University of Virginia Library

THE UNLOVED OF EARTH.

THE MOURNERS.

LINES ON A CHAINED EAGLE.

Of cloudland and the whirlwind heir and lord,
How vainly round thee storm and midnight roared,
In thy high haughty life of power and pride,
Soaring o'er heaven-kissed mountains, ocean wide,
And all the glories, all the glooms of earth!
But now—forgetful of thy skiey birth,
Not now dost thou imperially aspire!
Tamed is thy glance of fury and of fire!
What weight chains mournfully thy realmless wings,
Once! once! the mightiest of earth's freeborn things?
And hast thou abdicated space and air,
Thy proud domain? —No! with a blank despair
Captivity o'ercame thee! Thou! O, thou!
Whom Nature's terrors might not teach to bow,
Whose neck a thousand thunders clothed and armed,
Round whom the tempests played, like serpents charmed!
Thy throne was of the clouds—thy track the immense—
Thy joy thy dread, unshared pre-eminence!
How, in thy stormy strength and dazzling speed—
While the tall pine bowed like a broken reed—
Thou dashedst scornfully and swift along,
As to some loftier sphere thou didst belong!
Rejoicing in thy vast unfetter'd force,
Wild as the mountain-torrents in their course,
While thunders round thee boomed! and thou didst shake,
Till like a living comet's glared thy wake—
Redoubled lightnings from thy flashing plumes
Glittering athwart the tempest's quivering glooms!
How did the upper worlds and wastes of sky
Roll back the long peal of thy triumph-cry,
Shrill as a battle-trumpet's wakening breath,
Startling those elder worlds that know not death!
Now doth that cry, despairingly prolonged,
Scarce seem to haughty joy to have belonged;
No more, while shaping thy cloud-cleaving flight,
The burst is heard of thy sublime delight.
Thou'st left for ever thy wild realms of old,
Those kingdoms paved with purple and with gold,
Those long-resounding regions of the storms,
And sinkest, earth-chained, prone as earth's dull worms!
Better hadst thou, by all heaven's lightning flashes
Struck down at once, fallen to that earth in ashes!

TO THE DEPARTED.

NIGHT AND MORNING.

LINES ON ------

THOUGHTLESSLY SAD.

GREECE.

ABSENCE.

THE LARK AND THE BUTTERFLY.

THE FAREWELL.

Farewell—the spring, with all spring-flowers, will come,
To bless and cheer thee in thy woodland home,
With all her gladdening spells and wildering tones—
Her vernal treasures, stained like precious stones—
Her wandering scents — her rainbow-splendours bright—
Her dancing waves, like floods of silvery light—
Her flower-awakening smiles—her hurrying birds—
And golden airs, that waft love's murmured words,
And soften them to music more divine!
Alas! some other voice perchance than mine
May pour its plaint in thy forgetful ear:
Yet no—I will not nurse those thoughts of fear,
Oh, tell me—will thy soul remember still?
Will thy swoln heart and quickened pulses thrill
With recollected tones of mine—once dear
Beyond all heaven's spring music to thine ear?
To golden lands I go—to glorious shores,
Where the sweet sunshine streams, and heaves, and pours,
As though 'twould turn each glittering leaf to fire,
Which thrills and murmurs like a wakening lyre
To the rich musk-wind's breathings—sweeping past
With spells, and gifts, that ev'n might flush the waste;
Where birds, flowers, skies, magnificently strange,
Astonish and enchant with ceaseless change!
Yet, though they momently may touch and charm
My melancholy heart, till throng and swarm
Emotions long suppressed—too soon, alas!
Those fine emotions melt away and pass—
To leave a desert's dreary span behind,
That worst of deserts—a dejected mind;
The after-thought—nay, even the under-strain,
Burdened with sorrowing tenderness and pain!
And indistinct, but deep, will be the gloom
Haunting those scenes of rainbow-coloured bloom;
And thou—O! say, wilt thou accord one sigh
To hallow and to embalm my memory?
Wilt thou—my life's own treasure—wilt thou cast
One weeping glance on the unanswering past?
Yet, no! fix not thy vain beseeching gaze
On the dull track of ne'er-returning days;
Turn to the future thy deep-speaking eyes,
And speed its passage from the pitying skies.

REMEMBRANCES.

Remembrances! coiled ivies of the heart,
That grasp and crush it, till its life-drops start,—
Your gordianed coils, your ravelled tendrils loose;
Unwind from my sad thoughts those chain-links close;
Let me, oh! breathe glad currents of fresh air—
Drink draughts of pure sweet waters—free from care—
Welling from the unborn years; let me not droop
For evermore beneath a blighted hope;
My heart was free as a wild bird's of yore—
Must it be seared and haunted evermore?
Hope's precious rains have brought but poisonous plants,
Doubts, terrors, memories—till my sick soul pants
Even as a hunted deer—and dies away
In passionate yearnings for some calmer day,
When Memory may her arrowy sceptre break,
And from the soul her burdening mantle shake;
When the out-stretched Future, like a breezeless sea,
Shall shine in undisturbed transparency,
Troubled by no far-lengthening shadows, cast
From the horizon of the westering past.
Remembrances, dark ivies of the heart,
Your thorn-like tendrils through my soul ye dart;
All greenly branching round the ruins old
Of time, by ye o'ergloomed a thousand-fold!
O, but release me—let me win repose,
Or be the victim but of present woes!
Now, when, with morning beautifully red,
Glows every hill and valley far outspread—
While wakening birds flit 'mongst the dancing leaves—
Singing beneath the o'ershadowing household eaves!
Ye, ye, with breeze-like voices swell the strain,
Refining each emotion into pain!
Till morning, with her scents, and blooms, and lights,
Is haunted as lone hours of deepest nights.
Those breeze-like voices, too, are ever heard
When greets the ear the softly-warbled word;
That warbled word sung by some gentle voice
That once could wake the spirit to rejoice.
O that those voices could be drowned or stilled,
Or the racked sense with but their tones be filled!
But now—to walk 'mongst shadowy parted hours,
Dreamy existences, mysterious powers,
And yet be girt by all the bonds of life,—
Bowed by its actual grief and present strife—
This is a master-agony—'tis mine!
Oh, must it be—till lulled on shores divine?—
Remembrances—dark ivies of the heart—
Crush it, constrictor-like, at once, or part!

FROM INEZ.

AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

CHANGES.

FROM INEZ.

THE FROWN.

ART AND NATURE.

In the clear day-spring of my youth,
When life's winged pageants smiled like truth,
Oft did I tread the regal hall,
Gorgeous with midnight festival,
Where coloured lamps shed softly round
Their fitful splendours, and the sound
Of thrilling instruments was heard,
Softened to suit the whispered word.
—But were those glad scenes dear to me?
Was my heart filled with melody?
Were my thoughts bathed in rosy light?
Could they even charm my wayward sight?
—Oh, none can ever dream or know
All then I felt of fevered wo!
Nor what a gracious sweet relief
(As to a mother's yearning grief
Some lost child were returned at last,
And on her beating bosom cast),
It was to me to quit those halls
And those illumined festivals,
And pass from all the pomps of art
Into the fresh air of the heart—
Into my thought's proud solitude,
The chainless mind's infinitude!—
The bright, bright silence of my dreams,
That world of sounds, and hues, and gleams!
To nature's keyless sanctuaries,
The breezy hills, the breathless skies,
Rejoining with sweet raptures keen
Old memories garnered in each scene.
Thus, though I sorrowed bitterly,
High blessings were reserved for me,
A costly recompense was mine
In those past days, ere Hope's decline
Impoverished mine imaginings,
And chained my fancy's rainbowed wings.
Then my heart, soaring breezily,
Rushed like a freed bird to the sky,
Out-thrilled the skylark's ringing lays,
With music of its joy and praise—
With its deep fervid passionate tones,
Its inborn mighty unisons.
Oft the heart's melodies are deep,
For the heart's arteries bleed and weep,
Each languishing and lengthening tone,
Till ev'ry breath is sorrow's own!
But in that spring-burst of my youth,
I deemed my veriest fancies truth;
And O'twas joy beyond all joys,
Such as ne'er ends, nor tires, nor cloys,
To pass from all the pomps of art
Into the fresh air of the heart!
To nature's sweet unmasked revealings,
The fresh air of the unbounded feelings!

THE INJUNCTION.

REMEMBER!

THE CONSOLATION.

Myriads of creatures breathe joyous breath,
While she lies asleep on her bed of death;
Myriads of creatures still bless the sun—
For her the sweet glories of earth are done!
The Summer, with all her gifts and her spells,
In vain round her place of abiding dwells;
Her most precious breathings are powerless here—
Her loveliest splendours shew dim and drear;
Her thousands of roses are scattered in vain,
Her flower-lighting dews and perfuming rain—
Those dancing and fragrant rains, that shine
Like diamond-sparks of some rifted mine.
But Summer in vain o'er the waste must sweep—
Summer broods colourless o'er the old deep;
And Death, that mightiest of all the earth,
Is deaf to her voices of hope and mirth.
Summer and Death! O! they mournfully meet
With conflicting influence strange and sweet;
For Summer hath glorious airs and skies;
And our thoughts—those young immortalities!—
Will link their loveliness with a breath
Of the eternal being that knows not death!
Thus, Summer and Death may solemnly meet,
And with bright and breathless stillness greet—
But she who, in silence and darkness, now
Hath bowed her head and hath veiled her brow—
In joy and in summer she takes no part,
Though, as a breeze, they once ruffled her heart.
In the unsunned sabbath of the tomb,
All—all is weighty and frozen gloom.
The sabbath of the tomb!—not so!
Thou'rt where the immortal fountains flow;
Where fitful cloud or changeful breeze
Comes not 'mongst ever-flowering trees;
Where no wavering shadows fall nor float—
Lingers no echo's lamenting note—
No perishing flower—no withering leaf,
Sheds round a something like care and grief!
Thy starry being hath nought to fear
Of the change and ruin awaiting us here—
Thou'rt 'mongst the unwithering golden bowers,
Which own not the reign of earth's cloudy hours,
Where life is music and precious light,
Unbroken by sighs—unbreathed on by blight;
While the softly rosy and crystal air
Is thrilled but by seraph-breathings there!
O! that summer of heaven shall pass not away,
Nor eve's hyacinth hues o'ersweep the bright day!
In thoughts like these I can hang o'er thy tomb,
Nor feel its infection of desolate gloom;
They gird my soul with a haughty joy—
Haughty!—not so; pure from earth's alloy,—
O! pure from aught of prevailing dust
Be my thoughts of thee!—and they must—they must!
Yet moaning, like troubled waters, low,
Through my thrilled soul, some streams of wo
At times will pass, like the clouds that cross
Our summer heav'n; then I feel but thy loss—
Ay! sounds and shadows, now dwelling, now dying,
Like south-winds through broken harp-strings sighing,
Will sway me with sudden and hidden power,
Till I shrink from Mem'ry's long-treasured dower.
O, there's not a bird—a star—a leaf—
That hath not her spell to awaken grief,
Didst thou in thy triumph's hour, beautiful Hope!
Not sustain a spirit too prompt to droop!
Summer, and Love, and Death, are here,
Yet my soul shall not bow to bitter fear;
But with strengthened consciousness,—heightened trust,—
Pass its fleeting hour in its coil of dust!
Till, forgetting what 'twas to moan and weep,
With one conquering burst—with one mastering sweep—
It shall shoot away from all bonds and chains
To realms where the fulness of glory reigns!
Beyond the worlds, the graves, the storms—
Where, crowned for Eternity, glorious forms—
Mighty—in uttermost beauty shine,
And Love, undimmed by Death, is divine!
With thoughts like these in my silent breast,
I keep vigils calm o'er thy place of rest,
With a solemn tenderness—chastened hope—
That dares not, and deigns not, to sink and droop;
But most by the precious thoughts sustained
Of our spirit-meeting—unchecked, unchained!
Where soul unto soul shall bound and cling,
And Grief melt away a forgotten thing!

THE MOURNER.

SONG.

[Voices arise—the sweet of tone]

THE LOVER'S PRAYER.

A REMEMBERED SCENE.

