Laurella and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Calm deeps of beauty all this night of June
Speak to the soul in music—mystic bars
Of peace float downward from the clear-voiced stars,
Among whom proudly walks the vestal moon:
A spheric chorus crystalline—in tune
With the fervid symphony,
Half delight, half agony,
That ever riseth up to heaven from earth and sea.

Hark! to the cadenced murmur of the waves,
Where kissed by loveliest light they ebb and flow
Upon this pebbly strand, old Ocean laves,
With music weird and low;
Or rolled around their echoing caves,
Send far into the night their deep adagio.

Thus Ocean, in his passionate loneliness,
Utters to wandering winds mysterious things,

262

Unheeded as the poet when he sings
Of dreams beyond his cunning to express.
Prometheus-like, to him the fire from heaven
Brings vulture yearnings: till he feels at length
His wrestlings with despair, to whom is given
A god's ambition with a mortal's strength.

II. ALLEGRETTO.

But where the moonbeams fall
O'er the far-silvered sea,
With a motion musical
Dance the ripples restlessly,
Like such a tremulous theme for chiming strings,
As a mighty master flings
Over the rolling chords that chase
Each other through the tempest of his bass;
A theme swept onward with divinest sleight,
Weaving a tissue of delight,
Quaint as the weft of some wild dream
Where transient splendours blend in fitful gleam,
Yet tender as the last faint light that lies
Upon a western cloud, before it dies
Into the mellow calm of Autumn's evening skies.

263

III. MINORE.

Now the gale is in the trees
And stirs amid their boughs wild gusty melodies,
Rising in passion by abrupt degrees—
Dying, as of despair, in ghostly cadences;
In cadences of sorrowing tenderness,
(Like sighs from tearless hearts—to break at last)
Seeming to mourn dead love with fond distress;
Low requiems for the past,
Suggesting thoughts, too sweet to be denied,
And inward longings—never satisfied—
Deep-cherished dreams divine, by friendship undescried;
Opening to memory
Still palaces, in whose dim-vista'd halls,
Phantoms of childhood's joys float lingeringly,
And childhood's laughter faintly echoing falls
Softly, how softly, on the dreamer's ears,
Till the full heart expands ineffably,
Thrilled with strange hopes and vague foreboding fears,
In a solemn ecstasy.

264

IV. SCHERZO.

Anon the freaksome wind hath gentler grown,
And seeks the dale, his roughness all o'erblown:
Lithe stems of earing wheat he whispers through,
Or sports o'er moonlit meads begemmed with dew,
Kissing the wild-flower on her trembling stalk;
Then, stealing sly along a trellised walk,
With blowing roses arched, he fans the beds
Where summer lilies hang their dainty heads,
And many a blossomed vase the lawn bestuds,
There woos their odours from the chaliced buds,
Filling with dim perfumes the garden's bounds,
Perfumes that float like tender-breathéd sounds—
Sweet as the pleading tones of love-lorn lutes,
Soft as the mellow harmony of flutes:
Now through the woven clematis he climbs,
Or hides himself among the leafiest limes;
Now with a pink he pauses to coquette,
Or hovers o'er a plot of mignonette;
Now wantons with a fountain's dancing spray
Ere to fresh fields of joy he hastes away,
To chase the clouds with many an airy prank,
Or sigh himself to sleep upon a thymy bank.

265

V. ANDANTE TRANQUILLO.

Here in this peaceful glade,
Sweet tryst for lovers 'scaped from envious walls,
Where chastened light gleams through the trembling shade,
There comes a soothing sound of waterfalls;
And half you hope—so lovely looks the spot—
To come on Oberon and his chivalry,
Holding their revels in some quiet plot
With bannered pomp of elfin pageantry;
Or fair Titania laid in smiling sleep
On mossy couch beneath her loved woodbine,
Whose honied blossoms bend in fragrant twine
Over their Queen; while quaint-clad courtiers keep
Armed watch around her rest, and countless elves,
In bells of foxglove merrily swing themselves,
Or serenade some rose-rocked beauty near,
With silvery harps and voices icy-clear.

But now no fairy pomp is seen,
No fairy music heard—
Nought breaks upon the balmy night serene,
Save that the glimmering leaves are gently stirred,
Save that the brooklet murmurs through the dale:
When on a sudden, hark! the nightingale

266

Begins his song with soft melodious trill,
Tender as moonlight, passionate as love—
As though some spirit hidden in the grove
Poured forth his soul with more than mortal skill.
How plaintively it gushes from his throat,
Blent with the water's dreamy undertone,
Till with one liquid, long, delicious note
It ceases—he has flown!

VI. ANDANTE CON MOTO.

A stonecast farther on
The shadowy path winds slowly to a hill,
And lo! a lake—the starbeams shimmer wan
O'er all its bosom still;
And through the throbbings of the dewy night
A sound of city bells comes fitfully
From yonder haze of labyrinthine light
Seen dim against the sky.
O there are mingled in fantastic strife
All hopes, all passions—shaped by circumstance;
This grim farce-tragedy of human life,
Strange as a masquer's dance!

267

VII. ADAGIO MISTERIOSO.

These are the mystic voices of the earth
Heard faintly in the night's sweet silence—these
Her solemn utterance, rising since her birth
In wild crescendos swept through minor keys;
The music of her forests and her seas,
As of a mighty organ loud and deep,
Rolls up in full majestic harmonies,
Blent with the tones of men who toil and weep:
An awful strain, big with the agonies
Of a sin-wasted world: but through it peal
Strong chords of aspiration, which reveal
Undaunted wrestlings—quenchless energies.
Thus earth's grave song, unmarked by mortal ears,
Swells the grand chorus of the sister spheres.