Part 5

And therefore am I seeking to entwine A coronal of poppies for my head, Or wreathe it with a wreath engarlanded By Lethe’s slumberous waters. Oh! that mine Were some dim chamber turning to the north, With latticed casement, bedded deep in leaves, That opening with sweet murmur might look forth On quiet fields from broad o’erhanging eaves, And ever when the Spring her garland weaves, Were darkened with encroaching ivy-trail And jaggèd vine-leaves’ shade; And all its pavement starred with blossoms pale Of jasmine, when the wind’s least stir was made; Where the sun-beam were verdurous-cool, before It wound into that quiet nook, to paint With interspace of light and colour faint That tesselated floor. How pleasant were it there in dim recess, In some close-curtained haunt of quietness, To hear no tones of human pain and care, Our own or others, little heeding there, If morn or noon or night Pursued their weary flight, But musing what an easy thing it were To mix our opiates in a larger cup, And drink, and not perceive Sleep deepening lead his truer kinsman up, Like undistinguished Night, darkening the skirts of Eve.

ATLANTIS.

I.

I could loose my boat, And could bid it float Where the idlest wind should pilot, So its glad course lay From this earth away, Towards any untrodden islet.

II.

For this earth is old, And its heart is cold, And the palsy of age has bound it; And my spirit frets For the viewless nets Which are hourly clinging round it.

III.

And with joyful glee We have heard of thee, Thou Isle in mid ocean sleeping; And thy records old, Which the Sage has told, How the Memphian tombs are keeping.

IV.

But we know not where, ’Neath the desert air, To look for the pleasant places Of the youth of Time, Whose austerer prime The haunts of his childhood effaces.

V.

Like the golden flowers Of the western bowers, Have waned their immortal shadows; And no harp may tell Where the asphodel Clad in light those Elysian meadows.

VI.

And thou, fairest Isle In the daylight’s smile, Hast thou sunk in the boiling ocean, While beyond thy strand Rose a mightier land From the wave in alternate motion?

VII.

Are the isles that stud The Atlantic flood, But the peaks of thy tallest mountains, While repose below The great water’s flow Thy towns and thy towers and fountains?

VIII.

Have the Ocean powers Made their quiet bowers, In thy fanes and thy dim recesses? Or in haunts of thine Do the sea-maids twine Coral wreaths for their dewy tresses?

IX.

Or does foot not fall In deserted hall, Choked with wrecks that ne’er won their haven, By the ebb trailed o’er Thy untrampled floor, Which their sunken wealth has paven?

X.

Oh, appear! appear! Not as when thy spear Ruled as far as the broad Egean, But in Love’s own might, And in Freedom’s right, Till the nations uplift their Pæan,

XI.

Who now watch and weep, And their vigil keep, Till they faint for expectation; Till their dim eyes shape Temple tower and cape From the cloud and the exhalation.

SAIS.

An awful statue, by a veil half-hid, At Sais stands. One came, to whom was known All lore committed to Etruscan stone, And all sweet voices, that dull time has chid To silence now, by antique Pyramid, Skirting the desert, heard; and what the deep May in its dimly-lighted chambers keep, Where Genii groan beneath the seal-bound lid. He dared to raise that yet unlifted veil With hands not pure, but never might unfold What there he saw--madness, the shadow, fell On his few days, ere yet he went to dwell With night’s eternal people, and his tale Has thus remained, and will remain, untold.

SONNET.

I stood beside a pool, from whence ascended, Mounting the platforms of the cloudy wind, A stately hern--its soaring I attended, Till it grew dim, and I with watching blind-- When, lo! a shaft of arrowy light descended Upon its darkness and its dim attire: It straightway kindled then, and was afire, And with the unconsuming radiance blended. A bird, a cloud, flecking the sunny air, It had its golden dwelling mid the lightning Of those empyreal domes, and it might there Have dwelt for ever, glorified and brightning, But that its wings were weak--so it became A dusky speck again, that _was_ a wingèd flame.

RECOLLECTIONS OF BURGOS.

Most like some agèd king it seemed to me, Who had survived his old regality, Poor and deposed, but keeping still his state, In all he had before of truly great; With no vain wishes and no vain regret, But his enforcèd leisure soothing yet With meditation calm and books and prayer; For all was sober and majestic there-- The old Castilian, with close finger tips Pressing his folded mantle to his lips; The dim cathedral’s cross-surmounted pile, With carved recess, and cool and shadowy aisle, And had not from dark hoods peered darker eyes, All fitted well for meditation wise-- The walks of poplar by the river’s side, That wound by many a straggling channel wide; And seats of stone, where one might sit and weave Visions, till well-nigh tempted to believe That life had few things better to be done, And many worse, than resting in the sun To lose the hours, and wilfully to dim Our half-shut eyes, and veil them till might swim The pageant by us, smoothly as the stream And unremembered pageant of a dream.

