University of Virginia Library

I. VOL. I. THE SEARCH AFTER PROSERPINE

AND OTHER POEMS CLASSICAL AND MEDITATIVE

THE SEARCH AFTER PROSERPINE.

A MASQUE.

SCENE I. IN SICILY.

Ceres, Fountain Nymphs.
CERES.

FOUNTAIN NYMPHS.

CERES.
Fair nymphs! whose music o'er the meadows gliding
Hath been your gentle herald, and for me
A guide obsequious to this spot—fair nymphs!
Fair graceful nymphs, my daughter's sweet companions,
Say, say but where she dwells; asking from me,
In turn, what boon you will.

NYMPHS.
Alas, we know not!

CERES.
May the pure ripple of your founts for ever
Leap up, unsoiled, against their verdurous banks;
May your fresh kisses ripple up as lightly,
As softly, and with undiscovering noise,
Against the embowering arms of prisoning lovers,
Shadowing those crystal bowers.

NYMPHS.
We have no lovers.

CERES.
No, and need none. Alas, Proserpina,
Thou wert as these! so innocent no fountain,
Nor half so gay; no flower so light, so fair.
Ah, fair mild Nymphs, my daughter's sweet companions!
May Jove, as ye run by, make blind the eyes
Of Wood-gods and the Fauns; in matted ivy
Tangle their beards; catch them in sudden clefts
Of deep-mossed stems, till ye have glided by—
But tell me where she dwells.

NYMPHS.
Goddess! we know not.

CERES.
Tell me then how ye lost her.

NYMPHS.
We were playing,
After our caverned sleep, which the high Gods
Sent us while Phœbus flamed too near the earth:
We played, like summer bees involved, and sang;
Some combing pearls from sandy slopes, some blowing
In shells, or lily-tubes our watery conchs;
When suddenly rolled forth long thunder peals
Far, far below. Earth shook; trembling we sank
Into our beds, amazed: when up we floated
A divine darkness hovered o'er the earth,
And from that moment we have had no flowers;
No flower since then in flower-famed Sicily!
And we no more behold Proserpina,
That played with us so sweetly. We have made
A melody that tells of her, and sing it,
Lest we should grieve.

CERES.
Yes, I have heard your song.
Still the same tale—the words themselves unchanged
—Know you no more?

NYMPHS.
Goddess, not wide our knowledge!
Phœbus cares nought for Nymphs, lonely flower-bathers;
Nor other prophet see we. Yet of late
Our vales are flushed with new strange visitants;
Their tumult ofttimes, as the sun descends,
Shakes us within our lily-paved pavilions;
And when we look abroad along the marge,
The inland vales, shaggy with pine and ilex,
That catch like nets those boy-nymphs, the light Zephyrs,
Are filled with riot. From all sides they rush,
Mad Gods, with russet brows the west outfacing,
And wands tossed high: in songs the lawns are drowned.
Help us, great Jove! Fair Goddess, once it chanced
As this red festival came reeling by,
Over the fount in which trembling we lay,
Some Wood-god crushed a wreath of poisonous berries,
Laughing; and our bright home all crimson grew,
So that we wept. I pray you, gentle Goddess,
Protect us from these Gods.

CERES.
Ha! Bacchus here!
I thought my little late-born enemy
Lay hid in Hellas—What, and merry grown,
With revellers! then haply he hath stolen
My beauteous child. Mild nymphs, my child's companions!
Mild, silver-footed nymphs with silver songs!
Where dwell those Wood-gods when they come not hither?

NYMPHS.
At Naxos, Fame reports; and unblessed isle.

CERES.
Farewell, sweet nymphs—from them, and from all perils
May Jove defend you well! I seek those Gods,
And I will pray them that they hurt you not.

NYMPHS.

SCENE II. NAXOS.

Ceres, Wood-gods.
CERES.
A Bacchic wood! the pine stems and old oaks
Are swathed with crimson under their green shadows!
A wilderness of wood! within its depths
Armies of men might lurk. Above the trees
A gloom voluptuous undulates and hovers
Like a dark fleece of wind-dewed gossamer.
The caverns, as I pass them, mildly breathe
A colder current of wine-scented air
Into my face. Ha, ha,—a tiger's roar!
And now a din of resonant wild laughter
That makes the forest like a reed-pipe ring.
The very beasts have caught the infectious madness,
And ramp, with sport irreverent, on high Gods.
Down, leopard, down—ha, myriad-mooned panther,
Away! 'tis well for you this almond branch
Is sheathed in flowers Sicilia feeds no more;
That cry had else been louder. Hark, they come!

FAUNS AND WOOD-GODS.

CERES.
O Fauns and Satyrs of the merry forests!
Sharp-hoofed, long-horned, nymph-dreaded deities!
Grant me this hour your aid! Secrets I know
Of herbs grass-hidden and medicinal blooms
Whereof one leaf, into your cups distilled,
Would make them rise into a fount of foam
Wide as the broad arch of yon flowering myrtle:
Those secrets shall be yours—only restore me
My infant child.

FAUNS.
O venerable Goddess!
Large-browed, large-eyed, presence august and holy!
In our green forests dwells no infant child.

CERES.
But she is now in truth no infant child
As when I laid her 'mid the sacred flowers
Of Sicily, with Nymphs for her young nurses
And tender playmates.

FAUNS.
Venerable Goddess!
No child have we beheld, nor ever shall,
With mien like thine.

CERES.
Ah! she was not like me!
I was her mother; but like her no more
Than the dark ground is like some flower star-bright,
That from it springs, and o'er it waves in beauty!

FAUNS.
In Sicily you lost her?

CERES.
Wood-gods, yes.

FIRST FAUN.
And I remember now in that soft isle
Such creature we beheld as you have lost,
Upon a vernal bank she sat alone
Among the aërial mounds and honeyed meadows;
Wearied she seemed, yet smiled in weariness,
And, as a garden, was with bright flowers crowned;
Many she held upon her lap, and many
Fell down about her feet; her feet gleamed through them.
Strange fear, albeit to fear unused, we felt,
And, beckoning to each other, slow retired.
Since then in vain we seek her.

CERES.
Woodland Gods!
Was she not fair?

SECOND FAUN.
So fair that on the earth
Is left no longer any shape of beauty.
Well spake you, calling her your infant child.
Such light was on her brow—within her eyes
Such gleam immediate of celestial gladness,
A child she seemed, by that inspiring clime
Divinely ripened in one summer day
To full perfection of virginal beauty.
Not far the playmate nymphs their wild hymns sang,
Like birds new-touched by the enamouring season:
While we went back, dreading the wrath of Jove.

CERES.
Since she is lost those songs are heard no more.
In vain the sea-worn mariners suspend
Long time their oars amid the drifting spray;
In vain the home-bound shepherds pause and listen;
Nor any flower is seen.

FAUNS.
Maternal Goddess!
Still in one spot lingers a wreath of flowers.

CERES.
'Tis strange—those flowers, where are they?

FAUNS.
At the entrance
Of a long glen, that sinks in dimness down
From the proud pastures arched along the sea.

CERES.
Ha, Woodland Gods! that was her place of play;
A haunt unknown to men.

FAUNS.
Hark, hark, 'tis Bacchus!

CERES.
But tell me, Gods—

FAUNS.
We thirst, we thirst for wine;
Give, give us wine, and we will stay with you;
Roll it in deep floods forth, from cleft and cavern.

CERES.
Stay, Wood-gods, stay!

FAUNS.
(They rush past singing.)

CERES.
To Sicily once more. Lo! how these vines
Have grown about me! never infant yet
Tangled like this young Bacchus his embraces;
Not one upon the earth! another year,
And half my kingdom he'll have won from me
As Hermes robbed Apollo of his herd.
No feastful, sunlit mound, or yellow hill,
Will sing, at evening, anthems unto me;
No shelving corn-field on the mountain-slope
Make westering Phœbus, while askance he peers
Down through the pale stems, green with jealousy.
Parnassian weed, away! ah, lost Proserpina!
Thou, thou wert as my flowers—unsought for mine,
And then, once mine, more dear than all my wealth!
The Gods, in their Olympian mansions, know
Nothing of grief: children they too have lost;
But never mourned as I have. Surely I
Have caught from Earth some portion of her sadness,
And heart maternal of Humanity.
To Sicily once more. O fair Sicilia!
Those flowers they saw, whence came they, and what mean they?
That must my search discover; I must see them;
When I behold them I shall see once more
What I in vain desire—my child's fair eyes.
Down, vine-wreaths, down! I break from you away.

SCENE III. SICILIAN SEA.

(Nereids sing.)
GLAUCE.
Fair Sisters, ocean-cradled, wave-revered!
Holds not this evening well the morning's pledge?
Salt gust no more; nor airy arc, down-showering
Into the dim green, rain of sunny gems
Or crowns celestial; crystal chasm no more
By harsh winds crushed to murmuring foam abysses;
But, wide o'er all, a plenitude of light
Serene as that which sits on Jove's great brow;
And breeze as equable as Juno's breath.

AUTONOE.
And, Sisters, mark! along yon opal Heaven,
And sea of agate and chalcedony
The promised pageant spreads. We shall behold
The mighty head of Jove, rich-tressed, supreme,
Sacred and strong and fair and venerable,
With golden sceptre and obedient eagle:
And we shall gaze on Juno's large mild eyes,
And the sea-born Queen of Beauty, her who runs
Over the swelling hearts of Gods and men
As Thetis glides over the ocean waves;
And, dearer still to us, the graceful form
Of Hebe, solitary nymph of Heaven,
Alone among the Gods and yet not lonely.
Thus Iris spake.

EUDORA.
Fair Iris! dropped she then
This morn from Heaven, her ocean spoils to gather?
I knew it not, for on the Libyan sands
All day I rolled a great smooth shell, too great
To clasp or carry: but my tears are past,
Since we shall gaze upon high Gods.

GLAUCE.
Lo, there!
How the red west inflames the deep! Methinks
That merry God, conqueror of many a land,
His banners over ocean too is waving;
To Britain will he drive us, end of earth?
See, I have dropped my bracelet!

AUTONOE.
Over ocean
That God advances; dark-rimmed Naxian shores
Already with his tendril nets are swathed,
Yea and the Naxian billows; all day long
We toss them backward from our foam-white bosoms,
And beds of billows, to their beds of sand.

EUDORA.
And maids of earth he mocks at worse than us.
Last eve, by yonder meadow I was floating,
Pillowing my cheek upon a sleepy wave,
And hearkening to an inland pipe remote,
When suddenly the purpled shore resounded
With tumult harsh; and concourse I beheld
Of Wood-gods on the sands, leaping and laughing!
And why? because a gentle maid of earth
That with her mortal playmate had been straying,
Beneath the bank, oppressed perhaps with sleep,
(Who knows? I know not), when she thought not of it,
In vine-nets prisoned lay: The Wood-gods mocked!
Bacchus such puissance hath—

GLAUCE.
How wretched those
That dwell on Earth! alas, I pity them!
On that rough, heavy, element opaque
What lovely light can glimmer? None can tell
Wherefore the high Gods shaped the hump-backed Earth!

EUDORA.
Nay, Sister, when the forests slant as now
From the round mountains to the wine-black sea,
And Phœbus on their gold and vermeil roof
Looks brightly, while the winds rush under them,
Then hath the Earth her beauty—yea, a gleam
Like our Autonoe, when her sun-loved tresses
Upon a green rock loosening she flings forth,
Laughing, into some monster's briny eyes.

AUTONOE.
You speak well, Sister, courteous like the Gods;
And blossoming fruit-trees, spangled with sea spray,
Are fair indeed at sunrise: Earth hath gleams,
As Nubian slaves their gems; yet how forlorn
And like a slave's her downcast countenance!
Her hues are not like ocean's, coloured lights,
But coloured shades, dim shadows painted o'er;
Yea and the motions of her trees and harvests
Resemble those of slaves, reluctant, slow,
By outward force compelled; not like our billows,
Springing elastic in impetuous joy,
Or indolently swayed.

EUDORA.
Not less o'erawed
Are those that dwell on Earth, harsh-speaking Mortals.
One eve, it chanced, into a glen I wandered,
In garb a boy: unwonted weight I felt;
The shades moved not; dull odours thronged the air;
Up from the ground a dense, blunt sound was rushing;
All creatures ranged, as though beneath their feet
Down to earth's centre chains unseen were hung,
And languid browsed as from necessity,
Not joy, their faint sighs leaving on the grass.
All things were sad; sadly I wandered on
To where there lay a something large and black,
And panting; some Immortal deeming it,
With reverence I was passing, when, behold!
Hard by there stood a company of Mortals,
Wailing; and myrrh on myrrh, and oil on oil,
O'er it in grief they flung; it was a pyre.
Homeward I turned abashed, and weeping much
For Man's unhappy race, so fair, yet sad,
By Jove's great wrath oppressed and shame of death.
Yes, and weep still; for know you, gentle Sisters,
Though Gods themselves should dwell upon the Earth,
Grief they must feel; the affliction men call love,
Or hunger, or the grave.

AUTONOE.
Down, Sisters, down!
In sorrow footing the bright ocean-way
I see that form half human, all divine:
'Tis Ceres; plunge we down! No nymph she loves
Save her child's mates.

GLAUCE.
Yea, and of those is jealous.

SCENE IV. THE SICILIAN SHORE.

Ceres, Fountain Nymphs.
CERES.
(Fountain Nymphs sing.)

CERES.
O Nymphs, where found you that despondent song?
And why this funeral chime? She is immortal.

NYMPHS.
Immortal truly, venerable Goddess!
And yet in Erebus she dwells; and plays
No more; no flowers to play with finds she there.

CERES.
How know you this?

NYMPHS.
Last eve we wandered forth,
By fugitive rainbows lured and rain-washed grass,
To that deep valley where we lost our playmate;
And for the first time past it. In one spot
We found, with joy astonished, crowds of flowers;
Flowers of all kinds, each larger than its kind,
And brighter; wandering here and there among them,
Behold two mighty chariot tracks! deep fissures,
Burning and black, to where the opposing bank
Locked in and barred the vale: the rocks were split;
Dull vapours hovering o'er them. In a moment
The truth flashed on us, and we heard, yea felt
Once more, that subterraneous thunder roll.
The King of Darkness, Monarch sole below,
Looked up and saw thy child, and thirsted for her;
And snatched her to his shades:—In Erebus
Thy daughter dwells.

CERES.
No song, no fable this!
Ah flower! pure lily among the unfruitful shades!
White lonely lamp of all the Elysian darkness!
Ah child! the daughter of an unblest fate,
Thou hast no Mother now: thou hast forgotten
That e'er thou hadst a Mother—Woe, woe, woe!
The imperial diadem doth mock that brow,
The sceptre doth subdue that little hand
More than the Shades, thy subjects! Gentle Nymphs,
Let me behold that spot.

FIRST NYMPH.
With slow, sad foot
(On gray autumnal eves, the Nymphs themselves
With slow, sad foot, o'er the dim grass steal on)
Advance; no bounding step, fair sister Nymphs;
No bounding step, or jubilant, reckless song.
Lo, there the gleam! a breeze, a sigh divine
Is ever sweeping o'er those tremulous flowers!
Troubling their dews that fall not, held, like tears
In melancholy eyes—O fair, fair flowers!
Ye, as she dropped you, instantly took root,
And fade not ever. Immortality
Ye caught from the last pressure of those hands;
Immortal were ye though the world should die.

NYMPHS.

HERMES.
Hermes, mild herald of the Gods, I come,
Bearing the grace of Jove, upon my lips
Distilled—high kiss of heavenly benediction.
Goddess to Mortals and Immortals dear,
Be of good cheer: Proserpina, beloved
Of all the blest Olympians, sceptred sits
In Tartarus; sole pride of him that sways
The world heroic of Departed Souls;
A child although a Queen; and, though a spouse,
Yet virgin ever; tempering the deep heart
Of Pluto, and to all the Shades as dear
As Dian to the night, or to the waves
The foam-dividing star of Aphrodite.
Sacred and well beloved—a Mystery—
Fares she not well? Maternal Goddess! raise
The large dejected orbs of thy fair eyes,
And gaze on him upon whose brow doth meet
The light of all the Gods giving command:
Look up and speak!

CERES.
Mild herald Mercury!
Thy voice is in mine ears; winged and sweet
Ever its tones; brightening all hearts, like Heaven
When Jove looks up: but now, unwonted softness
Melts through their pauses. Dost thou pity me?
Then herald God, auspicious guide of Shades,
Mighty art thou in the Unbeloved Abode;
Restore, restore my child!

