Aonian Hours; And Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Aonian Hours; And Other Poems

By J. H. Wiffen

Wiffen, Jeremiah Holmes (1792-1836)

[epigraph]

II.

CANTO II.

POEMS.

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CANTO II.

“O Primavera gioventù de l'anno,
Bella madre di fiori,
D'herbe novelle, e di novelli amori;
Tù torni ben, ma teco
Non tornano i sereni
E fortunati dì de le mie gioie.”
GUARINI.

I

'Twas sweet I said to throw yourself at noon
Loose on May flowers and placidly repose,
Whilst twine o'erhead in many a fair festoon
The gadding woodbine and the sweet-briar rose.
But sweeter far, as airy music flows
From the grove's orchestra above, around,
In the open sky to wake. He only knows
How laughs the sun, and on the grassy ground
What chequering shadows lie, and what bright tints abound.

II

I was still dreaming when I heard the boughs
Parted asunder with a gentle noise,
But yet the falling blossoms could not rouse
My soul entranced, though conscious of its joys.
I heard the low of kine, but 'twas my choice
Not to be stirred, and thus I slumbered still;
Till high methought I heard Acasia's voice
Call me with songs up her dear native hill—
Why did I wake so soon? 'twas but the linnet's bill;

III

Which breaks the crystal air in sounds that gush
Clear as a fountain from its jasper base,
And warm as if its little heart would rush
To ruin with the music. From the face
Of the pure firmament light shadows chase
Each other o'er our world, as flies the rack,
Softening the sunbeam for a little space,
And saddening all the landscape in its track,
Till the cloud parts like snow, and the sweet ray comes back.

IV

On my hot brow, diffuse, delicious breeze,
The coolness of thy chalice! thus to lie
In the fresh shadow of the flickering trees,
Gloom on the grass but glory in the sky;
And mix with idlesse a calm dignity,
Which finds a moral in the slightest thing,
The whisper of a leaf—a lulling fly—
All changes which the cuckoo-seasons bring,
Is to draw bliss from toil, sounds from a tuneless string.

V

I cannot wrap in hideous vacancy
Mind's glorious faculties—upon the stream
Of Thought my gondola I love to ply
In search of greener shades, a fresher dream.
Drive wheresoe'er it will, let shade or beam
Glance on its painted prow from cloud or sun,
There fails not solemn or romantic theme
To light the gorgeous waters as they run—
Awake, ye mighty Shades! my vigil is begun.

VI

And O, what page can charm the lingering noon
Like thine, wild Master of the mask and pall,
Shakspeare! prince, patriot, wizard, mime, buffoon,
All—all in turn, and great alike in all.
The cold, the loved, the crowned obey thy call,
Now Passion thrills us and now Terror shakes—
The bridal now becomes a bloody Hall,
The feast a couch from which no sleeper wakes,
Where Murder plants her stab, the Furies coil their snakes.

VII

The sweet, the grand, the fair, the terrible,
The foul, the fond, the hideous and the bright,
The summer's vision, the magician's spell,
The stars, and the proud thunders of the night;
The sightless steeds of agonised affright,
Whispers of love and battailous uproar,
Burn in thy thoughts and radiate into light,
Which Time repeats and Feeling must adore;—
What new sublimer worlds shall Genius hence explore!

VIII

Here Cæsar, recent from barbaric wars,
Leads Rome in chains—the purple robe assumes;
There a loud shout thrice strikes the golden stars,
The deed is done, and Liberty resumes
Her march: to horse! to horse! a thousand plumes
Wait round the midnight Brutus in his tent.
Wan in the midst his warning Genius glooms
With finger to Philippi! a lament
Floats round the seven-hill'd Town—its last lorn pennon rent.

IX

There stands the gentle-musing misanthrope,
The Prince of faded passions, on whose breast
Sorrow writes madness—he whose sweetest hope
Droops like narcissus, when the winds o'the west
Gather its willing leaves; forlorn his vest—
The fool of Fortune, with keen feelings cursed,
To be a proud King's terror and his jest:
The dark grave crops his rose—the rose he nursed,
What can his heart do now but wither, bleed, and burst!

X

O for a love like thine, dear Imogen,
Unchanged in absence, undeprest by ill!
Those rueful storms which shake the faith of men,
Left thee the same fond, trusting woman still.
Tears for thy tale! the elder grows at will
Rank o'er a crumbling ruin with the rose,
Which then her essence sweetest does distil,
Like Virtue run to wildness with her woes—
So, through thy weeds of grief, Love's mossy buds unclose.

XI

Or, we will climb the mountainous cliff which hangs
O'er the mad surge, unheard so high, with Lear.
He is a chaos of all passions—pangs
Have hurled presiding Reason from her sphere:
His eyes are stormy, but without a tear—
Them wrath has scorched! his majesty but brings
The fiery-flying lightnings yet more near,
To strike the Tower round which one sweet root clings,
Whilst the wolf howls beneath, and the hid scorpion stings.

XII

Proud as those fires, dallying with nought but clouds,
Wild as their will, and blasting as their stroke,
His brooding, bright ambition Richard shrouds
Beneath a painted mask—a muffling cloke—
Till works his poison, and all bonds are broke
Which kept him from his dazzling wish; when won,
Glideth the subtle aspic from his Oak,
To rear his soldier-crest unto the sun,
And flesh his fangs in blood—avenged ere day be done.

XIII

But May is ripe with roses virginal
Unplucked of summer, where no serpent's tooth
May bubble forth its venom; ere the fall
Was sweetness and the stainlessness of truth,
And unpresuming love—and it may soothe
To mark their rays of radiance meet in thee
Cæsario or Viola—maid or youth—
Thy love is unsunned honey, which the bee
Cells beneath briery boughs that eye may never see.

