Poems (1895) :: :: University of Virginia Library

Dear Critics! Gentle Judgers! Why so prone
In my song's “mingled yarn” to note the worse alone?
Clear-sighted for all specks; to brightness blind!
Nosed to pick one ill scent from out a flower-fed wind!
Ear'd for one discord, sounding casually,
In a long breathing-while of tender harmony!
Learn'd readers of the gravure o'er the porch;
But, of th' esoteric ritual of the church
Untutor'd neophytes! If not for heed
Of him whose passive soul is but a chosen reed,
From which the Universal Pan, soft-breathing,
Makes gentle music swell and soar, like incense wreathing;
Yet, for the sake of all the love he sings,
He prays ye—learn to sigh; and grow less loveless things!

T.W.

FIFTY SONNETS BY THOMAS WADE.

I. BIRTH AND DEATH.

Methinks the soul within the body held
Is as a little babe within the womb,
Which flutters in its antenatal tomb,
And stirs and heaves the prison where 'tis cell'd,
And struggles in strange darkness, undispell'd
By all its strivings towards the breath and bloom
Of that aurorean being soon to come—
Strivings of feebleness, by nothing quell'd:
And even as birth to the enfranchised child,
Which shows to its sweet senses all the vast
Of beauty, visible and audible,
Is death unto the spirit undefiled;
Setting it free of limit and the past,
And all that in its prison-house befell.

17th August 1838.

II. WHO MAY SAY?

When the so-gracious frame of her whose heart
Obeys of mine the gentle monarchy,
Veils with itself its own sweet counterpart;
Living like that, altho' invisibly,
And to appear hereafter, and expand
To human grace and glory; who may say,
That that Great Whole which doth from eyes demand
Infinite adoration—the Vast Round
O' the Visible Universe—doth not enfold
A Second Self, which, on some destined day,
May into vision-startling being bound;
And, in the vast of ages, wide unfold
Magnificence, to kindle and to live
After the model of its Primitive?

30th August 1838.

III. THE NEAR ADVENT.

Now that the little fabric of our loves
Waits, at the very portal of the world,
The moment in which first shall be unfurl'd
The banner of its being; and it moves,
With cadence gentle as the alight of doves
Toward light and breath; be perfect peace upcurl'd
In thy deep heart, Dear! and thy thoughts impearl'd
All, with the dews of joy! For it behoves
That which creates to temper its creation
With balmiest elements of blessedness,
After great Nature's visible dictation;
Who, when she teemeth with delicious spring,
Doth tend the coming birth with sunshining
And with bright rains and blandest airs caress.

25th October 1838.

IV. A WARNING.

In the great work of Human Good, sweet Child!
Be thou a new Messiah to the earth!
Much thought and love made prelude to thy birth,
And passion by no violence defiled;
Kindness and care upon thy coming smiled,
And brooded o'er thy helplessness and pain:
And, if intent by fate be made not vain,
Thou shalt be rear'd within all influence mild.
Ye who have children, hear!—The mind of ages
Is in your hands, to fashion as ye will—
Ancillary to Nature and to God:
The distant future, waiting on your nod
For good perpetual or continuous ill,
Will stamp your praise or shame on its eternal page.

15th December 1838.

V. THE CHILD.

Germ of a world of thought! that shall create
Thought-worlds, or else belie thy parentage—
What full profession doth thy spirit engage
Of all of which thine elders make debate,
And yet know nothing? What they contemplate,
Is it even now thy fresh mind's heritage
To know and feel, without that surplusage
Of reasoning which doth reason agitate?
There is no childish touch about thy look;
But seriousness and seeming thought-result—
A still-unwritten, but arrangéd book,
Which we are all too eyeless to consult:
But it assures us, as the heavens do,
Of infinite beauty veil'd by that we view.

18th December 1838.

VI. TO MY CHILD.

Oh! sink not from us, as a drop of dew,
From life's fresh rose to the obstructive sod,
Where ear may hear thee not, nor fond eye view;
But our hearts strike against the sullen clod
For ever, till they break. On morning new
Never came instant night: and dearest God
Grant that to thy sweet dawn of human day
A glorious noon and placid eve be fated,
And that to whither goes poor dust alway
We may descend before thee!—O, created
Of divine love and joy! do not forsake us
In this thy bud of being; but disclose
The fulness of life's flower, and therewith make us
A garden all of sweets, thou folded rose!

22nd January 1839.

VII. THE FEAR.

The way this Child doth creep into my heart
Even fills my inmost being with alarm;
For fears, which from my soul I cannot charm
By any aidance of hope's rainbow-art,
Oppress me yet, that we are doom'd to part,
And all his pretty looks and breath of balm
Hear requiem'd by the grave-wind's winter-psalm,
And childless to the home of love depart!
But God is with him in his little ways,
His smiles and murmurs, cries and sufferings;
And if he be retaken to the springs
From whence all being flows, we yet will praise
The All-Disposer with a grief serene,
And o'er our dead bud fold its memory's fadeless green!

27th March 1839.

VIII. THE ENTREATY.

But, do not die! Sweet Cherub! do not die:
Yet fold within their human chrysalis
Thine angel-wings! We cannot yet let fly
The spirit from our gazing and our kiss:
It is a new and life-essential bliss
We've reap'd from thine existence; and the sky,
And all it girdleth, would but seem amiss
Without thy smile and little plaintive cry.
We've much to do with thee on earth, dear babe!
To see thee stagger on thy tiny feet;
To teach thee worded language—and so teach,
That thou hereafter may'st be as a stab,
Fatal, to wrong and woe. Live! We must reach
The grave ere thou, Love-Incarnation sweet!

28th March 1839.

IX. THE RETURN.

Smile, Baby! for thy Mother home is coming,
Again to clasp thee to her yearning heart;
Both memory and hope her way illuming
To the calm nook wherein thou nestled art.
Thou canst not run to meet her, Baby dear!
Nor hast sweet worded music on thy tongue
But thou the music of her voice canst hear,
And o'er thee see her tender gazings hung:
And little recollections, fond tho' dim,
Enkindled in thy soul thro' ear and eye
Shall lend thee graces of the cherubim
Saluted by the breath of deity:
Stir all thy tiny limbs, and softly trace
Sweet love-assurance on thy pretty face!

31st March 1839.

X. THE BARRIER-BOND.

I have seen flowers against each other's heart
Fearfully beaten by the sudden wind;
Until, as if toward instant death declined,
Low they have hung, and mournfully, apart—
By one green blade alone from earth protected;
Which, as they rose from out their state dejected,
Has with them risen, and a bond innected
Between them which no storm could unembind!
Thus be it with our loves, my more than wife!—
Too often sever'd by convulsive strife:
This gentle Infancy shall grow between
Our bosoms, as a bar 'gainst temper-harms;
And oft as passion threats our peace serene,
We'll seek reproof within his little arms.

8th June 1839.

XI. HIGH-SPEAKINGS.

In the still vacancy of common hours,
We need these stirrings from the Universe—
High-speakings to us from Superior Powers,
Which of remote existences rehearse
And in dream-regions all the spirit immerse;
And when they cease, or interlapse devours
The wonder of their utterance, our soul's sense
Frets, straining with divine impatience:
Most like a stepless and a wordless child,
Which listens to a sweet-toned instrument,
Touch'd by its mother's fingers, till beguiled
All into smiles and gestures eloquent;
And the loved music ceasing, pines and cries
For still-renewal of its harmonies.

8th June 1839.

