The Poetical Works of (Richard Monckton Milnes) Lord Houghton ::

The Poetical Works of (Richard Monckton Milnes) Lord Houghton

Collected ed.

Houghton, Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-1885)

VOLUME I

MEMORIALS OF TRAVELS IN GREECE

MEMORIALS OF TRAVELS IN ITALY.

II.

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I. VOLUME I

MEMORIALS OF TRAVELS IN GREECE

THE ELD.

Oh! blessèd, blessèd be the Eld,
Its echoes and its shades,—
The tones that from all time outswelled,
The light that never fades;—
The silver-pinion'd memories,
The symbol and the tale,—
The soul-enchasèd melodies
Of merriment or bale.

Oh, glory! that we wrestle
So valiantly with Time,
And do not alway nestle
In listlessness or crime:
We do not live and die
Irrevocably blind,
But raise our hands and sigh
For' the might we left behind.

Each goodly sign and mystic letter,
That angel-haunted books unfold,—
We cherish more,—we know them better,
When we remember they are old;
And friends, though fresh, and hale, and cheerly,
And young, as annals hold,
Yet, if we prize them very dearly,
We love to call them old.

Yon scented shrub,—I passed it by,
The youngling of the breeze;
I sat me, sad and soberly,
Beneath those ancient trees,
Whose branches, dight in summer pall,
Their gloom in moaning wore;
For' they told me of the Eld and all
The mystery of yore.

And in the gusts, I thought they pitied
The falling of the young,—
The fair, the subtle-witted,
Fine limb, and honeyed tongue;—
As man, from birth to funeral,
Were but a tragic mime,—
And, they the kinsman lineal
Of the good and olden prime.

I saw the hoary bulk of ocean
A' couching on the shore,
With a ripple for its motion,
And a murmur for its roar;
I gazed, but not as on the dead,
But as if Death were held
In awe, by a thing that slumberèd
In the deep and silent Eld.

The golden school of Eld is rife
With many a God-sent ray,
And jewel-gleams of perfect life,
Hereditary day!
Alas! we cannot quite awake,—
But when we feel we dream,
That hour, our heart is strong to shake
The falsities that seem.

For our bark is on the angle
Of a wide and bending stream,
Whose bosky banks entangle
The eye's divergent beam;—
The ridgy steeps hide in the way,
Whither the stream is quest,
As on a lake, the mirror'd day
Repeats its waveless rest.

How know we, when so clearly still,
Where its nether fountains be?
That it welleth in a viewless hill,
And passeth to the sea?
The tide beneath us,—where it welled
Dull sense regardeth not,—
But it was once the tide of Eld,
And we have not all forgot.

Great Art hath bound a diadem,
Upon his front serene,
Whose every pure and charmèd gem
Bedews him with its sheen;
And thus,—nor deem it wildly new,
Nor slur of idle tongue,—
But true, as God's own words are true,
The Eld is alway young;—

Young as the flush of all-blue light,
Or eve's imperial eyes,
And he who worshippeth aright,
Shall aye be young and wise,
And gentle as the virgin dove
That primal chaos quelled,
With Nature for his ladie-love,
The daughter of the Eld.

Sept. 20th, 1832.

CORFU.

1832

“It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise.”
Shelley

Thou pleasant Island, whose rich garden-shores
Have had a long-lived fame of loveliness,
Recorded in the historic song, that framed
The unknown Poet of an unknown time,
Illustrating his native Ithaca,
And all her bright society of isles,—
Most pleasant land! To us, who journeying come
From the far west, and fall upon thy charms,
Our earliest welcome to Ionian seas,
Thou art a wonder and a deep delight,

Thy usual habitants can never know.
Thou art a portal, whence the Orient,
The long-desired, long-dreamt-of, Orient,
Opens upon us, with its stranger forms,
Outlines immense and gleaming distances,
And all the circumstance of faery-land.
Not only with a present happiness,
But taking from anticipated joys
An added sense of actual bliss, we stand
Upon thy cliffs, or tread the slopes that leave
No interval of shingle, rock, or sand,
Between their verdure and the Ocean's brow,—
Whose olive-groves (unlike the darkling growth,
That earns on western shores the traveller's scorn)
Can wear the grey that on their foliage lies,
As but the natural hoar of lengthened days,—
Making, with their thick-bossed and fissured trunks,
Bases far-spread and branches serpentine,
Sylvan cathedrals, such as in old times
Gave the first life to Gothic art, and led
Imagination so sublime a way.

Then forth advancing, to our novice eyes
How beautiful appears the concourse clad
In that which, of all garbs, may best befit
The grace and dignity of manly form:
The bright-red open vest, falling upon
The white thick-folded kirtle, and low cap

Above the high-shorn brow.

Nor less than these,
With earnest joy, and not injurious pride,
We recognise of Britain and her force
The wonted ensigns and far-known array;
And feel how now the everlasting Sea,
Leaving his old and once imperious Spouse,
To faint, in all the beauty of her tears,
On the dank footsteps of a mouldering throne,
Has taken to himself another mate,
Whom his uxorious passion has endowed,
Not only with her antique properties,
But with all other gifts and privilege,
Within the circle of his regal hand.

Now forward,—forward on a beaming path,
But be each step as fair as hope has feigned it,
For me, the memory of the little while,
That here I rested happily, within
The close-drawn pale of English sympathies,
Will bear the fruit of many an after-thought,
Bright in the dubious track of after-years.

It will be seen by its date that this was written before the abandonment of the British Protectorate.

Σχεριην ερατεινην. —Odyss. vii. 79.

A DREAM OF SAPPHO.

The mariners were all asleep,
Save one half-dreaming at the stern,
Who gently bade me upward turn
My eyes, long gazing on the deep.
The wind had stol'n away,—our skiff
Rested, as if its sails were furled,
Upon the tide which softly curled
Around a triple-breasted cliff,
Whose steeps, in mistiest day-time bright,
Were almost above nature white,
Bare-fronted to the westering moon,
For the autumn night had past its noon.

I prayed that not a soul might wake,—
To be left utterly alone,—
That not the faintest human tone,
The silence of that time might break;
When,—as of old the alien maids,
Who sanctified Dodona's shades,

Drew out the tale of human fate,
From sounds of things inanimate,
Wont with inclinèd ear to listen,
Where branches rock or fountains rise,
Till high intelligences glisten
In their intense Egyptian eyes,—
So I began, in that light breeze,
Glancing along those noted seas,
To trace a harmony distinct,
A meaning in each change of tone,
And sound to sound more strangely linkt,
Than in my awe I dared to own:—
But when in clearer unison
That marvellous concord still went on,
And, gently as a blossom grows,
A frame of syllables uprose,
With a delight akin to fear
My heart beat fast and strong, to hear
Two murmurs beautifully blent,
As of a voice and instrument,—
A hand laid lightly on low chords,—
A voice that sobbed between its words.

“Stranger! the voice that trembles in your ear,
You would have placed, had you been fancy-free,
First in the chorus of the happiest sphere,
The home of deified mortality:

“Stranger, the voice that trembles here below,
While in your life, enjoyed a fame so loud,
That utmost nations listened to its flow,
And of its presence the old Earth was proud:

“Stranger, the voice is Sappho's,—weep, oh! weep,
That the soft tears of sympathy may fall
Into this prison of the sunless deep,
Where I am laid in miserable thrall.

“Not of my mortal pride, my mortal woe
Would I now speak;—there is no gentle maid,
Nor youth kind-hearted, but has sighed to know,
What was my love and how it was repaid!

“I had dear friends, who wept with bitter tears,
To watch my spirit's stream, which else had run,
In fulness and delight, its course of years,
Wasted and parched by that relentless sun.

“Of this far rock, and its miraculous power,
They heard, emmarvelled, and with sedulous prayer
Conjured me not to lose one precious hour,
But seek the cure of all my misery there.

“‘The Gods,’ they argued in their fond esteem,
‘Love their harmonious daughter far too well,
Not to pour forth on her diseasèd dream
The benediction of that soothing spell.

“‘When many a one, whose name will never shine
On after ages, there has found release,
How shall not she, already half divine,
Claim the same gift of spiritual peace?’

“I told them, ‘Thousands in that chilly deep
Might find relief from their weak hearts’ annoy :—
Venus herself might try the counselled leap,
And rise oblivious of her hunter-boy;

“‘The mystery of the place might moderate
Th' authentic passion of imperial Jove,
But did they hope for me that common fate,
They could know nothing of a Poet's love.’

“But vain my words;—the tender-cruel hand
Of blinded friendship guided me away,—
I would have died in my own Lesbian land,
Not in these regions of the waning day!

“Thus here all bootless adorations paid,
I dared the height of this tremendous shore;
What were your agonies, ye hope-betrayed!
When to your bosom I came back no more?

“Of the mysterious pass, that leads through death,
From life to life, I must not speak to thee;
Enough that now I breathed another breath,
Beyond the portals of mortality.

“A stream received me, whose æthereal flow
Came to my senses like a perfumed sigh,
From the rich flowers that shed their light below,
And bowed their jewelled heads as I passed by.

“And opposite a tide of sound was driven,
That made the air all music, and from far
Glimmered bright faces through a dead-gold heaven,
As in an earthly night star follows star.

“At last I came to a gigantic gate,
That opened to a steep-ascending lawn,
Whence rose a Temple, whose white marble state
Was fused into that gold and purple dawn.

“Sisterly voices were around me chanting,
‘Hail! Thou whom Song has numbered with the blest,
From fear, and hope, and passion's feverish panting,
Pass to thy crown, a Muse's glorious rest.’

“Entranced I entered,—but there stood between
Me and the fane, a queenly form and stern,
Upon whose brow, in letters all of sheen,
I saw the ancient name of Themis burn.

“She laid her hand on mine, it felt so cold,
She asked me, ‘Whether I, whose soul had earned
This highest Heaven, now felt serene and bold;’
Then I into my conscious self returned.

“She asked me, ‘Whether all that heart-distress,
In which my yielding womanhood had erred
From this my Goddess-state with bitterness
And shame was seen;’ I answered not a word.

“Then, piercingly, she asked me ‘Whether He,
Before whose charms I prostrated so low
My woman's worth, my Poet's dignity,
Was clear forgot;’—I answered slowly, ‘No.’

“Strange strength was in me; with consummate scorn,
I spoke of ‘That Appollo, who could deem,
That by his magic leap, the true love-lorn
Could wake to bliss, as from a troublous dream.’

“I said, ‘The promised peace, the calm divine,
The cold self-power, and royalty of will,
Or there, or elsewhere, never could be mine,
For I was Sappho,—Phaon's Sappho still.’

“There was dead blackness on the golden sky,
There was dumb silence in the resonant air,
But still I cried aloud in agony,
‘Heaven was not Heaven, if Phaon was not there.’

“With arms upraised, and towering looks averse,
That fearful Being uttered,—‘Be it so,
Blessing thou wilt not, thou shalt have a curse;
High bliss thou wilt not, thou shalt have deep woe.

“‘Thou hast defiled the Gods' most choicest dower,
Poesy, which in chaste repose abides,
As in its atmosphere;—that placid flower
Thou hast exposed to passion's fiery tides;

“‘Within the cold abyss, degraded, lone,
Beneath the rock whose power thou hast blasphemed,
From thy Parnassian, long-expectant, throne,
Lie banished, till by some new fate redeemed.’

“When will that new fate be? I linger on,—
I know not what I wish; Oh! tell me, thou
That weep'st for one thou would'st have smiled upon,
Dear Stranger, tell me where is Phaon now?”

Here paused the Voice, and now, methought, I spoke,
But what I know not; for there passed a shock
Throughout my senses, like a lightning-stroke;
I started to my feet;—the tall white Rock
Walled the far waste of silent sea, the morn
Light-lined the East, on grey-white wings upborne.

In the legend of the Leucadian promontory, which is fresh among the people, Phaon is the King of the Island, and the Poetess a foreign Queen. He slights her passion; she wanders over the hills in agony of heart, and heedless of her steps, she falls over the precipice.

THE RETURN OF ULYSSES.

[_]

The identity of Ithaca and Thiáke is satisfactorily demonstrated by Sir W. Gell, and other writers. There still remains, too, in the minds of the islanders, the legendary remembrance of the wandering king and the faithful wife, who weaves and spoils her web for very sorrow and distraction. The localities are quite as recognisable as could be expected:—a Grotto was discovered a few years ago by the shepherds, just above the shore of the deep bay (λιμενος πολυβενθεος), which bears a faithful likeness to the Homeric portrait of the cave of the nymphs. It is beautifully hung with stalactites, which are evidently the “distaffs” of its divine inhabitants, and its floor is strewn with fragments of votive amphoræ and other relics of ancient worship.

In another part of the island is a Fountain, still called “Melannéron.” Now the cattle of Eumæus come to the fount of Arethusa to drink the “black water;” and as this is still the common drinking-place of all the neighbouring cattle, the name has probably come down from the Homeric times.

The Man of wisdom and endurance rare,
A sundry-coloured and strange-featured way,
Our hearts have followed; now the pleasant care
Is near its end,—the oars' sweet-echoed play,
Falls on the cliffs of Ithaca's deep bay;—
The enemy, on whose impetuous breast
The hero rode undaunted, night and day,
(Such was Minerva's power, and Jove's behest)
Scorns the inglorious strife and lays his wrath to rest.

And how returns the tempest-tossed? his prows
Gay-garlanded, with grand triumphal song?
Leaps he upon the strand, and proudly vows
Dire vengeance unto all who did him wrong?
Not so; for him, all force and passion strong,

And fretful tumult, for a while are o'er,—
He is borne gently, placidly, along,
And laid upon his own belovèd shore.
Even as a wearied child, in quiet sleep once more!

There is no part of that archaic Lay,
That strikes with such resistless power on me,
As this pure artist-touch, this tender ray,
A perfect-simple light of poesy;
Not the nice wiles of chaste Penelope,—
Not the poor pining dog that died of joy,—
Not the grey smoke the wanderer yearned to see,
Whose wavings he had traced, a careless boy,
Sweet as they are, for me this preference can destroy.

Where the “stone distaffs” of the nymphs of old,
Still make rich tracery in the sacred Cave,—
Where peasants the dark-shadowed Fountain cold,
Hail by the name the Poet found or gave,
Where on the Eagle-height the walls out-brave
All time, and only the full-fruited vine
Trails o'er the home,—it may be o'er the grave,
Of Him for whom these memories combine,—
Rest, care-worn mortal! rest, and let his sleep be thine.

TEMPE.

We are in Tempe, Peneus glides below,—
That is Olympus,—we are wondering
Where, in old history, Xerxes the great King,
Wondered. How strangely pleasant this to know!
We may have gazed on scenes of grander flow,
And on rocks cast in shapes more marvellous,
Now this delicious calm entices us,
These platain shades, to let the dull world go.
A poet's Mistress is a hallowed thing,
And all the beauties of his verse become
Her own;—so be it with the poet's Vale:
Listen those emerald waters murmuring,
Behold the cliffs, that wall the gods' old home,
And float into the Past with softly swelling sail.

The repute of Tempe as a proverb of surpassing beauty, is exclusively Roman, and possibly few who spoke or wrote of it ever saw it. Livy's description (xliv) is one of terror, and what we now call ‘sublimity.’

Herodotus, vii., 128.

OLYMPUS.

With no sharp-sided peak or sudden cone,
Thou risest o'er the blank Thessalian plain,
But in the semblance of a rounded throne,
Meet for a monarch and his noble train
To hold high synod;—but I feel it vain,
With my heart full and passionate as now,
To frame my humble verse, as I would fain,
To calm description,—I can only bow
My head and soul, and ask again, “if that be Thou?”

I feel before thee, as of old I felt,
(With sense, as just, more vivid in degree)
When first I entered, and unconscious knelt
Within the Roman Martyr's sanctuary:
I feel that ages laid their faith on Thee,
And if to me thou art a holy hill,
Let not the pious scorn,—that Piety
Though veiled, that Truth, though shadowy, were still
All the world had to raise its heart and fallen will.

Thou Shrine which man, of his own natural thought,
Gave to the God of Nature, and girt round

With elemental mightiness, and brought
Splendour of form and depth of thunderous sound,
To wall about with awe the chosen ground,—
All without toil of slaves or lavished gold,
Thou wert upbuilt of memories profound,
Imaginations wonderful and old,
And the pure gems that lie in Poets' hearts untold.

God was upon Thee in a thousand forms
Of Terror and of Beauty, stern and fair,
Upgathered in the majesty of storms,
Or floating in the film of summer air;
Thus wert Thou made ideal everywhere;
From Thee the odorous plumes of Love were spread,
Delight and plenty through all lands to bear,—
From Thee the never-erring bolt was sped
To curb the impious hand or blast the perjured head

How many a Boy, in his full noon of faith,
Leaning against the Parthenon, half-blind
With inner light, and holding in his breath,
Awed by the image of his own high mind,
Has seen the Goddess there so proudly shrined,
Leave for awhile her loved especial home,
And pass, though wingless, on the northward wind,
On to thy height, beneath the eternal dome,
Where Heaven's grand councils wait, 'till Wisdom's self shall come.

Ours is another world, and godless now
Thy ample crown; 'tis well,—yes,—be it so,
But I can weep this moment, when thy brow
Light-covered with fresh hoar of autumn snow,
Shines in white light and chillness, which bestow
New grace of reverend loveliness, as seen
With the long mass of gloomy hills below:
Blest be our open faith! too grand, I ween,
To grudge these votive tears to Beauty that has been.

A VISION OF THE ARGONAUTS.

[_]

At Volo, a Greek peasant asked us whether it was true that the first ship that ever sailed started from this bay.

It is a privilege of great price to walk
With that old sorcerer Fable, hand in hand,
Adown the shadowy vale of History:
There is no other wand potent as his,
Out of that scene of gloomy pilgrimage,
Where prostrate splendors and unsated graves
Are ever rained upon by human tears,
To make a Paradise of noblest art,
A gallery of bright thoughts, serene ideas,
Pictorial graces, everlasting tints,
To the heart's eye delicious,—pure delight
Of Beauty and calm Joy alternating
With exercise of those high attributes,
Which make the will of man indomitable,—
Justice, and enterprise, and patriot-love.

That Peasant's simple question to my thoughts
Became a mystic thread,—a golden clue;
For when I drew it towards me, all the veil
Of the deep past shrunk up, and light profuse
Fell round me from time-clouded memories;

The full-noon-day, it seemed to me, went back,
And passed into the pearly grey of morn,
From which, in outline dim, slowly came forth
Pelion,—his lower steeps (now populous
With village voices) desolate and bare;
And the now naked range of loftier rock,
Thick-vested with a mantle of warm pine.
Along the shore, the turreted serail,
And bright-adorned kiosks, and low bazaar,
Into a city strange, of ancient form,
But to my spirit's sight faintly defined,
Was changed;—yet I could palpably discern
A crowd that stood before a portico,
And a thin smoke that from the midst arose,
As of a sacrifice; and close beside,
The waters rested in inviolate calm.

Upon their edge, yet clinging to the sand,
There was a shape, of other frame and kind
Than I had ever seen the wave embrace;
A burden of full-armèd men it bore,
And from its centre the aspiring stem
Of a straight oak, Dodona's holy growth,
Upsprung, with leafy coronal unshorn.
The joy of prosperous omens on the land
Awoke the silence of that solemn dawn;
And as it ceased, a clear and manly voice

Out of the shape responded musical,
And thus its meaning sunk into my soul.
“Not with the rapid foot and panting breast,
With which, be Pelion's dark-haired front
And mountain-thickets far away
Our witnesses, the eager heart was wont
To lead us to the boar's absconded rest
Unwearied, while before us lay
The hope of an illustrious prey,—
Nor, by the impulse of Pheræan steeds,
Bearing the warrior and the car
Into the central depths of war,
While he, thus, wingèd, hardly heeds
The presence of opposing spears,
More than the north wind fears
The grove whose mass he can crush down like reeds;
—Not thus the work is to be done,
Which this fleet-passing hour will see begun.

“For these are means, whose excellence can lead
To victory in the practised chase
Or common usage of heroic arms:—
Our thought is now to do a hardier deed;
Sublimer energy our spirit warms

Than bard has ever sung in Grecian halls;—
Where to succeed will place
Our name 'mid nations' festivals,
And where to fail itself will be
A glory for eternity.

“Over a wider and more dreary plain,
Than curious mortals know,
Trackless and markless as fresh-fallen snow,—
An awful space, on which the stain
Of human foot has never lain,—
Uncrossed by cheerful bird,—
Where never sound is heard,
But the unpausing din,
Half laughter and half groan,
Of the Divinity that stirs within,
And answers all the winds that blow
In thunder-tone;—
Over this mystic plain,—
The earth-enclosing Ocean-plain,
We are about to go.

“And let no holy fear restrain
The hearts, that know no fear beside;
For, not in impious disdain
Of the eternal rules, that bind
The destinies of human kind
Within sage limits, and wild pride,
But with the free obedience

Of a most perfect reverence,
Dare we the untamèd billow to bestride.

“For had it been in truth the imperial will
Of Mother Nature, when her plastic hand
Did the vast depths with buoyant liquid fill,
To plant a barrier betwixt land and land,
And keep each portion separate,
Encircled by a special fate;
How could the Gods, the everwise,
Have urged us to our enterprise
With favouring voices and protecting eyes?
How could our rude sea-chariot be
Made instinct with applauding Deity?

“A just and noble aim,
The Gods with love regard,—
But the self-glorious, the bold
Who honour not the laws of old,
A jealous justice will reward,
With woe and bitter shame;
We have not forgot
The miserable lot
Of Tantalus, ambrosia-fed,
Tantalus, whose kingly head
Deep in deepest Hades lies,
Eminent in agonies;
Even where our journey leads,

In that Eastern distance, bound
To an ice-peak, ever bleeds
He of the unclosed heart-wound,
The unsubdued and godlike one,
Who robbed the treasury of the sun;
But he such warnings little heeds,
Whose soul is fixed upon an honest end,—
Him must the Gods befriend.

“And is it not a virtuous aim,
Even to the earth's extremest shore,
By means no mortal force essayed before,
To bear the glory of the Grecian name?
To spoil the spoiler, wash away the stain
Of foully-slaughtered parentage, restore
To Greece the precious gift of yore,
Kind Gods to Helle and her brother gave,
Though Destiny restrained the power to save.

“Thus hasting to a sacred war,
With Pæan and delighted song,
We feel our feet upon the Car,
Which the broad-wingèd Winds shall bear along;
No strength of ours their turbulence restrains,
No will of ours their vagrant course commands,
But ye who love us, fear not, for the reins
Are in almighty and benignant hands.—
And if the blindly-falling brand

Of Fate, that neither spares the wise or brave,
Far from his loved paternal land,
Should lay some Hero under the dark wave;
Yet let him not be deeply mourned,
As dead inglorious, or cast out unurned:
For the fond-pitying Nymphs below,
Will cover him with golden sand,
And sing above him songs of woe,
Sweeter than we can understand;
The grace of song shall breathe upon his name,
And his Elysian bliss be endless as his fame.”

There was a moment's pause, and then, methought,
The exuberant shout, that to the warriors' strain
Had made tumultuous prelude, came again,
But with still loftier passion; to the cause
I gave a quick attention, and beheld
Above the low Magnesian promontory,
A small and solitary flaccid cloud
Lowly suspended, by the clear round sun
(Which seemed to halt behind it as he rose)
Gorgeously glorified; to this all eyes
Were turned, and every voice a homage paid:
“The Fleece, the Golden Fleece, our Golden Fleece,”
Rose in a storm of sound, and instantly,
Though with no visible wind or ruffled tide,

But as impregnate with propelling power,
The Shape, no more dependent on the sand,
Into the open waters past, serene.
Then as the Vision fainted, self-dispersed
In the full-flaring light, a melody,
Whose sense I could not justly apprehend,
But that it was of blessing and delight,
Emitted from th' oracular central tree,
Caught up my heart, and bore it swift along
With that strange shape, into mysterious depths
Of placid darkness and undreaming sleep.

Vide Iliad, ii. 763, for the excel'ence of the horses of the hero, the eponymus of the house which gave its name to the place. Pheræ, now Vclestino, is near the Bœbèan marsh (ii. 711), a few miles to the N.W. of Volo. Pagasæ was its port. There are walls and the site of a temple on the hill above it.

The sun itself was supposed to have its bed in Colchis. Mimnermus apud Athen.

THE SPARTANS AT THERMOPYLÆ.

“Stranger! go tell the Spartans—we obeyed
All that they told us,
and below are laid,”
Their laws and customs.

No parleying with themselves, no pausing thought
Of worse or better consequence, was there,
Their business was to do what Spartans ought,
Sparta's chaste honour was their only care.

First in the outlet of that narrowest pass,
Between the tall straight cliffs and sullen tide,
Before his Faithful, stood Leonidas,—
Before the Few who could not leave his side.

Never the hope of such a precious meed,
Upon his most ambitious dreams had shone,
Through Him the Gods for Sparta had decreed
More fame than Athens earned at Marathon.

And more than this, he knew in that proud hour,
How high a price his single Life could claim,
That in its sacrifice there lay the power,
Alone to save his father-land from shame.

Yet was he loth to meet that sacred fate,
As he there stood, cramped in by rocks and sea,
He would confront the Persian myriad's weight,
And die an unbound Victim, fighting free.

One more fair field,—one last unshackled blow
Strong with concentrate vengeance, this was all
That still remained to fill to overflow
The measure of the glory of his fall.

How He, and They who followed him in love,
Went forth and perished, is a tale to tell,
Such as old Bards to Epic music wove,
And so felt he who wrote their Chronicle.

The symbol Lion, that once stood in stone
Over the Lion-hearted, is no more;
Where sat the Last, on their sepulchral throne,
Is now a thing of antiquarian lore.

Nor mourn for this,—all other truth is vain.
But this, to know at heart, that They are there,
There in the giant cliffs, and perilous plain,
Paths, fountains, forest, ocean, every where.

Now let all Thought be Memory,—calmly wait,
Till clear defined, before thy Spirit's eyes,
Heroic Dignity, impersonate
In awful phantoms, silently arise.

Between the Men who noble deeds have done,
And every Poet to the end of time,
There is a brotherly communion,
One Father-God has made them both sublime:

And thus, to Thee, there can be nothing dead
Of great things past, they live in thine own will,
Thou givest them form,—they, on thy favoured head,
Virtues of earth and Heavenly Love distil.

According to Herodotus.

According to Strabo.

GREEK RELIGION

Could we, though but for an hour, burst through those gates adamantine,
Which, as the children of man pass onward in swift generation,
Time's dark cavern along, are heavily closing behind them!
Could we but breathe the delight of the time when, fresh in his boyhood,
Out of his own exuberant life, Man gave unto Nature,
And new senses awoke, through every nerve of creation!
Waves of the old Ægean!—I listen your musical ebbing;
Smile to my eye, as you will, with smiles clear-crystal as ever,
Bind, in your silvery net, fair capes and embowerèd islands,
But ye can bear no more on your breast that vision of glory,
When in the cool moon-dew went forth the imperial revel,
Dolphins and pearl-shell cars, of the Queen and the People of Ocean;

Whose sweet-undulant murmur the homeless mariner hearkened,
Over the undulant sapphire, and trembled in glad adoration.

How were ye voiced, ye Stars!—how cheerily Castor and Pollux
Spoke to the quivering seaman, amid th' outpouring of tempest!
With what a firm-set gaze on the belt triple-gemmed of Orion
Looked the serene Greek child, as he thought of the suffering giant,
Panting with sightless orbs for the dawn's miraculous healing!
With what a sigh did he pass from the six proud deified sisters,
On to the fate of the fallen, and mourned for the love that dethroned her!
Not by elaborate charts did he read that book of the Heavens,
But to his heart's fine ear it was taught by a heavenly master.

Now from her window perchance may the maiden of desolate Hellas,
When with the woes of her love and her land her spirit is heavy,

Yearn to the white-bright moon, which over the curvèd horizon,
Climbing the air still flushed with the flames of the opposite sunset,
Seems with affectionate eye to regard her, and weep to her weeping;
But it is now not as when, having pined for Endymion's kindness,
She with the mourners of love held personal sympathy ever,
When in the sky's void chasms a wanderer, she to pilgrim,
Over the world's sick plain, was a dear companion in sorrow.
Down through the blue-grey thyme, which roofs their courses with odour,
Rivulets, gentle as words from the lips of Beauty, are flowing;
Still, in the dusky ravine, they deepen and freshen their waters,
Still, in the thick-arched coves, they slumber and dimple delighted,
Catching the full-swell'd fig, and the deep-stained arbutus ruby,—
Still, to the sea's sand-brim, by royally gay oleanders,

And oriental array of reeds, they are ever attended;
But they are all dumb forms, unimpregnate with vital emotion,
Now from the pure fount-head, no Nymph, her bosom expanding,
Dazzles the way-worn wretch with the smile of her bland benediction,
Giving the welcomed draught mysterious virtue and savour;—
Now no curious hind in the noon-tide's magical ardour,
Peeps through the blossomy trellice, that over the pool's dark crystal
Guards the immaculate forms of the awful Olympian bathers;
Now at the wide stream-mouth never one, one amorous Triton
Breathes to the surge and the tall marsh-blooms euphonious passion.

These high Temples around, the religious shade of the olive
Falls on the grass close-wove;—in the redolent valley beneath us,
Stems of the loftiest platain their crowns large-leavèd are spreading,

While the most motley of herds is adorning the calm of their umbrage;—
Yet ye are gone, ye are vanished for ever, ye guardian Beings!
Who in the time-gnarled trunks, broad branches, and summer enchantment
Held an essentiäl life and a power, as over your members,—
Soothing the rage of the storm by your piteous moans of entreaty,
Staying the impious axe in the paralysed hand of the woodman.
Daphne, tremulous nymph, has fled the benignant asylum
Which, in the shape of the laurel, she found from the heat of Apollo;—
Wan Narcissus has languished away from the languishing flower;—
Hyacinth dwells no more in his brilliant abode, and the stranger
Reads the memorial signs he has left, with a curious pleasure.

Thou art become, oh Echo! a voice, an inanimate image;
Where is the palest of maids, dark-tressed, darkwreathèd with ivy,
Who with her lips half-opened, and gazes of beautiful wonder,

Quickly repeated the words that burst on her lonely recesses,
Low in a love-lorn tone, too deep-distracted to answer?

What must have been thy Nature, oh Greece! when marvellous-lovely
As it is now, it is only the tomb of an ancient existence?

The contemporaneity of a transparent moonlight with the roseate æther and gold and orange tracts of sunset is one of the most impressive phenomena of these regions.

On the mystical power of noon in the appearance of supernatural beings, vide Theocritus, i. 15; Lucan, iii. 422; Philostratus, Heroic. i. art 4; Porphyrius de Antro Nymph. c. xxvi. and xxvii.

