The poetical works of Bayard Taylor :: :: University of Virginia Library

When bleak winds through the Northern pines were sweeping,
Some hero-skald, reclining on the sand,
Attuned it first, the chords harmonious keeping
With murmuring forest and with moaning strand:
And when, at night, the horns of mead foamed over,
And torches flared around the wassail board,
It breathed no song of maid, nor sigh of lover,
It rang aloud the triumphs of the sword!
It mocked the thunders of the ice-ribbed ocean,
With clenched hands beating back the dragon's prow;
It gave Berserker arms their battle motion,
And swelled the red veins on the Viking's brow!

II

No myrtle, plucked in dalliance, ever sheathed it,
To melt the savage ardor of its flow;
The only gauds wherewith its lord enwreathed it,
The lusty fir and Druid mistletoe.
Thus bound, it kept the old, accustomed cadence,
Whether it pealed through slumberous ilex bowers
In stormy wooing of Byzantine maidens,
Or shook Trinacria's languid lap of flowers;
Whether Genseric's conquering march it chanted,
Till cloudy Atlas rang with Gothic staves,
Or where gray Calpè's pillared feet are planted,
Died grandly out upon the unknown waves!

III

Not unto Scania's bards alone belonging,
The craft that loosed its tongues of changing sound,
For Ossian played, and ghosts of heroes, thronging,
Leaned on their spears above the misty mound.
The Cambrian eagle, round his eyrie winging,
Heard the wild chant through mountain-passes rolled,
When bearded throats chimed in with mighty singing,
And monarchs listened, in their torques of gold:
Its dreary wail, blent with the seamews' clangor,
Surged round the lonely keep of Penmaen-Mawr;
It pealed aloud, in battle's glorious anger,
Behind the banner of the Blazing Star!

IV

The strings are silent; who shall dare to wake them,
Though later deeds demand their living powers?
Silent in other lands, what hand shall make them
Leap as of old, to shape the songs of ours?

Here, while the sapless bulk of Europe moulders,
Springs the rich blood to hero-veins unsealed,—
Source of that Will, that on its fearless shoulders
Would bear the world's fate lightly as a shield:
Here moves a larger life, to grander measures
Beneath our sky and through our forests rung;
Why sleeps the harp, forgetful of its treasures,—
Buried in songs that never yet were sung?

V

Great, solemn songs, that with majestic sounding
Should swell the Nation's heart from sea to sea;
Informed with power, with earnest hope abounding
And prophecies of triumph yet to be!
Songs, by the wild wind for a thousand ages
Hummed o'er our central prairies, vast and lone;
Glassed by the Northern lakes in crystal pages,
And carved by hills on pinnacles of stone;
Songs chanted now, where undiscovered fountains
Make in the wilderness their babbling home,
And through the deep-hewn cañons of the mountains
Plunge the cold rivers in perpetual foam!

VI

Sung but by these: our forests have no voices;
Rapt with no loftier strain our rivers roll;
Far in the sky, no song-crowned peak rejoices
In words that give the silent air a soul.
Wake, mighty Harp! and thrill the shores that hearken
For the first peal of thine immortal rhyme:
Call from the shadows that begin to darken
The beaming forms of our heroic time:
Sing us of deeds, that on thy strings outsoaring
The ancient soul they glorified so long,
Shall win the world to hear thy grand restoring,
And own thy latest thy sublimest song!

1850.

SERAPION

Come hither, Child! thou silent, shy
Young creature of the glorious eye!
Though never yet by ruder air
Than father's kiss or mother's prayer
Were stirred the tendrils of thy hair,
The sadness of a soul that stands
Withdrawn from Childhood's frolic bands,
A stranger in the land, I trace
Upon thy brow's cherubic grace
The tender pleadings of thy face,
Where other stars than Joy and Hope
Have cast thy being's horoscope.

For thee, the threshold of the world
Is yet with morning dews impearled;
The nameless radiance of Birth
Imbathes thy atmosphere of Earth,
And, like a finer sunshine, swims
Round every motion of thy limbs:
The sweet, sad wonder and surprise
Of waking glimmers in thine eyes,
And wiser instinct, purer sense,
And gleams of rare intelligence
Betray the converse held by thee
With the angelic family.

Come hither, Boy! For while I press
Thy lips' confiding tenderness,
Less broad and dark the spaces be
Which Life has set 'twixt thee and me.
Thy souls white feet shall soon depart
On paths I walked with eager heart;
God give thee, in His kindly grace,
A brighter road, a loftier place!
I see thy generous nature flow
In boundless trust to friend and foe,
And leap, despite of shocks and harms,

To clasp the world in loving arms.
I see that glorious circle shrink
Back to thy feet, at Manhood's brink,
Narrowed to one, one image fair,
And all its splendor gathered there.
The shackles of experience then
Sit lightly as on meaner men:
In flinty paths thy feet may bleed,
Thorns pierce thy flesh, thou shalt not heed,
Till when, all panting from the task,
Thine arms outspread their right shall ask,
Thine arms outspread that right shall fly,
The star shall burst, the splendor die!
Go, with thy happier brothers play,
As heedless and as wild as they;
Seek not so soon thy separate way,
Thou lamb in Childhood's field astray!