XIV

Break off! a Phantom moves through marble halls
In gloomy stateliness—night's shrieking bird
Flaps the friezed window with her wing which falls
Hollowly on the ear—my brain is stirred—
But she who bears the taper hath not heard,
With fearful visions her wild eye is glassed
Staring in slumberous trance, and many a word
Of guilt from her divining lips have passed,
Whilst the Weird Sisters laugh astride the groaning blast.

XV

Sweet winter-blossom, by a wind too rude
Tossed on the waters of a stormy sea,
Which Heaven with greater tenderness endued
Than thy sire's heart—alas, that such should be!
Young Perdita! O let me walk with thee
Through all thy fortunes; exiled as a thing
Of ill—a worm from a degraded tree;
But thee erewhile the handmaids of the Spring
Transplant to rosy bowers on Pleasure's April wing.

XVI

Gold in a rock! who hides his casket so?
Timon of Athens; mark his gloomy stare—
A yellow Lion glaring on his foe—
His soul was bountiful and trusting, e'er
That trusting bounty wove itself the snare,
In which all rage is powerless. To the cave
He shouts his wrongs—it babbles his despair;
He hath betook him to the savage wave
Of the resounding sea, and dug him there a grave.

XVII

Or to the ‘modern Timon’ let us turn,
Whose deep misanthropy winds like a spell
Around our young affections, till they burn
With feelings—visions which no tongue can tell.
Harold! with thy dark grandeur I will dwell
All mad and moody being as thou art,
In the eye of fiery zealots, who compel
Thy Prince to wrap a mask about his heart—
With smiles we ever meet, and 'tis with sighs we part.

XVIII

Whether in Rome we hear the authentic voice
Of her sad Genius, or in Athens mourn,
In sweet Egeria's mossy grots rejoice,
Or wildly weeping clasp dear Thyrza's urn;
Now briefly kind, now stoically stern,
Censor or soph, the scorner or the sage,
To thee we cling, and drink at every turn
Freedom, and fire, and pathos from thy page,
Through every varied scene which marks thy Pilgrimage.

XIX

In naked gloominess the Pilgrim stands—
No hope to woo, no danger to appal,
In Christian, Turkish, and Barbaric lands,
Without his like, and saturnine in all,
His honey-drops of pleasure turned to gall,
Raising the fever which they sought to slake—
A Statue on its marble pedestal,
Whose nervous limbs some unguessed passions shake,
Where Grief seems to repose or Agony to ache.

XX

There is one golden chord in Being's lyre,
One trembling string to finest issues wrought,
If a beloved finger touch the wire,
It deals around amid the heaven of thought
Elysian lightnings with like music fraught:
Once snapt—no hand re-strings it, or can steal
The vestal flame which visits it unsought,
But on the instrument Gloom sets his seal—
This stroke the poet's heart hath felt—doth hourly feel.

XXI

What marvel then if Fancy should rebel
Against her first creations, and thus shape
Shadows on canvass—Tasso in his cell,
A Corsair anchoring off a Turkish cape,
A fiery Giaour, a Selim in escape
Bleeding in death—or Hugo's fatal flame?
The cup which sparkled with the bright blue grape
If filled with wormwood to the brim, will claim
A harsh and bitter hue—the spirit does the same.

XXII

Then to its first romantic dream recurring,
Recals the fugitive which Pride exiled;
Its first emotions in the pulse are stirring,
And roses fix and flourish in the wild.
Hence Love, pure, warm, and guileless as a child,
Rises from the Pactolus of his mind—
Leila the lovely, and Medora mild,
Zuleika—a mimosa from the wind,
Folding her shrinking leaves, and Florence fair and kind.

XXIII

A dream to wake from, and to weep that such
Was not accorded to his lonely lot,
Dark Disappointment! at whose withering touch
The past—all but the present is forgot;
And the mind colours all things with a blot
Of midnight, in whose depth no star may burn,
Making that seem to be, which yet is not—
And hence it is dull Hatred will discern
Him in his Pilgrim's vest, the sternest of the stern.

XXIV

Meanwhile, by Adria's sunny sea thou rovest,
Heartsick with sorrow whilst in life's best bloom,
The pensiveness thou woo'st, the face thou lovest,
The eye of azure, and the cheek of gloom,
Her waves to please thee silently assume;
And in them and in thy benevolence
Which speaks a better and a brighter doom
Than envy grants thee, is some happiness—
For her calumnious wrong will pity love thee less?

XXV

O no, no, no! nor vainly hast thou sung
Thy hidden griefs, the blighting thoughts which tear
The heart they torture—Minstrel! many a tongue
Repeats thy echoes to the charmed air,
And eyes there are have mourned o'er the despair
Which made thy breast the home of bitterness;
The great, the good, the noble, and the fair,
Albeit their blessing could not make it less,
Have bent them from their bliss to pity and to bless.

XXVI

We see, but cannot heal the stanchless wound,
We share its gushing sorrow, still it bleeds;
Man plucks from out the garden's ruinous ground
The baleful nightshade, though it shed its seeds
With lavish bounty, but the bitter weeds
Of rooted sorrow mock his arm—ah why,
When the stung heart on its own sickness feeds,
Can we not wring from out compassion's eye
One potent silver drop to hush its agony?

XXVII

And is there then no talisman to quell
The thousand dark soliloquies entwined
With the soul's sufferance, and from out its cell
Expel the spirit which enthralls the mind,
Which from the void of years long left behind
With Ariel voice evokes from their abode
The pulseless phantoms of delight? to bind
Those airy shapes, O can no pitying God
Wave the subduing charm of his Lethean rod?

