Poetry

High fate is theirs, ye sleepless waves, whose ear
Learns Freedom’s lesson from your voice of fear;
Whose spell-bound sense from childhood’s hour hath known
Familiar meanings in your mystic tone:
Sounds of deep import⁠—voices that beguile
Age of its tears and childhood of its smile,
To yearn with speechless impulse to the free
And gladsome greetings of the buoyant sea!
High fate is theirs, who where the silent sky
Stoops to the soaring mountains, live and die;
Who scale the cloud-capt height, or sink to rest
In the deep stillness of its shelt’ring breast;⁠—
Around whose feet the exulting waves have sung,
The eternal hills their giant shadows flung.

No wonders nurs’d thy childhood; not for thee
Did the waves chant their song of liberty!
Thine was no mountain home, where Freedom’s form
Abides enthron’d amid the mist and storm,
And whispers to the listening winds, that swell
With solemn cadence round her citadel!
These had no sound for thee: that cold calm eye
Lit with no rapture as the storm swept by,
To mark with shiver’d crest the reeling wave
Hide his torn head beneath his sunless cave;
Or hear, ’mid circling crags, the impatient cry
Of the pent winds, that scream in agony!
Yet all high sounds that mountain children hear
Flash’d from thy soul upon thine inward ear;
All Freedom’s mystic language⁠—storms that roar
By hill or wave, the mountain or the shore⁠—
All these had stirr’d thy spirit, and thine eye
In common sights read secret sympathy;
Till all bright thoughts that hills or waves can yield,
Deck’d the dull waste, and the familiar field;
Or wondrous sounds from tranquil skies were borne
Far o’er the glistening sheets of windy corn:
Skies⁠—that unbound by clasp of mountain chain,
Slope stately down, and melt into the plain;
Sounds⁠—such as erst the lone wayfaring man
Caught, as he journeyed, from the lips of Pan;
Or that mysterious cry, that smote with fear,
Like sounds from other worlds, the Spartan’s ear,
While o’er the dusty plain, the murmurous throng
Of Heaven’s embattled myriads swept along.

Say not such dreams are idle: for the man
Still toils to perfect what the child began;
And thoughts, that were but outlines, time engraves
Deep on his life; and childhood’s baby waves,
Made rough with care, become the changeful sea,
Stemm’d by the strength of manhood fearlessly;
And fleeting thoughts, that on the lonely wild
Swept o’er the fancy of that heedless child,
Perchance had quicken’d with a living truth
The cold dull soil of his unfruitful youth;
Till, with his daily life, a life, that threw
Its shadows o’er the future, flower’d and grew,
With common cares unmingling, and apart,
Haunting the shrouded chambers of his heart;
Till life, unstirr’d by action, life became
Threaded and lighten’d by a track of flame;
An inward light, that, with its streaming ray
On the dark current of his changeless day
Bound all his being with a silver chain⁠—
Like a swift river through a silent plain!

High thoughts were his, when by the gleaming flood,
With heart new strung, and stern resolve, he stood;
Where rode the tall dark ships, whose loosen’d sail
All idly flutter’d in the eastern gale;
High thoughts were his;⁠—but Memory’s glance the while
Fell on the cherish’d past with tearful smile;
And peaceful joys and gentler thoughts swept by,
Like summer lightnings o’er a darken’d sky.
The peace of childhood, and the thoughts that roam,
Like loving shadows, round that childhood’s home;
Joys that had come and vanish’d, half unknown,
Then slowly brighten’d, as the days had flown;
Years that were sweet or sad, becalm’d or toss’d
On life’s wild waves⁠—the living and the lost.
Youth stain’d with follies: and the thoughts of ill
Crush’d, as they rose, by manhood’s sterner will.
Repentant prayers, that had been strong to save;
And the first sorrow, which is childhood’s grave!
All shapes that haunt remembrance⁠—soft and fair,
Like a green land at sunset, all were there!
Eyes that he knew, old faces, unforgot,
Gaz’d sadly down on his unrestful lot,
And Memory’s calm clear voice, and mournful eye,
Chill’d every buoyant hope that floated by;
Like frozen winds on southern vales that blow
From a far land⁠—the children of the snow⁠—
O’er flowering plain and blossom’d meadow fling
The cold dull shadow of their icy wing.

Then Fancy’s roving visions, bold and free,
A moment dispossess’d reality.
All airy hopes that idle hearts can frame,
Like dreams between two sorrows, went and came:
Fond hearts that fain would clothe the unwelcome truth
Of toilsome manhood in the dreams of youth,
To bend in rapture at some idle throne,
Some lifeless soulless phantom of their own;
Some shadowy vision of a tranquil life,
Of joys unclouded, years unstirr’d by strife;
Of sleep unshadow’d by a dream of woe;
Of many a lawny hill, and streams with silver flow;
Of giant mountains by the western main,
The sunless forest, and the sea-like plain;
Those lingering hopes of coward hearts, that still
Would play the traitor to the steadfast will,
One moment’s space, perchance, might charm his eye
From the stern future, and the years gone by.
One moment’s space might waft him far away
To western shores⁠—the death-place of the day!
Might paint the calm, sweet peace⁠—the rest of home,
Far o’er the pathless waste of labouring foam⁠—
Peace, that recall’d his childish hours anew,
More calm, more deep, than childhood ever knew!
Green happy places⁠—like a flowery lea
Between the barren mountains and the stormy sea.

O pleasant rest, if once the race were run!
O happy slumber, if the day were done!
Dreams that were sweet at eve, at morn were sin;
With cares to conquer, and a goal to win!
His were no tranquil years⁠—no languid sleep⁠—
No life of dreams⁠—no home beyond the deep⁠—
No softening ray⁠—no visions false and wild⁠—
No glittering hopes on life’s gray distance smiled⁠—
Like isles of sunlight on a mountain’s brow,
Lit by a wandering gleam, we know not how,
Far on the dim horizon, when the sky
With glooming clouds broods dark and heavily.

Then his eye slumber’d, and the chain was broke
That bound his spirit, and his heart awoke;
Then⁠—like a kingly river⁠—swift and strong,
The future roll’d its gathering tides along!
The shout of onset and the shriek of fear
Smote, like the rush of waters, on his ear;
And his eye kindled with the kindling fray,
The surging battle and the mail’d array!
All wondrous deeds the coming days should see,
And the long Vision of the years to be.
Pale phantom hosts, like shadows, faint and far,
Councils, and armies, and the pomp of war!
And one sway’d all, who wore a kingly crown,
Until another rose and smote him down:
A form that tower’d above his brother men;
A form he knew⁠—but it was shrouded then!
With stern, slow steps⁠—unseen⁠—yet still the same,
By leaguer’d tower and tented field it came;
By Naseby’s hill, o’er Marston’s heathy waste,
By Worcester’s field the warrior-vision pass’d!
From their deep base, thy beetling cliffs, Dunbar,
Rang, as he trode them, with the voice of war!
The soldier kindled at his words of fire;
The statesman quail’d before his glance of ire!
Worn was his brow with cares no thought could scan,
His step was loftier than the steps of man;
And the winds told his glory, and the wave
Sonorous witness to his empire gave!

What forms are these, that with complaining sound,
And slow, reluctant steps are gathering round?
Forms that with him shall tread life’s changing stage,
Cross his lone path, or share his pilgrimage.
There, as he gazed, a wondrous band⁠—they came,
Pym’s look of hate, and Strafford’s glance of flame.
There Laud, with noiseless steps and glittering eye,
In priestly garb, a frail old man, went by;
His drooping head bowed meekly on his breast;
His hands were folded, like a saint at rest!
There Hampden bent him o’er his saddle bow,
And death’s cold dews bedimm’d his earnest brow;
Still turn’d to watch the battle⁠—still forgot
Himself, his sufferings, in his country’s lot!
There Falkland eyed the strife that would not cease,
Shook back his tangled locks, and murmur’d⁠—“Peace!”
With feet that spurn’d the ground, lo! Milton there
Stood like a statue; and his face was fair⁠—
Fair beyond human beauty; and his eye,
That knew not earth, soar’d upwards to the sky!

He, too, was there⁠—it was the princely boy,
The child-companion of his childish joy!
But oh! how chang’d⁠—those deathlike features wore
Childhood’s bright glance, and sunny smile no more!
That brow so sad, so pale, so full of care⁠—
What trace of careless childhood linger’d there?
What spring of youth in that majestic mien,
So sadly calm, so kingly, so serene?
No⁠—all was chang’d⁠—the monarch wept alone,
Between a ruin’d church and shatter’d throne!
Friendless and hopeless⁠—like a lonely tree,
On some bare headland, straining mournfully,
That all night long its weary moan doth make
To the vex’d waters of a mountain lake!
Still, as he gaz’d, the phantom’s mournful glance
Shook the deep slumber of his deathlike trance;
Like some forgotten strain that haunts us still,
That calm eye follow’d, turn him where he will;
Till the pale monarch, and the long array,
Pass’d, like a morning mist, in tears away!

