[Poems by Cary in] The poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary

Across the southern hills comes the young May,
In her lap bearing, wet with honied showers,
White and blue violets, open to the day,
Blush roses, and the yellow cowslip flowers;
But from her o'er-full arms they lean away
Toward the melodious shadows of warm June,
Where their first love a pallid ghost doth stray
Like a lorn maiden wailing 'neath the moon.

A very queen of beauty doth she move,
Waving her vermeil-blossomed wand in air;
While Hope with crimsoning cheek, and soft-eyed Love,
Sprinkle the yellow sunshine of her hair
With winking flower-stars, and the blue above
With its dropped hem of silver, beauteously
Edged with the sea-green fringes of the grove,
Tents her about with glory fair to see.

Alone I sit, and yet not all alone,
For unsubstantial beings near me tread;
At times I hear them piteously moan—
Haply a plaint for the o'er-gifted dead,
That, to the perfectness of stature grown,
Had filled the vacant heart of Time for aye
With a deep sea of melody unknown,
And sunken from the embracing light of day.

And yet alone, for not a human heart
Stirs with tumultuous throbbings the deep hush;
Almost the blue air seems to fall apart
From the delirious warble of the thrush—
A wave of lovely sound untouched of art,
That floats above me like embodied joy;
O for such wasteless dowery, to impart
Delight so dainty and without alloy!

Deep in the shady cincture of the vale
I hear a long and melancholy cry,
As a lost spirit might in anguish wail,
Clinging to sin, yet longing for the sky:
And o'er the hill-tops, crowned with verdure pale,
A gnarled oak lifts above its fellow trees
Its gray head, palsy-stricken by the gale,
Defiant of the lapse of centuries.

A golden cloud above the sunken sun
Holds the first star of the night's solemn train,
Clasped from the world's profaneness, like a nun,
Behind the shelter of the convent pane:
Did the delicious light of such a one
Fleck his dark pathway with its shimmering fire,
Whose fingers, till life's little day was done,
Clung like pale kisses to the charméd lyre?

I 've read, in some chance fragment of old song,
A tale to muse of in this lovely light,
About a maiden fled from cruel wrong
Into the chilly darkness of the night;
Upon whose milk-white bosom, cold and long,
Beat the rough tempest; but a waiting arm
Was reaching toward her, and in hope grown strong,
Fled she along the woods and through the storm.

But how had he or heart or hope to sing
Of Madeline or Porphyro the brave,
While the dim fingers of pale suffering
Were pressing down his eyelids to the grave?
How could he to the shrine of genius bring
The constant spirit of a bended knee,
Ruffling the horrent blackness of Death's wing
With the clear echoes of eternity?

Hark! was it but the wind that swept along,
Shivering the hawthorn, pale with milky flowers?
The swan-like music of the dying song
Seems swimming on the bosom of the hours.
If Fancy cheats me thus, she does no wrong—
With mists of glory is my heart o'erblown,
And shapes of beauty round about me throng,
When of that muséd rhyme I catch the tone.

O lost and radiant wanderer of the storm,
Beauty eternal shines along the wave,
That bore thee on like an o'ermastering arm
To the blind silence of the hungry grave;
Nor genial spring, nor summer sunshine warm,
Broken to flakes of gold by boughs of gloom,
Hath power to make life's frozen current warm,
And the dark house of dust to re-illume.

Tell me, ye sobbing winds, what sign ye made,
Making the year with dismal pity rife,
When the all-levelling and remorseless shade
Closed o'er the lovely summer of his life?
Did the sad hyacinths by the fountains fade,
And tear-drops touch the eyelids of the morn,
And Muses, empty-armed, the gods upbraid,
When that great sorrow to the world was born?

Did Death stoop softly, and with gentle tone
Sweetly dispose his pallid limbs to rest,
As down the shadowy way he went alone,
With Love's young music trembling in his breast?
Then sunk as fair a star as ever shone
Along the gray and melancholy air;
And from Parnassus' hoary front, o'ergrown
With plants immortal, moaned infirm Despair.

Weave close, ye woods, your blooming boughs to-night,
Shut from my sense the joyous insect choir,
And all the intense stars whose wannish light
Checkers the wavy grass like spots of fire:
Nature for my sad thought is all too bright,
And half I long for clouds to veil the sky,
And softly weep for the untimely blight
Of all of him I sing of that could die.

The yellow leaves that covered up his grave
Are hidden by the monumental stone;
Immortal amaranths o'er his slumber wave,
And fame's deep trumpet to the world has blown
The echoes of his lyre. In her mute cave,
Silence shall lock my little song away,
And the vain longing for the fount that gave
His name to glory, perish with the clay.

Revised as “Hyperion” in volume of 1855.

Misprint for “unto.”

University of Virginia Library

KEATS.