I wandered where in youth I oft had been—
It was a soothing, unbewildering scene:
Old trees stood in their gracious beauty round,
Casting their massy shadows on the ground;
The flowering boughs wove many a verdurous screen
Of tremulous-shining bloom and varying green,
In dim pavilions of delight and rest,
For those with passions schooled and lessoned breast.
And the brook led its gentle music by,
And glanced back all the colourings of the sky,
Threading its way through that green whispery wood
With sweet apprisings of its neighbourhood
To ev'ry passer-by! And there the bird,
At oft-repeated intervals, was heard
To pour his unpremeditated strain,
And then—deep holy quiet reigned again!
And one faint, faintest star shone meekly bright,
Ministrant of soft influence to the night
That onwards came, with regal mien and crown,
And dews and star-rays showered together down!
'Twas the old haunt of my enchanted years,
Ere conversant with Sorrow's blinding tears
And Passion's sway, and Disappointment's lore,
That have enchained me now for evermore.
The rich breath of the violet floated there,
As sweet as in those days unclaimed by care;
And ev'ry hour I have in suffering passed
Hath here been softly traced—serenely glassed!—
As though there were no world beyond of gloom—
Like Paradise, unconscious of a tomb!
Henceforth, high Nature! let me all address
My thoughts and powers to thee! girt less and less
With earth, and more and more with thy strong ties,
Thy unimaginable sublimities!
Till, hallowed to that nature's sweet repose
My heart may be, though weighed down by its woes
Too long, too utterly! 'Tis not too late
That high and holy calm to emulate!
To mirror back that nature be its lot;
And O! to reap heaven's smiles, like this sweet spot.

A HUMAN VOICE.

ON THE NIGHTINGALE.

'Tis night, and 'twould be silence but for thee,
Spirit of multitudinous melody,
Deep nightingale! The very fire of heaven
Seems to thy throbbing strain intensely given,
And all the unsounded passion-fountains deep
That ever heaved the soul, o'erflow and steep
Those burning harmonies, that seem to rock
The weight of darkness on them with keen shock
And gust tempestuous! Mighty, mighty bird,
In thy sweet strength pre-eminent! Hope deferred,
And wounded love! here come for draughts of healing!
Now, nought but those victorious notes are pealing
Throughout the darkly-glorious night! no breath
Of winds is heard. All, all lies hushed as death!
And although thunders groaned and threatened round—
Through the deep thickening tumults should resound
That heavenward-mounting strain, that floods the air
With beauty almost too intense to bear,
In its mysterious power and wondrous might
Softening the savage grandeur of the night.
Alas! the rugged real it softeneth not—
Life's disappointments still are unforgot
Even by thy listener's heart! The music-land
Is haunted by a dreamy shadowy band—
The heart's lost hopes and loves, the dead, the dear—
The broken flowers of memory—changed and sere—
Crushed, wrecked affections, bound in withered sheaf,
And all the phantom retinue of grief!
But, O! these bitter truths, why come they now
To wring this long-sealed heart, this long-veiled brow?
Through music's spirit-land glide there no forms
But those bowed down by life's unpitying storms?
No Futures, that, serenely pure and bright,
Rise mantled round with fair transparent light?
Like soft and beautiful exhalations rise,
Nor cease to soar until they reach the skies?
No schooled affections, like earth's fountains, plenished
From the majestic heaven-deeps when evanished?—
Their lovely sources seem in some fierce drought—
No chastened hopes, sublimed by soaring thought?
—These may be there; but hearts of love and pride
Lean to their earthly more than heavenly side—
Would it were not so! Would that any wo
Could alienate this heart from things below!
Would—would the associative links were torn
From the close chain my heart so long hath worn!
Then might I hear thee, wondrous bird, and hang
On thy deep lays, nor feel the maddening pang
Accompanying those rich notes! Oh, why
Must they still call on buried memory?
Why, like electric wands and lightning rods,
But smite grief's deeply-bosomed veiled abodes?
O! cease to send those searching, searching darts!—
Profoundly sorrowing still to sorrowing hearts
Thou seem'st! and well, O well, it may be so,
When thy high song, the loveliest heard below,
Reminds the soul, of all earth's sounds the most,
Of that pure paradise for ever lost,
For ever on this leafy, flowery earth—
Wild scene of conflicts, triumphs, death, and mirth.
What part of time, or of eternity,
Hath sway o'er that most mighty harmony?
The Past, the Present, or the dim To-come?
Art thou an exile from a viewless home?
And is't a rapture of expectancy
That crowns each full victorious melody?
O, how each tone doth pierce through th' answering spirit!
No earthly echoes should that strain inherit—
That thunder-shower of music, thick and deep,
Startling the long-resounding night from sleep,
Which scarce sustains that precious weight of sound,
Disquieting the haunted calm around—
Now, with quick, billowy, and fiery floods
Thrilling the moonlighted and flowering woods—
Now, with the sweetnesses of sorrowing tones,
As music sighed from all her thousand thrones
On earth, and through the fair enchanted domes
Of yon starr'd skies, where spirits build their homes!—
Now, with wreathed tortuosities of sound—
Rich harmonies—inextricably wound—
O, do they cleave the heavens or strike the ground?—
Sinking within its depths like lightning strokes
That smite and scathe the immemorial oaks—
The forest-kings, even in their playful scorn?
Or is each tone on viewless pinions borne?
O, whether it disperses or aspires,
That lay, that out-throbs all earth's noblest lyres—
Even lever-like it doth upheave the soul,
While on the sense the volumed concords roll!
—Yet wherefore dost thou pour and rain away
Thy sweet strength on the night? O, let the day—
The golden laughing day—those sounds receive;
With every ray a song of triumph weave;
Mingle thy pure impassioned breathings still
With heaven's own splendours, free from stain or chill;
Let the great sun—the glowing sun above—
Tremble to thy assaults of piercing love!
There, pour away thy passion and thy soul—
There seek thy fiery spirit's fiery goal!
'Mongst the winged clouds that all unshackled shoot,
Though vast as mountains of a century's root!
'Mongst the spring-heads of music and of light—
'Mongst all things glorious, beautiful, and bright!

TO THE LARK.

