University of Virginia Library

In a serene leaf-latticed chamber
A Dying Poet calmly slept;
And dreams about his brain did clamber,
Which, like his waking thoughts, o'erswept
The narrow Present, and flow'd far
Into the Unceasing and the Boundless,
With stir and voice oracular—
Whilst round him all was still and soundless.

He dream'd not of the common things
That make the joy or woe of breath
To one whose spirit hath no wings
To leave the common world beneath;
But, as the Vast and the Eternal
Fill'd all his vision'd Phantasy,
It peopled them, in pomp supernal,
With Incarnations, livingly,
Of Power and Beauty, Strength and Grace,
And Love and Hope and Ecstasy,
And Sorrow, with her twilight face:
And Men, the Lights of History,
And Women, crown'd with gather'd fame,
Glode in procession beamingly
Through his all-seeing Soul; and, then,
Creations of Immortal Pen,
Pencil and Chisel—each a name
To wing the heart with plumes of flame!—
Frequent and flashing, fast and bright;
Like meteors through electric night.

Around his dying-couch were stooping,
With burthen of their sorrow drooping,
Five stricken Creatures, weepingly.
One was a Matron old and grey,
In all whose wrinkles agony,
Like a writhing serpent, lay;
And whose pale eyes, suffused and dim,
Grew death-film'd as they look'd on him.
And Three were sweetly fair and young;
And they around each other clung,
And so together o'er him hung—
As three chill'd roses faintly glow
O'er the white winter's shroud of snow;
Or, as three cluster'd stars on high
Gleam on the pale air tremblingly:
And those four bewailing Creatures
All wore the Dying Dreamer's features;
And every change death wrought in his,
Grief mirror'd in their semblances.
The Fifth was clad in robes of mourning;
But not for him for whom she mourn'd—
That Dying Singer there, adorning
His dreams with her, so song-adorn'd!
Her soul breathed in that failing Glory,
Whose life was the lone promontory
From which her love and fond hopes all
Gazed on Life's waters, and the sky—
Lit with star-dreams majestical—
Of Love's far immortality.
She stood apart; her madden'd eyes
Terribly glaring with great wo,
And flashing, like tempestuous skies,
Upon that pale, calm earth below.

He heard no sound of their lamenting,
Unless their speech and sobbings low,
And that Intense-One's stifled venting
The pangs of hope's last overthrow,
Did mingle with the Voices sweet
Which his dreaming sense did greet;
And real with unreal sound
Blent in his cavern'd brain profound,
Went circling through its mystic cells,
And issued thence in oracles;
And spake unto his vision'd ear
In accents eloquently clear,
Whose silver'd music did impart
Speed to the faint blood in his heart;
And his soul imbibed all
Its melodies ethereal—
As the ether, therewith ringing,
Drinks the sweet lark's matin-singing.

And, oh! might they have heard, as he,
That converse of his dying dream,
They could have borne most tranquilly
The widowing of their loves supreme:
Learning from that talk divine,
That the subtle fire which feeds
Souls whose words are their great deeds
Cannot perish; therefore, he,
Whose spirit was its radiant shrine,
Must endure immortally!

Before his dreaming vision floated
Two Forms serenely feminine;
Intent upon him, and devoted
To that bright spirit's dim decline.
One, was robed in a white shroud—
Such as haunted eyes may see,
Through their drops of misery,
In the fresh-closed sepulchre
Of a love-slain virgin dear—
Like the pale moon in pallid cloud,
When the sleeted winds on earth are loud
And the dull sky is winter-brow'd:
Pale were her cheeks, and pale each hand,
And her forehead very pale;
And her eyes, by thin brows spann'd,
Moved not in their low-lidded spheres,
Where gleam'd they like two frozen tears,
Or transparent ice-struck dews
Reflecting winter's dead-leaf hues:
Her white lips did no breath exhale,
Even when they spake; and her words all
Seem'd wandering echoes mystical.
The other, was a rosy thing;
But the pallor mirroring
Of her unlike sister there,
Half that pale aspect she did wear,
Though her warm native-colours play'd
Through it, as the sun through shade.
She robeless was, that lovely Form;
But her bright tresses mantled warm
Adown her throbbing beauties all,
And mazily around them curl'd—
As might a gentle waterfall
Down marble rubied and impearl'd.
Her eyes—like those blue flowers serene
Which constellate on banklets green
When the spring's bland touch invokes
Breath in all which winter chokes—
Seem'd dim with their own radiancy;
Whilst tears flowed from them silently,
And o'er her tresses dripp'd and river'd:
And wild words from her curved lips quiver'd—
Like tones from a wind-finger'd lyre;
Till e'en her ghastly Sister shiver'd
And burn'd with their all-vital fire.
This like-and-unlike sisterhood,
Were Death and Love.

