Poems Read Online

Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

»My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!«

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

To the Nile

Month after month the gathered rains descend

Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,

And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles

Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend

On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.

Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells

By Nile's aëreal urn, with rapid spells

Urging those waters to their mighty end.

O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level

And they are thine, O Nile – and well thou knowest

That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil

And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.

Beware, O Man – for knowledge must to thee,

Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

Passage of the Apennines

Listen, listen, Mary mine,

To the whisper of the Apennine,

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,

Or like the sea on a northern shore,

Heard in its raging ebb and flow

By the captives pent in the cave below.

The Apennine in the light of day

Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,

Which between the earth and sky doth lay;

But when night comes, a chaos dread

On the dim starlight then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,

Shrouding ...

The Past

I

Wilt thou forget the happy hours

Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,

Heaping over their corpses cold

Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?

Blossoms which were the joys that fell,

And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

II

Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet

There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,

Memories that make the heart a tomb,

Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,

And with ghastly whispers tell

That joy, once lost, is pain.

To Mary ––

O Mary dear, that you were here

With your brown eyes bright and clear,

And your sweet voice, like a bird

Singing love to its lone mate

In the ivy bower disconsolate;

Voice the sweetest ever heard!

And your brow more . ...

Than the sky

Of this azure Italy.

Mary dear, come to me soon,

I am not well whilst thou art far;

As sunset to the sphered moon,

As twilight to the western star,

Thou, beloved, art to me.

O Mary dear, that you were here;

The Castle echo whispers »Here!«

On a Faded Violet

I

The odour from the flower is gone

Which like thy kisses breathed on me;

The colour from the flower is flown

Which glowed of thee and only thee!

II

A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,

It lies on my abandoned breast,

And mocks the heart which yet is warm,

With cold and silent rest.

III

I weep, – my tears revive it not!

I sigh, – it breathes no more on me;

Its mute and uncomplaining lot

Is such as mine should be.

Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills

October, 1818.

Many a green isle needs must be

In the deep wide sea of Misery,

Or the mariner, worn and wan,

Never thus could voyage on –

Day and night, and night and day,

Drifting on his dreary way,

With the solid darkness black

Closing round his vessel's track;

Whilst above the sunless sky,

Big with clouds, hangs heavily,

And behind the tempest fleet

Hurries on with lightning feet,

Riving sail, and cord, and plank,

Till the ship has almost drank

Death from the o'er-brimming deep;

And sinks down, down, like that sleep

When the dreamer seems to be

Weltering through eternity;

And the dim low line before

Of a dark and distant shore

Still recedes, as ever still

Longing with divided will,

But no power to seek or shun,

He is ever drifted on

O'er the unreposing wave

To the haven of the grave.

What, if there no friends will greet;

What, if there no heart will meet

His with love's impatient beat;

Wander wheresoe'er he may,

Can he dream before that day

To find refuge from distress

In friendship's smile, in love's caress?

Then 'twill wreak him little woe

Whether such there be or no:

Senseless is the breast, and cold,

Which relenting love would fold;

Bloodless are the veins and chill

Which the pulse of pain did fill;

Every little living nerve

That from bitter words did swerve

Round the tortured lips and brow,

Are like sapless leaflets now

Frozen upon December's bough.

On the beach of a northern sea

Which tempests shake eternally,

As once the wretch there lay to sleep,

Lies a solitary heap,

One white skull and seven dry bones,

On the margin of the stones,

Where a few gray rushes stand,

Boundaries of the sea and land:

Nor is heard one voice of wail

But the sea-mews, as they sail

O'er the billows of the gale;

Or the whirlwind up and down

Howling, like a slaughtered town,

When a king in glory rides

Through the pomp of fratricides:

Those unburied bones around

There is many a mournful sound;

There is no lament for him,

Like a sunless vapour, dim,

Who once clothed with life and thought

What now moves nor murmurs not.

Ay, many flowering islands lie

In the waters of wide Agony:

To such a one this morn was led,

My bark by soft winds piloted:

'Mid the mountains Euganean

I stood listening to the paean

With which the legioned rooks did hail

The sun's uprise majestical;

Gathering round with wings all hoar,

Through the dewy mist they soar

Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven

Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,

Flecked with fire and azure, lie

In the unfathomable sky,

So their plumes of purple grain,

Starred with drops of golden rain,

Gleam above the sunlight woods,

As in silent multitudes

On the morning's fitful gale

Through the broken mist they sail,

And the vapours cloven and gleaming

Follow, down the dark steep streaming,

Till all is bright, and clear, and still,

Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green sea

The waveless plain of Lombardy,

Bounded by the vaporous air,

Islanded by cities fair;

Underneath Day's azure eyes

Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,

A peopled labyrinth of walls,

Amphitrite's destined halls,

Which her hoary sire now paves

With his blue and beaming waves.

