ODE.
THE ASCENT OF THE APPENNINES.
May, 1859.
I.
I move through a land like a land of dream,
Where the things that are, and that shall be, seem
Wov'n into one by a hand of air,
And the Good looks piercingly down through the Fair!
No form material is here unmated;
Here blows no bud, no scent can rise,
No song ring forth, unconsecrated
To meaning or model in Paradise!
Fallen, like man, is elsewhere man's earth;
Human, at best, in her sadness and mirth;
Or if she aspires after something greater,
Lifting her hands from her native dust,
In God she beholds but the Wise, the Just;
The Saviour she sees not in the Creator:
But here, like children of Saints who learn
The things above ere the things below,
Who choirs angelic in clouds discern
Ere the butterfly's wing from the moth's they know,
True Nature as ashes all beauty reckons
That claims not hereafter some happier birth;
She calls from the height to the depth; she beckons
From the nomad waste to a heavenly hearth:
‘The Curse is cancelled,’ she cries; ‘thou dreamer,
Earth felt the tread of her great Redeemer!’
II.
Ye who ascend with reverent foot
The warm vale's rocky stairs,
Though lip be mute, in heart salute
With praises and with prayers
The noble hands, now dust, that reared
Long ages since on crag or sward
Those Stations that from their cells revered
Still preach the Saviour-Lord!
Ah! unseductive here the breath
Of the vine-bud that blows in the breast of morn;
That orange bower, yon jasmine wreath,
Hide not the crown of thorn!
Here none can bless the spring, and drink
Those waters from the dark that burst,
Nor see the sponge and reed, and think
Of the Three Hours' unquenchèd thirst.
The Tender, the Beauteous receives its comment
From a truth transcendent, a life divine;
And the coin flung loose of the passing moment
Is stamped with Eternity's sign!
III.
Alas those days of yore
When Nature lay vassal to pagan lore!
Baia—what was she? A sorceress still
To brute transforming the human will!
Nor pine could whisper, nor breeze could move
But a breath infected ran o'er the blood
Like gales that whiten the aspen grove
Or gusts that darken the flood.
Beside blue ocean's level
The beauteous base ones
held their revel,
Dances on the sea-sand knitting,
With shouts the sleeping shepherd scaring,
Like Oreads o'er the hill-side flitting,
Like Mænads thyrsus-bearing.
The Siren sang from the moonlit bay,
The Siren sang from the redd'ning lawn,
Until in the feastful cup of day
Lay melted the pearl of dawn.
Unspiritual intelligence
Changed Nature's fane to a hall of sense,
That rings with the upstart spoiler's jest,
And the beakers clashed by the drunken guest!
IV.
Hark to that convent bell!
False pagan world, farewell;
From cliff to cliff the challenge vaults rebounded!
Echo, her wanderings done,
Heart-peace at last hath won,
The rest of love on Faith not Fancy founded;
‘By the parched fountain let the pale flower die,’
She sings, ‘True Love, true Joy, triumphant reign on high!’
V.
The plains recede; the olives dwindle;
Lleave the chestnut slopes behind;
The skirts of the billowy pine-woods kindle
In the evening lights and wind:
Not here we sigh for the Alpine glory
Of peak primeval and death-pale snow;
For the cold grey mere, and the glacier hoary,
Or blue caves that yawn below:
The landscape here is mature and mellow;
Fruit-like, not flower-like:—hills embrowned;
Ridges of purple and ledges of yellow
From runnel to rock church-crowned:
'Tis a region of mystery, hushed and sainted:
Serene as the pictures of artists old
When Giotto the thoughts of his Dante painted:—
The summit is reached! Behold!
Like a sky condensed lies the lake far down;
Its curves like the orbit of some fair planet;
A fire-wreath falls on the cliffs that frown
Above it, dark walls of granite;
The hill-sides with homesteads and hamlets glow;
With wave-washed villages zoned below:
Down drops by the island's woody shores
The bannered barge with its gleam of oars.
No solitude here, no desert cheerless
Is needed pure thoughts or hearts to guard;
'Tis a ‘populous solitude,’ festal, fearless,
For men of good-will prepared.
The hermit may hide in the wood, but o'er it
Three times each day the chimes are rolled:
The black crag woos the cloud, but before it
The procession winds on white-stoled.
Farewell, O Nature! None meets thee here
But his heart goes up to a happier sphere!
He sees, from the blossom of sense unfolded
By the Paraclete's breath, its divine increase,
Rose-leaf on rose-leaf in sanctity moulded,
The flower of Eternal Peace;
The home and the realm of man's race above;
The Vision of Truth, and the Kingdom of Love!
VI.
There shall the features worn and wasted
Let fall the sullen mask of years:
There shall that fruit at last be tasted
Whose seed was sown in tears:
There shall that amaranth bloom for ever
Whose blighted blossom drooped erewhile
In this dim valley of exile,
And by the Babylonian river.
The loved and lost once more shall meet us;
Delights that never were ours shall greet us;
Delights for the love of the Cross foregone
Fullfaced salute us, ashamed of none.
Heroes unnamed the storm that weathered
There shall sceptred stand and crowned;
Apostles the wildered flocks that gathered
Sit, throned with nations round.
There, heavenly sweets from the earthly bitter
Shall rise like odour from herbs down-trod;
There, tears of the past like gems shall glitter
On trees that gladden the mount of God.
The deeds of the righteous, on earth despised,
By the lightning of God immortalized
Shall crown like statues the walls sublime
Of all the illuminate, mystic City,
Memorial emblems that conquer Time,
Yet tell his tale. That Pity
Which gave the lost one strength to speak,
That love in guise angelic stooping
O'er the grey old head, or the furrowed cheek,
Or the neck depressed and drooping,
Shall live for aye, at a flash transferred
From the wastes of earth to the courts of the Word;
The Thoughts of the Just, their frustrate schemes,
Shall lack not a place in the wondrous session;
The Prayers of the Saints, their griefs, their dreams,
Shall be manifest there in vision;
For they live in the Mind Divine, their mould,
That Mind Divine the unclouded mirror
Wherein the glorified Spirits behold
All worlds, undimmed by error.
VII.
Fling fire on the earth, O God,
Consuming all things base!
Fling fire upon man, his soul and his blood,
The fire of Thy Love and Grace:
That his heart once more to its natal place
Like a bondsman freed may rise,
Ascending for ever before Thy face
From the altar of Sacrifice!
And thou, Love's comrade, Hope,
That yield'st to Wisdom strength, to Virtue scope,
That giv'st to man and nation
The on-rushing plumes of spiritual aspiration,
Van-courier of the ages, Faith's swift guide,
That still the attained foregoest for the descried;
On, Seraph, on, through night and tempest winging!
On heavenward, on, across the void, vast hollow!
And be it ours, to thy wide skirts close clinging
Blindly, like babes, thy conquering flight to follow:
What though the storm of Time roar back beside us?
Though this world mock or chide us?
We shall not faint or fail until at last
The eternal shore is reached, all peril past!