HERMES.
Not comfort only,
Deep-bosomed Goddess, grave, and dulcet-voiced,
But aid I bear: and need there is of both.
Alone she sits beyond the utmost bound
Of laughter from the Gods, or shaft Phœbean,
And thou art justly restless for thine own.
Hear then the ordinance of Jove; descend!
Yon rock shall like a billow arch thy way;
Descend into the Stygian waste; behold
Once more thy tender daughter face to face;
Kiss her once more, once more upon thy knee
And in thine arms possess her. This is much:
Yet more: if seed not yet of flower or fruit
Unblessed have touched her lips, henceforth and ever
With thee she dwells in sweet society.
Descend! the Will of Jove, before thee running,
Makes smooth thy path, and the Caducean charm
Waved from this wand, around thy feet shall beckon
A quire of bright Immortals fit to grace
The steps of a departing Deity.
Ethereal Seasons! from the snowy clouds,
Your ambient nests on cold autumnal days,
Hover once more about this spot; and ye
Gift-feathered Hours, at Heaven's wide gate for ever
On broad and billowy wing suspense, the cord
Aerial, that detains you, bursting, fly
With unreverting faces to the earth,
And breathe a sudden spring on valley and plain:
And ye, infantine Zephyrs, on whose lips
The Gods have breathed; thou too, delight of Heaven,
Iris! descend; and o'er the shadowy glen
Thy many-coloured scarf from both thy hands
Fling wide, and cast the brightest of thy smiles
Upon the head of this descending Power.

FIRST NYMPH.
Behold! into the chasm she walks.

SECOND NYMPH.
(The Hours sing.)
(The Zephyrs sing.)
(Hours and Zephyrs sing together.)
(Sicilian Nymphs singing.)

IRIS.
I have but leaped from out my airy lustres
To plant my white foot palpably on Earth.
Fair nymphs, this shadow soon, too soon, will reach
The front now bright of that descended Goddess.
Her lost one she hath found—alas, too late:
Seeds of a Stygian fruit have passed her lips!
Three fatal seeds! Proserpina hath sucked
Into her being the dark element.
And yet lament not! Ceres' self shall learn
Comfort and divine solace from her child,
What the Gods could not give, her child, though sad,
Yet fraught with sweetness of Elysian wisdom,
Bestows upon the Mother. From this hour
Let every mortal Mother that hath given
A child from her own heart into the Shades,
Live and take comfort; they shall meet again.
Let every mourner in the Past who buries
An innocent delight, be sure henceforth
That in the Future, a large treasure-house,
It doth await him. Gentle Nymphs, weep not;
Those parted lips, those smooth and candid brows
Were not for mourners fashioned, sigh or shadow,
But for pure breathing of celestial airs,
And gracing a light garland.

NYMPHS.
Mild-eyed Goddess!
Must we no more behold Proserpina?
Must flower-famed Sicily have no more flowers?

IRIS.
(Nymphs descend, singing.)

RECOLLECTIONS OF GREECE,

AND OTHER POEMS.

STANZAS

WRITTEN WHILE SAILING DOWN THE ADRIATIC.

A NIGHT AT CORCYRA.

GRECIAN ODE.

ODE TO THE PLANET MERCURY.

ODE TO THE PLANET VENUS.

TO A GREEK LADY.

AN AGED GREEK.

THE PANTHEIST.

The Eagle feeds his eyes upon the sun,
And drives the light before him as he plunges
On through the east. The mild, smooth-sailing Dove
Hath snowy wings that waft her o'er the cloud.
The grey Pine tosses in the air, and flings
Music and light from his broad boughs. The Reed
Sighs in the dreary winds: the large sea-flower
Grows in its dark cave like a fair, blind child:
But we know not, and we can never know
Which is the noblest of those visible shapes,
Or which most blest. One all-pervading Spirit
Moves in them all, and is to them as life:—
The Spirit that encircles Space and Time;
That lifts the tides, and downward draws the stars,
That beats within the heart of this green globe;
That holds the universe upon his breast,
And mirrors it upon the mind of man.

THE PLATONIST.

Forget not thy great birth! that heavenly source
From which thy spirit flows, though now in sense
Immersed, and bound upon the rolling Earth.
Weep not, sad Exile, 'mid the winds, because
Thy sides lack wings. The radiance of the Past
Still girds thee, as a glorious sunset heaven
That glows behind the mountains. Would'st thou more?
Beauty is round thee wheresoe'er thou movest:
It sounds in every sound; from cloud and flower
It gleams upon thee. Be what thou hast been!
Draw from the utmost bounds of Life and Love
With one long sigh their powers into thy heart;
And Thought shall flow from thee in arrowy rays
Piercing all space: and Majesty and Joy
Invest thee with such glory as he wears
Who sits in the centre of the spherèd sun!

THE ACADEMIC'S ADDRESS TO TRUTH.

AN EPICUREAN'S EPITAPH.

When from my lips the last faint sigh is blown
By Death, dark waver of Lethean plumes,
O! press not then with monumental stone
This forehead smooth nor weigh me down with glooms
From green bowers, grey with dew,
Of Rosemary and Rue.
Choose for my bed some bath of sculptured marble
Wreathed with gay nymphs; and lay me—not alone—
Where sunbeams fall, flowers wave, and light birds warble
To those who loved me murmuring in soft tone,
“Here lies our friend, from pain secure and cold;
And spreads his limbs in peace under the sun-warmed mould!”

WISDOM.

THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES.

I saw the Poet standing by himself
At old Colonos (now, alas! no more
With dewy laurels fenced, or lit by streams
That gush o'er beds of crocus; lulled no longer
By that dark choir of quick-winged nightingales
That soothed the Eumenides:) he stood in trance,
Resting his forehead 'gainst an olive stem
Round which one arm hung idly—
At last he moved; his head sank slowly back;
On his Olympian brow the invisible air
Rested serene; his eyelids slowly drooped,
Till their dark lashes met with softest touch:
At last a rapture swelled his breast, and rising
Increased upon his face.
As one that inland stands on high-arched downs
Pierced by sea-caves, and wondering hears the sea
Working beneath—half hears it and half feels,
So looked he for a moment; then arose
Bright as a god—around his temples wreathed
A light of sun-fed locks! silent he stood:
It was his hour of immortality!
Even at the moment of that trance he saw
A glorious vision from his own deep spirit
Emerged—a perfect form! o'er earth's dark ball
Hanging he saw it, as the Thunderer sees
That great creative Thought, mankind's one law—
He saw; and cried aloud—Antigone!

THE NIGHTINGALE.

ZOE, AN ATHENIAN CHILD.

I. THE TOMB OF AGAMEMNON.—1.

Two peaks I saw: one eminent in light;
The other shrouded by the shadow thrown
From his great brother's bosom on his own:
They stood, as Life to Death or Day to Night
Opposed. Descending from their common height
The mountain rivulet clasped with gentle moan
A funeral vault in vernal bravery dight—
Through the dim arch a low faint breeze was blown:
Not fainter through his murderer's hair unshaken
Breathed once the sleeping King! Sad odours blended
With that faint breeze: poppies on high suspended
Their dark lamps fed as with Elysian oil:
While bees low murmured, like the whispering coil
Round the sick bed of one men fear to waken!

II. THE TOMB OF AGAMEMNON.—2.

III. A STATUE OF JUNO.

That breadth and amplitude of brow uncrowned;
Those awful lids, lifted, nor e'er to close:
Those orbs that on their own calm gaze repose;
Those lips sedate though wreathed with smiles around:
That grand expanse of breast, wherein, enthroned,
Majesty dwells, and peaceful pleasure grows
And spreads, unheaving its Olympian snows
Against that marble zone, their sacred bound;
These, and the tall spear like a sceptre grasped,
Making a firm foot firmer; and the mien
Divine, and sphere in one large hand enclasped,
Fitly announce and without words rehearse
The Matron Ruler of the World, the Queen
Of Gods, and Mistress of the Universe!

IV. THE THEATRE AT ARGOS.

This rock-hewn theatre, yon stage-like plain,
Are not unpeopled: onward in my trance
From those blue mountains to the glimmering main
A mightier theatre, bright hosts advance;
The old Homeric hosts, with spear and lance:
The brother monarchs lead the glorious train
Car-borne—a herald leans on either rein:
Clear rings the trump: bright crests in myriads dance.
O'er Juno's Argolis the Sun is set:
Her car is here; her tempest-footed steeds:
Still on that poppied stone her victim bleeds:
Shoreward her Argive ranks are rushing yet;
Down the grey sands the last black ship has grated—
And now, woe, woe to Troy—her fall is fated!

V. THE TOMB OF THEMISTOCLES AT THE PIRÆUS.

The Sun is slowly sinking—it is set—
Yet still yon mountain range of Megara
(Like one that on his palate strives to stay
A taste forgone) retains, purpureal yet,
The sweet remembrance: crimsoned, the waves fret
Against those far-famed Walls that gird the bay,
Marmoreal record of a mightier day
When, pushed above that rocky parapet
In one elliptic wave of blood-stained brine,
This gulf, beneath the unwonted weight accurst
Of Persia's myriad ships, bounded and burst,
And, sinking, left more high its sanguine line
Than yonder margin where the Athenian's grave
Still in its secret joy engulfs the applauding wave!

VI. SOPHOCLES.

Alone I wandered through a city lone,
(The tomb august, and monumental state
Of Empire passed away and desolate)
To where, 'mid crumbling frieze, and columns prone.
Down a great Temple-court the shades were thrown
Of seven majestic Statues calm as Fate:
The mouldering altar, like a snowy zone
They girt: I midmost in that circle sate.
One was a King; and regal though uncrowned,
Low-bent he stood, standing as if he slept,
With blinded eyes, and chains his feet around:
Another was a royal Maid, who kept
Her eyes upon an urn funereal pressed
By both her marble hands deep deep into her breast.

VII. ÆSCHYLUS.

A sea-cliff carved into a bas-relief!
Dark thoughts and sad, conceived by brooding Nature;
Brought forth in storm:—dread shapes of Titan stature,
Emblems of Fate, and Change, Revenge, and Grief,
And Death, and Life:—a caverned Hieroglyph
Confronting still with thunder-blasted frieze
All stress of years, and winds, and wasting seas:—
The stranger nears it in his fragile skiff
And hides his eyes. Few, few shall pass, great Bard,
Thy dim sea-portals! Entering, fewer yet
Shall pierce thy mystic meanings, deep and hard:
But these shall owe to thee an endless debt:
The Eleusinian caverns they shall tread
That wind beneath man's heart; and wisdom learn with dread.

VIII. THE SUN GOD.

I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood
High in his luminous car, himself more bright;
An Archer of immeasurable might:
On his left shoulder hung his quivered load;
Spurned by his Steeds the eastern mountain glowed;
Forward his eager eye, and brow of light
He bent; and, while both hands that arch embowed,
Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night.
No wings profaned that godlike form: around
His neck high held an ever-moving crowd
Of locks hung glistening: while such perfect sound
Fell from his bowstring, that th' ethereal dome
Thrilled as a dewdrop; and each passing cloud
Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.

IX. URANIA.

Urania! Voice of Heaven, sidereal Muse!—
Lo, through the dark vault issuing from afar,
She comes, reclining on a lucid star:
Her dark eyes, trembling through celestial dews,
The glory of high thoughts far off diffuse:
While the bright surges of her refluent hair
Stream back, upraised upon sustaining air
Which lifts that scarf deep-dyed in midnight hues
To a wide arch above her hung like heaven.
I closed my eyes. Athwart me, like a blast,
Music as though of jubilant gods was driven.
Once more I gazed. That form divine had passed
Earth's dark confine. The ocean's utmost rim
Burned yet a moment: then the world grew dim.

X. THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS.—1.

All ye who seek the famed Acropolis,
First bathe in old Ilyssus, Muse-loved stream,
Whilst yet it laughs in Citherea's beam,
Lifting its cheek to catch her fugitive kiss:
There drown all thoughts save thoughts of mirth and bliss!
Fanciful sighs for rites of old supreme—
Now past—blow from you like an idle dream:
That which yon Summit ever was it is.
Entwine your heads with myrtle: with light heart
(A joyful band and deeming joy a duty)
Ascend that fairest hill which Earth sustains.
A giant Altar vowed to sovran Art
It stands; its sacred Offerings sun-clad Fanes,
To Beauty raised—owning no God but Beauty!

XI. THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS.—2.

Pallas Athena! deep of soul and wise!
Mighty in thought and act; severe of breast;
To this high fane, thine ancient region's crest,
Descend, and roll once more thine azure eyes
O'er th' Olive land, remembering well those ties
Which lured thee hither from the World's wide quest,
And reared thy seat of venerable rest
Under the equal arch of those broad skies!
Leave it not ever—round thee stand the mountains;
Bright as thy shield when it becomes thy mirror,
For victory arming, gleams yon purple Sea:
Nor silent yet the old poetic fountains—
Make thou thy Sons, redeemed from ancient Error
And recent bonds, more vile—strong, pure, and free!

XII. THE PRISON OF SOCRATES.

(A CAVE OPPOSITE TO THE ACROPOLIS.)

Pious the memory, or, if fabulous,
The Mythos reverent which such spot assigned
Prison of him the wisest of his kind,
Self-dedicated to the grave: for thus,
By setting suns touched with light dolorous
Thy countenance, Pallas, as the day declined
Was turned, dread image of a sorrowing mind,
On him—as Fancy turns it now on us.
But Wisdom's self in all its might and glory
On him for ever without shadow shone,
In Life as Death. No need of song or story—
Authentic or imagined needeth none!
Truth bent from Heaven, and fixed on him for aye
That gaze whose light is everlasting Day.

XIII. WRITTEN WHILE SAILING ON THE GULF OF LEPANTO.

All around they lie, deep breath to breath replying,
Those outworn seamen in their well-earned sleep:
From the blue concave to the dim blue deep
No sound beside. Fluttering all night, or sighing,
Since morn the breeze delicious hath been dying,
And now is dead. On yonder snowy steep
The majesty of Day diffused is lying;
While Evening's Powers in silence seaward creep
From glens that violet-shade the lilac vest
Of Delphi's hills. Ye mariners, sleep well!
Run slowly, golden sands, and noiselessly!
There stands the great Corinthian citadel:
Parnassus there: Rest, wearied pinnace, rest!
Sleep, sacred air! sleep on, marmoreal sea!

XIV. THE SETTING OF THE MOON NEAR CORINTH.

From that dejected brow in silence beaming
A light it seems too feeble to retain,
A sad, calm, tearful light through vapours gleaming,
Slowly thou sinkest on the Ægean main;
To me an image, in thy placid seeming
Of some fair mourner who will not complain;
Of one whose cheek is pale, whose eyes are streaming,
Whose sighs are heaved unheard,—not heaved in vain.
And yet what power is thine? as thou dost sink,
Down sliding slow along that azure hollow,
The great collected Deep thy course doth follow,
Amorous the last of those faint smiles to drink;
And all his lifted fleets in thee obey
The symbol of an unpresuming sway!

XV. CONSTANTINOPLE.

Is this the sovereign seat of Constantine?
Is that indeed Sophia's far-famed Dome,
Where first the Faith was led in triumph home
Like some high bride, with banner and bright sign,
And melody and flowers? Round yonder shrine
The sons, the rivals, yea the lords of Rome,
Bowed they in reverence, awed by truths divine
Breathed through the golden lips of Chrysostom?
But where that conquering Cross, which, high in heaven,
That Dome of old surmounted? Angels sweeping
The aërial coasts hand now no more suspended—
With the wild sea-dirge their chaunts are no more blended—
Onward they speed, onward by anguish driven;
And the winds waft alone their heavenly weeping.

XVI. ISLAM.

That Asian ardour, deep, and wide, and still,
Which once, like Heaven o'er glowing sands, did brood
Over this People's heart, stubborn and rude,
Hath left them. Did it yet their pulses fill,
They had not lost that fateful might of Will
Which from Imaus on to Atlas hewed
A way before them—in its terrible mood
‘Making ridiculous’ the boasted skill
Of Western Art alike and Arms. Of old
This People's spirit was an arch of fire,
Like a ‘clear heat at harvest.’ Now remains
Nought but the hoary herb and branded plains,
Which beasts shall trample, issuing in their ire
Forth from the depth of their morasses cold!

EUROPA.

STANZAS.

GREEK IDYLS.

1.—GLAUCÈ.

2.—IONÈ.

3.—LYCIUS.

LINES WRITTEN UNDER DELPHI.

KING HENRY THE SECOND AT THE TOMB OF KING ARTHUR,

AND OTHER POEMS.

To the Memory OF SIR WILLIAM ROWAN HAMILTON, LATE ASTRONOMER-ROYAL OF DUBLIN, THESE POEMS, ORIGINALLY DEDICATED TO HIM, ARE AGAIN INSCRIBED.

KING HENRY THE SECOND AT THE TOMB OF KING ARTHUR.

EPITAPH.

THE INFANT BRIDAL.

QUEEN BERTHA'S MATIN SONG.

QUEEN BERTHA'S ALMS.

QUEEN BERTHA AT HER VESPERS.

QUEEN BERTHA'S VIGIL.

THE SOUL'S WASTE.

GOOD AND EVIL.

Angel! beneath whose steadfast wings
The Earth revolves her wanderings;
Behold, that ancient nurse of man
Is wearied, withered, palsied, wan.
A serpent o'er her bosom crept:
A serpent stung her while she slept:
A serpent's poison taints her blood.
Therefore their wisdom mocks the wise:
Corruption near perfection lies:
Ill ends the work that well began—
Wave once thy mighty wings, and fan
The Evil from the Good!