XXVIII

Yes! though the mind by Memory's scathing share
Ploughed—waxes flowerless, black, and withering,
Like fields o'er which the desart's burning air,
Simoom or Samiel, passes with hot wing,
Fountains there are which for a season fling
Freshness around, and with their gentle dews
Charm wearied nature to a second spring—
Hope, and the sweet voice of the prompting Muse,
Both stirring still to joy, nor thou their gifts refuse!

XXIX

'Tis true the one but seems to draw its dyes
From the orbed rainbow in the dark storm bending,
Beautiful Visitant! to mortal eyes
Our gloom with the first light of Eden blending;
Beautiful, but how brief! too soon descending
In gentle tears that seem to weep our woe;
But still the colours are of Mercy's lending,
And presage of her future fiat—Go
To your own home, ye Clouds, thou swelling Deep reflow!

XXX

And who from out the dim abysmal sky
Would pluck the lovely Crescent of the night,
Because she has not all the majesty
And arrowy brightness of the God of Light,
Nor cull the blossom ere decay or blight
Feed on and spoil its damask beauty? so
Shall we not seize the sybil of delight
Because she has a fairy's fleetness? No—
Pluck the fair flowers of Hope whilst yet her roses blow.

XXXI

Or, if her fleeting visions be too weak
To silence thoughts that ill with pleasure suit,
Again the Muses' hallowed region seek,
And touch the string of that Elysian lute
Whose sound might charm the Furies—as the foot
Of Orpheus trod the downward path, and they
With all their thousand hissing asps grew mute
In listening to his song—griefs dark as they
The Eolian talisman of Music will obey.

XXXII

There is another and a purer fount,
There is a sweeter and a happier meed
Than e'er was gathered on the Muse's mount,
A plant for sorrow and for pain decreed,
Comfort the fruit—Religion is the seed.
She calls us with mild voice, which to repel
Must cause the wounds of sorrow still to bleed;
Obeyed—the waters of delight will swell
From an unfailing spring. ‘Sweets to the sweet, farewell.’

XXXIII

Ye that are weary of the world, come here
And drink a Lethe to your cares—its stream
Flows through these alleys silent, deep, and clear,
Making the toil of human passions seem
A restless vigil or a shifting dream.
It is not in the stirring haunts of men
That peace resides, the ever-pleasing theme
Of our desire—her nest is in the ken
Of some religious wood, or dim romantic glen.

XXXIV

'Twas in a grove retiring far away
Of blackening pines, and on a hill like this,
Silent and sweet, I've heard Alonzo say,
He felt the first thrill of enamoured bliss,
That lured him to the fatal precipice
From which he fell as in the flowers he played.
'Tis a sad tale, and suiteth not amiss
With the deep umbrage of this placid shade,
Wherein his feet so oft have languishingly strayed.

XXXV

A youth—he rarely mingled with the rest,
His chosen friend was solitude, among
Vallies, and woods, and waters, he was blest;
To him, earth, heaven, and ocean found a tongue,
And told their mysteries—to them he clung
Like a vine's tendril, till his spirit grew
Shy, silent, and reflective, and so hung
On what was wild, and wonderful, and new,
Till it seemed coloured all with their enchanting hue.

XXXVI

With this severe reservedness of mien
Was mixt a fervid and a gentle mood,
Which ever seemed to shun, yet charmed if seen,
By him the mossy rock, the wave, the wood,
Were peopled with affections, them he wooed
In every season; in the summer wind,
And snows of winter, it was joy to brood
On nature's volume, where the Almighty Mind
Pictures his awful face, magnificently kind.

XXXVII

'Twas Summer; scarce upon the aspin tall
The small leaf trembled—in the noon's repose
He sought from far a hospitable Hall,
Which dimly peeping, from the woodlands rose;
Not uncompanioned—arm in arm with those
Who most had met his warmth with warmth sincere;
Hid from his sight a neighbouring river flows,
Hung with fresh bowers, which murmuring cool and clear
Down many a rich cascade, stole sweetly on his ear.

XXXVIII

The Genius of the Place poured all his pride
At his advance upon the hanging grove.
Sparkled in light the ever-flashing tide,
A sound beneath—a silentness above;
Of brightest blue that day the skies were wove,
Its hue was magical—the Hall he found
In whose high porch now first he saw his Love,
Pouring sweet medicine in a brother's wound,
Which as the more he wept, more tenderly she bound;

XXXIX

And from the busy fingers wiped the blood,
And soothed his sorrow for a father's sake;
Her form, her pity secretly subdued
His gazing eye—he knew not what could make
A stranger look so dear, and prisoner take
His soul in sighings he could not explain;
Kind was their greeting, and his heart could ache
With hers to see the suffering and the pain,
One moment linked it there in a familiar chain.

XL

And in the garden sitting by her side,
When all was blissful, solitary, sweet,
He found the voice he ne'er before had tried,
And taught the warbling echoes to repeat
The name of Ion. In that dear retreat,
Musing or smiling she was ever by,
Or if she strayed to some romantic seat
Unknown, a shout was in the crystal sky,
“Ion?” the hollow cliffs and mossy walks reply.

XLI

Whatever flowers she cropped him were preserved
In his best volume with a miser's care,
Whatever were the praises she deserved,
He deemed she was the fairest of the fair;
Perfect each word, look, motion, gesture, air—
And I have heard him say, her native tone
Was a pathetic simpleness so rare,
It fell like music o'er deep billows blown,
That such another voice was—O no, never known!

XLII

And in their long, long walk at summer-eve
Beside the temple, in the accustomed wood,
Whose was the leaf which opened would relieve
Alonzo's fearful and desponding mood?—
To her he read, with bosom too subdued
By what it felt, sweet-stirring at the core,
What Campbell's happy hand, benignly good,
Drew of the tenderness which Gertrude bore,
Ajut's departing sail, or weeping Ellenore.

