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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..be7ae5c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #51770 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51770) 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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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) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="cb">CONNECTED POEMS.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="276" height="500" alt="" title="" /> -</div> - -<h1>CONNECTED POEMS.</h1> - -<p class="c">BY<br /> -CHARLES SEABRIDGE.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>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.—<i>Confessions de Rousseau, Partie</i> II., <i>livre 9</i>.</p> - -<p>Qui Deum amat, conari non potest, ut Deus ipsum contra amet.—<i>B. -de Spinoza, Ethica, Pars.</i> V.</p></div> - -<p class="c"> -LONDON:<br /> -TRÜBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW,<br /> -1866.<br /> -</p> - -<h1>CONNECTED POEMS.</h1> - -<h2>I.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O poor preludings to some happier praise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou frail decoy to merit myriad-hued,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The violets of whose virtue pave your ways,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Breathing beneficence on your sullen mood;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Go, test your worth, nor once obtrude the award<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On who, unanxious, cannot pant for fame;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His only verdict, whom these lines applaud,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall touch my soul with sense of praise or blame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Howe’er it be; this verse has frighted woe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And caught the glimpses of a banished Heaven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Haply surpassing in its quiet glow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Life’s fickle transports, nourishment and leaven;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If here is aught, its dues shall be allow’d;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I rest content, but of my office proud.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2"></a>{2}</span></p> - -<h2>II.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Aye fashioned from the mirror of the soul<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That lends its shadow to this fleeting world,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How doth thy beauty in itself control<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The spirit and the form wherein ’tis whirled;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In others earth beneath the inward fire<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sinks down, abashed, nor knows to bear the fame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While some more mean exalt the entrancing mire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Smothering the sparkles of celestial flame;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet either wanting, for, with those of earth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Earth’s purer mixture hallows what it lends,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And easier leads the sons of self-same birth<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To fathom beauty in its heavenlier ends:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis fit Nature should find a lovely hearse,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When man by death springs from the Universe.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3"></a>{3}</span></p> - -<h2>III.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">If there be some true meaning and a sign<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In all the altars where sad suppliants pray,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And if the words they sometime subtly twine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Be not unpregnant of a deeper lay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What depths of mystery might not then be read,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What gages of new hope lie undiscerned,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In all the purpose that thy beauties wed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all the thought in glowing shrine inurned,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the unfathomable music, weaving<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The young glad utterance of unconscious vows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And in the eloquence, quickening and relieving,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like sunset lingering round becalmèd prows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The heaven that wooes, now flashes, from that eye<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hath stol’n Jove’s lightning and his joys from high.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4"></a>{4}</span></p> - -<h2>IV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Fain would I speak of all thy hopes disclose,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My pen, charm’d with delights, scarce will steal on,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lingering about the rapture which it knows<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It dallies coyly with an idle song;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too long the prospect which mine eye surveys,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How shall I mark each flower or stay to cull?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Through light, through shade, Perfection planes the ways<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With sweet variety, that grows not dull;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each new enchantment seems itself so fair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That the last pride spoils his ancestor’s aims:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So justly tempered all, none can impair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Concent’ring beauty’s just imperial claims;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each borrows new delight while it conveys,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And leads to harmony by various ways.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5"></a>{5}</span></p> - -<h2>V.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Who hath not seen the morning breaking gaily,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The rivers leaping into dazzling light?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who hath not view’d the eve declining palely,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Flouting her rosy stillness with black night?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who then hath mark’d thee not in joy delightful,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Careering on thy young soul’s restless flow?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or who hath, sadly, blam’d not sorrow spiteful,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tempering thy beauty with a heavenly glow?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The even tenor of thy bosom led past,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor brook’d those tremors that disturb light breasts;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, like a holy ocean, calm, pure, steadfast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Just heav’d beneath its load which on it rests;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Streaked with faint tints of long delicious light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose radiance lures but never tires the sight.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_6" id="page_6"></a>{6}</span></p> - -<h2>VI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Bound in a little room, my heart exulting,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Surveys the treasures of unmeasured space;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A thousand pathways in one spot resulting,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Disclose the errors of the human race;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What all men seek within that centre lies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose ripening virtues shun the general view,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lest all should dub them beautiful and wise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all that nature has of good and true:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O well for me that worth all would admire<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Most should unconscious leave to my employ;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So may thy budding beauties breathe their fire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All unattempted by the world’s annoy:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So nature crowns her gifts by liberal growth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She owes success and sanctifies her troth.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7"></a>{7}</span></p> - -<h2>VII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But soon the rosebud, in developed beauty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unfolds its maiden, luring charms to light;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soon love usurps the walks of tired duty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And shows its godlike fulness to the sight;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The eaglet soon gladdens his golden plumage,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the intensest orient of the sun;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even the meek violet gently must assume age,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And glance through leaves the merit she hath won;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The noon it stealeth from the dewy morning,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And amorous night catcheth the trembling day,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The spring must ripen, and the summer’s warning<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That autumn shall not linger more than May;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou too must change, developed till all love thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And yet a change shall hover just above thee.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8"></a>{8}</span></p> - -<h2>VIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">If thou must change, beauty shall form the groove,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And nourish promise in a firmer mould,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which, all unchequered, onward still shall move,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Informed with wisdom and in virtue old:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thus shalt thou live, but no, what years can add<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the keen edge of thy unbated mind?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or what hath wisdom, more than reason had,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When in thy form she mustered all her kind?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Within the acorn lies the oak’s whole essence,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Man can accomplish but what in man dwells;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The iron that supples with its incalescence,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet wears the nature that its coldness tells;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So, yet unfashioned, in thy youth reposes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The germ that turns to use young nature’s roses.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9"></a>{9}</span></p> - -<h2>IX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">’Tis thou hast taught me what of truth I know,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Kind debt, that binds me nearer unto thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That worth’s best triumph scorns all outward show<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And works within its quiet mystery;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That the same virtues walk in various light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Accomplishing by each their several ends,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That as the sun to day, the moon to night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This, its pale lustre, that, its ardour lends;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So with each mortal’s differing merits twined,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A separate glory crowns peculiar aims,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And myriad fates, in one deep urn combined,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stamp, with one issue, more than million claims;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some only tower, above the rest, supreme,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That such thy lot, methinks, it well would seem.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10"></a>{10}</span></p> - -<h2>X.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Rare lot where reason is with fate combined,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where envy enters not, but only love;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thought, expectation, fancy, intertwined,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All could not fashion, that which thou dost prove:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where then is time for jealous jarring thought<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To ruffle the full transport of our heaven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or clog the wings of adoration fraught<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With purity and hope’s exulting leaven?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sunk in the sense of that supremest pleasure,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Here let me lose myself to live in thee;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A priceless boon, I only know to measure,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By what it costs my soul again to flee:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From heaven I fall, and this must, sure, be hell,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Earth never looked so void, I know full well.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11"></a>{11}</span></p> - -<h2>XI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Spirit of youth and joy and hope and love,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All this thy essence is and dwells in thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This praise but mocks thee, whilst thou soar’st above<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such vague assaults, in nature’s witchery!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou art a pearl, snatched from the angry deep,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A star, which envy hurled from comrade suns,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">An opal, where all rays reflected sleep,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The summer lightning, glistering as it runs;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All things that loveable and lovely are,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such thou appearest, in thy joyous hour;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Oft frolicsome as leaves, that dance from far,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When the wind dallies with some pensive flower;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All these thou art yet all of these express<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nought of the magic of thy loveliness.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12"></a>{12}</span></p> - -<h2>XII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Lovely in joy but grander yet when rage<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O’erflows the dams that reason interposed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The barriers past, themselves must, loath, engage<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And swell the tumult they’d have fain opposed;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There, once enlisted, shows the scene so fair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such modulation of impetuous wrath,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That what was scorn’d, now claims their tenderest care,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And arm’d in conscious worth they sally forth.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aye, ever did thy just soul scorn the wrong,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Twas only virtue lured thee thus astray;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How oft to goodness did’st thou wile the strong,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By young enticement’s headstrong, winning way,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till all of theirs was thine, and thou could’st pour<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At love’s high altar gifts of virgin ore.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13"></a>{13}</span></p> - -<h2>XIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Young spirit, thou hast taught me what is joy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And fathomed nature with a larger line;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How sweet to learn when nature’s powers deploy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And o’er thy frame their dalliance combine:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ye passions soothed to one unanimous end,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou concord breath’d through avenues of sound,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Witchery, ever winning, from its power to blend<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fancy’s light hints with intuition’s ground:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fulness of power lives not with those who roam,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dandling the toy of a fantastic grief,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Iconoclast of woe, it builds its home<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In joy’s ebullience at its own relief;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth founds the pile where age contented dwells,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And drowns his dearth with draughts from childhood’s wells.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14"></a>{14}</span></p> - -<h2>XIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A young Apollo flush’d with love and beauty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The world shall wonder owning thy command;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now, the boy Eros, scorning rugged duty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And mocking forms poor custom’s sole demand:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His archness blended with his sprightly grace,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His glance of love and fitfulness and sport,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His human godhead and heaven-moulded face;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These all are mingled in thy witching port:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, more than these, the eloquence of thy look,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The energy whose fire informs thy frame;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Well might man read thee as the favourite book,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wherein maternal nature graves her name.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In thy humanity perfection lives,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And kills th’ ideals which rash fiction gives.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15"></a>{15}</span></p> - -<h2>XV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Youth is the torch that lights up beauty’s forms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sail that wafts us where our hopes repose,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now steals it towards the heart which now it storms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gradual towards its own ideal grows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It sifts the sands, and clasps the golden grains;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It weaves a rainbow through the mists of life;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sluggard desire that faints, even as it strains,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And wears fulfilment, as a tedious wife,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Feels but the touch of youth, and rapturous soars<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To other heights, imagining brighter views;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth is a woodland slope, whose mossy pores<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are bursting with the life of violet hues;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Melodious changes of a harp’s reply<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To its sweet theme of mutability.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16"></a>{16}</span></p> - -<h2>XVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Art thou not goddess of this world, O Change?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Expound the riddle, otherwise who may,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet can I never from thy altar range,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature, artificer in a various way!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Enough for me if I may still adore<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each touch that throbs from thy maternal breast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If I may linger by the lonely shore,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And find a universe of Elysian rest.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If that with hands reverent and pure and holy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I drag some relics from the unworthy shade,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou wilt assist, and fashion visions wholly<br /></span> -<span class="i0">After the pattern which thyself hast made!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How more than mortal poor mankind should be,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If taught to crown the yearnings found in thee.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17"></a>{17}</span></p> - -<h2>XVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There is a virtue loftier than the rules<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By which belief squares what it would digest,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There is a process which the subtler schools<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Believe too simple for their high bequest;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A goddess hovers o’er this giddy earth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her snowy breasts are budding to the air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her sad smile ’s conquered peace yet shrinks from mirth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Reclines she, and her arms invite, her hair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sole garment of her loveliness, conformed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the semblance of a golden lap, the shrine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And cradle of all promise; here are formed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All creeds of holiness, beauty, divine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Truth, and immortal strivings unfulfilled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And through the whole rich charity’s distilled.