University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

JUNO LUDOVISI.

[I. White, silent goddess, whose divine repose]

White, silent goddess, whose divine repose
Shames the shrill ecstasies of later creeds,
What might is in thy presence that it breeds
This calm and deep delight that neither knows
Regret for past nor fear of coming woes!
I feel thee like a stately monotone,
Whose soundless waves against my spirit thrown
Make strong and pure. I feel the joy that flows
Like mild, unceasing rain upon my sense
From Nature's myriad fountains. In my soul
The lusty pagan wakes and roams the dense
Arcadian shades, and hears the distant roll
Of mingling echoes,—hears as in a dream
The cymbal's clash, the wild bacchante's scream.

[II. Sublime the thought that dwells within this stone]

Sublime the thought that dwells within this stone
Imprisoned, yet immortal in its tomb.
Where since the world emerged from Chaos' womb
Was peace so sacred and so perfect known?
A spirit from some high ethereal zone,
A spirit pure and passionless and free,
Has flushed thy snowy immobility
With an intenser life-blood than his own.
In thy majestic womanhood more fair
Thou art than all the weeping horde of saints
Whom men invoke with incense and with prayer.
I in thine ear benign would breathe my plaint;
Before thy tranquil eyes and in the shade
Of thine eternal brow my sorrows fade.

[III. Come, gentle mother, and resume thy sway]

Come, gentle mother, and resume thy sway!
Lift up the mellow splendor of thine eyes.
Awake the dumb and callous earth that lies
Steeped in reluctant sleep. Send forth the gay
Olympian throng that, vanquished, fled away
When the pale King of Sorrows conquering came
From out the East. Within thy mighty frame
New life is kindling for a holier day.
For hark! Methinks within this gurgling stream
The Naiad's silvery voice I faintly hear;
Among the leaves I catch the fleeting gleam
Of white limbs vanishing; yea, far and near
Strange whispers haunt my sense, and tenderly
The hamadryad's pulse beats in this tree.

EVOLUTION.

[I. Broad were the bases of all being laid]

Broad were the bases of all being laid,
On pillars sunk in the unfathomed deep
Of universal void and primal sleep.
Some mighty will, in sooth, there was that swayed
The misty atoms which inhabited
The barren, unillumined fields of space;
A breath, perchance, that whirled the mists apace,
And shook the heavy indolence that weighed
Upon the moveless vapors. Oh, what vast,
Resounding undulations of effect
Awoke the breath! What dizzying æons passed
Ere yet a lichen patch the bare rock flecked!
Thus rolls with boom of elemental strife
The ancestry e'en of the meanest life.

[II. I am the child of earth and air and sea]

I am the child of earth and air and sea!
My lullaby by hoarse Silurian storms
Was chanted; and through endless changing forms
Of plant and bird and beast unceasingly
The toiling ages wrought to fashion me.
Lo, these large ancestors have left a breath
Of their strong souls in mine, defying death
And change. I grow and blossom as the tree,
And ever feel deep-delving earthy roots
Binding me daily to the common clay.
But with its airy impulse upward shoots
My life into the realms of light and day;
And thou, O Sea, stern mother of my soul,
Thy tempests sing in me, thy billows roll!

[III. A sacred kinship I would not forego]

A sacred kinship I would not forego
Binds me to all that breathes; through endless strife
The calm and deathless dignity of life
Unites each bleeding victim to its foe.
What life is in its essence, who doth know?
The iron chain that all creation girds,
Encompassing myself and beasts and birds,
Forges its bond unceasing from below,—
From water, stone, and plant, e'en unto man.
Within the rose a pulse that answered mine
(Though hushed and silently its life-tide ran)
I oft have felt; but when with joy divine
I hear the song-thrush warbling in my brain,
I glory in this vast creation's chain.

[IV. I stood and gazed with wonder blent with awe]

I stood and gazed with wonder blent with awe
Upon the giant foot-prints Nature left
Of her primeval march in yonder cleft:
A fern-leaf's airy woof, a reptile's claw,
In their eternal slumber there I saw
In deftly-wrought sarcophagi of stone.
What humid tempests, from rank forests blown,
Whirled from its parent stem yon slender straw?
What scaly creature of a monstrous breed
Bore yonder web-foot through the tepid tide?
Oh, what wide vistas thronged with mighty deed
And mightier thought have here mine eyes decried!
Come, a fraternal grasp, thou hand of stone!
The flesh that once was thine is now mine own.

[V. Sublime is life, though in beginnings base]

Sublime is life, though in beginnings base
At first enkindled. In this clod of mold
Beats with faint spirit-pulse the heart of gold
That warms the lily's cheek; its silent grace
Dwells unborn 'neath this sod. Fain would I trace
The potent mystery which, like Midas' hand,
Thrills the mean clay into refulgence grand;
For, gazing down the misty aisles of space
And time, upon my sight vast visions throng
Of the imperial destiny of man.
The life that throbbed in plant and beast ere long
Will break still wider orbits in its van,—
A race of peace-robed conquerors and kings,
Achieving evermore diviner things.

TO BAYARD TAYLOR.

(Dedication of a Biography of Goethe.)

Unto those altitudes of thought where day
Reigns e'er serene, where unrelenting law
Guides circling worlds and growth of tiniest straw,
Thou led'st with prescient step my doubting way.
And from those radiant heights where naught could stay
The daring eye, there burst upon my view,
Uplooming 'gainst eternity's vast blue,
The image of the mighty sage. The gray,
Forgotten ages spread about his throne
As if his lofty solitude to guard,
And large, eternal voices—Nature's own—
Spoke to the wakeful senses of her bard.
Here have I traced the record of his fame;
Let me inscribe it, friend, with thy dear name.

I.—THE SEA.

Creator and destroyer, mighty sea!
That in thy still and solitary deep
Dost at all being's base thy vigil keep,
And nurturest serene and potently
The slumbering roots of vast Creation's tree.
The teeming swarms of life that swim and creep,
But half aroused from the primordial sleep—
All draw their evanescent breath from thee.
The rock thou buildest, and the fleeting cloud;
Thy billows in eternal circuit rise
Through Nature's veins, with gentle might endowed,
Throbbing in beast and flower in sweet disguise;
In sounding currents roaming o'er the earth
They speed th' alternate pulse of death and birth.

II.—THE AIR.

Invisible enchanter, sweet and strong,
That crumblest mountains in thy soft embrace,
That rock'st the feathered seed through sunlit space
And lull'st the sea with thy caressing song;
How lightly dost thou dance the waves among,
And wingest them for flight of fitful grace,
And in the cloud-rack's path which none can trace
Dispersing cheer the parchéd earth along!
My voice thou bearest over dale and hill
And spread'st in viewless billows near and far;
And with a subtler undulation still
Thou tremblest with the light of farthest star,
And holdest lightly, hovering on high,
The bright phantasmal bridge from earth to sky.