Then all his dream was troubled, and his soul
Thrill’d with a dread no slumber could control;
On that dark form his eyes had gaz’d before,
Nor known it then;⁠—but it was veil’d no more!
In broad clear light the ghastly vision shone⁠—
That form was his⁠—those features were his own!
The night of terrors, and the day of care,
The years of toil, all, all were written there!
Sad faces watch’d around him, and his breath
Came faint and feeble in the embrace of death.
The gathering tempest, with its voice of fear,
His latest loftiest music, smote his ear!
That day of boundless hope and promise high,
That day that hail’d his triumphs, saw him die!
Then from those whitening lips, as death drew near,
The imprisoning chains fell off, and all was clear!
Like lowering clouds, that at the close of day,
Bath’d in a blaze of sunset, melt away;
And with its clear calm tones, that dying prayer
Cheer’d all the failing hearts that sorrow’d there!

A life⁠—whose ways no human thought could scan;
A life⁠—that was not as the life of man;
A life⁠—that wrote its purpose with a sword,
Moulding itself into action, not in word!
Rent with tumultuous thoughts, whose conflict rung
Deep through his soul, and chok’d his faltering tongue;
A heart that reck’d not of the countless dead,
That strew’d the blood-stain’d path where Empire led;
A daring hand, that shrunk not to fulfil
The thought that spurr’d it; and a dauntless will,
Bold action’s parent; and a piercing ken
Through the dark chambers of the hearts of men,
To read each thought, and teach that master-mind
The fears and hopes and passions of mankind;
All these were thine⁠—Oh thought of fear!⁠—and thou
Stretch’d on that bed of death, art nothing now.

Then all his vision faded, and his soul
Sprang from its sleep! and lo, the waters roll
Once more beneath him; and the fluttering sail,
Where the dark ships rode proudly, woo’d the gale;
And the wind murmur’d round him, and he stood
Once more alone beside the gleaming flood.

Who taught this pleading to unpractis’d eyes?
Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom?
Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?
What clouds thy forehead, and fore-dates thy doom?

Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone;
The swinging waters, and the cluster’d pier.
Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on,
Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.

But thou, whom superfluity of joy
Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,
Nor weariness, the full-fed soul’s annoy;
Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain;

Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse
From thine own mother’s breast, that knows not thee;
With eyes which sought thine eyes thou didst converse,
And that soul-searching vision fell on me.

Glooms that go deep as thine I have not known:
Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth.
Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own:
Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth.

What mood wears like complexion to thy woe?⁠—
His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day,
Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below?⁠—
Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.

What exile’s, changing bitter thoughts wth glad?
What seraph’s, in some alien planet born?⁠—
No exile’s dream was ever half so sad,
Nor any angel’s sorrow so forlorn.

Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh
Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore:
But in disdainful silence turn away,
Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more?

Or do I wait, to hear some grey-hair’d king
Unravel all his many-colour’d lore:
Whose mind hath known all arts of governing,
Mus’d much, lov’d life a little, loath’d it more?

Down the pale cheek long lines of shadow slope
Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give⁠—
Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope,
Foreseen thy harvest⁠—yet proceed’st to live.

O meek anticipant of that sure pain
Whose sureness gray-hair’d scholars hardly learn!
What wonder shall time breed, to swell thy strain?
What heavens, what earth, what sun shalt thou discern?

Ere the long night, whose stillness brooks no star,
Match that funereal aspect with her pall,
I think, thou wilt have fathom’d life too far,
Have known too much⁠—or else forgotten all.

The Guide of our dark steps a triple veil
Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps:
Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale
Of grief, and eas’d us with a thousand sleeps.

Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,
Not daily labour’s dull, Lethaean spring,
Oblivion in lost angels can infuse
Of the soil’d glory, and the trailing wing;

And though thou glean, what strenuous gleaners may,
In the throng’d fields where winning comes by strife;
And though the just sun gild, as all men pray,
Some reaches of thy storm-vext stream of life;

Though that blank sunshine blind thee: though the cloud
That sever’d the world’s march and thine, is gone;
Though ease dulls grace, and Wisdom be too proud
To halve a lodging that was all her own:

Once, ere the day decline, thou shalt discern,
Oh once, ere night, in thy success, thy chain.
Ere the long evening close, thou shalt return,
And wear this majesty of grief again.

Mycerinus1

“Not by the justice that my father spurn’d,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn’d,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks were due;
Fell this late voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.

“I will unfold my sentence and my crime.
My crime, that, rapt in reverential awe,
I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
Of youth, self-govern’d, at the feet of Law;
Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,
By contemplation of diviner things.

“My father lov’d injustice, and liv’d long;
Crown’d with gray hairs he died, and full of sway.
I lov’d the good he scorn’d, and hated wrong:
The Gods declare my recompense to-day.
I look’d for life more lasting, rule more high;
And when six years are measur’d, lo, I die!

“Yet surely, O my people, did I deem
Man’s justice from the all-just Gods was given:
A light that from some upper fount did beam,
Some better archetype, whose seat was heaven;
A light that, shining from the blest abodes,
Did shadow somewhat of the life of Gods.

“Mere phantoms of man’s self-tormenting heart,
Which on the sweets that woo it dares not feed:
Vain dreams, that quench our pleasures, then depart,
When the dup’d soul, self-master’d, claims its meed:
When, on the strenuous just man, Heaven bestows,
Crown of his struggling life, an unjust close.

“Seems it so light a thing then, austere Powers,
To spurn man’s common lure, life’s pleasant things?
Seems there no joy in dances crown’d with flowers,
Love, free to range, and regal banquetings?
Bend ye on these, indeed, an unmov’d eye,
Not Gods but ghosts, in frozen apathy?

“Or is it that some Power, too wise, too strong,
Even for yourselves to conquer or beguile,
Whirls earth, and heaven, and men, and gods along,
Like the broad rushing of the insurged Nile?
And the great powers we serve, themselves may be
Slaves of a tyrannous Necessity?

“Or in mid-heaven, perhaps, your golden cars,
Where earthly voice climbs never, wing their flight,
And in wild hunt, through mazy tracts of stars,
Sweep in the sounding stillness of the night?
Or in deaf ease, on thrones of dazzling sheen,
Drinking deep draughts of joy, ye dwell serene?

“Oh, wherefore cheat our youth, if thus it be,
Of one short joy, one lust, one pleasant dream?
Stringing vain words of powers we cannot see,
Blind divinations of a will supreme;
Lost labour: when the circumambient gloom
But hides, if Gods, Gods careless of our doom?

“The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak,
My sand runs short; and as yon star-shot ray,
Hemm’d by two banks of cloud, peers pale and weak,
Now, as the barrier closes, dies away;
Even so do past and future intertwine,
Blotting this six years’ space, which yet is mine.

“Six years⁠—six little years⁠—six drops of time⁠—
Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane,
And old men die, and young men pass their prime,
And languid Pleasure fade and flower again;
And the dull Gods behold, ere these are flown,
Revels more deep, joy keener than their own.

“Into the silence of the groves and woods
I will go forth; though something would I say⁠—
Something⁠—yet what I know not: for the Gods
The doom they pass revoke not, nor delay;
And prayers, and gifts, and tears, are fruitless all,
And the night waxes, and the shadows fall.

“Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king.
I go, and I return not. But the will
Of the great Gods is plain; and ye must bring
Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil
Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,
The praise of Gods, rich boon! and length of days.”