A castle crowned a neighbouring hillock’s crest, But now the moat was level with the rest; And all was fallen of this place of power, All heaped with formless stone, save one round tower, And here and there a gateway low and old, Figured with antique shape of warrior bold. And then behind this eminence the sun Would drop serenely, long ere day was done; And one who climbed that height might see again A second setting o’er the fertile plain Beyond the town, and glittering in his beam, Wind far away that poplar-skirted stream.

TO A FRIEND.

Thou that hast travelled far away, In lands beyond the sea, Wilt understand me, when I say What there has come to me.

In chambers dim thou wilt have wrought, With no one by, to cheer, And trod the downward paths of thought, In solitude and fear;

Nor till the weary day was o’er, Into the air have fled From thought which could delight no more, From books whose power was dead;

What time perchance the drooping day With burning vapour fills The deep recesses far away Of all the golden hills:

Or later, when the twilight blends All hues, or when the moon Into the ocean depths descends, A wavering column, down.

Then hast not thou in spirit leapt, Emerging from thy gloom, Like one who unawares o’erstept The barriers of a tomb.

And in thine exultation cried-- Of gladness having fill, And in it being glorified-- “The world is beauteous still!”

TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL EXILES OF 1823.

[WRITTEN IN 1829.]

Wise are ye in a wisdom vainly sought Thro’ all the records of the historic page; It is not to be learned by lengthened age, Scarce by deep musings of unaided thought: By suffering and endurance ye have bought A knowledge of the thousand links that bind The highest with the lowest of our kind, And how the indissoluble chain is wrought. Ye fell by your own mercy once--beware, When your lots leap again from fortune’s urn, An heavier error--to be pardoned less. Yours be it to the nations to declare That years of pain and disappointment turn Weak hearts to gall, but wise to gentleness.

TO THE SAME.

Like nightly watchers from a palace tower, In hope and faith and patience strong to wait The beacons on the hills, which should relate How some fenced city of deceit and power Had fallen--ye have stood for many an hour, Till your first hope’s high movements must be dead, And if with new ye have not cheered and fed Your bosoms, dim despair may be your dower. Yet not for all--tho’ yet no fire may crest The mountains, or light up their beacons sere-- Your eminent commission so far wrong, Or so much flatter the oppressors’ rest, As to give o’er your watching, for so long As ye shall hope, ’tis reason they must fear.

SONNET.

The moments that we rescue and redeem From the bare desert and the waste of years, To fertilize, it may be with our tears, Yet so that for time after they shall teem With better than rank weeds, and wear a gleam Of visionary light, and on the wind Fling odours from the fields long left behind, These and their fruit to us can never seem Indifferent things, and therefore do I look Not without gentle sadness upon thee, And liken thy outgoing, O my book, To the impatience of a little brook, Which might with flowers have lingered pleasantly, Yet toils to perish in the mighty sea.

ON AN EARLY DEATH.

I.

Ah me! of them from whom the good have hope, Of them whom virtue for her liegemen claims, How many the world tames, That with its evil they quite cease to cope, And their first fealty sworn to beauty and truth Break early; and amid their sinful youth Make shipwreck of all high and glorious aims. How few the fierce and fiery trial stand, To be as weapons tempered and approved For an almighty hand.

How few of all the streamlets that were moved, Do ever unto clearness run again, And therefore is it marvellous to us, When of these weapons one is broken thus, When of these fountains one would seem in vain Renewed in clearness, and is staunched before It has had leave to spread fresh streams the desert o’er.

II.

Ah me! that by so frail and feeble thread Our life is holden--that not life alone, But all that life has won May in an hour be gathered to the dead; The slow additions that build up the mind, The skill that by temptation we have bought And suffering, and whatever has been taught By lengthened years and converse with our kind, That all may cease together--and the tree Reared to its height by many a slow degree, And by the dews the sunshine and the showers Of many springs, an instant may lay low, With all its living towers, And all the fruit mature of growth and slow, Which on the trees of wisdom leisurely must grow.

III.

Alas! it is another thing to wail, That when the foremost runners sink and fail, They cannot pass their torch or forward place To them that are behind them in their race, But their extinguished torches must be laid Together with them in the dust of death: That when the wise and the true-hearted fade, So little of themselves they can bequeath To us, who yet are in the race of life, For labour and for toil, for weariness and strife.

IV.