The Poet's blood
Gather'd around his heart, as Death,
Within her shrouded arms to wreathe
His weak limbs, stoop'd unto his rest:
But Love thrust her sweet face beneath
Death's coming hands, and fondly prest
Them upward from her Dear-One's face,
And fenced him with her strong embrace;
That Death did still at distance stay—
But near'd, alas! and near'd alway.
Then, ere the Poet waked to die,
He heard this spectral colloquy:

“What wouldst thou with this sacred breath?
Even I do almost loathe thee, Death,
Though oft thou bringest soothing balm
To my deep wounds, and blessed calm
Unto that rude sea, tempest-tost,
Where still my sailing hopes are lost.
O, is there not exhaustless prey
Awaiting thee on earth's highway;
Where the rushing common crowd
Seek the workshop and the trough,
And at all things holy scoff
With laughter and blasphemings loud?
Many a palace, many a den,
Is there, in the haunts of men,
Whence thou mayst pluck each denizen;
Nor leave, with all thy gorged food,
One gap in human grace or good;
Nor from Life's clod one drop o' the leaven
Steal, that makes it swell with heaven!
Why com'st thou, then—pale, dismal Death!
To suck this music-hallow'd breath?
To whelm these eyes in dark eclipse,
Which beam'd joy through the heart of pain;
And set thy seal on these sweet lips,
That they may never sing again
Songs that are wing'd things of light
Burning through Life's vapory night?
To sting the bliss of all these hearts,
In which, through him, thy poison darts;
And all their panting multitude
Of hopes, drown deep in tears and blood?
O, tarry, pallid sister Death!
Let Age come for my Dear-One's breath!
And not until his Fame be wed
To Time, and full-accomplished;
And not until this Matron old
Turn peacefully to ashes cold;
And not until these Sisters Three
Toward their graves tend peacefully
And, oh! not till this Mourner dim
Be ready to depart with him.
I pray thee, Death! sweet sister Death!
Let Age come for my Dear-One's breath!”

“O, why direct the mission'd dove?
His hour is come, sweet sister Love!
Upbraid me not! I cannot err;
Being the fated minister
Of Fate, in whose most sovereign eye
Each human thing moves equally.
The common throng which thy displeasure
Loadeth, with such onerous measure,
Bear sparklets of that fire divine
So starlike in this Child of thine:
And he and they are nothing more
Than little glow-worms on a shore
On which the billows everlasting
Of Time their mighty wrecks are casting,
And on which o'erarched Space
Still looketh with eternal face.
Sister! thy spirit magnifies;
And to thee two cherish'd eyes
Do seem as glorious as the skies,
And dower'd with as great destinies:
But 'tis not so. Be meek and dumb!
I tell thee that his hour is come:
And as for Sorrowers, what are they
But dust beneath my trampling way?
And, say, if Song were aught to me,
Thinkst thou that I, whose strong decree
Swept Homer from Ionian air
When his allotted years were run,
And Dante from Italia's sun
When all his griefs accomplish'd were;
Down-looking Chaucer from his theme,
And Spenser from his Faery dream,
And Shakspeare from his own great world,
And Milton from his starr'd-throne, hurl'd,
Ere their fames were half-unfurl'd:
I, who in later days have driven
Sweet Bards in earliest youth to heaven—
Shelley and Keats; and crash'd the bridge
That bore the life of Coleridge
Over my gulfs: that I, who still,
Upon his Thought's sublimest hill,
Tarry for Wordsworth—he who won
Renown from out Detraction's jaws;
Who wait for sweet-lipp'd Tennyson;
And prepare my shapeless cells
For the coming dust of Wells,
Whose genius sleeps for its applause:
Think'st thou that I, whose mission strong
Hath reach'd these mighty spirits of Song—
Or soon will reach—can pause for him?
Amid these suns a taper dim;
A mortal babe 'mid Seraphim!”

