LINES COMPOSED NEAR SHELLEY'S HOUSE AT LERICI, ON ALL SOULS' DAY, 1856.
DEDICATED TO J. W. FIELD, IN MEMORY OF A DAY PASSED WITH HIM AT LERICI.
I
And here he paced! These glimmering pathways strewn
With faded leaves his light swift footstep crushed;
The odour of yon pine was o'er him blown:
Music went by him in each wind that brushed
Those yielding stems of ilex! Here, alone,
He walked at noon, or silent stood and hushed
When the ground-ivy flashed the moonlight sheen
Back from the forest carpet always green.
II
Poised as on air the lithe elastic bower
Now bends, resilient now against the wind
Springs up, like Dryads that one moment cower
And rise the next with loose locks unconfined:
Through the dim roof like gems the sunbeams shower;
Old cypress trunks the aspiring bay-trees bind,
And soon will have them wholly underneath,
Types eminent of glory conquering death.
III
Far down on weedy shelves and sands below
The respirations of a southern sea
Beat with susurrent cadence soft and slow:
Round the grey cave's fantastic imagery,
In undulation eddying to and fro,
The purple waves on roll or backward flee;
While, dewed at each rebound with gentlest shock,
The myrtle leans her green breast on the rock.
IV
And here he stood! upon his face that light
Streamed from some furthest realm of luminous thought,
Which clothed his fragile beauty with the might
Of suns for ever rising! Here he caught
Visions divine. He saw in fiery flight
‘The hound of Heaven,’ with heavenly vengeance fraught,
‘Run down the slanted sunlight of the morn’—
Prometheus frown on Jove with scorn for scorn.
V
He saw white Arethusa, leap on leap,
Plunge from the Acroceraunian ledges bare
With all her torrent streams, while from the steep
Alpheus bounded on her unaware:
Hellas he saw, a giant fresh from sleep,
Break from the night of bondage and despair.
Who but had cried, as there he stood and smiled,
‘Justice and Truth have found their wingèd child!’
VI
Through cloud and wave and star his insight keen
Shone clear, and traced a God in each disguise,
Protean, boundless. Like the buskined scene
All Nature rapt him into ecstasies:
In him, alas! had Reverence equal been
With Admiration, those resplendent eyes
Had wandered not through all her range sublime
To miss the one great marvel of all time.
VII
The winds sang loud; from this Elysian nest
He rose, and trod yon spine of mountains bleak,
While stormy suns descending in the west
Stained as with blood yon promontory's beak:
That hour, responsive to his soul's unrest,
Carrara's marble summits, peak to peak,
Sent forth their thunders like the battle-cry
Of nations arming for the victory.
VIII
Visions that hour more fair, more false, he saw
Than those the mythologic heaven that throng;
Mankind he saw exempt from Faith and Law,
Move godlike forth, with science winged and song;
He saw the Peoples spurn religious awe,
Yet tower aloft through inbred virtue strong.
Ah, Circe! not for sensualists alone
Thy cup! It dips full oft in Helicon!
IX
Mankind he saw one equal brotherhood,
All things in common held as light and air!
‘Vinum dæmonum!’ Just, and wise, and good—
Were man all this, such freedom man might bear!
The slave creates the tyrant! In man's blood
Sin lurks, a panther couchant in his lair:
Nature's confession came before the Creed's;
Authority is still man's first of needs.
X
All things in common; equal all; all free!
Not fancies these, but gifts reserved in trust:
A spiritual growth is Liberty;
Nature, unnatural made through hate and lust,
Yields it no more, or chokes her progeny
With weeds of foul desire or fell disgust.
Convents have all things common: but on Grace
They rest. Inverted systems lack a base.
XI
The more obedience to a law divine
Tempers the chaos of man's heart, the less
Becomes his need of outward discipline
The balance of injustice to redress:
‘Wild Bacchanals of Truth's mysterious wine’
Must bear the Mænad's waking bitterness.
Anticipate not heaven. Not great thy worth
Heaven without holiness, and heaven on earth!
XII
Alas! the errors thus to truth so near
That sovereign truths they are, though misapplied,
Errors to pure but passionate natures dear,
Errors by aspirations glorified,
Errors with radiance crown'd like Lucifer
Ere fall'n, like him to darkness changed through pride,
These of all errors are the heart and head:
The strength of life is theirs; yet they are dead!
XIII
That Truth Revealed, by thee in madness spurned,
Plato, thy master in the walks of light,
Had knelt to worship! For its day he yearned
Through the long hungry watches of the night:
Its dawn in Thought's assumptions he discerned
Silvering hoar Contemplation's star-loved height;
The God-Man came! Thy pagan phantasy,
Feigning a Man-God, stormed against His sky!
XIV
Sorrowing for thee, with sorrow joy is mixed,
With triumph shame! Our hopes themselves are sad;
But fitful lustres break the shades betwixt;
So gleams yon olive bower, in mourning clad,
And yet at times with showery gleams transfixed,
That opal among trees which, grave or glad,
Its furtive splendour, half revealed or wholly,
Shoots ever from a base of melancholy.
XV
Our warfare is in darkness. Friend for foe
Blindly, and oft with swords exchanged, we strike:
Opinion guesses: Faith alone can know
Where actual and illusive still are like:
Thine was that strength which fever can bestow;
The madness thine of one that, fever-sick,
‘Beats a sad mother in distempered sleep!’
Perhaps death woke thee, on her breast to weep!
XVI
Thee from that Mother sins ancestral tore!
No heart hadst thou, from Faith's sole guide remote,
With statutable worship to adore,
Or learn a nation-licensed Creed by rote;
No heart to snatch thy gloss of sacred lore
From the blind prophet of the public vote.
Small help from such in life, or when thy pyre
Cast far o'er Tuscan waves its mirrored fire!
XVII
Hark! She thou knew'st not mourns thee! Slowly tolls,
As sinks the sun, yon church-tower o'er the sea:
Abroad once more the peal funereal rolls,
And Spezia now responds to Lerici:
This day is sacred to Departed Souls;
This day the Dead alone are great; and we
Who live, or seem to live, but live to plead
For the departed myriads at their need.
XVIII
Behold, the long procession scales the rock;
In the red glare dusk banners sadly wave:
Behold, the lambs of the immaculate flock
Fling flowers on noted and on noteless grave:
O Cross! sole Hope that dost not woo to mock!
Some, some that knew thee not thou liv'st to save,
At spirits not wholly—by their own decree—
From infinite Love exiled, and lost to thee!
