 | Songs of summer |  |
VII.
1.
Peace, wild dreamer! cease this raving! 'tis a madness in the brain;Even were it true, why say it? What will be the end, the gain?
Waves may murmur, thunders roll,
Silence is the only answer of a self-collected soul.
Though I fall, in darkness groping, I shall yet behold the light;
209
But the holy light will enter like the tempest and the night,
Beating on me, as I wander in the corridors apart!
In my youth I thought to perish: youth has gone, and I remain;
Some great shock will fall upon me, and will make me calm again:
Nay, my calmness is returning: torture has not wrung in vain.
Beauty stirs again my nature, not in suns and moons alone,
But in thoughts that breathe repentance, and in actions that atone:
Nature folds me to her bosom, in her unity enshrined,
Like a shell within the ocean, or a thought within the mind.
Even Love, the dream, remaineth; wears a kind of hopeful smile:
I've no faith in his fulfilment, but he may remain awhile!
2.
And mine the Paradise of books, the heaven of classic lore;The dreams of sage philosophers, the songs of bards of yore:
210
Nor pine, for that is over, for woman's loving looks!
Sometimes a tone of music, an old familiar strain
Reminds me of my feelings, recalls my former pain:
Something about the organ, a shrill yet muffled tone,
A rich melodious fretfulness, a snarling silver moan:
But I rarely heed its sorrow, I know its syren charms;
Nor need I listen to it, for in my listening brain
Is many a richer strain,
Lays to bury Youth to, or rouse the world in arms!
So armed with calm endurance I frame my glowing lays,
Embalming in forgetfulness the burden of my days!
3.
And when the days are ended, and come the dusky nights,Glimmering in my chamber, I let my fancy roam;
Watching from the window the twinkling city lights,
The people going home!
I cross my neighbor's threshold, and softly mount the stairs,
But for all my stealthy creeping, no step of mine is missed;
For the wifely face surprises me, like a vision, unawares,
211
The dear old feelings waken, the sad old times return;
Perchance I shed a tear or two, or heave a stifled sigh:
But the cheerful merry lamp comes in, the merry fagots burn,
And I put the darkness by!
4.
Then come the long and dreamy nights, the hours of classic ease;What honey-throated Plato says, and what Mæonides;
The songs I sing, the books I pen, the thought I undergo;
That sweet laborious idleness that poets only know!
I keep the watches of the night, the deeper hours of morn,
Till o'er the silent sea of sleep my spirit's bark is borne!
Save when the melancholy wind is moaning in the street,
When falls the rain upon the roof, when drives the icy sleet;
Or when the mournful midnight bell awakes its funeral toll,
212
Then stare I on the dying lamp, the embers on the hearth,
The thickening gloom, the empty room, and grow alone on earth;
Then turn I in my restless bed, and feel upon my breast
A weight like lead, and not the head, the heart that there should rest!
And in my dreams I seem to drift along a barren land,
Where strikes the moon on ruined walls, where muffled figures stand:
The waves are laid, the winds are still, yet over all the shore
There haunts a voice, there broods a shape, the awful Nevermore!
| Songs of summer | |