 | Poems lyric and idyllic |  |
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“O isplendor di Dio, per cu' io vidi
L'alto trionfo del regno verace,
Dammi virtude a dir com' io lo vidi.”
Dante: Il Paradiso.
L'alto trionfo del regno verace,
Dammi virtude a dir com' io lo vidi.”
Dante: Il Paradiso.
“Now more than ever seems it rich to die!”
Keats.
Keats.
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GLIMPSES OF HEAVEN.
I.
There comes a fresher coolness o'er the sea:New murmurs wander from the hither strand;
Like music from a far-off land,
Is heard the fisher's twilight glee;
The white waves ripple on the sand;
Eve opens wide, once more,
The entrance on her sea without a shore,
The gaze into Infinity—
That semblance of Divinity,
That larger prospect than the Noonday bore!
II.
Now watch-lights beacon from afar,184
But in the western pathway of the sun,
More luminous, the affluent Evening Star
Loops up her silvery robe, and hastens on
Through tideless depths, where no commotions are.
Eastward great Aldebaran sheds his light;
Behind him linger yet, in fear
Of dread Orion's ancient war,
Alcyone and all her sisters bright;
I see the Northern Charioteer
On fiery wheels along the horizon roll;
A thousand orbs at once appear!
The Milky Way flows on to either Pole,
Each spark of lustrous haze a blazing sphere;
I see the radiant worlds, and, ah! their choral song would hear.
III.
O shining multitude!Effulgent glories of the purer air!
What earthly films about us so preclude
Communion with you there?
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Of harsh disquietude,
Of grief and Man's despair,
As this dark world from whence we make our moan?
Where then are those celestial realms? O, where
That clime of bliss about the pearly throne,
That central Heaven, round which all motions move—
Region of light and love
Ineffable, where dreaming pilgrims see
Green fields and golden fruit and water of life!
O answer planets! O make answer ye
Fixed luminous suns, that shine
Down from your placid heights upon our strife!
Pellucid ether! through all time surrounding
This grosser matter, through all space abounding,
Is there no voice—no sign?
IV.
Rapt watcher of the skies!No sound of mortal speech,
From those bright orbs, shall reach
Thine ears—no mystic signal greet thine eyes
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Yet in their solemn march thou mayest find
Serenest utterance, such as prophets heard
After the earthquake and the rushing wind—
A still, small voice, that loftiest passion stirred
Where'er its whisper fell;
Even now they tell
Of holier ends than this insatiate strife:
That each can make his own life, of that life
Upholding all things, and which all things bear,
A consecrated shrine;
That here, and there, and everywhere,
In suns, worlds, ether, water, earth and air,
God's creatures have their joys and griefs like thine,
Nor less the illimitable strong desire
Of ceaseless aspiration—
Forever rising from that first creation,
Through devious paths, to faëry prospects higher.
V.
I shrunk from Death,Dreading the lapse of sense,
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So rudely banished hence,
With all those inlets closed through which our feelings flow;
Thought might flit away with breath;
Taste and touch and seeing
Gone out, our very Being
Might lose itself in gloom;
And through that midnight solitude,
Like the lone corpse-light o'er a ruined tomb,
The soul should hover—trembling, wan, and nude.
VI.
Away! away!—these fancies that did broodUpon my heart! Now, as I skyward gaze
Where all those cressets glow,
Fed with the same etherial rays
From whence come earthly hues to cheer and light us so,
The Shape that was a mystery
Fades out. I see an angel where it stood!
The doubts, that were a terror, turn and flee.
Leaving its kingdom here below,
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And subtler sense, to rule a wider realm;
So vast a sway beyond its young ideal
At first the Monarch's heart may overwhelm,
But soon shall seem that spacious empery real
As noontide—when we meet
Familiar faces, in the hurrying street,
And know we live, and know our work aright;
Then shall Life broaden on the sight,
From some imperial height,
More great and calm than now, and wiser and more bright.