Lo! the sun upsprings behind,

Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined

On the level quivering line

Of the waters crystalline;

And before that chasm of light,

As within a furnace bright,

Column, tower, and dome, and spire,

Shine like obelisks of fire,

Pointing with inconstant motion

From the altar of dark ocean

To the sapphire-tinted skies;

As the flames of sacrifice

From the marble shrines did rise,

As to pierce the dome of gold

Where Apollo spoke of old.

Sun-girt City, thou hast been

Ocean's child, and then his queen;

Now is come a darker day,

And thou soon must be his prey,

If the power that raised thee here

Hallow so thy watery bier.

A less drear ruin then than now,

With thy conquest-branded brow

Stooping to the slave of slaves

From thy throne, among the waves

Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew

Flies, as once before it flew,

O'er thine isles depopulate,

And all is in its ancient state,

Save where many a palace gate

With green sea-flowers overgrown

Like a rock of Ocean's own,

Topples o'er the abandoned sea

As the tides change sullenly.

The fisher on his watery way,

Wandering at the close of day,

Will spread his sail and seize his oar

Till he pass the gloomy shore,

Lest thy dead should, from their sleep

Bursting o'er the starlight deep,

Lead a rapid masque of death

O'er the waters of his path.

Those who alone thy towers behold

Quivering through aëreal gold,

As I now behold them here,

Would imagine not they were

Sepulchres, where human forms,

Like pollution-nourished worms,

To the corpse of greatness cling,

Murdered, and now mouldering:

But if Freedom should awake

In her omnipotence, and shake

From the Celtic Anarch's hold

All the keys of dungeons cold,

Where a hundred cities lie

Chained like thee, ingloriously,

Thou and all thy sister band

Might adorn this sunny land,

Twining memories of old time

With new virtues more sublime;

If not, perish thou and they! –

Clouds which stain truth's rising day

By her sun consumed away –

Earth can spare ye: while like flowers,

In the waste of years and hours,

From your dust new nations spring

With more kindly blossoming.

Perish – let there only be

Floating o'er thy hearthless sea

As the garment of thy sky

Clothes the world immortally,

One remembrance, more sublime

Than the tattered pall of time,

Which scarce hides thy visage wan; –

That a tempest-cleaving Swan

Of the songs of Albion,

Driven from his ancestral streams

By the might of evil dreams,

Found a nest in thee; and Ocean

Welcomed him with such emotion

That its joy grew his, and sprung

From his lips like music flung

O'er a mighty thunder-fit,

Chastening terror: – what though yet

Poesy's unfailing River,

Which through Albion winds forever

Lashing with melodious wave

Many a sacred Poet's grave,

Mourn its latest nursling fled?

What though thou with all thy dead

Scarce can for this fame repay

Aught thine own? oh, rather say

Though thy sins and slaveries foul

Overcloud a sunlike soul?

As the ghost of Homer clings

Round Scamander's wasting springs;

As divinest Shakespeare's might

Fills Avon and the world with light

Like omniscient power which he

Imaged 'mid mortality;

As the love from Petrarch's urn,

Yet amid yon hills doth burn,

A quenchless lamp by which the heart

Sees things unearthly; – so thou art,

Mighty spirit – so shall be

The City that did refuge thee.

Lo, the sun floats up the sky

Like thought-winged Liberty,

Till the universal light

Seems to level plain and height;

From the sea a mist has spread,

And the beams of morn lie dead

On the towers of Venice now,

Like its glory long ago.

By the skirts of that gray cloud

Many-domed Padua proud

Stands, a peopled solitude,

'Mid the harvest-shining plain,

Where the peasant heaps his grain

In the garner of his foe,

And the milk-white oxen slow

With the purple vintage strain,

Heaped upon the creaking wain,

That the brutal Celt may swill

Drunken sleep with savage will;

And the sickle to the sword

Lies unchanged, though many a lord,

Like a weed whose shade is poison,

Overgrows this region's foison,

Sheaves of whom are ripe to come

To destruction's harvest-home:

Men must reap the things they sow,

Force from force must ever flow,

Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe

That love or reason cannot change

The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.

Padua, thou within whose walls

Those mute guests at festivals,

Son and Mother, Death and Sin,

Played at dice for Ezzelin,

Till Death cried, »I win, I win!«

And Sin cursed to lose the wager,

But Death promised, to assuage her,

That he would petition for

Her to be made Vice-Emperor,

When the destined years were o'er,

Over all between the Po

And the eastern Alpine snow,

Under the mighty Austrian.

