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diff --git a/old/51770-0.txt b/old/51770-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 55f0300..0000000 --- a/old/51770-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2921 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Connected Poems, by Charles Seabridge - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Connected Poems - -Author: Charles Seabridge - -Release Date: April 15, 2016 [EBook #51770] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONNECTED POEMS *** - - - - -Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - - CONNECTED POEMS. - - - - - CONNECTED POEMS. - - - BY - - CHARLES SEABRIDGE. - - Oubliant tout à fait la race humaine, je me fis des sociétés de - créatures parfaites, aussi celestes par leurs vertus que par leurs - beautés, d’amis sûrs, tendres, fidèles, tels que je n’en troüvai - jamais ici-bas.--_Confessions de Rousseau, Partie_ II., _livre 9_. - - Qui Deum amat, conari non potest, ut Deus ipsum contra amet.--_B. - de Spinoza, Ethica, Pars._ V. - - LONDON: - TRÜBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW, - 1866. - - - - - CONNECTED POEMS. - - - I. - - O poor preludings to some happier praise, - Thou frail decoy to merit myriad-hued, - The violets of whose virtue pave your ways, - Breathing beneficence on your sullen mood; - Go, test your worth, nor once obtrude the award - On who, unanxious, cannot pant for fame; - His only verdict, whom these lines applaud, - Shall touch my soul with sense of praise or blame, - Howe’er it be; this verse has frighted woe, - And caught the glimpses of a banished Heaven, - Haply surpassing in its quiet glow - Life’s fickle transports, nourishment and leaven; - If here is aught, its dues shall be allow’d; - I rest content, but of my office proud. - - - II. - - Aye fashioned from the mirror of the soul - That lends its shadow to this fleeting world, - How doth thy beauty in itself control - The spirit and the form wherein ’tis whirled; - In others earth beneath the inward fire - Sinks down, abashed, nor knows to bear the fame, - While some more mean exalt the entrancing mire, - Smothering the sparkles of celestial flame; - Yet either wanting, for, with those of earth, - Earth’s purer mixture hallows what it lends, - And easier leads the sons of self-same birth - To fathom beauty in its heavenlier ends: - ’Tis fit Nature should find a lovely hearse, - When man by death springs from the Universe. - - - III. - - If there be some true meaning and a sign - In all the altars where sad suppliants pray, - And if the words they sometime subtly twine, - Be not unpregnant of a deeper lay, - What depths of mystery might not then be read, - What gages of new hope lie undiscerned, - In all the purpose that thy beauties wed, - And all the thought in glowing shrine inurned, - In the unfathomable music, weaving - The young glad utterance of unconscious vows, - And in the eloquence, quickening and relieving, - Like sunset lingering round becalmèd prows; - The heaven that wooes, now flashes, from that eye - Hath stol’n Jove’s lightning and his joys from high. - - - IV. - - Fain would I speak of all thy hopes disclose, - My pen, charm’d with delights, scarce will steal on, - Lingering about the rapture which it knows - It dallies coyly with an idle song; - Too long the prospect which mine eye surveys, - How shall I mark each flower or stay to cull? - Through light, through shade, Perfection planes the ways - With sweet variety, that grows not dull; - Each new enchantment seems itself so fair, - That the last pride spoils his ancestor’s aims: - So justly tempered all, none can impair - Concent’ring beauty’s just imperial claims; - Each borrows new delight while it conveys, - And leads to harmony by various ways. - - - V. - - Who hath not seen the morning breaking gaily, - The rivers leaping into dazzling light? - Who hath not view’d the eve declining palely, - Flouting her rosy stillness with black night? - Who then hath mark’d thee not in joy delightful, - Careering on thy young soul’s restless flow? - Or who hath, sadly, blam’d not sorrow spiteful, - Tempering thy beauty with a heavenly glow? - The even tenor of thy bosom led past, - Nor brook’d those tremors that disturb light breasts; - But, like a holy ocean, calm, pure, steadfast, - Just heav’d beneath its load which on it rests; - Streaked with faint tints of long delicious light, - Whose radiance lures but never tires the sight. - - - VI. - - Bound in a little room, my heart exulting, - Surveys the treasures of unmeasured space; - A thousand pathways in one spot resulting, - Disclose the errors of the human race; - What all men seek within that centre lies, - Whose ripening virtues shun the general view, - Lest all should dub them beautiful and wise, - And all that nature has of good and true: - O well for me that worth all would admire - Most should unconscious leave to my employ; - So may thy budding beauties breathe their fire, - All unattempted by the world’s annoy: - So nature crowns her gifts by liberal growth, - She owes success and sanctifies her troth. - - - VII. - - But soon the rosebud, in developed beauty, - Unfolds its maiden, luring charms to light; - Soon love usurps the walks of tired duty, - And shows its godlike fulness to the sight; - The eaglet soon gladdens his golden plumage, - In the intensest orient of the sun; - Even the meek violet gently must assume age, - And glance through leaves the merit she hath won; - The noon it stealeth from the dewy morning, - And amorous night catcheth the trembling day, - The spring must ripen, and the summer’s warning - That autumn shall not linger more than May; - Thou too must change, developed till all love thee, - And yet a change shall hover just above thee. - - - VIII. - - If thou must change, beauty shall form the groove, - And nourish promise in a firmer mould, - Which, all unchequered, onward still shall move, - Informed with wisdom and in virtue old: - Thus shalt thou live, but no, what years can add - To the keen edge of thy unbated mind? - Or what hath wisdom, more than reason had, - When in thy form she mustered all her kind? - Within the acorn lies the oak’s whole essence, - Man can accomplish but what in man dwells; - The iron that supples with its incalescence, - Yet wears the nature that its coldness tells; - So, yet unfashioned, in thy youth reposes - The germ that turns to use young nature’s roses. - - - IX. - - ’Tis thou hast taught me what of truth I know, - Kind debt, that binds me nearer unto thee, - That worth’s best triumph scorns all outward show - And works within its quiet mystery; - That the same virtues walk in various light, - Accomplishing by each their several ends, - That as the sun to day, the moon to night, - This, its pale lustre, that, its ardour lends; - So with each mortal’s differing merits twined, - A separate glory crowns peculiar aims, - And myriad fates, in one deep urn combined, - Stamp, with one issue, more than million claims; - Some only tower, above the rest, supreme, - That such thy lot, methinks, it well would seem. - - - X. - - Rare lot where reason is with fate combined, - Where envy enters not, but only love; - Thought, expectation, fancy, intertwined, - All could not fashion, that which thou dost prove: - Where then is time for jealous jarring thought - To ruffle the full transport of our heaven, - Or clog the wings of adoration fraught - With purity and hope’s exulting leaven? - Sunk in the sense of that supremest pleasure, - Here let me lose myself to live in thee; - A priceless boon, I only know to measure, - By what it costs my soul again to flee: - From heaven I fall, and this must, sure, be hell, - Earth never looked so void, I know full well. - - - XI. - - Spirit of youth and joy and hope and love, - All this thy essence is and dwells in thee, - This praise but mocks thee, whilst thou soar’st above - Such vague assaults, in nature’s witchery! - Thou art a pearl, snatched from the angry deep, - A star, which envy hurled from comrade suns, - An opal, where all rays reflected sleep, - The summer lightning, glistering as it runs; - All things that loveable and lovely are, - Such thou appearest, in thy joyous hour; - Oft frolicsome as leaves, that dance from far, - When the wind dallies with some pensive flower; - All these thou art yet all of these express - Nought of the magic of thy loveliness. - - - XII. - - Lovely in joy but grander yet when rage - O’erflows the dams that reason interposed, - The barriers past, themselves must, loath, engage - And swell the tumult they’d have fain opposed; - There, once enlisted, shows the scene so fair, - Such modulation of impetuous wrath, - That what was scorn’d, now claims their tenderest care, - And arm’d in conscious worth they sally forth. - Aye, ever did thy just soul scorn the wrong, - ’Twas only virtue lured thee thus astray; - How oft to goodness did’st thou wile the strong, - By young enticement’s headstrong, winning way, - Till all of theirs was thine, and thou could’st pour - At love’s high altar gifts of virgin ore. - - - XIII. - - Young spirit, thou hast taught me what is joy, - And fathomed nature with a larger line; - How sweet to learn when nature’s powers deploy, - And o’er thy frame their dalliance combine: - Ye passions soothed to one unanimous end, - Thou concord breath’d through avenues of sound, - Witchery, ever winning, from its power to blend - Fancy’s light hints with intuition’s ground: - Fulness of power lives not with those who roam, - Dandling the toy of a fantastic grief, - Iconoclast of woe, it builds its home - In joy’s ebullience at its own relief; - Youth founds the pile where age contented dwells, - And drowns his dearth with draughts from childhood’s wells. - - - XIV. - - A young Apollo flush’d with love and beauty, - The world shall wonder owning thy command; - Now, the boy Eros, scorning rugged duty, - And mocking forms poor custom’s sole demand: - His archness blended with his sprightly grace, - His glance of love and fitfulness and sport, - His human godhead and heaven-moulded face; - These all are mingled in thy witching port: - And, more than these, the eloquence of thy look, - The energy whose fire informs thy frame; - Well might man read thee as the favourite book, - Wherein maternal nature graves her name. - In thy humanity perfection lives, - And kills th’ ideals which rash fiction gives. - - - XV. - - Youth is the torch that lights up beauty’s forms, - The sail that wafts us where our hopes repose, - Now steals it towards the heart which now it storms, - And gradual towards its own ideal grows; - It sifts the sands, and clasps the golden grains; - It weaves a rainbow through the mists of life; - Sluggard desire that faints, even as it strains, - And wears fulfilment, as a tedious wife, - Feels but the touch of youth, and rapturous soars - To other heights, imagining brighter views; - Youth is a woodland slope, whose mossy pores - Are bursting with the life of violet hues; - Melodious changes of a harp’s reply - To its sweet theme of mutability. - - - XVI. - - Art thou not goddess of this world, O Change? - Expound the riddle, otherwise who may, - Yet can I never from thy altar range, - Nature, artificer in a various way! - Enough for me if I may still adore - Each touch that throbs from thy maternal breast; - If I may linger by the lonely shore, - And find a universe of Elysian rest. - If that with hands reverent and pure and holy - I drag some relics from the unworthy shade, - Thou wilt assist, and fashion visions wholly - After the pattern which thyself hast made! - How more than mortal poor mankind should be, - If taught to crown the yearnings found in thee. - - - XVII. - - There is a virtue loftier than the rules - By which belief squares what it would digest, - There is a process which the subtler schools - Believe too simple