The Flood of Thessaly The Girl of Provence, and Other Poems. By Barry Cornwall [i.e. Bryan Waller Procter] |
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 | The Flood of Thessaly |  |
163
I dream—I dream—I dream—
Of shadow and light,—of pleasure and pain,
Of Heaven,—of Hell.—And visions seem
Streaming for ever athwart my brain.
The present is here, and the past that fled
So quick, is returned with its buried dead,
And the future hath bared its scrolls of fame,
And I see the ‘is’ and the ‘was’ the same,
In spirit alike, but changed in name.
I see the phantoms of Earth and Air,
A thousand are foul where one is fair,
(But that ‘one’ is divine, and her blue eyes calm
Are shadowed by leaves of the branching palm,)
And I hear the yells of a million more,
Whose sins are all written in stripes and gore:—
There's one who the gem of his best friend stole,—
And a King half-hid in a beggar's soul,
And a Poet who lied for his earthly good,
And a Woman of glass, and a God of wood,
(Wrapped round like the idol-beast that treads
With murderous scorn on the Hindoos' heads)—
[OMITTED]
I see a Palace—enormous—bright,
Studded with stars like an August night;
The pillars that prop it are based below,
But whence they come or whither they go
Who, with an eye like ours, shall know!—
The shafts are embossed and golden, and graven
With letters of Earth and Hell and Heaven,
(A terrible mixture,—like the speech
Of the Sea when it bursts on a stormy beach:)
There are discord—melody—music,—hung
Like beads on a rosary oddly strung,
And words of a mighty forgotten tongue:—
There are lessons to curse and a few to bless,
And riddles beyond the Sphinx's guess;
And folly, and passion, and proud despair,
And all moods of the mind are sculptured there:
—The shafts are of gold, and they run so high
That they pierce the floors of the far blue sky,
And a million of creatures, whose size is a span
Climb round and around them, and each is—man:
All toil, some rise, some hang in the air,
And some fall with a shriek in a terrible lair,
Which yawns like the pit of the damn'd, or a cave
Where the brutes of the wilderness hunger and rave.
Fierce flames are up-rising, and rain is descending,
And o'er all the cloud-black Heaven is bending,
And the insolent winds are unloos'd from their den,
To hiss their scorn in the ears of the men,
Who drop like leaves, when but few do hang
On the blight smitten boughs:—Hark! a trumpet rang
Through my brain; and, behold, all the pillars crack,
And the star-studded palace is gone to rack:
It totters—it falls—with a human scream
Like the whirlwind's cry.—'Tis—an empty dream.
Of shadow and light,—of pleasure and pain,
Of Heaven,—of Hell.—And visions seem
Streaming for ever athwart my brain.
The present is here, and the past that fled
So quick, is returned with its buried dead,
And the future hath bared its scrolls of fame,
And I see the ‘is’ and the ‘was’ the same,
In spirit alike, but changed in name.
I see the phantoms of Earth and Air,
A thousand are foul where one is fair,
(But that ‘one’ is divine, and her blue eyes calm
Are shadowed by leaves of the branching palm,)
And I hear the yells of a million more,
Whose sins are all written in stripes and gore:—
164
And a King half-hid in a beggar's soul,
And a Poet who lied for his earthly good,
And a Woman of glass, and a God of wood,
(Wrapped round like the idol-beast that treads
With murderous scorn on the Hindoos' heads)—
[OMITTED]
I see a Palace—enormous—bright,
Studded with stars like an August night;
The pillars that prop it are based below,
But whence they come or whither they go
Who, with an eye like ours, shall know!—
The shafts are embossed and golden, and graven
With letters of Earth and Hell and Heaven,
(A terrible mixture,—like the speech
Of the Sea when it bursts on a stormy beach:)
There are discord—melody—music,—hung
Like beads on a rosary oddly strung,
And words of a mighty forgotten tongue:—
There are lessons to curse and a few to bless,
And riddles beyond the Sphinx's guess;
And folly, and passion, and proud despair,
165
—The shafts are of gold, and they run so high
That they pierce the floors of the far blue sky,
And a million of creatures, whose size is a span
Climb round and around them, and each is—man:
All toil, some rise, some hang in the air,
And some fall with a shriek in a terrible lair,
Which yawns like the pit of the damn'd, or a cave
Where the brutes of the wilderness hunger and rave.
Fierce flames are up-rising, and rain is descending,
And o'er all the cloud-black Heaven is bending,
And the insolent winds are unloos'd from their den,
To hiss their scorn in the ears of the men,
Who drop like leaves, when but few do hang
On the blight smitten boughs:—Hark! a trumpet rang
Through my brain; and, behold, all the pillars crack,
And the star-studded palace is gone to rack:
It totters—it falls—with a human scream
Like the whirlwind's cry.—'Tis—an empty dream.
A dream?—what is it—a birth or death
Of thought?—'Tis whatever the poet saith:
A figure (a prophecy) dark or dumb,
Yet breathing a tale of the vast ‘to come,’—
A fable,—a fact,—a cloud unfurled
From all that was done in the last good world,
And in truth as alarming as Plato's fear
(Or hope) of that mighty embracing year,
Within whose perilous grasp old Time
Should return, pulled back by his locks sublime,
And the Earth should gape, and the urns spice-fed,
Should give up (just as they were) the dead.
Of thought?—'Tis whatever the poet saith:
166
Yet breathing a tale of the vast ‘to come,’—
A fable,—a fact,—a cloud unfurled
From all that was done in the last good world,
And in truth as alarming as Plato's fear
(Or hope) of that mighty embracing year,
Within whose perilous grasp old Time
Should return, pulled back by his locks sublime,
And the Earth should gape, and the urns spice-fed,
Should give up (just as they were) the dead.
| The Flood of Thessaly | |