 | Praeterita (1863) |  |
102
FRAGMENT OF AN ALLEGORY.
My tale is but a shadow and a sign.
Between the column'd summits broadly strown,
The billowy light converged to blood-red zone.
Lovely, and waning as a thing divine,
Came eve, as even never came before,
With red-gray rush to stagger to their core
Eternal steeps, mysterious; by whose crest
The floated vapour shattering over-bore
The bleak-eyed raven in his glacier nest.
Not less, when all the naked summits wore
An echo-warmth against their iris west,
Failed out the silken melancholy gleam
Celestial, failing under spectral ways,
All blindness, whence the sky-prevailing rays
Are lost, as some great thought that threads a dream,
And lost the crimson wreaths that ring'd the burning stream.
Between the column'd summits broadly strown,
The billowy light converged to blood-red zone.
Lovely, and waning as a thing divine,
Came eve, as even never came before,
With red-gray rush to stagger to their core
Eternal steeps, mysterious; by whose crest
The floated vapour shattering over-bore
The bleak-eyed raven in his glacier nest.
Not less, when all the naked summits wore
An echo-warmth against their iris west,
Failed out the silken melancholy gleam
Celestial, failing under spectral ways,
All blindness, whence the sky-prevailing rays
111
And lost the crimson wreaths that ring'd the burning stream.
There sat the glittering heights immoveable,
Roof'd with the sun and stair'd in ridgey seams,
Holding the folded azure's vapour streams;
And from those heights a level dull and grey,
Dull as its sand and pale as pale decay,
Dispread perpetual towards a shining sea
That was but mirage cloud, which blent away
And to the skies glow'd vast and mightily.
Roof'd with the sun and stair'd in ridgey seams,
Holding the folded azure's vapour streams;
And from those heights a level dull and grey,
Dull as its sand and pale as pale decay,
Dispread perpetual towards a shining sea
That was but mirage cloud, which blent away
And to the skies glow'd vast and mightily.
There an old man was seated on a bulk
Of salt, that beasts had lick'd in pits and jags,
With great knees huddled towards his chin, and shrunk
His lean ring'd throat which fell in fleshless bags.
Above him spread illimitable crags,
And gray lights trembled from them: and his arm
Trembled from wrist to elbow where his face
Rested; the other moved not from its place
Saving to screen his eyes, when over-warm
A chance gleam wounding bit their weak white scums:
And then he mumbled groans and stirr'd his mouth
To show one wolf-tooth hung in rusty gums;
Nodding with ague, if the whispering south
Breathed but to puff a thistle seed along,
And the woods bloom'd beneath it: yet his limbs
Were palsied, and a wrinkling shiver strong
Winning fierce way from foot to forehead climbs.
Of salt, that beasts had lick'd in pits and jags,
With great knees huddled towards his chin, and shrunk
His lean ring'd throat which fell in fleshless bags.
Above him spread illimitable crags,
And gray lights trembled from them: and his arm
Trembled from wrist to elbow where his face
112
Saving to screen his eyes, when over-warm
A chance gleam wounding bit their weak white scums:
And then he mumbled groans and stirr'd his mouth
To show one wolf-tooth hung in rusty gums;
Nodding with ague, if the whispering south
Breathed but to puff a thistle seed along,
And the woods bloom'd beneath it: yet his limbs
Were palsied, and a wrinkling shiver strong
Winning fierce way from foot to forehead climbs.
For wizard he had been of knowledge ripe,
But that a stronger weird had chain'd him there
In this perpetual solitude. The gripe
Of age was on him, and a lean despair
Of impotence that held him from his share
In those delights his stronger years had fed:
They, blasted as the scalp of his foul head
In seamy gaps or slimy mats of hair,
Had perish'd inch-meal, but the ache lived on
In that great mesh of ruin, made its lair
By all corruption; as the fire-worm's glow
Among the rotting leaves. There, woe-begone,
He sate, and on the furthest peaky snow
He lifted melancholy eye-balls rolling slow.
But that a stronger weird had chain'd him there
In this perpetual solitude. The gripe
Of age was on him, and a lean despair
Of impotence that held him from his share
In those delights his stronger years had fed:
They, blasted as the scalp of his foul head
In seamy gaps or slimy mats of hair,
Had perish'd inch-meal, but the ache lived on
113
By all corruption; as the fire-worm's glow
Among the rotting leaves. There, woe-begone,
He sate, and on the furthest peaky snow
He lifted melancholy eye-balls rolling slow.
Ay, on the limit of eternal rock,
Or on the upper limitless expanse,
Or where lake mirrors crossing clouds bemock,
Painting as sharp below their plumed advance,
As one that sees such prospect in a trance,
He gazed, and gazing doubted all he saw
For phantom mist or mirage: and he loathed
The stately hills past loathing, glory-clothed,
And found in fairest thing a falsehood and a flaw,
Doubting himself besides and loathing nature's law.
Or on the upper limitless expanse,
Or where lake mirrors crossing clouds bemock,
Painting as sharp below their plumed advance,
As one that sees such prospect in a trance,
He gazed, and gazing doubted all he saw
For phantom mist or mirage: and he loathed
The stately hills past loathing, glory-clothed,
And found in fairest thing a falsehood and a flaw,
Doubting himself besides and loathing nature's law.
| Praeterita (1863) | |