Part 5

Unwatch’d the garden bough shall sway, The tender blossom flutter down, Unloved that beech will gather brown, This maple burn itself away;

Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, Ray round with flames her disk of seed, And many a rose-carnation feed With summer spice the humming air;

Unloved, by many a sandy bar, The brook shall babble down the plain, At noon or when the lesser wain Is twisting round the polar star;

Uncared for, gird the windy grove, And flood the haunts of hern and crake; Or into silver arrows break The sailing moon in creek and cove;

Till from the garden and the wild A fresh association blow, And year by year the landscape grow Familiar to the stranger’s child;

As year by year the labourer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; And year by year our memory fades From all the circle of the hills.

C.

We leave the well-beloved place Where first we gazed upon the sky; The roofs, that heard our earliest cry, Will shelter one of stranger race.

We go, but ere we go from home, As down the garden-walks I move, Two spirits of a diverse love Contend for loving masterdom.

One whispers, here thy boyhood sung Long since its matin song, and heard The low love-language of the bird In native hazels tassel-hung.

The other answers, ‘Yea, but here Thy feet have stray’d in after hours With thy lost friend among the bowers, And this hath made them trebly dear.’

These two have striven half the day, And each prefers his separate claim, Poor rivals in a losing game, That will not yield each other way.

I turn to go: my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms; They mix in one another’s arms To one pure image of regret.

CI.

On that last night before we went From out the doors where I was bred, I dream’d a vision of the dead, Which left my after morn content.

Methought I dwelt within a hall, And maidens with me: distant hills From hidden summits fed with rills A river sliding by the wall.

The hall with harp and carol rang. They sang of what is wise and good And graceful. In the centre stood A statue veil’d, to which they sang;

And which, tho’ veil’d, was known to me, The shape of him I loved, and love For ever: then flew in a dove And brought a summons from the sea:

And when they learnt that I must go They wept and wail’d, but led the way To where a little shallop lay At anchor in the flood below;

And on by many a level mead, And shadowing bluff that made the banks, We glided winding under ranks Of iris, and the golden reed;

And still as vaster grew the shore, And roll’d the floods in grander space, The maidens gather’d strength and grace And presence, lordlier than before;

And I myself, who sat apart And watch’d them, waxt in every limb; I felt the thews of Anakim, The pulses of a Titan’s heart;

As one would sing the death of war, And one would chant the history Of that great race, which is to be, And one the shaping of a star;

Until the forward-creeping tides Began to foam, and we to draw From deep to deep, to where we saw A great ship lift her shining sides.

The man we loved was there on deck, But thrice as large as man he bent To greet us. Up the side I went, And fell in silence on his neck:

Whereat those maidens with one mind Bewail’d their lot; I did them wrong: ‘We served thee here,’ they said, ‘so long, And wilt thou leave us now behind?’

So rapt I was, they could not win An answer from my lips, but he Replying, ‘Enter likewise ye And go with us:’ they enter’d in.

And while the wind began to sweep A music out of sheet and shroud, We steer’d her toward a crimson cloud That landlike slept along the deep.

CII.

The time draws near the birth of Christ; The moon is hid, the night is still; A single church below the hill Is pealing, folded in the mist.

A single peal of bells below, That wakens at this hour of rest A single murmur in the breast, That these are not the bells I know.

Like strangers’ voices here they sound, In lands where not a memory strays, Nor landmark breathes of other days, But all is new unhallow’d ground.

CIII.

This holly by the cottage-eave, To night, ungather’d, shall it stand: We live within the stranger’s land, And strangely falls our Christmas eve.

Our father’s dust is left alone And silent under other snows: There in due time the woodbine blows, The violet comes, but we are gone.

No more shall wayward grief abuse The genial hour with mask and mime; For change of place, like growth of time, Has broke the bond of dying use.

Let cares that petty shadows cast, By which our lives are chiefly proved, A little spare the night I loved, And hold it solemn to the past.

But let no footstep beat the floor, Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm; For who would keep an ancient form Through which the spirit breathes no more?

Be neither song, nor game, nor feast, Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown; No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens in the lucid east

Of rising worlds by yonder wood. Long sleeps the summer in the seed; Run out your measur’d arcs, and lead The closing cycle rich in good.

CIV.

Ring out wild bells to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.

CV.

It is the day when he was born, A bitter day that early sank Behind a purple-frosty bank Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.

The time admits not flowers or leaves To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies The blast of North and East, and ice Makes daggers at the sharpen’d eaves,

And bristles all the brakes and thorns To yon hard crescent, as she hangs Above the wood which grides and clangs Its leafless ribs and iron horns

Together, in the drifts that pass, To darken on the rolling brine That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine, Arrange the board and brim the glass;

Bring in great logs and let them lie, To make a solid core of heat; Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat Of all things ev’n as he were by:

We keep the day. With festal cheer, With books and music, surely we Will drink to him whate’er he be, And sing the songs he loved to hear.

CVI.

