University of Virginia Library

SONNETS

I
YESTERDAY.

Pale pilgrim of the heavens, that late didst glide
With sunbeam staff the violet vales along,
Where fountains of fresh dew gushed up in song,
To bathe thy golden feet, and then subside—
Last wave that sparkled on Time's ebbing tide—
How are thy bright limbs laid amid the throng
Of vanished days, that drooped o'er earthly wrong,
Seeing how virtue is to vice allied,
And vanished blushingly. Sad Yesterday!
Night's winding-sheet is round thee, and the eyes
That found a health, or fever, in thy ray,
And thoughtfully perused on evening skies
Thine elegy, star-lettered—now away
Turn their brief thoughts of thee, and thus men moralize.

II
TO-DAY.

A liberal worlding, gay philosopher,
Art thou that lift'st thy young and yellow head
O'er the dim burial of the scarce-cold dead,
Building above thy brother's sepulchre
A home of love that sense might almost err,
Deeming thy end therein to woo and wed
The flower-haired Earth for ever. Yet the red
In yonder west may well such dreams deter!
Yes, thou, all-hailed To-day! whose out-stretched hand
Scatters loose riches on a bankrupt land,
Even thou art but a leaf from off the tree
Of yellowing Time; a grain of glistening sand
Dashed from the waters of that unsailed sea,
Where thou to-night shalt sink, and I as soon may be.

III
TO-MORROW.

Who shall imagine how thy wing may sweep,
Many and mighty nations lying bare,
To blight—war—famine? Who shall say if e'er
The day may burn again? how men that sleep
May wake, and wander up and down, and keep
Their eyes on the dark east in long despair!
Or, coming, wak'st thou from thy cloudy lair
A lion-sun? or like a lark, to reap
Music in heaven for the glad ear of earth?
The signs of many yesterdays appear
But fading sparks on gossip memory's hearth;
Thine are as comets burning. For thy birth
Freedom, half stifled in the clasp of Fear,
Looks o'er a wailing world. The dawn, the dawn, is near.

IV
WISHES OF YOUTH.

Gaily and greenly let my seasons run;
And should the war-winds of the world uproot
The sanctities of life, and its sweet fruit
Cast forth as fuel for the fiery sun;
The dews be turned to ice—fair days begun
In peace wear out in pain, and sounds that suit
Despair and discord keep Hope's harpstrings mute;
Still let me live as Love and Life were one:
Still let me turn on earth a childlike gaze
And trust the whispered charities that bring
Tidings of human truth; with inward praise
Watch the weak motion of each common thing,
And find it glorious—still let me raise
On wintry wrecks an altar to the spring.

V
ON TIME.

To one that marks the quick and certain round
Of year on year, and finds how every day
Brings its grey hair, or bears a leaf away
From the full glory with which life is crowned,
Ere youth becomes a shade, and fame a sound;
Surely to one that feels his foot on sand
Unsure, the bright and ever-visible hand
Of Time points far above the lowly bound
Of pride that perishes; and leads the eye
To loftier objects and diviner ends—
A tranquil strength, sublime humility,
A knowledge of ourselves, a faith in friends,
A sympathy for all things born to die,
With cheerful love for those whom truth attends.

VI
THE CHARM OF SOUND.

Though that with silenced heart by stream or glade
The music of the morn hast haply heard,
When every leaf hath canopied some bird;
Whose step through wood and wilderness hath strayed
When all the living sunshine dies in shade,
When nothing in the haunted heaven hath stirred,
And earth hath echoed forth no wakening word;
Oh, come, ere yet the youthful year shall fade,
Among the mountains and the woods once more,
Pluck healthful pleasures, such as grew of yore
Wild in the ways of life. The fevered air
Of cities stifleth Reason, and their roar
Leaves in the soul the silence of despair;
Then come where Thought resides, for Music too is there.

VII
HIDDEN JOYS.

Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem,
There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy, of silence, or of sound;
Some sprite begotten of a summer dream.
The very meanest things are made supreme
With innate ecstacy. No grain of sand
But moves a bright and million-peopled land,
And hath its Edens and its Eves, I deem.
For Love, though blind himself, a curious eye
Hath lent me, to behold the hearts of things,
And touched mine ear with power. Thus, far or nigh,
Minute or mighty, fixed or free with wings,
Delight from many a nameless covert sly
Peeps sparkling, and in tones familiar sings.