MARATHON.

I could believe that under such a sky,
Thus grave, thus streaked with thunderlight, of yore,
The small Athenian troop rushed onward, more
As Bacchanals, than men about to die.
How weak that massive motley enemy
Seemed to those hearts, full-fed on that high lore,
Which, for their use, in his melodious store,
Old Homer had laid up immortally!
Thus Marathon was Troy,—thus here again,
They were at issue with the barb'rous East,
And favo'ring Gods spoke out, and walked the plain;
And every man was an anointed priest
Of Nemesis, empowerèd to chastise
The rampant insolence that would not be made wise.

THE CONCENTRATION OF ATHENS.

[_]

The Poet Keats, to whom the old Greek mind seemed instinctively familiar, in an unpublished fragment, speaks of the Greek Poets as

“Bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan.” and continues with a prayer that he too may attain their old vigour, and sing
“Unheard,
Save of the quiet primrose and the span
Of Heaven and tew ears.”

Why should we wonder that from such small space
Of Earth so much of human strength upgrew,
When thus were woven bonds that tighter drew
Round the Athenian heart than faith or race?
Thus patriotism could each soul imbue
With personal affections, face to face,
And home was felt in every public place,
And brotherhood was never rare or new.
Thus Wisdom, from the neighbouring Parthenon,
Down on the Areopagus could fix
A watchful gaze: thus from the rising Pnyx
The Orator's inspiring voice could reach
Half o'er the City, and his solemn speech
Was as a father's counsel to his son.

PELASGIAN AND CYCLOPEAN WALLS.

Ye cliffs of masonry, enormous piles,
Which no rude censure of familiar Time
Nor record of our puny race defiles,
In dateless mystery ye stand sublime,
Memorials of an age of which we see
Only the types in things that once were Ye.

Whether ye rest upon some bosky knoll,
Your feet by ancient myrtles beautified,
Or seem, like fabled dragons, to unroll
Your swarthy grandeurs down a bleak hill-side,
Still on your savage features is a spell
That makes ye half divine, ineffable.

With joy, upon your height I stand alone,
As on a precipice, or lie within
Your shadow wide, or leap from stone to stone,
Pointing my steps with careful discipline,
And think of those grand limbs whose nerve could bear
These masses to their places in mid-air;

Of Anakim, and Titans, and of days
Saturnian, when the spirit of man was knit

So close to Nature, that his best essays
At Art were but in all to follow it,
In all,—dimension, dignity, degree;
And thus these mighty things were made to be.

WRITTEN AT MYCENÆ.

I saw a weird procession glide along
The vestibule before the
Lion's gate;
A Man of godlike limb and warrior state,
Who never looked behind him, led the throng;
Next a pale Girl, singing sweet sorrow, met
My eyes, who ever pointed to a fleck
Of ingrained crimson on her marble neck;
Her a fierce Woman, armed with knife and net,
Close followed, whom a Youth pursued with smile,
Once mild, now bitter-mad, himself the while
Pursued by three foul Shapes, gory and grey:
Dread family! . . . I saw another day
The phantom of that Youth, sitting alone,
Quiet, thought-bound, a stone upon a stone.

προπυλα ταδε. Elect. 1391.

This piece of Archaic sculpture is very spirited; I think the Lions could not have had their heads as Clarke describes; they must have been thrown more back, like the Lions rampant in our heraldic bearings.

GRECIAN SUNSET.

[_]

The modern Greek phrase for the setting of the sun is “Βασιλευει ο ηλιος,” “the sun reigns,” or “the sun is a king.” One interpretation of this expression was given me, viz., that in the vesper anthem beginning with the words, “‘Ο Κυριος Βασιλευει,” “the Lord reigns,” the action was transferred to the sun itself, in the same feeling as the “Ave Maria” is the synonym of the close of an Italian day. Another explanation I have formed into the following lines.

In perfect Kingliness now reigns the Sun;
At morn, as one who girds himself for speed,
A Hero prompt to do a mighty deed,
And not to rest until the deed be done,
He rose:—at noon he wore the guise of one,
Who feels the purpose that his will decreed
Half-perfect, and goes onward to his meed,
Stronger than were his labour just begun;
And now his aim attained, his triumph known,
In conscious dignity he mounts his throne
Of golden air, and ere the eve can spread
Her pale-rose veil above his royal head,
No courtier clouds around him, to the bed
Of a victorious rest, he passes all alone.

A GRECIAN THUNDER-STORM.

The Thunder came not with one awful pulse,
When the wide Heaven seems quaking to its heart,
But in a current of tumultuous noise,
Crash upon crash,—a multitudinous clang
Of cymbals beating in the low-hung clouds,—
And every shortest interspace filled up
With echoes vivid as their parent sounds.
The lightning came not in one flash of light,
Soon yielding to the darkness, (which ere long
Is routed by another wingèd blaze,)
But with no pause, and swaying to and fro,
As if the common air was turned to flame.
So mused I, from this hot and furious scene
Drawing a timely lesson of calm Truth,
So,—when great nations are awake at heart,
And rise embattled, from an ancient sleep
Sudden aroused by some consummate deed
Of reckless tyranny, or glad to stand
For heir-loom rights, familiar liberties,
Through pain and loss and terror, unto death,—
Should be the expression of their energies,—
Earnest, intense, impassioned as you will,
But with no pause; the fruit is Victory.

CORINTH,

ON LEAVING GREECE.

I stood upon that great Acropolis,
The turret-gate of Nature's citadel,
Where once again, from slavery's thick abyss
Strangely delivered, Grecian warriors dwell.
I watched the bosom of Parnassus swell,
I traced Eleusis, Athens, Salamis,
And that rude fane below, which lives to tell
Where reigned the City of luxurious bliss.
Within the maze of great Antiquity
My spirit wandered tremblingly along;—
As one who with rapt ears to a wild song
Hearkens some while,—then knows not whether he
Has comprehended all its melody,
So in that parting hour was it with Greece and me.

It is very curious that some awkward ill-proportioned ruins should be the only memorials of that Corinth, whose exquisite refinement in all that could charm and embellish life was a proverb with the world, and who extended her existence so far into the later domains of Roman time. It may be that there was some sanctity attached to this temple, from its very age and ungainliness, which preserved it amid the annihilation of other more sumptuous and polished edifices.

MODERN GREECE.

As, in the legend which our childhood loved,
The destined prince was guided to the bed,
Where, many a silent year, the charmèd Maid
Lay still, as though she were not; nor could wake,
Till the first touch of his appointed hand
With the deep fountains of her subtle being
Made sympathy, and in her virgin bosom
The pulse of breath, that so long had beat on
Its regular measure, trembled and grew fast,
And the long fringes parted on her eyes,—
And she to her old world of light and sense
Was born again; so the Invisible Power,
Whose awful presence is upon our earth
Above all dominations, came at last
To Greece, and laid the magic of his hand
Upon her sleep, and she obedient rose.

She rose, but not as that enchanted ladie,
To whose unsullied beauty sleep had been
But as a veil, to guard off impure Time
From breathing on it, and had left no trace
Of its existence, but the long gold hair,

That, like a vestment, folded round her form;
Nor, even as they, who on this vulgar orb
Rise from their night's brief slumbers, hale and fresh,
With all the toil of yesterday behind them;—
No, Nations sleep not thus,—their sleep and rest
Has more of death about it,—in its hours
Silent corruption works, and slow decay;
And when some special grace bids them awake,
Half-blinded, with worn hearts, and sense confused,
They rush in fury from their couch of shame,
Proclaim themselves new-born, and free, and young,
Nothing of youth about them, but its passions,
Its vigorous lusts, and recklessness of ends.—

Oh! would'st Thou, from thy hot delirious dream,
Look out upon the calm of long-past time,
Thine own bright natural youth, willing to learn;
Would only Greece remember what she was,
And then what made her so;—would she remember
That distant History records a time,
Though in the splendour of the after-light
Nearly obliterate, when she was as bare
Of every element of social being,
Of every use of moral energies,
Of all that can transform humanity
From the wild warrior-savage, instinct-led,
Into the thinking, acting citizen,

As now, or more so; but her infant soul,
Soon from that rude and miserable state,
Into a youth of healthy-springing thoughts,
Gay simple fancies, aspirations high,
Expanded under tutelary care
Of two wise nurses, delegates of God,
The Love of Beauty and Self-sacrifice:
And when, in the full time, came slowly on
Life's manly mood, and consciousness mature,
She, the fair faith and natural impulses
That waited on her morning, taking up
Into the accomplished glory of her noon,
Never forgot, through all the growth of wealth,
And martial action, and scholastic pride,
Her first affections,—and possessed at once,
A Mind informed by sage experience,
And a Heart fresh as it had come from heaven.

What, though the curse of this unresting world,
The influence that will let no greatness be,
Merged in the blackness of barbaric night,
This model of the perfect equipoise,
And just appliance of all human powers;
Yet still for You, born of a second dawn,
The children of another germ of life,
It has a voice of loud authority;
By the same laws it bids you train your minds,

To the same tutelage submit your hearts,
And to the sum of wisdom there laid up,
Adding the priceless gems of Christian truth,
Be owners of a treasury of such wealth,
As all the spirit of nations has not known.

ON RETURNING TO GREECE IN 1842.

Ten years ago I deemed that if once more
I trod on Grecian soil, 'twould be to find
The presence of a great informing mind
That should the glorious past somewise restore;
And now I cry, with disappointment sore,
“Is it for this that Greece has striven and pined,—
These her rich vales with scarce a labouring hind,
These silent havens on this faded shore?”
Still patience—patience with the toils of Time;
The air of freedom is not always health,
Yet vain without it every hope sublime:
Better a nation's growth, however slow,
That is its own, than any strength or wealth
Conferred or cultured by a friend or foe.

DELPHI.

AN ELEGY.

Beneath the vintage moon's uncertain light,
And some faint stars that pierced the film of cloud,
Stood those Parnassian peaks before my sight,
Whose fame throughout the ancient world was loud.

Still could I dimly trace the terraced lines
Diverging from the cliffs on either side;
A theatre whose steps were filled with shrines
And rich devices of Hellenic pride;

Though brightest daylight would have lit in vain
The place whence gods and worshippers had fled;
Only, and they too tenantless, remain
The hallowed chambers of the pious dead.

Yet those wise architects an ample part
To Nature gave in their religious shows,
And thus, amid the sepultures of Art,
Still rise the Rocks and still the Fountain flows.

Desolate Delphi! pure Castalian spring!
Hear me avow that I am not as they—
Who deem that all about you ministering
Were base impostors, and mankind their prey:

That the high names they seemed to love and laud
Were but the tools their paltry trade to ply;
This pomp of Faith a mere gigantic fraud,
The apparatus of a mighty lie!

Let those that will believe it; I, for one,
Cannot thus read the history of my kind;
Remembering all this little Greece has done
To raise the universal human mind:

I know that hierarchs of that wondrous race,
By their own faith alone, could keep alive
Mysterious rites and sanctity of place,—
Believing in whate'er they might contrive.

It may be, that these influences, combined
With such rare nature as the priestess bore,
Brought to the surface of her stormy mind
Distracted fragments of prophetic lore:

For, howsoe'er to mortals' probing view
Creation is revealed, yet must we pause,
Weak to dissect the futile from the true,
Where'er imagination spreads her laws.

So now that dimmer grows the watery light,
And things each moment more fantastic seem,
I fain would seek if still the Gods have might
Over the undissembling world of dream:

I ask not that for me aside be cast
The solemn veil that hides what is decreed;
I crave the resurrection of the past,
That I may know what Delphi was indeed!

Oct. 8th, 1842.

THE TOMB OF LAIUS.

Where Delphi's consecrated pass
Bœotia's misty region faces,
Rises a tomb-like stony mass
Amid the bosky mountain-bases;
It seems no work of human care,
But many rocks split off from one:
Laius, the Theban king, lies there,—
His murderer Œdipus, his son.

No pilgrim to the Pythian shrine
But marked the spot with decent awe,
In presence of a power divine,
O'erruling human will and law:
And to some thoughtful hearts that scene—
Those paths, that mound, those browsing herds,
Were more than e'er that tale had been,
Arrayed in Sophoclean words.

So is it yet,—no time or space
That ancient anguish can assuage,
For sorrow is of every race,
And suffering due from every age;
That awful legend falls to us
With all the weight that Greece could feel,
And every man is Œdipus,
Whose wounds no mortal skill can heal.

Oh! call it Providence or fate,
The Sphynx propounds the riddle still,
That Man must bear and expiate
Loads of involuntary ill:
So shall Endurance ever hold
The foremost rank 'mid human needs,
Not without faith, that God can mould
To good the dross of evil deeds.

At the “Schiste Hodos,” or “Triodos.”

THE FLOWERS OF HELICON.

The solitudes of Helicon
Are rife with gay and scented flowers,
Shining the marble rocks upon,
Or 'mid the valley's oaken bowers;
And ever since young Fancy placed
The Hieron of the Muses here,
Have ceaseless generations graced
This airy Temple year by year.

But those more bright, more precious, flowers
With which old Greece the Muses woo'd,
The Art whose varied forms and powers
Charmed the poetic multitude,
The Thought that from each deep recess
And fissure of the teeming mind
Sent up its odorous fruitfulness—
What have those glories left behind?

For from those generous calices
The vegetative virtue shed,
Flew over distant lands and seas,
Waking wide nations from the dead;
And e'er the parent plants o'erthrown
Gave place to rank and noisome weed,
The giant Roman world was sown
Throughout with that ennobling seed.

And downward thence to latest days
The heritage of Beauty fell,
And Grecian forms and Grecian lays
Prolonged their humanising spell,
Till, when new worlds for man to win
The Atlantic's riven waves disclose,
The wildernesses there begin
To blossom with the Grecian rose.

And all this while in barren shame
Their native land remote reclines,
A mocked and miserable name
Round which some withered ivy twines:
Where, wandering 'mid the broken tombs,
The remnant of the race forget
That ever with such royal blooms
This Garden of the Soul was set.

O breezes of the wealthy West!
Why bear ye not on grateful wings
The seeds of all your life has blest
Back to their being's early springs?
Why fill ye not these plains with hopes
To bear the treasures once they bore,
And to these Heliconian slopes
Transport civility and lore?

For now, at least, the soil is free,
Now that one strong reviving breath
Has chased that Eastern tyranny
Which to the Greek was ever death:
Now that, though weak with age and wrongs,
And bent beneath the recent chain
This motherland of Greece belongs
To her own western world again.

It is of importance to remind the traveller from Delphi to Attica, to take the mountain road from Lebadea over the plateau of Helicon, and not the new one along the plain: the latter is the carriage-road of Greece, but has no other recommendation.

MODERN ATHENS.

If Fate, though jealous of the second birth
Of names in history raised to high degree,
Permits that Athens yet once more shall be,
Let her be placed as suits the thought and worth
Of those, who, during long oppression's dearth,
Went out from Hydra and Ipsara free,
Making their homestead of the chainless sea,
And hardly touching their enslavèd earth.
So on the shore, in sight of Salamis,
On the Piræan and Phalerian bays,
With no harsh contrast of what was and is,
Let Athens rise; while in the distance stands,
Like something hardly raised by human hands,
The awful skeleton of ancient days!

DELOS.

Though Syra's rock was passed at morn,
The wind so faintly arched the sail,
That ere to Delos we were borne,
The autumn day began to fail,
And only in Diana's smiles
We reached the bay between the isles.

In sweet serenity of force
She ruled the Heavens without a star—
A sacred image that the course
Of time and thought can hardly mar,—
As dear and nearly as divine
As ever in Ephesian shrine.

I knew that on the spot I trod
Her glorious twins Latona bore,
That for her sake the pitying God
Had fixed the isle afloat before;
And, fearful of his just disdain,
I almost felt it move again.

For the delicious light that threw
Such clear transparence on the wave,
From the black mastick-bushes drew
Column, and frieze, and architrave,
Like rocks, which, native to the place,
Had something of mysterious grace.

“Strong was the power of Art to bid
Arise such beauty out of stone,
Yet Paros might as well have hid
Its wealth within its breast unknown,
As for brute Nature to regain
The fragments of the fallen fane.

“Who can rebuild these colonnades
Where met the ancient festal host,
The peasant from Arcadia's glades,
The merchant from Ionia's coast,
Gladdening their Grecian blood to stand
On one religious Fatherland?”

So in my angry discontent
I cried, but calmer thoughts came on,
And gratitude with sorrow blent,
And murmur turned to orison:
I thanked the Gods for what had been,
And Nature for the present scene.

I felt that while in Greece remained
Signs of that old heroic show,
Hope, Memory's sister, so sustained,
Would sink not altogether low,
And Grecian hearts once more might be
Combined in powerful amity.

... Long ere the sun's most curious ray
Had touched the morning's zone of pearl,
I and my boat were far away,
Raised on the water's freshening curl;
And barely 'twixt the rose and blue
The island's rim was still in view.

So Delos rests upon my mind,
A perfect Vision of the night,
A picture by moon-rays designed,
And shaded into black and bright,—
A true Idea borne away,
Untroubled by the dreamless day.

MEMORIALS OF TRAVELS IN ITALY.

Sempre vivete, o cari arti divine,
Conforto a nostra sventurata gente,
Fra l' itale ruine
Gl' itali pregi a celebrare intente.
G. Leopard.

AN ITALIAN TO ITALY.

1831.

Along the coast of those bright seas,
Where sternly fought of old
The Pisan and the Genoese,
Into the evening gold
A ship was sailing fast,
Beside whose swaying mast
There leant a youth;—his eye's extended scope
Took in the scene, ere all the twilight fell;
And, more in blessing than in hope,
He murmured,—“Fare-thee-well.

“Not that thou gav'st my fathers birth,
And not that thou hast been
The terror of the ancient earth
And Christendom's sole Queen;

But that thou wert and art
The beauty of my heart:—
Now with a lover's love I pray to thee,
As in my passionate youth-time erst I prayed;
Now, with a lover's agony,
I see thy features fade.

“They tell me thou art deeply low;
They brand thee weak and vile;
The cruel Northman tells me so,
And pities me the while:
What can he know of thee,
Glorified Italy?
Never has Nature to his infant mouth
Bared the full summer of her living breast;
Never the warm and mellow South
To his young lips was prest.

“I know,—and thought has often striven
The justice to approve,—
I know that all that God has given
Is given us to love;
But still I have a faith,
Which must endure till death,
That Beauty is the mother of all Love;
And Patriot Love can never purely glow
Where frowns the veilèd heaven above,
And the niggard earth below.

“The wealth of high ancestral name,
And silken household ties,
And battle-fields' memorial fame,
He earnestly may prize
Who loves and honours not
The country of his lot,
With undiscerning piety,—the same
Filial religion, be she great and brave,
Or sunk in sloth and red with shame,
A monarch or a slave.

“But He who calls this heaven his own,
The very lowliest one,
Is conscious of a holier zone,
And nearer to the sun:
Ever it bids him hail,
Cloud-feathered and clear pale,
Or one vast dome of deep immaculate blue,
Or, when the moon is on her mid-year throne,
With richer but less brilliant hue,
Built up of turkis stone.

“The springing corn that steeped in light
Looks emerald, between
The delicate olive-branches, dight
In reverend gray-green;
Each flower with open breast,
To the gale it loves the best;

The bland outbreathings of the midland sea,
The aloe-fringed and myrtle-shadowed shore,
Are precious things,—Oh, wo the be
Must they be mine no more?

“And shall the matin bell awake
My native village crowd,
To kneel at shrines, whose pomp would make
A Northern city proud?
And shall the festival
Of closing Carnival
Bid the gay laughers thro' those arches pour,
Whose marble mass confronts its parent hill,
—And I upon a far bleak shore!
My heart will see them still.

“For though in poverty and fear,
Thou think'st upon the morrow,
Dutiful Art is ever near,
To wile thee from all sorrow;
Thou hast a power of melody,
To lull all sense of slavery;
Thy floral crown is blowing still to blow,
Thy eye of glory ceases not to shine,
And so long as these things be so,
I feel thee, bless thee, mine!”

WRITTEN IN PETRARCH'S HOUSE AT ARQUA,

AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS.

Petrarch! I would that there might be
In this thy household sanctuary
No visible monument of thee:

The Fount that whilom played before thee,
The Roof that rose in shelter o'er thee,
The low fair Hills that still adore thee,—

I would no more; thy memory
Must loathe all cold reality,
Thought-worship only is for thee.

They say thy Tomb lies there below;
What want I with the marble show?
I am content,—I will not go:

For though by Poesy's high grace
Thou saw'st, in thy calm resting-place,
God, Love, and Nature face to face;

Yet now that thou art wholly free,
How can it give delight to see
That sign of thy captivity?

FEELINGS EXCITED BY SOME MILITARY MANŒUVRES AT VERONA.

What is the lesson I have brought away,
After the moment's palpitating glee?
What has this pomp of men, this strong array
Of thousands and ten thousands been to me?
Did I find nothing but the vision gay,
The mere phenomenon that all could see?
Did I feel nothing but the brute display
Of Power,—the show of centred energy?
Trembling and humbled, I was taught how hard
It is for our strait minds at once to scan
The might of banded numbers, and regard
The individual soul, the living Man;
To use mechanic multitudes, and yet
Our common human feelings not forget!

MEDITATIVE FRAGMENTS, ON VENICE.

I.

“The ruler of the Adriatic, who never was infant nor stripling, whom God took by the right hand and taught to walk by himself the first hour.”— Landor.

Walk in St. Mark's, the time, the ample space
Lies in the freshness of the evening shade,
When, on each side, with gravely darkened face,
The masses rise above the light arcade;
Walk down the midst with slowly-tunèd pace,
But gay withal,—for there is high parade
Of fair attire and fairer forms, which pass
Like varying groups on a magician's glass.

From broad-illumined chambers far within,
Or under curtains daintily outspread,
Music, and laugh, and talk, the motley din
Of all who from sad thought or toil are sped,
Here a chance hour of social joy to win,
Gush forth,—but I love best, above my head
To feel nor arch nor tent, nor anything
But that pure Heaven's eternal covering.

It is one broad Saloon, one gorgeous Hall;
A chamber, where a multitude, all Kings,
May hold full audience, splendid festival,
Or Piety's most pompous ministerings;
Thus be its height unmarred,—thus be it all
One mighty room, whose form direct upsprings
To the o'er-arching sky;—it is right good,
When Art and Nature keep such brotherhood.

For where, upon the firmest sodden land,
Has ever Monarch's power and toil of slaves
Equalled the works of that self-governed band,
Who fixed the Delos of the Adrian waves;
Planting upon these strips of yielding sand
A Temple of the Beautiful, which braves
The jealous strokes of ocean, nor yet fears
The far more perilous sea, “whose waves are years?”

Walk in St. Mark's again, some few hours after,
When a bright sleep is on each storied pile,—
When fitful music, and inconstant laughter,
Give place to Nature's silent moonlight smile:
Now Fancy wants no faery gale to waft her
To Magian haunt, or charm-engirded isle,
All too content, in passive bliss, to see
This show divine of visible Poetry:—

On such a night as this impassionedly
The old Venetian sung those verses rare,
“That Venice must of needs eternal be,
For Heaven had looked through the pellucid air,
And cast its reflex in the crystal sea,
And Venice was the image pictured there ;”
I hear them now, and tremble, for I seem
As treading on an unsubstantial dream.

Who talks of vanished glory, of dead power,
Of things that were, and are not? Is he here?
Can he take in the glory of this hour,
And call it all the decking of a bier?
No, surely as on that Titanic tower
The Guardian Angel stands in æther clear,
With the moon's silver tempering his gold wing,
So Venice lives, as lives no other thing:—

That strange Cathedral! exquisitely strange,—
That front, on whose bright varied tints the eye
Rests as of gems,—those arches, whose high range
Gives its rich-broidered border to the sky,—
Those ever-prancing steeds!—My friend, whom change
Of restless will has led to lands that lie
Deep in the East, does not thy fancy set
Above those domes an airy minaret?

Dost thou not feel, that in this scene are blent
Wide distances of the estrangèd earth,
Far thoughts, far faiths, beseeming her who bent
The spacious Orient to her simple worth,
Who, in her own young freedom eminent,
Scorning the slaves that shamed their ancient birth,
And feeling what the West could be, had been,
Went out a Traveller, and returned a Queen?

“Ich hörte einen blinden Sänger in Chioggia, der sang, Venedig sey eine ewige Stadt; der Himmel hätte sich im Meer gespiegelt und sein Widerschein wäre Venedig.”—Platen.

The Campanile.

II.

The Golden Book
Is now unwritten in, and stands unmoved,
Save when the curious traveller takes down
A random volume, from the dusty shelf,
To trace the progress of a bruited name;
The Bucentaur
Is shattered, and of its resplendent form
There is no remnant, but some splintered morsel,
Which in his cabin, as a talisman,
Mournfully hangs the pious Gondolier;
The Adrian sea
Will never have a Doge to marry more,—
The meagre favours of a foreign lord
Can hardly lead some score of humble craft

With vilest merchandize into the port,
That whilom held the wealth of half a world.
Thy Palaces
Are bartered to the careful Israelite,—
Or left to perish, stone by stone, worn down
In desolation,—solemn skeletons,
Whose nakedness some tufts of pitying grass,
Or green boughs trembling o'er the trembling wall,
Adorn but hide not.

And are these things true,
Miraculous Venice? Is the charm then past
Away from thee? Is all thy work fulfilled,
Of power and beauty? Art thou gatherèd
To the dead cities? Is thy ministry
Made up, and folded in the hand of Thought?
Ask him who knows the meaning and the truth
Of all existence;—ask the Poet's heart:
Thy Book has no dead tome for him,—for him
Within St. Mark's emblazoned porticoes,
Thy old Nobility are walking still;—
The lowliest Gondola upon thy waters
Is worth to him thy decorated Galley;
He never looks upon the Adrian sea
But as thy lawful tho' too faithless Spouse;
And when, in the sad lustre of the moon,
Thy Palaces seem beautifully wan,
He blesses God that there is left on earth
So marvellous, so full an antidote,

For all the racks and toils of mortal life,
As thy sweet countenance to gaze upon.

The Libro d'Oro, the Venetian “Peerage. ”

III.

LIDO.

I went to greet the full May-moon
On that long narrow shoal
Which lies between the still Lagoon
And the open Ocean's roll.

How pleasant was that grassy shore,
When one for months had been
Shut up in streets,—to feel once more
One's foot-fall on the green!

There are thick trees too in that place;
But straight from sea to sea,
Over a rough uncultured space,
The path goes drearily.

I passed along, with many a bound,
To hail the fresh free wave;
But, pausing, wonderingly found
I was treading on a grave.

Then, at one careless look, I saw
That, for some distance round,
Tomb-stones, without design or law,
Were scattered on the ground:

Of pirates or of mariners
I deemed that these might be
The fitly-chosen sepulchres,
Encircled by the sea.

But there were words inscribed on all,
I' the tongue of a far land,
And marks of things symbolical,
I could not understand.

They are the graves of that sad race,
Who, from their Syrian home,
For ages, without resting-place,
Are doomed in woe to roam;

Who, in the days of sternest faith,
Glutted the sword and flame,
As if a taint of moral death
Were in their very name:

And even under laws most mild,
All shame was deemed their due,
And the nurse told the Christian child
To shun the cursèd Jew.

Thus all their gold's insidious grace
Availed not here to gain
For their last sleep, a seemlier place
Than this bleak-featured plain.

Apart, severely separate,
On the verge of the outer sea,
Their home of Death is desolate
As their Life's home could be.

The common sand-path had defaced
And pressed down many a stone;
Others can be but faintly traced
I' the rank grass o'er them grown.

I thought of Shylock,—the fierce heart
Whose wrongs and injuries old
Temper, in Shakspeare's world of Art,
His lusts of blood and gold;

Perchance that form of broken pride
Here at my feet once lay,—
But lay alone,—for at his side
There was no Jessica!

Fondly I love each island-shore,
Embraced by Adrian waves;
But none has Memory cherished more
Than Lido and its graves.

IV.

Oh Poverty! thou bitter-hearted fiend!
How darest thou approach the Beautiful?
How darest thou give up these Palaces,
Where delicate Art in wood and marble wove
Its noblest fancies, with laborious skill,
To the base uses of the artizan?
How darest thou defile with coarsest stores,
And vermin's loathsome nests, the aged walls,
Whence Titian's women burningly looked down
On the rich-vested pomp that shone below?
Is nothing sacred for thy hand, no names,
No memories,—thou bold Iniquity!
Shall men, on whose fine brows we recognize
The lines of some great ducal effigies,
Which frown along St. John's cathedral aisles,
With hearts as high as any of their fathers,
Sink silent under thy slow martyrdom,
Leaving their children, Liberty's just heirs,
Children like those that Gianbellini painted,
To batten on the miserable alms,
The sordid fragments of their country's wealth,
Doled out by servants of a stranger king?

Is there no engine of compassionate Death,
Which with a rapid mercy will relieve
This ancient city of its shamèd being?
Is War so weary that he cannot strike
One iron blow, that she may fold her robe
About her head, and fall imperially?
Is there no eager earthquake far below,
To shiver her frail limbs, and hurl her down
Into the bosom of her mated sea?
Or must she, for a lapse of wretched years,
Armless and heartless, tremble on as now,
Like one who hears the tramp of murderous foes,
Unseen, and feels them nearer, nearer still;—
Till round her Famine's pestilential breath,
Fatally closing, to the gloom of Time,
She shall, in quivering agony, give up
The spirit of that light, which burnt so long,
A stedfast glory, an unfailing fire?
Thus ran the darkling current of my thoughts,
As one sad night, from the Rialto's edge,
I looked into the waters,—on whose face
Glimmered the reflex of some few faint stars,
And two far-flitting lamps of gondoliers,
That seemed on that black flat to move alone,
While, on each side, each well-known building lost
Its separate beauty in one dark long curve.

The Venetian Pantheon of S. Giovanni e Paolo.

e.g. In the refectories of the Redentore and Frari.

V.

