University of Virginia Library

II. PART II.

The morn rose blue and glorious o'er the world;
The steamer left the black and oozy wharves,
And floated down between dark ranks of masts.
We heard the swarming streets, the noisy mills;
Saw sooty foundries full of glare and gloom,
Great bellied chimneys tipped by tongues of flame,
Quiver in smoky heat. We slowly passed
Loud building-yards, where every slip contained
A mighty vessel with a hundred men
Battering its iron sides. A cheer! a ship
In a gay flutter of innumerous flags
Slid gaily to her home. At length the stream
Broadened 'tween banks of daisies, and afar
The shadows flew upon the sunny hills;
And down the river, 'gainst the pale blue sky,
A town sat in its smoke. Look backward now!
Distance has stilled three hundred thousand hearts,
Drowned the loud roar of commerce, changed the proud
Metropolis which turns all things to gold,
To a thick vapour o'er which stands a staff
With smoky pennon streaming on the air.
Blotting the azure too, we floated on,
Leaving a long and weltering wake behind.
And now the grand and solitary hills
That never knew the toil and stress of man,
Dappled with sun and cloud, rose far away.
My heart stood up to greet the distant land
Within the hollows of whose mountains lochs
Moan in their restless sleep; around whose peaks,
And craggy islands ever dim with rain,
The lonely eagle flies. The ample stream
Widened into a sea. The boundless day
Was full of sunshine and divinest light,
And far above the region of the wind
The barred and rippled cirrus slept serene,
With combed and winnowed streaks of faintest cloud
Melting into the blue. A sudden veil
Of rain dimmed all; and when the shade drew off,
Before us, out toward the mighty sun,
The firth was throbbing with glad flakes of light.
The mountains from their solitary pines
Ran down in bleating pastures to the sea;
And round and round the yellow coasts I saw
Each curve and bend of the delightful shore
Hemmed with a line of villas white as foam.
Far off, the village smiled amid the light;
And on the level sands, the merriest troops
Of children sported with the laughing waves,
The sunshine glancing on their naked limbs.
White cottages, half smothered in rose blooms,
Peeped at us as we passed. We reached the pier,
Whence girls in fluttering dresses, shady hats,
Smiled rosy welcome. An impatient roar
Of hasty steam; from the broad paddles rushed
A flood of pale green foam, that hissed and freathed
Ere it subsided in the quiet sea.
With a glad foot I leapt upon the shore,
And, as I went, the frank and lavish winds
Told me about the lilac's mass of bloom,
The slim laburnum showering golden tears,
The roses of the gardens where they played.
At eve I lay in utter indolence
Upon a crag's high heather-purpled head.
The sun hung o'er a sea of wrinkled gold,
And o'er him fleecy vapour, rack of cloud,
And thin suspended mists hung tremulous
In fiery ecstasy; while high in heaven,
Discerned afar between the crimson streaks,
And melting away toward the lucid east,
Like clouds of cherubs tiny cloudlets slept
In soft and tender rose. When I returned,
The air was heavy with the breath of flowers,
And from the houses of the rich there came
Low-breathing music through the balmy gloom:
Linked lovers passed me, lost in murmurous talk:
That fragrant night of happiness and love
My soul closed o'er its secret like a rose
That sates itself with its own heart of bliss.
That fragrant night of happiness and love
She seemed to lie within my heart and smile.
The village lights were sprinkled on the hill;
And on the dim and solitary loch,
Our oar-blades stirred the sea to phantom light,
A hoary track ran glimmering from the keel.
Like scattered embers of a dying fire,
The village lights had burnt out one by one;
I lay awake, and heard at intervals
A drowsy wave break helpless on the shore,
Trailing the rattling pebbles as it washed
Back to the heaving gloom. “Come, blessed Sleep,
And with thy fingers of forgetfulness
Tie up my senses till the day we meet,
And kill this gap of time.” By sweet degrees
My slumberous being closed its weary leaves
In drowsy bliss, and slowly sank in dream,
As sinks the water-lily 'neath the wave.
Next morning I rose early and looked forth:
The quiet sky was veiled with dewy haze;
Beneath it slept the dull and beamless sea;
The flowers hung dim and sodden in the dew;
Strange birds fed in the walks, and one unseen
Sang from the apple-tree. I dressed in haste;
And when the proud sun fired the dripping pines,
I wandered forth, and drank with thirsty eyes
The coolness of the sun-illumined brooks
In which the quick trout played. The speckless light,
The beauty of the morning, drew me on
Into a gloomy glen. The heavy mists
Crept up the mountain sides; I heard the streams;
The place was saddened with the bleat of sheep.
