Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L. :: :: University of Virginia Library

“During Alexander the Great's illness, Peithou, Attalus, Demophon, Peucestas, Cleomenes, Minedas, and Seleucus, slept in the Temple of Serapis, and asked the god if it would be desirable and better for Alexander to be conveyed to the temple, and to supplicate the god, and be healed by him. The answer forbade his removal, declaring that it would be better for him to remain where he was. The companions reported this answer, and Alexander not long after expired, as if, under all circumstances, that were the better fate.”—Royal Diary.

The heavy night is falling,
A dark and silent night,
And aloud the storm is calling
From the mountains' wooded height,
There is weeping in the pines.
But a voice of louder sorrow
Arises from the plain,
For the nations fear the morrow,
And ask for aid in vain,
From the old ancestral shrines
In the still and stately temple—
The temple of the god.

The kingly chiefs are seven
Who seek that ancient shrine,
To ask of night and heaven
An answer and a sign;
Pale as shadows pass they by.
They are warriors, yet they falter,
As with feet unshod
They approach thy mighty altar,
O Assyrian god!
Will the secret of the sky
Fill the stately temple—
The temple of the god?

240

Conquerors they enter,
In the conqueror's name;
The altar in the centre,
Burnt with undying flame—
Day and night that flame is fed.
Lamps from many a marble column
In the distance burn,
And the light is sad and solemn
As a funeral urn.
For the presence of the dead
Haunts the mystic temple—
The temple of the god.

Seven warriors were their number,
Seven future kings;
Down they laid them to their slumber
Mid the silvery rings
Of the fragrant smoke that swept
From the golden vases streaming,
With their spice and oil,
And the rich frankincense steaming,
Half a summer's spoil.
Lull'd by such perfume they slept
In the silent temple—
The temple of the god.

Lay they in that sleep enchanted,
On the marble floor;
Many things their slumber haunted,
Things that were no more.
'Twas the phantasm of life:
Fierce and rugged bands were crowding
Round their youthful king;
Shaggy hides their wild forms shrouding,
While the echoes ring
With the shouts that herald strife;
Such now wake the quiet temple—
The temple of the god.

241

Next, a southern noon is sleeping
On embattled lines;
There the purple robe is sweeping,
There the red gold shines.
That young chief his own has won—
He who, when his warriors tasked him,
With his heart's free scope,
What was left himself, they ask'd him,
And he answer'd, “Hope.”
What he said, that hath he done;
And his glory fills the temple—
The temple of the god.

Victory is like sunshine o'er him,
Wealth is at his side,
Crowns are in the dust before him,
Earth hath bow'd her pride
At the whisper of his breath.
But that laurell'd one is dying
On a fever'd bed:
“Leave him where he now is lying,
There the king is best,” it said;
Such the oracle of death,
In that fated temple—
The temple of the god.

Such the moral of his story,
Such was heaven's reply;
Amid wealth, and power, and glory,
It is best to die!
Unto all that answer came.
From the highest to the lowest
Life draws deep a wasted breath:
Fate! thy best boon thou bestowest
When thou givest death.
Each that oracle may claim,
The words of that dark temple—
The temple of the god.

242

DEATH-BED OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

On his bed the king was lying—
On his purple bed;
“Tell us not that he is dying;”
So his soldiers said,
“He is yet too young to die.
Have ye drugged the cup ye gave him,
From the fatal spring?
Is it yet too late to save him?
We will see our king!
Let his faithful ones draw nigh,
The silver-shielded warriors—
The warriors of the world!”

Back they fling the fragrant portals
Of the royal tent;
Vainly to the stern immortals
Sacrifice and vow were sent.
Cold and pitiless are they!
Silent in their starry dwelling,
Nothing do they heed
Of the tale that earth is telling,
In her hour of need!

243

They have turned their face away,
Ye silver shielded warriors,
Ye warriors of the world!

