University of Virginia Library

In youth's fair season, when the blood
Begins to stir in heart and brain,
As stirs the sap within the bud,
Or virtue in the quickened grain;

When the expanding nature glows
With some strange sweetness yet to be,
And all it hopes, or feels, or knows,
Takes shape in dreams of poesy;

One balmy morn awake I lay
For very joy—what time the bloom
Was whitening on the hawthorn spray,
And winds grew wanton with perfume.

Awake I lay an hour ere dawn,
And through my ivied window gazed
On night's dusk legions slow withdrawn,
And on the morning star that blazed

Broader and brighter as he neared
The western mountains, purple-dark,—
And held my breath, and thought I heard
Far notes of mavis or of lark.

And then, when first the rosy gleam
Of sunrise caught the upland firs,
Across my spirit came a dream
Of joy and beauty, such as stirs

The being to its depths, and wakes
Within the wondering soul a thirst
No earthly fountain ever slakes—
Not even those deathless springs that burst

In music, 'mid the sacred shades,—
Untrod by pleasure's vulgar throng!
Where with the loved Pierian maids
Wander the laurelled kings of song.

Rising, I flung my casement wide;
And through the verdure all unshorn
Came floating in from every side
Sweet sounds and odours of the morn.

I took a pen, and kneeling there,
Bathed in the freshness and the sheen—
The young wind dancing in my hair—
Wrote down the vision I had seen.

With heart elate and trembling hand,
The ready numbers as they came
I penned; nor doubted all the land
Eftsoons would echo with their fame!

My vision of “The Golden Hour”!
I read it now—Ah, well-a-way!
How poor and vapid!—like a flower
Kept from some long-past festal day,

Which, scentless, hueless though it be,
We cherish for those bygone times.
So the fond light of memory
Endears those weak, incondite rhymes!

Till each poor faded character—
The very paper, soiled and worn—
A phasmal glory seems to wear,
Shed from that trancèd summer morn,

When first—ah, fancy sweet as vain!—
I dreamed that haply even I,
Some noble task achieved, might gain
The meed of immortality! . . .

Nor let us with too cold a sneer
Rebuke those lofty dreams of youth:
They serve to keep the spirit clear
From sordid aims; and are, in sooth,

But flutterings of the prisoned soul
That yet shall spread immortal wings,
And, victor at a loftier goal,
Wake music from celestial strings.

High-hearted minstrel of the morn,
Who singest all unseen
Up the steep eastern sheen,
Towards the gates of pearl enraptured borne.
O for those wings of thine!
O for those tones divine,
That circling upwards float
From thine inspirèd throat,
Like viewless incense round a sacred shrine!
So faint, so sweet, so crystal clear,
The listening heart must weep, or break to hear.

Or, O swart bird, that thou,
Who from the topmost twinkling aspen bough,
In strains that seem to well
Through gurgling oinomel,
Pourest thy passionate love-song all abroad;
And yet couldst not unload,
Till midnight didst thou try,
That throbbing breast of its sweet agony!
O passionate bird! that thou
Wouldst be my tutor now,
And to my yearning heart and brain
Reveal the secret of thy magic strain!

So might I give Her welcome meet,
Who, with rosy-glancing feet,
With locks of gold, and pinions sapphire-blue,
Begemmed with starry dew,
Glides hither o'er the eastern sea,
Warbling aërial melody,
And breathing myrrh and spice
From isles of Paradise,
Laved by the stream of ocean, deep withdrawn
Under the cloud-built palace-domes of dawn.

But not to me belong,
Or lark's aërial song,
Or merle's rich melody amid the boughs!
Yet though my lips refuse
Music's melodious dues,
My glad heart sings! Then may my rustic vows,
Mingling with nature's nobler harmonies
Unblamed, though tuneless all, to greet her now arise!

Hail to thee, Golden Hour!
Ethereal playmate of the morning star,
Immortal sister of the king of day,
And of the virgin queen who rules the night;
First-born and fairest daughter of the light,
Who from thy rosy bower,
On this fresh morn of May,
Com'st brightening in thy beauty from afar;
Sweet as a new-made bride,
Blushing and ardent-eyed:
Youth, joy, and love, and loveliness thy dower—
Hail to thee, Golden Hour!

