University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

ON VARIOUS THEMES.

I.
FRESHNESS OF POETIC PERCEPTION.

Day followed day; years perish; still mine eyes
Are opened on the self-same round of space;
Yon fadeless forests in their Titan grace,
And the large splendors of those opulent skies.
I watch, unwearied, the miraculous dyes
Of dawn or sunset; the soft boughs which lace
Round some coy dryad in a lonely place,
Thrilled with low whispering and strange sylvan sighs:
Weary? the poet's mind is fresh as dew,
And oft re-filled as fountains of the light.
His clear child's soul finds something sweet and new
Even in a weed's heart, the carved leaves of corn.
The spear-like grass, the silvery rim of morn,
A cloud rose-edged, and fleeting stars at night!

II.
LAOCOON.

A gnarled and massive oak log, shapeless, old,
Hewed down of late from yonder hillside gray,
Grotesquely curved, across our hearthstone lay;
About it, serpent-wise, the red flames rolled
In writhing convolutions; fold on fold
They crept and clung with slow portentous sway
Of deadly coils; or in malignant play,
Keen tongues outflashed, 'twixt vaporous gloom and gold.
Lo! as I gazed, from out that flaming gyre
There loomed a wild, weird image, all astrain
With strangled limbs, hot brow, and eyeballs dire,
Big with the anguish of the bursting brain:
Laocoon's form, Laocoon's fateful pain,
A frescoed dream on flickering walls of fire!

III.
AT LAST.

In youth, when blood was warm and fancy high,
I mocked at death. How many a quaint conceit
I wove about his veilèd head and feet.
Vaunting aloud. Why need we dread to die?
But now, enthralled by deep solemnity.
Death's pale phantasmal shade I darkly greet:
Ghostlike it haunts the hearth, it haunts the street,
Or drearier makes drear midnight's mystery.
Ah, soul-perplexing vision! oft I deem
That antique myth is true which pictured death
A masked and hideous form all shrank to see;
But at the last slow ebb of mortal breath,
Death, his mask melting like a nightmare dream,
Smiled,—heaven's high-priest of Immortality!

IV.
A PHANTOM IN THE CLOUDS.

All day the blast, with furious ramp and roar,
Sweeps the gaunt hill-tops, piles the vapors high,
Thro' infinite distance, up the tortured sky—
Till to one nurtured on the ocean-shore,
It seems—with eyes half-shut to hill and moor—
The anguished sea waves' multitudinous cry—
It changes! deepening .. Christ! what agony
Doth some doomed spirit on these wild winds outpour!
At last a lull! stirred by slow wafts of air!
When lo! o'er dismal wastes of stormy wreck,
Cloud-wrought, an awful form and face abhorred!
Thine, thine, Iscariot! smitten by mad despair,
With lurid eyeballs strained, and writhing neck,
Round which is coiled a blood-red phantom cord!

V.
JAPONICAS.

Beneath the sullen slope of shadowy skies,
Midmost this flowerless, wind-bewildered space
(Once a fair garden, now a desert-place)
Ah! what voluptuous hues are these that rise
In sudden lustre, on my startled eyes?
They glow like roses on an orient face,
Glimpsed in swift flashes of enchanting grace,
'Twixt the shy harem's gold-wrought tapestries!
Ye bright Japonicas! your glorious gleam
Tints with strange light the enamored waves of air,
And wafts of such coy fragrance round you float
Fancy transcends these boundaries blanched and bare,
For beauty lures her in a ravishing dream
Of roseate lips, dark locks, and swanwhite throat!

VI.
THE USURPER.

For weeks the languid southern wind had blown,
Fraught with Floridian balm; thro' winter skies
We seemed to catch the smile of April's eyes;
A queenly waif, from her far temperate zone
Wayfaring—half bewildered and alone,
Yet, by the delicate fervor of her grace,
And the arch beauty of her changeful face,
Making an alien empire all her own,
So day by day that sweet usurper's reign
Gladdened the world. One eve the south wind sighed
Her soft soul out; the north wind raved instead;
All night he raved; when morning dawned again,
Winter, rethroned, looked down with scornful pride
Where April, dying, bowed her golden head!