In that royal tent is weeping;
Women's tears will flow;
There the queens their watch are keeping
With a separate woe.
One still wears her diadem—
One her long fair hair is rending,
From its pearls unbound;
Tears from those soft eyes descending,
Eyes that seek the ground.
But Roxana looks on them,
The silver-shielded warriors,
The warriors of the world!

In the east the day was reddening,
When the warriors pass'd;
In the west the night was deadening,
As they looked their last;
As they looked their last on him—
He, their comrade—their commander—
He, the earth's adored—
He, the godlike Alexander!
Who can wield his sword?
As they went their eyes were dim,
The silver-shielded warriors,
The warriors of the world!

Slowly passed the sad procession
By the purple bed;
Every soldier in succession
Thro' that tent was led.

244

All beheld their monarch's face—
Pale and beautiful—reclining,
There the conqueror lay,
From his radiant eyes the shining
Had not passed away.
There he watched them from his place—
His silver-shielded warriors,
His warriors of the world!

Still he was a king in seeming,
For he wore his crown;
And his sunny hair was streaming
His white forehead down.
Glorious was that failing head!
Still his golden baldric bound him,
Where his sword was hung:
Bright his arms were scattered round him,
And his glance still clung
To the warriors by his bed—
The silver-shielded warriors,
The warriors of the world!

Pale and motionless he rested,
Like a statue white and cold,
With his royal state invested;
For the purple and the gold
In his latest hour he wore.
But the eye and breath are failing,
And the mighty Soul has fled!
Lift ye up the loud bewailing,
For a wide world mourns the Dead;
And they have a Chief no more—
The silver-shielded warriors,
The warriors of the world!

“While Alexander was on his death-bed, the soldiers,” says Arrian, “became eager to see him; some to see him once more alive, others because it was reported that he was already dead, and a suspicion had arisen that his death was concealed by the chief officers of the guards, but the majority from sorrow and anxiety for their king; they, therefore, forced their way into his chamber, and the whole army passed in procession by the bed where he lay pale and speechless.”

Plutarch mentions that one of the popular reports was, that Alexander's death was occasioned by poison administered by Iollas, his cup-bearer. This poison, the water of a mountain-spring, was of so corrossive a nature as to destroy every substance but the mule's hoof in which it was brought.

Phylarchus gives a splendid account of Alexander's magnificence. His tent contained a hundred couches, and was supported by eight columns of solid gold. Overhead was stretched cloth of gold, wrought with various devices, and expanded so as to cover the whole ceiling. Within, in a semicircle, stood five hundred Persians, bearing lances adorned with pomegranates; their dress was purple and orange. Next to these were drawn up a thousand archers, partly clothed in flame-coloured, and partly in scarlet dresses. Many of these wore azure-coloured scarfs. In front of these were arranged five hundred Macedonian Argyraspides, soldiers, so called from their silver shields. In the middle was the golden throne, on which Alexander sat and gave audience. The tent on the outside was encircled by elephauts drawn up in order, and by a thousand Macedonians in their native dress. Beyond these were the Persian guard often thousand men, and the five hundred courtiers allowed to wear purple robes.

Alexander's death was preceded by many omens, which sacrifice vainly strove to avert.

After the conqueror's death, Roxana allured her gentler rival into her power, and poisoned her. She was the beautiful daughter of a barbarian chief, made captive by Alexander, who was so struck with her charms, that he immediately married her. Statira was the child of Darius, and inherited the evil fortunes of her ill-fated race.

Pearls were favourite ornaments with the Persian ladies, who often wore them wreathed in their hair.

The death of Alexander plunged all his vast empire into anarchy and slaughter. He was the soul that animated the mighty force that afterwards wasted its energies in petty warfare. The popular saying attributed to him might well be true, “That the survivors would celebrate his obsequies with bloody funeral games.”

245

STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF MRS. HEMANS.

“The rose—the glorious rose is gone.”—Lays of Many Lands.