for their high bequest; - A goddess hovers o’er this giddy earth, - Her snowy breasts are budding to the air, - Her sad smile ’s conquered peace yet shrinks from mirth, - Reclines she, and her arms invite, her hair, - Sole garment of her loveliness, conformed - To the semblance of a golden lap, the shrine - And cradle of all promise; here are formed - All creeds of holiness, beauty, divine - Truth, and immortal strivings unfulfilled, - And through the whole rich charity’s distilled. - - - XVIII. - - Man varies, ages change, and time unfolds - A different name writ on the selfsame scroll; - And one shall hate what his descendant holds - Immoveable, as the antithesis of the pole: - Then, wherefore snarl, wrangling o’er half-starved names, - That do but mock the thing which most believe? - Such jarring furthers not, but rather lames - The substance man would from the eternal weave: - Love, Beauty, Joy, echoes from inmost Nature, - Howe’er miscalled, must still remain the same; - Let man develope each distinctive feature, - And all shall worship then, what none dare blame: - Most born without the pale, yet linger there, - Nor mourn as lost, what ne’er employed their care. - - - XIX. - - There is a spirit that sanctifies the dulness - Of those, unconscious of the charm they boast; - There is a soul, sparkling in nature’s fulness, - Which laughs at custom’s quibbles, trembling ghost; - A love there is, whose breath trembles with godhead, - Which robs the desert of the wanderer’s fears; - The inexpressible pathways it hath trod, led - By intense silence, boding o’er the years: - It will not lend its harmony to words, - Nor lower reality by visions, torn - From knowledge fitful, that but speaks to herds, - Quivering with mutual wonder, mutual scorn. - Yet love is there, and will, in time, inform - All who have passed to sunshine out of storm. - - - XX. - - Wandering to other strains, my fancy dwells - Yet about the musings that enwrap thy name; - Aught that awakes some peal from far joy-bells, - Youth’s hopes, and holydays, recalls thy fame: - This hast thou sanctified by eloquent words, - And that enshrinèd in thy beauty lies; - As spring awakes and calls the joyous birds, - Truth comes with thee, at thy departure flies: - Yet gladlier o’er thy image would I pause, - Swelling the verse with music of thy name, - If once my efforts might support the cause, - Nor blot thy merits with my failure’s shame: - Enough, if indirect and faltering praise - Attest my love, failing thy fame to raise. - - - XXI. - - O the glad days, the promise of our spring, - When wandering by thy side I lived in thee! - Yet, can I hear the light winds carolling, - About the woods that echoed to our glee, - The heather on the hills, the long green downs, - The slopes, the glades, the sunshine and the shade, - The spring-time earth, the heaven that seldom frowns, - The love, whose substance dazzled all parade; - All is yet there, nor change hath marred the spot; - Remembrance fashions all as once it stood: - ’Tis not the same, the heather knows me not, - The dancing water, nor the talking wood; - And all is changed, and I am not the same, - Nought speaks of self, save some unreal name. - - - XXII. - - And can I rest the same and thou not here, - Whose essence flowed through, new-creating all? - Fancy dreamt not, thou wast indeed so dear, - Thy very presence made its splendour’s pall: - I held thee, as the substance of my hope, - The lovelier part of what to me belonged, - The very essence, and the eternal scope, - For which my thought and being were prolonged: - Witness thou heaven, what joy have I e’er found - In aught, that unto hope delightful seems, - Save when joy held us both in larger bound? - Thou wast the source of all young longing dreams: - If such my joy, how bitter sorrow’s blow, - That christens thy once haunts by terms of woe? - - - XXIII. - - But, pausing o’er the relics of past days, - A deadlier mischief strikes my bosom chill: - No more, alas! no more, my bosom sways - With joys, fresh-flowing from the heaven-capt hill; - No more, the quickening pulses of the world - May teach my soul to madden with its joy; - No more, its echoes, all confus’dly whirl’d, - O’erpower the troubling of each weak annoy: - ’Tis past; the voice is silent, and if now - A quiet bliss steals o’er declining years; - ’Tis but, that reason smooths the rugged brow, - Kissing the sources of uncertain tears: - The cup of rapture’s equal lent to all, - Drink once of bliss, and poor content must pall. - - - XXIV. - - And in this stream thy youthful limbs were borne, - Dear stream, I drink thy waters for his sake; - And on this grass, and by this flowering thorn, - His noon-day couch, we murmur’d half awake: - River, why flow’st thou on, so placid gleaming? - Why waves the grass its green and nymph-like hair? - Why both so tender and complacent seeming, - When he is gone who made you trebly fair? - Warm not thy waters with the love he gave, - O all unconscious or ungrateful stream? - Here would he sit, tempting the lazy wave, - With feet, whose ivory shamed some mermaid’s dream: - ’Tis I, not nature, err; she clasps her child, - And wins divinely, even as then she smiled. - - - XXV. - - Bosomed in the young years, perchance repose - As lovely forms, and spirits as divine; - He in the perfectness of youth arose, - Soon death may hold him in her mystic twine; - Nature that gave him to mankind, not long - Endures his absence from her ravished breast; - Sick for the love of what she looks upon, - She opes her veins to engulf him to sweet rest: - Now the keen chords of love, with thrilling touch, - Tremble intense music all along thy wings; - Now thou dost all pervade, and hallow such - As thought of joyance, and of beauty brings: - Swell now the thronging harmonies that roll - The breath of love and beauty through the soul! - - - XXVI. - - I will not mourn thee; when thou art not here, - Yet is thy influence present to my heart; - I will not moisten more wet memory’s bier, - Only some flowers shall play my saddening part; - Full well I know that, bursting distance’s chains, - A guardian angel, thou’lt attend my ways; - And I shall hear thee in the loftiest strains - That wake this world to muse on grander days: - A voice, whose silence is more strong than storms, - Shall conquer midnight in its soothing power; - The golden stars, from out their mazy swarms, - Chime with innumerous tongues the passing hour! - Nature’s epitome and Nature’s crown! - Replete with thee heaven’s minstrels murmur down. - - - XXVII. - - Thy words, with what sweet purport oft they come, - Breathing, like scented gales, along the years; - Their wafted odours still increase their sum, - And steal the music of delicious tears: - Each bank, whose reeds speak to the clear calm wave, - Whose rippling emulates thy softer tone, - Each tree, that beckons to some sheltering cave, - The torrent near, whose ardour’s like thy own; - By each of these, a separate tale was told, - Each claims the tribute of distinctive thought; - Here poetry’s witchcraft grew, with fostering, bold, - Here youth waxed amorous of what nature taught: - These still remain, nurturing such goodly seed, - Recall each word, and meditate each deed. - - - XXVIII. - - When, all unswayed by passion, or by thought, - When love nor care disturb’d thy even breast, - How dropp’d the golden words, with wisdom fraught, - Like the light flashing on Athena’s crest! - Here, by this stream, that wantons by this willow, - (By such a stream, the sage beguiled the day, - Wooing with mellifluous words the crisping billow,) - Thy sweetest art compels the grave to gay; - Ah! me, the words have lost the charm they ow’d - To disposition, nature, eloquence, tone; - The gesture, that from o’erwrought feeling flow’d, - The music of the voice, is all thine own; - And the poor tenement of a troubled brain - Confuses all, and cannot much retain. - - - XXIX. - - Beauty, a thing of nought, the sages say, - But relative to sense, blood, pulse, ear, eye; - The mockery of life, fool nature’s play, - Who trifles kingdoms on a wanton’s sigh; - It lives not in the object it endues, - It takes its colour from the lover’s breast; - Yet ’tis not there, it flits between, and wooes - Existence unexplained, and ne’er exprest: - Steal from it colour, smoothness, odour, shape, - The empty phantom who would care to clasp? - It plays its gambols, a fantastic ape, - Deriding those, who for its presence gasp; - Even the form exists not, all things lie - ’Twixt outward nothing, inward mystery. - - - XXX. - - ’Tis a fond creed, and drags into the stream - Truth, who sits by, and varies with the wave; - But fate decrees, that still the froward dream - Shall enthrall nature, and dig pride his grave: - If the form change, and colour be the dye - Of the sun’s brilliance breathing through the air; - If men still vary, and if all things fly, - Shifting from real base to seeming fair; - If truth should seem to change and God to stain - His snowy vesture in the winnowing years; - Yet, something godlike ever shall remain, - This well I know, confirm it, O ye spheres; - Yet, beauty’s form shall beckon, and inspire, - Exalting earth with its spiritual fire. - - - XXXI. - - O reason, best ally, and first assistant, - Of beauty, wandering in his own sweet maze; - Arise, great empress, and dear spirit ministrant, - O glance thy sunshine, quickening this foul haze; - If beauty knows to conquer human hearts, - Lurking in virtue, wisdom, face or form, - Or sanctifying success in nature’s parts, - In the blue heaven, on earth, in calm or storm, - Declare its essence; by what power it bends - Each stubborn element to its strong hint: - Is this too hard? then whither beauty tends; - Assure at least divine its fateful dint: - Give some rich medicine that may scorn its hold, - And frothing warm the chalice; here all’s cold. - - - XXXII. - - Beauty by his own light shines forth and wins - Consent of all men to his supreme power; - Who will not think so, unagreeing, sins - ’Gainst love that hails each beauty of an hour: - For love is only constant, when it sways - With the uncertain hues, that beauty gives, - Even admiration, swerving various ways, - Imagines change, and otherwhere straight lives: - The ficklest thing beneath the inconstant moon - Is the sigh swelling from a lover’s breast; - It pants, nor thinks that it must die full soon, - Even by its own luxuriance opprest. - Love like an o’erstrung bow, now snaps and breaks, - And now, o’erwrought, relaxes, yields, and shakes. - - - XXXIII. - - I ask’d the echoes, that recall the past, - I ask’d the thrilling voice of those who live, - I ask’d the forms that mother nature cast - And feeds within the mind, aye yet can give, - Must love be fostered by its own despair? - Must the mere shadow mark where we adored? - Must we be drunk even with the wanton air, - Because both breathe it;--and our hearts be gored? - Where lies the fault? even in this, replies - The voice of Wisdom; thrifty Nature lends - Rude sketches, undeveloped, which thy sighs, - Thy fancy, thought, or lonely pride pretends - To draw to their full scope; oft must thou err, - Even though successful, nature will not stir. - - - XXXIV. - - What’s more delightful than young love disporting - In the commutual bond of first breathed sighs? - What is more lovely than the passion, courting - Such sweet succession of carnation dyes, - When love grows pale and red, yet knows not why, - And sorrow kisses joy and both are glad? - What fame, or wealth, or power, or all, can buy - Aught but compared to this looks sourly-sad? - ’Tis a brief joy, yet all that mortals know; - Happy who even this, unmixed, can find, - Who will not doubt the substance in the show, - Nor ruffle pleasure with unquiet mind: - Sift but enjoyment with too strict a hand, - It mocks your fingers, and escapes to sand. - - - XXXV. - - O