Soar! soar! and sing for ever, glorious Lark!
And thou, O cold dull Earth, behold and hark;
Morning and music, melody and bloom,
Their rapturous reign triumphantly resume.
Go forth, thou mighty warbler! strike the sky,
And in an understrain of sweet, reply.
The fountains of its echoes forth shall flow,
Till they rebound against this earth below—
Till all the dewy silvery air is shivering,
Like some transparent censer, wherein, quivering,
A thousand, thousand fires are pent, that leap,
And rush, and strive, as panting to escape.
O, shalt thou not, all unreproved, be heard?
And shalt thou not be hailed, deep-hearted bird,
By all earth's tribes, though pouring drops of fear
Into the sinner's heart and sluggard's ear?
Ne'er shalt thou by the conflicts and the cares
Of dark life be deterred—while smiling wears
The morn her glistening diadem, and flowers,
Unfolding, tell of blue, blue summer hours,
And fair elysian haunts, and worlds of beauty!
Thou shalt not be deterred from thy sweet duty—
While springs the fawn and roams the honey-bee,
And spreads the sunshine's robe of royalty!
Hark! hark! how thrillingly they swell and rise,
Those heaven-electrifying harmonies!
The dervishes of the East are little zealous
Compared with thee, who seem'st each morning jealous
Of thy past efforts, and dost, more and more
Careering, wheel and spin, and heavenward soar.
And now thy glorious place is nobly won,
While welcomes with his priceless smiles, the sun—
His indefatigable worshipper!
Now—now a soft and pleasurable stir
Runs joyously through all the unshattered air,
While witcheries and delights spring every where—
Enchantments, pleasures, wonders, dreams of love,
Start to our senses wheresoe'er we move—
Even at the call of that winged wizard bright,
While surging rosier round him streams the light.
Blest bird! what sweet prerogatives are thine!
For thee the day-spring's rays of beauty shine—
Thine are the firstling breezes of the prime,
The bloom upon the hours of summer time—
Those opening glories—those unfolding pleasures—
Far richer than the noontide's crimsoner treasures.
Behold, how each, like some enchanted sphere,
The morn-reburnished clouds on high appear,
Gathering into a rich and rosy ark,
As if to tempt thee, lonely—loneliest Lark,
To stay—forgetful of a world of gloom,
And, ah! forgetful of thy leaf-girt home.
But, no! thy rapturous orisons achieved,
Thou hurriest back unto thy mate bereaved!
As if by viewless link or loadstone drawn
From the azure-portalled temple of the dawn,
Thou meltest like a raindrop from the sky,
Then sink'st into thy nest,—that leafy shell—
That dim and sheltering cove—that fragrant cell—
That mossy haunt,o'er which each breeze hath blown,
Throbbing with heart-fraught harmonies thine own—
Thine own exulting and adoring strains,
That flash to earth, like silvery summer-rains!
Or quivering storms of whirlwind-adoration,
Lashing the unbounded ocean of creation!
But O! not yet hast silently declined
That music, searching through the soul and mind;
Still rings, even with redoubled peals, around
That lovely tumult of unwearying sound!
Those glorious bursts—those harmonies superb,
Even with keen tremulous ecstasy disturb
All who have sense to listen, souls to feel,
And hearts whose strings are not of stubborn steel!
O, beautiful is this pure—pure happiness,
With nought to avoid, to banish, or suppress!
Beautiful is this happiness we share
With the bright innocent populace of air!
Beautiful the happiness that from above
Doth tremble! Bird, thou hast been a thief of love!
Bringing us thoughts, dreams, visions, phantasies—
All breathing of the sunny radiant skies!
Yet bring me none. Alas! I fear—I fear,
Lest they should Hope's delusive aspect wear!
Bird, bear my hopes away on thy strong wing,
Thou privileged and emancipated thing!
Even those my heart has cherished unavowed—
Bear them beyond the tempest and the cloud,
Unto those shining tracts, in glory strong,
Bequeathed, and blent with the echoes of thy song
In that rich orient Paradise of Light!
In that immortal air! which gloom or blight
Shall never reach, since far—oh! far away
Those regions stretch, and far art thou—are they—
From earth's bleak graves! and from their shadows cold,
Though where the wandering clouds thy form enfold,
Perchance, from time to time! But they have dyes
Won from the sunrise—changeful brilliancies,
Redeeming them from sadness and from gloom—
Ah, how unlike the shadows of the tomb!
And far thou art from the endless mist of tears,
That dims the flowery crown high Nature wears,
And half obliterates her divinest hues!
Though 'mongst the fountains of the lovely dews
Those long-resounding harmonies take birth,
Which pour a deluge of delight on earth;
Far—far from grief's unlanguageable sighs—
Though where the harping blast doth sweep and rise!
Heaven's charged Intelligencer thou would'st seem,
The interpreter of many a wildering dream!
Earth's sweet Misrepresentative thou art—
Oh! would she bore as true and free a heart!
But she and all her sons remain supine,
Whilst thou greet'st morning with a love divine—
Thou wrestler with her breezy boundless spirit;
Thou conqueror, that shalt evermore inherit
Her wond'rous wealth of joy—keen, mystic, wild—
And breathed but through thy pæans undefiled!
Thou sweet, sweet spendthrift of thy priceless pleasure,
Scattered about without reserve or measure—
Thou harmony-quickened spark—and spring of being—
Unintermittent lightning!—Dream unfleeing!
Thou that art now, even now, high poised in air,
As though thy home, thy world, thy heaven was there,
And throbbing like a new-discovered star,
Most radiant where a thousand thousand are
Unto th' astronomer's enraptured ken!—
Thou keen reproach to silent-hearted men!—
Thou beating pendulum 'twixt heaven and earth!
Art thou, as from their immemorial birth
The stars have been, sustained by soft attraction?
No!—free thou'rt still, in spirit as in action—
Free! and it is thy glad and glorious choice
To aspire, to adore, to extol, and to rejoice!
A feathered culverin, thou seem'st to pour
Thy shots of living fire still more and more!
While the beleaguered clouds surrendering seem
To melt round thee like vapours in a dream.
Thou fluttering telegraph 'twixt land and sky!
For O! thou art no child of mystery—
No incommunicative cell thy breast,
Which pants with glad emotions unsuppressed!
Nor unintelligible be thy signs
Of bliss, which still the unquestioning heart divines!
Nor unintelligible be the bliss,
The upspringing from so dark a world as this!
And art thou not an argosy of cost,
Freighted with treasures for the outstretched coast
Of the most mighty heavens?—Ah, do not we
Who watch thy jubilant progress, far and free,
Pour our soul's priceless, countless riches forth,
And charge thee with them, as thou spring'st from earth!
The passionate dreams and flashing Inspirations,
Trembling affections and proud aspirations,
And glorious hopes, within the soul unrolled—
The heavenward hopes that cannot be controlled!—
I've bade thee fly with mine. Ah, bear them far,
Those hopes that fain would soar o'er sun and star!
Bear them where all the purple air is burning,
E'en now, with incense, sunshine, and the morning!
Morning!—O how, like a vibrating harp,
Whose mighty chords no time nor tears can warp,
Doth she thrill tremulously round thee now!
To extract her soul of sweetness skilled art thou,
And to transfuse it through our beating bosoms,
Revivifying feelings old—as blossoms
Discoloured are by dews revivified!
And thou'st compelled deep dreams of power and pride—
Even from the soul's abysses! forth they rise—
Delights, and hopes, and shadowy mysteries,
Speechless Abstractions, Terrors, Splendours, Glooms,
Imaginations borne on seraph plumes!
Passions, and Ecstasies, and keen Perceptions,
And lightning-pinioned Phantasms and Conceptions,
And starry Ardours, breathless Expectations,
Beatitudes, and fervid Adorations,
And bright Amazements, that, transfixed and still,
Yet with a rapture of assurance thrill!
Glorying Enthusiasms that awake
To spurn earth's fetters, and her trammels break!—
To soar from world to world—from height to height,
Till lost at last in unimagined light!
And with them wake—appear—and with them rise
Winged Joys! veiled Triumphs! sceptered Destinies!
These throng around us when the o'erarching skies
Are flooded by thy melody, and all
Lies clasped in music's dewy, silvery thrall.
These rise when from the shadowless blue above
Burst thy precipitated calls of love!
When doth with cloudless auguries commence
Thy skyey saturnalia!—pure, intense!
Ah, let a heart of wounded love but share
Thy breezy bliss, ere crushed into despair!
Too bitterly and wildly well it knows
It had escaped its martyrdom of woes,
Had it, like thee, made offerings of the best,
The earliest feelings of the awakening breast.
But now thou wing'st thy swift way back to earth,
Where swells thy plumaged kindred's lowlier mirth,
Bright-coloured birds that pierce the flowering glades,
And cross with chequering gleams the verdurous shades!
Mount! mount again, enchanter! Mount again,
Thou that canst charm the serpents of old pain—
Thou that canst draw the arrow from the wound,
By the celestial sorceries of sound!
And that canst give to memory's treasured tears
A rainbowed light!—soothe agonising ears
That pine for dearer sounds! and keep suppressed
The feverish yearnings of the unanswered breast!—
Canst bid departed phantoms start and live,
And disenchanted dreams at once revive!
From Hope's wild-rose the threatening thorn canst take—
From Grief's bowed from the lead-like mantle shake—
From Pleasure's honey-bee the treacherous sting
Canst wile, and lend to joy thy song and wing!—
From Fancy's rainbow-pictures sweep the stain—
The wormwood from the passion-fountains drain—
The burning passion-fountains of the soul,
Which, freed by music any by thee, shall roll
O'er beds of pearls, and precious sands of gold,
And shells like those where Love lay couched, of old,
Still answering! while thou seem'st to pour on high
A milky-way of music through the sky!
But yet do more, sweet minister of bliss!
Yet—I adjure thee—yet do more than this!
O, prophet-like, unveil the years to come—
The unborn, supine, remote—pierce their far home
Beyond the curtaining clouds! Yet, no! Forbear!
Ah, rather teach the soul to brunt—to dare—
To face them undismayed! Rather prevail
Its own majestic inner worlds to unveil—
Its rich resources—its unfathomed mines!
Where many a treasure-hoard unrecked-of shines!
Then will we urge thee not those realms to explore,
When thou canst do—nay, hast done nobly, more!
Inciting sorrow's languid heart to adore,
Leading the steps of erring reason right,
And bathing thought in floods of smiling light!
Thou blithe adventurer of the untracked skies—
Thou leader of divinest enterprise—
Pilgrim—probationer of the aërial heights,
To thee a wilderness of blooms and lights!
Still thou appearest, brightly lone, to be
The anchorite of the gorgeous cloudlands free!
To Fancy's eye thou seem'st a mystic wheel,
Round which careering worlds, with echoing peal,
Are driven, triumphant, jubilant, ecstatic,
Reclaimed from journeyings wide and maze erratic!
And unto heavenliest harmony constrained,
Within whose smooth, smooth circles bound and chained,
They evermore shall shape their measured course,
Won by mysteriously prevailing force!
Thou shell of multitudinous melodies,
Instinct with precious breathings from the skies—
Winged sphinx! whose not inextricable meanings
Our after-thoughts collect in costly gleanings!
One strong emotion in that breast elate
Throbs—inextinguishably passionate!
One feeling floods thee, like a chainless river,
Beautiful inexhaustibly!—for ever!
O! thy wild strains have manifold revealings—
The overpowering mysteries of the feelings
Have found a voice—a glorious voice—at length,
Through which to shower their full, deep burning strength—
Even thine! for so imagination works—
It deems a kindred spirit in thee lurks!
Thou'st imaged by thy strains, to rapture wrought,
The interminable wanderings of the thought;
Since high and higher! ever high and higher!
They piercingly and thrillingly aspire!
And when thou'rt silent, the echoes of those sounds
O'erflow their tremulous and aëry bounds,
And interweave themselves, with whisperings low,
That from the soul's disturbed recesses flow
In undistinguishable murmurings!
And the quick-glancing shiver of thy wings
Commingleth with wild Fancy's rainbowed dyes,
In undistinguishable radiancies!
(For, when thy form, erewhile, towards earth descended,
It seemed to emit bright sparkles, briefly splendid;
But, by the trouble of the rich air wrought,
As fancy by the ruffling of the thought!)
O! that I might, with thee at last ascending,
Gain those calm realms where bliss reigns neverending;
Thy wild rejoicings, and my deep adorings,
Mingling in undistinguishable soarings!

THE WARRIOR'S FAREWELL.

THE STRANGER.

DREAMS.

LINES ON MARTIN'S PAINTINGS.

Upon these wonder-breathing scrolls I gaze,
Lost in their boundlessness of gloom and blaze!
Depth within depth of night, o'erpowering night—
Sphere beyond sphere of light, transcending light—
Within their span, concentered and combined,
Bewilder and intoxicate the mind!
Here multitudinous cities are uplifted
From the dim dust—they that were earthquakerifted,
Or deluged by the rampant ocean's waves—
Or left the site of immemorial graves!
The hundred-gated capitals of old!
They blaze once more—rich with barbaric gold!
There bright, bright fields glow with undying bloom,
Undarkened by the shadows of the tomb.
O! but these visioned wonders are sublime,
And lift the soul above the wrecks of time!
These scenes with immortality are crowned,
And own, in their imperial sway, no bound
Save that of uttermost magnificence!—
The excess—the height—the super-eminence
Of mightiest grandeur in its mightiest hour!
O! marvellous is thy privilege and power,
Great Painter! thy unfaltering, fearless hand
Hath sovereign mastery o'er the vast and grand!
Thine eye hath traversed—measured—overcome—
The heights, the abysses of all light and gloom!
Hath flashed along the immeasurable void,
As some winged comet, on its journeyings wide,
Flashes from space to space! and we behold
The banners of thy triumph's hour unrolled.
Hast thou thy hand, untrembling, undismayed,
Upon the Future's shadowy mane victorious laid;
Or struck the dark rock of th' impassive Past,
Till forth the fountains gushed! full, deep, and fast?
What spirits ministrant to thy great mind,
Have in its depths amassed—compressed—enshrined
These boundless treasures, those rich stores of light,
Which have no name, no price, no end? Proud freight!
O! what have been the wands, the lightning rods,
Wherewith thou'st pierced the innumerous abodes
Of slumbering mystery? What the Ithuriel spear,
Which makes to thee in Truth's bright guise appear
Things which to eyes ungifted shine not clear?
How have those visions on thy soul descended?
Yet, wherefore ask?—O'erpoweringly splendid!—
Each glorified—immortalized—enriched—
Now o'er thy canvass dazzlingly outstretched,—
Burns—inextinguishably wonderful!—
With hues e'en Time shall teach not to grow dull.
O! wherefore ask?—Still be it ours to admire—
To catch some sparks of thy Promethean fire!
Still in unquestioning ecstasy to allay
Our spirit-thirst with draughts of heavenly day!
(For, still the immortal day-spring seems to bloom
And break through all the intense, the gorgeous gloom,
Which streams like midnight's jewelled mantle round
Thy dream of worlds)—still, still from the profound
And teeming depths thou hast unveiled, to reap
Gatherings of priceless knowledge, pure and deep,
Thine must have been—O! wherefore, wherefore ask?—
Thine was an unparticipated task!
The prophet-impulse of thine own winged thought—
The sole proud agency and aid thou hast sought!
By thy unsuccoured strength hast thou achieved
Thy kingly victories, and the crown received!
That burning crown, that orbed and laurelled wreath,
Which beams defiance to the shafts of Death!
O! rich must be thy haunted solitude—
Thy mind's creative, star-rejoining mood!
What unimaginable apparitions—
(Startling with dream-like, shadowy recognitions
The soul of genius—for that soul sublime
Hath lingering memories of its native clime!)
What shapes of Glory—Terror—Wonder—Power,
Must throng that incommunicable hour!—
With aspects like the sun, or star-strewn sky!
Beautiful!—beautiful incomprehensibly!
Though they be there whose foreheads, thunder-splintered,
Shew where the ruinous bolts of wrath had entered!
Behold them! rank o'er rank and grade o'er grade,
The realmless lords! the discrowned chiefs! arrayed
In mockery of the illustrious state they've lost!
By thee evoked—that myriad-legioned host!
Behold him on his shadowing mountain-throne
Amidst those vassal-myriads—yet alone!
How awfully alone!—meet monarch there!
Sovereign—in unapproachable despair!—
He who, midst sceptered hierarchies divine,
Did with insufferable refulgence shine!
He, the Arch-anarch of the unbounded skies—
Leader of ruined immortalities!
But thou hast loftier, nobler, happier themes
For the fine passion of thy mounting dreams!
Pure heavenward hopes and crowned imaginations
Incarnate seem midst thy more bright creations,
Where angel-throngs, with wreath, and harp, and wing,
O'er pictured Edens smiles of radiance fling.
How must those glorious groups—those realms Elysian—
Crowd in dread pomp upon thy aching vision!
Still, still surpassed by others still appearing,
While, like Heaven's meteors dazzlingly careering,
In long, interminably long, processions—
In swift, precipitately swift, successions—
They sweep through the endless area of thy thought,
As by the wings of triumphing morning brought,
Till, too intensely exquisite to stay,
Those splendours melt, like sunset's clouds, away!
Those shadowy-lengthening pageantries disperse
Through all the avenues of the universe—
The universe of spirit and of mind—
All indestructible, though undefined!
But still innumerable gleams and rays
Remain and crowd upon thy raptured gaze!
Shadows and scarce-glimpsed splendours flit and pass,
As o'er the surface of some magic glass;
And thou art skilled to embody and to blend
Those ever-shifting phantasms without end!
Thy whirlwind-stroke hath fixed them and enchained,
And unto bright development constrained!
And still adventurously hast thou essayed
More wond'rous things!—more wond'rously portrayed!
And still undaunted and undazzled, still
Thou'st climbed, and soared, and vanquished at thy will,
And half-withdrawn the invulnerable veil,
And almost stood within the extremest pale!—
Loosened creation's adamantine zone,
And glimpsed the blazing shadows of its Throne!
Till e'en the Heaven of Heavens the Empyreums seem
In the stupendous mystery of thy dream,
Won from their dread inexorable height!
Lo! thou'st drawn tribute from reluctant night,
Amerced the lightnings on their arrowy flight,
And prisoned them—and sentenced them—to flee,
And burn, and dazzle—everlastingly!
In that suspended impulse of their power
More terrible than in their chartered hour!
Thou hast arrested even the ocean's surge,
When stung to fury by the whirlwind's scourge!
Seized the fierce tempest in its midmost rage,
And dashed its sweeping terrors on thy page!
Thou'st glassed the earthquake's desolating strife,
When maddening, agonising into life—
Then levelled hills, and disembowelled plains,
The earth and the elements appear! in chains—
In viewless chains.—Strong arbiter!—thou'st swung
The toppling crags! in mid-o'erwhelming hung!—
In mid-o'erwhelming!—in the impending rush—
The threatening of the exterminating crush!
Thou'st dreamed the ruin of the affrighted world;
The heavens seem rent! the judgment-thunders hurled!
Thou'st loosed the fountains of the eternal deeps,
And forth the annihilating Deluge sweeps!
Genius! thou day-star of the human mind!
Which in its flight leaves systemed worlds behind—
Which streams through conquered universes, fraught
With themes for the immortality of thought—
Thou'rt not to earth's inglorious span contracted,
Nor incommunicatively abstracted!—
From world to world thou tak'st thy trackless way,
—World after world to unveil, and to display!
Genius! thou'st bound all in thy kingly thrall—
Transpierced— constrained—defined—unravelled all!
Grandeur and Beauty thy deep soul pervade!
Majesty is thy garment—Power thy shade!
All Grandeur—Beauty—Majesty—and Power,
Are thy supreme, inalienable dower!
The Past is refluent to thy mastering glance!
—Contemporaneous in thy breathless trance
Art thou with all that hath been or shall be—
The Past—the Future—and the Eternity!
And, interpenetrated streams thy thought
With all that e'er was to existence wrought—
The incomprehensible, unmeasured Whole
Seems compassed by thy circumambient soul!
And glorified—illumined—changed—inspired,
Where'er thou hast awakeningly respired!
Thy breath is power—life—victory—realization!
Thy touch—thy lightning-touch—transfiguration!
Thy presence—an apotheosis, even!
Flooding the earth with sunburst hues of Heaven!

