Madmoments: or First Verseattempts By a Bornnatural. Addressed to the Lightheaded of Society at Large, by Henry Ellison |
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SUGGESTED BY THE LITTLE STATUE OF LOVE SLEEPING
ON A LION, WITH HIS TORCH BESIDE HIM, IN THE UFFIZI
GALLERY AT FLORENCE. |
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 | Madmoments: or First Verseattempts |  |
SUGGESTED BY THE LITTLE STATUE OF LOVE SLEEPING ON A LION, WITH HIS TORCH BESIDE HIM, IN THE UFFIZI GALLERY AT FLORENCE.
1.
Oh thoughtless Love! thy Torch will burn away,Thus sleeping: yet how many Hearts still need
To be touched by its holy Flame!—indeed
The World is not so much beneath thy Sway
As Poets feign, and Mortals go astray
When thou, their surest Guide, art gone: the Seed
Of all good Things thy quickening Warmth must feed.
It is no Time for Sleeping! wake, I pray:
Thou art the Civilizer, thou alone,
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More savage than the Lion thou liest on.
I'll wake thee— but now that I think on't, no,
I'll steal thy Torch: alas! what Good were done?
Thou thyself in each Heart the Spark must throw!
2.
But thou art not the divine Love I sought,Else would'st thou not lie slumbering idly here,
Thou art the fabled Love, whose Realm is sere
As Autvmn's withered Leaf, and good for nought,
Save for a Poet's Rhyme! How little thought
The Grecian Bard of that sublimer Sphere
Of Christian Charities, which thou shouldst cheer:
Thou art the Love of Poesy, and fraught
With many a fancied Charm, but thou couldst not
Descend to soften and sublime the Lot
Of poor and suffering Humanity!
No heavenly Ministries were thine, the Eye
Of Passion to unfilm: to free from Blot
And Stain the Soul, and fit it for the Sky!
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Thy Reign it over— therefore slumber on:Thy Torch is fed with no celestial Fire,
And, fallen from thy Grasp, will soon expire.
Lo! thou thyself art changed by Time to Stone,
A Moral Fragment of a World that's gone:
Like antique Hieroglyphics, which require
Something to piece them out: with Meanings higher
By Time invested than those which their own
Inventors dreamt of! I could fall asleep
Beside thee, for such Glimpses calm and deep,
Into the Life of Things, break in on me,
That with the Body's Eye I no more see:
Thy Torch now blazes, and by it I read
Nature's Papyrusroll, before me spread:
Not Language she employs alone, but by
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Each fond Memento left us by the Dead
Is as an Hyeroglyphic on the old
Sarcophagus of some past World, t' unfold
What lies within, if wellinterpreted,
Like Half reliefs, which yet serve to suggest
And help the Fancy to piece out the Rest:
We lift the Lid, and see the Mummy rolled
Up like a Chrysalis's Husk, whence Man
Has passed to purer Forms, an ampler Span
Of Being, as the cast off Sloughs attest!
| Madmoments: or First Verseattempts | |