rarest interchange of truth and lies, - Love, ever pandering to thine own deceit! - Thou sweet chameleon of a thousand dyes! - Truth still is varying with thy wayward heat; - Truth long ago has banish’d thee his court, - Yet by thy essence Truth thou still must be; - Though different winds waft to a changeful port, - If Truth be gone, then it departs with thee; - Lo! thou art Truth, and Truth developed lies - In Love, whose home is Beauty, and the world, - And the quick sympathy of unfathomed eyes, - And maddening forms out of their orbits hurl’d; - And all are drunken for a little space, - Then drink disgust, quite sickened of the chase. - - - XXXVI. - - Love takes its impress from the formless hues - That signify the thing they yet conceal; - Love leads that heart to life, which it endues - With joys that aggravate the harm they heal; - Love’s treasures are not priceless to all eyes, - All may not learn what their full magic means: - By various grades of hopes, and fears, and sighs, - And ecstacies, and woes, raptures, and dreams, - The soul of man ascends to that it loves, - And is developed into something more; - In a more rich creation now it moves, - And seeks in other souls a priceless ore: - Something it finds, yet loses what it lacks, - So must the conqueror in the town he sacks. - - - XXXVII. - - Love gain’d is love unlovely, joy ne’er seeth’d - But in desire, still with possession cloy’d; - If that the vows whose once perfection breath’d, - Could hide with words the margin of their void, - Then Love were hope, fulfilment, peace, combined, - Into a concord of unearthly bliss; - Then were the roses of enjoyment twined - Around the satire on young Love’s first kiss: - But Love says, no, and Nature too denies; - For Rapture rises but by woe’s decline: - And too much bliss, with a brief respite, dies - By coldness, that shall make love dimlier shine. - All love betrays man past its paltry base, - He mounts his bubble, soars, and falls apace. - - - XXXVIII. - - Puff’d with the pride that feeds on lonely thoughts, - In seeking secure harbours, thou must fail - Of all the aim which with such toil thou sought’st: - Either thy lot be wretchedness, or hail - The empty, fond creations of the brain, - For the warm, glowing, living forms of flesh. - I smile at danger, and such fears as reign, - In some men’s brooding minds entangled mesh; - I have a pleasant harbour, and a hope, - For ever wooed by an ethereal breeze; - Not Love but Friendship’s my ambitious scope, - Ne’er shall such fantasies my bosom tease: - Yet if I knew not Friendship, I would rest, - Sad, not despairing, on Creation’s breast. - - - XXXIX. - - Theme of my thought, and beacon to my verse, - Too long thy words have stolen me from thy praise; - Yet now I’ll linger round thee, and rehearse - All that thou wast in past delightful days: - As one, a boy, who leaves his home, his friends, - And thinks he knows them well, sudden discerns - A charm in what seem’d dead, he stops and sends - Message to tree and stone, yet weeps not, turns - Only one parting glance on what, review’d - After few years, heaps quick Eternity - On the bright Past, severing it from the brood - Of the moody Future and the Present’s pity: - So thick, so warm, the thoughts that press my heart, - And goad the gain their frequence fails to impart. - - - XL. - - How loathing’s germ is longing, grief wooes joy, - ’Tis but a comment on the hurrying world; - Man knows such shiftings and is only coy - To match them to the stage, whereon he’s hurl’d: - But thou, immutable substance of all beauty, - Shalt yet defeat the purpose of this change, - Shalt purge the essence of its vestment sooty, - And guide its explorations quick and strange; - Thou shalt inhabit and invest a soul, - Whose myriad, intricate voices know one tone; - And I, where’er wavers my wintry pole, - Shall hail that music’s influence as my own: - All Beauty, and all Love radiate from thee, - Thou centre of my soul’s full harmony. - - - XLI. - - Bring me to some waste, whose stream’s Lethean trail, - Scarce stirs its islands of monotonous grass; - Where circling hills heal their huge tattered mail, - With foliage fringing all the mountain pass; - Where the quire that sings, deepens the deadly lull; - Where Time responds, chiming a sullen note; - Where Phœbus, mellowing, blends a glory dull, - With shades that on the wings of darkness float; - Where a gloom of mystery wears strange, luminous, shapes, - Shadowing unholy, ghastly, wizard forms; - Growing into the pulsing life, whose pregnance apes - Fierce fascinations, foul unspeaking storms; - Where, in brief space, myriads of demons urge - One quivering form to Hell’s red hideous verge. - - - XLII. - - Methought, a breath stole and unsealed my eyes - And bared the workings of the carcase world; - An engine, like a skeleton, ever plies - A trade infernal, Death’s flag stood unfurled; - With iron teeth, I mark’d, this hell-fiend tore - The gaspings relics of Creation’s throes; - Fitted to a rack each substance, looming more, - Lengthens unnatural shapes, in awful rows; - And howlings, tears, and shriekings thrill’d the night, - That mourn’d for ever, dumbly consonant; - Each shape, to other bound in pitiless plight, - Reluctant, must destroy, foster, or plant, - What, it knows not, and cares not; whizzing wheels - Whirl, till the sick heart pants, the mad brain reels. - - - XLIII. - - I gazed, with unaccustomed eyes, on night, - Whose blackness dazzled more than midday sun, - It rather seem’d, some new intenser light, - Through which immortal powers, far wandering, run: - I gazed, and hurled my curses at the rage, - That traced its will on such a reckless course; - Methought, a golden form of light did cage - My utterance’ portals, strengthening vision’s source; - And, fool, it cried, look nearer, nor despair. - I saw, ’twas, as the thunder-cloud, that burst - Is glorious with the lightning, a child’s hair - Within whose gold entwined sunbeams are nurst, - No cradle else so sweet; it was the breath - Whose loveliness of life scares dreary death. - - - XLIV. - - Dreams, visions, foolish echoings to the thought, - That homeless wanders for the thing it loves: - The fancies of man’s waking are so fraught - With folly, or philosophy that roves - It knows not where, that ’tis no marvel sleep - Should pass its coinage as the current dross: - Could man contain his dreamings in their keep, - How great a gain should balance little loss: - The world is wearied, to know why it plods - The equal tenour of a various way; - But half attends, smiles sometimes, sometimes nods - O’er its dissection, while its head is grey. - It clears the rubble from its own high-road, - And asks but truth, nor cares to increase its load. - - - XLV. - - Life is a river, that hath caught its gleam - From age’s lingering years, and youth’s proud date, - From dull despair, and from the hopes, that seem - To form their longing, and to hide their hate; - From sickness, quailing underneath her pains; - And health, exulting in his pride of life; - From black meláncholy, that turns her gains, - All to the theme of an unending strife; - From that fine frame of beauty and of bliss, - That, over-sensitive, will not distort - Nature’s delights to Hell’s triumphant hiss, - That, ’mid its sorrows, lives near joy’s high court: - From genius, freedom, beauty it assumes - As many forms, as hate’s dark hell consumes. - - - XLVI. - - I once inquired, whence the cicada brought - The joy whose music prattles through the day; - I wished that the glad lark would but have taught, - Whence came the glee that could incite his lay; - And, as the rolling streams of music flow, - Building all heaven along the deep blue wave, - I prayed, that I might e’er thus rapturous glow - And wholly live within the bliss they gave, - When, on the dancing waters, the white sail - Grows big with kisses of the lustful wind, - Blushing at sunrise, and at midnight pale, - All for some lurking love that match’d their kind; - Then, anxiously, I sought that blissful bound; - That was long since e’er thou, my friend, wast found. - - - XLVII. - - To some the world is but a ragged screen, - Hiding the essence of eternal fire; - They tear its tatters, and would peep between; - The unknown is lovely, and the rest is mire. - And other some glory in Nature’s robe, - Dare scorn ideal monsters of the mind, - Where man would test the heart with his nice probe, - Suit his sick taste, and leave the rest behind; - And some are drunken of they know not what, - And cull what sweets may hang from every hour, - Nor hope, nor pause, but magnify the sot; - Know not the weed, or train it as their flower. - Let these rejoice, yet happier, by far, - The silly brutes, that gorge at pleasure, are. - - - XLVIII. - - All pleasures and all hopes are their own scorn, - And man’s a measure, filling, never fill’d; - Who’d not sell life, its promise something worn, - For one week’s bliss with no awakening chill’d? - It cannot be; and some, foil’d or despis’d, - Or craving peace, life’s courted joys all spann’d, - Have scouted all things which the world e’er prized; - Dreaming of life, through the dead cloister scann’d, - Fair sounds this, luring; yet, methinks, that shows - A creed nor hard, nor healthy, which unscrews - The rivets, that should pin us to the throes, - That nature in begetting man renews: - The earthly mind, fed on unearthly leaven, - Diffuses Hell through earth, and earth through Heaven. - - - XLIX. - - Who ponders on eternity, can draw - Its shadow o’er the strangeness of this earth, - And, quite immersed in future bliss, can store - His fancy’s dreams with fables of new birth; - And men have tortured, altering holiest phrase, - And sanctified the hopes which they adored; - Have made their souls more worthless than their praise, - Saying, that perfect love to Heaven outpoured, - Must hold its flood, nor risk the Heaven it decks, - Making love less lovely than the hope of bliss; - Fostering the demon Self, whose presence checks, - And dulls each noble prompting with his kiss. - Say ye, who steal the jewels from Heaven’s crown, - Where lies the rigour of Hell’s fancied frown? - - -L. - - Heaven! ’tis a name, that as inconstant sways, - As fame or love, the changes of the moon, - Or, whatsoever wanders by dim ways - To a goal, fashioned by youth’s treacherous noon: - Heaven! ’tis a sound that in its uttering mocks - The hopes, reposing round that various base; - Adroitly differing, tempered to the shocks, - That mind the slow world of its desperate case! - The flattery of an echo from each heart, - A mirror, where each soul, reflected, shows - Unnatural choice of some unworthy part, - Which nature’s whole must loathingly depose: - Seek virtue for itself, or, seeking, lose - A Heaven apart, else Hell would Heaven confuse. - - -LI. - - Life is a brook, that over pebbles glides, - And tints with colour of the cloud his wave; - Now, the East blazes, now, sad Phœbus slides - Down the red hills, that shroud him for his grave; - The waters now are calm, now, troubled, foam, - Exult on ridges, now o’er slopes decline, - Now, in their summer sprightliness, they roam, - Now, stand, congealed, in winter’s icy twine; - Full many a flower is often mirror’d there, - And the fresh grass, and the green shady trees, - Full many a pebble glistens through them, fair, - All in confusion, toss’d by wave and breeze; - ’Tis strange, though many stones are form’d to fit, - Few meet their mates, most roll confus’dly knit. - - -LII. - - The world’s but a rude frame, whose substance takes - Colouring from all who flatter, or who curse; - How oft man’s heart, all discontented wakes, - His frame’s a coffin, and the world’s his hearse; - How oft, despairing, he goes forth to find - Yet more assurance of the thing he hates; - How oft he leaves misanthropy behind, - New folly found, of former folly prates: - Needs but some precept, touch, face, form, or word - To dam the current, and to turn its course; - Earth, in her loveliness, or music heard, - While low sweet voices harmonize its force: - There’s nought so small in Nature, but can sum - Earth’s total process, which it seems to numb. - - -LIII. - - Lo! thus, that life, which seem’d to me a void, - E’er thou my sun did’st gild it with thy light, - Now looks as merry, as the bubble buoy’d - On summer’s billow, whose quick glory’s bright: - My scouted woe now glares as sourly-strange, - As once joy show’d to my grief-fashioned breast; - Each act, each thought, as through the world I range, - Finds new commencement, in young vigour drest: - Rich centre, around which my life revolves, - How strong the attraction of thy far intent; - How living, and how joyous, the resolves - Whose object, thou, thy will, their utmost bent: - Though thou art far, fancy relieves her fear, - Imagining thoughts whose love may bring thee near. - - -LIV. - - O immense chaos whence each forms his world! - Where difference lovely suits distinctive minds: - How hideous others’ landskips were, unfurled; - Fancy guides all, enlightens, or else blinds: - Yet, at my idol’s shrine, I’d fain believe - The pride of each were quick constrain’d to pray, - Could I but e’er impart, that I receive - From the mind imaged in thy beauty’s ray: - But, founder’d in my bliss, I helpless lie, - Like Phrygia’s king, incompetent in wealth; - When I behold thee, laden thought would die; - And seeing not, I picture thee, by stealth: - It wants thy equal, to report thy praise, - Let such fill up the inkling in these lays. - - -LV. - - Dear child of joy, who read thy soul shall find, - That all things shifting, man must vary too; - Sometimes in thunder, earthquake, and in wind, - Nature will mourn, so grief her sons should woo; - But when the winning breeze coys with the sail, - That bears thy bark along the flowing wave; - Then, know, perfection lives not in the pale - Of that small space, where thy mad fancies rave: - If there’s no happiness, then conquer time, - And grandly dare to build, scorning blind Fate; - Fate lives enshrined within the spirit sublime, - Which o’er a faltering world asserts its weight. - Let fools of circumstance wither and yield, - Some in themselves foster the fate they wield. - - -LVI. - - Men err, and blindly happiness propose, - Whither their steps and fortunes should aspire; - Alas! they seek, what Earth no longer knows; - Once haply clasp’d, the wanton’s waxing shier; - For, now, it hath ascended to the heavens, - And sits commingling Nature’s shapes and dyes: - Who’s rash to seek it, him, ill fortune leavens - With sick acquirement of unworthy sighs: - Youth courts the sunshine to his vigorous wings; - Sees Hope, that beckons, thinks himself a God; - Rivals the lark, acting the joy it sings; - Till age desponds at Life’s too real rod: - Let youth abandon hope, and court content, - Now bliss mocks hope, then joys were blessings lent. - - -LVII. - - O ye, the eastern glory of whose hope, - Laughs at the shadow, which your phantom shames, - Abase the aery tenour of your scope, - E’er woe involve its promise, earth your frames: - Who ponder, reckon vain all reason’s forts; - Who think not, live, but know not joy’s true tones: - They wander, vacant, through high Nature’s courts; - Their spirit seems unworthy, even of groans: - Intrusion of vain tears but mocks the woe, - Whose dregs are tasteless of the former draught; - Time was, when the harp wrung the tears that flow, - Grateful, since needful, then the people quafft. - But time rolls on, and in its changes brings - The age that scoffs at its ancestors’ wings. - - -LVIII. - - A new Narcissus gazed himself to death, - Picturing his lonely beauty in the flood, - The river, onward flowing, flouts the breath - That charm’d the fire, Promethean, from its mud: - Who topple on a pinnacle, scorn the steps - That usher to the pride, whereon they stand; - Yet Nature’s structure swerves not, men, adepts - At self-deception, judge from whence they’ve scann’d; - View the whole plot, and just should all appear, - What’s beauteous, the relief that Nature wears, - The base, by difficult straits and shoals, should steer - To quicken praise, shunning monotonous cares: - What fail’d of high fulfilment, where it lack’d, - Should live in others’ worth when all were pack’d. - - -LIX. - - Thy voice still cautioned, ’tis no time for woe, - Nor only warned, but marked out safety’s road; - Who crams his yearning heart with earthly show, - Straight to be voided, fondles with the goad; - Who nods to Passion, as he gulps the chaff - That whitens the base highway of the world, - Totters to age, on an unstable staff, - Shook by the winds, which his own hopes unfurl’d; - Who tamely would let Age assert his claims, - And stiffen self to a distincter mould, - Who would not rather curse all shapes, thoughts, names, - That frame men’s hearts to forms, as meagre-cold: - He ne’er shall triumph o’er the powers of woe; - Mad Passion bursts his bounds, and thunders, “No.” - - -LX. - - The poison well’d from Circe’s treacherous cups - Beyond the shape, with fell designment, work’d; - Had thought not pander’d to nectareous sups, - And, brute-like, veiled what beastly semblance lurk’d, - Sure change had mock’d his aim, by death and spleen. - ’Tis bounteous Nature smoothes the wrinkled brow, - Bellying with pride the front that looks too lean: - She plants conceit in gaping brains enow; - She salves with flattery some unequal wounds, - Impartial measures grief for men and years; - One age inglorious slumbers on and swounds; - One moistens deathless leaves with blood and tears: - All drink, and die, but oh! how deep a draught, - E’er separate life’s a blessing, must be quafft. - - -LXI. - - The rivulets, the earth, the skies, the motion - Whose substance varies to a higher change, - The clouds, the woods, the mountains, and the ocean - Whose endless blue defies the fancy’s range, - The sun, and the calm host that guide the night - Throughout the seasons of the changeful year, - The warmth, the snow, the music, and the bright - Foliage that quivers to the songsters’ cheer; - And the swift thought that wings its measureless way - (Though clogg’d with self, it feels but how it fails,) - Just to the confines of eternal day, - In outer orbit whirl’d it pines, and sails; - And more than these, Love, Beauty, Reason, Joy. - All these are life, but self’s a half-formed toy. - - -LXII. - - O ye faint touches, that but tire the gaze, - Casting reflection on incompetence; - O all ye thoughts, that weave truth’s tangled maze, - Would we might grasp your spirit’s hidden sense: - Man is shut out from what himself assists; - Too dear-bought self, rich privilege to conceal, - Strange substance, individualized, that twists - A web, it knows not how, more stiff than steel: - Man knows not how, or wherefore, whence, or why; - He thinks that he must go; whither? he doubts, - Creeds he must form and hopes; he cannot fly, - And haply would not, fostering fears he scouts; - Thrown on the world, he’d lose, in the world’s din, - Too fine perception of sad worlds within. - - -LXIII. - - And Death is the glad clasp of knotted braids; - Death seals the circlet, that Life gradual twines; - In all that’s fair, Death, inartistic, trades; - Beauty he saps, beleaguering Youth with mines; - O, art thou usher to a fuller world, - Grim Death, whose smile is cased in a frown? - Or speak’st thou only to an infant curl’d, - Dreaming a moment in a bed of down? - Stalk not too proudly, ravisher of life, - Thy boast shall reach no pearl in Nature’s casket; - What sinks, benumb’d, though lovely, in the strife - Shall cast the slough, that could a moment mask it. - I cannot wholly hate nor love thee, Death, - Thou tak’st my life, but robb’st my friend of breath. - - -LXIV. - - Doubt struggles into Faith, and calls it life, - Hopes turn to gods, and fears take demon forms; - Man must be somewhere stayed in this strange strife; - He feels himself so weak against its storms. - Dim eyes he strains into futurity; - Weak arms, extending, gropes to find his road; - His fingers clutch at what seems Purity; - Thank Heaven! he sees not all their ghastly load. - And, whether all footpaths lead to the same place, - Or the weed hope blossoms into a flower; - Or whether all struggle in a phantom race, - And blow the bubbles of fame, love and power; - All this he knows not, somewhere he would rest, - By pleasure, or content, aye so ’twere best. - - -LXV. - - Life’s but a straw, that’s piped upon by winds, - Fluttering to different tunes at every blast; - But he is strong who conquers what he finds, - Dragging it onward, as the unyielding mast - Toils up the wave, and draws, from victory won, - Fresh presage, and fresh purpose, for the fight: - So let man struggle upward; like the sun - Ne’er slacken, till he sinks beneath the night; - Swell action’s tide, that rolls along the world, - Or force from Nature secrets undisclosed; - Or, if less apt to be thus rudely whirl’d, - Rest in this din on sure content reposed. - These words sound fair, but Passion scorns such strains, - And mocks Endeavour with her empty pains. - - -LXVI. - - How should the cloud cry to the summer sea, - Take not the leaden impress from my sails? - How should the amorous eve not taste the glee - That mantles golden o’er its hills and vales? - Were ocean to contemn the rain’s increase, - Or woods to spurn the dew, and chide the wind; - Reft of their source, sudden they all would cease, - Lacking that element they once thought unkind: - So, were man shorn of passions and of hates, - And nicely pared of what uneven seems, - He’d seem some plaything, jostled by rough fates - Into existence, from poor Fancy’s dreams. - Nature has naught superfluous,--clip her pride, - You mar her beauties, and the man beside. - - -LXVII. - - Should one proclaim, what perfect man might be, - What finest tonings of trained passion’s host, - What calm should murmur on a breathless sea, - What childhood’s joy linger around the coast, - How the rare form should tremble to each string - Of the ever-pulsing, passionate, tranquil frame: - His virtues should steal lustre while they bring, - For Beauty sanctifies even Virtue’s name: - ’Twere vain, words cannot paint, nor the mind’s maze, - Compose perfections in such various mould: - Create the hero, and the world shall gaze, - Not unobservant, nor profanely cold. - Vain is the juggle of consenting phrase, - Nature is just, and claims the larger praise. - - -LXVIII. - - To shape from infinite words and big-wombed thought, - The form that mimics Nature, yet transcends; - To shower beauty, from the sunbeam caught, - On one who, lofty, walks toward lofty ends; - To live within that which themselves create, - By sufferance swelling more exalted ranks, - With such communion still to recreate - The pauses of the world, whose iron harsh clanks, - In that most sweet society, how soon - To lose all sense, all memory of the earth; - Aye, this were godlike, and the priceless boon - Which Nature grudges prompters of true birth: - Holier, she bids them worship what inspires - And guides the blast that feeds Pygmalion fires. - - -LXIX. - - O Beauty is too holy to be handled - By the indiscriminate, rude, critic-touch! - Gently be its timorous, blushing blossoms dandled - On the fringed boughs, coy to the breezes’ clutch; - Yea the ransack’d Past’s aroma should dwell on it, - While the coronetted Future, breathing, fann’d it: - The flowers of love garden its paths and throng it, - And Fancy’s cloud-like sails on lone stars land it: - It should be the idea’s gradual unfolding, - Whose rosebud leaves astonish niggard Hope: - It should be the delicate and fleece-like moulding - That snowy clouds build on the heaven’s blue scope: - It should be,--who can say except the