—So spake he, half in anger, half in scorn;
And one loud cry of grief and of amaze
Broke from his sorrowing people: so he spake;
And turning, left them there; and with brief pause,
Girt with a throng of revellers, bent his way
To the cool region of the groves he lov’d.
There by the river banks he wander’d on,
From palm-grove on to palm-grove, happy trees,
Their smooth tops shining sunwards, and beneath
Burying their unsunn’d stems in grass and flowers:
Where in one dream the feverish time of Youth
Might fade in slumber, and the feet of Joy
Might wander all day long and never tire:
Here came the king, holding high feast, at morn,
Rose-crown’d; and ever, when the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beam’d in the tranquil gloom,
From tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast,
Flush’d guests, and golden goblets, foam’d with wine;
While the deep-burnish’d foliage overhead
Splinter’d the silver arrows of the moon.
It may be that sometimes his wondering soul
From the loud joyful laughter of his lips
Might shrink half startled, like a guilty man
Who wrestles with his dream; as some pale Shape,
Gliding half hidden through the dusky stems,
Would thrust a hand before the lifted bowl,
Whispering: “A little space, and thou art mine.”
It may be on that joyless feast his eye
Dwelt with mere outward seeming; he, within,
Took measure of his soul, and knew its strength,
And by that silent knowledge, day by day,
Was calm’d, ennobled, comforted, sustain’d.
It may be; but not less his brow was smooth,
And his clear laugh fled ringing through the gloom,
And his mirth quail’d not at the mild reproof
Sigh’d out by Winter’s sad tranquillity;
Nor, pall’d with its own fullness, ebb’d and died
In the rich languor of long summer-days;
Nor wither’d, when the palm-tree plumes, that roof’d
With their mild dark his grassy banquet-hall,
Bent to the cold winds of the showerless Spring;
No, nor grew dark when Autumn brought the clouds.
So six long years he revell’d, night and day;
And when the mirth wax’d loudest, with dull sound
Sometimes from the grove’s centre echoes came,
To tell his wondering people of their king;
In the still night, across the steaming flats,
Mix’d with the murmur of the moving Nile.

The Hayswater Boat

A region desolate and wild,
Black, chafing water: and afloat,
And lonely as a truant child
In a waste wood, a single boat:
No mast, no sails are set thereon;
It moves, but never moveth on:
And welters like a human thing
Amid the wild waves weltering.

Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,
Far down the torrent cleaves its way:
In front the dumb rock rises steep,
A fretted wall of blue and grey;
Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone
With many a wild weed overgrown:
All else, black water: and afloat,
One rood from shore, that single boat.

Last night the wind was up and strong;
The grey-streak’d waters labour still:
The strong blast brought a pygmy throng
From that mild hollow in the hill;
From those twin brooks, that beachèd strand
So featly strewn with drifted sand;
From those weird domes of mounded green
That spot the solitary scene.

This boat they found against the shore:
The glossy rushes nodded by.
One rood from land they push’d, no more;
Then rested, listening silently.
The loud rains lash’d the mountain’s crown,
The grating shingle straggled down:
All night they sate; then stole away,
And left it rocking in the bay.

Last night?⁠—I look’d, the sky was clear.
The boat was old, a batter’d boat.
In sooth, it seems a hundred year
Since that strange crew did ride afloat.
The boat hath drifted in the bay⁠—
The oars have moulder’d as they lay⁠—
The rudder swings⁠—yet none doth steer.
What living hand hath brought it here?

In the cedar shadow sleeping,
Where cool grass and fragrant glooms
Oft at noon had lur’d me, creeping
From your darken’d palace rooms:
I, who in your train at morning
Stroll’d and sang with joyful mind,
Heard, at evening, sounds of warning;
Heard the hoarse boughs labour in the wind.

Who are they, O pensive Graces,
—For I dream’d they wore your forms⁠—
Who on shores and sea-wash’d places
Scoop the shelves and fret the storms?
Who, when ships are that way tending,
Troop across the flushing sands,
To all reefs and narrows wending,
With blown tresses, and with beckoning hands?

Yet I see, the howling levels
Of the deep are not your lair;
And your tragic-vaunted revels
Are less lonely than they were.
In a Tyrian galley steering
From the golden springs of dawn,
Troops, like Eastern kings, appearing,
Stream all day through your enchanted lawn.

And we too, from upland valleys,
Where some Muse, with half-curv’d frown
Leans her ear to your mad sallies
Which the charm’d winds never drown;
By faint music guided, ranging
The scar’d glens, we wander’d on,
Left our awful laurels hanging,
And came heap’d with myrtles to your throne.

From the dragon-warder’d fountains
Where the springs of knowledge are:
From the watchers on the mountains,
And the bright and morning star:
We are exiles, we are falling,
We have lost them at your call.
O ye false ones, at your calling
Seeking ceilèd chambers and a palace hall.

Are the accents of your luring
More melodious than of yore?
Are those frail forms more enduring
Than the charms Ulysses bore?
That we sought you with rejoicings
Till at evening we descry
At a pause of Siren voicings
These vext branches and this howling sky?

Oh! your pardon. The uncouthness
Of that primal age is gone:
And the skin of dazzling smoothness
Screens not now a heart of stone.
Love has flush’d those cruel faces;
And your slacken’d arms forgo
The delight of fierce embraces:
And those whitening bone-mounds do not grow.

“Come,” you say; “the large appearance
Of man’s labour is but vain:
And we plead as firm adherence
Due to pleasure as to pain.”
Pointing to some world-worn creatures,
“Come,” you murmur with a sigh:
“Ah! we own diviner features,
Loftier bearing, and a prouder eye.

“Come,” you say, “the hours are dreary:
Life is long, and will not fade:
Time is lame, and we grow weary
In the slumbrous cedarn shade.
Round our hearts, with long caresses,
With low sighs hath Silence stole;
And her load of steaming tresses
Weighs, like Ossa, on the aery soul.

“Come,” you say, “the Soul is fainting
Till she search, and learn her own:
And the wisdom of man’s painting
Leaves her riddle half unknown.
Come,” you say, “the brain is seeking,
When the princely heart is dead:
Yet this glean’d, when Gods were speaking,
Rarer secrets than the toiling head.

“Come,” you say, “opinion trembles,
Judgement shifts, convictions go;
Life dries up, the heart dissembles:
Only, what we feel, we know.
Hath your wisdom known emotions?
Will it weep our burning tears?
Hath it drunk of our love-potions
Crowning moments with the weight of years?”

I am dumb. Alas! too soon, all
Man’s grave reasons disappear:
Yet, I think, at God’s tribunal
Some large answer you shall hear.
But for me, my thoughts are straying
Where at sunrise, through the vines,
On these lawns I saw you playing,
Hanging garlands on your odorous pines.

When your showering locks enwound you,
And your heavenly eyes shone through:
When the pine-boughs yielded round you,
And your brows were starr’d with dew:
And immortal forms to meet you
Down the statued alleys came:
And through golden horns, to greet you,
Blew such music as a God may frame.

Yes⁠—I muse:⁠—And, if the dawning
Into daylight never grew⁠—
If the glistering wings of morning
On the dry noon shook their dew⁠—
If the fits of joy were longer⁠—
Or the day were sooner done⁠—
Or, perhaps, if Hope were stronger⁠—
No weak nursling of an earthly sun⁠ ⁠…
Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens,
Dusk the hall with yew!

For a bound was set to meetings
And the sombre day dragg’d on:
And the burst of joyful greetings,
And the joyful dawn, were gone:
For the eye was fill’d with gazing,
And on raptures follow calms:⁠—
And those warm locks men were praising
Droop’d, unbraided, on your listless arms.

Storms unsmooth’d your folded valleys,
And made all your cedars frown;
Leaves were whirling in the alleys
Which your lovers wander’d down.
—Sitting cheerless in your bowers,
The hands propping the sunk head,
Do they gall you, the long hours?
And the hungry thought, that must be fed?

Is the pleasure that is tasted
Patient of a long review?
Will the fire joy hath wasted,
Mus’d on, warm the heart anew?
—Or, are those old thoughts returning,
Guests the dull sense never knew,
Stars, set deep, yet inly burning,
Germs, your untrimm’d Passion overgrew?

Once, like me, you took your station
Watchers for a purer fire:
But you droop’d in expectation,
And you wearied in desire.
When the first rose flush was steeping
All the frore peak’s awful crown,
Shepherds say, they found you sleeping
In some windless valley, further down.

Then you wept, and slowly raising
Your doz’d eyelids, sought again,
Half in doubt, they say, and gazing
Sadly back, the seats of men.
Snatch’d an earthly inspiration
From some transient human Sun,
And proclaim’d your vain ovation
For those mimic raptures you had won.
Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens,
Dusk the hall with yew!

With a sad, majestic motion⁠—
With a stately, slow surprise⁠—
From their earthward-bound devotion
Lifting up your languid eyes:
Would you freeze my louder boldness,
Dumbly smiling as you go?
One faint frown of distant coldness
Flitting fast across each marble brow?

Do I brighten at your sorrow,
O sweet Pleaders? doth my lot
Find assurance in to-morrow
Of one joy, which you have not?
O speak once! and let my sadness!
And this sobbing Phrygian strain,
Sham’d and baffled by your gladness,
Blame the music of your feasts in vain.

Scent, and song, and light, and flowers⁠—
Gust on gust, the hoarse winds blow.
Come, bind up those ringlet showers!
Roses for that dreaming brow!
Come, once more that ancient lightness,
Glancing feet, and eager eyes!
Let your broad lamps flash the brightness
Which the sorrow-stricken day denies!

