The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

My little Poetess! whose eyes
Not less than lips demand
The lore of sounding harmonies—
An almost infant hand
Laying the while my chords among,
Accept song-science in a song.

1.

Fling far thy books! or only read
Of fairy spell and knightly deed:
Hating the pedant's learned strife
Truth walks but in the walks of Life.
Beside thy Mother watch and wait:
Her wish, her thought anticipate.
With kind, poetic insight guess
The want yon Babe can not express.
Be glad to play: and learn, each day,
To love, believe, enjoy, obey!

2.

Fling far thy books! thy leaves be those
Famed Daphne's glittering laurel shows:
For thee inscribed with words sun-bright,
Blank tablets to the casual sight!
Bend o'er yon stream, and o'er its sound
Where sighs of Hylas are kiss-drowned.
No kindly converse scorn or shun:
The Muses danced on Helicon

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Enwreathed, and infant Love enwreathing—
A God unwaked—yet softly breathing.

3.

But when within thy deeper eyes
The dawn of ripening Thought shall rise,
And human sympathies have part
With heavenlier yearnings in thy heart,
Walk forth where Larks new-mounted sing,
And catch their transports on thy string!
Partake their joy; fit words supply:
Interpret next yon Thrush hard by:
Explore her deep heart, tone by tone:
But touch not, lest thou taint, thine own!

4.

No Epic swell, no Tragic rage
Be thine: no war with Evil wage;
But show the Good, and show the Fair;
And launch light warblings on the air,
Glassy and pure, as those that stole,
Ere jarred by Love, through Psyche's soul!
More subtle lore than man could reach
With child-like instinct learn and teach:
With airier touch entwined than ours
The dew hang heavy from thy flowers!

5.

Mimic not thou a manly strain;
A woman's song in heart and brain
Should woman be:—a coarser leaven
Would dull that music-birth from heaven.
Yon singing spheres have tones they ne'er
Have deigned as yet with earth to share;

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Their Muse reserves that chime unknown
For bosoms vestal as her own;
From her, not alien models, learn
To charm it from its native bourne.

6.

Too rich in vulgarer notes, we crave
The songs we lack, not those we have;
Hope, Beauty, Truth, let thine express;
Nor over-gay, nor mean their dress,
But finely woven and lightly worn;
No gems but those for service borne.
Forth, happy Hymns from a full heart
With natural impulse, simple art,
But softly, when o'er sacred ground,
As though you feared your own sweet sound!

L'ENVOY.

Chiron taught Thetis' boy to fight:
A little, fearless Bard,
A maid disguised I teach to write;
And this be my reward—
In minstrelsy of hers one day
To clasp that beauteous, wilful Lay,
Which oft its brow o'er mine inclined,
Then, mocking, passed me in the wind!

178

SONG.

FIRST SHEPHERDESS.

1

Breath divine of morning odours!
Breath of blossoms, breath of buds;
Onward borne in wingèd chorus,
Through the alleys and old woods:
And thou stream, that, lightly flowing,
Dost thy pretty mirth enforce;
Flash, and laugh, and crystal ripple,
Hurrying in perpetual course:
O the joy to walk, low-singing,
Through those blooming vales, and say
Another morn hath dropped from heaven
With our aged earth to play!

SECOND SHEPHERDESS.

2

Phosphor, through my casement peeping,
On my folded eyelids shone;
‘Wake,’ he sang, ‘no more of sleeping,
Shadows melt, the night is gone:’
A bird that with the year is ripening,
One brief moment wakes to pour
Through the boughs wild jets of music,
Then sinks in sleep once more.

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O the joy to walk, low-singing,
Through those blooming woods, and say
Another spring has stooped from heaven
With our aged earth to play!

SONG.

Sing the old song, amid the sounds dispersing
That burden treasured in your hearts too long;
Sing it with voice low breathed, but never name her.
She will not hear you, in her turrets nursing
High thoughts, too high to mate with mortal song—
Bend o'er her, gentle Heaven, but do not claim her!

In twilight caves, and secret lonelinesses,
She shades the bloom of her unearthly days;
And the soft winds alone have power to woo her:
Far off we catch the dark gleam of her tresses;
And wild birds haunt the wood-walks where she strays,
Intelligible music warbling to her.

That Spirit charged to follow and defend her,
He also, doubtless, suffers this love-pain;
And she perhaps is sad, hearing his sighing:
And yet that face is not so sad as tender;
Like some sweet singer's when her sweetest strain
From the heaved heart is gradually dying!

180

SONG.

1

Slanting both hands against her forehead
On me she levelled her bright eyes:
My whole heart brightened as the sea
When midnight clouds part suddenly;
Through all my spirit went the lustre,
Like starlight poured through purple skies.

2

And then she sang a loud, sweet music,
Yet louder as aloft it clomb;
Soft when her curving lips it left;
Then rising till the heavens were cleft,
As though each strain, on high expanding,
Were echoed in a silver dome.

3

But, ah! she sings ‘she does not love me:’
She loves to say she ne'er can love:
To me her beauty she denies,
Bending the while on me those eyes
Whose beams might charm the mountain leopard,
Or lure Jove's herald from above!

TO A WILD PANSY.

Lone flower of many names, the wind sweeps o'er thee,
Knowing thee not: tumultuous, vain, and wild,

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The mountain-torrent sounds and shines before thee;
Yet droop not, little flower, for she who bore thee,
The great Earth, careth for thee,
And from her bosom mild
Delights to feed thee like a newborn child.