VII.
DECEMBER SONNET.

Round the December heights the clouds are gray—
Gray, and wind-driven toward the stormy west,
They fly, like phantoms of malign unrest,
To fade in sombre distances away.
A flickering brightness o'er the wreck of day,
Twilight, like some sad maiden, grief-oppressed,
Broods wanly on the farthest mountain crest;
All nature breathes of darkness and decay
Now from low meadow land and drowsy stream.
From deep recesses of the silent vale,
Night-wandering vapors rise formless and chill,
When, lo! o'er shrouded wood and shadowy hill,
I mark the eve's victorious planet beam,
Fair as an angel clad in silver mail!

VIII.
A COMPARISON.

I think, ofttimes, that lives of men may be
Likened to wandering winds that come and go,
Not knowing whence they rise, whither they blow
O'er the vast globe, voiceful of grief or glee.
Some lives are buoyant zephyrs sporting free
In tropic sunshine; some long winds of woe
That shun the day, wailing with murmurs low,
Through haunted twilights, by the unresting sea;
Others are ruthless, stormful, drunk with might,
Born of deep passion or malign desire:
They rave 'mid thunder-peals and clouds of fire.
Wild, reckless all, save that some power unknown
Guides each blind force till life be overblown,
Lost in vague hollows of the fathomless night.

IX.
FATE, OR GOD?

Beyond the record of all eldest things,
Beyond the rule and regions of past time,
From out Antiquity's hoary-headed rime,
Looms the dread phantom of a King of kings:
Round His vast brows the glittering circlet clings
Of a thrice royal crown; behind Him climb,
O'er Atlantean limbs and breast sublime
The sombre splendors of mysterious wings;
Deep calms of measureless power, in awful state,
Gird and uphold Him; a miraculous rod,
To heal or smite, arms His infallible hands:
Known in all ages, worshipped in all lands,
Doubt names this half-embodied mystery—Fate,
While Faith, with lowliest reverence, whispers—God!

X.
SONNET.

Written on a fly-leaf of “The Rubaiyat” of Omar Kháyyám, the astronomer-poet of Persia.

Who deems the soul to endless death is thrall,
That no life breathes beyond that moment dire,
When every sense seems lost as outblown fire;—
Must walk, clothed round with darkness like a pall,
Or on false gods of sensual rapture call;
Pluck the rich rose-leaves! lift the wine cup higher!
Wed delicate Instinct to malign Desire,
(Like some Greek girl clasped by a barbarous Gaul!)
Thus Omar preached, thus practised, centuries since;
Wine, beauty, idlesse, orgies crowned by lust;
All these he chanted in voluptuous song;
Yet who shall vow, deep Thinker! poet Prince!
Thy rhythmic creed the unnatural voice of wrong,
If man, dust-born, shall still return to dust?

XI.
EARTH ODORS—AFTER RAIN.

Life-yielding fragrance of our mother earth!
Benignant breath exhaled from summer showers!—
All Nature dimples into smiles of flowers,
From unclosed woodland, to trim garden girth;—
These perfumes softening the harsh soul of dearth,
Are older than old Shinar's arrogant towers,—
And touched with visions of rain-freshened hours,
On Syrian hill-slopes 'ere the patriarch's birth!
Nay! the charmed fancy plays a subtler part!—
Lo! banished Adam, his large, wondering eyes
Fixed on the trouble of the first dark cloud!
Lo! tremulous Eve,—a pace behind, how bowed,—
Not dreaming, 'midst her painful pants of heart,
What balm shall fall from yonder ominous cloud!

XII.
SONNET.

I lay in dusky solitude reclined,
The shadow of sleep just hovering o'er mine eyes,
When from the cloudland in the western skies
Rose the strange breathings of a tremulous wind.
As sound upborne o'er water, through some blind.
Mysterious forest, so this wind did rise.
Laden, methought, with half-articulate sighs.
Wafted like spirit-memories o'er the mind.
Then the night deepened; through my window-bars
I saw the gray clouds billowing fast and free.
Smit by the splendor of the solemn stars.
Then the night deepened; wind and cloud became
A blended tumult, crossed by spears of flame,
While the great pines moaned like a moaning sea.