XLIII

And ever from his lid a tear would slide
Which he could not repress, he knew not why,
And Campbell, Ion, valley, temple, tide,
Swum in a Paradise of beauty by.
And on the air would fall the unbidden sigh,
Till Ion trembled, and no more the page,
Bent at the passage wet by either eye,
The excess of praise or pity could engage,
Too dear the glancing war which their dark pupils wage.

XLIV

Are they on earth or in the court of heaven?
A thought to be imagined, not expressed!
But with their rapture a decay is given,
Or bliss would so annihilate the blest.
Love is the Aloe of an age at best,
Its leaf may for a century be green—
That for which Youth is ever on the quest,
Its present flower—tomorrow but has been,
So must it fare with those who linger in that scene.

XLV

It came at last, the melancholy hour
Dreaded so long, and it was death to part;
O had he never known the passion's power,
Than feel the struggles of a bursting heart!
He passed away and never told his smart,
One kiss he stole, and thrice returned to tell
By nought but sighs, a gaze, a pause, a start,
A gushing tear, the mastery of the spell—
Scarce spoke his wild white lips articulate farewell.

XLVI

The world hushed not his agony of thought,
The peopled city was to him a wild
Whose vital barrenness before him brought
The face—the idol from its shrine exiled.
Yet were there things which oft his grief beguiled,
The moss-rose given when it began to blow,
The tale o'er which she wept, or sighed, or smiled,
Her folded leaf, her profile—these could throw
Sunshine on his despair, deliciousness on woe.

XLVII

I see him join the gay—his brow is knit,
I know his thoughts, to Ion they belong;
There is no charm can overpower his fit,
But pity, and the harmonies of song.
Once hid the laurels and the pines among,
In his love's youth I heard him touch a strain
Liquid with tenderness, to which his tongue
Trembled, as though prophetic of his pain,
As I his form recal, his spirit sings again.

To Ion.

1

The waves we traced, the walks we trod,
I cannot help but build in air,
When Ion seeks their lonely sod,
Say, does she wish Alonzo there?
Upon my fancy graved I bear
The flowery wood, the mossy hill,
And that forsaken Temple, where
We sat, and sighed, and looked our fill,
And e'en the sunshine and the shade
Which robed the paths wherein we strayed.

2

How darkly have the journeying years
O'er me their stormy shadows cast,
Since in a war of hopes and fears,
Sweet Ion, from thy bower I passed!
It soothed the tears which rose so fast
And gushingly when thou wert by,
In thy dear eyes to see them glassed
Like rain-drops in a sunny sky.
I would not that one drop of pain
Thy tranquil spirit then should stain.

3

But now so changed in love or ruth,
I guess not how, I know not why,
These weeping eyes 'twould more than soothe,
To know that Ion's are not dry.
The woods are wild with harmony,
I hear it, but I am not glad,
I ask if in as blest a sky,
The heart of Ion is as sad;
To think such things I know unmeet
From one so fond, of one so sweet.

4

But oft the fondest thing assumes
A moodiness from others' glee,
These waves will frown, when fall the blooms
Upon them of the lilach tree—
They waft a sound of joy to me
I would not feel, I would not hear,
Ion! alone I'd gaze on thee,
And wrestle for a bursting tear,
One sunny tear, to prove at last
Thy constancy through all the past.

5

But if thy maiden truth I wrong,
Here as I kneel where I have knelt
In prayer for thee so oft and long,
Look on this heart and thine will melt.
In desolation it hath dwelt,
And mourned o'er its uncertain lot;
O if the half of what it felt
Be thine, I am not all forgot.
This bosom could not then repine,
Convinced it held one pulse of thine.

XLVIII

Years passed with years; unchanged his spirit was,
A virgin volume filled with Ion's name,
In whose pure sound he read as in a glass,
A kindred feeling, an unbroken claim,
Perfect as when without a farther aim
He listened to her tones—and now the blast
Of winter blew, spring fled, and summer came,
And with a beating heart and footsteps fast,
Filled with a thousand thoughts he trod that Hall at last.

XLIX

She was still beautiful, and gazed on him
With a bewildered eye of kind regard,
And prayed the youth to ease his wearied limb—
What toil would not that winning voice reward?
Nor were the woods, the rushing waves debarred
To their soon-seeking sight—his love he told,
A feeling pity in her eyes was starred,
She could not listen with a bosom cold,
But—an usurping root had flourished o'er the old.

L

He heard—he felt, wept, chided, pardoned, passed
A hurried hand across his burning brow,
And in unutterable wildness cast
The dark thought back—perhaps it was not so,
Her love might yet awaken to his woe,
A wronging Angel he could never hate;—
I know not—for her tears refused to flow;
He still against all hope would hope await,
Again he passed away, again he sought her gate.

LI

The reckless stream flowed as it flowed before,
The lychnis budded, and the forest bowed
With blossoms all unsparing as of yore—
He asked of Ion, but the wave was loud,
And the rock would not answer—'twas too proud
To bear the question—Ion was a bride!
He knew it not. A voice amidst a crowd
In pity to his ignorance replied—
Enough! a broken heart what hand can heal or hide?

LII

He could not—to the place of many graves,
Rushed like a driven deer the unconscious man,
To pour forth groans of which the innocent waves
Prattled, as smooth and tranquilly they ran.
He wished his life were fettered to the span
Which they, the buried held—it might not be;
The winds were charged with gentleness to fan
The fever of his agony, as he
Bent to the Power above his supplicating knee.