Through black depths of serried shadows,
Up cold aisles of buried glade;
In the midst of river meadows
Where the looming kine are laid;
From your dazzled windows streaming,
From your humming festal room,
Deep and far, a broken gleaming
Reels and shivers on the ruffled gloom.

Where I stand, the grass is glowing:
Doubtless you are passing fair:
But I hear the north wind blowing;
And I feel the cold night-air.
Can I look on your sweet faces,
And your proud heads backward thrown,
From this dusk of leaf-strewn places
With the dumb woods and the night alone?

But, indeed, this flux of guesses⁠—
Mad delight, and frozen calms⁠—
Mirth to-day and vine-bound tresses,
And to-morrow⁠—folded palms⁠—
Is this all? this balanc’d measure?
Could life run no easier way?
Happy at the noon of pleasure,
Passive, at the midnight of dismay?

But, indeed, this proud possession⁠—
This far-reaching magic chain,
Linking in a mad succession
Fits of joy and fits of pain:
Have you seen it at the closing?
Have you track’d its clouded ways?
Can your eyes, while fools are dozing,
Drop, with mine, adown life’s latter days?

When a dreary light is wading
Through this waste of sunless greens⁠—
When the flashing lights are fading
On the peerless cheek of queens⁠—
When the mean shall no more sorrow
And the proudest no more smile⁠—
While the dawning of the morrow
Widens slowly westward all that while?

Then, when change itself is over,
When the slow tide sets one way,
Shall you find the radiant lover,
Even by moments, of to-day?
The eye wanders, faith is failing:
O, loose hands, and let it be!
Proudly, like a king bewailing,
O, let fall one tear, and set us free!

All true speech and large avowal
Which the jealous soul concedes:
All man’s heart⁠—which brooks bestowal:
All frank faith⁠—which passion breeds:
These we had, and we gave truly:
Doubt not, what we had, we gave:
False we were not, nor unruly:
Lodgers in the forest and the cave.

Long we wander’d with you, feeding
Our sad souls on your replies:
In a wistful silence reading
All the meaning of your eyes:
By moss-border’d statues sitting,
By well-heads, in summer days.
But we turn, our eyes are flitting.
See, the white east, and the morning rays!

And you too, O weeping Graces,
Sylvan Gods of this fair shade!
Is there doubt on divine faces?
Are the happy Gods dismay’d?
Can men worship the wan features,
The sunk eyes, the wailing tone,
Of unspher’d, discrownèd creatures,
Souls as little godlike as their own?

Come, loose hands! The wingèd fleetness
Of immortal feet is gone.
And your scents have shed their sweetness,
And your flowers are overblown.
And your jewell’d gauds surrender
Half their glories to the day:
Freely did they flash their splendour,
Freely gave it⁠—but it dies away.

In the pines the thrush is waking⁠—
Lo, yon orient hill in flames:
Scores of true love knots are breaking
At divorce which it proclaims.
When the lamps are pal’d at morning,
Heart quits heart, and hand quits hand.
—Cold in that unlovely dawning,
Loveless, rayless, joyless you shall stand.

Strew no more red roses, maidens,
Leave the lilies in their dew:
Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens!
Dusk, O dusk the hall with yew!
—Shall I seek, that I may scorn her,
Her I lov’d at eventide?
Shall I ask, what faded mourner
Stands, at daybreak, weeping by my side?
Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens!
Dusk the hall with yew!

Desire2

Thou, who dost dwell alone⁠—
Thou, who dost know thine own⁠—
Thou, to whom all are known
From the cradle to the grave⁠—
Save, oh, save.
From the world’s temptations,
From tribulations;
From that fierce anguish
Wherein we languish;
From that torpor deep
Wherein we lie asleep,
Heavy as death, cold as the grave;
Save, oh, save.

When the Soul, growing clearer,
Sees God no nearer:
When the Soul, mounting higher,
To God comes no nigher:
But the arch-fiend Pride
Mounts at her side,
Foiling her high emprize,
Sealing her eagle eyes,
And, when she fain would soar,
Makes idols to adore;
Changing the pure emotion
Of her high devotion,
To a skin-deep sense
Of her own eloquence:
Strong to deceive, strong to enslave⁠—
Save, oh, save.

From the ingrain’d fashion
Of this earthly nature
That mars thy creature.
From grief, that is but passion;
From mirth, that is but feigning;
From tears, that bring no healing;
From wild and weak complaining;
Thine old strength revealing,
Save, oh, save.
From doubt, where all is double:
Where wise men are not strong:
Where comfort turns to trouble:
Where just men suffer wrong:
Where sorrow treads on joy:
Where sweet things soonest cloy:
Where faiths are built on dust:
Where Love is half mistrust,
Hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea;
Oh, set us free.
O let the false dream fly
Where our sick souls do lie
Tossing continually.
O where thy voice doth come
Let all doubts be dumb:
Let all words be mild:
All strifes be reconcil’d:
All pains beguil’d.
Light bring no blindness;
Love no unkindness;
Knowledge no ruin;
Fear no undoing.
From the cradle to the grave,
Save, oh, save.

The Voice

As the kindling glances,
Queen-like and clear,
Which the bright moon lances
From her tranquil sphere
At the sleepless waters
Of a lonely mere,
On the wild whirling waves, mournfully, mournfully,
Shiver and die.
As the tears of sorrow
Mothers have shed⁠—
Prayers that to-morrow
Shall in vain be sped
When the flower they flow for
Lies frozen and dead⁠—
Fall on the throbbing brow, fall on the burning breast,
Bringing no rest.
Like bright waves that fall
With a lifelike motion
On the lifeless margin of the sparkling Ocean:⁠—
A wild rose climbing up a mould’ring wall⁠—
A gush of sunbeams through a ruin’d hall⁠—
Strains of glad music at a funeral:⁠—
So sad, and with so wild a start
To this long sober’d heart,
So anxiously and painfully,
So drearily and doubtfully
And, oh, with such intolerable change
Of thought, such contrast strange,
O unforgotten Voice, thy whispers come,
Like wanderers from the world’s extremity,
Unto their ancient home.
In vain, all, all in vain,
They beat upon mine ear again,
Those melancholy tones so sweet and still;
Those lute-like tones which in long distant years
Did steal into mine ears:
Blew such a thrilling summons to my will
Yet could not shake it:
Drain’d all the life my full heart had to spill;
Yet could not break it.

To Fausta

Joy comes and goes: hope ebbs and flows,
Like the wave.
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles: and then,
Both are laid in one cold place,
In the grave.

Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,
Like spring flowers.
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves, with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes; and all,
Maz’d with doubts, and sick with fears,
Count the hours.

We count the hours: these dreams of ours,
False and hollow,
Shall we go hence and find they are not dead?
Joys we dimly apprehend,
Faces that smil’d and fled,
Hopes born here, and born to end,
Shall we follow?

Shakespeare

Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil’d searching of mortality:
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,
Didst walk on earth unguess’d at. Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs that bow,
Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

Because thou hast believ’d, the wheels of life
Stand never idle, but go always round:
Not by their hands, who vex the patient ground,
Mov’d only; but by genius, in the strife
Of all its chafing torrents after thaw,
Urg’d; and to feed whose movement, spinning sand,
The feeble sons of pleasure set their hand:
And, in this vision of the general law,
Hast labour’d with the foremost, hast become
Laborious, persevering, serious, firm;
For this, thy track, across the fretful foam
Of vehement actions without scope or term,
Call’d History, keeps a splendour: due to wit,
Which saw one clue to life, and follow’d it.

Written in Butler’s Sermons

Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers,
Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control⁠—
So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole,
Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours.
Vain labour! Deep and broad, where none may see,
Spring the foundations of the shadowy throne
Where man’s one Nature, queen-like, sits alone,
Centred in a majestic unity;
And rays her powers, like sister islands, seen
Linking their coral arms under the sea:
Or cluster’d peaks, with plunging gulfs between
Spann’d by aerial arches, all of gold,
Whereo’er the chariot wheels of Life are roll’d
In cloudy circles, to eternity.

Written in Emerson’s Essays

“O monstrous, dead, unprofitable world,
That thou canst hear, and hearing, hold thy way.
A voice oracular hath peal’d to-day,
To-day a hero’s banner is unfurl’d.
Hast thou no lip for welcome?” So I said.
Man after man, the world smil’d and pass’d by:
A smile of wistful incredulity
As though one spake of life unto the dead:
Scornful, and strange, and sorrowful; and full
Of bitter knowledge. Yet the Will is free:
Strong is the Soul, and wise, and beautiful:
The seeds of godlike power are in us still:
Gods are we, Bards, Saints, Heroes, if we will.⁠—
Dumb judges, answer, truth or mockery?