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18"></a>{18}</span></p> - -<h2>XVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Man varies, ages change, and time unfolds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A different name writ on the selfsame scroll;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And one shall hate what his descendant holds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Immoveable, as the antithesis of the pole:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then, wherefore snarl, wrangling o’er half-starved names,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That do but mock the thing which most believe?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such jarring furthers not, but rather lames<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The substance man would from the eternal weave:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love, Beauty, Joy, echoes from inmost Nature,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Howe’er miscalled, must still remain the same;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let man develope each distinctive feature,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all shall worship then, what none dare blame:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Most born without the pale, yet linger there,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor mourn as lost, what ne’er employed their care.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19"></a>{19}</span></p> - -<h2>XIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There is a spirit that sanctifies the dulness<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of those, unconscious of the charm they boast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There is a soul, sparkling in nature’s fulness,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which laughs at custom’s quibbles, trembling ghost;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A love there is, whose breath trembles with godhead,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which robs the desert of the wanderer’s fears;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The inexpressible pathways it hath trod, led<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By intense silence, boding o’er the years:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It will not lend its harmony to words,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor lower reality by visions, torn<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From knowledge fitful, that but speaks to herds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Quivering with mutual wonder, mutual scorn.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet love is there, and will, in time, inform<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All who have passed to sunshine out of storm.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20"></a>{20}</span></p> - -<h2>XX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Wandering to other strains, my fancy dwells<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet about the musings that enwrap thy name;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aught that awakes some peal from far joy-bells,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth’s hopes, and holydays, recalls thy fame:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This hast thou sanctified by eloquent words,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And that enshrinèd in thy beauty lies;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As spring awakes and calls the joyous birds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Truth comes with thee, at thy departure flies:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet gladlier o’er thy image would I pause,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swelling the verse with music of thy name,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If once my efforts might support the cause,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor blot thy merits with my failure’s shame:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Enough, if indirect and faltering praise<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Attest my love, failing thy fame to raise.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21"></a>{21}</span></p> - -<h2>XXI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O the glad days, the promise of our spring,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When wandering by thy side I lived in thee!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet, can I hear the light winds carolling,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">About the woods that echoed to our glee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The heather on the hills, the long green downs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The slopes, the glades, the sunshine and the shade,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The spring-time earth, the heaven that seldom frowns,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The love, whose substance dazzled all parade;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All is yet there, nor change hath marred the spot;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Remembrance fashions all as once it stood:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis not the same, the heather knows me not,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The dancing water, nor the talking wood;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all is changed, and I am not the same,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nought speaks of self, save some unreal name.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22"></a>{22}</span></p> - -<h2>XXII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And can I rest the same and thou not here,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose essence flowed through, new-creating all?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fancy dreamt not, thou wast indeed so dear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy very presence made its splendour’s pall:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I held thee, as the substance of my hope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lovelier part of what to me belonged,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The very essence, and the eternal scope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For which my thought and being were prolonged:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Witness thou heaven, what joy have I e’er found<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In aught, that unto hope delightful seems,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Save when joy held us both in larger bound?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou wast the source of all young longing dreams:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If such my joy, how bitter sorrow’s blow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That christens thy once haunts by terms of woe?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23"></a>{23}</span></p> - -<h2>XXIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But, pausing o’er the relics of past days,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A deadlier mischief strikes my bosom chill:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No more, alas! no more, my bosom sways<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With joys, fresh-flowing from the heaven-capt hill;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No more, the quickening pulses of the world<br /></span> -<span class="i0">May teach my soul to madden with its joy;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No more, its echoes, all confus’dly whirl’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O’erpower the troubling of each weak annoy:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis past; the voice is silent, and if now<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A quiet bliss steals o’er declining years;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis but, that reason smooths the rugged brow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Kissing the sources of uncertain tears:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The cup of rapture’s equal lent to all,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Drink once of bliss, and poor content must pall.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24"></a>{24}</span></p> - -<h2>XXIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And in this stream thy youthful limbs were borne,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dear stream, I drink thy waters for his sake;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And on this grass, and by this flowering thorn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His noon-day couch, we murmur’d half awake:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">River, why flow’st thou on, so placid gleaming?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why waves the grass its green and nymph-like hair?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why both so tender and complacent seeming,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When he is gone who made you trebly fair?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Warm not thy waters with the love he gave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O all unconscious or ungrateful stream?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Here would he sit, tempting the lazy wave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With feet, whose ivory shamed some mermaid’s dream:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis I, not nature, err; she clasps her child,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And wins divinely, even as then she smiled.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25"></a>{25}</span></p> - -<h2>XXV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Bosomed in the young years, perchance repose<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As lovely forms, and spirits as divine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He in the perfectness of youth arose,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soon death may hold him in her mystic twine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature that gave him to mankind, not long<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Endures his absence from her ravished breast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sick for the love of what she looks upon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She opes her veins to engulf him to sweet rest:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now the keen chords of love, with thrilling touch,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tremble intense music all along thy wings;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now thou dost all pervade, and hallow such<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As thought of joyance, and of beauty brings:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swell now the thronging harmonies that roll<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The breath of love and beauty through the soul!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26"></a>{26}</span></p> - -<h2>XXVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I will not mourn thee; when thou art not here,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet is thy influence present to my heart;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I will not moisten more wet memory’s bier,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only some flowers shall play my saddening part;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Full well I know that, bursting distance’s chains,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A guardian angel, thou’lt attend my ways;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I shall hear thee in the loftiest strains<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That wake this world to muse on grander days:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A voice, whose silence is more strong than storms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall conquer midnight in its soothing power;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The golden stars, from out their mazy swarms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Chime with innumerous tongues the passing hour!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature’s epitome and Nature’s crown!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Replete with thee heaven’s minstrels murmur down.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27"></a>{27}</span></p> - -<h2>XXVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Thy words, with what sweet purport oft they come,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Breathing, like scented gales, along the years;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their wafted odours still increase their sum,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And steal the music of delicious tears:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each bank, whose reeds speak to the clear calm wave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose rippling emulates thy softer tone,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each tree, that beckons to some sheltering cave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The torrent near, whose ardour’s like thy own;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By each of these, a separate tale was told,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each claims the tribute of distinctive thought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Here poetry’s witchcraft grew, with fostering, bold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Here youth waxed amorous of what nature taught:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These still remain, nurturing such goodly seed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Recall each word, and meditate each deed.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28"></a>{28}</span></p> - -<h2>XXVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When, all unswayed by passion, or by thought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When love nor care disturb’d thy even breast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How dropp’d the golden words, with wisdom fraught,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like the light flashing on Athena’s crest!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Here, by this stream, that wantons by this willow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(By such a stream, the sage beguiled the day,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wooing with mellifluous words the crisping billow,)<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy sweetest art compels the grave to gay;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ah! me, the words have lost the charm they ow’d<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To disposition, nature, eloquence, tone;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The gesture, that from o’erwrought feeling flow’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The music of the voice, is all thine own;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the poor tenement of a troubled brain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Confuses all, and cannot much retain.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29"></a>{29}</span></p> - -<h2>XXIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Beauty, a thing of nought, the sages say,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But relative to sense, blood, pulse, ear, eye;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mockery of life, fool nature’s play,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who trifles kingdoms on a wanton’s sigh;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It lives not in the object it endues,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It takes its colour from the lover’s breast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet ’tis not there, it flits between, and wooes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Existence unexplained, and ne’er exprest:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Steal from it colour, smoothness, odour, shape,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The empty phantom who would care to clasp?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It plays its gambols, a fantastic ape,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Deriding those, who for its presence gasp;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even the form exists not, all things lie<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Twixt outward nothing, inward mystery.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30"></a>{30}</span></p> - -<h2>XXX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">’Tis a fond creed, and drags into the stream<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Truth, who sits by, and varies with the wave;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But fate decrees, that still the froward dream<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall enthrall nature, and dig pride his grave:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If the form change, and colour be the dye<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of the sun’s brilliance breathing through the air;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If men still vary, and if all things fly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shifting from real base to seeming fair;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If truth should seem to change and God to stain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His snowy vesture in the winnowing years;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet, something godlike ever shall remain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This well I know, confirm it, O ye spheres;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet, beauty’s form shall beckon, and inspire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Exalting earth with its spiritual fire.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31"></a>{31}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O reason, best ally, and first assistant,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of beauty, wandering in his own sweet maze;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Arise, great empress, and dear spirit ministrant,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O glance thy sunshine, quickening this foul haze;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If beauty knows to conquer human hearts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lurking in virtue, wisdom, face or form,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or sanctifying success in nature’s parts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the blue heaven, on earth, in calm or storm,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Declare its essence; by what power it bends<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each stubborn element to its strong hint:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is this too hard? then whither beauty tends;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Assure at least divine its fateful dint:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Give some rich medicine that may scorn its hold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And frothing warm the chalice; here all’s cold.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32"></a>{32}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Beauty by his own light shines forth and wins<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Consent of all men to his supreme power;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who will not think so, unagreeing, sins<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Gainst love that hails each beauty of an hour:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For love is only constant, when it sways<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With the uncertain hues, that beauty gives,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even admiration, swerving various ways,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Imagines change, and otherwhere straight lives:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The ficklest thing beneath the inconstant moon<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is the sigh swelling from a lover’s breast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It pants, nor thinks that it must die full soon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even by its own luxuriance opprest.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love like an o’erstrung bow, now snaps and breaks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And now, o’erwrought, relaxes, yields, and shakes.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33"></a>{33}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I ask’d the echoes, that recall the past,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I ask’d the thrilling voice of those who live,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I ask’d the forms that mother nature cast<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And feeds within the mind, aye yet can give,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Must love be fostered by its own despair?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Must the mere shadow mark where we adored?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Must we be drunk even with the wanton air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Because both breathe it;—and our hearts be gored?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where lies the fault? even in this, replies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The voice of Wisdom; thrifty Nature lends<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rude sketches, undeveloped, which thy sighs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy fancy, thought, or lonely pride pretends<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To draw to their full scope; oft must thou err,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even though successful, nature will not stir.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34"></a>{34}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">What’s more delightful than young love disporting<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the commutual bond of first breathed sighs?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What is more lovely than the passion, courting<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such sweet succession of carnation dyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When love grows pale and red, yet knows not why,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sorrow kisses joy and both are glad?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What fame, or wealth, or power, or all, can buy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aught but compared to this looks sourly-sad?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis a brief joy, yet all that mortals know;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Happy who even this, unmixed, can find,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who will not doubt the substance in the show,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor ruffle pleasure with unquiet mind:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sift but enjoyment with too strict a hand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It mocks your fingers, and escapes to sand.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35"></a>{35}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O rarest interchange of truth and lies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love, ever pandering to thine own deceit!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou sweet chameleon of a thousand dyes!