University of Virginia Library

True poesy is thought impassionëd,
Moulded of form, sound, colour; and so wed
To outer life: she is the pure ideal
Transferred to use, refiner of the real:
She sleeps unstirred till won from intellect
By passion, the great mover, and so deck'd
In many coloured life: nor loses she
Aught of her secret grace and purity
By such strong contact with this outwardness,
Else were she formless, voiceless, imageless,
A slumbrous phantom, brighter, subtiler
Than sunshine upon wide-spun gossamer,
But void and mute, an unfulfilled decree,
An aimless power, a realmless deity.
Yet now she lives insphered within the world,
Haunting all time with music, and empearled
In all the preciousness of outer life,
The child of beauty, sprung from gentle strife
Of influences diverse, yet supreme,
Whereby the soul is joined with heaven's scheme.

Therefore the past is glorious; and each place
Wherein the past has been, wherein the race
Of man hath moved is holy; 'tis the lair
Of passions yet unspent; therein they swear
That oft the wind hath utterance not its own,
Pregnant with airy meaning; there have flown
Shapes half-seen by their shadows, which but glance,
Then mock the sudden eye; there oft the dance
Of phantasy is pressed upon the dew;
There whispery fens have music, often too
From barren, ruined, wasteful solitudes
Great sounds have sprung, swollen on the swell of woods,
And mingled with night gushings of far streams,
Floated and died; these were the first stray gleams
Of the great dawn of legend, and in sooth
It might be so, for legend oft spheres truth,
And the great cycle ever hath onrolled,
Changeful of form, but certain to unfold
Weird broideries of time; like as the years
Glide in quaternion, still the harbingers
Of life and beauty, though in each the dower
Differs in depth of season, sun, or shower.

Thus then her chiefest glory earth has won
From man's reflected presence, as the sun
Flushes with purple heaven's wide westering side,
And that again the sea: I oft have tried
In sorry sort to image to my sense
Fair cities, and the bygone opulence
Of ruined wastes; and, certes, howsoe'er
Legends be true, yet oft to poet there,
Where most the shadows of time's wings have gloomed,
Have come sweet dreams, which almost have assumed
Bodily shapes, the concourse of swift thought,
Which but for very transience would be nought.
Such me befel, a vision of past gladness,
Filled with the rayless imagery of sadness,
Big with the glories, darkened with the woe
Of nations dead, and ages long ago.
And I must try a strange and antique theme,
The dim remembrance of a flitted dream;
And I must venture on far wanderings,
Dimming my soul in underlights of things.

I had a vision, and the past came to me;
She touched me with her voice—her voice ran through me:
She was a shadow, that strange phantasy,
A trembler upon being, moving wearily;
Her voice an echo, shadow's utterance,
A shadow and an echo! then a trance
Fell on my senses, but my spirit sped,
A mystic pinion, wheresoe'er she led.
Then came I to an awful place, afar,
Upon the midmost tide of night, and there
I saw a stony whiteness answering
Unto the moon's uncertain glimmering:
There were dim forms of tower and pyramid
Narrowing skywards, but all else was hid,
By the false breadths of the uncertain light:
Midway a river rolled through the deep night,
Black, weltering sullenly; and lo, thereon,
Cinctured with imaged beams the image of the moon.
Then entered I the place with secret dread,
Passing through streets of ruin, where my tread
Fell drearily, for it was very lone,
And full of wasteful haunts, and far agone
In desolation: columns stood there shorn
Of half their height, and massy fragments torn
From fallen piles, and crumbling, fissured walls,
And sunken towers and domes, and capitals
Broken on bases: there too images
Of nameless shapes, supporting cornices,
Stood in half-lights: and to the chill night air
A few scant trees sighed sadly: everywhere
Shadows fell black on shadows, but all round
The outermost, unbroken, reached the ground.
Much marvelling at this so grievous change
Upon such grandeur wrought, and giving range
To many fancies, till the stars were sped
Far into morn, in that untenanted
And voiceless place throughout the night I stood,
But when the dawn betrayed the secret quietude,
Then saw I clearly all the mystery
Of obelisk and tower, all emblemry
Of cornice-couchant sphinx with calm wide eyes,
All wonders of dim-reaching galleries,
Of crumbling frieze, of ruining gradine,
Of marbled slab, of moulding palatine;
Moreover when the clearness of daylight
Slid into distant haze, there seemed upright,
Fronting the east, a giant mass of stone,
Shaped into man's rough semblance, whereupon
Unto my brain swift recognition ran:
Memnon I knew, and Thebes Egyptian.