“In harmony with Nature”? Restless fool,
Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,
When true, the last impossibility;
To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool:⁠—
Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more.
And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
Nature is cruel; man is sick of blood:
Nature is stubborn; man would fain adore:
Nature is fickle; man hath need of rest:
Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;
Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.
Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;
Nature and man can never be fast friends.
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!

In Utrumque Paratus

If, in the silent mind of One all-pure,
At first imagin’d lay
The sacred world; and by procession sure
From those still deeps, in form and colour drest,
Seasons alternating, and night and day,
The long-mus’d thought to north south east and west
Took then its all-seen way:

O waking on a world which thus-wise springs!
Whether it needs thee count
Betwixt thy waking and the birth of things
Ages or hours: O waking on Life’s stream!
By lonely pureness to the all-pure Fount
(Only by this thou canst) the colour’d dream
Of Life remount.

Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow;
And faint the city gleams;
Rare the lone pastoral huts: marvel not thou!
The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,
But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams:
Alone the sun arises, and alone
Spring the great streams.

But, if the wild unfather’d mass no birth
In divine seats hath known:
In the blank, echoing solitude, if Earth,
Rocking her obscure body to and fro,
Ceases not from all time to heave and groan,
Unfruitful oft, and, at her happiest throe,
Forms, what she forms, alone:

O seeming sole to awake, thy sun-bath’d head
Piercing the solemn cloud
Round thy still dreaming brother-world outspread!
O man, whom Earth, thy long-vext mother, bare
Not without joy; so radiant, so endow’d⁠—
(Such happy issue crown’d her painful care)
Be not too proud!

O when most self-exalted most alone,
Chief dreamer, own thy dream!
Thy brother-world stirs at thy feet unknown;
Who hath a monarch’s hath no brother’s part;
Yet doth thine inmost soul with yearning teem.
O what a spasm shakes the dreamer’s heart⁠—
“I, too, but seem!”

Omit, omit, my simple friend,
Still to enquire how parties tend,
Or what we fix with foreign powers.
If France and we are really friends,
And what the Russian Czar intends,
Is no concern of ours.

Us not the daily quickening race
Of the invading populace
Shall draw to swell that shouldering herd.
Mourn will we not your closing hour,
Ye imbeciles in present power,
Doom’d, pompous, and absurd!

And let us bear, that they debate
Of all the engine-work of state,
Of commerce, laws, and policy,
The secrets of the world’s machine,
And what the rights of man may mean,
With readier tongue than we.

Only, that with no finer art
They cloak the troubles of the heart
With pleasant smile, let us take care;
Nor with a lighter hand dispose
Fresh garlands of this dewy rose,
To crown Eugenia’s hair.

Of little threads our life is spun,
And he spins ill, who misses one.
But is thy fair Eugenia cold?
Yet Helen had an equal grace,
And Juliet’s was as fair a face,
And now their years are told.

The day approaches, when we must
Be crumbling bones and windy dust;
And scorn us as our mistress may,
Her beauty will no better be
Than the poor face she slights in thee,
When dawns that day, that day.

Artist, whose hand, with horror wing’d, hath torn
From the rank life of towns this leaf: and flung
The prodigy of full-blown crime among
Valleys and men to middle fortune born,
Not innocent, indeed, yet not forlorn:
Say, what shall calm us, when such guests intrude,
Like comets on the heavenly solitude?
Shall breathless glades, cheer’d by shy Dian’s horn,
Cold-bubbling springs, or caves? Not so! The Soul
Breasts her own griefs: and, urg’d too fiercely, says:
“Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man
May be by man effac’d: man can control
To pain, to death, the bent of his own days.
Know thou the worst! So much, not more, he can.”

Fragment of an Antigone4

Fragment of Chorus of a Dejaneira

O frivolous mind of man,
Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts,
Though man bewails you not,
How I bewail you!

Little in your prosperity
Do you seek counsel of the Gods.
Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.
In profound silence stern,
Among their savage gorges and cold springs
Unvisited remain
The great oracular shrines.

Thither in your adversity
Do you betake yourselves for light,
But strangely misinterpret all you hear.
For you will not put on
New hearts with the inquirer’s holy robe,
And purged, considerate minds.

And him on whom, at the end
Of toil and dolour untold,
The Gods have said that repose
At last shall descend undisturb’d,
Him you expect to behold
In an easy old age, in a happy home;
No end but this you praise.

But him, on whom, in the prime
Of life, with vigour undimm’d,
With unspent mind, and a soul
Unworn, undebased, undecay’d,
Mournfully grating, the gates
Of the city of death have for ever closed⁠—
Him, I count him, well-starr’d.

The Strayed Reveller

The portico of Circe’s palace. Evening.

A Youth. Circe.

The Sick King in Bukhara

To die be given us, or attain!
Fierce work it were, to do again.
So pilgrims, bound for Mecca, pray’d
At burning noon: so warriors said,
Scarf’d with the cross, who watch’d the miles
Of dust which wreath’d their struggling files
Down Lydian mountains: so, when snows
Round Alpine summits eddying rose,
The Goth, bound Rome-wards: so the Hun,
Crouch’d on his saddle, while the sun
Went lurid down o’er flooded plains
Through which the groaning Danube strains
To the drear Euxine: so pray all,
Whom labours, self-ordain’d, enthrall;
Because they to themselves propose
On this side the all-common close
A goal which, gain’d, may give repose.
So pray they: and to stand again
Where they stood once, to them were pain;
Pain to thread back and to renew
Past straits, and currents long steer’d through.

But milder natures, and more free;
Whom an unblam’d serenity
Hath freed from passions, and the state
Of struggle these necessitate;
Whom schooling of the stubborn mind
Hath made, or birth hath found, resign’d;
These mourn not, that their goings pay
Obedience to the passing day:
These claim not every laughing Hour
For handmaid to their striding power;
Each in her turn, with torch uprear’d,
To await their march; and when appear’d,
Through the cold gloom, with measur’d race,
To usher for a destin’d space
(Her own sweet errands all foregone)
The too imperious Traveller on.
These, Fausta, ask not this: nor thou,
Time’s chafing prisoner, ask it now.

We left, just ten years since, you say,
That wayside inn we left to-day:8
Our jovial host, as forth we fare,
Shouts greeting from his easy chair;
High on a bank our leader stands,
Reviews and ranks his motley bands;
Makes clear our goal to every eye,
The valley’s western boundary.
A gate swings to: our tide hath flow’d
Already from the silent road.
The valley pastures, one by one,
Are threaded, quiet in the sun:
And now beyond the rude stone bridge
Slopes gracious up the western ridge.
Its woody border, and the last
Of its dark upland farms is past;
Cool farms, with open-lying stores,
Under their burnish’d sycamores;
All past: and through the trees we glide
Emerging on the green hill-side.
There climbing hangs, a far-seen sign,
Our wavering, many-colour’d line;
There winds, upstreaming slowly still
Over the summit of the hill.
And now, in front, behold outspread
Those upper regions we must tread;
Mild hollows, and clear heathy swells,
The cheerful silence of the fells.
Some two hours’ march, with serious air,
Through the deep noontide heats we fare:
The red-grouse, springing at our sound,
Skims, now and then, the shining ground;
No life, save his and ours, intrudes
Upon these breathless solitudes.
O joy! again the farms appear.
Cool shade is there, and rustic cheer:
There springs the brook will guide us down,
Bright comrade, to the noisy town.
Lingering, we follow down: we gain
The town, the highway, and the plain.
And many a mile of dusty way,
Parch’d and road-worn, we made that day;
But, Fausta, I remember well,
That, as the balmy darkness fell
We bath’d our hands, with speechless glee,
That night, in the wide-glimmering Sea.

Once more we tread this self-same road,
Fausta, which ten years since we trod:
Alone we tread it, you and I;
Ghosts of that boisterous company.
Here, where the brook shines, near its head,
In its clear, shallow, turf-fring’d bed;
Here, whence the eye first sees, far down,
Capp’d with faint smoke, the noisy town;
Here sit we, and again unroll,
Though slowly, the familiar whole.
The solemn wastes of heathy hill
Sleep in the July sunshine still:
The self-same shadows now, as then,
Play through this grassy upland glen:
The loose dark stones on the green way
Lie strewn, it seems, where then they lay:
On this mild bank above the stream,
(You crush them) the blue gentians gleam.
Still this wild brook, the rushes cool,
The sailing foam, the shining pool.⁠—
These are not chang’d: and we, you say,
Are scarce more chang’d, in truth, than they.