A TRAVELLER'S GRACE.

Take, pretty birds—to you these crumbs are given—
Your portion of our meal ere yet begun:
And waft our thanks in melody to Heaven
Should we forget them, when that meal is done.

SONG.

THE SOLITARY.

SONG.

SONG.

LINES.

UNA.

A ‘lovely fear,’ a sweet solicitude
For others' grief is hers; skilled are her fingers
To cool with dewy flowers the front of care,
Flattering to pleasant tears the over-worn.
She lives in her sweet maidenhood, untouched
By doubt, distrust, or pain; and gives to Heaven
Her heart, to earth her pity, to her friends
The snow-fed fountains of her fresh affections;
Seldom she weeps, and never causes tears;
Her looks are gentle, and her voice as low
As morning winds that spare the trembling dewdrops;
Her hand is lighter than a young bird's wing.
You deem her undefended. She is strong!
A glorious Spirit zoned with power and beauty!
The pure are always strong; for they possess
Youth's heaven-taught lore, and Virtue's might eterne:
And, as the ocean in the flowers of ocean,
So God within them dwells, and moves around.

IN VIA.

DE VIA.

From North unto South, from the East unto the West,
There is no rest;
Wind sigheth unto wind, sea moaneth unto sea,
‘Not in me,’
And the loud waves that roar
In the deep, and on the shore:—
Never, till thou resteth in the green earth's breast,
Shalt thou rest.

SONNETS.

I. TO COLERIDGE.

As one who lies, when day is almost done,
Rocked in a little boat upon a sea
Whose glassy billows heave eternally
Albeit the winds are lulled, watching the sun
That sinks behind those billows, and anon
Uprises, while the orange gleams that dye
The long, low windows of the western sky
Are imaged in the waters smooth and wan;
Coleridge! thus hang we on the mystic traces
Of that one Thought which feeds thy soul with light;
Thus falls the ‘Idea of the Infinite’
Dazzling our spirit-eyes, and up-turned faces;
Thus sinks, and reappears, and mocks our sight,
Absorbed once more in the great deep's embraces.

II. TO E.—1.

Sweet tears commingling with our youthful smiles
Made them more balmy in life's happy dawn:
Ah, friend belovèd, whither is it gone,
That power whose infant tenderness beguiles
Our childhood's sorrows with its lovely wiles?
Still lies the dew upon our own green lawn;
The peaceful gleam can never be withdrawn
From yon dim lake, and all its glistening isles:
Yet on all these how vainly do we gaze
Seeking for something nowhere to be found;
And in the wind we listen for a sound
That now is buried with departed days;
And wonder at the smiles that strangely pass
Over the tears that lie on either wildered face.

III. TO E.—2.

No more, O never more in wood, or wold,
Mountain, or ocean's many-coloured plain,
Or in the manners or the minds of men,
Shall we the ancient loveliness behold.
An apathetic languor, calm and cold,
Hangs upon all things with a cast of pain;
And a community of self-disdain
Is all the young inherit from the old.
Earth, full of years, and in old age forlorn,
Laments the dewy beauty of her prime,
Laments with tears, and would of thee implore
A restoration, unrestoring Time!
A restoration of her glorious morn,
And Love which, once rejected, comes no more.

IV. TO E.—3.

Sorrow and joy mature the growth of love:
Love, nursed by joy alone, is poor and weak:
'Tis not that we together sought and seek
Those streams of song whose fountains are above;
It is not kindred minds alone which move
In us a love that must for aye endure;
Nor kindred hopes that blend in rhythm pure,
Nor charm of childish memories interwove,
Nor those sweet names of sister and of brother,
Alone; the grave endears us to each other;
The mournful separation which must come
When eyes wax dim, and fondest lips are dumb:—
We love the golden calm before the storm,
And turn to clasp once more the hand which yet is warm.

V. TO E.—4.

The ocean murmurs on his circling shores—
Where is the ear that catches as a whole
That never-ceasing sound from pole to pole?
The sun upon a thousand empires pours
At once his beams in unexhausted stores;
But who—what mortal eye, what human soul,
Beholds that light on all those empires roll,
And on the intermediate ocean floors?
We see but the detail of things; too near
We stand to comprehend their harmony:
Hereafter happy in some nobler state
Of being we shall turn and contemplate
The moral planet of Humanity
In the bright fulness of its perfect sphere.

VI. ART AND SCIENCE.

A wild swan and an eagle side by side
I marked, careering o'er the ocean-plain,
Emulous a loftier zenith each to gain,
Circling in orbits wider and more wide:
Highest, methought, through tempest scarce descried,
One time the bird of battle soared;—in vain;
So soon, exhausted 'mid their joy and pride,
Dropp'd the bright rivals, vanquished, to the main.
Then, o'er the mighty waves around them swelling,
That snowy nursling of low lakes her song
Lifted to God, floating serene along;
While she that in the peaks had made her dwelling
Struggled in vain her wings to beat and quiver,
And the sea closed o'er that bright crest for ever.

VII. TO POWER.

Where art thou? In the winds when they awake
Man's soul, and with their sevenfold harmonies
Admonish him from regions far, and break
The frozen trance in which his spirit lies.
Where art thou? In all Nature while her hues
Sink into Man's deep spirit; thence to rise
In branching thoughts, as evening's buried dews
Emerge from earth in flowers of heavenly dyes.
Where art thou? With the Muse when she is raising
Unto the Poet's ear her unseen shell,
Which charms to movements smooth with potent spell
The Visions from his brain their progress tracing!
There—not in battle-fields—O Power, thou art—
An Eagle brooding o'er the world's wide heart.

VIII.

A tranced beauty dwells upon her face,
A lustrous summer-calm of peace and prayer;
In those still eyes the keenest gaze can trace
No sad disturbance, and no touch of care.
Peace rests upon her lips, and forehead fair,
And temples unadorned. A cloistral grace
Says to the gazer over-bold, ‘Beware,’
Yet love hath made her breast his dwelling-place.
An awful might abideth with the pure,
And theirs the only wisdom from above.
She seems to listen to some strain obscure
Of music in sidereal regions wove,
Or to await some more transcendent dower
From heaven descending on her like a dove.

IX.

She sat amid a soft-eyed company
Of little children, whom she taught to love
That God who deigned a child on earth to move,—
And, loving Him, to fear. Hand, lip, and eye,
And many a smile and sometimes a short sigh
Were beautiful to incite and to reprove;
And with that holier wisdom from above
Enlarge our sorrowful humanity.
And yet, O blameless, and thyself a child!
How canst thou teach? Thy rosy lips make sweet
The faults they fain would chide! Of all that group
The timidest such wrath as thine would meet
Gladly, if so that dovelike hand might droop
Upon her shoulder or her tresses wild.

X.

Happy are they who kiss thee, morn and even,
Parting the hair upon thy forehead white:
For them the sky is bluer and more bright,
And purer their thanksgivings rise to Heaven.
Happy are they to whom thy songs are given;
Happy are they on whom thy hands alight:
And happiest they for whom thy prayers at night
In tender piety so oft have striven.
Away with vain regrets and selfish sighs—
Even I, dear friend, am lonely, not unblest:
Permitted sometimes on that form to gaze,
Or feel the light of those consoling eyes:
If but a moment on my cheek it stays
I know that gentle beam from all the rest!

XI.

She whom this heart must ever hold most dear,
This heart in happy bondage held so long,
Began to sing. At first a gentle fear
Rosied her countenance, for she is young,
And he who loves her most of all was near:
But when at last her voice grew full and strong,
O! from their ambush sweet, how rich and clear
Leaped the bright notes abroad—a rapturous throng!
Her little hands were sometimes flung apart,
And sometimes palm to palm together prest;
While wave-like blushes rising from her breast
Kept time with that aerial melody;
A music to the sight !—I standing nigh
Received the falling fountain in my heart.

XII.

Flowers I would bring if flowers could make thee fairer,
And music, if the Muse were dear to thee;
(For loving these would make thee love the bearer)
But sweetest songs forget their melody,
And loveliest flowers would but conceal the wearer:—
A rose I marked, and might have plucked; but she
Blushed as she bent, imploring me to spare her,
Nor spoil her beauty by such rivalry.
Alas! and with what gifts shall I pursue thee,
What offerings bring, what treasures lay before thee;
When earth with all her floral train doth woo thee,
And all old poets and old songs adore thee;
And love to thee is nought; from passionate mood
Secured by joy's complacent plenitude!

XIII.

Let me be near thee, and I will not touch
Thy hand; or grieve thee with reproach or praise;
Or look into thine eyes. Is this too much?
Sweet Lady, say not so, for I would gaze
On thee for ever. Be but what thou art,
A Beauty shrined within a silver haze;
And in the silence let me fill my heart
With memories calmly stored for wintry days.
O Lady! there is sorrow here below;
And gladness seldom comes, and cannot last:
Thou art all summer: thou wilt never know
The cold and cloudy skies which I forecast:
Deny not thou long years of future woe
Their comfort sad and sole—a happy Past.

XIV.

You say the Past is dead. It cannot die:
Life makes immortal what it breathes upon.
Last night, whilst I was slumbering restlessly,
Dark Forms, attired like mourners, one by one,
Drew near, and bound me with unaltered eye.
They stood a long and melancholy train:
At last I spake: ‘Ye ministers of Pain!
I know you, and your aspect stern and high.
Ye are the Phantoms of departed Hours.’
They sank; but sent, instead, a dense array
Of shadows gathered from their dreariest bowers—
Forms, faces, scenes forgotten many a day,
That seemed before my eyes to reel and swim,
Like objects seen through sounding harp-strings dim.

XV.

Silence and Sleep, and Midnight's softest gloom!
Consoling friends of fast deelining years;
Benign assuagers of unfruitful tears;
Soft-footed heralds of the wished-for tomb!
Go to your master Death, the Monarch whom
Ye serve; whose majesty your grace endears;
And in the awful hollows of his ears
Murmur, O ever murmur,—‘Come, O come!’
Virginal rites have I performed full long,
And all observance worthy of a bride.
Then wherefore, Death, dost thou to me this wrong,
So long estranged to linger from my side?
Am I not thine? O breathe upon my eyes
A gentle answer, Death, from thine Elysian skies!

XVI.

Pause, lovely Lady, pause: with downward eye
Regard this humble tomb awhile; and read
The name of him who loved you well, now freed
From pains of love—Ah, mournful liberty!
Sigh forth, too late, an unavailing sigh:
And, if thy spirit be to pity moved,
Pray that a ceaseless dream of her he loved
Abide upon him everlastingly.
Stay, lovely Lady, stay: O stay for hours:
I feel thy tear-drops falling one by one.
Yet do not stay, for grief and shame it were
That tears should fall so fast from eyes so fair;
And feet that scarcely bend the meadow flowers
Linger so long upon the chilling stone.

XVII. TO A SCEPTIC.

How oft that haughty and far-flashing eye,
Have I not seen thee to the wide heavens raise,
Or on the dark earth root thy tyrannous gaze
As on a scroll with piercing scrutiny!
Great scorn it seemed and great indignity
That aught should mock thy search:—and yet that haze
Which veils the loftiest, deepest things, obeys,
Be sure, the cloud-compelling Power on high.
Our life is finite—let the mind be so;
And therefore bound the Spirit's appetites:
Some things we cannot, some we should not know;
Wisdom there is that weakens, lore that blights—
He too that walks among the eternal lights
Casts, as He moves, His shadow oft below!

XVIII. A CHURCHYARD.—1.

It stands a grove of cedars vast and green,
Cathedral-wise disposed, with nave and choir,
And cross-shaped transept lofty and serene;
And altar decked in festival attire
With flowers like urns of white and crimson fire;
And chancel girt with vine-trailed laurel screen;
And aisles high arched with cypresses between;
Retreats of mournful love, and vain desire.
Within the porch a silver fount is breathing
Its pure, cold dews upon the summer air:
Round it are blooming herbs, and flowers, the care
Of all the angels of the Seasons, wreathing
Successively their unbought garniture
Round the low graves of the beloved poor.

XIX. A CHURCHYARD.—2.

But when the winds of night begin to move
Along the murmuring roofs, deep music rolls
Through all the vaults of this Cathedral grove;
A midnight service for departed Souls.
Piercing the fan-like branches stretched above
Each chapel, oratory, shrine, and stall
Then a pale moonshine falls or seems to fall
On those cold grave-stones—altars reared by love
For a betrothal never to be ended;
And on the slender plants above them swinging;
And on the dewy lamps from these suspended;
And sometimes on dark forms in anguish clinging,
As if their bosoms to the senseless mould
Some vital warmth would add—or borrow of its cold.

XX. TO------.

Armoury of impenetrable mail
Is thine; and hath been ever from the womb:
Loosen not, till thou loosenest for the tomb
The sevenfold harness of that iron scale:
For many are there watchful to assail
The mighty, and to speed the flying doom
In all those fits of weakness or of gloom
Which o'er the loftiest head at times prevail.
Not only Passion's Furies—Jealousies,
The heart's Hell-fires; Suspicion, Fear, and Hate:
But Languors unheroic; Sympathies
That, promising to soften, enervate;
Desires that over earth and ocean roam;
And Love, which here beneath should never make her home.

XXI. FAME.

Aspiring souls! henceforward without blame
Revere in faith, and fearlessly obey
That generous impulse which inspires your way:
Glory your spur may be, though not your aim.
Love hath its archetype, nor less hath Fame
In Heaven; there shines the light whereof one ray
Is Fame below: re-echoed thence for aye,
Spread the great echoes of God's sacred Name.
God's living Words through all the worlds sent forth,
Support those worlds by them ordained and made:
True Glory is God's sentence, rightly weighed:
His Lips establish all things: and His Eyes
Kindle the universal sacrifice,
And everlasting, of the Heavens and Earth!

XXII. TO A JUST LAWYER (EDWARD O'BRIEN).

This sonnet was addressed to my dear early friend, Edward O'Brien, on the publication of his work, ‘The Lawyer,’ (Pickering.)

Defrauded Justice, long a wanderer driven
From Law, her Temple, holy kept of old,
Though now the money-changers' strongest hold,
Invoked not vainly aid from thee: and Heaven
To thee that voice heroical hath given
Wherewith to all thy brethren thou hast called,
Standing alone among them disenthralled,
All chains of custom, fear, and interest riven.
Young Priest of Justice, what was their reply?
‘Justice herself this human sacrifice
Requires: if thou wouldst serve her, rob and lie,
So keeps the State function and equipoise’—
Such answer thou didst scorn; and hast for this,
Attained, fully to see its utter hollowness.

XXIII.

Virgin from Fame, and widowed of his Love,
As for life's baser objects all too high,
He lived alone, and fixed a steadfast eye
On the fair prospects of the world above.
Over earth's foreground poor of hill and grove
The streams of sunset, and the starry sky
He watched; and he had heard that harmony
Which Spirits leave behind where'er they move.
Men said he was a Visionary. True:
He was such, for the deep and precious things
Most real, ever stood before his view:
His tendency was upward: without wings
His sympathies ascended—yet below
Where Duty called him, he was prompt to go.

XXIV.

Blessed is he who hath not trod the ways
Of secular delights, nor learned the lore
Which loftier minds are studious to abhor:
Blessed is he who hath not sought the praise
That perishes, the rapture that betrays;
Who hath not spent in Time's vainglorious war
His youth; and found, a schoolboy at fourscore,
How fatal are those victories which raise
Their iron trophies to a temple's height
On trampled Justice; who desires not bliss,
But peace; and yet when summoned to the fight,
Combats as one who combats in the sight
Of God, and of His Angels, seeking this
Alone, how best to glorify the right.

XXV. THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY.

A cedar-cone from Carmel! stored with seeds
Which, might they ripen in the sun and dew
Of our ungenial West, ere long would strew
Our desolate mountains, and o'er-shade our meads
With forests such as earth no longer feeds!
Could man once more that primal growth renew
Then God's immortal breeze would wander through
Their midnight boughs—that vital spirit which breeds
Life without end. And be it known to you,
Ye who would build, that with this wood alone,
Sacred, eternal, incorruptible,
That House in which the Holy One will dwell
Must shape her chambers; and with blocks of stone
As noiselessly raised up as those great forests grew.

XXVI. THE SPIRITUAL TIES REHEARSED IN THE NATURAL.

Father!—the childless Angels cannot call
Upon their God, by that most sacred name!
Brother!—the seed of Adam, one and all,
With Christ Himself true brotherhood we claim.
King, Prophet, Priest! the whole predestined frame
Of life in one symbolic mould is cast;
To prove of Heaven a mystic antepast,
And a pure language to reveal the same.
But we have scorned that old and simple life;
And, building social Babels, fain to reach
Yea storm high Heaven itself, through hate and strife
Confused that Catholic and Godlike speech:
Therefore God's face is dark as in a glass
To us: the Patriarchs saw Him face to face.