heart? - It should be all, nor lovelier than thou art. - - -LXX. - - O thou glad phantom of my waking hours, - I will not clasp thee, lest the vision fail; - I only, sometimes, wander o’er the flowers - Whose perfume lingers in my summer’s vale: - Whether joy’s victorious, when I oft recount - The former kisses of indulgent Time; - Or the sad Present fathoms sorrow’s fount, - And bids my eyes assist my bosom’s chime; - I yet will fashion pleasure from each mood, - Shaming the Present with the Past’s record, - And gather strength, from memory’s darling brood, - To temper, and to wield the eventful sword: - Thy aid delightful seems, for thy dear sake, - And I shall seem to give, even what I take. - - -LXXI. - - What is more lovely than to celebrate - That Beauty’s virtue we can never reach? - What’s heavenlier, than our pride to lowly rate - In that great Love where nought is left to teach? - To admire, to adore, to fall at Beauty’s feet, - To lose all sense of this corporeal frame, - Who’d not choose Life’s intense, perpetual heat, - Whose walk of love were blessed by Beauty’s name? - O better shows our worship falsely placed, - Than the fixed heart of an unfruitful doubt! - Happier were he, with love of Hell disgraced, - Than he whose hope of Heaven gazed coldly out. - Love’s measured by the heart, from whence it flows, - Though all be void, yet it must rest on shows. - - -LXXII. - - Who hath not wakened, dizzy, from the dream, - The fairyland, that boyhood claim’d his own? - Who hath not gulped down memories that teem, - E’er such sweet seed of madness were full grown? - Who hath not, when his wound less rawly looked, - Lightly tripped over the yet sunny fields? - What ominous garnitures have we not brook’d, - For the kind promise, that the spectre shields? - Else how much life must, vacant, pass man by, - Or seem the babblings of an uncrude mind: - How poor the pageant of the world must die - In uncongenial souls, of purpose blind: - Sooner than such I’d the light insect be, - Whose little summer world is revelry. - - -LXXIII. - - Two children wandered o’er one plain together, - Like beauteous planets, shot from some new lair; - Proud flowers grew up, exulting in fair weather, - Tendered their sweets, and twined their glowing hair: - Some lovelier, but more lonely, lay enshrined, - Whispering the affable breath of modesty: - I marked the children; these, they oft entwined - About their locks, and thought them fair as shy: - Heedless, they trampled o’er the gaudy flowers, - Whose larger plenty paved the ensuing way: - But, soon, alas! you might well count the hours - By the few lilies, hidden far away. - At length the wanderers passed a river’s ford, - One kept his primrose wealth, one cull’d new hoard. - - -LXXIV. - - Along the desert pathway of my years - The untarnished green of an oasis lies, - Full many a bliss, watered by love’s since tears, - Full many a note, that in the distance dies; - And I will pause, and gather fresh those sweets, - And bind their buds in chaplets on my brows; - I’ll hail what youth soe’er my wandering meets, - “See here the guerdon of my childhood’s vows.” - So, joy’s unripened blossoms shall forth peep - From dewy sluices of long-buried grief; - And love, though dead, shall through my pulses leap, - And pinnacle the Past on rapture’s reef. - Memory shall gild with fancy what is gone, - And dim indulgence dreamingly live on. - - -LXXV. - - There is one name on which remembrance lingers, - Not soon shall Time tear it from my quick breast; - There comes a music, touched by fairy fingers, - To draw thy features, floats thy spirit’s unrest; - Thy voice shall be a passport through life’s harms; - I will believe thy fondness mends my slips; - When Death shall clasp me in his haggard arms, - I think that name shall arm my quivering lips: - Young years, that made thee wild, had made thee loving; - Nature had crown’d with Beauty what Wit gave; - Perchance this verse shall prove not quite unmoving, - Calling unto thee, as from out the grave: - Yes, well I know, thou’lt sometimes give one sigh, - To years that come no more, when once gone by. - - -LXXVI. - - There was one more, but, ’tis no matter now, - One who’s forgot, I too will learn that lore; - Nor others rest, but wistfully, I plough - Memory’s hard furrows, pregnant now no more; - For now Love’s turned from my too sullen soul, - He will no longer fling the rainbow veil, - Nor glance his mirror o’er defects, to enroll - Me, midst the captives of his courted jail: - I’ll draw fresh sustenance from the past for joy, - And scorn love’s gyves, his fears, his jealous frowns; - Take up the sweets, and mock the archer boy, - Who fools each votary with delusive crowns: - Yet could I buy his pleasures with his woes, - I’d choose them both, the archer God well knows. - - -LXXVII. - - What pride the season takes in his gay flowers! - How the dead year mourns for his withered leaves! - The lover sadly looks on desolate bowers, - No song re-echoes to the verse he weaves: - These all are sad, but promise gilds their death; - Their notes of woe but swell the spring’s new joy; - But, ’tis more pitiful, when the very breath, - Which was our life, seems but the summer’s toy: - With lifted hands, vain man implores the skies; - Curses the sometime joy, the nurse of woe, - The bliss whose unfelt want erst caused no sighs; - His pilgrimage had, once, less grief, less show: - But no; lost love exalts, in saddening, man, - While heartless plodding but degrades his span. - - -LXXVIII. - - ’Tis bitter for the spirit that’s lived in Heaven, - Quickly to be reft of what composed its bliss; - ’Tis bitter, that our bliss should wing the levin, - And add a torture to the incisor knife; - And, after earth was shaped to Paradise, - Catching the colour of most loveable eyes, - ’Tis sad, that all should darken in a trice, - And but remind us of the joy that flies; - Wants but a motion, and all sights that woo - The bewitched eyesight of the doting world, - Shall catch some stain, and shade to black their hue, - Their pride exposed to gaze, their void unfurled: - Yet who’d exist, and bind nought to his heart? - Strong be that soul that dares to live apart. - - -LXXIX. - - But what have I to do with prating griefs, - That mar the sanctity on Beauty’s brow? - I have in thee a thousand full reliefs; - Why wound the seeds of joy with torture’s plough? - Even now, thy youthful years, in wisdom fledg’d, - Wave thousand-coloured plumes o’er elder minds; - Whiles thou, to only Love and Beauty pledged, - Unsought, uncared for, feel’st the applausive winds: - Envy thou dost take captive, and transform - To the good angel of magnanimous praise; - And men are only jealous, and grow warm, - Matching those wordy altars which they raise: - That men adore the wonder of thy worth, - But shames my love, whose utmost praise is dearth. - - -LXXX. - - In seeking pleasure, I have tasted woe; - And drunk of every cup, to test its worth: - Ill sediments must, in such seeking, flow - And mingle with the thoughts that gave them birth: - Who drinks experience, drinks, at once, disdain; - From weariness, Excitement gathers force, - Then swerves not for slight barriers, nor draws rein, - Till all his passion’s wreak’d upon the course: - The course is finished; hollow is the cup; - Nor may regret point at the looked for dregs: - Who sits the banquet out, at last, must sup - From off satiety’s unfurnished pegs. - ’Tis something known, that there is nought to gain; - Each different science prints his proper strain. - - -LXXXI. - - How void of meaning seems the barren earth! - How dwindles all its pride, to infants’ toys! - For me, all life is quickened into birth, - Only by the love, that turns my grief to joys: - Sullen, I look out upon the bleak dim morn, - And curse the cold, the climate, and the cloud: - I match those frowns with thy imagined scorn; - Sudden, the sun illumes the misty shroud; - The thought, that’s full of thee, discerns no grief, - But builds a summer palace in the air; - It sifts compounded woes, torturing their sheaf, - That bitter thoughts may hide, ’mid thoughts more fair; - The mind returns from thee, winged with delight; - Unsated, it soon meditates new flight. - - -LXXXII. - - There are, who count the day by Phœbus’ course, - And ask the dial, where the sun should be; - Who teach the clock, to give the hours force, - To speak the change of their monotony; - Who span the earth with measures, and with rules, - And prate of chart, of compass, and of mile; - Others, more learned, beckon to the schools, - Whence time and space flee with mysterious smile: - But we, who count by love, care not to point - Our sweet decisions by such knotty laws; - Whether one be right, or, all be partners joint - In folly’s mandates, or in wisdom’s saws, - Love cares not, knows not, reckons not; its ways - Seem shorter to its joy, than winter days. - - -LXXXIII. - - ’Twas here, we met, we spoke; ’twas but a moment, - So short the hours seemed; we loved, we parted; - Ah! that harsh word of parting, with such woe shent, - Dulls all the joy that e’er our meeting darted; - Those leagues we linger’d o’er, what steps they seem’d! - How could we give to distance his full dues? - How short those days, when tricksome fancy’s dream’d, - And dress’d the present in rich memory’s hues! - This is Eternity, shorn of the dress - That sedate Time winds round his glowing limbs: - Soon shall the Eternal rise, and find redress - From slanderous Time, who sickens what he dims. - Time rules but mortals, wavers even for men; - Should Truth inhabit such a meteor’s den? - - -LXXXIV. - - Unsatisfied desires have sway’d my breast; - Hope’s Syren voice has lured me to despair; - Only Excitement’s charm’d me, with its zest, - And strangled thought, e’er it could change to care; - But, now, such deep repose hath breathed content, - Filling the measure of all hopes with thee; - That, all my longings and my fears are spent, - Or only live, that thou may’st bid them flee: - If, now, Ambition points to ceaseless toil; - Gleam through the years, altars of sacrifice; - When all is done, I but remain the foil, - Marking what measure thou may’st well despise. - All that I have, or gain, or love, is thine, - And all is little, since thy heart is mine. - - -LXXXV. - - O think not I would purchase, measuring out, - The priceless merit of the love I’ve sued! - Thy love’s the larger, that it will not doubt - To rest its hope on buds whose beauty’s crude: - Yet suffer, that my shafts attempt the mark - Which thy heart shows to be true virtue’s goal; - Suffer, that, by thy conduct, my poor bark - May proudly sail, and scorn the obtrusive shoal: - My service slights all guerdons, and all gains, - Than but one smile, one word, one thought of thine; - Happy, whoe’er approves not, if my pains - Be crown’d by thee, and through thy merit shine. - What others’ emulous worth labours to gain, - O glorious prize! ’tis mine, perchance, to attain. - - -LXXXVI. - - Love is the larger when it seeks return, - Only in the fulness of its treasur’d self; - When it can linger by the shattered urn, - Its idol gone, it knows not where, nor whence; - When what we worship, may not mark the woes - Which wear the frame, but fortify the mind; - When all is dark, nor earth, nor Heaven shows - Acceptance gleaming, through the midnight, kind: - This love’s of purer strain than men can know, - Most jar the chords, but toying with the harp, - They’d lower to life, and filter through fresh woe - The essence that should illustrate their dark. - Grief’s scale shows heights, to which whoe’er attain, - Shall haply find the joy outweigh the pain. - - -LXXXVII. - - But, life compounds the dregs to luscious draughts; - And various pleasure mocks monotonous woe; - And all the wheels and hinges show their crafts, - Leaving no room for the full spirit’s flow; - Even love forbids the