Whence camest thou? what angel bore
Thee past so many a fairer shore
Of guarding love, and guidance mild,
To drop thee on this barren wild?
Thy soul is lonely as a star,
When all its fellows muffled are,—
A single star, whose light appears
To glimmer through subduing tears.
The father who begat thee sees
In thee no deeper mysteries
Than load his heavy ledger's page,
And swell for him thy heritage.
A hard, cold man, of punctual face,
Renowned in Credit's holy-place,
Whose very wrinkles seem arrayed
In cunning hieroglyphs of trade,—
Whose gravest thought but just unlocks
The problems of uncertain stocks,—
Whose farthest flights of hope extend
From dividend to dividend.
Thy mother,—but a mother's name
Too sacred is, too sweet for blame.
No doubt she loves thee,—loves the shy,
Strange beauty of thy glorious eye;
Loves the soft mouth, whose drooping line
Is silent music; loves to twine
Thy silky hair in ringlets trim;
To watch thy lightsome play of limb;
But, God forgive me! I, who find
The soul within that beauty shrined,
I love thee more, I know thy worth
Better, than she who gave thee birth.

Are they thy keepers? They would thrust
The priceless jewel in the dust;
Would tarnish in their careless hold
The vessel of celestial gold.
Who gave them thee? What fortune lent
Their hands the delicate instrument,
Which finer hands might teach to hymn
The harmonies of Seraphim,
Which they shall make discordant soon,
The sweet bells jangled, out of tune?
Mine eyes are dim: I cannot see
The purposes of Destiny,
But than my love Heaven could not shine
More lovingly, if thou wert mine!
Rest then securely on my heart:
Give me thy trust: my child thou art,
And I shall lead thee through the years
To Hopes and Passions, Loves and Fears,
Till, following up Life's endless plan
A strong and self-dependent Man,
I see thee stand and strive with men:
Thy Father now, thy Brother then.

1851.

“MOAN, YE WILD WINDS!”

Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane,
And fall, thou drear December rain!
Fill with your gusts the sullen day,
Tear the last clinging leaves away!
Reckless as yonder naked tree,
No blast of yours can trouble me.

Give me your chill and stern embrace,
And pour your baptism on my face,
Sound in mine ears the airy moan
That sweeps in desolate monotone,
Where on the unsheltered hill-top beat
The marches of your homeless feet.

Moan on, ye winds! and pour, thou rain!
Your stormy sobs and tears are vain,
If shed for her whose fading eyes

Will open soon on Paradise:
The eye of Heaven shall blinded be,
Or ere ye cease, if shed for me.

1850.

TAURUS

I

The Scorpion's stars crawl down behind the sun,
And when he drops below the verge of day,
The glittering fangs, their fervid courses run,
Cling to his skirts and follow him away.
Then, ere the heels of flying Capricorn
Have touched the western mountain's darkening rim,
I mark, stern Taurus, through the twilight gray
The glinting of thy horn,
And sullen front, uprising large and dim,
Bent to the starry hunter's sword, at bay.

II

Thy hoofs, unwilling, climb the sphery vault;
Thy red eye trembles with an angry glare,
When the hounds follow, and in fierce assault
Bay through the fringes of the lion's hair.
The stars that once were mortal in their love,
And by their love are made immortal now,
Cluster like golden bees upon thy mane,
When thou, possessed with Jove,
Bore sweet Europa's garlands on thy brow,
And stole her from the green Sicilian plain.

III

Type of the stubborn force that will not bend
To loftier art,—soul of defiant breath
That blindly stands and battles to the end,
Nerving resistance with the throes of death,—
Majestic Taurus! when thy wrathful eye
Flamed brightest, and thy hoofs a moment stayed
Their march at Night's meridian, I was born:
But in the western sky,
Like sweet Europa, Love's fair star delayed,
To hang her garland on thy silver horn.

IV

Thou giv'st that temper of enduring mould,
That slights the wayward bent of Destiny,—
Such as sent forth the shaggy Jarls of old
To launch their dragons on the unknown sea:
Such as keep strong the sinews of the sword,
The proud, hot blood of battle,—welcome made
The headsman's axe, the rack, the martyr-fire,
The ignominious cord,
When but to yield, had pomps and honors laid
On heads that moulder in ignoble mire.

V

Night is the summer when the soul grows ripe
With Life's full harvest: of her myriad suns,
Thou dost not gild the quiet herdsman's pipe,
Nor royal state, that royal actions shuns.
But in the noontide of thy ruddy stars
Thrive strength, and daring, and the blood whence springs
The Heraclidean seed of heroes; then
Were sundered Gaza's bars;
Then, 'mid the smitten Hydra's loosened rings,
His slayer rested, in the Lernean fen.

VI

Thine is the subtle element that turns
To fearless act the impulse of the hour,—
The secret fire, whose flash electric burns
To every source of passion and of power.
Therefore I hail thee, on thy glittering track:
Therefore I watch thee, when the night grows dark,
Slow-rising, front Orion's sword along
The starry zodiac,
And from thy mystic beam demand a spark
To warm my soul with more heroic song.

