The Poetical Works of James Gates Percival :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Poetical Works of James Gates Percival

With a biographical sketch

Percival, James Gates (1795-1856)

PROMETHEUS.

THE DREAM OF A DAY, AND OTHER POEMS. FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1843.

POSTHUMOUS POEMS.

JUVENILE POEMS.

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PROMETHEUS.

Συ δ' ουδεπω ταπεινος, ουδ' εικεις κακοις,
Προς τοις παρουσι δ' αλλα προσλαβειν θελεις.
Æsch. Prom. Desm. 320.

PART I.

I.

They talk of love and pleasure,—but 'tis all
A tale of falsehood. Life is made of gloom:
The fairest scenes are clad in ruin's pall,
The loveliest pathway leads but to the tomb;
Alas! destruction is man's only doom.
We rise, and sigh our little lives away,
A moment blushes beauty's vernal bloom,
A moment brightens manhood's summer ray,
Then all is wrapt in cold and comfortless decay.

II.

And yet the busy insects sweat and toil,
And struggle hard to heap the shining ore:
How trifling seems their bustle and turmoil,
And even how trifling seems the sage's lore!
Even he who, buried in the classic store
Of ancient ages, ponders o'er the page
Of Tully or of Plato, does no more
Than with his bosom's quiet warfare wage,
And in an endless round of useless thought engage.

III.

Then close thy ponderous folio, and retire
To shady coverts, undisturbed retreats,
And lay thy careless hand upon thy lyre,
And call the Muses from their woodland seats:
But ah! the poet's pulse how vainly beats!
'Tis but vexation to attune his strings.
Even he who with the Chian bard competes
Had better close his fancy's soaring wings,
And own earth's highest bliss no true enjoyment brings.

IV.

We find this earth a gloomy, dull abode,
And yet we wish for pleasure;—sense is keen,
And so this life is but a toilsome road,
That leads us to a more delightful scene.
Well, if thou find'st a solace there, I ween
It is the only joy thou e'er canst know;
And yet it is but fancy, never seen
By mortal eye was all that lovely show,
That paradise where we so fondly wish to go.

V.

We have a body,—and the wintry wind
Will not respect the poet. No, the storm
Beats heavy on the case that holds a mind
Of heavenly mould, as on the vulgar form;
When bleak winds blow, how can the soul be warm?
Can fancy brighten in the cell of care?
Can inspiration's breath the soul inform,
When the limbs shiver in the gusty air,
And in the thin, pale face the fiends of hunger stare?

VI.

O, they may tell me of the ethereal flame
That burns and burns for ever;—'t is the dream
Of those high intellects, who well may claim
Relation to the pure, celestial beam:
The life eternal,—'t is a glorious theme,
Whereon bards, sages, have outpoured their fire;
Yet view it narrowly, and it will seem
But the wild mounting of unquenched desire,
The long extended wish to raise our being higher.

VII.

True, 't is a mighty stretch, when unconfined
The soul expatiates in imagined being,
And where the vulgar eye can only find
Dust, by a second sight strange visions seeing,
And still from wonder on to wonder fleeing,
By its enkindled feelings wildly driven,
It leaps the walls of earth, but ill agreeing
With those high-mounting thoughts to genius given,
Nor rests till it has set its eagle-foot in heaven.

VIII.

And there it culls the choicest fields of earth
For all the pure and beautiful and bright,
And gives a gay and odorous Eden birth,
And rains around a flood of golden light,
Where sun, moon, stars, no more awake the sight,
But, pouring from the Eternal's viewless throne,
It fills us with ineffable delight,
And, every stain of earth for ever flown,
We bathe and bask in this ethereal fount alone.

IX.

And flowers of every hue and scent are there;
The laughing fields are one enamelled bed,
And filled with sweetness breathes the fanning air,
And soaring birds are singing overhead,
And bubbling brooks, by living fountains fed,
O'er pebbled gems and pearl-sands winding play;
One boundless beauty o'er creation shed,
The storm, the cloud, the mist, have hied away,
And nothing dims the blaze of this immortal day.

X.

And man, a pure and quenchless beam of light,
All eye, all ear, all feeling, reason, soul,
He takes from good to good his tireless flight,
And, ever aiming at perfection's goal,
Sees at one instant-glance the moral whole;
Powers ever kindling, always on the wing,
The disembodied spark Prometheus stole,
To science, virtue, love, devotion, spring
His fancy, reason, heart,—creation's angel king.

XI.

The whole machine of worlds before his eye
Unfolded as a map, he glances through
Systems in moments, sees the comet fly
In its clear orbit through the fields of blue,
And every instant gives him something new,
Whereon his ever-quenchless thirst he feeds;
From star to insect, sun to falling dew,
From atom to the immortal mind, he speeds,
And in the glow of thought the boundless volume reads.

XII.

Truth stands before him in a full, clear blaze,
An intellectual sunbeam, and his eye
Can look upon it with unbending gaze,
And its minutest lineaments descry;
No speck nor line is passed unnoticed by,
And the bright form perfection's image wears.
And on its forehead sceptred majesty
The calm, but awful port of justice bears,
Who weeps when she condemns, but smiles not when she spares.

XIII.

Mercy! thou dearest attribute of Heaven,
The attractive charm, the smile of Deity,
To whom the keys of Paradise are given,—
Thy glance is love, thy brow benignity,
And bending o'er the world with tender eye,
Thy bright tears fall upon our hearts like dew,
And, melting at the call of clemency,
We raise to God again our earth-fixed view,
And in our bosom glows the living fire anew.

XIV.

The perfect sense of beauty,—how the heart,
Even in this low estate, with transport swells,
When Nature's charms at once upon us start!
The ocean's roaring waste, where grandeur dwells,
The cloud-girt mountain, whose bald summit tells,
Beneath a pure black sky the faintest star,
The flowery maze of woods, and hills, and dells,
The bubbling brook, the cascade sounding far,
Robed in a mellow mist, as Evening mounts her car,

XV.

And with her glowing pencil paints the skies
In hues, transparent, melting, deep, and clear,
The richest picture shown to mortal eyes,
And lovelier when a dearer self is near,
And we can whisper in her bending ear,
“How fair are these, and yet how fairer thou!”
And, pleased the artless flattery to hear,
Her full blue eyes in meek confusion bow,—
That hour, that look, that eye, are living to me now.

XVI.

But there the cloud of earth-born passion gone,
Taste, quick, correct, exalted, raised, refined,
Rears o'er the subject intellect her throne,
The pure Platonic ecstasy of mind;
By universal harmony defined,
It feels the fitness of each tint and hue,
Of every tone that breathes along the wind,
Of every motion, form, that charm the view,
And lives upon the grand, the beautiful, and new.

XVII.

The feelings of the heart retain their sway,
But are ennobled;—not the instinctive tie,
The storgè, that so often leads astray,
And poisons all the springs of infancy,
So that thenceforth to live is but to die,
And linger with a venom at the heart,
To feel the sinking of despondency,
To writhe around the early-planted dart,
And burn and pant with thirst that never can depart.

XVIII.

Such are the wounds indulgent parents give,
Who slay the smiling blossom of their love;
And if the blighted plant should lingering live,
The spirit cannot wing its flight above,
But in its restless agony will rove
Still on and onward in forbidden joy,
Till wildly, as a whirlwind's fury drove,
He rushes to the foes that soon destroy,
And then they weep, and curse their lost, deluded boy.

XIX.

His friendship warmed to love, all things, that feel,
In all his tenderness of feeling share;
His love, bright as devotion's holiest zeal,
For sex, without its ill, has being there;
All pleasure's smile and virtue's beauty wear,
And kindred souls in dear communion blend,
Love, purest love, without its sigh and care,
And hand in hand their mounting way they wend,
With hope that meets no chill, and joys that never end.

XX.

Devotion,—'tis an all-absorbing flame,—
The omnipotent, all-perfect, endless Being,
The Builder of the universal frame,
At one quick glance past, present, future, seeing,
By whom, hot, cold, moist, dry, good, ill, agreeing,
At last, the perfect birth of bliss comes forth,
And evil to its native darkness fleeing,
Virtue shines out in her unspotted worth,
And blasts to meanest dust the proudest forms of earth.

XXI.

Hark! hear the holy choir around the throne;
Their lips are coals, their pæans vocal fire;
They sing the Eternal Lord, who sits alone,
And still their swelling anthem rises higher,
The warbling of the universal lyre,
The harmony of hearts and souls and spheres.
O, how my bosom burns with long desire,
How flow my bitter, penitential tears!
O, 'tis a strain too loud and sweet for mortal ears!

XXII.

But stop, delirious fancy! now awaking
From thy enchanted dream, what meets thy sight?
The charmed spell, that bound thy senses, breaking,
Thy Eden withers in a simoom's blight,
And all its suns have set in endless night;
Love, sanctity, and glory, all a gleam,
Thy airy paradise has vanished quite,
And, falling, fading, flickering, dies life's beam,
Thy visioned heaven has fled. Alas! 't was but a dream!

XXIII.

O for those early days, when patriarchs dwelt
In pastoral tents, that rose beneath the palm,
When life was pure, and every bosom felt
Unwarped affection's sweetest, holiest balm,
And like the silent scene around them, calm,
Years stole along in one unruffled flow!
Their hearts aye warbled with devotion's psalm,
And as they saw their buds around them blow,
Their keenly glistening eye revealed the grateful glow.

XXIV.

They sat at evening, when their gathered flocks
Bleated and sported by the palm-crowned well,
The sun was glittering on the pointed rocks,
And long and wide the deepening shadows fell;
They sang their hymn, and in a choral swell
They raised their simple voices to the Power
Who smiled along the fair sky; they would dwell
Fondly and deeply on his praise; that hour
Was to them as to flowers that droop and fade the shower.

XXV.

He warmed them in the sunbeams, and they gazed
In wonder on that kindling fount of light,
And as, hung in the glowing west, it blazed
In brighter glories, with a full delight
They poured their pealing anthem, and when night
Lifted her silver forehead, and the moon
Rolled through the blue serenity, in bright
But softer radiance, they blessed the boon
That gave those hours the charm without the fire of noon.

XXVI.

Spring of the living world, the dawn of nature,
When man walked forth the lord of all below,
Erect and godlike in his giant stature,
Before the tainted gales of vice 'gan blow;
His conscience spotless as the new-fallen snow,
Pure as the crystal spouting from the spring,
He aimed no murderous dagger, drew no bow,
But at the soaring of the eagle's wing,
The gaunt wolf's stealthy step, the lion's ravening spring.

XXVII.

With brutes alone he armed himself for war;
Free to the winds his long locks dancing flew,
And at his prowling enemy afar
He shot his death-shaft from the nervy yew;
In morning's mist his shrill-voiced bugle blew,
And with the rising sun on tall rocks strode,
And bounding thro' the gemmed and sparkling dew,
The rose of health, that in his full cheek glowed,
Told of the pure, fresh stream that there enkindling flowed.

XXVIII.

This was the age when mind was all on fire,
The day of inspiration, when the soul,
Warmed, heightened, lifted, burning with desire
For all the great and lovely, to the goal
Of man's essential glory rushed; then stole
The sage his spark from heaven, the prophet spake
His deep-toned words of thunder, as when roll
The peals amid the clouds,—words that would break
The spirit's leaden sleep, and all its terrors wake.

XXIX.

He stood on Sinai, wrapped in storm-clouds, wild
His loose locks streamed around him, and his eye
Flashed indignation on a world defiled
With sense and slavery, who lost the high
Prerogative of power and spirit by
Their longings for their flesh-pots:—O, 't is lust
Which robs us of our freedom, makes us lie
Wallowing in willing wretchedness, nor burst
That thraldom of our woes, most foul, most hard, most curst.

XXX.

He saw those Samsons by a harlot shorn,
He saw them take the distaff, and assume
The soft and tawdry tunics which adorn
The leering siren; all their flush and bloom,
And might and vigor, all that can illume
And blazon manhood, by the magic rod
Of pleasure changed to weakness, squalor, gloom,
And they, who erst with port majestic trod,
Then drunk and gorged and numbed, in sleep lethargic nod.

XXXI.

He stood and raised his mighty voice in wrath,
And sent it, like a whirlwind, o'er those ears,
And thrilled them, like a simoom on its path
Of havoc. See, the slumbering giant hears,
And, waked and roused and kindled by his fears,
Starts into new life with an instant spring;
This is no time for soft, repentant tears;
At once away their wine-drenched spoils they fling,
Their energy is up, their souls are on the wing.

XXXII.

They did not lie, and wish, and long to break
The manacles which clasped them; they did tear
Cables as we would silk-threads, and did take
An upward journey, where the world shines fair,
The temple of true virtue, glory, where
Man lives and glows in sunshine, where the prize,
More rich than laurel wreaths, for all who dare
To reason's perfect, fearless freedom rise,
Sends forth bright beams, that dim and blind all meaner eyes.

XXXIII.

Go o'er the fields of Greece, and see her towers
Fallen and torn and crumbled,—see her fanes
Prostrate and weed-encircled; dimly lowers
Brute ignorance around them, slavery reigns
And lords it o'er their sacred cities, chains
Are riveted upon them, and they gall
Their cramped limbs to the bone, the lashed wretch strains
To rend the gnawing iron,—but his fall
Is in himself. Sleep on! ye well deserve your thrall.

XXXIV.

This is the old age of our fallen race;
We mince in steps correct, but feeble; creep
By rule unwavering in a tortoise pace;
We do not, like the new-born ancient, leap
At once o'er mind's old barriers, but we keep
Drilling and shaving down the wall; we play
With stones and shells and flowers, and as we peep
In nature's outward folds, like infants, say,
How bright and clear and pure our intellectual day.

XXXV.

We let gorged despots rise and plant their foot
Upon our prostrate necks, if they but give
Their golden counters. Tyranny takes root
In a rich soil of sloth and self;—we live
Like oysters in their closed shells;—can we strive
For freedom when this cobweb circle draws
Its tangling coils around us? Let us give
Our hearts to Nature and her sacred laws,
And we can fight unharmed, unchecked in freedom's cause.

XXXVI.

There are a few grand spirits who can feel
The beauty of simplicity, and pour
Their ardent wishes forth, and sternly deal
Their crumbling blows around them; they would soar,
Where man unfettered rises, proudly o'er
The common herd of slaves to power and rule:
Go, search the world, you cannot find a more
Weak, drivelling subject for a despot's tool,
Than him who dares not leave the lessons of his school.

XXXVII.

Cast back your sickened eye upon the dawn
Of Greek and Roman freedom. See their sons
Before the bulwark of their dear rights drawn,
Proud in their simple dignity, as runs
The courser to the fair stream;—on their thrones
They sat, all kings, all people;—they were free,
For they were strong and temperate, and in tones
Deep and canorous, nature's melody,
They sung in one full voice the hymn of liberty.

XXXVIII.

In Dorian mood they marched to meet their foes;
With measured step their awful front they bore,
As, when a mountain billow slowly flows,
Rising and heaving onward to the shore,
It rolls its mingled waters with a roar,
That echoes through the mountains; wide they dash,
Blue as the heavens they kiss, and, tumbling o'er,
They burst upon the coast, and foaming lash
The rocks and splintered cliffs; earth groans beneath the crash.

XXXIX.

Then liberty and law were brightest: men
Were not themselves,—the city was their soul;
They did not keep their treasures in a den,
And brood them, as a fowl her eggs,—the pole
To which their hearts were pointed, and the goal
Of all their strivings, was the public good;
The sage, with naked brow, and flowing stole,
And snowy beard, and eye majestic, stood,
And gave to willing minds their high but simple food.

XL.

It was not cates which pleased then, but they drew
And filled their brimming goblet from the stream,
And plucked the fruits that overhung it; few
But noble were their works,—the living beam
Of sunlight stamped their pages. We may dream
Of monsters, till the brain is mad,—the pure,
Bright images, wherewith their volumes teem,
The taste of nature always will allure,
And while man reads and thinks, and feels and loves, endure.

XLI.

Then Wisdom crowned her head with stars, and smiled
In Socrates, and glowed in Plato, shone
Like day's god in the Stagirite, who piled
A pyramid of high thoughts; as a throne,
It lorded o'er the world for ages; grown
Weak in a second childhood, they did count
And nicely measure each minutest stone,
And crawled around the base, but could not mount
And taste, upon the top, the pure ethereal fount.

XLII.

Then Eloquence was power,—it was the burst
Of feeling, clothed in words o'erwhelming, poured
From mind's long-cherished treasury, and nurst
By virtue into majesty; it soared
And thundered in Pericles; and was stored
With fire that flashed and kindled in that soul
Who called, when Philip, with barbarian horde,
Hung over Athens, and prepared to roll
His deluge on her towers, and drown her freedom's whole.

XLIII.

Then Poetry was inspiration,—loud,
And sweet, and rich, in speaking tones it rung,
As if a choir of muses from a cloud,
Sun-kindled, on the bright horizon hung;
Their voices harmonized, their lyres full strung,
Rolled a deep descant o'er a listening world.
There was a force, a majesty, when sung
The bard of Troy,—his living thoughts were hurled,
Like lightnings, when the folds of tempests are unfurled.

XLIV.

Was it the tumult of contending powers,
The clash of swords and shields, the rush of cars,
Or when aloft, in night's serenest hours,
The moon, encircled by her train of stars,
Poured her soft light around, and dewy airs
Breathed through the camp and cooled the warrior's brow,—
Was it the mellow slumber which repairs
The languid limbs, or keen-edged words, that bow
The soul in wondering awe,—or was it, round the prow,

XLV.

The purple wave disparting, and in foam
Roaring behind the vessel, as she flew,
A white-winged falcon, from her lessening home,
Ploughing the sea's broad back, as loudly blew
The winds among the cordage,—Nature threw
Her energy athwart his page, and shed
Her blaze upon his mind, and there we view,
If, chance, by taste, unwarped, unfettered, led,
A new-made world, all life and light, around us spread.

XLVI.

