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Mundi et Cordis

De Rebus Sempiternis et Temporariis: Carmina. Poems and Sonnets. By Thomas Wade

Wade, Thomas (1805-1875)

[epigraph]

MUNDI TEMPLUM.

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MUNDI TEMPLUM.

POEMS.

I. TO POESY.

1.

Thou “Wine of Demons!” by dull Flesh abjured,
But the true Essence of all things divine!
The Incense that perfumeth Nature's shrine!
Nectar of the heart and brain!
Spirit's sun-unfolding Rain!
Deep Poesy! I come to thee, allured
By all that I do hear, scent, touch, or see;
From the flower's delicate aglet, where the bee
Makes music; to the depths of sea and ether,
Where winds and waves in fierce love leap together,
And storms are thunder-voiced and lightning-plumed,
And worlds, Creation's sparks, extinguish'd and illumed!

2.

The mysteries which the Dreamers of old days
Did gird thee with, in many a solemn strain,
Are buried in the grave of our disdain:
Men now no altars to Apollo raise;

And rich-brain'd Memory's glorious Daughters
Sink in Oblivion's Lethe-waters:
The Mount whence Eros shot his golden arrow
At jeering Phœbus' heart, revered by none,
Hath less advertence than a war-left barrow,
And every spring mates that of Helicon:
The blood-engender'd Horse, the winged vision!
With the child's steed becomes the man's derision;
Round poet-brows no laurel crownlet clings,
And outward symbols all are scoff'd as idle things!

3.

But life and death remain unread;
And by the same
Aspiring flame
Their poor inheritors are fed:
And thou and thy sublime rewards,
Deep-dwelling in the mind's regards,
Unchanged, are now as when dark Sappho writ,
Or Carus' wisdom on the world alit.

4.

Some idle voices are gone forth of late,
That thou art fading from the dreamless world;
But darkness cannot yet decree light's date,
Nor thine imperial flag by slaves be furl'd!

From many a stately and electric pen
Thou still shalt rule and lighten amid men,
Blinding their common being
To teach diviner seeing!
Thou art immortal!
The lurid portal
Which openeth at life's last declivity
Is not for thee;
For thou wilt hold thine high festivity
Of grief and glee
Till mind with matter shall no longer mingle,
And crush'd be every world where breathing soul doth tingle!

5.

Deep Cell of Honey! evermore unclosed,
But filling fast as feasted on: thou Flower!
That on the steep of Life aye overpeerest
The ocean of Eternity, and rearest
Thy beauteous head beneath Time's hurricane power,
In which, though shaken, thou hast still reposed:
Even as a green bough waveth o'er a tomb,
Thy glories float above the old world's doom;
And as sweet blossoms beat to earth by rain
Rise with fresh beauty in the morning sun—
When Barbarism hath thy grace o'errun,

Thou with a most tender
And more perfect splendour
Hast blush'd reviving o'er the world again!

6.

Words, the keen instruments of Mind and Thought,
Are but the semblance which thou deign'st to wear
To make thy godhead visible to sense:
Then, on thy wings and in thy gaze intense
To Heaven by a divine assumption caught,
We mount amid the Soul's ascending thunder;
Sublimer spirits for awhile appear,
And spurn this clay-work with disdaining wonder!
Deep-mirror'd, in the ocean of the Mind
Thy heavens are in reflected glory kindled;
Till, like a Typhon, thunder-struck and blind,
We fall, in darkness crush'd—helpless, and dwindled
Into our insect-cells again! but thou
Dost comfort us with balm:
A holy calm
Falls on our woe;
We bathe in thy sweet waters of delight,
And, so refresh'd, into our mortal night
Droop cheerful as the pinky daisy's eye,
That closeth in the twilight quietly.

7.

As many wander by the wondrous Ocean
Only to gather pebbles, thou to millions
Art but as vanity; but that emotion
Which of the hearts who feast in thy pavilions
Is the ripe-gushing fruit and foaming wine,
Is deep as Bacchus' vat, or Mammon's mine!
Those who despise thee and thy dreamy glories,
Because they know thee not, are dreamers vainer,
Who sleep through their dark life, and think it light;
Reality their spell-word: but thy sight
Out-glanceth dull day-life; thy lofty stories
Are clear as their fond creeds, and thy religion plainer.

8.

Oh! be thou with my dense soul interfused!
That it may float in buoyant gladness
Upon thy stream of sober madness
Over the grave, within itself bemused:
When I am dead, be thou my cenotaph!
As shakes the shingle-foam beneath the wind,
I quiver at thy breath, which whirls the chaff
From out the stored garners of the mind:
Thou dost anneal the spirit, till each hue
O' the outward Universe doth pierce it through

And there live colour'd in resemblance rife!
Thy lightning flashes from the clouds of life!
As the eye, eastward fix'd afar,
Plucks from the dawn a paling star,
Seen but by a striving vision;
Thou, with a sublime decision,
Forcest from the Universe
Many a dream and secret golden,
In its depths of glory folden,
And weav'st it into soul-essential Verse!
Like the storm-presaging bird
In the van of thunder heard,
Thou prophesiest of Eternity;
And from the great To-Come clouds roll before thine eye!

9.

Like the Mæander's, thy sweet streams return,
From their diverse and mazy wandering,
To their bright fountain-urn;
And to the spirit bring
Tidings of a diviner blossoming,
In meadows far away of endless Spring.
Nature's most common page with thee is fraught;
Thy flowers expand around us, dew'd and sunny—
But the wing'd hearts by whom thy balm is sought
Are few, and fewer those that find the honey

Which sleepeth in the depths of thy perfume:
Bees amass sweetness from the lowliest flower;
But vulgar insects o'er a world of bloom
Flit, and reveal no nectar-hiving power.

10.

Thy mighty elements, in peace prepared
In the creative chaos of the soul,
Are blent in fury; and that storm is shared
By all who walk within thy sky's control:
But between them that in thy tempests pant
And thee, is seal'd a rainbow-covenant!
As in the banner'd gloom the dusk Night reareth
The solitary sea-bird disappeareth,
Thou fadest in the depths of our despair;
But Hope's bright dreams arise,
With future-wooing eyes—
And, lo! thy re-apparent wings burn in the visible air!

11.

The theme that's inexhaustible must cease
All unaccomplish'd, or for ever flow:
I dedicate my transient being
To thy great altars, thou All-seeing!
Lead me in tumult to thy sovereign peace;
And print thy kiss of love on my soul's brow!

Suffer my footsteps in thy Places Holy;
And sanctify me with the melancholy
Born of that exaltation !—Lo! I droop;
And from thine ether to dim silence stoop—
Yet musing of thee: as the lark, descending,
Stills in the lower airs his gushing song;
And on the quiet mead his voyage ending,
Sits hush'd, as his deep thought did the same strain prolong.

II. PHOSPHOR AND HESPER.

PHOSPHOR.
In a flood of ether I swim, I swim!
My argent lamp dewily burning;
But, Sister! thy splendour is dim, is dim!
As an eye to the grave returning—
Why is thy beauty mourning?

HESPER.
I am weary and sick with dreams,
White Son of the Waking Morn!
For since the sun set in these western streams
I have slept in the midst of my golden beams,
The pillow of air adorning;
And visions of time and space and heaven
The life in my heart have lulled, or riven;
And now I sink
On night's dim brink,
Like a soul to the grave, that is unforgiven—
Forlorn! forlorn! forlorn!—
Art thou my sadness scorning?

PHOSPHOR.
The starry curtain of the dawn
Hath my silver hand withdrawn,
Orb of evening splendid!
My joy hath not birth from thy sadness;
But the sun hath endow'd me with gladness:
From the crystal height of my eastern throne
I behold him ascending alone, alone!
Into heaven, with eye distended—
Like a thought of God in the poet's soul!
His herald-cloud is above me, tinted
With the light his purple kiss imprinted:
Its foldings pallid in dew unrol,
Which the lark, on my lustre calling,
Imbibes in its balmy falling:
I hear the star beneath me sighing
With the burning love on his pale heart lying—
Art thou, too, dying?

HESPER.
I seek my tomb
In the purpled verge of the night-cloud's gloom:
Like hope from the heart, I sink from heaven.
Our queen is tranced in a ghostly swoon;

Red-banner'd Mars faints by the fainting moon,
And the constellations around are driven
Into the depths of the brightening dawn—
Like dews by the sphere of a flower absorb'd,
Or starting tears in the eye withdrawn!
Only thou art radiant-orb'd:
The morn o'ermantles the earth and sea—
Farewell! they need not me:
O'er the gulf of night am I clouded!

PHOSPHOR.
Farewell! I am failing like joy
Which its own sweet excess doth cloy—
Farewell! in light I am shrouded!

III. THE COMING OF NIGHT.

Night in the east, like to a shrouded nun,
Comes pacing, slow and melancholy, forth,
With all her mystical austerity,
Dark'ning the hills and billows; but the west
Still holds fair Day, who, like a dying saint,
Gleams with a holy joy in her last hour,
Mantled in gold and azure; and two stars
That on her lessening boundary hang in light,
Seem angels minist'ring to her last breath
Some heavenly consolation. Like death on life,
The pall of Night spreads ever on the track
Of fading Daylight, till the west, as east,
Is darkness. Lo! the stars, Day's funeral lamps,
Hang thick and clustering in the vault of Heaven,
Mirror'd along the ocean, which peals forth
A requiem to the sun; whilst those two orbs
That leant above the death-bed of the Day
Set, as in righteous sorrow, leaving Night
To all the wide inheritance of Heaven.
She wears her milky girdle o'er her robe

Starrily spangled; and upon the cliffs
And complication of the circling hills,
The wave-swept shore, and all the amplitude
Of air and sea, broodeth in starry vastness.