TO THE MOON.

World amongst worlds! the crowned, the girt with power—
The minister of Nature's heavenliest hour,
O, Moon, thou art! and still dost thou appear
Calmly victorious o'er each vassal sphere!
Thou lookest holy—pale—severely bright!
Thou lovely Zion of the Heavens! while night,
Beneath thy calm and solemnizing sway,
Seems e'en more glorious than the orient day!
Thou lovely Zion! throned 'midst thrones on high,
City of shadowless transparency,
Islanded in the blue untroubled sky!
Ark of blest refuge, as perchance thou art,
For earth's lost doves—they of the wounded heart!
Shrine of the wandering thoughts! bright pillar'd tent!
Heaven's landmark in the outstretched firmament!
That archipelago of severed orbs,
Whose beauty thrills—electrifies—absorbs
The mind—which, triumphing or trembling, soars
In passionate greeting from earth's pensive shores.
But thou! 'tis to the heart—the heart thou speakest—
'Tis on the heart thy softening power thou wreakest!
Breathing along it—till 'tis winged with light,
And fain to thee would shape its towering flight,
Thou lovely Zion of the Heavens of night!—
And now, while gazing on heav'n's seas of blue,
The halcyon of one hope I faintly woo
Unto my desolate and undreaming heart,
Which hath beheld so many hopes depart,
Like the light clouds which, soft-disporting, play,
Then on the breeze that brought them float away !—
The creatures of a moment! Such ye've been—
But, ah! my hopes—my life's once smiling scene,
Hath, by your vanishing, been darkened o'er!
Ye have stripped the hues its wide horizon wore;
Ye've swept the flower-leaves from its stems borne down;
Disturbed its doves of peace—far, far they've flown,
And crushed the idols in its holds enshrin'd!
And sad bequeathments have ye left behind—
Cold shadows, trailing o'er earth's loveliest things,
And blights and poisons — chains, and taints, and stings—
Echoes that murmuringly rise and roll,
Troubling the precious music of the soul!
Echoes—like last notes of a dying bird,
When on some bleak and gusty night they're heard—
The low, low harpings of a spirit blighted—
In its own wastes bewildered and benighted;
While still the wind that calls the music forth
Sighs from the past!—the black and dreary north
Of the long-disenchanted heart!—which grows
Deadly unto itself, with cankering woes,
And only to the touch that wounds it turns—
And only with the flame that scathes it burns!
And seeks alone the kindred things of grief
To bind its shadowy wreath!—the nightshade's leaf,
The slumberous poppy, and the yew-bough chief!
O, how the full-blown life, and full-blown pride
Of the strong present, palls on hearts allied,
By rivetted bonds, unto the long ago!
And checks the sickening spirit's wayward glow,
And seems a smile of mockery round to throw;
While memory's pale and scattered leaves are driv'n
Across our onward path! and, sweet as heaven,
Pure spray-drops from the fountains of the past
Fall on the fountains of life's lengthening waste—
Making a melody all soft and wild;
While with those Marah-waves,—yet undefiled,—
They mix! then midst oblivion's keyless caves
Freeze, petrify, or waste—yet my heart craves
E'en their brief freshness! since denied must be
Hope's springs of jubilee and joyauncy!
But are they sealed indeed against me now?
While vainly throbs and aches this fevered brow?
Sweet Hopes! delay! shine yet beyond the strife—
Above the cold Asphaltes of my life!
As stars o'er graves and deserts. Part not yet—
(Since all the lights of life, save ye, are set!)
Part not!—Alas! ye're gone! bewild'ring dreams!
While yet I feel your faintly-visioned gleams
Now chillier than the moonlight glimpsing pale,
O'er freezing snows that gird some alpine vale.
Gone—gone! and, Parthian-like, they've turned and thrown
Keen arrows—that remain, though they have flown!
Like the Greek torch-race once seemed their career,
On! on! Joy's quenchless torch they flew to bear.
But let them go! O, there are promised joys,
Impenetrable unto time's alloys!
Joys that shall never fade, and never fly—
Meet for the children of eternity!
And, looking on those midnight heavens that spread
A wilderness of worlds above my head,
Well may my heart in those proud hopes exult,
And turn from dreams obscure, and thoughts occult,
To that resplendent—that soul-kindling blaze,
That soul-bewildering—that o'erpowering maze,
That everlasting and astounding page—
(Defying withering time, age after age!)
Where even the Holy Word seems stamped and streaming,
Through worlds—dread worlds on fire!—for ever beaming!
And charactered in light along the sky!
Ye stars! Probationers of the eternity!
Persistent in unbroken harmony!
Enlighteners and intelligencers meek,
That all but breathe and smile — that more than speak!
And thou, deep Moon!—thou spiritually intense—
Thou loveliest shadow of Omnipotence!
Ye do bring thoughts, and dreams, and hopes august,
To lift the weeping mourner from the dust!
The ambitious worldling from his tinselled toys—
The prodigal from his inglorious joys!
The sufferer from the dim shades of the tomb,
And even the sceptic from the depths of gloom!
Shine on, thou wond'rous Moon! prevailing shine—
A power—a task—a mystery is thine!
Thou seem'st too softly gentle to control
These night-flowers, whose rich breathings sweetly roll
On the faint breeze!—(all tremulously blushing!
The heavy atmosphere around them flushing!
Their coloured censers drooping towards the moss,
Which rays illuminate and dews emboss)—
Yet in thy fragile loveliness, calm Moon,
Thou hast sway as regal as the lord of noon!
O'er the deep world of waters thou dost reign,
Binding the tides in thy elastic chain.
Thou art their strength and trust—their life and soul,
And still beneath thy silvery sway they roll;
Thou art their crown and shield—their light and guide—
From Heaven thou rulest their infuriate pride!
O, that in my dark being set, some light
From heaven—to heaven would guide my course aright—
Ruling my soul's deep waters midst the rushing night!

THE RETURN.

SONG.

[Wouldst thou have this pale lip smile? but say]

THE SUNBEAM.

ON MUSIC.