Flower on the Past's dark brow! I gaze upon thee
Till my dim eyes are vacant as thine own:
With labour I have sought, yet now I shun thee:
Flower of sad Thought! thou art not mine alone;—
Thou from my eyes art gone;
And long-forgotten voices swell the strain
Of that loud mountain-stream whose clamour stuns my brain!

SONG.

1

Softly, O midnight Hours!
Move softly o'er the bowers
Where lies in happy sleep a girl so fair!
For ye have power, men say,
Our hearts in sleep to sway,
And cage cold fancies in a moonlight snare.
Round ivory neck and arm
Enclasp a separate charm:
Hang o'er her poised; but breathe nor sigh nor prayer:
Silently ye may smile,
But hold your breath the while,
And let the wind sweep back your cloudy hair!

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2

Bend down your glittering urns
Ere yet the dawn returns,
And star with dew the lawn her feet shall tread;
Upon the air rain balm;
Bid all the woods be calm;
Ambrosial dreams with healthful slumbers wed.
That so the Maiden may
With smiles your care repay
When from her couch she lifts her golden head;
Waking with earliest birds,
Ere yet the misty herds
Leave warm 'mid the grey grass their dusky bed.

LOVE AND SORROW.

Wherever under bowers of myrtle
Love, summer-tressed, and vernal-eyed,
At morn or eve is seen to wander,
A dark-eyed Girl is at his side.

No eye beholds the Virgin gliding
Unsandalled through the thicket's glooms;
Yet some have marked her shadow moving
Like twilight o'er the whiter blooms.

A golden bow the Brother carries,
A silver flute the Sister bears:
And ever at the fatal moment
The notes and arrows fly in pairs.

183

She rests that flute upon her bosom
While up to Heaven his bow he rears,
And as her kisses make it tremble
That flute is moistened by her tears.

The lovely twain were born together,
And in the same shell-cradle laid,
By one sea-murmur lulled to slumber,
Together slept, and sleeping played,

With hands into each other's woven,
And whispering mouths that seem to teach
Each other in their rosy motion
What still their favourites learn from each.

Proud of her boy, the Mother showed him
To mortal and immortal eye;
But hid, because she loved her dearer,
The deeper, sweeter Mystery.

Accept them both, or hope for neither,
Love-seeking Youth, or Maid love-lorn,
For Grief has come when Love is welcome,
And Love will comfort those who mourn.

ODE ON LEAVING ITALY.

[_]

(Written many years ago.)

1

Angels that with love ‘revere
The gentle changes of the day,’
Thus solaced bend they o'er the bier
Ausonia, of thy long decay?

184

Thy large flower fading softly, slowly,
Fan they, and fill with sighs as lowly
As tender, and as deep as those
The year on Summer's grave bestows;
When hectic mounds of vaporous wood
Extend for Autumn's cheek their cushion,
And Heaven's own tears on boughs o'er-dewed
Anoint them—‘for their dissolution?’

2

Ah, would it were so! Death-bells tolled
O'er graves like these no pangs awaken:
Unguilty griefs are soon consoled,
But thou in death art shaken
By dreams in direful alternation
Of action blind, and aimless passion,
With hopes of future empire, based
On noblest instincts run to waste.
And worst of all, one sable pall
Hangs o'er that dying couch suspended:
Thyself, thou knowest, hast wrought thy fall—
Thy tears with tears of blood are blended.

3

Death, that from none accepts denial,
In reverence thrice his sceptre bowed;
A triple life, a threefold trial,
The Fates to thee allowed.
Etrurian greatness gold had tamed
Ere Mars his iron empire claimed:
Then Rome arose; and like that God
All lands, subdued and bleeding, trod.
She sank:—Thy States, redeemed once more,
Upreared to Heaven a smiling brow:

185

Like flowers from chains of winter frore
They rose: where lie they now?

4

Venice yet crowns the orb of waters,
Why sinks she not beneath them? What
Are now her sons? her beauteous daughters—
Go, Stranger; name them not!
Genoa, whose star-eyed Pilgrim gave
Our world its mate beyond the wave,
Scarcely retains on Europe's shore
A name: her place is hers no more.
Her choicest boon where Nature showers
On thy blue bay, Parthenopè,
There most corruption blights the bowers
Of men too abject to be free.

5

Pisa to earth inclines her brow;
Her ‘field of Death’ becomes her most:
Sea-born Amalphi needs not now
That compass, once her boast.
The sunshine beats Ravenna's streets:
That glare alone the traveller greets:
Ferrara wakes her echoes lone
In Tasso's wrong to sing her own:
Bologna's arts, and Padua's schools,
And sacerdotal Milan grey,
Old Saturn rules, while Janus fools;
And Momus ratifies their sway!

6

A wind-tossed wreath of odorous roses
Against me borne in wanton play

186

On lips and lyre their seal imposes:—
I know what ye would say!
Those haunts, I know, are sacred places,
Loved of the Loves and all the Graces;
And, wandering through those lucent bowers,
To love them, not to judge, is ours.
I love them—love in grief: and more
While on those glorious souls I muse
Wherewith surcharged they were of yore
As ye, rich flowers, with morning dews!