IV. DAWN.

I break upon the skylark's starry sleep:
Lo! up to the unclouded vault he springs,
As a quick thought into the brain doth leap,
And to the cresting star of morning sings
A faint and trembling song; again descending,
And with the interrupted silence blending.
The pale Dawn dreams amid the broken shadows
Of sky and air, of ocean, cliffs and meadows,
Like love, with eyes half-ope, through scatter'd hair;
The morning star swings high its silver lamp
O'er the white portal of the ethereal east;
And beaming upon Vesper, dim and damp
In the pale purple of the western air,
Lights her to sleep in the o'ercurtain'd night,
Fast fading from the banner of the morning
In the advancing van of its adorning.
The fixed star-spheres, from their watch released,
Retire within a veil of blinding light;
And, riding on Aurora's opening lid,
Seem but dream-tears within its lashes hid.

As the morn wakes upon her starlight pillow,
The moonbeam pales upon the tranquil billow,
And, like a radiant ghost, slow dies away
In the grey splendour of the kindling day.
In a dim vapour, on the horizon's verge,
Now setteth Hesper faint and weepingly;
And from the caves of night a murky surge,
Advancing to the forehead of the sky,
Enfolds in heaving clouds the day-star clear;
And the cleft orb of the way-weary moon
And one far pilgrim planet's failing sphere
Alone in the dissolving ether swoon.

V. THE FROZEN COAST.

1829, 1830.

1.

The winter-wild Seas have laid bare the shore,
And shingle and sand from its stony floor
Swept, and left naked a desert of rocks
That was buried in pebbly depths before;
And the spray of the waves on their massy blocks—
Of a thousand uncouth and fantastic forms,
The offspring misshapen of billows and storms—
Lies frozen, and white as an old man's hair:
Some are huddled and clad, others lonely and bare;
And from the weeds on the adamant crowd,
Thick, wither'd and starch'd,
By the keen winds parch'd,
The icicles hang their white frost-woven locks,
Which shell-fish and creatures scarce animate shroud.
Where the waves have receded that blent with the rills
Which flow'd o'er the beach to the sea from the hills

And kiss'd them with freshness, of shingle-pierced ice
Lie glittering curves; and the unmoving snow
Streaks the cliffs above and the beach below
And enwreathes the far hills with a varied device;
And smooth frozen sea-weeds are scatter'd around,
Which, suddenly struck, gleam with stars at the wound.

2.

A river, the far-pour'd oblation
Of mountain-streamings, in their congregation,
Beneath a veil of ice transparent,
Through which its crystal clear apparent
Gleams like love through chastity,
Flows along the dreary sand;
Till, breaking from its icy shade,
'Twixt ice-banks, from its waters made,
It trickles coldly to the sea
That foams upon the frozen strand.

3.

On the vast cliffs that heavenward climb,
Which on their brows wear storm-recorded Time,
The frost hath wrought a work sublime!
The manifold descending fountains
Of these cleft and concave mountains

Are veil'd within their icy cells,
Portculliced by vast icicles,
That, dagger-like, in each rocky jag,
Hang threat'ningly from crag to crag;
And where'er a curving roof
Beetles far into the air,
There is woven a glorious woof
Of ice-threads o'er the ceiling bare;
Whilst broader streamlets here and there
From the cliff's summit to its base
Lie bright and still in frozen ripples,
Where the faint sunbeams, coldly nurst,
Draw slow drops from those icy nipples,
Which, chain'd by the frost in their downward chase,
Seem struggling in vain to leap forth as at first—
A charm on my eyes hath burst!
A waterfall bold,
In many a fold
From steep to steep wide sweeping,
Till, perpendicularly leaping,
It sprang to the rocky beach,
In vain hath strived to reach—
For the frozen airs, around it creeping,
In massy ice-bonds clasp it, sleeping,
And there it lives, unheard, but dread,
Like a mighty spirit dead!

VI. THE WINTER SHORE.

JANUARY, 1830.

A mighty change it is, and ominous
Of mightier, sleeping in Eternity.
The bare cliffs seem half-sinking in the sand,
Heaved high by winter seas; and their white crowns,
Struck by the whirlwinds, shed their hair-like snow
Upon the desolate air. Sullen and black,
Their huge backs rearing far along the waves,
The rocks lie barrenly, which there have lain,
Reveal'd, or hidden, from immemorial time;
And o'er them hangs a sea-weed drapery,
Like some old Triton's hair, beneath which lurk
Myriads of crowned shell-fish, things whose life,
Like a cell'd hermit's, seemeth profitless.
Vast slimy masses harden'd into stone
Rise smoothly from the surface of the Deep,
Each with a hundred thousand fairy cells
Perforate, like a honeycomb, and, cup-like,
Fill'd with the sea's salt crystal—the soft beds

Once of so many pebbles, thence divorced
By the continual waters, as they grew
Slowly to rock. The bleak shore is o'erspread
With sea-weeds green and sere, curl'd and dishevell'd,
As they were mermaids' tresses, wildly torn
For some sea-sorrow. The small mountain-stream,
Swoln to a river, laves the quivering beach,
And flows in many channels to the sea
Between high shingly banks, that shake for ever.
The solitary sea-bird, like a spirit,
Balanced in air upon his crescent wings,
Hangs floating in the winds, as he were lord
Of the drear vastness round him, and alone
Natured for such dominion. spring and Summer
And stored Autumn, of their liveries
Here is no vestige: Winter, tempest-robed
In gloomy grandeur o'er the hills and seas
Reigneth omnipotent.

VII. “SOLVITUR ACRIS HYEMS.”

1.

The Winter's fled;
He's charm'd away:
The Earth, that dead
And frozen lay
But yesterday,
Hath burst her grave:
The glorious wave
Foams richly in the Sun:
The Winter's reign is done!

2.

The sea-birds lave their wings
For joy in the bright ocean;
The hill-descended springs
Resume their bounding motion;
The ice and snow have vanish'd;
The freezing winds are banish'd;
And the mild airs come
To their sunny home;

And along the mountainous earth
Its green robe starts to birth;
And by joyous thousands forth
The glad birds chirping roam!

3.

Toward us the infant Spring
Is on her cherub wing;
And on the sea and land
The hearts of men expand,
And open to the God
Who o'er their drear abode
Doth breathe this renovating spirit,
Which skies and air and earth and all that live inherit!

VIII. “GOLDEN CAP.”

1ST FEBRUARY, 1830.

1.

I tread the bare crown of this regal hill,
And gaze around:
The frost hath hung rich jewels by the rill,
And o'er the fall
Of every brook and fountain small;
Along the ground
The vestal snow is warmly spread,
Kiss'd by the blaze of glory overhead.

2.

The smooth wave curves up
On the shelving shore,
Till the mighty cup
Seems brimming o'er!
The blue sea from the azure-palaced sun
A golden zone of rippling fire hath won,

Through which a skiff is flying,
And earthly meteor, vying
With one of heaven:
The clouds in heaven as heaven are clear,
And in the horizon doth appear,
Of texture even,
A silvery mist, that nothing veils
The glory of the atmosphere—
Yet the light-feather'd snow is flying on the gales!

3.

Pale, in the pale blue sky,
High o'er the snow-robed hills,
Hangs the hemisphered moon;
Wan as a maid with maiden ills:
But she shall be no vestal soon;
But on the bed of night, voluptuously
Fill'd with the sun's embrace, rejoicing lie.

4.

The splendour of the Universe is round me:
I am transfix'd;
But my animate soul
Is pervading the whole,
Far intermix'd—
And love, sin, grief, nor death hath power to wound me!

Dorsetshire.

IX. A NIGHT AMID THE SEA-WARD HILLS.

1

The brow of Heaven wears
No frown, nor storm-cleft wrinkle;
The fountain's gentle tears
Amid the silence tinkle;
The lake it formeth in the meadow
Is kiss'd by many a trembling shadow
Of flower and blade;
Reflected stars, its depths amid,
Gaze heavenward as with furtive lid,
And by the moon a pyramid
Of light is made.

2

The water-fowl supine
Crowd close, with hidden bills;
The ruminating kine
Move not upon the hills;
Moths on the warm air dimly flit,
And insects in a slumb'rous fit

Stir all the leaves;
One bird, amid the hazel fluttering,
A sleepy cry of fear is uttering;
And the scarce-audible sea, low-muttering,
A dull sound weaves.

3

The fishermen's old boats,
Like shore-cast things asleep—
And nets, with shapeless floats,
Lie on the shingle deep:
Amid them, one rough sentinel
Strides as a lynx within his cell,
Still to and fro,
Tracking a smuggler's veering skiff,
In the dim distance fugitive;
The sere grass stirs upon the cliff,
With motion slow.

4

The Ocean's foamless lip
Scarce breathes upon the beach;
The Moon and Hesper clip
Its depths with amorous pleach,
Beaming their love from south and west
Over its mutely-panting breast,

In paleness splendid;
And by the gush and crisp retreat
Of its calm swell, their reflex fleet
Is curved from my advancing feet,
Or dim-extended.