XXVII. ‘THE FLESH IS WEAK.’

What man can hear sweet sounds and dread to die?
O for a music that might last for ever
Abounding from its sources like a river
Which through the dim lawns streams eternally!
Virtue might then uplift her crest on high,
Spurning those myriad bonds that fret and grieve her;
Then all the powers of Hell, rebuked, would quiver
Before the ardours of her awful eye.
Alas for Man with all his high desires,
And inward promptings fading day by day!
High-titled honour pants while it expires;
And clay-born glory turns again to clay.
Low instincts last: our great resolves pass by
Like winds whose loftiest pæan ends but in a sigh.

XXVIII. THE DYING PLATONIST.

Fain would I call that night which spreads so fast
Out of the vault of Death's abysmal skies,
A gentle gloom like that of thy dark eyes:
Fain would I say that we, like children, cast
Our blind-fold faces with a timid haste
Into a mother's lap—ere long to rise
Some little forfeit and some sweet surprise
The playful future of a playful past.
But ah! it is not so. Reality
Makes a dread language of this ebbing breath;
Preaching those awful homilies of Death
Which sound so like each other at their close.
The least of Sins is Infinite: it throws
A shade into the face of the Most High.

XXIX. RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.

Stranger! yet friend! who from the ways unblest
Of common life retired, art pleased to rove
The autumnal alleys of this ‘Golden Grove,’
By woodland odours, sportive gleams carest,
That lure thee forward in thine easy quest
Of Wisdom bowered with Beauty and with Love;
Beware! a presence that thou deemest not of
Is here concealed. From out the air-rocked nest
Of every leaf, looks forth some Dream divine:
The grass thou treadest—the weeds, are cyphered o'er
With mystic traces, and sibylline lore:
Each branch is precious as that golden bough
Hung by Æneas, ere he passed below,
Upon the sable porch of Proserpine.

XXX. RELIGIOUS ANTIQUARIANISM.

I saw a wild-swan flying toward the West,
Following the traces of a sunken Sun:
The sky grew momently more pale; yet on
She urged her indefatigable quest;
Faint crimson lights suffusing still that breast,
Out of whose deep recesses forth she flung
Exhausted wailings of immortal song,
Wind-scattered dirges, psalmody unblest!
Sad lover of the Past! in vain that flight!
A law there is that bids the earth roll round,
And marvellously marries day and night,
The first, and last. Yet drop not to the ground!
Once more the orb thou lovest on thee shall rise,
Far-shining from the East of thine abandoned skies.

XXXI. STORM AND STABILITY.

Now, now, ye kings and rulers of the earth,
Lift up your eyes unto the hills eterne,
Whence your salvation comes. From Earth's dark urn
The great floods burst! From each ancestral hearth
Look forth ye bold and virtuous poor, look forth:
The meteor signs of woes to come discern;
And whence the danger be not slow to learn:
Then greet it with loud scorn, and warlike mirth.
The banner of the Church is ever flying!
Less than a storm avails not to unfold
The Cross emblazoned there in massy gold—
Away with doubts and sadness, tears and sighing:
It is by faith, by patience, and by dying,
That we must conquer, as our sires of old!

XXXII. THE BEATIFIC VISION OF THE EARTH.—1.

Glad childhood's dream of marvels past, we rise,
Still on our cheeks the flush of sleep remaining;
And roam the waste of Earth, our eyelids straining
The glories of that dream to realise.
Nor seek in vain. Stream, bird, or cloud replies,
Echoes that mock young passion's amorous feigning,
Fancy shines starlike forth 'mid daylight waning,
And Hope the night-bird sings 'neath shrouded skies.
At last the charm is broken: day by day
Drops some new veil, until the countenance bare
Of that ice-idol, blank Reality,
Confronts us full with cold, and loveless eye—
Then dies our heart, unless that faith we share
Whose touch makes all things gold, and gives us youth for aye.

XXXIII. THE BEATIFIC VISION OF THE EARTH.—2.

Hail Earth, for man's sake cursed, yet blessing man!
The Saviour trod thine herbage, breathed thine air:
Henceforward, not alone through symbols, fair,
Thou showest, delivered from thine ancient ban,
Memorial bloom withheld since death began:
Thy Maker's glory formed at last to share
Even now that light transfiguring thou dost wear
For us, which once adorned His forehead wan.
‘All things are new.’ O sing it, heavenly choirs!
And ye, the choir of God's great Church below,
The Poets! sound it on your deep-toned lyres:
From every mountain-top the tidings blow:
‘All things are new.’ The Earth hath thrown aside
Her mourning weeds, and sits a pale, and veilèd bride.

XXXIV. THE BEATIFIC VISION OF THE EARTH.—3.

Cowering beneath a semilucid veil,
A semilucid bridal veil of snow,
Which from the wreath that binds her temples pale
Down to her white and slender feet doth flow,
She sits. I hear her breathings soft and low:
They shake the vine-leaves in that garland frail—
Like Mary's when she heard th' Angelic ‘Hail,’
Dimly I see her blushes come and go.
And now, that veil thrown back, her head she raises,
Fixing upon the stars her starlike eyes:
As though she felt that Heaven on which she gazes
Her bosom rises: lo! her hands, they rise:
She also rises. Time it is to meet
Her Lord, and bless ‘the light of His returning feet.’

XXXV. THE CONSTELLATION OF THE PLOUGH.

Type of celestial labour, toil divine,
That nightly downward from the glistening skies
Showerest thy light on these expectant eyes,
Around thee in their stations ever shine
Full many a radiant shape and emblemed sign,
Swords, sceptres, crowns, bright tresses, galaxies—
Whatever Song can raise, or Thought devise,
Yet none, methinks, so truly great as thine.
On, ever on! while He who guides thee flings
His golden grain along the azure way
Do thou thy sleepless work, and toiling, say,
‘O men, so sedulous in trivial things,
Why faint amid your loftier labours? Why
Forget the starry seed and harvests of the sky?’

XXXVI. HUMAN LIFE.

Sad is our youth, for it is ever going,
Crumbling away beneath our very feet;
Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing,
In current unperceived because so fleet;
Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,
But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat;
Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing;
And still, O still, their dying breath is sweet:
And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us
Of that which made our childhood sweeter still;
And sweet our life's decline, for it hath left us
A nearer Good to cure an older Ill;
And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them
Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them.

XXXVII. FORTITUDE.

Man's mind should be of marble, not of clay:
A rock-hewn temple, large, majestic, bare;
Not decked with gewgaws, but with life-long care
And toil heroic shaped to stand for aye:
Not like those plaster baubles of the day,
In which the lightest breath of praise or prayer
Crumbles the gauds wherewith they garnished are:
In which we dare not think, and cannot pray;
In which God will not dwell. O Constancy!
Where thou art wanting all our gifts are naught!
Friend of the martyrs—both of those who die,
And those who live—beneath that steadfast eye
The breast-plates and the beaming helms were wrought
Of all our far-famed Christian chivalry!

XXXVIII. MEDITATION.

What is more glorious than a noble Thought?
What is more blessed?—In that thought to dwell!
To build your bower within it; scoop a cell;
Inlay with precious ores a secret grot
With mossy seats around: to wander not;
But lean in peace above its caverned well,
Passive to that pure runnel's murmuring spell,
Or sound of sighing forests heard remote.
Such holy promptings moved of old our sires
Those vast cathedrals cruciform to raise
Which make us dwell within the Cross: and still,
Sweet as the gradual breeze from all their choirs
Moving with dawning day o'er wood and hill,
The thoughts by those grey Minsters quickened to God's praise!

XXXIX. SORROW.

Count each affliction, whether light or grave,
God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou
With courtesy receive him; rise and bow;
And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave;
Then lay before him all thou hast: Allow
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow,
Or mar thy hospitality; no wave
Of mortal tumult to obliterate
The soul's marmoreal calmness: Grief should be,
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate,
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;
Strong to consume small troubles; to commend
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end.

XL. EVANESCENCE OF THE PATRIARCHAL RELIGION.

Hermes! unearthly were those melodies
That closed the lids of Argus! one by one
His hundred orbs, by a sweet force pressed down,
Yielding successively, like Heaven's bright eyes
When moonlight spreads along her glistening skies:
Smiling he sank, more pleased the more undone,
Inebriate, while through those thin lids the sun
Shone warmly without light!—thy sorceries,
Faith of the Pagan world, so fair of old,
Worked like those songs! Procession, Legend, Rite,
Sapped thus transmitted Truth by spells of Art:
Till the ever-waking spirit in man's heart
Relinquished at the last its sacred hold
Of God's prime creature, beatific Light!

XLI. VIGILANCE.

Virgin! at placid morn, and when the airs
Of evening fan her flushed and throbbing sky,
Send up, like doves, thy homeward thoughts on high,
And mingle with those gentle thoughts thy prayers.
Blameless thou art: but One there is who dares
Assail for ever, and remorselessly
The soul of finest grain and purest dye,
And in the softest herbage sprinkles tares.
Virgin! that Power which sends the winds of Even
To rock the blossoms on the boughs of May,
That Power the Spirits of the Mind obey,
And come and go at His command alone:
Yea, but for Him the loftiest star of Heaven
Would drop, supplanted, from his glittering throne.

XLII. PROVIDENCE.

Providence is that thread on which are strung
Like beads, all Acts and Epochs great and small,
Where diamonds glitter at wide interval
The sanguine and the sable gems among.
‘Wreathe it to one wide crown, and be it hung
Henceforth aloft in Time's memorial hall,
Suspend it o'er the symbol of the Fall;’
This is the burden of the angelic song.
But we must live by Faith: waiting the time
Solemnly set apart in God's great plan
For joining the beginning and the ending:
Then Truth and Love and Joy with choral blending
Shall chaunt the mythic tale of Earth: then Man
Shall mark the metre and recurrent rhyme.

XLIII. UNIVERSAL HISTORY.

Methought I gazed upon a dusky Round,
Our mortal planet's monumental urn:
Around its orb with many a spiral turn
Ascending, a Procession slowly wound:
There saw I laurelled poets, kings renowned;
Prophets I saw from earth's remotest bourne:
There saw I maids and youths, old men forlorn,
And conquerors full-armed, and captives bound.
A Funeral pomp methought it seemed far down
In pale relief; and, side by side, therein
Hooded, there paced, a Sorrow and a Sin:
Midway in ampler ring, and vision clear,
A Sacrifice embraced that mighty sphere:
Above, a lovely Bridal was its crown.

XLIV. TRUTH.

Centre of Earth; keystone of Heaven's great dome!
In thee the world's vast arches rest suspended:
Within thy zodiac's belt round all extended
The orb of Knowledge evermore doth roam:
Thou art the lamp and hearth of each man's home—
How many wondrous powers in thee are blended!
By thee we live; by thee from death defended
We find a second cradle in the tomb.
In thee all good things breathe, without thee die:
Strength, Justice, Loyalty, Truth's noble thrall,
Song, Science, all the Loves; yea most of all,
Though deemed too oft thy rival, Charity,
Whose golden arrows swift as sunbeams fly,
And scatter seeds of life where'er they fall!

XLV. NATIONAL STRENGTH.

What is it makes a Nation truly great?
Her sons; her sons alone; not theirs, but they:
Glory and gold are vile as wind and clay
Unless the hands that grasp them, consecrate.
And what is that in man by which a State
Is clad in splendour like the noontide day?
Virtue: Dominion ebbs, and Arts betray;
Virtue alone endures. But what is that
Which Virtue's self doth rest on; that which yields her
Light for her feet, and daily, heavenly bread;
Which from demoniac pride, and madness shields her,
And storms that most assail the loftiest head?
The Christian's humble faith; that faith which cheers
The orphan's quivering heart and stays the widow's tears.

XLVI. HONOUR.

Bright and majestic Spirit! faithful mate
Of all true Virtue, and that generous Fame
Which guards a spotless, seeks a glorious name
From Love not Pride; but seeks content to wait
And prompt to share it: Angel of the State!
Sanctioning Order with religious awe;
Taking the harshness and the sting from Law,
Scorn from the lowly, envy from the great:
Come to this region of thine ancient sway!
With thy heroic and inspiring smile
Illume our perils and our fears beguile!
Was it not here that Alfred built his throne,
And high-souled Sidney waived a throne away?—
The land is strong which thou hast made thine own.

THE FALL OF RORA.

Caverned rocks in the mountains above Rora.—Chorus of Virgins and Wives—Old Men, Children.
A GIRL.
It thunders!

AN OLD MAN.
No, it is their meeting.

A WOMAN.
Ah!
Thus far, beyond the sight of this great onset
To wait the issue in suspense, and hear
No sound, but those fierce shouts, and our hearts' beating!
Hurl down, O wind, yon rocks! their jagged pines
Leave half the vale exposed, yet hide the battle!

SECOND WOMAN.
A tenfold shout—now, now they meet. O heaven!

CHORUS.
Clouds above the dark vale streaming!
Onward rushing, swift and free!
Oh! that, as a mirror gleaming,
You might show us all you see!
Glittering heralds you should be
Of a sun-bright victory!

FIRST SEMI-CHORUS.
Now the battle hosts are meeting;
Tangled now in mazy error;
Like whirlpools down a river fleeting—
I am blind with doubt and terror.
Better death, than doubt. O cease!
Be still, my heart, or burst. Peace, peace!

SECOND SEMI-CHORUS.
Darkness and storm before him driven,
Ascending ever high and higher,
Yon Eagle cleaves the clouded heaven:
Lo! now sun-smitten, like a pyre
He burns! auspicious omen! we
Behold our Fate and Fame in thee!

FIRST GIRL.
Have we judged well?

SECOND GIRL.
To give up all at once!
The thought is glorious—

WOMEN.
But the act! woe, woe!

FIRST SEMI-CHORUS.
I heard a voice: the clouds were fled;
All heaven hung vast and pure o'erhead;
The mountain rock, and mountain sod,
Lay steadfast, as the throne of God!
I heard a voice: it spake to me,
Far murmuring, ‘One hath died for thee,
That thou shouldst live both just and free.’

SECOND SEMI-CHORUS.
‘For how,’ that deep voice murmured—‘how
Shall man to God his forehead bow,
If, bent beneath a Power unjust,
For aye it grovel in the dust?
Or how expand a chain-worn breast
For Christ therein, an equal guest,
To find his temple and his rest?’

FIRST WOMAN.
(Children pass through the caverns singing.)

CHORUS.
Hark, hark the Storm! the voice not long
Outstrips the Presence: see you now,
Not leaves alone, but branch and bough!
They roof the glen, a rushing throng,
Fast borne in current fierce and strong:
The cliffs that wall the vale are shaking:
The forests to their heart are quaking:
Crouch in caves who will: but I
Exulting pace this platform high!
My panting soul, with joy o'er-awed,
I cast upon the storm abroad:
And soon will hurl, inspired by wrong,
Thereon my vengeance and my Song!

A WOMAN.
Is it the gasping of the storm
That makes her wan cheek red and warm?
Lo! how she fixes now her eyes—

CHORUS.
Catching the quickening impulse from those kindling skies!
See, see the storm grows radiant now,
As radiant as a lifted brow
Too long abased! lo, fast and wide,
Avenging Forms the tempest ride;
And answer, round, above, and under,
With choruses of rapturous thunder!
Burst on the tyrant, Storm from God!
Hurl them like leaves from rock to rock!
Trample them down through clay and sod:
From dark to dark!—their banners mock
The purple and the blood-stained gold
Thy clouds have righteously unrolled—

A WOMAN.
She lifts her hands, and far away
Flings forth the ban!

CHORUS.

FIRST WOMAN.
How her high passion teems with thoughts as high;
Like fire from Earth's deep heart quickening the seeds
In some volcanic soil to stateliest growth!
Flushed is her cheek with crimson as she cow'rs
Beneath their umbrage!

CHORUS.
Ha! how well
That Chief made answer. At the door
The herald stood, and shook all o'er;
And spake: ‘These tumults thou shalt quell;
Or else, a deep oath I have sworn,
Thy wife, the children of thy joy,
With fire in vengeance to destroy.’
Then made he answer, without scorn:
‘Their flesh thou mayest consume; Time must:
But I commend their spirits
To God, in whom we trust.’

WOMEN.
See, see that man! he's hurt—how goes the battle?

MESSENGER.
Thrice have they rushed upon us: thrice fled back:
They form for the last onset. Arnold sent me—
He prays you to remove.

WOMEN.
We will not stir!
Why should we move?

MESSENGER.
The fight is worse than doubtful:
Fresh troops are pouring on us—Christoval—
Mario—the rest—have burst into the valley
From every entrance. We are girt—surrounded—

CHORUS.

FIRST WOMAN.
She sings aright: this music of her anger
Makes my blood leap like founts from the warm earth:
My chill is past.

SECOND WOMAN.
'Tis well. We shall die free!

CHORUS.
As though this Freedom they demand of us
Were ours, at will to keep or to bestow!
To them a boon profane, a gift of woe;
For us a loss fatal and blasphemous!
This Freedom—man's dread Birthright of the Soul—
It is not man's, nor under man's control:
From God it comes; His prophet here, and martyr;
Which when He gives to man, man's sword must guard:
No toy for sport; no merchandise for barter;
A duty, not a boast; the Spirit's awful ward!—
Dread, sullen stillness, what art thou portending?
Once more each word I mutter on mine ear,
Forward in anguish bending,
Drops resonant and clear—
The forest wrecks, each branch and bough,
O'er voiceless caves lie silent now:
No sound, except the wind's far wail,
Forth issuing through the portals of the vale,
Now low, now louder and more loud,
Under the bridge-like archway of yon low-hung cloud!