The times are altered:—man is now no more
The being of his capabilities;
The days of all his energy are o'er.
And will those fallen demigods arise
In all their panoply, and hear the cries
Of king-crushed myriads, who wear the chain
Of bondage? will light dawn upon their eyes,
And wake them from their iron sleep, again
To bare their breast in strife on freedom's holy plain?

XLVII.

A trumpet echoes o'er their tombs,—awake!
The long full peal is “Vengeance!—sleep no more!”
The marble walls, as by an earthquake, break,
And, lo! an armed legion onward pour
Bright casques and nodding plumes, and thirsting gore,
The blood of awe-struck tyrants, flash their swords;
Their march is as a torrent river's roar,
And, with a waked slave's desperation, towards
Their homes of icy gloom they drive Sarmatia's hordes.

XLVIII.

There is a flood of light rolled round the hill
Of Jove, and from its cloudy brightness spring
Spectres of long-departed greatness; still
Their heart-felt homage to that shrine they bring,
Which time has made all sacred, where the king
Of thunder sat upon his ivory throne,
And by him stood his bird, with ready wing
To pounce upon his foes. The days are flown
When darkness ruled as God,—Valor will claim his own,

XLIX.

And Rome again is free, and from thy shore,
Italia! Gaul and Goth and Hun shall fly;
Thy sons shall wash away their shame in gore,
And once again the year of liberty,
The mighty months of glory, they shall see,
Along thy radiant zodiac, on the path
Of ages, warn the nations, “We are free!”
O, who can tell the madness and the wrath,
The drunkenness of soul, a new-waked people hath?

L.

They stand for hearth and altar, wife and sire;
Their lisping infants call them to the fight,
And as they call, their eyeballs flashing fire,
And shouting with a courser's wild delight,
When loosed he bounds and prances in the might
Of young life. There is in the sound of home
A magic, and the patriot, in his right
Strong-founded, meets the prowling foes that come
To waste his land,—no threats his valor can benumb.

LI.

The torch that lights him in his high career
Was kindled at the purest, holiest flame;
He fights for all his bosom holds most dear,
And oh! no voice so conquering as the claim
Of filial tenderness and love; no name
So melting as sire, wife, and children,—all
Are in those sweet words blended. What is fame,
Though pealing with her trumpet to the call
Of kindred, bound and toiling in a tyrant's thrall?

LII.

He sees the noble and the learned stoop,
And kiss the feet that crush them, and the crowd,
In hopeless, cureless, willing bondage droop;
And yet he does not shrink beneath that cloud,
But, muttering execrations deep, not loud,
He whets his sword upon his heaped-up wrong;
And starting, like a spectre from his shroud,
Stung by the lash of slavery's knotted thong,
In all the might of wrath, he hurls his strength along.

LIII.

Even as a tigress, when her secret lair
The hunter hath invaded,—how she draws
Her limbs to all their tenseness, points her hair,
Gnashes her grinding teeth, and bares her claws,
And breathes a stifled growl, and in a pause
Of burning fury hangs upon the spring,
And, nerved and heated in a parent's cause,
Bounds roaring on the robber, like the wing
Of pouncing hawk, or stone hurled whizzing from the sling!

LIV.

They meet at Tivoli,—and night has spread
Her curtain o'er those legions, who would quench
The flame that Brutus, Tully, Cato, fed,
And from its lofty column madly wrench
The new-raised statue. Freemen will not blench,
When they have broke their fetters; but will arm
Their nervy hands with vengeance, and will clench
And grapple with their masters; for the charm
Of liberty's sweet voice the coldest heart will warm.

LV.

They meet, and they are victors;—but the soul,
Like his own mountain's lava glowing, dies,
And falls with hand firm-grasped upon the goal
Of all his longings. As he mounts the skies,
He drops his mantle on the youth, who rise
To give their lives, like him, to liberty;
Devoted to the noblest sacrifice,
Like stars of purest brightness, they shall be
The rallying-point where all the bruised and crushed shall flee.

LVI.

A dream,—a cruel dream! Fair rose the sun
Of freedom on that sky without a cloud;
Sweet was the dawn, when liberty was won
By hands unweaponed; and they hasted, proud
Of bloodless conquest, in their pæans loud
To those who Samson-like had rent their chain;
Then heavenward shone the foreheads which had bowed
To foreign rule for ages, and again
The people's majesty towered over hill and plain.

LVII.

And we did hope the Roman had awaked,
And ancient valor had revived anew,
And that the eagle's thirst of light unslaked,
As when above the Capitol she flew,
Still sought her eyry in the boundless blue;
And we did hope a spirit had gone forth,
Which tyrants and their parasites would rue,
And, like a torrent rolling to the north,
Would with it blend all hearts that kept man's native worth.

LVIII.

It seemed the renovation of the world,
The knell of despots, and the day when thrones
Were tottering, and crowns falling, when kings, hurled
From their base height of lust, should leave their bones
To moulder in their feudal filth; the stones
Which bound the arch of empire lost their hold,
And in the sudden crush were heard the groans
Of gorged and pampered spoilers, who had rolled
Like havoc on the dumb, weak tremblers of their fold.

LIX.

And we did see a nation on their way
To stop the invading torrent, ere it came
And deluged their fair fields. It was a day
Of breathless expectation, when the flame
Of freedom burned the highest, for the game
Of man's emancipation was at stake.
The heart that would not throb then, had no claim
And place in Honor's column,—'t would not wake
Even if a bolt from Heaven should by its pillow break.

LX.

They hung upon the mountains, like a storm
Crowning the Apennine with deep, dun shade,
And o'er them towered the bold and ardent form,
Who seemed in panoply of fire arrayed;
And from their pikes and bayonets there played
A stream of lightnings on the advancing host,
Which, trained and nurtured in the murdering trade,
Like tempest-billows rolling to the coast,
Marched slow and still and sure, to storm that rocky post.

LXI.

In all the discipline of war they came;
Their strong, squared columns moved with heavy tread,
Their step, their bearing, even their breath the same,
And not a murmur whispered through the dead
And boding silence; by a master led,
Even as a rock, that fronts the infuriate wave,
They saw them hanging on their mountain's head;
With cold, proud sneer they marked the untutored brave,
And knew here lay wide-yawned Italian freedom's grave.

LXII.

Secure and calm, they pitched their camp, and piled
Their arms, and furled their banners; all was still,
When, like the bursting of a hail-cloud, wild
Those sun-fired legions hurried down the hill,
And dashed against their robbers, with a will
To do all deeds of daring, and a might
Nerved into madness by those wrongs, that fill
The heart to overflowing; from that height,
In one wild rush, they poured their souls into the fight.

LXIII.

Awhile the Austrian wavered, for the blows
Fell with a giant's vigor; but the clear,
Quick-sighted leader bade their stretched wings close,
And circle in the headlong swarms; then fear
Usurped the seat of courage; far and near
The plain was covered with the flying bands.
In vain the patriot's effort, word, and tear,
His life's blood only drenched his country's sands,
Or stained with fruitless drops the brute invader's hands.

LXIV.

The invading wave rolls on,—no arm is raised
To stem its ceaseless progress; in its flood
It swallows all the hopes, on which men gazed
With such deep yearnings, as when linnets brood
Their callow nestlings,—they are now the food
Of sceptred ribaldry and regal sneers.
Well, let them laugh and revel in light mood,—
A voice of wrath, erelong, will thrill their ears,
And give them doubly full their cup of blood and tears.

LXV.

Fosterers of nations! whose parental hand
Scourges the unwilling subject to obey,
To you, ye self-misnomered holy band,
The goaded slaves their stripes and wounds shall pay;
Though now their heads in childlike fear they lay,
They keenly feel the smart of all their wrong;
They now may stoop and crawl, there is a day
When they will rise and to their vengeance throng;
Even now, ye trembling dread what will not linger long.

LXVI.

Aceldema of nations! thou hast bled
From countless gashes,—thou must still bleed on;
Thy children's gore that harvest-field has fed,
Where thou thy chains and manacles hast won;
Thy struggle for true liberty is done,
France, Italy, have roused and burst their thrall,
And started in that glorious race to run.
Where have their high words ended? See their fall.
The despots crush them now, and say, “So perish all

LXVII.

Who will not sleep contented, while we rule
And fleece and flay them.” You may writhe and turn,
And curse them, as you crouch, their earth-pressed stool;
Yes, ye may start a moment, spring and spurn
The foot that treads you; ye may glow and burn
With wrath to be so scoffed at, but a weight
Like mountains bows you down; dust is your urn;
The spirit is besotted:—this your fate,
To rise and stumble, kneel and kiss the hand you hate.

LXVIII.

One storm has come and gone;—the film is torn
From off your eyes;—you look, and Power is there;
Around his throne unnumbered shields are borne,
Serried in close array; you cannot tear
The monster from his pinnacle; his lair
Is filled with bones of freemen he has slain.
As a crouched lion, when his fangs are bare,
He casts around his keen eye; Hope in vain
Lifts up her gaze, his glance bends it to earth again.

LXIX.

Freedom can have no dwelling on that shore;
She must away and cross the Atlantic flood.
Why play the rude game over? you may pour
In waves, like torrent rivers, your best blood,
But it will end in “We have dared and stood
In battle for our rights; we sink again
Before an overwhelming weight, the food
Of tyrants and their parasites, who drain
Our tears like wine, and bind with doubled links our chain.”

LXX.

Severe and simple walked the Cyprian sage
In Athens' pictured porch; he showed and taught
Unbending virtue in a downward age,
And reckoned all the joys of sense as naught,
And mastered down the tide of swelling thought,
And bound on passion an unyielding rein;
With slow, sure step, the highest good he sought,
And shunning, as a viper's tooth, the stain
Of weakness, marched erect to Truth's majestic fane,

LXXI.

Which stood aloft in Doric plainness; bright
The sunbeams played upon its marble pride,
And from it flashed a stream of purest light
Down its ascending path,—as rolls the tide
Of snow-fed torrents, in a deep, a wide,
Resistless rush of waters, till the plain
Is satiate with its richness, then they glide
In summer's scanty wave, so pure, no stain
Darkens its liquid light, when rolling to the main.

LXXII.

So on the mind enwrapped in error's cloak,
Whom bigotry and sense have led astray,
If chance the fetters of his thought are broke,
And all the night that dimmed him swept away,
And on him Wisdom pours her fullest ray,
A flood seems rolled through his exulting soul,
And all its fulness hardly can allay
His new-waked thirst for knowledge; to the goal
Of truth he springs, and spurns indignant all control.

LXXIII.

Awhile he grasps at Science, with the strong,
Fierce spirit of ambition, when his car
O'er fortune's field of blood is borne along,
Drawn by the wildly-rushing steeds of war,
And hurrying on in quest of Fame's bright star,
That shines through smoke and dust and wounds and gore;
Justice and mercy cannot raise a bar
Across the torrent of his wrath; its roar
Drives virtue, love, and peace, affrighted from its shore.

LXXIV.

So on he rushes, in the high pursuit
Of knowledge, till his stored and wearied mind
Bows 'neath the weight of its collected fruit,
And, casting all its useless load behind,
No more to man's essential being blind,
His thought dwells only on the good supreme;
Then, calm in dignity, in taste refined,
A spirit pure and lucid as the beam
Ethereal, virtue's charms are his continual theme.

LXXV.

And what is virtue but the just employ
Of all our faculties, so that we live
Longest and soundest and serenest,—joy
Its handmaid, all the sweets that health can give,
The light heart, and the strong frame, which can strive,
Delighted in the war we must endure;
Thoughts clear, bold, tireless, feelings all alive,
No passion can subdue, no sense allure,
Even as our Sire in heaven, just, merciful, and pure.

LXXVI.

The animal is crushed, the god bears sway,
The immortal essence, the enkindling fire;
What powers, what energy, it can display,
When, freed from life's gross wants, it dare aspire,
And give a free reign to its high desire,
And longing for a mind that cannot sleep,
Even as Apollo with his golden lyre,
And canopied in sunbeams, he would sweep
His chords, and pour a hymn, harmonious, full, and deep.

LXXVII.

A hymn to Nature, and the unseen hand
That guides its living wheels, the moving soul
Of this material universe, who spanned
Within his grasp its circle, where suns roll,
Each in its fixed orb, and around the whole
Has drawn in viewless light its flaming walls;
This is the limit of our thought, the goal
Where mind's imaginative pinion falls,
When, wrapt in solemn thought, no link of earth inthralls.

LXXVIII.

I walk abroad at midnight, and my eye,
Purged from its sensual blindness, upward turns,
And wanders o'er the dark and spangled sky,
Where every star, a fount of being, burns,
And pours out life, as Naiads from their urns
Drop their refreshing dew on herbs and flowers;—
I gaze, until my fancy's eye discerns,
As in an azure hall, the assembled powers
Of nature spend in deep consult those solemn hours.

LXXIX.

Methinks I hear their language;—but it sounds
Too high for my conception, as the roar
Of thunder in the mountains, when it bounds
From peak to peak; or on the echoing shore
The tempest-driven billows bursting pour,
And raise their awful voices; or the groan
Rumbling in Ætna's entrails, ere its store
Of lava spouts its red jets; or the moan
Of winds, that war within their caverned walls of stone.

LXXX.

And there is melody among those spheres,
A music sweeter than the vernal train,
Or fay notes, which the nymph-struck shepherd hears.
Where moonlight dances on the liquid plain,
That curls before the west-wind, till the main
Seems waving like a ruffled sheet of fire:—
'T is Nature's Alleluia; and again
The stars exult, as when the Eternal Sire
Said, “Be there light,” and light shone forth at his desire.

LXXXI.

How my heart trembles on so vast a theme!—
The boundless source of energy and power,
The living essence of the good supreme,
The all-seeing eye that watches every hour,
That marks the opening of each bud and flower,
That paints the colors of the ephemeron's wing,
That counts the myriad drops which form the shower,
As wondrous, in the awakening call of spring,
As worlds that lie beyond the stretch of fancy's wing.

LXXXII.

With brute, unconscious gaze, man marks the earth
Take on its livery of early flowers;
He sees no beauty in this annual birth,
No ceaseless working of creative powers;
His soul, lethargic, wakes not in those hours
When air is living, and the waters teem
With new-born being, and the mantling bowers
Are full of love and melody, and seem
The happy Eden of a poet's raptured dream.

LXXXIII.

The sky is then serenest, and its arch
Of brighter sapphire; and the sportive train
Of life-awakening zephyrs, on their march,
Shed renovating influence o'er the plain;
The blue waves sparkle on the laughing main,
Which renders back to heaven its placid smile;
The checkered sky, now clear, now dropping rain
On flowers, that spread their leaves to catch it, while
The full-swoln river rolls a fertilizing Nile.

LXXXIV.

How lovely is the landscape! Morning peeps
Behind yon leafy mountain, and her eye
Looks o'er a fresh, green world, that calmly sleeps
In the sweet cradle of its infancy,
And, clustering round the rocky summits, fly
Light mists, now painted in the rich array
Of Heaven's majestic spectrum, which on high
Spans the dark tempest, as it steals away,
And westward glows in pomp the golden eye of day.

LXXXV.

Beneath the cliff that frowns in blackness lies
The mirror of dark waters, on it rest
Soft wreaths of snowy vapor, such as rise
Spotless in winter on the mountain's breast,
Soft as the downy couch by beauty prest,
And mantled in as gay a canopy
Of overhanging clouds in crimson drest,
All glow, transparency, and purity,
Fit curtain to the throne where dwells Eternity.

LXXXVI.

And now the sun springs upward from his bed,
Insufferably brilliant, and his blaze
Tinges with flowing gold the icy head
Of peaks which rise above the clouds, and gaze
In lonely grandeur on an endless maze
Of budding landscape, hills, woods, meadows, lakes,
Rivers, and winding rivulets, where plays
The wave in lines of silver. Day now breaks
In dazzling floods of light, and living Nature wakes

LXXXVII.

Her woodland choristers, and air is breathing
In tones of love-tuned harmony, the deep,
Heart-kindling, soul-inspiring anthem wreathing
The burst of native joy that will not sleep,
But at the summons of the dawn will leap,
And all its full-swoln tides of feeling pour,
And, as the light winds from the bright lake sweep
The mantling vapors, it will freely soar,
And with its strong voice drown the waterfall's wide roar.

LXXXVIII.

Let man come forth, and in the general throng
Of tuneful hearts his high devotion raise,
And, joining in the universal song
Of thankful rapture, centre all the rays
Of that heaven-lighted intellect, whose blaze,
Bright emanation from the ethereal beam,
For ever kindling through eternal days,
A disembodied spark, along life's stream,
Shall always hasten on to excellence supreme.

LXXXIX.

There is its only resting-place,—while here
We pine in heart-sick longing. Is the fire
That burns within our bosoms, for a sphere
Of brighter, purer being, something higher
Than all man ever reached to, the desire
Of sinless purity and tireless thought,
But the vibration of a living wire,
The motion of frail flesh more nicely wrought,
That trembles here awhile, and then consumes to naught?

XC.

Our thoughts are boundless, tho' our frames are frail,
Our souls immortal, though our limbs decay;
Though darkened in this poor life by a veil
Of suffering, dying matter, we shall play
In truth's eternal sunbeams; on the way
To Heaven's high capitol our car shall roll;
The temple of the Power whom all obey,
That is the mark we tend to, for the soul
Can take no lower flight, and seek no meaner goal.

XCI.

I feel it,—though the flesh is weak, I feel
The spirit has its energies untamed
By all its fatal wanderings; time may heal
The wounds which it has suffered; folly claimed
Too large a portion of its youth; ashamed
Of those low pleasures, it would leap and fly,
And soar on wings of lightning, like the famed
Elijah, when the chariot rushing by
Bore him with steeds of fire triumphant to the sky.

XCII.

We are as barks afloat upon the sea,
Helmless and oarless, when the light has fled,
The spirit, whose strong influence can free
The drowsy soul, that slumbers in the dead,
Cold night of moral darkness; from the bed
Of sloth he rouses at her sacred call,
And, kindling in the blaze around him shed,
Rends with strong effort sin's debasing thrall,
And gives to God his strength, his heart, his mind, his all.