City, whose name did once adorn the world,
Thou might'st have been all that thou ever wert,
In form and feature and material strength,
Up from the sea, which is thy pedestal,
Unto thy Campanile's golden top,
And yet have never won the precious crown,
To be the loved of human hearts, to be
The wise man's treasure now and evermore.—
Th' ingenious boldness, the creative will,
Which from some weak uncertain plots of sand,
Cast up among the waters, could erect
Foundations firm as on the central ground,—
The art which changed thy huts to palaces,
And bade the God of Ocean's temples rise
Conspicuous far above the crystal plain,—
The ever-active nerve of Industry,
That bound the Orient to the Occident
In fruitful commerce, till thy lap was filled
With wealth, the while thy head was girt with power;
Each have their separate palm from wondering men,
But the sage thinker's passion must have source
In sympathy entire with that rare spirit
Which did possess thee, as thy very life,—
That power of union and self-sacrifice,

Which from the proud republics of old time
Devolved upon thee, by a perfect faith
Strung to a tenfold deeper energy.
Within thy people's mind immutable
Two notions held associate monarchy,
Religion and the State,—to which alone,
In their full freedom, they declared themselves
Subject, and deemed this willing servitude
Their dearest privilege of liberty.
Thus at the call of either sacred cause,
All wealth, all feelings, all peculiar rights,
Were made one universal holocaust,
Without a thought of pain,—thus all thy sons
Bore thee a love, not vague and hard defined,
But close and personal, a love no force
Could take away, no coldness could assuage.
Thus when the noble body of Italy,
Which God has bound in one by Alps and sea,
Was struggling with torn heart and splintered limbs,
So that the very marrow of her strength
Mixed with the lavished gore and oozed away,—
Town banded against town, street against street,
House against house, and father against son,
The servile victims of unmeaning feuds,—
Thou didst sustain the wholeness of thy power,—
Thy altar was as a domestic hearth,
Round which thy children sat in brotherhood;—
Never was name of Guelf or Ghibelline

Writ on thy front in letters of bright blood;
Never the stranger, for his own base ends,
Flattered thy passions, or by proffered gold
Seduced the meanest of thy citizens.—
Thus too the very sufferers of thy wrath,
Whom the unsparing prudence of the state,
For erring judgment, insufficient zeal,
Or heavier fault, had banished from its breast,
Even they, when came on thee thy hour of need,
Fell at thy feet and prayed, with humble tears,
That thou wouldst deign at least to use their wealth,
Though thou didst scorn the gift of their poor lives.

Prime model of a Christian commonwealth!
Thou wise simplicity, which present men
Calumniate, not conceiving,—joy is mine,
That I have read and learnt thee as I ought,
Not in the crude compiler's painted shell,
But in thine own memorials of live stone,
And in the pictures of thy kneeling princes,
And in the lofty words on lofty tombs,
And in the breath of ancient chroniclers,
And in the music of the outer sea.

As in the instance of Antonio Grimani, who was living in exile at Rome at the time of the league of Cambray. He had been condemned for some error in fighting against the Turks. When Venice was in distress, he offered all his private fortune to the state. After her victory he was not only recalled, but elected Doge some years later.

THE VENETIAN SERENADE.

When along the light ripple the far serenade
Has accosted the ear of each passionate maid,
She may open the window that looks on the stream,—
She may smile on her pillow and blend it in dream;
Half in words, half in music, it pierces the gloom,
“I am coming—Stalì—but you know not for whom!
Stalì—not for whom!”

Now the tones become clearer,—you hear more and more
How the water divided returns on the oar,—
Does the prow of the gondola strike on the stair?
Do the voices and instruments pause and prepare?
Oh! they faint on the ear as the lamp on the view,
“I am passing—Premì—but I stay not for you!
Premì—not for you!”

Then return to your couch, you who stifle a tear,
Then awake not, fair sleeper—believe he is here;

For the young and the loving no sorrow endures,
If to-day be another's, to-morrow is yours;—
May, the next time you listen, your fancy be true,
“I am coming—Sciàr—and for you and to you!
Sciàr—and to you!”

[_]

The Venetian words here used are the calls of the gondoliers, indicating the direction in which they are rowing. Sciare is to stop the boat.

FROM GÖTHE.

Let me this gondola boat compare to the slumberous cradle,
And to a spacious bier liken the cover demure;
Thus on the Great Canal through life we are swaying and swimming
Onward with never a care, coffin and cradle between.

A DREAM IN A GONDOLA.

I had a dream of waters: I was borne
Fast down the slimy tide
Of eldest Nile, and endless flats forlorn
Stretched out on either side,—
Save where from time to time arose
Red Pyramids, like flames in forced repose,
And Sphynxes gazed, vast countenances bland,
Athwart that river-sea and sea of sand.

It is the nature of the Life of Dream,
To make all action of our mental springs,
Howe'er unnatural, discrepant, and strange,
Be as the unfolding of most usual things;
And thus to me no wonder did there seem,
When, by a subtle change,
The heavy ample byblus-wingèd boat,
In which I lay afloat,
Became a deft canoe, light-wove
Of painted bark, gay-set with lustrous shells,
Faintingly rocked within a lonesome cove,
Of some rich island where the Indian dwells;
Below, the water's pure white light
Took colour from reflected blooms,

And, through the forest's deepening glooms,
Birds of illuminated plumes
Came out like stars in summer night:
And close beside, all fearless and serene,
Within a niche of drooping green,
A girl, with limbs fine-rounded and clear-brown,
And hair thick-waving down,
Advancing one small foot, in beauty stood,
Trying the temper of the lambent flood.

But on my spirit in that spicèd air
Embalmed, and in luxurious senses drowned,
Another change of sweet and fair
There passed, and of the scene around
Nothing remained the same in sight or sound:
For now the Wanderer of my dream
Was gliding down a fable-stream
Of long-dead Hellas, with much treasure
Of inworking thoughtful pleasure;
While the silver line meanders
Through the tall pink oleanders,
Through the wood of tufted rushes,
Through the arbute's ruby-bushes,
Voices of a happy hymn
Every moment grow less dim,
Till at last the slim caïque
(Hollowed from a single stem
Of a hill-brow's diadem)

Rests in a deep-dented creek
Myrtle-ambushed,—and above
Songs, the very breath of Love,
Stream from Temples reverend-old,
Porticoes of Doric mould,
Snow-white islands of devotion,
Planted in the rose and gold
Of the evening's æther-ocean;—
O joyant Earth! belovèd Grecian sky!
O favoured Wanderer—honoured dreamer I!

Yet not less favoured when awake,—for now,
Across my torpid brow
Swept a cool current of the young night's air,
With a sharp kiss, and there
Was I all clear awake,—drawn soft along
There in my own dear Gondola, among
The bright-eyed Venice isles,
Lit up in constant smiles.—
What had my thoughts and heart to do
With wild Egyptain bark, or frail canoe,
Or mythic skiff out of Saturnian days,
When I was there, with that rare scene to praise,
That Gondola to rest in and enjoy,
That actual bliss to taste without alloy?

Cradler of placid pleasures, deep delights,
Bosomer of the Poet's wearied mind,

Tempter from vulgar passions, scorns and spites,
Enfolder of all feelings that be kind!
Before our souls thy quiet motions spread,
In one great calm, one undivided plain,
Immediate joy, blest memories of the dead,
And iris-tinted forms of hope's domain,
Child of the still Lagoons!
Open to every show
Of summer sunsets and autumnal moons,
Such as no other space of world can know,—
Dear Boat, that makest dear
Whatever thou com'st near,—
In thy repose still let me gently roam,
Still on thy couch of beauty find a home;
Still let me share thy comfortable peace
With all I have of dearest upon Earth,
Friend, mistress, sister; and when death's release
Shall call my spirit to another birth,
Would that I might thus lightly lapse away,
Alone,—by moonlight,—in a Gondola.

ON THE MAD-HOUSE AT VENICE.

“I looked and saw between us and the sun
A building on an island, such an one
As age to age might add, for uses vile,
A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile;
And on the top an open tower, where hung
A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,—
We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue;
The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled
In strong and black relief. ‘What we behold
Shall be the Madhouse and its belfry tower,’
Said Maddalo.”
Shelley.

Honour aright the philosophic thought,
That they who, by the trouble of the brain
Or heart, for usual life are overwrought,
Hither should come to discipline their pain.
A single convent on a shoaly plain
Of waters never changing their dull face
But by the sparkles of thick-falling rain
Or lines of puny waves,—such is the place.
Strong medicine enters by the ear and eye;
That low unaltering dash against the wall
May lull the angriest dream to vacancy;
And Melancholy, finding nothing strange,
For her poor self to jar upon at all,
Frees her sad-centred thoughts, and gives them pleasant range.

TO ---

WRITTEN AT VENICE.

Not only through the golden haze
Of indistinct surprise,
With which the Ocean-bride displays
Her pomp to stranger eyes;—
Not with the fancy's flashing play,
The traveller's vulgar theme,
Where following objects chase away
The moment's dazzling dream;—

Not thus art thou content to see
The City of my love,—
Whose beauty is a thought to me
All mortal thoughts above;
And pass in dull unseemly haste,
Nor sight nor spirit clear,
As if the first bewildering taste
Were all the banquet here!

When the proud Sea, for Venice' sake,
Itself consents to wear
The semblance of a land-locked lake,
Inviolably fair;
And in the dalliance of her Isles,
Has levelled his strong waves,
Adoring her with tenderer wiles,
Than his own pearly caves,—

Surely may we to similar calm
Our noisy lives subdue,
And bare our bosoms to such balm
As God has given to few;
Surely may we delight to pause
On our care-goaded road,
Refuged from Time's most bitter laws
In this august abode.

Thou knowest this,—thou lingerest here,
Rejoicing to remain;
The plashing oars fall on thy ear
Like a familiar strain;
No wheel prolongs its weary roll,
The Earth itself goes round
Slower than elsewhere, and thy soul
Dreams in the void of sound.

Thy heart, by Nature's discipline,
From all disdain refined,
Kept open to be written in
By good of every kind,
Can harmonise its inmost sense
To every outward tone,
And bring to all experience
High reasoning of its own.

So, when these forms come freely out,
And wonder is gone by,
With patient skill it sets about
Its subtle work of joy;
Connecting all it comprehends
By lofty moods of love,—
The earthly Present's farthest ends,—
The Past's deep Heaven above.

O bliss! to watch, with half-shut lid,
By many a secret place,
Where darkling loveliness is hid,
And undistinguished grace,
To mark the gloom, by slow degrees,
Exfoliate, till the whole
Shines forth before our sympathies,
A soul that meets a soul!

Come out upon the broad Lagoon,
Come for the hundredth time,—
Our thoughts shall make a pleasant tune,
Our words a worthy rhyme;
And thickly round us we will set
Such visions as were seen,
By Tizian and by Tintorett,
And dear old Giambellin,—

And all their peers in art, whose eyes,
Taught by this sun and sea,
Flashed on their works those burning dyes,
That fervent poetry;
And wove the shades so thinly-clear
They would be parts of light
In northern climes, where frowns severe
Mar half the charms of sight.—

Did ever shape that Paolo drew
Put on such brilliant tire,
As Nature, in this evening view,—
This world of tinted fire?
The glory into whose embrace,
The virgin pants to rise,
Is but reflected from the face
Of these Venetian skies.

The sun, beneath the horizon's brow
Has sunk, not passed away;
His presence is far lordlier now
Than on the throne of day;
His spirit of splendour has gone forth,
Sloping wide violet rays,
Possessing air and sea and earth
With his essential blaze.

Transpierced, transfused, each densest mass
Melts to as pure a glow,
As images on painted glass
Or silken screens can show.
Gaze on the city,—contemplate
With that fine sense of thine
The Palace of the ancient state,—
That wildly-grand design!

How 'mid the universal sheen
Of marble amber-tinged,
Like some enormous baldaquin
Gay-chequered and deep-fringed,

It stands in air and will not move,
Upheld by magic power,—
The dun-lead Domes just caught above—
Beside,—the glooming Tower.

Now a more distant beauty fills
Thy scope of ear and eye,—
That graceful cluster of low hills,
Bounding the western sky,
Which the ripe evening flushes cover
With purplest fruitage-bloom,—
Methinks that gold-lipt cloud may hover
Just over Petrarch's tomb!

Petrarch! when we that name repeat,
Its music seems to fall
Like distant bells, soft-voiced and sweet,
But sorrowful withal;—
That broken heart of love!—that life
Of tenderness and tears!
So weak on earth,—in earthly strife,—
So strong in holier spheres!

How in his most of godlike pride,
While emulous nations ran
To kiss his feet, he stept aside
And wept the woes of man!

How in his genius-woven bower
Of passion ever green,
The world's black veil fell, hour by hour,
Him and his rest between.

Welcome such thoughts;—they well atone
With this more serious mood
Of visible things that night brings on,
In her cool shade to brood;
The moon is clear in heaven and sea,
Her silver has been long
Slow-changing to bright gold, but she
Deserves a separate song.

The perfect transparency and rich colour of all objects, and their reflections, in southern countries, for some short time after sunset, has an almost miraculous effect to a northern eye. Whenever it has been imitated in art, it has been generally pronounced unnatural or exaggerated. I do not remember to have ever seen the phenomenon so astonishingly beautiful as a Venice, at least in Italy.

TO THE MOON OF THE SOUTH.

Let him go down,—the gallant Sun!
His work is nobly done;
Well may He now absorb
Within his solid orb
The rays so beautiful and strong,
The rays that have been out so long
Embracing this delighted land as with a mystic song.

Let the brave Sun go down to his repose,
And though his heart be kind,
He need not mourn for those
He leaves behind;
He knows, that when his ardent throne
Is rolled beyond the vaulting sky,
The Earth shall not be left alone
In darkness and perplexity.

We shall not sit in sullen sorrow
Expectant of a tardy morrow,
But there where he himself arose,
Another power shall rise,
And gracious rivalry disclose
To our reverted eyes,

Between the passing splendour and the born,
Which can the most our happy world adorn.

The light of night shall rise,—
Not as in northern skies,
A memory of the day, a dream
Of sunshine, something that might seem
Between a shadow and a gleam,
A mystery, a maiden
Whose spirit worn and sorrow laden
Pleasant imaginations wile
Into a visionary smile,
A novice veiled in vapoury shrouds,
A timid huntress, whom the clouds
Rather pursue than shun,—
With far another mien,
Wilt Thou come forth serene,
Thou full and perfect Queen,
Moon of the South! twin-sister of the Sun!

Still harboured in his tent of cloth of gold
He seems thy ordered presence to await,
In his pure soul rejoicing to behold
The majesty of his successor's state,—
Saluting thy ascent
With many a tender and triumphant tone
Compassing in his celestial instrument,
And harmonies of hue to other climes unknown.

He, too, who knows what melody of word
May with that visual music best accord,
Why does the Bard his homage now delay?
As in the ancient East,
The royal Minstrel-Priest
Sang to his harp that Hallelujah lay
Of the Sun-bridegroom ready for his way,
So, in the regions of the later West
This blessed even-tide,
Is there no Poet whose divine behest
Shall be to hail the bride?

A feeble voice may give an earnest sound,
And grateful hearts are measured not by power,
Therefore may I, tho' nameless and uncrowned,
Proffer a friendly tribute to thy dower.
For on the midland Sea I sailed of old,
Leading thy line of narrow rippled light,
And saw it grow a field of frosted gold,
With every boat a Shadow in the Bright;
And many a playful fancy has been mine,
As I have watched the shapes thy glory made,
Glimpsing like starlight through the massive pine,
Or finely-trellised by mimosa shade;
And now I trace each moment of thy spell,
That frees from mortal stain these Venice isles,
From eve's rich shield to morn's translucid shell,
From Love's young glow to Love's expiring smiles!

We gaze upon the faces we hold dear,
Each feature in thy rays as well defined,
As just a symbol of informing mind,
As when the moon is on them full and clear;
Yet all some wise attempered and subdued,
Not far from what to Faith's prospective eyes
Transfigured creatures of beatitude
From earthly graves arise.

Those evenings, oh! those evenings, when with one,
Then the world's loveliness, now wholly mine,
I stood beside the salient founts that shone
Fit frontispiece to Peter's Roman shrine;
I knew how fair were She and They
In every bright device of day,
All happy as a lark on wing,
A singing, glistening, dancing thing,
With joy and grace that seemed to be
Of Nature's pure necessity;
But when, O holy Moon! thy might
Turned all the water into light,
And each enchanted Fountain wore
Diviner beauty than before,
A pillar of aspiring beams,
An ever-falling veil of gleams,—
She who in day's most lively hour
Had something of composing power
About her mirthful lips and eyes,—

Sweet folly making others wise,—
Was vested with a sudden sense
Of great and grave intelligence,
As if in thy reflex she saw
The process of eternal law,
God's conscious pleasure working out
Through all the Passion, Pain, and Doubt;—
And thus did She and Thou impart
Such knowledge to my listening heart,
Such sympathies as word or pen
Can never tell again!

All spirits find themselves fulfilled in Thee,
The glad have triumph and the mourning balm:
Dear God! how wondrous that a thing should be
So very glorious and so very calm!
The lover, standing on a lonely height,
Rests his sad gaze upon the scene below,
Lapt in the trance of thy pervading glow,
Till pleasant tears obscure his pensive sight;
And in his bosom those long-smothered flames,
The scorching elements of vain desire,
Taking the nature of thy gentle fire,
Play round the heart in peace, while he exclaims,
“Surely my Love is out somewhere to-night!”

Why art thou thus companionable? Why
Do we not love thy light alone, but Thee?

Is it that though thou art so pure and high,
Thou dost not shock our senses, as they be?
That our poor eyes rest on thee, and descry
Islands of earth within thy golden sea?
Or should the root be sought
In some unconscious thought,
That thy fine presence is not more thine own
Than are our soul's adorning splendours ours?—
Than are the energies and powers,
With which reflected light alone
Illuminates the living hours,
From our own wells of being brought,
From virtue self-infused or seed of life self-sown?
Thus with ascent more ready may we pass
From this delightful sharing of thy gifts
Up to the common Giver, Source, and Will;
And if, alas!
His daily-affluent sun-light seldom lifts
To thankful ecstasy our hearts' dull mass,
It may be that our feeble sight
Will not confront the total light,
That we may love, in nature frail,
To blend the vivid with the pale,
The dazzling with the dim:
And lo! how God, all-gracious still
Our simplest fancies to fulfil,
Bids us, O Southern Moon, thy beauty hail,
In Thee rejoicing and adoring Him.

PICTURES IN VERSE.

I. PICTURE BY GIOV. BELLINI, IN THE CHURCH OF THE REDENTORE AT VENICE.

THE VIRGIN.
Who am I, to be so far exalted
Over all the maidens of Judæa,
That here only in this lonely bosom
Is the wonder-work of God revealèd?
Oh! to think this little, little infant,
Whose warm limbs upon my knees are resting,
Helpless, silent, with his tender eyelids,
Like two pearl-shells, delicately closèd,
Is informed with that eternal spirit,
Who, between the Cherubim enthronèd,
Dwells behind the Curtain of the Temple!
I can only gaze on him adoring,
Fearful lest the simple joy and passion
Which my mother-love awakes within me,
Be not something bold and too familiar
For this Child of Miracle and Glory.

100

TWO ANGELS.
(PLAYING ON INSTRUMENTS.)
We and the little cheerful goldfinch,
Perched above that blessèd seat,—
He above and we below,—
We with voices and sweet viols,
He with chirping voice alone,—
Glorify the happy Mother,
Glorify the holy Child.
Now that our great heavenly Master
Has put on this wondrous semblance
Of a humble mortal infant,
We, the Angels of his presence,
Are become as simple children,
And beside him watch, admiring
All his innocence and beauty,
Lulling him to downy slumbers
With remembrances of Heaven.

THE CHILD JESUS.
I seem to be asleep,—I seem to dream,—
But it is Ye, Children of fallen Man,
Who dream, not I. Though I am now come down,
Out of the Waking of Eternal Truth,

101

Here born into the miserable Dream
Of your poor Life, still I must ever wake,
For I am Love, and if ye follow me,
Ye too will wake;—I come to lead the way.

II. THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. CHRISTINA,

BY VINCENZO CATENA, IN THE CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA MATER DOMINI, AT VENICE.

ST. CHRISTINA.
(KNEELING.)
I knew, I knew, it would be so,
That, in this long-expected hour,
Thou would'st not leave me, Christ, my Lord!
My poor blind-hearted enemies
Have brought me here to die,—even here,
In this my old delight, the Lake
Of dear Bolsena; they have tied
About my weak and slender neck
A ponderous millstone, that my frame
May be dragged down to surest death
Within that undulating tomb.
The stone is there,—the cord is there,

102

But the gross weight I cannot feel,
For round me, even while I pray,
Beautiful-wingèd childly shapes
Are gathering, smiling glorious smiles.
With what deep looks of sympathy
They dwell upon me! with what care
Some raise the cord, some raise the stone,
So that it cannot sway me down.
O my soul's lover! Saviour Christ! take this earnest of thy grace,
Assured that I shall lay aside
The coil of this tormented flesh,
Without a thought of fear or pain,—
That, when this mortal shell is cast
Into the stifling element,
That instrument of my distress
Will, at thy blessèd will, be changed
Into the very air of Heaven.

CHORUS OF ANGELS.
Sister Christine, sweetest Sister,
Know you not from whom we come?
See, we kneel around you kneeling,
Offering kind and loving duty,
All we can to soothe your suffering,

103

All we can to make you glad!
Ah! we see you look with wonder,
That our small and tender hands
Can raise up this heavy stone,
Without show of pain or labour:
Do you believe then,
That, because our long gold hair,
And our rosy-rounded faces,
And our laughing lips and eyes,
And our baby-moulded limbs
Are like those of earthly children,
We have not the strength, the glory, and the power,
Which our Father gives unto his dear ones,—
Which he will give to you, most happy Christine,
For you have loved him?

CHRIST.
(ABOVE, SPEAKING TO AN ANGEL.)
Angel! to thee is given the noble charge
To bear this martyr-mantle perfect-white
To my dear daughter Christine there below;
That she, when clothed thus worthily, may pass
From the hard triumph of her prison-life
To the embraces of essential Love.

104

ANGEL.
(KNEELING, AND HOLDING THE MANTLE.)
Burning with delight, I haste
This high mission to perform,—
But it is an awful task,
Even for an Angel's hands,
Such a power of God to hold,
As the sign of Martyrdom.

III. JESUS AND JOHN CONTENDING FOR THE CROSS.

BY SIMEONE DA PESARO; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE SEMINARY AT VENICE.

THE CHILD JOHN.
(TRYING TO TAKE THE CROSS OUT OF THE HAND OF JESUS
Give me the Cross, I pray you, dearest Jesus!
Oh! if you knew how much I wish to have it,
You would not hold it in your hand so tightly:
Something has told me,—something in my heart here,
Which I am sure is true,—that if you keep it,—
If you will let no other take it from you,—

105

Terrible things, I cannot bear to think of,
Must fall upon you; show me that you love me:
Am I not here to be your little servant,
Follow your steps and wait upon your wishes?
Why may I not take up the heavy plaything,
And on my shoulder carry it behind you?
Then, I am older, stronger too, than you are;
I am a child o' the desert and the mountains;—
Deep i' the waste, I shouted at the wild bees,—
They flew away, and left me all the honey:
Look at the shaggy skin I've tied about me;
Surely, if Pain or any other evil
Somewhere about this mystery be hidden,
I am the fittest of the two to suffer!

THE CHILD JESUS.
(HOLDING THE CROSS FIRMLY.)
Ask me not, my gentle brother,—ask no more, it must not be:
In the heart of this poor trifle lies the secret unrevealed
Which has brought me to this world, and sent you to prepare my way.
In the long and weary woodland, where your path of life will lead,

106

Thousand, myriad, other Crosses you will find on every side;
And the same eternal Law that bids me take this chiefest one,
Will be there to give you many, grievous as your strength can bear;
But in vain would you and others sink beneath the holy load,
Were I not with mine before you, Captain of the Crucified;
I must be your elder Brother in the heritage of Pain;
I must give you to our Father,—I must fall for you to rise.

THE VIRGIN.
(WITH HER HAND ON THE CROSS.)

My soul is weak with doubt,—
What can I think or do?
To which of these dear children shall I yield
The object of their earnest looks and words?

Ah me! I see within
That artless wooden form,
A meaning of exceeding misery,
A dark, dark shadow of oncoming woe.

107

Oh! give it up, my child!
I see your bright eyes close,
Your soft fair fingers spattered all with blood,
Your cheeks dead pale;—throw down the horrid toy.

He grasps it firmer still!
I dare not thwart his hand;
For what he does, he does not of himself,
But in the Will of Him who sent him here.

And I, who labour blind
In this abysmal work,
Must bear the weight of dumb expectancy,
Of women first in honour and in woe!

IV. CHRIST'S DESCENT INTO PURGATORY.

BY GIORGIONE, AT VENICE.

The saving work for man is finishèd,
The kingdoms of the Earth and Air o'erthrown;
So now hath Christ come down among the dead,
Spoiling the Spoiler, to redeem his own.
What blessèd glory plays about that head
For those who here in fiery bondage groan,

108

Conscious their suffering never could atone
For Sin, till He that once had sufferèd.
And, lo! in patient melancholy state
The synod of the Patriarchs rests apart
Condemned, tho' sons of God by faith, to wait
In this dark place and solitude of heart,
Joyless and tearless, till this Christ should come
To bear them to their Father and their Home.

109

SIR WALTER SCOTT AT THE TOMB OF THE STUARTS IN ST. PETER'S.

Eve's tinted shadows slowly fill the fane
Where Art has taken almost Nature's room,
While still two objects clear in light remain,
An alien pilgrim at an alien tomb.—

—A sculptured tomb of regal heads discrown'd,
Of one heart-worshipped, fancy-haunted, name,
Once loud on earth, but now scarce else renown'd
Than as the offspring of that stranger's fame.

There lie the Stuarts!—There lingers Walter Scott!
Strange congress of illustrious thoughts and things!
A plain old moral, still too oft forgot,—
The power of Genius and the fall of Kings.

The curse on lawless Will high-planted there,
A beacon to the world, shines not for him;
He is with those who felt their life was sere,
When the full light of loyalty grew dim.

110

He rests his chin upon a sturdy staff,
Historic as that sceptre, theirs no more;
His gaze is fixed; his thirsty heart can quaff,
For a short hour, the spirit-draughts of yore.

Each figure in its pictured place is seen,
Each fancied shape his actual vision fills,
From the long-pining, death-delivered, Queen,
To the worn Outlaw of the heathery hills.

O grace of life, which shame could never mar!
O dignity, that circumstance defied!
Pure is the neck that wears the deathly scar,
And sorrow has baptised the front of pride.

But purpled mantle, and blood-crimson'd shroud,
Exiles to suffer and returns to woo,
Are gone, like dreams by daylight disallow'd;
And their historian,—he is sinking too!

A few more moments and that labouring brow
Cold as those royal busts and calm will lie;
And, as on them his thoughts are resting now,
His marbled form will meet the attentive eye.

Thus, face to face, the dying and the dead,
Bound in one solemn ever-living bond,
Communed; and I was sad that ancient head
Ever should pass those holy walls beyond.

When Sir Walter Scott was at Rome, the year of his death, the history and localities of the Stuarts seemed to absorb all other objects of his interest. The circumstance of this poem fell within the observation of the writer.

111

THE ILLUMINATIONS OF ST. PETER'S.

I. FIRST ILLUMINATION.

Temple! where Time has wed Eternity,
How beautiful Thou art, beyond compare,
Now emptied of thy massive majesty,
And made so faery-frail, so faery-fair:
The lineaments that thou art wont to wear
Augustly traced in ponderous masonry,
Lie faint as in a woof of filmy air,
Within their frames of mellow jewelry.—
But yet how sweet the hardly-waking sense,
That when the strength of hours has quenched those gems,
Disparted all those soft-bright diadems,—
Still in the Sun thy form will rise supreme
In its own solid clear magnificence,
Divinest substance then, as now divinest dream.

112

II. SECOND ILLUMINATION.

My heart was resting with a peaceful gaze,
So peaceful that it seemed I well could die
Entranced before such Beauty,—when a cry
Burst from me, and I sunk in dumb amaze:
The molten stars before a withering blaze
Paled to annihilation, and my eye,
Stunned by the splendour, saw against the sky
Nothing but light,—sheer light,—and light's own haze.
At last that giddying Sight took form,—and then
Appeared the stable Vision of a Crown,
From the black vault by unseen Power let down,
Cross-topped,—thrice girt with flame:—Cities of men,
Queens of the Earth! bow low,—was ever brow
Of mortal birth adorned as Rome is now?

113

III. REFLECTION.

Past is the first dear phantom of our sight,
A loadstar of calm loveliness to draw
All souls from out this world of fault and flaw,
To a most perfect centre of delight,
Merged in deep fire;—our joy is turned to awe,
Delight to wonder. This is just and right;—
A greater light puts out the lesser light,—
So be it ever,—such is God's high law.
The self-same Sun that calls the flowers from earth
Withers them soon, to give the fruit free birth;—
The nobler Spirit to whom much is given
Must take still more, though in that more there lie
The risk of losing All;—to gaze at Heaven,
We blind our earthly eyes;—to live we die.

Translated by C. J. M`C.—

Tempio! che'l ciel con quest' angusto mondo
E 'l tempo coll' eternità mariti,
Di quai bellezze nuove il viso inondo
Or che mite e fral tu lo sguardo inviti!
Sorridòn sciolti sotto vel profondo
Quei tratti già da fermo sasso uniti,
Tela di luce sol ti fa giocondo,—
Sol di gemme, di fiamma, e' son vestiti.
Eppur che gioia nel pensier segreto
Che quando l' avide Ore e l' invidioso
Sol spegneran quel fregio, or si pomposo,
Tu non perciò vedrai a te rovina,
Ma sempre stai eterno e chiaro e lieto,
Or divin sogno, or realtà divina!

114

THE FIREWORKS.

FROM THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO.

Play on, play on, I share your gorgeous glee,
Creatures of elemental mirth! play on,—
Let each fulfil his marvellous destiny,
My heart leaps up and falls in unison.
The Tower round which ye weave, with elfin grace,
The modulations of your burning dance,
Looks through your gambols with a grandsire's face,
A grave but not reproachful countenance;
Ye are the children of a festive night,
He is the mate of many an hundred years,—
Ye but attest men's innocent delight,
He is the comrade of their crimes and tears,—
Ye in your joy's pure prime will flare away,
He waits his end in still and slow decay.

115

ON THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY GWENDOLIN TALBOT WITH THE ELDEST SON OF THE PRINCE BORGHESE.

Lady! to decorate thy marriage morn,
Rare gems, and flowers, and lofty songs are brought;
Thou the plain utterance of a Poet's thought,
Thyself at heart a Poet, wilt not scorn:
The name, into whose splendour thou wert born,
Thou art about to change for that which stands
Writ on the proudest work that mortal hands
Have raised from earth, Religion to adorn.
Take it rejoicing,—take with thee thy dower,
Britain's best blood, and Beauty ever new,
Being of mind; may the cool northern dew
Still rest upon thy leaves, transplanted flower!
Mingling thy English nature, pure and true,
With the bright growth of each Italian hour.

Rome, May 11th, 1835.

St. Peter's.

116

ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS BORGHESE,

AT ROME, NOVEMBER, 1840.