California, 1849.

AUTUMNAL VESPERS

The clarion Wind, that blew so loud at morn,
Whirling a thousand leaves from every bough
Of the purple woods, has not a whisper now;
Hushed on the uplands is the huntsman's horn,
And huskers whistling round the tented corn:
The snug warm cricket lets his clock run down,
Scared by the chill, sad hour that makes forlorn
The Autumn's gold and brown.

The light is dying out on field and wold;
The life is dying in the leaves and grass.
The World's last breath no longer dims the glass
Of waning sunset, yellow, pale, and cold.
His genial pulse, which Summer made so bold,
Has ceased. Haste, Night, and spread thy decent pall!
The silent, stiffening Frost makes havoc: fold
The darkness over all!

The light is dying out o'er all the land,
And in my heart the light is dying. She,
My life's best life, is fading silently
From Earth, from me, and from the dreams we planned,
Since first Love led us with his beaming hand
From hope to hope, yet kept his crown in store.
The light is dying out o'er all the land:
To me it comes no more.

The blossom of my heart, she shrinks away,
Stricken with deadly blight: more wan and weak
Her love replies in blanching lip and cheek,
And gentler in her dear eyes, day by day.
God, in Thy mercy, bid the arm delay,
Which through her being smites to dust my own!
Thou gav'st the seed thy sun and showers; why slay
The blossoms yet unblown?

In vain,—in vain! God will not bid the Spring
Replace with sudden green the Autumn's gold;
And as the night-mists, gathering damp and cold,
Strike up the vales where watercourses sing,
Death's mists shall strike along her veins, and cling
Thenceforth forever round her glorious frame:
For all her radiant presence, May shall bring
A memory and a name.

What know the woods, that soon shall be so stark?
What know the barren fields, the songless air,
Locked in benumbing cold, of blooms more fair
In mornings ushered by the April lark?
Weak solace this, which grief will never hark;

Blind as a bud in stiff December's mail,
To lift her look beyond the frozen dark
No memory can avail.

I never knew the autumnal eves could wear,
With all their pomp, so drear a hue of Death;
I never knew their still and solemn breath
Could rob the breaking heart of strength to bear,
Feeding the blank submission of despair.
Yet, peace, sad soul! reproach and pity shine
Suffused through starry tears: bend thou in prayer,
Rebuked by Love divine.

Our life is scarce the twinkle of a star
In God's eternal day. Obscure and dim
With mortal clouds, it yet may beam for Him,
And darkened here, shine fair to spheres afar.
I will be patient, lest my sorrow bar
His grace and blessing, and I fall supine:
In my own hands my want and weakness are,—
My strength, O God! in Thine

1850.

ODE TO SHELLEY

I

Why art thou dead? Upon the hills once more
The golden mist of waning Autumn lies;
The slow-pulsed billows wash along the shore,
And phantom isles are floating in the skies.
They wait for thee: a spirit in the sand
Hushes, expectant for thy coming tread;
The light wind pants to lift thy trembling hair;
Inward, the silent land
Lies with its mournful woods;—why art thou dead,
When Earth demands that thou shalt call her fair?

II

Why art thou dead? I too demand thy song,
To speak the language yet denied to mine,
Twin-doomed with thee, to feel the scorn of Wrong,
To worship Beauty as a thing divine!
Thou art afar: wilt thou not soon return
To tell me that which thou hast never told?
To clasp my throbbing hand, and, by the shore
Or dewy mountain-fern,
Pour out thy heart as to a friend of old,
Touched with a twilight sadness? Nevermore.

III

I could have told thee all the sylvan joy
Of trackless woods; the meadows far apart,
Within whose fragrant grass, a lonely boy,
I thought of God; the trumpet at my heart,
When on bleak mountains roared the midnight storm,
And I was bathed in lightning, broad and grand:
Oh, more than all, with soft and reverent breath
And forehead flushing warm,
I would have led thee through the summer land
Of early Love, and past my dreams of Death!

IV

In thee, Immortal Brother! had I found
That Voice of Earth, that fails my feebler lines:
The awful speech of Rome's sepulchral ground;
The dusky hymn of Vallombrosa's pines!

From thee the noise of Ocean would have taken
A grand defiance round the moveless shores,
And vocal grown the Mountain's silent head:
Canst thou not yet awaken
Beneath the funeral cypress? Earth implores
Thy presence for her son;—why art thou dead?

V

I do but rave: for it is better thus.
Were once thy starry nature given to mine,
In the one life which would encircle us
My voice would melt, my soul be lost in thine.
Better to bear the far sublimer pain
Of Thought that has not ripened into speech,
To hear in silence Truth and Beauty sing
Divinely to the brain;
For thus the Poet at the last shall reach
His own soul's voice, nor crave a brother's string.

1848.