The Gipsies, whom we met below,
They too have long roam’d to and fro.
They ramble, leaving, where they pass,
Their fragments on the cumber’d grass.
And often to some kindly place,
Chance guides the migratory race
Where, though long wanderings intervene,
They recognise a former scene.
The dingy tents are pitch’d: the fires
Give to the wind their wavering spires;
In dark knots crouch round the wild flame
Their children, as when first they came;
They see their shackled beasts again
Move, browsing, up the gray-wall’d lane.
Signs are not wanting, which might raise
The ghost in them of former days:
Signs are not wanting, if they would;
Suggestions to disquietude.
For them, for all, Time’s busy touch,
While it mends little, troubles much:
Their joints grow stiffer; but the year
Runs his old round of dubious cheer:
Chilly they grow; yet winds in March,
Still, sharp as ever, freeze and parch:
They must live still; and yet, God knows,
Crowded and keen the country grows:
It seems as if, in their decay,
The Law grew stronger every day.
So might they reason; so compare,
Fausta, times past with times that are.
But no:⁠—they rubb’d through yesterday
In their hereditary way;
And they will rub through, if they can,
To-morrow on the self-same plan;
Till death arrive to supersede,
For them, vicissitude and need.

The Poet, to whose mighty heart
Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,
Subdues that energy to scan
Not his own course, but that of Man.
Though he move mountains; though his day
Be pass’d on the proud heights of sway;
Though he hath loos’d a thousand chains;
Though he hath borne immortal pains;
Action and suffering though he know;
—He hath not liv’d, if he lives so.
He sees, in some great-historied land,
A ruler of the people stand;
Sees his strong thought in fiery flood
Roll through the heaving multitude;
Exults: yet for no moment’s space
Envies the all-regarded place.
Beautiful eyes meet his; and he
Bears to admire uncravingly:
They pass; he, mingled with the crowd,
Is in their far-off triumphs proud.
From some high station he looks down,
At sunset, on a populous town;
Surveys each happy group, which fleets,
Toil ended, through the shining streets,
Each with some errand of its own;⁠—
And does not say, I am alone.
He sees the gentle stir of birth
When Morning purifies the earth;
He leans upon a gate, and sees
The pastures, and the quiet trees.
Low, woody hill, with gracious bound,
Folds the still valley almost round;
The cuckoo, loud on some high lawn,
Is answer’d from the depth of dawn;
In the hedge straggling to the stream,
Pale, dew-drench’d, half-shut roses gleam:
But where the farther side slopes down
He sees the drowsy new-wak’d clown
In his white quaint-embroider’d frock
Make, whistling, towards his mist-wreath’d flock;
Slowly, behind his heavy tread,
The wet, flower’d grass heaves up its head.⁠—
Lean’d on his gate, he gazes: tears
Are in his eyes, and in his ears
The murmur of a thousand years:
Before him he sees Life unroll,
A placid and continuous whole;
That general Life, which does not cease,
Whose secret is not joy, but peace;
That Life, whose dumb wish is not miss’d
If birth proceeds, if things subsist;
The Life of plants, and stones, and rain:
The Life he craves; if not in vain
Fate gave, what Chance shall not control,
His sad lucidity of soul.

You listen:⁠—but that wandering smile,
Fausta, betrays you cold the while.
Your eyes pursue the bells of foam
Wash’d, eddying, from this bank, their home.
Those Gipsies, so your thoughts I scan,
Are less, the Poet more, than man.
They feel not, though they move and see:
Deeply the Poet feels; but he
Breathes, when he will, immortal air,
Where Orpheus and where Homer are.
In the day’s life, whose iron round
Hems us all in, he is not bound.
He leaves his kind, o’erleaps their pen,
And flees the common life of men.
He escapes thence, but we abide.
Not deep the Poet sees, but wide.

The World in which we live and move
Outlasts aversion, outlasts love:
Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,
Remorse, grief, joy:⁠—and were the scope
Of these affections wider made,
Man still would see, and see dismay’d,
Beyond his passion’s widest range,
Far regions of eternal change.
Nay, and since death, which wipes out man,
Finds him with many an unsolv’d plan,
With much unknown, and much untried,
Wonder not dead, and thirst not dried,
Still gazing on the ever full
Eternal mundane spectacle;
This World in which we draw our breath,
In some sense, Fausta, outlasts death.

Blame thou not therefore him, who dares
Judge vain beforehand human cares.
Whose natural insight can discern
What through experience others learn.
Who needs not love and power, to know
Love transient, power an unreal show.
Who treads at ease life’s uncheer’d ways:⁠—
Him blame not, Fausta, rather praise.
Rather thyself for some aim pray
Nobler than this⁠—to fill the day.
Rather, that heart, which burns in thee,
Ask, not to amuse, but to set free.
Be passionate hopes not ill resign’d
For quiet, and a fearless mind.
And though Fate grudge to thee and me
The Poet’s rapt security,
Yet they, believe me, who await
No gifts from Chance, have conquer’d Fate.
They, winning room to see and hear,
And to men’s business not too near,
Through clouds of individual strife
Draw homewards to the general Life.
Like leaves by suns not yet uncurl’d;
To the wise, foolish; to the world,
Weak: yet not weak, I might reply,
Not foolish, Fausta, in His eye,
To whom each moment in its race,
Crowd as we will its neutral space,
Is but a quiet watershed
Whence, equally, the Seas of Life and Death are fed.

Enough, we live:⁠—and if a life,
With large results so little rife,
Though bearable, seem hardly worth
This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth;
Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,
The solemn hills around us spread,
This stream which falls incessantly,
The strange-scrawl’d rocks, the lonely sky,
If I might lend their life a voice,
Seem to bear rather than rejoice.
And even could the intemperate prayer
Man iterates, while these forbear,
For movement, for an ampler sphere,
Pierce Fate’s impenetrable ear;
Not milder is the general lot
Because our spirits have forgot,
In action’s dizzying eddy whirl’d,
The something that infects the world.

The Forsaken Merman

Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below.
Now my brothers call from the bay;
Now the great winds shoreward blow;
Now the salt tides seawards flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away.
This way, this way.

Call her once before you go.
Call once yet.
In a voice that she will know:
“Margaret! Margaret!”
Children’s voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother’s ear:
Children’s voices, wild with pain.
Surely she will come again.
Call her once and come away.
This way, this way.
“Mother dear, we cannot stay.”
The wild white horses foam and fret.
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down.
Call no more.
One last look at the white-wall’d town,
And the little grey church on the windy shore.
Then come down.
She will not come though you call all day.
Come away, come away.

Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam;
Where the salt weed sways in the stream;
Where the sea-beasts, rang’d all round
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb’d its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
She sigh’d, she look’d up through the clear green sea.
She said; “I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
In the little grey church on the shore to-day.
’Twill be Easter-time in the world⁠—ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.”
I said; “Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.”
She smil’d, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, were we long alone?
“The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.
Long prayers,” I said, “in the world they say.
Come!” I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.
We went up the beach, by the sandy down
Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall’d town.
Through the narrow pav’d streets, where all was still,
To the little grey church on the windy hill.
From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
We climb’d on the graves, on the stones, worn with rains,
And we gaz’d up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
“Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here.
Dear heart,” I said, “we are long alone.
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.”
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were seal’d to the holy book.
“Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.”
Come away, children, call no more.
Come away, come down, call no more.

Down, down, down.
Down to the depths of the sea.
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark, what she sings; “O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its toy.
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well.
For the wheel where I spun,
And the blessed light of the sun.”
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully,
Till the shuttle falls from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh;
For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,
And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away children.
Come children, come down.
The hoarse wind blows colder;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing, “Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she.
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea.”

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow;
When clear falls the moonlight;
When spring tides are low:
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr’d with broom;
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch’d sands a gloom:
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie;
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side⁠—
And then come back down.
Singing: “There dwells a lov’d one,
But cruel is she.
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.”

Why, when the World’s great mind
Hath finally inclin’d,
Why, you say, Critias, be debating still?
Why, with these mournful rhymes
Learn’d in more languid climes,
Blame our activity,
Who, with such passionate will,
Are what we mean to be?

Critias, long since, I know,
(For Fate decreed it so),
Long since the World hath set its heart to live.
Long since, with credulous zeal
It turns Life’s mighty wheel;
Still doth for labourers send,
Who still their labour give;
And still expects an end.

Yet, as the wheel flies round,
With no ungrateful sound
Do adverse voices fall on the World’s ear.
Deafen’d by his own stir
The rugged Labourer
Caught not till then a sense
So glowing and so near
Of his omnipotence.

So, when the feast grew loud
In Susa’s palace proud,
A white-rob’d slave stole to the Monarch’s side.
He spoke: the Monarch heard:
Felt the slow-rolling word
Swell his attentive soul.
Breath’d deeply as it died,
And drain’d his mighty bowl.

