The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

From Lynton, where the double streams
Through forest-hung ravines made way,
And bounded into seas late grey
That shook with morning's earliest beams,
I wandered on to Porlock bay;

And thence, for love of him who sang
His happiest songs beside their rills,
To ‘seaward Quantock's heathy hills’
Advanced, while lane and hedge-grove rang,
And all the song-birds ‘had their wills.’

There, like a sweet face dimmed with pain,
The scene grew dark with mist and shower:
Its yellow leaf the autumnal bower
Moulted full fast; and as the rain
Washed the last fragrance from the flower

I heard the blue-robed schoolboy's tongue
Thrilling Christ's Hospital once more
With mythic chant and antique lore,
While round their Bard his playmates hung,
Wondering, and sighed, the witchery o'er.

I saw him tread soft Devon's coombes—
Ah! thence he drew that southern grace
Which in his songs held happy place
Amid their mystic northland glooms,
Like some strange flower of alien race;—

410

That Bard who like a gleam, or strain
Of music, crossed at morn and eve
Those hills; who sang of Genevieve
And that weird Pilgrim from the main;
Nor less at Truth's command could leave

Song's sheltered haunt the steeps to climb
Where, high o'er cloud and precipice,
Mind, throned among the seas of ice,
Watches from specular tower sublime
Far visions kenned through freezing skies,

Outlines of Thought, like hills through mist
That stretch athwart the Infinite
In dread mathesis lines of light—
Such Thoughts the Muse's spell resist;
Above her mark they wing their flight!

The songs he gave us, what were they
But preludes to some loftier rhyme
That would not leave the spheral chime,
The concords of eternal day,
And speak itself in words of Time?

O ever-famished Heart! O hands
That still ‘drew nectar in a sieve!’
At birth of thine what witch had leave
To bind such strength in willow bands,
The web half-woven still to unweave?

O for those Orphic songs unheard
That lived but in the Singer's thought!
Who sinned? Whose hand frustration wrought?
Unworthy was the world or Bard
To clasp those Splendours all but caught?

411

What Bard of all who e'er have sung
Since that lark sang when Eve had birth,
Song's inmost soul had attered forth
Like thee? from Song's asperge had flung
Her lesser baptism o'er the earth?

The world's base Poets have not kept
Song's vigil on her vestal height,
Nor scorned false pride and foul delight,
Nor with the weepers rightly wept,
Nor seen God's visions in the night!

Profane to enthrone the Sense, and add
A gleam that lies to shapes that pass,
Ah me! in song as in a glass
They might have shown us glory-clad
His Face Who ever is and was!

They might have shown us cloud and leaf
Lit with the radiance uncreate;
Love, throned o'er vanquished Lust and Hate;
Joy, gem-distilled through rocks of Grief;
And Justice conquering Time and Fate!

But they immodest brows have crowned
With violated bud and flower:
Courting the high Muse ‘par amour,’
Upon her suppliants she hath frowned,
And sent them darkness for a dower.

Better half-sight and tear-dimmed day
Than dust-defiled, o'er-sated Touch!
Better the torn wing than the crutch!
Better who hide their gift than they
Who give so basely and so much!

412

Thy song was pure: thy heart was high:
Thy genius through its strength was chaste:
And if that genius ran to waste,
Unblemished as its native sky
O'er diamond rocks the river raced!

Great Bard! To thee in youth my heart
Rushed as the maiden's to the boy,
When love, too blithesome to be coy,
No want forebodes and feels no smart,
A selfless love self-brimmed with joy!

Still sporting with those amaranth leaves
That shape for others coronals,
I ask not on whose head it falls
That crown the Fame Pandemian weaves—
Thee, thee the Fame Uranian calls!

For wildered feet point thou the path
Which mounts to where triumphant sit
The Assumed of Earth, all human yet,
From sun-glare safe and tempest's wrath,
Who sing for love; nor those forget,

The Elders crowned that, singing, fling
Their crowns upon the Temple floor;
Those Elders ever young, though hoar,
Who count all praise an idle thing
Save His who lives for evermore!

See Coleridge's ‘Recollections of Love.’

University of Virginia Library

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