soul, for human loss, - To wear less brightly, its heaven-tinctur’d fire, - And shows it lovelier, to exalt the cross - Into the pledge of love, still struggling higher: - Only the eternal breath of Nature’s beauty - Demands the unchanged devotion of our years. - Immortal constancy of shifting duty - Crowns the rich harvest of our sometime tears: - What’s spent in loving, richly is defrayed, - Though nought’s returned, by lending we are paid. - - -LXXXVIII. - - But, man, the fitful birth of Time and Change, - Demands the substance of a living love: - Nor, ever satisfied, must onward range, - And builds for earth the idea, or above: - His heart must find a home, where’er it goes; - He nestles in the warmth, then dreams ’tis cold; - Each imperfection lives, and livelier shows; - Love learns despair, and, at the last, is cold: - And, but one path, secure, leads ever round, - Nor dares attempt the warmth, for which it glows; - And who would trifle in this shallow sound - Escapes the test, fenced round by summer snows. - Whose quiet peace can amble o’er this road, - Lives, like what sage? nor fears love’s ardent goad. - - -LXXXIX. - - I lately dreamt of an ideal form; - I thought to shape the mould after my mind; - I bore it through the crowd, and thought it warm; - I saw the shape, that struck my fancy blind: - Fool! whose presumption struggles to create - A beauty other than high nature uses; - Reckon thy function at a lowlier rate, - Raise thy poor pride to what herself infuses: - Then, if the glow of Nature’s life-blood thrill thee, - Then, draw the vision to a finer strain; - Then, purify, exalt, let beauty fill thee; - Imagination works not, then, in vain. - If here is aught, ’tis fashioned all from thee, - Lord of my love and of my minstrelsy. - - - XC. - - How large a margin yawns ’twixt thought and fact! - Rich Expectation robs the beggar Deed, - An unwise spendthrift, all his fortune’s sackt - To build the storehouse whence he ne’er can feed: - For, Hope devours her progeny in the womb; - Glutted with meat, she thinks she shall not starve; - She lies, she chews the cud, sleeps by the tomb, - Accustomed to past gorging, wakes to carve; - Poor idiot, all her rapture’s drunk away, - The sediment’s tasteless, save of craving thirst; - Her hydra debts seem lost in what they pay, - She cannot feed, till they’re discharged first. - I only know one hope, that ne’er deceives, - What’s stay’d on thee buoys less than it relieves. - - - XCI. - - The proud long hours amble at tedious rate, - For that they know they bear the weight of thee, - Even the tripping minutes borrow state, - And, oft return, playing bo-peep with me; - Their cunning thinks to lengthen out my pain, - Or, woo weak prescience, with some fearful mine; - They ne’er suspect how joy shall, in this strain, - Usurp a minute’s woe, in every line: - To draw thy lineaments, the painter’s pride, - The marble’s glory, thy limbs’ mobile grace, - ’Tis mine, to celebrate thy virtuous side, - How firm consistent, in such temple’s space. - To express its all would tire, though charm the time, - Some part befits the occasion, and my rhyme. - - - XCII. - - I care not to mark out where Beauty lies, - What nice distinction claims it for her own; - Some intuition says it never dies, - Born of young joy, by feeling larger grown: - ’Twere easy, to cull out fine tints, deep shades, - To trick comparisons into the vain verse; - Digging the ground, with intellect’s keen spades, - To touch more nearly something which is worse: - O too close strainers of the priceless wine, - The essence flies with what ye deem the dregs! - The jewel’s blaze, less lustrous in the mine, - Commands, there, praise, which, capp’d on age, it begs: - One stroke of Nature, and of Truth outweighs - All similes and suits, bedizening lays. - - - XCIII. - - But who knows Nature, Truth, Beauty divine, - (Three varying names of one unswerving Love), - Speechless will worship, and attend the trine: - The critic hawk shall own the stronger dove; - For, admiration glows with brighter flame, - Than but to light the judgment to his prey; - And it was ever Love’s most glorious shame, - He could not analyze, nor mutter nay: - Enough, that beauty lives in clouds of colour, - In forest, ocean, mountain, forms and faces; - Why wrest these proofs, to hints and motes of dolour, - To impose some sense that shrouds what it defaces? - How vain is man, who deems his weak conceits - Of better worth than Nature’s utmost heats. - - - XCIV. - - There are, whose life, perch’d on a ledge of grief, - Scarcely can draw some comfort from its tears; - That thought probes not sensation, their relief, - Else how could Nature pant through such long years? - These may drink in the smile which Nature weaves - O’er all her sons alike, the proud, the poor; - They, oft, shall catch a solace from the sheaves - Of golden light, that pave heaven’s evening floor; - Nature has own’d her children, as they have smil’d, - Rapt in the glancing fields, where ocean ripples, - And hush’d them, as some mother, to her child - Gently discloses her just budded nipples! - I think, long years, long woes, hard times, forgot, - They stand inspired, nor dream of their sad lot. - - - XCV. - - O ye, who furnish’d with hearts form’d of fire, - Can clasp no longer love within your arms; - Who, lost in a poor world of brick and mire, - Can find no breast to give the love which charms; - Who live to dream, what waking quite confounds; - Who, forced on self, loathe your own lives the while; - Who cannot hear your names, ’mid many sounds, - Or teach one heart to feel, one face to smile; - Mechanical action, which use steers, not thought, - And lifeless purpose, robb’d of seeming gains, - This is your lot: with how much rapture fraught, - Too well, I know, were Nature’s slightest strains; - With what sweet voice Nature can soothe such woe, - And smile away such tears with evening’s glow. - - - XCVI. - - Where solitude makes music unto silence, - By forests arching over deep slow streams; - Or, where huge rocks guard oceans, giving high sense - Of gods in-dwelling through immortal dreams; - There stands a shadow, beckoning to the insight, - Of a world, far vaster, fuller, more intense, - It sweeps away the cobwebs of our dim sight; - The pigmy world dwindles near shapes immense: - ’Tis then, that voice, passion, shape, action, thought, - Lose all the colours caught from phantom life; - And all is given, that even presumption sought; - And there is peace, without the bubble strife: - ’Tis but a moment we may blissful be; - Soon grate the irons that mind us we’re not free. - - - XCVII. - - Who that has felt such joy would dare intrude - His heart’s best love into such quiet scene? - Who would not rather stifle thought’s sick brood, - And gag the monitor of existence lean? - For this is the well-spring, whence love must draw - The food to stuff those shapes, on which it doats; - And henceforth, kindlier, pity Nature’s flaw, - Dazzling with lustre all her gloom of motes: - ’Tis here the bosom of Existence heaves; - Man feels its swell, which lifts him to more bliss; - He feels the heaven of its warm breath, which leaves - The rapture of young Love’s ideal kiss: - And he is calm, in depth of sweet repose, - In Nature lives, to Nature’s bosom grows. - - - XCVIII. - - And this is life, and here existence beats - With too swift cadence for the mind, poor sloth; - And here, the inquisitive soul all dumbly seeks - The quick transplantings of an earlier growth; - And the vision of the world fades from before him, - And hopes, and fears grow blind, looking on light; - Man reaps the only harvest that can store him - For each emergence of the monstrous night: - O heaven! that this too dies, leaves us o’erweighed - By the gathered volume of defeated woe; - That grief should still be furthered, not delayed, - By joy that makes it heavier, though more slow: - Dark swells the wave, big with his comrade’s might, - Barks stemm’d the first, all own the latter’s right. - - - XCIX. - - O paltry jingle to a coinèd note! - Words that ape thought, and thought that soils the soul; - With what a tide of emptiness ye float, - On the heart’s music, ye can ne’er control! - The sieve of words holds not the element’s sense; - The thought is the poor highway to the heart; - How should man’s tongue hold heaven in its pretence? - How should one road contain the city’s mart? - The pipings of a mind, vex’d, half distraught, - Are but as signs, of what their speech should be; - They can but show what happier moments sought; - What gilds the Future’s blank satiety; - ’Tis the one only tone that echo gives; - The music dying, death in music lives. - - - C. - - But, these are flowers of spring, grafted on winter; - Sounds, gently opening, that grow sudden harsh; - In darkness, light’s most momentary splinter; - The sometime flicker, dancing o’er the marsh. - Such visions deaden life, or else exalt: - They will not rest, they lead to Heaven or Hell, - Now charm to happiness’ more stern assault, - Now bid man sink, and more despairing dwell: - Pure vistas open, in long lanes of light, - Building reflections, mirror-like, from their forms, - And lovely angels beckon the entranc’d sight; - Too oft, alas! they’re lost in life’s strange storms: - Let those buds nestle amid memory’s weeds, - They’ll dart their purpose, quickening life’s faint seeds. - - - CI. - - The world was young, when some Prometheus came - And snatch’d the kernel action from repose; - His flaming ministrations crown’d his name, - Earth throbb’d his glory in her godlike throes; - And immortal words have rounded, since, the soul - With love, whose sufferance is keen to act; - But some seek suffering, scorning action’s goal, - Disjoining love, from what lifts love to fact. - Far other, taught love’s founder, and love’s lord; - Far other, mighty shades have since decreed; - They would not linger by the deep’ning ford, - They plunged, they fought, and victors now proceed: - Two notes of music blended in one tone; - Rich various colours form’d their pure white zone. - - - CII. - - For Love, without her son, is a weak fool, - The faltering treble of a school-girl’s thought; - She whimpers, daunted, for ’tis hot or cool, - Or that’s there less, or more, than what she sought; - Commutual bliss lives only when they join, - And, hand in hand, pace o’er the conquered lands; - One bides the occasion, stamps the current coin; - The other’s power sows blessings o’er the strands: - She is more weak, more lovely, and more mild; - And he more beautiful, more strong, more calm; - Earth almost blossomed, when just now she smiled; - But earth cried out for joy, feeling his balm: - Divorced, one’s weakness lends the other fuel; - The more love yields, the more is action cruel. - - - CIII. - - But, borrowing aid of Nature, to upsoar, - And steer thy purpose, resolution-winged; - This, is to leave these suburbs for the shore, - Where Nature’s movements slide, noiselessly hinged; - The passive puppet, cooped in his poor self, - Foregoes the scope of his divinity; - Thinking he wields a little power or pelf, - And knows not, sees not, power’s sublimity: - Even, while living, such shall tamely die, - And, uncomplaining, reap their perished seeds: - But, holier, thou, stifle another’s sigh, - And steal whose sorrow disappoints his deeds: - Then shall the dark confirm the intenser light; - And the world’s woe but make the world more bright. - - - CIV. - - Who hath not bless’d the woods, that gave the breeze, - Freshening the city from his summer cheek? - Who hath not trembled to the quivering leaves, - Wondering such music thus was left to seek? - And thus, the hubbub left of wandering words, - My steed returns along the well-known road; - He knows his home by music of no birds, - Though by instinct of as harmonious load; - For, there, thy voice laughs fantasies away, - Showing the