No! nought beneath the sun is like to thee,
Music! Of our deep souls the master-key!
The passions kindled by thy sovereign might,
Like mountain-torrents freed, in strength and light
Stream on! and, deepened, purified, sublimed,
Like exhalations that towards heaven have climbed!
And in some spirit-crucible refined,
Seem the vast sumless treasures of the mind!
The feelings' glorious affluence, which too long
May have lain choked—suppressed by grief or wrong,
Then spreads around! by thee set free at once—
And thoughts, rich thoughts, awake in deep response!
When Night with her transcendent bird is reigning,
Thou art, each sense, each wandering thought enchaining;—
When Morning laughs in beauty, hark! oh, hark!
Upspringing to the heavens loud sings the lark—
That music of the sun which seems to be
Even like the sunrise-statue's melody,
Brought forth from his own beams! Then joy swells high,
In blameless daring to the beckoning sky!
Then young Enthusiasm, revelling wild,
Kindles his thousand altars undefiled;
And Hope, the awakener, rapturously springs
To the glad strength and freedom of his wings.
Music! there is no bound to thy deep sway!
Lo, on the combat's wild eventful day
The warriors' hearts leap to thy proud appeal,
And heave against the scarce-restraining steel.
Through all the battle thunders dread and fierce,
Thy sounds of billowy exultation pierce—
Thy notes have pierced, and ring triumphant out,
Through the' echoes of the charge—the crash— the shout!
E'en through the stun of the artillery
That shakes the dome of the retorting sky!
The earth-pawing charger, maddening for the war,
The regal music hears resounding far,
And lives redoubled life through every nerve;
Tossing his mane, shortening his neck's proud curve,
While through his nostrils rolls the haughty breath,
Thickening the sulphurous clouds whose rain is death!
And glares his eye, on fire with furious wrath,
And clangs his hoof along the echoing ground,
Which with a moment's earthquake heaves around;
The trumpet's ringing blast is in his ears—
The long, long roll of stormy drums he hears—
And still he plunges on his desperate way,
While toss the plumes around like ocean-spray—
The faulchions, like forked lightnings on the waters—
The waters! Ah! the crimsoning sea of slaughters!—
But let us turn to lovelier, happier scenes,
Where summer heavens shine soft, and the heart leans
To its more sweet, and dear, and calm emotions,
Smoothed as the surface of eve's breezeless oceans!
The maidens heap their stag-like heads with flowers,
And weave the graceful dance through shadowing bowers;
But one, the brightest of that radiant band,
Smote by thy viewless and victorious wand,
Droops her fair head upon a trembling hand.
Thou hast pierced through her spirit! hast stirred up
Thoughts that were lost in youth's o'erflowing cup,
Thoughts of an absent dear one, who had been
The day-spring glory of life's opening scene!
Now hath thy strong and inly-working spell
Compelled remembrance from its folded cell;
At those dear recollected tones she starts,
Those tones that wake but glee in lighter hearts,
And sighing o'er the name she once loved best,
Wooes tender memory to her softened breast;
Hope languishes along each dying fall,
And springs responsive to the sprightlier call;
While memory throws her moonlight-rainbows round
The brooding halcyon of the seas of sound!
But when upon the poet's thrilling sense,
Thou fling'st thy spell, imperious and intense,
O, who shall tell what bright creations start
Unto his throbbing brain and burning heart!
His soul by thee is searched, winged, dowered, inspired!
His keen imagination armed and fired,
Till floats before his dream-enchanted eyes,
Girt with all luminous mysteries of the skies,
The mirage of a phantasm universe.
Doth now his soul deliriously rehearse
Its long eternities—in one dread flight!—
One strong consuming burst!—one rush of might?
Its long eternities—constrained to sweep
Into that moment's dizzying vortex deep!
Doth now his mind—his vast untrammelled mind—
To space, time, earth, creation, unconfined—
Become the centre round which, thick converging,
Suns and their systems roll! while still emerging,
As from the' undreamed profundities of space
New suns, new systems, join the immortal race?
Doth his grand thought, of more than mortal power,
Seem, in the strength of that prevailing hour,
The very pivot round which eddying turn
Careering spheres that tremble while they burn?
The prism of all unfathomable hues!—
—Mirror, which but concentrates to diffuse!
The focus of unimaginable fires!
Load-star of all that, like itself, aspires!—
While still outstretched before his conquering gaze,
Worlds, myriad worlds, exulting sweep and blaze!
Absolved from all distemperatures and glooms—
(O! how unlike this world of tears and tombs!)
Crowned with luxuriance of celestial light,
Suffused with rainbow-colourings strangely bright,
Breathing all precious summer's breathings round—
O, but this dream of worlds hath neither bourne nor bound!—
Peopled with beings glorious as the sun,
When in the crimsoning east his reign's begun!
Seraphic aspects, full of heaven and peace,
Bright with unchanging bloom, and smiles that never cease!
But when the last, last echoes murmuring roll,
O'ershadowing consciousnesses blight his soul!
That mighty mind hath rushingly retracked
Its course, like a reverted cataract!
A disenchanted desert spreads around—
Once more he treads the paths of mortal ground;
He fain would grasp that passing, fading train,
The phantasm of the Unbounded! but in vain!
Yet during that proud respite, bright and brief,
From care and strife, from memory and grief—
That deep, that full transfiguration-trance
Of thoughts, whose sovereign predominance
O'er-canopied the unlimited expanse!—
How wondrously exalted, towered the soul
Of genius! stretching on towards some far-off goal!
How kindled was the o'erwrought imagination—
Strengthened to grasp the arcana of creation!
How gloriously surcharged the awakened mind,
By riches in its unveiled depths enshrined!
By flower, and leaf, and golden-fruited branch
Of the high tree of knowledge! Launch, O, launch
Thy mind's most royally-freighted argosy,
Free poet! on the immeasurable sea
Of shadowy speculation once again!
Call back the gorgeous throngs, the astounding train,
That haunted thee when music shook the air
With piercing rapture, too intense to bear!
Call back the glorying, rushing worlds of light,
That blazed so keenly on thy inner sight,
And chain them to thy proud triumphal car,
Which th' unleashed lightnings, and the fire-tressed star,
And th' eddying whirlwinds, shall bear wildly far!
Arrest the unbounded phantasms ever fleeing!
The unfathomable depths and gulphs of being
With an unfathomable beauty fill!
For, O, the Beautiful doth haunt thee still!
O, be thy deathless, thy o'erwhelming feelings,
Gathered in deathless strength to intense revealings!
O, be thine unextinguishable thought
With unextinguishable splendours fraught!
Thy dreams, that far through space have shot away
Into the unsufferable realms of day,
With an excess of glory overpowered!
O, with what dreams of heaven o'erwrought and dowered
The poet's mind shall sovereignly be
That dares to seize its birthrights and be free!
His hour of keen reflection is an hour
Girt with unknown, unutterable power!
Ah! though his themes may breathe through burning words,
Their heaven-born fire defies the lyre's frail chords!
His passion-haunted solitude is rife
Of marvels that seem teeming with deep life—
Of sceptered apparitions of the past,
Or shadowings of the future, faintly cast
Athwart his troubled spirit, faintly drawn,
Like the unreal mockery of the eastern dawn,
Ere yet the real dawn appears; but soon,
Touched by his thought, they wear the hues of noon!
His mind is lost 'midst its own wildering maze,
Dazzled by many a startling, dizzying blaze
Of phantasy too fervidly intense,
And veiled by its own dread magnificence!
His soul, o'erburthened by its own creations,
Breathless with quickening, thronging inspirations,
Mastered by visions that itself unveiled,
Enthralled by mysteries that its thought hath scaled,
Sinks into mighty stillness and repose,
While still the fount of inspiration flows;—
And still streams on with passionate persistance
Through that soul's multitudinous existence!
But loftier raptures yet the spirit await,
Which music, wondrous music, can create;
Nor in the grandly gifted mind alone,
But whereso'er the seeds of faith are sown,
When the organ's consecrated thunders swell
Till every echo seems an oracle!—
Midst the cathedral's massive-columned aisles,
Old costly shrines, and trophy-sculptured piles,
Where beats with raptured awe some lowly breast—
Ah! how its loftiest triumph is confessed!
While chorused hallelujahs burst profound,
As though a storm went by, and broke in sound,
The music of the heavens it seems to be!
Mighty to thunder-strike the immensity!
Mighty to raise the spirit from the tomb,
If 'twere, indeed, sepulchred midst its gloom!
Mighty to uplift the living soul from earth,
And pierce the shrouded secrets of its birth!
To make those trophied shrines, those sculptured stones,
Blaze like the threshold of the throne of thrones!
Most mighty when the listener there shall kneel
With heaven-touched heart that but aspires to feel!
Then, then what fervid breathings swell that heart—
What echoes from its depths responsive start!
Tempestuously—tempestuously they roll,
While glorying exultations shake his soul—
Triumphs, and mysteries, and wonders, seem
To haunt him, like the shadows of a dream;
And rushing hopes, and towering aspirations—
Raptures sublime, and breathless Adorations—
And winged Enthusiasms—pale as wo!
Starry Transcendencies, that dazzling glow—
And visioned Super-eminencies divine—
These make his swelling soul their living shrine!—
These have upon his deep-tranced thought descended—
These, with his full-rejoicing spirit blended,
Have compassed his existence! sunned his vision
With radiant glimpsings of the realms Elysian!
Thus—thus with loftiest raptures filled and fired,
The lowliest breast shall be, by faith inspired!—
With revelations of all marvels blessed,
The humblest heart shall be, by faith possessed!—
Rise!—thunderous hallelujahs! O ascend!
The hollow firmaments transpiercing rend!
Since ye can raise man's drooping soul above,
Winged on a thought-electrifying love!
Music! thou art a wondrous master-key
To the great soul and her infinity!
Ay, thou canst search the inner depths—the sealed—
The incommunicative—unrevealed!
Canst search, and stir them, too, with kindling strife,
With agony, or ecstasy of life:
Ah! e'en her depths of love—the undreamed, the unknown
Even to herself—are pierced by thee alone!
O! Music, thou'rt a thrice-charmed master-key
To the deep soul and her infinity!
Unbounded is thy wide-asserted power—
Thou crowdest ages in one passionate hour
Of love or triumph! thou canst bring the past
Even as a cloud upon a sweeping blast,
With all its rushing darkness—whence escapes
A fearful throng of shadowy phantom shapes—
Whence startlingly and breathlessly arise
Disturbing aspects, wan as twilight skies,
And beautiful—e'en to fear and painfulness!
The entombed! the lost! the loved, to all excess!
But O! what unimaginable sway
Must thine be, in the realms of boundless day!
Where through the spirit-depths thou sweepest free,
Thy language then no more a mystery—
Where universe to universe shall call,
Till all are bound in thy triumphant thrall!
Where echo may no more thy reign extend—
No echo there, where there shall be no end
To conquering harmony—for ever reigning!
Bright orb to orb — nay, heaven to heaven enchaining!
And spirit unto spirit!—there shalt thou
No longer through the obstructing senses plough
Thy lingering way; but, with the soul! the soul!
At once commingling, in full mastery roll!
All sound shall there take thy entrancing tone,
And silvery silence yield to thee alone!
There shalt thou in thy jubilant career,
Ne'er meet the passions that thou kindlest here.
The dark conflicting passions that awake
Beneath thy pure, pure spell, and dare to slake
At thy rich fountains their unholy thirst—
At thy rich fountains, that untainted burst—
Breathing of too profound, intense a bliss
To be sustained in such a life as this!

SOON, SOON SHALL MY TOILING BARK.

THE SEA-SHORE.

THE WINTER ROSE.

SONG OF THE ECHOES.

FIRST ECHO.

SECOND ECHO.

THIRD ECHO.

FOURTH ECHO.

FIFTH ECHO.

FAREWELL.

AN OLD HAUNT.

It was a dreamy haunt! And, O, the times,
In spring's young hours and summer's roseate primes,
That I have wandered there, in hope and joy,
In thoughtless idlesse—peace, without alloy!
But now a breeze of change hath o'er it blown,—
Ah! 'tis the shadows of the heart are thrown
Along its changeless beauty—still the same
As when that heart deemed sorrow but a name!
Thou lark! thou'rt soaring, singing, as of old,
Rejoicing ever with delight untold,
And hanging on the morning's cloudless brow,
Like a bright quivering forehead-jewel now!
I almost marvel in so dear a spot
The paradise of sky is not forgot!
Ah! midst those isles of cloud, can'st thou ere find
A happier home than that thou leavest behind?
Ye winds, that leave no hidden nook unsearched—
That play in scorn where eagles never perched
Nor pierced!—that rifle, in your mirth,
All the green treasure-holds of laughing earth;
Say—have ye e'er o'erswept a lovelier scene,
Or on a track more full of beauty been?
And clouds! ye star associates! declare,
Have ye e'er visited a haunt so fair?—
Hath e'er the all-viewing sun himself descried
A sweeter, midst his subject-regions wide?
Hath ever night a heavenlier spot o'erpowered,
Midst leafy glooms embosomed and embowered?
How fitly—when no sound its stillness mars,
Glassed over by the dewy light of stars,
Sweet isle! as 'mongst the sea-like woods, thou art
Of refuge and repose to this worn heart.
Green bowery shrine! at which the sad might kneel,
Forgetting how to mourn—but, ah! not how to feel!

LINES TO A BOWER.

MY HOPE.

THE SEASON COMES.

NIGHT.