Once, and but once again I dare to raise
A voice which thou in spirit still may'st hear,
Now that thy bridal bed becomes a bier,
Now that thou canst not blush at thine own praise!
The ways of God are not as our best ways,
And thus we ask, with a convulsive tear,
Why is this northern blossom low and sere?
Why has it blest the south but these few days?
Another Basilic, decked otherwise
Than that which hailed thee as a princely bride,
Receives thee and three little ones beside;
While the young lord of that late glorious home
Stands 'mid these ruins and these agonies,
Like some lone column of his native Rome!

S. Maria Maggiore, where the Borghese family are interred.

117

ROMAN RUINS.

How could Rome live so long, and now be dead?
How came this waste and wilderness of stones?
How shows the orbèd monster, so long fed
On martyr-blood, his bare and crumbling bones?
Did the strong Faith, that built eight hundred years
Of world-dominion on a robber's name,
Once animate this corse, and fervent seers
Augur it endless life and shadeless fame?
Stranger! if thou a docile heart dost bring
Within thee, bear a timely precept hence;
That Power, mere Power, is but a barren thing,
Even when it seems most like omnipotence;
The forms must pass,—and past, they leave behind
Little to please, and nought to bless mankind.

118

ON A SCENE IN TUSCANY.

What good were it to dim the pleasure-glow,
That lights thy cheek, fair Girl, in scenes like these,
By shameful facts, and piteous histories?
While we enjoy, what matters what we know?
What tender love-sick looks on us below
Those Mountains cast! how courteously the Trees
Raise up their branching heads in calices
For the thick Vine to fill and overflow!
This nature is like Thee, all-bright, all-mild;
If then some self-wise man should say, that here
Hate, sin, and death held rule for many a year,
That of this kindliest earth there's not a rood
But has been saturate with brother's blood,—
Believe him not, believe him not, my Child.

119

AN INCIDENT AT PISA.

“From the common burial-ground
Mark'd by some peculiar bound,
Beppo! who are these that lie
Like one numerous family?”

“They whose bodies rest within
This appointed place,
Signor! never knew of sin,
Only knew of grace.
Purified from earthly leaven,
They have mounted straight to heaven,
Without sorrow, without thrall,
Blessed children, angels all!”

“But that second space, with art
Fenc'd from all the rest apart,
Though from those sweet infants' bed
By a low wall separated—
Beppo! who are these, and why
To the others laid so nigh?”

120

“Signor! they who moulder here,
Be it wrong or right,
Shake with many a pang of fear
Passers-by at night:
Men of passion, vice, and pride,
Who in evil liv'd and died,
Unrepentant, unconfess'd,
By the sacraments unbless'd;
Though with these are mingled some
That deserv'd a better doom,
When by sudden death waylaid,
Ere their peace with God was made:
But why they who guiltless die
By those reprobates should lie,
Signor! the priest may know, not I.”

In these words the truth discerning,
Much I ponder'd, home returning,
Whether chance or wise design
Drew this thin dividing line,
Almost blending in this close
Old decay and young repose;
Almost laying side by side
Those who hardly liv'd and died,
And the wretched ones for whom
Life has been a very tomb.

Oh! if in our utmost need
Love has power to intercede—

121

If between us and our foes
Innocence may interpose—
May not they, who dare not claim
Pardon in the church's name,
By some sweet and secret law
From these little neighbours draw
Blessings such as nature gave
To the angel-ruffled wave;
Finding a Bethesda's worth
In this angel-planted earth?

122

NAPLES AND VENICE.

Overlooking, overhearing, Naples and her subject bay,
Stands Camaldoli, the convent, shaded from the inclement ray.

Thou, who to that lofty terrace, lov'st on summer-eve to go,
Tell me, Poet! what Thou seest,—what Thou hearest, there below!

Beauty, beauty, perfect beauty! Sea and City, Hills and Air,
Rather blest imaginations than realities of fair.

Forms of grace alike contenting casual glance and stedfast gaze,
Tender lights of pearl and opal mingling with the diamond blaze.

Sea is but as deepen'd æther: white as snow-wreaths sunbeshone
Lean the Palaces and Temples green and purple heights upon.

123

Streets and paths mine eye is tracing, all replete with clamorous throng,
Where I see and where I see not, waves of uproar roll along.

As the sense of bees unnumber'd, burning through the walk of limes,—
As the thought of armies gathering round a chief in ancient times,—

So from Corso, Port, and Garden, rises Life's tumultuous strain,
Not secure from wildest utterance rests the perfect-crystal main.

Still the all-enclosing Beauty keeps my spirit free from harm,
Distance blends the veriest discords into some melodious charm.

—Overlooking, overhearing, Venice and her sister isles,
Stands the giant Campanile massive 'mid a thousand piles.

Thou who to this open summit lov'st at every hour to go,
Tell me, Poet! what Thou seest, what Thou hearest, there below.

124

Wonder, wonder, perfect wonder! Ocean is the City's moat;
On the bosom of broad Ocean seems the mighty weight to float:

Seems—yet stands as strong and stable as on land e'er city shall,—
Only moves that Ocean-serpent, tide-impelled the Great Canal.

Rich arcades and statued pillars, gleaming banners, burnished domes,—
Ships approaching,—ships departing,—countless ships in harbour-homes.

Yet so silent! scarce a murmur winged to reach this airy seat,
Hardly from the close Piazza rises sound of voice or feet.

Plash of oar or single laughter,—cry or song of Gondolier,—
Signals far between to tell me that the work of life is here.

Like a glorious maiden dreaming music in the drowsy heat,
Lies the City, unbetokening where its myriad pulses beat.

125

And I think myself in cloudland,—almost try my power of will,
Whether I can change the picture, or it must be Venice still.

When the question wakes within me, which hath won the crown of deed,
Venice with her moveless silence, Naples with her noisy speed?

Which hath writ the goodlier tablet for the past to hoard and show,
Venice in her student stillness, Naples in her living glow?

Here are Chronicles with virtues studded as the night with stars,—
Records there of passions raging through a wilderness of wars:

There a tumult of Ambitions, Power afloat on blood and tears,—
Here one simple reign of Wisdom stretching thirteen hundred years:

Self-subsisting, self-devoted, there the moment's Hero ruled,—
Here the State, each one subduing, pride enchained and passion schooled:

126

Here was Art the nation's mistress, Art of colour, Art of stone—
There before the leman Pleasure bowed the people's soul alone.

Venice! vocal is thy silence, can our soul but rightly hear;
Naples! dumb as death thy voices, listen we however near.

127

CANNÆ.

Save where Garganus, with low-ridgèd bound,
Protects the North, the eye outstretching far
Surveys one sea of gently-swelling ground,
A fitly-moulded “Orchestra of War.”

Here Aufidus, between his humble banks
With wild thyme plotted, winds along the plain,
A devious path, as when the serried ranks
Passed over it, that passed not back again.

The long-horned herds enjoy the cool delight,
Sleeping half-merged, to shun the deep sun-glow,
Which, that May-morning, dazed the Roman sight,
But fell innocuous on the subtler foe.

We feel the wind upon our bosoms beat,
That whilom dimmed with dust those noble eyes,
And rendered aimless many a gallant feat,
And brought disgrace on many a high emprise.

128

And close beside us rests the ancient well,
Where at the end of that accursed day,
Apulian peasants to their grandsons tell,
The friend and follower of wise Fabius lay;

Here fainting lay, compelled by fate to share
Shame not his own,—here spurned the scanty time
Still left for flight, lest, living, he might bear
Hard witness to his colleague's generous crime.

I have seen many fields where men have fought
With mightier issues, but not one, I deem,
Where history offers to reflecting thought,
So sharp a check of greatness so supreme.

The battle was fought on the 21st of May, B.C. 216.

Vulturnus, a south-east wind, probably a local name.

The only localities preserved in the tradition are this large fountain, which goes by the name of the “Consul's Well,” and “The Place of Blood,” a farm-house on the other side of the river, where they say the Roman prisoners were massacred.

Abi, nuncia publice patribus urbem Romam muniant . . . . privatimque Fabio, L. Æmilium præceptorum ejus memorem extitisse, et vixisse, et adhuc mori; et tu me, in hac strage militum meorum, patere exspirare, ne ut reus inteream, causâque consulatus accusator collegæ existam, ut alieno rimine innocentiam meam protegam. Liv. xxii.

129

ON LEAVING ITALY,

FOR THE SUMMER, ON ACCOUNT OF HEALTH.

Thou summer-land! that dost put on the sun
Not as a dress of pomp occasional,
But as thy natural and most fitting one,—
Yet still thy Beauty has its festival,
Its own chief day,
And I, though conscious of the bliss begun,
Must turn away!

I leave thee in thy royalest attire
Of affluent life,—I leave thee 'mid thy wealth
Of sunlight gold and jewels of all fire,—
Led by the paltry care of weakened health
And fear of pain;
Who knows that I shall see, ere I expire,
Thy face again!

I almost could persuade me that too dear
My Northern-island birthdom has been bought,
The vantage-ground of intellect, the clear
And bright expanse of action and of thought,
If I am bound
To limit all the good my heart has sought
To that cold ground.

130

What is my gain that I can take and mesh
The Beautiful in Nature's deepest sea,
If I am bound the bondman of the flesh,
And must not float upon the surface free?
Why should these powers
Bring nothing but a burden ever fresh
Of yearning hours?

Why do we wish the things we do not dare?
Why do I tremble at my æstuous Soul
That would embrace the burning god, and there
Give up into the elemental whole
Its worthless frame,
Whose instincts guide me captive everywhere,
In grief and shame?

Oh! what a world of strifes of good and ill
Is this that we are cast in? Head and Heart,
Body and Spirit, Faculties and Will,
Nothing at peace, all sundered and apart;
Who would not shun
This war, if Death were sure to make him still,
Or make him One!

131

SWITZERLAND AND ITALY.

Within the Switzer's varied land,
When Summer chases high the snow,
You'll meet with many a youthful band
Of strangers wandering to and fro:
Through hamlet, town, and healing bath,
They haste and rest as chance may call,
No day without its mountain-path,
No path without its waterfall.

They make the hours themselves repay,
However well or ill be shared,
Content that they should wing their way,
Unchecked, unreckoned, uncompared:
For though the hills unshapely rise,
And lie the colours poorly bright,—
They mould them by their cheerful eyes,
And paint them with their spirit's light.

132

Strong in their youthfulness, they use
The energies their souls possess;
And if some wayward scene refuse
To pay its part of loveliness,—
Onward they pass, nor less enjoy
For what they leave;—and far from me
Be every thought that would destroy
A charm of that simplicity!

But if one blot on that white page
From Doubt or Misery's pen be thrown,—
If once the sense awake, that Age
Is counted not by years alone,—
Then no more grand and wonderous things!
No active happinesses more!
The wounded Heart has lost its wings,
And change can only fret the sore.

Yet there is calm for those that weep,
Where the divine Italian sea
Rests like a maiden hushed asleep
And breathing low and measuredly;
Where all the sunset-purpled ground,
Fashioned by those delicious airs,
Seems strewed with softest cushions round
For weary heads to loose their cares:

133

Where Nature offers, at all hours,
Out of her free imperial store,
That perfect Beauty their weak powers
Can help her to create no more:
And grateful for that ancient aid,
Comes forth to comfort and relieve
Those minds in prostrate sorrow laid,
Bidding them open and receive!

Though still 'tis hardly she that gives,
For Nature reigns not there alone,
A mightier queen beside her lives,
Whom she can serve but not dethrone;
For she is fallen from the state
That waited on her Eden-prime,
And Art remains by Sin and Fate
Unscathed, for Art is not of Time.

134

PALM LEAVES.

THE GREEK AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

The cypresses of Scutari
In stern magnificence look down
On the bright lake and stream of sea,
And glittering theatre of town:
Above the throng of rich kiosks,
Above the towers in triple tire,
Above the domes of loftiest mosques,
These pinnacles of death aspire.

It is a wilderness of tombs,—
Where white and gold and brilliant hue
Contrast with Nature's gravest glooms,
As these again with heaven's clear blue:
The city's multitudinous hum,
So far, yet strikes the listening ear,—
But what are thousands to the sum
Of millions calmly sleeping here?

135

For here, whate'er his life's degree,
The Muslim loves to rest at last,
Loves to recross the band of sea
That parts him from his people's past.
'Tis well to live and lord o'er those
By whom his sires were most renowned,
But his fierce heart finds best repose
In this traditionary ground.

From this funereal forest's edge
I gave my sight full range below,
Reclining on a grassy ledge,
Itself a grave, or seeming so:
And that huge city flaunting bright,
That crowded port and busy shore,
With roofs and minarets steeped in light,
Seemed but a gaudy tomb the more.

I thought of what one might have hoped
From Greek and Roman power combined,
From strength, that with a world had coped,
Matched to the queen of human mind;—
From all the wisdom, might, and grace,
That Fancy's gods to man had given,
Blent in one empire and one race,
By the true faith in Christ and Heaven.

136

The finest webs of earthly fate
Are soonest and most harshly torn;
The wise could scarce discriminate
That evening splendour from the morn;
Though we, sad students of the past,
Can trace the lurid twilight line
That lies between the first and last,
Who bore the name of Constantine.

Such were my thoughts and such the scene,
When I perceived that by me stood
A Grecian youth of earnest mien,
Well-suiting my reflective mood:
And when he spoke, his words were tuned
Harmonious to my present mind,
As if his spirit had communed
With mine, while I had there reclined.

“Stranger! whose soul has strength to soar
Beyond the compass of the eye,
And on a spot like this can more
Than charms of form and hue descry,—
Take off this mask of beauty,—scan
The face of things with truth severe,
Think, as becomes a Christian man,
Of us thy Christian brethren here!

137

“Think of that age's awful birth,
When Europe echoed, terror-riven,
That a new foot was on the earth,
And a new name came down from Heaven:
When over Calpe's straits and steeps
The Moor had bridged his royal road,
And Othman's sons from Asia's deeps
The conquests of the Cross o'erflowed.

“Think, if the arm of Charles Martel
Had failed upon the plain of Tours,
The fate, whose course you know so well,
This foul subjection had been yours:
Where then had been the long renown
France can from sire to son deliver?
Where English freedom rolling down,
One widening, one continuous, river?

“Think with what passionate delight
The tale was told in Christian halls,
How Sobieski turned to flight
The Muslim from Vienna's walls:
How, when his horse triumphant trod
The burgher's richest robes upon,
The ancient words rose loud—‘From God
A man was sent whose name was John.’

138

“Think not that time can ever give
Prescription to such doom as ours,
That Grecian hearts can ever live
Contented serfs of barbarous powers:
More than six hundred years had past,
Since Moorish hosts could Spain o'erwhelm,
Yet Boabdil was thrust at last,
Lamenting, from Grenada's realm.

“And if to his old Asian seat,
From this usurped unnatural throne,
The Turk is driven, 'tis surely meet
That we again should hold our own:
Be but Byzantium's native sign
Of Cross on Crescent once unfurled,
And Greece shall guard by right divine
The portals of the Eastern world.

“Before the small Athenian band
The Persian myriads stood at bay,
The spacious East lay down unmanned
Beneath the Macedonian's sway:
Alas! that Greek could turn on Greek—
Fountain of all our woes and shame—

139

Till men knew scarcely where to seek
The fragments of the Grecian name.

“Know ye the Romans of the North:
The fearful race whose infant strength
Stretches its arms of conquest forth,
To grasp the world in breadth and length?
They cry ‘That ye and we are old,
And worn with luxuries and cares,
And they alone are fresh and bold,
Time's latest and most honoured heirs!

“Alas for you! alas for us!
Alas for men that think and feel,
If once beside this Bosphorus
Shall stamp Sclavonia's frozen heel!
Oh! place us boldly in the van,
And ere we yield this narrow sea,
The past shall hold within its span
At least one more Thermopylæ.”

Historical.

The Turks adopted the sign of the Crescent from Byzantium after the conquest: the Cross above the Crescent is found on many ruins of the Grecian city; among others, on the Genoese castle on the Bosphorus. The Virgin standing on the Crescent is another common sign.

140

THE TURK AT CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE FRANK.

When first the Prophet's standard rested on
The land that once was Greece and still was Rome;
We deemed that his and our dominion
Was there as sure as in our Eastern home:
We never thought a single hour to pause
Till the wide West had owned Mohammed's laws.

How could we doubt it? To one desert tribe
The truth revealed by one plain-seeming man
Cut off the cavil, thundered down the gibe,
And formed a nation to its lofty plan:
What barrier could its wave of victory stem?
Not thy religious walls, Jerusalem!

The impious wars that stained the faithful host,
Might for some years the ripe success delay;
But when we once stood firm on Europe's coast,
'Twas as the dawning of that final day,
That could not close till Islam's flag was furled
O'er the last ruins of the Roman world.

141

For History is not silent what we did,
Long ere we crushed to dust the Grecian name:
It was no Western to whom Bajazid
Surrendered his long heritage of fame;
The shame of Hungary was not less sure,
Because your victor crouched before Timour.

Hard was the penalty of broken faith,
By Lladislaus paid on Varna's plain:
For many a Knight there met unhonoured death,
When, like a god of vengeance, rose again
Old Amurath from his far home and cried,
“Now Jesus combats on Mohammed's side!”

Nor was the mission of our Master stayed,
When seated safe on this imperial throne;
Witness the wonders wrought before Belgrade,
The fields whose very loss none blushed to own;
Witness St. John's proud island-chevaliers,
Thrust from their lordship of two hundred years.

Thus did we justify the Faith by Works:
And the bright Crescent haunted Europe's eye,

142

Till many a Pope believed the demon Turks
Would scour the Vatican, ere he could die:
Why was our arm of conquest shortened? Why?
Ask him whose will is o'er us, like the sky.

The dome to heavenly wisdom consecrate
Still echoes with the Muslim's fervent prayers;
The just successor of the Khaleefate
Still on his brow the sign of empire wears;
We hold our wealth without reserve or fear;
And yet we know we are but tented here.

Millions of Christians bend beneath our rule,
And yet these realms are neither theirs nor ours,
Sultan and subject are alike the tool
Of Europe's ready guile or banded powers;
Against the lords of continent and sea
What can one nation do, one people be?

Therefore regardless of the moment's shame,
Of wives' disdain, and children's thoughtless woe,
Of Christian triumph o'er the Prophet's name,
Of Russia's smile beneath her mask of snow:
Let us return to Asia's fair domain,
Let us in truth possess the East again!

143

Men of the West! Ye understand us not,
We you no more: ye take our good for ill;
Ye scorn what we esteem man's happiest lot—
Perfect submission to creative will;
Ye would rejoice to watch from us depart
Our ancient temperance—our peace of heart.

Let us return! if long we linger here
Ye will destroy us, not with open swords,
Not with such arms as brave men must not fear,
But with the poison'd shafts of subtle words:
Your blank indifference for our living creed
Would make us paltry Infidels indeed.

What can Ye give us for a Faith so lost?
For love of Duty, and delight in Prayer?
How are we wiser that our minds are tost
By winds of knowledge on a sea of care?
How are we better that we hardly fear
To break the laws our fathers held most dear?

Aping your customs we have changed e'en now
The noble garb in nature's wisdom given,
And turban that, on every Muslim's brow,
Was as a crown at once for earth and heaven:—

144

The sword with which the sire Byzantium won
Sleeps in yon deep unwielded by the son.

Let us return! across the fatal strait
Our Father's shadows welcome us once more;
Back to the glories of the Khaleefate,
Back to the faith we loved, the dress we wore,
When in one age the world could well contain
Haroòn Er-Rasheed and your Charlemagne!

A.D. 1444. A copy of the treaty, the monument of Christian perfidy had been displayed in the front of battle; and it is said that the Sultan, in his distress, lifting his eyes and his hands to heaven, implored the protection of the God of Truth, and called on the prophet Jesus himself, to avenge the impious mockery of his name and religion.—Gibbon, chap. lxvii.

A.D.1456, when defended by John Huniàdes.

Knights of Rhodes.

Hagaia Sophia.

The sword of Mohammed the Second, worn at the conquest of Constantinople, had always been religiously preserved in a mosque untainted by the foot of the Infidel. The late Sultan put it on, the day he went to visit the large man-of-war which bears his name, when first completed: on mounting the ship's side, the sword, which was a small short one, got detached, and fell into the strait, lost irrecoverably;—this was regarded at the time as a most unhappy omen.

145

THE HAREEM.

Behind the veil, where depth is traced
By many a complicated line,—
Behind the lattice closely laced
With filagree of choice design,—
Behind the lofty garden-wall,
Where stranger face can ne'er surprise,—
That inner world her all-in-all,
The Eastern Woman lives and dies.

Husband and children round her draw
The narrow circle where she rests;
His will the single perfect law,
That scarce with choice her mind molests;
Their birth and tutelage the ground
And meaning of her life on earth—
She knows not elsewhere could be found
The measure of a woman's worth.

If young and beautiful, she dwells
An Idol in a secret shrine,
Where one high-priest alone dispels
The solitude of charms divine:

146

And in his happiness she lives,
And in his honour has her own,
And dreams not that the love she gives
Can be too much for him alone.

Within the gay kiosk reclined,
Above the scent of lemon groves,
Where bubbling fountains kiss the wind,
And birds make music to their loves,—
She lives a kind of faëry life,
In sisterhood of fruits and flowers,
Unconscious of the outer strife,
That wears the palpitating hours.

And when maturer duties rise
In pleasure's and in passion's place,
Her duteous loyalty supplies
The presence of departed grace:
So hopes she, by untiring truth,
To win the bliss to share with him,
Those glories of celestial youth,
That time can never taint or dim.

Thus in the ever-closed Hareem,
As in the open Western home,

147

Sheds womanhood her starry gleam
Over our being's busy foam;
Through latitudes of varying faith
Thus trace we still her mission sure,
To lighten life, to sweeten death,
And all for others to endure.

Home of the East! thy threshold's edge
Checks the wild foot that knows no fear,
Yet shrinks, as if from sacrilege—
When rapine comes thy precincts near:
Existence, whose precarious thread
Hangs on the tyrant's mood and nod,
Beneath thy roof its anxious head
Rests as within the house of God.

There, though without he feels a slave,
Compelled another's will to scan,
Another's favour forced to crave
There is the subject still the man:
There is the form that none but he
Can touch,—the face that he alone
Of living men has right to see;—
Not He who fills the Prophet's throne.

Then let the Moralist, who best
Honours the female heart, that blends

148

The deep affections of the West
With thought of life's sublimest ends,
Ne'er to the Eastern home deny
Its lesser, yet not humble praise,
To guard one pure humanity
Amid the stains of evil days.

In the general confusion of the orthography of Eastern words, I have usually adopted Mr. Lane's.

It is supposed to be left to the will of the husband to decide whether his wife should be united to him in a future state: but this does not imply that her happiness after death depends upon him.

149

THE MOSQUE.

A simple unpartitioned room,—
Surmounted by an ample dome,
Or, in some lands that favoured lie,
With centre open to the sky,
But roofed with archèd cloisters round,
That mark the consecrated bound,
And shade the niche to Mekkeh turned,
By which two massive lights are burned;
With pulpit whence the sacred word
Expounded on great days is heard;
With fountain fresh, where, ere they pray,
Men wash the soil of earth away;
With shining minaret, thin and high,
From whose fine-trelliced balcony
Announcement of the hours of prayer
Is uttered to the silent air;
Such is the Mosque—the holy place,
Where faithful men of every race,
Meet at their ease, and face to face.

Not that the power of God is here
More manifest, or more to fear;
Not that the glory of his face
Is circumscribed by any space;

150

But that, as men are wont to meet
In court or chamber, mart or street,
For purposes of gain or pleasure,
For friendliness or social leisure,—
So, for the greatest of all ends
To which intelligence extends,
The worship of the Lord, whose will
Created and sustains us still,
And honour of the Prophet's name,
By whom the saving message came,
Believers meet together here,
And hold these precincts very dear.

The floor is spread with matting neat,
Unstained by touch of shodden feet—
A decent and delightful seat!
Where, after due devotions paid,
And legal ordinance obeyed,
Men may in happy parlance join,
And gay with serious thought combine;
May ask the news from lands away,
May fix the business of to-day;
Or, with “God-willing,” at the close,
To-morrow's hopes and deeds dispose.

Children are running in and out
With silver-sounding laugh and shout,

151

No more disturbed in their sweet play,
No more disturbing those that pray,
Than the poor birds, that fluttering fly
Among the rafters there on high,
Or seek at times, with grateful hop,
The corn fresh-sprinkled on the top.

So lest the stranger's scornful eye
Should hurt this sacred family,—
Lest inconsiderate words should wound
Devout adorers with their sound,—
Lest careless feet should stain the floor
With dirt and dust from out the door,—
'Tis well that custom should protect
The place with prudence circumspect,
And let no unbeliever pass
The threshold of the faithful mass;
That as each Muslim his Hareem
Guards even from a jealous dream,
So should no alien feeling scathe
This common home of public faith,
So should its very name dispel
The presence of the infidel.

152

Yet, though such reverence may demand
A building raised by human hand,
Most honour to the men of prayer,
Whose mosque is in them everywhere!
Who, amid revel's wildest din,
In war's severest discipline,
On rolling deck, in thronged bazaar,
In stranger lands, however far,
However different in their reach
Of thought, in manners, dress, or speech,—
Will quietly their carpet spread,
To Mekkeh turn the humble head,
And, as if blind to all around,
And deaf to each distracting sound,
In ritual language God adore,
In spirit to his presence soar,
And, in the pauses of the prayer,
Rest, as if rapt in glory there!

Many of the mosques possess funds dedicated to the support of birds and other animals: one at Cairo has a large boat at the top filled with corn as fast as it is consumed, and another possessed an estate bequesthed to it to give food to the homeless cats of the city. Most of these funds have, however, now passed, with those of higher charities, into Mehemet Ali's own pocket.

153

MOHAMMEDANISM.

While the high truths to man in Christ revealed
Were met by early foes,
Who oft assault by strategy concealed,
And oft in force arose;

While Pagan fancy would not lay aside
Her pleasurable faith,
At call of one who lived in that he died,
And preached that Life was Death;

And while philosophy with old belief
Blent fragments of the new,
Though every master held himself the chief
Discerner of the true;

In that convulsion and distress of thought,
Th' Idea that long ago
Had ruled the Hebrew mind occasion caught
To strike a final blow.

In the fresh passions of a vigorous race
Was sown a living seed,
Strong these contending mysteries to displace
By one plain ancient creed.

154

Thus in a life and land, such as of old
The Patriarch name begot,
Rose a new Prophet, simple to behold,
Cast in a humble lot;

Who in the wild requirements of his state
Let half his life go by,
And then stood up a man of faith and fate,
That could the world defy.

God and his Prophets, and the final day,
He preached, and little more,
Resting the weight of all he had to say
On what was said before.

He bade men mark the fissureless blue sky,
The streams that spring and run,
The clouds that with regenerate life supply
The havoc of the sun:

All forms of life profuse and different,
The camel and the palm,
To them for sustenance or service sent,
And wondrous herbs of balm;

155

He bade them mark how all existence comes
From one Creative will,
As well the bee that 'mid the blossoms hums,
As human pride and skill.

How shadows of all beings, morn and even,
Before Him humbly bend,
And, willing or unwilling, earth and heaven
Work out His solemn end.

Therefore is God the Universal Power,
The Absolute, the One,—
With whom a thousand years are as an hour,
And earth as moon or sun.

And shall this God who all creation fills
His creature men permit
The puny fragments of their mortal wills
Against his might to set?

What wonderful insanity of pride!
With objects of the eye
And fanciful devices to divide
His awful monarchy.

Can vain associates seated on His throne,
Command the only Lord?

156

What strength have they but flows from Him alone,
Adorers or adored?

Hew down the Idols: prayer is due to Power,—
But these are weak and frail:
—By men and angels every living hour
Father, Creator, hail!

So preached of God Mohammed, of himself
He spoke in lowly words,
As one who wanted not or power or pelf,
Or more than God affords;

As a poor bearer with the message sent
Of God's majestic will,
In his whole being resolutely bent
That mission to fulfil.

The miracles to which he oft appealed
Were Nature's, not his own,
Teaching that God was everywhere revealed—
Not in His words alone.

157

No Poet he, weaving capricious dreams,
To please inconstant youth,
But one who uttered, without shows and seems,
The serious facts of truth;

And threats and promises, that line by line
Were parts to mortals given
Of that eternal Book of thought divine—
The Prototype in heaven:

Which ever and anon from that sad dawn
Of sin that Adam saw
In Pentateuch, and Gospel, and Kuràn
Enunciates Allah's law.

In Noah, Abraham, Moses, Earth beholds
The prophet lineage run,
Down till the fulness of due time unfolds
Immaculate Mary's son.

158

Whence to Arabia's free unlettered child
The great commission past,—
Mohammed, the Apostle of the Wild,
The purest and the last.

Thus stood he wholly in reflected light,
Rejecting other claim
To power or honour than attends of right
The Apostolic name.

Yet louder still he preached the day that comes
Unhastened, undelayed,
Fixed to consign to their eternal homes
All men that God has made:

159

The day when children shall grow gray with fear,
And, like a ball of sand,
God shall take up this our terrestrial sphere,
In the hollow of his hand;

When without intercessor, friend, or kin,
Each man shall stand alone,
Before his judge, and, once for ever, win
A prison or a throne.

The Unbeliever in his agony
Shall seek in whom to trust,
And when his idols help him not, shall cry
“O God! that I were dust!”

Before the Faithful, as their troops arise,
A glorious light shall play,
And angels herald them to Paradise,
To bliss without decay;

Gardens of green, that pales not in the sun,
And ever-budding flowers;
Rivers that cool in brightest noon-day run,
Nor need the shade of bowers;

160

Seats of high honour and supreme repose,
To which the laden trees
Bend at desire, and every hour disclose
Fresh tastes and fragrances;

Deep cups of wine that bring no after-pain
By angel-children plied,
And love without satiety or stain
For bridegroom or for bride.

While yet a purer essence of delight
Awaits the bolder few,
That plunge their being in the Infinite,
And rise to life anew.

Such was the guise of Truth that on its front
The new religion wore,
And in new words men followed, as is wont,
Precepts they scorn'd before.

And the Faith rose from families to tribes,
From tribes to nations rose,
And open enmities and ribald gibes
Grew feeble to oppose.

161

“Resigned to God” —this name the Faithful bore—
This simple, noble name;
And reckoned life a thing of little store,
A transitory game.

Thus was Endurance on the banner writ
That led the Muslim forth,
And wonder not that they who follow it
Should conquer half the earth.

What might the men not do, who thus could know
No fear and fear no loss?
One only thing—they could not overthrow
The kingdom of the Cross.

And this, because it held an element
Beyond their spirits' range,
A Truth for which the faith they represent
Had nothing to exchange.