Up the dappled orient,
See her silvery veil outstreaming!
On the mountain summits gleaming,
See her young feet, dew-besprent!
While from their radiant track on every side,
O'er the awakening landscape far and wide,
The Day-spring, like a fountain, showers amain
Its golden rain:—
O'er the folded upland valleys;
O'er the sudden silver sallies
Of the rainbow-bright cascade,
Fitful flashing through the shade
Of pensile birch and oak's young green,
That mingling hide the grey ravine;
O'er the tarn—a diamond set
In an emerald carcanet!
O'er the coppice, up the wold,
O'er the meadow's budded gold;
O'er the chimneys, clustering tall,
Of the many-centuried hall;
O'er its twinkling turret vanes,
O'er its curtained lattice panes;
O'er the silent terraces,
And the dreaming chestnut trees,
Where, half asleep, the rooks begin
To flit and wheel with drowsy din;
O'er the shining, shingly reaches
Of the river winding down,
Through the wavering darkness thrown
By the boughs of mighty beeches,
That, with shadows long-outdrawn
'Thwart the billowy pasture-lawn,
Stand to guard the fair demesne—
Dewy sunlight all between!
And there, where, half-way up the hill,
Hid in bosky hollow, sleeps
The brown-roofed hamlet, round the mill
With its black reposing-wheel,
And gable white with ancient meal,
Which the alder oversweeps—
Soft the vapoury splendour creeps!
O'er the hoary village church,
With its dark and vacant porch;
O'er its ivy-hooded spire,
O'er its cross of steadfast fire,
And chancel windows all ablaze
With ruby, sapphire, chrysoprase;
O'er the grassy mounds below,
Ranked in sad and solemn row,
O'er stooping headstones, mossy-green,
And many a cypress darkly seen,
'Twixt giant girths of oak and elm,
That round the consecrated realm
Of death and silence ever shed
A pensive gloom, a holy fear;
As though the spirits of the dead,
In the mute air were hovering near.
How brightly shines the dædal earth!
As bright and fair as when the sea
To angel anthems gave it birth,
Half-down in the depths of eternity;
And from emerald valley and mountain grey
The lingering darkness rolled away,
As from the cave of night
The young Morn, robed in rosy light,
Like a beautiful dream came forth;
And down the eastern steeps, as now,
Gazed on the slumbering sphere below,
Till upwards in her joyous eyes
It smiled with fond and sweet surprise,
As a babe who starts from dreams of fear
May smile to find his mother near!

Nor sweeter rang of old,
To heavenly harps of gold,
Creation's morning hymn from seraph throats,
Than, now, her matin song,
The blossoming woods along,
And all the happy plains, enraptured floats;
While wakening bird, and rill, and vernal breeze
Answer her airy notes with glad antiphonies!
For down the slanting sunlight, see!
She glides in bright ubiquity,
'Mid the flickering shine and shade,
By the beaded branches made;
Through many a bowery woodland way,
White with odorous wreaths of may,
And rich with many a tangled twine
Of the budding honeybine—
Sweet paramour of half the grove:
Lovely, and lavish of her love!—
A glimmering Shape of golden air!
A hovering Radiance, dewy-fair!
A Presence of keen joy, felt everywhere!

O radiant Shape! O Dream Elysian!
Fade not from my raptured vision!
Fade not till my pencil trace
The unearthly sweetness of thy face,
Thy form's unearthly grace,
That draws yet still eludes the eye,
As in the evening sky
The young moon, when she trembles through
A cloud of vapoury dew,
That dims, but cannot all repress
The light of her maiden loveliness—
Even as translucent verse may fold
Its woven music round a thought of gold!

But ah! as vain the assay
To make the dewdrop stay
Upon the rose's cheek, nor heavenward fly;
Or fix the wavering glow
Of yonder tinted bow,
That spans the sunward cataract's wreathed spry!—
For as the woven chords
Of loud-stringed instruments and warbled words,
By music's mightful magic tost
Through rhythmic intertanglement, are lost
In one subduing storm of harmony;
Or as the prismed rays
That in the iris blaze,
Commingled, lose themselves in hueless light;
So thy fair lineaments evade the sight:
Lost in the dazzling atmosphere
That from thy presence, wheresoe'er
Thou comest, overflows,
Like splendour from a star, or fragrance from a rose!
A diviner alkahest,
That all its touches doth invest
With its own glorious attributes:
That basest things, if such there be, transmutes
Into ethereal gold—
More precious, ay, a thousandfold,
Than that the pale adept sought, frenzy-eyed,
And finding not, an empty beggar died:
Than that which, this fair hour,
While all creation, saving him alone,
Grows affluent by thy dower,
Man digs for in his dreams with weary moan;
And wakes to battle for; and winning, grows
Ten times a beggar, if his heart disown
The truer, nobler wealth, thy loveliness bestows!

A balmy wind breathes low
Out of the brightening west,
And the plumèd brackens, all a-glow,
Swale in its breathing to and fro;
And the hawthorn blossoms are showered like snow
On the green rath's mossy breast.
And wherever She cometh comes the wind,
Leaving a golden track behind,
And all around a silvery sound
Of whispering leaves and waving grasses;
And of twinkling dewdrops tinkling,
All her airy vesture sprinkling,
On her bright way as she passes.
Soft as sunshine is the beat
Of her swift, unsandaled feet—
Soft as sunshine, or the fall
Of a jasmine leaf when all
The summer winds are whist, and noon
Lies slumbering in the lap of June;
But the starry windflower knows
Their coming, and with rapture glows
And blushes to her crimson tips;
And the kingcup's fervid lips
Curl to kiss them silently;
And her meek and pensive eye
Opes the wild wood-violet,
In her covert, dewy-wet,—
Like virgin sweetness lowly born,
From a heart that wastes, love-lorn,
Breathing breath that poets love,
And maidens dream of; and above,
Like sun-flecks fallen in the place,
The primrose lifts her angel face—
Purest, sweetest, loveliest she
Of all May's flowery progeny:
Her look an ave, and her breath
A benediction;—while, beneath
Many a lichened rock, half hid
In fairy boscage deep and dern
Of the rough unfolding fern,—
Where clings the dreaming chrysalid,—
That shy sylph as moonlight pale,
The green-robed lily of the vale
Laughs through all her elfin bells;
And the golden asphodels
Toss their crested heads to greet
The Morn with welcome dewy-sweet!