FIRST WOMAN.
O God, what light is that? See, see, it spreads!
The vale is all one flame—the clouds catch fire—
Our hearths, our homes! all lost—gone, gone, for ever!

SECOND WOMAN.
It wakes another tempest! From the gorges
And deep glens on all sides the winds come rushing,
And mate themselves unto that terrible flame,
As we shake hands fiercely with our despair!
Lo, once again that sound! that flame, behold!
Once more it leaps off from its burning altar
Up, up, to heaven—

CHORUS.
To be our witness there!

A SECOND MESSENGER.
Arnold is dead! He felt the wound was mortal:
Then stood he up from slaying of his foes,
And smiled, and gave this staff to me, and said:
‘If there be yet one free spot left on Earth,
Let them plant there this staff—
And there, not on my grave, remember me!’

FIRST SEMI-CHORUS.
Boast not, haughty conqueror!
Not from thee hath fallen this woe:
He, the Lord of Peace and War,
He alone hath laid us low.
Boast not, haughty conqueror!
Slay, but boast not. Woe! Woe! Woe!

SECOND SEMI-CHORUS.
From Heaven the curse was shaken
On this predestined head:
From thy hand the plague was taken;
By a mightier vengeance sped.
Mine is the sorrow,
Mine, and for ever;
Who can turn back again
A mighty archer's arrow?
Who can assuage my pain?
Who can make calm my brain?
Who can deliver?

CHORUS.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

FEMALE POETRY.

SONG.

FIRST SHEPHERDESS.

SECOND SHEPHERDESS.

SONG.

SONG.

TO A WILD PANSY.

SONG.

LOVE AND SORROW.

ODE ON LEAVING ITALY.

SONG.

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!’
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!

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:
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,
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.

8.

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:
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:
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,
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.)

SONG.

THE DIGNITY OF SORROW.

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]

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.
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
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!

DOUBTS.

LOVE'S SPITE.

DOLORES.

(SCENE IN A MADHOUSE).

SONNETS.

I. THE POETIC FUNCTION.—1.

The College of the Priests is with us still:
Still on our low, and sin-defilèd ground
The borders of their sacred vestments sound:
But where by caverned wood, or crested hill,
Or cedar-girded mountain citadel,
Where are the high-commissioned Prophets found?
The Unanointed Order, not uncrowned,
For whom the curtain unremovable
Of Time, transparent grows;—to whom is given,
When mighty Nations rage in anarchy,
Bending with arm outstretched and potent rod
To part the waves of that rebellious sea;
To warn ill Rulers of the ways of Heaven,
And sternly monish Kings that know not God?

II. THE POETIC FUNCTION.—2.

I asked; and it was answered me—‘The Praise
And Burthen, which to these did once belong,
Is now committed to the Lords of Song;—
For, throned above earth-mist, and Time's poor haze,
Their spiritual spheres they build and raise:
And those eternal Truths on which are hung
The fates of mortals, lurk their leaves among;
And what exalts a nation; what betrays.
Therefore the People cleave to them: and all
To whom the World, not Truth and Man, are dear
Abhor them, and suspect; despise, yet fear;
And will not bid them to their festival,
Unless, like Balak's wise and wicked Seer,
They merge the Prophet in the Sorcerer.’

III.

A wayward child, scarce knowing what he wanted,
Ran to one side while all his comrades played,
And in the sunny ground a berry planted:
An olive-tree uprose; and in its shade,
While summer after summer glowed and panted,
That child's descendants sat. The tree decayed:
Then of one polished branch this flute was made,
The sire of all sweet sounds and strains enchanted,
Immortal nurslings of the transient breeze.
That child is dead and gone; that olive now
Is swept away with all its centuries;
Yet this selected fragment of a bough
Survives, and may survive till earth expires
And mortal strains are lost in songs of heavenly choirs.

IV.

The spring of my sweet life thou madest thine;
And on my summer glories thou hast fed:
And now the vernal melodies are dead
On lips that mourn for joys no longer mine.
The summer brilliance now hath ceased to shine
Upon a brow so oft disquieted
By agonising doubts: thy love is fled;
And thou art flying—how dare I repine?
How could I hope so great a love would cleave
To one whose fault too well was known to thee?
Lament not, O my love; or, if thou grieve,
For me lament not, though my grief thou share;
For I have known in dreams my destiny,
And what I ought to welcome I can bear.

V.

I was ashamed when some one said to me,
‘How blue those mountains are, that cloud how fair’—
I could have praised them first: but could not dare
To mix false words with joy so pure and free.
And when they said, ‘Behold that shining sea!’
I wept beneath my long and veiling hair;
Stung by the rapture which I could not share,
Long, long I wept, and unrestrainedly.
Stranger! if thou canst help me, help me now.
Beauty I saw of old where'er I gazed:
But now, like one by light too brilliant dazed,
To me the loveliest things look blank and grey.
A cloud is on my breast, and on my brow—
Abashed I turn from fairest shapes away.

VI.

The light that played above thine infancy,
I see it still in all that shining hair:
And on that countenance pale and brow of care,
Depressed by melancholy though they be,
Departing Youth looks back remorsefully—
Then why such sorrow in a world so fair,
As if there were no Heaven to minister
Immortal nourishment to one like thee?
Ah! fret not thou at Fortune's petty stings,
Sorrow unlovely and unsanctified,
But strictly fortify the loftier heart,
Communing hourly with undying things;
And, without promptings of injurious pride,
Remember what thou wert and what thou art.

VII. HUMILITY.

Those hills, so graceful, though to us not grand,
Are grand to children: shade-swept hill and dale
The same in beauty, on an ampler scale
With broader trees and shades, for them expand:
To them, the pebbles on the wet sea-sand
Are gems: to them each river brim and vale
Sends forth a thousand odours sweet and bland,
Too low for us to catch, too faint, too frail.
They see as far as we do: but their eye
Comparing all things with a humbler measure,
Exalts not less than multiplies their pleasure—
Ah that the moral world thus constantly
Might yield her gifts to our humility!
The smallest key unlocks the largest treasure.

VIII. THE ISLAND OF INISFALLEN.

The holy sunshine like a garment lay,
A sacerdotal vesture dense with gold,
On every shelving mound, and slumbrous wold,
As round and round we paced at noon our way.
Onward we paced by many a winding bay,
And hollow lawn that seemed to have ta'en its mould
From wave-like anthems rolling here of old,
While yet old rites maintained harmonious sway.
Green slopes we trod, majestic as the plains
Of sand disclosed by Ocean's ebbing tide:
Hard by were groves of ash through which we spied
The ruined convent with its weather-stains,
From whose calm bosom passed of old the strains
This Eden of blue lakes that sanctified.

IX.

To raise the triumph of victorious Art;
To poise a temple in the middle air;
To deck its walls with sculptures gravely fair
Or hues which trace the windings of the heart:
To pierce the maze of Science, and to part
Error from Truth, until thy sedulous care
Had made the moral map of Man as bare
Of doubt or hindrance as the Ocean's chart—
Was this thine aim, high Spirit? knew'st thou not
That, but one soul to lift and purify,
And keep a single day from sinful blot,
Exceeds the strength of frail mortality?
Take back awhile thy corals: and, untaught
To totter, be not emulous to fly.

X. LOW COMPANY.

Sad Host of an ignoble company
Of hungry Cares that to thy sumptuous board
Troop, not unbidden, preying on their lord—
Mingling their shrill harsh voices with the glee
Of Pride and Sense, their friends of high degree;
If these, unmasked, are duteously abhorred,
If thou wouldst be once more from those restored
To peace, to honour, and to liberty;
Stamp on thy floor, and bid thy guests depart,
And fill thy gorgeous chambers with the poor:
Yea, press those outcasts to thine aching heart
Whom thou so long hast banished from thy door,
As if contagion issued from the eye
Of Want, or pleading Woe's melodious sigh.

XI.

Praise from the noble, from the gentle, Love,
Too oft unfairly won, or dearly bought,
By man may be accepted, though not sought,
And when accepted, honoured: for they rove,
Outcasts from Heaven, a world that loves them not—
If then they seek thy tent or sheltering grove,
Count them lost Angels to thy threshold brought
For rest, ere yet they wing their flight above.
Welcome those Strangers meekly when they come,
And gain their blessing when they seek the sky:
Strive not to keep them: Earth is not their home;
And Man must humbly live, and gladly die.
Death—Death, a dark-eyed Page, shall be his guide
To seats where Praise and Love with Life and Peace abide.

XII.

A glorious Crown, if God maintain it, thou,
O Queen, hast rightfully inherited:
If not, even now it totters on thy head:
Therefore to Him present in time thy vow.
For thousands are there that have knit their brow
Against thy throne and thee: thousands have spread
Their hands against thee: yea, the shaft was sped
Long since, the venomed shaft on-flying now.
And yet despond not; for thy People's prayers,
And wise men wakeful all the livelong night,
Are striving for thee; and the brave will fight;
And all the good are fighting unawares
For thee. Away with comfortless despairs!
Power is of God; and He will guard the Right.

XIII.

The golden splendour of the regal Crown
Shoots from the meekest brow a dazzling sheen
Painful to eyes malignant. King or Queen!
Think not of men, whether they smile or frown.
The Princely sceptre and the Priestly gown
Are symbols of eternal Power serene;
Visibly preaching Him who reigns unseen—
An impious deed it were to lay them down,
And to usurp that peace by Heaven bestowed
Upon the Holy Order of the Poor;
That genuine peace which can alone endure
While men are trained to mark the hand of God
Alike in all things; doing, each his part,
In low estate or high, with an untroubled heart.

XIV.

Far rather let us loathe and scorn the power
Of Song, than seek her fane with hearts impure,
Panting for praise or pay, the vulgar lure
Of those on whom the Muse doth scantly shower,
Or not at all, her amaranthine dower:
Ye that would serve her, first of this be sure,
Her glorious Pæans will for aye endure
Whether or not she smile upon your bower.
Go forth, eternal Melodies, go forth
O'er all the world, and in your broad arms wind it!
Go forth, as ye are wont, from south to north;
No spot so barren but your spells can find it:
So long as Heaven is vaulted o'er the earth,
So long your power survives, and who can bind it?

XV. FORM OF CONSECRATION FOR A NEW HOUSE.

I bless thy new-raised threshold: let us pray
That never faithless friend, insulting foe,
O'er this pure stone their hateful shadows throw:
May the poor gather round it day by day.
I bless this hearth: thy children here shall play:
Here may their graces and their virtues blow:
May sin defile it not; and want and woe
And sickness seldom come, nor come to stay.
I bless thy House. I consecrate the whole
To God. It is His Temple. Let it be
Worthy of Him, confided thus to thee.
Man's dwelling, like its lord, enshrines a soul:
It hath great destinies, wherein do lie,
Self-sown, the seeds of Immortality.

XVI. TO AN INFANT.

Familiar Spirit! that so graciously
Dost take whatever fortune may befall,
Trusting thy fragile form to the arms of all,
And never counting it indignity
To sit caressed upon the humblest knee;
Thou, having yet no words, aloud dost call
Upon our hearts: the fever and the gall
Of our dark bosoms are reproved in thee.
From selfish fears and lawless wishes free,
Thou hast no painful feeling of thy weakness;
From shafts malign and pride's base agony
Protected by the pillows of thy meekness:
Thou hast thy little loves which do not grieve thee,
Unquiet make thee, or unhappy leave thee.

XVII. EARTHLY HOPE.

Painter of Hope! too bright that brow, too fair;
Those eyes too eager; all too deep the flush
Upon that cheek! O bid those streams that gush
So warmly, backward to her heart repair,
And warm, if warm they can, the chillness there:
Make her unconscious hands deflower and crush
Those unblown buds: command the tears to rush
Into worn eyes that, sadly constant, stare
As if they strove the narrowing light to hold
Of some far object, gliding fast away.
Let this be Hope: then make her stand forlorn
Upon the shore disconsolate and cold
Of seas fast-ebbing, over which the morn
Begins to tremble with its ashy grey.

XVIII.

Ample, and vast, and infinitely still,
Slants down from the blue crystal of the sky,
Throne of the Muse, the Heliconian hill:
Citheron's frowning crest ascends hard by
With clouds and tempest plagued perpetually:
There walk those feet that fates unblest fulfil:
There tread the avenging Furies: wild and shrill
There rings the victim's shriek, the Mænad's cry.
Poets! let none deceive you; nor confound
Tumult with strength. Then most the Muse is calm,
Singing the strifes of sublunary things:
Steady her hand among the quivering strings:
No sorrow she approves that slights her balm:
Her toils are rest-ennobled, virtue-crowned!

XIX.

Nations, their mission o'er, their office done,
Are forcibly drawn downwards; and that tide
Which raised them, homeward summoned doth subside.
What man by art can stay the sinking sun,
Or Spring departing when her goal is won?
States too are transient! longer none may bide
When once, its lesson taught or place supplied,
That steadying weight by it sustained is gone.
Nations, be wise! Whate'er the course ye hold,
Strive that your furthest aim subservient be
To the virtuous progress of Humanity.
Woe to that greatness which commercial gold
Alone creates, or seals. Such leaves no trace,
Sinking; and lighter things float up into its place.

XX. TO THE THAMES.

River, whose charge is from the winds and sky
The Imperial City's agitated ear
To soothe with murmur low and ceaseless cheer,
Do thy great, pious task perpetually:
But add a warning voice more deep and high:
Borne down from bridge to bridge in smooth career
Tell her to whom the pomp of gold is dear,
Of Tyre that fell; of Fortune's perfidy!
Tell her, whilst on thy broad and glimmering mirror
The shadows of her turrets tremble and slide,
How brief the impress of victorious Pride,
How nearly Triumph is allied to Terror.
Demons their nests in ship-mast forests hide—
By nobleness, not gold, are Nations deified.

XXI. ‘IN ALL THINGS LOYALTY.’

One Virtue reigned supreme in days gone by,
Familiarly beloved, with awe obeyed:
The name survives amongst us—Loyalty:
By her all natural ties were Virtues made:
All Virtues, humble while their Queen stood nigh,
Unsunned remained, and pure, beneath the shade:
Without her now, they strut in masquerade,
Vainglorious pageants for the public eye!
Sans-foy! Sans-loy! Sans-joy!—the Patron Saints
Which every modern warrior, on his casque
Blazons—each scribe on his phylactery!
How will ye better help a land that faints
With hunger, long and vainly do I ask,
Than ancient Faith, or Hope, or Charity?

XXII. MILTON VISITING GALILEO IN HIS BLINDNESS.

Behold how long, and with what earnest eye
He gazes on that venerable face,
And forehead heavenward lifted! Doth he trace
In that calm symbol of serenity
And sorrow mastered with a loftier grace,
The shadow of his own high destiny;
Virtue contending with the pride of place,
Blindness, unhonoured age, and penury?
Yes—ye are like, though Time not yet hath marred
The lightest of those locks; nor anguish pressed
The signet of her silence cold and hard
Upon those lips so lovely in their rest:
Yes—ye are like, as morn is like to even,
Or trance of Summer-noon to Winter's frozen heaven.

XXIII. THE OLD AGE OF MILTON.

I knew him. Blind and pale, but undepressed,
He sat beneath his hovel's silent shade,
Sternly quiescent. At his feet were laid
Two forms reclining there in heavenly rest:
One held a book; his hand the other kissed
With awe; but while the younger daughter read
I saw the mournful drooping of his head,
I saw the sideway leaning of his breast
Like Theseus bending o'er the Minotaur.
Supported on one hand, he seemed to gaze
Into the face of some accursèd thing—
O Nation, self-enslaving more and more,
And thou, disastrous, nation-selling King,
Why trouble ye this blind man old in days?

XXIV.

For we the mighty mountain plains have trod
Both in the glow of sunset and sunrise;
And lighted by the moon of southern skies!
The snow-white torrent of the thundering flood
We two have watched together: In the wood
We two have felt the warm tears dim our eyes
While zephyrs softer than an infant's sighs
Ruffled the light air of our solitude!
O Earth, maternal Earth, and thou, O Heaven,
And Night first-born, who now, e'en now, dost waken
The host of stars, thy constellated train!
Tell me if those can ever be forgiven,
Those abject, who together have partaken
These Sacraments of Nature—and in vain?

XXV.

Flowers growing to the level of the hand;
Flowers we may pluck without the toil of stooping;
And fruits from orchard branches gently drooping,
To our warm lips by every Zephyr fanned;
Delights, timid, yet tame, that come fast trooping,
Like birds that hear a well-known summons bland,
Such are the joys we hold at our command;
The joys that we escape, for ever scooping
The insalubrious mines of sensual Care
For stuff to load a back already weary,
Or climbing mountain ridges dark and bare
In search of colder winds, and views more dreary.
Ah, fatal Contradiction! do we roam,
Hoping to fly from self, or find a home?