XII. THE FIRST DAY OF THE FOURTH YEAR.

Best celebration, next to that most dear,
Of this memorial day of chainless union,
Is the plain falling-off of such as wear
The mask of truth in their most false communion:
So, let them go!—The fields and trees appear
Of fresher beauty, for the thoughts within us;
And all that speaketh unto eye or ear,
Not of itself, but through our hearts, doth win us.
Rich were we then beyond all worldly store;
But now that wealth is by comparison
From heap'd abundance made but seeming poor—
A Crœsus meagred to a beggar's-son!—
For there at home our little Willy lies
With our earth-paradise in his sweet eyes!

17th August 1839.

XIII. TO BABY.

Thou art thy father's Soul, I do believe,
My golden-hair'd and radiant-visaged Child!
Projected into light, and undefiled
By the dull flesh which makes it ache and grieve
Thro' thy brief scene, where shadow doth deceive,
Until by substance we are more beguiled:
With the strange thought I have both wept and smiled—
As one men suddenly from death reprieve.
O, speak to me of past and future things!
Of whence thou camest into this worn clay,
And whither thou dost tend in its decay.
Almost I seem to see cherubic wings
Ope from about thee, for swift heavenward flight;
And I grow dust in their departing light!

17th January 1840.

XIV. THE RESULT.

From depths unfathomable that desire
Which gave us being, sprang; and fathomless
The sources of that being. We were born,
To meet and gaze and mingle. From the morn,
And noon, and eve, and night, did we inspire
The spirit of a gradual consciousness,
And from the visage and the voice and hand
Of human minist'rings: and grew and grew—
Imbibing from the skies and stream and land,
With every straining sense, that sacred dew
By which the roots of Thought are nourishéd,
And Feeling into bud and fruit is fed:
And hence the love in which our hearts exult,
And this divinest Child, its full and last Result.

17th January 1840.

XV.

Dear Lady mine! in whose sweet company
I walk at morning, noon and eventide;
Under cool trees, or placid streams beside;
Smiling on all fair things with loving eye:
The pleasant grass beneath; the leaves on high;
The tender flowers, in all fair colours dyed;
The glittering insects, in their sunshine pride;
And the glad birds, singing melodiously!
The thought of that drear hour when we must mingle
With dark dust under-ground, is solemn-sad,
And well might drive a human creature mad:
Yet e'en thro' that doth the quaint fancy tingle,
That our rechaos'd and soul-parted clay
Shall be the quiet nurse of such bright things as they!

18th May 1836.

XXV. ON HEARING SOME FINE MUSIC ILL-PLAYED.

Not in the noting, or the instrument
Fine Music's sweet sufficiency doth live;
But in the sight and touch executive
Of harmony's soul-active president,
Learn'd, and instinctive to her element.
How dull is Poesy which, read, doth give
Naught of its meanings clear-exempletive—
The poet lost, the reader evident!
I have heard Spenser, Shakspeare, and sage Ben,
Made Sternhold, Hopkins, Watts, by mouths ungifted,
Which spake untutor'd by the heart and brain:
And thus it is how Weber, Beethoven,
Whom hearing, I have been to heaven lifted,
Now steep me in a discord-hell of pain.

XXVI. THE FACE.—I.

The “joy for ever” of a beauteous thing
Is effluent from its beauty's memory:
Itself and all its loveliness take wing,
And only fixed in the thoughts they lie,
A worshipp'd, but unseen, Divinity
Like God himself! I never shall forget
That lucent face, but for a moment met:
Itself and all its loveliness must die
In death, or deathward life's maturity;
But, ever young and beauteous, in my dreaming
It shall contend for immortality,
Till o'er my dust the grass and flowers are teeming:
Nor perish then, if aught in this true page
May feed a dream thereof from age to age.

XXVII. THE FACE.—II.

It was a face that on the eyesight struck
Like the clear blue and starry arch of night,
When suddenly we quit a narrow chamber,
From the world's dust to teach our thoughts to clamber
To that invisible ether of delight
Which atmospheres the planets in their flight!
With lips, and brow, and eyelids that did pluck
The gaze from all the circling flash of faces,
And fix it on its beauties' combination;
So interflexed, that, star by star, its graces
Were noted not; but still, in constellation,
A harmony of grace, such as embraces
The innermost spirit with its concord fine
But which sense cannot note by note define.

XXVIII. POETRY AND SCIENCE.

A revelation of the essence of God
Is Poetry; Science, of his effluence:
This, a revealing of the power of God;
That, of his being is a vision intense:
This, a disclosure of the acts of God;
That, God himself reveal'd to evidence.
The Spirit of all things felt before he knew;
And from his feeling was his knowledge drawn—
Effect divine of a diviner cause!
So from the heart the head hath its prime laws;
For Poetry's noon-hues our souls imbue
Ere Science breaks on them with her cold dawn.
O, self-proud Head! bow down thy Science high
To the creator Heart and its great Poetry!

XXIX. COMPANIONSHIP.

God cannot feel alone; for unto Him
The Love of All Things is companionship—
Whether express'd by human hand and lip,
Or quivering wing within the forest dim,
Or silent gaze of flowers; or which o'erbrim
Doth not in act or look, but lieth deep
Folded in brain and bosom, like a sleep,
And singing to itself a dreamy hymn!
And thus should Man of heavy solitude
Break the dead clasp; and of all living creatures
Make the enjoyment and the love his love
And glee and dear associates: there be features
Of tenderness and joy in things endued
With plainest aspect, the dull'd spirit to move.

100

XXX. THE FALLERS-SHORT.

When Great Men are not great, we needs must mourn,
More than for all the pranks of Littleness;
For that short-falling doth increase the weight
Our spirits bear beneath this dust forlorn.
Great Men are solid harbour-holding banks
Bounding the weltering waves of Life's distress;
And when they sink and fail us, we are left
Upon a shoreless ocean, hope-bereft.
O ye of lofty souls! what is there here,
In this poor antepast to the Eternal,
To lure ye to the glory-wrecking shoals
That should but tempt the idler voyager?
Your spirits in a Timeless mould are cast,
And should disdain to shrink within the mean Diurnal.

101

XXXI. THE SWAN.

O, blended majesty and grace of motion!
Majestic as a billow of the ocean;
And graceful as a matron's bosom heaving!
At the first coming of the twilight wan,
The crystal of the river whitely cleaving,
O'er his fair shadow floats a state-proud swan!
His wings upreared and curved; his fine neck arching;
His eyes to either shore intently peering;
His progress silent as the mighty marching
Of earth and all the planets round the sun!
He naught divergeth from his forth-careering
Till the far haven of his rest is won;
Where her close-nestled young his fond mate tendeth,
And her upraised neck to greet his coming bendeth!

102

XXXII.

When we behold the air-suspended sword
O'er human joy for ever pendulous;
And see the earthly pitfalls 'waiting us
Thickly along life's way; of act or word
We grow incapable, and fain would wait
Stirless and speechless for the coming state,
Wherein the millions of the past abide—
Their dust, their deeds, and their recorded pride:
And our vow'd spirits (like the devotees
In attitudinal monotony
Transfix'd in Indian forests, till the trees
O'ergrow them, and the wild birds build thereon)
Seem stricken to their place eternally,
And no more vital than a stock or stone.

103

XXXIII.

The life continual, the fast flow of things,
That welters round about us; every year
Bearing the next upon its changing wings,
And disappearing but to reappear
Like-visaged, tho' transfigured; rise and setting
Of sun and moon, planets, and starry crowds;
Coming and going of the solemn clouds;
Wild play of storms and streams, and billows, fretting
The ever-shifting girdle of the ocean;
The bursting of green buds, and fall of leaves;
The unfolding and decay of gracious flowers;
The music and the silence of the hours,
Still alternating: 'tis all this reprieves
Our spirits from their trance, to sweet commotion.