“'Tis surely in such lonely scenes as these,
Mythologies are bred. The rolling storms—
The mountains standing black in mist and rain,
With long white lines of torrents down their sides—
The ominous thunder creeping up the sky—
The homeless voices at the dead of night
Wandering among the glens—the ghost-like clouds
Stealing beneath the moon—are but as stuff
Whence the awe-stricken herdsman could create
Gods for his worship.” Then, as from a cup,
Morn spilt warm sunshine down the mountain-side.
Cuckoo! cuckoo! woke somewhere in the light;
I started at the sound, and cried, “O Voice!
I've heard you often in the poet's page—
Now, in your stony wilds—and I have read
Of white arms clinging round a sentenced neck
Upon a morn of death; of bitter wrong
Freezing sweet love to hate; of fond ambition
Which plaits and wears a wretched crown of straw,
And dreams itself a king; of inward shame,
To which a lingering and long-drawn death
Were bed of roses, incense, and a smile.
With anxious heart I hear my distant hours
Gather like far-off thunder. Canst thou tell
What things await me on my road of life
As did your floating voice?” Behold the sea!
Far flash its glittering leagues, and 'neath the sun
There gleams from coast to coast a narrow line
Of blinding and intolerable light.
I lay beneath a glimmering sycamore
Drowsy with murmuring bees.—As o'er my limbs
There palpitated countless lights and shades,
I heard the quiet music of the waves,
And saw the great hills standing dim in heat.
At height of noon a gloomy fleece of rain
Was hanging o'er the zenith. On it crept,
Drinking the sunlight from a hundred glens;
Blackening hill by hill; smiting the sea's
Bright face to deadly pallor; till at last
It drowned the world from verge to verge in gloom.
A sky-wide blinding glare—the thunder burst—
Again heaven opened in a gape of flame;
Heavy as lead came down the loosened rain—
I heard it hissing in the smoking sea;
It slackened soon, the sun blazed through, and then
The fragment of a rainbow in the gloom
Burned on the rainy sea—a full-sail'd ship
Apparent stood within the glorious light
From hull to highest spar. The tempest trailed
His shadowy length across the distant hills:
The birds from hiding-places came and sang,
And ocean laughed for miles beneath the sun.
I and my cousins started in the morn
To wander o'er the mountains and the moors.
How different from the hot and stony streets!
The dark red springy turf was 'neath our feet,
Our walls the blue horizon, and our roof
The boundless sky; a perfect summer-day
We walked 'mid unaccustomed sights and sounds;
Fair apparitions of the elements
That lived a moment on the air, then passed
To the eternal world of memory.
O'er rude unthrifty wastes we held our way
Whence never lark rose upward with a song,
Where no flower lit the marsh: the only sights,
The passage of a cloud—a thin blue smoke
Far on the idle heath—now caught, now lost,
The pink road wavering to the distant sky.
At noon we rested near a mighty hill,
That from our morning hut slept far away
Azure and soft as air. Upon its sides
The shepherds shouted 'mid a noise of dogs;
A stream of sheep came slowly trickling down,
Spread to a pool, then poured itself in haste.
The sun sunk o'er a crimson fringe of hills:
The violet evening filled the lower plain,
From which it upward crept and quenched the lights—
Awhile the last peak burned in lingering rose,
And then went out. We toiled at dead of night
Through a deep glen, the while the lonely stars
Trembled above the ridges of the hills;
And in the utter hush the ear was filled
With low sweet voices of a thousand streams,
Some near, some far remote—faint trickling sounds
That dwelt in the great solitude of night
Upon the edge of silence. A sinking moon
Hung on one side and filled the shattered place
With gulfs of gloom, with floating shades, and threw
A ghostly glimmer on wet rock and pool.
Then came a day of deep and blissful peace,
In which familiar thoughts and images
By which we know and recognise ourselves
Fell from me, and I felt as new and strange
As a free spirit which has shaken off
The wrappings of this life. Upon a stair,
The remnant of the tower, I sat and watched
Tumultuous piles of cloud upon the hills,
The sea-mew sweeping silent as a dream,
The black rocks ringed with white, the creeping sail.
The wandering greens and purples of the sea.