XIII.
POVERTY.

Once I beheld thee, a lithe mountain maid,
Embrowned by wholesome toils in lusty air;
Whose clear blood, nurtured by strong, primitive cheer,
Through Amazonian veins, flowed unafraid.
Broad-breasted, pearly-teethed, thy pure breath strayed,
Sweet as deep-uddered kine's curled in the rare
Bright spaces of thy lofty atmosphere,
O'er some rude cottage in a fir-grown glade.
Now, of each brave ideal virtue stripped,
O Poverty! I behold thee as thou art,
A ruthless hag, the image of woeful dearth
Or brute despair, gnawing its own starved heart.
Thou ravening wretch! fierce-eyed and monster-lipped,
Why scourge forevermore God's beauteteous earth?

XIV.
WASTE.

How many a budding plant is born to fade!
How many a May bloom wilt with quick decay!
Ofttimes the ruddiest rose holds briefest sway,
While heart and sense are evermore betrayed
Alike in nature's shine and nature's shade.
Vainly earth-tendered seeds have sought the day,
And countless threads of rivulets wind astray,
For one that joins the vast main unembayed.
O prodigal nature, why this spendthrift waste
Of light, strength, beauty given to earth or man?
Thy richest realm may lie in trackless seas,
Thy tenderest loves, perchance, die unembraced;
While faith and reason watch thy 'wildering plan,
The baffled soul's cloud-compassed Hyades!

XV.
A MORNING AFTER STORM.

All night the north wind blew; the harsh north rain
Lashed like a spiteful whip at roof and sill.
Now the pale morning lowers, bewildered, chill,
Leaning her cheek against the misted pane,
Like some worn outcast, sick in heart and brain.
The wind that raved all night, though muttering still,
Moans fitfully, with faint, irresolute will,
Through dreary interludes, its low refrain.
In desolate mood I turn to rest once more,
Closing my senses to this hopeless morn,
This dismal wind. Still must the morning gloom,
Still the low sighing pass sleep's muffled door,
Till her veiled life is filled with dreams forlorn,
With hollow sounds and bodeful shapes of doom.

XVI.
DEAD LOVES.

Whene'er I think of old loves wan and dead,
Of passion's wine outpoured in senseless dust,
Of doomed affection's and long-buried trust,
Through all my soul an arctic gloom is shed;
And ah! I walk the world disquieted.
Thou, my own love! white lily of April! must
Thy beauty, perfume, radiance, all be thrust
Earthward, to crumble in a grass-grown bed?
Yea, sweet, 'tis even so! How long, how long
The dust of her who once was tender Ruth,
Hath mouldered dumbly! And how oft the clod,
Which binds, like hers, all perished love and truth,
Strives with pale weeds to veil death's hopeless wrong,
Or through chill lips of flowers appeals to God!

XVII.
NATURE AT EASE.

I feel the kisses of this lingering breeze,
Warm, close, and ardent as the lips of love,
I quaff the sunshine streaming from above,
Like mellow wine of antique vintages;
Now, serene nature, at luxurious ease,
Her deep toils perfected, and richly rife
With subtlest meanings—all her opulent life
Reveals in tremulous brakes and whispering seas.
If, then, the reverent soul doth lean aright,
Close to those voices of wood, wind, and wave,
What wondrous secrets bless the spiritual ear,
Born, as it were, of music winged with light,
Sweeter than those strange songs which Orpheus gave
To earth and heaven, while both grew dumb to hear!

XVIII.
THE CNYDIAN ORACLE.

“What though the Isthmus lacks an ocean-gate,
Delve not the soil! If Jove had willed it so,
His watchful power had opened long ago
The channelled pathways of a billowy strait.”
Thus spake the Cnydian Oracle but too late;
For men are blinder than blind winds that blow
Round midnight waves, yet idly dream they know
Some Hermes' trick to steal the goods of fate.
Fools! trench your Isthmus, delving fast and deep;
And as ye toil uplift your boastful breath
O'er swift inrushings of the turbulent sea—
Too swift, by heaven! for, lo! its treacherous sweep
O'erwhelms the graded dykes, the opposing lea,
While ye that mocked at fate, fate whirls to death!