104

XXXIV. THE “POETRY OF EARTH.”

“The Poetry of Earth is never dead,”
Even in the cluster'd haunts of plodding men.
Before a door in citied underground,
Lies a man-loving, faith-expression'd hound—
To pastoral hills forth sending us; to den
Of daring bandit; and to regions dread
Of mountain-snows, where others of its kind
Tend upon man's, as with a human mind:
A golden beetle on the dusty steps
Crawls, of a wayside-plying vehicle,
Where wending men swarm thick and gloomily—
We gaze; and see beneath the ripening sky
The harvest glisten; and that creature creeps
Upon the sunny corn, radiantly visible!

105

XXXV. THE SERE OAK LEAVES.

Why do ye rustle in this vernal wind,
Sere Leaves! shaking a drear prophetic shroud
Over the very cradle of the Spring?
Like pertinacious Age, with warnings loud,
Dinning the grave into an infant's mind,
And shadowing death on life's first imaging!
Why to these teeming branches do ye cling
And with your argument renascence cloud;
Whilst every creature of new birth is proud,
And in unstain'd existence revelling?
Fall, and a grave within the centre find!
And do not thus, whilst all the sweet birds sing,
The insects glitter, and the flower'd grass waves,
Blight us with thoughts of winter and our graves!

106

XXXVI. THE SWAN-AVIARY.

A thousand swans are o'er the waters sailing,
And others in the reeds and rushes brood,
And some are flying o'er the sunny flood;
And all move with a grandeur so prevailing,
That long we stand without a breath-inhaling,
In admiration of their multitude,
And the majestic grace with which endued
They float upon the waves, their pride regaling.
The sky is blue and golden; clear as glass,
The sea sweeps richly on the glowing shingle;
All vernal hues in the near woods commingle;
And exquisite beauty waves along the grass;
But these things seem but humbly tributary
To the white pomp of that vast aviary!

107

XXXVII. SPIRIT SOLACE.

Perpetual moanings from the troubled sea
Of human thought, and wail from the vex'd wind
Of mortal feeling, fill our life's wide air:
Yet, let thereof the breather not despair:
For wind and wave obey a high decree,
Which we perceive not in this transit blind
From body unto soul. Oh! the clear calm
Of that wild ocean, and its sunlit splendours,
And even the rainbows of its tempests fierce,
Beget a tranquil spirit-trance, which renders
Its terrors dreadless: and the flower-fed balm
Of that wind, lull'd to zephyr, doth so pierce
The immortal senses with an odorous hope,
That earth seems verged on heaven, and all heaven's portals ope.

1848.

108

XXXVIII. DECEMBER—MAY.

“So sweet a day it is, that even December,
On the strange freshness of whose alter'd lip
I drink this balmy breath—despite the bare
And silent trees, and meadows flower-forsaken—
Seems beating with the pulse of joyous May!”
Thus said I, with a feeling all of May,
One gentle daytime bland of late December,
On the strange freshness of whose alter'd lip
I breathed mild airs of spring: and lo! the bare
And silent trees, and meadows flower-forsaken,
Grew leaf'd and musical, and flower-adorn'd;
And near and far spake out the cuckoo's soul!—
“Ah, God!” methought, “these things are in the soul;
And from Within is the Without adorn'd.”

1843.

109

XXXIX. THE SUN AND THE DAISY.

The temper'd Sun, down-verging to the West,
Shone full upon one Daisy's lonely bloom;
Of a bleak bank the solitary guest,
And only spirit risen from Winter's tomb!
But fair and bright and perfect-orb'd it gleam'd;
And, as the Sun the cold encircling sky,
To gild the barrenness around it seem'd,
And claim'd as constant tribute from the eye.
And worthily: for that vast globe of fire,
Unto the vision which no space controll'd,
Would show minute, compared with glories higher,
As unto ours that little disc of gold:
'Tis our poor faculties make large and small,
Where the same boundless wonder mantles all.

1843.

110

XL. THE ACCOMPANIMENT.

The lark, as I did read her sweetest letter,
Sang heavenward in divine accompaniment;
And as its gentle meanings ceased to fetter,
At intervals, all sense o' the outward ear,
I heard that loud bird-music piercing clear
The freshness of the morning element,
Descending as its minstrel made ascent
And timed to the soft written argument.
In Love is all-embracing sympathy:
All accents of the song of that high bird,
All modulations of its melody,
Were answer'd by that letter's spirit and word;
And the far bird re-echoed, tone for tone,
The love-notes which my tranced eye trembled on.

111

XLI. THE CRUCIFIXION.

To an illustrious teacher of men; upon his non-vindication of Shelley from the aspersions of a common-place babbler.

All his pain'd life was nail'd and crucified
By selfish men, of hearts conventional:
And since his death, he many deaths hath died
On dull men's tongues; his godhead full denied,
His memory scourged, and rudely vilified,
And pierced by ruffians in its holy side.
Then should'st thou not, thou Man Imperial!
Whose thoughts do govern thought amidst us all,
Be worse than Pilate; in not being the thrall
Of place, as he, and yet abandoning
The sacred name of Shelley, deified,
To vulgar mockery, without championing
His spirit divine. O, marvel, shame and loss:
Our Pilate is turn'd Jew, and strains the Cross!

1839.

112

XLII. THE MAN-“GOD.”

It cannot last—this story of a manger
Being the Godhead's cradle!—“Miracles,”
Dealt upon fish and swine and jars-of-water!
Which, to the ceaseless Miracle that wells
Forth from th' unfathom'd Universe, are folly,
By Man the Knave to Man the Fool made holy.
Should we not laugh to know that flies and worms
Fabled that Godhead in their atom forms?
And what are we, but insects of an hour?—
Yet deeming that the Eternal God could cower
In our vile flesh his Omnipresent Fire!
It cannot last!—The Prophets of the Lyre,
And all men of great thought, do make it stranger
To brain and heart. God's “Son”!—Why not God's “Daughter”?

An Adorer of Jesus the Man; but a Contemner of Christ the “God.”

1839.

113

XLIII. TRACES.

Thy name upon the sands, my Spirit's bride!
Lo! I have writ; and the fast-coming sea
Advances, that will sweep it utterly
Out of all mark and meaning: but the tide,
And the sleek shore o'er which its waters glide,
Newly configurate and changed shall be
By that impressure, though invisibly,
And ever with the touch thereof abide:—
And thus, thy name, thy beauty, and thy love,
Whose traces Time's obliterating ocean
Hath wash'd from out my action-smoothéd mind,
Shall, with a fix'd effect, be intertwined
Therewith eternally, and deep inwove
With Time's own everlasting voice and motion.

1845.

114

XLIV.—XLV. BEETHOVEN'S “SONATA WITH THE FUNERAL MARCH.”

1.

Man is a noble animal: in ashes
“Splendid, and pompous in the grave; nativities
“And deaths with equal lustres solemnizing;
“Nor ceremonies, in his nature's infamy,
“Of bravery omitting.”—Thus, in majesty
Of words like pyramids o'er death-bones rising,
Spake he who saw things from their cloud-acclivities,
Where light from high above blinds and abashes:
And thus this mighty music speaks sublimely,
The dark scene it proclaimeth glorifying;
Evolving the Eternal from the Timely;
And seems attending, as its death-note rolls,
And awful army of triumphant souls,
Toward Eternity in thunder flying.

115

2.

And, from the instrument it seemeth not
The grandeur of its harmony ariseth,
Which life in death with more than life surpriseth;
But from the soul of her who, like a thought,
Sits there entranced; herself and all forgot
That lives and moves around her; and compriseth
Within herself the marvel she deviseth—
A music upon music's self begot!
It cometh from her like to shrouded light
From the great Sun, eclipsed; like echoes loud
From billow-beaten rocks, when in the night
The struggling elements wage starless war;
Like solemn thunder from a midnight cloud;
Or awful winds from caves oracular.