We heard the people singing in the hay,
A single girl-voice leading, all the field
Bursting in chorus; a little off, the Laird,
Upon his shaggy pony of the isles,
Drew rein and heard the legend of his house.
At eventime the mighty barn was cleared,
The torches lit, the lads and lasses came,
And to the yelling pipes, in loop and chain,
And whirling circles, spun the maddened reels.
Next morning we came early 'cross the moors,
And reached again the village by the sea.
“To-day I chanced to pass
A churchyard covered with forgetful grass;
And as one puts the hair from off a face,
I put aside the grass; and, on the stones,
Saw roses wreathing bones:
And, in the rankest corner of the place,
Set in a ghastly scroll of skulls and flowers,
And belts of serpents twined and curled,
I traced a crowned and mantled Death,
Asleep upon a World.
How grim the carver's style—
The tarnished coffins, rotten palls,
The weeping of the charnel walls,—
When one is lord of happy hours,
When one is breathing priceless breath—
Made happy by a smile!
“The sheep they leap in golden parks;
My blood is bliss, my heart is pleasure;
Then let my song flow like a lark's
Above his nested treasure.
What care I for the circling cup?
What care I for applausive breath?
For the stern secret folded up
In the closed hand of Death?
Bring me Love's honied nightshade; fill it high;
I know its madness, all its wild deceit;
I know the anguish of the morning sky
When brain and eyeballs beat.
I cannot throw it down and fly—
The poison is so sweet
That I must drink and drink, although I die.”
The thought of the to-morrow was a goad
That urged me forth along the lonely shore:
Alone I wandered through the breathless gloom,
Feeding upon the honey of my heart
With a strange thrill of fear. While on I walked,
As if the sea would fain delay my steps,
Out of the darkness rushed a ghostly fringe
Wailing, and licked my feet, and then withdrew.
What wouldst thou with me, melancholy one?
What prophecy is in thy voice to-night?
What evil dost thou 'bode? Then, o'er my head,
To a low breathing wind the darkness cracked,
Rolled to a crescent shore of vapour, washed
By a blue bay of midnight keen with stars.
The moon came late, and quivered on the waves;
And, far away, 'tween dim horizons, beds
Of restless silver shifted on the sea.
Home by the margin of the deep I went,
And sought repose; and all the night a surge
Mourned bodefully around the shores of sleep.
“Let us slip in.”
Hope's door closed with a clang.—I rose up calm,
Calm as a country when the storm is o'er,
And broken boughs are hanging from the trees,
And swollen streams have crept within their banks,
Leaving a mighty marge of wreck and sand
Along the soppy fields. When I went home,
My mother dwelling in the empty house
With sorrow for a husband, like reproach
Struck through my selfish rage. She crept to bed,
And, from the barren desert of the night,
Prayer, like a choir of angels, bore her up
To heaven, where she talked alone with God.
I ground between my teeth, “The day has come
That progressed like a monarch with his court;
Of whose approach each courier hour that passed,
Brought sweetest tidings, like gay winds that sing
In the delighted ears of sunny May,
Sitting among the golden buttercups.
‘June, drowned with roses, comes;’ to which my thoughts
Arose, as from the earth a thousand larks,
In salutation to the dawn. And now
I sit degraded. Palaces of dream
Shivered around; uncounted wealth that stuffed,
This morn, the coffers of my heart, all false
And base as forgers' coin.
“As a wild mother, when her child is dead,
Flings herself down on the unheeding face,
And pours more passionate kisses on the lips
Than when they kissed again, and then starts up,
And, in a dreamy luxury of grief,
Strews the white corse with flowers:—‘I'll lay thee out,
My poor dead love, and fondlier gaze on thee,
Than when thou smiled amid thy golden hair,
And sang more sweet than Hope. No tears; for Death
Saw thee when loveliest, and his icy touch
Preserves thy look for ever. It is well:
The only things that change not are the dead.
Now thou art safe from Time's defacing hand,
From staling custom, and, sadder far than all,
From human fickleness. In after years,
It might be, I would scarce have followed thee,
A mourner to thy grave. Thou art so fair,
That, gazing on thee, clamorous grief becomes
For very reverence, mute. If mighty Death
Made our rude human faces by his touch
Divinely fair as thine, O, never more
Would strong hearts break o'er biers. There sleeps to-night
A sacred sweetness on thy silent lips,
A solemn light upon thine ample brow,
That I can never, never hope to find
Upon a living face. Within thy grave
I'll lay thee; and above will memory hang
An ever-mourning willow!’”