I will not shut me from my kind, And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:

What profit lies in barren faith, And vacant yearning, tho’ with might To scale the heaven’s highest height, Or dive below the wells of Death?

What find I in the highest place, But mine own phantom chanting hymns? And on the depths of death there swims The reflex of a human face.

I’ll rather take what fruit may be Of sorrow under human skies: ’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.

CVII.

Heart-affluence in discursive talk From household fountains never dry; The critic clearness of an eye, That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk;

Seraphic intellect and force To seize and throw the doubts of man; Impassion’d logic, which outran The hearer in its fiery course;

High nature amorous of the good, But touch’d with no ascetic gloom; And passion pure in snowy bloom Thro’ all the years of April blood;

A love of freedom rarely felt, Of freedom in her regal seat Of England, not the schoolboy heat, The blind hysterics of the Celt;

And manhood fused with female grace In such a sort, the child would twine, A trustful hand, unasked, in thine, And find his comfort in thy face;

All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have look’d on: if they look’d in vain My shame is greater who remain, Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.

CVIII.

Thy converse drew us with delight, The men of rathe and riper years: The feeble soul, a haunt of fears, Forgot his weakness in thy sight.

On thee the loyal-hearted hung, The proud was half disarm’d of pride, Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with his treble tongue.

The stern were mild when thou wert by, The flippant put himself to school And heard thee, and the brazen fool Was soften’d, and he knew not why;

While I, thy dearest, sat apart, And felt thy triumph was as mine; And loved them more, that they were thine, The graceful tact, the Christian art;

Not mine the sweetness or the skill, But mine the love that will not tire, And, born of love, the vague desire That spurs an imitative will.

CIX.

The churl in spirit up or down, Along the scale of ranks, thro’ all To who may grasp a golden ball By blood a king, at heart a clown;

The churl in spirit, howe’er he veil His want in forms for fashion’s sake, Will let his coltish nature break At seasons thro’ the gilded pale:

For who can always act? but he, To whom a thousand memories call, Not being less but more than all The gentleness he seem’d to be,

So wore his outward best, and join’d Each office of the social hour, To noble manners, as the flower And native growth of noble mind;

Nor ever narrowness or spite, Or villain fancy fleeting by, Drew in the expression of an eye, Where God and Nature met in light,

And thus he bore without abuse The grand old name of gentleman, Defamed by every charlatan, And soil’d with all ignoble use.

CX.

High wisdom holds my wisdom less, That I, who gaze with temperate eyes On glorious insufficiencies, Set light by narrower perfectness.

But thou, that fillest all the room Of all my love, art reason why I seem to cast a careless eye On souls, the lesser lords of doom.

For what wert thou? some novel power Sprang up for ever at a touch, And hope could never hope too much, In watching thee from hour to hour,

Large elements in order brought, And tracts of calm from tempest made, And world-wide fluctuation sway’d In vassal tides that followed thought.

CXI.

’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise; Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee Which not alone had guided me, But served the seasons that may rise;

For can I doubt who knew thee keen In intellect, with force and skill To strive, to fashion, to fulfil-- I doubt not what thou wouldst have been:

A life in civic action warm, A soul on highest mission sent, A potent voice of Parliament, A pillar steadfast in the storm,

Should licensed boldness gather force, Becoming, when the time has birth, A lever to uplift the earth And roll it in another course,

With many shocks that come and go, With agonies, with energies, With overthrowings, and with cries, And undulations to and fro.

CXII.

Who loves not knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars? Let her work prevail.

But on her forehead sits a fire: She sets her forward countenance And leaps into the future chance, Submitting all things to desire.

Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain-- She cannot fight the fear of death. What is she, cut from love and faith, But some wild Pallas from the brain

Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst All barriers in her onward race For power. Let her know her place; She is the second, not the first.

A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child:

For she is earthly of the mind, But wisdom heavenly of the soul. O, friend, who camest to thy goal So early, leaving me behind,

I would the great world grew like thee, Who grewest not alone in power And knowledge, but from hour to hour In reverence and in charity.

CXIII.

Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drown’d in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood; that live their lives.

From land to land; and in my breast Spring wakens too; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest.

CXIV.

Is it, then, regret for buried time That keenlier in sweet April wakes, And meets the year, and gives and takes The colours of the crescent prime?

Not all: the songs, the stirring air, The life re-orient out of dust, Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust In that which made the world so fair.

Not all regret: the face will shine Upon me, while I muse alone; The dear, dear voice that I have known Will speak to me of me and mine:

Yet less of sorrow lives in me For days of happy commune dead; Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strong bond which is to be.

CXV.

O days and hours, your work is this, To hold me from my proper place, A little while from his embrace, For fuller gain of after bliss:

That out of distance might ensue Desire of nearness doubly sweet; And unto meeting, when we meet, Delight a hundredfold accrue,

For every grain of sand that runs, And every span of shade that steals, And every kiss of toothed wheels, And all the courses of the suns.

CXVI.