XIX.
THE HYACINTH.

Here in this wrecked storm-wasted garden-close
The grave of infinite generations fled
Of flowers that now lay lustreless and dead,
As the gray dust of Eden's earliest rose.
What bloom is this, whose classical beauty glows
Radiantly chaste, with the mild splendor shed
Round a Greek virgin's poised and perfect head,
By Phidias wrought 'twixt rapture and repose?
Mark the sweet lines whose matchless ovals curl
Above the fragile stem's half shrinking grace,
And say if this pure hyacinth doth not seem
(Touched by enchantments of an antique dream)
A flower no more, but the low drooping face
Of some love-laden, fair Athenian girl?

XX.
THE WOOD FAR INLAND.

I close mine eyes in this lone inland place,
This wood, far inland, thronged with sombrous trees—
Our southland pines—in whose dark boughs the breeze
Mourns like a spirit shorn of joy and grace;
The same wild genius whose half-veilèd face
Dawns on the barren brink of wave-washed leas,
Fraught with the ancient mystery of the seas,
Whose hoary brow bears many a storm-bolt's trace;
I close mine eyes; but lo! a spiritual light
Steals round me: I behold through foam and mist
A dreary reach of wan, slow-shifting sand,
By transient glints of flickering starbeams kissed,
And hear upborne athwart the desolate strand
Voices of ghostly billows of the night.

[XXI. A moment since his breath dissolved in air]

A moment since his breath dissolved in air!
And now divorced from life's last hectic glow,
He joins the old ghostly years of long ago,
In some cloud-folded realm of vague despair;
Ah me! the unsceptred years that wander there!
With cold, wan hands, and faces white as snow,
And echoes of dead voices quavering low
The phantom-burden of long-perished care!
Perchance all unsubstantialized and gray,
Time's earliest year now greets his last, deceased;
Or he that dumbly gazed on Adam's fall,
Palely emerging from the shadowy east,
With flickering semblance of cold crown and pall,
Clothes the dim ghost of him just passed away!

XXII.
MAGNOLIA GARDENS.

Yes, found at last,—the earthly paradise!
Here by slow currents of the silvery stream
It smiles, a shining wonder, a fair dream,
A matchless miracle to mortal eyes:
What whorls of dazzling color flash and rise
From rich azalean flowers, whose petals teem
With such harmonious tints as brightly gleam
In sunset rainbows arched o'er perfect skies!
But see! beyond those blended blooms of fire,
Vast tier on tier the lordly foliage tower
Which crowns the centuried oaks' broad crested calm:
Thus on bold beauty falls the shade of power;
Yet beauty still unquelled, fulfils desire,
Unfolds her blossoms, and outbreathes her balm!

XXIII.
ENGLAND.

Cloud-girded land, brave land beyond the sea!
Land of my father's love! how oft I yearn
Toward thy famed ancestral shores to turn,
Roaming thy glorious realm in liberty;
All English growths would sacred seem to me,
From opulent oak to flickering wayside fern;
Much form her delicate daisies could I learn,
And all her home-bred flowers by lake or lea.
But most I dream of Shropshire's meadow grass,
Its grazing herds, and sweet hay-scented air;
An ancient hall near a slow rivulet's mouth;
A church vine-clad; a graveyard glooming south;
These are the scenes through which I fain would pass;
There lived my sires, whose sacred dust is there.

XXIV.
DISAPPOINTMENT.

Ah! phantom pale, why hast thou come with pace
Thus slow, and such sad deprecating eyes?
What! dost thou dream thy presence could surprise
One the born vassal of thy realm and race?
I looked in boyhood on thy clouded face;
In youth dissevered from all cordial ties,
Heard the deep echoes of thy murmured sighs
In many a shadowy, grief-enshrouded place;
Therefore, O sombre Genius, be not coy!
When have we dwelt so alien and apart
I could not faintly feel thy muffled heart?
Till even should hope's fruition softly shine,
I well might deem beneath the mask of joy
Lurked that sad brow, those twilight eyes of thine!

XXV.
THE LAST OF THE ROSES.

A royal rose! A rose how darkly red!
A proud, voluptuous, full blown flower, that sways
Her sceptre o'er the wind-swept garden-ways,
With mantling cheek and bold, imperious head!
Alone she lifts above yon desolate bed
A beauty past all terms of raptured praise,
The statelier that she rules in autumn days,
When every rival flower is dimmed or dead!
A haughty Cleopatra! there she smiles,
Unwitting that her sovereign love is lost—
Her Antony! a gorgeous sunflower bloom!
Ah! vain henceforth her beauty and sweet wiles!
Queen! art thou blind? Thy lord hath met his doom;
His Actium came with winter's vanguard—Frost!