7

Day after day at Rome I sate,
Dejected sate, with brow low-bent,
The vault of an abandoned gate
O'er head my firmament.
They muttered Freedom's queenly name:
It stung my sadness into shame.
The wise, the constant, Freedom calls;
The rest she scourges from her halls!
There Justice lifts her axe and rods;
There all the Virtues take their stand,
Sun-facing statues of the Gods
That guard a Heaven-loved land!

8

I asked for Brutus. What! too high
The passion? Give me Cæsar then!
Airs, airs in which her latest sigh
Cornelia left, ye nourished Men,
Ye nourished Men in those great days
Whereon I fix with grief my gaze—
O wildly-blooming, slenderest trees,
That bend like feathers in the breeze,

187

Have I then hurt you with my song?
In deprecating grace your tresses
Wide flinging, ye lament your wrong
From verse whose very praise oppresses

9

The masters of a milder sway
I asked for. Dantè, where art thou?
Petrarca, shadowing with deep bay
The breadth of an illumined brow?
I asked—my tears fell fast and faster—
I asked for Raffaelle and his Master.
Those gleams, those pictured shapes of theirs!
Deep-breathers of Elysian airs—
O'er Earth they breathe them, pacing slowly
With steps that lead the Elysian measures!
O how their awful melancholy
Rebukes all baser pains and pleasures!

10

Cease, cease, wild bird, that melody
Where grief is over scorn prevailing;
In grief thou singest—in grief sing I—
Must thou alone be wailing?
No, not in grief she sings, but love!
The Heavens themselves my grief reprove;
The Love-star through that roseate gloom
Leaps up—ah yes! o'er Virgil's tomb!
O'er Virgil's tomb! But where, O where
His strains?—Ye winds whose breath dispersed them
Abroad o'er every region, bear
Them back into the vales that nursed them!

188

11

No vain regret or vain desire
Could touch that breast whose thoughts immortal
Walked ever with the Olympian choir:
Across the guarded portal
Of godlike souls, no pangs of earth
Or entrance find, or issue forth.
Pity and love, not grief were thine,
Couldst thou, great Bard, thine eyes decline
On these fair shores! O teach me thus
To bend; nor sigh that beauty viewing
Of which yon Heaven is amorous
Descending fast to death and ruin!

12

The sun is set. Long shadows grey
Trail slowly o'er the mountain head:
The olive-forests far away
Grow pale, like ashes spread
By some dejected Penitent,
On locks whose prime was idly spent—
Ah, brand no more with harsher name
A land which thus herself doth blame!
Still in the west a feeble glimmer
Is struggling with those shadows dun:
The face I love grows dim and dimmer—
'Tis going—It is gone.

189

SONG.

1

A brightened Sorrow veils her face,
Sweet thoughts with thoughts forlorn,
And playful sadness, like the grace
Of an Autumnal morn,
When birds new-waked, like sprightly elves,
The languid echoes rouse,
And infant Zephyrs make themselves
Familiar with old boughs.

2

All round our hearts the Maiden's hair
Its own soft shade doth fling:
Her sigh perfumes the forest air,
Like eve—but eve in Spring;
When Spring precipitates her flow;
And Summer, swift to greet her,
Breathes, every night, a warmer glow
Half through the dusk to meet her.

ODE ON THE ASCENT OF THE ALPS.

1.

All night as in my dreams I lay
The shout of torrents without number
Was in mine ears—‘Away, away,
No time have we for slumber!
The star-beams in our eddies play—
The moon is set: away, away!’

190

And round the hills in tumult borne
Through echoing caves and gorges rocking,
The voices of the night and morn
Are crying louder in their scorn,
My tedious languor mocking.
Alas! in vain man's mortal limbs would rise
To join in elemental ecstasies!

2.

‘But thou, O Muse, our heavenly mate,
Unclogged art thou by fleshly weight!
Ascend, upbearing my desire
Among the mountains high and higher!
Leap from the glen upon the forest;
Leap from the forest on the snow:
And while from snow to cloud thou soarest
Send back thy song below!’

3.

I spake—Behold her o'er the broad lake flying:
Like a great Angel missioned to bestow
Some boon on men beneath in sadness lying:
The waves are murmuring silver murmurs low:
Beneath the curdling wind
Green through the shades the waters rush and roll,
Or whitened only by the unfrequent shoal;—
Lo! two dark hills, with darker yet behind,
Confront them, purple mountains almost black,
Each behind each self-folded and withdrawn
Beneath the umbrage of yon cloudy rack—
That orange gleam! 'tis dawn!
Onward! the swan's flight with yon eagle's blending,
On, wingèd Muse; still forward and ascending!

191

4.

That mighty sweep, one orbit of her flight,
Has over-curved the mountain's barrier height:
She sinks, she speeds, on prosperous wing prevailing
(Broad lights below and changeful shadows sailing)
Over a vale upon whose breadth may shine
Not noontide suns alone, but suns of even,
Warming the rich fields in their red decline,
The pale streams flushing with the hues of heaven.
In vain those Shepherds call; they cannot wake
The echoes on this wide and cultured plain,
Where spreads the river now into a lake,
Now curves through walnut meads its golden chain,
In-isling here and there some spot
With orchard, hive, and one fair cot;
Or children dragging from their boat
Into the flood some reverend goat—
O happy valley! cradle soft and deep
For blissful life, calm sleep,
And leisure, and affections free and wide,
Give me yon plough, that I with thee may bide,
Or climb those stages, cot-bestrown
Vast steps of Summer's mountain-throne,
Terrace o'er terrace rising, line o'er line,
Swathed in the light wreaths of the elaborate vine.
On yonder loftiest steep, the last
From whose green base the grey rocks rise,
In random circle idly cast
A happy household lies.
Not far there sits the plighted maid;
Her locks a lover's fingers braid—
Fair, fearless maiden! cause for fear
Is none, though he alone were near:

192

Indulge at will thy sweet security!
He doth but that bold front incline
And all those wind-tossed curls on thine
To catch from thy wild lips their mountain purity!