Bring flowers to crown the cup and lute,—
Bring flowers,—the bride is near;
Bring flowers to soothe the captive's cell,
Bring flowers to strew the bier!
Bring flowers! thus said the lovely song;
And shall they not be brought
To her who linked the offering
With feeling and with thought?

Bring flowers,—the perfumed and the pure,—
Those with the morning dew,
A sigh in every fragrant leaf,
A tear on every hue.
So pure, so sweet thy life has been,
So filling earth and air
With odours and with loveliness,
Till common scenes grew fair.

Thy song around our daily path
Flung beauty born of dreams,
And scattered o'er the actual world
The spirit's sunny gleams.
Mysterious influence, that to earth
Brings down the heaven above,
And fills the universal heart
With universal love.

Such gifts were thine,—as from the block,
The unformed and the cold,
The sculptor calls to breathing life
Some shape of perfect mould,
So thou from common thoughts and things
Didst call a charmed song,
Which on a sweet and swelling tide
Bore the full soul along.

246

And thou from far and foreign lands
Didst bring back many a tone,
And giving such new music still,
A music of thine own.
A lofty strain of generous thoughts,
And yet subdued and sweet,—
An angel's song, who sings of earth,
Whose cares are at his feet.

And yet thy song is sorrowful,
Its beauty is not bloom;
The hopes of which it breathes, are hopes
That look beyond the tomb.
Thy song is sorrowful as winds
That wander o'er the plain,
And ask for summer's vanish'd flowers,
And ask for them in vain.

Ah! dearly purchased is the gift,
The gift of song like thine;
A fated doom is her's who stands
The priestess of the shrine.
The crowd—they only see the crown,
They only hear the hymn;—
They mark not that the cheek is pale,
And that the eye is dim.

Wound to a pitch too exquisite,
The soul's fine chords are wrung;
With misery and melody
They are too highly strung.
The heart is made too sensitive
Life's daily pain to bear;
It beats in music, but it beats
Beneath a deep despair.

It never meets the love it paints,
The love for which it pines;
Too much of Heaven is in the faith
That such a heart enshrines.

247

The meteor-wreath the poet wears
Must make a lonely lot;
It dazzles, only to divide
From those who wear it not.

Didst thou not tremble at thy fame,
And loathe its bitter prize,
While what to others triumph seemed,
To thee was sacrifice?
Oh, Flower brought from Paradise
To this cold world of ours,
Shadows of beauty such as thine
Recall thy native bowers.

Let others thank thee—'twas for them
Thy soft leaves thou didst wreathe;
The red rose wastes itself in sighs
Whose sweetness others breathe!
And they have thanked thee—many a lip
Has asked of thine for words,
When thoughts, life's finer thoughts, have touched
The spirit's inmost chords.

How many loved and honoured thee
Who only knew thy name;
Which o'er the weary working world
Like starry music came!
With what still hours of calm delight
Thy songs and image blend;
I cannot choose but think thou wert
An old familiar friend.

The charm that dwelt in songs of thine
My inmost spirit moved;
And yet I feel as thou hadst been
Not half enough beloved.
They say that thou wert faint, and worn
With suffering and with care;
What music must have filled the soul
That had so much to spare!

248

Oh, weary One! since thou art laid
Within thy mother's breast—
The green, the quiet mother-earth—
Thrice blessed be thy rest!
Thy heart is left within our hearts,
Although life's pang is o'er;
But the quick tears are in my eyes,
And I can write no more.

THREE EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF A WEEK.

A record of the inward world, whose facts
Are thoughts—and feelings—fears, and hopes, and dreams.
There are some days that might outmeasure years—
Days that obliterate the past, and make
The future of the colour which they cast.
A day may be a destiny; for life
Lives in but little—but that little teems
With some one chance, the balance of all time:
A look—a word—and we are wholly changed.
We marvel at ourselves—we would deny
That which is working in the hidden soul;
But the heart knows and trembles at the truth:
On such these records linger.

We might have been!

We might have been!—these are but common words,
And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing;
They are the echo of those finer chords,
Whose music life deplores when unavailing.
We might have been!