XCIII.

Our home is not on earth; although we sleep,
And sink in seeming death awhile, yet then
The awakening voice speaks loudly, and we leap
To life and energy and light again;
We cannot slumber always in the den
Of sense and selfishness; the day will break,
Ere we for ever leave the haunts of men;
Even at the parting hour the soul will wake,
Nor like a senseless brute its unknown journey take.

XCIV.

How awful is that hour, when conscience stings
The hoary wretch, who on his death-bed hears,
Deep in his soul, the thundering voice that rings,
In one dark, damning moment, crimes of years,
And, screaming like a vulture in his ears,
Tells one by one his thoughts and deeds of shame!
How wild the fury of his soul careers!
His swart eye flashes with intensest flame,
And like the torture's rack the wrestling of his frame.

XCV.

Our souls have wings; their flight is like the rush
Of whirlwinds, and they upward point their way,
Like him who bears the thunder, when the flush
Of his keen eye feeds on the dazzling ray:
He claps his pinions in the blaze of day,
And, gaining on the loftiest arch his throne,
Darts his quick vision on his fated prey,
And, gathering all his vigor, he is gone,
And in an instant grasps his victim as his own.

XCVI.

We soar as proudly, and as quickly fall,
This moment in the empyrean, then we sink,
And, wrapping in the joys of sense our all,
The stream that flows from Heaven we cannot drink,
But we will lie along the flowery brink
Of pleasure's tempting current, till the wave
Is bitter and its banks bare, then we think
Of what we might have been, and, idly brave,
We take a short, weak flight, and drop into the grave.

XCVII.

My heart has felt new vigor, and the glow
Of high hopes and bright fancy, and the spring
Of that unchanging being, whither flow
The breathings of our spirit, when its wing
Is spread to take its last flight, where we cling
In all the storms of life, as to an oar;
There, like the shining serpent, we shall fling
Away our earthly shackles; there no more
The wind shall lift the waves and send them to the shore,

XCVIII.

To make wild music on the surging beach,
And fling the foam aloft in snowy curls,
And, pouring headlong through the sea-wall's breach,
Suck, in the raging vortex' giddy whirls,
The sea-bird lighting on the wave, that hurls
To swift destruction; but there is a rock,
Built strong, deep-planted,—Mercy there unfurls
Her white flag, and the bark that stands the shock,
The tempest-tossing tide, the breaker's burst, shall mock.

XCIX.

Much study is a weariness:—so said
The sage of sages, and the aching eye,
The pallid cheek, the trembling frame, the head
Throbbing with thought and torn with agony,
Attest his truth; and yet we will obey
The intellectual Numen, and will gaze
In wondering awe upon it, and will pay
Worship to its omnipotence; the blaze
Of mind is as a fount of fire, that upward plays

C.

Aloft on snow-clad mountains, on whose breast
Unspotted purity has ever lain;
The clouds of sense and passion cannot rest
Upon its shadowy summit, nor can stain
The white veil which enwraps it, nor in vain
Roll the white floods of liquid heat; they melt
The gathered stores of ages, to the plain
They pour them down in streams enkindling, felt
By every human heart, in myriad channels dealt.

CI.

This is the electric spark sent down from Heaven,
That woke to second life the man of clay;
The torch was lit in ether, light was given,
Which not all passion's storms can sweep away.
There is no closing to this once-risen day;
Tempests may darken, but the sun will glow,
Serene, unclouded, dazzling, and its ray
Through some small crevices will always flow,
Nor leave in utter night the world that gropes below.

CII.

And now and then some spirit from the throng,
With wings Dædalean, in his rage will soar,
And spreading wide his pinions, with a strong
And desperate effort, from this servile shore
Mounting like Minder's swans, whose voices pour
Melodious music, like the dying fall
Of zephyrs in a pine grove, or the roar
Heard through the lonely forest when the pall
Of night o'erhangs us, borne from some far waterfall.

CIII.

With wing as tireless, and with voice as sweet,
His eye the falcon's, and his heart the dove's,
He lifts his heavenward daring, till the heat
Of that same orb he aimed to, which he loves
To mark with keen eye till the cloud removes
That gave its glow a softness, with its blight
Withers his sinewy strength: so Heaven reproves
The minds that scan it with audacious sight,
And seek with restless gaze too pure, unmingled light.

CIV.

Gay was the paradise of love he drew,
And pictured in his fancy; he did dwell
Upon it till it had a life; he threw
A tint of Heaven athwart it. Who can tell
The yearnings of his heart, the charm, the spell,
That bound him to that vision? Cold Truth came
And plucked aside the veil,—he saw a hell,
And o'er it curled blue flakes of lurid flame.
He laid him down, and clasped his damp, chill brow in shame.

CV.

His fall is as the Titans', who would tear
The thunder from their monarch, and would pile
Their mountain stairway to Olympus, where
The bolt they grasped at pierced them; with a smile
Of fearless power the thunderer sat the while,
And mocked their fruitless toiling, then he hurled
His whitening arrows, and at once their guile
And force were blasted, and their fall unfurled
An awful warning flag to a presumptuous world.

CVI.

They stand, a beacon chained upon the rock;
Heaven o'er them lifts unveiled her boundless blue;
Ambition's sun still scorches, and the mock
Of all their high desires is full in view;
Affection cools their foreheads with no dew
Of melting hearts, no rain of pitying eyes;
The vulture, conscience, gnaws them; ever new
Their heart's torn fibres into life will rise;
The gorging fury clings, repelled she never flies.

CVII.

These are the men who dared to rend the veil
Religion hung around us; they would tear
The film from off our eyes, and break the pale
That bound the awe-struck spirit, nor would spare
The worship paid by ages; in the glare
Of their red torches Piety grew blind,
And saw no more her comforter; her fair
And fond hopes lost their beauty. Can the mind
When rifled of its faith, so dear a solace find?

CVIII.

They pull down Jove from his Idæan throne;
They quench the Jew's Shechinah, and the cross,
That bore the mangled corse of Heaven's own Son,
They trample in the dust, and spurn as dross;
And will they recompense the world its loss?
Have they a fairer light to cheer our gloom?
O, no!—the grave yawns on us as a fosse,
Where we must sleep for ever; this our doom,—
Body and mind shall rot and moulder in the tomb.

CIX.

There is a mourner, and her heart is broken.
She is a widow; she is old and poor;
Her only hope is in that sacred token
Of peaceful happiness, when life is o'er;
She asks nor wealth nor pleasure, begs no more
Than Heaven's delightful volume, and the sight
Of her Redeemer. Sceptics! would you pour
Your blasting vials on her head, and blight
Sharon's sweet rose, that blooms and charms her being's night?

CX.

She lives in her affections; for the grave
Has closed upon her husband, children; all
Her hopes are with the arm she trusts will save
Her treasured jewels; though her views are small,
Though she has never mounted high, to fall
And writhe in her debasement, yet the spring
Of her meek, tender feelings cannot pall
Her unperverted palate, but will bring
A joy without regret, a bliss that has no sting.

CXI.

Even as a fountain, whose unsullied wave
Wells in the pathless valley, flowing o'er
With silent waters, kissing, as they lave,
The pebbles with light rippling, and the shore
Of matted grass and flowers,—so softly pour
The breathings of her bosom, when she prays,
Low-bowed, before her Maker; then no more
She muses on the griefs of former days;
Her full heart melts and flows in Heaven's dissolving rays.

CXII.

And Faith can see a new world, and the eyes
Of saints look pity on her; death will come;
A few short moments over, and the prize
Of peace eternal waits her, and the tomb
Becomes her fondest pillow; all its gloom
Is scattered. What a meeting there will be
To her and all she loved here, and the bloom
Of new life from those cheeks shall never flee!
Theirs is the health which lasts through all eternity.

CXIII.

There is a war within me, and a strife
Between my meaner and my nobler powers;
I would, and yet I cannot, part with life:
'T is as a scorpion's sting to view those hours
Where soul has bowed to sense, and darkly lowers
The future in the distance. There are men,
Whose strange-blent nature now an angel's towers,
And rides among the loftiest, and then
Seeks, like a snarling dog, the cynic's squalid den.

CXIV.

They nestle in their prison; they can find
No friend to pour their hearts on; they would cling
Closer than ivy to the kindred mind
They touch. Its ice-cold freezes; then they fling
Affection to the winds, and madly spring
To shun their hated fellows in some cave;
A leaden weight confines their spirit's wing,
Life palls them, there is naught beyond the grave,
They turn a sneer on Him who gives his hand to save.

CXV.

Theirs is the boundless love of sentient being;—
As they have now the will, had they the power,
Were but their longings and their strength agreeing,
Their outspread hand a flood of bliss would shower,
And wake the moral world, as in the hour
Of spring wakes living nature;—from his sleep
Of vice and superstition man should tower;
Thoughts pure, high feelings, purpose strong and deep,
Should lift him on, like wings, up virtue's craggy steep.

CXVI.

And flowers should bloom on his ascending track,
Like roses on their wild thorns, by the way
The hunter scales the mountains, nor should lack
Music of tuneful birds; the flute should play
The soft airs of the shepherdess; when day
Spreads the broad plane-tree's noon shade, and when night
Spangles her silent canopy, away
By some dark cavern on the lonely height,
The full-voiced hymn should tell the hermit's holy flight;

CXVII.

Who sits alone in darkness, wrapped in musing,
Communing with the Universe, the Power,
Whose ceaseless mercy, love and life diffusing,
Bids the sun dart his warm rays, sends the shower,
Mantles the turf in green, and decks the bower
With tufted leaves and wreathed flowers, whose perfume,
Earth's incense, breathes most sweetly at the hour
When soft-descending night-dews steep the bloom,
And with their star-lit gems the mantling arch illume;

CXVIII.

And from this waste of beauty fills the urn
Of plenty with her fair fruits, spreads the plain
With all the wealth of harvest, the return
Of spring's delightful promise, with a chain
Of love and bounty binding life's domain
To Him who by his fiat gave it birth.
Else had these flowery fields a desert lain,
And all the riches of the teeming earth
Been withered by the touch of endless, hopeless dearth;

CXIX.

Else had one wilderness of rock and sand,
Treeless and herbless, where no rain nor dew
Poured their reviving influence, one land
Of sparkling barreness, appalled the view,
And o'er it heaven had raised its cloudless blue,
Hot as the burning steel's cerulean glow,
And the sun's blasting arrows darted through
The scorched brain, till its lava blood would flow
In torrents, and its veins throb with delirious throe;

CXX.

And man had died of thirst and famine;—Death
Comes not with direr aspect; eyes of blood,
Staring and bursting; frequent, fiery breath
Heaved from the breast, that seems one boiling flood
Of maddening pulses, writhing as a brood
Of serpents roused to fury; like their hiss
They rush along the swoln veins, and for food
His parched jaws gnaw his flesh, and oh! what bliss
To drain his life's warm stream!—there is no death like this.

CXXI.

This is the living prototype of hell,—
The earth all fire without, all flame within,
And conscience barking like a Hyæn's yell,
And pouring out her vialed wrath on sin;
She lights her torch unwasting,—then begin
Ages of endless torture, for the heart
Whom Circe and the tempting Sirens win,
While listening to their voice, must feel the smart
And pangs of unfed Hope's forever probing dart.

CXXII.

The clouds are gathering on the mountain-tops,
And in their dark veil wrap those cliffs and towers
Of wasteless granite, those enduring props,
On which the arch of heaven rests, where the powers
Of winter hold their rule, even in the hours
When sultry summer scorches; there they roll
And spread their frowning curtains; night there lowers
With an unusual blackness, and the pole
Rocks with the bolt, as if the knell of nature tolled.

CXXIII.

In hazy gloom the threatening tempest broods,
Crowning with ebon wreaths the mountain's cone,
And holding in its magazine the floods
That soon will hurry headlong from its throne,
From rock to rock impetuous pouring down
Their dark, foam-crested waters, as the mane
Waving amid the rush of war, and drown,
In their wide-wasting waves, the cultured plain,
And bear flocks, forests, towns, and harvests to the main.

CXXIV.

And see,—the cloudy billows heave their surges,
In airy tides, along yon western wall,
Now swiftly rolling as the roused wind urges,
Now hanging silent as the wild blasts fall,
Drooping in massy folds, as if the pall
Of all these sweet scenes o'er us were outspread;
Even as a spectre rising grim and tall
At night to some scared wanderer, fancy-led,
Sullen and dim and dark, towers yonder mountain's head.

CXXV.

A solemn pause,—the woods below are still;
No breezes wave their light leaves, and the lake
Lies like a sleeping mirror; on the hill
The white flocks eye the rain-drops, that will slake
Their hot thirst, and the screaming curlews take
Their circling flight along the silent stream;
Save their storm-loving music now awake,
Nature seems slumbering in a midnight dream;
She starts!—behold aloft that sudden, quivering gleam.

CXXVI.

The torch is lit among the clouds,—the peals
Roar through the lonely wilds, and echoing swell
Around the far horizon;—earth now feels
And trembles as she listens. Who can tell
The spirit's awe? as if it heard its knell,
It bows before the Power, whose hand controls
Lightning and wind and waves, who loves to dwell
In storms, and on its path the tempest rolls,
Whose words are bolts, whose glance electric pierces souls,

CXXVII.

And makes the bold blasphemer pale with awe,
And stills the madman's laugh, and strikes with dread
The brow, that bore defiance to the law
Stamped on the universe; he hides his head
In darkness like the ostrich; all those led
By his once fearless mocking slink away,
And o'er them prostrate, wrathful angels tread,
And draw their fiery arrows, and repay
With fear and death the hearts that dare to disobey.

CXXVIII.

'Tis night, and we are on the mountain-top:
The air is motionless, and not a breath
Of wind is whispered, and the pure dews drop
From heaven, like tears, upon this lovely death
Of nature, while the landscape underneath,
And the vast arch above, smile in the ray
Of the full moon, who, circled in her wreath
Of glory, walks, a queen, her lofty way,
And pours upon the world a softer, calmer day.

CXXIX.

The hills, the plains, and meadows, far below,
Sparkle with watery diamonds, and the stream
That steals in oft meanders, in its flow
Of peacefulness, is silvered with her beam,
And the round basins in the woodlands seem
Like mirrors circled in a pearly row,
And like the colors of the dying bream,
The soft mists hovering round them, bear the bow,
The aerial brede of light, lit with a mellower glow,

CXXX.

Than when it sits majestic on the storm,
What time it hangs along the eastern sky,
The herald of returning calm, its form,
As imaged erst, a maid of peaceful eye,
Who on her dewy saffron wings would fly,
And roll away the clouds along the wind,
And laughing as she saw the car on high
Shine in its full effulgence, as the mind,
Whom sense can never sink, nor passion's fury blind.

CXXXI.

So rolls that car along its arch of blue,
And shines with a serener effluence; air
Wakened by fanning breezes, charms anew
The flushed cheek with its coolness; heaven is fair,
A speck dims not its liquid azure, there
The eye can rest with calmness, and the green
And bloom of grass and flowers new richness wear,
And sweeter incense rises from the bean
And jessamine and rose, that scent this dewy scene.

CXXXII.

As when the twilight of a weary life
Comes on with quietness and purity,
And, after vainly struggling in the strife
Of pleasure or ambition, from the eye
The film falls, and the mantling vapors fly,
And man stands forth in his pure, native worth,
And, after tears for lost years hurried by,
The soul awakens to a second birth,
And for a few hours knows there is a heaven on earth.

CXXXIII.

Live for the present moment, but live so
As you might live for ever; let the cares
And toils of this poor transient being go,
And pluck the fruit the tree of knowledge bears,
And gaze upon the charms which virtue wears,
Till her eye's light has filled and warmed your breast;—
Be strong and bold and active;—he who dares
Contend in virtue's panoply is blest
Alone with Heaven's unstained, enduring, noiseless rest.

CXXXIV.

Give me the evening of a summer's day,
A long bright day of glory, when the sun
Is most effulgent, and the earth most gay,
And after deeds of lofty daring done,
And palms on many a field of combat won,
Where tempests rage, or noontide glows with power,
And when the mind its high career has run,
To seek a covert at this silent hour,
Where songs and gales may lull in some secluded bower.

CXXXV.

'T is night, and winds are hushed;—the leaves are still,
Or scarcely ruffle on the poplar bough,
And where a stream of waving light, the rill
Drips o'er the face of yonder mountain's brow,
The moonbeams shine as on Endymion; now
The forests are unpeopled of those gay
And lovely nymphs and wanton fauns, but how
They gave the fancy of the poet play,
And threw a rosy hue and perfume o'er his lay!

CXXXVI.

The Spring came forth, and with her came a train
Of hours and loves and graces; every bower
Concealed its nymph, and every flowery plain
Was full of light-winged Cupids; for the power
Of love awaked the universe, the hour,
When Hymen lit his torch, and Psyche came
Wrapped in the embrace of Eros, and a shower
Of sweets was poured around them, and a flame
Shot from the glowing eyes of that enamored dame.

CXXXVII.

She gave her soul to love, and on her lip
Her heart stood, and he kissed the prize away,
More sweet than when the dews from roses drip
In spangles on the grass, in early day,
When emerald sylphs on airy pinions play,
And lightly hover, as the leaves unfold
And spread their vermeil velvet, in the ray
Poured through the leafy canopy, and rolled
O'er all the bloom below in waving floods of gold:

CXXXVIII.

The lilac purpling with its luscious spires,
Breathing a milky sweetness, like the balm
From Aden's groves of myrrh, where summer fires
The living world to rapture; but the calm,
Cool shade of spreading maples, than the palm
With all its crimson clusters charms me more;
The violet, lurking underneath the halm
Of withered grass tufts, has a dearer store
Of sweets, than all the flowers that glow on Ceylon's shore.

CXXXIX.