To a Republican Friend, 18489

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, priz’d and practis’d by too few,
But priz’d, but lov’d, but eminent in you,
Man’s fundamental life: if to despise
The barren optimistic sophistries
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
Teaches the limit of the just and true⁠—
And for such doing have no need of eyes:
If sadness at the long heart-wasting show
Wherein earth’s great ones are disquieted:
If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow
The armies of the homeless and unfed:⁠—
If these are yours, if this is what you are,
Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share.

Continued

Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted, than that proud
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud,
France, fam’d in all great arts, in none supreme.
Seeing this Vale, this Earth, whereon we dream,
Is on all sides o’ershadow’d by the high
Uno’erleap’d Mountains of Necessity,
Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.
Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,
When, bursting through the network superpos’d
By selfish occupation⁠—plot and plan,
Lust, avarice, envy⁠—liberated man,
All difference with his fellow man compos’d,
Shall be left standing face to face with God.

Children (as such forgive them) have I known,
Ever in their own eager pastime bent
To make the incurious bystander, intent
On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own;
Too fearful or too fond to play alone.
Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul
(Not less thy boast) illuminates, control
Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.
What though the holy secret which moulds thee
Mould not the solid Earth? though never Winds
Have whisper’d it to the complaining Sea,
Nature’s great law, and law of all men’s minds?
To its own impulse every creature stirs:
Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers!

To a Friend10

Who prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days, my mind?
He much, the old man, who, clearest-soul’d of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,11
And Tmolus’ hill, and Smyrna’s bay, though blind.
Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son
Clear’d Rome of what most sham’d him. But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanc’d soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor Passion wild:
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole:
The mellow glory of the Attic stage;
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.

Quiet Work

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson that in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties serv’d in one,
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity⁠—
Of Toil unsever’d from Tranquillity:
Of Labour, that in still advance outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplish’d in Repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
Man’s senseless uproar mingling with his toil,
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,
Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting:
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil;
Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone.

A Memory-Picture

Laugh, my Friends, and without blame
Lightly quit what lightly came:
Rich to-morrow as to-day
Spend as madly as you may.
I, with little land to stir,
Am the exacter labourer.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

But my Youth reminds me⁠—“Thou
Hast liv’d light as these live now:
As these are, thou too wert such:
Much hast had, hast squander’d much.”
Fortune’s now less frequent heir,
Ah! I husband what’s grown rare.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Young, I said: “A face is gone
If too hotly mus’d upon:
And our best impressions are
Those that do themselves repair.”
Many a face I then let by,
Ah! is faded utterly.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Marguerite says: “As last year went,
So the coming year’ll be spent:
Some day next year, I shall be,
Entering heedless, kiss’d by thee.”
Ah! I hope⁠—yet, once away,
What may chain us, who can say?
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Paint that lilac kerchief, bound
Her soft face, her hair around:
Tied under the archest chin
Mockery ever ambush’d in.
Let the fluttering fringes streak
All her pale, sweet-rounded cheek.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Paint that figure’s pliant grace
As she towards me lean’d her face,
Half refus’d and half resign’d,
Murmuring, “Art thou still unkind?”
Many a broken promise then
Was new made⁠—to break again.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Paint those eyes, so blue, so kind,
Eager tell-tales of her mind:
Paint, with their impetuous stress
Of inquiring tenderness,
Those frank eyes, where deep doth lie
An angelic gravity.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

What, my Friends, these feeble lines
Show, you say, my love declines?
To paint ill as I have done,
Proves forgetfulness begun?
Time’s gay minions, pleas’d you see,
Time, your master, governs me.
Pleased, you mock the fruitless cry
“Quick, thy tablets, Memory!”

Ah! too true. Time’s current strong
Leaves us true to nothing long.
Yet, if little stays with man,
Ah! retain we all we can!
If the clear impression dies,
Ah! the dim remembrance prize!
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

A Modern Sappho

They are gone: all is still: Foolish heart, dost thou quiver?
Nothing stirs on the lawn but the quick lilac shade.
Far up gleams the house, and beneath flows the river.
Here lean, my head, on this cold balustrade.

Ere he come: ere the boat, by the shining-branch’d border
Of dark elms come round, dropping down the proud stream,
Let me pause, let me strive, in myself make some order,
Ere their boat-music sound, ere their broider’d flags gleam.

Is it hope makes me linger? the dim thought, that sorrow
Means parting? that only in absence lies pain?
It was well with me once if I saw him: to-morrow
May bring one of the old happy moments again.

Last night we stood earnestly talking together⁠—
She enter’d⁠—that moment his eyes turn’d from me.
Fasten’d on her dark hair and her wreath of white heather⁠—
As yesterday was, so to-morrow will be.

Their love, let me know, must grow strong and yet stronger,
Their passion burn more, ere it ceases to burn:
They must love⁠—while they must: But the hearts that love longer
Are rare: ah! most loves but flow once, and return.

I shall suffer; but they will outlive their affection:
I shall weep; but their love will be cooling: and he,
As he drifts to fatigue, discontent, and dejection,
Will be brought, thou poor heart! how much nearer to thee!

For cold is his eye to mere beauty, who, breaking
The strong band which beauty around him hath furl’d,
Disenchanted by habit, and newly awaking,
Looks languidly round on a gloom-buried world.

Through that gloom he will see but a shadow appearing,
Perceive but a voice as I come to his side:
But deeper their voice grows, and nobler their bearing,
Whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died.

Then⁠—to wait. But what notes down the wind, hark! are driving?
’Tis he! ’tis the boat, shooting round by the trees!
Let my turn, if it will come, be swift in arriving!
Ah! hope cannot long lighten torments like these.

Hast thou yet dealt him, O Life, thy full measure?
World, have thy children yet bow’d at his knee?
Hast thou with myrtle-leaf crown’d him, O Pleasure?
Crown, crown him quickly, and leave him for me.

Consolation

Mist clogs the sunshine,
Smoky dwarf houses
Hem me round everywhere.
A vague dejection
Weighs down my soul.

Yet, while I languish,
Everywhere, countless
Prospects unroll themselves,
And countless beings
Pass countless moods.

Far hence, in Asia,
On the smooth convent-roofs,
On the gilt terraces
Of holy Lassa,
Bright shines the sun.

Grey time-worn marbles
Hold the pure Muses.
In their cool gallery,
By yellow Tiber,
They still look fair.

Strange unlov’d uproar12
Shrills round their portal.
Yet not on Helicon
Kept they more cloudless
Their noble calm.

Through sun-proof alleys
In a lone, sand-hemm’d
City of Africa,
A blind, led beggar,
Age-bow’d, asks alms.

No bolder Robber
Erst abode ambush’d
Deep in the sandy waste:
No clearer eyesight
Spied prey afar.

Saharan sand-winds
Sear’d his keen eyeballs.
Spent is the spoil he won.
For him the present
Holds only pain.

Two young, fair lovers,
Where the warm June wind,
Fresh from the summer fields
Plays fondly round them,
Stand, tranc’d in joy.

With sweet, join’d voices,
And with eyes brimming⁠—
“Ah,” they cry, “Destiny!
Prolong the present!
Time! stand still here!”

The prompt stern Goddess
Shakes her head, frowning.
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal.
Their hour is gone.

With weak indulgence
Did the just Goddess
Lengthen their happiness,
She lengthen’d also
Distress elsewhere.

The hour, whose happy
Unalloy’d moments
I would eternalize,
Ten thousand mourners
Well pleas’d see end.

The bleak stern hour,
Whose severe moments
I would annihilate,
Is pass’d by others
In warmth, light, joy.

Time, so complain’d of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm’d hours.

Sonnet to the Hungarian Nation

Not in sunk Spain’s prolong’d death agony;
Not in rich England, bent but to make pour
The flood of the world’s commerce on her shore;
Not in that madhouse, France, from whence the cry
Afflicts grave Heaven with its long senseless roar;
Not in American vulgarity,
Nor wordy German imbecility⁠—
Lies any hope of heroism more.
Hungarians! Save the world! Renew the stories
Of men who against hope repell’d the chain,
And make the world’s dead spirit leap again!
On land renew that Greek exploit, whose glories
Hallow the Salaminian promontories,
And the Armada flung to the fierce main.

Switzerland

In front the awful Alpine track
Crawls up its rocky stair;
The autumn storm-winds drive the rack
Close o’er it, in the air.

Behind are the abandon’d baths15
Mute in their meadows lone;
The leaves are on the valley-paths;
The mists are on the Rhone⁠—

The white mists rolling like a sea.
I hear the torrents roar.
—Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee!
I feel thee near once more.

I turn thy leaves: I feel their breath
Once more upon me roll;
That air of languor, cold, and death,
Which brooded o’er thy soul.