XXVI. MARCELLA.—1.

Marcella! those that to the Gods are dear
On thee may gaze with forehead undepressed:
Thy sire, thy brothers thou hast oft caressed,
And others are there, men whom all revere,
On whom thou canst not look with eye austere:
Nay, there may come a time when on thy breast
Or knee, a child of thine in sleep may rest
Or upward gaze untroubled with a fear.
But we, Marcella, never without awe
Approach thee; never without awe depart:
To us thy gentlest words are as a law:
The sacred wisdom of the virgin heart
Shines through these clear calm eyes, and to thine hand
Commits unseen a sceptre of command.

XXVII. MARCELLA.—2.

Eyes justly levelled, searching yet sedate,
A marble brow enthroning a still light,
A cheek that neither seeks nor shuns our sight,
A form severely fair, on which aye wait
All natural emblems of unboastful state;
A step reserved, yet steadied by the might
Of fearless frankness, garments dark as night,
A breast the Loves in vain would penetrate—
Thou hast no wishes: for the vestal Spirit
As with a beaming breastplate doth repel
Whate'er of troubled joy with her would dwell.
The brave with thee approval find, not merit:
Thy first of duties deem'st thou this—to scorn
Whatever is not of the Immortals born.

XXVIII. RATIONALISM.

Notions of notions docketed and classed:
Shadows self-chased along a barren ground:
Pale tracks of foam in wandering waves half-drowned:
Thin shreds of song half lost in winter's blast—
These starved and squalid Systems cannot last:
Vainly man's plummet the great deep would sound,
Man's arms enclose within their pigmy bound
Of sense, the Present, Future, and the Past.
Well skilled to trace the diagrams of thought,
Our modern Muse (with aid of compass) shines
In abstract lore of surfaces and lines;
Courses along Truth's limits; enters not;
Steps not across the threshold; dares not tread
The space within devote to God and to the dead!

XXIX.

System o'erstrained offends through haughtiness:
Hours chained to tasks, resolves in steel arrayed,
Words strict as edicts, measured each, and weighed,
Are well; but nought is healthy in excess.
Our thoughts grow tangled in their phalanxes:
And oft, by inward discipline betrayed,
From outward things we win a lowlier aid,
From chance a surer guide in our distress.
With her habitual, half-unconscious kindness,
Nature, our sweet companionable friend,
Upon our forehead breathes and clears our blindness,
Sends her familiar sprites our steps to tend,
A scent, a sound, a swan that cuts the lake,
To lure dark fancies brightening in her wake!

XXX. SOLITUDE WITHOUT VOCATION.

In this Seclusion, from the world secure,
Her frauds, her force, her clamour, and her din,
O what a prosperous height might virtue win,
If, entering first these courts, the soul were pure!
But to a tainted soul, how weak the lure
Of outward things compared with snares within,
Where thought tracks thought, insatiable pursuer,
On through the inmost caves of lurking sin—
Dark thoughts which nobler presences had scared,
And palpable duties crushed! Ah, well of old
Fabled the priest, if priest he were or bard,
His Dian strenuous of life and bold:
A Huntress o'er the mountain summits hard,
Her couch beside the fountain calm but cold.

THE YEAR OF SORROW AND OTHER POEMS.

THE YEAR OF SORROW—IRELAND— 1849.

TO BURNS'S ‘HIGHLAND MARY.’

PSYCHE; OR, AN OLD POET'S LOVE.—

SONNETS WRITTEN IN TRAVEL.

I. GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE AT FLORENCE.

Enchased with precious marbles, pure and rare,
How gracefully it soars, and seems the while
From every polished stage to laugh and smile,
Playing with gleams of that clear southern air!
Fit resting-place methinks its summit were
For a descended Angel! happy isle
Mid life's rough sea of sorrow, force, and guile,
For Saint of royal race, or vestal fair,
In this seclusion—call it not a prison—
Cloistering a bosom innocent and lonely:
O Tuscan Priestess! gladly would I watch
All night one note of thy loud hymn to catch
Sent forth to greet the sun, when first, new-risen,
He shines on that aërial station only!

II. OLD PICTURES AT FLORENCE.

Thrice happy they who thus before man's eyes
Restored the placid image of his prime;
Illustrating th' abortive shows of Time
With gleams authentic caught from Paradise.
Those Godlike forms are men! Impure disguise
By us now suffered! O for wings to climb
Once more to Virtue's mountain seats sublime,
And be what here we poorly recognise!
From these fair pictures our Humanity
Looks down upon us kindly. 'Tis no dream:
Truth stands attested by Consistency;
And all the Virtues here in peace supreme
So meet, so blend, that in those Forms we see,
The sum of all we are and fain would be.

III. ON A PICTURE BY COREGGIO AT PARMA.

Paint thou the pearl gates of the Morning Star,
Loftiest of Painters, and the loveliest;
For only of thy pencil worthy are
Those ever-smiling mansions of the blest!
Thyself when homeward summoned to thy rest
Couldst scarce have marked our earth's receding bar:
No happier shapes could greet thee, near or far,
Than oft in life thy radiant fancy drest.
God, when He framed the earth, beheld it good:
The light from His approving smile that shone
For thee waned never from her features wan:
Before thine eyes—unfallen if unrenewed—
Still moved that Race supreme and fairest made;
And Love and Joy, twin stars, still on their foreheads played.

IV. COREGGIO'S CUPOLAS AT PARMA.

Creatures all eyes and brows, and tresses streaming,
By speed divine blown back:—within, all fire
Of wondering zeal, and storm of bright desire;
Round the broad dome the immortal throngs are beaming:
With elemental Powers the vault is teeming:
We gaze, and, gazing, join the fervid choir,
In spirit launched on wings that ne'er can tire,
Like those that buoy the breasts of children dreaming.
The exquisitest hand that e'er in light
Revealed the subtlest smile of new-born pleasure,
Here sounds the abysses, and attains the height,
Is strong the strength of heavenly hosts to measure,
Draws back the azure curtain of the skies,
And antedates our promised Paradise.

V. TO ITALY.

O Italy, how beautiful thou wert,
If in thee dwelt an answerable soul!
Fair in each feature, perfect in each part,
That, that thou lack'st which should inspire the whole:
Thine are all gifts of nature, all of art;
Yet a slow sadness we cannot control
Steals, as we gaze, o'er the dejected heart,
And our checked passion meets too soon its goal.
Beyond the mark of Virtue thou hast shot
(For only Virtue's ornaments are thine)
And so fallen short of Greatness. Solid Thought,
Strength, courage, prudence—all, save Truths divine,
Thou hast corrupted. Therefore falls thy hand,
Prone, and unsceptred of its old command.

VI. GENOA.

Ah! what avails it, Genoa, now to thee
That Doria, feared by monarchs, once was thine?
Univied ruin! in thy slow decline
From virtuous greatness, what avails that he
Whose prow descended first the Hesperean sea,
And gave our world her mate beyond the brine,
Was nurtured, whilst an infant, at thy knee?
All things must perish—all but things divine.
Flowers, and the stars, and Virtue; these alone,
The self-subsisting shapes, or self-renewing,
Survive. All else are sentenced. Wisest were
That builder who should plan with strictest care
Ere yet the wood was felled or hewn the stone,
The aspect only of his pile in ruin!

VII. A PICTURE BY ANDREA DEL SARTO, IN THE CATHEDRAL OF PISA.

Are there not virtues which we know not of,
By men unnamed because not met with here,
Perchance too lofty for this lowly sphere,
Our great and glorious heritage above,
Yet here in virtues which we know and love
Dimly foreshown? Thus dimly to the seer,
Rehearsed in humbler kinds that round us move
The sovran attributes of man appear.
Madonna! I have hung day after day
On thy strange beauty with a devout eye;
And now, all marvel, rapture, ecstasy
Rebuked, or harmonised, or worn away,
I gaze; and ask what I have asked; and stay
Lingering, and vainly hoping a reply.

VIII. THE RENAISSANCE, AND SAVONAROLA.—1.

Painter, that on these sacred convent walls
The symbols paintest of the fleeting Hours,
Reserve thine art, poor spoil from Pagan bowers,
To deck withal the rich man's secular halls!
Are these the Hours? aërial Bacchanals
With urn down-bent or basket heaped with flowers,
Through sunshine borne, light Zephyr's paramours?
—Thralls though we be, we are not Pleasure's thralls!
When God with thunder and his prophet's voice
The temples where of old he chose to dwell
Chooses to shake in judgment, cleanse or quell,
How impious sounds thy summons to rejoice!
Erase thy work; kneel on the tombstones bare:
Thine eye with fastings purge: make firm thy hand with prayer.

IX. THE RENAISSANCE, AND SAVONAROLA.—2.

Then rise, and paint the Hours; and launch them forth
Like sequent arrows hurled from God's right hand,
Or eagles of the ocean borne to earth
By solid storm their wings no more withstand:
Yet, calm in speed, a stern, predestined band,
In meditative might or gloomy mirth
Speed them, dread forms of elemental birth;
And let one bear the trump, and one the brand.
Fix thou their mighty eyes the dark locks under
Massed o'er their fervid foreheads, like a cloud
Whose heart is flame: and be their faces bowed,
As though they listened to unsleeping thunder;
The breaking of the billows of Time's sea
On the far confines of Eternity.

X. FRESCOES BY MASACCIO, AT FLORENCE.

Well hast thou judged that sentence, ‘Had ye Faith,
Ye could move mountains.’ In those forms I see
What God at first created man to be;
His image crowned, triumphant over death.
Born of that Word which never perisheth
Those Prophets here resume the empery
By sin in Eden lost. Their eye, their breath
Cancels disease; lays prone the anarchy
Of Passion's fiercest waves. Secret as Fate,
Like Fate's the powers they wield are infinite:
Their very thoughts are laws: their will is weight:
On as they move in majesty and might
The demons yield their prey, the graves their dead:
And to her centre Earth is conscious of their tread.

XI. SAINTS BY PIETRO PERUGINO.

Glory to God of all fair things the maker
For that He dwelleth in the mind of Man!
Glory to Man of that large grace partaker
For that he storeth thus his spirit's span
With shapes our earth creates not, neither can,
Till, like a flood, her vanished youth o'ertake her,
And heaven's ‘New Song’ to loftier labours wake her,
High artist then, as now poor artisan.
Mark, mark those awful sons of Martyrdom,
With their uplifted hands, but eyes down-cast.
As though the uncreated light had dazed them:—
The error of our brief existence past
They stand like Saints resurgent from the tomb,
Suspended still on that great Voice which raised them!

XII. PICTURE OF A SAINT.

Dark, infinitely dark, a midnight blue
Those orbs that, resting on the skies, appear
To pierce the veil of Heaven and wander through,
Searching the centre of the starry sphere.
Angels, be sure, unseen are hovering near!
Their fanning plumes with faintest blush imbue
That pearly cheek, a lily else in hue,
And from that brow the auburn tresses clear.
One hand is laid upon her mantled breast
To us an unrevealèd paradise,
Nor bodied in the ascetic Painter's dream:
Hidden it lies in everlasting rest
Beneath those purple robes that earthward stream
Cyphered with star-emblazoned mysteries.

XIII. A NIGHT ON THE GENOESE RIVIERA.

Fanned by sweet airs the road along the cliff
Wound in the moonlight, glistening now, now dim;
So winds a silver snake in pale relief
Girdling a sacrificial beaker's brim:
Black rocks loomed forth in giant hieroglyph
O'er silken seas: amid their shadows grim
From lowly town dim-lit, or dancing skiff,
At times the song was borne, at times the hymn.
Star after star adown the blue vault sliding
Their bright hair washed successive in the wave,
Till morning, from her far purpureal cave
Issuing, and o'er the foamless billows gliding,
Leaped, as the bells rang out from tower and shrine,
Up from her sea-bath to the hills of pine.

XIV. BOCCACCIO AND CERTALDO.

The world's blind pilgrims, tendering praise for blame,
Passing Certaldo, point and smile and stare
And with Boccaccio's triumph din the air:—
Ah, but for him how high had soared thy fame,
Italian Song! False Pleasure is a flame
That brands the Muses' pleasaunce; burns it bare
As some volcanic isle with barren glare:
O Italy! exult not in thy shame!
'Twas here, 'twas here thy Song's immortal river
Lost its last sight of hoar Parnassus' head,
And swerved through flowery meads to sandy bar:
Its saintly mission here it spurned for ever:
It sighed to Laura, and with Tancred bled:
But caught no second flash from Dante's star!

XV. THE CAMPO SANTO AT PISA.—1.

There needs not choral song, nor organs pealing:
This mighty cloister of itself inspires
Thoughts breathed like hymns from spiritual choirs;
While shades and lights, in soft succession stealing,
Along it creep, now veiling, now revealing
Strange forms, here traced by Painting's earliest sires,
Angels with palms; and purgatorial fires;
And Saints caughtup, and demons round them reeling.
Love, long remembering those she could not save,
Here hung the cradle of Italian Art:
Faith rocked it; hence, like hermit child, went forth
That heaven-born Power which beautified the earth:
She perished when the world had lured her heart
From her true friends, Religion and the grave.

XVI. THE CAMPO SANTO AT PISA.—2.

Lament not thou: the cold winds, as they pass
Through the ribbed fret-work with low sigh or moan,
Lament enough; let them lament alone,
Counting the sere leaves of the innumerous grass
With thin, soft sound like one prolonged—‘alas!’
Spread thou thy hands on sun-touched vase, or stone
That yet retains the warmth of sunshine gone,
And drink warm solace from the ponderous mass.
Gaze not around thee. Monumental marbles,
Time-clouded frescoes, mouldering year by year,
Dim cells in which all day the night-bird warbles,
These things are sorrowful elsewhere, not here:
A mightier Power than Art's hath here her shrine:
Stranger! thou tread'st the soil of Palestine!

XVII. TASSO'S HOUSE AT SORRENTO.

O Leonora, here thy Tasso dwelt,
Secure, ere yet thy beauty he had seen:
Here with bright face and unterrestrial mien
He walked, ere yet thy shadow he had felt:
From that green rock he watched the sunset melt,
On through the waves: yon cavern was his screen
When first those hills, which gird the glowing scene,
Were thronged with heavenly warriors, and he knelt
To hail the vision! Syren baths to him
Were nothing; Pagan grot, or classic fane,
Or glistening pavement seen through billows dim:
Far, far o'er these he gazed on Judah's plain,
And more than manhood wrought was in the boy—
Why did the Stranger meddle in his joy?

XVIII. CASTELAMARE.

O cool and healthful nights! O peaceful gloom!
O winding sands that in your beauteous zone
Clasp the dim watery plain, how oft alone
I paced your marge, inhaling the perfume
Which forests bursting with invisible bloom
Poured from their mountain ambush! Moon was none:
But with such strength the lamp of Venus shone,
Descending nightly over Virgil's tomb,
That, like the moonbeam, her long lustre lay
On distant waves to meet that radiance swelling;
A long bright ladder from the Star of Love
Touched, as it seemed, our lower world. Above,
The nightingale her sorrows wept away;
And all the echoes of her wrong were telling.

XIX. A MORNING AT SALERNO.

Our hearts heaved slowly as that deep blue flood
Along whose marge we paced. More darkly blue,
Through lines of poplars gleaming on our view,
The violet crescent of the mountains stood:
Unblemished morning, shy as Maidenhood,
Rose blushing from the waves, and round us threw
A gradual halo, reddening through its dew
The silvery greenness of the willow wood—
Small clouds unnumbered swollen with golden glories
Swam in succession long of lucent fleeces
O'er all the ocean-isles and promontories;—
That old-world Faith, which sees whate'er it pleases,
Had deemed Saint Agnes up the heavenly Eden
Her mild immaculate flock was gently leading!

XX. TO NAPLES.

Queen of the sunny South, in grace reclined
O'er thy voluptuous bath, and warmed for ever
By beams that make thy nerves in rapture shiver,
From yonder Syren Islands silver-shrined
Smiles, such as strike the loftier vision blind,
Beckoning to thee each morning shoot and quiver:
They sting the languor of thine amorous fever:
And Syren voices swell each passing wind.
But from the other coast, and yet more near,
The Sibyl's whisper, with that music bent,
Creeps slowly o'er the waters. Hear, O hear!
She speaks of buried cities, mountains rent;
Of Pleasure stifled in her mid career,
Fire-lifted isle, and fire-drowned continent!

XXI. THE SIBYL'S CAVE AT CUMA.

Cumæan Sibyl! from thy sultry cave
Thy dark eyes level with the sulph'rous ground
Through the gloom flashing, roll in wrath around!
What see they? Coasts perpetual Earthquakes pave
With ruin; piles half buried in the wave;
Wrecks of old times in later lava drowned;—
And festive crowds, sin-steeped and myrtle-crowned,
Like idiots dancing on a Parent's grave.
And they foresee. Those pallid lips with pain
Suppress their thrilling whispers. Sibyl, spare!
Could Wisdom's voice divide yon sea, and scare
With some Vesuvius new its flaming plane,
Futile the warning! Power despised! forbear
To deepen guilt by counsel breathed in vain!