XXVI.
THE AXE AND PINE.

All day, on bole and limb the axes ring,
And every stroke upon my startled brain
Falls with the power of sympathetic pain;
I shrink to view each glorious forest-king
Descend to earth, a wan, discrownèd thing.
Ah, Heaven! beside these foliaged giants slain.
How small the human dwarfs, whose lust for gain
Hath edged their brutal steel to smite and sting!
Hark! to those long-drawn murmurings, strange and drear!
The wail of Dryads in their last distress;
O'er ruined haunts and ravished loveliness
Still tower those brawny arms; tones coarsely loud
Rise still beyond the greenery's waning cloud,
While falls the insatiate steel, sharp, cold and sheer!

XXVII.
BETROTHAL NIGHT.

Through golden languors of low glimmering light,
Deep eyes, o'erbrimmed with passion's sacred wine,
Heart-perfumed tears—yearning towards me, shine
Like stars made lovelier by faint mists at night;
Her cheeks, sweet lilies change to roses bright,
Blown in love's realm, fed by his breath divine;
And even those virginal tremors seem the sign
Of perfect joy through love's unchallenged right:
O happy breast, that heavest soft and fair
Through silvery clouds of luminous silk and lace!
O, gracious hands, O flower-enwoven head,
O'er which hope's charm its delicate warmth has shed!
While smiles and blushes wreathe her dimpling face,
Set in the splendor of dark Orient hair!

XXVIII.
“THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA.”

Grievous, in sooth, was luckless Sindbad's plight,
Saddled with that foul monster of the sea;
But who of some soul-harrowing weight is free?
And though we veil our woe from public sight,
Full many a weary day and dismal night,
It chafes our spirits sorely! Yet, for thee,
Whate'er, O friend, thy special grief may be,
Range thou against it all thy manhood's might.
Thus, though thou may'st not smite on brow or breast
That irksome incubus, be sure some day
The load that blights shall droop and fall away,
And thou, because of torture borne so well,
Shall pass from out thy long, malign unrest
And walk thy future paths invincible!

XXIX.
TWO PICTURES.

She stood beneath the vine-leaves flushed and fair;
The dimpling smiles around her tender mouth,
Seemed born of mellow sunshine of the South;
A light breeze trembled in her unbound hair;
No young Greek goddess, in the violet air
Of vales immortal, shone with purer grace;
A delicate glory touched her form and face,
Whence the sweet soul looked on us, nobly bare,—
As Heaven itself, unclouded:—thus she stood,
But when I saw her next (O God! the woe!)
Love, mirth, and life had fled forever more;
Prostrate she lay, about her a dark wood,
And many a helpless mourner, wailing low;
The cruel waves which drowned her lapped the shore.

XXX.
THE MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Once in the twilight hour there stole on me
A strange, sweet spirit! In her tender eyes
Shone a far beauty, like the morning skies,
And tranquil was she as a summer sea;
An air of large, divine benignity
Breathed, like a living garb of spiritual dyes
About her—with the gentle fall and rise
Of her heart pulses tuned to mystery—
But, as I gazed, a sadness deep as death
Crept o'er the beauty of her brow serene
And a faint tremor stirred her shadowy lips;
“Thou know'st me not, “she sighed, with mournful breath;
“How can'st thou know me? Lo, through Fate's eclipse,
Thou seest, too late, too late, thy Might Have Been!”

XXXI.
NIGHT-WINDS IN WINTER.

Winds! are they winds?—or myriad ghosts, that shriek?
Ghosts of poor mariners, drowned in Northern seas,
Beside the surf-tormented Hebrides,
Whose voices now of tide-born terror speak
In tones to blanch the boldest listener's cheek?
Hark! how they thunder down the far-off leas,
Sweep the scourged hills, and smite the woodland trees,
To die where towers yon glittering mountain-peak!
A moment's stillness! Then with lustier might
Of wing and voice, these marvellous wraiths of air
Fill with dread sound the ominous heights of night.
Athwart their stormful breath the star-throngs fade:
How dimmed is Cassiopæia's radiant chair,
While Perseus droops, touched by transfiguring shade!