LIII

Thence Mercy, radiant as an angel flew,
And shook a flower of comfort in his bowl,
Torn from the amaranth; in the bowl it blew,
And shed a sovereign balsam o'er his soul.
Beside her mother's turf, it could console
Him of past hopes forsaken, even there
To wish, that as the varying seasons roll,
No portion of his pangs might Ion share,
He turned and passed away—'twas more than he could bear!

LIV

Peace to thy banished, but enduring breast,
Alonzo! as the woodbine round the tree
Twines sweetly, may the Star which rules thy rest
Diffuse its choicest influences on thee;
Sorrow the path, in heaven thy bridal be,
A glory faintly shadowed forth on earth,
Hallowed with seraph songs and jubilee;
Peace to thy troubled spirit, in the dearth
Of thy once promising hopes, and dear domestic hearth!

LV

Advancing to the steep wood's southern side,
A glimpse comes on me of the glittering Town,
Far off o'er trees and level lawns descried,
In midst a Tower with ivies overgrown
Starts from a mass of shadow. Taste has strown
Her verdant web o'er chancel and o'er aisle;
On buttress, turret, Gothic mullion, stone,
Creeps the dark weed in beauty, to beguile
With its religious shade the horror of the pile.

LVI

Thence widely winding down a sylvan dell,
Fenced from the touch of each ungentle wind,
I reach methinks Love's Delphic oracle,
For many a long-forgotten name is shrined
In sculpture on a beech's glossy rind,
And whispered vows, and words of tender sound
Are heard they say to float, when suns are kind,
From viewless forms, now near, above, around,
Blessing their steps whose feet its solitude have found.

100

LVII

The air is delicate, and pure the place,
The tall tree's foliage casts a pensive shade,
Its boughs depend with inexpressive grace,
The last to wither, and the first arrayed
When April dances in each opening glade;
And far and wide is seen Adonis' flower
Stained from his ancient wound, and born to fade,
Which Venus mourning many a summer-hour,
Here drives her turtle car from Acidalian bower.

LVIII

Steep is the acclivity which now my foot,
Ambitious of its scene, aspires to scale;
A hawk flies round it, and the Wood grows mute,
Conscious that evil pinions load the gale.
But look! what loveliness is in the vale,
Solemnly beautiful! that golden light
Eve's curtain is. Plato, I bid thee hail,
Did not thy spirit move before my sight?
Haunt'st thou not now these groves, thine own uprooted quite?

101

LIX

Where are thy olives and thy laurels now,
Frequented Porch and holy Academe?
Owls haunt the ruin, axes lop the bough,
Fallen is the column, shrunk Ilissus' stream!
And is it so? is Science too a dream
Baseless as they, the echo of a sound?
The sage's precept, rhetorician's theme,
Fall they with tower and temple to the ground,
Periods which charmed and lit assenting nations round?

LX

Twined with the ivy of despoiling years,
The fane of Pallas to the dust may sink;
But She is co-eternal with the spheres,
And Wisdom is the soul's ethereal link
Which binds it to its God. With thee to think,
Pure Plato! though in error, is a fit
More glorious than from other founts to drink
The stream of truth. If falsely Tully writ,
It is a bright deceit which she may well remit.

102

LXI

I did not err, for Science can evoke
E'en from their urn the ashes of the wise,
The thoughts they cherished, and the words they spoke,
The key of life within her volume lies;
And thus that sea of bowers before my eyes,
Where blooms the unfading bay, the cypress weeps,
Is populous with earth's divinities;
They well may be where thought such silence keeps,
And from the gloom she loves the bird of Wisdom peeps.

LXII

Within the shade a ruined temple stands
To sight conspicuous, navelled in the pines,
Speaking of Grecian art, since Vandal hands
Defaced her structures, and despoiled her shrines.
As here, the weed of ruin darkly twines
Her marble walls now verdant with decay,
As here, on roofless floors her sunbeam shines;
As here the fox, the jackall howls for prey
There, where Minerva shone, and Pericles bore sway.

103

LXIII

Too clear a type of thy degraded state!
And there are lovely things which haunt thee still,
Land of immortal relics! in thy fate,
Though fallen Colonna strews Tritonia's hill,
Forms such as those which rapt Apelles' skill
Made breathing in thy high and happy hour,
Thy olive shores with classic beauty fill,
But chained beneath the Vandal Slavery's power,
We love and start away—the wasp is in thy flower!

LXIV

But round the princely coast of Albion, she
Who starting from thy ashes, keeps thy fire
Of Vesta in her temples of the free,
The wise to win, the coldest to inspire
With the mild pulse of elegant desire,
With more than Grecian beauty, Woman roves;
Her wit Aspasia, Sappho gives her lyre,
Penelope her cestus, veil, and doves,
And Helen the dear smile which dimpled Hebe loves.

104

LXV

And as the brilliant halcyons seek the shades,
And fluttering upon azure wings, appear
Loveliest above secluded waters, maids
At the calm sunset walk in beauty here;
Wise but not grave, correct but not austere,
The harmonists of life, who scatter round,
Benignant as the Pleiads in their sphere,
Mirth in their smiles, and music in the sound
Of tones which sweeter fall than dews on starlight ground.

LXVI

Saw you those eyes which sparkled as they passed,
Bright with excessive feeling? they belong
To warm Euanthe, in whose soul are glassed
The love of nature, and the love of song.
The mirthful form which gayly shot along
With her whose look was an ingenuous grace,
Fluttering with sweet confusion, was the young
Ianthe with Verduta; next in place
Is one whom from your mind no season can erase.