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Truth still is varying with thy wayward heat;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Truth long ago has banish’d thee his court,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet by thy essence Truth thou still must be;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Though different winds waft to a changeful port,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If Truth be gone, then it departs with thee;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lo! thou art Truth, and Truth developed lies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In Love, whose home is Beauty, and the world,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the quick sympathy of unfathomed eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And maddening forms out of their orbits hurl’d;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all are drunken for a little space,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then drink disgust, quite sickened of the chase.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36"></a>{36}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Love takes its impress from the formless hues<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That signify the thing they yet conceal;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love leads that heart to life, which it endues<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With joys that aggravate the harm they heal;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love’s treasures are not priceless to all eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All may not learn what their full magic means:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By various grades of hopes, and fears, and sighs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ecstacies, and woes, raptures, and dreams,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The soul of man ascends to that it loves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And is developed into something more;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In a more rich creation now it moves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And seeks in other souls a priceless ore:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Something it finds, yet loses what it lacks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So must the conqueror in the town he sacks.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37"></a>{37}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Love gain’d is love unlovely, joy ne’er seeth’d<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But in desire, still with possession cloy’d;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If that the vows whose once perfection breath’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Could hide with words the margin of their void,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then Love were hope, fulfilment, peace, combined,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into a concord of unearthly bliss;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then were the roses of enjoyment twined<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Around the satire on young Love’s first kiss:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But Love says, no, and Nature too denies;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For Rapture rises but by woe’s decline:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And too much bliss, with a brief respite, dies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By coldness, that shall make love dimlier shine.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All love betrays man past its paltry base,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He mounts his bubble, soars, and falls apace.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38"></a>{38}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Puff’d with the pride that feeds on lonely thoughts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In seeking secure harbours, thou must fail<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of all the aim which with such toil thou sought’st:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Either thy lot be wretchedness, or hail<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The empty, fond creations of the brain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For the warm, glowing, living forms of flesh.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I smile at danger, and such fears as reign,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In some men’s brooding minds entangled mesh;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I have a pleasant harbour, and a hope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For ever wooed by an ethereal breeze;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not Love but Friendship’s my ambitious scope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ne’er shall such fantasies my bosom tease:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet if I knew not Friendship, I would rest,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sad, not despairing, on Creation’s breast.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39"></a>{39}</span></p> - -<h2>XXXIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Theme of my thought, and beacon to my verse,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too long thy words have stolen me from thy praise;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet now I’ll linger round thee, and rehearse<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All that thou wast in past delightful days:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As one, a boy, who leaves his home, his friends,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And thinks he knows them well, sudden discerns<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A charm in what seem’d dead, he stops and sends<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Message to tree and stone, yet weeps not, turns<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only one parting glance on what, review’d<br /></span> -<span class="i0">After few years, heaps quick Eternity<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On the bright Past, severing it from the brood<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of the moody Future and the Present’s pity:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So thick, so warm, the thoughts that press my heart,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And goad the gain their frequence fails to impart.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40"></a>{40}</span></p> - -<h2>XL.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">How loathing’s germ is longing, grief wooes joy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis but a comment on the hurrying world;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Man knows such shiftings and is only coy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To match them to the stage, whereon he’s hurl’d:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But thou, immutable substance of all beauty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shalt yet defeat the purpose of this change,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shalt purge the essence of its vestment sooty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And guide its explorations quick and strange;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou shalt inhabit and invest a soul,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose myriad, intricate voices know one tone;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I, where’er wavers my wintry pole,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall hail that music’s influence as my own:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All Beauty, and all Love radiate from thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou centre of my soul’s full harmony.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41"></a>{41}</span></p> - -<h2>XLI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Bring me to some waste, whose stream’s Lethean trail,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scarce stirs its islands of monotonous grass;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where circling hills heal their huge tattered mail,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With foliage fringing all the mountain pass;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where the quire that sings, deepens the deadly lull;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where Time responds, chiming a sullen note;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where Phœbus, mellowing, blends a glory dull,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With shades that on the wings of darkness float;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where a gloom of mystery wears strange, luminous, shapes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shadowing unholy, ghastly, wizard forms;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Growing into the pulsing life, whose pregnance apes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fierce fascinations, foul unspeaking storms;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where, in brief space, myriads of demons urge<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One quivering form to Hell’s red hideous verge.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42"></a>{42}</span></p> - -<h2>XLII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Methought, a breath stole and unsealed my eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And bared the workings of the carcase world;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">An engine, like a skeleton, ever plies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A trade infernal, Death’s flag stood unfurled;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With iron teeth, I mark’d, this hell-fiend tore<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The gaspings relics of Creation’s throes;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fitted to a rack each substance, looming more,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lengthens unnatural shapes, in awful rows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And howlings, tears, and shriekings thrill’d the night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That mourn’d for ever, dumbly consonant;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each shape, to other bound in pitiless plight,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Reluctant, must destroy, foster, or plant,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What, it knows not, and cares not; whizzing wheels<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whirl, till the sick heart pants, the mad brain reels.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43"></a>{43}</span></p> - -<h2>XLIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I gazed, with unaccustomed eyes, on night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose blackness dazzled more than midday sun,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It rather seem’d, some new intenser light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Through which immortal powers, far wandering, run:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I gazed, and hurled my curses at the rage,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That traced its will on such a reckless course;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Methought, a golden form of light did cage<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My utterance’ portals, strengthening vision’s source;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, fool, it cried, look nearer, nor despair.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I saw, ’twas, as the thunder-cloud, that burst<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is glorious with the lightning, a child’s hair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Within whose gold entwined sunbeams are nurst,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No cradle else so sweet; it was the breath<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose loveliness of life scares dreary death.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44"></a>{44}</span></p> - -<h2>XLIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Dreams, visions, foolish echoings to the thought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That homeless wanders for the thing it loves:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fancies of man’s waking are so fraught<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With folly, or philosophy that roves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It knows not where, that ’tis no marvel sleep<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Should pass its coinage as the current dross:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Could man contain his dreamings in their keep,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How great a gain should balance little loss:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The world is wearied, to know why it plods<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The equal tenour of a various way;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But half attends, smiles sometimes, sometimes nods<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O’er its dissection, while its head is grey.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It clears the rubble from its own high-road,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And asks but truth, nor cares to increase its load.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45"></a>{45}</span></p> - -<h2>XLV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Life is a river, that hath caught its gleam<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From age’s lingering years, and youth’s proud date,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From dull despair, and from the hopes, that seem<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To form their longing, and to hide their hate;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From sickness, quailing underneath her pains;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And health, exulting in his pride of life;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From black meláncholy, that turns her gains,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All to the theme of an unending strife;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From that fine frame of beauty and of bliss,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That, over-sensitive, will not distort<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature’s delights to Hell’s triumphant hiss,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That, ’mid its sorrows, lives near joy’s high court:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From genius, freedom, beauty it assumes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As many forms, as hate’s dark hell consumes.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46"></a>{46}</span></p> - -<h2>XLVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I once inquired, whence the cicada brought<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The joy whose music prattles through the day;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I wished that the glad lark would but have taught,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whence came the glee that could incite his lay;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, as the rolling streams of music flow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Building all heaven along the deep blue wave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I prayed, that I might e’er thus rapturous glow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And wholly live within the bliss they gave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When, on the dancing waters, the white sail<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grows big with kisses of the lustful wind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blushing at sunrise, and at midnight pale,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All for some lurking love that match’d their kind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then, anxiously, I sought that blissful bound;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That was long since e’er thou, my friend, wast found.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47"></a>{47}</span></p> - -<h2>XLVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">To some the world is but a ragged screen,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hiding the essence of eternal fire;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They tear its tatters, and would peep between;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The unknown is lovely, and the rest is mire.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And other some glory in Nature’s robe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dare scorn ideal monsters of the mind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where man would test the heart with his nice probe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Suit his sick taste, and leave the rest behind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And some are drunken of they know not what,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And cull what sweets may hang from every hour,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor hope, nor pause, but magnify the sot;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Know not the weed, or train it as their flower.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let these rejoice, yet happier, by far,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The silly brutes, that gorge at pleasure, are.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48"></a>{48}</span></p> - -<h2>XLVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">All pleasures and all hopes are their own scorn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And man’s a measure, filling, never fill’d;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who’d not sell life, its promise something worn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For one week’s bliss with no awakening chill’d?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It cannot be; and some, foil’d or despis’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or craving peace, life’s courted joys all spann’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Have scouted all things which the world e’er prized;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dreaming of life, through the dead cloister scann’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fair sounds this, luring; yet, methinks, that shows<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A creed nor hard, nor healthy, which unscrews<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The rivets, that should pin us to the throes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That nature in begetting man renews:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The earthly mind, fed on unearthly leaven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Diffuses Hell through earth, and earth through Heaven.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49"></a>{49}</span></p> - -<h2>XLIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Who ponders on eternity, can draw<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Its shadow o’er the strangeness of this earth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, quite immersed in future bliss, can store<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His fancy’s dreams with fables of new birth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And men have tortured, altering holiest phrase,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sanctified the hopes which they adored;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Have made their souls more worthless than their praise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Saying, that perfect love to Heaven outpoured,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Must hold its flood, nor risk the Heaven it decks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Making love less lovely than the hope of bliss;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fostering the demon Self, whose presence checks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And dulls each noble prompting with his kiss.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Say ye, who steal the jewels from Heaven’s crown,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where lies the rigour of Hell’s fancied frown?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50"></a>{50}</span></p> - -<h2>L.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Heaven! ’tis a name, that as inconstant sways,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As fame or love, the changes of the moon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or, whatsoever wanders by dim ways<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To a goal, fashioned by youth’s treacherous noon:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heaven! ’tis a sound that in its uttering mocks<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The hopes, reposing round that various base;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Adroitly differing, tempered to the shocks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That mind the slow world of its desperate case!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The flattery of an echo from each heart,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A mirror, where each soul, reflected, shows<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unnatural choice of some unworthy part,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which nature’s whole must loathingly depose:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Seek virtue for itself, or, seeking, lose<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A Heaven apart, else Hell would Heaven confuse.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51"></a>{51}</span></p> - -<h2>LI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Life is a brook, that over pebbles glides,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And tints with colour of the cloud his wave;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now, the East blazes, now, sad Phœbus slides<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Down the red hills, that shroud him for his grave;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The waters now are calm, now, troubled, foam,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Exult on ridges, now o’er slopes decline,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now, in their summer sprightliness, they roam,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now, stand, congealed, in winter’s icy twine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Full many a flower is often mirror’d there,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the fresh grass, and the green shady trees,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Full many a pebble glistens through them, fair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All in confusion, toss’d by wave and breeze;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis strange, though many stones are form’d to fit,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Few meet their mates, most roll confus’dly knit.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52"></a>{52}</span></p> - -<h2>LII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The world’s but a rude frame, whose substance takes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Colouring from all who flatter, or who curse;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How oft man’s heart, all discontented wakes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His frame’s a coffin, and the world’s his hearse;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How oft, despairing, he goes forth to find<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet more assurance of the thing he hates;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How oft he leaves misanthropy behind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">New folly found, of former folly prates:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Needs but some precept, touch, face, form, or word<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To dam the current, and to turn its course;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Earth, in her loveliness, or music heard,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While low sweet voices harmonize its force:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There’s nought so small in Nature, but can sum<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Earth’s total process, which it seems to numb.