1845.

Sir Thomas Browne.

116

XLVI. CHRISTMAS 1866.

He stopp'd beneath the mistletoe, and kiss'd
Imaginary lips—and then he wept;
Lips which an everlasting silence kept
Within a far-off grave, but did exist
For him most livingly in memory,
With love and music that could never die,
Save with himself: and then, this weakness fled,
If weakness were it, he the revel sought;
Its joyous spirit in his spirit caught,
And only sadness in some minor thought:
“Why did I weep?” unto himself he said;
“Youth, beauty, love, are all renascent here,
“Making a spring time of the dying year;
“And what is gone, I do not think is dead.”

117

XLVII. WRITTEN AFTER HEARING GREAT MUSIC.

Pianoforte! ne'er before, perchance,
Thy alien name with English verse was blent;
But now 'tis meet thou to that place advance,
As rival to whatever instrument:
This Priestess of thy spirit-mysteries
Makes thee oracular; and harmonies
Soar from beneath her touch, which sing aloud
Of things imagined, but not seen nor known:
The rush of angels' wings; the flit of elves',
The creatures of the rainbow and bright cloud;
And the loved Dead, who in our dreams appear:
Cramer and Hummel, 'tis believed, are gone;
Yet in this heaven-of-sound we seem to hear,
Not echoes of them, but their living selves.

St. Helier, 31 March 1869.

118

XLVIII. WRITTEN AFTER HAVING RECEIVED A PRESENT OF FLOWERS.

I do not know, but (such is Fantasy!)
I could believe these flowers are musical,
However silent unto our deaf hearing:
At least they speak to me of Music's crown,
And tell of great Musicians whom men name—
Mozart, Beethoven, at the height of fame,
And others, gifted but of less renown,
And their Interpreter, accomplish'd high,
Whose power compels their thoughts to reappearing,
And their clear inspiration doth recall,
In its rich eloquence ethereal,
And beam it bright around us! Flowers must die;
And so must we, and all things; yet there seems
Still, something deathless amid all our dreams.

17 April 1869.

119

XLIX. A TRIBUTE TO THE PRESENT, AND A REMINISCENCE OF THE FAR PAST.

[_]

Written after having heard a Lady Play B[eethoven]'s------

Sovereign Creatrix of the World of Sound
Which vibrates on the raptly-listening ear,
Thou breath'st a meaning subtle and profound
Through every note whose beating pulse we hear:
Of One Beloved we feel the end of life,
The suffering, fear and hope, and then the death,
And next the tears and sobs and wailing strife
Of those who mourn the cease of that dear breath;
Then the black funeral from whose clouding rolls
The dark at length, until the adoring eye
Sees radiant armies of triumphant souls
In thunder pacing towards eternity.
Beethoven's spirit shines englass'd in Thine,
Which mirrors all its depths and effluence divine!

26 November 1869.

The Sonnet headed “The Rivalry,” at page 255 of Mundi et Cordis Carmina, is built up from the same opening theme as this, but with a difference:—

Ah! Sweet Creatrix of that World of Sound
That vibrates on my ever-listening ear,

and for a thought almost identical with that of the last couplet but one, see the final couplet of Sonnet No. XLIV in the present series.

120

L. TO THE PIANOFORTE.

Nobly, Piano! hast thou held thy place
(Inspired by brain-and-heart-enkindled hands)
In strength, in sweetness, majesty and grace,
Beside the Frame loud bruited in the lands,
In which it higher laud than thine commands:
Unjustly, seems it: I would rather hear,
In the rapt stillness of this peopled room,
From thy roused depths—when, even as now, inform'd
(Thy coldness into passionate utterance warm'd)
By this High Priestess of thy Mysteries—
Beethoven's Pathos and dread March of doom,
In their great melodies and harmonies,
Than from all sound-shrines, gather'd to one sphere,
In Palace, or in full-throng'd Theatre!

13 February 1871.

123

THE CONTENTION OF DEATH AND LOVE.

“I am worn away;
“And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.”
Shelley.—Dedication to “The Revolt of Islam.”

In a serene leaf-latticed chamber
A Dying Poet calmly slept;
And dreams about his brain did clamber,
Which, like his waking thoughts, o'erswept
The narrow Present, and flow'd far
Into the Unceasing and the Boundless,
With stir and voice oracular—
Whilst round him all was still and soundless.

He dream'd not of the common things
That make the joy or woe of breath
To one whose spirit hath no wings
To leave the common world beneath;
But, as the Vast and the Eternal
Fill'd all his vision'd Phantasy,
It peopled them, in pomp supernal,

124

With Incarnations, livingly,
Of Power and Beauty, Strength and Grace,
And Love and Hope and Ecstasy,
And Sorrow, with her twilight face:
And Men, the Lights of History,
And Women, crown'd with gather'd fame,
Glode in procession beamingly
Through his all-seeing Soul; and, then,
Creations of Immortal Pen,
Pencil and Chisel—each a name
To wing the heart with plumes of flame!—
Frequent and flashing, fast and bright;
Like meteors through electric night.

Around his dying-couch were stooping,
With burthen of their sorrow drooping,
Five stricken Creatures, weepingly.
One was a Matron old and grey,
In all whose wrinkles agony,
Like a writhing serpent, lay;
And whose pale eyes, suffused and dim,
Grew death-film'd as they look'd on him.
And Three were sweetly fair and young;
And they around each other clung,
And so together o'er him hung—

125

As three chill'd roses faintly glow
O'er the white winter's shroud of snow;
Or, as three cluster'd stars on high
Gleam on the pale air tremblingly:
And those four bewailing Creatures
All wore the Dying Dreamer's features;
And every change death wrought in his,
Grief mirror'd in their semblances.
The Fifth was clad in robes of mourning;
But not for him for whom she mourn'd—
That Dying Singer there, adorning
His dreams with her, so song-adorn'd!
Her soul breathed in that failing Glory,
Whose life was the lone promontory
From which her love and fond hopes all
Gazed on Life's waters, and the sky—
Lit with star-dreams majestical—
Of Love's far immortality.
She stood apart; her madden'd eyes
Terribly glaring with great wo,
And flashing, like tempestuous skies,
Upon that pale, calm earth below.

He heard no sound of their lamenting,
Unless their speech and sobbings low,

126

And that Intense-One's stifled venting
The pangs of hope's last overthrow,
Did mingle with the Voices sweet
Which his dreaming sense did greet;
And real with unreal sound
Blent in his cavern'd brain profound,
Went circling through its mystic cells,
And issued thence in oracles;
And spake unto his vision'd ear
In accents eloquently clear,
Whose silver'd music did impart
Speed to the faint blood in his heart;
And his soul imbibed all
Its melodies ethereal—
As the ether, therewith ringing,
Drinks the sweet lark's matin-singing.

And, oh! might they have heard, as he,
That converse of his dying dream,
They could have borne most tranquilly
The widowing of their loves supreme:
Learning from that talk divine,
That the subtle fire which feeds
Souls whose words are their great deeds
Cannot perish; therefore, he,

127

Whose spirit was its radiant shrine,
Must endure immortally!