One God the Arabian Prophet preached to man,
One God the Orient still
Adores through many a realm of mighty span,
A God of Power and Will—

162

A God that shrouded in His lonely light
Rests utterly apart
From all the vast Creations of His might,
From Nature, Man, and Art:—

A Being in whose solitary hand
All other beings weigh
No more than in the potter's reckoning stand
The workings of his clay:—

A Power that at its pleasure will create,
To save or to destroy;
And to eternal pain predestinate,
As to eternal joy:—

An unconditioned, irrespective, will,
Demanding simple awe,
Beyond all principles of good or ill,
Above idea of law.

No doctrine here of perfect Love divine,
To which the bounds belong
Only of that unalterable line
Disparting right from wrong:—

163

A love, that, while it must not regulate
The issues of free-will,
By its own sacrifice can expiate
The penalties of ill.

No message here of man redeemed from sin,
Of fallen nature raised,
By inward strife and moral discipline,
Higher than e'er debased,—

Of the immense parental heart that yearns
From highest heaven to meet
The poorest wandering spirit that returns
To its Creator's feet.

No Prophet here by common essence bound
At once to God and man,
Author Himself and part of the profound
And providential plan:

Himself the ensample of unuttered worth,
Himself the living sign,
How by God's grace the fallen sons of earth
May be once more divine.

—Thus in the faiths old Heathendom that shook
Were different powers of strife;
Mohammed's truth lay in a holy Book,
Christ's in a sacred Life.

164

So, while the world rolls on from change to change,
And realms of thought expand,
The Letter stands without expanse or range,
Stiff as a dead man's hand;

While, as the life-blood fills the growing form,
The Spirit Christ has shed
Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm,
More felt than heard or read.

And therefore, though ancestral sympathies,
And closest ties of race,
May guard Mohammed's precept and decrees,
Through many a tract of space,

Yet in the end the tight-drawn line must break,
The sapless tree must fall,
Nor let the form one time did well to take
Be tyrant over all.

The tide of things rolls forward, surge on surge,
Bringing the blessèd hour,
When in Himself the God of Love shall merge
The God of Will and Power.

Mohammed always professes to be renewing old truths, not to be revealing new ones: he seems to be always wishing to restore the patriarchal state of thought and feeling, with the addition of a distinct faith in a future life and in a day of final retribution.

The frequent recurrence of this notion evidently applies to the doctrine of the Trinity and the worship of the Virgin as much as to that of Idols; it is singular that Mohammed considers the two as equally common to all Christians; it has been suggested that the sect of Collyridians, who used to sacrifice cakes (KOLLURI/DES) to St Mary, had come prominently under his notice: this is unlikely and unnecessary; the mere title of the Mother of God was enough to excite his hostility, as that of the Son did; and his was not the mind to make the philosophical distinction.

I ask for no payment; I am paid at the hand of God—the Master of the universe. Kuràn, chap. xxvi. ver. 109.

The archetye or “mother” of all these sacred books, is supposed to have existed in Heaven from the beginning of things: thus the Prophet always speaks of the Kuràn as a thing completed from the very beginning: thus, too, every verse is as much the Kuràn as the whole book. This adoration of the Word has had a peculiar effect on the Arabic language,—every word in the Kuràn being declared, as a matter of faith, to be pure Arabic, even those demonstrably Persian. The copies of the Kuràn printed by order of Mahomet Ali have not yet been sanctioned by the ecclesiastical authorities: they say, “they cannot answer for the errors of the press, some of them probably intentional, Infidels being occasionally employed in the work. The copyists, it must be remembered, are a strong interest in the East.

Mohammed seems to have attached so little importance to miraculous events—regarding the whole world as one incessant miracle—that his recognition of the supernatural birth of Christ does not imply any acknowledgment of his divine nature. It still remains a subject of inquiry, from what sources he derived his notions of the theory of Christianity, or the person of its author. Not, probably, from books: for if his assertion (chap. xxix. v. 47) that he could neither read nor write had not been correct, it could have been disproved by many persons present, who had known him from his youth; and Toland's theory of his instruction by the apocryphal gospel of Barnabas has been put an end to by the discovery of the forgery of that work, written with the very intent of exciting this notion, long after Mohammed's era, in Italy or Spain. The Syrian monk, Sergius, is a rather obscure personage: Mohammed only knew him in his early days, and he is hardly likely to have filled the mind of a heathen boy with strange legends and perverted facts. The Christianity of the Kuràn is, in all probability, the Arabian tradition of that time, formed out of the recollections of the doctrine which spread very early into Arabia, but did not meet with much success there, and the relations of the Nestorian fugitives, who would not scruple to attribute many corruptions to the orthodox body. The Infancy, and other apocryphal gospels, are derived from a similar source, and hence their frequent coincidence with Mohammedan notions.

“All shall appear before him on the day of resurrection, each alone. Chap. xix. v. 95.

Oriental mysticism distinguishes itself from Christian by the predominance of the sensual character: it is the rapture of the soul, the ecstatic interfusion of pleasure and pain, the yearning towards the absorption of self in the Infinite, which is at the heart of the spiritual religion of the East, while with us there is much more sentiment, and a variety according to the character of the individual, unknown to Oriental Pantheism.

The meaning of the word “Muslim:”—“El Islam” also signifies “the resigning.”

Mohammed carries out the doctrine of predestination with a merciless logic—“Would you force men to become believers? How can a soul believe without the will of God?” Chap. x. v. 99. “There shall be a great number of those that are saved among the ancient peoples, but few among those of modern times.” Chap. lvi. v. 13. The eternity of hell does not seem to be doubted.

165

THE SONG OF THE WAHABEES.

[_]

These Protestants of Mohammedanism owe their origin to the Sheykh Mohammed Ibn-Abd-El-Wahhab, who founded or incorporated them into a religion and political sect in 1745. They professed to restore Islam to its primitive purity, and to establish an ascetic morality throughout its followers. Like some other religious Reformers, they committed great devastation in places reputed holy, and gratified by the same acts their hatred of superstition and their love of gain. They forbade all luxury in dress and habits of life, and even interdicted the use of the pipe—almost a necessary of existence to the Oriental. The attention of the Porte was not long ago directed to their increasing power in Arabia and the molestations they offered to the pilgrims to the Holy Cities; and the present Pasha of Egypt, after many losses and repulses, succeeded in completely subduing them. Individuals of these tenets are still occasionally to be met with, but it is very difficult to draw from them any information or acknowledgment.

We will not that the truth of God by prophets brought to earth
Shall be o'erlaid by dreams and thoughts of none or little worth;
We will not that the noblest Man, that ever lived and died,
Should be for canting, cozening, Saints in reverence set aside.

166

While God was uttering through his lips, and writing through his pen,
Mohammed took his lot with us, a man with other men;
And thus in our due love to him, and awe for God alone,
We bless his memory as the chest that holds the precious stone.

So, though 'tis well that where entombed, his holy body lies,
Praises and prayers from faithful crowds to Allah's name should rise.
The best of Mosques is still the tent where earnest Muslims meet,
The best of Minarets is the rock that desert tempests beat.

We all have Mekkeh in our hearts, who speak and act the truth;
We all are Saints who read the Book and worship from our youth.
Men are no happier than they were for all El-Azhar's lore,
And if our Faith wins Paradise, can knowledge win us more?

167

We will not that the gifts of God, so good when used aright,
Should leave their wholesome natural ends and turn to His despite;
That men should change the sweetest flowers to bitter poison weeds:
The Book has said that “everyone is hostage for his deeds.”

Man should be man; the world is his to conquer and command,
No pipe or downy bed for him, but horse and sword in hand;
Let they who will consume their lives in joys of vicious ease,—
The Prophet's word will scarce prevail with Preachers such as these.

Let women love Damascus silk, give us Damascus blades,
The shawls of rich Cashmere look best on our Circassian maids;
We wear the homely woollen woof, such as Mohammed wore,
Nor steal from herbs the drunken dreams that he with wine forswore.

168

We know that time is worst than lost, which is not used for gain,
For Life is not a jest, and God will not create in vain,—
And thus we will not rest while earth has idols still to fall;
Till Islam is indeed Islam, and Allah God for all!

The whole notion of Hagiology is totally at variance with the original idea of Islam: nevertheless there is no city without its mosque, sanctified by the relics of the Prophet or his family, and hardly a district without the tomb of its local Saint. Part of the dress of the Prophet is yearly soaked in a large quantity of water, which is bottled into small vials, and sent to all the great dignitaries of the Empire. So vain have been the Prophet's efforts to establish a practical Monotheism.

The Wahabees allowed a certain veneration for Mckkeh, as Protestantism permits for Jerusalem, but discouraged pilgrimages generally.

The gre at college at Cairo, the Oxford of Arabia.

Kuràn, chap. lii. v. 21.

169

ARABIAN LEGENDS.

I. THE PRIDE OF NIMROD.

“Thou art King of all the nations,—
They are thine to take or give,—
We are but thy will's creations,—
In thy breath we die or live.”
So the servile courtiers chanted,
But the tyrant's heart replied
That some stronger food was wanted
To content his swollen pride.

Now, behold, the myriads gather
Round him,—work as he may bid,
To invade God's realm of æther
By the Babel pyramid:
God the pitiful intrusion
Checks not by his lightning hand,
But imposing and confusion
Frustrates every proud command.

Allah then in arms defying,
See the tyrant's golden car,

170

With four harnessed eagles, flying
Upward, through the air afar:
Now he glows in rage delighted,
Thinks he grasps Jehovah's throne,
But that instant falls benighted
On a desert rock alone.

Hear, Believers! hear with wonder
How, at last, God's vengeance came;
Not in tempest, not in thunder,
Not in pestilence or flame:
One of Nature's meanest features,
Hardly to your vision clear,
Least of tiny insect creatures,
Crept into the Tyrant's ear.

There its subtle life it nested
In the tissues of his brain,
And the anguish never rested,
And his being turned to pain:
Thus four hundred years tormented,
Nature's God he learnt to know,
Yet his pride was unrepented,
And he sunk to endless woe!

The Kuràn makes Pharaoh also build a huge tower to scale heaven with: Pharaoh ascended it when completed, and having thrown a javelin upwards, which fell back again stained with blood, boasted he had killed the God of Moses; but Gabriel, at one brush of his wing, demolished the tower, which fell, crushing a million of men.

171

II. ABRAHAM AND HIS GODS.

[_]

Abraham is the great Patriarch of Arabia; he is declared by Mohammed to be neither a Jew nor a Christian, but a Muslim and the friend of God. The great idol of red agate, with a golden hand holding seven divining arrows, which Mohammed destroyed in the Kaabeh, after his capture of Mekkeh, is supposed to have been a representation of Abraham. The Black Stone set in silver, which the Prophet left there, and which has remained an object of idolatrous homage, is said to be one of the precious stones of Paradise, and to have been brought by the angel Gabriel to Abraham, when he was rebuilding the Kaabeh. The Books of Abraham are spoken of with those of Moses, chap. lxxxvii. v. 19; the Kuràn is full of him: Mohammed seems, whether intentionally or not, to have fused his character into his own; he makes Abraham speak as himself, and he himself speaks in the person of the Patriarch. The following story expresses either the process of Abraham's reasoning with himself, or was used, by way of argument, to convince the idolaters among whom he lived. Josephus (lib. i. cap. 8) writes of Abraham, “that he was the first that ventured to publish this notion, that there was but one God, the Creator of the Universe, and that, as to other gods, if they contributed anything to the happiness of man, each of them afford it only according to his appointment, and not by their own power: this his opinion was derived from the irregular phenomena that were visible both at land and sea, as well as those that happen to the sun and moon, and all the heavenly bodies.”

Beneath the full-eyed Syrian moon,
The Patriarch, lost in reverence, raised
His consecrated head, and soon
He knelt, and worshipped while he gazed:
“Surely that glorious Orb on high
Must be the Lord of earth and sky!”

Slowly towards its central throne
The glory rose, yet paused not there,

172

But seemed by influence not its own
Drawn downwards through the western air,
Until it wholly sunk away,
And the soft Stars had all the sway.

Then to that hierarchy of light,
With face upturned the sage remained,—
“At least Ye stand for ever bright,—
Your power has never waxed or waned!”
Even while he spoke, their work was done,
Drowned in the overflowing Sun.

Eastward he bent his eager eyes—
“Creatures of Night! false Gods and frail!
Take not the worship of the wise,
There is the Deity we hail;
Fountain of light, and warmth, and love,
He only bears our hearts above.”

Yet was that One—that radiant One,
Who seemed so absolute a King,
Only ordained his round to run,
And pass like each created thing;
He rested not in noonday prime,
But fell beneath the strength of time.

Then like one labouring without hope
To bring his toil to fruitful end,

173

And powerless to discern the scope
Whereto his aspirations tend,
Still Abraham prayed by night and day—
“God! teach me to what God to pray!”

Nor long in vain; an inward Light
Arose to which the Sun is pale,
The knowledge of the Infinite,
The sense of Truth that must prevail;—
The presence of the only Lord
By angels and by men adored.

174

III. MOSES ON MOUNT SINAI.

[_]

There is a Hebrew tradition that the Israelites asked two things of God, —to hear his voice and see his glory: these were granted them, and in consequence they fell down dead: but the Law (which is here a personality) addressed God, saying, “Shall a king give his daughter in marriage and destroy his own household? Thou hast given me to the world which rejoices in me, and shall the Israelites, thy children, perish?” Upon this, the dead were restored to life; for “the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” Ps. xix. 7. The Kuràn limits the vision of God to Moses. The leading events of that Prophet's life are there given with little variation from the Jewish scriptures: the events connected with the departure of the Jews from Egypt have, of course, afforded much scope to traditions of the marvellous. One miracle ascribed to him, as being exhibited for the terror of Pharaoh, is very picturesque, viz., that he was a most swarthy man, but when he placed his hand in his bosom, and drew it forth again, it became extremely white and splendid, surpassing the brightness of the sun.

Up a rough peak, that toward the stormy sky
From Sinai's sandy ridges rose aloft,
Osarsiph, priest of Hieropolis,
Now Moses named, ascending reverently
To meet and hear the bidding of the Lord.
But, though he knew that all his ancient lore
Traditionary from the birth of Time,
And all that power which waited on his hand,
Even from the day his just instinctive wrath
Had smote th' Egyptian ravisher, and all

175

The wisdom of his calm and ordered mind
Were nothing in the presence of his God;
Yet was there left a certain seed of pride,
Vague consciousness of some self-centred strength,
That made him cry, “Why, Lord, com'st thou to me,
Only a voice, a motion of the air,
A thing invisible, impalpable,
Leaving a void, an unreality,
Within my heart? I would, with every sense,
Know thou wert there—I would be all in Thee!
Let me at least behold Thee as Thou art;
Disperse this corporal darkness by thy light;
Hallow my vision by thy glorious form,
So that my sense be blest for evermore!”

Thus spoke the Prophet, and the Voice replied,
As in low thunders over distant seas:—

Beneath the height to which thy feet have striven,
A hollow trench divides the cliffs of sand,
Widen'd by rains and deepened every year.
Gaze straight across it, for there opposite
To where thou standest, I will place myself,
And then, if such remain thy fixed desire,
I will descend to side by side with thee.”

So Moses gazed across the rocky vale;
And the air darkened, and a lordly bird
Poised in the midst of its long-journeying flight,
And touched his feet with limp and fluttering wings
And all the air around, above, below,

176

Was metamorphosed into sound—such sound,
That separate tones were undistinguishable,
And Moses fell upon his face, as dead.
Yet life and consciousness of life returned;
And, when he raised his head, he saw no more
The deep ravine and mountain opposite,
But one large level of distracted rocks,
With the wide desert quaking all around.

Then Moses fell upon his face again,
And prayed—“O! pardon the presumptuous thought,
That I could look upon thy face and live:
Wonder of wonders! that mine ear has heard
Thy voice unpalsied, and let such great grace
Excuse the audacious blindness that o'erleaps
Nature's just bounds and thy discerning will!”

Not just according to the Kuràn, which makes Moses repent of it. Chap. xxvi. v. 19.

177

IV. SOLOMON AND THE ANTS.

[_]

Solomon is the Hero of Wisdom all over the East: but wisdom there must be manifested by power: he is therefore the great Magician, the ruler of all the spirits of Creation, and to whom all inferior creatures do homage. The Targum to the Book of Esther, i. 2, relates: “that Demons of the most different orders, and all evil Spirits, were submitted to his will.” The 8th verse of the 2nd chapter of Ecclesiastes has been interpreted to have a similar meaning. One of the singular uses to which he applied his power, according to the Mohammedan commentators, was to get the demons to make a depilatory to remove the hair from the legs of the Queen of Seba before he her. The following story from the Kuràn is evidently connected with the mention of the wonderful instincts of the ant, Proverbs, vi. 6, 7, 8.

Of all the Kings of fallen earth,
The sun has never shone
On one to match in power and worth
With ancient Solomon.

Master of Genii and of Men,
He ruled o'er sea and land;
Nor bird in nest, nor beast in den,
Was safe from his command.

So past he, gloriously arrayed,
One morning to review
The creatures God on earth has made,
And give Him homage due.

178

Well busied in a valley near,
A troop of Ants perceived
The coming pomp—and struck with fear
Death close at hand believed.

They cried: “What care the Kings and Priests
That here in splendour meet,
What care the Genii, birds, or beasts,
For us beneath their feet?

For what are we to them, and who
Shall check their mighty way?
Fly to your inmost homes or rue
The glory of to-day.”

The son of David's wondrous ear
No haughty mood beguiled;
He, bent the Ant's small voice to hear,
Beneficently smiled;

And prayed: “Oh God! the great, the good,
Of kings Almighty King!
Preserve my progress free from blood,
Or hurt to living thing!

“Comfort these humble creatures' fear;
Let all thy servants know,
That I thy servant, too, am here,
Thy power, not mine, to show.

179

That, 'mid the tumult and the tread
Of myriads, I will guard
Secure from hurt each little head,
As thou wilt me reward.”

And thus the Ants that marvellous scene
Beheld, as glad a throng,
As if their tiny forms had been
The strongest of the strong.

180

So the sad Spirits, whom the will
Of God exiles to outer pain,
Yearning in their dark bosoms still
For all their pride might most disdain,
Round the serene celestial halls
Hover in agonised suspense,
To catch the slightest sound that falls,
The faintest breeze that murmurs thence.

But holy instinct strikes a sting
Into each pure angelic breast,
The moment any sinful thing
Approaches its religious rest;

181

And when their meteor darts are hurled
Th' audacious listeners to surprise,
'Tis said by mortals in their world,
That Stars are falling in the Skies.

182

VI. THE INFANCY OF MOHAMMED.

[_]

This legend does not seem to me to be orthodox, but rather to be a later invention arising from a desire to assimilate the nature of Mohammed to that of Christ. The humility of Mohammed in all that concerns his personality is conspicuous throughout the Kuràn. “I do not say unto you, that in my possession are the treasures of God, nor that I know what is unseen; nor do I say unto you, Verily I am an angel,—I only follow what is revealed to me.” Chap. vi. v. 50. “Mohammed is nought but an Apostle: other Apostles have passed away before him.” Chap. iii. v. 138. Nor does Mohammed even attribute to himself any specialty of nature such as he gives to Christ, whom he declares to have been born of a Virgin by the Spirit of God. “She said, O my Lord, how shall I have a son, when a man hath not touched me? He answered—Thus. God will create what he pleaseth. When he determineth a thing, he only saith unto it, Be, and it is.”

An Arab nurse, that held in arms a sleeping Arab child,
Had wandered from the parents' tents some way into the wild.

She knew that all was friendly round, she had no cause to fear,
Although the rocks strange figures made and night was threatening near.

Yet something kin to dread she felt, when sudden met her sight
Two forms of noble maintenance and beautifully bright.

183

Their robes were dipt in sunset hues—their faces shone on high,
As Sirius or Canopus shine in purest summer sky.

Straight up to her without a word they walked, yet in their gaze
Was greeting, that with subtle charm might temper her amaze.

One, with a mother's gentleness, then took the slumbering child
That breathed as in a happy dream, and delicately smiled:

Passed a gold knife across his breast, that opened without pain,
Took out its little beating Heart—all pure but one black stain.

Amid the ruddy founts of life in foul stagnation lay
That thick black stain like cancerous ill that eats the flesh away.

The other Form then placed the heart on his white open hand,
And poured on it a magic flood, no evil could withstand:

184

And by degrees the deep disease beneath the wondrous cure
Vanished, and that one mortal Heart became entirely pure.

With earnest care they laid it back within the infant's breast,
Closed up the gaping wound, and gave the blessing of the blest:

Imprinting each a burning kiss upon its even brow,
And placed it in the nurse's arms, and passed she knew not how.

Thus was Mohammed's fresh-born Heart made clean from Adam's sin,
Thus in the Prophet's life did God his work of grace begin.

185

VII. MOHAMMED AND THE MISER.

There was wailing in the village—not the woe of hireling tears,
There was sorrow all around it—not the grief of servile fears,
Though the good Abdallah dying, to his son's especial care
Had bequeathed his needy neighbours, making him his virtue's heir.

But in this our earthly being virtue will not follow blood,
Good will often spring from evil, evil often rise from good;
So th' ensample of his father, and the trust to him consigned,
Could not change the rebel nature, could not raise the niggard mind.

'Twas the season when the date-trees, cultured in their seemly plan,
Yield their sweet and wholesome burden into the glad lap of man;

186

Then it was Abdallah's custom to collect the poor around,
To up-glean the casual fruitage, freely scattered on the ground.

But that year about the date-grove palisades were planted strong,
Watchers placed to guard the entrance, watchers all the wall along;
And the Lord announced his harvest on the morrow should begin,
Swearing he would slay the peasant that should creep the pale within.

Passing near, the Prophet wondered at the loud lament he heard,
And he proffered them his counsel, and he soothed them with his word,
And he bade them trust in Allah, Father of the rich and poor,
One who wills not that his children pine before their brother's door.

Thundering from the sandy mountains all that night the tempest came,
All that night the veil of water fell before the flashing flame,

187

And when dawn the Master summoned to review his promised gain,
Not the date-fruit, but the date-trees, strewed the desolated plain.

188

VIII. MOHAMMED AND THE BLIND ABDALLAH.

[_]

Referred to in chap. 80 of the Kuràn. Abdallah Ebn Omm Maktoun seems to have been a man of no rank or importance, but was treated with great respect by the Prophet ever after this adventure. It is interesting that Mohammed should make his own faults and the divine reproofs he received a matter of revelation, and a stronger proof of his sincerity and earnestness could hardly be given.

The blind Abdallah sought the tent
Where, 'mid the eager listening croud,
Mohammed gave his wisdom vent,
And, entering fast, he cried aloud—
“O Father, full of love and ruth!
My soul and body both are blind;
Pour on me then some rays of truth
From thine illuminated mind.”

Perchance the Prophet heard him not,
Or busied well, seemed not to hear,
Or, interrupted, then forgot
How all mankind to God are dear:
Disputing with the great and strong,
He frowned in momentary pride,
While through the jeering outer throng
Th' unnoticed suppliant crept aside.

189

But, in the calm of that midnight,
The Voice that seldom kept aloof
From his blest pillow spoke the right,
And uttered words of stern reproof:—
“How dost thou know that poor man's soul
Did not on thy regard depend?
The rich and proud thy moods controul;—
I meant thee for the mourner's friend.”

Deep in the Prophet's contrite heart
The holy reprimand remained,
And blind Abdallah for his part
Kindness and reverence then obtained:
Twice, after years of sacred strife,
Within Medeenah's walls he ruled,
The man through whom Mohammed's life
Into its perfect grace was schooled.

And, from the warning of that night,
No one, however humble, past
Without salute the Prophet's sight,
Or felt his hand not held the last:
And every one was free to hear
His high discourse, and in his breast
Unburden theirs without a fear
Of troubling his majestic rest.

190

Thus too, when Muslim Muslim meets,
Though new the face and strange the road,
His “Peace be on you” sweetly greets
The ear, and lightens many a load:
Proclaiming that in Allah's plan
True men of every rank and race
Form but one family of man,
One Paradise their resting-place.

Salutation in the East seems almost a religious ordinance, and good manners part of the duty of a good Muslim.

191

IX. MOHAMMED AND THE ASSASSIN.

“Leave me, my followers, leave me;
The best-loved voices grieve me
When falls the weary day:
My heart to God is yearning,
My soul to God returning:
Leave me alone to pray.”

So had the Prophet spoken:
The silence was unbroken;
While on a tree close by
He hung his arms victorious,
And raised his forehead glorious
As glows the western sky.

Fast as the sun descended,
Further the Prophet wended
His course behind the hill;
Where, at his motives prying,
An Arab foe was lying,
Hid by a sand-heap still.

192

One of a hateful tribe,
Treating with scorn and gibe
God and the Prophet's name:
Creatures of evil lust,
Base as the desert dust,
Proud of their very shame!

With upraised sword behind him,
Burning to slay or bind him,
Stealthy the traitor trod;
He cried, “At last I brave thee!
Whom hast thou now to save thee?”
“God,” said the Prophet, “God!”

Guardian of Allah's choice,
Gabriel had heard that voice—
Had seen the felon's brand;
Swift from his hand he tore it,
Swift as an arrow bore it
Into the Prophet's hand.

O vain design, and senseless,
To find the man defenceless
Whom God loves like a son!
He cried, “Who now shall save thee?
Which of the friends God gave thee?”
“None,” said the Arab, “none!”

193

“Yes,” said the Prophet, “One—
Evil the deed now done—
Still thou hast found a friend:
Only believe and bow
To him who has saved thee now,
Whose mercy knows no end.”

194

EASTERN THOUGHTS

I. THE THINKER AND THE POET.

Sunshine often falls refulgent
After all the corn is in;
Often Allah grants indulgent
Pleasure that may guard from sin:
Hence your wives may number four;
Though he best consults his reason,
Best secures his house from treason,
Who takes one and wants no more.

Nor less well the man once gifted
With one high and holy Thought,
Will not let his mind be shifted,
But adores it, as he ought;
Well for him whose spirit's youth
Rests as a contented lover,
Nor can other charms discover
Than in his absorbing Truth!

195

But the heaven-enfranchised Poet
Must have no exclusive home,
He must feel, and freely show it,—
Phantasy is made to roam:
He must give his passions range,
He must serve no single duty,
But from Beauty pass to Beauty,
Constant to a constant change.

With all races, of all ages,
He must people his Hareem;
He must search the tents of sages,
He must scour the vales of dream:
Ever adding to his store,
From new cities, from new nations,
He must rise to new creations,
And, unsated, ask for more.

In the manifold, the various,
He delights, as Nature's child,—
Grasps at joys the most precarious,
Rides on hopes, however wild!
Though his heart at times perceives
One enduring Love hereafter,
Glimmering through his tears and laughter,
Like the sun through autumn leaves.

196

II. THE EASTERN EPICUREAN.

You are moaning, “Life is waning,”
You are droning, “Flesh is weak:”
Tell me too, what I am gaining
While I listen, while you speak.

If you say the rose is blooming,
But the blast will soon destroy it,
Do so, not to set me glooming,
But to make me best enjoy it.

Calm the heart's insatiate yearning
Towards the distant, the unknown:
Only do so, without turning
Men to beasts, or flesh to stone.

Cry not loud, “The world is mad!
Lord! how long shall folly rule?”
If you've nothing but the sad
To replace the jovial fool.

Sorrow is its own clear preacher,—
Death is still on Nature's tongue;—
Life and joy require the teacher,
Honour Youth and keep it young.

197

Even you, ascetics, rightly,
Should appreciate Love and Joy;—
For what you regard so lightly
Where's the merit to destroy?

III.

“To endure and to pardon is the wisdom of life.” Kuràn, 42, v. 41.

Father! if we may well endure
The ill that with our lives begins,
May'st Thou, to whom all things are pure,
Endure our follies and our sins!

Brothers! if we return you good
For evil thought or malice done,
Doubt not, that in our hearts a blood
As hot as in your own may run.

198

IV. PHYSICAL AND MORAL BLINDNESS.

[_]

The hab'ts here alluded to are familiar to every traveller in those parts of the East where a large portion of the population are subject to ophthalmia and other diseases of the eyes, brought on by dirt and carelessness. In Egypt the number is much increased by those who have blinded themselves, or been blinded by their parents, to avoid the conscription.

The child whose eyes were never blest
With heavenly light, or lost it soon,
About another's neck will rest
Its arm, and walk like you at noon;
The blind old man will place his palm
Upon a child's fresh-blooming head,
And follow through the croud in calm
That infantine and trusty tread.

We, too, that in our spirits dark
Traverse a wild and weary way,
May in these sweet resources mark
A lesson, and be safe as they:
Resting, when young, in happy faith
On fair affection's daily bond,
And afterwards resigned to death,
Feeling the childly life beyond.

199

V. DISCORDANT ELEMENTS.

In the sight of God all-seeing
Once a handful of loose foam
Played upon the sea of being,
Like a child about its home:
In his smile it shone delighted,
Danced beneath his swaying hand,
But at last was cast benighted
On the cold and alien land.

Can it wait till waves returning
Bear it to its parent breast?
Can it bear the noontide's burning,
Dwelling Earth's contented guest?
Oh! no,—it will filter slowly
Through the hard ungenial shore,
Till each particle be wholly
In the deep absorbed once more.

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VI. THE TWO THEOLOGIES.

THE MYSTIC

It must be that the light divine
That on your soul is pleased to shine
Is other than what falls on mine:

For you can fix and formalize
The Power on which you raise your eyes,
And trace him in his palace-skies;

You can perceive and almost touch
His attributes as such and such,
Almost familiar overmuch.

You can his thoughts and ends display,
In fair historical array,
From Adam to the judgment-day.

You can adjust to time and place
The sweet effusions of his grace,
And feel yourself before his face.

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You walk as in some summer night,
With moon or stars serenely bright,
On which you gaze—at ease—upright.

But I am like a flower sun-bent,
Exhaling all its life and scent
Beneath the heat omnipotent.

I have not comforts such as you,—
I rather suffer good than do,—
Yet God is my Deliverer too.

I cannot think Him here or there—
I think Him ever everywhere—
Unfading light, unstifled air.

I lay a piteous mortal thing,—
Yet shadowed by his spirit's wing,
A deathless life could in me spring:

And thence I am, and still must be;
What matters whether I or He?—
Little was there to love in me.

I know no beauty, bliss, or worth,
In that which we call Life on earth,
That we should mourn its loss or dearth:

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That we should sorrow for its sake,
If God will the imperfect take
Unto Himself, and perfect make.

O Lord! our separate lives destroy!
Merge in thy gold our soul's alloy,—
Pain is our own, and Thou art Joy!

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VII. LOSS AND GAIN.

Myriad Roses, unregretted, perish in their vernal bloom,
That the essence of their sweetness once your Beauty may perfume.

Myriad Veins of richest life-blood empty for their priceless worth,
To exalt one Will imperial over spacious realms of earth.