5.

Up to lonelier, narrower valleys
Winds an intricate ravine
Whence the latest snow-blast sallies
Through black firs scarce seen.
I hear through clouds the Hunter's hollo—
I hear, but scarcely dare to follow
'Mid chaotic rocks and woods,
Such as in her lyric moods
Nature, like a Bacchante, flings
From half-shaped imaginings.
There lie two prostrate trunks entangled
Like intertwisted dragons strangled:
Yon glacier seems a prophet's robes;
While broken sceptres, thrones, and globes
Are strewn, as left by rival States
Of elemental Potentates.
Pale floats the mist, a wizard's shroud:
There looms the broad crag from the cloud:—
A thunder-graven Sphinx's head, half blind,
Gazing on far lands through the freezing wind!

6.

My song grows smoother, hearing
A smooth-voiced female hymn,
In verse alternate cheering
The pass above me dim.
Behold them now; a band
Of maids descending hand in hand,

193

Singing softly, singing proudly
Low-toned anthems echoed loudly—
Martyr sufferings, mountain pleasures,
Grave, religious, sweet affections,
Tuned with notes of ancient measures,
Linked with patriot recollections!
The land is strong when such as these
Inspire their lovers and their brothers:
The land is strong with such as these
Her heroes' destined mothers!
Freedom from every hut
Sends down a separate root:
And when base swords her branches cut
With tenfold might they shoot.
Her Temples are of pine-woods made,
Not Tyrian gold or Parian stone
With roofs of cedar gem-inlaid:
There sits she; thence alone
To those dispensing her large love
Who share her solemn feast above,
Nor fear her icy halls, or zone
Of clouds with which she girds her own!

7.

Mount higher, mount higher!
With rock-girdled gyre
Behind each grey ridge
And pine-feathered ledge
A vale is suspended; mount higher, mount higher!

From rock to rock leaping
The wild goats, they bound;
The resinous odours
Are wafted around;

194

The clouds, disentangled,
With blue gaps are spangled;
Green isles of the valley with sunshine are crowned.

The birches new budded
Make pink the green copse;
From the briar and hazel
The golden rain drops;
As he climbs, the boughs shaking,
Nest-seeking, branch-breaking,
Beneath the white ash-boughs the shepherd-boy stops.

How happy that shepherd!
How happy the lass!
How freshly beside them
The pure Zephyrs pass!
Sing, sing! From the soil
Springs bubble and boil,
And sun-smitten torrents fall soft on the grass.

Once more on every turf-clad stage
Peeps forth some household hermitage;
Once more from tracts serene and high
The young lambs bleat, the dams reply.
From echoing trunks I hear the dash
Of headlong stream or ‘Rans des Vaches.’
Lo! from thickets lightly springing,
An old church spire! around its base
Devotions ever upward winging,
That find in Heaven their resting-place!
Around it grey-haired votaries kneel,
Who look along it to the skies,
And babes with imitative zeal
Kissing their lip-worn rosaries.
Not soon the mountain Faith grows cold:
Yon hamlet is six centuries old!

195

8.

Mount higher, mount higher,
To the cloudland nigher;
To the regions we climb
Of our long-buried prime—
In the skies it awaits us—Up higher, up higher!

Loud Hymn and clear Pæan
From caverns are rolled:
Far below us is Summer—
We have slipped from her fold;
We have passed, like a breath,
To new life without death—
The Spring and our Childhood all round we behold.

9.

What are toils to men who scorn them?
Peril what to men who dare?
Chains to hands that once have torn them
Thenceforth are chains of air!
The winds above the snow-plains fleet—
Like them I race with wingèd feet:
My bonds are dropped; my spirit thrills,
A Freeman of the Eternal Hills!
Each cloud by turns I make my tent;
I run before the radiance sent
From every mountain's silver mail
Across dark gulfs from vale to vale:
The curdling mist in smooth career,
A lovely phantom fleeting by,
As silent sails through yon pale mere
That shrines its own blue sky;
The sun that mere makes now its targe,
And rainbow vapours tread its marge:

196

A whisper, such as lovers use,
Far off on those still heights were heard;
But here was never sound of bird;
No wild bee lets its murmur loose
O'er those blue flowers in rocky cleft
Their unvoluptuous eyes that lift
From feathery tufts of spangled moss
Pure as the snows which they emboss.
Lo! like the foam of wintry ocean,
The clouds beneath my feet are curled;
Dividing now with solemn motion
They give me back the world.
No veil I fear, no visual bond
In this aerial diamond:
My head o'er crystal bastions bent,
'Twixt star-crowned spire and battlement
I see the river of green ice
From precipice to precipice
Wind earthward slow, with blighting breath
Blackening the vales below like death.
Far, far beneath in sealike reach
Receding to the horizon's rim,
I see the woods of pine and beech,
By their own breath made dim:
I see the land which heroes trod;
I see the land where Virtue chose
To live alone, and live to God;
The land she gave to those
Who know that on the hearth alone
True Freedom rears her fort and throne.

