Poems Lyrical and Dramatic :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thou perishing for scorn
To utter thy despair,
Come, tell it, poet born,
Unto my silver air.
My star-eyes, wet and wild,
Swim with a blinded sight:
I am thy mother, child,
I, the Night.

Mother mine, only one,
A wanderer from the womb,
I pray thee take thy son
Into thy golden gloom.
Here wastes my soul in thrall
To griefs and doubts and fears:

Hast thou no place in all
These, thy spheres?

Ah poet, eagle-soul,
Soar to thy lawful place
Beyond Orion's goal,
And kiss me on my face.
Set on my lips thy lips,
And on my spangled hair,
My breast with thine eclipse:
Have thy prayer!

Mother mine, Comforter,
Spirit most high and pure,
Deep heavens are all astir
With thy most starry lure:
A mind, a mystery,
Exiled and orphaned quite,
I pine, I die for thee,
Mother Night.

Child, be of better cheer:
I lure thee not from far.
Lo, I am even near;
I fold thee like a star!

Mine arms embrace thy head,
My beams thy spirit reach,
My voice and thy voice wed,
Light and speech.

Mother, I loved of old
A woman great and fair,
Serene and high and cold
As thy serenest air.
A world, a wilderness
Divides us heart from heart,
Poet and poetess
Most apart.

Child, what dost thou with love
For mortal clay defiled?
We, are we not enough?
Thine own, thy kindred, child.—
Lo the Sea, soft and warm,
Reposes by thy side,
All thine in calm and storm,
Son, thy bride!

Mother, thy fair limbs swoon
Within the misty robe;

Upon thy brow the moon
Pales her broad opal globe.
Mother, I droop, I faint;
Thy voices ebb away.—
Cursed be thy cold restraint,
Thou vile clay!

Over white mountain peaks
I pass with waning wings,
My path the moonlight streaks,
The meteor-girdle rings;
A cirque of starry flames,
I fade from common sight;
The Universe reclaims
Me, the Night.

Sea, wooed in many a song,
Reach me thy spirit-hand;
Now slips thy foam along
The quiet golden sand,
Hissing about my feet,
Melodious murmuring brine,
Foaming with love, O sweet
Bride of mine!

Enter my bosom's wan
Fluid green flame of waves,
Play with the weeds upon
My sweet concealéd caves;
My rippling moonlight hairs
Weave over and over thee;
I too, I grant, thy prayers,
I, the Sea.

I lay my hand upon
Thy panting naked side,
I clasp thy billows wan,
And paddle with thy tide;
I faint upon thy lips
And catch thy fresh sweet breath,
From limbs thy gold veil slips,
Pale as Death.

Poet, I warm, I glow
Through all my sickening flood;
I faint, I melt, I flow,
I throb throughout thy blood;
I circle round thy brow,
And o'er thy bosom run;

Not twain be I and thou,
Nay, but one.

Maiden, divinest maid,
Infinite, silent, deep,
Under thy lashes' shade
Thine eyes, thine eyes, asleep,
Thy voice, thy voice more vast,
More soft than sounds which fall
From trump and organ blast—
Yea, than all.

Poet, divinest face,
Lo, at thy feet I cast
The treasure I embrace
Within my caverns vast,
Shells fairer than the gems
On maiden breasts that shine
Or in queen's diadems,
Poet mine.

I lift them to my lips
And kiss thy dripping weeds,
Until my mouth too drips
And my heart burns and bleeds.

Cease with thy sighs to vex:
Dead let the dead past be:
Bury me with thy wrecks,
Thou deep Sea.

From these fair golden sands
I fade with ebbing tide
To wash remoter lands,
A weeping widowed bride;
I go, I cannot stay,
Under the cold moon's spell,
Into the depths away.
Love, farewell!

High mountains, brethren dear,
I swim, a dazzled star,
In blue depths opening near
And widening out afar;
I mix in the faint streaks
Where with the morn's blue blaze
Your pinnacles and peaks
Melt in haze.

Brother sweet, desolate,
Our granite arms we ope;

Our feet are firm as Fate,
Our head as high as Hope:
We clasp thee to our breast,
We lock thee up in us,
From fear, from doubt at rest,
Guarded thus.

Your crevices and cracks,
Your purple-paved ravines
Lead me on tear-dimmed tracks
To misty golden scenes;
Your gusty gorges worn
By labyrinthine streams
Fade like sweet Sleep at morn
With her dreams.

More than for other men
For thee we wear these hues;
We open to thy ken
Our most mysterious views;
We converse, soul with soul,
In earthquake tones that rend
And thunder-peals that roll,
Poet friend.

Your avalanches crash,
And foam your white cascades;
Your pine-trees groan and clash
Among tempestuous glades;
Your pitch-black tarns arise
And shake their snowy wave;—
What am I in your eyes?—
I, a slave.

Slave!—A free soul thou art,
Free as the blast that plays
Among our rifts apart
And treads our highest ways.
Scorn cannot quell nor tame
That thou beliest so,
The deep the hidden flame
'Neath the snow.

Speak again! bid me strive;
Utter some thunder-word
To save my soul alive,
Never forgot once heard!
Ah! the clouds cover you,
The valley-mists arise;

You melt, you fade from view,
And hope dies.

We melt, we fade; the storms
Rise up, and like a veil
Deep clouds enwrap our forms;
Our granite voices fail.
Still, still the rivers shine:
Their flying feet pursue,
Our sisters dear, and thine—
Friend, adieu!

Pale River, sister sweet,
That through the rising storm
Hurriest with glimmering feet
And verdant-vestured form,
Thy forehead crowned with reed,
The lotus on thy breast;
Take me in this my need
To thy rest.

Dear brother, thou a child
My playmate wast of old;
Thy pure limbs undefiled
Played with my ripples cold;

My flag and lotus dank
Thy dripping hair would twine,
Sleeping on my green bank,
Brother mine!

Sister, man's heart and soul
Lie dead in golden chains:
In vain on stagnant shoal
Heaven pours her passionate strains.
Who sings to loveless slaves,
Deaf ears and spirits numb?
Ah! teach me, like thy waves,
To be dumb.

Silent I move along
Polluted haunts of man;
I stifle my sweet song,
Gliding from span to span:
But in the solitude
Of moor and mountain-peak,
Far from the multitude,
I can speak.

I too, I too would leave
The life of men on earth,

And to my kindred cleave,
My kin of soul and birth.
Not of mankind am I,
And yet not all thine own—
A double sympathy,
Twice alone.

Nay, not alone with me:
Clothed as thou art in clay,
Straight to thy soul I see
Through sin and pain my way.
I too must mix with mire
My living liquid dew,
Till time and long desire
Cleanse me through.

Immortal Effluence
That drinkest deep of life,
How canst thou know the sense
Of ever-baffled strife?
Earth's bonds and mortal breath,
Sorrow, and sin, and pain,
Lie like the gulf of Death
'Twixt us twain.

Poet, my lips are sealed
Upon this mystery:
Yet hope thou, and be healed,
Orphan of Destiny.
Though God, though man forsake,
Though I too seek my goal,
Build where no whirlwinds shake—
On thy soul.

Night, Ocean, Mountain, Stream,
Ye pass away so swift
I grope as in a dream
'Mid shapes that fade and shift.
All, all abandon me:
All leave me desolate:
Ah! then I turn to ye,
Death and Fate!