Ay, 'twas the glorious city, hundred-gated,
The olden one, before which stand abated
All puny elegance of modern days,
Whose cumbrous grandeur even to our gaze
Fills out all myths of founder demigod;
The stony ghost of old, the sea-bank broad,
Staying time's waves, which, with its great compeers,
Stands forth unwhelmed by the huge tide of years;
Gazing whereon we may uptrace the springs
Of human action through the past of things,
And scoop the future from the past—such thought
Rose in my heart, with fear and wonder fraught,
Unshaped in word, till from my breast unpent
My voice at length throughout the ruins went.

All without grief, 'twas thus I cried aloud,
Is light and flitting as a rainless cloud;
And thou, fair city, hast a name, and fate
Dewing all time with tears, for thou dost mate
Thyself unto an inner region
Of glory and decay. Ah, once the throne
Whereon erewhile towered brave humanity
Enseated grandly, dost thou prostrate lie?
Alas, not ruined shade of portico
Nor fall of turret strength hath brought thee low
To this immortal mourning; thou dost show
The truth outrolled by rolling centuries
Of glorious but changing destinies.
The heart of man is one! throughout all life
At grasp with circumstance, at endless strife
To clothe itself in deed; but as no brain
Hath e'er been found capacious to contain
An ultimate ideal, accident
Entails itself on all that we invent,
Nor aught is perfect, nothing can attain
Its final point at once, but still must gain
By slow accessions, still must be increased
By added strength; hence nought hath ever ceased,
All life is reproduction; hence upspring
Cities, with all their wealthy minist'ring
To diverse wants, which ever couchant lie
In different natures; hence society
Is holden in the bond of difference
And hence compacted; hence, great Thebës, hence,
The impulse that created thee still moves
Unslumbrous and unspent, for what man loves
Is ever changeless, and becomes the centre
Whence he draws wider circles; do thou enter
Among those wondrous antitypes of soul
Which show it like yet diverse, be the goal
At once, and starting-point of human thought!

Ah! subtle cause thine overthrow hath wrought,
Who whilom sat'st the crown of circumstance,
Taking joy's tithe from every moment, glance
Upon thyself, and say, are not the powers
Of ruin sown within? Thy sister towers
Stand on in their first strength, by battle's wrack
Unbroken, by time's ever ruthless track
Scarce furrowed; what then was it that hath cast
Earth's darkness on thee, making thee at last
A sepulchre for ruin? Sad, that e'er
Man's glory should be made his sepulchre!
Yea, that one idea driven to excess
Should be its own destroyer! Thou didst press
Thy law of sole dominion questionless
Unto its furthest; thou didst give no scope
To individual purpose, interest, hope,
Those parents of endeavour; and the want
Of this one truth it was did disenchant
Thy solemn halls; thy stern unswerving code
On alien ages sunk its unmeet load,
Nor knew to fit itself to after years.
So to its rules old tyranny adheres,
The season being gone, in fell despite
Of change and progress, and forgetting quite
That man's advancing work can never die,
And all must share the immortality.