A thousand thousand worlds break forth in light,
Till the mid-heavens seem streaming on our sight—
More—more than the mid-heavens—there seems to dwell,
Deep midst their splendours inaccessible,
A presence and a power!—divine!—supreme!
And yet—not so—'tis but a cheating dream!
'Tis but the shadow of a presence there,
Reflected back from the out-stretched soul! They bear,
Even in the might of their refulgent hour,
But the dread impress of invisible power.
Beautiful, Night, thou art! High mysteries breathe
Through all thy conquering silence—deep as death;
High mysteries that seem portion still and part
Of the high nature throbbing through the heart!
Thy sky seems wearing, midst its depths of blue,
The intense transparence of the sapphire's hue!
The piercing sweetness of Eolian sighs,
The burning darkness of the hyacinth's dyes,
Dwells on thy thrilling air! while whisperings low
Fitfully through thine awful regions flow!
Not now art thou by tempests lashed and tossed,
But in thine own unbounded beauty lost!
O, how unbounded! Not a breath—a ray,
But floats through starry endlessness away!
I've watched thee, when along the shaken shores
Thy haughty presence like a deluge pours!
When kingly storms met ye with furious force,
And savage winds raved hurriedly and hoarse—
When with the hollow-dashing breakers' din
The gathered surge, the hissing surf chimed in,
And the fierce waters leaped and roared around,
As scorning every chain, and every bound!
When the deep heaved and rushed, as though 'twould rock,
With every thundering burst and conquering shock,
The mighty heavens themselves on its dread waves—
Those shadowy, incommunicative graves
Of countless thousands, whose strewn ashes stir
Within their loud and jubilant sepulchre!—
But now, the lovely difference!—'tis an hour
When thoughts—dreams—prayers, assert a sevenfold power,
The stars, like pageant-visions, float and gleam,
And seem to bear on every quivering beam
A load of life-like beauty—a rich store
Of strange, magnificently-wondrous lore!
As from each ray, all tremulously gleaming,
The poetry of eternity was streaming!
Pressing our souls, a weight of breathless light
Comes silent down, unfathomably bright!
Still there pass breezy whispers through the air,
So sweet—so faint—as dying love were there;
Till memory—passion—conscience, swell the tone,
And trumpet-like peals each mysterious moan.
O, 'tis a strong hour this!—the mind soars high,
To which the winds are laggards in the sky.
The all-o'ersweeping mind that rends its way
Beyond the chartered bounds of night and day!
Through the awed soul, heaven—heaven now seems to rush,
Yet not consumed, as sank the burning bush
Of old, but hallowed, chastened, glorified,
And melted from its pinnacle of pride!—
That soul, in rapt communion filled and fired,
Is thrillingly awakened and inspired!
Still, still the old religious night o'erpowers
With holiest thoughts the dark stream of her hours,
As she would fain man's questioning spirit draw
O'er her abyss of beauty and of awe.
But, O, dread, fearful being that thou art!
Man of the dark unfathomable heart,
How often dost thou turn in scorn away,
Impatient of thy better nature's sway!
Thou'st pierced the secrets, wonderful and old,
Of nature, and her chasmy page unrolled;
Sounded creation's depths,—thy own strong will
The agent of thy grand achievements still!
But what, save Heaven's omnipotence, can sound
Thy spirit's sea of darkening depths profound?
Yet, through thy vast existence there is nought
So fearfully distracting to the thought
As thy soul's deadness to its own true life—
Its strenuous eagerness in each vain strife
For earth's vain triumphs! its harsh disrespect
Of heavenly things! Alas, its cold neglect!
Are nature's threatenings—teachings—promptings, vain?
Still hopelessly beleaguering heart and brain!
Shall narrow self be ignobly opposed
To worlds developed and to heavens disclosed?
Shall nought, or touch, or pierce that stony heart,
In dreadful independence reared apart?
Shall nought arouse, convince that slumbering mind,
In the uncommunicativeness enshrined
Of self-sufficing, deaf, and reckless pride,
With all presumption's impious host allied!—
Must all be vain?—the unutterable all
Which should the stubbornest thought enchain—enthrall!
The Eternity's sublime attesting signs—
The Immensity's ten thousand thousand shrines,
Setting all space on fire! Those worlds whose strife
Harmonious, floods the firmaments with life!
Nature's most rich revealings! pure and high,
And blazoned forth through the earth, and air, and sky!
While, O, through worlds and wastes of worlds, through space,
Through all—that all extension doth embrace!
The heights, the depths, the expanses, and the abysses,
The ocean-gulphs, and chaos-wildernesses!—
Through calm and storm, the earth-wakening thundercrash!
The arrowy terrors of the lightning's flash!—
Through morning's rich luxuriance of delight—
Through midnight-heavens—through all the crush of night!—
Through every moment of out-meted time,
Which strikes its own death-knell in every chime!
(Time! that still flies!—that hath for ever fled!
As from that awful contact, deep and dread)—
Through every element that hath confessed
The unerring laws, fulfilled the imposed behest—
Through every sun that takes its glorying way,
Scattering profuse magnificence of day—
Through every beam that star or sun emits—
Through all the infinite of infinites—
The Godhead breathes! the eternal Godhead streams!
The Almighty presence pours! and clouds, and beams—
Thunders and lightnings—noon and midnight, still
Beneath the burthening Omnipresence thrill!
Omnipotence—Omnipotence proclaims
Itself through all!—O! shame of burning shames!
Shall we, in obdurate pride, refuse to hear
The Almighty voice, that thrills each echoing sphere?—
Thundering through long-resounding worlds on high,
Till all are love, and strength, and harmony—
Thundering, to melt away from those proud thrones,
Into the murmurous hush of tenderest tones—
Sunk to that still small voice, whose whisperings low,
Poured in faint cadence, tremulously flow,
When through the human breast its breath is stealing,
Tenderly—nay—imploringly appealing!
As if thus softened from a pitying fear
Of startling man's awed soul!—and shall that soul not hear?
And shall the love of Heaven, a wounded love
For ever be? The Heaven of Heavens above
Opened their dazzling gates of glory wide,
(While wonder-stricken angels turned aside,
Bowed with amazement!) for the atoner's train!
His train! Ah! he who doth omnific reign
O'er worlds by myriads, on the eternal throne,
Went forth—to grief, scorn, anguish, death—alone!
And vain! all vain! That more than mightiest love
Streamed through the astonished Heaven of Heavens above,
But to be lost in man's disdainlful heart—
That doth not shrink nor quail—that doth not start!
Untouched by all that should to each pierced thought
Bring adoration, even to anguish wrought!
Alas! shall no compunctious pang be brought—
Alas! shall no spark from the Almighty Sun
Kindle the soul from doom and darkness won?
No gracious breathings of the Almighty Dove—
Whose breathings all are mercy, pardon, love—
Melt the stern spirit from its hardened pride,—
Nor from the paths of sin triumphant guide?
Must there be truth in such abhorrent tale?
O, stars! ere ye're absolved, wane, dim and pale—
To undiscoverable depths retire!
Turn from this guilt-stained earth your looks of fire,
Or, in o'erwhelming mountainous, conspiring,
Rend through the scattered elements expiring
Your dread avenging path! Expel—efface
The world of death from the abyss of space!
Your glory, indestructible—divine,
Withdraw from this contaminated shrine!
Your harmony, multitudinous and deep,
Waste not upon this cold world's deafened sleep!
Leave the bared midnight heavens like some rent scroll,
In dread similitude of man's dimmed soul!—
Even to the blackness of their darkness dire.—
Vainly they've rolled their breathless seas of fire!
Vainly, o'er-charactered with truths sublime,
Given their bright banners to the storm of time!
O, vainly have they wielded, night on night,
Worlds linked with worlds—spheres joined with spheres of light—
Stupendous chain-shot, 'gainst man's stubborn brain,
In luxury of endeavour, vain—all vain!
Let it not be—at least one heart awake!
Let mine its clayey trammels from it shake!
Let life be love!—even love that never dies,
Borne o'er earth's glooms, temptations, agonies!
(As the sea-eagle o'er the sweeping main,
That soars beyond the reach of speck or stain,)
To where the passion-tempests cease from strife,
And all is bound in full deep burning life!—
Beautiful, Night, thou art!—most beautiful
When thy adoring stillness seems to lull
The spirit! yet but breathes intenser power
Through every thought, born in thy solemn hour!
O, 'tis a draught of passionate repose,
That from thy unsealed fountains deeply flows
Into that fevered spirit—freshening all
Its fainting powers, that hallowed dew doth fall!
The soul is haunted by transcendant dreams—
Unlanguageable hopes! quick spirit-gleams,
That scarce may seem its own, but sent in love
From the most glorious of the worlds above—
Precipitated rays, concentred bright
Into one sun of deep-embosomed light!
No wishes wild the imagination forms,
Heaving with billowy might, like prisoned storms!
No cold regrets round memory's altars cling,
Making them dim sepulchral urns! Each spring
Of feeling trembles into joy! O, Night!
Even now I bless thy solemnizing might—
Even fancies free, that wildly gushed of yore
Their bright meanderings labyrinthine o'er,
Have sunk into one deep and silent stream—
Calm confluence of many a wandering dream!
Beautiful, Night, thou art! thy pomp of gloom
Is richer than the day-spring's living bloom!
Majesty is thy awful soul! thy breath
Is strong as storm, and deep as deepest death!
Beautiful, Night, thou art! no leaf—no flower,
But wins from thee a trebly-precious dower,
To charm—to soothe the o'erwrought unquiet feelings
To administer the calm of tenderest healings,
E'en to the wounded spirit, though its wo
Be of that sort which doth in silence flow!
Beautiful art thou! on the mountains' heights,
Which seem to mingle with thy deathless lights!
Beautiful on the breezy purple sea,
Which only bends, and only yields to thee!
And midst the forest's verdurous solitudes,
Th'unroofed cathedrals of the solemn woods!
And o'er the palm-crowned desert's loneliest breast,
Or wide savannahs of the mighty west!
And now to me—too beautiful thou appearest—
Too deep, too dread a loveliness thou wearest!
My dreams are girt by shadows too profound,
And round my heart too many chains are wound!
Quick tears are swelling in mine upraised eyes—
All vainly questioning thy untroubled skies,
Of things that still must be—thy mysteries!
Vain yearnings start within my trembling soul!
Ye stars! that in immortal triumph roll,
Bear me to peace away! Night, let me part!
Invulnerably beautiful that thou art,
Close not around my spirit—fain 'twould rise
In free upspringings through thy trackless skies!

WHEN THE EARTH'S OVERSHADOWED.

THE BLIGHTED ROSE.

I WEEP THE HOUR.

THE CONSOLATIONS OF NATURE.

OSMAN TO ZELIDA.

THE STARRY SKIES.

Ye flaming watch-towers of the solemn skies—
Ye haughty, unabsconding mysteries!
Manifestations beautiful and pure,
—Bearing a dread and awful signature!—
Of mightiest Truths that shall for aye endure!
How gloriously unfolds each world above!
Ministrant of sweet terror, deepest love
And joy, but solemn joy, unto the heart,
Which, 'neath those radiant inquisitions, well may start,
With conscious horror at its load of sin,
From those rich worlds without to worlds within—
Of cloud and gloom, all tremulously turning:
O, that those inner worlds were deeply burning
With fervid purities as richly fraught!
O, that such rays streamed round each wakening thought!
Stars! in all pomp, all beauteous pomp arrayed,
Regalia of the universe displayed!
Stars! glorying in your harmony sublime—
Dazzling chronometers of missioned time;
Burning with adoration's dread excess—
Ruffled as by o'erpowering happiness!
Ethereal principalities—crowned powers—
With empire girt—enriched with sovereign dowers!
How ye inflame the conscious mind that feels
The o'erwhelming truths your startling pomp reveals!
Your's is a light that smites, but doth not blind,
Ye gracious Mediators of the Mind!—
Which, taught by ye, may dare at last to raise
To loftier wonders its triumphant gaze—
Wonders—to thunderstrike the soul with dread,
If unprepared and unpremonished!
Ye mighty fountains of unfathomed fire,
That ever blaze, and quicken, and aspire!
Ye unexhausted, unimpoverished mines—
Magnificently glorious thrones and shrines!
O, unextinguishably beauteous lights,
Girt with sweet powers to brunt all years and blights—
All times—all seasons! Ever pure and high,—
Breathing around your immortality!
How doth the spirit spurn its bonds of clay
Beneath your calm regenerative sway!
How glorious are ye to our soul and sight!
Your lovely strength exerted o'er the night
All unlaboriously—your splendours deep
Showered round, like gleams 'mid phantom-haunted sleep!
Ye paragons of glory undefiled—
Marvels on marvels crowded, heaped, and piled;
Familiarities, miraculously strange—
Imperishable challengers of change!
Ye voiceless champions of eternity—
Great commonwealth of worlds that throng the sky!
Would that your majesty of calm repose
Were glassed upon this world of stormy woes!
Enduring and exulting orbs! proud arks
For soaring spirits—pure electric sparks,
That quicken into beauty all the vast,
The unsounded deep of heaven! the effulgent waste!
Ye shall not faulter in your task, nor fail,
Nor wavering burn, nor languish dim and pale!
Ever persistent intimations ye,
Of bliss and glory and futurity—
Of boundless power—unmeasured might above—
Unfluctuating, unfathomable love!
For love, through all creation's vast expanse,
Breathes out in manifest predominance!
Then shine! like wakeful guardian-seraphs, shine!
The heart to inspire, to exalt, and to refine!
Blaze, then, like quenchless watch-fires, ever blaze.
The soul to awake, to animate, to raise!
Of the most infinite sea, ye gorgeous shells—
Mute monitors—unbreathing oracles,
From our stupendous nature calling out
Rich melodies of hope, unchecked by doubt—
For who can doubt, when truth is writ in light
Ineffably, unutterably bright?
For who can doubt when blazing worlds proclaim
The great reality in storms of flame?
And nobly ye proclaim it to the sense
And soul in dizzying magnificence!
Ye! whom no stain, no blight, no shadow mars,
Unborn, undying, immemorial stars!
Calm zealots!—bright incomprehensibles!—
Explicit mysteries!—luminous signs and spells!—
Placid dictators of the solemn skies—
Unboastful, pure infallibilities!
Beauteous predominancies! thrones of light!
Heaven's glorying super-eminencies bright!
Ye are indeed the very prisms and mirrors
Of the endless universe! Ye radiant terrors
Unveiled, but all unfathomable still!
O, weak is science—vain is human skill,
To trace your wonders! In your skyey home,
Far from the enfolding shadows of the tomb,
Perchance our strengthened thought and unsheathed glance
May fathom and transpierce you! There perchance
We may unravel and develope all
Your mystery, awful and majestical!
But now our minds bewilderingly conceive,
And even in triumph painfully perceive!—
And strenuously, laboriously must learn,
Feebly discover, arduously discern,
That little which may only guide us wrong!
O, wiser, wiser is the seraph's song
Than all the cherubs' dread and awful lore!
'Tis grand to know, 'tis heavenly to adore!
O, let us wing our souls with holy love,
If we indeed would strongly soar above!
Roll on, proud hierarchs of the midnight heaven,
To you a thousand thousand spells are given;
And gazing, pondering on your maze and plan,
Glorious compeers of this dim world of man!
The very soul seems bowed—enthralled—transfixed,
With exultation and despondence mixed!—
Despondence that its home should still be far,
And exultation that beyond each star,
Each sun that paves the immeasurable abyss,
That home awaits it, midst the worlds of bliss!
Well may it cherish, e'en thus cooped in clay,
A reverential hope, which not astray
Shall lead the inspired heart! No! on the track
Of deathless truth—on pinions never slack,
It shall ascend e'en eagle-like on high,
To bathe in all the fountains of the sky!

