The Poetical Works of John Critchley Prince :: :: University of Virginia Library

In my forlorn and visionary youth,
Dear Muse! I sought companionship with thee,
Heard thy first murmur of melodious truth
With a new sense of dignity and glee.
Thy many-toned revealings day and night
Haunted my spirit with a vague delight,
Quickened the life of thought, and lent it wings
To seek, if not to share, diviner things,
Where Genius, self-enthroned, sits calm and pure,
Crowned with the beams of Truth, on Fame's proud palace-floor.

'Twas thee that strengthened those delicious moods
Which slept like angel shadows on my mind,
When in the depths of slumbrous solitudes
My soul was flushed with fancies undefined.
'Twas thee that gave to Nature's varying form,
In gloom or gladness, quietude or storm,
While all her changes passed into my face—
More than external lineament and grace,
A voice which whispered wheresoe'er I trod,
Of fitness, perfect mould, life, harmony, and God!

336

'Twas thee that gave to summer earth and air
A fuller glory, a serener dye;
To winter, wayward, desolate, and bare,
A wilder beauty, a sublimer sky;
A richer life and language to the flower,
To sound and silence more impressive power,
To every interchange that went and came
O'er the glad world and its resplendent frame
A majesty and mystery, that woke
Feelings of love and awe, as if an angel spoke.

'Twas thee that wrought the tissue of my dreams
Out of the mingled elements that throng
The temple of the universe—high theme!
That make the charm of many a living song!
And in those dreams of rife and rapturous thought
My soul, impatient of its bondage, sought
To look beyond the visible, to Him
Who tuned the harp-strings of the seraphim,—
Who clothes the sun in glory or eclipse,—
Who shook the prophet's frame, who fires the poet's lips.

Sweet dewdrops twinkling with prismatic light,
Strewn for the joyous coming of young day,
Star-systems crowding in the cope of night,
Clouds in their fleeting splendour of array;
The lapse of waters, and the stir of trees,
The war of thunders, and the wail of seas,
Mountains in steadfast grandeur, and the glow
Of gorgeous sunsets on their crowns of snow,
Twilight in quiet fields, and in the wild
The dim and dreamy sheen of moonlight undefiled.

337

These, and whate'er was Nature's, and pertained
To beauty, and sublimity, and power,
At once my inquiring faculties enchained,
And tinged with transport meditation's hour:
But had I caught the cunning to diffuse
All thou hast shadowed forth, dear spirit-muse!
How had I bounded up the steep of fame!
How had I gathered glory round my name!
With what proud triumph had I voiced the lyre,
And used for holiest ends thy consecrated fire!

So sped my youth; but in my after years,
When the cold world was freezing round my heart,
When stern realities, obtrusive fears,
And selfish sorrows warned thee to depart,
Thou didst not leave me to my sombre fate
All callous, comfortless, and desolate,
But breathing in my ear some quickening tale
Of hopes that urge, of efforts that prevail,
Gilded the gloom, assuaged the internal strife,
And armed me to endure the fitful storms of life.

Disaster drove me to a stranger-land,
But thy calm shadow travelled by my side;
Oppression smote me with his ruffian hand,
But thou sustained my intellectual pride;
I maddened at my wrongs, but thou didst stay
To soothe my frenzy with the poet's lay;
Thoughtless, I roamed on Error's tangled track,
But thy sweet voice could ever lure me back,
And bring before me, as by magic spell,
A banquet from the bowers where Truth, Peace, Beauty dwell.

338

My children pined for perishable food,
Their mother battled with the stalwart ill;
I, in a passive but bewildered mood,
Saw, thought, and suffered, but adored thee still;
I sickened, but thy spirit floated by
With songs which were the echoes of the sky;
Death trampled on my flowers, but thou didst fling
The dews of resignation from thy wing,
And whispered through the darkness of the hour,
“There's mercy in the Hand that awes thee with its power!”