SICILIAN WINE

I've drunk Sicilia's crimson wine!
The blazing vintage pressed
From grapes on Etna's breast,
What time the mellowing autumn sun did shine:
I've drunk the wine!
I feel its blood divine
Poured on the sluggish tide of mine,
Till, kindling slow,
Its fountains glow
With the light that swims
On their trembling brims,
And a molten sunrise floods my limbs!
What do I here?
I 've drunk the wine,
And lo! the bright blue heaven is clear
Above the ocean's bluer sphere,
Seen through the long arcades of pine,
Inwoven and arched with vine!
The glades are green below;
The temple shines afar;
Above, old Etna's snow
Sparkles with many an icy star:
I see the mountain and its marble wall,
Where gleaming waters fall
And voices call,
Singing and calling
Like chorals falling
Through pearly doors of some Olympian hall,
Where Love holds bacchanal.

Sicilian wine! Sicilian wine!
Summer, and Music, and Song divine
Are thine,—all thine!
A sweet wind over the roses plays;
The wild bee hums at my languid ear;
The mute-winged moth serenely strays
On the downy atmosphere,
Like hovering Sleep, that overweighs
My lids with his shadow, yet comes not near.
Who 'll share with me this languor?
With me the juice of Etna sip?
Who press the goblet's lip,
Refusing mine the while with love's enchanting anger?
Would I were young Adonis now!
With what an ardor bold
Within my arms I'd fold
Fair Aphrodite of Idalian mould,
And let the locks that hide her gleaming brow
Fall o'er my shoulder as she lay
With the fair swell of her immortal breast
Upon my bosom pressed,
Giving Olympian thrills to its enamored clay!

Bacchus and Pan have fled:
No heavy Satyr crushes with his tread
The verdure of the meadow ground,
But in their stead
The Nymphs are leading a bewildering round,
Vivid and light, as o'er some flowering rise
A dance of butterflies,
Their tossing hair with slender lilies crowned,
And greener ivy than o'erran
The brows of Bacchus and the reed of Pan!

I faint, I die:
The flames expire,
That made my blood a lurid fire:
Steeped in delicious weariness I lie.
Oh lay me in some pearlèd shell,
Soft-balanced on the rippling sea,
Where sweet, cheek-kissing airs may wave
Their fresh wings over me;
Let me be wafted with the swell
Of Nereid voices: let no billow rave
To break the cool green crystal of the sea.
For I will wander free
Past the blue islands and the fading shores,
To Calpè and the far Azores,
And still beyond, and wide away,
Beneath the dazzling wings of tropic day,
Where, on unruffled seas,
Sleep the green isles of the Hesperides.

The Triton's trumpet calls:
I hear, I wake, I rise:
The sound peals up the skies
And mellowed Echo falls
In answer back from Heaven's cerulean walls.
Give me the lyre that Orpheus played upon,
Or bright Hyperion,—
Nay, rather come, thou of the mighty bow,
Come thou below,
Leaving thy steeds unharnessed go!
Sing as thou wilt, my voice shall dare to follow,
And I will sun me in thine awful glow,
Divine Apollo!
Then thou thy lute shalt twine
With Bacchic tendrils of the glorious vine
That gave Sicilian wine:
And henceforth when the breezes run
Over its clusters, ripening in the sun,
The leaves shall still be playing,
Unto thy lute its melody repaying,
And I, that quaff, shall evermore be free
To mount thy car and ride the heavens with thee!

1848.

STORM-LINES

When the rains of November are dark on the hills, and the pine-trees incessantly roar
To the sound of the wind-beaten crags, and the floods that in foam through their black channels pour:

When the breaker-lined coast stretches dimly afar through the desolate waste of the gale,
And the clang of the sea-gull at nightfall is heard from the deep, like a mariner's wail:

When the gray sky drops low, and the forest is bare, and the laborer is housed from the storm,
And the world is a blank, save the light of his home through the gust shining redly and warm:—

Go thou forth, if the brim of thy heart with its tropical fulness of life overflow,—
If the sun of thy bliss in the zenith is hung, nor a shadow reminds thee of woe!

Leave the home of thy love; leave thy labors of fame; in the rain and the darkness go forth,
When the cold winds unpausingly wail as they drive from the cheerless expanse of the North.

Thou shalt turn from the cup that was mantling before; thou shalt hear the eternal despair
Of the hearts that endured and were broken at last, from the hills and the sea and the air!

Thou shalt hear how the Earth, the maternal, laments for the children she nurtured with tears,—
How the forest but deepens its wail and the breakers their roar, with the march of the years!

Then the gleam of thy hearth-fire shall dwindle away, and the lips of thy loved ones be still;

And thy soul shall lament in the moan of the storm, sounding wide on the shelterless hill.

All the woes of existence shall stand at thy heart, and the sad eyes of myriads implore,
In the darkness and storm of their being, the ray, streaming out through thy radiant door.

Look again: how that star of thy Paradise dims, through the warm tears, unwittingly shed;—
Thou art man, and a sorrow so bitterly wrung never fell on the dust of the Dead!

Let the rain of the midnight beat cold on thy cheek, and the proud pulses chill in thy frame,
Till the love of thy bosom is grateful and sad, and thou turn'st from the mockery of Fame!

Take with humble acceptance the gifts of thy life; let thy joy touch the fountain of tears;
For the soul of the Earth, in endurance and pain, gathers promise of happier years!

1849.

