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

Each mountain's snowy bosom feels
Young Spring's dissolving glow;
And wide the waveless river steals
In silent peace below,
Through velvet meads and flowerful vales,
Where browsing cattle be;
And scarcely kissed by gentle gales,
The blue and crystal sea,
With here and there a sail unfurled,
Like dove-wings white in space,
Spreads dimly to the spirit-world
Where Earth and Heav'n embrace;
Like purple of deep-vaulted night
When hanging vapours lift,

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And clouds of snow, like clouds of light,
Across the moon may drift;
Like some interminable sweep
Of lightly ruffled grass,
Where pasture is for many sheep,
And scattered breezes pass;
For, faint as smiles that sweetly break
The calm of one who dreams,
Come languid winds, and in their wake
A trace of sorrow seems:
And the white calm, like slumber's bloom,
Profound but transient,
Is streaked with shade, as glow and gloom
In summer glades be blent.

II.

Yet where no winds disturb the trance
No spangling sunbeam shines,
But diamond-pointed ripples dance
Across the deeper lines,
Thus all the waves in dreams which pant
Two tints of Eden clothe,

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One pale, one darkly radiant,
But born of beauty both;
And ocean seems a damsel fair
Below the moon that lies,
Entangled in her black bright hair,
Uplooking to the skies;
And from that sea a gentle wind
Comes like a dreamer's breath,
Charged with a blessing undefined,
A whisper hushed in death.

III.

My boat lies buried 'mong the weeds
Along the river-side:
'Tis loosed, and through a lane of reeds
Half noiselessly we glide.
The quiet waters with us go;
The clouds are still on high;
A maiden on her white pillow
Sleeps not more peacefully;
Below the keel a gurgling sound
Makes music in my ear;

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The valleys change in form around;
New hills beyond appear.
The world is love, but nevermore
My soul can taste of bliss,
And yet has known but once before
A sadness sweet as this.

IV.

It was a day which might have been
Born in earth's golden time,
And through a blue and silver sheen
The dawn began to climb;
The stream lay silver in the sun,
And calm as some dead child;
Mute were the willows every one,
They wept, while lo! it smiled;
And there was one beside me then,
A virgin pure and white,
A shrine, an angel among men,
A Heaven revealed to sight.
This scene of placid loveliness
Wears not a charm so meek

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As that which made her glances bless
And tinged her marble cheek;
And wheresoe'er her footsteps trod
To me was holy ground.
A saint may serve an unseen God,
But I had sought and found.

V.

I stand upon a little isle
With one old turret crowned,
And lovely as a tearful smile
The ocean beams around.
My skiff may kiss the shell-strewn beach,
And tarry till I come,
For sure my sorrow cannot reach
This haunt where grief is dumb.
I hear the lark up in the sky
Make light of my despair,
And many a wingèd melody
Is fluttering in the air;
While fiercely prone as Titan forms
That stiff in torture died,

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The mountains of a thousand storms
Strike heaven on every side,
With here and there a smaller shape,
Glassed in the lucent sea,
Some rocky strand or jutting cape,
As calm as calm can be.

VI.

But breaking now the mute repose
In flocks the sea-birds rise,
Like winter flakes which winds oppose,
And hurl back t'ward the skies;
And upward still in wailful choirs
They hover o'er my head,
Like taunting ghosts of pure desires
Once felt, forever fled.
Away—I cannot bear the place;
I cannot bear the sea.
'Tis holy as her own young face,
With not a smile for me.