Before his dreaming vision floated
Two Forms serenely feminine;
Intent upon him, and devoted
To that bright spirit's dim decline.
One, was robed in a white shroud—
Such as haunted eyes may see,
Through their drops of misery,
In the fresh-closed sepulchre
Of a love-slain virgin dear—
Like the pale moon in pallid cloud,
When the sleeted winds on earth are loud
And the dull sky is winter-brow'd:
Pale were her cheeks, and pale each hand,
And her forehead very pale;
And her eyes, by thin brows spann'd,
Moved not in their low-lidded spheres,
Where gleam'd they like two frozen tears,
Or transparent ice-struck dews
Reflecting winter's dead-leaf hues:
Her white lips did no breath exhale,
Even when they spake; and her words all

128

Seem'd wandering echoes mystical.
The other, was a rosy thing;
But the pallor mirroring
Of her unlike sister there,
Half that pale aspect she did wear,
Though her warm native-colours play'd
Through it, as the sun through shade.
She robeless was, that lovely Form;
But her bright tresses mantled warm
Adown her throbbing beauties all,
And mazily around them curl'd—
As might a gentle waterfall
Down marble rubied and impearl'd.
Her eyes—like those blue flowers serene
Which constellate on banklets green
When the spring's bland touch invokes
Breath in all which winter chokes—
Seem'd dim with their own radiancy;
Whilst tears flowed from them silently,
And o'er her tresses dripp'd and river'd:
And wild words from her curved lips quiver'd—
Like tones from a wind-finger'd lyre;
Till e'en her ghastly Sister shiver'd
And burn'd with their all-vital fire.

129

This like-and-unlike sisterhood,
Were Death and Love.

The Poet's blood
Gather'd around his heart, as Death,
Within her shrouded arms to wreathe
His weak limbs, stoop'd unto his rest:
But Love thrust her sweet face beneath
Death's coming hands, and fondly prest
Them upward from her Dear-One's face,
And fenced him with her strong embrace;
That Death did still at distance stay—
But near'd, alas! and near'd alway.
Then, ere the Poet waked to die,
He heard this spectral colloquy:

“What wouldst thou with this sacred breath?
Even I do almost loathe thee, Death,
Though oft thou bringest soothing balm
To my deep wounds, and blessed calm
Unto that rude sea, tempest-tost,
Where still my sailing hopes are lost.
O, is there not exhaustless prey
Awaiting thee on earth's highway;
Where the rushing common crowd

130

Seek the workshop and the trough,
And at all things holy scoff
With laughter and blasphemings loud?
Many a palace, many a den,
Is there, in the haunts of men,
Whence thou mayst pluck each denizen;
Nor leave, with all thy gorged food,
One gap in human grace or good;
Nor from Life's clod one drop o' the leaven
Steal, that makes it swell with heaven!
Why com'st thou, then—pale, dismal Death!
To suck this music-hallow'd breath?
To whelm these eyes in dark eclipse,
Which beam'd joy through the heart of pain;
And set thy seal on these sweet lips,
That they may never sing again
Songs that are wing'd things of light
Burning through Life's vapory night?
To sting the bliss of all these hearts,
In which, through him, thy poison darts;
And all their panting multitude
Of hopes, drown deep in tears and blood?
O, tarry, pallid sister Death!
Let Age come for my Dear-One's breath!
And not until his Fame be wed

131

To Time, and full-accomplished;
And not until this Matron old
Turn peacefully to ashes cold;
And not until these Sisters Three
Toward their graves tend peacefully
And, oh! not till this Mourner dim
Be ready to depart with him.
I pray thee, Death! sweet sister Death!
Let Age come for my Dear-One's breath!”

“O, why direct the mission'd dove?
His hour is come, sweet sister Love!
Upbraid me not! I cannot err;
Being the fated minister
Of Fate, in whose most sovereign eye
Each human thing moves equally.
The common throng which thy displeasure
Loadeth, with such onerous measure,
Bear sparklets of that fire divine
So starlike in this Child of thine:
And he and they are nothing more
Than little glow-worms on a shore
On which the billows everlasting
Of Time their mighty wrecks are casting,

132

And on which o'erarched Space
Still looketh with eternal face.
Sister! thy spirit magnifies;
And to thee two cherish'd eyes
Do seem as glorious as the skies,
And dower'd with as great destinies:
But 'tis not so. Be meek and dumb!
I tell thee that his hour is come:
And as for Sorrowers, what are they
But dust beneath my trampling way?
And, say, if Song were aught to me,
Thinkst thou that I, whose strong decree
Swept Homer from Ionian air
When his allotted years were run,
And Dante from Italia's sun
When all his griefs accomplish'd were;
Down-looking Chaucer from his theme,
And Spenser from his Faery dream,
And Shakspeare from his own great world,
And Milton from his starr'd-throne, hurl'd,
Ere their fames were half-unfurl'd:
I, who in later days have driven
Sweet Bards in earliest youth to heaven—
Shelley and Keats; and crash'd the bridge
That bore the life of Coleridge

133

Over my gulfs: that I, who still,
Upon his Thought's sublimest hill,
Tarry for Wordsworth—he who won
Renown from out Detraction's jaws;
Who wait for sweet-lipp'd Tennyson;
And prepare my shapeless cells
For the coming dust of Wells,
Whose genius sleeps for its applause:
Think'st thou that I, whose mission strong
Hath reach'd these mighty spirits of Song—
Or soon will reach—can pause for him?
Amid these suns a taper dim;
A mortal babe 'mid Seraphim!”

At this, Love wept a passion-dew,
And ghostly as her Sister grew;
And made a wreck of her bright hair,
Tress by tress, with sobs, unzoning—
As winds the golden sun-clouds tear,
With a melancholy moaning:
Till very Death felt pain for her,
And masqued thus as a comforter—
Alas for Love, when Death to her
Is last poor solace-minister!—

134

“O, be thou solaced, wailing Sister!
Of his Essence, charm'd resister
Of my subtlest poisons all!
That which in his deep brain wrought
All those glowing forms of thought
Which people his sweet Poesy,
Nothing know I: funeral
And the grave my knowledge bound;
And a trust in Destiny
May be thy firm assurance-ground
That 'twill not perish utterly.
But picture not his mortal clay
As a loathsome thing alway
Festering in my clammy cells:
Life will reclaim its particles,
One by one, and spread them wide
O'er the fresh earth glorified:
The green o' the grass, the blush o' the flower,
Shall draw from them their lustrous grace
And thrilling sun and kindly shower
Visit their calm biding-place;
And odors from their beauty freed
Shall the bland airs of springtime feed;
And evening and morning-dew
The sweetness where they dwell imbue:

135

The butterflies their gladness sunny,
And burnish'd bees their luscious honey,
Shall suck from them; and vernal singing,
From ecstatic bird-life springing,
For ever be around them ringing;
And, in perpetual rebirth,
Still shall they smile a light on earth!
And if all this not comfort thee,
Bethink thee that his Memory
Shall not droop its soaring pinion,
For ages, to my black dominion;
And, haply, not till my vast robe
Wrap this total under-globe,
And all its breath and stir and thought
Refold into primeval Naught!”

“His Memory! his Memory!”
Cried starting Love, far echoingly:
“It shall not die, it cannot die—
His song-embalmed Memory!
His throbbing Verse, his burning Verse,
Shall breathe it through the Universe
With a ceaseless spirit-pant,
Love's divine arch-ministrant!
It shall speak in all sweet things;

136

And with it I will load my wings,
And waft it thorough skies and waters,
And over earth's green hills and plains,
And through her caverns, rocks and woods,
And her most desert solitudes;
And into human hearts and brains,
And the blood of human veins!
And even these, my wailing daughters,
Shall hear its music deep and holy,
And list away their melancholy!
It shall bloom in every flower,
And mantle green o'er ancient trees;
The rainbow-winged insectries,
And birds and rills, shall sound its power;
And the mighty bass of seas,
And the wind's wild harmonies!
It shall float in every cloud;
And thunder in the tempest loud,
And glitter in the tempest-light;
And it shall look from heaven, through
The unfathom'd depths of ether blue!
And the Sun—artificer
Of that pomp magnificent
Of golden-vapor'd mansionry
In which are far involved and blent,

137

With complication infinite,
Structures piled and broad and high,
That seem, to the used eye of man,
Sky-cities metropolitan—
Shall be to Space a minister
Of its glories, burningly!
And the ever-fainting Moon
Shall smile it from her silver swoon;
And in every circling Planet
Shall the eye of Passion scan it;
The Constellations, radiantly,
And the belting Galaxy,
Shall arch it, with a splendorous grace
O'er the awful brow of Space!—
His Memory! His Memory!
Fed by his Song eternally:
His Song, which shall a music be
Amid the Earth's grand vocalings
As round the golden Sun she swings,
With solemn-sounding melodies,
And harmonious chorusings
Of earthquake, thunder, winds and seas,
And voice of all living things!”