And still her sweet song singeth she—
A magic song of glamourie!
From their dreams awakening
Birds of every hue and wing,
In bush, in brake, in greenwood tree!
“Tirra lirra!” far and near
They answer her with merry cheer;
While from the farm upon the wold,
Like a champion stout and bold,
Winds his bugle chanticleer!
And see! like fairy “gondelay”
That o'er a charmèd river holds its way,
“Withouten oare or pilot it to guide,”
From her nest among the sheaves
Of bulrush and narcissus leaves—
Golden beak and silver plume
Mirrored in the liquid gloom—
Gleams the swan in silent pride!
And hark! within the shadowy aisles
Of the pinewood sweetly wails
The culver—but of joy, I trow,
Not sadness, she is murmuring now!—
And all strange creatures of the wood,
Wild, tame, or beautiful, or rude,
Fragrant of thyme, leap up to hear
The wondrous descant ringing clear.—
Through the budding meadowsweet
The yeanling bounds with dewy feet;
The great-eyed kine beneath the trees
Glower, hid in bracken to the knees;
And o'er the cowslip-tufted mead
In giddy circles wheels the steed,
With head erect and nostril wide
And streaming mane and quivering side—
Shrill as the blast of woodland horn
Neighing proud welcome to the Morn!
In her presence, see! forth flash
The dragonflies with ireful clash—
Like paladins in listed field,
With helm and hauberk, lance and shield!
And lo! like foam-beads on a stream,
Or sun-stars over sultry seas,
Around her pathway whirl and gleam
The fire-plumed ephemerides;
And see! the blazoned butterfly—
Prankt in every selcouth dye
Known in Elvan armoury—
Through the warm air winnowing,
Flutters wide on wanton wing;
And hark! with haughty ministrelsy,
Sudden booms the bearded bee
From the nodding foxglove bell,
In whose twilight-folden cell
Belated, all the balmy night
He hath slumbered in the light
Of honey-dreams—like bard of old,
In lone, enchanted bower of gold,
By viewless lips caressed, and fanned
As by the gales of Fairyland!—
Now, too, familiar signs are rife
Of reawakening human life:
“Man to his labour goeth forth
Till eve;” and from the teeming earth,
As from an altar, heavenward rise
The sounds of prayer and sacrifice:—
Labour, the prayer God loveth best;
A loving heart, the offering blest
By Him most surely! Far and near
They make low music in the ear;
While sights of gladness to the eye
Bring tears of yearning sympathy.
Blest tears!—like desert springs, that start
Too rarely from man's arid heart;
But clothe with sweetness evergreen
The bosom where they once have been!

Once more from yonder bastioned wall
Shrills the heart-stirring bugle-call;
And through the thick wood faintly come
The muffled sounds of fife and drum—
Awaking many a memory
Of “derring-do” by land and sea!
And far and near from thorp and hall
The white smoke rises; and the hum
Of life grows loud in all the ways.
While overhead the chattering jays
Wheel, as the solemn church-bell rings,
And clear the village anvil sings
Its lusty song of joyous toil;
And ruddy daughters of the soil,
Striding a-field, flout merrily
The stalworth mower jingling by
Behind his team of snorting greys,
To fetch the grass from upland lays;
And the mill-wheel's liquid noise;
And the shouts of truant boys
Plunging in the glassy weir;
And the milkmaid's treble clear,
Calling “Daisy” to the pail;
And the hollow-thumping flail
Diverberant through wood and vale,
Make the quick blood within me dance
With a pulse of the general jubilance!

From the green strath, rich and wide,
Up the white-scarred mountain-side
Slow the gathered mists are curled,
Like fantastic flags unfurled
In the pageant of a dream;
And round the faint peaks, all a-gleam
With splendours of the breaking day,
Silently they melt away!—
And listen to the far blue sea!
How he shouts aloud for glee,
How he shakes his hoary mane—
Blue-eyed Morn is come again!
Thou but raised thy face and smiled,
Spirit beautiful and mild!
And lo! as savage creatures flee
Glance of maiden purity,
Night and sadness fled from thee!

Fled from thee!—But where art thou,
Ethereal Presence?—Even now
Earth, sea, and utmost heaven were thine,
And from thy deep and dewy eyen
Drank beauty; fromthy voice divine
Sweet madness—like enchanted wine!
And now thou art not!—Past away
Even as a morning dream; and lo! once more, 'tis Day!