We might have been so happy! says the child,
Pent in the weary school-room during summer,
When the green rushes 'mid the marshes wild,
And rosy fruits, attend the radiant comer.
We might have been!

It is the thought that darkens on our youth,
When first experience—sad experience—teaches
What fallacies we have believed for truth,
And what few truths endeavour ever reaches.
We might have been!

249

Alas! how different from what we are
Had we but known the bitter path before us;
But feelings, hopes, and fancies left afar,
What in the wide bleak world can e'er restore us?
We might have been!

It is the motto of all human things,
The end of all that waits on mortal seeking;
The weary weight upon Hope's flagging wings,
It is the cry of the worn heart while breaking.
We might have been!

And when, warm with the heaven that gave it birth,
Dawns on our world-worn way Love's hour Elysian,
The last fair angel lingering on our earth,
The shadow of what thought obscures the vision?
We might have been!

A cold fatality attends on love,
Too soon or else too late the heart-beat quickens;
The star which is our fate springs up above,
And we but say—while round the vapour thickens—
We might have been!

Life knoweth no like misery; the rest
Are single sorrows,—but in this are blended
All sweet emotions that disturb the breast;
The light that was our loveliest is ended.
We might have been!

Henceforth, how much of the full heart must be
A sealèd book at whose contents we tremble?
A still voice mutters 'mid our misery,
The worst to hear, because it must dissemble—
We might have been!

Life is made up of miserable hours,
And all of which we craved a brief possessing,
For which we wasted wishes, hopes, and powers,
Comes with some fatal drawback on the blessing.
We might have been!

250

The future never renders to the past
The young beliefs intrusted to its keeping;
Inscribe one sentence—life's first truth and last—
On the pale marble where our dust is sleeping—
We might have been.

Necessity.

In the ancestral presence of the dead
Sits a lone power—a veil upon the head,
Stern with the terror of an unseen dread.

It sitteth cold, immutable, and still,
Girt with eternal consciousness of ill,
And strong and silent as its own dark will.

We are the victims of its iron rule,
The warm and beating human heart its tool;
And man, immortal, godlike, but its fool.

We know not of its presence, though its power
Be on the gradual round of every hour,
Now flinging down an empire, now a flower.

And all things small and careless are its own,
Unwittingly the seed minute is sown,—
The tree of evil out of it is grown.

At times we see and struggle with our chain,
And dream that somewhat we are freed, in vain;
The mighty fetters close on us again.

We mock our actual strength with lofty thought,
And towers that look into the heavens are wrought,—
But after all our toil the task is nought.

Down comes the stately fabric, and the sands
Are scatter'd with the work of myriad hands,
High o'er whose pride the fragile wild-flower stands.

Such are the wrecks of nations and of kings,
Far in the desert, where the palm-tree springs;
'Tis the same story in all meaner things.

251

The heart builds up its hopes, though not addrest
To meet the sunset glories of the west,
But garnered in some still, sweet-singing nest.

But the dark power is on its noiseless way,
The song is silent so sweet yesterday,
And not a green leaf lingers on the spray.

We mock ourselves with freedom, and with hope,
The while our feet glide down life's faithless slope;
One has no strength, the other has no scope.

So we are flung on Time's tumultuous wave,
Forced there to struggle, but denied to save,
Till the stern tide ebbs—and there is the grave.

Memory.

I do not say bequeath unto my soul
Thy memory,—I rather ask forgetting;
Withdraw, I pray, from me thy strong control,
Leave something in the wide world worth regretting.

I need my thoughts for other things than thee,
I dare not let thine image fill them only;
The hurried happiness it wakes in me
Will leave the hours that are to come more lonely.

I live not like the many of my kind;
Mine is a world of feelings and of fancies,
Fancies whose rainbow-empire is the mind,
Feelings that realize their own romances.

To dream and to create has been my fate,
Alone, apart from life's more busy scheming;
I fear to think that I may find too late
Vain was the toil, and idle was the dreaming.