THE END.

138

[_]

NOTE BY THE AUTHOR.

The name of Wells illustrates this Lyric. That it should be needful here to state, that Mr. Wells is the author of a great Poem, in the dramatic form, entitled “Joseph and his Brethren,” and published many years since, is a disgrace to our best and leading Reviewers, whose most holy duty it should be to dispel the clouds which veil genius from the public eye: “bis dat qui citò dat;” but these gentlemen ever tarry till the force of its own fire has done the work; and then they sedulously hasten, one and all, to assure the world that a new glory is burning in the heaven of Mind!

Of the noble Poem of Mr. Wells, one personally but a stranger to him can say, with a fervid conviction of the truth of his assertion, that, to go from the “Paradise Lost,” the “Samson Agonistes,” the “Antony and Cleopatra,” to the finer—and they not few—passages and scenes of “Joseph and his Brethren,” is but to sail in spirit down one and the same stream of sublime, subtle, and unsurpassed Poetry.

141

HELENA.

I

To Love inhaloed with self-plenitude,
Is no without-door world. For Helena—
Tho' shining is the moon in her calm mood,
And the stream plaining, fretful runaway!
And nightingales are singing in the wood—
No nightingales are glad, no stream is pining,
And no calm moon is in the concave shining!

II

For she is in her bower with Agathon;
And in his face she sees her universe,

142

And hears it in his voice, whose every tone
Into her spirit's depths did keenly pierce;
And in his passion, as within a zone,
All her fair world of woman's beauty lay—
Soft, dim and swooning as the Starry-Way.

III

At the top step of bliss we nearest are
To the first downward ledge of misery;
And thus with Helena the truth did fare:
In all her senses bow'd them passively
To the great love to which they servile were;
And touch, sight, hearing, were therewith imbued,
And all-absorb'd in its infinitude.

IV

A sense of love was all with Helena:
A sense of beauty ruled in Agathon,
And of a power o'er beauty: to allay
His intense love of loveliness, he won
Sweet souls to love him—in the selfsame way
As he would gather buds and blushing flowers,
And fondle them to death in silent hours.

143

V

But when dull clouds of circumstance between
Him and the heart he brighten'd louring came,
He staid not for the darkness of the scene,
In which he shared not; but the lambent flame
Of his incessant radiance o'er serene
And happier creatures, in its wandering, fell;
And still his thought made heavens to veil its hell.

VI

He glozed o'er fact with fancy's imagery;
And tho' all hapless things for him were dead,
They still were deathless in his memory;
And still the passion of his musing fed,
Which prey'd upon their light incessantly;
And made a Paradise of shadows brave,
Whose substances were sorrowing to their grave.

VII

Ah! this was very sad for Helena;
For heavenly Helena all sad and drear!
After that night, there came a slow dismay
Over her soul, till madness sprang from fear;
And reckless Agathon was far away
From the green hovel in a lonely lane,
Where woke she from her raving trance of pain.

144

VIII

Beside her bed there watch'd a wrinkled dame,
With careful eye and hand the lady tending;
And ever sedulously went and came,
A loving-kindness with quick duty blending.—
Why o'er her paleness flits a hue of flame?
Why turn her eyes from vacant wandering,
To looks that seem to seek some precious thing?

IX

Poor Helena comes back to consciousness.
“Thou long wert with me,” said she, “hidden creature!
“And my love reach'd thee thro' my deep distress,
“With doting on thine unseen form and feature;
“And in a dream of strange mysteriousness,
“Surely, I felt thee leave me? saw thine eyes
“And tiny hands? and heard thy feeble cries?

X

“Vacant I feel thy long-abiding place;
“And yet, nor see nor hear thee! Where, oh! where,
“Vanish'd the beauty of thy little face—
“A cherub's, in the cloud of my despair?
“Nurse! bring my child to my intense embrace,
“For with this longing all my heart is shook!”—
There was no comfort in the matron's look.

145

XI

“That cavalier,” responded she—with speech
Which seem'd to tremble at its own drear sound—
“Who brought thee hither, when the months did reach
“The limit of their nature-fixed bound,
“Return'd, with one attendant—I beseech
“Thy best of patience, lady!—and they bore,
“Whilst thou wert tranced, thy infant from my door.

XII

“And—‘Tell her,’ said to me thy noble friend,
“‘That in good time this faithful servitor
“‘Will at her own good pleasure reattend
“‘Her safely homeward.’” “And he said no more?”
Cried Helena, with accents that did rend
The heart that utter'd and the ears that heard,
With all the human woe that fills a word!

XIII

“No more; but with his kisses he did bring
“The glowing crimson to thy pallid cheek.”
Sweet Helena smiled sadly; murmuring,
Now, of false Agathon, with blamings meek
Of his forswearing and abandoning;
And now loud-calling, with great sorrow wild,
For restoration of her little child.

146

XIV

No lover's kisses stay'd her bootless raving;
No child was given to her stretching arms:
But soon the servitor came to her, craving
That she would heal her grief with comfort-balms,
Nor longer seek for things beyond her having;
But straightway with him to her home return,
That her dear kindred there might cease to mourn.

XV

And at length homeward did she weeping go;
And found fresh wrinkles on her mother's cheek,
And greyer hairs upon her father's brow,
Grown of the sorrow which they did not speak;
For but to kill would be upbraiding now:
And so they nothing blamed, and question'd naught;
And ways to solace their dear daughter sought.

XVI

Their dwelling with all pleasant things they fill'd
Which God's dear mercy hath for humankind:
Small birds in cages wide their joyance trill'd;
But these she from their prison unconfined,
And gave a fatal freedom, that but kill'd:
Sweet lyres, wind-finger'd, in the casements play'd;
But they her griefs with deeper grief o'erlaid:

147

XVII

And painting was to her but sembled woe;
And song the pampering food of agony;
And music but an echoing of the throe
Which trembled in her bosom torturingly:
Upon house-creatures would her hand bestow
No fond caress; and friend nor servant ever
Might cheer her, with their best of heart-endeavour.

XVIII

At length, a solace mild she found in flowers
That grow on herby banks and grassy meadows;
And both her waking and her dreaming hours
She feasted with them and their vision'd shadows—
Transplanting them into her garden-bowers
In storied vases of clear porcelain;
And near them let no haughty blooms remain.

XIX

Gorgeous exotics, the art-fostered boast
Of those who joy in flower-menageries;
Nor all the proud and statelier garden-host
Of lilies tall and globed peonies;
Nor gaudy tulips, raised at florist's cost;
Formal ranunculus, nor iris fine,
Drew from her fancy one regard divine.

148

XX

But, daisies, primroses and violets;
Cowslips, and bird's-eye-flowers—so heavenly blue,
The adoring eye their transient date forgets,
And sees undying love in their sweet hue—
Windflowers, light Zephyr's airy coronets;
And all wild blooms that keep their own pure natures,
Free from the touch of meddling human creatures:

XXI

Of these she unafflicted prisoners made,
Wrapt in their native mould, and moss, and grass,
And treasured them in many a garden-glade;
And never did she by their beauty pass
Without a pause of tears, whose silence said—
“Such little flowers as these do sleep and wave
“Amid the dews upon my baby's grave?”