earnest of my fancy’s dream; - And, there, thy love has traced the lively way, - Whose signs, but thought on, indistinctly gleam: - I turn to thee, and soon forget all fears; - Swerves not my skiff, when such strong pilot steers. - - - CV. - - Ye pleasant days, companions to young joy, - E’er self and sorrow had born agony; - When grief, wreathed in romance, looked slily coy, - And wedded bliss, nor thought it felony; - My only sorrow, we for hours might part; - My often solace, we for years must meet; - Sweet expectation filled up yearning’s smart; - While memory thought not stale the oft-tasted treat: - I’ve learned those brooks were sparkling all with sunshine, - Though they seem’d stern, dividing life from life; - Could I these mazes thread so swift, and untwine, - How keen an edge were given to Time’s dull knife. - Joy steals from abhorred evil his enhancement, - His proud foot spurns the neck, that aids advancement. - - - CVI. - - There are, who build great domes sparkling with wealth, - Whose wretched pride mounts with palatial walls; - Some, yet more mean, hold riches for their health, - And tire their laded ships and creaking stalls; - Some bend their foolish steps to lofty place, - Cringe, fawn, and hope--to be despised, forgot; - These wisely think, by flattery of the base, - To help their high-placed frames, e’er low they rot: - And, others scorn the world, and serve for hire - A self-erected Heaven, whither they’d soar; - They feed on such vile thoughts, nor know the mire,-- - Heaven their sole aim, and Hell sin’s only flaw: - More noble, some live by ambition’s shrine; - To ponder on thy worth, is only mine. - - - CVII. - - ’Tis a great aim, this will to wander lonely, - This high ambition, gnawing its heart’s core, - To scorn this life, and live thy dying only, - Along the years that hear thy words no more: - ’Tis great, to burst the web that stays thy hand, - Stern to rush on, nor pause, nor look, nor hear; - To escape mute love’s imploring glance and band; - To feel intensely, yet to shed no tear; - As one who swims, fights with wave-baffling arms, - Wrestling with the roaring, wracking, whistling waters, - So, too, resistless urge thy way through harms, - Nor swerve for earth, her sons, or charming daughters: - All this seems great, yet I would rather rest - My troubled fancies in thy loving breast. - - - CVIII. - - For, even there translucent thought’s deep roll, - There the slight foam but beautifies the blue, - O let me write my name along that scroll, - That mirror, varying to a lovelier hue! - Thou, like the cold world, will not e’er forget; - When thou must die, my fame shall wither too; - For what were laurels when with weeping wet? - Though fame be lost, yet love shall fly with you; - Yet nought shall perish; for one thought of thine - Hath breath’d eternity through these slight lays; - And I can dare the world’s poor scornful whine - To spoil the smoothness of thy perfect praise: - I know these strains are weak, yet love them still, - Their blind obedience only owns thy will. - - - CIX. - - Fame, slowly staggering, toils up hard ascents, - The summit reached, she beckons, proudly poised; - Life struggles out through inapparent vents; - Fame’s former glory is less loudly noised: - Death calls, and fame revives, then sudden dies, - Or, smouldering, stinks along the restless years; - Life’s various hoard, fed by such quick supplies, - Heeds not the fanes of bygone mirth or tears; - The years, that build the shadows, make them dim; - The busy world’s scarce conscious of itself; - Already toying on oblivion’s brim, - It prays for heirs to waste much useless pelf. - Who have not time to assure their own weak ways, - How should they pause o’er their ancestors’ praise? - - - CX. - - But, the spirit, enamoured of immortal Beauty, - He will not serve on fame’s light grudging meed; - His grateful labour, merg’d in sublime duty, - Seeks, in creation, harvest of its seed; - Beauty is his dear Lord, he loves to owe, - And grows more rich by payment; he will toil, - And watch his offspring, as they grander grow, - Outdoing Nature in their beauteous coil. - And all alone he feels, yet is not sad, - For She, the inspirer of all hearts, is near; - And Nature’s fondness makes her son look glad, - And will not, wholly, let his heart grow sear. - The artificer of the Changeless grows not tired, - He is well paid, nor cares to be admired. - - - CXI. - - Ye spirits, whose soaring vivified your plumes; - Whose godlike names swell man’s adoring breath; - Whose glory, time, nor space, nor hate consumes; - Ministers of love, whose virtue conquers death; - Such love of Beauty for its own dear sake, - Resident in the soul, the mind, the form, - Only could inspire what ye dared undertake, - And bear ye, conquerors, through the mist and storm: - Great humanisers of the world, fusing your merit - Through the inattentive cycles of the years; - Most know not the profusion they inherit, - So hath your spirit impregnated men’s tears: - Severing what Gordian knots of mysteries, - Love echoes Christ, Spinoza, Socrates! - - - CXII. - - Now all in Heaven is tranquil; peeps one cleft - Of silver splendour; mark! an angel stands there, - And breathes his bubble, as fresh childhood deft; - Blushing into life, the concave pays his care, - And purple melts to gold; the scarce white cloud - Mantles the mines that make such depth of blue, - And the delicate ripple tingles to that shroud, - Consorting music with its late-found hue, - Such is religion:--immanent in the altars - That the pure heart prostrates at Beauty’s shrine, - In ceremonies, pomps, and forms it falters; - But rapt at Nature, stands confessed divine: - Offspring of Joy and Love, religion wings - The adoration of the heart’s mute strings. - - - CXIII. - - Hail! holy triumph of time-chastened piles; - Your lofty music thrills along the soul; - Welcome! the sunbeams, glistening through your aisles, - Tinging their gold with history’s coloured roll: - Young voices move your melodies, young limbs - White-robèd, pluck the buds of innocence. - Mild silver beckons to the light which swims - Evolved through darkness, fashioning forms for sense. - But I love best, when faith moves dreary self, - Toppling its pride and pedestal to the ground; - Most then in Being lose the world, that elf, - Harbouring their errors in a happier sound: - What matters whether Heaven exist or no? - Their prayers find Heaven, or lose the sense of woe. - - - CXIV. - - I knew a man, whose heart could find no home, - Whose very fulness but provoked his dearth; - He was too proud to show how he could moan, - Most thought him cold, few understood his worth; - But closeted feelings bring forth bitter fruit; - And solitude preys on love, making it mad; - Hearts throb more genial, even to a worthless suit, - Than when experience answers, all is sad: - He hath grasp’d sometimes at the empty air, - Parcelling it out to visions of his mind; - Deifying some idea, he’s call’d it fair; - Alas! he could not long continue blind: - Who’s separate from his fellows may live great; - Yet fate decrees he’ll curse his empty state. - - - CXV. - - And he had doubts, aye, I have heard him cry - To the wild winds, bidding them stay awhile; - He sought the substance of the beauty shy, - That lurk’d in ocean, kiss’d by summer’s smile; - And he hath called unto the ghastly dark, - Gasping for breath, and panting for the light: - He long’d for life, but phantoms steer’d his bark, - Lengthening his voyage with a tedious freight; - O he could understand all that seem’d sad, - And claim’d a kindred with deserted hope! - Life, too indulgent, show’d him all she had, - He scorned her earnest, would not trust her scope: - He asked nor sympathy, nor aid, nor pity; - Where should he seek them? not in field or city. - - - CXVI. - - But had his happy hope chanc’d to alight - By the full river of thy thought’s sweet flow! - O then, my love, how couch’d had been his sight! - How had his mind been purged from all its woe! - Thy hand should only lead him to the hill, - That beckons daylight o’er its far blue waves; - Thy thought should but subdue his stubborn will; - Soon he were master of poor hope’s dim graves! - The presence of the God, that weaves the world, - Transfusing beauty till it higher grows; - The God of love, should still those storms that whirl’d - Such petty streamlets into deadlier flows: - But ah! the hand that only knows to mend, - How oft it fails unconscious whom to tend. - - - CXVII. - - Child of a day, and changeling of an hour! - Man, feeblest tuning of love’s scarce-heard pipe; - The abyss, that voids despair, burns to deflower - With death thy hopes, with time thy thoughts unripe. - Yet know, rejoice, ’tis Nature guides the change; - Joy, beauty, truth, wing her transparent feet: - No toy thou art, nor left to lonely range; - Reward grows stronger from its oft defeat: - Whate’er thy utmost joy can comprehend; - What godlike beauty hath once thrill’d thy soul; - What love has ever stamp’d truth as his end: - Such joy, beauty, truth, love, are Nature’s goal: - Shall Nature gladden only to deceive? - Should man the atom more than God conceive? - - - CXVIII. - - The echoes, from the ruins of the Past, - Steal o’er our ears, sphering a heavenly isle; - Haply deceptive, yet we’ll there make fast, - Wreathing the skeleton world in childhood’s smile: - For who can build, when woods and quarries fail? - Or who can fathom the dark monster deep? - How shall the bud be rear’d from storm and hail? - Which drug and stun the Present, till it sleep: - Yet sift the grains, dissevering hope from fear, - For one least seed shall shame whole worlds of drought; - Brightens the prospect, when beheld more near; - Love trims the flights, that scorn knows but to flout: - The search may fail, yet seeking bears its crown, - And joy’s least treasure smooths the world’s worst frown. - - - CXIX. - - O Eden of our childhood, Innocence! - How did thy ardour paint the ugly world; - Making it amiable, void of all pretence; - With roses garlanded with dew be-pearl’d - The world’s not chang’d, ’tis only thou, art gone; - The music’s wanting to the quick-breathing shell; - The aroma fails where it hath dwelt so long; - The flash divine is dead, or fades to Hell; - But, thou wast gentle, calm, silent, and strong; - A truth, too real, to be here conceiv’d: - And we are parted,--be it not for long, - That thou art somewhere, may be well believed. - O let me find thee; if frail life forbid, - In the universe of thee, let life be hid. - - - CXX. - - To see great minds baffling an evil fate, - Delights, and urges on to emulous deeds; - Yet, seems it only Nature’s tricksome state, - Defeating self, by livelier-quickening seeds; - The mind conquers base thoughts by its own power, - Then thinks it much, that its true self prevails; - Yet Nature tempers all things, even the flower - That stoops to winter, or that scorns his flails; - But, when young, godlike innocence arises, - He will not flinch, nor shudder, nor conspire; - His perfect purpose shatters faint surmises, - And brightly burns, ascending ever higher: - Conquered, at length, by his too great devotion, - He learns he lives in nought, and kills emotion. - - - CXXI. - - There seem’d to burst upon my flooded sight - A globe of lustre, an enormous sun; - It swallow’d, in the majesty of its might, - The whole vast concave, where the eye can run: - I stood, I know not where, marking it glide - With stealthy swiftness on its axle, round; - And there were forms, frown’d lurid on its side, - Their names were on their brows, there was no sound: - The orb had blazon’d, Change, on each proud flank, - And pass’d its order’d puppets in review; - First, Death rose ghastly, then as sudden sank, - Conquered by Woe, of sullen haggard hue: - Despair and Hope, Love, Youth, Fear, Friendship, Hate, - Tears, Laughter, Beauty, Age