Fly hence, poor Wretch, whoe’er thou art,
Condemn’d to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without:

A fever in these pages burns
Beneath the calm they feign;
A wounded human spirit turns
Here, on its bed of pain.

Yes, though the virgin mountain air
Fresh through these pages blows,
Though to these leaves the glaciers spare
The soul of their white snows,

Though here a mountain-murmur swells
Of many a dark-bough’d pine,
Though, as you read, you hear the bells
Of the high-pasturing kine⁠—

Yet, through the hum of torrent lone,
And brooding mountain bee,
There sobs I know not what ground tone
Of human agony.

Is it for this, because the sound
Is fraught too deep with pain,
That, Obermann! the world around
So little loves thy strain?

Some secrets may the poet tell,
For the world loves new ways.
To tell too deep ones is not well;
It knows not what he says.

Yet of the spirits who have reign’d
In this our troubled day,
I know but two, who have attain’d,
Save thee, to see their way.

By England’s lakes, in grey old age,
His quiet home one keeps;
And one, the strong much-toiling Sage,
In German Weimar sleeps.

But Wordsworth’s eyes avert their ken
From half of human fate;
And Goethe’s course few sons of men
May think to emulate.

For he pursued a lonely road,
His eyes on Nature’s plan;
Neither made man too much a God,
Nor God too much a man.

Strong was he, with a spirit free
From mists, and sane, and clear;
Clearer, how much! than ours: yet we
Have a worse course to steer.

For though his manhood bore the blast
Of Europe’s stormiest time,
Yet in a tranquil world was pass’d
His tenderer youthful prime.

But we, brought forth and rear’d in hours
Of change, alarm, surprise⁠—
What shelter to grow ripe is ours?
What leisure to grow wise?

Like children bathing on the shore,
Buried a wave beneath,
The second wave succeeds, before
We have had time to breathe.

Too fast we live, too much are tried,
Too harass’d, to attain
Wordsworth’s sweet calm, or Goethe’s wide
And luminous view to gain.

And then we turn, thou sadder Sage!
To thee: we feel thy spell.
The hopeless tangle of our age⁠—
Thou too hast scann’d it well.

Immoveable thou sittest; still
As death; compos’d to bear.
Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill⁠—
And icy thy despair.

Yes, as the son of Thetis said,16
I hear thee saying now⁠—
Greater by far than thou art dead:
Strive not: die also thou.⁠—

Ah! two desires toss about
The poet’s feverish blood.
One drives him to the world without,
And one to solitude.

The glow, he cries, the thrill of life⁠—
Where, where do these abound?⁠—
Not in the world, not in the strife
Of men, shall they be found.

He who hath watch’d, not shar’d, the strife,
Knows how the day hath gone;
He only lives with the world’s life
Who hath renounc’d his own.

To thee we come, then. Clouds are roll’d
Where thou, O Seer, art set;
Thy realm of thought is drear and cold⁠—
The world is colder yet!

And thou hast pleasures too to share
With those who come to thee:
Balms floating on thy mountain air,
And healing sights to see.

How often, where the slopes are green
On Jaman, hast thou sate
By some high chalet door, and seen
The summer day grow late,

And darkness steal o’er the wet grass
With the pale crocus starr’d,
And reach that glimmering sheet of glass
Beneath the piny sward,

Lake Leman’s waters, far below:
And watch’d the rosy light
Fade from the distant peaks of snow:
And on the air of night

Heard accents of the eternal tongue
Through the pine branches play:
Listen’d, and felt thyself grow young;
Listen’d, and wept⁠—Away!

Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad Guide, adieu!
I go; Fate drives me: but I leave
Half of my life with you.

We, in some unknown Power’s employ,
Move on a rigorous line:
Can neither, when we will, enjoy;
Nor, when we will, resign.

I in the world must live:⁠—but thou,
Thou melancholy Shade!
Wilt not, if thou canst see me now,
Condemn me, nor upbraid.

For thou art gone away from earth,
And place with those dost claim,
The Children of the Second Birth,
Whom the world could not tame;

And with that small, transfigur’d Band,
Whom many a different way
Conducted to their common land,
Thou learn’st to think as they.

Christian and pagan, king and slave,
Soldier and anchorite,
Distinctions we esteem so grave,
Are nothing in their sight.

They do not ask, who pin’d unseen,
Who was on action hurl’d,
Whose one bond is that all have been
Unspotted by the world.

There without anger thou wilt see
Him who obeys thy spell
No more, so he but rest, like thee,
Unsoil’d:⁠—and so, Farewell!

Farewell!⁠—Whether thou now liest near
That much-lov’d inland sea,
The ripples of whose blue waves cheer
Vevey and Meillerie,

And in that gracious region bland,
Where with clear-rustling wave
The scented pines of Switzerland
Stand dark round thy green grave,

Between the dusty vineyard walls
Issuing on that green place
The early peasant still recalls
The pensive stranger’s face,

And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date
Ere he plods on again;⁠—
Or whether, by maligner Fate,
Among the swarms of men,

Where between granite terraces
The blue Seine rolls her wave,
The Capital of Pleasure sees
The hardly heard-of grave⁠—

Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In the stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!

Human Life

What mortal, when he saw,
Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
“I have kept uninfring’d my nature’s law;
The inly-written chart thou gavest me,
To guide me, I have steer’d by to the end”?

Ah! let us make no claim
On life’s incognizable sea,
To too exact a steering of our way!
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim
If some fair coast have lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hail’d us to keep company!

Aye, we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule!
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow’d in vain!
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance’s fool.

No! as the foaming swathe
Of torn-up water, on the main,
Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
On either side the black deep-furrow’d path
Cut by an onward-labouring vessel’s prore,
And never touches the ship-side again;

Even so we leave behind,
As, charter’d by some unknown Powers,
We stem across the sea of life by night,
The joys which were not for our use design’d,
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours.

Courage

True, we must tame our rebel will:
True, we must bow to Nature’s law:
Must bear in silence many an ill;
Must learn to wail, renounce, withdraw.

Yet now, when boldest wills give place,
When Fate and Circumstance are strong,
And in their rush the human race
Are swept, like huddling sheep, along;

Those sterner spirits let me prize,
Who, though the tendence of the whole
They less than us might recognize,
Kept, more than us, their strength of soul.

Yes, be the second Cato17 prais’d!
Not that he took the course to die⁠—
But that, when ’gainst himself he rais’d
His arm, he rais’d it dauntlessly.

And, Byron! let us dare admire
If not thy fierce and turbid song,
Yet that, in anguish, doubt, desire,
Thy fiery courage still was strong.

The sun that on thy tossing pain
Did with such cold derision shine,
He crush’d thee not with his disdain⁠—
He had his glow, and thou hadst thine.

Our bane, disguise it as we may,
Is weakness, is a faltering course.
Oh that past times could give our day,
Join’d to its clearness, of their force!

Self-Dependence

Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea.

And a look of passionate desire
O’er the sea and to the stars I send:
“Ye who from my childhood up have calm’d me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end.

“Ah, once more,” I cried, “ye Stars, ye Waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew:
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you.”

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea’s unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer⁠—
“Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.

“Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

“And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silver’d roll.
For alone they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

“Bounded by themselves, and unobservant
In what state God’s other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see.”

O air-born Voice! long since, severely clear,
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear.
“Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.”

Destiny

Why each is striving, from of old,
To love more deeply than he can?
Still would be true, yet still grows cold?
—Ask of the Powers that sport with man!

They yok’d in him, for endless strife,
A heart of ice, a soul of fire;
And hurl’d him on the Field of Life,
An aimless unallay’d Desire.

Youth’s Agitations

When I shall be divorced, some ten years hence,
From this poor present self which I am now;
When youth has done its tedious vain expense
Of passions that for ever ebb and flow;
Shall I not joy youth’s heats are left behind,
And breathe more happy in an even clime?
Ah no! for then I shall begin to find
A thousand virtues in this hated time.
Then I shall wish its agitations back,
And all its thwarting currents of desire;
Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack,
And call this hurrying fever, generous fire,
And sigh that one thing only has been lent
To youth and age in common⁠—discontent.

The World’s Triumphs

So far as I conceive the World’s rebuke
To him address’d who would recast her new,
Not from herself her fame of strength she took,
But from their weakness, who would work her rue.
“Behold,” she cries, “so many rages lull’d,
So many fiery spirits quite cool’d down:
Look how so many valours, long undull’d,
After short commerce with me, fear my frown.
Thou too, when thou against my crimes wouldst cry,
Let thy foreboded homage check thy tongue.”⁠—
The World speaks well: yet might her foe reply⁠—
“Are wills so weak? then let not mine wait long.
Hast thou so rare a poison? let me be
Keener to slay thee, lest thou poison me.”