10.

Lift up, not only hand and eye,
Lift up, O Man, thy heart on high:

197

Or downward gaze once more; and seè
How spiritual dust can be!
Then far into the Future dive,
And ask if there indeed survive,
When fade the worlds, no primal shapes
Of disembodied hills and capes,
Types meet to shadow Godhead forth;
Dread antitypes of shapes on earth?
O Earth! thou shalt not wholly die,
Of some ‘new Earth’ the chrysalis
Predestined from Eternity,
Nor seldom seen through this;
On which, in glory gazing, we
Perchance shall oft remember thee,
And trace through it thine ancient frame
Distinct, like flame espied through flame,
Or like our earliest friends, above
Not lost, though merged in heavenlier love—
How changed, yet still the same!

11.

Here rest, my Soul, from meteor dreams;
And thou, my Song, find rest. The streams
That left at morn yon mountain's brow
Are sleeping with Locarno now.
Earth seeks perforce from joy release;
But Heaven in rapture finds her peace.
Gaze on those skies at once o'er all the earth
Dissolving in a bath of purple dews,
And spread thy soul abroad as widely forth
Till Love thy soul, as Heaven the snows, suffuse.
The sun is set—but upwards without end
Two mighty beams, diverging,

198

Like hands in benediction raised, extend;
From the great deep a crimson mist is surging:
The peaks are pyres where Day doth lie
Like Indian widows proud to die;
Strange gleams, each moment ten times bright,
Shoot round, transfiguring as they smite
All spaces of the empyreal height—
Deep gleams, high Words which God to man doth speak,
From peak to solemn peak in order driven
They speed—A loftier vision dost thou seek?
Rise then—to Heaven!

SONG.

(TO A BIRD.)

O wing-girt form of air and fire!
Thy little heart will burst atwain:
Sooner Apollo's steeds will tire
Than thou remit that ardent strain!

Who changed to shape so fine and small
Some Mænad o'er the rough hills flying?
What God, expelled the Olympian Hall,
In anger took this mould to die in?

Fly, Winter, fly! the notes she flingeth
Are shafts that pierce thy mailed array:
Come, Summer, come! the songs she singeth
With buds and blossoms pave thy way!

199

SONG.

Give me back my heart, fair child;
To you as yet 'twere worth but little!
Half beguiler, half beguiled,
Be you warned: your own is brittle.

‘Hid it! dropt it on the moors!
Lost it, and you cannot find it’—
My own heart I want, not yours:
You have bound, and must unbind it.

Fling it from you: Youth is strong:
Love is trouble; love is folly:
Love, that makes an old heart young,
Makes a young heart melancholy.

THE DIGNITY OF SORROW.

1.

I have not seen you since the Shadow fell
From Heaven against your door:
I know not if you bear your Sorrow well:
I only know your hearth is cold: your floor
Will hear that soft and gliding tread no more.

2.

I know our ancient friendship now is over:
I can love still, and so will not complain:
I have not loved in vain;

200

Taught long that Art of Sadness to discover
Which draws stern solace from the wells of pain.
You love the dead alone; or you have lost
The power and life of Love in Time's untimely frost.

3.

You have stood up in the great Monarch's court—
The court of Death: in spirit you have seen
His lonely shades serene
Where all the mighty men of old resort.
The eyes of Proserpine,
Heavy and black, have rested upon thine.
Her vintage, wine from laurel-berries prest,
You raised—and laid you then the chalice down,
Scared by that Queen's inevitable frown,
Just as the marble touched your panting breast?
O! in the mirror of that poison cold
What Shadow or what Shape did you behold?

4.

And she is dead: and you have long been dying:
And are recovered, and live on; O Friend!
Say, what shall be the end
Of leaf-lamenting boughs and wintry sighing?
When will the woods that moan
Resume their green array?
When will the dull, sad clouds be overblown,
And a calm sunset close our stormy day?

5.

My thoughts pursue you still. I call them back.
Once more they seek you, like the birds that rise
Up from their reeds, and in a winding track
Circle the field wherein their forage lies;

201

Or like some poor and downcast Pensioner,
Depressed and timid, though his head be grey,
That moves with curving steps to greet his Lord,
Whom he hath watched all day—
Yet lets him pass away without a word;
And gazes on his footsteps from afar.

ODE TO AN EOLIAN HARP.

Time goes: yet not for ever
Are gone those joys once mine:
Once more my pulses quiver
With every pulse of thine,
With every throbbing murmur,
And dying gasp divine.

As the graceful bending
Of a breeze-swayed tree,
Rising or descending
T'ward the shade-swept lea,
Thus are my fancies rocked and swayed
By thy slow harmony!

Hast thou felt the sorrow
Which thy sighs bemoan?
Or art fain to borrow,
Like the bards, a tone
Of visionary sadness
And anguish not thine own?

202

By soft Zephyrs greeted
Thou dost answer well:
Fretfully entreated
Thou wilt nothing tell—
Let me win thy secret
By some flattering spell.