XXII. THE RUINS OF CORNELIA'S HOUSE AT BAIA.

I turn from ruins of imperial power,
Tombs of corrupt delight, old walls the pride
Of statesmen pleased for respite brief to hide
Their laurell'd foreheads in the Muse's bower,
And seek Cornelia's home. At sunset's hour
How oft her eyes, that wept no more, descried
Yon purpling hills! how oft she heard that tide
Fretting as now low cave or hollow tower!
The mother of the Gracchi—Scipio's child—
'Twas virtue such as hers that built her Rome!
Never towards it she gazed! Far off, her home
She made, like her great Father self-exiled.
Woe to the nations when the souls they bare,
Their best and bravest, choose their rest elsewhere!

XXIII. VENICE BY DAY.

The splendour of the Orient, here of old
Throned with the West upon a waveless sea,
Her various-vested, resonant jubilee
Maintains, though Venice hath her freedom sold:
In their high stalls of azure and of gold
Yet stand, above the servile concourse free,
Those brazen steeds the Car of Victory
Hither from far Byzantium's porch that rolled.
The wingèd Lions, Time's dejected thralls,
Glare with furled plumes. The pictured shapes that glow
Like sunset clouds condensed upon the walls
Still boast old wars, or feasts of long ago:
And still the sun his amplest glory pours
On all those swelling domes and ocean floors.

XXIV. VENICE IN THE EVENING.

Alas! mid all this pomp of the ancient time,
And flush of modern pleasure, dull Decay
O'er the bright pageant breathes her shadow grey:
As on from bridge to bridge I roam and climb
It seems as though some wonder-working chime,
Whose spell that pageant raised and still can sway,
To some far source were ebbing fast away;
As though, by man unheard, with voice sublime
It bade the sea-born Queen of Cities follow
Her Sire into his ocean realm far down—
Beneath my fleet the courts sound vast and hollow;
And more than Evening's darkness seems to frown
On sable barks that, swift yet trackless, fleet
Like dreams o'er dim lagune and water-street.

XXV. LEONARDO'S ‘LAST SUPPER’ AT MILAN.

Come! if thy heart be pure, thy spirits calm,
If thou hast no dark memories, or but those
Pure self-reproach inflicts—ah no, bestows;
Her wounds, here probed, find here their gentlest balm.
O the sweet sadness of that lifted palm!
The dreadful Deed to come His lips disclose:
Yet love and awe, not wrath, that count'nance shows,
As though they sang even now that ritual psalm
Which closed the Feast piacular. Time hath done
His work on this fair picture; but that Face
His outrage awes. Stranger! the mist of years,
Between thee hung and half its heavenly grace,
Hangs there, a fitting veil; nor that alone—
They see it best who see it through their tears!

XXVI. THE CHURCH OF ST. AMBROSE AT MILAN.

Here still remains the Apostolic Chair
Whence good Saint Ambrose, patriarchal man,
Thy spiritual sceptre swayed, Milan!
Yonder the Font, divine Augustine, where
The life that never ends for thee began;
And—near as death to life—behold them there!
Those Gates, to him the portals of despair,
Whose closing spake the blood-stained Emperor's ban.
He, the world's master, and her lord, as one
By lightning smitten on his noon-tide throne,
Fell from his pride, and without speech departed:
While thou, dejected Afric's humblest son,
To seats a Mother's tears had made thine own
With regal step didst mount, no longer feeble-hearted.

XXVII. THE STATUE OF ST. CARLO BORROMEO AT ARONA.

XXVIII. THE MILANESE SCHOOL.

What memory of a being ere his birth
Possessed Luini with the idea strange
Of that Sibylline beauty? Hall or grange,
Palace or Hut, whate'er we know on earth,
Holds nothing like it. Sadness here and mirth
So blend, or so into each other range,
We deem them ancient foemen that exchange
Love-vows, and sit henceforth beside one hearth.
Those half-closed eyes with mournful penetration
Look on through all things; yet a furtive smile
Brightens her thin, smooth, shadowy face the while:—
Methinks that subtle-visaged creature hears
The narrowing thread of Life in soft gyration
Drawn out; or closing of the Parcæ's shears!

XXIX. THE CATHEDRAL OF MILAN.

With steps subdued, silence, and labour long,
I reached the marble roofs: A we vanquished dread:—
White shone they as the summit of Mont Blanc
When noontide parleys with that mountain's head:
The far-off Alps, by morning tinged with red,
Blushed through the spires that round in myriads sprung:
A silver gleam the wind-stirred poplars flung
O'er Lombardy's green sea below me spread.
Of these I little saw. In trance I stood,
Ere death, methought, admitted to the skies:
Around me, like a heavenly multitude
Crowning some specular mount of Paradise,
Thronged that Angelic Concourse robed in stone.
The sun, ascending, in their faces shone!

XXX. BYZANTINE MOSAICS AT RAVENNA.

Traced on dim gold, in azure vaults enshrined,
Dreary adornments of each glaring space,
Those figures lean lack not a terrible grace!
Like cloud-rack dragged along the wintry wind
Forth stream at large their grey locks unconfined:
A vulture's foot each hand might seem: each face
Reports of wilds where, 'mid the ferine race,
Couched hungry seers and prophets vigil-blind.
Rocks, forests, caves, before me rise austere!
And that strong Church in childhood wandering wide,
By visions nursed, by tempests lullabied:
And hymns of warlike blast I seem to hear;
Victorious hymns no pen of scribe records:—
Fly, scattered Fiends! stand back, terrestrial Lords!

XXXI. TO A MOUNTAIN IN SWITZERLAND.—1.

From all the glittering towers and spires star-bright
That fret thy crystal bastions far below,
With what an awful grace yon dome of snow
Ascends, and, swelling, grows upon our sight,
White as an infant's spirit, or the might
Of grey hairs in a monarch! Soft and slow
Dark clouds across thy Pine-wood vesture flow,
But touch not, mountain king, that sovran height.
The avalanche, borne down in rocky flood,
Thunders unechoed 'mid those seats divine:
And heaven's great diadem of starry globes
Is all thou seest, for thine own white robes
Cancel the world—Never shall foot of mine
Assail the region of thy solitude!

XXXII. TO A MOUNTAIN IN SWITZERLAND.—2.

Lead to this spot Ambition's outcast son,
With unslaked hopes burning from youth to age;
That snowy vault, its latest crimson flown,
With cold aspèct his fever shall assuage:
Lead hither him who, captive in the cage
Of love remembered when the loved is gone,
Feeds on one thought, and that a poisonous one;
Haply that free expanse may disengage
His heart from earth—that region whence there seems
To heaven but one step only. To this spot
Be thou, bewildered maniac, also brought;
Gaze on that calmness, and forget thy dreams,
While noontide slumbers on its breezeless height,
While kissed by rose-lipped Morn, or crowned by starry Night.

XXXIII. TO A MOUNTAIN IN SWITZERLAND.—3.

The Spirits of the midnight and noonday
On thee, hoar Mount, obsequiously attend;
Within thy skirts shadow and sunlight play;
And the stars hail thee as their earthly friend:
From their immortal charge the Twins descend;
The Plough awhile forgets his heavenly way;
The Pleiads from their shining cloisters stray;
And the crowned Archer doth his bow unbend.
Thy vastness draws the sphere above thee nearer:
—Or is it that our hearts by thee are raised;
And, strengthened thus, delight with vision clearer
To pore on starry wonders unamazed,
Earth's noblest shape forsaking for the sky,
As life when sweetest makes it sweet to die?

XXXIV. THE CHAPEL OF TELL ON THE LAKE LUCERNE.

On this green platform with its chapel small
Embowered, the centre of the mountain land,
Take, holy Freedom, take for aye thy stand;
And hither from all regions ever call
Thy sons to thy perpetual festival:
Or bid them drink, a sacramental band,
From Grutli's founts, that rose at thy command
There where the three Deliverers vowed the fall
Of Powerunjust. Nightheard those whispered tones;—
Have they not found large echoes in the world?
Have they not been like God's own thunder hurled
In ruin down on all opprobrious thrones?
All sway that, deifying lawless might,
On that doth build, and not on God and on the right?

XXXV. THE LAKE OF LUCERNE.

In shape a Cross, and walled with cliffs so high
That o'er each aisle of that quadruple plain
No unfit roof appears the vaulted sky,
It lies, a vast and crystal-paven fane,
A Church, by Nature built, and not in vain
Among the shadowing Mountains; to supply
For all thy sons and suppliants, Liberty,
A shrine of ample girth, and free from stain.
But thou, O Freedom! bid them gaze with fear
And love, upon Tell's birthplace, not on thee!
An awful thing art thou, not less than dear:
Unpurged no eye thy form unveiled should see:
Temples their hearts should be who hope to gain thee—
The sword may win, but Virtue must retain thee!

XXXVI.

How bright, how calm, how gentle, and how great
The soul should grow, ere yet for such a scene,
So sweet, so pure, so lofty, so serene,
It were an equal or an answering mate!
All day upon my heart there hung a weight;
And whence I knew not. Beauty seemed to lean,
Heavy for once, upon a breast, I ween,
Till now to catch her faintest smile elate.
But now the cause of that depression known,
The pain itself has left me; rather say,
In aspiration upward it has flown
From the dark altar of this heart of clay:
And I tread firmly, though by conscience chidden,
A guest permitted—yet a guest unbidden.

XXXVII. THE MOUNTAIN MUSE.

Where shall we spread the couch of thy repose,
For here below thou find'st no worthy dwelling?
Rise then where Alp o'er Alp, like clouds up-swelling,
Above th' attempt of eagle's wing enclose
Inviolate spaces of suspended snows:
There, while the floods far down are faintly knelling,
And hooded Evening, star by star, is telling
Her rosary dim-seen through skies of rose,
There, thy large eyes stedfast and open keeping,
Olympia, rest! what time in mournful choir
The mighty winds, through endless pinewoods sweeping,
Draw from those chords, their melancholy lyre,
Eolian tones of elemental weeping,
And the last gleams of dying day expire.

XXXVIII. THE BLUE GENTIAN.

With heart not yet half rested from Mont Blanc,
O'er thee, small flower, my wearied eyes I bent,
And rested on that humbler vision long:
Is there less beauty in thy purple tent
Outspread, perchance a boundless firmament,
O'er viewless myriads which beneath thee throng,
Than in that Mount whose sides, with ruin hung,
Frown o'er black glen and gorges thunder-rent?
Is there less mystery? Wisely if we ponder,
Thine is the mightier! Life, dread Power, in thee
Is strong as in cherubic wings that wander
Searching the limits of Infinity,
Life, life to be transmitted, not to expire
Till yonder snowy vault shall melt in the last fire!

XXXIX. THE MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE.

Silent to watch great rivers at their rise,
And downward track them to the murmuring deep;
The sunlit storm to follow as it flies
Broken through purple glens; in lingering sweep
To hear the forest sigh, the torrent leap;
These things, great Nature's tragic agonies,
What lesson teach they which the soul should prize
As precious, and the memory strive to keep?
‘Lift up your hearts!’ O strange and mystic words!
Sounds truly eucharistic! Nothing mean
Is heard in them, or common, or unclean.
This is the mountain language. Sense affords
The instrumental medium: but the Spirit
Draws near in faith; and God, that hour, is near it!

XL. A TYROLESE VILLAGE.

This village, thronged with churches, needeth none:
Each house, like some old missal rich and quaint,
Is blazoned o'er with prophet, seer, and saint:
Each court and street a sanctity hath won:
Here a great Angel stands, crowned with the sun:
Magdalene there pours her perpetual plaint:
There o'er her child the Maiden without taint
Bends—as His mercy bends o'er worlds undone.
Of earth's proud centres none like this recalls
That mystic City in the realms supernal
Built upon God; whose light is God alone:
The very stones cry out: the eloquent walls
Plainly confess that Name the proud disown;
The Father's glory, and the Son Eternal.

THE AUTUMN OF THE SPRING.

SONG.

[Heart wingèd once; self-doomed]

SONG.

A FAREWELL TO NAPLES.

LINES WRITTEN AT HALSTEADS.

WRITTEN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CRIMEAN WAR.

A WANDERER'S MUSINGS AT ROME.

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS.

I.

Cold, pure, reviving, med'cinable gales,
Sea-born, nor charged with breath of herb or flower,
That far o'er moonlight seas, perhaps this hour,
Trouble some sleeping pilot's whispering sails,
And pour into his ear consoling tales
Of ivy murmuring round a known church tower;
Crystalline airs, in love and pitying power,
Serving that God whose love o'er all prevails;
Hither in mercy also come, and lean
One moment on those lids and o'er this breast!
O cooled by all the shadows of your caves,
O fresh from mountain snows or loneliest waves,
O pure from haunts where man hath never been,
Come with ethereal dews and endless rest!

II. ON THE DEATH OF A GOOD KING.

Honour that dies not, grief that lives for aye,
And the benedictions of the suffering poor,
Come to thy grave, and there, as at the door
Of Heaven, their brows in mute expectance lay;
A mighty nation stands uncrowned this day:
This day a widowed people's heart is sore;
A sire this day each household doth deplore;
Each head hath lost its helm, each hand its stay.
Great king! a nation smiled upon thy birth;
A nation's prayers, each night, kept watch around thee:
Now thou obey'st the summons of the earth
Behold! a nation's duteous tears have crowned thee:
And millions at thy tomb to thee have given
A portion of their heart to waft with thee to heaven!

III. ON THE FALL OF A USURPER.

I wished thee length of years! the courtly crowd
Wished it less truly, and less fervently.
Thou livest! How many a head miscrowned hath bowed
In specious death! The slow shaft missed not thee.
Thou livest a posthumous life; reserved to see
The Future's verdict—laughter long and loud:—
Melted thy throne beneath thee like a cloud;
Like snow thy puissance vanished. Mockery
Answered when that usurping hand invoked
Thy host their hundred thousand swords to bare.
Unknown, alone, dethroned because uncloaked,
Thou fleddest; nor friend nor foe demanded where.
Thou livest! A King Batavian William died:—
By which the nations were disedified.

IV. POLAND.

Lo, as a prophet, old, and fierce, and gaunt,
Spurning the plains, when some detested foe
His country, and his country's hearths, lays low,
Makes in the mountain walls his caverned haunt;
There lurks; thence leans; half blind, yet vigilant,
Watches red morning tinge the ensanguined snow;
And bends his ear, and says, ‘Thy foot is slow,
Deliverer! see thy vengeance be not scant;’—
Not otherwise a trampled Nation waits,
Regioned in fell resolve; her heart thus feeds
On iron; muses thus on coming fates;
Revels in rapture of predestined deeds;
And finds at last the hour, and finds the way:—
Let sceptre-wielding Rebels fear that day!

V. TO THE NOBILITY OF ENGLAND, 1848.

Princes of England, undeposed as yet,
While panic-stricken thrones around you quake,
And perplexed kings themselves their sceptres break,
With a firm hand your house in order set:
If sound ye be at heart, external threat
That soundness can but probe to prove. Awake!
Hold fast your birthright for the people's sake:
Let high and low discharge their mutual debt.
Things hollow must collapse; effete decay:
But that which stablished first Nobility—
Valour and Truth—if these abide, her stay,
While live the nations she can never die.
Be true to England: to yourselves be true:
And England shall work out her furthest fates by you.

VI. ON A CONVENT.

Glorious the thought, not mortal the design,
Defamed by fools, in earthly hearts to raise
Unearthly citadels of prayer and praise;
Revering, to renounce all bonds that twine
With heavenly, earthly love; through Grace divine
To rise o'er Virtue's secondary ways;
Hidden to live with God; and, by His gaze
Illumed yet veiled, like noontide stars to shine!
Glorious the deed each waste and wilderness
And isle beleaguered by the raging main
To thrill with Christian chaunt and psalmic strain,
And make a conquered world her Lord confess!
Ye that conventual pomps denounce, begin
By fixing in your hearts conventual discipline.

VII. A CONVENT SCHOOL IN A CORRUPT CITY.

Hark how they laugh, those children at their sport!
O'er all this city vast that knows not sleep
Labour and Sin their ceaseless vigil keep:
Yet hither still good Angels make resort.
Innocence here and Mirth a single fort
Maintain: and though in many a snake-like sweep
Corruption round the weedy walls doth creep,
Its track not yet hath slimed this sunny court.
Glory to God, who so the world hath framed
That in all places children more abound
Than they by whom Humanity is shamed!
Children outnumber men: and millions die—
Who knows not this?—in blameless infancy,
Sowing with innocence our sin-stained ground.

VIII.

The reason why we love thee dost thou ask?
We love for many reasons joined in one:
Because thy face is fair to look upon;
Because, when pains or toils our hearts o'ertask,
In sunny smiles of thine thy love to bask;
Because thou honourest all, and harmest none:
Because thy froward moods so soon are gone:
Thy many faults and foibles wear no mask:—
Because thou art a woman. Unto me
A gracious woman is a child mature;
Docile, and gentle, though with many a lure
Enriched, and, in a soft subjection, free;
A sanguine creature, full of winning ways;
Athirst for love, and shyly pleased with praise.

IX. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.—1.