Have I uprear'd my glorious pyre of thought,
Up to the heavens, but for my own entombing?
The fair and fragrant things that years have brought
Must they be gathered for my own consuming?

252

Oh! give me back the past that took no part
In the existence it was but surveying;
That knew not then of the awaken'd heart
Amid the life of other lives decaying.

Why should such be mine own? I sought it not:
More than content to live apart and lonely,
The feverish tumult of a loving lot,
Is what I wish'd, and thought to picture only.

Surely the spirit is its own free will;
What should o'ermaster mine to vain complying
With hopes that call down what they bring of ill,
With fears to their own questioning replying?

In vain, in vain! Fate is above us all;
We struggle, but what matters our endeavour?
Our doom is gone beyond our own recall,
May we deny or mitigate it?—never!

And what art thou to me,—thou who dost wake
The mind's still depths with trouble and repining?
Nothing;—though all things now thy likeness take;
Nothing,—and life has nothing worth resigning.

Ah, yes! one thing, thy memory; though grief
Watching the expiring beam of hope's last ember;
Life had one hour,—bright, beautiful, and brief,
And now its only task is to remember.

THE FUTURE.

Ask me not, love, what can be in my heart:
While gazing on thee sudden tear-drops start,
When only smiles should brighten where thou art.

The human heart is compassed by fears;
And joy is tremulous—for it inspheres
A vapoury star which melts away in tears.

253

I am too happy for a careless mirth;
Hence, thoughts the sweet, yet sorrowful, have birth:—
Who looks from heaven is half return'd to earth.

I feel the weakness of my love—its care;
How deep, how true, how passionate soe'er,
It cannot keep one sorrow from thy share.

How powerless is my fond anxiety!
I feel I could lay down my life for thee;
Yet know how vain such sacrifice must be!

Ah, the sweet present!—should it not suffice?
Not to humanity which vainly tries
To lift the curtain that may never rise!

Hence do we tremble in our happiness;
Hurried and dim the unknown moments press;—
We question of the grief we cannot guess.

The Future is more present than the Past:
For one look back, a thousand on we cast;
And hope doth ever memory outlast.

For hope, say fear. Hope is a timid thing,
Fearful and weak, and born 'mid suffering;—
At least, such hope as our sad earth can bring.

Its home, it is not here, it looks beyond;
And while it carries an enchanter's wand,
Its spells are conscious of their earthly bond.

We almost fear the presence of our joy;
It doth tempt Fate, the stern one, to destroy,
Fate in whose hands this world is as a toy.

We dearly buy our pleasures, we repay
By some deep suffering; or they decay
Or change to pain, and curse us by their stay.

A world of ashes is beneath our feet—
Cold ashes of each beautiful deceit,
Owned by long silent hearts, that beat as ours now beat.

254

How can we trust our own? we waste our breath;
We heap up hope and joy in one bright wreath;—
Our altar is the grave—our priest is death.

But, ah! death is repose;—'tis not our doom,
The cold, the calm, that haunts my soul with gloom:
I tremble at the passage to the tomb.

Love mine—what depths of misery may lie
In the dark future?—I may meet thine eye,
Cold, careless, and estranged, before I die.

All grief is possible, and some is sure;
How can the loving heart e'er feel secure,
And e'er it breaks it may so much endure?

We had not lived had the past been foreshown;
Ah! merciful the shadow round us thrown.—
Thank heaven, the future is at least unknown!

A LONG WHILE AGO.

Still hangeth down the old accustomed willow,
Hiding the silver underneath each leaf,
So drops the long hair from some maiden pillow,
When midnight heareth the else silent grief;
There floats the water-lily, like a sovereign
Whose lovely empire is a fairy world,
The purple dragon-fly above it hovering,
As when its fragile ivory uncurl'd
A long while ago.