Myriad Hearts are pained and broken that one Poet may be taught
To discern the shapes of passion and describe them as he ought.

Myriad Minds of heavenly temper pass as passes moon or star,
That one philosophic Spirit may ascend the solar car.

Sacrifice and Self-devotion hallow earth and fill the skies,
And the meanest Life is sacred whence the highest may arise.

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VIII. THE MOTH.

Parted from th' eternal presence,
Into life the Soul is born,
In its fragmentary essence
Left unwittingly forlorn.

In the shrubbery's scented shadows
First the insect tries its wings,
In the evening's misty meadows
It pursues the faëry rings.

Where the trelliced roses clamber,
And the jasmine peeps between,
Looks the gardener's lowly chamber
On the garden—on the green.

Through the sultry veil of vapour,
Like a nearer nether star,
Shines the solitary taper,
Seen and known by friend afar.

Then the Moth, by strange attraction,
Leaves the garden, leaves the field,
Cannot rest in sweet inaction,
Cannot taste what earth can yield.

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As the lov'd one to the lover,
As a treasure, once your own,
That you might some way recover,
Seems to him that fiery cone.

Round he whirls with pleasure tingling—
Shrinks aghast—returns again—
Ever wildly intermingling
Deep delight and burning pain.

Highest nature wills the capture,
“Light to light” th' instinct cries,
And, in agonising rapture,
Falls the Moth, and bravely dies!

Think not what thou art, Believer;
Think but what thou may'st become;
For the World is thy deceiver,
And the Light thy only home!

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IX. THE SAYINGS OF RABIA.

[_]

Rabia was a holy woman, who lived in the second century of the Hegira. Her sayings and thoughts are collected by many devotional Arabic writers: they are a remarkable development of a purely Christian mystical spirit so early in the history of Islam; the pantheistic mysticism of Sufism soon followed, and obtained a signal victory over the bare positive theism of the Prophet, clothing the heartless doctrine with a radiant vesture of imagination.

I.

A pious friend one day of Rabia asked,
How she had learnt the truth of Allah wholly?
By what instructions was her memory tasked—
How was her heart estranged from this world's folly?

She answered—“Thou who knowest God in parts,
Thy spirit's moods and processes, can tell;
I only know that in my heart of hearts
I have despised myself and loved Him well.”

II.

Some evil upon Rabia fell,
And one who loved and knew her well
Murmured that God with pain undue
Should strike a child so fond and true:
But she replied—“Believe and trust
That all I suffer is most just;

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I had in contemplation striven
To realise the joys of heaven;
I had extended fancy's flights
Through all that region of delights,—
Had counted, till the numbers failed,
The pleasures on the blest entailed,—
Had sounded the ecstatic rest
I should enjoy on Allah's breast;
And for those thoughts I now atone
That were of something of my own,
And were not thoughts of Him alone.”

III.

When Rabia unto Mekkeh came,
She stood awhile apart—alone,
Nor joined the croud with hearts on flame
Collected round the sacred stone.

She, like the rest, with toil had crossed
The waves of water, rock, and sand,
And now, as one long tempest-tossed,
Beheld the Kaabeh's promised land.

Yet in her eyes no transport glistened;
She seemed with shame and sorrow bowed;
The shouts of prayer she hardly listened,
But beat her heart and cried aloud:—

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“O heart! weak follower of the weak,
That thou should'st traverse land and sea,
In this far place that God to seek
Who long ago had come to thee!”

IV.

Round holy Rabia's suffering bed
The wise men gathered, gazing gravely—
“Daughter of God!” the youngest said,
“Endure thy Father's chastening bravely;
They who have steeped their souls in prayer
Can every anguish calmly bear.”

She answered not, and turned aside,
Though not reproachfully nor sadly;
“Daughter of God!” the eldest cried,
“Sustain thy Father's chastening gladly,
They who have learnt to pray aright,
From pain's dark well draw up delight.”

Then she spoke out,—“Your words are fair;
But, oh! the truth lies deeper still;
I know not, when absorbed in prayer,
Pleasure or pain, or good or ill;
They who God's face can understand
Feel not the motions of His hand.”

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X. PLEASURE AND PAIN.

Who can determine the frontier of Pleasure?
Who can distinguish the limit of Pain?
Where is the moment the feeling to measure?
When is experience repeated again?

Ye who have felt the delirium of passion—
Say, can ye sever its joys and its pangs?
Is there a power in calm contemplation
To indicate each upon each as it hangs?

I would believe not;—for spirit will languish
While sense is most blest and creation most bright;
And life will be dearer and clearer in anguish
Than ever was felt in the throbs of delight.

See the Fakeer as he swings on his iron,
See the thin Hermit that starves in the wild;
Think ye no pleasures the penance environ,
And hope the sole bliss by which pain is beguiled?

No! in the kingdoms those spirits are reaching,
Vain are our words the emotions to tell;
Vain the distinctions our senses are teaching,
For Pain has its Heaven and Pleasure its Hell!

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XI. THE PEACE OF GOD.

“The blessed shall hear no vain words, but only the word—Peace.” Kuran, chap. xix. v. 63.

Peace is God's direct assurance
To the souls that win release
From this world of hard endurance—
Peace—he tells us—only Peace.

There is Peace in lifeless matter—
There is Peace in dreamless sleep—
Will then Death our being shatter
In annihilation's deep?

Ask you this? O mortal trembler!
Hear the Peace that Death affords—
For your God is no dissembler,
Cheating you with double words:—

To this life's inquiring traveller,
Peace of knowledge of all good;
To the anxious truth-unraveller,
Peace of wisdom understood:—

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To the loyal wife, affection
Towards her husband, free from fear,—
To the faithful friend, selection
Of all memories kind and dear:—

To the lover, full fruition
Of an unexhausted joy,—
To the warior, crowned ambition,
With no envy's base alloy:—

To the ruler, sense of action,
Working out his great intent,—
To the prophet, satisfaction
In the mission he was sent:—

To the poet, conscious glory
Flowing from his Father's face:—
Such is Peace in holy story,
Such is Peace in heavenly grace.

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XII. CHRISTIAN ENDURANCE.

TO HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Mortal! that standest on a point of time,
With an eternity on either hand,
Thou hast one duty above all sublime,
Where thou art placed serenely there to stand:

To stand undaunted by the threatening death,
Or harder circumstance of living doom,
Nor less untempted by the odorous breath
Of Hope, that rises even from the tomb.

For Hope will never dull the present pain,
And Time will never keep thee safe from fall,
Unless thou hast in thee a mind to reign
Over thyself, as God is over all.

'Tis well on deeds of good, though small, to thrive,
'Tis well some part of ill, though small, to cure,
'Tis well with onward, upward, hopes to strive,
Yet better and diviner to endure.

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What but this virtue's solitary power,
Through all the lusts and dreams of Greece and Rome,
Bore the selected spirits of the hour
Safe to a distant, immaterial home?

What but this lesson, resolutely taught,
Of Resignation, as God's claim and due,
Hallows the sensuous hopes of Eastern thought,
And makes Mohammed's mission almost true?

But in that patience was the seed of scorn—
Scorn of the world and brotherhood of man;
Not patience such as in the manger born
Up to the cross endured its earthly span.

Thou must endure, yet loving all the while,
Above, yet never separate from, thy kind,—
Meet every frailty with the gentlest smile,
Though to no possible depth of evil blind.

This is the riddle thou hast life to solve;
But in the task thou shalt not work alone:
For, while the worlds about the sun revolve,
God's heart and mind are ever with his own!

The meaning of the word “Muslim:”—“El Islam” also signifies “the resigning.”

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THE KIOSK.

Beneath the shadow of a large-leaved plane,
Above the ripple of a shallow stream,
Beside a cypress-planted cemetery,
In a gay-painted trellis-worked kiosk,
A company of easy Muslims sat,
Enjoying the calm measure of delight
God grants the faithful even here on earth.
Most pleasantly the bitter berry tastes,
Handed by that bright-eyed and neat-limbed boy;
Most daintily the long chibouk is filled
And almost before emptied, filled again;
Or, with a free good-will, from mouth to mouth
Passes the cool Nargheelee serpentine.
So sit they, with some low occasional word
Breaking the silence in itself so sweet,
While o'er the neighbouring bridge the caravan
Winds slowly in one line interminable

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Of camel after camel, each with neck
Jerked up, as sniffing the far desert air.
Then one serene old Turk, with snow-white beard
Hanging amid his pistol-hilts profuse,
Spoke out—“Till sunset all the time is ours,
And we should take advantage of the chance
That brings us here together. This my friend
Tells by his shape of dress and peakèd cap
Where his home lies: he comes from furthest off,
So let the round of tales begin with him.”
Thus challenged, in his thoughts the Persian dived,
And, with no waste of faint apologies,
Related a plain story of his life,
Nothing adventurous, terrible, or strange,
But, as he said, a simple incident,
That any one there present might have known.

The hookah of the Levant.

THE PERSIAN'S STORY.

“Wakedi, and the Heshemite, and I,
Called each the other friend, and what we meant
By all the meaning of that common word,
One tale among a hundred—one round pearl
Dropped off the chain of daily circumstance
Into the Poet's hand—one luscious fruit
Scarce noticed in the summer of the tree,
Is here preserved, that you may do the like.

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“The Ramadhan's long days (where'er they fall
Certain to seem the longest of the year)
Were nearly over, and the populous streets
Were silent as if haunted by the plague;
For all the town was crowding the bazaar,
To buy new garments, as beseemed the time,
In honour of the Prophet and themselves.
But in our house my wife and I still sat,
And looked with sorrow in each other's face.
It was not for ourselves—we well could let
Our present clothes serve out another year,
And meet the neighbours' scoffs with quiet minds;
But for our children we were grieved and shamed;
That they should have to hide their little heads,
And take no share of pleasure in the Feast,
Or else contrast their torn and squalid vests
With the gay freshness of their playmates' garb.
At last my wife spoke out—‘Where are your friends?
Where is Wakedi? where the Heshemite?
That you are worn and pale with want of gold,
And they perchance with coin laid idly by
In some closed casket, or in some vain sport
Wasted, for want of honest purposes?’
My heart leapt light within me at these words,
And I, rejoicing at my pain as past,
Sent one I trusted to the Heshemite,
Told him my need in few plain written words,
And, ere an hour had passed, received from him

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A purse of gold tied up, sealed with his name:
And in a moment I was down the street,
And, in my mind's eye, chose the children's clothes.
—But between will and deed, however near,
There often lies a gulf impassable.
So, ere I reached the gate of the Bazaar,
Wakedi's slave accosted me—his breath
Cut short with haste; and from his choaking throat
His master's message issued word by word.
The sum was this:—a cruel creditor,
Taking the 'vantage of the season's use,
Pressed on Wakedi for a debt, and swore
That, unless paid ere evening-prayer, the law
Should wring by force the last of his demand.
Wakedi had no money in the house,
And I was prayed, in this his sudden strait,
To aid him, in my duty as a friend.
Of course I took the Heshemite's sealed purse
Out of my breast, and gave it to the slave;
Yet I must own, oppressed with foolish fear
Of my wife's tears, and, might be, bitter words,
If empty-handed I had home returned,
I sat all night, half-sleeping, in the mosque,
Beneath the glimmering feathers, eggs, and lamps,
And only in the morning nerved my heart,
To tell her of our disappointed pride.
She, when I stammered out my best excuse,
Abashed me with her kind approving calm,

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Saying—‘The parents' honour clothes the child.’
Thus I grew cheerful in her cheerfulness,
And we began to sort the children's vests,
And found them not so sordid after all.
‘This might be turned—that stain might well be hid—
This remnant might be used.’ So we went on
Almost contented, till surprised we saw
The Heshemite approach, and with quick steps
Enter the house, and in his hand he showed
The very purse tied up, sealed with his name,
Which I had given to help Wakedi's need!
At once he asked us, mingling words and smiles,
‘What means this secret? you sent yester morn
Asking for gold, and I, without delay,
Returned the purse containing all I had.
But I too found myself that afternoon
Wanting to buy a sash to grace the feast;
And sending to Wakedi, from my slave
Received this purse I sent you the same morn
Unopened.’ ‘Easy riddle,’ I replied,
‘And, as I hope, no miracle for me—
That what you gave me for my pleasure's fee
Should serve Wakedi in his deep distress.’
And then I told him of Wakedi's fate:
And we were both o'ercome with anxious care
Lest he, obeying his pure friendship's call,
Had perilled his own precious liberty,
Or suffered some hard judgment of the law.

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But to our great delight and inward peace,
Wakedi a few moments after stood
Laughing behind us, ready to recount,
How Allah, loving the unshrinking faith
With which he had supplied his friend's desire
Regardless of his own necessity,
Assuaged the creditor's strong rage, and made
His heart accessible to gentle thoughts,
Granting Wakedi time to pay the debt.
—Thus our three tales were gathered into one,
Just as I give them you, and with the purse
Then opened in the presence of the three—
We gave my children unpretending vests,
Applied a portion to Wakedi's debts,
And bought the Heshemite the richest sash
The best silk merchant owned in the Bazaar.”

Soon as he ceased, a pleasant murmur rose,
Not only of applause, but of good words,
Dwelling upon the subject of the tale;
Each to his neighbour in low utterance spoke
Of Friendship and its blessings, and God's grace,
By which man is not left alone to fight.
His daily battle through a cruel world.

The next in order, by his garb and look,
A Syrian merchant seemed, who made excuse

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That he had nothing of his own to tell,
But if the adventure of one like himself,
Who roamed the world for interchange of gain,
Encountering all the quaint varieties
Of men and nature, pleased them, it was theirs.

THE SYRIAN'S STORY.

“A merchant of Damascus, to whom gain
Tasted the sweetest when most boldly won,
Crossed the broad Desert, crossed th' Arabian Gulf,
Entered with goods the far-secluded land
That Franks call Abyssinia, and became
The favourite and companion of its King.
And little wonder—for to that rude chief
He spoke of scenes and sights so beautiful,
Of joys and splendours that had hardly place
In his imagined Paradise, of arts
By which all seasons were made sweet and mild.
In the hot sandy winds and blazing sun,
He spoke of alleys of delicious shade,
Of coloured glass that tempered the sharp light,
Of fountains bubbling up through heaps of flowers,
And boys and maidens fanning genial airs:
In the bleak snow-time, when the winds rung shrill
Through the ill-jointed palace, he pourtrayed
The Syrian winter of refreshing cool,

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And breezes pregnant with all health to man.
At last the King no more could hold in check
The yearning of his heart, and spoke aloud—
‘Friend! what is now to me my royal state,
My free command of all these tribes of men,
My power to slay or keep alive,—my wealth,
Which once I deemed the envy of all kings,—
If by my life amid these wild waste hills
I am shut out from that deliciousness
Which makes existence heavenly in your words,—
If I must pass into my Father's tomb,
These pleasures all untasted, this bright earth
To me in one dark corner only known?
Why should I not, for some, short time, lay by
My heavy sceptre, and with wealth in hand,
And thee to guide and light me in my path,
Travel to those fair countries God-endowed,—
And then with store of happy memories,
And thoughts, for pauses of the lion-hunt,
And tales to tell, to keep the evenings warm,
Return once more to my paternal throne?’
Gladly the merchant, weary with his stay
In that far land, and fearing lest kind force
Might hold him prisoner there for some long time,
Accepted the proposal, praised the scheme
As full of wise, and just, and manly thought,
Recounted the advantages the land
Would from their King's experience surely draw:

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And ended by determining the day
When they two should set out upon their road,
Worthily armed, with ample store of gold,
And gems adroitly hid about their dress.

“The day arrived, big with such change of life
To this brave Monarch: in barbaric pomp
Were gathered all the princes of the race,
All men of name and prowess in the state,
And tributary chiefs from Ethiop hills.
With mingled admiration and dismay
They heard the King announce he should go forth
To distant nations ere that sun went down;—
That for two years they would not see his face;
But then he trusted God he should return
Enriched with wisdom, worthier of his rule,
And able to impart much good to them.
Then to the trust of honourable men
Committing separate provinces and towns,
And over all, in delegated rule,
Establishing his favourite brother's power,
Amid applauses, tumults, prayers, and tears,
Towards the Arabian Gulf he bent his way.
A well-manned boat lay ready on the shore;
A prosperous gale was playing on the sea;
And after some few days of pleasant sail,
From Djedda's port to Mekkeh's blessed walls
The Merchant and the King advanced alone.

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“At every step he made in this new world,
At every city where they stopped a while
On their long journey, with the fresh delight
His eye was ravished and his heart was full;
And when at last upon his vision flashed
Holy Damascus, with its mosques, and streams,
A gem of green set in the golden sand,
The King embraced his friend; and, thanking God
That he had led him to this heaven, despised
The large dominion of his Afric birth,
And vowed he'd rather be a plain man there,
Than rule o'er all the sources of the Nile.
Thus in Damascus they were safely housed,
And as the King's gold through the Merchant's hands
Flowed freely, friends came pouring in amain,
Deeming it all the fortunate reward
Of the bold Merchants venture; for he spoke
To none about the secret King, who seemed
Rather some humble fond companion brought
From the far depths of that gold-teeming land.
Oh! what a life of luxury was there!
Velvet divans, curtains of broidered silk,
Carpets, as fine a work of Persian looms
As those that in the Mosque at Mekkeh lie;
The longest, straitest, pipes in all the East,
With amber mouth-pieces as clear as air;

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Fresh sparkling sherbet, such as Franks adore;
And maidens who might dazzle by their charms
The Sultan seated in his full Hareem.
The months rolled on with no diminished joys,
Nay, each more lavish in magnificence
Than that which went before; and, drunk with pleasure,
The Merchant lost all sense and estimate
Of the amount of wealth he and the King
Had brought together from that distant clime.
The gold was soon exhausted, yet remained
A princely store of jewels, which for long
Sustained that fabric of enchanted life,
But one by one were spent and passed away;
Then came the covert sale of splendours bought;
Then money borrowed easily at first,
But every time extracted with more pain
From the strong griping clutch of usury.
But all the while, unwitting of the truth,
Without the faintest shadow of distrust
Of his friend's prudence, care, or honesty,
Taking whatever share of happiness
He gave him with an absolute content,
Tranquil the Abyssinian King remained,
Confiding and delighted as a child.

Statius (Sylv. 1, 6, 14), speaks of Syrian plums, as, “Quod ramis pia germinat Damascus.”

Our champagne is the favourite sherbet of the East.

“At last the hour came on, though long delayed,
When the bare fact before the Merchant's eyes

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Stood out, that he was ruined without hope!
What could be done? Not only for himself,
But for his friend, that poor deluded King,
Become an useless burthen on his hands?
He knew his doors, that guests so lately thronged,
Would soon be thronged as thick with creditors;
And he himself, by law, be forced to pay
In person, where he had no gold to give:
He must escape that very hour—but how?
Without one good piastre to defray
His cost upon the road, or bribe the porters
To set his creditors on some false scent.
Then rose a thought within him, and, it seemed,
Was gladly welcomed by a sudden start,
And a half-cruel, half-compassionate, smile.
For straight he sought the Abyssinian King,
Whom he found watching with a quiet smile
The gold fish in the fountain gleam and glide.
He led him, ever ductile, by the hand
Down many streets into a close-built court
Where sat together many harsh-browed men,
Whom he accosted thus: ‘Friends, I want gold;
Here is a slave I brought with me last year
From Abyssinia; he is stout and strong,
And, but for some strange crotchets in his head
Of his own self-importance and fond dreams,
Which want a little waking now and then
By means that you at least know well to use,

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A trusty servant and long-headed man;
Take him at your own price—I have no time
To drive a bargain.’ ‘Well, so much,’—one cried—
‘So much’ another. ‘Bring your purses out,
You have bid most, and let me count the coin.’
Dumb as a rock the Abyssinian King,
Gathering the meaning of the villany,
Stood for a while; then, in a frantic burst,
Rushed at his base betrayer, who, his arm
Avoiding, gathered up his gold and fled:
And the slave-merchant, as a man to whom
All wild extremities of agony
Were just as common as his daily bread,
Shouted, and like a felon in a cage
The King was soon forced down by many hands.
“None know what afterwards became of him:
Haply he died, as was the best for him;
And, but that the false Merchant, proud of crime,
Oft told the story as a good device
And laughable adventure of his craft,
The piteous fate of that deluded King
Had been as little known to anyone
As to the subjects of his distant realm,
Who still, perchance, expect their Lord's return,
Laden with all the wealth of Eastern lands.”

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'Twas strange to see how upon different minds
The Syrian's tale with different meanings fell.
One moralised of the vicissitudes
Of mortal greatness, how the spider's web
Is just as safe from harm and violence
As the bright-woven destiny of kings.
Another cursed the Merchant for his deed:
And a third laughed aloud and laughed again,
Considering the strange contrast of the pomp
Of that departure from a regal throne
And grand commission of so many powers,
With the condition of a kennelled slave;
For true it is, that nothing moves to mirth
More than the gap that fortune often leaps,
Dragging some wretched man along with her.

To an Egyptian soldier, scarred and bronzed,
The duty of narration came the next:
Who said, “that soldiers' tales were out of place
Told in calm places and at evening hours:
His songs required the music of the gun:
He could recount a thousand desperate feats,
Hair-breadth escapes and miracles of war,
Were he but cowering round a low watch-fire
Almost in hearing of the enemy;
But now his blood was cold, and he was dull,
And even had forgot his own wild past.
They all had heard—had East and West not heard

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Of Mehemet Ali and of Ibrahim?
It might be that the Great Pasha was great,
But he was fond of trade—of getting gold,
Not by fair onslaught and courageous strength,
But by mean interchange with other lands
Of produce better in his own consumed;
This was like treason to a soldier's heart;
And all he hoped was that when Ibrahim
Sat in his father's seat, he would destroy
That flight of locusts—Jew, and Greek, and Frank,
Who had corrupted Egypt and her power,
By all their mercenary thoughts and acts,
And sent him there, brave soldier as he was,
To go beg service at the Sultan's hand.
Yet Ibrahim's heart was still a noble one;
No man could contradict him and not fear
Some awful vengeance;—was this story known?”

THE EGYPTIAN'S STORY

“Once, when in Syria he had let war loose,
And was reducing, under one strong sway,
Druses, and Christians, and Mohammedans,
He heard that his lost child, the favourite
Born of a favourite wife, had been let fall
By a young careless Nubian nurse, and hurt,
So as to cripple it through all its days.
No word of anger passed the warrior's lips,—

229

No one would think the story on his mind
Rested a single moment. But due time
Brought round his glad return, and he once more
Entered his hall, within which, on each side,
Long marble stairs curved towards the balcony,
Where right and left the women's chambers spread;
Upon the landing stood the glad Hareem
To welcome him with music, shouts, and songs;
Yet he would not ascend a single step,
But cried—‘Where is the careless Nubian girl
That let my child fall on the stony ground?’
Trembling and shrieking down one marble flight
She was pushed forward, till she reached the floor:
Then Ibrahim caught her in one giant grasp,
Dragged her towards him, and one brawny hand
Tight-twisting in her long and glossy hair,
And with the other drawing the sharp sword
Well known at Nezib and at Koniah,
Sheer from her shoulders severed the young head,
And casting it behind him, at few bounds
Cleared the high stair and to his bosom pressed
The darling wife his deed had just reveng'd.
O! he is god-like in his hour of rage!
His wrath is like the plague that falls on man
With indiscriminate fury, and for this
His name is honoured through the spacious East,
Where all things powerful meet their just reward.”

230

The Soldier paused; and surely some one else
Had taken up the burden of a tale;
But at that moment through the cypress stems
Shot the declining crimson of the sun
Full on the faces of that company,
Who for some instants in deep silence watched
The last appearance of the ruddy rim,
And, little needing the clear warning voice
Which issued round the neighbouring minaret,—
Bidding all earthly thoughts and interests
Sink in their breasts as sunk that fiery sun—
Bowed, old and young, their heads in blest accord,
Believers in one Prophet and one God!

Story-telling is, now as ever, the delight of the East: in the coffee and summer houses, at the corners of the streets, in the courts of the mosque, sit the grave and attentive crowd, hearing with childly pleasure the same stories over and over again, applauding every new turn of expression or incident, but not requiring them any more than the hearers of a European sermon.

231

THE TENT.

Why should a man raise stone and wood
Between him and the sky?
Why should he fear the brotherhood
Of all things from on high?
Why should a man not raise his form
As shelterless and free
As stands in sunshine or in storm
The mountain and the tree?

Or if we thus, as creatures frail
Before our time should die,
And courage and endurance fail
Weak Nature to supply;—
Let us at least a dwelling choose,
The simplest that can keep
From parching heat and noxious dews
Our pleasure and our sleep.

The Fathers of our mortal race,
While still remembrance nursed
Traditions of the glorious place
Whence Adam fled accursed,—

232

Rested in tents, as best became
Children, whose mother earth
Had overspread with sinful shame
The beauty of her birth.

In cold they sought the sheltered nook,
In heat the airy shade,
And oft their casual home forsook
The morrow it was made;
Diverging many separate roads,
They wandered, fancy-driven,
Nor thought of other fixed abodes
Than Paradise or Heaven.

And while this holy sense remained,
'Mid easy shepherd cares,
In tents they often entertained
The Angels unawares:
And to their spirits' fervid gaze
The mystery was revealed,
How the world's wound in future days
Should by God's love be healed.

Thus we, so late and far a link
Of generation's chain,
Delight to dwell in tents, and think
The old world young again;

233

With Faith as wide and Thought as narrow
As theirs, who little more
From life demanded than the sparrow
Gay-chirping by the door.

The Tent! how easily it stands,
Almost as if it rose
Spontaneous from the green or sand,
Express for our repose:
Or, rather, it is we who plant
This root, where'er we roam,
And hold, and can to others grant,
The comforts of a home.

Make the Divan—the carpets spread,
The ready cushions pile;
Rest, weary heart! rest, weary head!
From pain and pride awhile:
And all your happiest memories woo,
And mingle with your dreams
The yellow desert glimmering through
The subtle veil of beams.

We all have much we would forget—
Be that forgotten now!
And placid Hope, instead, shall set
Her seal upon your brow:

234

Imagination's prophet eye
By her shall view unfurled
The future greatnesses that lie
Hid in the Eastern world.

To slavish tyrannies their term
Of terror she foretells;
She brings to bloom the faith whose germ
In Islam deeply dwells;
Accomplishing each mighty birth
That shall one day be born
From marriage of the western earth
With nations of the morn!

Then fold the Tent—then on again;
One spot of ashen black,
The only sign that here has lain
The traveller's recent track:
And gladly forward, safe to find
At noon and eve a home,
Till we have left our Tent behind,
The homeless ocean-foam!

235

THE BURDEN OF EGYPT.

[_]

Our land is the temple of the world, but Egypt will be forsaken, and the land which was once the seat of the divinity will be void of religion. Then this holy seat will be full of idolatry, idols' temples, and dead men's tombs. O Egypt! there will remain only a faint show of thy religion, not believed by posterity, and nought but the letters engraven on thy pillars will declare thy pious deeds. The divinity will fly to heaven, and Egypt will be forsaken by God and man. I call upon Thee, most holy River! I foretell unto Thee what will come to pass. Thy waters and holy streams will be filled with blood, and will overflow thy banks, so that the dead will be more numerous than the living; and he that remains alive will be known to be an Egyptian only by his language, but in his deeds he will seem a barbarian. Hermes Trismegistus.

I

After the phantasies of many a night,
After the deep desires of many a day,
Rejoicing as an ancient Eremite
Upon the Desert's edge at last I lay:
Before me rose, in wonderful array,
Those works where man has rivalled Nature most,
Those Pyramids, that fear no more decay
Than waves inflict upon the rockiest coast,
Or winds on mountain-steeps, and like endurance boast.

II

Fragments the deluge of old Time has left
Behind it in its subsidence—long Walls

236

Of cities of their very names bereft—
Lone Columns, remnants of majestic halls,—
Rich-traceried chambers, where the night-dew falls,—
All have I seen with feelings due, I trow,
Yet not with such as these memorials
Of the great unremembered, that can show
The mass and shape they wore four thousand years ago.

III

The screaming Arabs left me there alone,
Hoping small gain from one who silent dreamed;
Till o'er the sand each solemn shadow thrown
Like that of Etna to my fancy seemed,
While in the minaretted distance gleamed
Purple and faint-green relics of the day,
And the warm air grew chill, and then I deemed
I saw a Shape dark-lined against the gray
Slowly approach my couch, but whence I could not say.

IV

The starry beauty of its earnest gaze
The heavenly nature of that form revealed,

237

Seen through the dimness of the evening haze,
That magnified the figure it concealed:
It was the Genius who has trust to wield
The destinies of this our living hour,
Who wills not that the studious heart should shield
Itself from the requirements of his power,
Or seek a selfish rest, whatever tempests lour.

V

Just at that moment, o'er the stony East
An arch of crimson radiance caught my sight,
That gradually expanded and increast,
Till the large moon arose—and all was light!
Then I beheld advancing opposite
Another Shape, to which the Genius turned
As with a look of anger and despite,
While with a curious eagerness I burned,
And marked the Shape as one that much my weal concerned.

VI

It was a female Form—divinely tall,
Yet somewhat bowed, as by invisible weight,
A face whose pallor almost might appal,
Had not the charm of features been so great:
Her gathered amice, like the web of fate,

238

Was party-coloured, and her forehead bound
With such gold-work as fairies fabricate
In flowery cells, and stamp with letters round
That mock the learned sage and foolish eyes astound.

VII

But passing by her without word or sign
The first came straight to me and looked awhile,
And laid his hand affectionately on mine,
And veiled his sternness with a gentle smile:
Making, by some unutterable wile,
The homely duties I could hardly prize,
And occupations I had left as vile,
Rise to my conscience like domestic ties,
For which my soul was bound all else to sacrifice.

VIII

“Thou that art born into this favoured age,
So fertile in all enterprise of thought,
Bound in fresh mental conflicts to engage
The liberties for which your fathers fought,—
Be not thy spirit contemplation-fraught,
Musing and mourning! Thou must act and move,
Must teach your children more than ye were taught,
Brighten intelligence, disseminate love,
And, through the world around, make way to worlds above.

239

IX

“The total surface of this sphered earth
Is now surveyed by philosophic eyes;
Nor East nor West conceals a secret worth—
In the wide Ocean no Atlantis lies:
Nations and men, that would be great and wise,
Thou knowest, can do no more than men have done;
No wondrous impulse, no divine surprise,
Can bring this planet nearer to the sun,—
Civilisation's prize no royal road has won.

X

“So not to distant people, to far times,
Turn mind and heart, life's honest artisan!
Seek not miraculous virtues, mighty crimes,
Making a demon or a god of man:
Deem not that ever, wide as mind can scan,
He has been better in the mass than now,
A thing of wider intellectual span,
A creature of more elevated brow,
A being Hope has right more richly to endow.”