Unforgetful mourner
Undisquieted!
Innocent adorner
Of every season fled!
Consoler of the absent
Condoler of the dead!

As one, now blind, that lingers,
On the cold world cast,
Following with frosty fingers
Old names on tree-stems traced,
I stand: thy breath like spring unsealing
All the ice-bound Past.

Making that Past so distant,
Thou giv'st us age in youth:—
Wilt thou, with boon persistent
When youth is gone, in sooth
With lights of morning paint once more
The mists of time and ruth?

On, with angel fleetness,
Again those sounds sweep on,
Crushing the air to sweetness:
They came, and they are gone!
Again my dreams desert me:
I sit once more alone.

203

When from some doomed city
Her Gods depart, such sound
Of mixed reproof and pity
In refluent airs half drowned
Are heard at night among the clouds
By kneelers on the ground.

Half the world are wailing,
Harp of Heaven, like thee!
Tell them vain is railing
At what needs must be;
That sighs are vainer still unless
Those sighs make melody.

Tell them dead leaves are fragrant;
Autumn airs serene;
Showers gone by or vagrant
Smile with rainbow sheen:
Delights, if pure, when buried,
Keep their graves long green.

From Fortune thus we'll hide us;
On Fate our scorn thus wreak:
That help the strong denied us
We'll borrow from the weak—
Hark, hark; again that murmur!
O heart, be strong or break!

204

SONG.

Cool, if ye may, my hands, rivers soft-sliding!
Far-sunken, piny dells, and shadowy glades,
Take, take me to your shades!
Sea-caverns deep in emerald cloisters hiding
Dark gems and endless peace,
O bid my tumults cease:
Fan me, cold airs, with gelid breath serene:
Ye meadows lull me with your soothing green!

Heaven is too wide a sphere for Man's weak spirit
To fill, and there, with joy or grief opprest,
To find, all round, one rest:
And Earth, that bourne we sought not but inherit,
In her small bound can yield
No region and no field
For a proud Soul that seeks and seeks for ever
That which she knows too well no finite space can give her!

TO M. O. B.

As if no child on all the earth,
Till thou wert born, had golden hair,
And eyes, pure lamps of loveliest mirth,
Thy Mother lifts her hands to swear
No charms were e'er like thine: but I
Misdoubt the boast—almost deny.

205

Who knows but in some Grecian vale
Even now as fair a child may sit
Close-nested like a nightingale,
While round and round the dark birds flit
Amazed at sunny locks and eyes,
Strange rebels 'gainst Egean skies!

Who knows but where the almond waves,
'Mid some Circassian forest's gloom,
Between two scarce divided graves,
An English and a native tomb,
Some child like thee the buds may gather,
And sing ‘A hero was my Father!’

Ausonia, in her bowered retreats—
But has not England too her bowers
Where Love with love-touched Beauty meets,
And rears from earth supernal flowers?
Away, away! 'twere shame to say
No child was e'er like thee: away!

Or if indeed no prosperous star
To form so fine on earth has given
A bloom so sweet—what then? there are
A thousand such in Heaven!
Away, away! 'twere sin to say
No child was e'er like thee. Away!

206

COLERIDGE.

His eye saw all things in the symmetry
Of true and just proportion; and his ear
That inner tone could hear
Which flows beneath the outer: therefore he
Was as a mighty shell, fashioning all
The winds to one rich sound, ample and musical.

Yet dim that eye with gazing upon heaven;
Wearied with vigils, and the frequent birth
Of tears when turned to earth:
Therefore, though farthest ken to him was given,
Near things escaped him: through them—as a gem
Diaphanous—he saw; and therefore saw not them.

Moreover, men whom sovereign wisdom teaches
That God not less in humblest forms abides
Than those the great veil hides,
Such men a tremor of bright reverence reaches;
And thus, confronted ever with high things,
Like cherubim they hide their eyes between their wings.

No loftier, purer soul than his hath ever
With awe revolved the planetary page,
From infancy to age,
Of Knowledge; sedulous and proud to give her
The whole of his great heart for her own sake;
For what she is; not what she does, or what can make.

207

And mighty Voices from afar came to him:
Converse of trumpets held by cloudy forms,
And speech of choral storms:
Spirits of night and noontide bent to woo him:
He stood the while, lonely and desolate
As Adam, when he ruled the world, yet found no mate.

His loftiest thoughts were but like palms uplifted,
Aspiring, yet in supplicating guise;
His sweetest songs were sighs:
Adown Lethean streams his spirit drifted,
Under Elysian shades from poppied bank
With Amaranths massed in dark luxuriance dank.

Coleridge, farewell! That great and grave transition
Which may not Priest, or King, or Conqueror spare,
And yet a Babe can bear,
Has come to thee. Through life a goodly vision
Was thine; and time it was thy rest to take.
Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break—
When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's sake!

1839.

A CHARACTER.

She scarce can tell if she have loved or not;
She of her heart no register has kept:
She knows but this, that once too blest her lot
Appeared for earth; and that ere long she wept.

208

Upon life's daily task without pretence
She moves; and many love her; all revere:
She will be full of joy when summoned hence,
Yet not unhappy seems while lingering here.

If once her breast the storms of anguish tore
On that pure lake no weeds or scum they cast:
Time has ta'en from her much, but given her more;
And of his gifts the best will be the last.