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53"></a>{53}</span></p> - -<h2>LIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Lo! thus, that life, which seem’d to me a void,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">E’er thou my sun did’st gild it with thy light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now looks as merry, as the bubble buoy’d<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On summer’s billow, whose quick glory’s bright:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My scouted woe now glares as sourly-strange,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As once joy show’d to my grief-fashioned breast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each act, each thought, as through the world I range,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Finds new commencement, in young vigour drest:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rich centre, around which my life revolves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How strong the attraction of thy far intent;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How living, and how joyous, the resolves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose object, thou, thy will, their utmost bent:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Though thou art far, fancy relieves her fear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Imagining thoughts whose love may bring thee near.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54"></a>{54}</span></p> - -<h2>LIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O immense chaos whence each forms his world!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where difference lovely suits distinctive minds:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How hideous others’ landskips were, unfurled;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fancy guides all, enlightens, or else blinds:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet, at my idol’s shrine, I’d fain believe<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pride of each were quick constrain’d to pray,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Could I but e’er impart, that I receive<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the mind imaged in thy beauty’s ray:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, founder’d in my bliss, I helpless lie,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like Phrygia’s king, incompetent in wealth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When I behold thee, laden thought would die;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And seeing not, I picture thee, by stealth:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It wants thy equal, to report thy praise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let such fill up the inkling in these lays.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55"></a>{55}</span></p> - -<h2>LV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Dear child of joy, who read thy soul shall find,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That all things shifting, man must vary too;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sometimes in thunder, earthquake, and in wind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature will mourn, so grief her sons should woo;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But when the winning breeze coys with the sail,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That bears thy bark along the flowing wave;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then, know, perfection lives not in the pale<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of that small space, where thy mad fancies rave:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If there’s no happiness, then conquer time,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And grandly dare to build, scorning blind Fate;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fate lives enshrined within the spirit sublime,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which o’er a faltering world asserts its weight.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let fools of circumstance wither and yield,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some in themselves foster the fate they wield.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56"></a>{56}</span></p> - -<h2>LVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Men err, and blindly happiness propose,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whither their steps and fortunes should aspire;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Alas! they seek, what Earth no longer knows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Once haply clasp’d, the wanton’s waxing shier;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For, now, it hath ascended to the heavens,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sits commingling Nature’s shapes and dyes:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who’s rash to seek it, him, ill fortune leavens<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With sick acquirement of unworthy sighs:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Youth courts the sunshine to his vigorous wings;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sees Hope, that beckons, thinks himself a God;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rivals the lark, acting the joy it sings;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till age desponds at Life’s too real rod:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let youth abandon hope, and court content,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now bliss mocks hope, then joys were blessings lent.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57"></a>{57}</span></p> - -<h2>LVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O ye, the eastern glory of whose hope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Laughs at the shadow, which your phantom shames,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Abase the aery tenour of your scope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">E’er woe involve its promise, earth your frames:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who ponder, reckon vain all reason’s forts;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who think not, live, but know not joy’s true tones:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They wander, vacant, through high Nature’s courts;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their spirit seems unworthy, even of groans:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Intrusion of vain tears but mocks the woe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose dregs are tasteless of the former draught;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Time was, when the harp wrung the tears that flow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grateful, since needful, then the people quafft.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But time rolls on, and in its changes brings<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The age that scoffs at its ancestors’ wings.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58"></a>{58}</span></p> - -<h2>LVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A new Narcissus gazed himself to death,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Picturing his lonely beauty in the flood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The river, onward flowing, flouts the breath<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That charm’d the fire, Promethean, from its mud:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who topple on a pinnacle, scorn the steps<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That usher to the pride, whereon they stand;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet Nature’s structure swerves not, men, adepts<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At self-deception, judge from whence they’ve scann’d;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">View the whole plot, and just should all appear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What’s beauteous, the relief that Nature wears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The base, by difficult straits and shoals, should steer<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To quicken praise, shunning monotonous cares:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What fail’d of high fulfilment, where it lack’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Should live in others’ worth when all were pack’d.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59"></a>{59}</span></p> - -<h2>LIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Thy voice still cautioned, ’tis no time for woe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor only warned, but marked out safety’s road;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who crams his yearning heart with earthly show,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Straight to be voided, fondles with the goad;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who nods to Passion, as he gulps the chaff<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That whitens the base highway of the world,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Totters to age, on an unstable staff,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shook by the winds, which his own hopes unfurl’d;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who tamely would let Age assert his claims,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And stiffen self to a distincter mould,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who would not rather curse all shapes, thoughts, names,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That frame men’s hearts to forms, as meagre-cold:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He ne’er shall triumph o’er the powers of woe;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mad Passion bursts his bounds, and thunders, “No.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60"></a>{60}</span></p> - -<h2>LX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The poison well’d from Circe’s treacherous cups<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beyond the shape, with fell designment, work’d;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Had thought not pander’d to nectareous sups,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, brute-like, veiled what beastly semblance lurk’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sure change had mock’d his aim, by death and spleen.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis bounteous Nature smoothes the wrinkled brow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bellying with pride the front that looks too lean:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She plants conceit in gaping brains enow;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She salves with flattery some unequal wounds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Impartial measures grief for men and years;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One age inglorious slumbers on and swounds;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One moistens deathless leaves with blood and tears:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All drink, and die, but oh! how deep a draught,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">E’er separate life’s a blessing, must be quafft.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61"></a>{61}</span></p> - -<p>LXI</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The rivulets, the earth, the skies, the motion<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose substance varies to a higher change,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The clouds, the woods, the mountains, and the ocean<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose endless blue defies the fancy’s range,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sun, and the calm host that guide the night<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Throughout the seasons of the changeful year,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The warmth, the snow, the music, and the bright<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Foliage that quivers to the songsters’ cheer;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the swift thought that wings its measureless way<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Though clogg’d with self, it feels but how it fails,)<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Just to the confines of eternal day,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In outer orbit whirl’d it pines, and sails;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And more than these, Love, Beauty, Reason, Joy.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All these are life, but self’s a half-formed toy.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62"></a>{62}</span></p> - -<h2>LXII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O ye faint touches, that but tire the gaze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Casting reflection on incompetence;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O all ye thoughts, that weave truth’s tangled maze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Would we might grasp your spirit’s hidden sense:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Man is shut out from what himself assists;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too dear-bought self, rich privilege to conceal,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Strange substance, individualized, that twists<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A web, it knows not how, more stiff than steel:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Man knows not how, or wherefore, whence, or why;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He thinks that he must go; whither? he doubts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Creeds he must form and hopes; he cannot fly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And haply would not, fostering fears he scouts;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thrown on the world, he’d lose, in the world’s din,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too fine perception of sad worlds within.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63"></a>{63}</span></p> - -<h2>LXIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And Death is the glad clasp of knotted braids;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Death seals the circlet, that Life gradual twines;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In all that’s fair, Death, inartistic, trades;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beauty he saps, beleaguering Youth with mines;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O, art thou usher to a fuller world,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grim Death, whose smile is cased in a frown?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or speak’st thou only to an infant curl’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dreaming a moment in a bed of down?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stalk not too proudly, ravisher of life,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy boast shall reach no pearl in Nature’s casket;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What sinks, benumb’d, though lovely, in the strife<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall cast the slough, that could a moment mask it.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I cannot wholly hate nor love thee, Death,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou tak’st my life, but robb’st my friend of breath.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64"></a>{64}</span></p> - -<h2>LXIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Doubt struggles into Faith, and calls it life,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hopes turn to gods, and fears take demon forms;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Man must be somewhere stayed in this strange strife;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He feels himself so weak against its storms.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dim eyes he strains into futurity;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Weak arms, extending, gropes to find his road;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His fingers clutch at what seems Purity;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thank Heaven! he sees not all their ghastly load.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, whether all footpaths lead to the same place,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or the weed hope blossoms into a flower;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or whether all struggle in a phantom race,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And blow the bubbles of fame, love and power;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All this he knows not, somewhere he would rest,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By pleasure, or content, aye so ’twere best.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65"></a>{65}</span></p> - -<h2>LXV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Life’s but a straw, that’s piped upon by winds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fluttering to different tunes at every blast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But he is strong who conquers what he finds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dragging it onward, as the unyielding mast<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Toils up the wave, and draws, from victory won,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fresh presage, and fresh purpose, for the fight:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So let man struggle upward; like the sun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ne’er slacken, till he sinks beneath the night;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swell action’s tide, that rolls along the world,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or force from Nature secrets undisclosed;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or, if less apt to be thus rudely whirl’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rest in this din on sure content reposed.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These words sound fair, but Passion scorns such strains,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And mocks Endeavour with her empty pains.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66"></a>{66}</span></p> - -<h2>LXVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">How should the cloud cry to the summer sea,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Take not the leaden impress from my sails?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How should the amorous eve not taste the glee<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That mantles golden o’er its hills and vales?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Were ocean to contemn the rain’s increase,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or woods to spurn the dew, and chide the wind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Reft of their source, sudden they all would cease,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lacking that element they once thought unkind:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So, were man shorn of passions and of hates,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And nicely pared of what uneven seems,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He’d seem some plaything, jostled by rough fates<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into existence, from poor Fancy’s dreams.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature has naught superfluous,—clip her pride,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You mar her beauties, and the man beside.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67"></a>{67}</span></p> - -<h2>LXVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Should one proclaim, what perfect man might be,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What finest tonings of trained passion’s host,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What calm should murmur on a breathless sea,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What childhood’s joy linger around the coast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How the rare form should tremble to each string<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of the ever-pulsing, passionate, tranquil frame:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His virtues should steal lustre while they bring,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For Beauty sanctifies even Virtue’s name:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Twere vain, words cannot paint, nor the mind’s maze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Compose perfections in such various mould:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Create the hero, and the world shall gaze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not unobservant, nor profanely cold.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Vain is the juggle of consenting phrase,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature is just, and claims the larger praise.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68"></a>{68}</span></p> - -<h2>LXVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">To shape from infinite words and big-wombed thought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The form that mimics Nature, yet transcends;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To shower beauty, from the sunbeam caught,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On one who, lofty, walks toward lofty ends;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To live within that which themselves create,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By sufferance swelling more exalted ranks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With such communion still to recreate<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pauses of the world, whose iron harsh clanks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In that most sweet society, how soon<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To lose all sense, all memory of the earth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aye, this were godlike, and the priceless boon<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which Nature grudges prompters of true birth:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Holier, she bids them worship what inspires<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And guides the blast that feeds Pygmalion fires.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69"></a>{69}</span></p> - -<h2>LXIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O Beauty is too holy to be handled<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By the indiscriminate, rude, critic-touch!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gently be its timorous, blushing blossoms dandled<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On the fringed boughs, coy to the breezes’ clutch;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yea the ransack’d Past’s aroma should dwell on it,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While the coronetted Future, breathing, fann’d it:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The flowers of love garden its paths and throng it,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Fancy’s cloud-like sails on lone stars land it:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It should be the idea’s gradual unfolding,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose rosebud leaves astonish niggard Hope:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It should be the delicate and fleece-like moulding<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That snowy clouds build on the heaven’s blue scope:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It should be,—who can say except the heart?