105

LXVII

Her eloquence of figure seems to start
Pure from the Grecian chisel, and to claim
A kindred with those statues which impart
Awe to the eye, and rapture to the frame.
Warm from her cheek the Promethéan flame
Of what from heaven was stolen might be caught,
And dignify the Rhodian artist's aim;
The blended charms which he all vainly sought
Throughout the shores of Greece, in Isaline are wrought;

LXVIII

And graces which they had not—the gazelle
Springs not in glorious liberty more free
To the far palms which shade some Syrian well,
Or almond-bowers in happy Araby.
Thoughtful beside the bright laburnum-tree,
Her hours devoted to some glowing page,
Combines the fanciful Euphrosyne,
Youth's flowers of freshness with the fruits of Age,
Then Phryne golden-tress'd, and Sophonisba sage.

106

LXIX

But than the quivered Dian far more shy,
With modest beauty, in her sable veil,
Sulmalla in the loneliest walk will fly
The breath of praise. Listening the nightingale
Too late, has made Medora's face so pale,
So like the jasmine, innocent and sweet;
The mild-eyed Arethusa seeks the vale,
And gay Janeira and Janessa's feet
Have too their share of joy in this beloved retreat.

LXX

Nor pass unsung the fair Genevra by,
Whose hand, disporting with the silent strings,
Draws sounds which make us watchful, and the eye
Melt, as when Israfil the angel sings,
And to some holy Imaum's vision brings
The beauty-peopled bowers of Aden near:
Hark! for his flute the shut of blossoms rings,
From the far vallies creeping in the ear,—
Vallies, in whose cool depth the first blue mists appear.

107

LXXI

It is the dying hour of day which grows
Sweeter in setting—all is shadow round,
But where afar the tall trees part in rows,
The West burns like a ruby, and the ground
Is tinctured with its brightness to the bound
Of the soon-purpling East. I will away
And gaze once more upon the ancient mound,
Where with stern hands embrued in civil fray,
Roundhead and Cavalier usurped alternate sway.

LXXII

The point is won: how balmily the breeze
Breathes from the sky-aspiring larch! this hill
And all its vales of tributary trees
Are gathered in one scene, which asks the skill
Of Poussin's beauty-breathing hand to fill
The fancy of a stranger; but to wreak
Such love upon the task as to instil
The immortal tints of nature's changing cheek,
Art must exhaust her stores, and leave the rainbow weak.

108

LXXIII

We move—the expressive Picture will assume
A more endearing aspect, we recur
To Tempe and to Vall'ombrose—a gloom
As holy falls from the umbrageous Fir
Which shades these vallies, and the vallies stir
With as white flocks; nought else is seen to leave
Its fixt repose—the statued clouds scarce err
Over the marbled skies, which to them give
Hues which dispute in love, and discords which relieve.

LXXIV

Such pastoral quiet marks this evening scene;
But where conspicuous o'er yon Eastern vale
Hill undulates on hill, the roar has been
Of Battle, ('tis Tradition tells the tale,)
The neigh of snorting steeds, the trumpet's wail,
Whilst civil banners flouted the blue sky,
Stained with devices proud, which seldom fail
To fan the fire of feud and anarchy,—
“The Commons and the Cause”—their watchword and reply.

109

LXXV

Answered with taunts the gallant Cavalier,
The battle joined—where then was your renown,
Frenetic zealots! when in mid career
The kingly squadrons hewed your pennon down?
Then might you hear “The Crosier and the Crown”
Pass o'er both armies, in a shout which took
The air in thunders to the distant town,
League after league, and into vapour shook
Craulee! the startled waves of thy pellucid brook!

LXXVI

'Tis done! the strife is over on the plains,
The years revolve. Yon subterraneous tower
Holds now within its heart, but not in chains,
The daring Regicide who mocks the power
Of swords that seek him, Argus-eyes that lower
To trace his haunt, and what is now his doom?
To shroud, year after year—hour after hour,
His helmed head within a living tomb;
How brooks that rebel Chief his cell's sepulchral gloom?

110

LXXVII

E'en as the Lion-leader of the Gaul,
Took in the toils of nations, to become
A vassal to the tyranny of all,
Once trembling at the thunders of his drum;
E'en as he bears in rocks his martyrdom,
With a despair which would annihilate
The past, and the eternity to come
Of his dark doom, but with an eye elate,
Steeled with the pride of scorn, the apathy of hate.

LXXVIII

How oft, stern Tower, did thy enclosing vault
Echo the whispers of his powerless rage,
And the vain wish that a more hot assault
Might loose his soldier-spirit from its cage,
On an arena—on a wider stage,
To wreak his fury, not on walls but men!
Gold conquers all—and gold has won his page
To snare the hunted Lion in his den;—
There lies the slayer slain—what boots it how or when?

111

LXXIX

The moral is the same—a truth enshrined
In this wild tale for subject and for king;
The ruler and the ruled are entwined
In blest concordance by a golden string.
Whose keen sword cuts the Gordian knot, doth bring
Wrath on himself, and ruin on his race,
Ambition's suicide—he dies, a thing
For scoffing Time to point at with his mace,
Avouch it, Thou who fell at Pompey's marble base!

LXXX

Man did not draw his birth from heaven to be
In turn the tyrant and the tyrannised,
His Maker formed him like the eagle free,
To spurn at slavery, howsoe'er disguised
By cowl or crown; but freedom realized,
Is to be guarded with an eye more keen
Than of the fabled Dragon, erst surprised
By Hercules. England, inviolate queen!
Guard well thy golden fruit—thy spoiler works within.

112

LXXXI

Beside that Tower of ages past I rove
At summer-eve, when dews and twilight fall;
It is a foolish fancy, but I love
To gather from the mosses of its wall
A flower—and ask the winds if this be all
The poor, poor blossoms of a warrior's fame?
'Tis fragile! the next blast which round the Hall
Resounds—will scatter it to whence it came;
Was it for such ye fought? O greatly-glorious aim!