XXII

Whence came the Rose-tree, in its costly vase,
Amid those creatures meek of banks and fields?
There had it not even yesternight a place;
But this fair morning to their eyes it yields
A vision of intense, but placid grace;
All robed in bud and bloom, and light and dew—
As sunrise' self had beam'd it on the view!

149

XXIII

And Helena stood gazing on its glory;
Tranced as a soul that sees its own strange thought
Air-figured, with precision transitory;
Till with her wonder grief grew inter-wrought,
And words slept in her eyes which spake her sorry
That her fond-tended flock of little flowers
Should underserve this pride of garden-bowers.

XXIV

Resentfully she pluck'd it, bud and bloom;
And made a shower, silent as love-looks, fall
Of its rich blossom-leaves; that final doom
Seem'd close awaiting on its beauty all—
When Helena, with doubly-clouded gloom
Stirring its earth, lay startled finger on
A tablet, superwrit—“From Agathon.

XXV

“I saw thy love's fruit, in its birth death-stricken,
“Was doom'd to darkness in its dawn of life;
“And sought to spare thee all the forms that sicken
“The soul of grief, and all the vulgar strife
“That greets the evidence of pulse that quicken
“Too surely at the leap of blood to blood,
“And all the babble of the multitude.

150

XXVI

“The bud that from the blooms of our sweet pleasure
“Derived its life, being dead, and seen of none,
“Thy maiden honour shall have no erasure:
“Men's eyes, and not the cloud, make shade i' the sun.
“O, still thy love for me, deep-hearted, treasure!
“And this assurance in thy soul receive—
“Thou in my thought a deathless thought dost live.

XXVII

“I wander o'er the earth; and common make
“All that to thee great faith had sanctified:
“Yet hoard this grace of flowers for my bad sake,
“And tend it as thy child with mother's pride;
“It to thy inmost bower of musing take;
“Be with it ever whilst its roses bloom,
“And thou alone its time-dried stem entomb!”

XXVIII

She read, and wept; and wept, and read, and read;
And with her tears the tree gleam'd dewily:
The delicate leaves which she had scattered
She, one by one, collected heedfully,
And made her bosom their sad funeral-bed;
And wofully her trembling hand upbraided,
Whose ignorance their sacred source invaded.

151

XXIX

What human hands had in the night convey'd
That Rose-tree to her garden's far recesses
Could no one tell: and so, her maidens made
Strange stories of it, as they wreathed their tresses
Where in dim light dull chamber-shadows play'd;
And made their own inventions their belief,
And superstitions of their lady's grief.

XXX

Unnoted now of mourning Helena
The little flowers that love the grass and moss:
Upon her Rose-tree tendeth she alway;
And every moment deems eternal loss
In which she near it doth not weep and pray,
Or sit in dreamings of the awful past,
And of the lulling death that comes at last.

XXXI

One night, she slumber'd on a couch star-lit,
Her Rose-tree breathing balm o'er her soft sleeping;
When slowly all its flowers grew interknit,
And clung together in a dewy weeping;
And mystic lights did thro' their blent leaves flit—
Like gemm'd rings twinkling thro' a silken glove,
Or stars thro' cloudlets on heaven's zone of love.

152

XXXII

And then, like golden insects gently paining
A little bloom by feeding on its life,
A something seem'd to be their veins constraining,
And they to writhe with some disturbing strife;
And from their crowd arose a balmy plaining—
As sweet as from May-flowers come southern gales,
And dulcet as the notes of nightingales.

XXXIII

Till, from the midst, the heart of all those roses,
A little child looks forth seraphical;
And its joy-throbbing limbs warm interposes
Among the Rose-tree's tiny branches all:
Its pretty hand the clustering green uncloses,
And blush-like leaves, and emerald, o'er her eyes
Scatters, with chuckled infant-ecstasies.

XXXIV

She knew it was the never-clasped creature
Which long and painfully her frame embower'd;
For such the radiant smile, and such the feature,
That oft thro' all her waking visions shower'd
Intense conviction to her craving nature;
And up she sprang to kiss its face endear'd—
It vanish'd playfully; and reappear'd;

153

XXXV

And said, with voice more faintly audible
Than wave of bird-wing thro' the dim twilight—
“When we shall meet again, I may not tell;
“But when a death-air doth the Rose-tree blight
“Thy babe to thee shall be perceptible;
“But not as now—and pray, sweet mother! pray,
“Against the woe to follow that decay.”

XXXVI

Again she leap'd to clasp its beaming form;
Again it vanish'd, and return'd no more:
And then she started from her slumber warm,
And all her hair and all her garments tore,
In her despair; and all her soul in storm
Was raging, with dread sense of that transition
To fact accursed from beatific vision.

XXXVII

Is the sweet Rose-tree dying? Every star
Of early sunlight wears the radiant veil,
And the glad flowers awake and dew-dropp'd are;
But all its buds and blooms are drooping, pale,
And of a latent death oracular:
And Helena is calm'd from her despair
By the sad aspect of its glories fair.

154

XXXVIII

“But when a death-air doth the Rose-tree blight
“Thy babe to thee shall be perceptible;
“But not as now!” Those dream-words, at the sight
Of that blight-stricken plant, brain echoing fell
Upon her heart, with meanings infinite;
Re-echoed in those words of Agathon,
That she should dig the fair tree's grave alone.

XXXIX

“Against the woe to follow that decay,
“Sweet mother! pray.” She wrung her piteous hands;
And on her trembling knees to God did pray,
That he would loose from her the painful bands
Of life that kept her from her babe away;
And then all tears she sank—like love-eyed flowers,
Wept to their heavy death by thunder-showers.

XL

What was to come she knew not; but, to come
Some fearful thing there was, she felt and knew.
Morn after morn, eve after eve, the doom
Of her adored Rose-tree nearer drew,
Which faded in green leaf, and bud, and bloom:
And oft she sat all thought, in love and fear,
How to avert the terror felt so near.

155

XLI

“Companion sweet! wherefrom, in blessed dreams,
“My little cherub ever shines on me,
“And the bright spirit of thy blossoms seems;
“Mine only bliss of earth! memorial-tree!
“Upon whose every leaf are love-writ themes
“Whose purity nor crimes nor wrongs deprave—
“O, do not die! or, die upon my grave!”

XLII

Poor blighted willow! o'er the plaintive river
Of her profound woe fading, in whose depth
All precious things lay buried, thus she ever
For her fast-dying Rose-tree moan'd and wept;
Until a gentle handmaid, with endeavour
Of dear heart-duty, said that needful space
For its quick growth had fail'd it in its vase:

XLIII

And to her lady she a larger brought,
Figured with those sweet stories ancient
Which tell of youths and maidens passion-fraught
Changed into flowers of sweetness eminent,
With the fine skill of poet-sculptor wrought;
And with the Rose-tree, and the vases twain,
Sat Helena; and would alone remain.

156

XLIV

As if a midnight deed of death were plann'd
(So weigh'd her task on her instinctive heart!)
She first extinguish'd, with a creeping hand,
The tapers that robb'd darkness of its part;
Save one which in a dim recess did stand:
And then all stealthily did haste to clamber
From forth the bower'd casement of her chamber.

XLV

Of winding paths the foliage she divided;
Startling small birds from their light slumberings,
And little moths, which from the green leaves glided,
With sembled music on their pearly wings
And letter'd gold: a glade in which she prided
Herself with her wild flowers, she now did tread,
And saw them in the lurid moonlight dead;

XLVI

Nor paused to sigh or weep; but, all intent
On preservation of her Rose-tree's life,
Into a honeysuckle-bower she went,
And took therefrom a curved garden-knife
And a pearl-hafted delving instrument:
These in the foldings of her robe she buried,
And back into her lonely chamber hurried.