I hear the bees in sleepy music winging
From the wild thyme when they have past the noon—
There is the blackbird in the hawthorn singing,
Stirring the white spray with the same sweet tune;
Fragrant the tansy breathing from the meadows,
As the west wind bends down the long green grass,
Now dark, now golden, as the fleeting shadows
Of the light clouds pass as they wont to pass
A long while ago.

255

There are the roses which we used to gather
To bind a young fair brow no longer fair;—
Ah! thou art mocking us, thou summer weather,
To be so sunny, with the loved one where?
'Tis not her voice—'tis not her step—that lingers
In lone familiar sweetness on the wind;
The bee, the bird, are now the only singers—
Where is the music once with their's combined
A long while ago?

As the lorn flowers that in her pale hands perish'd
Is she who only hath a memory here.
She was so much a part of us, so cherished,
So young, that even love forgot to fear.
Now is her image paramount, it reigneth
With a sad strength that time may not subdue;
And memory a mournful triumph gaineth,
As the slow looks we cast around renew
A long while ago.

Thou lovely garden! where the summer covers
The tree with green leaves, and the ground with flowers;
Darkly the past around thy beauty hovers—
The past—the grave of our once happy hours.
It is too sad to gaze upon the seeming
Of nature's changeless loveliness, and feel
That, with the sunshine round, the heart is dreaming
Darkly o'er wounds inflicted, not to heal,
A long while ago.

Ah! visit not the scenes where youth and childhood
Pass'd years that deepen'd as those years went by;
Shadows will darken in the careless wildwood—
There will be tears upon the tranquil sky.
Memories, like phantoms, haunt me while I wander
Beneath the drooping boughs of each old tree:
I grow too sad as mournfully I ponder
Things that are not—and yet that used to be—
A long while ago.

256

Worn out—the heart seems like a ruin'd altar:—
Where are the friends, and where the faith of yore?
My eyes grow dim with tears—my footsteps falter—
Thinking of those whom I can love no more.
We change, and others change—while recollection
Would fain renew what it can but recall.
Dark are life's dreams, and weary its affection,
And cold its hopes—and yet I felt them all
A long while ago.

EXPERIENCE.

My very heart is filled with tears! I seem
As I were struggling under some dark dream,
Which roughly bore me down life's troubled stream.

The past weighs heavily upon my soul,
A tyrant mastering me with stern control;
The present has no rest—the future has no goal.

257

For what can be again but what has been?
Soon the young leaf forgets its early green,
And shadows with our sunshine intervene.

Quenched is the spirit's morning wing of fire;
We calculate where once we could aspire,
And the high hope sets in some low desire.

Experience has rude lessons, and we grow
Like what we have been taught too late to know,
And yet we hate ourselves for being so.

Our early friends, where are they?—rather, where
The fond belief that actual friends there were,—
Not cold and false as all must find they are?

We love—may have been loved—but ah! how faint
The love that withers of its earthly taint,
To what our first sweet visions used to paint!

How have we been deceived, forgotten, flung
Back on our trusting selves—the heart's core wrung
By some fond faith to which we weakly clung.

Alas! our kindest feelings are the root
Of all experience's most bitter fruit;
They waste the life whose charm they constitute.

At length they harden, and we feel no more
All that was felt so bitterly before,
But with the softness is the sweetness o'er.

Of things we once enjoyed how few remain!
Youth's flowers are flung behind us, and in vain
We would stoop down to gather them again.

Why do we think of this?—bind the red wreath—
Float down time's water to the viol's breath,
Wot not what those cold billows hide beneath.

258

We cannot do this:—from the sparkling brink
Drops the glad rose, and the bright waters shrink:
While in the midst of mirth we pause to think;—

And if we think—we sadden:—thought and grief
Are vowed companions; while we turn the leaf,
It darkens—for the brilliant is the brief.

Ah! then, farewell ye lovely things that brought
Your own Elysium hither!—overwrought
The spirit wearies with the weight of thought.

Our better nature pineth—let it be!
Thou human soul—earth is no home for thee;
Thy starry rest is in eternity!