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It should be all, nor lovelier than thou art.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70"></a>{70}</span></p> - -<h2>LXX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O thou glad phantom of my waking hours,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I will not clasp thee, lest the vision fail;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I only, sometimes, wander o’er the flowers<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose perfume lingers in my summer’s vale:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whether joy’s victorious, when I oft recount<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The former kisses of indulgent Time;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or the sad Present fathoms sorrow’s fount,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And bids my eyes assist my bosom’s chime;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I yet will fashion pleasure from each mood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shaming the Present with the Past’s record,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gather strength, from memory’s darling brood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To temper, and to wield the eventful sword:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy aid delightful seems, for thy dear sake,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I shall seem to give, even what I take.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71"></a>{71}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">What is more lovely than to celebrate<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That Beauty’s virtue we can never reach?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What’s heavenlier, than our pride to lowly rate<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In that great Love where nought is left to teach?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To admire, to adore, to fall at Beauty’s feet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To lose all sense of this corporeal frame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who’d not choose Life’s intense, perpetual heat,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose walk of love were blessed by Beauty’s name?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O better shows our worship falsely placed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Than the fixed heart of an unfruitful doubt!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Happier were he, with love of Hell disgraced,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Than he whose hope of Heaven gazed coldly out.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love’s measured by the heart, from whence it flows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Though all be void, yet it must rest on shows.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72"></a>{72}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Who hath not wakened, dizzy, from the dream,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fairyland, that boyhood claim’d his own?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who hath not gulped down memories that teem,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">E’er such sweet seed of madness were full grown?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who hath not, when his wound less rawly looked,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lightly tripped over the yet sunny fields?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What ominous garnitures have we not brook’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For the kind promise, that the spectre shields?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Else how much life must, vacant, pass man by,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or seem the babblings of an uncrude mind:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How poor the pageant of the world must die<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In uncongenial souls, of purpose blind:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sooner than such I’d the light insect be,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose little summer world is revelry.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73"></a>{73}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Two children wandered o’er one plain together,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like beauteous planets, shot from some new lair;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Proud flowers grew up, exulting in fair weather,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tendered their sweets, and twined their glowing hair:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some lovelier, but more lonely, lay enshrined,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whispering the affable breath of modesty:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I marked the children; these, they oft entwined<br /></span> -<span class="i0">About their locks, and thought them fair as shy:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heedless, they trampled o’er the gaudy flowers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose larger plenty paved the ensuing way:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, soon, alas! you might well count the hours<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By the few lilies, hidden far away.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At length the wanderers passed a river’s ford,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One kept his primrose wealth, one cull’d new hoard.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74"></a>{74}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Along the desert pathway of my years<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The untarnished green of an oasis lies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Full many a bliss, watered by love’s since tears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Full many a note, that in the distance dies;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I will pause, and gather fresh those sweets,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And bind their buds in chaplets on my brows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ll hail what youth soe’er my wandering meets,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“See here the guerdon of my childhood’s vows.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So, joy’s unripened blossoms shall forth peep<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From dewy sluices of long-buried grief;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And love, though dead, shall through my pulses leap,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And pinnacle the Past on rapture’s reef.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Memory shall gild with fancy what is gone,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And dim indulgence dreamingly live on.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75"></a>{75}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There is one name on which remembrance lingers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not soon shall Time tear it from my quick breast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There comes a music, touched by fairy fingers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To draw thy features, floats thy spirit’s unrest;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy voice shall be a passport through life’s harms;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I will believe thy fondness mends my slips;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When Death shall clasp me in his haggard arms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I think that name shall arm my quivering lips:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Young years, that made thee wild, had made thee loving;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature had crown’d with Beauty what Wit gave;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Perchance this verse shall prove not quite unmoving,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Calling unto thee, as from out the grave:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yes, well I know, thou’lt sometimes give one sigh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To years that come no more, when once gone by.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76"></a>{76}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There was one more, but, ’tis no matter now,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One who’s forgot, I too will learn that lore;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor others rest, but wistfully, I plough<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Memory’s hard furrows, pregnant now no more;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For now Love’s turned from my too sullen soul,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He will no longer fling the rainbow veil,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor glance his mirror o’er defects, to enroll<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Me, midst the captives of his courted jail:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ll draw fresh sustenance from the past for joy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And scorn love’s gyves, his fears, his jealous frowns;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Take up the sweets, and mock the archer boy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who fools each votary with delusive crowns:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet could I buy his pleasures with his woes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’d choose them both, the archer God well knows.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77"></a>{77}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">What pride the season takes in his gay flowers!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How the dead year mourns for his withered leaves!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lover sadly looks on desolate bowers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No song re-echoes to the verse he weaves:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These all are sad, but promise gilds their death;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their notes of woe but swell the spring’s new joy;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, ’tis more pitiful, when the very breath,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which was our life, seems but the summer’s toy:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With lifted hands, vain man implores the skies;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Curses the sometime joy, the nurse of woe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The bliss whose unfelt want erst caused no sighs;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His pilgrimage had, once, less grief, less show:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But no; lost love exalts, in saddening, man,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While heartless plodding but degrades his span.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78"></a>{78}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">’Tis bitter for the spirit that’s lived in Heaven,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Quickly to be reft of what composed its bliss;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis bitter, that our bliss should wing the levin,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And add a torture to the incisor knife;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, after earth was shaped to Paradise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Catching the colour of most loveable eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis sad, that all should darken in a trice,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And but remind us of the joy that flies;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wants but a motion, and all sights that woo<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The bewitched eyesight of the doting world,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall catch some stain, and shade to black their hue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their pride exposed to gaze, their void unfurled:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet who’d exist, and bind nought to his heart?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Strong be that soul that dares to live apart.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79"></a>{79}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But what have I to do with prating griefs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That mar the sanctity on Beauty’s brow?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I have in thee a thousand full reliefs;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why wound the seeds of joy with torture’s plough?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even now, thy youthful years, in wisdom fledg’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wave thousand-coloured plumes o’er elder minds;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whiles thou, to only Love and Beauty pledged,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unsought, uncared for, feel’st the applausive winds:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Envy thou dost take captive, and transform<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the good angel of magnanimous praise;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And men are only jealous, and grow warm,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Matching those wordy altars which they raise:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That men adore the wonder of thy worth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But shames my love, whose utmost praise is dearth.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80"></a>{80}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">In seeking pleasure, I have tasted woe;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And drunk of every cup, to test its worth:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ill sediments must, in such seeking, flow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And mingle with the thoughts that gave them birth:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who drinks experience, drinks, at once, disdain;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From weariness, Excitement gathers force,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then swerves not for slight barriers, nor draws rein,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till all his passion’s wreak’d upon the course:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The course is finished; hollow is the cup;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor may regret point at the looked for dregs:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who sits the banquet out, at last, must sup<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From off satiety’s unfurnished pegs.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis something known, that there is nought to gain;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each different science prints his proper strain.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_81" id="page_81"></a>{81}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">How void of meaning seems the barren earth!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How dwindles all its pride, to infants’ toys!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For me, all life is quickened into birth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only by the love, that turns my grief to joys:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sullen, I look out upon the bleak dim morn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And curse the cold, the climate, and the cloud:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I match those frowns with thy imagined scorn;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sudden, the sun illumes the misty shroud;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The thought, that’s full of thee, discerns no grief,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But builds a summer palace in the air;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It sifts compounded woes, torturing their sheaf,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That bitter thoughts may hide, ’mid thoughts more fair;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mind returns from thee, winged with delight;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unsated, it soon meditates new flight.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_82" id="page_82"></a>{82}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There are, who count the day by Phœbus’ course,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ask the dial, where the sun should be;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who teach the clock, to give the hours force,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To speak the change of their monotony;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who span the earth with measures, and with rules,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And prate of chart, of compass, and of mile;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Others, more learned, beckon to the schools,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whence time and space flee with mysterious smile:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But we, who count by love, care not to point<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Our sweet decisions by such knotty laws;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whether one be right, or, all be partners joint<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In folly’s mandates, or in wisdom’s saws,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love cares not, knows not, reckons not; its ways<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Seem shorter to its joy, than winter days.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_83" id="page_83"></a>{83}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">’Twas here, we met, we spoke; ’twas but a moment,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So short the hours seemed; we loved, we parted;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ah! that harsh word of parting, with such woe shent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dulls all the joy that e’er our meeting darted;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Those leagues we linger’d o’er, what steps they seem’d!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How could we give to distance his full dues?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How short those days, when tricksome fancy’s dream’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And dress’d the present in rich memory’s hues!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This is Eternity, shorn of the dress<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That sedate Time winds round his glowing limbs:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soon shall the Eternal rise, and find redress<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From slanderous Time, who sickens what he dims.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Time rules but mortals, wavers even for men;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Should Truth inhabit such a meteor’s den?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_84" id="page_84"></a>{84}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Unsatisfied desires have sway’d my breast;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hope’s Syren voice has lured me to despair;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only Excitement’s charm’d me, with its zest,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And strangled thought, e’er it could change to care;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, now, such deep repose hath breathed content,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Filling the measure of all hopes with thee;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That, all my longings and my fears are spent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or only live, that thou may’st bid them flee:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If, now, Ambition points to ceaseless toil;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gleam through the years, altars of sacrifice;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When all is done, I but remain the foil,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Marking what measure thou may’st well despise.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All that I have, or gain, or love, is thine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all is little, since thy heart is mine.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_85" id="page_85"></a>{85}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O think not I would purchase, measuring out,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The priceless merit of the love I’ve sued!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy love’s the larger, that it will not doubt<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To rest its hope on buds whose beauty’s crude:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet suffer, that my shafts attempt the mark<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which thy heart shows to be true virtue’s goal;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Suffer, that, by thy conduct, my poor bark<br /></span> -<span class="i0">May proudly sail, and scorn the obtrusive shoal:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My service slights all guerdons, and all gains,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Than but one smile, one word, one thought of thine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Happy, whoe’er approves not, if my pains<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Be crown’d by thee, and through thy merit shine.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What others’ emulous worth labours to gain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O glorious prize! ’tis mine, perchance, to attain.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_86" id="page_86"></a>{86}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Love is the larger when it seeks return,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only in the fulness of its treasur’d self;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When it can linger by the shattered urn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Its idol gone, it knows not where, nor whence;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When what we worship, may not mark the woes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which wear the frame, but fortify the mind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When all is dark, nor earth, nor Heaven shows<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Acceptance gleaming, through the midnight, kind:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This love’s of purer strain than men can know,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Most jar the chords, but toying with the harp,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They’d lower to life, and filter through fresh woe<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The essence that should illustrate their dark.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grief’s scale shows heights, to which whoe’er attain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall haply find the joy outweigh the pain.