THE TWO VISIONS

Through days of toil, through nightly fears,
A vision blessed my heart for years;
And so secure its features grew,
My heart believed the blessing true.

I saw her there, a household dove,
In consummated peace of love,
And sweeter joy and saintlier grace
Breathed o'er the beauty of her face:

The joy and grace of love at rest,
The fireside music of the breast,
When vain desires and restless schemes
Sleep, pillowed on our early dreams.

Nor her alone: beside her stood,
In gentler types, our love renewed;
Our separate beings one, in Birth,—
The darling miracles of Earth.

The mother's smile, the children's kiss,
And home's serene, abounding bliss;
The fruitage of a life that bore
But idle summer blooms before:

Such was the vision, far and sweet,
That, still beyond Time's lagging feet,
Lay glimmering in my heart for years,
Dim with the mist of happy tears.

That vision died, in drops of woe,
In blotting drops, dissolving slow:
Now, toiling day and sorrowing night,
Another vision fills my sight.

A cold mound in the winter snow;
A colder heart at rest below;
A life in utter loneness hurled,
And darkness over all the world.

1850.

STORM SONG

The clouds are scudding across the moon,
A misty light is on the sea;
The wind in the shrouds has a wintry tune,
And the foam is flying free.

Brothers, a night of terror and gloom
Speaks in the cloud and gathering roar;
Thank God, He has given us broad sea-room,
A thousand miles from shore.

Down with the hatches on those who sleep!
The wild and whistling deck have we;
Good watch, my brothers, to-night we 'll keep,
While the tempest is on the sea!

Though the rigging shriek in his terrible grip,
And the naked spars be snapped away,
Lashed to the helm, we 'll drive our ship
In the teeth of the whelming spray!

Hark! how the surges o'erleap the deck!
Hark! how the pitiless tempest raves!
Ah, daylight will look upon many a wreck
Drifting over the desert waves.

Yet, courage, brothers! we trust the wave,
With God above us, our guiding chart:
So, whether to harbor or ocean-grave,
Be it still with a cheery heart!

Gulf of Mexico, 1850.

SONG

I plucked for thee the wilding rose
And wore it on my breast,
And there, till daylight's dusky close,
Its silken cheek was pressed;
Its desert breath was sweeter far
Than palace-rose could be,
Sweeter than all Earth's blossoms are,
But that thou gav'st to me.

I kissed its leaves, in fond despite
Of lips that failed my own,
And Love recalled that sacred night
His blushing flower was blown.
I vowed, no rose should rival mine,
Though withered now, and pale,
Till those are plucked, whose white buds twine
Above thy bridal veil.

1849.

THE WAVES

I

Children are we
Of the restless sea,
Swelling in anger or sparkling in glee;
We follow our race,
In shifting chase,
Over the boundless ocean-space!
Who hath beheld where the race begun?
Who shall behold it run?
Who shall behold it run?

II

When the smooth airs keep
Their noontide sleep,
We dimple the cheek of the dreaming deep;
When the rough winds come,
From their cloudy home,
At the tap of the hurricane's thunder-drum,
Deep are the furrows of wrath we plough,
Ridging his darkened brow!
Ridging his darkened brow!

III

Over us born,
The unclouded Morn
Trumpets her joy with the Triton's horn,
And sun and star
By the thousand are
Orbed in our glittering, near and far:
And the splendor of Heaven, the pomp of Day,
Shine in our laughing spray!
Shine in our laughing spray!

IV

We murmur our spell
Over sand and shell;
We girdle the reef with a combing swell;
And bound in the vice,
Of the Arctic ice,
We build us a palace of grand device—
Walls of crystal and splintered spires,
Flashing with diamond fires!
Flashing with diamond fires!

V

In the endless round
Of our motion and sound,
The fairest dwelling of Beauty is found,
And with voice of strange
And solemn change,
The elements speak in our world-wide range,
Harping the terror, the might, the mirth,
Sorrows and hopes of Earth!
Sorrows and hopes of Earth!

1850.

SONG

From the bosom of ocean I seek thee,
Thou lamp of my spirit afar,
As the seaman, adrift in the darkness,
Looks up for the beam of his star;
And when on the moon-lighted water
The spirits of solitude sleep,
My soul, in the light of thy beauty,
Lies hushed as the waves of the deep.

As the shafts of the sunrise are broken
Far over the glittering sea,
Thou hast dawned on the waves of my dreaming,
And each thought has a sparkle of thee,
And though, with the white sail distended,
I speed from the vanishing shore,
Thou wilt give to the silence of ocean
The spell of thy beauty the more.

Gulf of Mexico, 1850.

SONNET

TO G. H. B.

You comfort me as one that, knowing Fate,
Would paint her visage kinder than you deem;
You say, my only bliss that is no dream
She clouds, but makes not wholly desolate.
Ah, Friend! your heart speaks words of little weight
To veil that sadder knowledge, learned in song,
And 'gainst your solace Grief has made me strong:
The Gods are jealous of our low estate;
They give not Fame to Love, nor Love to Fame;
Power cannot taste the joy the humbler share,
Nor holy Beauty breathe in Luxury's air,
And all in darkness Genius feeds his flame.
We build and build, poor fools! and all the while
Some Demon works unseen, and saps the pile.