The heart cannot be cold in such a shade;
It will be melted, as the icy stream
That steals with limpid current through the glade,
And murmurs not in winter, but the beam
Of warmth dissolves it; as a fleeting dream
The fretted icicles are gone, the wave,
Gliding o'er snowy sands in morning's gleam,
Chimes like the song of sorrow Cycnus gave,
In tones of dying woe, around his brother's grave.

CXL.

How poor, how weak, how impotent is man!
Cradled in imbecility, the prey
Of those who love him fondest, who will fan
His passions by indulgence, and will sway
To sense and self, and pride and fear, and play
Their apish tricks upon him, till his soul
Has lost its native innocence; the ray
Kindled from Heaven, while feeble yet, is stole
By sirens, and then quenched in pleasure's mantling bowl.

CXLI.

The foaming goblet sparkles to the brim,
And heedless youth hangs o'er the glowing stream,
And in its amber waters gayly swim
The fairest visions of enchantment's dream,
And o'er it plays a soft and sunny beam,
That steals in serpent windings to the heart,
And like a viper's hid in roses gleam
The flashings of its keen eyes, as a dart
With venom tipped, they give deep wounds that ne'er depart.

CXLII.

We lie along in gay voluptuous ease,—
The full vine mantles o'er us, and our pillow
Of mingled moss and flowers; the hum of bees
Sucking the dew of roses, and the willow
Now hung in downy bloom, and clothed in yellow,
Comes like a drowsy zephyr on the ear,
And the clear-flowing fountain murmurs mellow,
And airy birds in mazy circles veer,
And all seems fair and bright as some celestial sphere.

CXLIII.

We sip the cup of promise, and we drain
With eager lip its nectar, till the fume
Mounts kindling to the wild and heated brain;
And then all things a richer tint assume,
And are enrobed in splendor, and illumed
With gay looks, and bright eyes, and speaking glances,
And laughing frolic waves her spangled plume,
And revelry with light step featly dances,
And on their rainbow-wings flit round a crowd of fancies.

CXLIV.

And from our couch we spring,—we scarce can tread
This poor earth in our ecstasy; on high
We float through fields of ether, overhead
Swells with a bluer, loftier arch the sky,
And on an eagle's wings we seem to fly,
And all the kingdoms of the world appear
In dazzling beauty to the fancy's eye,
And like the tuneful spirit of some sphere,
The sweet winds pour full floods of music in our ear.

CXLV.

As breezes from Sabæa o'er the main
Waft fragance on their pinions from the groves
Of myrrh and cassia, and the snowy plain
Of coffee-blossoms, where the Queen of Loves,
Drawn in her pearly car by purple doves,
Would linger with most fondness on her way;
A land of passion,—under shady coves
Hollowed in living rock, they spend the day,
To see their houries dance and hear their citherns play.

CXLVI.

The past is gone,—it can return no more,
The dew of life exhaled, its glory set;
It has no other goods for me in store,
It is a dreary wilderness, and yet
I fondly look and linger. In the net
Of pleasure all the breathings of my soul,
The burning thoughts alone on Learning set
In tender childhood, pointed to the goal
Where bards and sages aimed, in youth blind leaders stole,

CXLVII.

And vile companions rifled, and they left
My heart dispirited and sunk and poor,
Of all its highest hopes and wants bereft,
A pinnace on the waves with naught to moor
Or bind it to the safe bank; from the shore,
Where my best powers stood weeping, o'er the deep,
Tossing and madly heaving, wild winds bore
My dark, distracted being, where fiends keep
Their orgies, and the worm that gnaws will never sleep.

CXLVIII.

There is no hope;—ten years the winds have blown,
That bore me to my ruin, and the waves
Roll in my wake like mountains. Joy has flown,
And left behind the lonely, turfless graves
Of early, fond attachments;—like the slaves
Bound fettered to the galley, at the oar
Still I must toil uncheered, or in the caves,
Where not a ray of hope comes, I must pour
Tears, bitter tears, that well from the heart's bleeding core.

CXLIX.

The soul that had its home with me was bright,
Its early promise as the flowers of spring,
Profuse in richness as the dawning light,
When the gay, rosy-footed hours take wing,
And from the glowing east the coursers spring,
That bear the car of day along its road,
And o'er a waking world their radiance fling,—
So bright the stream of mind within me flowed,
It had one only wish,—to scale the high abode,

CL.

Where Truth has reared her awful throne, and pure
Platonic Beauty sits, a smiling bride,
The Majesty that bows, and to allure
The winning charms of Virtue by his side.
Cursed be the drawling pedants, who divide
The monarch from his lovely queen, and sink
The soul in stupid awe, too soon to hide
Its coward head in Pleasure's lap, and drink
Her tempting, fiery draughts.—Stop! ye are on the brink

CLI.

Of endless woe and ruin;—sleep no more,—
The charm will soon be broken. Ye will wake,
And find the alluring hours that wooed you o'er,
And, rising like a fury, Vice will shake
Her smoky torch, and in your heart's blood slake
Its hell-lit fires, and you will seek in vain
The young days that have vanished; in the lake,
That priests have drawn so highly, there remain
But years of hopeless thought, and still returning pain.

CLII.

The world may scorn me, if they choose,—I care
But little for their scoffings,—I will think
Freely, while life shall linger on, and there
I find a plank, that bears me;—I may sink
For moments, but I rise again, nor shrink
From doing what the love of man inspires:
I will not flatter, fawn, nor crouch, nor wink
At what high-mounted wealth or power desires;
I have a loftier aim to which my soul aspires.

CLIII.

'Tis of no common order, but is founded
On all the capabilities of man,
Not like Condorcet's waking dreams, 'tis bounded
By what our free, unfettered efforts can,
The high career that Tully, Plato, ran,
Or higher still, the ideal they could form.
'T is ignorance, not nature, puts the ban
On these bright, perfect visions, which could warm
Worthies of old, who lived in virtue's darkest storm.

CLIV.

They saw man sunk around them, grovelling, vile,
A mass of brutal grossness, shivering fear,
Follies, that made the cold Abderite smile
And on his fellows look with bitter sneer,
And squalid woes, that drew the Ephesian's tear,
Which flowed for miseries he could not heal;
So wept the man, to whom all life was dear,
Whose heart was made most sensitive to feel,
And from a wretched world in hopeless sorrow steal.

CLV.

He could not cure the malady,—too deep
The poisoned dart was planted; but he gave
His witness, and his voice should never sleep,
A warning sound should issue from his grave,
And tell to ages words, which heard might save
From woes like those he suffered, woes like mine;
The man who will speak boldly, and will brave
A thoughtless world's contempt, deserves to shine
Bright in the loftiest niche of Fame's enduring shrine.

CLVI.

To feel a heart within thee, tender, flowing
In tears at others pain, and racked with thine,
A soul that longs for high attainments, glowing
For all that can ennoble, raise, refine,
Whose dearest longings seem almost divine,
The insatiate grasp for knowledge, and the aim
Of tireless, fearless virtue, then to pine,
Unknown, unvalued, and to quench the flame
Of mind in some low slough, and bid farewell to fame.

CLVII.

And why? because no hand was near to check
The wanderings of my childhood, but their care,
If care it could be called, which caused my wreck,
Made sin's descending path to me seem fair;
They poured her tempting fruits and viands there,
And kindled in my heart the lava-stream
Of wasting passion;—now I wake, and bare
Before me lie the horrors of that dream,
Which poor, perverted youth the fairest Eden deem.

CLVIII.

The world will never pity woes like mine,—
'T is only justice pouring out her flood.
I ask no pity, nor will I incline
Weakly before the cross, nor in the blood
Of others wash away my crimes;—I stood
Alone, wrapped in suspicion and despair,
For they did goad me early to that mood;—
I hate not men, but yet I will not share
Again their follies, hopes, their toils and fears, nor wear

CLIX.

The mantle of the hypocrite, nor bow
Before a fancied power, nor lisp the creed
Which offers them new life, they know not how,
A blind belief, whose ministers will lead,
Even as a hireling slave the shackled steed,
The many, who to Nature's laws are blind.
The heart whom early wrongs have taught to bleed,
When blended with a bright and well-stored mind,
In solace such as this, no hope, no joy can find.

CLX.

I will not lift my hand against those laws,
Which Nature wears enstamped upon her, nor
Gird me to battle in so weak a cause,
Nor waste my efforts in so fruitless war;
But I will weep the hopes I panted for,
Which virtue might have made reality,
And know that fortune with malignant star
Lighted my path, and with an evil eye
Left me to those who crawled in Epicurus' stye.

CLXI.

I see the charms of Virtue;—can I take
Again her narrow path, which leads to Heaven?
Beside it flows a fountain, which can slake
The temperate thirst of nature, there are given
Fruits which refresh, not kindle;—I have striven
Against the long perversions of my frame,
And I will strive; but no, by passion driven,
In evil hour I do the deed of shame,
And for a time I quench the soul's reviving flame.

CLXII.

I have no hand to cheer me;—was there one,
Whom I must ever long for, was that heart
Still mine in all my failings, as the sun
Wakens a slumbering world, she might impart
New being to me, and my soul would start,
As giants from their sleep, to run the race
Of glory, and to hurl the unerring dart,
Where Victory rears her palm-branch. No, my chase
Of fame is done, and left behind it scarce a trace.

PART II.

I.

Awake, thou sleeper, from thy languid dream
Of pleasure crowned with roses; thou must take
Anew the harp of solemn tone,—a theme
Demands thee to attune it, which should wake
The fire within thy bosom hid, and break
The flowery fetters that entwine thee. Hark!
A clear voice calls thee, where the blue waves make
Music around the light and bounding bark,
That rides the shoreless sea of mind, a heaven-built ark.

II.

Fair shines the sun to greet thee on thy way
Over the hurried ocean, heaven is clear
In its serenest vestment, light winds play
And sport along the billows, far and near
Earth, air, and sea are beautiful, a sphere
Of purest light o'erhangs thee, full the sail
Swells, as the north-wind, in its mild career,
With the still breathing of a summer gale,
O'er the long-rolling deep doth steadily prevail.

III.

On with thy voyage! leave the darker shore,
Where keener spirits feel their light grow dim,
And as thy white wing hastens on before
The breath of heaven, exalt thy farewell hymn;
Weave the fresh flowers to crown thy goblet's brim,
And pour thy offering to the powers who keep
Watch o'er the waters, while the vessel's rim
Rides low along the green wave, up the steep
Climbing, or sinking soft into the furrowed deep.

IV.

On o'er the boundless waters! thou wilt bear
Prayers for mild winds and sunshine; every soul,
That hath a portion of Heaven's fire, will share
In all thy fortunes: whether ocean roll
Calm in a mellowed brightness, or the whole
Wrath of the tempest lash it, still steer on,
Joyous or firm in courage; man's control
Is on the sea, and proudest wreaths are won
Alone in those wild storms where hardest deeds are done.

V.

Up with thy swelling canvas! now the gale
Woos thee to strain thy cordage, down the bay
The small waves fleet, like quick streams down the dale,
Speeding o'er polished stones their babbling way;
The shrill voice of the air forbids thy stay,
It summons thee to take the gift it throws
With such a smile before thee:—now when day
Sits on its high throne, and the pure sky glows
Unclouded, as the form of things in beauty rose;

VI.

Now, in this noon of life, this jubilee
Of the united elements, this flow
Of soul from eye to eye, this harmony
Of all that shine above with all below
In their unfaded loveliness, this glow
Of nature in its manhood; now expand
All to the embrace of the sweet airs, that blow,
Wafting fresh odors from the bowers they fanned,
To meet the sweeter breath of a diviner land:

VII.

Where on the coast the flowering myrtles bend,
Laden with Love's own garlands; in its rear
Towers a fair summit, where all treasures blend,
That Spring showers from her full urn; one may hear
Voices that speak all melody, tones dear
To young hearts, as the tones of those we love;
Sweeter the mellow touch, the more we near
The thicket where it dwells, as from her cove
The stock-dove's widowed voice comes wailing thro' the grove.

VIII.

Such is the land that welcomes thee afar
To cut thy long, bright track, and proudly go,
Led by the light of a celestial star,
That from its seat of beauty sparkles so,
As mind from its dark portal; in the flow
Of the broad stream of ocean, with thy sky
The dome to crown thy temple, and the glow
Of suns to light and cheer thee, send on high,
From off thy full-toned harp, sounds that should never die;

IX.

But with the hymns that have been sung, of old
Burning on lips of inspiration, glowing
Deep in those ancient hearts of keener mould,
With tireless energy their treasure throwing
In lavish gifts around them, and bestowing
New being on the wanderer of the wild;
Those spirits nerved with intellect, all-knowing,
Whose voice now roused in terror, now they smiled,
Reading soft words of love to the delighted child;

X.

With these, and all who have been of the train,
That hold the power of harmony to give
Joy unto others, as the melting rain
Wakens the earth, so that all freshly live,
And, as again in infancy, revive
With an intenser hue and shade of green,
When the waked bees come thicker from their hive,—
O, when these lords of harmony convene,
There be the farewell hymn that paints the parting scene.

XI.

Farewell to the lost land, where life was young,
And the fresh earth seemed lovely; where the heart
First felt the thrill of ecstasy, when, strung
With its fine tender chords, all could impart
Joy to its laughing innocence—I start
To find I am so cold, where all before
Was tinctured with divinity—we part,
Land of my early loves! thy once bright shore
Has lost its dearest charm. Farewell! we meet no more.

XII.

The world that is, seems Eden to the child;
The rainbows on a bubble are a spell
To chain him in sweet wonder; O, how wild
Do the first wakened throbs of feeling swell!
There is no music like the village bell,
That o'er the far hills sends its silver sound,
There is no beauty like the forms, that dwell
In flower and bud, and shell and insect, found,
When through the watered vale we take our infant round.

XIII.

But this is for the new mind,—soon we tire
Of all this simple loveliness we form
Within a magic fane, whose sun-gilt spire
Burns in the azure firmament,—the storm
Is portion of its majesty, we warm,
Not tremble in the lightning's vivid glare,—
Sounds must be heard from Heaven, that they inform
The spirit with the life of thought, and bear,
Through all their unseen flight, the souls that upward dare.

XIV.

The world imagined, to the world we feel,
Is glory and magnificence; we turn
From earth in sated weariness, but kneel
Before the pomp we dream of;—when the urn
Holds all that now hath form and life, we spurn
The shackles that debase us and confine;
Deep in its central fountain mind will burn
Brighter in darkness, like the gems that shine
With a fixed eye of fire, the stars of cave and mine.

XV.

When the gay visions once so fair are fled,
When Time has dropped his rose-wreaths, and his brow
Hath only snows to shade it; hearts have bled,
And healed themselves to be all callous; now,
In the cold years of vanished hope, we plough
And sow in barrenness, to reap in blight,—
Then the soul in its solitude doth bow
To its own grandeur, and from outer night
Turns to the world within, and finds all love and light.

XVI.

Darkness hath then no covering, but its veil
Is as a pictured curtain o'er a scene,
That hides the life of some bewitching tale,
And is itself all beauty; on the green
Before an ancient temple walks the queen
Of smiles, dispensing happiness to choirs
Of youths and maidens, whose ecstatic mien
Tells of the heart within, whose keen desires
Burn with the pure flame lit from Love's Olympian fires.

XVII.

Not kindled from the altar, which below
Stood in Idalia, bowered in myrtle shades,
The shrine of him who bore the burning bow,
Whose earthly passion, ere it ripens, fades:
'T is the one Spirit, who with light pervades
The infinite of being, but controls
Alike the insect floating through the glades
On the soft air of June, or human souls
New in their merry morn, or all that lives and rolls

XVIII.

Wide through the waste of ether, sun or star,
All linked by Harmony, which is the chain
That binds to earth the orbs that wheel afar
Through the blue fields of Nature's wide domain;
From the last glimmerer in the starry train,
To that which is to us the God of day,
From the beam glancing on the tossing main,
To the full floods that o'er creation play,
And feed the lamps of life, all feel that boundless sway.

XIX.

Love is attraction, and attraction love;—
The meeting of two fond eyes, and the beat
Of two accordant pulses, are above
Planets, that always tend, but never meet:
To us, that have a feeling, love is sweet,
The life of our existence, the great aim
Of all our hope and beauty,—but they fleet,
Moments of fond endearment,—years will tame
The electric throb of bliss, and quench the spirit's flame.

XX.

But yet there is to us a purer light,
And that is in the beautiful unfading,
The mould wherein all phantoms of delight
Are fashioned into loveliness; the shading
Of earth may give it softness, kindly aiding
The weakness of our feebler nature, while
Mind has not fledged its pinions; soon pervading
Space in its daring, as a long-sought isle,
It turns with naked gaze to that Eternal smile,

XXI.

Whose charm is on the universe, the blue
Mellowed with light's full essence on the sphere
Wrapping us in its mantle, whence the dew
Falls clear and pearly, like a tender tear
Shed on the hues, that fade so quickly here,
But are awhile so beautiful,—the sea
That smooths its gold, or, as the light winds veer,
Crisps it, or decks it o'er with stars,—the sea
Takes all it hath to charm, Eternal Love! from thee.

XXII.

And thee the fountains worship, where they lie
Curling in silent loveliness, or sending
Through the flowered vale the brook that prattles by,
Twinkling o'er polished pebbles; willows bending
Wave in thy soft breath, when its fragrance lending
Balm to the new spring makes the earth perfume:
All hues, that, o'er the tufted meadow blending,
As the wind sinks or rises oft, assume
New shades and tints, in thee expand their buds and bloom.

XXIII.

In thee all creatures gladden, on the air
Moving their filmy wings, or calm at sail
Skimming the winding water sheeted fair,
As the sun walks above it,—their bright mail
Burns on the polished mirror, which doth veil
To the bossed form, that studs it like a gem,—
Whether their serried pinions cut the gale,
Or their quick-glancing fins the current stem,
Or earth is their domain,—thy life enkindles them.

XXIV.

