Miscellaneous Poems Read Online

What matters it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrance them?

III

Imagination; honourable aims;

Free commune with the choir that cannot die;

Science and song; delight in little things,

The buoyant child surviving in the man;

Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky,

With all their voices – O dare I accuse

My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,

Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no!

It is her largeness, and her overflow,

Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!

IV

For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,

But tim'rously beginning to rejoice

Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start

In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice.

Beloved! 'tis not thine; thou art not there!

Then melts the bubble into idle air,

And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.

V

The mother with anticipated glee

Smiles o'er the child, that, standing by her chair

And flatt'ning its round cheek upon her knee,

Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare

To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight

She hears her own voice with a new delight;

And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes aright,

VI

Then is she tenfold gladder than before!

But should disease or chance the darling take,

What then avail those songs, which sweet of yore

Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake?

Dear maid! no prattler at a mother's knee

Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee:

Why was I made for Love and Love denied to me?

[1805]

From the German

Know'st thou the land where the pale citrons grow,

The golden fruits in darker foliage glow?

Soft blows the wind that breathes from that blue sky!

Still stands the myrtle and the laurel high!

Know'st thou it well that land, beloved Friend?

Thither with thee, O, thither would I wend!

[1799?]

Fancy in Nubibus

Or the Poet in the Clouds

O! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,

Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,

To make the shifting clouds be what you please,

Or let the easily persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould

Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low

And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold

'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go

From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!

Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight,

Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

[1817]

The Two Founts

Stanzas Addressed to a Lady on Her Recovery with Unblemished Looks, from a Severe Attack of Pain

'Twas my last waking thought, how it could be,

That thou, sweet friend, such anguish shouldst endure;

When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he

Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure.

Methought he fronted me with peering look

Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game

The loves and griefs therein, as from a book;

And uttered praise like one who wished to blame.

In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin

Two Founts there are, of suffering and of cheer!

That to let forth, and this to keep within!

But she, whose aspect I find imaged here,

Of Pleasure only will to all dispense,

That Fount alone unlock, by no distress

Choked or turned inward, but still issue thence

Unconquered cheer, persistent loveliness.

As on the driving cloud the shiny bow,

That gracious thing made up of tears and light,

Mid the wild rack and rain that slants below

Stands smiling forth, unmoved and freshly bright; –

As though the spirits of all lovely flowers,

Inweaving each its wreath and dewy crown,

Or ere they sank to earth in vernal showers,

Had built a bridge to tempt the angels down.

Ev'n so, Eliza! on that face of thine,

On that benignant face, whose look alone

(The soul's translucence thro' her crystal shrine!)

Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own,

The beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing,

But with a silent charm compels the stern

And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring,

To shrink aback, and cower upon his urn.

Who then needs wonder, if (no outlet found

In passion, spleen, or strife,) the fount of pain

O'erflowing beats against its lovely mound,

And in wild flashes shoots from heart to brain?

Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam

On his raised lip, that aped a critic smile,

Had passed: yet I, my sad thoughts to beguile,

Lay weaving on the tissue of my dream;

Till audibly at length I cried, as though

Thou had'st indeed been present to my eyes,

O sweet, sweet sufferer; if the case be so,

I pray thee, be less good, less sweet, less wise!

In every look a barbed arrow send,

On those soft lips let scorn and anger live!

Do any thing, rather than thus, sweet friend!

Hoard for thyself the pain, thou wilt not give!

[1826]

The Wanderings of Cain

Prefatory Note

A prose composition, one not in metre at least, seems prima facie to require explanation or apology. It was written in the year 1798, near Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, at which place (sanctum et amabile nomen! rich by so many associations and recollections) the author had taken up his residence in order to enjoy the society and close neighbourhood of a dear and honoured friend, T. Poole, Esq. The work was to have been written in concert with another, whose name is too venerable within the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connection with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were suggested by myself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the contents for each of the three books or cantos, of which the work was to consist, and which, the reader is to be informed, was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook the first canto: I the second: and which ever had done first, was to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by; yet at this moment I cannot without something more than a smile moot the question which of the two things was the more impracticable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another man's thoughts and fancies, or for a taste so austerely pure and simple to imitate the Death of Abel? Methinks I see his grand and noble countenance as at the moment when having despatched my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened to him with my manuscript – that look of humorous despondency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme – which broke up in a laugh: and the Ancient Mariner was written instead.

Years afterward, however, the draft of the plan and proposed incidents, and the portion executed, obtained favour in the eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic work could not but have weighed with me, even though no parental partiality had been thrown into the same scale, as a make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and composing the whole in stanzas, and made some progress in realizing this intention, when adverse gales drove my bark off the »Fortunate Isles« of the Muses: and then other and more momentous interests prompted a different voyage, to firmer anchorage and a securer port. I have in vain tried to recover the lines from the palimpsest tablet of my memory: and I can only offer the introductory stanza, which had been committed to writing for the purpose of procuring a friend's judgment on the metre, as a specimen.

Encinctured with a twine of leaves,

That leafy twine his only dress!

A lovely Boy was plucking fruits,

By moonlight, in a wilderness.

The moon was bright, the air was free,

And fruits and flowers together grew

On many a shrub and many a tree:

And all put on a gentle hue,

Hanging in the shadowy air

Like a picture rich and rare.