Her parents lie beneath the churchyard grass;
On her own strength and foresight she is thrown,
Who, while her brothers played, too timid was
To join their sports; and played or sighed alone.

Her heart is as a spot of hallowed ground
Filled with old tombs and sacred to the Past,
Such as near villages remote is found,
Or rain-washed chancel in some woodland waste:

It once was pierced each day by some new stone,
And thronged with weeping women and sad men;
But now it lies with grass and flowers o'ergrown,
And o'er it pipes the thrush and builds the wren.

MOODS.

In heaviness I lay; no word
I spake; I breathed no tone;
When down from Heaven a thought of joy
Into my heart fell prone:
It smote, it thrilled, it pierced my mind;
Then by that mind's up-buoyaunce
Half-lifted, o'er it cast a glow
Of beauty and deep joyaunce.

209

It left me: and my soul once more
Grew dreary as a flood,
When that bright Nymph who bathed therein
Hath vanished in the wood:
When her last lustre from the wave
Is gone, or all but gone,
And backward close the forest boughs,
And the shades of Eve come on.

TO A. S. O. B.

I never looked upon the face
Of her whom you deplore and love;
Yet bending o'er this portrait's grace
Some image lost I seem to trace,
Not lost, but stored above.

I never saw those eyes whose beams
Made heaving hearts as calm and bright
As Hesper makes the ocean-streams:
O! if they shine upon your dreams
To you how dear must be the night!

I never saw those lips whose breath
Was earth's best music once for you:
From the cold cells of dreary death
What message do they now bequeath?
A long and last ‘adieu.’

Your own are trembling: Prize, O prize
That farewell word, that holiest sound,
The pledge of undissevered ties;
Of mortal love in Paradise
With love immortal crowned.

210

And though your cheek with tears be wet
Forbear to murmur ‘Is this all?’
Love meets and mingles with Regret,
Like alienated brethren met
At the paternal funeral.

I bring your anguish no relief:
I scorn, like you, the opiate spell:
But barren woes, like joys, are brief;
If faithful you would make your grief,
Grieve calmly, and grieve well!

So shall wise suffering make you wise;
So, purged from passion's hectic glow,
Life's lasting shapes shall meet your eyes
Like nature's naked majesties
After a night of snow.

So shall repentance easier be,
And waking Conscience wake in light,
Past times roll back, from night set free,
And Life regain her unity,
And Death lose half his might.

I charge you by the smile that hung
Upon her eyes in their eclipse;
That to her deep, dark lashes clung,
And looked so sweet, and stayed so long,
And waned so slowly on her lips;

To seek within the cloistered pale
Of Sorrow, a sequestered cell;
Nor ever stray beyond that vale
Which catches on the passing gale
Her low, sweet convent bell.

211

And when you feel your spirit burn,
Or swell, within your aching breast,
Strain to your heart her votive urn:—
Speak nothing then—but gently turn
Your eyes unto the West,

Until they meet that mystic line
Where Earth is lost in Heaven's blue gleam,
When earliest stars begin to shine,
And lessening lights of day decline
Along the lilied stream.

ANGELINA.

For ever gentle, sweet, and lone,
Her voice, her step, her hand subdued,
She moves like one who ne'er has known
The changes of a human mood.

The tender dawn of those fair eyes
Breaks, vaguely sweet, through tears unfalling;
Waking strange Fancies; Memories
As sweet, as strange recalling.

A soft shade makes her face more fair:—
Not softer, slanted from above
On lilies rocked in evening air
That shadow from the Star of Love!

Say, has she loved? in some far sphere
Perhaps she loved, and loved in vain;
And still in this cold exile here
Forgets the cause, but feels the pain.

212

[My hope, in happier days than these]

1

My hope, in happier days than these
My love—hope past;
Memory's one star on lonely seas;
My anchor, last!
Why ask'st thou, with subdued surprise,
And that mild glee,
Wherefore I turn, still turn mine eyes
From all, to thee?

2

The blind man turns—and none forbids—
Into sunshine
His filmy, cold, unlighted lids;
The deaf incline
To harps whence songs, for them unborn,
Float light and free;
To graves long-cherished hearts forlorn;
And I to thee.

DEATH IN CHILDBIRTH.

Sweet Martyr of thine Infant and thy Love,
O what a death is thine!
Is this to die? Then, Love, henceforth approve
This, this of all thy gifts the most divine!
Grave she needs not: Matrons, cover
Her white bed with flowers all over;
With the dark, cool violets swathing
A full bosom mother-hearted;
Under lily shadows bathing
Brows whose anguish hath departed.

213

Life with others, Death with thee
Plays a grave game smilingly—
O Death not Death! through worlds of bliss
The happy new-born Soul is straying!
O Death not Death! thy Babe in this,
An Angel on the earth, is playing!

[Three prayers to Heaven the Lover doth present]

Three prayers to Heaven the Lover doth present:
—That she he loves rest ever innocent:
Next for her happiness: and last that he
Shield of that goodness and that peace may be.
Dear friend, repine no longer—be content;
For thou hast gained two wishes out of three!

[Smiles are the wrinkles of our Youth:—]

Smiles are the wrinkles of our Youth:—
Ah, gently turn the page;
And say that wrinkles are in sooth
But smiles of our old age!

EPITAPH.