And man becomes thy worshipper, when first
The sense of beauty wakens him to kneel
Before the images which thou hast nurst,
And stamped them with thy deep eternal seal,—
Forms from which age and ruin cannot steal
The pure, free grace of nature;—but they wear
The magic charm, in which we live and feel
That we have caught a higher sense, and bear
New-wrought within our souls the essence of the fair.

XXV.

And to those forms of light our wishes tend,
And our fixed longing is to stand and gaze,
Where to the Parian stone the mind doth lend
Its own divinity, and pour its rays
Harmonious o'er the canvas, where life plays
In the flushed cheek, blue veins, and speaking eye,
And lip with passion trembling;—Mind can raise
From its unseen conceptions, where they lie
Bright in their mine, forms, hues, that look Eternity;

XXVI.

That send through the long waste of ages, pure
From the corruption of a grosser time,
Those models of perfection, which endure,
The guides of all the graceful and sublime
In our own nature, fashioned in the clime
Of the sweet myrtle, and the kindling vine,
Of roseate skies, green vales, and rocks that climb
Amid the never-wasting snows, and shine
In the glad Sun,—the seat of all they held divine.

XXVII.

It was from gazing on the fairy hues
That hung around the born and dying day,
The tender flush, whose mellow stain imbues
Heaven with all freaks of light, and where it lay
Deep-bosomed in a still and waveless bay,
The sea reflected all that glowed above,
Till a new sky, softer but not so gay,
Arched in its bosom, trembled like a dove,
When o'er her silken plumes wanders the light of love.

XXVIII.

It was from gazing on them, when the flowers
First wakened from their wintry sleep, and flung
Their first warm tints o'er garden beds and bowers,
When from the temple roof the swallow sung,
And in the thorny thicket sweetly rung,
Through the still moonlight hours, the heart-breathed tone
Of the lone warbler,—when the loosed steed sprung
Bright o'er the sounding plain, and the charmed zone,
In one soft twine of love, round all that lived was thrown.

XXIX.

When there were dances in the Platane shades,
And the vine arbors breathed with music,—Night
Looked from her starry throne on youths and maids,
Bounding and shouting in their full delight,
From the round orb of azure sparkled bright
The spirit in its ecstasy, wreathed gold
Flowed tressed behind them, as their footsteps light
Leaped in the mazy ring, and the wide fold
Of mantles waved to fly the clasping girdle's hold:

XXX.

And feeling voices blended with the lute,
Raising the hymn to beauty and to love,
The parent and the infant boy,—the flute,
In tempered sweetness, flowing like the dove,
In her deep sorrow, from the elm above
The dark stream sleeping in seclusion; so,
As the voice ceased, and Echo from her cove
Answered, the flute, in one continual flow,
Breathed every winding note and falling touch of woe:

XXXI.

And smiles were changed to tears, the dance became
Still, and the dancers breathless; you might see
In the soft dews of sorrow quenched the flame
Of buoyant passion;—soon the sound of glee
Rang on the merry cymbal, then all free,
As the winds hurry o'er the mountains, beat,
In numbered steps attuned to melody,
Round the close-shaven green their glancing feet,
Light as the spotted fawns through Tegean forests fleet.

XXXII.

And there the pencil and the chisel drew
Apollos and Dianas; there they wrought
Into one form the charms that nature threw
Round the fair youth of Athens; there they sought
All the soft lines of elegance, and caught
The grandeur too of loveliness, which lends
Power to the young god; there they culled and brought
From innocent forms the perfect grace, which sends
Such magic on the heart of youth, that awed it bends.

XXXIII.

Once they were planted in a marble fane
Built to the power that in the statue stood,
Or underneath the blue sky on the plain,
Or in the shadow of a sacred wood,
Or where the poplar quivered o'er the flood,
Itself in air, its image glassed below:
But now they stand, the artist's holy food,
Where the high dome permits the light to flow,
Aloft above the crowd that wondering gaze below.

XXXIV.

And there they stand, still perfect; though the stain
Of centuries has lent to them a hue,
Which tells of age and change, 't is not in vain,
But is their triumph: they have risen through
The roar of ruin round them, to renew
Taste in the land of music, and of form,
And tint, and shade;—so eagerly we view
The long-tost bark, that rudely beat the storm,
And rode unharmed, unwrecked, where all its terrors swarm.

XXXV.

They stand replete with life, the marble speaks,
And the cold eye looks passion; they might tell
Of cultured fields, where now the dead fen reeks,
Of pomp and feast, where bats and night birds dwell;
Though from their first-raised pedestal they fell,
Yet they revived in glory. It is sure,
Stamped by the seal of nature, that the well
Of Mind, where all its waters gather pure,
Shall with unquestioned spell all meaner hearts allure.

XXXVI.

We gaze on them, and on the ancient page,
And read its mystic characters, which seem,
Through the expanding haziness of age,
The fading forms of a majestic dream.
Cold is the heart, that not on such a theme
Feels the warm spirit kindle;—'t is the sound
Of a gone trumpet rolling on the stream
Of Time, and catching still at each rebound
Deeper and clearer tones to bear its warning round,

XXXVII.

And ever waken from the dull repose
Of peace and plenty, where we waste in rust
That love of high emprise which ever glows
When the roused mind hath sternly shook the dust
From off its robe, and in a childlike trust
To its own inspiration, and the power
That speaks from buried nations, at the bust
Of ancient Mind gives worship, in the hour
When the waked eyes of Heaven their tempering influence shower.

XXXVIII.

Language of Gods and godlike men! thy tone
First sounded on Olympus from the lyre
Of the glad virgins, when around the throne
They raised the joyful Pæan, in a choir
Alternate with Apollo, sitting higher,
The sovereign of all harmony;—thence came
That sounding speech, whose words, imbued with fire,
Could the wild wave of Athens bend and tame,
And wreathe the poet's harp with locks of lambent flame.

XXXIX.

Thy faintest tone is music,—when thy words
Come o'er my ear, I seem on wings at play
With every bard who sung thee, like the birds
Who feed on dewy air, and float in day,
Speeding in endless round their lives away,
Aloft above the region of the storm,
Where naught can soil their golden plumes, nor stay
Their swift career,—no sudden gust deform
The beauty of their flight, but all is still and warm,

XL.

And the clear sun stands over them, his hair
Waves gloriously athwart the perfect blue;
There is no rustling in the deep, calm air,
But one eternal tide is rolling through
The far expanse, and thus it ever drew
The waves of ether in its willing train;
Higher than ever wing of eagle flew,
Or white curl dimmed the noon-vault with its stain,
There, bird of Eden, spreads thy pure and bright domain.

XLI.

And thou too hast a voice, and oft at night,
When thy wing winds among the stars, 't is said
By those who watch the sky in fixed delight,
On fairy dreams of wooing fortune led,
When the cool winds around the flowery bed
Hid in the garden alcove long delay
Because the spot is fragrant, then 't is said
The midnight gazer hears thee far away,
Like a sweet angel's voice, salute the coming day.

XLII.

Fit image of those subtile kindled souls,
Who spurned at baseness, and arose from earth
Indignantly, who fixed in Heaven their goals,
Whose only rival was departed worth;
Whose restless passion labored in the birth
Of moral greatness;—whether on the page,
Statue, or canvas, round the quiet hearth,
On the loud Pnyx, or in the sanguine rage
Of fight,—they sought to charm and conquer every age.

XLIII.

And this with such a language, sweetly blending
All in one round of fulness, that it flowed
A streamlet or a torrent, ocean sending
Its blue waves on its rocky barrier,—glowed
Sparkles of beauty thickly o'er it,—strode
Mind on its breast, like Gods, who sail through air
Throned on a tempest-cloud,—whether the ode
Burned, or the epic thundered, or the fair,
Fond Lesbian sighed and wooed, the magic sound was there.

XLIV.

Yes, but the accent, the nice touch and tone,
Have perished with the tongues whose melody
Was Music's essence. Yes, the sound has flown
With the keen life aloft, where it will be
Absorbed and blended in Eternity,
The spirit of a grander, purer time:
Language of Heaven, O lend thy voice to me!
Give me the perfect note, the tempered chime,
That I at times may feel and live with the sublime;

XLV.

That I may read the rhapsodies and odes,
And proud harangues, and flowing histories,
Those flights where mortals mingled with the Gods,
And threw their eye beyond the life that is;
Those sun-bright lessons of the good and wise,
Those golden songs of a diviner age,—
O, could my mind but gain that long-sought prize,
O, could I take the early Grecian rage,
And pour Homeric fire along my wandering page,—

XLVI.

There should be altars to thee, and the flame
Should be ethereal, no gross earthly fire
Should taint their marble purity, but tame
The spark of Heaven should tremble down the wire,
And with the lightest element conspire
To roll full floods of snowy light to thee,
And I would warm my spirit in that pyre,
And all that lives within my heart should be
Devoted to thy will, Eternal Harmony!

XLVII.

Are there not moments when we fly from earth
And dwell in ether? Are there no bright hours
Along the dull of life? Is not the dearth
Of feeling quickened, and the dormant powers
Wakened, by living with the domes and towers
We fly to o'er the bounding sea? O fane
Of Grecian wisdom! that in ruin lowers
Over the rage of ignorance, again
Thou shalt be bright, renewed, and pure from every stain.

XLVIII.

And I would go, and worship at thy door;
I dare not enter, where thy form doth rear
That beaming lance, which stilled the battle's roar,
And stopped the clang of sword, the hum of spear,
Cutting the murk air in its dark career,
And thirsting for the shouting warrior's blood;
I feel within my soul a holy fear
Forbidding me to enter thy abode,
Where none but grandest minds and purest hearts have trod.

XLIX.

Wisdom enshrined in beauty,—O, how high
The order of that loveliness! the blue
That rolls and flashes in thy full, round eye,
Thy forehead arched with such a stainless hue,
As crowns the eternal mountains lifted through
The gathered night of clouds, the smile, the frown,
Blended in sweetness,—all in thee can view
How mind and virtue linked alone bring down
On mortal heads from Heaven the star-wreathed laurel crown.

L.

Would I might stand beneath thy temple's roof,
Closed from the entrance of all common light,
From all the sound and stir of man aloof,
Whose dark air makes thy ægis doubly bright,
As the broad flash glares through the cloud of night
With an intenser redness,—could I stand
Beneath thy roof, and from thy pure lips write
The volume of all Truth,—but no! my hand
Will not,—I am not one by whom thy lore is scanned.

LI.

No, I should rather fly among the bowers
That bloom around the Idalian dome, and take
From soft Sicilian plains the leaves and flowers,
Of which a coronal of love to make;—
Better for me a seat beside the lake,
Where the enchanter erst his wild harp hung
To moulder in the birches. Why not wake
Those witching notes again? Shall they be flung
To the wild mountain winds from chords so long unstrung?

LII.

And now I turn me to the misty island,
Which rises with its white cliffs from the ocean,
I turn to where the storm broods on the highland,
And the sea lifts its waves in angry motion,
And there again I feel a new devotion
Come with a spell of power athwart me; light
Burns, blazes over Greece, but wild commotion
Heaves in the bosoms of the North; their flight
Is on the whirlwind's wing, their home the womb of night.

LIII.

They follow nature, who hath girt their hills
With a dark belt of pines, whose fitful roar,
Far wafted on the wind, the stout heart fills
With its own wild sublimity; the shore
Breasts the rude shock of waves, that rush before
The north-wind bursting from the icy pole;
Yon peaks, that lift their foreheads bald and hoar,
Where the long wreaths, that tell of tempest, roll,
Stamp mightily and deep their grandeur on the soul.

LIV.

They love the rock, whose dark brow beetles far
Into the wallowing ocean, whose white waves
Join round the thundering crag in mingled war,
Where in the hollow cavern echo raves,
Like the long groans that seem to come from graves,
When sheeted spectres burst their cerements; high
The gannet wheels and screams, then, stooping, braves
The fury of the surge that rushes by,
And then rolls dim and far to mingle with the sky.

LV.

Their home is on the mountain, where in mist
They darkly dwell, and when the hollow sound
Of the crushed woods comes on, they fondly list
To hear the winds wake up, and gather round,
Till from each rocky battlement they bound,
Mingling and deepening, like the waves in war,
Which on the mid-sea heave and strive around
The rock, that dares their madness; loud afar
Rolls on the foam-lit main the rush of Odin's car.

LVI.

And when the night comes down, and deeper gloom
Falls on the cloud, that wraps the height in shade,
When the mist moves away, and opens room
To catch a glimpse of lakes in moonlight laid,
For all below is by the clear wind made
Serene in brightness, then the lone bard throws
A glance on distant beauty, and the maid,
White as the foam that on the lashed wave rose,
Sits lonely in her bower, and weeps her tender woes.

LVII.

Their tenderness is dark; it hath the hue
Of their own watery skies, and thence they bear
Its tints of paleness, for the light sent through
The floating veil of mist, that dims the air,
Sheds a faint glimmering on the landscape there,
So that the earth seems weeping; when they mourn
Their tones are wild, but soft; they do not tear
With a new pang the heart already torn,
That finds in the still look what kills, yet must be borne.

LVIII.

The soaring of their heights uplifts the soul,
And gives their heavenward daring to the heart,
And the tossed waves, that midway round them roll,
Seeming below, as if they were a part
Of a new ocean raging there, will dart
Their sternness on the eye, that loves to rise
From the low vale, and as it gazes start
To see above them floating in the skies
Peaks white with eldest snow, and gilt with sunset dyes.

LIX.

Dofra, thy brow is in that upper air,
No cloud e'er went as high, the eagle's wing
Has been thy only visitant, thy bare
And pillared cone is such a glorious thing
To the far-gazing Norseman, when the sting
Of a fond love of country prompts him on
To worship at thy base, and upward spring
To thy eternal walls, which in the sun
Flash far and purely forth, when the long day is done.

LX.

Far round thy fir-shagged base the torrent winds,
Hoarse as the voice of Liberty, who bears
With open breast the tempest, when it binds
Seas in its chain of frost, whose brow still wears
Part of its once deep frown, the will that dares
All, when invasion threats,—that torrent leaps
Down the dark gulf, and with its dashing tears
The rock in deeper rents, and ever keeps
Wild music in the wood, that o'er it bends and weeps;

LXI.

The roar of waters, and the rush of winds
Through the black boughs, whose tangled branches throw
Night o'er the rift, where the dashed vapor blinds,
And distant down the gushing waters glow
In their intense convulsion, as they go
Plunging and lifting high their frothy swell;
Then, as a new-sprung arrow, on they flow,
Roaring along a pit that seems a hell,
Where the shook caverns ring their echoes like a knell.

LXII.

So Mind takes color from the cloud, the storm,
The ocean, and the torrent: where clear skies
Brighten and purple o'er an earth, whose form
In the sweet dress of Southern summer lies,
Man drinks the beauty with his gladdened eyes,
And sends it out in music;—where the strand
Sounds with the surging waves, that proudly rise
To meet the frowning clouds, the soul is manned
To mingle in their wrath, and be as darkly grand.

LXIII.

Nature! when looking on thee, I become
Renewed to my first being, and am pure,
As thou art bright and lovely; from the hum
Of cities, where men linger and endure
That wasting death, which kills them with a sure
But long-felt torture, I now haste away
To climb thy rugged rocks, and find the cure
Of all my evils, and again be gay
In the clear sun, that gilds the fair autumnal day.

LXIV.

I cannot look upon those cloudless skies,
And not be lifted, for they seem to spread
With an unbounded vastness, and they rise
Beyond the height where early fancy, led
By its own grand aspirings, which were fed
On hopes nursed in their shrines below, had given
To the first powers their throne; so o'er my head,
As by an ever-moving hand still driven,
Wider and wider spreads the azure deep of heaven.

LXV.

I gaze and I am vaster;—thought takes wing
From off the rock I stand on, and goes far
Into the pure blue gulf, and there I bring
The myriad bands of night, and set each star
In its peculiar station, till they wear
All forms of brightness, and a magic train,
Show all the fabled world in picture there,
And then I seem to range them o'er again,
Like him who read them first on the Chaldæan plain.

LXVI.

But Nature! thou hast more beneath me bright
In their rich autumn tints, than all I throw
Over the crystal arch, whose tranquil light
Takes every hue of mellowness below;
It kindles in the orchard's ruddy glow,
And on the colored woods, whose dying shade
Crowns the tall mountain with a wreath, whose flow,
Softly descending to the silent glade,
Seems like the evening cloud in airy tints arrayed.

LXVII.

And where the river winds along the vale,
Bending through sloping hills, which o'er it lift
Oaks faintly yielding to the rudest gale,
And clinging with close twining to the rift
Of the steep rocks, which, as the wild winds drift
The rain-clouds o'er their quivering tops, still rise
Contending with the gust, whose flight is swift,
Scouring with stormy wing the cold, dun skies,
On which the flock look up with faint, imploring eyes.

LXVIII.

Through that low, watered vale a sanguine stream
Winds, where the maple gives its leaf a hue
Of deepest carmine, and those wreathed boughs teem
With the same tint of blood and berries blue;
Deeper their contrast, as they meet us through
The oak's dark russet and the walnut's brown;
There we might weave of falling leaves a new
And brighter wreath than earth e'er gave to crown
The sun of lower life, before its light went down.

LXIX.

There is a pensive spirit in those woods,
The sighing of the lone wind in their leaves
Has much to soften; there the sunk heart broods
Intenser o'er its many wrongs, and grieves
With a far purer sorrow; it believes,
With fond illusion, that a form is there
Who hath her sorrows too; and then he weaves
Of the pale-tinted flowers a wreath, to bear
On his dishevelled locks, the garland of despair.

LXX.

To look upon thy form, thou dying year,
To see thy brightest honors thickly shed,
As withered flowers are scattered on a bier
By pious hands, who mourn a loved one dead;
To think how all that Spring and Summer spread
Of freshness and maturity are torn
By the rude winds, how coldly in their stead
The crusted frost hangs glimmering on the thorn,
And bends the widowed boughs, that stoop as if forlorn:

LXXI.