5

The gather'd constellations
The infinite blue bestud,
Whose twinkling coruscations
Cleave its ethereal flood,
And yield the deep pale influence,
Dim-scrutable to striving sense,
Of shade and light:
Murmurs pervade the concave hills,
From echoed sounds and trickling rills;
And over all, the Night distils
A dew-shower bright.

6

A solitude sublime
Breathes on my breathless heart,
And thoughts of death and time
Into its depths depart:
Immortal dreams above them gushing,
My soul in all my veins is blushing

With love divine—
Spirit! from me let not this symbol'd story
Of thine immensity pass transitory;
Let me not lose of thine in-hidden glory
This outward, visible sign!

X. SYMPATHY.

There's music on the earth: the moon and her attendant
Partake the lofty solitude of Heaven.
Why should they seem more lovely to the sight
For that low melody? By the sweet strain,
Which falls upon the soul and melts the soul,
'Tis temper'd to their beauty: 'tis the mind
Which lends the happier influence it receives
From things external, and takes back its own
Even as a boon. A sympathy is on me:
I deem those fair lights mortal; there's a death
Looks through their glory: feeling they may perish,
I love them more; and my mortality
Shakes off its grosser weight, self-reconciled
By such high partnership.

XI. NYMPHS.

1

Beautiful Things of Old! why are ye gone for ever
Out of the earth? Oh! why?
Dryad and Oread, and ye, Nereids blue!
Whose presence woods and hills and sea-rocks knew—
Ye've pass'd from Faith's dim eye,
And, save by poet's lip, your names are honour'd never.

2

The sun on the calm sea sheddeth a golden glory,
The rippling waves break whitely,
The sands are level and the shingle bright,
The green cliffs wear the pomp of Heaven's light,
And sea-weeds idle lightly
Over the rocks; but ye appear not, Dreams of Story!

3

Nymphs of the Sea! Faith's heart hath fled from ye, hath fled;
Ye are her boasted scorn;

Save to the poet's soul, the sculptor's thought,
The painter's fancy, ye are now as nought:
Mute is old Triton's horn,
And with it half the voice of the Old World is dead.

4

Our creeds are not less vain; our sleeping life still dreams;
The present, like the past,
Passes in joy and sorrow, love and shame;
Truth dwells as deep; wisdom is yet a name;
Life still to death flies fast,
And the same shrouded light from the dark future gleams.

5

Spirits of vale and hill, of river and of ocean—
Ye thousand deities!
Over the earth be president again;
And dance upon the mountain and the main,
In view of mortal eyes:
Love us, and be beloved, with the Old Time's devotion!

XII. TO A WATER-DROP.

1.

Atom of the sustaining element
Which of the old earth is the sap and blood,
That dwell'st apart
From that vast heart
Of which thou art one life-drop, to the mood
Of thought thy narrow sphere lends spacious argument!

2.

This is thy voice:—“I am the globed dew
Which trickles from the locks of twilight grey,
When the earth falls asleep, and when anew
She wakens, blushing with a dream of day,
And the love-stricken star of the pale morning
Swoons in Aurora's eyelids; till the grass,
Foliage and flowers are pearl'd with my adorning,
And not a leaf but drinks me as I pass.

3.

“I am the tears that gush from human eyes,
Even figured as themselves and glassy-sphered—
A sweeter dew let fall from clearer skies;
And on the flower o' the cheek I hang endear'd:
I am the eyes, with air and fire enwove,
In triple glory; and I am the light
Which moistly lies upon the lips of love,
When love to liquid kisses they invite.

4.

“I am the rain which clouded heaven weepeth;
In the rebounding hail I dance congeal'd;
In the still snow which, mute as shadows, sweepeth
Over the earth, I am by warmth revealed;
And in the hoar frost is my gem secreted—
Soft-frozen dew; and from the icicle
I come at the sun's call—on bare bough greeted,
Or far amid the rocks in cavern'd cell.

5.

“I form the clouds and mists: the setting sun
Doth glorify me in the golden west,
The moon in silver cloud and halo dun,
And planets in their circlets of dim mist.

Without me were not the electric fire,
Thunder, wind, meteor, nor bright exhalation;
And through me the ethereal beams transpire
Which weave the rainbow's sevenfold coruscation.

6.

“I form the secret springs that feed the earth—
The gushing brook, swift rill and leaping fountain,
River and lake and waterfall; and mirth
Bounds with my music adown many a mountain;
And when the Winter with his cold hand chains
The fluent freedom which in me abided,
Ye may behold me fix'd in crystal plains—
And o'er me glide, swiftly as I have glided.

7.

“I am the seed whence grew the unfathom'd ocean,
Boundless, and crested with a foaming glory!
I form the billows whose eternal motion
Shakes the strong rock and fells the mountain hoary:
Without me the wide earth were desolate,
Its sweets corruption and its verdure sere;
And splendour waits upon my flowing state,
Or in the curving wave, or orbed tear!”

8.

Atom of the earth-filling element!
I cast thee now into thy kindred sea:
Lo! thou art mingled—
As spirit singled
From Nature's soul, awhile in us to be,
Is given to the Great Vast, and with its Depths reblent.

XIII. TO A NEW-FALLEN LAMB.

1

Awearied with thy struggle into light,
Thou liest exhausted on the dewy grass;
Whilst o'er thee stands thy dam, in bold affright
At every footstep which doth near thee pass:
Pain, fear and joy and love are in her eyes,
And all a living heart's pure mysteries.

2

But thou, unconscious and regardless lying
On the damp sod; too new inhabitant
Of this great scene of quick'ning and of dying
To know or fear or joy; clothed in thy scant
And rugged fleece, which the cold winds of morning
Unpitying strike, dost stir not at her warning.

3

O, for the power to look into the spirit
Which, as thy senses from without receive
The knowledge of their being, shall inherit
Thine infant brain; and in its foldings weave

The intricate forms and sounds, perfumes and hues,
Which the great Universe must there infuse!

4

Even in the contemplation of a lamb,
All that is vast and brief, blessing and curse,
In life and life's, drives thought into a flame
Whose bright spires in the blue-domed Universe,
Beyond the spheres, are hidden! Yet are we,
Weak wretch! but things of breath and blood like thee.

5

Nor do I know that this so boasted air
Of immortality we bear within
Is privilege: thou dost not know despair,
Though ignorant of hope; nor crime, nor sin,
Though with no self-wrought virtue; and no fear,
Although no faith, doth to thy dream appear.

6

Or come there thoughts of life to that dark brain;
Or thy life's spirit be as senseless water,
Which, all reflecting, yet doth nought contain
Of that reflected; even from birth to slaughter,
But for some hopes and terrors which are mine,
What difference 'twixt my mortal lot and thine?

XIV. THE COPSE.

TO ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.

1.

Nor step, nor speech of human thing is near;
But many-winged creatures, round me flying,
Make the incessant airs one voice appear
From Being's infinite heart! Upon the dying
Trunk of this mossy fruit-tree, old and sere,
And half-uprooted, toward the green slope lying,
Will I recline; and fold me in a trance
Of meditation with the bard of France.

2.

Away! thou art too wild for this calm dell;
Anon, I'll ponder with thee by the foam.
A bridal music, not a burial knell,
Must echo here: within this leafy dome
Soft-gushing melodies high o'er me swell
From two enamour'd birds, to shadow come
To bless each other with a summer song,
Whilst yet the earth is green and daylight long.

3.

O, god Apollo! there be million pleasures
Which thine eternal lyre can ne'er express
That warble in these winged poets' measures,
Full flowing from their little hearts' excess!
I know not what may be the rhymed treasures
That have been lost in old Time's wilderness;
But well I weet that never human lips
Breath'd love to love with sweeter soul-eclipse!

4.

They chant, till their own exquisite melodies
Extrance them into silence, and they flit
Mutely among the leaves: the gleaming flies,
Whose wings are rainbows, as with ether lit,
Around me wheel with stirring harmonies
That ne'er from dawn to twilight intermit;
And deep in yon green cave a veiled stream
Murmurs like thoughts of Heaven in a dream.

5.

Alphonse de Lamartine! Come hither, hither—
Furling thy sullen spirit's eagle pinion,
As mine is furl'd; and let us weave together
A sunny song of panting Love's dominion
Over the Universe! let us wear ether
Unclouded in our hearts, leaving the minion

Of common life to strive with common sorrow,
And with our lyres assert the joy of Heaven's morrow!

6.

“I am here! but not rejoicing
With thine idle gladness;
From the music round us voicing
I but gather sadness:
Thou sittest on a tree uprooted,
Which shall no more be leav'd or fruited;
Those minstrel birds, the bird of prey,
Or winter and its want, shall slay;
Those insects are each other's slaughter;
And the sweet music of the water,
Yon emerald cavern's mystic river,
The falling earth strikes dumb for ever.”

7.

I would reply; but—hark to that pure strain!—
Those wiser bards sing in the boughs again!