At this, Love wept a passion-dew,
And ghostly as her Sister grew;
And made a wreck of her bright hair,
Tress by tress, with sobs, unzoning—
As winds the golden sun-clouds tear,
With a melancholy moaning:
Till very Death felt pain for her,
And masqued thus as a comforter—
Alas for Love, when Death to her
Is last poor solace-minister!—
“O, be thou solaced, wailing Sister!
Of his Essence, charm'd resister
Of my subtlest poisons all!
That which in his deep brain wrought
All those glowing forms of thought
Which people his sweet Poesy,
Nothing know I: funeral
And the grave my knowledge bound;
And a trust in Destiny
May be thy firm assurance-ground
That 'twill not perish utterly.
But picture not his mortal clay
As a loathsome thing alway
Festering in my clammy cells:
Life will reclaim its particles,
One by one, and spread them wide
O'er the fresh earth glorified:
The green o' the grass, the blush o' the flower,
Shall draw from them their lustrous grace
And thrilling sun and kindly shower
Visit their calm biding-place;
And odors from their beauty freed
Shall the bland airs of springtime feed;
And evening and morning-dew
The sweetness where they dwell imbue:
The butterflies their gladness sunny,
And burnish'd bees their luscious honey,
Shall suck from them; and vernal singing,
From ecstatic bird-life springing,
For ever be around them ringing;
And, in perpetual rebirth,
Still shall they smile a light on earth!
And if all this not comfort thee,
Bethink thee that his Memory
Shall not droop its soaring pinion,
For ages, to my black dominion;
And, haply, not till my vast robe
Wrap this total under-globe,
And all its breath and stir and thought
Refold into primeval Naught!”

“His Memory! his Memory!”
Cried starting Love, far echoingly:
“It shall not die, it cannot die—
His song-embalmed Memory!
His throbbing Verse, his burning Verse,
Shall breathe it through the Universe
With a ceaseless spirit-pant,
Love's divine arch-ministrant!
It shall speak in all sweet things;
And with it I will load my wings,
And waft it thorough skies and waters,
And over earth's green hills and plains,
And through her caverns, rocks and woods,
And her most desert solitudes;
And into human hearts and brains,
And the blood of human veins!
And even these, my wailing daughters,
Shall hear its music deep and holy,
And list away their melancholy!
It shall bloom in every flower,
And mantle green o'er ancient trees;
The rainbow-winged insectries,
And birds and rills, shall sound its power;
And the mighty bass of seas,
And the wind's wild harmonies!
It shall float in every cloud;
And thunder in the tempest loud,
And glitter in the tempest-light;
And it shall look from heaven, through
The unfathom'd depths of ether blue!
And the Sun—artificer
Of that pomp magnificent
Of golden-vapor'd mansionry
In which are far involved and blent,
With complication infinite,
Structures piled and broad and high,
That seem, to the used eye of man,
Sky-cities metropolitan—
Shall be to Space a minister
Of its glories, burningly!
And the ever-fainting Moon
Shall smile it from her silver swoon;
And in every circling Planet
Shall the eye of Passion scan it;
The Constellations, radiantly,
And the belting Galaxy,
Shall arch it, with a splendorous grace
O'er the awful brow of Space!—
His Memory! His Memory!
Fed by his Song eternally:
His Song, which shall a music be
Amid the Earth's grand vocalings
As round the golden Sun she swings,
With solemn-sounding melodies,
And harmonious chorusings
Of earthquake, thunder, winds and seas,
And voice of all living things!”