grew link’d in fate. - - - CXXII. - - Vision unwelcome, of familiar things, - Why force, I cried, your fantasies on my mind? - Your aspect shadows gloom with fouler wings; - Could I some refuge from your varying find! - I look’d, and, eminent, o’er that ghastly round, - And, quite diffusive, through its sad precincts, - Uncertain shapings based on steadfast ground, - The light of myriad suns made dark those tints: - Transfixed, I stand, inhaling joy and wonder; - Then nearer gaze, that effluence divine - Stream’d ever on, and burst the pores asunder, - Whose ignorance scorn’d such treasure for their mine: - When uncongenial homes rebuked that power, - Its lightning flight bless’d some more grateful bower. - - - CXXIII. - - Such visions, poised upon entrancing notes, - May waft some waif toward congenial ports; - Poised on the wind, ineffable music floats, - In the enchantress face holding her courts; - In the harmonious pants of drunken joy; - In the traitorous interchange of random vows; - In the commutual wave of forest boughs; - In thought, whose arbitrary response wakes, - Fashioning the melody to peculiar laws; - In passion, surging, by its own quick shakes, - Wresting aside the unapprehensive cause; - Swift-winged ideas waft her from her throne; - Music scarce knows the offspring for her own. - - - CXXIV. - - Thou starting-place to a goal yet undefined; - Thou limit clasp’d in no circumference; - Thou tell-tale, in a castle undermined; - Strange tongue, of an uncertain prescience; - Foundation-stone supporting piles of thought; - Thou, Proteus, differing in a self-same soul; - Discoverer of joy, with sorrow fraught; - Thou lively fire, flung from the sullen coal; - The sacred marble shows but one indent - Of penitential kisses, thousandfold, - Yet towers memorial, of sad pilgrims spent, - Of pomps, of pride, of broken hearts and gold: - Like frescoes, born in marble, from one sound, - Lo! multitudinous living shapes abound. - - - CXXV. - - Tangle some notes beneath the prisoner’s bars, - Some simple music he may recognise; - He is not querulous, that it haply jars, - Nor twists its turns to meanings shrewdly-wise; - His heart shall leap aloft, and shout “’tis mine;” - Sorrow and hope, repentance, love, joy, tears, - Shall hail that melody’s unforgotten chime: - What matter that the crowd without the walls - Are jocund to the music of its mirth? - That the voluptuous dance, through lordly halls, - Sweeps by the eyes that sparkle to its birth? - One dreams to it, while one dances, one is sad. - Omnipotent music thou mak’st all men mad. - - - CXXVI. - - But thou, whose breath, the music of my life, - Murmurs its sweetness, never uninhaled; - Now, the last time, glance o’er my spirit’s strife, - The bliss, whose close must be so soon bewailed. - I must depart, and think those hours were bless’d, - Long since, so pregnant of departing joy, - And wonder at the earth, I lightly press’d, - Nor knew what reverence it should once enjoy: - The crescent of thy spring shall flower as brightly - As though mine eyes stood sentinels o’er its growth; - And thou shall carol on thy pathway lightly, - Transplanting summer into winter wroth. - I’ll ponder still, where’er adversely hurled, - Thy words, which marr’d the change which makes the world. - - - CXXVII. - - The voice that charm’d my sorrows knows me not, - The smile that made my life wakes not for me, - Haply such musings shall disown the spot, - That once looked lovely but through light of thee; - Shall anguish curse the unremembering stones, - For that they build no ruinous epitaph? - Or weave still living voices to new groans, - And match with sighs the people’s hollow laugh? - No; rather consecrate thy once abode, - The birth-place, and the altar of love’s prime; - Aye, steal my spirit from beneath its load, - Revisiting the haunts of fairy time: - The shadows of thy steps must leave the impress, - Shall drink the dew, token of bitterness. - - - CXXVIII. - - I seem’d so rich, with promise of the Future, - I stand so desolate, calling to the Past, - The Present mocks the yet unfashion’d suture; - A gloom there is o’er all the landskip cast: - Why should brief joy shadow such length of woes? - Why should the sweet taste sourly to the sense? - The diamond yet within the casket glows, - Why should its brilliance fright my fancy hence? - I would all pain and pleasure were forgot: - My ineffectual thought giddies with hope; - Relief with blotted joys were dearly got; - Bliss, vacillating, sails in such strait scope: - My mind knows not its thoughts; they storm and veer; - Time, draw some comfort from the Present’s fear. - - - CXXIX. - - And, shall it be, that who have stol’n ambrosia, - From the aerial palaces of the gods, - Or, like faint flowers, flush’d to the morning rosier, - Touch’d by the mesmerism of the sunbeams’ rods-- - Shall such commend their spring to dungeon walls, - Catching no comfort from the dull reflex, - Responsive, breathe to no melodious calls? - But feed on hope, insidious to perplex. - How doubly dark frowns the removed cold spot, - Lumber’d with shadows from the journeying sun; - How trebly cursed, that unpropitious lot, - Whose scale descends from whence its joys begun: - And such is mine, whose starting-point was bliss; - Yet all life’s rounds but lead me more amiss. - - - CXXX. - - I must depart, and others shall crowd up - The empty room it was my pride to fill; - And other votaries shall attempt the cup, - Whose crystal lends a flavour, sparkling still; - But, sometimes, thus my heart with transport speaks - Sometimes, my name shall flash along thy thought; - Thy heart shall own the spell and pale thy cheeks, - And give one sigh, from joy, or sorrow bought: - I ask not grief; nay, rather joyous weave - A dear recess, luminous with fancy’s rays; - There, let my captured heart delight, not grieve - Thy attentive sequence, through dim memory’s maze: - Joy leads remembrance wistfully through the years; - Give me but love, I ask no weed of tears. - - - CXXXI. - - Let me not grieve, though blasting blight my days; - Let me not, with harsh cadence, crash the sound; - Let me not smear this fond record of praise, - Nor pause on sorrow’s inharmonious round; - Nay, let me capture joy, and, rashly-glad, - Bend bliss reluctant to my craving sense; - But, softening, soon, I’ll grow more lonely-sad, - Beckoning Content to chase those phantoms hence: - With velvet tread, lynx eye, he steals along, - Dreading the indent of some half-healed mishap; - Then, gathering courage, treads with step more strong, - And probes the withered trunk’s neglected sap: - He threads the weeded Past, without annoy; - And boasts, at length, from pain a new-found joy. - - - CXXXII. - - A thousand dumb-voiced stars beseech our eyes - And lend a magic to the lonely night; - True world-historians of all hopes and sighs, - Might we but spell their story from your light. - Loves, hopes, philosophies, religions, powers, - Feed on themselves, quickened by their own fall: - And years but mock at years, and hours at hours, - Processions furnish soon their grandeur’s pall: - Even now ye gaze on hopes, that live in death, - On many a various god of wealth or pride, - On schemes, fated to fail, on learning’s breath, - Soon choked by dust, or blown by truth aside: - Ambition, strong to live, must feel decay; - What shall not fade? can priests or sages say? - - - CXXXIII. - - Hark! what a voice comes crying through the night, - How does it thrill my too obsequious ears! - “O God, that knowledge should be wisdom hight, - And men should broadcast sow big-bellied years:” - Should a strong spirit descend, and wave his wand, - And gaze, and breathe inventions into life; - And fit all systems, with his dexterous hand, - Into a social perfectness from strife,-- - ’Twere much; and goodly heaven-descended Peace - Should sprout her blossoms, beautiful, o’er the land: - I question yet, if jars should wholly cease, - Or hatreds yield their once-accomplished stand: - An automaton world may merchandise, weave, spin; - Riches shall swell, not harmonise, its din. - - - CXXXIV. - - Nay let your flight, Dædalean, touch far shores, - The utmost horizon where discovery tends! - Let Riches lavish their luxuriant stores, - Till Poverty gapes, wanting her wonted friends; - Let Rule, accomplished by adjustment’s mean, - Tune his mild precepts to benevolence; - Let knowledge thirst, and universal seem, - Say what, say wherefore, whither, and say whence; - Let ignorance crown with pride presumption’s vaunt, - And fruitless pages garner stores of praise; - Let social systems, smoothly-gliding, haunt - The wheels of state, whose barter smooths their ways: - Yet riches are life’s condiment, not life; - Peace is not love, but absence from the strife. - - - CXXXV. - - The earth is hoar with many a thousand years, - And many a nation’s mute observance hung - On brighter ministers than woman’s tears, - Immutable still, as when their course begun; - Once large luxuriance fostered giant forms, - Huge sepulchres contain their trampled pride; - Nature, or glutted, or transposed by storms, - Invites man sail o’er Being’s former tide: - Without one tear those calm, clear worlds looked down, - And haply smile at mortals’ eagerness; - They seem to murmur, grasp your bauble crown, - Scan not too near your treasure’s meagreness: - All changes; but one essence guides the change, - Involved, immortal, it must onward range. - - - CXXXVI. - - Types of the volume where all secrets lie, - Who hath not made ye confidants of woe? - Whom have ye cheer’d not, beckoning from on high, - Watched at their birth, and flash’d on death your glow? - Witnesses to my woes, my thoughts, my sins, - Attest, that sometimes I have conquered grief; - If I have known what loss fulfilment wins, - And yet striven on, then yield me some relief: - Thou, blue escutcheon, on which worlds have painted - The symbol, truth, hard for poor man to read; - If I have lonely storm’d content, nor fainted, - Nourish some flower from this uncertain seed: - Though great my sins, not less my griefs have been, - Bear witness, Truth, high arbitress and queen. - - - CXXXVII. - - When man sinks awed, watching a myriad globes, - How shrunk his purpose and his works appear! - All his achievement ne’er can weave such robes; - He can but gaze, despair confounds his fear: - Yet there’s a link that binds weak man to God, - And earth hath heavens as bright as all those stars; - Beauty, ever-living, need but inspire the sod, - And, lo! the substance of those golden cars. - Spirit of Beauty, quicken, purge my soul; - Raise it more near the substance of thy form; - Then, mounting gradual, I shall reach the goal, - Where individual life’s no longer warm; - Where Beauty in itself transpicuous shines, - And, universal, dazzles life’s dim mines. - - - CXXXVIII. - - I cease, and bid farewell to who hath swayed, - This tribute’s mite of unmelodious verse; - With many a billow my bark’s idly play’d, - My thoughts enamoured but of thee, their hearse; - And think not, though life drags a tedious chain, - And all it offers, shows on trial nought, - Believe not, I will sorrow, or complain; - Hast thou not stored all summer in my thought? - And, watching the bright heavens, or the glad ocean, - I’ll think thou look’st, and they repeat thy smile; - Nor shall life’s utmost favour of commotion - Bid homage spurn my Sovereign from love’s isle: - To live in mortal’s mouths, be others’ aim; - To dwell within thy heart, my only claim. - - - HERTFORD: - PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Connected Poems, by Charles Seabridge - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONNECTED POEMS *** - -***** This file should be named 51770-0.txt or 51770-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/7/7/51770/ - -Produced by Larry B. 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