WISHES.

SONG.

[Tell me, hath thy young heart ne'er yearned]

TO ------, ON HER MARRIAGE.

With snow-white marriage-wreaths I saw thee crowned,
Gentlest and sweetest being! while around
Stood the beloved ones of thy rosy years,
With cloud-o'ershadowed smiles, and rainbow-brightened tears!
Thy lovely glance, bright, feverishly bright,
Seemed shrinking from their looks, and from the light—
Thy rose-leaf lip was tremulously quivering,
Like sunbeams on a rocking billow shivering;
Thy step was like a startled fawn's upspringing,
Remembrances of thy glad childhood bringing
To us, who loved thee in those days departed,
Who still must love thee, true and changless-hearted!
And once again that deep scene seems to rise,
And thou, with thy sweet mien and tearful eyes—
Thou! our own lovely one! and must thou part?
Be it in cloudless trustingness of heart!
Thou wert beloved—thou art beloved—and still
May thy young days be screened from grief and ill!
Be love the incense-perfumed torch, whose light
Shall ever guide thy gentle footsteps right—
Be love the thrice-charmed mantle that shall fold
That graceful form of pure and lofty mould!
Thou weepest—Nature triumphs at thy heart—
Thou weepest, blessed and blessing as thou art!
O! be those tears, like spring-showers gushing fast,
Like spring-showers, brief and brilliant—be the last
Those innocent eyes may ever have to shed!
Lift up, lift up that thoughtful-drooping head;
Thou'rt but by fond familiar faces bound,
By thine own kindred band girt meetly round—
Affectionate hearts beat near thee, and the air
Is thrilled for thee by many a whispered prayer!
But now 'tis past! thy breeze-like tones and faint
Have melted from the ear! the lone dove's plaint
Less tender, sweet, and spiritually soft!
Yet missioned airs to heaven those tones shall waft!
But now 'tis past! those solemn vows are breathed—
'Tis o'er! and, O, the marriage-flower-crowns wreathed
Amidst those gleamy tresses waving bright,
That shining fall with play of changeful light,
Shall lightly sit upon thy lovely brow,
(And, O, less stainless and less pure than thou),
Their tenderest leaves, by young affection's dews,
Nursed in the earliest freshness of their hues!
May those soft tones, lately so faltering-low,
With sudden laughter joyously o'erflow!
O, may thy fawn-like step, the gayest, fleetest,
That ever, when young life and hope are sweetest,
Pressed down spring's greensward-violets, till their scent
Loaded the air with slumbrous languishment—
O, may that fawn-like step, now slow and shrinking
(As thou on solemn themes wert deeply thinking),
Once more be winged by breathless, thoughtless joy,
Too light to droop, too exquisite to cloy—
That deep-flushed lip forget its tremulous quiver,
Undimmed by spray-drops from life's dark-stained river;
But may thy heart in changeless tenour move,
As thrillingly alive to joy and love;
For joy shines midst the trouble of thy mind,
Like some rich jewel 'mongst dim waves enshrined—
Some beauteous star midst curtaining mists enshrouded,
That yet shall beam untroubled and unclouded!
—I saw thee with thy marriage-crown in youth
Stand lovely in thy heart's confiding truth!
And when long years, long years, have circled by,
O, may that eloquent and gentle eye
Shine but with graver, tenderer constancy!
May that unclouded forehead, smooth and fair,
Its marriage-crown of light unwrinkled wear—
That marriage-crown, of deathless roses braided,
Shall, when life's scattered roses all lie faded,
Shine forth more deeply, exquisitely bright,
Only in heaven to win sublimer light!

FAME.

Fame! sunlike shadow! lightning-winged breath!
Vain atmosphere of meteors! haloing death!
Thou lovely image of unreal good,
Bubble on life's unfathomable flood!
Thou'rt but a dazzling phantasm in the eyes
Of earth's self-crowned infallibilities!
Life, love, hope, happiness to thee are vowed,
Thou fleeting ray, thou bright but vapoury cloud!
Thou most capricious of all things that be—
Illusive dream of immortality!
How many reap rich harvest of the bays
For whom no lights of inspiration blaze!
How many who deserve, but not desire,
To wear that crown of inly-smouldering fire!
How many who have toiled through lengthened years
To win no meed save disappointment's tears!—
But when, undreamed-of and unsought-for, Fame!
Thou'st showered thy splendours on their blazoned name—
Like that lone, lovely Abyssinian tree
Which, all uncourted, unexpectedly
Lowers her rich branches o'er those wanderers' brows
Who pass beneath her fragrance-breathing boughs—
Thus, thus, thou clasp'st within thy dazzling thrall
Those who forget thee—vainly prodigal!—
And, O! the noblest gift thou canst bestow,
How vain to assuage one pang of human wo!
How vain to exalt one joy that thrills the heart
From all the unmeaning din of life apart!
The heart! O, vain is there thy mightiest sway,
Thy kingly triumphs, and thy pæan-lay!
Thy cup, whose burning draught can yield to those
Who quaff it, all save joy and blest repose!
Yet my weak heart hath coveted in vain
Thy crown unheavenly, thy unlasting gain!
Still fervidly it ever hath aspired,
More than for vain renown, to be inspired!
Quickeningly, thrillingly, inspired and filled
With purpose high, through every pulse instilled!
For well it knows, O Fame! thou'rt but a lure—
A treacherous path to tread, and insecure!
Like the Mahometans' traditioned bridge,
Keen as a scimitar's thrice-burnished edge,
Fine as a slight aerial-textured thread,
O'er the abyss of yawning ruin led!
Even so, thy wavering, slight, frail bridge of breath
Spans a dread gulf of darkness and of death!
Oblivion's drear annihilation lowers
Beneath; above, the amaranthine bowers
Shine fadeless, but far off—thou ne'er hast led
To them—track of the crowned and mighty dead!
Alas! the Al Sirat Arch, once crossed and passed,
Led to a happy Paradise at last!

ELEGY.

THE STARS.

LINES WRITTEN IN DERBYSHIRE.

SONG.

[So hath it ended, and for ever]

EVENING.

'Twas evening, and a lovely and a lulling evening 'twas—
Soft, slumbrous murmurs lightly ran through the wavy shadowy grass—
Bright birds were homewards flitting, scattering songnotes faint and few,
And heavy grew the soft warm air, all redolent of dew—
Sweet dew! that mantled and arrayed all things in quivering splendour!
Sweet dew! that made the violet-leaves their richest scents surrender!
The lengthening shadows slanted from the mountain's flowery side—
The half-veiled landscape with a depth of dreamy hues was dyed!
Ah! 'twas such season and such scene as silently compels
Long-unremembered feelings from their sealed and shrouded cells—
Inducing a luxuriant calm—a solemn mood and high,
While melancholy's thousand chords are attuned to harmony!
A mood from which no wanderer-thought, in feathery bondage held,
Would wish to escape, though prisoned there, and softened down, and quelled!
O, 'tis a tender bondage this, as light—as soft as sleep!
Sleep—that, like summer's purple heaven, doth all in beauty steep—
Sleep! O, that most familiar—that most 'wildering miracle,
When all the music of the soul lies locked within its shell!
Yet e'en more wondrously divine, and more rich and glorious seems
A waking world of phantasies and ever-changeful dreams—
A waking world of visions, spread before the uncurtained eyes!
As in such sweet aërial mood unsought—undreamed of—rise!
That mood which, like the dove, doth all unwearied evermore
Brood on itself!—or like the wave o'er its unseen pearly store:
Words never may its mysteries high—its sweet discrepancies unfold—
O, in this world are feelings old, unlanguaged, and untold!
Though they by thousands have been felt, by tens of thousands known—
Silence still overpowers them from her wide and viewless throne!
Thus this blest mood — of sadness rich, and of influence pure and fine—
(How all wild and dark emotions in its hallowed sphere decline!)
Language may never breathe away the mists that wrap it round!
'Twould shrink from the aëry thrall of words—the silvery touch of sound!
Calmer the spirit seems to lie than some many-imaged lake,
When no breeze may crisp its crystal-depths, its azure mirror break!
O, 'tis a reconciling charm—a mediatorial spell—
The trouble of our worldly griefs and our worldly joys to quell!

THE AWAKENING.

IT SHOULD NOT BE, AND SHALL NOT.

ON A TOMB.

