Areytos or songs and ballads of the South

Give Fancy freedom, freedom to-night!
Let her soar up in the face of the stars!
What's the soul-virtue, if never, in flight,
We fling off our sense of the earth with its bars?
The spirit that clings to its fetters of clay,
Whose eyes never lift in the prayer for a wing,
Hath no pinion of soul which shall bear it away
To that realm of delight,
Which is born of the flight,
Where the very soul-soaring compels it to sing!

II.

It needs but the prayer for the wing, and we rise!
We have shaken the earth-clogs away from our feet;
Already we taste the cool breath of the skies,
And the music deliciously wooing and sweet!
See, as we soar, how the provinces spread,
How the bright vistas persuade us to roam
Oh! friends, 'tis the sky, the blue sky overhead,
And the realms that he finds,
In his flight with the winds,
That make for the soul of the poet her home.

III.

Freed from the fetter, a captive no more,
With the glad spirit upsoaring, the eye
Takes in the moony realm, ocean and shore,
Mountain and billow, in cope of the sky!
Lo! the bird crossing the face of the moon!
How the great vans waver darkly and bright!
He speeds—the crag-ærie will welcome him soon;
See where the grim steep,
Hanging over the deep,
Bathes its forehead of blackness in smiles of the night!

IV.

And, hark! the wild scream from below—
The eagle's fierce cry of delight!
And see, on the peak of the mount, in the glow
Of the moon, where his mate is in sight!
She flings off her young from the steep:
They flutter—are falling—but the sire,
While each feather of his wing rattles loud in its sweep,
Darts beneath, and they cling,
Upon shoulder and wing,
While he rushes up in pride to his spire.

V.

Even he shall not mate us in flight,
Though a type of the noblest in air;
We aspire to a realm of a braver delight
Than the lark or the eagle may share:
We've the passport of soul to a clime
Where the will finds the wing, and the eye,
Touch'd by thought and by fancy with visions sublime,
No element copes,
Creates as it opes,
And wills for itself where to fly!

VI.

Away and aloft, with a bolder aim,
We swim 'mid the eyes of the milky way;
And we gaze upon beauties with earthly name,
That never yet sank 'neath an earthly sway!
There; the central group of the Pleiades,
That never lost sister, as here you see,
Float together serenely on silver seas,
And woo with a smile,
Whose meanest wile
Were a bliss to our mortal destinies.

VII.

Ah! why should we wander yet farther on,
Since here the Elysium spreads around?
We have but to cherish the fields we've won,
And the lost Eden again is found.
What a glorious landscape woos us now!
The plains lie open; the mountains blue
Conduct us on to one snow white brow,
Where the cataract breaks
Into silvery lakes,
That wander away the whole valley through!—

VIII.

And the glory that smiles o'er the landscape gleams
With a brightness such as no sun may show,
Yet we gaze undazzled, as when in our dreams
We hail the great orb in his noonday glow;
While a sky spreads o'er us more pure and clear
Than ever on mortal vision shone,
And we pierce with our souls a nobler sphere—
Whose music is light,
Whose being is flight,
And we float in a sea of fragrance on!

IX.

There swells the blue of a thousand hills;
Together the grand and the soft unite;
And the harmony streams from a thousand rills,
That lapse away from each heaving height;
And lo! where an ocean spreads below,
With wingéd forms on a silvery shore,
That dart and glow, as they laugh and go,
And shed, as they rise,
The light from eyes
That smile with love as they sing and soar!

X.

Now drink your fill, and to memory plead
For the sweetest lore that she ever knew;
See the group that beckons to yonder mead,
With eyes that win, and with smiles that woo!
Hath their happy flight to the better sphere
Made the change so great to your mortal ken,
That ye know not the forms that were once so dear
And can not trace,
In each glorious face,
The charms so precious 'mongst mortal men?

XI.

Lo! the sweet sister, so pale and fair,
With eyes so blue and cheeks so wan;
Whose hapless dying, the livelong year,
Gave a sad relief when ye felt her gone:
No death now darkens those lustrous eyes,
No sorrow now wans that virgin face,
But a wondrous youth in her beauty lies,
And the bliss that speaks
In those soul-lit cheeks,
Shows an angel life with an angel grace.