But from behind the veil, Where they are entered who have gone before, A solemn voice arrests my feeble wail-- “And has thy life such worthier aims, O man, That thou shouldst grudge to give its little span To truth and knowledge, and faith’s holy lore, Because the places for the exercise Of these may be withdrawn from mortal eyes. Win truth, win goodness--for which man was made, And fear not thou of these to be bereft, Fear not that these shall in the dust be laid, Or in corruption left, Or be the grave-worm’s food. Nothing is left or lost--nothing of good, Or lovely; but whatever its first springs Has drawn from God, returns to him again; That only which ’twere misery to retain Is taken from you, which to keep were loss; Only the scum the refuse and the dross Are borne away unto the grave of things, Meanwhile whatever gifts from heav’n descend Thither again have flowed, To the receptacle of all things good, From whom they come and unto whom they tend, Who is the First and Last, the Author and the End.

V.

And fear to sorrow with increase of grief, When they who go before Go furnished--or because their span was brief, When in the acquist of what is life’s true gage, Truth, knowledge, and that other worthiest lore, They had fulfilled already a long age. For doubt not but that in the worlds above There must be other offices of love, That other tasks and ministries there are, Since it is promised that His servants, there Shall serve him still. Therefore be strong, be strong, Ye that remain, nor fruitlessly revolve, Darkling, the riddles which ye cannot solve, But do the works that unto you belong, Believing that for every mystery, For all the death the darkness and the curse Of this dim universe, Needs a solution full of love must be: And that the way whereby ye may attain Nearest to this, is not thro’ broodings vain And half-rebellious--questionings of God, But by a patient seeking to fulfil The purpose of his everlasting will, Treading the way which lowly men have trod. Since it is ever they who are too proud For this, that are the foremost and most loud To judge his hidden judgments, these are still The most perplexed and mazed at his mysterious will.”

SONNET.

When I have sometimes read of precious things, The precious things of earth, which yet are vile, Together heaped into the graves of kings, Or wasted with them on their funeral pile, Steeds arms and costly vestments and the dross Which men call gold, feeding one ravenous pyre, I have been little moved at all the loss Of all the treasure which fond men admire. But when I hear of some too early doom, Snatching wit wisdom valour grace away, Or our own loss has taught me what the tomb May cover from us, then I feel and say That earth has things whereon the grave may feed, And feeding may make poor the world indeed.

SONNET.

What is the greatness of a fallen king? This--that his fall avails not to abate His spirit to a level with his fate, Or inward fall along with it to bring; That he disdains to stoop his former wing, But keeps in exile and in want the law Of kingship yet, and counts it scorn to draw Comfort indign from any meaner thing. Soul, that art fallen from thine ancient place, Mayest thou in this mean world find nothing great, Nor aught that shall the memories efface Of that true greatness which was once thine own, As knowing thou must keep thy kingly state, If thou wouldst reascend thy kingly throne.

NEW YEAR’S EVE.

The strong in spiritual action need not look Upon the new-found year as on a scroll, The which their hands lack cunning to unroll, But in it read, as in an open book, All they are seeking--high resolve unshook By circumstance’s unforeseen control, Successful striving, and whate’er the soul Has recognised for duty, not forsook. But they whom many failures have made tame, Question the future with that reverent fear, Which best their need of heav’nly aid may shew. Will it have purer thought, and loftier aim Pursued more loftily? That a man might know What thou wilt bring him, thou advancing year!

TO MY CHILD.

Thy gladness makes me thankful every way, To look upon thy gladness makes me glad; While yet in part it well might render sad Us thinking that we too might sport and play, And keep like thee continual holiday, If we retained the things which once we had, If we like happy Neophytes were clad Still in baptismal stoles of white array. And yet the gladness of the innocent child Has not more matter for our thankful glee Than the dim sorrows of the man defiled; Since both in sealing one blest truth agree-- Joy is of God, but heaviness and care Of our own hearts and what has harboured there.

SONNET.

An open wound that has been healed anew; A stream dried up, that once again is fed With waters making green its grassy bed; A tree that withered was, but to the dew Puts forth young leaves and blossoms fresh of hue, Even from the branches which had seemed most dead; A sea which having been disquieted, Now stretches like a mirror calm and blue,-- Our hearts to each of these were likened well. But Thou wert the physician and the balm; Thou, Lord, the fountain, whence anew was filled Their parchèd channel; Thou the dew that fell On their dead branches; ’twas thy voice that stilled The storm within--Thou didst command the calm.

SONNET.

IN A PASS OF BAVARIA BETWEEN THE WALCHEN AND THE WALDENSEE.

“His voice was as the sound of many waters.”

A sound of many waters--now I know To what was likened the large utterance sent By Him who ’mid the golden lampads went: Innumerable streams, above, below, Some seen, some heard alone, with headlong flow Come rushing; some with smooth and sheer descent, Some dashed to foam and whiteness, but all blent Into one mighty music. As I go, The tumult of a boundless gladness fills My bosom, and my spirit leaps and sings: Sounds and sights are there of the ancient hills, The eagle’s cry, or when the mountain flings Mists from its brow, but none of all these things Like the one voice of multitudinous rills.

SONNET.