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_87" id="page_87"></a>{87}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But, life compounds the dregs to luscious draughts;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And various pleasure mocks monotonous woe;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all the wheels and hinges show their crafts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Leaving no room for the full spirit’s flow;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even love forbids the soul, for human loss,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To wear less brightly, its heaven-tinctur’d fire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And shows it lovelier, to exalt the cross<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into the pledge of love, still struggling higher:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only the eternal breath of Nature’s beauty<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Demands the unchanged devotion of our years.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Immortal constancy of shifting duty<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Crowns the rich harvest of our sometime tears:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What’s spent in loving, richly is defrayed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Though nought’s returned, by lending we are paid.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_88" id="page_88"></a>{88}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But, man, the fitful birth of Time and Change,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Demands the substance of a living love:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor, ever satisfied, must onward range,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And builds for earth the idea, or above:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His heart must find a home, where’er it goes;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He nestles in the warmth, then dreams ’tis cold;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each imperfection lives, and livelier shows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love learns despair, and, at the last, is cold:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, but one path, secure, leads ever round,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor dares attempt the warmth, for which it glows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And who would trifle in this shallow sound<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Escapes the test, fenced round by summer snows.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose quiet peace can amble o’er this road,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lives, like what sage? nor fears love’s ardent goad.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_89" id="page_89"></a>{89}</span></p> - -<h2>LXXXIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I lately dreamt of an ideal form;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I thought to shape the mould after my mind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I bore it through the crowd, and thought it warm;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I saw the shape, that struck my fancy blind:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fool! whose presumption struggles to create<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A beauty other than high nature uses;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Reckon thy function at a lowlier rate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Raise thy poor pride to what herself infuses:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then, if the glow of Nature’s life-blood thrill thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then, draw the vision to a finer strain;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then, purify, exalt, let beauty fill thee;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Imagination works not, then, in vain.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If here is aught, ’tis fashioned all from thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lord of my love and of my minstrelsy.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_90" id="page_90"></a>{90}</span></p> - -<h2>XC.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">How large a margin yawns ’twixt thought and fact!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rich Expectation robs the beggar Deed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">An unwise spendthrift, all his fortune’s sackt<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To build the storehouse whence he ne’er can feed:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For, Hope devours her progeny in the womb;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Glutted with meat, she thinks she shall not starve;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She lies, she chews the cud, sleeps by the tomb,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Accustomed to past gorging, wakes to carve;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Poor idiot, all her rapture’s drunk away,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sediment’s tasteless, save of craving thirst;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her hydra debts seem lost in what they pay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She cannot feed, till they’re discharged first.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I only know one hope, that ne’er deceives,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What’s stay’d on thee buoys less than it relieves.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_91" id="page_91"></a>{91}</span></p> - -<h2>XCI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The proud long hours amble at tedious rate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For that they know they bear the weight of thee,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even the tripping minutes borrow state,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, oft return, playing bo-peep with me;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their cunning thinks to lengthen out my pain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or, woo weak prescience, with some fearful mine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They ne’er suspect how joy shall, in this strain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Usurp a minute’s woe, in every line:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To draw thy lineaments, the painter’s pride,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The marble’s glory, thy limbs’ mobile grace,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis mine, to celebrate thy virtuous side,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How firm consistent, in such temple’s space.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To express its all would tire, though charm the time,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some part befits the occasion, and my rhyme.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_92" id="page_92"></a>{92}</span></p> - -<h2>XCII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I care not to mark out where Beauty lies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What nice distinction claims it for her own;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some intuition says it never dies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Born of young joy, by feeling larger grown:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Twere easy, to cull out fine tints, deep shades,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To trick comparisons into the vain verse;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Digging the ground, with intellect’s keen spades,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To touch more nearly something which is worse:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O too close strainers of the priceless wine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The essence flies with what ye deem the dregs!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The jewel’s blaze, less lustrous in the mine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Commands, there, praise, which, capp’d on age, it begs:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One stroke of Nature, and of Truth outweighs<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All similes and suits, bedizening lays.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_93" id="page_93"></a>{93}</span></p> - -<h2>XCIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But who knows Nature, Truth, Beauty divine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Three varying names of one unswerving Love),<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Speechless will worship, and attend the trine:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The critic hawk shall own the stronger dove;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For, admiration glows with brighter flame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Than but to light the judgment to his prey;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And it was ever Love’s most glorious shame,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He could not analyze, nor mutter nay:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Enough, that beauty lives in clouds of colour,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In forest, ocean, mountain, forms and faces;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why wrest these proofs, to hints and motes of dolour,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To impose some sense that shrouds what it defaces?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How vain is man, who deems his weak conceits<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of better worth than Nature’s utmost heats.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_94" id="page_94"></a>{94}</span></p> - -<h2>XCIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There are, whose life, perch’d on a ledge of grief,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scarcely can draw some comfort from its tears;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That thought probes not sensation, their relief,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Else how could Nature pant through such long years?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These may drink in the smile which Nature weaves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O’er all her sons alike, the proud, the poor;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They, oft, shall catch a solace from the sheaves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of golden light, that pave heaven’s evening floor;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature has own’d her children, as they have smil’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rapt in the glancing fields, where ocean ripples,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And hush’d them, as some mother, to her child<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gently discloses her just budded nipples!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I think, long years, long woes, hard times, forgot,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They stand inspired, nor dream of their sad lot.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_95" id="page_95"></a>{95}</span></p> - -<h2>XCV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O ye, who furnish’d with hearts form’d of fire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Can clasp no longer love within your arms;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who, lost in a poor world of brick and mire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Can find no breast to give the love which charms;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who live to dream, what waking quite confounds;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who, forced on self, loathe your own lives the while;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who cannot hear your names, ’mid many sounds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or teach one heart to feel, one face to smile;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mechanical action, which use steers, not thought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And lifeless purpose, robb’d of seeming gains,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This is your lot: with how much rapture fraught,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too well, I know, were Nature’s slightest strains;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With what sweet voice Nature can soothe such woe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And smile away such tears with evening’s glow.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_96" id="page_96"></a>{96}</span></p> - -<h2>XCVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Where solitude makes music unto silence,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By forests arching over deep slow streams;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or, where huge rocks guard oceans, giving high sense<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of gods in-dwelling through immortal dreams;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There stands a shadow, beckoning to the insight,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of a world, far vaster, fuller, more intense,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It sweeps away the cobwebs of our dim sight;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pigmy world dwindles near shapes immense:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis then, that voice, passion, shape, action, thought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lose all the colours caught from phantom life;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all is given, that even presumption sought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And there is peace, without the bubble strife:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis but a moment we may blissful be;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soon grate the irons that mind us we’re not free.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_97" id="page_97"></a>{97}</span></p> - -<h2>XCVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Who that has felt such joy would dare intrude<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His heart’s best love into such quiet scene?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who would not rather stifle thought’s sick brood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gag the monitor of existence lean?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For this is the well-spring, whence love must draw<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The food to stuff those shapes, on which it doats;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And henceforth, kindlier, pity Nature’s flaw,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dazzling with lustre all her gloom of motes:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis here the bosom of Existence heaves;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Man feels its swell, which lifts him to more bliss;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He feels the heaven of its warm breath, which leaves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The rapture of young Love’s ideal kiss:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And he is calm, in depth of sweet repose,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In Nature lives, to Nature’s bosom grows.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_98" id="page_98"></a>{98}</span></p> - -<h2>XCVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And this is life, and here existence beats<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With too swift cadence for the mind, poor sloth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And here, the inquisitive soul all dumbly seeks<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The quick transplantings of an earlier growth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the vision of the world fades from before him,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And hopes, and fears grow blind, looking on light;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Man reaps the only harvest that can store him<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For each emergence of the monstrous night:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O heaven! that this too dies, leaves us o’erweighed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By the gathered volume of defeated woe;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That grief should still be furthered, not delayed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By joy that makes it heavier, though more slow:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dark swells the wave, big with his comrade’s might,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Barks stemm’d the first, all own the latter’s right.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_99" id="page_99"></a>{99}</span></p> - -<h2>XCIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O paltry jingle to a coinèd note!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Words that ape thought, and thought that soils the soul;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With what a tide of emptiness ye float,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On the heart’s music, ye can ne’er control!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sieve of words holds not the element’s sense;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The thought is the poor highway to the heart;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How should man’s tongue hold heaven in its pretence?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How should one road contain the city’s mart?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pipings of a mind, vex’d, half distraught,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are but as signs, of what their speech should be;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They can but show what happier moments sought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What gilds the Future’s blank satiety;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis the one only tone that echo gives;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The music dying, death in music lives.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a>{100}</span></p> - -<h2>C.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But, these are flowers of spring, grafted on winter;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sounds, gently opening, that grow sudden harsh;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In darkness, light’s most momentary splinter;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sometime flicker, dancing o’er the marsh.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such visions deaden life, or else exalt:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They will not rest, they lead to Heaven or Hell,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now charm to happiness’ more stern assault,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now bid man sink, and more despairing dwell:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pure vistas open, in long lanes of light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Building reflections, mirror-like, from their forms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And lovely angels beckon the entranc’d sight;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too oft, alas! they’re lost in life’s strange storms:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let those buds nestle amid memory’s weeds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They’ll dart their purpose, quickening life’s faint seeds.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a>{101}</span></p> - -<h2>CI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The world was young, when some Prometheus came<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And snatch’d the kernel action from repose;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His flaming ministrations crown’d his name,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Earth throbb’d his glory in her godlike throes;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And immortal words have rounded, since, the soul<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With love, whose sufferance is keen to act;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But some seek suffering, scorning action’s goal,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Disjoining love, from what lifts love to fact.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Far other, taught love’s founder, and love’s lord;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Far other, mighty shades have since decreed;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They would not linger by the deep’ning ford,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They plunged, they fought, and victors now proceed:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Two notes of music blended in one tone;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rich various colours form’d their pure white zone.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a>{102}</span></p> - -<h2>CII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For Love, without her son, is a weak fool,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The faltering treble of a school-girl’s thought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She whimpers, daunted, for ’tis hot or cool,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or that’s there less, or more, than what she sought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Commutual bliss lives only when they join,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, hand in hand, pace o’er the conquered lands;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One bides the occasion, stamps the current coin;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The other’s power sows blessings o’er the strands:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She is more weak, more lovely, and more mild;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And he more beautiful, more strong, more calm;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Earth almost blossomed, when just now she smiled;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But earth cried out for joy, feeling his balm:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Divorced, one’s weakness lends the other fuel;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The more love yields, the more is action cruel.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a>{103}</span></p> - -<h2>CIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But, borrowing aid of Nature, to upsoar,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And steer thy purpose, resolution-winged;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This, is to leave these suburbs for the shore,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where Nature’s movements slide, noiselessly hinged;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The passive puppet, cooped in his poor self,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Foregoes the scope of his divinity;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thinking he wields a little power or pelf,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And knows not, sees not, power’s sublimity:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even, while living, such shall tamely die,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, uncomplaining, reap their perished seeds:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, holier, thou, stifle another’s sigh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And steal whose sorrow disappoints his deeds:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then shall the dark confirm the intenser light;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the world’s woe but make the world more bright.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a>{104}</span></p> - -<h2>CIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Who hath not bless’d the woods, that gave the breeze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Freshening the city from his summer cheek?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who hath not trembled to the quivering leaves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wondering such music thus was left to seek?