XII.

And note ye the joyous bride that stands,
Blessing, beside her, and woos us nigh!
How sweetly she waves her snow-white hands,
And oh! the sweet passion that lights her eye!
Ah! weep—yes, weep! but with joyful tears,
As at bliss new born in a stricken heart;
The night is gone that was full of fears,
And, on other shores,
The soul restores
What the mortal Terror hath torn apart.

XIII.

This is the vale of the Perfect Peace,
And how glorious all is the blessed show!
From pleasure to pleasure, with fresh increase,
In every change, may the inmates go;
They have but to will, and the landscape gleams
With living treasures of love-delight;
Such as in glimpses they show us in dreams,
To soothe the woe
Of our life below,
And win our thoughts to a loftier flight.

XIV.

And the glorious power of soul here lies,
In this very virtue of will, to call
Into quick presence, from out the skies,
Each germ of joy, and with shape enthrall;
To summon, from realms in the airy space,
Of beauty, and bliss, and love, the charms,
To weave the air into shapes of grace,
Bid the tree shoot,
Command the fruit,
And crown the whole landscape with happy forms.

XV.

See, as we gaze, how, with lifted hands,
And a potent will that need never speak,
They raise around them the bloomy lands,
And the rocks shoot up to a snowy peak;
And along their slopes, how the crimson flowers
Gem the green sward as with laughing eyes,
While, on the great summit, a temple tow'rs,
Where the Perfect Art,
In a wondrous mart,
Each image of beauty and love supplies!

XVI.

And lo! from the temple streams a tide
Of noble and beautiful forms, that grow,
As down, o'er the sunny slopes, they glide,
Into beings we've known and that still we know;
There stands the manly and white-hair'd sire,
And there is the loving mother who bore;
How perfect now in their soul attire!
Unbent with years,
Untroubled with fears,
And bless'd by the tears, which they shed no more;

XVII.

And they wave us their blessing, and bid us see
The glorious clime that their wings have won;
But, alas! our feet are no longer free,
And all in vain would we wander on:
This is the bound of our mortal flight,
And a mighty spell in the barrier air,
Checks the wild gush of that warm delight
Which would bound to gain
The glorious plain,
And wander away with the loved ones there.

XVIII.

But a moment's glimpse, and the plain is void:
They are gone—the beautiful, bright ones, all;
All the grand phantoms of art destroy'd,
Sudden, as cloudy palaces fall,
When the architect sun forbears to gild,
And turns away with a moody brow!
Vainly would Fancy the realm rebuild,
And pierce the screen
That falls between,
And shuts the whole scene from our vision now.

XIX.

Alas! that the earth should still be near—
That Fancy's limit should now be won!
We have had but a glimpse of the wondrous sphere,
Which dulls the glory of mortal sun!
And to forfeit all, and to feel the wing
Clipt in its flight to the spirit's home;
To sink once more where the birds that sing,
But mock the gains
Of those grander strains,
That lift the soul when it seeks to roam!

XX.

And yet, the one glimpse in that happy flight,
Of the wondrous powers of soul set free,
Shall lift the heart with a long delight,
In this dream of its immortality!
And what if the promise of earth be low?
With the soul-promise that flight declares,
We spurn its bonds, with a Hope whose glow
Shall gild the wing,
In each upward spring
That carries us out of this Vale of Tears.

XXI.

The Valley of Perfect Peace is ours,
With all its fruits, and its sweet serene,
If the will to soar bring the soul its powers,
And through earth's vapors the light be seen.
It is but to soar, and with soaring, see;
The mount of vision is quickly won,
If we set the soul-pinion with fancy free,
And shake off the clod
Of that earthly God,
Who makes his sole realm 'neath a mortal sun:

XXII.

If we break, with a wing, through that narrow ring
Which binds the base realm of each lowly aim,
And rend from the soul, that earthy control
Which crushes from spirit its seraph flame;
And rise to the lore, which, taught of yore,
Moved the eager Thought to an upward flight,
And purged the vision, for realms elysian,
Where, to use the wing,
Is to see—to sing,
And the very flight is a birth of light!

University of Virginia Library

“VOLANS VIDEO.”

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