What is thy worship but a vain pretence, Spirit of Beauty, and a servile trade, A poor and an unworthy traffic made With the most sacred gifts of soul and sense; If they who tend thine altars, gathering thence No strength, no purity, may still remain Selfish and dark, and from Life’s sordid stain Find in their ministrations no defence? Thus many times I ask, when aught of mean Or sensual has been brought unto mine ear, Of them whose calling high is to insphere Eternal Beauty in forms of human art-- Vexed that my soul should ever moved have been By that which has such feigning at the heart.

SONNET.

Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident, It is the very place God meant for thee; And shouldst thou there small scope for action see, Do not for this give room to discontent; Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent In idly dreaming how thou mightest be, In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free From outward hindrance or impediment. For presently this hindrance thou shalt find That without which all goodness were a task So slight, that Virtue never could grow strong: And wouldst thou do one duty to His mind, The Imposer’s--over-burdened thou shalt ask, And own thy need of grace to help, ere long.

TO MY GOD-CHILD,

ON THE DAY OF HIS BAPTISM.

No harsh transitions Nature knows, No dreary spaces intervene; Her work in silence forward goes, And rather felt than seen.

For where the watcher, that with eye Turned eastward, yet could ever say When the faint glooming in the sky First lightened into day?

Or maiden, by an opening flower That many a summer morn has stood, Could fix upon the very hour It ceased to be a bud?

The rainbow colours mix and blend Each with the other, until none Can tell where fainter hues had end, And deeper tints begun.

But only doth this much appear-- That the pale hues are deeper grown; The day has broken bright and clear; The bud is fully blown.

Dear child, and happy shalt thou be, If from this hour, with just increase All good things shall grow up in thee, By such unmarked degrees.

If there shall be no dreary space Between thy present self and past, No dreary miserable place With spectral shapes aghast;

But the full graces of thy prime Shall, in their weak beginnings, be Lost in an unremembered time Of holy infancy.

This blessing is the first and best; Yet has not prayer been made in vain For them, tho’ not so amply blest, The lost and found again.

And shouldest thou, alas! forbear To choose the better, nobler lot, Yet may we not esteem our prayer Unheard or heeded not;

If after many a wandering, And many a devious pathway trod; If having known that bitter thing, To leave the Lord thy God,

It yet shall be, that thou at last, Altho’ thy noon be lost, return To bind life’s eve in union fast To this, its blessed morn.

THE MONK AND BIRD.

I.

As he who finds one flower sharp thorns among, Plucks it, and highly prizes, though before Careless regard on thousands he has flung, As fair as this or more;

II.

Not otherwise perhaps this argument Won from me, where I found it, such regard, That I esteemed no labour thereon spent As wearisome or hard.

III.

In huge and antique volume did it lie, That by two solemn clasps was duly bound, As neither to be opened or laid by But with due thought profound.

IV.

There fixèd thought to questions did I lend, Which hover on the bounds of mortal ken, And have perplexed, and will unto the end Perplex the brains of men;

V.

Of what is time, and what eternity, Of all that seems and is not--forms of things-- Till my tired spirit followed painfully On flagging weary wings.

VI.

So that I welcomed this one resting-place, Pleased as a bird, that when its forces fail, Lights panting in the ocean’s middle space Upon a sunny sail.

VII.

And now the grace of fiction, which has power To render things impossible believed, And win them with the credence of an hour To be for truths received--

VIII.

That grace must help me, as it only can, Winning such transient credence, while I tell What to a cloistered solitary man In ancient times befel.

IX.

Him little might our earthly grandeur feed, Who to the uttermost was vowed to be A follower of his Master’s barest need, In holy poverty.

X.

Nor might he know the gentle mutual strife Of home affections, which can more or less Temper with sweet the bitter of our life, And lighten its distress.

XI.

Yet we should err to deem that he was left To bear alone our being’s lonely weight, Or that his soul was vacant and bereft Of pomp and inward state:

XII.

Morn, when before the sun his orb unshrouds, Swift as a beacon torch the light has sped, Kindling the dusky summits of the clouds Each to a fiery red--

XIII.

The slanted columns of the noonday light, Let down into the bosom of the hills, Or sunset, that with golden vapour bright The purple mountains fills--

XIV.

These made him say,--if God has so arrayed A fading world that quickly passes by, Such rich provision of delight was made For every human eye,

XV.

What shall the eyes that wait for him survey, Where his own presence gloriously appears In worlds that were not founded for a day, But for eternal years?

XVI.

And if at seasons this world’s undelight Oppressed him, or the hollow at its heart, One glance at those enduring mansions bright Made gloomier thoughts depart;

XVII.

Till many times the sweetness of the thought Of an eternal country--where it lies Removed from care and mortal anguish, brought Sweet tears into his eyes.

XVIII.