1850.

THE WAYSIDE DREAM

The deep and lordly Danube
Goes winding far below;
I see the white-walled hamlets
Amid his vineyards glow,
And southward, through the ether, shine
The Styrian hills of snow.

O'er many a league of landscape
Sleeps the warm haze of noon;
The wooing winds come freighted
With messages of June,
And down among the corn and flowers
I hear the water's tune.

The meadow-lark is singing,
As if it still were morn;
Within the dark pine-forest
The hunter winds his horn,
And the cuckoo's shy, complaining note
Mocks the maidens in the corn.

I watch the cloud-armada
Go sailing up the sky,
Lulled by the murmuring mountain grass
Upon whose bed I lie,
And the faint sound of noonday chimes
That in the distance die.

A warm and drowsy sweetness
Is stealing o'er my brain;
I see no more the Danube
Sweep through his royal plain;
I hear no more the peasant girls
Singing amid the grain.

Soft, silvery wings, a moment
Have swept across my brow:
Again I hear the water,
But its voice is sweeter now,
And the mocking-bird and oriole
Are singing on the bough;

The elm and linden branches
Droop close and dark o'erhead,
And the foaming forest brooklet
Leaps down its rocky bed:
Be still, my heart! the seas are passed,
The paths of home I tread!

The showers of creamy blossoms
Are on the linden spray,
And down the clover meadow
They heap the scented hay,
And glad winds toss the forest leaves,
All the bright summer day.

Old playmates! bid me welcome
Amid your brother-band;
Give me the old affection,—
The glowing grasp of hand!
I seek no more the realms of old,—
Here is my Fatherland!

Come hither, gentle maiden,
Who weep'st in tender joy!
The rapture of thy presence
Repays the world's annoy,
And calms the wild and ardent heart
Which warms the wandering boy.

In many a mountain fastness,
By many a river's foam,
And through the gorgeous cities,
'T was loneliness to roam;
For the sweetest music in my heart
Was the olden songs of home.

Ah, glen and grove are vanished,
And friends have faded now!
The balmy Styrian breezes
Are blowing on my brow,
And sounds again the cuckoo's call
From the forest's inmost bough.

Fled is that happy vision,—
The gates of slumber fold;
I rise and journey onward
Through valleys green and old,
Where the far, white Alps announce the morn,
And keep the sunset's gold.

Upper Austria, 1845.

STEYERMARK

In Steyermark,—green Steyermark,
The fields are bright and the forests dark,—
Bright with the maids that bind the sheaves,
Dark with the arches of whispering leaves.
Voices and streams and sweet bells chime
Over the land, in the harvest-time,
And the blithest songs of the finch and lark
Are heard in the orchards of Steyermark.

In Steyermark,—old Steyermark,
The mountain summits are white and stark;
The rough winds furrow their trackless snow,
But the mirrors of crystal are smooth below;
The stormy Danube clasps the wave
That downward sweeps with the Drave and Save,
And the Euxine is whitened with many a bark,
Freighted with ores of Steyermark!

In Steyermark,—rough Steyermark,
The anvils ring from dawn till dark;
The molten streams of the furnace glare,
Blurring with crimson the midnight air;
The lusty voices of forgemen chord,
Chanting the ballad of Siegfried's Sword,
While the hammers swung by their arms so stark
Strike to the music of Steyermark!

In Steyermark,—dear Steyermark,
Each heart is light as the morning lark;
There men are framed in the manly mould
Of their stalwart sires, of the times of old,
And the sunny blue of the Styrian sky
Grows soft in the timid maiden's eye,
When love descends with the twilight dark,
In the beechen groves of Steyermark.

1848.

TO A BAVARIAN GIRL

Thou, Bavaria's brown-eyed daughter,
Art a shape of joy,

Standing by the Isar's water
With thy brother-boy;
In thy dream, with idle fingers
Threading through his curls,
On thy cheek the sun's kiss lingers,
Rosiest of girls!

Woods of glossy oak are ringing
With the echoes bland,
While thy generous voice is singing
Songs of Fatherland,—
Songs, that by the Danube's river
Sound on hills of vine,
And where waves in green light quiver,
Down the rushing Rhine.

Life, with all its hues and changes,
To thy heart doth lie
Like those dreamy Alpine ranges
In the southern sky;
Where in haze the clefts are hidden,
Which the foot should fear,
And the crags that fall unbidden
Startle not the ear.

Where the village maidens gather
At the fountain's brim,
Or in sunny harvest weather,
With the reapers trim;
Where the autumn fires are burning
On the vintage-hills;
Where the mossy wheels are turning
In the ancient mills;

Where from ruined robber-towers
Hangs the ivy's hair,
And the crimson foxbell flowers
On the crumbling stair:—
Everywhere, without thy presence,
Would the sunshine fail.
Fairest of the maiden peasants!
Flower of Isar's vale!

Munich, 1845.

IN ITALY

Dear Lillian, all I wished is won!
I sit beneath Italia's sun,
Where olive-orchards gleam and quiver
Along the banks of Arno's river.