XV. THE NEST.

In a sun-excluding thicket—
Laurel, fir, arbutus, rose—
Where the cherup of the cricket
Rang at night and even-close;
And at early morn and noon
Piped the chaffinch joyously—
To his mate each song a boon
Dear as human poesy
Unto human thought—as far
In its green elysium hidden
As in purple clouds a star,
In love's heart a wish forbidden—
Hung the litle woven nest
Of some teeming warbler's rest:
Based upon two laurel sprays—
Emerald moss for its foundation;
Hair, enwreathed in subtle ways,
And, above, the implication
Of white wool and bosom-feather,
Matted in a round together:

Fibres fine and finer hair
Lined the winged creature's lair;
Laurels were its tapestry;
Roses strew'd their leaves beneath;
Storms broke o'er it harmlessly;
And the summer's perfumed breath
Round it crept in warmth and balm;
And the morn and even calm,
Gliding its green curtains through,
Hung them all with silver dew!

XVI. MIND.

1.

What is thy emblem, Mind?

The earth—now wearing on its forehead young
Unopen'd leaf-buds, and a few pale flowers;
Now with the summer's green and blossom hung,
And lavishing warm love on all the hours;
Now with its myriad globes of rich ripe fruit,
And its arboreous leaf-work, million-hued;
Now cold in winter's winding-sheet and mute—
But its deep heart with brooding life imbued:
Its early flowers and bursting buds
Struck by chill winds and cloud-rain'd floods;
Its summer mantle rent and sodden,
By all the elements down-trodden;
Its golden fruit and foliage scatter'd,
And its dead limbs oppress'd and shatter'd
By the strong wings of wind and storm,
And frozen in its heart-depths warm!

2.

What should be thy emblem, Mind?

The weltering ocean,
In calm or commotion—
Now with heaven's own hue
On its bosom blue;
Gentle and slow, with lustrous shadows
Of clouds thin-woven,
By light airs cloven,
And studs of light o'er its azure meadows:
Now dark and still
As intents of ill,
And a mighty mirror
For every terror—
And inly-folded, like resolved will:
Now rolling and foaming
In thunder and fire,
Like the turbulent coming
Of rending desire:
Now vailing to midnight its quivering crest;
Wearing starbeams and moonlight in love on its breast.

3.

What is thy meet emblem, Mind?

The holy beauty of the sky,
Dim shroud of that vast Deity

To whose veil'd ray all rays we see
Are cloud; with all the spirits that roam
Beneath its ether-woven dome:
The sun, whose space-enfolding flight
Steeps the inebriate earth in light;
The unresting moon, the love-beloved;
The planets and pale constellations;
The cloud-stars, where the soul, reproved,
Dreams of immensity, and quivers;
And ever-changing clouds, that flee
Before the wild wind's inspirations,
Like oceans dark and gleaming rivers,
And in tempestuous exhalations
Work change eternal o'er the earth and sea.

4.

As heaven upon the deep descendeth,
God—or whate'er that spirit's name
Whose torch lit up the undying flame
That lampeth in the eyes of space—
Falls on the mind:
As light and wind
Blend on the many-colour'd ocean's face,
So with our common thought that spirit blendeth:

As the sea shakes the earth
With every billow's birth,
The mind with all its strife
Shatters the nerves of life!

XVII. REALITY.

1

Reality's slave
From the womb to the grave,
Awake! awake! awake!
Wouldst thou nothing but feed
And sleep at thy need?
Awake! for thy soul's sake.

2

Art thou not a spirit
Ordain'd to inherit
The universe for ever?
And from birth wilt thou creep
To thy worm-tended sleep,
And from thy clay pass never?

3

The past, the to-come
Inform and illume
Thy present path, pale sleeper!

But thine apathy dull
Makes thy life-cloud more full,
And thy soul's shadow deeper.

4

From Reality's trance
Thy spirit advance!
Be dreaming! dreaming! dreaming!
Let thy thought's rapid wave
Far, far o'er the grave
Be streaming! streaming! streaming!

XVIII. DELIGHTS.

1

Rock'd on the salt deep
Into a sunny sleep,
And a dream sublime
Of the flow of Time,
Whose billows without number
Bear all things in a slumber
Into Eternity,
As we
Over the glowing sea
Are wafted sleepingly:

2

Pillow'd, with leaves and stars above us,
Upon hearts that love us;
Clasp'd and folden
In arms and eyes,
Till from full-cupp'd pleasure's brink
Into a trance we sink,

With visions golden
Peopling the shadow of our ecstasies—
Redeeming sleep from death,
And doubling every joy that perisheth:

3

Upon an oaken bough
In the fierce wind swinging,
Shouting to earth below,
To the clouds on high
And the birds that round us fly
Rejoicingly,
Words of a clear-tongued poet's singing,
Lofty flights of madness winging:
These are delights divine—
They have been mine.

XIX. BIRDS AND THOUGHTS.

1

Oh! I am weary
Of this being dreary:
Sweet birds! Sweet birds!
The winter is around ye;
And ice and snow
Wrap all below;
Above, the air
Is cold, and bare
Each bough,
And the frozen breezes wound ye;
That wherever ye fly,
On the earth, or on high,
Ye find no rest,
Nor food, nor nest,
Sweet birds! Sweet birds!

2

Oh! I am weary
Of this being dreary:
Sweet birds! Sweet birds!
Our thoughts like ye must ever
In this cold world
With wings half furled
Make voyage bare,
Till by despair
They're whirled
Around, and peace find never;
And, sinking or soaring,
Earth or heaven exploring,
They still must flee
Joyless like ye,
Sweet birds! Sweet birds!

3

Oh! I am weary
Of this being dreary:
Sweet birds! Sweet birds!
Ye must wait till the spring unfoldeth
The sun and earth;
And then in mirth

Ye may rejoice,
And with clear voice
Her birth
Chant to the sphere which her beauty holdeth:
And our thoughts must await
The great life beyond fate,
To soar and sing,
Like ye in spring,
Sweet birds! Sweet birds!

XX. “U S.”

1

For ever, for ever,
The gathering river
Of human life flows on:
We leave but a trace
On the current's face,
And that is lost anon.

2

Our laughter and tears,
Our hopes and our fears,
Our spirit and our form,
Like mist disappear
Which silent streams wear
In summer-twilight warm.

3

As a dream in our sleep
Is our life in the deep
Abyss of space and time,
Whose visions most dim and ideal
Of a being resplendent and real
Are record and prophet sublime.

XXI. OUR LIFE.

1

As in a shadowy vision
Do we walk the earth,
In this brief transition
Into death, from birth.

2

We live, or dream—and ponder
On all things around us;
Till the gathering wonder
Deepens to confound us.

3

In vain we strive to waken,
And to feel that all is real;
By that effort wrung and shaken,
We relapse to the ideal:

4

Till the sleep of life is past,
And its visions are departed;
And we wake in death, at last,
To a being clearer-hearted.

XXII. PRESENT AND FUTURE.

1

As from a gloomy valley,
O'er which clouds are sweeping,
Which with each other dally,
And end, like love, in weeping;—
Where wind and rain are beating,
To shelter birds retreating,
And all things living hush'd;
We gaze on hills afar,
Where sunbeams glowing are,
And life with light is flush'd:

2

So from the Present's sorrow,
Where sighs and tears prevail,
We look toward far to-morrow,
And the Future's sunlight hail—
Bright as bright hills seen from the valley,
Where the rain and cold winds dally,

And the clouds are canopy,
And unseen one happy bird,
And no insect-cherup heard,
And leaves and flowers weep mournfully.

3

But when we gain the height
Of time call'd future then,
We find that joyful light
Which there seem'd denizen
Is vanish'd; and the gloom
Which made the earth a tomb
Hath with us been travelling:
As the clouds to hill from valley
With us in our pathway sally
And there in gloom are gathering.

4

But still on heights beyond, beyond,
The cloud-chased rays are met;
And on we pace, with footsteps fond,
In search of sunshine yet—
Though still the clouds above us
Float onward, to reprove us:

So ever are we cheated
By the Future's flying light;
Till despair whelms all in night—
And the soul drags back, defeated.

XXIII. THE CURSE OF THOUGHT.

1

Why, why do I pine,
When the glories divine
Of the sky-painted earth are around me?
Oh! why do I grieve,
When so many hearts weave
About me their meshes of kindness?
Why to me is all vision but blindness?
Oh! why doth the balm
Of retirement and calm
Not heal, as 'tis wont; but still deeplier wound me?

2

'Tis the demon within,
More of doubt, than of sin,
That racks my gall'd spirit with brooding dismay!
I think on the past—
'Tis gone like the blast,

That dies, but leaves shipwreck and terror behind:
The present is blank as the eye that is blind;
And the future's a dream
That all shadow doth seem—
A fathomless deep, without haven or bay!

XXIV. DESPAIR.

The wave-roar of the thunder,
Beating the shore of heaven;
The piled rocks asunder
By earthquakes widely riven;
Wild beasts in midnight motion;
Whirlwinds, and torrents showering;
The tempest-voice of ocean;
Volcanoes, lava-pouring:
Great armies, mad-ambitious,
In smoke and blood contending;
Huge multitudes seditious
The air with tumult rending:
These things peace and silence are
To a mighty heart's despair!

XXV. FAREWELL TO MORTAL LIFE.

1

Breath, impregnate with a dream—
As the cloud with a sun-beam,
Ere descends the tempest-stream—
Farewell!
Thing of shadows; thing of fears;
Floweret drench'd by torrent-tears;
Splendour which a foam-wreath wears—
Farewell!

2

Web upon a whirling gale;
Murmur in a desert vale
From a wretch whose cold limbs fail
In snow;
Flutter of an insect's wing,
Gasping in another's sting;
Spray of an in-veiled spring—
Art thou.