XI

Thus in clear language, not without reproof,
The Spirit of the Present, eagle-eyed,
Conjured me not to lie in thought aloof
From actual life, casting my fancy wide:

240

I know not what my tongue confused replied;
But she to whom my anxious looks appealed,
Now seated near in tutelary pride,
Spoke firmly for me, and would nowise yield
A cause she felt at heart, and on so fair a field.

XII

She cried, “I am the Past!” and I inherit
Some rights and powers that thou canst not dethrone,
Therefore, unresting and untiring Spirit,
Thou shalt not make the Poet all thine own:
Time was when all men deemed that I alone
Was chartered his bright presence to possess,
That thou in heart and hand wert cold as stone,
And he would perish in thy rude caress,
Strong to insult and crush, but impotent to bless.

XIII

“But things are changed: over the Poet's soul
No more my sway and dignities extend,—
Thy influences now his moods control,
If yet my lover, he is more thy friend:
But, since his errant footsteps hither tend,
Some little while by me he must remain,
Some little while beneath my memories bend,
And, when he hath full-stored his eager brain,
He shall return and be thy servitor again.

241

XIV

“And surely here I claim but what I ought
In this my holiest place, my special shrine,
My Land of Egypt! where the human thought
Is linked to Chaos and the light divine,
Disparting darkness—led from line to line
Of regal generations deep engraved,
Or richly wrought in hieroglyphic sign,
On Palaces, Tombs, Temples, that have saved
Their beauty through such storms as rocks have hardly braved.

XV

“Here Fancy bows to Truth: Eldest of Time,
Child of the world's fresh morning, Egypt saw
These Pyramids rise gradually sublime,
And eras pass, whose records, as with awe,
Nature has willed from History to withdraw;
Yet learn, that on these stones has Abraham gazed,
These regions round acknowledged Joseph's law,
That obelisk from granite bed was raised,
Ere Moses in its shade sat and Jehovah praised.

XVI

“This Nile was populous with floating life
For ages ere the Argo swept the seas,

242

Ere Helen woke the fires of Grecian strife
Thebes had beheld a hundred dynasties:
And when the Poet, whom all grandeurs please,
Named her the Hundred-gated and the Queen
Of earthly cities, she had reached the lees
Of her large cup of glory, and was seen
Image and type of what her perfect pride had been.

XVII

“Here Greece, so often hailed progenitrix
Of mortal wisdom, nurse of ancient lore,
First skilled the ideal beautiful to fix
In plastic forms that shall not perish more,
Seems a pretender, who astutely bore
O'er his young locks a show of reverent grey,—
And Rome, whose greatness thou couldst once adore,
Appears, with all her circumstance of sway,
A mere familiar face, a thing of yesterday.

XVIII

“Thus recognise that here the Past is all,
And Thou, the Present, nothing: no display

243

Of intellectual vigour can appal
Me, who can count the ages as a day:
But lest thy subtle words should lead astray
Him, who to me commits his heart awhile,
Depart to thine own kingdoms far away;
And we with grave delight will days beguile
Of wintry name, but blest with summer's blandest smile.”

XIX

So were we left, the Past and I together;
But how wise converse did itself unfold,
And how we breathed in that delicious weather
Whose balm was never hurt by heat or cold,
And how the scrolls of Nature were uprolled
Before me in that sacred company,
Are what can never in such words be told
As may seem worthy the reality:
Faint are the shades I give of what was given to me.

XX

O Thou beneficent and bounteous stream!
Thou Patriarch River! on whose ample breast
We dwelt the time that full at once could seem
Of busiest travel and of softest rest:
No wonder that thy being was so blest

244

That gratitude of old to worship grew,
That as a living God Thou wert addrest,
And to itself the immediate agent drew
To one creative power the feelings only due.

XXI

For in thy title and in Nature's truth
Thou art and makest Egypt: were thy source
But once arrested in its bubbling youth,
Or turned extravagant to some new course,
By a fierce crisis of convulsive force,
Egypt would cease to be—the intrusive sand
Would smother its rich fields without remorse,
And scarce a solitary palm would stand
To tell, that barren vale was once the wealthiest land.

XXII

Scarce with more certain order waves the Sun
His matin banners in the Eastern sky,
Than at the reckoned period are begun
Thy operations of fertility;

245

Through the long sweep thy bosom swelling high
Expands between the sandy mountain chains,
The walls of Libya and of Araby,
Till in the active virtue it contains
The desert bases sink and rise prolific plains.

XXIII

See through the naked length no blade of grass,
No animate sign relieves the dismal strand,
Such it might seem our orb's first substance was,
Ere touched by God with generative hand;
Yet at one step we reach the teeming land
Lying fresh-green beneath the scorching sun,
As succulent as if at its command
It held all rains that fall, all brooks that run,
And this, O generous Nile! is thy vast benison.

XXIV

Whence comest Thou, so marvellously dowered
As never other stream on earth beside?
Where are thy founts of being, thus empowered
To form a nation by their annual tide?
The charts are silent; history guesses wide;
Adventure from thy quest returns ashamed;
And each new age, in its especial pride,
Believes that it shall be as that one named,
In which to all mankind thy birth-place was proclaimed.

246

XXV

Though Priests upon thy banks, mysterious Water!
Races of men in lofty knowledge schooled,
Though warriors, winning fame through shock and slaughter,
Sesostris to Napoleon, here have ruled:
Yet has the secret of thy sources fooled
The monarch's strength, the labours of the wise,
And, though the world's desire has never cooled,
Our practised vision little more descries
Than old Herodotus beheld with simple eyes.

XXVI

And now in Egypt's late degraded day,
A venerating love attends thee still,
And the poor Fellah, from thee torn away,
Feels a strange yearning his rude bosom fill;
Like the remembered show of lake and hill,
That wrings the Switzer's soul, though fortune smile,
Thy mirage haunts him, uncontrolled by will,
And wealth or war in vain the heart beguile
That clings to its mud-hut and palms, beside the Nile.

247

XXVII

The Palm! the Princess of the Sylvan race;
When islanded amid the level green,
Or charming the wild desert with her grace,
The only verdure of the sultry scene:
Ever, with simple majesty of mien,
No other growth of nature can assume,
She reigns—and most when, in the evening sheen,
The stable column and the waving plume
Shade the delicious lights that all around allume.

XXVIII

Yet this fair family's most lofty peers
Are dwarfed and stunted to the traveller's eye,
When by them its enormous bulk uprears
Some antique work of pomp or piety,—
Columns that may in height and girth defy
The sturdiest oaks that British glades adorn,
Or chesnuts on the slopes of Sicily,—
And walls that when, by time, to fragments torn,
Still look like towering cliffs by mountain-torrents worn.

XXIX

'Twould seem as if some people that had held
Their pristine seat in lands of stony hill
Once from their ancient boundaries outswelled,
And took these vales to conquer and to till:

248

So, where the memory and tradition still
Of temples cut in living rocks remains,
This one Idea the artists' breasts might fill,
Who built amid the Nile's alluvial plains,
First to erect the Rocks and then work out the Fanes.

XXX

Nor, when the architect's presiding thought
Stood out in noble form, solid and clear,
Was all the hieratic purpose wrought,
Or sacred objects their completion near:
For giant shapes of beauty and of fear
Must make each part for open worship fit,
And mystic language, known to priest and seer,
In very volumes on the walls be writ,
Whose sense is late revealed to searching modern wit.

XXXI

Within—without—no little space is lost,
Though hardly obvious to a stranger eye;
With lavish labour and uncounted cost
Is overlaid each nook of masonry;
No base too deep—no architrave too high
For these weird records of a nation's lore,
And early pride, that yearned to deify
The names and titles that their monarchs bore—
That what they loved and feared their children might adore.

249

XXXII

Thus the Eternal Trinities, whose birth
Is in the primal reason of mankind,
Were mingled with the mighty of the earth,
To whom was given the trust to loose and bind
The destinies of nations: thus behind
The God, came close the great victorious King;
Till with the regal image were combined
All the dim thoughts and phantasies that cling
Round power, for power's own sake, as round a sacred thing.

XXXIII

But walls, once stedfast as their base of rock,
Have crumbled into heaps o'er which we climb,
And graceless children leap from block to block,
The spawn of Nature on the graves of Time:
Into the tabernacle's night sublime,
Through the long fissures curious sunrays peep;
Say! if the Priests, who led this sacred mime,

250

Could loose their spicy cerements and the sleep
Of many thousand years,—say, would they smile or weep?

XXXIV

If that religion were a subtle wile
Dominion over feeble minds to keep,
If 'twere in truth a mime, they well might smile;
But if 'twere truth itself, they well might weep;
And why not truth itself? truth not less deep
For being fragmentary,—though a gleam,
Not less a portion of the fires that steep
Mankind's brute matter in the heavenly stream,
And lead to waking life through mazy modes of dream.

XXXV

Theirs was the sin to cumber faith with fear—
To tremble where they should have feared and loved;
To overlook the glory close and near,
And only reverence it in space removed;
Their pride of wisdom knew not it behoved
Man's mind to worship but man's heart still more,
Nor could conceive the doctrine thus approved,
When far away from Egypt and its lore,
Judæa's race, once free, the world's bright future bore.

251

XXXVI

For right to mediate between God and man
The Art of Greece long combated in vain;
Far earlier here was shown the heavenly plan
How Nature's self could not that privilege gain;
So now organic life can scarce obtain
Its recognition of divinity,—
Past like the godhead of the Grecian fane:
And thus we know Ideas alone can be
Idols divine enough for man's high destiny.

XXXVII

Who would not feel and satisfy this want,
Watching, as I, in Karnak's roofless halls,
Subnuvolar lights of evening sharply slant
Through pillared masses and on wasted walls?
Who would not learn, there is no form but palls
On the progressive spirit of mankind,
When here around in soulless sorrow falls
That which seemed permanence itself, designed
To rase the sense of death from out all human mind.

XXXVIII

For near the temple ever lies the tomb,
The dwelling, not the dungeon, of the dead,

252

Where they abide in glorifying gloom,
In lofty chambers with rich colours spread,
Vast corridors, all carved and decorated
For entertainment of their ghostly lord,
When he may leave his alabaster bed,
And see, with pleasure earth could scarce afford,
These subterranean walls his power and wealth record.

XXXIX

Often 'twas willed this splendour should be sealed
Not only from profane but priestly eyes,
That to no future gaze might be revealed
The secret palace where a Pharaoh lies,
Amid his world-enduring obsequies;
And though we, children of a distant shore,
Here search and scan, yet much our skill defies;
One chance the less, some grains of sand the more,
And never had been found that vault's mysterious door.

XL

Not without cause the Persian's brutal hate
The regal corpse of Amasis profaned;
The Arabs' greed would hardly venerate
These halls of death, while hope of gain remained:

253

So much for ages with base passions stained;
But who are now the spoilers? We, even we;
Now the worst fiends of ruin are unchained,
That sons of science and civility
May bear the fragments home, beyond the midland sea.

XLI

Soon will these miracles of eldest art
Be but as quarries hollowed in base stone; .
Soon will the tablets, that might bear their part
In shedding light on tracts of time unknown
Be by caprice or avarice overthrown;
While worn by bitter frost of northern gloom
The obelisks will stand defaced and lone,
And god-like effigies, that had for room
The Nile and Desert, pine in narrow prison-gloom.

XLII

But from that Theban Kingdom desolate
Benevolent winds, opposing the swift tide,

254

Impelled me onward, nor did once abate
Till the strong Cataract checked my vessel's pride:
How happy in that cool bright air to glide
By Esne, Edfou, Ombos! each in turn
A pleasure, and to other joys a guide;—
Labourless motion—yet enough to earn
Syene's roseate cliffs —Egypt's romantic bourn.

XLIII

Tranquil above the rapids, rocks, and shoals,
The Tivoli of Egypt, Philæ lies;
No more the frontier-fortress that controls
The rush of Ethiopian enemies,—
No more the Isle of Temples to surprise,
With Hierophantic courts and porticoes,
The simple stranger, but a scene where vies
Dead Art with living Nature to compose
For that my pilgrimage a fit and happy close.

XLIV

There I could taste without distress of thought
The placid splendours of a Nubian night,
The sky with beautiful devices fraught
Of suns and moons and spaces of white light:

255

While on huge gateways rose the forms of Might,
Awful as when the People's heart they swayed,
And the grotesque grew solemn to my sight;
And earnest faces thronged the colonnade,
As if they wailed a faith forgotten or betrayed.

XLV

There too, in calmer mood, I sent aflight
My mind through realms of marvel stretching far,
O'er Abyssinian Alps of fabled height,
O'er Deserts where no paths or guidance are,
Save when, by pilotage of some bright star,
As on the ocean, wends the caravan;
And then I almost mourned the mythic bar
That in old times along that frontier ran,
When gods came down to feast with Ethiopian man.

XLVI

For I remember races numberless,
Whom still those latitudes in mystery fold,
And asked, what does the Past, my monitress,
For them within her genial bosom hold?
Where is for them the tale of history told?
How is their world advancing on its way?
How are they wiser, better, or more bold,

256

That they were not created yesterday?
Why are we life-taught men, why poor ephemerals they?

XLVII

Present and Past are question'd there in vain,
And hang their heads unanswering: there in fee
The Future holds her absolute domain,
Empress of what a third of Earth shall be:
But will our generations live to see
Plenty through those unwatered regions reign,—
Science there dwell as with the white and free,—
To gentle thoughts subside the heated brain,—
And lawless tribes be bound in Order's sacred chain:

XLVIII

May such things be? Ask him who hopes and prays
Rather than reasons. Good men have not quailed
Before the problem. and high justice weighs
The thoughts that prompted, not the deeds that failed.
What matter that the world has mocked and railed?
What matter that they perish, work undone?
The prescience of such souls has ever hailed,
Long ere the dawn, the coming of the sun,
And, may be, by such Faith the Light itself is won.

I cannot here enter into chronological arguments, but I may mention that the schemes of Egyptian history, that give it the largest field of time, seem to me the most probable.

The noise of the Arabs is the greatest drawback to the pleasure of an excursion to the Pyramids—most disagreeable ciceroni besetting you on every side and in numbers that renders resistance impossible.

At Hieropolis.

That is, with the hundred temples: there was no wall round Thebes, therefore no gates; but the Pylones, or massive gates of the Temples, were evidently the object of foreign astonishment and admiration.

In the oldest form of Egyptian theology of which we have cognizance, the Nile is a God, and the phrase “the proper rising of the God,” is found on the tablet in front of the sphynx erected under Nero: the Egyptian theologians also imagined divisions in Heaven similar to those of earth, and could conceive no Paradise without a celestial Nile.

The Egypt of Homer is the river not the country: all the other Greek names of Egypt are derived from the Nile: its Coptic name was Phiaro— hence probably Pharaoh. In somewhat the same sense is India derived from the Indus.

In all probability the Nile has no one particular source, but is created by the convergence of many small streams, like the Thames and the Rhone. We have an excellent vindication for our geographical ignorance on this point in that of Pliny, with regard to the Rhine. Hundreds of years after the first passage of the river by Roman troops, he writes “that the Rhine takes its rise in the most hidden parts of the earth, in a region of perpetual night, amidst forests for ever inaccessible to human footsteps” (iii. 24). The source of the Iser seems, too, to have been equally undiscovered.

The earlier Egyptians arranged their gods habitually in threes; when the theology got confused, the groups became more numerous and varied— just as new characters crept into the hieroglyphics and the titles of the Kings within the ovals became much longer.

Throughout Egyptian history the King is divine; there were temples in front of the Pyramids, and the Labyrinth is the temple of another dynasty; so down to the latest and basest times. The most contemptible of the Ptolemies is on his coins—“the adorable God;” and Cleopatra, on her later ones—“the younger goddess.”

“The Egyptians thought it more worthy of the Gods to adore them in symbols animated by their creating breath, than in empty images of inert matter; they regarded the intelligence of animals as connecting them with Gods and men.”—Champollion.

e.g. that of Osiris I., discovered by a happy hazard by Belzoni, and from which the alabaster coffin was taken, now in Sir J. Soane's museum. The tombs of the Theban kings, as yet known, are confined to a single dynasty; there must be somewhere in the neighbourhood the sepultures of all the others, probably equal in magnificence and interest.

“I have travelled through Greece, Egypt, Nubia, and much of Asia Minor, and I have witnessed much destruction of monuments; but everywhere the injurers were Europeans, the pretext science, and the motive gain.”—Prokesch.

Unless the Pasha will have doors erected and watched, and all pillage forbidden, under heavy penalties; the figures are now being stripped from the walls every day

That of Luxor, at Paris, has already lost the sharpness of the edges.

In the quarries of red granite at Syene may be seen the marks of the tools employed a thousand years ago, as fresh as if they had been left yesterday, and the form of an obelisk may be traced, partially dissevered from its native rock.

Canopus, the ornament of the Southern hemisphere, is called by the Arabs, “the caravan-seducer”— a large caravan having been lost in the desert by the driver taking it for Venus.

257

A TRAVELLER'S IMPRESSION ON THE NILE.

When you have lain for weeks together
On such a noble river's breast,
And learnt its face in every weather,
And loved its motions and its rest,—

'Tis hard at some appointed place
To check your course and turn your prow,
And objects for themselves retrace
You past with added hope just now.

The silent highway forward beckons,
And all the bars that reason plants
Now disappointed fancy reckons
As foolish fears or selfish wants.

The very rapids, rocks, and shoals
Seem but temptations which the stream
Holds out to energetic souls,
That worthy of its love may seem.

But life is full of limits; heed not
One more or less—the forward track
May often give you what you need not,
While wisdom waits on turning back.

258

OTHER SCENES.

THE RIVER TRAUN.

WRITTEN IN LOMBARDY.

[_]

The Traun rises in the mountains of Upper Austria, and loses itself in the Danube above Linz. Its course is remarkable for the combination of the best features of Alpine scenery with the grace and elegance of the Southern landscape.

My heart is in a mountain mood,
Though I am bound to tread the plain,
She will away for ill or good,—
I cannot lure her back again;
So let her go,—God speed her flight
O'er teeming glebe and columned town,
I know that she will rest ere night,
By the remembered banks of Traun.

And she will pray her sister Muse,
Sister, companion, friend, and guide,
Her every art and grace to use,
For love of that well-cherished tide;
But words are weak,—she cannot reach
By such poor steps that Beauty's crown;
How can the Muse to others teach
What were to me the banks of Traun?

259

She can repeat the faithful tale
That “where thy genial waters flow,
All objects the rare crystal hail,
And cast their voices far below;
And there the stedfast echoes rest,
Till the old Sun himself goes down,
Till darkness falls on every breast,
Even on thine, transparent Traun!”

And she can say, “Where'er thou art,
Brawling 'mid rocks, or calm-embayed,
Outpouring thy abundant heart
In ample lake or deep cascade,—
Whatever dress thy sides adorn,
Fresh-dewy leaves or fir-stems brown,
Or ruby-dripping barbery thorn,
Thou art thyself, delightful Traun!

“No glacier-mountains, harshly bold,
Whose peaks disturb the summer air,
And make the gentle blue so cold,
And hurt our warmest thoughts, are there;
But upland meadows, lush with rills,
Soft-green as is the love-bird's down,
And quaintest forms of pine-clad hills,
Are thy fit setting, jewelled Traun!”

260

But the wise Muse need not be told,
Though fair and just her song may seem,
The same has oft been sung of old,
Of many a less deserving stream;
For where would be the worth of sight,
If Love could feed on blank renown?
They who have loved the Traun aright
Have sat beside the banks of Traun.

TO AN ENGLISH LADY,

WHO HAD SUNG A ROMAN BALLAD.

Blame not my vacant looks; it is not true,
That my discourteous thoughts did vainly stray
Out of the presence of your gentle lay,
While other eager listeners nearer drew,
Though sooth I hardly heard a note; for you,
Most cunning songstress, did my soul convey
Over the fields of space, far, far away,
To the dear garden-land, where long it grew.
Thus, all that time, beneath the ilex roof
Of an old Alban hill, I lay aloof,
With the cicala faintly clittering near,
Till, as your song expired, the clouds that pass
Athwart the Roman plain, as o'er a glass,
Thickened, and bade the vision disappear.

261

ON THE CHURCH OF THE MADELEINE AT PARIS.

I.

The Attic temple whose majestic room
Contained the presence of Olympian Jove,
With smooth Hymettus round it and above,
Softening the splendour by a sober bloom,
Is yielding fast to Time's irreverent doom;
While on the then barbarian banks of Seine
That nobler type is realised again
In perfect form, and dedicate—to whom?
To a poor Syrian girl, of lowliest name,
A hapless creature, pitiful and frail
As ever wore her life in sin and shame,—
Of whom all history has this single tale,—
“She loved the Christ, she wept beside his grave,
And He, for that Love's sake, all else forgave.”

II.

If one, with prescient soul to understand
The working of this world beyond the day
Of his small life, had taken by the hand
That wanton daughter of old Magdala;

262

And told her that the time was ripe to come
When she, thus base among the base, should be
More served than all the Gods of Greece and Rome,
More honoured in her holy memory,—
How would not men have mocked and she have scorned
The fond Diviner?—Plausible excuse
Had been for them, all moulded to one use
Of feeling and of thought, but We are warned
By such ensamples to distrust the sense
Of Custom proud and bold Experience.

III.

Thanks to that element of heavenly things,
That did come down to earth, and there confound
Most sacred thoughts with names of usual sound,
And homeliest life with all a Poet sings.
The proud Ideas that had ruled and bound
Our moral nature were no longer kings,
Old Power grew faint and shed his eagle-wings,
And grey Philosophy was half uncrowned.
Love, Pleasure's child, betrothed himself to Pain;—
Weakness, and Poverty, and Self-disdain,
And tranquil sufferance of repeated wrongs,
Became adorable;—Fame gave her tongues,
And Faith her hearts to objects all as low
As this lorn child of infamy and woe.

263

ON REVISITING CAMBRIDGE,

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE ON THE CONTINENT.

Nor few, nor poor in beauty, my resorts
In foreign climes,—nor negligent or dull
My observation, but these long-left courts
I still find beautiful, most beautiful!
And fairly are they more so than before;
For to my eye, fresh from a southern land,
They wear the colouring of the scenes of yore,
And the old Faith that made them here to stand.
I paint the very students as they were,
Not the men-children of these forward days,
But mild-eyed boys just risen from their knees,
While, proud as angels of their holy care,
Following the symbol-vested priest, they raise
The full response of antique litanies.

264

THE SAME.

I have a debt of my heart's own to Thee,
School of my Soul! old lime and cloister shade,
Which I, strange suitor, should lament to see
Fully acquitted and exactly paid:
The first ripe taste of manhood's best delights,
Knowledge imbibed, while mind and heart agree,
In sweet belated talk on winter nights,
With friends whom growing time keeps dear to me,—
Such things I owe thee, and not only these:
I owe thee the far beaconing memories
Of the young dead, who, having crossed the tide
Of Life where it was narrow, deep, and clear,
Now cast their brightness from the further side
On the dark-flowing hours I breast in fear.

265

ON COWPER'S GARDEN AT OLNEY.

From this forlornest place, at morn and even,
Issues a voice imperative, “Begone,
All ye that let your vermin thoughts creep on
Beneath the unheeded thunders of high Heaven;
Nor welcome they, who, when free grace is given
To free from usual life's dominion,
Soon as the moving scene or time is gone,
Return, like penitents unfitly shriven.
But Ye, who long have wooed the memory
Of this great Victim of sublime despair,
Encompassed round with evil as with air,
Yet crying, ‘God is good, and sinful He,’—.
Remain, and feel how better 'tis to drink
Of Truth to Madness even than shun that fountain's brink.”

266

ON MILTON'S COTTAGE, AT CHALFONT ST. GILES,

WHERE HE REMAINED DURING THE GREAT PLAGUE.

Beneath this roof, for no such use designed
By its old owners, Fleetwood's banished race,
Blind Milton found a healthful resting-place,
Leaving the city's dark disease behind:—
Here, too, with studies noble and refined,
As with fresh air, his spirits he could brace,
And grow unconscious of the time's disgrace,
And the fierce plague of disappointed mind.
The gracious Muse is wont to build for most
Of her dear sons some pleasant noontide bower;
But for this One she raised a home of fame,
Where he dwelt safe through life's chill evening hour,
Above the memo'ry of his Hero lost,
His martyred brethren and his country's shame.

267

ANSWER TO WORDSWORTH'S SONNET AGAINST THE KENDAL AND BOWNESS RAILWAY.

The hour may come, nay must in these our days,
When the swift steam-car with the cata'ract's shout
Shall mingle its harsh roll, and motley rout
Of multitudes these mountain echoes raise.
But Thou, the Patriarch of these beauteous ways,
Canst never grudge that gloomy streets send out
The crowded sons of labour, care, and doubt,
To read these scenes by light of thine own lays.
Disordered laughter and encounters rude
The Poet's finer sense perchance may pain,
But many a glade and nook of solitude
For quiet walk and thought will still remain,
Where He those poor intruders can elude,
Nor lose one dream for all their homely gain.

268

TINTERN ABBEY.

The Men who called their passion piety,
And wrecked this noble argosy of faith,—
They little thought how beauteous could be Death,
How fair the face of Time's aye deepe'ning sea!
Nor arms that desolate, nor years that flee,
Nor hearts that fail, can utterly deflower
This grassy floor of sacramental power
Where we now stand commu'nicants—even We,
We of this latter, still protéstant age,
With priestly ministrations of the Sun
And Moon and multitudinous quire of stars
Maintain this consecration, and assuage
With tender thoughts the past of weary wars,
Masking with good that ill which cannot be undone.

269

ON THE GRAVE OF BISHOP KEN,

AT FROME, IN SOMERSETSHIRE.

Let other thoughts, where'er I roam,
Ne'er from my memory cancel
The coffin-fashioned tomb at Frome
That lies behind the chancel;
A basket-work where bars are bent,
Iron in place of osier,
And shapes above that represent
A mitre and a crosier.

These signs of him that slumbers there
The dignity betoken;
These iron bars a heart declare
Hard bent but never broken;
This form pourtrays how souls like his,
Their pride and passion quelling,
Preferr'd to earth's high palaces
This calm and narrow dwelling.

There with the church-yard's common dust
He loved his own to mingle;
The faith in which he placed his trust
Was nothing rare or single;

270

Yet laid he to the sacred wall
As close as he was able,
The blessèd crumbs might almost fall
Upon him from God's table.

Who was this Father of the Church,
So secret in his glory?
In vain might antiquarians search
For record of his story;
But preciously tradition keeps
The fame of holy men;
So there the Christian smiles or weeps
For love of Bishop Ken.

A name his country once forsook,
But now with joy inherits,
Confessor in the Church's book,
And Martyr in the Spirit's!
That dared with royal power to cope,
In peaceful faith persisting,
A braver Becket—who could hope
To conquer unresisting!

271

OCCASIONAL POEMS.

THE FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON.

All nature is stiff in the chill of the air,
The sun looks around with a smile of despair;
'Tis a day of delusion, of glitter and gloom,
As brilliant as glory, as cold as the tomb.

The pageant is passing—the multitude sways—
Awaiting, pursuing, the line with its gaze,
With the tramp of battalion, the tremor of drums,
And the grave exultation of trumpets he comes.

It passes! what passes? He comes! who is He?
Is it Joy too profound to be uttered in glee?
Oh, no! it is Death, the Dethroner of old,
Now folded in purple and girded with gold!

It is Death, who enjoys the magnificent car,
It is Death, whom the warriors have brought from afar,
It is Death, to whom thousands have knelt on the shore,
And sainted the bark and the treasure it bore.

272

What other than He, in his terrible calm,
Could mingle for myriads the bitter and balm,
Could hush into silence this ocean of men,
And bid the wild passion be still in its den?

What other than He could have placed side by side
The chief and the humblest, that serving him died,
Could the blood of the past to the mourner atone,
And let all bless the name that has orphaned their own?

From the shades of the olive, the palm, and the pine,
From the banks of the Moskwa, the Nile, and the Rhine,
From the sands and the glaciers, in armament dim,
Come they who have perished for France and for Him.

Rejoice, ye sad Mothers, whose desolate years
Have been traced in the desert of earth by their tears,
The Children for whom ye have hearts that still burn,
In this triumph of Death—it is they that return.

And Ye in whose breast dwell the images true
Of parents that loved Him still better than you,
No longer lament o'er a cenotaph urn,
In this triumph of Death—it is they that return.

From legion to legion the watchword is sped—
“Long life to the Emperor—life to the dead!”
The prayer is accomplished—his ashes remain
'Mid the people he loved, on the banks of the Seine.

273

In dominions of Thought that no traitor can reach,
Through the kingdoms of Fancy, the regions of Speech,
O'er the world of Emotions, Napoleon shall reign
'Mid the people he loved, on the banks of the Seine.

Paris, December, 1840.

IRELAND, 1847.

The woes of Ireland are too deep for verse:
The Muse has many sorrows of her own;
Griefs she may well to sympathy rehearse,
Pains she may soften by her gentle tone.

But the stark death in hunger and sharp cold,
The slow exhaustion of our mortal clay,
Are not for her to touch.—She can but fold
Her mantle o'er her head, and weep and pray.

O gracious Ruler of the rolling hours!
Let not this agony last over long;
Restore a nation to its manly powers,
Give back its suffe'rings to the sphere of Song.

274

A MONUMENT FOR SCUTARI,

AFTER THE CRIMEAN WAR, SEPTEMBER, 1855.

“The cypresses of Scutari
In stern magnificence look down
On the bright lake and stream of sea
And glittering theatre of town;
Above the throng of rich kiosks,
Above the towers in triple tire,
Above the domes of loftiest mosques,
Those pinnacles of death aspire.”

Thus, years ago, in grave descant,
The trave'ller sang those ancient trees
That Eastern grace delights to plant
In reverence of man's obsequies;
But time has shed a golden haze
Of memory round the cypress glooms,
And gladly he reviews the days
He wandered 'mid those alien tombs.

Now other passion rules the soul;
And Scutari's familiar name
Arouses thoughts beyond controul,
A tangled web of pride and shame;

275

No more shall that fair word recall
The Moslem and his Asian rest,
But the dear brothers of us all
Rent from their mother's bleeding breast.

Calmly our warriors moulder there,
Uncoffined, in the sandy soil,
Once festered in the sultry glare,
Or wasted in the wintry toil.
No verdure on those graves is seen,
No shade obstructs the garish day;
The tender dews to keep them green
Are wept, alas! too far away;

Are wept in homes their smiles shall bless
No more, beyond the welte'ring deep,
In cottages now fatherless
On English mead or Highland steep,
In palaces by common grief
Made level with the meanest room,—
One agony, and one relief—
The conscience of a glorious doom!