LXXXII

These peaceful times behold the peasant pass
Unconscious o'er your ashes, see his plough
Glide where bones whiten, and where carnage was;
O'er embrazure and ruined rampart now
The adjacent garden waves its wilding bough,
And bees hum round the untended mignionette;
And thither, ere the spring's first roses blow,
Do young lambs bound, and village-girls are met,
To cull from nettles rank the snow-white violet.

113

LXXXIII

But not like those, unwept and unbeloved,
Whitbread! to Lethe shall thy spirit pass,
Whose Attic lips majestic senates moved,
Thou in whose bosom Freedom sought to glass
Her beauty, all she is, and ever was,
The nurse of glory, and the scourge of wrong,
A kindling Ray breathed in the Statue's mass—
The electric fire of life: as Pallas sprung
Armed from the Thunderer's head, immaculate and young,—

LXXXIV

And grasped the writhen lightnings in her hand,
The heart of guilty princes to appal,
But with her olive making green the land
Where Truth and Mercy flourished free from thrall:
So, when his moral thunders shook the wall
Of Senates, Wisdom from his councils burst—
Illumining the grove, the camp, the hall,
And breathing freedom when none other durst
Impugn the guilty great, whom pride in purple nursed.

114

LXXXV

There has been One on whom the snaky breath
Of Hate would breathe pollution, but who stood
Unsullied as Alasnam's glass beneath
What sought to taint it, innocently good,
The applause of millions!—when the venomous flood
Hissed in its bubbling caldron to o'erboil,
His was the awful Ægis which subdued
The Dragon which her garments would despoil,
And stiffened it to stone, though heaping coil on coil.

LXXXVI

How, when your hand unfurled the historian's scroll,
How have ye pictured Cato, he who fell,
Wept by a world? whose thunders sought to roll
If aught like Cæsar shot athwart the cell
Where jealous thought sate like a centinel
On his high watch-tower, and whose trumpet blew
In every danger an alarming knell,
Till hushed by agony? in what bright hue,
Phocion, the good, the great, adoringly ye drew?

115

LXXXVII

Say, was it not with a majestic brow,
Lit by the blaze of His electric eye,
Whose fascination won, we knew not how,
The key-note of the soul's ascendency,
Whose music was the appeal of Liberty,
The Greek's philippic in the Roman's tone;
Say, was it not with his despairing sigh,
And arm whose pulse was eloquence alone,
Which throbbed at Genoa's wrongs and Saxony o'erthrown?

LXXXVIII

Silenced for ever! but his glorious name
Hath aye become a watchword, to combine
All hearts that fly for freedom or for fame
To freedom's ark—the threshold of a shrine,
Hallowed by many an oracle divine.
The Ship may wrestle with the enemy,
Whilst whirlwinds battle with its groaning pine,
It strikes not—ne'er shall strike, whilst such as He
Nails with determined hand her colours to the tree!

116

LXXXIX

The westering Sun has reached his distant goal,
He looks an idol robed in scarlet weed,
And heaven, from the horizon to the pole,
Is massed in fire, as recent from the speed
Of snorting Ethon and each other steed
Which whirled to Hades his descending car;
I must away, in Nature's book to read
One other page, ere evening shadows mar
Her glittering leaves—though blessed by planet and by star.

XC

I stand where I was standing in the morn,
And all has changed around me—time has come,
And passing, scattered fruitage from his horn,
The bashful maid has found a bridal home,
The anchored vessel launched in ocean foam,
Oceans themselves have flowed since morn began,
And bright orbs ebbed in the aerial dome,
Moving the pendulum of heaven; to Man
Figuring what glorious hours to joy or ruin ran.

117

XCI

So dies the Good as nature now assumes
The mask of night, to dwell a little while
Amid the shadow of funereal tombs,
Until the bright To-morrow! such the smile
Which radiates round his soul to reconcile
The shrinking body to its dark sojourn,
A beam which Mercy deigns us to beguile
The eyes which weep o'er lost Affection's urn,
Sphered in some happier star, for ever so to burn.

XCII

This leaf recals to earth my wandering thought—
Beneath the setting sun's illuming shower,
Its lines are into life and language wrought,
As Memnon's harp, beneath his rising power,
Woke into sound. On Temple and on Tower
Hangs in a glory the last flake of light,
For now the clock tolls forth the curfew-hour,
The rippling lake flows rosily, and bright
The windowed Abbey shines, part melting into night.

118

XCIII

Looks not that Structure, in the hues of eve,
A palace of enchantment? a recess
Shaped for a prince, where Birth and Beauty weave
The net of conquest of a golden tresse—
A dance perchance—or song, at lute or chess?
Of such, Arabian minstrelsy has sung
Erst in the halls of Bagdad, these no less
Might furnish dreams, lovelier than Fiction's tongue
Hath over Tigris' waves magnificently flung.

XCIV

Of pictured heroes might description speak,
The pride of Albion, glorious in their strife;
Of freedom's banner, weeping beauty's cheek,
The martyred husband, and the sainted wife;
Statues whose look is loveliness and life,
On which Canova has his spirit poured
Creative—for of each these Halls are rife;
But weary falls my finger on the chord,
And the first stars are met, and Twilight walks abroad.

119

XCV

With twilight wakes the nun Mnemosyne,
Parent of pensive pleasure! at whose wand
The vanished are compelled again to be,
And wear a robe whose Painting is beyond
The touch of Rubens. Questioned they respond,
Albeit but shadows from Trophonian cave;
With them the loved, the absent, and the fond
Commune, and thus defraud the silent grave,
Long as the Goddess will her ivory sceptre wave.