To think on this, and on the breathing hues
That wreathed the same earth in its fairest prime,
When the glad season with its life imbues
The very clods, and wakens from the slime
Of the low marsh new forms, that spread a time
A pictured mantle o'er it; when it blows,
Mocking the beauty of a tropic clime,
Where one eternal round of flowering throws
New bloom to crown the fruit, that swells and ripening glows:

LXXII.

To think on infancy, and then on death,
In the wild herb, or those fair forms we bind
Close to our hearts, as if their life and breath
Were portion of our being, where the mind
Is heightened, and all sympathies refined
To that high state where we are not our own.
To think on death—to leave the looks, that wind
Round all our thoughts their tenderness,—alone
To sit and hear the winds make sad and solemn moan

LXXIII.

Through the dark pines, whose foliage, in the sway
Of fitful gusts, waves mournfully, and throws
From its fine threads a sound, that sinks away
Faintly and sweetly, to a dying close,
Like a soft air to which the boatman rows
Over the moon-lit lake his gliding keel,
Which comes more calmly, for the still wind blows
So meekly through the summer night, we feel
Scarce on our wakeful ear the whispered echo steal,—

LXXIV.

To think on death, and how it rends the links
Of long and close communion, how it tears
One and another chord, till the heart sinks
Without one friend on whom to lay its cares,
And take his in return;—the spirit bears
Better a loved one's woes, than those it feels
Spring in its own lost hopes;—the heart that shares
With a long bosom-friend his burdens, heals
Its wounds, and still is soft;—alone, their closing steels.

LXXV.

'Tis good to think on death;—it bends the will
From that stern purpose which no man can hold
And yet be happy;—we must go and fill
Thought with affection, where pale mourners fold
The shroud around those chill limbs, whose fair mould
Imaged unearthly beauty. Why not blend
With tears awhile, and leave that stern, that cold
Contempt of all that waits us, when we end
Our proud career in death, where all, hope-lifted, bend.

LXXVI.

'Tis good to hold communion with the dead,
To walk the lane where bending willows throw
Gloom o'er the dark green turf, ere day is fled,
And cast deep shadow on the tomb below;
For, as we muse thus silently, we know
The worth of all our longings, and we pay
New worship unto purity, and so
We gather strength to take our toilsome way,
Which must be meekly borne, or life be thrown away.

LXXVII.

Better live long and tranquilly, if pure,
Than rush into the madness of a crowd,
Where all are eager for the prize, none sure;
Where busy voices clamor long and loud,
And man shows in the strife how feebly proud
Are his best aims to raise himself, and cast
His fellows in his rear;—how keen, when bowed
Beneath a firmer heel, he finds at last,
Are the condemning thoughts, that mock him, of the past.

LXXVIII.

But I must turn again to higher themes,
And, from the lifted summit where I stand
Casting a rapid glance o'er hills and streams,
That checker with their light a happy land,
Must find again my better powers expand
To a fit harmony with earth and sky,
Which spread before me, with so vast a hand,
Those forms that seem to bear eternity
Stamped on their iron brows, where age will ever be:

LXXIX.

The gray rocks, and the mountains wrapped in blue,
Towering far distant through the silent air,
That sleeps in noon-light, but in morning blew
Fresh o'er the russet plain, and scattered there
Shadows from flitting clouds, that earth seemed fair
Robed in a sheet of light, and then grew dim;—
Far distant through the haze, those mountains bear
Sky-lifted walls, that frown along the brim
Of earth, and, as I gaze, in vapor seem to swim.

LXXX.

They rise with twofold vastness through the dun
And quivering air, that broods along the heath,
Which gilds its dark waste with the reddening sun,
Whose sinking light seems ominous of death;
Air now is hushed, and not a whispered breath
Bears from the cedar-woods one sound away
To speak of life; a lightly curling wreath
O'er the far lake alone is seen to play,
And give one fairy hue to the departing day.

LXXXI.

'Tis the fit hour of high and solemn thought;
The sun sinks lower, and a wave of flame
Burns on the distant peaks; I feel my lot
Too scanty for those inner powers, that frame
Visions of glory, which no want should tame
To the poor level of our common days;
I would be with the heights, which stand the same,
Catching through countless years the dying rays,
That every evening crown the rocks in one full blaze.

LXXXII.

And here shall be my temple, where I pay
Devotion unto Nature, here the throne
On which my soul shall sit, and pass away
Beyond where ever wing of air has flown,
Or first-created beam of morning shone,
Through the void infinite, the far expanse,
Spread out beyond all life, by thought alone
Pervaded, where no atoms in their dance,
Ere sun and star came forth, rolled on the waves of chance.

LXXXIII.

To think is to exist, and when we go
Far in the range of intellect, we seem
Heightened in our existence: brute below
Move the dull crowd, a slow and sluggish stream,
Who think us madmen, who on mountains deem
There are more lofty musings, and new force
Caught from the purer air and clearer beam;
They know no upward hours, and as their source
Of life is in the dust, such is their being's course.

LXXXIV.

They are the pillars on which nations rest,
Useful, but rude. All beauty took its birth
In the rank mould,—now worshipped and caressed,
It once lay buried in its parent earth;
And thus the mean and sordid have their worth,
To bear aloft the finer form, and rear
The prouder seat of soul, that sallies forth
High in a purer element, to hear
The lore of minds who dwell in a celestial sphere;

LXXXV.

Who have been in the common herd, but long
Have found a home more genial, and have grown,
From this our infancy of reason, strong
In all that gives to intellect the tone
Of an exalted essence, such as shone
Faint in the bard and sage of ancient days;
Earth was around them,—now, they would not own
Those visions, where they wandered in a maze
Of dreams, that were sublime, and dazzle all who gaze.

LXXXVI.

But these were dreams of infancy; they broke
The chain of earthly appetite,—the will
To be all greatness burst the binding yoke
That ever bore their spirit downward, till
They leaped on a free pinion to fulfil
The grandeur they had purposed,—then the sky
Received them in its bosom, where they still
Haste on in eager hopes that never die,
To read all things that are, with an unsated eye.

LXXXVII.

Space is to them an ocean, where they rush
Voyaging in an endless circle; light
Comes from within, and as the mountains flush,
When morning sails athwart them, so their flight
Kindles all things they pass by, with so bright
And searching glance, they read them in their core:
Like a quick meteor hasting on in night,
They wander through a sea without a shore,
Which still hath something new to gather to their store.

LXXXVIII.

And they too have a centre, where they tend;
The universe rolls round it; there all power
Comes and goes forth; though lesser beings end,
Wasting and born and dying every hour,
Yet like the fabled amaranthine flower,
That ever held the same unfading glow,
Shedding its fragrance through the holy bower,
Where angels took their slumbers, in a flow
That bore a sense of Heaven to purer hearts below,—

LXXXIX.

Yet, like that never-dying flower, the whole
Lives one unchanging round, and ever draws
New motion from the animating soul,
Which acts on matter with eternal laws,
And is to each event the one first cause,
From which all changes emanate; like rays,
All spirits point to this, and there they pause,
And when all worlds are passed, the soul there lays
Its separate life aside, and mingles in that blaze.

XC.

Here we have only moments when we speed
Round the aerial ocean, o'er whose tides
The mind goes onward, like the breathless steed
On which the wretch who flies his ruin rides;
But the base will to earth for ever guides
The soaring pinion in its highest flight;
We cannot go where the free spirit glides
Serenely in a flowing wave of light;
We may be bright awhile, but more of life is night.

XCI.

'Tis a vain toil to send our fancy on,
In quest of higher worlds than this we know;
Cold want will come, when all we sought is won,
And then our new-fledged wing must stoop below;
I am not to the hope of Heaven a foe,
It comforts, lifts, and widens all who share
In the pure streams that from its fountain flow;
We must be pure ourselves, if we would dare
Take of the holy fire that wells and gushes there.

XCII.

'Tis a weak madness, or a base deceit,
To talk of hope like this, when life is stained
With all rank, reeking grossness;—when we meet,
In a fair life, a goodness all unfeigned,
Where one long love of purity hath reigned,
And the meek spirit charms us, like the rose
That in a thicket lurks, and there hath gained
Sweetness from all it fed on, till it throws
New fragrance on the wind,—we give a Heaven to those.

XCIII.

They have a heaven on earth: it ever springs
In the calm round of tender feeling, shown
By the dear cares and toils which Nature wrings,
With a most gentle pressure, from the lone
But happy parent, who amid her own,
Smiling like first-blown flowers around her, feeds
Her spirit with their looks of love; unknown
She lives within her shrine; her fond heart needs
No tongue to tell her worth, to gladden in her deeds.

XCIV.

They have their own reward: it is the law
Of our existence, that our hearts should cling
To those who from our life their being draw;
The favors that we render ever bring
Closer the cherished, till they are a thing
We cannot sever from us, but they tear
Roots from our hearts; the thankless child may sting,
Even as a serpent, but we meekly bear
All wrongs, and when the storm beats on him, clasp him there.

XCV.

The feeling of a parent never dies
But with our moral nature; all in vain
The wretch, by cold and cruel spurning, tries
To change that love to hate: the sense of pain
Shoots keenly through a mother's heart, the chain
Wound through life's tender years twines closer so;
Feelings, that in our better hours had lain
Silent, are often waked by some deep throe,
And as the torture racks, our loves intenser grow.

XCVI.

We send these fond endearments o'er the grave:
Heaven would be hell, if loved ones were not there,
And any spot a heaven, if we could save
From every stain of earth, and thither bear
The hearts that are to us our hope and care,
The soil whereon our purest pleasures grow;
Around the quiet hearth we often share,
From the quick change of thought, the tender flow
Of fondness waked by smiles, the world we love, below.

XCVII.

But now I turn me to the setting sun,
Whose broad fire dips behind yon rock, a tower
Fit for the eagle's aerie; day is done,
And earth is hushed at evening's dewy hour;
Down the high, wooded peak a golden shower
Flows through the twinkling leaves, that lightly play
In the cool wind, that wakens from its bower,
Hung where the curling river winds away
Through the green, watered vale, to meet the sheeted bay;

XCVIII.

On which the moon, who long had watched the set
Of the bright lord who gives her light, but dims
Her brightness, when they two in heaven are met,
Casts her pale shadow, which as softly swims
As nymphs who cleave the wave with snowy limbs,
Like lilies floating on a falling stream,
Whose incense-breathing cup now lightly skims
The crinkling sheet, and now with opal gleam
Dips in the brook, and takes from air a brighter beam;

XCIX.

Which is condensed, and parted into hues
That charm us in the rainbow; each waved tip
Of the glossed petals, in that light imbues
Its paleness with an iris fringe; the lip
Thus takes a sweeter beauty, when we sip
The infant stream of life from some bright bowl
Fretted with Eastern flowers; and as they drip
From the new rose, the pearls of morning roll
Such tints upon the eye, they pass into the soul.

C.

Sunlight and moonlight now are met in heaven;
This, like a furnace blazing in the west,
Lifts a wide flame, that, as a banner driven,
Glows where the mountain lake unfolds its breast,
And every tree in amber locks is tressed,
Flowing in waved fire down the green hill-side;
Round the far eastern sky the blue is dressed
With blushes, like a sweet Circassian bride,
Who looks with melting eye on Helle's rolling tide.

CI.

The vast arch lifts a darker canopy,
The perfect dome of nature, reared aloft
Above the columned rocks, that send it high,
Like a round temple-roof, which rises soft
Melting in evening air, where sunbeams waft
Flashes, that tip with gold the pointed spire,
And crown the statue there, and gem the haft
Of the bent sword, that, like a stream of fire,
Waves o'er the startled crowd, the sign of God's first ire.

CII.

But as I turn me to the silent sea,
Where not a wind is breathing, no calm swell
Creeps slowly whispering on; where in his lee,
Through the far deep, the sailor-boy can tell,
On the white bed of sand, each twisted shell
That lies where never waves in tempest sweep;—
I look, and as I hear the vesper bell
Swing solemnly afar, the moonbeams keep
Watch o'er the silver tide, that now is hushed in sleep.

CIII.

Day fades, and night grows brighter in her orb,
Which walks the blue air with a queen-like smile,
And seems with a soft gladness to absorb
All the deep blaze that lit yon rocky pile,
Where the sun took his farewell glance, the while
He rested on the throne of parting day,
Which is his royal seat;—as a far isle
Rolling amid the upper deep its way,
The moon glides on, as glides her shadow on the bay.

CIV.

Beauty is doubled here, and both are fair,
But the reflection hath a paler tint,
As when from out a calm and hazy air
The first wan rays in frosted autumn glint;
The moon aloft comes freshly from the mint,
Where first she took her loveliness; the bright
And dark she bears, like bosses by the dint
Of a deep die, give changes to her light,
As if a snowy veil with glittering pearls were dight.

CV.

Night steals apace, and brings the hour of stars,
Which come emerging from heaven's azure flow;
First in the west the loving planet bears
The charm of light, that hath a power to throw
Hope on the impassioned heart, who in her glow
Reads the fond omen of his happy flame;
She leads the way; then thicker splendors go.
Each to his seat, as when at once they came
Obedient to the voice whose word all power can tame.

CVI.

And now the night is full; unnumbered eyes
Look on us from infinitude; the dome
Whereon they hang, in darker azure lies
Round their intenser light; as when the foam
Crests the green wave, when barks are hurrying home
From the wild cloud that skirts the brooding sky,
And gives the sea a frown, before it come
To plough the surge in wrath, and roll it by
The rock, which in that rush still lifts its forehead high.

CVII.

They gather on the far-expanded arch,
Each in their separate orders, and go on
Sweeping the long, dark vault in silent march,
Until at last the western goal is won,
Or on the orient hill the morning sun
Come forth and quench their lesser light; yon plain
Is a wide list, where higher souls may run
In the bright form of star, and grandly gain
The only good reward, which here we seek in vain.

CVIII.

No wonder nations worshipped here, and bowed
Their foreheads in the dust before the fires
That watch o'er earth, and seem to speak aloud
The deeds of unborn ages;—man aspires
To the high seat of gods, and never tires
To read the infinite, the past, and throw
Looks full of hope before him; so those fires,
Which are so high, and look so far, must know
All that is big with fate, and will have birth below.

CIX.

Faith centres in the sky;—'t is there we turn,
When earth is only darkness, there we send
Our vows to those we fear, and there we burn,
When the last pulse beats low, to find the end
Of all we hate, and thus in hope we tend
To the high dwelling of the stars;—bright souls
Love with the purer elements to blend,
And so, when the deep knell its parting tolls,
They gaze on the pure light that ever round us rolls:

CX.

So those who have been gifted with the flame
Of an ascending intellect, whose light
Kindled as death drew near, and seemed the same,
Or fairer, on the verge of being's night;—
So they have fixed their last look on the bright,
Clear sky, as if awhile insphered and bound
In a full sense of glory;—their delight
Was too intensely keen to have a sound;
It spake in the long smile they cast so calmly round.

CXI.

The sun was setting when the Gueber drew
His parting breath; he gazed in worship there,
Life seemed concentred in that ardent view,
His spirit wandered into worlds of air,
To mingle with his god, and dying share
In the last flash of day;—the cold dim glaze
Fell on his eye, but yet he oft would bear
A fond look to the cloud that drank the rays,
And then he calmly died, as one who only pays

CXII.

Devotion on his pillow, ere he draw
His curtain round, and close his eye in sleep;
That fond idolater in dying saw,
As the day sank in glory in the deep,
That rolled in gilt waves o'er it with the sweep
Of a far-flashing brightness, there his eye
Beheld his god enshrined;—his soul could leap,
At such a calm and holy hour, to lie
Serenely on his couch, and with his loved lord die.

CXIII.

Centre of light and energy! thy way
Is through the unknown void; thou hast thy throne,
Morning, and evening, and at noon of day,
Far in the blue, untended and alone;
Ere the first-wakened airs of earth had blown,
On thou didst march, triumphant in thy light;
Then thou didst send thy glance, which still hath flown
Wide through the never-ending worlds of night,
And yet thy full orb burns with flash as keen and bright.

CXIV.

We call thee Lord of day,—and thou dost give
To Earth the fire that animates her crust,
And wakens all the forms that move and live,
From the fine viewless mould, which lurks in dust,
To him who looks to heaven, and on his bust
Bears stamped the seal of God, who gathers there
Lines of deep thought, high feeling, daring trust
In his own centred powers, who aims to share
In all his soul can frame of wide and great and fair.

CXV.

Thy path is high in heaven;—we cannot gaze
On the intense of light that girds thy car;
There is a crown of glory in thy rays,
Which bear thy pure divinity afar,
To mingle with the equal light of star,
For thou, so vast to us, art in the whole
One of the sparks of night, that fire the air,
And as around thy centre planets roll,
So thou too hast thy path around the central soul.

CXVI.

I am no fond idolater to thee,
One of the countless multitude who burn,
As lamps, around the one Eternity,
In whose contending forces systems turn
Their circles round that seat of life, the urn
Where all must sleep, if matter ever dies:—
Sight fails me here, but fancy can discern,
With the wide glance of her all-seeing eyes,
Where, in the heart of worlds, the ruling Spirit lies.

CXVII.

And thou too hast thy world, and unto thee
We are as nothing;—thou goest forth alone,
And movest through the wide aerial sea,
Glad as a conqueror resting on his throne
From a new victory, where he late had shown
Wider his power to nations;—so thy light
Comes with new pomp, as if thy strength had grown
With each revolving day, or thou at night
Had lit again thy fires, and thus renewed thy might.

CXVIII.

Age o'er thee has no power;—thou bringest the same
Light to renew the morning, as when first,
If not eternal, thou, with front of flame,
On the dark face of earth in glory burst,
And warmed the seas, and in their bosom nursed
The earliest things of life, the worm and shell;
Till through the sinking ocean mountains pierced,
And then came forth the land whereon we dwell,
Reared like a magic fane above the watery swell.

CXIX.

