Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Oh! if there be a spot upon the earth
Where ruin hath more lightly laid her hand
Than elsewhere, surely it is this fair place!
Who ever saw decay more beautiful,
Than when she holds her silent court as now
Within the mouldering crypts of Heidelberg?
Nay, one might think that Time himself were awed
By such memorials of man's pomp and power,
So that he walked with somewhat of a soft
And reverential step, as we should tread
Over the ashes of departed friends.

Spirit of Desolation! Men may come
To do thee homage in thy lone retreats,
When broad-leaved summer hangs about the walls
Her drapery of various green to hide
The unseemly scars of time, and from the towers
Gay flowering creepers fling their tendrils down
For the soft summer winds to wanton with,—
A banner bright as those that floated there
Upon some pageant day in olden time.
Yes, doubtless this would be a lovely place
At such a season,—when the tufted pinks
And scented wallflowers cling to every stone,
And when the narrow mountain-paths appear

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Winding through vineyards, rich with purple grapes.
Yet that is not the season when the power
Of Desolation is most deeply felt.
No; winter hath a beauty of its own,
And more in harmony with spots like these.
The summer loves not silence: her great charm
Is in the concourse of a thousand sounds:—
The birds, the winds, the very earth herself
Breathing with life at every bursting pore,
And that low ringing melody that comes
I know not whence or how, except it be
From things inanimate;—so all unlike
To winter's tranquil and unbroken hush,
When frosts have locked the trickling well-springs up
In the earth's caverns, and the winds are furled
Within the bosom of the brooding storm.

There is a deep embrasure in the hall
Wherein I sat, so buried and absorbed
In thought, I almost seemed to have become
Part of the spirit of that lonely place.
It passed upon me like a dreamy spell,
And viewless as the air that clothes the earth.

About the Castle stood the shaggy hills,
Hung round with dark and uncouth legends,—such
As feed great minds, and are themselves the mind
Of a great nation; and amongst the woods
Young boys and little maidens went about,
Stripping the glossy ivy from the trees,
To hang as Christmas garlands round their doors.
Far off, a group of charcoal burners stood,
And from their fire the constant smoke went up
In curls of faintest blue,—how silently!
And ever and anon the chattering jay

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With his rude note awoke the slumbering woods,
Displacing the sweet stillness that was there.
But then the silence came again, and grew
Far more intense—with now and then a pause,—
When an old fount, that fell with splashing sound
On the green stones below the Castle wall,
Smote on my ear; a sound most desolate,
And dreary as a tune that comes to mind
In some lone bower where those we've loved and lost
Were wont to be, and now can be no more!

All these things came upon me with a shock,
Yet wherefore it were hard to say, when all
So silent were, and so supremely calm,—
Yet did they come upon me like a sound
That breaks on silence unawares, a shock
Unsettling many most familiar thoughts,
And feelings that were household in my heart.
I was as one who dimly felt his way
Among great truths and perilous mysteries,
To whom the knowledge of deep things did seem
About to be revealed,—the mighty powers
With which the air is all impregnated,
And the great earth, and the far-rolling sea,
And the unquiet intellect of man;
That something which is like the lightning-fire
That leaps and lives within the thundercloud,
And is its fiery soul, and drives it on
In fierce career against the wind! Then came
That desperate, sickening pang of impotence,
Which cannot grasp the truth that it hath touched,
As if that touch had paralyzed its hand.
But quick a sense of exultation rose,
And an ethereal buoyancy that thrilled
My very soul, and lightened all my life

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Of that which weighed it down, and lifted me
Far up upon the wings of power. I saw
The mighty truth that I would fain possess
Fixed in a region above all things else,
And in that region did I seem to walk.
Oh! it was like a distant city seen
All lying in a bath of beauteous light,
Within the heart of a rich golden haze,
Cheating the evening traveller's anxious eye
Of many a mile of weary distance—when
The sun goes down, and all is gloom again.

O wherefore have these tranquil images
Of deepest winter, with its drear expanse
Of brooding silence, wrought within my soul
So hotly and unquietly? For who
Would e'er have dreamed that such profound repose,
Snow-buried, wind-less, desolate, and cold,
Was but a gate to the invisible world,
An unexpected outlet to the land
Of inmost thought, which men so seldom reach,
Whose truths appear unspeakably to shun
The chains of words, and even to elude
The outlines of material images?

O Mother Earth! how near thou art to Heaven!
For matter lies for ever in the lap
Of spirit, and their subtle boundaries
Fade, and revive, and quiver like the light,
In most intelligent confusion, now
Efface, and now repaint themselves again,
Repose one moment in distinctness, then
Gleam like the infinite without an edge,
And melt within the furnace-fires of thought,
Seen, yet unseen, now glowing on the eye,
And now withdrawn in an excess of light

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Deeper than darkness. So these limits seem,
Dividing realms so opposite, and spheres
Which underlie each other,—rugged cliffs
That crumble at a touch, yet from whose heights,
As from the undiscovered end of space,
Men fall at once into some other world,
Some new and unimaginable life;—
Walls that man knocks against and knocks in vain,
And yet so imperceptibly confused
That all seems smooth as summer lake between,—
Matter and spirit pressing on each other,
Stealing or borrowing each the other's place,
With sweet encroachments, now as calm and slow
As the white flush of dawn, now shooting swift
Like the cold arrows of the boreal fire
That climb half heaven at once in rosy flight,
Or mingling unconsumingly in depths
Of flickering splendours, volatile as are
The vivid hues at eve exhaled in space
Out of the speechless throbbing sunsets.

Thus
Mind hath a space, a medium of its own,
Room for itself, more intimate and near,
More vast and more accessible, than that
Through which material worlds must plough their way
Not unresisted; and the softest scenes,
Fair forms, faint sounds, and fickle airy hues,
The play of light, the splash of waters, pomps
Of rolling clouds that creak not, and the blank
Of midnight's unreverberating ear,
The strain of silence listening for a sound,
The patterns of the moonlight on the grass,
The undulations of sweet scents,—all these

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Give way, like snow-drifts, 'neath the weight of thought,
And let us down through the material world,
As if it were a veil of thinnest silk,
Into an inner world, whose fantasies
Are few in number, dwelling far apart,
Alone, in couples, or like nomad tribes
Upon the roomy steppe, and where all thoughts
Are colourless, without terrestrial shapes,
And with an influence like creative words,
So that each thought is word and work at once,
Substantial, permanent, and giant-like,
Widening the mind, transfiguring the will,
And taking down the frightened faculties
To that deep point in self, where God vouchsafes
To confine on our thoughts, and touch our souls.

It struck the hour of noon: the quiet sound
Came muffled through the fleecy folds of mist,
That thickly hung upon the town below.
So faint was it and soft—yet so distinct—
It seemed the spirit of a sound, escaped
From some more gross and heavy atmosphere.