Sin smiled so as Sin only can,

And since that time, ay, long before,

Both have ruled from shore to shore, –

That incestuous pair, who follow

Tyrants as the sun the swallow,

As Repentance follows Crime,

And as changes follow Time.

In thine halls the lamp of learning,

Padua, now no more is burning;

Like a meteor, whose wild way

Is lost over the grave of day,

It gleams betrayed and to betray:

Once remotest nations came

To adore that sacred flame,

When it lit not many a hearth

On this cold and gloomy earth:

Now new fires from antique light

Spring beneath the wide world's might;

But their spark lies dead in thee,

Trampled out by Tyranny.

As the Norway woodman quells,

In the depth of piny dells,

One light flame among the brakes,

While the boundless forest shakes,

And its mighty trunks are torn

By the fire thus lowly born:

The spark beneath his feet is dead,

He starts to see the flames it fed

Howling through the darkened sky

With a myriad tongues victoriously,

And sinks down in fear: so thou,

O Tyranny, beholdest now

Light around thee, and thou hearest

The loud flames ascend, and fearest:

Grovel on the earth; ay, hide

In the dust thy purple pride!

Noon descends around me now:

'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,

When a soft and purple mist

Like a vaporous amethyst,

Or an air-dissolved star

Mingling light and fragrance, far

From the curved horizon's bound

To the point of Heaven's profound,

Fills the overflowing sky;

And the plains that silent lie

Underneath, the leaves unsodden

Where the infant Frost has trodden

With his morning-winged feet,

Whose bright print is gleaming yet;

And the red and golden vines,

Piercing with their trellised lines

The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;

The dun and bladed grass no less,

Pointing from this hoary tower

In the windless air; the flower

Glimmering at my feet; the line

Of the olive-sandalled Apennine

In the south dimly islanded;

And the Alps, whose snows are spread

High between the clouds and sun;

And of living things each one;

And my spirit which so long

Darkened this swift stream of song, –

Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky:

Be it love, light, harmony,

Odour, or the soul of all

Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,

Or the mind which feeds this verse

Peopling the lone universe.

Noon descends, and after noon

Autumn's evening meets me soon,

Leading the infantine moon,

And that one star, which to her

Almost seems to minister

Half the crimson light she brings

From the sunset's radiant springs:

And the soft dreams of the morn

(Which like winged winds had borne

To that silent isle, which lies

Mid remembered agonies,

The frail bark of this lone being)

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,

And its ancient pilot, Pain,

Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be

In the sea of Life and Agony:

Other spirits float and flee

O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,

On some rock the wild wave wraps,

With folded wings they waiting sit

For my bark, to pilot it

To some calm and blooming cove,

Where for me, and those I love,

May a windless bower be built,

Far from passion, pain, and guilt,

In a dell mid lawny hills,

Which the wild sea-murmur fills,

And soft sunshine, and the sound

Of old forests echoing round,

And the light and smell divine

Of all flowers that breathe and shine:

We may live so happy there,

That the Spirits of the Air,

Envying us, may even entice

To our healing Paradise

The polluting multitude;

But their rage would be subdued

By that clime divine and calm,

And the winds whose wings rain balm

On the uplifted soul, and leaves

Under which the bright sea heaves;

While each breathless interval

In their whisperings musical

The inspired soul supplies

With its own deep melodies,

And the love which heals all strife

Circling, like the breath of life,

All things in that sweet abode

With its own mild brotherhood:

They, not it, would change; and soon

Every sprite beneath the moon

Would repent its envy vain,

And the earth grow young again.

Scene From »Tasso«

Maddalo, a Courtier.

Malpiglio, a Poet.

Pigna, a Minister.

Albano, an Usher.

Maddalo. No access to the Duke! You have not said

That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?

Pigna. Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna

Waits with state papers for his signature?

Malpiglio. The Lady Leonora cannot know

That I have written a sonnet to her fame,

In which I Venus and Adonis.

You should not take my gold and serve me not.

Albano. In truth I told her, and she smiled and said,

»If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,

Art the Adonis whom I love, and he

The Erymanthian boar that wounded him.«

O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,

Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.

Malpiglio. The words are twisted in some double sense

That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.

Pigna. How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?

Albano. Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning,

His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.

The Princess sate within the window-seat,

And so her face was hid; but on her knee

Her hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,

And quivering – young Tasso, too, was there.

Maddalo. Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven

Thou drawest down smiles – they did not rain on thee.

Malpiglio. Would they were parching lightnings for his sake

On whom they fell!

Song for »Tasso«

I

I loved – alas! our life is love;

But when we cease to breathe and move

I do suppose love ceases too.

I thought, but not as now I do,

Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,

Of all that men had thought before,

And all that Nature shows, and more.