XXXII.
TO THE QUERULOUS POETS.

Throw by the trappings of your tinsel rhyme!
Hush the crude voice, whose never-ending wail
Blights the sweet song of thrush, or nightingale,—
Set to the treble of our querulous time;
Is earth grown dim? Hath heaven her grace sublime,
Her pomp of clouds, and winds, and sunset showers
Merged in the twilight of funereal hours,
And Time's death-signal struck its iron chime?
O! false, frail dreamer! not one tiniest note
From yonder green-girt copse, but whispers “shame!”—
Love, beauty, rapture, swell the warbler's throat.—
The self-same joy, the passion blithe and young.
Thrilled by the force of whose immaculate flame,
The first glad stars, the stars of morning, sung!

XXXIII.
IN THE PORCH.

In this old porch, fast mouldering to decay,
But wreathed in vines and girt by shadowy trees,
All day I hear the dreamful hum of bees,
Soft-rustling foliage, and the fragrant sway
Of breezes borne from some far ocean bay;
And oft with half-closed eyelids, stretched at ease—
The pines above me voiced like distant seas—
I seem to mark a coy young Dryad stray
Out from the tangled greenery overhead,
Her brow leaf-crowned, her eyes of twilight fire
Deep with Arcadian mysteries softly shed;
And near her, wafted from the ambrosial South,
A white-limbed Nereid, round whose balmy mouth
Breathe the wave's freshness and the wind's desire.

XXXIV.
THE PHANTOM—SONG.

In museful hours, when thoughts of grace divine
Roll wave-like up the stormless strand of dreams;—
When that which is grows vague as that which seems,—
I mark, far-off, a radiant shade incline
From heaven to earth,—whose face of marvelous shine,
(Half veiled in mystic beauty), softly beams
With delicate lustres, and elusive gleams,
Caught from some viewless Eden—hyaline:—
Ethereal, as the wavering hues that start
From chorded rainbows;—lingering scarce so long
As the last sun-ray flashed in twilight's eye,
I hail this phantom of a perfect song;—
And I, some day, shall pass the phantom by,—
To feel the embodied music next my heart!

XXXV.
SMALL GRIEFS AND GREAT.

How oft by trivial griefs our spirits tossed
Drift vague and restless round this changeful world!
Yet when great sorrows on our lives are hurled,
And fate on us has wreaked his uttermost,
O'er wounded breasts our steadfast arms are crossed;
We front the blast, silent, with unbowed head
And stoic mien; for fear with hope is dead;
And calm the voice which whispers: “All is lost!”
Thence to the end, our being, stripped and bare
Of love, and peace, and gracious joys of of earth,
Like some storm-shattered tree, its withered might
May lift defiant, dauntless in its dearth,
Seeming Death's bolt, that final stroke, to dare,
A dreary watcher on a blasted height!

XXXVI.
THE SHALLOW HEART!

“Pity her,” say'st thou, “pity her!” nay, not I!
Her heart is shallow as yon garrulous rill
That froths o'er pebbles: grief, true grief is still,
Deathfully solemn as eternity
Thro' whose dread realm its silent fancies fly
Seeking the lost and loved; sorrows that kill
Life's hope, are like those poisons which distil
Their noiseless dews beneath the midnight sky:—
Their venom works in secret! gnaws the heart,
And withers the worn spirit, albeit no sign
Shows the sad inward havoc, till some day,
(Pledging our calm friend o'er the purpling wine),
Sudden, he falls amongst us, and we start
At a low whisper, “He has passed away!”

XXXVII.
THE STORMY NIGHT.

[Written on a stormy Christmas night (1873).]

How roars this wintry tempest, fierce and loud,
Borne from far passes of the ice-locked hills!
How raves this desolate rain, whose tumult fills
The whole dark heaven up-piled with cloud on cloud;
While yonder quivering pine-trees, drenched and bowed,
Blend their strange moaning with the noise of rills,
And one swift stream, whose angry clarion shrills,
Piercing the mists which o'er it cling and crowd!
Roar, mighty wind! rave on, thou merciless rain!
Uproot, and madly ravage—whilst ye may;
Your furious voices smite mine ears in vain,
For, housed and warmed by this bright fireside cheer,—
Safe as on some calm springtide's calmest day,
I mock your ire, nor heed your wild despair.