3

Whence thou flowest, where thou tendest,
Why we love thee whilst thou rendest,
In what fearful depths thou endest,
None weet:
Leaping from the limbs of pleasure,
With all pains is thy deep measure,
From thy birth to thine erasure,
Replete.

4

From an atom dost thou rise
Into framed harmonies,
And high thoughts that walk the skies
Sublime;
Till thy weary lamp outburneth,
And to nought its light returneth:
Dust is all thy marvel earneth
From Time.

5

Though we salve and though we preach,
We nor medicine, nor teach:
Thy charms lurk beyond our reach,
Strange spell!

Thou, nor thine were of my choosing,
And thy loss is nothing losing:
From my frame uninterfusing—
Farewell!

XXVI. CORFE CASTLE RUINS.

1

In sunny beauty's self-diffused light,
That beam'd to shame the cheat of Athelwold,
She moves before me—Lo! the spiritual might
Of vision is upon me: I behold
The bleeding ‘Martyr’ spur his horse to speed,
And the queen smiling at the mother's deed!

2

I've trod the very stair Elfrida trod,
And seen the summer-clouds roof fleetingly
The towers of her inheritance! Ay, strode
Above the walls where monarchs feasted high,
Sweet women sinn'd, and dungeon'd victims groan'd,
And vassals revell'd whilst their masters moan'd!

3

Nettles and thorns and ivy overspread
The high places of the tyrants of old days;
And o'er their weed-choked hearths is idly read
The little name of each dull thing that strays

From his poor pigmy hovel, to crush'd towers,
Where the past's shadow clasps and overpowers

4

The substance of the present. Some few flowers
Amid these silent ruins breathe and smile;
And birds and insects frame their brooding bowers
In the cleft walls—as if to reconcile
The eternal enmity of birth and death,
Ashes with blood, and airless dust with breath.

5

The fulness and the vacancy of being,
Reality and vision, truth and fable
Alternately with blindness and with seeing
Endue my pausing spirit; and, unstable,
Yield mingled visitings of faith and doubt:
Pale adumbrations of this wreck without
Come to the chaos within—I darkly dream,
Lull'd by the unseen flow of my mind's cavern'd stream.

XXVII. THE “BELVIDERA” OF FANNY KEMBLE.

1

I oft had dream'd of mighty agonies,
Rending the heart with tempests of the mind;
Painting bare death upon the cheek, and filling
With some few tears of fire the maniae eyes:
Till such imaginations, fiercely thrilling
The electric soul within me, had entwined
Their shadows in one form—dark elements combined!

2

But vague and indistinct the gather'd vision:
Medea, in her babes' blood all disguised;
Cassandra, uttering the wild woes of Troy;
Or Dido, wailing in that dire transition
To desolation from o'erwhelming joy;
Or Constance, throned on earth and agonized—
But now my dark dream lives, in terror realized!

XXVIII. THE NET-BRAIDERS.

1

Within a low-thatched hut, built in a lane,
Whose narrow pathway tendeth toward the ocean—
A solitude, which, save of some rude swain
Or fisherman, doth scarce know human motion;
Or of some silent poet, to the main
Straying, to offer infinite devotion
To God, in the free universe—there dwelt
Two women old, to whom small store was dealt

2

Of the world's mis-named good; mother and child,
Both aged and mateless. These two life sustain'd
By braiding fishing-nets; and so beguiled
Time and their cares, and little e'er complain'd
Of Fate or Providence: resign'd and mild,
Whilst day by day, for years, their hour-glass rain'd
Its trickling sand, to track the wing of time,
They toil'd in peace; and much there was sublime

3

In their obscure contentment: of mankind
They little knew, or reck'd; but for their being
They blest their Maker, with a simple mind;
And in the constant gaze of his all-seeing
Eye, to his poorest creatures never blind,
Deeming they dwelt, they bore their sorrows fleeing,
Glad still to live, but not afraid to die,
In calm expectance of Eternity.

4

And since I first did greet those braiders poor,
If ever I behold fair women's cheeks
Sin-pale in stately mansions, where the door
Is shut to all but pride, my cleft heart seeks
For refuge in my thoughts, which then explore
That pathway lone near which the wild sea breaks,
And to Imagination's humble eyes
That hut, with all its want, is Paradise!

XXIX. TO THE BIRD'S-EYE FLOWER.

1

Thy beauty seems wrought of bright dew
That fell from the rainbow's blue
In rich drops azure and pearly;
And the lark, from beside thee upspringing,
Wild love of thy sweet eye seems singing,
As he mounts to the white clouds curly.

2

Thou openest thy gaze to the morn,
Whose kiss on thine eye-lid is worn,
Whence it presseth a tear of splendour
And a bride, on her rich bed dreaming
Of the love in her blue veins streaming,
Wakes not with a glance more tender.

3

Beautiful being! love-star of the flowers!
Birth-mate of the daisy in primrose hours!
Blue gem of the emerald meadow!
Not more sweetly the lone poet sleepeth
O'er the eloquent thought which he weepeth,
Than thou o'er thy moonlight shadow.

XXX. TO THE BIRD'S-EYE FLOWER.

HYMN THE SECOND.

Thou look'st on my Verse, dear Flower!
And my brain draws a finer power
From thy blue and tranquil eye:
Not the love on my Lady's lid,
As she broods o'er a joy heart-hid,
Fills my soul with a dreamy sigh
More lusciously!
The daisy, the glow-worm and lark,
In blossom, in light and in song,
And dews from the rainbow's arc,
Be with thee thy sweet life long!

XXXI. TO A BUTTERFLY AT SEA.

1

Slight thing of sunny hours!
Upon the cups of flowers
Folding thy wings in pleasure;
In perfume and mild airs
Fulfilling thy sweet cares,
At bright and balmy leisure!

2

What do thy pinions weary
Upon the ocean dreary,
Where their light state must perish?
Upon the summer-meads,
Where air on incense feeds,
Thou hadst enough to cherish.

3

Here, by the strong wind driven,
Ere long thou shalt have striven,
Thy grave will be the billow;

And thoughts of the green home,
Whence thou wouldst idly roam,
Shall come to thy death-pillow.

4

So Beauty's life is spent
On love's fierce element—
Her wing'd hopes fail; she dies:
So the pale Poet's dream
Faints in the waste extreme
Of life's realities.

XXXII. THE BIRD.

1

Cold rain hath fallen through the kindless spring,
Sweet bird of song!
Thou hast been mute; with wet and furled wing,
Dejected long.

2

Summer at length is warm upon the earth;
And sun and dew
Gladden the heart of things; and thy wild mirth
Thrills heaven through.

3

Had the spring worn the aspect of all gladness
On her fresh brow,
Thou couldst not have been further voiced from sadness,
Rich bird! than now.

4

And to have lived to sing to this great morn,
So robed in glory!
Cold winds and chilling showers well hast thou borne,
Thing transitory!

5

Let not despair await on gloom and sorrow,
Though dark-enduring;
For in the future there is still a morrow
High joy assuring.

XXXIII. THE GREETING.

(A FRAGMENT.)

1

My poet-thoughts, that long lay dead,
Are re-arisen; and must be fed
With the delight of outward beauty,
That they may freshly pay sweet duty
To God and skies and flowers and birds,
With all the hoarded wealth of words;
And give to Heaven and to Earth
Their resurrection, as their birth!

2

Lo! every wave of that vast Sea
Like a glad thing leaps to me;
Welcoming, each to the other,
The advent of their mortal brother;

Who hath long been toss'd, as they,
On a dim and stormy way;
Now meeting on the self-same shore,
To part, and wander as before.

3

The bare boughs greet me with oblations
Of dry leaves; whence contemplations
Rise, like ghosts of youth and grace,
Met, in winter's gathering-place,
With the ancient and the rotten;
All their witchery forgotten:
Ghosts, that still our ways condemn;
Till we join decay—and them.

4

Upon the Sea and on the cliff
There rests a glory fugitive
Of sunbeams, lying like the grace
Of bland smiles on a wrinkled face:
And on the sailing grey-gull's wing
Strange shades the clouds are scattering:
'Tis now a white speck in the black,
And now a stain on the white rack!

5

O! every thing to things, I ween,
The light in which those things are seen! [OMITTED]
Now, God be praised for all he gives!—
His creature, that was dead, re-lives.

XXXIV. THE DREAM-DANCERS.

1

No human beauty ever from the page
Of poet, or great painter's canvass, threw
Entrancement over sense; or in an age
Of living flesh and blood to fulness grew,
So beautiful and living as did come
One summer-night before me in a dream,
Pacing a dance of love-delirium
With measured motion—like a brimming stream
Which rolling in the sun we do behold,
Its broad unvarying ripples hung with gold!

2

A Man and Woman, bare as Bacchanals,
Clothed only in the robing light of pleasure,
And dancing to no music but the calls
Of sighs, which faintly with their feet kept measure;

Their mingling limbs now loosed, and now entangled,
Like clustering rose-boughs when sweet airs are blowing,
Or pure etherial fires now interspangled
By winds, and now apart in glory glowing;
Their liquid eyes into each other burning,
Their kiss-curved lips still to each other turning:

3

And thus they floated round and round, as lightly
As gold-wing'd creatures circle in the sun!
The Man still smiled rejoicing, and as brightly
As when their glorious dance was first begun;
But the ripe Woman with voluptuous feeling
Became oppress'd—a Hebe steep'd in wine
Out of Jove's cup!—and, in their midway reeling,
Sank on the bosom of her mate divine:
Then, both grew ether-pale as skies at dawn;
And o'er their forms a veil of light was drawn.