Had I been worthy of the love you gave
That love withdrawn had left me sad but strong;
My heart had been as silent as my tongue;
My bed had been unfevered as my grave:
I had not striven for what I could not save:
Back, back to heaven my great hopes I had flung:—
To have much suffered, having done no wrong,
Had seemed to me that noble part the brave
Account it ever. What this hour I am
Affirms the unworthiness that in me lurked:
Some sapping poison through my substance worked,
Some sin not trivial though it lacked a name,
Which ratifies the deed that you have done
With plain approval. Other plea seek none.

X. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.—2.

Give me one kiss, sweet love, and so farewell!
Those magic lips, when they were all my own,
To me were dearer than the loftiest throne
That ever made a Conqueror's bosom swell.
Those youthful eyes retain their luminous spell:
Fairer those brows, that droop like flowers o'erblown,
For the dim, dubious shadow o'er them thrown:
Still on that cheek the pure carnations dwell!
—Softly, of infidelity ashamed,
Yet with recovered freedom softly pleased,
She sighed: her hand unwillingly released,
Withdrew, yet something seemed to leave behind:—
She's gone! so fleets the fleeting stream unblamed;
So fleets the unquestioned cloud, the unchallenged wind!

XI. ON A PORTRAIT.

A deep still Sorrow, beautiful and bland,
Across those brooding brows and eastern eyes
Rests, as a broad shade on the mountain lies:
How few that Sorrow's cause shall understand!
Methinks, the years to come, a tragic band,
Move, heard by him, with funeral harmonies,
Up life's dim vale: and prescience, vainly wise,
Shadows a fair face with prophetic hand.
'Tis but a picture:—Stranger, grief-betrayed,
Weep not! The man, not portrait, hadst thou seen,
For early death then justly hadst thou prayed
To shield the mourner with the grave's kind screen
From woes, his portion destined from his birth,—
O noble souls, what do ye here on earth?

XII. FALSE FRIENDSHIP.

Alas, dear friends, we do each other wrong;
For we long years in love conjoined have been;
Many vicissitudes, and strange, have seen;
Joyed oft, wept oft, outgrown our grief ere long;
Yet what we were, still are we. Love is strong,
Through vigilant hate of all things base and mean,
To raise her votaries, and with fire make clean;
But we her awful aids away have flung,
Over complacent Friendship weakly doted
On virtues, oft through dim tears magnified,
Till Friendship, o'er-indulgent, scarcely noted
The faults hard-by; or, noting, feared to chide;
Therefore dishonoured Friendship asks too late,
‘My seat inglorious must I abdicate?’

XIII.

Free born, it is my purpose to die free.
Away, degrading cares; and ye not less,
Delights of sense and gauds of worldliness;
I have no part in you, nor you in me.
They that walk brave wear the world's livery:
Their badge of service is their sumptuous dress:
Seek then your prey in gilded palaces;
Revere my hovel's humble liberty.
Are there no flowers on earth, in heaven no stars,
That we must place in such low things our trust?
Let me have noble toils, if toil I must,
The Patriot's task, or Friendship's sacred cares—
Beside my board that man shall break no crust,
Who sells his birthright for a feast of dust.

XIV. THE POETRY OF LIFE.

Dian! thy brother of the golden beams
Is hailed for ever as the Lord of Song,
Master of manly verse, and mystic dreams:
Doth, then, no female lyre to thee belong?
Say, is that silver bow whose crescent gleams,
Above black pine-woods lifted, or low-hung
'Twixt hornèd rocks, or troubling midnight streams,
With immelodious cord, and silent, strung?
Ah no, not so! Thou too art musical!
The world is full of poetry unwrit;
Dew-woven nets that virgin hearts enthrall;
Darts of glad thought through infant brains that flit;
Hope and pursuit; loved bonds, and fancies free;—
Poor were our earth of these bereft and thee!

XV.

Painter, in endless fame most sure to live
If thou my Celia's face reveal to men,
Thy heart, all other schools forsaking, give
To him whom Parma boasts her citizen.
All gladdening forms, with exquisitest ken,
Scan thou like him; and sift as with a sieve
From each its dross:—then fix the fugitive,
Painting that Joy which mocks the poet's pen.
The new-born fountain, and the sea-bird's grace,
Be dear to thee. Whole hours, where violets gleam,
Muse thou on eyes as blue, and lids as white:
Where, under chestnut boughs, the moon's pale light
Glimmers o'er banks of primrose, sit and dream
Of those soft lustres on her innocent face!

XVI.

The happiest lovers that in verse have writ,
After all vows to perfect beauty paid
Full oft their hymns of triumph intermit,
And harp and brow with funeral chaplets shade:
A Babylonian choir on earth they sit
In garb of exiles: sadly they upbraid
Beauty and Joy that only bloom to fade,
And Love and Hope to Death and Ruin knit.
What shall we say? Have poets never loved?
(For small that love which fears that love can die):
Have those that earthly immortality
Award, the name itself a mockery proved?
Or of the Spirit of Life so full are they
That with Death's shadow they are pleased to play?

XVII. A POET TO A PAINTER.

That which my fault has made me, O paint not:
Paint me as that which I desire to be:
The unaccomplished good that died in thought,
That Limbo of high hopes, seek out, set free,
And all I might have been concede to me:
The mask my errors and the world have wrought
Remove: the cloud disperse: erase the blot:
Bid from my brow the temporal darkness flee.
In that celestial and pure fount whereof
Some drops affused my childhood, bathe me wholly;
And shield me from my own deserts: lest they
Who now but see me by the light of love
A sterner insight learn from thee one day;
And love pass from them like some outworn folly.

XVIII. THE FALL OF BACON.

Apologist for a great man, take heed!
Needs he such aid? Of errors worse is none
Than fond excuses urged for deeds ill-done
By men whose actions mould a nation's creed.
They that in might of mind their race exceed,
And walk this earth like Spirits from the sun,
By them should Virtue's palms not less be won:—
These if they reach not, let the victim bleed!
And who shall dare lament them? All are frail,
Though Nemesis the meaner culprit slights:
Adversity and Justice, hail, O hail!
Sacred the laurelled head your lightning smites!
Him from the prosperous herd ye raise, and down
On crowns of fortune drop a kinglier crown.

XIX. GRACE DIEU.

When Francis Beaumont wandered in old time
Beside that stream which throws, as then it threw,
A music sweeter than the poet's rhyme
O'er the grey ruins of ‘forlorn Grace Dieu,’
How oft, while bat and owl around them flew,
Mourned the great Bard that blood-stained Monarch's crime;
How often yearned to hear that convent chime
Which, century after century, shook the dew
From Charnwood's forest branches eve and dawn!
De Lisle! God's Grace it was thy heart that stirred!
All praise to Him, the Angelus is heard
Once more from hill and woodland, crag and lawn:
And yon Cistercian abbey on the height
Once more ‘with psalms resoundeth, and the chaunted rite.’

XX. TO S. C.

‘Sleep dwell within thine eyes, peace in thy breast:’
To-night the memory of thy native hills,
To-night the charm of unforgotten rills,
Be kind to fevered nerves and thoughts opprest!
Yet, if the mourners are most surely blest;
If He, who only wounds to heal us, wills
That thou shouldst have thy load of twofold ills,
And, shorn of strength, in vain solicit rest;
Then like a cross thy patient hands put forth,
And gently welcome that which God accords:
And let the sharpest of terrestrial swords
Transfix, unblamed, the meekest heart on earth:
Nor Sleep nor Death repose so perfect gives
As in entire Submission wakes and lives.

XXI. FROM PETRARCH.

Ah me! how beauteous were those tears of hers
The gathered cloud of Passion, melting, bred
When that deep grief whereon her heart had fed
Rose to her eyes, those tender, starlike spheres!
Wandered adown her delicate face her tears,
Wandered o'er pale cheeks touched with faintest red,
As some clear stream through meads with flowers o'erspread,
White flowers with sanguine mingled, softly steers.
Love in that rain bewitching stood embowered
Like blithesome bird on which the longed-for rays
Blended with drops of gentlest rain are showered,
And, weeping 'mid his home in those fair eyes,
Shot from the bosom of that sad, sweet haze
Gleams of an ever-brightening Paradise!

XXII. FROM PETRARCH.

That nightingale which wails with such sweet woe
Haply its young ones, haply its dear mate,
Fills the dark heavens and makes the fields overflow
With its wild, broken chaunt disconsolate:
Beside me all night long, where'er I go,
Its dirge upbraids me with my own sad fate,
And chides my blindness which refused to know
That Death divine things too can subjugate.
Ah! easy 'tis to cheat the self-deluded!
Yet who had ever dreamed those sunlike eyes
Setting, should leave the world in darkness shrouded?
But I my pain's high mission recognise:
It means that I should weep and live, and so
Learn that delight abides not here below!

XXIII. FROM PETRARCH.

Thou Valley filled for ever with my plaint,
River with tears of mine so oft increased,
Fair woodland creatures, wandering bird or beast,
Or, 'twixt your green banks flickering, fishes quaint;
Air by my sighs made warm, and hushed, and faint,
Loved path that, shadowed now, forth issuest,
Hill, happy haunt, to which, now haunt unblest,
Love leads me still, and Custom's dear constraint;
In you full well I trace your features old,
Not in myself, who, of that life bereaven,
Am made a mansion of perpetual woe:
Here I beheld my love; here still behold
The spot from which she passed, disrobed, to Heaven,
Ah, leaving still that beauteous robe below!

XXIV. IN MEMORY OF SIR WILLIAM R. HAMILTON.—1.

Friend of past years, the holy and the blest,
When all my day shone out, a long sunrise;
When aspirations seemed but sympathies,
In such familiar nearness were they dressed;
When Song, with swan-like plumes and starry crest,
O'er-circled earth and beat against the skies,
And fearless Science raised her reverent eyes
From heaven to heaven, that each its God confessed
With homage ever widening! Friend beloved!
From me those days are passed; yet still, O, still,
This night my heart with influx strange they fill
Of beaming memories from my vanished youth:
On thee—the temporal veil by Death removed—
Rests the great Vision of Eternal Truth!

XXV. AFTER READING AGAIN HIS LETTERS.—2.

At times I see that ample forehead lit,
Bright as the day-spring round the mounted lark;
At times I see thee stand in musing fit;
At times in woodlands of that twilight park,
Deciphering well-loved names on beechen bark:
Where Rotha's moonlight ripples past thee flit,
I see the kiss a grave—then by it sit—
Her grave that left the land's chief Poet dark.
This day I read thy letters. Word and scene
Recur with strangely mingled joy and ruth;
Thy soul translucent; yet thine insight keen,
Thy heart's deep yearnings and perpetual youth;
Thy courtesy, thy reverence, and thy truth—
All that thou wert, and all thou mightst have been!

XXVI. TRUE AND FALSE LOVE OF FREEDOM. 1860.

They that for freedom feel not love but lust,
Irreverent, knowing not her spiritual claim,
And they, the votaries blind of windy fame,
And they who cry “I will because I must,”
They too that launch, screened by her shield august,
A bandit's shaft, revenge or greed their aim,
And they that make her sacred cause their game
From restlessness or spleen or sheer disgust
At duteous days; all these, the brood of night,
Diverse, by one black note detected stand,
Their scorn of every barrier raised by Right
To awe self-will. Howe'er by virtue bann'd,
By reason spurned, that act the moment needs
Licensed they deem; holy whate'er succeeds.

XXVII. NATIONAL APOSTACY.

Trampling a dark hill, a red sun athwart,
I saw a host that rent their clothes and hair, [glare,
And dashed their spread hands 'gainst that sunset
And cried, ‘Go from us, God, since God thou art!
Utterly from our coasts and towns depart,
Court, camp, and senate-hall, and mountain bare;
Our pomp Thou troublest, and our feast dost scare,
And with Thy temples dost confuse our mart!
Depart Thou from our hearing and our seeing:
Depart Thou from the works and ways of men;
Their laws, their thoughts, the inmost of their being:
Black Nightmare, hence! that earth may breathe again.’
‘Can God depart?’ I said. A Voice replied,
Close by—‘Not so: each Sin at heart is Decide.”

XXVIII.

Romans, that lift to Liberty, your God,
Not vows but swords, suppliants self-deified,
Betwixt her altars and your rock of pride
A stream there rolls fiercer than Alpine flood,
A fatal stream of murdered Rossi's blood!
For Liberty he lived; and when he died,
Prisoner, that new Rienzi's corse beside,
The king, the pontiff, and the father stood!
What rite piacular from that impious deed
Hath cleansed your hands? Accuse not adverse stars,
If guilt unwept achieve not virtue's meed.
Years heal not treason. All his sands old Time
Shakes down to keep unblurred those calendars,
Which blazon red their Feasts of prosperous crime.

TO IRELAND.

AGAINST FALSE FREEDOM.

THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF;

OR, THE KING'S SACRIFICE.

(Ireland in the Eleventh Century.)

I.

‘Answer, thou that from the height
Look'st to left, and look'st to right,
Answer thou, how goes the fight?’

II.

Thus spake King Brian, by his tent
Kneeling, with sceptred hands that leant
Upon that altar which, where'er
He marched, kept pure his path with prayer.
For after all his triumphs past
That made him wondrous 'mid his peers,
On the blind King God's will had cast
The burden of his fourscore years:
And therefore when that morn, at nine,
He rode along the battle's van,
No sword he lifted, but the Sign
Of Him Who died for man.
King Brian's fleshly strength decayed,
Three times in puissance waxed his spirit,
And tall like oak-trees towered his merit,
And like a praying host he prayed:—
From nine to twelve, with crown on head,
Full fifty prayers the King had said;
And unto each such power was given,
It shook the unopening gates of heaven.

III.

IV.

Then prayed the King once more, head-bare,
And made himself a cross in prayer,
With outstretched arms, and forehead prone
Staid on that topmost altar-stone
Gem-charged, and cleansed from mortal taint,
And strong with bones of many a Saint.
In youth his heart for God had yearned,
And Eire: now thrice his youth returned:
A child full oft, ere woke the bird,
The convent's nocturns he had heard,
In old Kincora, or that isle
Which guards, thus late, its wasted pile,
While winds of night the tall towers shook;
And he would peer into that Book
Which lay, lamp-lit, on eagle's wings,
Wherein God's Saints in gold and blue
Stood up, and Prophets stood, and Kings;
And he the Martyrs knew,
And maids, and confessors each one,
And—tabernacled there in light—
That blissful Virgin enough bright
To light a burnt-out sun.
The blazoned Letters well he kenned
That stood like gateways keeping ward,
Before the Feast-Days set, to guard
Long ways of wisdom without end:
He knew the music notes black-barred,
And music notes, like planted spears,
Whereon who bends a fixed regard
The gathering anthem hears,
Like wakening storms 'mid pines that lean
Ere sunrise o'er some dusk ravine.—
The thoughts that nursed his youth, that hour
Were with his age, and armed with power.

V.

So fifty Psalms he sang, and then
Rolled round his sightless eyes again,
And spake; ‘Thou watcher on the height,
Make answer quick, how goes the fight?’

VI.

VII.

Then to his altar by the tent
Once more King Brian turned, and bent
Unsceptred hands and head discrowned
Down from that altar to the ground,
In such sort that the cold March air
With fir-cones swept his snow-white hair;
And prayed, ‘O Thou that from the skies
Dost see what is, and what must be,
Make mine and me Thy Sacrifice,
But set this People free!’

VIII.

That hour, he knew, in many a fane
Late ravaged by the Pagan Dane,
God's priests were offering, far and wide,
The Mass of the Presanctified:
For lo! it was Good Friday morn,
And Christ once more was crowned with thorn:
God's Church, he knew, from niche and shrine
Had swept those gauds that time consumes,
Whate'er sea-cave, or wood, or mine
Yield from their sunless wombs:
Veiled were the sacred images,
He knew, like vapour-shrouded trees,
Vanished gold lamp, and chalice rare;
The astonished altars stripped and bare,
Because upon the cross, stone-dead,
Christ lay that hour disraimented.

IX.

He prayed—then spake—‘How goes the fight?’
Then answer reached him from the height:

X.

XI.

It fell: but as it fell, above
Through lightning-lighted skies on drove
A thousand heavenly standards, dyed
In martyrdom's ensanguined tide;
And every tower, and town, and fane
That blazed of old round Erin's shore,
Down crashed, it seemed, in heaven again;
So dire that thunder's roar!
The wrath had come: the Danes gave way;
For Brian's prayer had power that day;
Seaward they rushed, the race abhorred;
The sword of prayer had quelled their sword.
So fled they to the ship-thronged coast;
But, random-borne through Tolga's glade,
A remnant from that routed host
Rushed by where Brian prayed;
And, swinging forth his brand, down leap'd
Black Brodar, he that foremost rode,
And from the kingly shoulders swept
The old head, praising God;
And cried aloud, ‘Let all men tell
That Brodar, he that leagues with Hell,
That Brodar of the magic mail
Slew Brian of the Gael.’

XII.

THE BARD ETHELL.

(Ireland in the Thirteenth Century.)

THE SISTERS; OR, WEAL IN WOE.

(Ireland in the Nineteenth Century.)