Contemplate all this work of Time, The giant labouring in his youth; Nor dream of human love and truth, As dying Nature’s earth and lime;

But trust that those we call the dead, Are breathers of an ampler day For ever nobler ends. They say, The solid earth whereon we tread

In tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man;

Who throve and branch’d from clime to clime, The herald of a higher race, And of himself in higher place, If so he type this work of time

Within himself, from more to more; And, crown’d with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears; And dipp’d in baths of hissing tears, And batter’d with the shocks of doom

To shape and use. Arise and fly The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.

CXVII.

Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, not as one that weeps I come once more; the city sleeps; I smell the meadow in the street;

I hear a chirp of birds; I see Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn A light-blue lane of early dawn, And think of early days and thee,

And bless thee, for thy lips are bland And bright the friendship of thine eye; And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh I take the pressure of thine hand.

CXVIII.

I trust I have not wasted breath: I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries; not in vain, Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;

Not only cunning casts in clay: Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men, At least to me? I would not stay.

Let him, the wiser man who springs Hereafter, up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape, But I was born to other things.

CXIX.

Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun And ready, thou, to die with him, Thou watchest all things ever dim And dimmer, and a glory done:

The team is loosen’d from the wain, The boat is drawn upon the shore; Thou listenest to the closing door, And life is darken’d in the brain.

Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night, By thee the world’s great work is heard Beginning, and the wakeful bird; Behind thee comes the greater light:

The market boat is on the stream, And voices hail it from the brink; Thou hear’st the village hammer clink, And see’st the moving of the team.

Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name For what is one, the first, the last, Thou, like my present and my past, Thy place is changed; thou art the same.

CXX.

Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then, While I rose up against my doom, And strove to burst the folded gloom, To bare the eternal Heavens again,

To feel once more, in placid awe, The strong imagination roll A sphere of stars about my soul, In all her motion one with law;

If thou wert with me, and the grave Divide us not, be with me now, And enter in at breast and brow, Till all my blood, a fuller wave,

Be quicken’d with a livelier breath, And like an inconsiderate boy, As in the former flash of joy, I slip the thoughts of life and death;

And all the breeze of Fancy blows, And every dew-drop paints a bow; The wizard lightnings deeply glow, And every thought breaks out a rose.

CXXI.

There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea.

The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

But in my spirit will I dwell, And dream my dream, and hold it true; For tho’ my lips may breathe adieu, I cannot think the thing farewell.

CXXII.

That which we dare invoke to bless; Our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt; He, They, One, All; within, without; The Power in darkness whom we guess;

I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye; Nor thro’ the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun:

If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep, I heard a voice ‘believe no more’ And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Godless deep;

A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason’s colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answer’d ‘I have felt.’

No, like a child in doubt and fear: But that blind clamour made me wise; Then was I as a child that cries, But, crying, knows his father near;

And what I seem beheld again What is, and no man understands; And out of darkness came the hands That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.

CXXIII.

Whatever I have said or sung, Some bitter notes my harp would give, Yea, tho’ there often seem’d to live A contradiction on the tongue,

Yet Hope had never lost her youth; She did but look thro’ dimmer eyes; Or Love but play’d with gracious lies, Because he felt so fix’d in truth:

And if the song were full of care, He breathed the spirit of the song; And if the words were sweet and strong He set his royal signet there;

Abiding with me till I sail To seek thee on the mystic deeps, And this electric force, that keeps A thousand pulses dancing, fail.

CXXIV.

Love is and was my Lord and King, And in his presence I attend To hear the tidings of my friend, Which every hour his couriers bring.

Love is and was my King and Lord, And will be, tho’ as yet I keep Within his court on earth, and sleep Encompass’d by his faithful guard,

And hear at times a sentinel That moves about from place to place, And whispers to the vast of space Among the worlds, that all is well.

CXXV.

And all is well, tho’ faith and form Be sunder’d in the night of fear; Well roars the storm to those that hear A deeper voice across the storm,

Proclaiming social truth shall spread, And justice, ev’n tho’ thrice again The red fool-fury of the Seine Should pile her barricades with dead.

But woe to him that wears a crown, And him, the lazar, in his rags: They tremble, the sustaining crags; The spires of ice are toppled down,

And molten up, and roar in flood; The fortress crashes from on high, The brute earth lightens to the sky, And the vast Æon sinks in blood,

And compass’d by the fires of Hell, While thou, dear spirit, happy star, O’erlook’st the tumult from afar, And smilest, knowing all is well.

CXXVI.

The love that rose on stronger wings, Unpalsied when he met with Death, Is comrade of the lesser faith That sees the course of human things.

No doubt vast eddies in the flood, Of onward time shall yet be made, And throned races may degrade; Yet O ye ministers of good,

Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, If all your office had to do With old results that look like new, If this were all your mission here,

To draw, to sheathe a useless sword, To fool the crowd with glorious lies, To cleave a creed in sects and cries, To change the bearing of a word,

To shift an arbitrary power, To cramp the student at his desk, To make old baseness picturesque And tuft with grass a feudal tower;