VIII
INFANCY ASLEEP.

The fairest thing that human eyes may view
Now breathes beneath my own—a sleeping child,
Smiling beneath its thoughts and visions mild;
Its face upturned in hope's pervading hue,
As the glad morning of the mind dawns through.
These wordless lips as yet have only smiled
On life, nor hath an evil taint defiled
Eyes that are closed like flowers—whose tears are dew
From the heart's inmost heaven. Oh! infant heir
Of Nature, in thy fresh and delicate dust
If aught of ill be mingled, 'twere unjust
To deem it thine, for on thy forehead fair
Sit purity and peace: be ours the trust
That age shall find them still unchilled by crime or care!

IX
TO J. O.

I class thee, moral Critic, with the few
Whose simple friendship is a kind of fame;
On whose unpurchased praise we rest a claim
To glories which the Cæsars never knew.
Thy nature was conceived ere falsehood grew
A fashion in the world, and Wit took shame
To twine a wreath for Wisdom's naked name.
Thus have thy words a power that doth endue
Our dreams with faith, our deeds with gentleness.
Within the mirror of thy single mind
All noble thoughts their dear reflection find;
And thy calm spirit, shunning all excess—
Keen in its quest of good, to ills resigned—
Pursues its way in smiles, intent to cheer and bless.

X
LIBERTY.

There is a social and a solemn spell,
A spirit in our dust, a dream divine,
Filling the world with inspiration fine,
And making virtue purely visible;
Whether in hall of state or studious cell,
Where'er the currents of our life incline,
Oh! equal Liberty! this power is thine!
For at thy voice, which Instinct knows as well
As doth a child its mother's natural tone,
The darkened soul looks sunward, like a bird
Whose wing hath paused on mountains not its own.
By thee, fair Freedom, in the outcast herd
The seeds of high nobility are sown,
And abject minds are taught the wisdom of a word.

XI
TO NATURE.

Sweet Nature, with thy bosom ever young
In green temptation, and in healthier charms
Than Art hath yet been painted with; whose arms
Have rocked to rest a mind that oft have clung
To the rich promise of thy secret tongue,
Fulfilled in silence: Nature, not of those
Who, shunning thy most fond and sure repose,
For crowded cities their high harps have strung,
And poured in thankless ears their rapturous rhyme—
Forgetting how each hollow flower around
May hold an echo of Fame's answering sound
In natural numbers, simple, yet sublime—
O! not of such is he whom changing time
Has only brought a wish to tread thy hallowed ground.

XII
TO D. W. J.

When I behold the false and flattered state
Which all ambition points at, and survey
The hurried pageants of the passing day,
Where all press on to share a fleeting fate—
Methinks the living triumphs that await
On hours like thine might tempt the proud to stay.
For on a green and all unworldly way
Thy hand hath twined the chaplet of the great,
And the first warmth and fragrance of its fame
Are stealing on thy soul. The time shall be
When men may find a music in thy name,
To rouse deep fancies and opinions free;
Affections fervid as the sun's bright flame,
And sympathies unfathomed as the sea.

XIII
MORNING.

Wake from your misty nests—instinctive wake,
Ye fine and numberless, and sleeping things!
The infant Saviour of all blossomings
From heaven's blue womb hath passed; and for the sake:
Of Earth, and her green family, doth make
In air redemption and soft gloryings.
The world, as though inspired, erectly flings
Its shadowy coronals away, to slake
A holy thirst for light; and, one by one,
The enamoured hills—with many a startled dell,
Fountain, and forest—blush before the sun!
Voices and wings are up, and waters swell;
And flowers, like clustered shepherds, have begun
To ope their fragrant mouths, and heavenly tidings tell.

XIV
NOON.

How all the spirits of nature love to greet,
In mystic recognition from the grass,
And cloud, and spray—a warm and vivid class—
The eagle-stirring Noon; around whose feet
The glories of the brimful summer meet:
That reeling Time beholds his sober glass
Turn to a goblet; and the sands that pass
Seem drops of living wine! O, this is sweet,
To see the heavens all open, and the hood
Of crystal Noon flung back! the earth meanwhile
Filling her veins with sunshine—vital blood
Of all that now from her full breast doth smile
(Casting no shadow) on that pleasant flood
Of light, where every mote is some small minstrel's isle.

XV
EVENING.