It was a climate where, they say,

The night is more belov'd than day.

But who that beauteous Boy beguil'd,

That beauteous Boy to linger here?

Alone, by night, a little child,

In place so silent and so wild –

Has he no friend, no loving mother near?

Canto II

»A little further, O my father, yet a little further, and we shall come into the open moonlight.« Their road was through a forest of fir-trees; at its entrance the trees stood at distances from each other, and the path was broad, and the moonlight and the moonlight shadows reposed upon it, and appeared quietly to inhabit that solitude. But soon the path winded and became narrow; the sun at high noon sometimes speckled, but never illumined it, and now it was dark as a cavern.

»It is dark, O my father!« said Enos, »but the path under our feet is smooth and soft, and we shall soon come out into the open moonlight.«

»Lead on, my child!« said Cain: »guide me, little child!« And the innocent little child clasped a finger of the hand which had murdered the righteous Abel, and he guided his father. »The fir branches drip upon thee, my son.« »Yea, pleasantly, father, for I ran fast and eagerly to bring thee the pitcher and the cake, and my body is not yet cool. How happy the squirrels are that feed on these fir-trees! they leap from bough to bough, and the old squirrels play round their young ones in the nest. I clomb a tree yesterday at noon, O my father, that I might play with them, but they leaped away from the branches, even to the slender twigs did they leap, and in a moment I beheld them on another tree. Why, O my father, would they not play with me? I would be good to them as thou art good to me: and I groaned to them even as thou groanest when thou givest me to eat, and when thou coverest me at evening, and as often as I stand at thy knee and thine eyes look at me?« Then Cain stopped, and stifling his groans he sank to the earth, and the child Enos stood in the darkness beside him.

And Cain lifted up his voice and cried bitterly, and said, »The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like the wind, like the sand-blast he passeth through me; he is around me even as the air! O that I might be utterly no more! I desire to die – yea, the things that never had life, neither move they upon the earth – behold! they seem precious to mine eyes. O that a man might live without the breath of his nostrils. So I might abide in darkness, and blackness, and an empty space! Yea, I would lie down, I would not rise, neither would I stir my limbs till I became as the rock in the den of the lion, on which the young lion resteth his head whilst he sleepeth. For the torrent that roareth far off hath a voice: and the clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty One who is against me speaketh in the wind of the cedar grove; and in silence am I dried up.« Then Enos spake to his father, »Arise, my father, arise, we are but a little way from the place where I found the cake and the pitcher.« And Cain said, »How knowest thou?« and the child answered – »Behold the bare rocks are a few of thy strides distant from the forest; and while even now thou wert lifting up thy voice, I heard the echo.« Then the child took hold of his father, as if he would raise him: and Cain being faint and feeble rose slowly on his knees and pressed himself against the trunk of a fir, and stood upright and followed the child.

The path was dark till within three strides' length of its termination, when it turned suddenly; the thick black trees formed a low arch, and the moonlight appeared for a moment like a dazzling portal. Enos ran before and stood in the open air; and when Cain, his father, emerged from the darkness, the child was affrighted. For the mighty limbs of Cain were wasted as by fire; his hair was as the matted curls on the bison's forehead, and so glared his fierce and sullen eye beneath: and the black abundant locks on either side, a rank and tangled mass, were stained and scorched, as though the grasp of a burning iron hand had striven to rend them; and his countenance told in a strange and terrible language of agonies that had been, and were, and were still to continue to be.

The scene around was desolate; as far as the eye could reach it was desolate: the bare rocks faced each other, and left a long and wide interval of thin white sand. You might wander on and look round and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks and discover nothing that acknowledged the influence of the seasons. There was no spring, no summer, no autumn: and the winter's snow, that would have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks and scorching sands. Never morning lark had poised himself over this desert; but the huge serpent often hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and the vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within the coils of the serpent. The pointed and shattered summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude mimicry of human concerns, and seemed to prophesy mutely of things that then were not; steeples, and battlements, and ships with naked masts. As far from the wood as a boy might sling a pebble of the brook, there was one rock by itself at a small distance from the main ridge. It had been precipitated there perhaps by the groan which the Earth uttered when our first father fell. Before you approached, it appeared to lie flat on the ground, but its base slanted from its point, and between its point and the sands a tall man might stand upright. It was here that Enos had found the pitcher and cake, and to this place he led his father. But ere they had reached the rock they beheld a human shape: his back was towards them, and they were advancing unperceived, when they heard him smite his breast and cry aloud, »Woe is me! woe is me! I must never die again, and yet I am perishing with thirst and hunger.«

Pallid, as the reflection of the sheeted lightning on the heavy-sailing night-cloud, became the face of Cain; but the child Enos took hold of the shaggy skin, his father's robe, and raised his eyes to his father, and listening whispered, »Ere yet I could speak, I am sure, O my father, that I heard that voice. Have not I often said that I remembered a sweet voice? O my father! this is it:« and Cain trembled exceedingly. The voice was sweet indeed, but it was thin and querulous, like that of a feeble slave in misery, who despairs altogether, yet can not refrain himself from weeping and lamentation. And, behold! Enos glided forward, and creeping softly round the base of the rock, stood before the stranger, and looked up into his face.