Through laurel leaves, the dim green light
Falls on my forehead as I write,
And the sweet chimes of vesper, ringing,
Blend with the contadina's singing.

Rich is the soil with Fancy's gold;
The stirring memories of old
Rise thronging in my haunted vision,
And wake my spirit's young ambition.

But as the radiant sunsets close
Above Val d'Arno's bowers of rose,
My soul forgets the olden glory,
And deems our love a dearer story.

Thy words, in Memory's ear, outchime
The music of the Tuscan rhyme;
Thou standest here—the gentle-hearted—
Amid the shades of bards departed.

I see before thee fade away
Their garlands of immortal bay,
And turn from Petrarch's passion-glances
To my own dearer heart-romances.

Sad is the opal glow that fires
The midnight of the cypress spires,
And cold the scented wind that closes
The heart of bright Etruscan roses.

A single thought of thee effaced
The fair Italian dream I chased;
For the true clime of song and sun
Lies in the heart which mine hath won!

Florence, 1845.

A BACCHIC ODE

Wine,—bring wine!
Let the crystal beaker flame and shine,
Brimming o'er with the draught divine!

The crimson glow
Of the lifted cup on my forehead throw,
Like the sunset's flush on a field of snow.

I love to lave
My thirsty lip in the ruddy wave;
Freedom bringeth the wine so brave!

The world is cold:
Sorrow and pain have gloomy hold,
Chilling the bosom warm and bold.

Doubts and fears
Veil the shine of my morning years,—
My life's lone rainbow springs from tears.

But Eden-gleams
Visit my soul in immortal dreams,
When the wave of the goblet burns and beams.

Not from the Rhine,
Not from fields of Burgundian vine,
Bring me the bright Olympian wine!

Not with a ray
Born where the winds of Shiraz play,
Or the fiery blood of the bright Tokay.

Not where the glee
Of Falernian vintage echoes free,
Or the Chian gardens gem the sea.

But wine,—bring wine,
Royally flushed with its growth divine,
In the crystal depth of my soul to shine!

Whose glow was caught
From the warmth which Fancy's summer brought
To the vintage-fields in the Land of Thought.

Rich and free
To my thirsting soul will the goblet be,
Poured by the Hebe, Poesy.

1847.

A FUNERAL THOUGHT

I

When the stern Genius, to whose hollow tramp
Echo the startled chambers of the soul,
Waves his inverted torch o'er that pale camp
Where the archangel's final trumpets roll,
I would not meet him in the chamber dim,
Hushed, and pervaded with a nameless fear,
When the breath flutters and the senses swim,
And the dread hour is near.

II

Though Love's dear arms might clasp me fondly then
As if to keep the Summoner at bay,
And woman's woe and the calm grief of men
Hallow at last the chill, unbreathing clay—
These are Earth's fetters, and the soul would shrink,
Thus bound, from Darkness and the dread Unknown,
Stretching its arms from Death's eternal brink,
Which it must dare alone.

III

But in the awful silence of the sky,
Upon some mountain summit, yet untrod,
Through the blue ether would I climb, to die
Afar from mortals and alone with God!
To the pure keeping of the stainless air
Would I resign my faint and fluttering breath,
And with the rapture of an answered prayer
Receive the kiss of Death.

IV

Then to the elements my frame would turn;
No worms should riot on my coffined clay,
But the cold limbs, from that sepulchral urn,
In the slow storms of ages waste away.
Loud winds and thunder's diapason high
Should be my requiem through the coming time,
And the white summit, fading in the sky,
My monument sublime.

1847.

THE NORSEMAN'S RIDE

The frosty fires of Northern starlight
Gleamed on the glittering snow,
And through the forest's frozen branches
The shrieking winds did blow;
A floor of blue, translucent marble
Kept ocean's pulses still,
When, in the depth of dreary midnight,
Opened the burial hill.

Then while a low and creeping shudder
Thrilled upward through the ground,
The Norseman came, as armed for battle,
In silence from his mound:
He, who was mourned in solemn sorrow
By many a swordsman bold.
And harps that wailed along the ocean,
Struck by the Skalds of old.

Sudden, a swift and silver shadow
Rushed up from out the gloom,—
A horse that stamped with hoof impatient,
Yet noiseless, on the tomb.
“Ha, Surtur! let me hear thy tramping,
Thou noblest Northern steed,
Whose neigh along the stormy headlands
Bade the bold Viking heed!”

He mounted: like a north-light streaking
The sky with flaming bars,
They, on the winds so wildly shrieking,
Shot up before the stars,
“Is this thy mane, my fearless Surtur,
That streams against my breast?
Is this thy neck, that curve of moonlight,
Which Helva's hand caressed?

“No misty breathing strains thy nostril,
Thine eye shines blue and cold,
Yet, mounting up our airy pathway,
I see thy hoofs of gold!
Not lighter o'er the springing rainbow
Walhalla's gods repair,
Than we, in sweeping journey over
The bending bridge of air.

“Far, far around, star-gleams are sparkling
Amid the twilight space;
And Earth, that lay so cold and darkling,
Has veiled her dusky face.
Are those the Nornes that beckon onward
To seats at Odin's board,
Where nightly by the hands of heroes
The foaming mead is poured?