XXXV. THE STATUE.

1

She lieth bare, in unveil'd loveliness,
Yet nothing naked; for the perfect charm
Of beauty and of symmetry doth dress
Her figure in a raiment bright and warm—
A garb most spiritual, which doth repress
The sensual eye of sense: with one fair arm
She leaneth on a pillow, softly sinking,
And her sweet face upturns, to some voluptuous thinking.

2

The other, bending with a rainbow grace,
Plays with the hindmost tresses of her hair,
Over her shoulder—Oh! that love-toned face!
It beams a passionate pleasure on the air,
And makes us crave some silent dwelling-place,
To gaze and live on it for ever there!

A love-thought stirs her mouth; and o'er her eyes
Appears the memory of a thousand sighs.

3

Her rich-swell'd bosom, toward her white couch turn'd,
Spell-takes the eye-lids; and her limbs, extended
In animate perfection, are discern'd,
In all the harmony of structure blended,
Pressing each other's beauty: there hath burn'd
A dream of fire about her, which hath ended;
And now she looks reposing from that vision,
And from love's dream to love inviting soft transition.

XXXVI. THE WAKING MORN.

1

The blue, the fair eye-blue of Morn,
With fallow cloudings islanded,
Opens in fondness, slumber-born,
O'er the loved earth beneath it spread:

2

And, kissing it from balmy sleeping,
Lies on its breast in smiles of light;
And hastes, joy-showers of dew-tears weeping,
To realise the dreams of night!

XXXVII. A LAMENT FOR THE PAST.

O, Early Days! and Youth! and Bloom!
Ye are exsanguent in the tomb
Of Time and Change!
The Minutes and the Airs have taken
Your glory from this form forsaken!
I cannot range
The proud earth wantonly and proudly,
Nor cry unto the ocean loudly,
With glee redundant, as of yore!
The ecstasy of Life is gone!
Like a moss'd tree, I blanch alone!
I am beloved no more!
Old Time! my Youth restore!
Ye Elements! its liveries disgorge
From your eternal maw!
Kindle new fire, wherewith I may reforge

The iron of my strength! O, for a law
Of the dead Past revocative!
To my Youth's grave, O, let my Age withdraw
For thus, for thus, it is not Life to live!

SONNETS.

I. THE BRIDE.

Let the trim tapers burn exceeding brightly!
And the white bed be deck'd as for a goddess,
Who must be pillow'd, like high Vesper, nightly
On couch etherial! Be the curtains fleecy,
Like Vesper's fairest, when calm nights are breezy—
Transparent, parting—shewing what they hide,
Or strive to veil—by mystery deified!
The floor gold-carpet, that her zone and bodice
May lie in honour where they gently fall,
Slow-loosened from her form symmetrical—
Like mist from sunlight! Burn, sweet odours, burn!
For incense at the altar of her pleasure!
Let music breathe with a voluptuous measure;
And witchcrafts trance her wheresoe'er she turn!

II. BEAUTY VANISHED.

A creature beautiful as dew-dipp'd roses,
Symmetric as the goddess sprung in marble
From out the sculptor's mind, deeply reposes
In a rich sleep of thought; and the clear warble
Of birds that greet Aurora in blue skies
Hath not a sound so holy as the sighs
That part her fruit-like lips. Is she not dreaming
A poesy inspired of panting love,
Divine as that with which the heavens are streaming
When the intense eye of the west is wove
With the aurient sun-set? She is gone! I weep:
For so all beauty passeth from the vision;
And clouds of darkness o'er the spirit creep,
Making of all her light obscure elision.

III. THE MINGLING.

Nature, low-panting into silence, seems
In a voluptuous trance 'twixt pain and pleasure.
Like a flush'd bride, who sleeps, but still in dreams
Awhile sighs lovingly, the day is hush'd
To slumber in the west; but its warm beams
Yet breathe there of the sun: a fitful measure
Comes on the air, at length'ning intervals,
From some near-nestling bird; whilst, even as crush'd
Flowerets and leaves yield incense, fruits their juices,
The full-reposing beauty of the scene,
Press'd by the strenuous soul, deeply infuses
Its sweetness through the spirit; till between
The twain is but one life, and these clay walls
On this side Death dissolve, and all on air we lean!

IV. THE PRESENT.

As one, a steep and slippery cliff ascending,
Pauses midway, and dares not farther climb;
But a reverting gaze beneath him bending,
Greets terror in the downward course sublime;
And 'twixt the crags above and rocks below
Quails: so, between the depths of all we know,
And the veil'd Future's unattained summit,
Despond we, till our fears around us throw
A murkier shade than death's; and all the glow
Of fancy's star-fires would in vain illume it:
But, ever and anon, Love's moon-like beaming
With a religious beauty o'er us streaming,
Nor ghost of Past, nor dream of Future riseth—
But the sweet Present all in all sufficeth.

V. THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE.

War lay by Love: his sanguine limbs her whiteness
Bound, as might wreaths of coral ivory;
His sun-burnt cheeks from her etherial brightness
Gather'd a gentle glory; whilst a die
Of shadow from his brow her fair embrown'd,
And fell like twilight on the day profound
Of her warm eyes: then, lull'd in purple splendour,
She tamed his fierceness with her kisses tender;
And in the folding of her delicate arms
Beguiling him to savage deeds' disuse,
By the full prevalence of yielding charms
She won for long-lorn Peace a live-long truce;
Girding with moonlight hope her cloud of fears—
And half-redeem'd the world from blood and tears.

100

VI. THE PARALLEL.

I cannot celebrate great Nature's face
When my adoring eyes are fixed there;
For then am I enrapt in my enjoyment,
And feel her charms too well to say she's fair.
When thou art on thy wooing lady's bosom,
To laud her lips, or eyes, is't thy employment?
No; thou hast scanty time to cull the blossom,
And pausest not to descant on its grace:
But when thy love hath its delirium fed,
Thou dost retire, and call on memory;
Then in thy brain is inspiration bred,
And thou salut'st her with a comment high:
So, till I from the face of Nature turn,
I cannot speak the thoughts with which I burn.

101

VII. COMPARISON.

As lightning flashing on a twilight kiss
Startles the heart that in the darkness trusted,
Lest sight should make a sin of harmless bliss—
True to the law which Nature's self adjusted:
So, men's eyes striking on my musings written
Alarm my mind, that thought not to be seen,
Lest they should be with contumely smitten
And their high truth cried false by others' spleen.
Those lips are bold which bid the world defiance
And in its spite will take their dues of pleasure;
That verse is daring which holds firm alliance
With truth, and metes the world with rightful measure:
But lips still kiss, in face of scandal's blame—
And I must write, though half the world cry Shame!

102

VIII. ON A HUMAN HEART.

And was this loathsome clod, which now I grasp,
The vital centre of a wondrous world,
Warming a bosom for pale love to clasp?
Was this foul mass the marvel, where enfurl'd,
Like waves along the mighty ocean curl'd,
High feelings rose, that would the stars defy?
Was this the throbbing and dilating thing,
That lent all splendid beauty to the eye,
Made the lip burn with holy melody,
And floated Fancy on her rainbow-wing?
It was!—a living and a human heart!
A sun of smiles—a solemn cloud of tears!
What is it now?—Oh! let my soul depart!
She's stricken, and her glory disappears.

103

IX. TO THREE SKULLS.

Still grinning? ye grim frames of vacant bone!
Still staring at me from your sockets blank?
Your noses, bitten by the grave's black frost,
Still sneering hideously? and your lean jaws lank,
Jagg'd with those gumless teeth, still horribly
Mocking the porch of lips?—Ye do accost
My waking with a warning thunder-tone;
And in your looks I read the certainty
Of something that's eternal—death, or life—
For ye with either argument are rife.
I have had horrid dreams; and ye are blest
That no more welter with such fiery rain—
Curse on your empty heads! that are at rest,
Whilst tortures now are ringing through my brain!

104

X. SLEEP.

Why should'st thou rail at Sleep? poor waking Fool!
How canst thou tell what heavenly subtleties
Are in thy brain wrought by the Power of Dream?
What wondrous seeds of Rhymed Mysteries
Sown in the Soul in slumber, when the cool
And dew-lipp'd Night hath kiss'd each golden beam
That made the Day, into oblivion;
And we within her silent bosom swoon
Into a trance like Death's? What's waking pleasure,
But a forgetfulness of all of pain
That hath been and must be, with some bright treasure
Of present bliss, that no possession leaves us?
And what is Sleep? A ceasing to complain;
And happiest life, if it a sweet dream weaves us.

105

XI. SPACE.

O, for a song of unimagined glory,
To tell the visible wonders of great Space!
And stand as on a spiritual promontory,
Looking Creation in her holy face;
And with the adoring eye of Poesy
Read the love-secrets there! Holy, all holy,
Is every aspect of the earth and sky;
And all the mighty cloud of melancholy
That from the soul without on that within
Descendeth, to the brainwork of vast dreams
Lends splendid shadowings. O, for deep words,
That, like the music of leaf-hidden birds,
Might even from the listening flowers win
Assent to the great love which in me teems!

