The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell :: :: University of Virginia Library

In vain! There is but one wall upon earth
Thou canst not pass: One door that being closed
Is closed on thee; one refuge where even thou
Art silent. If I hide myself in deeps
Of lonely woods the murmuring trees take up
Thine argument; if in the further wilds
Of the waste hills, my heart is full of tongues
And each to either in untiring round

238

They tell thy story. She of old who fled
Before the humming fly, and coursed the world
Uncomforted, wild with the ceaseless sound
Susurrent, was in better case than I
Who have no hope of change, and with swift flight
Should bear as swift a woe. I am impaled
Here where I stand; my hurt, alas, not mortal,
But touching at the very hinge and crank
The springs of action and the palsied limbs
Of staring struck desire. 'Tis hard, 'tis hard,
To lie upon this earthly battle-field
Among the sick and helpless in the rear
And see the strife and the eternal prize
Borne off by other hands, and hear the trump
And all the victory which thou canst not share.
But nature smooths the pillow that she spreads,
The fevered hand is weary of the sword,
The fallen warrior's eye hath lost its fire,
His voice its thunder; his unstanchèd wound
Hath bled ambition, and the sick man's pap
Is not the bait of war.

Ask what he feels
Who with the pulse of promise and the limbs
Of young performance and the lusts of youth
Swelling and flushing on unconquered brows
And favouring heavens above him and great signs
In the consenting earth, mounts to his dear
And proud intent, and hears already rise

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The shout of conquest, and, in grasp of all,
Yea in the triumph of his measured strength—
That leans over accomplishment to close
With forward acquisition,—stops stone still,
Spell-bound. And spell-bound, locked and motionless,
With unseen prowess of inglorious war
Hid in his silent body, strives with fate
And spends his might within. (As one doth grind
The set teeth down, and in his clenchèd palm
Break his own bones, and cram his chargèd veins
To bursting, string each muscle till it crack,
Hold but a little breath with will enough
To bind the winds of Heaven, and stay a hand
With force that could arrest the headlong world
And no man knows it.) He thro' starting eyes
Sees all that should be his, and, like a fierce
And hungry mastiff held back by a chain
In the full scent and sight of his near prey,
And strong to seize, that gasps and claws the ground
And wears his bloody talons to the bone
With unrelaxed endeavour, he beholds
While the auspicious light goes down the sky
And high in Heaven the awful omens change,
And 'mid the murmurs of impatient earth
He stands for ever straining to the breach
Of still denied occasion.

My keen ears
Heard each careering star that rounds the sky,

240

And knew them by their sounds. But now to list
In vain, nor know if the great march of worlds
Stand still! When life was sweet I would have died
That men might happier live; when hard existence
Toiled thro' its sweats of blood, I would have lived
That men might nobler die; but now alike
To live unfruitful and to die unblest!
Heavens! that the creak of passing wain should hide
The voice that drowns the rolling universe!
That thou, despite of me, canst fill the world,
And no more pressure of this hand than holds
A bundle of unbruised buttercups
Could still thee! That the bannered host of man
Under my leading starts on its white way
Down the rejoicing ages, and thou, Amy,
Canst take the car of glory by the wheel
And stop it; with a single touch arrest
That wondrous wingèd horse whereon I rode,
And throw mankind in me.