University of Virginia Library

I sit, unconscious of all things around,
Gazing into my heart. Within its void
There is an image, dim and indistinct,
Of something which hath been—I know not which,

A dream, or a reality. In vain
I seek to force it take a visible form,
And be condensed to thought and memory.
At times I catch a glimpse of it, behind
The clouds and shadows, which fill up the chasm
Of the dim soul. And when I seem to grasp
The half-embodied echo of the dream,
When it hath almost grown an audible sound,
Then it retreats, hunting the inner caverns
And undisturbed recesses of the mind—
Recesses yet unpeopled by quick thought,
Or conscience, hope, live fear, or memory—
And there they hide. Now, while I separate
Myself yet more from my external life,
And turn within, I see those floating thoughts
Quiver amid the chaos of the heart;
And slowly they assume a more distinct
And palpable appearance. One by one,
Dimly, like shadows upon ocean-waves,
For a brief moment they are memory.
I see a boy, reading at deep, dead night;
The lamp illuminates his pallid face,
Through the thin hand which shades his deep, black eyes,
Half bedded in the clustering, damp, dark hair.
He closes up the book, and rising, takes
A step, a tottering step, or two, and speaks
In low and murmuring tones unto himself:—
`The fountain is unsealed; this “annciente rime”
Hath shown my powers to me—hath waked the tide
Of poetry, which lay within the soul.
Henceforth I know my fate; the latent love,
Now well revealed, of wild and burning song,
Will render me unhappy: until now
I have not known the bent of my own mind.
And now I look into it, as a new
And unexhausted treasure. Burning words,
Wild feelings, broken hopes, await me now.
Oh! what a curse this gift of song will be!
'T will quicken the quick feelings, make still less
The power of grasping happiness, give strength
To every disappointment, wo and pain.
If I win fame, ever unsatisfied;
If not—but I shall win it—and in vain.
Oh! what a curse, indeed, were prophecy,
And knowledge of the future. Could the soul
Exist, and know what waits it, with no wing
Of hope to shade it from the blasting eye
Of hot despair? Well, be it so; the gift
Must be received. Passion will have its way,
Although the heart be shivered by its wild

And stormy course. Although the eyes grow dim—
Dimmer than mine; although the unripe buds
Of happiness are shaken from the stems
Fed by the heart, and choak its fountains up
With their decaying blights; yea, though that heart
Be like a house deserted—with the doors
And windows open to the winter wind—
The lamps extinct, the moonlight shining in
Through barred casements and wind-moven blinds,
With ghastly eye,—passion will have its way.'
I see him hide his face within his hand.
Was it to weep? It might be. He was young,
And tears flow freely at the spring of life.
In after years the desert is less moist,
The fountains of the heart are deeper, or
More choked and more obstructed. He was young,
And had not known the bent of his own mind,
Until the mighty spell of Coleridge woke
Its hidden powers, as did the wondrous wand
Of God's own prophet the sealed desert-rock.
He saw his fate; he knew, that to a mind
Enthusiastic, wayward, shy as his,
It is a curse, this love of poetry;
It is a thing which on the heart doth brood,
Unfitting it for aught but solitude;
Unfitting it to toil and jostle with
The busy world, and gain amid its crowd
The scanty pittance of a livelihood.
He knew all this, and wept—who would not weep?
That shadow vanishes, and like a man
Standing anear one broad monotonous sea,
And gazing to its distant space, and void,
And chasmal indistinctness, I behold
Another shadow, gathering in the vast,
Wherein are stored old dreams and antenatal echoes.
And now its images and thoughts take shape.
I see the boy sit in a crowded room.
His eyes have still that look of wasting gloom
And lustrous deepness; still his cheek is pale,
His lips are thin and bloodless, and his form
Is wan and wasted; bright eyes bend on him,
(That might make summer in the wintry heart;)
Transparent cheeks are flushed, whene'er his voice,
With its low murmuring, is heard, as 't were,
In lone communion with himself—for praise
Has fed his eager spirit with her rain
Of dangerous sweetness. Songs of wild and fierce
And energetic things, or low and sweet
Eolic tones, but unconnected with
Himself, unegotistical, had won