XCVI

Most amiable in sadness is her mien,
Her magic cell a mild sequestered grot,
Hung round with shells and mosses evergreen—
Of shells the fount, of shells the walls are wrought.
Thither, 'tis said, her nymphs one summer brought,
And to her arms consigned a truant boy,
Wandering beside the cell; she smiled, for Thought
Sate on his brow, and melancholy Joy,
In sooth she loved the child so beautifully coy;

120

XCVII

And gave him Fancy for a nursing mother,
The Sister of her Vigils! with his guide
He ever wandered, he would seek no other,
She was his consolation, he her pride.
And in the Grotto sitting by her side,
Of all their fairy wonders he would ask,
The waving sceptre and the pictured tide,
Of her own magic dress and painted mask,
And of the Elysian Maid, and her mysterious task.

XCVIII

The lore she taught him, and the tales she told
Sunk on his heart—it was a bliss to stand
Near where the fountain's bubbling waters rolled,
And see the wild, the wonderful, and grand,
Called into being by the nun's command;
And sometimes as the floor he darkling trod,
The smiling Goddess trusted to his hand,
His little and—the waving of her rod,
Then waxed he pleased indeed, and deemed himself a God.

121

XCIX

It chanced, while watching by the noontide lymph,
When the mild nun had sought the bower of sleep,
Came running to his side a babbling nymph
On airy toe, who nothing does but peep
At what the renovating Sisters keep
Guarded, locked, covered, caverned, veiled, and hid,
All heedless if it make her smile or weep;
'Twas she who erst the sweet Pandora chid,
Till she her hest obeyed, and oped the fatal lid.

C

He was yet bending thoughtful o'er the fountain,
Which nothing did but sparkle, play, and curl,
And in the mirror of his mind was counting
Each brilliant drop which fell like orient pearl,
Kissed by the sunbeams—when that prying girl,
Young Curiosìta rushing to the well,
Her blue and busy eyes fixt on the whirl
Of waters, bade him seize a chorded shell
At the fount's base, on which a mimic rainbow fell.

122

CI

Seizing, he drew from forth the conch a sound,
Clear as the silver of the warbling wave,
Were nought but heavenly numbers heard around,
To fill the coral vault, the shelly cave;
The stir of his ambitious fingers gave
A voice to echo—at the grateful song
The wondering Infant now looked glad, now grave,
New thoughts broke on him in a glorious throng,
As stole the pensive strains melodiously along.

CII

Mnemosyne awoke, nor knew what hand
Could make so sweet her slumber; 'twas too sad
For viny-crowned Thalia, for the grand
Melpomene too innocently glad.
Urania sometimes played so, but she had
As 'twere a starry music of her own,
Yet her belov'd Euterpe could not add
A more sonorous and engaging tone—
She rose to see by whom her daughter's flute was blown.

123

CIII

But who may paint her transport and surprise?
She started—'twas the infant Rogers drew
The tears which rushed to her rejoicing eyes,
In strains to pathos and to pity new.
To the dear sound all birds of beauty flew,
And hovered round, and fanned him with their wing;
There sunny halcyons spread their pinions blue,
The tender wren, the turtles of the spring,
And to her new-blown rose the bulbul ceased to sing.

CIV

In her maternal arms she clasped the youth,
And on his forehead printed many a kiss,
And called up all her shadowy shapes to soothe
His pensive mind with images of bliss.
Him too the Muses with their melodies
Inspired, instructed, softened, and entranced;
“Framing loose numbers,” in Parnassian skies
His boyhood fled—but as his years advanced,
A more pervading power within his pupil glanced.

124

CV

And in his foster-mother Memory's praise,
He woke a grateful, a Virgilian strain,
Which told the secret of his boyish days,
Making grief beautiful, and teaching pain
To smile, and talk of happy hours again.
Anon to Human Life his string was given,
He drew it pure in precept, free from stain,
A Sail which glides from infancy to Heaven,
By many a willing wind down glassy waters driven.

CVI

Nor deem his triumphs foreign to my song—
Not now through shade is seen the Abbot's Tree,
But chasing there the moral hours along,
The poet wove his recent minstrelsy,
Near to the waves which, from my infancy,
I called the Lake of Rogers! for the beech
Shades with such loveliness its placid sea
In autumn noons, I could not chuse but teach
Loud to the golden Woods his sweetnesses of speech.

125

CVII

But whilst Mnemosyne awakes, and loves
To picture forth the absent, where art Thou,
N******, of late my partner of the groves?
Thou treads't not Syria's holy mountains now,
Nor seest in Greece unfading myrtles blow,
As in sweet seasons past—but it is thine,
Whilst round me Night descends, and waves the bough,
To mark through breaking clouds the morning shine,
Sweeping with orient keel the many-coloured brine.

CVIII

From the wild depth of woods, from silent hills,
And vallies by the maiden moon made pale,
Shrined in the solitude which most instils
The tenderness of thought, I bid thee hail:
Health to my friend! where'er thy Indian sail,
By cliff or cape, in haven or in bay,
Waves to the influence of the tropic gale,
The blessing of that Spirit on thee lay,
Whose voice the absent forms of past delight obey!

126

CIX

The stars are gathered thick in Heaven—I pass
Beyond their limits on Devotion's wings,
Albeit as in a multiplying glass,
In them we read unutterable things.
Thou Wood! where now the bird of Evening sings,
To thee shall I devote my silenced shell,
With no ungrateful breast: to Rapture's springs,
And to the threshold of Urania's cell,
Thou hast thy Votary brought—all hail, and fare thee well!

Childe Harold. See Addition to the Preface.

“Errare meherculè malo cum Platone, quám cum istis vera sentire!” Cicero.