II

And still I love and still I think,

But strangely, for my heart can drink

The dregs of such despair, and live,

And love; ...

And if I think, my thoughts come fast,

I mix the present with the past,

And each seems uglier than the last.

III

Sometimes I see before me flee

A silver spirit's form, like thee,

O Leonora, and I sit

... still watching it,

Till by the grated casement's ledge

It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge

Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.

Invocation to Misery

I

Come, be happy! – sit near me,

Shadow-vested Misery:

Coy, unwilling, silent bride,

Mourning in thy robe of pride,

Desolation – deified!

II

Come, be happy! – sit near me:

Sad as I may seem to thee,

I am happier far than thou,

Lady, whose imperial brow

Is endiademed with woe.

III

Misery! we have known each other,

Like a sister and a brother

Living in the same lone home,

Many years – we must live some

Hours or ages yet to come.

IV

'Tis an evil lot, and yet

Let us make the best of it;

If love can live when pleasure dies,

We two will love, till in our eyes

This heart's Hell seem Paradise.

V

Come, be happy! – lie thee down

On the fresh grass newly mown,

Where the Grasshopper doth sing

Merrily – one joyous thing

In a world of sorrowing!

VI

There our tent shall be the willow,

And mine arm shall be thy pillow;

Sounds and odours, sorrowful

Because they once were sweet, shall lull

Us to slumber, deep and dull.

VII

Ha! thy frozen pulses flutter

With a love thou darest not utter.

Thou art murmuring – thou art weeping –

Is thine icy bosom leaping

While my burning heart lies sleeping?

VIII

Kiss me; – oh! thy lips are cold:

Round my neck thine arms enfold –

They are soft, but chill and dead;

And thy tears upon my head

Burn like points of frozen lead.

IX

Hasten to the bridal bed –

Underneath the grave 'tis spread:

In darkness may our love be hid,

Oblivion be our coverlid –

We may rest, and none forbid.

X

Clasp me till our hearts be grown

Like two shadows into one;

Till this dreadful transport may

Like a vapour fade away,

In the sleep that lasts alway.

XI

We may dream, in that long sleep,

That we are not those who weep;

E'en as Pleasure dreams of thee,

Life-deserting Misery,

Thou mayst dream of her with me.

XII

Let us laugh, and make our mirth,

At the shadows of the earth,

As dogs bay the moonlight clouds,

Which, like spectres wrapped in shrouds,

Pass o'er night in multitudes.

XIII

All the wide world, beside us,

Show like multitudinous

Puppets passing from a scene;

What but mockery can they mean,

Where I am – where thou hast been?

Stanzas

Written in Dejection, Near Naples

I

The sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright,

Blue isles and snowy mountains wear

The purple noon's transparent might,

The breath of the moist earth is light,

Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,

The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.

II

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strown;

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:

I sit upon the sands alone, –

The lightning of the noontide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

III

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within nor calm around,

Nor that content surpassing wealth

The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned –

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.

Others I see whom these surround –

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; –

To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

IV

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;

I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,

Till death like sleep might steal on me,

And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

V

Some might lament that I were cold,

As I, when this sweet day is gone,

Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,

Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament – for I am one

Whom men love not, – and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

The Woodman and the Nightingale

A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune

(I think such hearts yet never came to good)

Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood

Satiate the hungry dark with melody; –

And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky

Struggling with darkness – as a tuberose

Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,

The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,

Was interfused upon the silentness;

The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss

Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear

Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness

Of the circumfluous waters, – every sphere

And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,

And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,

And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,

And every silver moth fresh from the grave

Which is its cradle – ever from below

Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,

To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproached star,

As if it were a lamp of earthly light,

Unconscious, as some human lovers are,

Itself how low, how high beyond all height

The heaven where it would perish! – and every form

That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm

Girt as with an interminable zone,

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion

Out of their dreams; harmony became love

In every soul but one.

. . . . . . .

And so this man returned with axe and saw

At evening close from killing the tall treen,

The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green

The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,

Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene

With jagged leaves, – and from the forest tops

Singing the winds to sleep – or weeping oft

Fast showers of aëreal water-drops

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,

Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness; –

Around the cradles of the birds aloft

They spread themselves into the loveliness

Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers

Hang like moist clouds: – or, where high branches kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers,

Like a vast fane in a metropolis,

Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries

In which there is religion – and the mute

Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute

Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed

To such brief unison as on the brain

One tone, which never can recur, has cast,

One accent never to return again.

. . . . . . .

The world is full of Woodmen who expel

Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,

And vex the nightingales in every dell.

Marenghi

I

Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,

Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,

Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange

Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,

Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn

Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.

II

A massy tower yet overhangs the town,

A scattered group of ruined dwellings now . ...

. . . .