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And thus, the hubbub left of wandering words,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My steed returns along the well-known road;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He knows his home by music of no birds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Though by instinct of as harmonious load;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For, there, thy voice laughs fantasies away,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Showing the earnest of my fancy’s dream;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, there, thy love has traced the lively way,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose signs, but thought on, indistinctly gleam:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I turn to thee, and soon forget all fears;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swerves not my skiff, when such strong pilot steers.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a>{105}</span></p> - -<h2>CV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Ye pleasant days, companions to young joy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">E’er self and sorrow had born agony;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When grief, wreathed in romance, looked slily coy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And wedded bliss, nor thought it felony;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My only sorrow, we for hours might part;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My often solace, we for years must meet;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sweet expectation filled up yearning’s smart;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While memory thought not stale the oft-tasted treat:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ve learned those brooks were sparkling all with sunshine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Though they seem’d stern, dividing life from life;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Could I these mazes thread so swift, and untwine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How keen an edge were given to Time’s dull knife.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Joy steals from abhorred evil his enhancement,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His proud foot spurns the neck, that aids advancement.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a>{106}</span></p> - -<h2>CVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There are, who build great domes sparkling with wealth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose wretched pride mounts with palatial walls;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some, yet more mean, hold riches for their health,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And tire their laded ships and creaking stalls;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some bend their foolish steps to lofty place,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Cringe, fawn, and hope—to be despised, forgot;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These wisely think, by flattery of the base,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To help their high-placed frames, e’er low they rot:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, others scorn the world, and serve for hire<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A self-erected Heaven, whither they’d soar;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They feed on such vile thoughts, nor know the mire,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heaven their sole aim, and Hell sin’s only flaw:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">More noble, some live by ambition’s shrine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To ponder on thy worth, is only mine.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a>{107}</span></p> - -<h2>CVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">’Tis a great aim, this will to wander lonely,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This high ambition, gnawing its heart’s core,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To scorn this life, and live thy dying only,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Along the years that hear thy words no more:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis great, to burst the web that stays thy hand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stern to rush on, nor pause, nor look, nor hear;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To escape mute love’s imploring glance and band;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To feel intensely, yet to shed no tear;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As one who swims, fights with wave-baffling arms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wrestling with the roaring, wracking, whistling waters,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So, too, resistless urge thy way through harms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor swerve for earth, her sons, or charming daughters:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All this seems great, yet I would rather rest<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My troubled fancies in thy loving breast.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a>{108}</span></p> - -<h2>CVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For, even there translucent thought’s deep roll,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There the slight foam but beautifies the blue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O let me write my name along that scroll,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That mirror, varying to a lovelier hue!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou, like the cold world, will not e’er forget;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When thou must die, my fame shall wither too;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For what were laurels when with weeping wet?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Though fame be lost, yet love shall fly with you;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet nought shall perish; for one thought of thine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hath breath’d eternity through these slight lays;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I can dare the world’s poor scornful whine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To spoil the smoothness of thy perfect praise:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I know these strains are weak, yet love them still,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their blind obedience only owns thy will.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a>{109}</span></p> - -<h2>CIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Fame, slowly staggering, toils up hard ascents,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The summit reached, she beckons, proudly poised;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Life struggles out through inapparent vents;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fame’s former glory is less loudly noised:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Death calls, and fame revives, then sudden dies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or, smouldering, stinks along the restless years;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Life’s various hoard, fed by such quick supplies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heeds not the fanes of bygone mirth or tears;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The years, that build the shadows, make them dim;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The busy world’s scarce conscious of itself;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Already toying on oblivion’s brim,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It prays for heirs to waste much useless pelf.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who have not time to assure their own weak ways,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How should they pause o’er their ancestors’ praise?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a>{110}</span></p> - -<h2>CX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But, the spirit, enamoured of immortal Beauty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He will not serve on fame’s light grudging meed;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His grateful labour, merg’d in sublime duty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Seeks, in creation, harvest of its seed;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beauty is his dear Lord, he loves to owe,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And grows more rich by payment; he will toil,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And watch his offspring, as they grander grow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Outdoing Nature in their beauteous coil.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all alone he feels, yet is not sad,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For She, the inspirer of all hearts, is near;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Nature’s fondness makes her son look glad,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And will not, wholly, let his heart grow sear.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The artificer of the Changeless grows not tired,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He is well paid, nor cares to be admired.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a>{111}</span></p> - -<h2>CXI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Ye spirits, whose soaring vivified your plumes;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose godlike names swell man’s adoring breath;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose glory, time, nor space, nor hate consumes;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ministers of love, whose virtue conquers death;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such love of Beauty for its own dear sake,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Resident in the soul, the mind, the form,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only could inspire what ye dared undertake,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And bear ye, conquerors, through the mist and storm:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Great humanisers of the world, fusing your merit<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Through the inattentive cycles of the years;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Most know not the profusion they inherit,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So hath your spirit impregnated men’s tears:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Severing what Gordian knots of mysteries,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love echoes Christ, Spinoza, Socrates!<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a>{112}</span></p> - -<h2>CXII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Now all in Heaven is tranquil; peeps one cleft<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of silver splendour; mark! an angel stands there,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And breathes his bubble, as fresh childhood deft;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blushing into life, the concave pays his care,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And purple melts to gold; the scarce white cloud<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mantles the mines that make such depth of blue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the delicate ripple tingles to that shroud,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Consorting music with its late-found hue,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such is religion:—immanent in the altars<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That the pure heart prostrates at Beauty’s shrine,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In ceremonies, pomps, and forms it falters;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But rapt at Nature, stands confessed divine:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Offspring of Joy and Love, religion wings<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The adoration of the heart’s mute strings.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a>{113}</span></p> - -<h2>CXIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Hail! holy triumph of time-chastened piles;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Your lofty music thrills along the soul;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Welcome! the sunbeams, glistening through your aisles,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tinging their gold with history’s coloured roll:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Young voices move your melodies, young limbs<br /></span> -<span class="i0">White-robèd, pluck the buds of innocence.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mild silver beckons to the light which swims<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Evolved through darkness, fashioning forms for sense.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But I love best, when faith moves dreary self,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Toppling its pride and pedestal to the ground;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Most then in Being lose the world, that elf,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Harbouring their errors in a happier sound:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What matters whether Heaven exist or no?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their prayers find Heaven, or lose the sense of woe.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a>{114}</span></p> - -<h2>CXIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I knew a man, whose heart could find no home,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose very fulness but provoked his dearth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He was too proud to show how he could moan,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Most thought him cold, few understood his worth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But closeted feelings bring forth bitter fruit;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And solitude preys on love, making it mad;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hearts throb more genial, even to a worthless suit,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Than when experience answers, all is sad:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He hath grasp’d sometimes at the empty air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Parcelling it out to visions of his mind;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Deifying some idea, he’s call’d it fair;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Alas! he could not long continue blind:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who’s separate from his fellows may live great;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet fate decrees he’ll curse his empty state.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a>{115}</span></p> - -<h2>CXV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And he had doubts, aye, I have heard him cry<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To the wild winds, bidding them stay awhile;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He sought the substance of the beauty shy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That lurk’d in ocean, kiss’d by summer’s smile;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And he hath called unto the ghastly dark,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gasping for breath, and panting for the light:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He long’d for life, but phantoms steer’d his bark,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lengthening his voyage with a tedious freight;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O he could understand all that seem’d sad,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And claim’d a kindred with deserted hope!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Life, too indulgent, show’d him all she had,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He scorned her earnest, would not trust her scope:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He asked nor sympathy, nor aid, nor pity;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where should he seek them? not in field or city.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a>{116}</span></p> - -<h2>CXVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But had his happy hope chanc’d to alight<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By the full river of thy thought’s sweet flow!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O then, my love, how couch’d had been his sight!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How had his mind been purged from all its woe!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy hand should only lead him to the hill,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That beckons daylight o’er its far blue waves;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy thought should but subdue his stubborn will;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soon he were master of poor hope’s dim graves!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The presence of the God, that weaves the world,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Transfusing beauty till it higher grows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The God of love, should still those storms that whirl’d<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such petty streamlets into deadlier flows:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But ah! the hand that only knows to mend,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How oft it fails unconscious whom to tend.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a>{117}</span></p> - -<h2>CXVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Child of a day, and changeling of an hour!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Man, feeblest tuning of love’s scarce-heard pipe;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The abyss, that voids despair, burns to deflower<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With death thy hopes, with time thy thoughts unripe.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet know, rejoice, ’tis Nature guides the change;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Joy, beauty, truth, wing her transparent feet:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No toy thou art, nor left to lonely range;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Reward grows stronger from its oft defeat:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whate’er thy utmost joy can comprehend;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What godlike beauty hath once thrill’d thy soul;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What love has ever stamp’d truth as his end:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such joy, beauty, truth, love, are Nature’s goal:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall Nature gladden only to deceive?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Should man the atom more than God conceive?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a>{118}</span></p> - -<h2>CXVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The echoes, from the ruins of the Past,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Steal o’er our ears, sphering a heavenly isle;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Haply deceptive, yet we’ll there make fast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wreathing the skeleton world in childhood’s smile:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For who can build, when woods and quarries fail?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or who can fathom the dark monster deep?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How shall the bud be rear’d from storm and hail?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which drug and stun the Present, till it sleep:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet sift the grains, dissevering hope from fear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For one least seed shall shame whole worlds of drought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Brightens the prospect, when beheld more near;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Love trims the flights, that scorn knows but to flout:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The search may fail, yet seeking bears its crown,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And joy’s least treasure smooths the world’s worst frown.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a>{119}</span></p> - -<h2>CXIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O Eden of our childhood, Innocence!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How did thy ardour paint the ugly world;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Making it amiable, void of all pretence;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With roses garlanded with dew be-pearl’d<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The world’s not chang’d, ’tis only thou, art gone;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The music’s wanting to the quick-breathing shell;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The aroma fails where it hath dwelt so long;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The flash divine is dead, or fades to Hell;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, thou wast gentle, calm, silent, and strong;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A truth, too real, to be here conceiv’d:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And we are parted,—be it not for long,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That thou art somewhere, may be well believed.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O let me find thee; if frail life forbid,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the universe of thee, let life be hid.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a>{120}</span></p> - -<h2>CXX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">To see great minds baffling an evil fate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Delights, and urges on to emulous deeds;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet, seems it only Nature’s tricksome state,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Defeating self, by livelier-quickening seeds;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mind conquers base thoughts by its own power,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then thinks it much, that its true self prevails;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet Nature tempers all things, even the flower<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That stoops to winter, or that scorns his flails;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, when young, godlike innocence arises,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He will not flinch, nor shudder, nor conspire;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His perfect purpose shatters faint surmises,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And brightly burns, ascending ever higher:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Conquered, at length, by his too great devotion,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He learns he lives in nought, and kills emotion.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a>{121}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">There seem’d to burst upon my flooded sight<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A globe of lustre, an enormous sun;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It swallow’d, in the majesty of its might,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The whole vast concave, where the eye can run:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I stood, I know not where, marking it glide<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With stealthy swiftness on its axle, round;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And there were forms, frown’d lurid on its side,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their names were on their brows, there was no sound:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The orb had blazon’d, Change, on each proud flank,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And pass’d its order’d puppets in review;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">First, Death rose ghastly, then as sudden sank,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Conquered by Woe, of sullen haggard hue:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Despair and Hope, Love, Youth, Fear, Friendship, Hate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tears, Laughter, Beauty, Age grew link’d in fate.