,
Through the central fires, and the voiceless wailing
Of spirits there eternally ailing.
CCXXVI
He could circle the earth underground,Where the subterranean waters sound,
In grottoes and streets which the diamond lights,
And the lamps of the opal stalactites.
CCXXVII
On the top of the atmosphere well could he ride,Or again in the hollow equator slide,
Or lie where it bulges, and midnight and noon
Be cradled there by the nursing moon.
567
CCXXVIII
'Twas a poet's life, a voluptuous calm,All music and metre, all fragrance and balm,
A half-waking dream from the dawn to the even,
A banquet of blossoms, a pantheist heaven!
CCXXIX
For ever to him jealous nature was biddenTo open her gates, that he might pass unchidden
To all the vast palaces God was adorning,
When the stars sang together in nature's first morning.
CCXXX
All beauty that matter can show him shall beUnrolled to his eyes like the broad open sea;
The elements too shall go with him in throngs,
Singing their sweet untranslateable songs.
CCXXXI
He saw and he handled the powdery stuff,The insoluble atoms the world is made of;
He divined how their forces, their scent, and their taste
All came from the patterns in which they were placed.
CCXXXII
He saw how the rocky foundations of matterWere volatile, weightless, and fluent by nature;
How all in swift currents was flowing and crossing,
And staying with no one, and never reposing.
CCXXXIII
He shall rifle the universe far as it stretches,He shall look o'er the outside of space where it reaches
The confines of nothing, and exhaust if he can
All the beauty God made, save the grand heart of man.
568
CCXXXIV
Thus over the world for long years he was borne,To the lands of the sunset, the lands of the morn;
And summer-winds fanned him wherever he went,
And the soft charms of sunshine with moonlight were blent.
CCXXXV
Not a nook, not a hollow the whole planet over,Where he did not fresh wonder, fresh beauty discover,
From the gardens of ocean the green billows under,
To the lone mountain top which belongs to the condor.
CCXXXVI
Earth, water, air, fire, were his loves at the first;Then under-earth growths, where the metals are nursed;
Then the outlines of landscapes, and mountains' grave faces,
And the green things that grow in tropical places.
CCXXXVII
He heard the plants breathe out their soft tiny sighs,And he saw chemist air dole them out their supplies;
He asked of the flowers, and they answered him right,
Why some sleep with their eyes open all through the night.
CCXXXVIII
He enquired of the solar beam, how it enchantedThe blossoms to take just the mixed hues it wanted;
He watched threadlike roots pierce the clay, cleave the rock,
Strong as bodkins of steel, slow as hands of a clock.
569
CCXXXIX
Sometimes he lay on a cloud, and looked downOn the field and the woodland, blue sea and white town;
And he thought earth's geography surely was given
To be a substantial reflection of heaven.
CCXL
He studied the natures and instincts of beasts,And saw possible worlds imaged deep in their breasts;
And he read a whole science newly-made in the features,
The deep tender wildness of the faces of creatures.
CCXLI
He knew every chord that the rich wind could change,Its loud, and its soft, and its musical range,
From the storms of the night to the songs it will sing
As it sinks to an almost inaudible thing.
CCXLII
Sound is a language of beauty for ever,From the sigh of the reeds to the dash of the river,
From the plaintive soul prisoned within the pine tree
To the foam effervescing on a wave out at sea.
CCXLIII
The piping of wild-fowl was music to him,As it rose from the marsh, fenny, sedgy, and dim,
Though it sounded sometimes, long haunting the ear,
Too like human anguish, too word-like, too clear.
CCXLIV
Yet the shouts of the gulls to the deaf storms complaining,Their shrieks, and their oaths gainst the strong winds maintaining,
Were excitement at times, in the sea-sounding air,
As if the wild woes of all shipwrecks were there.
570
CCXLV
Even sounds out of harmony filled him with wonder,Like the cry of the curlew in the middle of thunder,
Inopportune sounds, or sounds cursed from their birth,
Like unmusical souls among men upon earth.
CCXLVI
There was one sound of sweetness he loved and he feared,Which full oft in the oak-groves of summer was heard;
'Twas a thing close to tears, and it made him turn pale,—
The half-human soul of the grieved nightingale.
CCXLVII
He lay long to listen in caves, where the swellOf the sea-murmur sings, like the air in a shell,
Now idyll, now elegy, storm-ode or pean,
Mid the cavernous isles of the classic Egean.
CCXLVIII
Where the mountains were folded one over another,And the hanging woods the echoes smother,
He loved the sea's voice, where its courage fails,
Speaking low, like a stranger, in inland vales.
CCXLIX
He discovered that time made a sound in its going,A tremulous ringing, a rhythmical flowing,
Slowest at noon, as if day in its net
Caught the sun for a while ere he slanted to set,
CCL
He wrapt his soul round in each kind of perfumeFrom the bright open gardens or close forest-gloom,
And he saw how within him each fragrance was mother
Of a brood of soft thoughts that was like to no other.
571
CCLI
But the sounds and the scents floated into his being,Not by hearing or smell, but a new kind of seeing,
Which brought all unbodied delights within reach,
And gave colour and form to the beauty of each.
CCLII
'Twas the same wondrous eyesight which o'er the earth cast,Saw clear through the gauze of the Present the Past,
And the Future, which under old centuries lay,
Like a grave pre-existence, work up into day.