VII.
But here our weepings furrowTheir mocking lines in many a gentle face;
And pityingly, each night, doth Sleep embrace
With tenderest arm the weary babes of sorrow:
Yea, even the eyelids of the slave
Droop 'neath her kisses, and her shadow falls
On prison walls:—
Most sweet it seems for aye to slumber deep:
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And clasp their hands and weep—
“Rest! Rest! and Lethe for our aching pain:
O, let us thither flee!
Come, Death, and set us free
That we may taste thy peace and never toil again!”
VIII.
O moaning sons of Earth!Ye know not whence ye came,
Nor how divine the flame
In which your souls had birth!
Soon of Night's grateful draught ye drink your fill,
For morning brings the sunlight on the hill;
The little birds sing cheerly and anew;
The winds praise God; the life-blood courses through
Your strengthened frames in many a fervid rill;
So at that hour, for whose release ye wait,
A thousand sleeps are merged in one great thrill,
One night and one awaking:
In its swift transit taking
Strength, that shall not abate,
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And chants a loftier pæan than before!
IX.
Ah, yes! that life shall beNo floating in perpetual balm,
Nor long ignoble calm,
Nor swooning ecstacy
Such as the raptured Hascheesh-Eater knows;
Perfected through each patient, suffering sense,
The Soul into God's image grows
With joy intense;
The lilies of that purer land
Not only in celestial meadows blow—
Are close at hand
Even here, and by the wayside thronging,
For all to gather as they go.
These are the thrills of every hallowed longing:
The dear delight and blessed guerdon
Of Faith, that counts her losses gain;
Hope, that triumphs over pain
And lifts the heaviest burden;
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And, O, divinely sweet! the bliss of abnegation.
X.
Think not that He—our Father—Will free the after-life of these alloys,
That can so fuse our native gold, and mould us
To what He would behold us;
Rather shall Toil still chasten us, and, rather,
New strength to grieve shall come with nobler joys.
Only, as we draw more near
His face, old doubts shall widen and grow clear;
Perception will be truer; we shall know
More through those still monitions,
And precious intuitions,
That from his Spirit flow:
Only we shall grow more wise,
Nor toil for meaner ends; what glorifies,
And waxes brighter till the perfect day,
We shall discern, and humbly dare to sever
From temporal surroundings—seeing, ever,
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And how they fade and pall, and vanish quite away.
XI.
Now, though having journeyed late—Far from that enchanted ground—
Though man has left his first estate
And Eden's wildwood,
'Tis but as children leave their childhood,
For larger life and spacious havens bound.
Now, toiling on to something great,
Launched venturously from those green-swarded shores
Upon a rough, tempestuous sea—
Spreading sails and plying oars,
In search of finer countries, even, than he
Saw round him in his infancy—
What though the storms beat and the ocean roars!
Not thus can any tempest wear
Our souls or make our hearts despair.
Often the helmsmen wonderingly hark
To catch the rustle of angelic wings
About their bark;
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Upon the upper shrouds, and, while he sings,
O, swiftly speeds the night,
And heavenly breezes swell the yearning sails!
Often, in middle watches dark,
And lowering gales,
Fainting and worn and weary, they may see,
Straight forward from their prow, a little time,
The clouds roll open lustrously!
Then come those glimpses of the life immortal,
In glory streaming through the portal,
Flush with the splendor of a sunnier clime!
XII.
But see, how silvery over all the bayCreeps the white outline of a fairer sheen!
Long since the last, faint, glimmering light of day
Fled from the westward; in the East, serene,
Night's stately Queen
Sends out the lucent heralds of her sway.
Softly the radiant train
Absorb those distant lustres in their own;
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Her pages pierce and play about beneath;
Calm and full-orbed, she mounts her sapphire throne;
So let me enter, with my latest breath,
Yon clime that glistens through the shadowy gates of Death!
| Poems lyric and idyllic | |