And there thy searching heat awoke the seeds
Of all that gives a charm to earth, and lends
An energy to nature; all that feeds
On the rich mould, and then in bearing bends
Its fruit again to earth, wherein it blends
The last and first of life; of all who bear
Their forms in motion, where the spirit tends
Instinctive, in their common good to share,
Which lies in things that breathe, or late were living there.

CXX.

They live in thee; without thee all were dead
And dark, no beam had lighted on the waste,
But one eternal night around had spread
Funereal gloom, and coldly thus defaced
This Eden, which thy fairy hand had graced
With such uncounted beauty;—all that blows
In the fresh air of Spring, and growing braced
Its form to manhood, when it stands and glows
In the full-tempered beam, that gladdens as it goes.

CXXI.

Thou lookest on the Earth, and then it smiles;
Thy light is hid, and all things droop and mourn;
Laughs the wide sea around her budding isles,
When thro' their heaven thy changing car is borne;
Thou wheel'st away thy flight, the woods are shorn
Of all their waving locks, and storms awake;
All that was once so beautiful is torn
By the wild winds which plough the lonely lake,
And in their maddening rush the crested mountains shake.

CXXII.

The Earth lies buried in a shroud of snow;
Life lingers, and would die, but thy return
Gives to their gladdened hearts an overflow
Of all the power that brooded in the urn
Of their chilled frames, and then they proudly spurn
All bands that would confine, and give to air
Hues, fragrance, shapes of beauty, till they burn,
When on a dewy morn thou dartest there
Rich waves of gold, to wreathe with fairer light the fair.

CXXIII.

The vales are thine; and when the touch of Spring
Thrills them, and gives them gladness, in thy light
They glitter, as the glancing swallow's wing
Dashes the water in his winding flight,
And leaves behind a wave, that crinkles bright,
And widens outward to the pebbled shore;—
The vales are thine, and when they wake from night,
The dews, that bend the grass tips, twinkling o'er
Their soft and oozy beds, look upward and adore.

CXXIV.

The hills are thine: they catch thy newest beam,
And gladden in thy parting, where the wood
Flames out in every leaf, and drinks the stream
That flows from out thy fulness, as a flood
Bursts from an unknown land, and rolls the food
Of nations in its waters,—so thy rays
Flow and give brighter tints than ever bud,
When a clear sheet of ice reflects a blaze
Of many twinkling gems, as every glossed bough plays.

CXXV.

Thine are the mountains, where they purely lift
Snows that have never wasted, in a sky
Which hath no stain; below the storm may drift
Its darkness, and the thunder-gust roar by,
Aloft in thy eternal smile they lie
Dazzling but cold; thy farewell glance looks there,
And when below thy hues of beauty die,
Girt round them as a rosy belt, they bear
Into the high, dark vault a brow that still is fair.

CXXVI.

The clouds are thine, and all their magic hues
Are pencilled by thee; when thou bendest low,
Or comest in thy strength, thy hand imbues
Their waving fold with such a perfect glow
Of all pure tints, the fairy pictures throw
Shame on the proudest art,—the tender stain
Hung round the verge of heaven, that as a bow
Girds the wide world, and in their blended chain
All tints to the deep gold, that flashes in thy train,—

CXXVII.

These are thy trophies, and thou bend'st thy arch,
The sign of triumph, in a seven-fold twine,
Where the spent storm is hasting on its march;
And there the glories of thy light combine,
And form with perfect curve a lifted line,
Striding the earth and air;—man looks and tells
How Peace and Mercy in its beauty shine,
And how the heavenly messenger impels
Her glad wings on the path, that thus in ether swells.

CXXVIII.

The ocean is thy vassal; thou dost sway
His waves to thy dominion, and they go,
Where thou in heaven dost guide them on their way,
Rising and falling in eternal flow;
Thou lookest on the waters, and they glow,
They take them wings and spring aloft in air,
And change to clouds, and then, dissolving, throw
Their treasures back to earth, and, rushing, tear
The mountain and the vale, as proudly on they bear.

CXXIX.

I too have been upon thy rolling breast,
Widest of waters! I have seen thee lie
Calm as an infant pillowed in its rest
On a fond mother's bosom, when the sky,
Not smoother, gave the deep its azure dye,
Till a new heaven was arched and glassed below,
And then the clouds, that gay in sunset fly,
Cast on it such a stain, it kindled so,
As in the cheek of youth the living roses grow.

CXXX.

I too have seen thee on thy surging path,
When the night tempest met thee; thou didst dash
Thy white arms high in heaven, as if in wrath
Threatening the angry sky; thy waves did lash
The laboring vessel, and with deadening crash
Rush madly forth to scourge its groaning sides;
Onward thy billows came to meet and clash
In a wild warfare, till the lifted tides
Mingled their yesty tops, where the dark storm-cloud rides.

CXXXI.

In thee, first light, the bounding ocean smiles,
When the quick winds uprear it in a swell,
That rolls in glittering green around the isles,
Where ever-springing fruits and blossoms dwell;
O, with a joy no gifted tongue can tell,
I hurry o'er the waters, when the sail
Swells tensely, and the light keel glances well
Over the curling billow, and the gale
Comes off from spicy groves to tell its winning tale.

CXXXII.

The soul is thine; of old thou wert the power
Who gave the poet life, and I in thee
Feel my heart gladden, at the holy hour
When thou art sinking in the silent sea;
Or when I climb the height, and wander free
In thy meridian glory, for the air
Sparkles and burns in thy intensity;
I feel thy light within me, and I share
In the full glow of soul thy spirit kindles there.

CXXXIII.

All have their moments, when the world looks dark
Behind, around, before them. Some have steeled
Their hearts to hope, and put out every spark
Faith lends the future,—minds, who will not yield
To aught but sense, who lurk beneath a shield
That bears unshocked the rudest brunt of fate;
They boast of their fixed hardness; they have healed
All the heart's wounds by searing; love and hate
Have died alike;—unmoved they sit, and sternly wait

CXXXIV.

Death, which hath lost all terrors, in the cold
Stifling of every passion and desire;
'T is the same sound, whether the bell has tolled,
Or the flute warbled out the lover's fire;
They laugh at Heaven and all who there aspire,
Who lowly crouch and bend to fear, they mock;
They strive, while they have vigor; when they tire,
They sit and muse, like Marius on a rock,
And thus in calm, deep thought the Book of Life unlock:—

100

CXXXV.

“It came, is gone, whence, whither, none can know:
Darkness behind, as deep a gloom before:
Wave after wave our generations go
Rolling to break upon an unknown shore;
Awhile we toss and sparkle, then no more
The eye beholds our being; we are fled,
And they who moved alone, and they who bore
Navies and convoys, soon, as quickly sped,
Have vanished in the waste, dark vacuum of the dead.

CXXXVI.

“Graves tell no tales, but silence dread and deep
Broods over them for ever; one long night
Wraps all that enter their domain in sleep,
On which no day hath ever poured its light;
But time, as it advances, still doth write
Eternity above their dark repose;
Ages have wheeled away in silent flight,
Man ever to his long oblivion goes;
What if he hath new life? Who hath it only knows.

CXXXVII.

“We stand the centre of Eternity,
Infinity around us: but we cling
To the few sands of life, that soon will be
Lost in the common mass, when Death shall fling
His clay-cold hand athwart us, and shall wring
The spirit from our forms; then dust to dust
Shall meanly moulder; we shall be a thing
For worms to feast on; do we rightly trust
We shall be then all mind, or is it a vain lust?

101

CXXXVIII.

“So man has questioned, since his being came
Forth from the womb of Nature; he has found
This dull life for his inner powers too tame,
And therefore he hath cast his view around,
And wandered far away, beyond the bound
Of the seen universe, to find a home
For his high soul to dwell in; though the ground
Receive the wasted corpse, yet he may roam,
On a swift, airy wing, beneath heaven's proudest dome.

CXXXIX.

“There is a lifting grandeur in the thought;
'Tis the extreme of ecstasy to rear
Our now base life above its sordid lot,
And kindle in a holy, happy sphere,
Where all that is of intellect is near,
And all pure feeling finds eternal food:
No wonder better souls have rested here
Intensely, as the sparrow guards her brood;
And it attracts the more, the more it is pursued.

CXL.

“They live in holy musing,—mind is drawn
From all external being,—calm repose
In the one chiefest essence, as the dawn
Sleeps on the silent valley, when the rose
Drips with its seeded dew, that slowly flows
From the still leaves, all are so hushed and calm,
When the blue flowers of day their leaves unclose,
And wake their azure eyes, and breathe their balm,
And the green linnet sucks the honey of the palm,

102

CXLI.

“Whose broad leaves hang unruffled by the sway
Of the cool air, that from the ocean steals
With breath so faint, that scarce the silk-tufts play
Round the green cane, when the night beauty seals
Her golden eye in slumber, but reveals
In tender lines of light the fringed lid;
When all that hath a life in silence feels
The moving of that Power, whose ways are hid
Deep in the core of things, unresting, and amid

CXLII.

“Myriads of viewless instruments, the springs
By which the eternal round of life goes on,
Whose sleep is in the tomb, when spirit flings
Its faded slough aside, again to run
In a fresh-glowing spoil, that gives the sun
Its light in burnished beauty. Do we fly,
Thus parted, Earth for ever? or does one
Take from another life, wherewith to ply
Awhile on gladdened wings, and then grow old and die?

CXLIII.

“Nature is one eternal circle: Life
Floats through the void, and is attracted, where
The elements, in their collected strife,
From Chaos raise a world in order fair,
To float through space, and on its bosom bear
Forms, that are fashioned with unnumbered wheels,
To walk, or swim, or on the buoyant air
Float in the calm of motion;—Life there steals,
And finds its home prepared; it enters, Matter feels,

103

CXLIV.

“And all awakes to energy; the blood
Courses the winding arteries, which convey
Spirit and heat in its air-kindled flood,
And send to all, the atoms which array
The form in rounded beauty, and their play
Paints on the new-born cheek the one full rose,
Which is the flower of love; we all obey,
Uncheated of our due, the charm, that glows,
And then turns sweetly pale, as passion ebbs and flows.

CXLV.

“Above the temple, where the Godhead sits,
Reason, the Deity and guide of man,
In the most lofty seat, as well befits
The Power whose sacred office is to span
All that is working round us, or that can
Meet us to please, to harm us, or destroy;
Who hath his band of feelings, who may scan
All that would seek an entrance; who, as joy
Draws or pain frights, seeks, shuns, what charm us or annoy.

CXLVI.

“There sits the Power upon his higher throne,
In a fair palace wrought, when life at first
In the grand form, where mind alone is shown,
The elements of thought and feeling nurst
From the blank infant state, till Genius burst
All earthly barriers, and aspired to Heaven;—
He sought to grasp its fire, and he was curst
By his own daring; now by fancy driven,
The victim of belief, he finds a longing given

104

CXLVII.

“To dwell with angels, and to fashion dreams
Of glory, goodness, perfect mind, pure love,
Consummate beauty, in whose gladdening beams
We seem exalted to a sense above
The common life, that chills us; but we prove,
In all this ecstasy, the torturing fire
Of a keen thirst, whose fountain doth remove
Farther, the more we seek it;—such desire
Burns the lost wretch, who finds, each step, the desert drier.

CXLVIII.

“Man, in the temperate use of all his powers,
Is happy: with the simple fruit and stream,
Labor and rest in their alternate hours,
His life is golden, as fond poets dream
Of the first age, the Paradise, the theme
Where the rapt spirit gladdens, and runs wild
Through citron shades, whose fruitage woos the beam,
To harden in its rind, through all that smiled
In the Elysian isles, where air was ever mild,

CXLIX.

“Brushing the light leaves on its jocund way,
Borne from the breast of ocean without cloud,
Save such light streaks as give the setting day
Its gilded glory, where the year was bowed
With an eternal harvest, in whose shroud
Earth seemed a heaven for gods, not home for men;
They dreamed of all these phantoms, and were proud
Of their creations, but cold winter then
Shut them to gnaw their hearts, and grovel in their den.

105

CL.

“Rapture is not the aim of man; in flowers
The serpent hides his venom, and the sting
Of the dread insect lurks in fairest bowers;
We were not made to wander on the wing,
But if we would be happy, we must bring
Our buoyed hearts to a plain and simple school;
We may, as the wild-vines their tendrils fling,
And waste their barren life, o'erleap all rule,
And grasp all light, till age our fruitless ardor cool.

CLI.

“We would be gods, and we would know all things,
And therefore we know nothing well; our thought
Would lift itself upon an eagle's wings,
And speed through all that Deity hath wrought
And fashioned by his fiat, until naught
Should be untravelled; but the aspiring flame
Consumes the active mind, and all it sought
Becomes its torment, for the breath of fame,
Like a Sirocco's blast, will sear and scorch our frame.

CLII.

“We seek the fountain-head, whence Genius flowed
Pure from the breast of Nature, where her stream
Was sparkling as the crystal, and it showed
The bright reflection of the solar beam,
Which from the Sun of mind, the high supreme
Of moral grace and beauty, and the throne
Of majesty unbounded, took its theme,
And in the Muse's morning splendor shone,
As in the dawn of light some snow-capped mountain's cone:

106

CLIII.

“And we go down the stream of ages, borne
Through cultured fields and deserts, and we take
All that is poured from Plenty's brimming horn
Of mind's collected treasures; there we slake
Our growing thirst, and thus by quenching make
Burning and wasting our intense desire;
We gather burdens, till our spirits ache
Beneath the weight of our attainments; higher,
Even on the grave's close brink, our mounting souls aspire:

CLIV.

“And then Death comes, which we have hurried on,
By our own longing to escape it; still
Hope points the temple we had almost won,
Its Doric columns crown the lifted hill,
And the departed great its porches fill,
And all the springs of Truth at last unlock;
Onward we leap to join them, with a will
That dies in effort;—so from the doomed rock
Prometheus saw the sea roll near, his torture's mock.

CLV.

“We are the slaves of Nature; sun and cloud
Brighten and darken,—cold and heat compel
The spirit to their rule; we may be proud
That we are lords of earth, and greatly tell
How elements, obedient to the spell
Of our high reason, follow where we go:
'T is a vain pride; for Glory's upward swell,
Lifting its tides, like oceans in their flow,
Finds in the meanest check full oft its overthrow.

107

CLVI.

“A breath may quell the tempest of a soul,
Whose gusts blow o'er a continent, and pour
Madness through nations; who, as wild seas roll,
When wind and earthquake dash them on the shore,
To bury thousands in their rush and roar,
Where ages had been calm and happy, send
One host to sweep a feebler host before
Its brute and causeless rage,—that life may end
By the dark, stagnant air, whose poison doth defend

CLVII.

“With a securer bulwark than the rock
Crowned with its iron jaws of death, which speak
Defiance to the invading wave, and mock
All, who, in their insatiate longing, seek
Wider and richer regions, where to wreak
The lust of a false greatness: in his snows
The Switzer finds his safeguard; winds are bleak,
And earth is barren, but his bosom shows
How hard and firmly nerved to bear and to oppose:

CLVIII.

“And in his damp, close woods the Carib dwells
Free, for the pestilence for ever spreads
Its purple folds around him, till it swells
Dire as a Hydra with its hundred heads;
Where snakes and reptiles batten in their beds,
And round the boughs their bloated circles twine;
Where the dull air its fatal influence sheds
In one eternal mist,—no pure beams shine,
But all that sleeps below is rayless as the mine.

108

CLIX.

“Man would be free, but is his own worst slave;
His tyrant is his appetite; he lives
Calmly in bondage, if he thus can save
The lust he long hath cherished; then he gives
His birthright to the pander, and believes
He hath his surest safety in that power;
He rests in quiet sloth; he never grieves
For the high glories of that ancient hour,
When Liberty sprang forth, and fiercely claimed her dower.

CLX.

“Base passions are our lords; and thus we bend
So silently to those who let us feed
On the rank garbage of low joys; we send
Rarely, if ever, to the hopes that breed
Strength in the heart, and give the mind the speed
Of a young courser, on its upward way;
The strong and lofty love the daring deed,—
Free in their own wide circuit, they obey
No power but their own might,—the weak too are their prey.

CLXI.

“Weakness is vice: man first was bold and strong,
Prompt to repel all force, to spurn all rule;
He felt his wants, he knew his rights; that throng
Of prurient, pampered appetites, which fool
The soul of its true being, in the school
Of reeking cities taught, he had not known;
And therefore he was not the flatterer's tool,
Who gives the cup of Circe, but alone
He walked erect, a god, and made the earth his own.

109

CLXII.

“We tell of meekness,—'t is the very curse
Of our degraded nature; we are driven
Close in a crowd, where all mean feelings nurse
Their blackness, and the feebler thus in Heaven
Look for the help that here they find not given,
And patiently submit to those who crush;
Fetters so galling had been sternly riven
By the first upward race; they would not hush
Wild nature in their hearts, but spend it in the rush

CLXIII.

“Of a determined will; though now firm laws
Rear iron walls to hem us darkly in,
We can be just, and ever in the cause
Of the first liberty speak in the din
Of prating slaves, who strive, and only win
New shackles by their toil; the few will hate
The tyrant, and be nobly free within;
They live in their own world; the mean will wait
Fawning around a lord;—such is the doom of fate.

CLXIV.

“It is our pride to conquer Nature:—Mind
Is an internal force, that oft can sway
Things to its great dominion; 't is designed
As the one balance, which at least can stay
Awhile the haste of causes, which convey
All in their downward flood, to where they mix
Again in that great furnace, where the play
Of first attractions ever will unfix
The binding links of life, and send us o'er the Styx,

110

CLXV.

“To wander through ten thousand changes, where
All first is gross and hateful, till we rise
From the rank, putrid heap, to spread in air
New forms, that veil at first their energies;
But as the tireless wing of Being flies,
Hasting for ever onward, they grow pure,
And spread new beauty to the admiring eyes
Of the pleased Earth, and silently allure
To taste their fleeting charms, too lovely to endure.

CLXVI.