For there, too, is Thermopylæ;—
As on the dank Ægean shore,
By this bright portal of the sea
Stood the Devoted as of yore;

276

When Greece herself was merged in night,
The Spartan held his honour's meed—
And shall no pharos shed the light
To future time of Britain's deed?

Masters of Form!—if such be now—
On sense and powers of Art intent,
To match this mount of sorrow's brow
Devise your seemliest monument:
One that will symbolize the cause
For which this might of manhood fell,
Obedience to their country's laws,
And duty to God's truth as well.

Let, too, the old Miltonic Muse,
That trumpeted “the scattered bones
Of saints on Alpine mountains,” use
Reveillé of forgotten tones;
Let some one, worthy to be priest
Of this high altar of renown,
Write in the tongues of West and East
Who bore this cross, who wore this crown.

Write that, as Britain's peaceful sons
Luxurious rich, well-tended poor,
Fronted the foeman's steel and guns,
As each would guard his household door;

277

So, in those ghastly halls of pain
Where thousand hero-sufferers lay,
Some smiled in thought to fight again,
And most unmurmu'ring passed away.

Write that, when pride of human skill
Fell prostrate with the weight of care,
And men prayed out for some strong will,
Some reason 'mid the wild despair,
The loving heart of woman rose
To guide the hand and clear the eye,
Gave hope amid the sternest woes,
And saved what man had left to die.

Write every name—lowlier the birth,
Loftier the death!—and trust that when
On this regenerated earth
Rise races of ennobled men,
They will remember—these were they
Who strove to make the nations free,
Not only from the sword's brute sway,
But from the spirit's slavery.

Florence Nightingale.

278

ON THE PEACE

May, 1856.

Come in, wild Hopes! that towards the dawning East
Uprose so high: now be content to stand,
Like hooded hawks upon the falconer's hand,
Awhile expectant of the promised feast.
Peace is proclaimed! the captives are releast!
Yet yearns the exile from the alien strand,—
Yet chafes and struggles Europe's fairest land,—
Untamed by priestly kings or kingly priest.
O blessed Peace! if peace were peace indeed,—
Based upon justice and the eternal laws
Which make the free intent of Man the cause
Of all enduring thought and virtuous deed.
But 'tis not so: we know we do but pause,
Awaiting fiercer strife and nobler meed.

279

CRIMEAN INVALID SOLDIERS REAPING AT ALDERSHOT.

Reap ye the ripe ripe corn,
Ye have reap'd the green and the young,
The fruits that were scarcely born,—
The fibres that just were strung.

Ye have reaped, as the Destinies reap,
The wit and the worth of Man,
The tears that we vainly weep—
The deeds that we vainly plan.

Now reap as the generous life
Of the pregnant Earth commands,
Each seed with a future rife,
And the work of a thousand hands.

Beautifully illustrated by Mr. Walter Severn.

280

COLUMBUS AND THE MAY-FLOWER.

O little fleet! that on thy quest divine
Sailedst from Palos one bright autumn morn,
Say, has old Ocean's bosom ever borne
A freight of Faith and Hope to match with thine?

Say, too, has Heaven's high favour given again
Such consummation of desire, as shone
About Columbus, when he rested on
The new-found world and married it to Spain?

Answer—Thou refuge of the Freeman's need,—
Thou for whose destinies no kings looked out,
Nor sages to resolve some mighty doubt,—
Thou simple May-Flower of the salt-sea mead!

When Thou wert wafted to that distant shore—
Gay flowers, bright birds, rich odours, met thee not:
Stern Nature hail'd thee to a sterner lot.—
God gave free earth and air, and gave no more.

281

Thus to men cast in that heroic mould
Came Empire such as Spaniard never knew—
Such Empire as beseems the just and true;
And at the last, almost unsought, came Gold.

But He who rules both calm and stormy days
Can guard that people's heart, that nation's health,
Safe on the perilo'us heights of power and wealth,
As in the straitness of the ancient ways.

Written as prefatory stanzas to Hunter's “Collection concerning the Founders of New Plymouth.”

CHINA, 1857.

The little Athens from its pillared hill
Yet reigns o'er spacious tracts of human mind:
Britain, within her narrow bounds confined,
Bends East and West to her sagacious will:
While, recordless alike for good or ill,
China extends her name o'er so much rind
Of the round earth, and only stunts mankind
To mean desires, low acts, and puny skill.
Enormous masses of monotonous life!
Teaching how weak is mere material power
To roll our world toward its heavenly goal:
Teaching how vain is each exhausted hour
That does not mingle in the mental strife,
That does not raise or purify the soul.

282

AN ENVOY TO AN AMERICAN LADY.

Beyond the vague Atlantic deep,
Far as the farthest prairies sweep,
Where forest-glooms the nerve appal,
Where burns the radiant Western fall,
One duty lies on old and young,—
With filial piety to guard,
As on its greenest native sward,
The glory of the English tongue.
That ample speech! That subtle speech!
Apt for the need of all and each:
Strong to endure, yet prompt to bend
Wherever human feelings tend.
Preserve its force—expand its powers;
And through the maze of civic life,
In Letters, Commerce, even in Strife,
Forget not it is yours and ours.

283

ENGLAND AND AMERICA, 1863.

We only know that in the sultry weather,
Men toiled for us as in the steaming room,
And in our minds we hardly set together
The bondman's penance and the freeman's loom.

We never thought the jealous gods would store
For us ill deeds of time-forgotten graves,
Nor heeded that the May-Flower one day bore
A freight of pilgrims, and another slaves.

First on the bold upholders of the wrong,
And last on us, the heavy-laden years
Avenge the cruel triumphs of the strong—
Trampled affections, and derided tears.

Labour, degraded from her high behest,
Cries “Ye shall know I am the living breath,
And not the curse of Man. Ye shall have Rest—
The rest of Famine and the rest of Death.”

Oh, happy distant hours! that shall restore
Honour to work, and pleasure to repose,
Hasten your steps, just heard above the roar
Of wildering passions and the crash of foes.

284

ON THE OPENING OF THE FIRST PUBLIC PLEASURE-GROUND AT BIRMINGHAM

August, 1856.

I

Soldiers of Industry! come forth:
Knights of the Iron Hand!
Past is the menace of the North
That frowned upon our land.
We have no will to count the cost,
No thought of what we bore
Now the last warrior's gaze has lost
The doomed Crimean shore!

II

That shore, so precious in the graves
Of those whose lustrous deeds
Consecrate Balaklava's waves,
And Alma's flowe'ring reeds;
Where, at some future festival,
Our Russian foe will tell,
How British wrestlers, every fall,
Rose stronger than they fell.

285

III

Now town and hamlet cheer to see
Each bronzed and bearded man,
Or murmur low, “'Twas such as he,
Who died at the Redan!”
Rest for his worn or crippled frame,
Rest for his anxious eye,—
Rest, even from the noise of Fame,
A Nation's welcome-cry!

IV

But Ye,—whose resolute intents
And sturdy arms combine
To bend the' obdurate elements
Of Earth to Man's design—
Ye, to your hot and constant task
Heroically true,
Soldiers of Industry! we ask,
“Is there no Peace for you?”

V

It may not be: the' unpausing march
Of toil must still be yours—
Conquest, with no triumphant arch,
Unsung by Troubadours:
Yet, as the fiercest Knights of old
To give “God's Truce” agreed,
Cry ye, who are as brave and bold,
“God's Truce” in Labour's need.

286

VI

“God's Truce” be their device, who meet
To-day with generous zeal
To work, by many a graceful feat,
Their brethren's future weal;
From stifling street and popu'lous mart
To guard this ample room,
For honest pleasures kept apart,
And deck'd with green and bloom.

VII

Here let the eye to toil minute
Condemned, with joy behold
The fresh enchantment of each suit
That clothes the common mould:
Here let the arm whose skilful force
Controuls such mighty powers,
Direct the infant's totte'ring course
Amid the fragrant bowers.

VIII

Yet all in vain this happy hope,
In vain this friendly care,
Unless of loftier life the scope
In every mind be there:
In vain the fairest, brightest, scene,
If passion's sensual haze
And clouded spirits lie between
To mar the moral gaze.

287

IX

He only at the marriage-feast
Of Nature and of God
Sits worthily who sits released
From sin's and sorrow's load:
And then, on his poor window-sill,
One flower more pleasure brings
Than all the gorgeous plants that fill
The restless halls of kings.

X

All Nature answers in the tone
In which she is addressed:
Beneath Mont Blanc's illumined throne,
The peasant walks unblessed;
The' Italian struggles in his bonds,
Beside his glorious sea,
And Beauty from all sight absconds
Which is not wise and free.

XI

So, Friends! while gentle Arts are wed
To frame your perfect plan,
Broadcast be Truth and Knowledge spread
O'er this rich soil of Man!
Ideal parks—ideal shade—
Lay out with libe'ral hand—
But teach the souls you strive to aid
To feel and understand.

288

WORKMAN'S CHORAL SONG.

[_]

SUNG AT THE OPENING OF THE DUTCH INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, AT AMSTERDAM, JULY 15, 1869.

[_]

(Paraphrased from the Dutch.)

No monster of Iron on gunpowder fed,
No clangor of Steel, no whizzing of Lead,
Make the blood in our arteries tingle;
But the whirl of the wheel, and the whistle of steam,
And the bubbling hiss of the seething stream,
Are the sounds where our sympathies mingle.

No Laurel that drips with the blood of the brave,
No crown that hangs over the conqueror's grave,
No wreath that is woven in weeping—
The Olive that circles the forehead of toil,
The meed of the master of metal and soil,
Is the fruit that we glory in reaping.

Oh! the roar and the foam of the fiery stream!
Oh! the rush and the shriek of the bursting steam!
No warrior's clarion is louder;
We, too, have our iron, our steel, and our lead,
But ours is living and theirs is dead,
And the music of Peace is the prouder.

289

Then a Song shall arise in melodious might,
To God who has severed the Dark from the Light,
And the Work and the Workman created;
By the play of the muscles He holds us in health,
By the sweat of the brow can endow us with wealth,
In the love of our labour elated.

We sow for the weal of the loved ones at home,
We know in good time that the harvest will come,—
He wins who has honestly striven:
Our toil is the salt of the bread of to-day,
And the food of our hearts is the Faith that can say,
“We, too, have our Rest and our Heaven.”

290

ON THE OPENING OF THE ALBERT HALL

South Kensington, May 1, 1871.

O people of this favoured land
Within this peaceful Orbit met,
We strike the chords with trembling hand,
The voice within us falters yet:
While on this point of time we stand,
Shall we remember or forget?

We must remember those good days
When first we bade the Nations fill
The fairy Halls we dared to raise,
By Genius wed to earnest Will,—
And all was pleasure, power, and praise,
The fair reward of toil and skill.

So let this gracious memory veil
From present thoughts the later woe,
Now that the blood-red clouds grow pale,
Now that no more the trumpets blow,—

291

No more beneath the fiery hail
Children in terror come and go.

Be this a feast of Hope! the flowers
Of Spring the waste of War repair:
The quiet work of happier hours
Dispels the load of human care:
For Industry and Art are Powers
That know no End and no Despair.

Set to very effective music by the Cavaliere Ciro Pinsuti, and sung by a full choir.

292

IN MEMORIAM.

LADY CAMPBELL.

Gently supported by the ready aid
Of loving hands, whose little work of toil
Her grateful prodigality repaid
With all the benediction of her smile,
She turned her failing feet
To the soft-pillowed seat,
Dispensing kindly greetings all the while.

Before the tranquil beauty of her face
I bowed in spirit, thinking that she were
A suff'ring Angel, whom the special grace
Of God entrusted to our pious care,
That we might learn from her
The art to minister
To heavenly beings in seraphic air.

There seemed to lie a weight upon her brain,
That ever pressed her blue-veined eyelids down,
But could not dim her lustrous eyes with pain,
Nor seam her forehead with the faintest frown:

293

She was as she were proud,
So young, to be allowed
To follow Him who wore the thorny crown.

Nor was she sad, but over every mood,
To which her lightly-pliant mind gave birth,
Gracefully changing, did a spirit brood,
Of quiet gaiety, and serenest mirth;
And thus her voice did flow,
So beautifully low,
A stream whose music was no thing of earth.

Now long that instrument has ceased to sound,
Now long that gracious form in earth has lain
Tended by nature only, and unwound
Are all those mingled threads of Love and Pain;
So let me weep and bend
My head and wait the end,
Knowing that God creates not thus in vain.

294

GEORGE VERNON COLEBROKE.

Thou too art gone, and yet I hardly know
Why thou didst care to go:
Thou wert so well at heart, so spirit-clear,
So heavenly-calm, though here;
But thus it is; and, it would seem, no more
Can we, who on the shore
Of the loud world still walk, escape the din,
And lie awhile within
The quiet sunlight of thy filmless mind
And rise refreshed, refined;
Yet am I mild and tempered in my grief,
Having a sure relief;—
For these dear hours on life's dull length were sprent,
By rarest accident,
And now I have thee by me when I will,
Hear thy wise words, and fill
My soul with thy calm looks; now I can tame
Ill thoughts by thy mere name.
Death, the Divorcer, has united us
With bands impervious
To any tooth of Time, for they are wove
Of the same texture as an Angel's Love.

February 23, 1835.

295

ARTHUR AND HELEN HALLAM.

A Brother and a Sister,—these two Friends,
Cast by fond Nature in one common mould,
And waited on by genial circumstance
In all their history of familiar love,
After a parting of not quite four years,
Are peacefully united here once more.

He first, as best beseemed the manly mind,
Tried the dark wall, which has (or seems to have)
No portion in the pleasant sun or stars,
The breath of flowers or morning-song of birds,
The hand of Friendship or the lips of Love.
Whether her sad and separated soul
Received some token from that secret place,
That she might follow him and meet him there,
Or whether God, displeased that anything
Of good or evil should so long divide
Such undefiled and sacred sympathies,
Has made them one again before his face,
Are things that we perhaps shall never know.

Say not, O world of short and broken sight!
That these died young: the bee and butterfly

296

Live longer in one active sunny hour
Than the poor tortoise in his torpid years:
The lofty flights of Thought through clear and cloud—
The labyrinthine ways that Poesy
Leads her beloved, the weary traverses
Of Reason, and the haven of calm Faith,
All had been theirs; their seamless brows had known
The seal of pain, the sacrament of tears;
And, unless Pride and Passion and bold Sin
Are all the rule and reckoning of our Being,
They have fulfilled as large a task of life
As ever veteran on the mortal field.

Thus they who gave these favoured creatures birth
Deem it no hard infraction of the law
Which regulates the order of our race,
That they above their offspring raise the tomb,
And with parental piety discharge
The duties filial love delights to pay:
They read the perfect sense of the design
In that which seems exception, and they mourn,
Not that these dear ones are already gone,
But that they linger still so far behind.

297

MRS. DENISON.

'Tis right for her to sleep between
Some of those old Cathedral-walls,
And right too that her grave is green
With all the dew and rain that falls.

'Tis well the organ's solemn sighs
Should soar and sink around her rest,
And almost in her ear should rise
The prayers of those she loved the best.

'Tis also well this air is stirred
By Nature's voices loud and low,
By thunder and the chirping bird,
And grasses whispering as they grow.

For all her spirit's earthly course
Was as a lesson and a sign
How to o'errule the hard divorce
That parts things natural and divine.

Undaunted by the clouds of fear,
Undazzled by a happy day,
She made a Heaven about her here,
And took, how much! with her away.

Salisbury, November, 1843.

Mrs. Denison was the first wife of the Bishop of Salisbury, and is buried in a grassy space enclosed by the cloisters of that cathedral.

298

MARY AND AGNES BERRY.

Nov. 27, 1852.

Two friends within one grave we place
United in our tears,—
Sisters, scarce parted for the space
Of more than eighty years;
And she whose bier is borne to-day,
The one the last to go,
Bears with her thoughts that force their way
Above the moment's woe;

Thoughts of the varied human life
Spread o'er that field of time—
The toil, the passion, and the strife,
The virtue and the crime.
Yet 'mid this long tumultuous scene,
The image on our mind
Of these dear women rests serene
In happy bounds confined.

Within one undisturbed abode
Their presence seems to dwell,
From which continual pleasures flowed,
And countless graces fell;

299

Not unbecoming this our age
Of decorative forms,
Yet simple as the hermitage
Exposed to Nature's storms.

Our English grandeur on the shelf
Deposed its decent gloom,
And every pride unloosed itself
Within that modest room;
Where none were sad, and few were dull,
And each one said his best,
And beauty was most beautiful
With vanity at rest.

Brightly the day's discourse rolled on,
Still casting on the shore
Memorial pearls of days bygone,
And worthies now no more;
And little tales of long ago
Took meaning from those lips,
Wise chroniclers of joy and woe,
And eyes without eclipse.

No taunt or scoff obscured the wit
That there rejoiced to reign;
They never could have laughed at it
If it had carried pain.

300

There needless scandal, e'en though true,
Provoked no bitter smile,
And even men-of-fashion grew
Benignant for a while.

Not that there lacked the nervous scorn
At every public wrong,
Not that a friend was left forlorn
When victim of the strong:
Free words, expressing generous blood,
No nice punctilio weighed,
For deep and earnest womanhood
Their reason underlaid.

As generations onward came,
They loved from all to win
Revival of the sacred flame
That glowed their hearts within.
While others in Time's greedy mesh
The faded garlands flung,
Their hearts went out and gathered fresh
Affections from the young.

Farewell, dear ladies! in your loss
We feel the past recede,
The gap our hands could almost cross
Is now a gulf indeed:

301

Ye, and the days in which your claims
And charms were early known,
Lose substance, and ye stand as names
That History makes its own.

Farewell! the pleasant social page
Is read, but ye remain
Examples of ennobled age,
Long life without a stain;
A lesson to be scorned by none,
Least by the wise and brave,
Delightful as the winter sun
That gilds this open grave.

302

DRYDEN AND THACKERAY.

[_]

(HISTORICAL CONTRAST.)

When one whose nervous English verse,
Public and party hates defied,
Who bore and bandied many a curse
Of angry times—when Dryden died,

Our royal Abbey's Bishop-Dean
Waited for no suggestive prayer,
But, ere one day closed o'er the scene,
Craved as a boon to lay him there.

The wayward faith, the faulty life,
Vanished before a nation's pain;
“Panther” and “Hind” forgot their strife,
And rival statesmen thronged the fane.

O gentle Censor of our age!
Prime master of our ampler tongue!
Whose word of wit and generous page
Were never wroth except with wrong,—

303

Fielding—without the manners' dross,
Scott—with a spirit's larger room,
What prelate deems thy grave his loss?
What Halifax erects thy tomb?

But, may be, He who so could draw
The hidden great, the humble wise,
Yielding with them to God's good law,
Makes the Pantheon where he lies.

Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster.

The Lord Halifax sent to the Lady Elizabeth and Mr. Charles Dryden her son, that if they would give him leave to bury Mr. Dryden, he would inter him with a gentleman's private funeral, and afterwards bestow five hundred pounds on a monument in the Abbey: which, as they had no reason to refuse, they accepted.—Biog. Dict.

A bust of Thackeray has now been placed in Westminster Abbey by public subscription, and with the sanction of Dean Stanley.

304

THE DEATH OF LIVINGSTONE.

(ILALA—MAY, 1873.)

The swarthy followers stood aloof,
Unled—unfathered;
He lay beneath that grassy roof
Fresh-gathered.

He bade them, as they passed the hut,
To give no warning
Of their still faithful presence but
“Good Morning.”

To him, may be, through broken sleep
And pains abated,
These words were into senses deep
Translated.

Dear dead salutes of wife and child,
Old kirkyard greetings;
Sunrises over hill-sides wild,
Heart-beatings;

Welcoming sounds of fresh-blown seas,
Of homeward travel,
Tangles of thought last memories
Unravel.

305

'Neath England's fretted roof of fame—
With flowers adorning
An open grave—comes up the same
“Good Morning.”

Morning o'er that weird continent
Now slowly breaking—
Europe her sullen self-restraint
Forsaking!

Morning of sympathy and trust
For such as bore
Their Master's spirit's sacred crust
To England's shore.

306

GHAZELES.

I.

Sister! I will go with Thee;
How can I not go with Thee?
What am I for, but to share
Thought, and joy, and woe with Thee?
I have known the unstainèd peace
Children only know—with Thee;
I have watched the chequered blooms
Of my fortune blow—with Thee;
I must part the scanty hope
Our low fates bestow—with Thee;
Wish I with the great to live,
With the wealthy? No! with Thee;
Nature's hand has mated us,—
Who but I can go with Thee?

307

II.

There are few to whom, expiring, I would say, Forget me not?
The busy world, the many-minded,—why should it forget me not?
I have never worn its honours, never won its open shame,
Never bent before it, never wooed it to forget me not;
But if e'er my hand has wakened grateful hearts to yearn to mine,
If I ever earned kind friendship, let those friends forget me not.
And for Her who was and is my soul of soul—my life of life—
'Twould be wicked doubt to ask it—Leila will forget me not.
Then mayst thou of all remembrance—thou whose knowledge only sleeps
In the free-will of thy justice—Father—thou—forget me not!

308

III. WRITTEN AT AMALFI.

It is the mid-May Sun, that, rayless and peacefully gleaming,
Out of its night's short prison, this blessèd of lands is redeeming;
It is the fire evoked from the hearts of the citron and orange,
So that they hang, like lamps of the day, translucently beaming;
It is the veinless water, and air unsoiled by a vapour,
Save what, out of the fullness of life, from the valley is steaming;
It is the olive that smiles, even he, the sad growth of the moonlight,
Over the flowers, whose breasts triple-folded with odours are teeming;
Yes, it is these bright births, that to me are a shame and an anguish,
They are alive and awake,—I dream, and know I am dreaming;
I cannot bathe my soul in this ocean of passion and beauty,—

309

Not one dew-drop is on me of all that about me is streaming;
Oh! I am thirsty for Life,—I pant for the freshness of Nature,
Bound in the World's dead sleep—dried up by its treacherous seeming.

IV. TO ------.

Wherever Beauty is, I find thee there,—
Through every veil and guise, I find thee there:
Where the low zephyr dreams among thick flowers,
Embalmer of sweet thoughts! I find thee there;
Where full cascades leap down with curvèd steps,
Form of essential Grace! I find thee there;
In the broad mirror of the summer-sea,
Crystal entire of Truth! I find thee there;
In the unshaded presence of the sun,
Illuminating Mind! I find thee there;
In the mild splendours which enjoy the night,
Radiance of gentlest Love! I find thee there;
In the ecstatic realms that Prayer reveals,
There, Humble Holiness! I find thee there.

These lines may remind the German scholar of one of Göthe's most exquisite and most untranslateable Poems.

310

V.

My own friend, my old friend!
Time's a soldier bold, friend!
Of his lofty prowess
Many a tale is told, friend!
Nations are his puppets,
To be bought and sold, friend!
He can mock the conqueror,
Rase his strongest hold, friend!
Fool the stern philosopher,
Win the miser's gold, friend!
But though earthly nature
Has so frail a mould, friend!
What the tyrant cannot do
Is to make us cold, friend!

311

VI.

I've a Friend, a staunch Friend; listen, listen, Mary, mine!
There's none such wherever Phœbus winds his airy line;
When I rise at morn-time,—ere the grass his dewy tears
Dries away, she meets me, beckoning oft with wary sign,
That I tread discreetly, while she shows how round about
With marigolds and violets she has pranked her dairy fine,—
That the milk, fresh steaming, may be sweeter to my lips,
Crowned with glowing blossoms,—so too is it, faery mine!
When at eve out-wearied I approach, she brings me down
What her own white hands have pressed—a flask of chary wine.
There it is,—the nectar! where then is the Friend I mean?
Where but here, beside me? kiss me, bless me, Mary mine

312

VII.

Shade not the light within thine eyes,
The wondrous light within thine eyes;
The Sun is all too fierce to hold
Light such as that within thine eyes,—
Yet is the passion of his warmth
Less deep than that within thine eyes;
The Moon is all too cold to wear
Light such as that within thine eyes,—
Yet is her flame less silver-clear
Than that which glows within thine eyes.
Thou art my Heaven; my Sun and Moon
Are the mere light within thine eyes;
Nature, that gave the world those orbs,
Gave me the light within thine eyes;—
I, and I only, can repose
Within the light within thine eyes;
Oh! Leila, what would be my gloom,
Without the light within thine eyes?

313

VIII.

All things once are things for ever;
Soul, once living, lives for ever;
Blame not what is only once,
When that once endures for ever;
Love, once felt, though soon forgot,
Moulds the heart to good for ever;
Once betrayed from childly faith,
Man is conscious man for ever:
Once the void of life revealed,
It must deepen on for ever,
Unless God fill up the heart
With himself for once and ever:
Once made God and man at once,
God and man are one for ever.

314

BALLAD.

GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD MORNING.

A fair little girl sat under a tree,
Sewing as long as her eyes could see:
Then smoothed her work, and folded it right,
And said, “Dear Work! Good Night, Good Night!”

Such a number of rooks came over her head,
Crying “Caw! caw!” on their way to bed:
She said, as she watched their curious flight,
“Little black things! Good Night! Good Night!”

The horses neighed, and the oxen lowed:
The sheep's “Bleat! bleat!” came over the road:
All seeming to say, with a quiet delight,
“Good little Girl! Good Night! Good Night!”

She did not say to the Sun “Good Night!”
Though she saw him there, like a ball of light;
For she knew he had God's time to keep
All over the world, and never could sleep.

315

The tall pink foxglove bowed his head—
The violets curtsied and went to bed;
And good little Lucy tied up her hair,
And said, on her knees, her favourite prayer.

And while on her pillow she softly lay
She knew nothing more till again it was day:
And all things said to the beautiful sun,
“Good Morning! Good Morning! our work is begun!”

316

VERSICLES.

[Amid the factions of the field of life]

Amid the factions of the field of life
The Poet held his little neutral ground,
And they who mixed the deepest in the strife
Their evening way to his seclusion found.

There, meeting oft the' antagonists of the day,
Who near in mute defiance seemed to stand,
He said what neither would be first to say,
And, having spoken, left them hand in hand.

[I sent my memo'ry out]

I sent my memo'ry out
To chase a Thought:
It brought back doubt on doubt,
But never caught
The fugitive,—who will return some day
When I've no use for him in work or play.

[The heart that Passion never fired]

The heart that Passion never fired,
Of other's Love can nothing tell—
How can I teach you what's inspired,
Unless you are inspired as well?

317

[Because your nature can extend]

Because your nature can extend
Its vision to a needle's end,
And you, with self-sufficient air,
Announce the wonders you see there,—
You must not murmur that some eye
Moulded and trained to range the sky,
May read in yon far star as clear
As you can spy and potter here.

(PREFIXED TO PALM LEAVES.)

Eastward roll the orbs of heaven,
Westward tend the thoughts of men:
Let the Poet, nature-driven,
Wander Eastward now and then:
There the calm of life comparing
With his Europe's busy fate,
Let him, gladly homeward faring,
Learn to labour and to wait.

[Through clouds of care mankind must move]

Through clouds of care mankind must move,
—Each his appointed day;
Only the glorious care of Love
Drives other clouds away.

318

[Since in this world's eternal chorus]

Since in this world's eternal chorus
Some voices must be high, some low,
Let those that like it bawl and bore us,
—But in the things they really know.

319

TO A. H. H.

[_]

(WRITTEN IN THE FIRST LEAF OF THE SELECTION OF MY POEMS.)

Thou gleaner of the sunny hours,
Harvested in the home of God,
Gild me the future summer's hours,
Revive the present ice-bound sod!

Thou gleaner from the darkest hours
Of scattered good I cannot see,
Preserve thy dear remedial powers,
And shed them, as I need, o'er me!

New Year's Day, 1854.

END OF VOL. I.

University of Virginia Library

I. VOLUME I

MEMORIALS OF TRAVELS IN GREECE

THE ELD.

CORFU.

A DREAM OF SAPPHO.

THE RETURN OF ULYSSES.

TEMPE.

OLYMPUS.

A VISION OF THE ARGONAUTS.

THE SPARTANS AT THERMOPYLÆ.

GREEK RELIGION

MARATHON.

THE CONCENTRATION OF ATHENS.

PELASGIAN AND CYCLOPEAN WALLS.

WRITTEN AT MYCENÆ.

GRECIAN SUNSET.

A GRECIAN THUNDER-STORM.

CORINTH,

ON LEAVING GREECE.

MODERN GREECE.

ON RETURNING TO GREECE IN 1842.

DELPHI.

AN ELEGY.

THE TOMB OF LAIUS.

THE FLOWERS OF HELICON.

MODERN ATHENS.

DELOS.

MEMORIALS OF TRAVELS IN ITALY.

AN ITALIAN TO ITALY.

WRITTEN IN PETRARCH'S HOUSE AT ARQUA,

AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS.

FEELINGS EXCITED BY SOME MILITARY MANŒUVRES AT VERONA.

MEDITATIVE FRAGMENTS, ON VENICE.

I.

II.

III.

LIDO.

IV.

V.

THE VENETIAN SERENADE.

FROM GÖTHE.

A DREAM IN A GONDOLA.

ON THE MAD-HOUSE AT VENICE.

TO ---

WRITTEN AT VENICE.

TO THE MOON OF THE SOUTH.

PICTURES IN VERSE.

I. PICTURE BY GIOV. BELLINI, IN THE CHURCH OF THE REDENTORE AT VENICE.

II. THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. CHRISTINA,

BY VINCENZO CATENA, IN THE CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA MATER DOMINI, AT VENICE.

III. JESUS AND JOHN CONTENDING FOR THE CROSS.

BY SIMEONE DA PESARO; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE SEMINARY AT VENICE.

IV. CHRIST'S DESCENT INTO PURGATORY.

BY GIORGIONE, AT VENICE.

SIR WALTER SCOTT AT THE TOMB OF THE STUARTS IN ST. PETER'S.

THE ILLUMINATIONS OF ST. PETER'S.

I. FIRST ILLUMINATION.

II. SECOND ILLUMINATION.

III. REFLECTION.

THE FIREWORKS.

FROM THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO.

ON THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY GWENDOLIN TALBOT WITH THE ELDEST SON OF THE PRINCE BORGHESE.

ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS BORGHESE,

AT ROME, NOVEMBER, 1840.

ROMAN RUINS.

ON A SCENE IN TUSCANY.

AN INCIDENT AT PISA.

NAPLES AND VENICE.

CANNÆ.

ON LEAVING ITALY,

FOR THE SUMMER, ON ACCOUNT OF HEALTH.

SWITZERLAND AND ITALY.

PALM LEAVES.

THE GREEK AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

THE TURK AT CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE FRANK.

THE HAREEM.

THE MOSQUE.

MOHAMMEDANISM.

THE SONG OF THE WAHABEES.