Already hath the day grown grey with age;
And in the west, like to a conqueror crowned,
Is faint with too much glory. On the ground
He flings his dazzling arms; and, as a sage,
Prepares him for a cloud-hung hermitage,
Where Meditation meets him at the door;
And all around—on wall, and roof, and floor,
Some pensive star unfolds its silver page
Of truth, which God's own hand hath testified.
Sweet Eve! whom poets sing to us as a bride,
Queen of the quiet—Eden of Time's bright map—
Thy look allures me from my hushed fireside,
And sharp leaves rustling at my casement tap,
And beckon forth my mind to dream upon thy lap!

XVI
MIDNIGHT.

The pulse of Time is stopt: a silentness
Hath seized the waters, and the winds, and all
That motion claims or musical natural;
The altar of all life stands victimless.
Of beast or bird, in joyance or distress,
All token sleeps; nor leaf is heard to fall
As Midnight holds her breath! The kingly hall
Is barred—the slave inherits an excess
Of infelt loyalty—the exile views
His home in dreams; nay, even the student breaks
From his worn volume, and forgets to muse
On laws and worlds—the miser only wakes,
Warming his fingers at a golden heap,
He smiles in Midnight's face, and will not trust to sleep.

XVII
THE MOUNTAINS.

Oh! Mountains! On your glorious points sublime,
The threshold of our earth, to stand and see
The seasons on swift wings come forth and flee;
And from the changes of enchanted time
To draw the moral music of my rhyme,—
How full of joy this simple lot would be;
To cushion on the grass my bended knee,
And worship Nature in a clearer clime.
For on the hills have mortal footsteps found
The eagle nest of Freedom, and a throne
Where peasant-princes have been proudly crowned.
Full many a stirring air and pastoral tone
Come breathing from them still; and all the ground
Is full of strange delight and glories deeply sown.

XVIII
NATURAL STUDIES.

To see the grace and glory of the year,
Cradled in leaves, grow with the breath of May,
At whose warm touch the winter melts away,
And all the wakened heaven, shows full and clear;
To mark the faint but freshening light appear,
And throw its first fair gold upon the grey,
Giving glad promise of the dazzling day;
To view the mute and labouring Night uprear
Its starriness through storms; or trace the tide
Forth from its pebbly prison flowing free—
These link the soul, O Nature! unto thee;
And in these scenes are figured and implied
The dawn and growth of life, when taught by pride
The Mind disdains the dust and feels its liberty.

XIX
THE STATE OF MAN.

Oh! who can look upon that lofty mind
O'ercome by taunt and tears; observe the vow
Of princes unfulfilled, and the slow plough
Crushing the peasant's hopes; the weak resigned
To wrongs, the crafty trampling on the kind;
The laurel wreathed upon a branded brow,
Hiding, not honouring; the olive bough
Faded, and cast upon the common wind—
And earth a doveless Ark. Oh! who can see
How weak the wise, how fallen are the free;
How Thirst sits pining by the plenteous main,
While Virtue finds her garlands but a chain,
Nor deem the golden hour is still to be,
When Life shall look to heaven exempt from pride and pain.

XX
IN MEMORY OF KEATS.

Mute Minstrel of the Eve, pale, mystical,
When one by one comes forth the pensive train
Of things not born for worldly strife and pain,
That cannot fade, though doomed perchance to fall;
Fond Cherisher of passions, fancies, all
Whose essence fills a poet's flower-like home.
I saw but now, within you distant dome,
A cloud that passed its transitory pall
Across the quivering light, and I did think
That moment on the cold and shadowing shame
With which thy starry spirit hath been crowned.
How vain their torturings were! for thou didst sink
With the first stone cast at thy martyred fame;
How like the snow that's ruined by a sound!

XXI
DELIGHT NOT DISDAIN.

Around man's hearth his dearest blessings meet.
Why look we for a fruit that grows afar
Planted in peril, when free pastures are,
Like promises, spread round our calm retreat!
Man flies the land to range where billows beat;
Forsakes his hut to track the conqueror's car:
Yet he whose eyes but watch some wandering star,
May crush the steadier glowworm at his feet.
And thus who idly grasp a doubtful good,
In thoughts obscure and passions wild and vain,
Neglect the native pleasures of the blood,
And turn its health and hopes to present pain;
Missing, for gems deep fixed within the flood,
The readier riches of the fragrant plain.