Thus mused I till the richness of the west,
Of hues immingled in a floating rest,
Showed like a melted rainbow, till adown
Fluttering in thousand stars great night had flown.
I mused; I saw the budding moon enshrined
By gentlest office of the summer wind,
With clouds to couch on; and in that still hour
Great visions stood enshapèd by the power
That works in earnest meditation: lo!
Methought the place so gloom-entranced ere now
Had met the noonlight, and a dream in dream
Fell on my soul, for all the air did seem
Enthronged with uplift shapes of tower and fane,
Each bearing strange device upon its van
Of hieroglyph; and 'neath them life again
Was multiplied in dusky throngs of men,
And from collision groups of circumstance
Sprang ever chequered; 'twas as though advance
Of onward-flowing time had never been
Since first that desert was joy's chosen scene.
For ruin was not: the great city's smoke
Swung heavy in the sky, and voices spoke
In the wide-whispering night, borne from beneath
To the upper air, far wafted on the breath
Of grief or laughter: midst a mighty throng
I entered, borne resistlessly along
By the great human concourse, through long streets
Walled by vast columns and enset with sheets
Of pale red marble; ever as I went
The wonder grew, for all the crowd upsent
Red pointed flames of torchlight to the sky,
As on they marched beneath emblazonry
Hung high from palace roof or pillar tall,
As suited ancient Thebes upon a festival.

There were vast forms of calm eternal lines,
That brooded ever upon guarded shrines;
There were slight nameless creatures with scythed wings,
Embodied thoughts and delicatest things
In fretwork, whereon ever flitted past
Warm hurried glows and moving shadows cast
From torches, and made thinner by the moon;
Unto a temple huge the crowd rolled on,
And passed between its valves of crudded gold,
Into a four-square court wide to enfold
The vastest throng that e'er to worship passed,
Round which went curtains always interlaced,
From shaft to shaft wide floating; and entraced
With tender curves of richest broidery,
That showed upon the clear and moony sky.
O'erhead the fane loomed hugely, and in front
Two doors of inwrought glory nigh a font
O'erdrooped by heavy-leavèd orient trees,
Drew all eyes towards them; for the mysteries
Of Egypt's greatest god were shrinèd there.

Now when the joyous torches sunken were,
And the glad shoutings hushed for reverence,
And one sole voice was telling how immense
The glory and the terror and the wrath,
And prayer was breathing thoughts unuttered forth,
Back I withdrew me from the golden glare,
Back from the awèd throng, apart to where
Was only moonlight in a quiet street.
And there the far-off echoes did I meet
Of the full-throated response, and stray gleams
Of magic lights, and heard the voice of streams.
The broad-breast river ran through floating shades,
Lapping sheer blocks of granite, colonnades
That high upheld long rows of palaces;
And on its eddies glanced light pinnaces
With lamps and wafts of music: on I hied,
Methought in silence, lone and unespied,
Beneath vast groves of sleeping foliage,
The stars among their branches; soft umbrage
Moon-flung on sheeny fountains, where there lay
Enwalled spaces widened to embay
Quaint plots of greeness: then with sudden change
Methought I was amid an endless range
Of palace fronts, tall shafts, and long arcades,
And slabbed steps that led through balustrades
Of columns twin on either hand, which spread
Into an archèd roof high overhead
Through all the aislèd length; each floor was paven
With level squares of marble, gem-engraven,
Which chilled the moonbeams streaming over them;
And on the doors was wealth of gold and gem,
A solemn wealth, which gave to the moonlight
Rich molten gleams; and fountain rillets bright,
Jetted from marble stems by water elves,
Came spreaded over smooth and level shelves,
Wave rippling over wave; and thence they fell
With ceaseless murmur and a gentle swell
Unto the marble limits of their lake.
Thus momently did I myself betake
Through golden vestibules and galleries
Into wide palace courts and breadth of terraces:
Till in the midst of this wide loveliness
Close sandalled forms about me 'gan to press,
And I was in amongst the throng again:
And that great heart, whence through the whole domain
Of Egypt, life was pulsed, throbbed mightily,
In its primeval strength before mine eye.

But now these visions warm began to pale,
Gradual as fogbank parting from a vale;
The night was sinking, and the stars were dim,
And soon the morning light began to swim
Slow through the eastern port with saddening gleam;
A hundred fountains twisted the first beam
In crystal writhings, then all straight were gone,
And all the show, and I was left alone.