“'T is Skuld! her star-eye speaks the glory
That waits the warrior's soul,
When on its hinge of music opens
The gateway of the Pole,—
When Odin's warder leads the hero
To banquets never done,
And Freya's eyes outshine in summer
The ever-risen sun.

“On! on! the Northern lights are streaming
In brightness like the morn,
And pealing far amid the vastness,
I hear the Gjallarhorn:
The heart of starry space is throbbing
With songs of minstrels old,
And now, on high Walhalla's portal,
Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold!”

1846.

THE CONTINENTS

I had a vision in that solemn hour,
Last of the year sublime,
Whose wave sweeps downward, with its dying power
Rippling the shores of Time.
On the bleak margin of that hoary sea
My spirit stood alone,
Watching the gleams of phantom History,
Which through the darkness shone.

Then, when the bell of midnight ghostly hands
Tolled for the dead year's doom,
I saw the spirits of Earth's ancient lands

Stand up amid the gloom!
The crownèd deities, whose reign began
In the forgotten Past,
When first the fresh world gave to sovereign Man
Her empires green and vast.

First queenly Asia, from the fallen thrones
Of twice three thousand years,
Came with the woe a grieving goddess owns,
Who longs for mortal tears.
The dust of ruin to her mantle clung
And dimmed her crown of gold,
While the majestic sorrows of her tongue
From Tyre to Indus rolled:

“Mourn with me, sisters, in my realm of woe,
Whose only glory streams
From its lost childhood, like the arctic glow
Which sunless Winter dreams!
In the red desert moulders Babylon,
And the wild serpent's hiss
Echoes in Petra's palaces of stone,
And waste Persepolis.

“Gone are the deities that ruled enshrined
In Elephanta's caves,
And Brahma's wailings fill the fragrant wind
That ripples Ganges' waves:
The ancient gods amid their temples fall,
And shapes of some near doom,
Trembling and waving on the Future's wall,
More fearful make my gloom!”

Then, from her seat, amid the palms embowered
That shade the lion-land,
Swart Africa in dusky aspect towered,
The fetters on her hand!
Backward she saw, from out her drear eclipse,
The mighty Theban years,
And the deep anguish of her mournful lips
Interpreted her tears.

“Woe for my children, whom your gyves have bound
Through centuries of toil;
The bitter wailings of whose bondage sound
From many an alien soil!
Leave me but free, though the eternal sand
Be all my kingdom now,—
Though the rude splendors of barbaric land
But mock my crownless brow!”

There was a sound, like sudden trumpets blown,
A ringing, as of arms,
When Europe rose, a stately amazon,
Stern in her mailèd charms.
She brooded long beneath the weary bars
That chafed her soul of flame,
And like a seer, who reads the awful stars,
Her words prophetic came:

“I hear new sounds along the ancient shore,
Whose dull old monotone
Of tides, that broke on many a system hoar,
Moaned through the ages lone:
I see a gleaming, like the crimson morn
Beneath a stormy sky,
And warning throes, which long my breast has borne,
Proclaim the struggle nigh.”

O radiant-browed, the latest born of Time!
How waned thy sisters old,
Before the splendors of thine eye sublime,
And mien erect and bold!
Free, as the winds of thine own forests are,
Thy brow beamed lofty cheer,
And Day's bright oriflamme, the Morning Star,
Flashed on thy lifted spear.

“I bear no weight”—rang thine exulting tones—
“Of memories weird and vast;
No crushing heritage of iron thrones,
Bequeathed by some dead Past;

But hopes, that give my children power to climb
Above the old-world fears—
Whose prophecies forerun the latest time,
And lead the crowning years!

“Like spectral lamps, that burn before a tomb,
The ancient lights expire;
I hold a torch, that floods the fading gloom
With everlasting fire:
Crowned with my constellated stars, I stand
Beside the foaming sea,
And from the Future, with a victor's hand,
Claim empire for the Free!”

1848.

L'ENVOI

I've passed the grim and threatening warders
That guard the vestibule of Song,
And traced the print of bolder footsteps
The lengthened corridors along;
Where every thought I strove to blazon
Beside the bannered lays of old,
Was dim below some bright escutcheon,
Or shaded by some grander fold.

I saw, in veiled and shadowy glimpses,
The solemn halls expand afar,
And through the twilight, half despairing,
Looked trembling up to find a star;
Till, in the rush of wings, awakened
My soul to utterance free and strong
And with impassioned exultation,
I revelled in the rage of Song!

Then, though the world beside, unheeding,
Heard other voices than my own,
Thou, thou didst mark the broken music,
And cheer its proud, aspiring tone:
Thou cam'st in many a lovely vision
To lead my ardent spirit on,
Thine eye my morning-star of promise,
The sweet anticipant of dawn.

And if I look to holier altars,
Thou still art near me, as of old,
And thou wilt give the living laurel,
When the shrined Presence I behold.
Take, then, these echoes of thy being,
My lips have weakly striven to frame;
For when I speak what thou inspirest,
I know my songs are nearest fame.

1848.