CCLIII
The cosmical meanings, the calmness and strife,The intermutations of earth's ancient life,
He read off from her strata, strange ciphers and dread,
And great thoughts sang out loud in his soul as he read.
CCLIV
He sings funeral hymns over buried creations,Or inaugurates epochs with grandest orations,
While the rocks at his bidding re-plant, re-adorn
Earth's secular landscapes ere Adam was born.
CCLV
The deltas all told him what history was theirs,White shells and black soil in alternate thin layers;
The dunes let him feel their slow pulses, dumb things
That can walk without feet and can fly without wings.
CCLVI
In truth it was strange and suggestive to seeThe patience of earth's monotony,
How grand in its slowness the march of a law
That must work without tool and complete without flaw.
572
CCLVII
How slowly the desert stalked into the land,And had powdered old Egypt with handfuls of sand,
And how calm and contented the pyramids were
To be buried so slowly by hair-breadths a year.
CCLVIII
He saw how old history patiently waitedHer time, under green mounds still unexcavated;
In unthought-of places he watched mortals treading
The graves of old grandeurs, unknowing, unheeding.
CCLIX
In Edom and Tadmor he stayed to imbibeThe spirit of ruins, but found that the tribe
Of the great human race left a taint where it travelled,
Making earth's peaceful spells all bewildered and ravelled.
CCLX
Earth showed him the footprints of ages, which sheHad so tenderly veiled with green grass or blue sea,
And he saw the true process of world-peopling, flowing
By routes unsuspected, a science worth knowing.
CCLXI
Hieroglyphical marks became clear by degrees,Either crooked or straight, like the wakes on calm seas,
The paths by which Asia her children had driven
From her hearth to fill earth at the bidding of heaven.
CCLXII
He dreamed that he saw, was it more than a dream?Laws, faiths, and philosophies national seem,
And that all mental glories subservient must be
To the physical spells of geography.
573
CCLXIII
In the bright silver havens of cloudland aboveHe lingered to watch how the rainbow-looms move;
He heard light sing its songs in the calm upper ether,
And the whispers the clouds made when touching together.
CCLXIV
Earth-weary he rose up again on swift wingsThrough the half-solid space-matter, graven with rings,
The grooves of the stars in their orderly race
Through the infinite purple of icy-cold space.
CCLXV
But his thoughts were more earthly; he lagged on the wing,As earth's sounds in his ears kept murmuring;
Space appeared to resist him much more than before,
As he breasted the light on its outermost shore.
CCLXVI
And the marvels of starry life soon became weary,And the gulfs of the Milky Way manless and dreary:
How sweet looked our planet, when it first came in sight,
Like a teardrop of joy on the fair brow of night.
CCLXVII
Ah! this foolish Prince! was the first hopeful feelingThat o'er thy young lifetime already was stealing;
This the true fountain deep in thee, the root
Of earth's wonderful flower that bears heavenly fruit.
574
CCLXVIII
At last he was homesick; at last he was weary;At last the world's outside shone cold-bright and dreary;
He had come to the end, and he saw that the light
Of beauty fell short of the infinite.
CCLXIX
He was sick of the luscious cup nature had brought him,And began to distrust the thin truths she had taught him;
At last came the time, when a soul full of beauty
Should feel the one lovely thing wanting was duty.
CCLXX
Sad thoughts rose within him, distracting, prolific,As he sank to the earth in the Southern Pacific,
On a cocoa-crowned crater, which coral worms built,
And the yellow brine-lichens had modestly gilt.
CCLXXI
In his absence of mind, he had lighted belowNear a dwelling of man, where the plaining of woe
On the warm spicy wind arose touching and wild,—
'Twas a mother just closing the eyes of her child.
CCLXXII
First there came o'er his heart a most strange agitation,—Then it flashed on his mind like a new revelation,—
No love without depth, and no depth without sorrow;
For the tears of to-day are the joys of to-morrow.
CCLXXIII
'Twas as old as the hills; but it is so with youth,—It must find out as new the most primary truth:
No wisdom self has not found out is our own;
Truths taken on trust are oft cold as a stone!
575
CCLXXIV
He thought of the creed of his now sainted mother;It taught the same lesson; it was based on no other;
How the great God Himself, who all beauty had given,
Came on earth to find woe when there was none in heaven.
CCLXXV
All at once what a change had come over his spirit;For tho' sorrow be not the whole truth, it is near it.
A thousand false lights were put out on the earth,
For the beauty of things seemed a poor kind of mirth.
CCLXXVI
It was persons, not things, that the Prince wanted now,And he welcomed the ache just begun in his brow;
O beautiful sorrow! thy tears how they shine,—
Ah! none can preach God with persuasion like thine!
CCLXXVII
All wisdom is in thee, O fairy-like sorrow!The faith of to-day, and the crown of to-morrow,
The love, for God's sake, of these deep human faces,
With their troubles, and joys, and their hearts' common-places.
CCLXXVIII
The sound of the savage in the cocoa-isle weepingHath wakened the Prince from the sleep he was sleeping:
To mourn with the sad was his first act of duty,
And at once he found out the imposture of beauty.
576
CCLXXIX
He hath shed a man's tear o'er the grief of another;And lo! earth fell beneath him, and man was his brother:
And a kindhearted soul, with a sad sort of bliss,
In his hoary old age was the Prince Amadis!
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