Ye village poor, whose pitying fingers strew
Those kind, cold sprays of rosemary and rue;
And brush light snows from every tombstone dun,
While Evening's orange gleams in sequence run

214

From Pine to Pine—drop here a spray or or two;
Though He below was never known to you:
And bid the Stranger spare the grave of one
Who said of him no evil, and thought none.

A SKETCH.

Made up of Instincts half, half Appetites,
Ingenuous, winning, graceful, graceless, gay,
Her wingèd fancies, wheresoe'er they stray,
Find, yield, or make a thousand strange delights;
Then, ranging swift as sounds or lunar sprites,
For ever they desert, but ne'er betray:
To please was what they promised; not to stay:
No pledge they asked for; they conferred no rights—
Welcome them, Stranger, when they come; and say,
‘Away, sweet Wantons!’ when they fly away.

[A sigh in the morning grey!]

A sigh in the morning grey!
And a solitary tear,
Slow to gather, slow to fall;
And a painful flush of shame
At the naming of thy name—
This is little, this is all,
False one, which remains to say
That thy love of old was here;
That thy love hath passed away!

215

DOUBTS.

Fear not—or thou shalt find
Cause too much for fear:
Sigh not—or every wind
Shall waft thee, deep and drear,
The echoes of the murmurs
Of many a buried year.

O'er the ice-plain gliding,
Forward, fearless, race:
Doubly hard were sliding
With reverted face:
Doubts are dull rehearsals
Of self-doomed disgrace!

LOVE'S SPITE.

You take a town you cannot keep;
And, forced in turn to fly,
O'er ruins you have made shall leap
Your deadliest enemy!
Her love is yours—and be it so—
But can you keep it? No, no, no!

Upon her brow we gazed with awe;
And loved, and wished to love, in vain;
But when the snow begins to thaw
We shun with scorn the miry plain.
Women with grace may yield: but she
Appeared some Virgin Deity.

216

Bright was her soul as Dian's crest
Whitening on Vesta's fane its sheen:
Cold looked she as the waveless breast
Of some stone Dian at thirteen.
Men loved: but hope they deemed to be
A sweet Impossibility!

DOLORES.

(SCENE IN A MADHOUSE).

1

She sings her wild dirges, and smiles 'mid the strain;
Then turns to remember her sorrow.
Men gaze on that smile till their tears fall like rain,
And she from their weeping doth borrow.
She forgets her own story: and none, she complains,
Of the cause for her grief will remind her:
She fancies but one of her kindred remains:
She is certain he never can find her.
Whence caught you, sweet Mourner, the swell of that song?
‘From the arch of yon wind-laden billow.’
Whence learned you, sweet Lady, your sadness?—
‘From Wrong.’
Your meekness who taught you?—‘The Willow.’

2

She boasts that her tresses have never grown grey;
Yet murmurs, ‘How long I am dying!
My sorrows but make me more lovely, men say;
But I soon in my grave shall be lying!

217

My grave will embrace me all round and all round,
More warmly than thou, my false lover;
No Rival will steal to my couch without sound:
No Sister will come to discover!’
Whence caught you, sweet Mourner, the swell of that song?
‘From the arch of the wind-laden billow.’
Whence learned you, sweet Lady, your sadness?—
‘From Wrong.’
Your meekness who taught you?—‘The Willow.’

3

She courts the cold wind when the tempests blow hard,
And at first she exults in their raving:
She clasps with her fingers the lattice close-barred:
Like the billows her bosom is waving:
But ere long with strange pity her spirit is crossed,
And she sighs for poor mariners drowning:
And—‘thus in my passion of old I was tossed’—
And—‘thus stood my grey Father frowning!’
Whence caught you, sweet Mourner, the swell of that song?
‘From the arch of the wind-laden billow.’
Whence learned you, sweet Lady, your sadness?—
‘From Wrong.’
Your meekness who taught you?—‘The Willow.’

4

On the wall the rough water chafes ever its breast;
'Mid the willows my bark was awaiting;
Passing by, on her cold hand a sad kiss I prest,
And slowly moved on to the grating.

218

‘For my lips, not my fingers, your bounty I crave!’
She cried with a laugh and light shiver:
‘You drift o'er the ocean, and I to the grave;
Henceforward we meet not for ever!’
Where found you, sweet Mourner, the swell of that song?
‘In the arch of yon wind-laden billow.’
Whence learned you, sweet Lady, your sadness?—
‘From Wrong.’
Your meekness who taught you?—‘The Willow.’

University of Virginia Library

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

FEMALE POETRY.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

L'ENVOY.

SONG.

1

2

SONG.

SONG.

1

2

3

TO A WILD PANSY.

SONG.

1

2

LOVE AND SORROW.

ODE ON LEAVING ITALY.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

SONG.

1

2

ODE ON THE ASCENT OF THE ALPS.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

SONG.

(TO A BIRD.)

SONG.

THE DIGNITY OF SORROW.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

ODE TO AN EOLIAN HARP.

SONG.

TO M. O. B.

COLERIDGE.

A CHARACTER.

MOODS.

TO A. S. O. B.

ANGELINA.

[My hope, in happier days than these]

1

2

DEATH IN CHILDBIRTH.

[Three prayers to Heaven the Lover doth present]

[Smiles are the wrinkles of our Youth:—]

EPITAPH.

A SKETCH.

[A sigh in the morning grey!]

DOUBTS.

LOVE'S SPITE.

DOLORES.