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a>{122}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Vision unwelcome, of familiar things,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why force, I cried, your fantasies on my mind?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Your aspect shadows gloom with fouler wings;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Could I some refuge from your varying find!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I look’d, and, eminent, o’er that ghastly round,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, quite diffusive, through its sad precincts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Uncertain shapings based on steadfast ground,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The light of myriad suns made dark those tints:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Transfixed, I stand, inhaling joy and wonder;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then nearer gaze, that effluence divine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stream’d ever on, and burst the pores asunder,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose ignorance scorn’d such treasure for their mine:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When uncongenial homes rebuked that power,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Its lightning flight bless’d some more grateful bower.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a>{123}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Such visions, poised upon entrancing notes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">May waft some waif toward congenial ports;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Poised on the wind, ineffable music floats,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the enchantress face holding her courts;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the harmonious pants of drunken joy;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the traitorous interchange of random vows;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the commutual wave of forest boughs;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In thought, whose arbitrary response wakes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fashioning the melody to peculiar laws;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In passion, surging, by its own quick shakes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wresting aside the unapprehensive cause;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swift-winged ideas waft her from her throne;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Music scarce knows the offspring for her own.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a>{124}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Thou starting-place to a goal yet undefined;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou limit clasp’d in no circumference;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou tell-tale, in a castle undermined;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Strange tongue, of an uncertain prescience;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Foundation-stone supporting piles of thought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou, Proteus, differing in a self-same soul;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Discoverer of joy, with sorrow fraught;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou lively fire, flung from the sullen coal;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sacred marble shows but one indent<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of penitential kisses, thousandfold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet towers memorial, of sad pilgrims spent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of pomps, of pride, of broken hearts and gold:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like frescoes, born in marble, from one sound,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lo! multitudinous living shapes abound.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a>{125}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Tangle some notes beneath the prisoner’s bars,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some simple music he may recognise;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He is not querulous, that it haply jars,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor twists its turns to meanings shrewdly-wise;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His heart shall leap aloft, and shout “ ’tis mine;”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sorrow and hope, repentance, love, joy, tears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall hail that melody’s unforgotten chime:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What matter that the crowd without the walls<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are jocund to the music of its mirth?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That the voluptuous dance, through lordly halls,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sweeps by the eyes that sparkle to its birth?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One dreams to it, while one dances, one is sad.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Omnipotent music thou mak’st all men mad.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a>{126}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But thou, whose breath, the music of my life,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Murmurs its sweetness, never uninhaled;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now, the last time, glance o’er my spirit’s strife,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The bliss, whose close must be so soon bewailed.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I must depart, and think those hours were bless’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Long since, so pregnant of departing joy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And wonder at the earth, I lightly press’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor knew what reverence it should once enjoy:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The crescent of thy spring shall flower as brightly<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As though mine eyes stood sentinels o’er its growth;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And thou shall carol on thy pathway lightly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Transplanting summer into winter wroth.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ll ponder still, where’er adversely hurled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy words, which marr’d the change which makes the world.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a>{127}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The voice that charm’d my sorrows knows me not,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The smile that made my life wakes not for me,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Haply such musings shall disown the spot,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That once looked lovely but through light of thee;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall anguish curse the unremembering stones,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For that they build no ruinous epitaph?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or weave still living voices to new groans,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And match with sighs the people’s hollow laugh?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No; rather consecrate thy once abode,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The birth-place, and the altar of love’s prime;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aye, steal my spirit from beneath its load,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Revisiting the haunts of fairy time:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The shadows of thy steps must leave the impress,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall drink the dew, token of bitterness.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a>{128}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I seem’d so rich, with promise of the Future,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I stand so desolate, calling to the Past,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Present mocks the yet unfashion’d suture;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A gloom there is o’er all the landskip cast:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why should brief joy shadow such length of woes?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why should the sweet taste sourly to the sense?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The diamond yet within the casket glows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why should its brilliance fright my fancy hence?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I would all pain and pleasure were forgot:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My ineffectual thought giddies with hope;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Relief with blotted joys were dearly got;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bliss, vacillating, sails in such strait scope:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My mind knows not its thoughts; they storm and veer;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Time, draw some comfort from the Present’s fear.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a>{129}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXIX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And, shall it be, that who have stol’n ambrosia,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the aerial palaces of the gods,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or, like faint flowers, flush’d to the morning rosier,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Touch’d by the mesmerism of the sunbeams’ rods—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shall such commend their spring to dungeon walls,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Catching no comfort from the dull reflex,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Responsive, breathe to no melodious calls?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But feed on hope, insidious to perplex.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How doubly dark frowns the removed cold spot,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lumber’d with shadows from the journeying sun;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How trebly cursed, that unpropitious lot,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose scale descends from whence its joys begun:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And such is mine, whose starting-point was bliss;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet all life’s rounds but lead me more amiss.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a>{130}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXX.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I must depart, and others shall crowd up<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The empty room it was my pride to fill;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And other votaries shall attempt the cup,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose crystal lends a flavour, sparkling still;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, sometimes, thus my heart with transport speaks<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sometimes, my name shall flash along thy thought;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy heart shall own the spell and pale thy cheeks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And give one sigh, from joy, or sorrow bought:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I ask not grief; nay, rather joyous weave<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A dear recess, luminous with fancy’s rays;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There, let my captured heart delight, not grieve<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thy attentive sequence, through dim memory’s maze:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Joy leads remembrance wistfully through the years;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Give me but love, I ask no weed of tears.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a>{131}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXXI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Let me not grieve, though blasting blight my days;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let me not, with harsh cadence, crash the sound;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let me not smear this fond record of praise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor pause on sorrow’s inharmonious round;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nay, let me capture joy, and, rashly-glad,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bend bliss reluctant to my craving sense;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, softening, soon, I’ll grow more lonely-sad,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beckoning Content to chase those phantoms hence:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With velvet tread, lynx eye, he steals along,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dreading the indent of some half-healed mishap;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then, gathering courage, treads with step more strong,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And probes the withered trunk’s neglected sap:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He threads the weeded Past, without annoy;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And boasts, at length, from pain a new-found joy.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a>{132}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXXII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A thousand dumb-voiced stars beseech our eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And lend a magic to the lonely night;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">True world-historians of all hopes and sighs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Might we but spell their story from your light.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Loves, hopes, philosophies, religions, powers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Feed on themselves, quickened by their own fall:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And years but mock at years, and hours at hours,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Processions furnish soon their grandeur’s pall:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even now ye gaze on hopes, that live in death,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On many a various god of wealth or pride,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On schemes, fated to fail, on learning’s breath,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soon choked by dust, or blown by truth aside:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ambition, strong to live, must feel decay;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What shall not fade? can priests or sages say?<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a>{133}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXXIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Hark! what a voice comes crying through the night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How does it thrill my too obsequious ears!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“O God, that knowledge should be wisdom hight,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And men should broadcast sow big-bellied years:”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Should a strong spirit descend, and wave his wand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gaze, and breathe inventions into life;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And fit all systems, with his dexterous hand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into a social perfectness from strife,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Twere much; and goodly heaven-descended Peace<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Should sprout her blossoms, beautiful, o’er the land:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I question yet, if jars should wholly cease,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or hatreds yield their once-accomplished stand:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">An automaton world may merchandise, weave, spin;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Riches shall swell, not harmonise, its din.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a>{134}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXXIV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Nay let your flight, Dædalean, touch far shores,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The utmost horizon where discovery tends!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let Riches lavish their luxuriant stores,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till Poverty gapes, wanting her wonted friends;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let Rule, accomplished by adjustment’s mean,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tune his mild precepts to benevolence;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let knowledge thirst, and universal seem,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Say what, say wherefore, whither, and say whence;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let ignorance crown with pride presumption’s vaunt,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And fruitless pages garner stores of praise;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let social systems, smoothly-gliding, haunt<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The wheels of state, whose barter smooths their ways:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet riches are life’s condiment, not life;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Peace is not love, but absence from the strife.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a>{135}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXXV.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The earth is hoar with many a thousand years,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And many a nation’s mute observance hung<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On brighter ministers than woman’s tears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Immutable still, as when their course begun;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Once large luxuriance fostered giant forms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Huge sepulchres contain their trampled pride;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nature, or glutted, or transposed by storms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Invites man sail o’er Being’s former tide:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Without one tear those calm, clear worlds looked down,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And haply smile at mortals’ eagerness;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They seem to murmur, grasp your bauble crown,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scan not too near your treasure’s meagreness:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All changes; but one essence guides the change,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Involved, immortal, it must onward range.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a>{136}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXXVI.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Types of the volume where all secrets lie,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who hath not made ye confidants of woe?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whom have ye cheer’d not, beckoning from on high,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Watched at their birth, and flash’d on death your glow?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Witnesses to my woes, my thoughts, my sins,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Attest, that sometimes I have conquered grief;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If I have known what loss fulfilment wins,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And yet striven on, then yield me some relief:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thou, blue escutcheon, on which worlds have painted<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The symbol, truth, hard for poor man to read;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If I have lonely storm’d content, nor fainted,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nourish some flower from this uncertain seed:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Though great my sins, not less my griefs have been,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bear witness, Truth, high arbitress and queen.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a>{137}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXXVII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When man sinks awed, watching a myriad globes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How shrunk his purpose and his works appear!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All his achievement ne’er can weave such robes;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He can but gaze, despair confounds his fear:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yet there’s a link that binds weak man to God,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And earth hath heavens as bright as all those stars;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beauty, ever-living, need but inspire the sod,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, lo! the substance of those golden cars.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Spirit of Beauty, quicken, purge my soul;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Raise it more near the substance of thy form;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then, mounting gradual, I shall reach the goal,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where individual life’s no longer warm;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where Beauty in itself transpicuous shines,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, universal, dazzles life’s dim mines.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a>{138}</span></p> - -<h2>CXXXVIII.</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I cease, and bid farewell to who hath swayed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This tribute’s mite of unmelodious verse;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With many a billow my bark’s idly play’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My thoughts enamoured but of thee, their hearse;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And think not, though life drags a tedious chain,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all it offers, shows on trial nought,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Believe not, I will sorrow, or complain;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hast thou not stored all summer in my thought?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, watching the bright heavens, or the glad ocean,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ll think thou look’st, and they repeat thy smile;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor shall life’s utmost favour of commotion<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bid homage spurn my Sovereign from love’s isle:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To live in mortal’s mouths, be others’ aim;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To dwell within thy heart, my only claim.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - 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