“Why was the sense of beauty lent to man,
The feeling of fine forms, the taste of soul,
That speaks from eye and lip, and thus will fan
Love in the young beholder? Why the whole
Waste of creation sweetly can control
The fixed heart to devotion? Why hath Night
So many golden eyes? Why is the roll
Of Nature so accordant, when a blight
Withers our very lives, and poisons all delight?

CLXVII.

“Why are we not like Nature, ever new,
Freshening with every season? It is pain
To gaze, when sick and wasted, on the blue
Arching as purely o'er us, and the stain
Of the curled clouds that gather in the train
Which the low Sun makes glorious with his smile:
To see the light Spring weave her rosy chain,
And sow her pearls, no longer can beguile,
When age and want and sin our sinking hearts defile.

111

CLXVIII.

“Youth is the season when we must enjoy,
If we would know the sweets of life; the mind
Is then pure feeling, for no base alloy
Of gain hath blended with the ore refined
By the wise hand of Nature, who designed
The beautiful years to be alone the time
When we can fondly love, and loving find
In the adored the same glad passion chime,
As if two spirits met in one most tuneful rhyme.

CLXIX.

“O, there are eyes that have a language!—sweet
Comes their soft music round us, till the air
Is one intensest melody;—we beat
Through every pulse, as if a spring were there
To buoy us into upper worlds, and bear
Our fond hearts with linked arms, on whitest wings,
To a far island, where we two may share
Eternal looks, such as the live eye flings,
When it collects all fire, and as it blesses, stings.

CLXX.

“O, could we stop at this glad hour the wheels
Of Time, and make this point Eternity!
Could check that onward flight, which ever steals
Hues, forms, and soul, as the twined colors flee,
Which are above the sevenfold Harmony,
Whose perfect concord meets in the soft light
That sits upon a wave of clouds,—a sea
Of rolling vapor, pearled and purely white,
That as a curtain hangs the pale-lit throne of Night:

112

CLXXI.

O, could we dwell in rapture thus for ever,
Hearts burning with a high, empyreal flame,
Whose blended cones no reckless storm could sever,
But they should tremble upward till the same
Fine point of centred heat should ever aim
Higher and higher to the perfect glow;
As Dante saw from that celestial dame,
Once loved, now worshipped, Heaven's own splendors flow,
And gather in her smile, that looked so calm below.

CLXXII.

“It is not in us; we were fashioned here
For a more tranquil feeling, such as home
Sheds on two hearts, whose true and lasting sphere
Is round the holy hearth; hearts do not roam
When they are pledged by the young shoots, that come,
Like the green root-twigs, sweetly to renew
Our life in their dear lives, which are the sum
Of all our after being, where we view
Heaven, as the soul's fond smile those rose-lips trembles through.

CLXXIII.

“O, had I one on whom to fix my heart,
To sit beside me when my thoughts are sad,
And with her tender playfulness impart
Some of her pure joy to me, in whose glad,
Up-gazing eyes the love that once I had
Might find its lesser image formed complete
In all its mellow mildness! We grow mad
In dwelling on ideal woes,—we meet
Those loved looks in their smile, and mind regains its seat.

113

CLXXIV.

“And as those blue eyes on the canvas throw
Their watery glances to me, where the tear
Seems gathering to a starry drop, to flow
Down the soft damask of her cheek, I hear
From her moved lips a voice salute my ear,
That was so kind and so confiding; pain,
Which once did throb within me, now doth veer
To a calm stillness; the delirious brain
Seems by cool drops renewed to life's young bliss again.

CLXXV.

“And I would then that pictured form could talk
Of hours that once were happy, in the round
Of thought still growing, as at each new walk
With deeper hue the early bud is found,
Till it unfold its leaves, and scatter round
Its purest incense;—so our life steals by,
Catching new loves and hopes, which, closely wound
With every blended thought and wish, will try
The heart to its last throb, when loved ones leave or die.

CLXXVI.

“But there is one affection, which no stain
Of earth can ever darken, when two find,
The softer and the manlier, that a chain
Of kindred taste hath fastened mind to mind;—
'T is an attraction from all sense refined,
Not purer shone the sky-born vestal fire;
The good can only know it; 't is not blind,
As love is, unto baseness; its desire
Is, but with hands intwined, to lift our being higher.

114

CLXXVII.

“'T is life the twine of hearts from infancy
Beneath the same roof, who have kindly shown
All the fond aids of childhood;—such as we see
In minds, that have one sympathy alone,
That answer to each other, as the tone
Of woman's voice to the deep sounds that flow
From the fit organ-tubes more grandly blown;
With a dissolving concord blended so,
On through the waste of life those happy spirits go.

CLXXVIII.

“Life is to them in its revolving years
One round of fragrance, one parterre of flowers:
There is a very blessing in their tears;
They are as to the earth the first spring showers,
When, wakened by the music of the hours,
All loose their wintry bonds, and leap in air,
When up the mountain, which a forest towers,
The busy hands of life their colors bear,
Darkening the yellow tint, till one deep green is there.

CLXXIX.

“There is a very blessing in their tears;
Their fountain is in purity, they well
In a clean heart, whose fondness more endears
Than all the forms and blended tints that dwell
On a first master's canvas, and compel
Worship unto that miracle of skill,
Which can at once create, as with a spell,
On the blank sheet, such things of life as fill
The gazer with mute awe, and bend the sterner will.

115

CLXXX.

“There is a very blessing in their tears,
For while they flow in happiness, they heal
Wounds that bleed deep in other hearts,—Grief hears,
With a sweet sense of gladness, tones that feel
The sorrow they would comfort; we may steel,
In our despair, our hearts to all who lend
Kindness to those who suffer; but the seal
Of our shut tears is broken, when a friend
Weeps with us all our woes, and then our sorrows end.

CLXXXI.

“And we weep on and smile; the cloud gives way,
And a new light comes trembling through its shade;
We weep till all our grief is gone, and day
Again is pure above us;—thus we aid
One in another's evils, which were made
Partly to bind more feelingly the chain,
That links existence;—we are doubly paid
By our own calm from tears, and by the pain
Which we have gently healed, and made it bliss again.

CLXXXII.

“I turn me back, and find a barren waste,
Joyless and rayless; a few spots are there,
Where briefly it was granted me to taste
The tenderness of youthful love, and share
In the fond, mutual sympathy, the care
Of those on whom our full affections rest:
I dreamed, or it was real; but in air
The charm was broken; it was mine to test
With a long pang how dark and cold the rifled breast.

116

CLXXXIII.

“There was a madness in the feeling; fire
Seemed to rush through my whirling brain; one stream
Bathed it in torture: thought could never tire
In painting all that I could shape or dream
Of years of mingled joy, till one supreme
And perfect sense of glory filled me: light
Was in my life—a moment; then the beam
Sunk, and a sudden rush of tenfold night
Chilled me to my heart's core; all being seemed one blight.

CLXXXIV.

“And then that deep intensity of pain;—
I could have pressed my forehead with the weight
Of a whole world, and yet my throbbing brain
Bounded beneath my strained hand: all seemed hate
And leering scorn around me, tyrant fate
Methought had stamped me for eternal woe;
There was no cool, soft dew shed to abate
The fever of despair;—tears could not flow,
But with another's tears, and then I melted so,

CLXXXV.

“As the doomed wretch, who on the scaffold hears
Pardon:—at first he gazes wildly round,
And mocks the offer; hope is lost in fears,
But as he drinks renewed the silver sound,
With such interest joy his heart-strings bound,
It is too keen, too deadening:—tears first start
Few to his swimming eyes, but he has found
Freshness in those scant drops, and then his heart
Flows, and his melting frame in every gush takes part.

117

CLXXXVI.

“I wept and I was calm; as when at night,
After a stormy day, the sky turns clear,
And all the world of stars are doubly bright,
As the cloud sails away, and the wide sphere
Swells darkly pure behind it, till it near
The orb that rules the still hours, then its fold
Whitens and shines impearled, and then we hear
The cock crow, as the silver planet, rolled
On the unshaded heaven, makes all things bright, but cold.

CLXXXVII.

“The earth, that sleeps below in silence, seems
Sprinkled with light, for each clear drop of rain,
That bends the leaves, and grass, and closed flowers, teems
With her mild lustre;—now she casts a stain
On the white clouds behind her, not in vain,
Bending athwart their curls the breded bow;
And as the north-wind whispers o'er the plain,
The drops, that fell with such a silent flow,
Harden to fretted frost, and whiten all below.

CLXXXVIII.

“It is one land of loveliness;—but chill
Comes the pale landscape o'er me;—not a tread
Disturbs the calm;—the lone tree on the hill
Waves in its frosted foliage;—fountains fed
From earth's warm bosom, as they kiss it, shed
A fresh green o'er the meadow-grass, alone
Living amid a world that lies as dead
In a pale, corpse-like beauty, while a zone
Of a most tender tint round all that is seems thrown.

118

CLXXXIX.

“Such was the calm that brooded o'er my heart,
Silent but cold;—I wondered, and I grew
Tranquil, though but a moment; as a dart
Leaps on the lurking deer, who wildly flew,
Seeking the woodland covert, as they blew
The maddening horn behind him, so there came,
Through my hot brain, to madden me anew,
The same wild thoughts, which soon were blown to flame,
Till one convulsive throb ran quivering through my frame.

CXC.

“And then I thought of death, I sternly rushed
To the steep brink, and eyed the depth below:
I stood poised for the plunge; my forehead, flushed
With the hot pain within me, seemed to glow
On the cool wave;—with a last parting throe
I yielded up my being, but a thought
Checked me,—I might not perish. Some sure blow,
That would end all at once,—such death I sought,
To wither in one breath, then go where all is naught.

CXCI.

“Again I steeled me, and the flashing tip
Of a sharp dagger met my bounding breast;
It seemed with drops of living blood to drip;
Already on the seat of life 't was prest,
And I was sinking to eternal rest,
When a loud voice seemed yelling, ‘Madman, stay!
Bear with a sterner will the stern behest
Of fate.’ I threw the shining dirk away,
And with a deep, wild groan I hasted to obey.

119

CXCII.

“My heart seemed hardened from that very hour,—
Feeling was deadened in it,—smiles and tears
Were gone for ever,—friendship had no power
To give me comfort,—all that so endears
In the fair face of woman, hopes and fears
That have in her their fountain, all had fled;
But life had grown eternal, countless years
At once had flown, a wider being spread,
Dark, silent, dim, around,—I wandered with the dead.

CXCIII.

“And coldly I live on, and will live on,
Till life hath ceased to torture, and the grave
Hides me from man, and that long home is won
Which welcomes us to quench us, or to save
From all that sinks us here. O, I could brave
Hell and its fires, if with it strength would grow.
There is no pain like weakness;—Justice gave
No keener rack than this, to live and know,
Weak, scorned, that our own hand had wrought our overthrow.

CXCIV.

“Well, let the world pass on; I stand unmoved
In all its uproar,—all it hath of good
Is now turned poison,—those I fondly loved
Have died, or hate me;—as the tempter stood
In Eden, nursing in his heart a brood
Of all dark passions, so I look on life;
I find no charm without, my only food
Of thought is in the keen and quenchless strife,—
I wrestle with despair, where all of ill is rife.

120

CXCV.

“But evil is my good;—I cannot turn
Back to renew the freshness of young days.
Talk not to me of penitence,—I spurn
The weakness of the stooping wretch, who pays
Awe to the hand that crushes him, and lays
The weight of such existence on his soul;
I asked not to have being, nor to raise
My life from out the brute and senseless whole,
Which ever sleeps the same, though years and ages roll.

CXCVI.

“We must submit or die:—If all would end
With the last twinkling of this lamp,—why, well;
I could bear on; but thought will sometimes send
Questions across the dark, dread gulf, where dwell
All wild and formless visions,—'t is the hell
That kindles with its fires the doubting brain;
It may be,—and those few short words will tell
Racks to the lingering heart, that longs in vain
To find some calm retreat to quell its raging pain.

CXCVII.

“There is, they say, a bending form of love,
Who spreads his dove-wings over us, and bears
The wearied in his gentle arms above
All earth has to assail us, sorrows, cares,
Toil and disease and want, till cool, sweet airs
Breathe odors from the never-fading flowers
That grow in Heaven, where peace eternal wears
The same undying smile, and, as the hours
Steal silently along, descends in balmy showers.

121

CXCVIII.

“'T is a fond fancy;—some may find it sweet,
Full of all happy visions,—life will seem
Bliss in their upward longings,—there they meet
All their once loved ones heightened;—such a dream
Heals many a broken heart, and then they deem
All is one light around them: let them bend
Deep o'er their long devotion,—let the theme
Of all their words be, of the one Great Friend,
Who saves them from all pain, and bids all sorrows end.

CXCIX.

“'T is not for me,—I am of sterner mould;
I must live on in my own heart, and find
Strength to sustain—by thought; my only hold
Is on that unbent energy of mind,
Which, as the storm beats harder on, will bind
Closer its will around it, and endure;
Which shuns all concord with its own base kind,
Where it for ever totters, but grows pure
And firm in solitude, which is its only cure.

CC.

“I will not look on Nature,—'t is too fair,
And hath too much of beauty, when it lies
Spread in the sunlight;—we must hate, or share
In the same being;—when the clouded skies
In one black front of coming tempest rise,
And bear their rolling waves in torrents on,
Then I can wander forth, and lift my eyes
With a wild sense of power,—the hollow moan
Of the far mountain-winds hath music in its tone.

122

CCI.

“I must make home in darkness,—I can sit
Days on the sunward rocks that crown the peak
Of a long Alpine wave,—such things befit
The soul collected in its might to seek
Food in the desert: as the raven's beak
Bore life unto the lonely man, so I
Feed on the darkest forms, and proudly wreak
My wrath on Nature, who hath bent the sky,
So glorious and so vast, round such as crawl and die.

CCII.

“The sense of fair and lofty,—this will wring
The form that finds itself in cold decay,
Hateful to those we loved, and thus we fling
The wooing Beauty from us, and array
All in a shroud: we cast all hope away,
As a fond thing to cheat the infant; pride
Comes where ambition fled, and when the gay
And lovely from our dark looks turn aside,
Abhorrent and in fear, our part is to deride.

CCIII.

“We have gone through the dusk of death, and known
All the grave hath of horrors; we have seen
Each separate form of pain, have heard the groan,
And the loud maniac laugh; we too have been
Partakers in these torments, and have then
Come out to be the scorner, and to wear
One broad, cold sneer;—we have no part with men,
But like a leering devil we must bear
Proud on our up-curled lips the scoff that trembles there.

123

CCIV.

“We now can smile, and feel at heart a hell;—
'T is a blue meteor on a cloud, that brings
Plague o'er a sleeping earth, and tolls the knell
Of a lost land, and scatters from its wings
Big drops of venom;—such the smile hate wrings
From the crushed heart, that hardened as it bore;
So I must live, and look on men as things
That are my bane,—so hide in my heart's core
The grief I cannot tell, till life's poor dream is o'er.

CCV.

“Then be my spirit firm: the storm may rush
In all its rage around me,—clouds may rend
Their gloom in one broad flash, and in one gush
Pour their wide deluge o'er me,—earth may send
Swarms of all ills and plagues,—they shall not bend
My soul from its fixed bearing: here on high,
Where the rude rocks and snows eternal lend
Bulwarks to my retreat, and the clear sky
Lifts over me its roof,—I sternly sit and die.”

CCVI.

'T is the wild rage of madness, thus to send
Defiance unto Nature, thus to build
A wall of scorpions, cherishing a fiend
Within a human bosom, sternly willed
To be the common foe, and darkly filled
With all that form the worst of passions,—hate,
Till every warning voice within is stilled,
And all is nerved to meet the doom of fate,
As if man stood alone without a lord or mate;

124

CCVII.

As if these feeble bodies had the power
To battle with the elements, to stand
Sole, as an oak, to whom the wintry shower
And summer dew fall like: no heart is manned,
Or fenced in iron, that the icy hand
Of want may not subdue it, and compel
The boldest daring to its stern command;
'T is the relentless tyrant of a hell,
In whose cold, sordid dens the heart turns hard and fell.

CCVIII.

Man is a very infant, when alone;—
The desert, and the forest, and the sea,
Lifting its boundless brine, and with a zone
Of azure clasping earth,—man cannot be,
Lost in their barren silence, firm and free,—
Nature will lift her voice, and bend him low;
Thirst, hunger, fear, and madness, like the tree
Whose dew is death, a chilling shade will throw,
Where the heart kindles not with a fond, social glow.

CCIX.

Then farewell, Solitude! where hate is nursed,
And doubt is cherished; I would rend away
The links that bind my spirit there, and burst
From my dark cell of silence into day,
And climb with tireless hand my upward way,
Where all who wield the hearts of men have trod;
Honor and love are there, and these repay
For the dull cares and toils wherein we plod,—
They have a spell to charm the slave, who turns the clod.

125

CCX.

Why mount the higher track, that leads to fame?
Why seek to twine a halo round thy brow?
Can the wide echo of a bruited name
Stifle the cry of vulgar want, when thou
Art in the ruder conflict forced to bow
To the hard insolence of common men?
Better have dug the earth, or steered the prow,
Than gain the heights which few can gain, and then
Drudge in the sordid path, where meaner minds have been.

CCXI.

And wherefore doubt? Belief is doubly dear,
When truth has never drawn aside the veil
That hides the laws of Nature. All who fear
Will find a hope,—one voice can ill avail
Amid the cry of thousands,—we must quail
Submissive to the common creed, or die,
Should fortune waft not with a flattering gale,
And send the gilded bark in triumph by;—
They can do all, who daze with pomp the vulgar eye.

CCXII.

My work is ended:—I have gained the shore,
Whose flowers are fancy, and whose fruits deceit;
And I have furled my sail to try no more
The gentle breath of favor, nor to beat
With adverse gales, nor where the wild winds meet
On the contending waters: youth's quick swell
Is sunk to manhood's calm, and now my feet
Must take a weary pilgrimage, and tell,
On through the waste of age, to all I loved, farewell.

Tupelo.