106

XII. REVELATION.

Spirit!—to God!—The Eternal Soul of Things
Is animate within us!—we aspire;
And, glorying in our elemental fire,
Expand etherially—till we embrace
At least a cloud that looks a deity;
And gazing upon Nature, face to face,
Half trace her secret fountains to their springs,
And hold a still communion with her sky.
We need no revelation of the God—
The high, instinctive Being of all Space;
For, as the sweet flower rises from the sod,
Our essence from its clay springs mountingly—
And all its heavenly birth-right doth inherit!
Ay, Spirit's revelation dwells in Spirit.

107

XIII. LIGHT IN GLOOM.

The self-same play is acted day by day,
And we the weary actors in the sameness:
Our eloquent'st thoughts are dumb in their display,
Our sight not seeing, and our speeding lameness:
We walk as in a cloud; and that poor ray
That finds us in the midst, but serves to show
The deepening mist that girds us as we go.
And yet, I wot, a high and glorious light
Lies in the outward Nature's couch of fire,
To whose eternal pillows we aspire,
And of their ardent freshness dream delight—
That makes a living waking in our slumbers,
Lightens a beam of glory through our night,
And leads the Soul's streams forth, in all their crystal numbers.

108

XIV. SOLACE.

Thou who dost slumber in dim apathy,
Born of this world's unfathom'd mystery—
Where nothing sweet is tasted, not even love,
Which bitterness succeeds not; where the dove
Of dear Enjoyment, by the vulture Sorrow
Is murder'd at the heart; and hope and thought,
By their intensity to torture wrought,
But gild the brief night that hath no to-morrow—
Yet, come with me! and to the altars fleeing,
For refuge from ourselves, of Nature holy,
Let us there worship, till this gloomy being
Feel gladness lighten o'er its melancholy;
And gazing on the blue sea, rocks and sky,
Our souls gush to their God, in felt eternity!

109

XV. THE JOURNEY.

“We're on a journey brief; the day is bright,
“And our thoughts joyous—that we shall not tire.”
We're on a journey that is infinite;
'Mid an eternal change of sun and cloud,
Cold winter showerings and hot summer fire;
Breathed on by zephyrs, struck by whirlwinds loud;
And our thoughts, floating through eternity,
Are lapt by turns in joy and agony,
In glory and in gloom; and if fatigue
Assail us not in our unresting travel,
'Tis that we make with our own souls a league
Not to look far before, but on our road
Glance round and feel employ'd: would we unravel
The Immensity beyond? We lift a weary load.

110

XVI. MINDS AND THE UNIVERSE.

There must be mighty pantings of free thought,
Cravings profound for liberty and love
And sublime ponderings on life and death,
In all the spirits that fill mortal forms!
I cannot yet believe the human swarms
Hived on the earth, are the mere things of breath,
Instinct and form, custom, and slavery
To what their fellows damn, or may approve,
Which still they seem: the mystery round them wrought,
The source and flow of things, the Eternity
From whence they issued and to which they tend,
Must draw their souls unto their utmost bend
And turn them from life's daily littleness;
Or reason is an ape, and spirit spiritless!

111

XVII. LIFE AND ITS DREAMS.

Even as a cloud, from the horizon's bound,
Floats o'er the dark sea dim and rapidly,
Passes before the sun, deriving light,
Wafts o'er the hills, as doth an airy sound,
And latching on the forehead of the night,
Faints into unseen dew—and so doth die!
Even as a far bird comes, with swift endeavour,
In happy search of regions summer-mild,
Sinks weary down upon the billows wild,
And soon within their depths is whelm'd for ever:
So is it with our life, from birth to death;
And, in their cloud and bird-flight, all its dreams
Still vanish even as a vapour's wreath,
Or perish in affliction's gather'd streams.

112

XVIII. THE LIFE ETERNAL.

We have two lives. The one, is but a cheat:
A thing of mere convention, which we bear
As minions of that Congregate Deceit,
Society—sole hope of many men!
The tiny parts of one great counterfeit.
The other, fountain'd in Eternity,
Eternal is; and toward Eternity
Flows constant; self-impelling and sublime:
It recogniseth neither Space nor Time;
Contain'd not, but containing; in itself
Folding the Universe; creating all,
Of nought created; sole, and self-sustain'd!
An all-perpetual, undiscerned glory,
To which this Visible Round is darkly transitory!

113

XIX. ENCHANTED GROUND.

I sat alone, far in a meadow nook,
Fern, briars and wild-flowers dew around me weeping,
And read upon old Bunyan's Christian book
Of Pilgrims vain on Ground Enchanted sleeping:
As, musing, from the page my gaze I took,
I saw dark ivy round a wild-flower creeping;
A spider, when my eyes that trance forsook,
Its venom on a golden insect heaping,
Did I arrest with my detecting look:
Beyond, a pretty-winged thing was steeping
Its plumes in dew-beams from the woodbine shook,
At which a bird flew by, and caught it, leaping.
Ah! when these evil aspects gird us round,
'Tis best to sleep upon Enchanted Ground.

114

XX. HOPE'S NEED.

The earth is full of ripe and pleasant foison,
Enough to feed its human people all
With sweet abundance; yet, save they quaff poison,
Or have recourse to water, fire, or steel,
Or strangling, or from some high point down fall
And dash their lives out, there be those must feel
Famine, and pining cold, and desolation.
O, God! sure hearts are stones? or none would want
The little which they lack in their progression
From birth to death: men's needings are but scant;
But scantier far men's charity, denying
Superfluous food to life, with hunger dying.
O, Human Thought! that in thy contemplation
Bear'st this, and hopest not—thine is sore oppression.

115

XXI. AN EXHORTATION TO MANKIND.

When will it be that men shall kinder grow
In human intercourse; and not thus, savagely,
Spring upon each occasion to o'erthrow
Their fellow-travellers through mortality?
God hath apportion'd us enough of woe
In this brief journey; from within derived,
And from the elements, in which we sicken,
Grow weak and die: let not man be deprived
By man of that poor solace which doth quicken
The flagging heart and the o'erlabour'd brain,
And temper to endurance, when self-stricken,
Or time and storm-worn. Transient thing! refrain!
Sting not thy brother insect, till he perish:
A life brief as thine own, vex not; but cherish.

116

XXII. TO THE PEOPLE.

The Fatal Tree that grew in Paradise,
Whose Fruit, being plucked and eaten, brought the Curse
Of Sin and Sorrow on the goodly Earth,
Must cure as it hath poison'd! Healing lies
In Knowledge for the wounds which the Old Verse
Avers were got from Knowledge: a new birth
Must rise from death; and both of that high cause
Which makes us “even as gods” be the deriven laws.
Let the gall'd Many, in their banded numbers,
Drink of the solemn Knowledge-streams that flow
Over the Land, from the exhaustless springs
Of the Redeemer-Press; till what encumbers
The people with its load be hurl'd below
Into hell-depths, and Mind be left to her free wings!

117

XXIII. THE TO-COME.

We spurn thy slight decrees, ephemeral World!
And the debased necessity of things
That bows us down before them: there is furl'd
In us the banner of a fortitude,
And lowly on its sovereign rampart hurl'd.
It shall be re-exalted! There be wings
Weaving themselves within the loom of Time,
On which a race to come shall float sublime
In the just liberty of their own mood.
Thou art a tyrant high, usurping power,
Which shall a little moment be obey'd—
And then, dethroned; the disenthralling hour
Now lightens from the Future's thunder-shade!
Thy minions veil their eyes, and are dismay'd.

118

XXIV. A PROPHECY.

There is a mighty dawning on the earth,
Of human glory: dreams unknown before
Fill the mind's boundless world, and wondrous birth
Is given to great thought; and deep-drawn lore,
But late a hidden fount, at which a few
Quaff'd and were glad, is now a flowing river,
Which the parch'd nations may approach and view,
Kneel down and drink, or float in it for ever:
The bonds of Spirit are asunder broken,
And Matter makes a very sport of distance;
On every side appears a silent token
Of what will be hereafter, when Existence
Shall even become a pure and equal thing,
And earth sweep high as heaven, on solemn wing.

119

XXV. OF POETS.

Oh! do not envy Poets the poor breath
Of praise which urgeth on their sail of life
Along the troubled waters of the world;
Nor the rich power by which they twine the wreath
Of fame which crowns them when that sail is furl'd
In the calm haven of the breathless grave:
Bitter and strong and manifold the strife
Which shakes them on that voyage; every wave
Of feeling dashes o'er their weltering heart;
And all the thunder and the flash of though
Vollies and lightens round their fitful brain;
And their high power, by which the world is wrought
To mighties sympathies, is grasp'd in pain,
Shower'd from the bosom-tempests they impart.

120

XXVI. SHELLEY.

Holy and mighty Poet of the Spirit
That broods and breathes along the Universe!
In the least portion of whose starry verse
Is the great breath the sphered heavens inherit—
No human song is eloquent as thine;
For, by a reasoning instinct all divine,
Thou feel'st the soul of things; and thereof singing,
With all the madness of a skylark, springing
From earth to heaven, the intenseness of thy strain,
Like the lark's music all around us ringing,
Laps us in God's own heart, and we regain
Our primal life etherial! Men profane
Blaspheme thee: I have heard thee Dreamer styled—
I've mused upon their wakefulness—and smiled.