157

XLVII

Far night it was—and all the household slept:
Only, the watch-dogs bay'd the flitting moon,
Deform'd and white, by fast clouds overswept;
The bats were sporting in their dismal noon;
Low, sullen winds thro' all the dark leaves crept;
The frogs were croaking from a stagnant moat,
Fitfully echoed from the nighthawk's throat.

XLVIII

The portals all she barr'd; and by the gloom
Of moon and taper, which the clouds and wind
Made intermit with darkness thro' the room,
The mould around the vase she 'gan unbind,
To free her Rose-tree from that narrow tomb;
And dug beneath its roots with tenderest care,
And gently raised the black mass to the air.

XLIX

By one strong fibre a strange something swung
That with its load made shake her feverish hand,
And the dread vision-words like thunder rung
Thro' all her beating soul: still she did stand
As a white gravestone churchyard-yews among:
The wind blew out the taper, and the clouds
Choked the dim-gasping moon in tempest-shrouds.

158

L

Terror! what show'd the grey dawn's coming bland?
A woman, with ope mouth and glaring eyes,
Maniacally laughing: in one hand
Holding a Rose-tree towards the placid skies,
As to spell-bind them with that awful wand;
And with the other on her dead-child's face—
A clod among the root-clods at its base!

LI

O, misery! O, utter misery!
Sorrow, the bitter blood of love's full heart
Kills, kills, quite kills! O, dismal agony!
That all which passion doth to life impart
Can end in desolation, mournfully;
In beauty wreck'd, and reason all astray,
And dotage on a piece of livid clay!

LII

Alas, for the poor wits of Helena!
Even as a quivering cloud they long had fared
Which doth insensibly in heaven decay,
Unnotedly by subtle airs impair'd;
And now a tempest-gale had swept that way,
Impelling it, with fierce and thunderous wings,
To wild and fragmentary wanderings.

159

LIII

Now did she weep; and now chant long and cheerily,
As to the morning joy's inebriate bird;
Now hollowly laugh loud; and then most drearily
Moan with a vacant gazing, without word;
Then dance, with swingings bacchanal; till wearily
She sank into a brief-enduring trance—
With madness lined upon her countenance!

LIV

At soft alarums at her chamber-door,
She started to her feet; and in its vase
The terror-veiling Rose-tree placed once more;
And to her garden-grotto hied apace,
And set it on its cool-recessed floor;
And gave strange mandates to her people all
For celebration of its funeral.

LV

They saw that she was mad; and all she did
And all she said, to that dire cause assign'd;
And all that she fantastically bid
Obey'd, still soothing thus her raging mind:
And she the secret in her grotto hid
Continually fondled, day and night,
And shut it with her Rose-tree from all sight.

160

LVI

She freed it tenderly from root and mould
Of the now wither'd thing to which it cleaved;
And in her grotto-fountain clear and cold
Its earth-defiled body gently laved;
And each small tangled hair she did unfold,
And perfumed oils to each administer;
And steep'd its little limbs in lavender.

LVII

And then, enwrapp'd in a purpureal vest,
She laid it on her soft lap lovingly,
And over all its face her lips imprest;
And sang to it a low-voiced lullaby,
And fondled it to her blue-veined breast;
And never mother o'er her health-rosed child
With more impassion'd mother-fondness smiled.

LVIII

A gurgle from the still fount of her heart
Rose to the loud air of her storm-torn mind,
As thus her madness played its reason-part,
And sigh'd sweet peace about her. O, to find
A fond dream realized, love so doth start
Into fulfilment, that the grave's due bones
With life's aurorean beauty it enzones!

161

LIX

“Dead is my sweet babe, and must buried be;
“We may not keep the dust we love, for ever:
“Go with thee graveward shall thine own Rose-tree,
“And I, dear baby! will forsake thee never;
“But soon beneath the sod will come, to see
“How spring the fresh flowers from thy pillow drear
“We three will have one rest, my baby dear!”

LX

Thus murmur'd Helena, as she enwreathed
The tiny clay with all the balmiest flowers
That ceaseless fragrance thro' her garden breathed
In procreant greeting to their paramours,
And with her Rose-tree's ruins all-o'erdeath'd;
And slowly swathed it in a shroud of white,
O'ergarlanded with pearls, of circling light.

LXI

The precious relic in the vase she laid,
And with its former mould recover'd it:
The vase with ivy green she did embraid,
With eglantine and woodbine interknit;
And a gold-broider'd silken cloth she made,
To bind in sumptuous foldings over all;
And closed it in an ivory coffin small.

162

LXII

No learned music; soul-impenetrating,
Supreme in the authority of sounds,
Death-ceremonies with great pomp enstating;
Was heard in Helena's lone garden-grounds,
As all her servants stood her will awaiting
Around the little grave prepared there
For sad interment of her Rose-tree fair:

LXIII

But, as she lower'd it to its burial,
And as the hiding earth around it fell,
She moan'd a low dirge o'er its funeral—
“Sweet death-in-life, and life-in-death, farewell!”
She said, with hollow voice—“within the pall
“Of my involving heart I fold thee still,
“And it shall warm thee in thy slumbers chill!

LXIV

“Ha! ha! there nothing is 'twixt life and death;
“For I have seen thine eyes of heaven-hue,
“And felt upon my cheek thy violet breath,
“And kiss'd upon thy cheek the rose's dew;
“And so, where now thy beauty slumbereth,
“Wilt thou in my blown Rose-tree reappear:
“We three will have one waking, baby dear!”

163

LXV

They cannot laugh, those vacant servitors,
Altho' they deem it all mad mockery;
But each, in fear, the mournful scene deplores,
And muses on the hour when he must die;
And sees the picture which he most abhors—
Himself encoffin'd, and to darkness thrust,
And worms the sole life in his livid dust.

LXVI

Mad, mad, to her last hour, was Helena!
Of naught but rose-trees was her eager care:
With anxious eye she watch'd for their decay,
And their most living grace was her despair:
Vase after vase she broke; and sobb'd dismay
And agony of heart, to there behold
Nothing but matted roots and clotted mould.

LXVII

And where her Rose-tree had its garden-grave,
The icy winds upon her bare frame beating,
They found her, shatter'd as a breaking wave,
One winter-midnight; of the ground entreating
With piteous cries, some instant boon to have
And clutching with her nails the frozen sod,
And praying for her buried babe to God!

164

LXVIII

They bore her to her chamber; and there grew
Over poor Helena, before she died,
A faintest consciousness: but all she knew,
Was of her Rose-tree and its stricken pride;
And when another in her pining view
Was placed, with hope to comfort, she but smiled
At the kind cheat, and would not be beguiled.

LXIX

“Let me be buried with my Rose-tree sweet;
“For then I may have dreams to light the grave!”
Thus, in that gleam of sense, did she entreat;
And then anew of fearful things did rave,
Until her throbbing heart-pulse ceased to beat:
Her prayer with those who heard was sanctified;
And she was buried by her baby's side.

LXX

And, what of Agathon? What of a cloud
Of sun and mist, that pauseth o'er the hills?
What, of a lark which ether-beams enshroud?
What, of a rose whose balm the soft air fills?
A zephyr by whose breath frail flowers are bow'd?
What, of a hue? a tone? a look?—a thought,
Which even the pensive thinker fixeth not?

THE END

The subject of this poem was suggested to its author by a tale narrated to him by a poetry-adoring friend of his, to whom he had been reading Keats' divinely beautiful version of the pathetic novella of Boccacio—“Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil.” The principal incident of the one story will be found to bear much “unlike likeness” to that of the other. This somewhat immaterial circumstance is here intimated, merely that the author's “anticipation” may forestall the critic's “discovery.”