Vigil and vision :: :: University of Virginia Library

HOW have I sinned against thy statutes, Sleep,
That thou this many a year forsaken hast
My sorry eyes, that, whilst, their cares offcast,
All else are sunken in thy drowsy deep,
I, only I, the weapon-watch must keep,
Revolving still in thought the piteous Past,
The laggard hours each heavier than the last,
Till the chill dawn in at my casements peep?
Oh, for an hour of antick Thessaly,
That I might steep me, with Medean spells,
Mandragora and heavy hæmony
And what herb else the assaining God compels,
The cup that sets the imprisoned spirit free
At will to wander in the dreamland's dells!

2.

“Let me but perish in the face of light!”
So spake the ancient Greek, and so say I.
How many a time, with dimmed and haggard eye
Following the dull hours in their halting flight
Along the aisles of never-ending night,
Old Ajax' prayer I've prayed, with many a sigh,
As one condemned, who longs, before he die,
To look once more upon the morning-white!
Nay, in the dreary fever-dreams of wake,
Not seldom I, despairing of the lark,
Deem that the blue day never more shall break
Nor morning glimmer white nor henceforth reign
But the blind twins of blank disfeaturing Dark
And fore-eternal Chaos come again.

3.

In my young days, for sleep I did not wait,
But, rising up, when all the world slept sweet,
Followed the flying foe through square and street.
Oft over hill and stream the dim white day
Wax have I watched to radiance, ray by ray,
And seen the glistering morn, with golden feet
Chasing the shadows from their each retreat,
Awake and glorify the city gray.
But now that with the years the youthful heat
No more runs riot in each pulse and vein
And the fierce fires, that in the blood had seat,
For refuge now have gotten them to the brain,
My feet are still and thought for them and me
The wander-staff must wield by land and sea.

4.

Love grows by longing, so the poets tell:
And if, indeed, the saw not always sooth
Be of the fitful loves of fickle youth,
With age's wistfulness it fitteth well.
And of all longings which the soul compel,
That which the sleepless harbour for the ruth
Of kindly slumber sharpest is of tooth
And worst of woes which were since Adam fell.
Yet, if wont wax by what it battens on
And want by that whereon it fain would feed,
Methinketh, an eternity or two
From my tired eyes and my strained sense 'twill need
The dust of wakefulness away to do
With the sweet waters of oblivion.

DREAM-MEETINGS.

WHILES, in the midnight hours, upon my bed,
In dreams once more to me the old delight
Returns and in the visions of the night,
I look upon the faces of my dead.
No thought there is of sorrow, no tears shed,
No word of woe, but unto touch and sight
All is as once it was, the eyes as bright,
The hands as living warm, the lips as red.
But, in the morn, my dreams when I retrace,
Remembrance rends me of the Might-have-been
And to the house of grief I set my face,
Nay, were, methinks, less sad, if I had seen
The dear-loved dead, in all sleep's marble sheen,
Lie with closed lids the coffin-boards between.

THE CUSHAT.

THE wind was wailing in the trees all night,
Before my sills, but in the middle noon
Of night there came the mild mysterious moon,
And with the wonder of her silver sight,
The dim gray world was gladdened and waxed white;
The shrill winds slackened from their wailing tune
And left uprise the soft complaining croon
Of some stray cushat on the limes alight.
Poor pilgrim, from the Summer woods astray,
What cold commandment of unfavouring Fate
Drove thee from thy warm lodging in the green,
With my dull heart to mourn thy hopes' dismay,
In the gray town, where sad are small and great
And pine for air and sunlight, like the treen?

ANIMAE VIGILIUM.

WHENAS the spirit's vigil, in clear dream
And solemn vision shrined, anights I keep,
What while the world is sanctified with sleep,
Thought, over all the troubled, surging stream
Of darkling life casting its searching beam,
Bids, with its ruthless radiance, from the deep
Into full light the things eternal leap
And strips from those the splendour which but seem.
Then many a thing, which in men's sight is good
And fair, unblest and foul to us is shown
And many a God and many a Holy Rood
In that dread hour resolves to wood and stone;
Nay, when the sun returneth with the day,
Meseems that light with night hath past away.

THE FOREDAWN HOUR.

1.

BETWEEN the night-end and the break of day
An hour there is that from the thither shore
Of the dark river its enchantments frore
And fearful borrows, when each churchyard-clay
Breathes out its chills, when life unto a stay
Seems come and pauses, shuddering, at Death's door,
That stands ajar; of all the twenty-four
Sternest and most of horror and affray.
Here, for arraignment, all its sour and sweet,
Its crimes, its wrongs, its errors, its tears shed,
(For sorrows here for sins imputed are)
The piteous Past unto Thought's judgment-bar
Brings up; and here, where night and morning meet,
The sea of memory gives up its dead.

2.

Here, all alone, the soul before the ark
(That ark whereto there is no mercy-seat)
Of conscience stands and to the iron beat
Of time, that all the wasted years doth mark
And all the days in vain bygone, must hark,
Mourning for done and undone, deeds unmeet
And words ill-spoken; whilst, with faltering feet,
The night slopes dawnward through the shallowing dark.
Set, awful hour, when, in the grave-cold air,
The moments fall like ages, when Life's breath
Halts and the world lies blank and stark and bare
Before thought's eyes, when love and life and light
For ever sunken seem in seas of night
And the soul pauses in the ports of Death.

3.

Who to this dread diurnal judgment-hour,
This everyday rehearsal-time of death,
When life stands still and cold is Nature's breath,
When all our sins bygone like mountains tower
Before the thought and with its salving power,
Afar the blessed daylight tarrieth,—
Who is't can look with hope and cheer and faith?
Who but before its cold approach must cower?
Then for a God, with blind hand, round about
Casting, to succour it and finding none,
The soul into the darkness crieth out
For some twin soul, to share its hope and doubt,
And meeting but the void, till night be done,
Longeth and trembleth for the assaining sun.

4.

Oft, in this darkling hour of doubt and dread,
The Past, with all its ghosts, revisits me,
Its wraiths of hope and joy and ecstasy:
I feel the windy presence of the dead
Stir in my hair and hear their spirit-tread,
As dry leaves falling, nothing though I see:
Again for my sad sense they live and be
And stir and rustle round about my bed.
Oh spirits of my dead, that may not rest,
But needs must harbour where you loved of yore,
Still, by the fetters of the grave opprest,
Seeking to burst the bonds of nothingness,
How shall I do to ease you of your stress?
How shall I win to look on you once more?

RETROSPECT.

WHENAS the Past unto the stern assize
Of middle night I summon and survey,
With backward thought, the over-travelled way,
Much for repentance, yea, and much for sighs
And more for shamefast sorrow, to mine eyes
There doth appear, and needs my head away
Turn must I from the record for dismay
Which graven there in fire eternal lies.
But for a solace yet I have the thought,
That none I willingly did ever wrong;
And much, meseems, for duty hath he wrought
Who ne'er the eternal things hath sold or bought
And with his unsophisticated song,
The healing tears to some sad eyes hath brought.

TO THE BELOVED DEAD.

I call upon you “in the collied night,”
When all things sleep and only I, I wake,
Beseeching you to come for pity's sake
And my sad eyes to solace with your sight.
How many a time I've watched the dark grow white,
Expecting still to see the shadow take
Your shape, to hear your voice the silence break,
Your speech renew for me the dead delight!
I will not question you. I will not weep;
I will not seek to strain you to my breast:
Let me but look upon your face in sleep,
But feel your touch, but hear you voice my name,
And you shall go, returning whence you came,
And have again your cold and senseless rest.

Midsummer-Night's Dream, I, 1.