121

XXVII. SHELLEY & KEATS, & THEIR “REVIEWER.”

Two heavenly doves I saw, which were indeed
Sweet birds and gentle—like the immortal pair
That waft the Cyprian chariot through the air;
And with their songs made music, to exceed
All thought of what rich poesy might be:
At which, a crow, perch'd on a sullen tree,
Dingy and hoarse, made baser by their brightness,
Would fain be judge of melody and whiteness,
And caw'd dire sentence on those sweet-throat turtles;
To which his fellow flock of carrion things
Croak'd clamorous assent: but still the wings
Of those pure birds are white amid the myrtles
Of every grove, where cull they nectar'd seed,
Whilst still on cold, dead flesh, those carrion creatures feed.

122

XXVIII. “JULIAN AND MADDALO.”

I read of “Julian” and “Count Maddalo,”
Till in their spirits' presence stood my soul;
And blending with their sympathy of woe,
A tempest woke my thoughts, and they 'gan roll,
Billow on billow, toward Eternity—
And Passion's cloud hung over the vast Sea.
Where is the Essence now, that thought and spoke?
Absorb'd like water, the frail vessel broke
That held it trembling from the sand awhile?
Or doth it quiver still; and, quivering, smile
At the now clear'd-up Mystery of Creation?
Which shook it once even to its mortal seat,
Which seems the brain and heart, that burn and beat,
Till Life pants darkly for Annihilation.

123

XXIX. TAGLIONI.

The music and the eloquence of motion
Breathe in quick beauty from her subtle feet;
She moveth like a moonbeam upon ocean,
Which curves and quivers as the billows fleet;
Upon the earth her fine foot falls as lightly
As winds of odour, or aërial rays
From Morn's blue eye, on a mist-woven cloud—
Or dews upon the forest and the flowers:
So round Apollo glance the golden Hours;
Bacchants, with thyrsus arm'd and cymbals loud,
So bound, in many a wine-bewitched maze,
About their joyous god; so Iris, brightly,
Weaving from sun and rain her silent wings,
Upon her pinnacle of ether springs!

124

XXX. THE TRANCE.

For six long months I lived and yet was dead:
All faith and hope were gone from me; I spoke not;
My heart no longer on my spirit fed,
But on itself, and bitterly; it woke not
With the awak'ning world of things; it sunk
Into the depths of sullen-sleeping thought,
And brooded on extinction, in a drunk
And apoplex'd bewilderment! I sought
For savage arguments, wherewith to arm
My life against my life, that it might pass
Into oblivion: but the mighty charm
Of Being chain'd me to itself; a glass
All microscopic came to my Soul's eye—
I shook—the atom Time grew to Eternity!

125

XXXI. THE REPROOF OF FAITH.

Even by the Wonder of the Universe
My inmost heart and brain were shaken fearfully;
And whether 'twere a blessing, or a curse,
One of the myriad moving things to be
That people it, I knew not. From the Sea
A sound of terror and a sight of gloom
Pass'd through me; and as upward, mute and tearfully,
I turn'd mine eyes for comfort, Space grew dark
And breathless as a deeply-vaulted tomb;
That my soul circled round the hueless arc,
And thence return'd unsolaced. From within
At length dawn'd consolation. Much of sun
Had shone, and yet would shine, where now was none:
Faith with the thought came back; and whisper'd—“Doubt is Sin.”

126

XXXII. ATOMICS.

The cavities of tiny grains of sand
Have “deserts idle” and deep “antres vast,”
The haunts of things alive, which understand,
By usage of all senses, that they live,
Enjoy and suffer; but, no more! And we,
Of this “great globe” the creatures transitive,
Know we aught else, for sure? Eternity;
Immensity: in these our doom is cast;
With which compared, earth and its measured time
Are but as sand-grains, whereof in the nooks
We little insects take our revelry,
Laugh, weep, and turn to dust. Those dogma-books
That plague us with our immortality—
Hold they more truth of warrant than this rhyme?

127

XXXIII. THE UNDECEIVING.

On the great day when I did cease to love,
A glory from the midst of things departed:
But straightway I became more solemn-hearted;
Lifting the business of my mind above
The vulgar work of sense, and even drew
A fulness from the world's new vacancy.
In the changed spirit of life which in me grew
There was a temperate and chasten'd sadness,
That gather'd in the wake of that old madness
As cloudy evening o'er the hot day-sky,
And strengthen'd with its shade my dazzled view
Of Present and Hereafter. Be my eye
Closed to all outward beauty from this hour;
Whilst in my soul I arm a change-defying power!

128

XXXIV. SOUL-CREATION.

Those words I utter for the Vulgar World
Are not the speech of my in-musing heart;
Where, like to honey by the flower enfurl'd,
There lies a treasure from the World apart:
The World, that cannot pluck from me the art
Of breathing beauty into trembling song;
Which till the blood be stagnant in my veins
Must of prerogative to me belong!
An hour of calm and sea-side loneliness
Will melt out from my mind the grievous stains
Impressed there by forced worldliness;
And as an eve of stillness after storms
Shall my soul be, and with a self-caress
Beget creation of all lovely forms.

129

XXXV. THE UN-CHARMED.

My pierced life was all ablood with sorrow!
For, suddenly, the veil of beauty thrown
By glorifying Youth o'er sweet To-Morrow
Fell, and disclosed to me the Future's frown;
Within the wrinkles of whose unread brow
There was a lurking something which till then
I dream'd not hung before the lives of men,
Ready to fall upon them as they grow
Into the longer knowledge of brief years:
Blank vacancy; and doubt; and strangled tears,
That never reach the eyelids; vanishing
Of all sweet things we love; death-beds; and graves;
And shadowy wrecks, where pale hopes trembling cling,
Heart-faint, and stifled by continual waves!

130

XXXVI. THE CORRUPTION.

With much of baseness have I had to do—
Base men; base things!—in this relapse of mine
Into the darkness of our common life,
Through which we thoughtless of all wonders go
Of birth and life and death, as brutish swine
That for their food i' the mire make bestial strife.
Worse than Persephone dragg'd back to Hell
From midway-wending towards Apollo's sight,
Fares the pale Soul, into her fleshly cell
Resunk, from her aspirings to the light
Of that etherial day which ever burneth
In holy Thought's imagined Universe!
I have been tempted; and I feel the Curse,
As vainly now my heart to its old glory turneth.

131

XXXVII. “MY TABLETS, HO!”

Time passeth o'er me like a silent cloud;
My gaze reverteth, but 'tis gone—dissolved
Into vacuity, or dim-involved
With the undiscerned winds!—Oh! Infancy,
Where be thine eyes, floating in delicate blue?
Oh! Childhood, where thy heart-high prophecy
Of dream-fulfilling bliss? Oh! Beauty's hue,
Where be thy balmy youth? Oh! Manhood proud,
Where thy stout sinews? Age, oh! where thy breath?
All blended in the infinite of Death!
Therefore, away! base heed of appetite;
And, love! be pastime for a wanton hour:
Out of this darkness must I kindle light,
And the all-powerful Shadow overpower.

132

XXXVIII. TO MY SONG.

Fawn of my deer-swift Thought! that wert most young
And bounded o'er the meadows of delight,
Dew-freshen'd herbs and pleasant flowers among,
With choice of cool shade or of sunshine bright:
What hath befallen thy rejoicing state,
That thou dost gambol on the sward no more,
But still at early morn and evening late
Crouch on the sod where thou didst leap before?
A blight is on thy place of revelry,
And thou dost pluck up hemlock with thy food;
That well may sick death overdim thine eye
When poison mingles with thine infant blood:
Ah! muddy are the streams thy thirst that slake;
And thou hast honours—but they branch, to break.

133

XXXIX. ROYALTY.

Feels a king's soul as mine such regal pride?
I'm hill-surrounded and star-canopied,
And upon Thought immortal am I throned;
My verse my sceptre, and my liegemen true
The tributary hearts which I imbue
With my mind's shadow: should I stand disown'd
Amid the peopled world—scorn'd of the many,
Fear'd of the few and unbeloved by any—
I am the master still of mine own fate;
Defeat cannot subdue me to its state,
Nor victory unseemingly elate:
Otway died meanly; not so Chatterton,
Whose hopes forsook and left his heart alone—
No footstool-emperor he, for man to tread upon!

134

XL. PHILOSOPHY AND IMPULSE.

TO G--- T---.

When Socrates, through Plato, learnedly
Argueth against impulsive action,
I, in the ignorance of Mortality,
To his divinest meditation,
Which holdeth that achievement—difficult
As is the checking of the wind and tide—
The curbing of the Thought's and Feeling's pride,
To be within the scope and a result
Of blood and fancy-led Humanity,
Do write me down most captious heretic,
Falling to contradiction splenetic.
Ah! dear G--- T---! If this did abide
Within the compass of Philosophy,
My Friend and I were spirits right orderly!

135

XLI. AN ANTICIPATION.

My youth was love, and all my love was youth;
And youth and love were blended in my song;
With much of fable, but with more of truth,
And though the chain was weak, its power was strong:
For, as we pause by summer-vale, or hill,
To drink the music of a bird, or rill,
So warm hearts waited round my gushing lyre,
And loved the dreamer for his vision's fire!
But now my hair is grey, my sense is blind;
Time's ashes choke my heart's expiring glow;
And my Song, leaving this bright world behind,
Mounts to the loftier world to which I go:
I muse on deathless things; but die, alone—
A King abandon'd, by his shatter'd throne!