Praise and a name for the enthusiast boy.
But, with the same intense and constant look
With which men gaze within upon their soul,
And with a deep expression of devotion,
He gazed continually there on one—
One that knew not his love, but stealthily
Uplooked at him, and seemed to him more cold
Because she loved him. Oh! the power of love
Is terrible upon the poet's heart.
The quick and fiery passions there that dwell,
And quiver, serpent-like, make too his love
As wild, intense, unmingled as themselves.
The boy tells not his love—
Not even when from out his wasting heart
The passions will have vent, and he doth breathe
His feelings to the world—this one remains
To feed that heart with its destroying dew.
'T is only when the passions of the soul
Have lost some fierceness, and become more tame,
Not in the first intense, enthralling gush,
That men write down their soul in measured rhyme.
After a space, it is some sad relief,
To weigh and ponder it in different ways—
To view it in all lights—in short, to make
Poetry of our feelings and our heart.
I lose the shadow:—will its place be filled?
Darker and darker the chaotic vast;
And now upon its eyeless surface, moves
The half-embodied spirit of a dream,
Like an unshapen dread upon the soul,
A heaviness which hath no visible cause.
When will the dream arise from out the chasm,
And be revealed?—oh when? I cannot yet
Express it to myself. Again the vast
Quivers like clouds that are by lightning shaken.
And now more clearly I behold the dream—
The shadow comes distinctly to mine eyes.
I see the boy stand in a crowded street:
The shade of manhood is upon his lip;
His thin form has grown thinner, his dark eyes
More deep, more melancholy, more intense.
No muscle moves upon his pallid face;
His brow contracts not, though its swollen veins
Show that the stream of passion or of wo
Beats fastly there. Full listlessly he leans
Against the pillar of a noble dome,
Holding no converse with the crowd; his eyes
Look inward, there communing with his spirit.
Another shadow rises. Ah! it is
That lady of his love; I see her pass

By the enthusiast boy: and now I see
Him, by the sympathy which doth connect
His soul with hers, raise up his dark, sad eyes.
They meet his idol. Now his pallid face
Is flushed, his frame is shaken, as it were,
With a quick agony; the gouts of sweat
Stand on his brow. Like one who talks to spirits,
His lips part and emit a stifled sound.
One sad, mute gesture is his last farewell.
The hand of poverty has chilled his hopes,
Closed up their rainbow wings, and bid them brood
No more upon his heart, to comfort it.
Weary of toil and care, he leaves his home,
To seek in other climes a fairer lot,
And friends less faithless, and a world less cold.
He hath not told his love; he hath not asked
The idol of his soul to wed with want,
And poverty, and pain—perhaps remorse.
He leaves his home, henceforth to be a leaf,
Wandering amid the currents of the air,
Or of the trackless sea—a fallen blight—
An aimless wave, that tosses on the ocean,
Bearing a star within its heart of love.
Gone like the spirit of an echo;—gone
Into the shapeless chasm of the soul.
But still the cone of one white, glittering star
Lightens the dim abyss of memory.
Another shadow rises, and behind
The wild chaotic darkness waits to whelm
That shadow like the rest. I see a desert;
And in it is that boy, now grown a man:
Strange alterations have been on his soul;
His sorrows still are there, but kindly now,
Like ancient friends, they people his lone heart.
Like shadows round the roots of wasting trees,
Feeding them with an influence of love,
The sorrows feed his soul, and make it calm.
He has communed with nature, in her moods
Of stern and silent grandeur, and of sweet
And calm contentment, and of bold
And barren loneliness—conversed
Most intimately with his wasted heart,
And tracked its hidden fountains to their head;
And like sick men, that watch their frame decay
With strange and silent quietude, so he
Has watched those fountains, choked with blighted hopes,
Or sublimated unto unseen dew,
By passion's constant and devouring fire;
Has watched that heart, once verdurous, waste away,
Shedding no tear, nor feared to meet with death.

Henceforth he hath no hope;—a still despair,
A quiet, lone monotony of heart,
A strong, unsatiated wish of change,
A carelessness and scorn of all mankind,
But not a hate, and deep within his heart
A love of beauty and of poetry—
This is his nature.
I lose the shadow, and the chasmal shades
Throng from the void, filling the inner heart.
The quivering star of memory is extinct;
The echo rings no longer on the sea
Of dreams and past realities. So be it—
It is a lesson of another boy,
Whom not his crimes or follies, but the tide
Of his quick passions ruined. Let, henceforth,
None be like him. If ye are born to toil,
Wear out your hearts, and let not poetry
Enter and nestle there:—it is a curse.