Thou solemn, sainted, lone, and lovely spot,
Where all but immortality's forgot!
My worn heart hails thee with no shrinking sigh,
For many-featured death in majesty
Of calm, heaven-breathing peace seems here to rest,
Tempting the long-tried and the long-tired breast!
Is it the eternal real that doth assert,
Barred from the world, its empire o'er the heart?
While touched by Death's wand earth's dark trials take
Their proper shade and shape, and stir and wake
The immortal in the heart! the heart which mourns,
Yet mourning, still disdains its griefs! and burns
For other worlds than this of vain regrets,
Of Heavens that thunder, and a Sun that sets,
Of rainbows still unreached, spring-flowers arrayed
In dazzling glory but to droop and fade!
Of glorious harmonies that float away,
And all things beautiful that cannot stay—
Of meteors bright that sparkle but to fly,
Of love, deep love! that only smiles to die!
O, but it is! it infinitely is!—
Death's world of shadows casts eclipse o'er this—
Only, like night, ten thousand worlds to unfold—
To shew creation's glorious page unrolled!
Ah! 'tis even so!—avaunt, all idle fear!
The true—the real, is developed here!
O, but it is! it infinitely is!—
Life hath her thousand tones of bale, of bliss,
Solemn, or jubilant, or piercing sweet,
And the heart's thousand echo-cells repeat
Those changeful breathings! Life's rich voices still
With every varying modulation thrill!
Ay, life hath language fervid and intense!
Death—silence! vague, stupendous eloquence!
And well it is with us if we perceive
Its mighty drift, and fittingly receive!
How awful is that deep, that breathless hush!—
Our trembling spirits crowd, and heave, and rush,
To fill up the dread pause, which seems to press
The future through the soul! that breathlessness
Which holds suspended every pulse of life,
In midst of all its stormy play and strife!
It is—is infinitely! Death! stern Death!
Thy language, soaring high o'er sound and breath,
Outpierces far all music of the earth!
All golden melodies we've loved from birth,
Whether the murmured sweetnesses that dwell
In the deep lyre, the poet's chorded shell,
Or passionately glad the wild bird's note,
Which winged with happiness through heaven doth float,
Like our unsheathed, upspringing thoughts, when glow
Those chainless thoughts in quick and starry flow.
Yes! thou hast whispers soft, like sounds in dreams,
Or haunting murmurs of faint far-off streams,
Still to detach from earth, to draw, to wean
The soul from every sublunary scene!
Lo! when a mighty warrior's tomb is crowned
With sculptured pomps, and banners sweeping round,
With helm and shield and high armorial crest,
(Ah! can they soothe that stern and marble rest?)—
With lengthened scrolls and proud emblazonries,
That bid his memory crowned with triumph rise,
(Ah! can they lift his spirit to the skies?)—
When a dead monarch's burial-thunders peal,
Teaching us ermine's vulnerable as steel!
Or humbler clay to clay consigned demands
Our kindred care, since bound in brethren-bands,
In sheaves of brotherhood, are all mankind,
By Heaven's own hand!—what hand shall then unbind?
—Or all we love unpityingly departs,
Leaving us to the silence of our hearts,
Bequeathing us a burdening weight of care,
And ever-yearning souls, scarce stilled by prayer;—
Thou still arraignest every inmost thought,
Thou still dost teach, as thou hast ever taught,
The present's nothingness, the future's weight—
The arrowy swiftness of our mortal date.
Thou still hast tones too deep and too distinct,
Wherewith our spirit-breathings all are linked
Unbrokenly! till the earth with echo-cells
Of the far heavens is sown, in scented bells
Of spring's first flowers, still lurking; and in leaves
Of beauty, rustling round our household eaves—
—The thousand-tendrilled ivy, or the vine,
Purpling the hills where southern suns outshine;—
And midst the light or thunder-burthened clouds
That hide the sky with their beleaguering crowds,
Or with sweet murmurings of the lapsing rill,
Or sounds that float along the breezy hill;—
And with low sighings of the wandering breeze,
And tremblings running through the whispering trees,
With shells from jewel-fretted grots uptorn,
That blush beneath the wave like the red morn,
And melt in melody for evermore,
Like links of lovely sounds from shore to shore!—
Mournfully still awakening! still abounding,—
Commingling, or conflicting!—still resounding!
Ay, with all music of the flower or tree,
All music of the earth or of the sea—
Still, still those tones are mingling, faint, more faint
Than sigh of reeds, or night-winds' shivery plaint;
But yet, however faint, however low,
With every language, sound, or breath below,
Commingling or conflicting!—with sad power
O'erwhelming us from thy absconding hour!
O Death! strong Death! still wheresoe'er we tread,
By thee we're chasteningly admonished!
Boundless thine influence is o'er this frail world—
This bridge, whence thousands momently are hurled,
Even as by viewless winds! far, far away
From the blue warm dominions of the day!
Far, far away! to regions where even thought
May follow not!—to realms begirt and fraught
With mysteries unimaginably deep,
Unreached by fancy, and unglimpsed in sleep!—
Realms where the piercing winds ne'er shaped their flight—
Where never rolled the o'ersweeping tide of night;
Where the swift-rushing morning never flew,
Her dewy crowns o'er vale and mount to strew!
But from those realms full many a token strange
Thou'st sent, O, Death, unto this world of change!
Full many a sign we sorrowingly descry,
Where'er we turn a contemplative eye!
Midst every earth-born wreath we sadly find
Thy shadowy, cold night-blowing flowers entwined!
Thou writ'st mysteriously, o'er sun and sea—
Lands vintage-crowned, where summers loveliest be—
Deserts where ancient Silence sternly broods,
And ever-rocking forest solitudes!—
O'er capitals of old regality—
O'er all the beautiful beneath the sky!—
Even o'er bright aspects in the light of youth,
Lovely and radiant as the sunny south,—
Mysteriously thou'st charactered even there
Thy mournful truths—thou that ne'er deigned to spare!
Boundless thine influence is, strong Death, and deep,
Thou viewless and unknown! whose shadowy keep
Encloseth all earth e'er hath loved or feared—
All man hath scorned, despised, admired, revered!
Boundless thine influence and thy conquering thrall!
And, O! beneath thy shadow the' endless All,
The infinite, seems hid! the unknown, untried,—
The impervious secrets to our grasp denied—
The mysteries none may ever dream or tell—
The vague—the dread—the incomprehensible!—
For which the human heart still pants and aches,
Even whilst for human griefs it bleeds and breaks!
And the unquenched soul, whose conquest-heightened thirst
Rages unslaked—the sould that fain would burst
From every fetter, every cloud, away,
And seize its proud inheritance of day!—
The soul that seeks and strives for evermore—
That rushes on—a sea without a shore!
Uncalmed, insatiable—though it possess
Treasures of knowledge, still to happiness
Uncoined! Though, all victoriously swelling,
Fountains of genius in its wastes are welling;
And in its strongholds, ne'er by eye explored,
Harvests of wisdom—pure and priceless hoard!—
Are proudly heaped, and richly piled and gathered,
Strengthening its glorious energies, when withered
By time or grief, or sharp corroding care,—
(Which, like the ever-falling drop, doth wear
The strongest and the mightiest mind at length,
Making a very mockery of its strength.)
Though in its awful depths, enshrined, amassed,
Marvels and mysteries dwell! though deeply glassed
Within those mighty boundless depths may be
The o'erpowering wonders of eternity!
Still, still that haughty soul shall know not rest,
But ever rush upon its endless quest!
Still, still for the unattainable, the unknown,
It yearns!—Power, Grandeur, Knowledge, Bliss, Renown,
Can never fill that aching void profound—
Which nought can search nor reach—which nought can sound!
Still, most sublime to its strong passion seems
The vague stupendousness of shadowy dreams,
That haunt unceasingly the aspiring thought—
The soul, inflamed, concentrated, o'erwrought—
Ambitious for the impossible! In vain
It doth extend its space-o'ermastering reign—
In vain it triumphs in victorious might,
Careering, like the wind, on its free flight;
In vain it clasps, weighs, interpenetrates
All worlds!—all universes!—and creates
More wonders than it conquers! still, afar,
A beckoning mystery lures from sun and star—
Still wild ambition aims beyond—above—
Triumph of triumphs! could it melt in love!
Death! I have wandered far and long away
From thy deep themes, thy purifying sway—
The calm pervading thy untrodden haunts;—
But now once more my wearied spirit pants
For full repose! Pale Angel of the Grave,
O, let it turn to thee! fain, fain 'twould crave
Thy deep immeasurable quiet now;
So softly reared thy visionary brow
Appears—so cloudlessly thy form's impressed
On all around, in traits of beauty dressed—
In tenderest hues and loveliest flowers arrayed,
Forming a paradise of this sweet shade!
Pale Paradise of shadows and of thee—
Oasis-isle of immortality!
O! the heart almost doubts thee—thou'rt too much
Like happiness that shrinks from every touch!
The heart, so oft betrayed, so oft deceived—
So oft of its most cherished hopes bereaved—
Doth almost doubt thee—as its fears doubt all
That proffereth honey-dews instead of gall!
Thou seem'st, for even imagination's grasp,
Too mighty, and too vast. We fain would clasp
Thy phantom form of beauty—wan, but fair—
We clasp, and gaze, and, lo! thou art not there!
Thou seem'st, with all thy crowning mystery deep—
Like visions shadowed forth in feverish sleep—
Alas! to melt away—to float—to flee
From the ardent gaze—too beautiful to be!
Too, too much to be wished for, to be won! too rife
Of uttermost blessedness from this bleak life
Estranged, to be on earth achieved or gained;
Or, in thine hour of conquering might sustained,
Too precious, too inestimably dear—
Thou spring of victory! to be tasted here;
Too wondrous and too glorious to be true,
(For immortality hath still wrought through
Thy dusky veil of clouds, revealing bright
The intense transcendence of undying light);
Or to be aught save a deceptive vision,
Flushing the atmosphere with glows Elysian—
Too promising on this earth to be proved
A universe of love to the unloved!—
And, O! to those, the blessed on earth—to those
Who on the trusted answering heart repose,
Love, endless love, without change, bound, or shade—
Perfect as undestructible!—arrayed
In panoply of glorying strength, and girt
With charmed powers all ills, all harms to avert!
And now in thine own hallowed haunts I feel
Thy solemnizing influence round me steal!
My trembling soul thou seemest to surround
With dreams! Dreams? No! with certainties thou'rt crowned—
Thou precious hope! thou that must be fulfilled!
The ever-restless heart shall so be stilled!
The heart of many tendrils!—it shall cease
To ache and yearn! gathered to breathless peace,
And all its trials, all its sorrows o'er,
Shall reach at last the calm and golden shore!
And even the soul of fire—th' aspiring mind—
The bliss, the triumph, and the peace shall find!
Farewell! O, solemn tomb! all must be well
With thee, calm home! and those who in thee dwell—
With me! Well! be it so! whate'er it be,
No mote's o'erlooked through all the infinity
Of gathered worlds, stretched to their thundering race
Through fixed duration and unmeasured space!
Well—be it so! whate'er it be, I know
From whence th' unerring dispensations flow;
O, be it so!—though it be grief, I feel
The inflicting hand the aching wounds can heal!—
Yet—yet again, farewell! I turn with pain
Back to earth's myriads and myself again!
I must renounce this rich forgetfulness
Of earth and care—than every happiness
Less holy and less high—how far more dear!—
Pure as are death-bed thoughts, or childhood's tear!
Yes! 'tis a spiritual luxury this—
A spring of soul-intoxicating bliss—
A draught of strange bewildering delight,
Mantling with precious dews, rich, fervid, bright—
A draught of solemn ecstasy and deep—
Mighty the soul in glorious dreams to steep—
That must not be too freely quaffed, nor sought
When virtuous action might crown virtuous thought!
Then let me tear myself away! alas!
Even as the lights and shadows swiftly pass
O'er these low mounds of dewy, flowery grass.
Too soon the immortal hues, the Elysian gleams,
Will pass from my changed thoughts and wandering dreams!
Still must I tear myself, and turn
Where kindred beings smile!—ah! oftener mourn!

THE LOST PLEIAD.

Departed world! O, whither art thou fled?
—For thou may'st not be of the past!—the dead!
Forefend the thought, great Heaven! No!—not of those
Wert thou, whose marked and measured span must close;
But undestructible—beyond the storm!—
Decay might never reach thy radiant form!
Annihilation might not strike thy frame,
Nor quench the unextinguishable flame
That wrapt thee like a royal mantle round.
But thou'rt no more in thy proud orbit found—
Oh! whither hast thou fled? bright wanderer, say!
Thou, undiscoverably rapt away!—
Thou Light evanished, and thou World estranged!—
All unsubstantialised, perchance, and changed!—
In the rich effluence of immortal air,—
Glorified, and transfigurated there!
Thy very elements transfused—refined!—
Filtered and winnowed!—thou may'st be enshrined
'Mongst the empyreal suns of heaven's own light,
Far from the shadowy confines of the night!
And is there silence, breathless and intense,
Where thou wert glorying in magnificence—
Where thy deep harmonies rolled thundering by,
Shaking the strong foundations of the sky?
And is there chasmy desolation now
Where thou wert triumphing of old—O, thou
Bright, awful denizen of eternity?
No! like a huge unfathomable sea,
Shutting above the vessel's wake or wreck!
As thou hadst been a floating ray, a speck,
The vast, the mighty space fills up—and, lo!
No sign is left of thee—above, below!
And the uncommemorative air alone
Rolls where once rolled thy splendour-streaming throne—
The mighty space fills up—no trace is left
Of thee!—the ancient night is shorn, bereft,
Of thy deep beauty!—Whither art thou fled?
Throughout what realms interminably spread,
And what stupendous heights and depths afar
Hast thou careered in glory, thou lost star?
What is the goal of thy unmeasured race?
Mysterious wanderer from space to space!
Whither art thou inexorably fled?
How wert thou through the starry labyrinth led?
How charioteered? how harbingered? how borne
Beyond the uttermost regions of the morn,
Unto the unknown abyss that recks no bound?
And shall the regal Night be thus discrowned
Of all her starry splendours, one by one,
Till she remain upon her shadowy throne
Deserted—unilluminated—lone?
Majestic Night!—no Niobe art thou—
Thou mother of a thousand worlds! Thy brow,
Thou true Cybele! crowned with blazing towers,
In the dread pomp of thy victorious hours,
Is all as haughtily upreared in gloom,
Majestical, as ere the stroke of doom
Dissevered from thee that refulgent world,
Far from thy deep, untroubled bosom hurled!
And thou, abstracted star! thou, too, may'st be—
Nay, must—rejoicing in eternity;
But where the baffled thought may never dream,
Though strong to pierce creation's vasty scheme.
O, could this world through nameless ages last,
Her sons once more, in the ethereal waste,
Might view thee!—Since so far, so wildly far,
Thou may'st have been translated, vanished star!
(To realms where thought its course may never guide—
Distances unimaginably wide!)
That even the rapid lightning of thy ray
May linger for long centuries on its way!
But yet at last, rejoining earth's far sphere,
Once more—victorious over space—appear!