Poems Read Online

An outlawed murderer

Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot

When he was cold. The birds that were his grave

Fell dead after their feast in Vado's wave.

XVIII

There must have burned within Marenghi's breast

That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,

(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon . ...

More joyous than free heaven's majestic cope

To his oppressor), warring with decay, –

Or he could ne'er have lived years, day by day.

XIX

Nor was his state so lone as you might think.

He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,

And every seagull which sailed down to drink

Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.

And each one, with peculiar talk and play,

Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.

XX

And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night

Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet;

And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,

In many entangled figures quaint and sweet

To some enchanted music they would dance –

Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.

XXI

He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed

The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;

And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read

Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn

Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves

The likeness of the wood's remembered leaves.

XXII

And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken –

While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron

Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken

Of mountains and blue isles which did environ

With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea, –

And feel liberty.

XXIII

And in the moonless nights, when the dun ocean

Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled,

Starting from dreams ...

Communed with the immeasurable world;

And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated,

Till his mind grew like that it contemplated.

XXIV

His food was the wild fig and strawberry;

The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast

Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry

As from the sea by winter-storms are cast;

And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found

Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.

XXV

And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made

His solitude less dark. When memory came

(For years gone by leave each a deepening shade),

His spirit basked in its internal flame, –

As, when the black storm hurries round at night,

The fisher basks beside his red firelight.

XXVI

Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,

Like billows unawakened by the wind,

Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors,

Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.

His couch ...

. . . . . . .

XXVII

And, when he saw beneath the sunset's planet

A black ship walk over the crimson ocean, –

Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it,

Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,

Like the dark ghost of the unburied even

Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven, –

XXVIII

The thought of his own kind who made the soul

Which sped that winged shape through night and day, –

The thought of his own country ...

. . . . . . .

Sonnet

Lift not the painted veil which those who live

Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,

And it but mimic all we would believe

With colours idly spread, – behind, lurk Fear

And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave

Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.

I knew one who had lifted it – he sought,

For his lost heart was tender, things to love,

But found them not, alas! nor was there aught

The world contains, the which he could approve.

Through the unheeding many he did move,

A splendour among shadows, a bright blot

Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove

For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

Fragment: to Byron

O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age

Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm,

Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?

Fragment: Apostrophe to Silence

Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou

Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged

Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy

Are swallowed up – yet spare me, Spirit, pity me,

Until the sounds I hear become my soul,

And it has left these faint and weary limbs,

To track along the lapses of the air

This wandering melody until it rests

Among lone mountains in some ...

Fragment: the Lake's Margin

The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses

Track not the steps of him who drinks of it;

For the light breezes, which for ever fleet

Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.

Fragment: »My Head Is Wild with Weeping«

My head is wild with weeping for a grief

Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.

I walk into the air (but no relief

To seek, – or haply, if I sought, to find;

It came unsought); – to wonder that a chief

Among men's spirits should be cold and blind.

Fragment: the Vine-Shroud

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow

Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;

For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below

The rotting bones of dead antiquity.

Lines Written During the Castlereagh Administration

I

Corpses are cold in the tomb;

Stones on the pavement are dumb;

Abortions are dead in the womb,

And their mothers look pale – like the death-white shore

Of Albion, free no more.

II

Her sons are as stones in the way –

They are masses of senseless clay –

They are trodden, and move not away, –

The abortion with which she travaileth

Is Liberty, smitten to death.

III

Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!

For thy victim is no redresser;

Thou art sole lord and possessor

Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions – they pave

Thy path to the grave.

IV

Hearest thou the festival din

Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin,

And Wealth crying Havoc! within?

'Tis the bacchanal triumph that makes Truth dumb,

Thine Epithalamium.

V

Ay, marry thy ghastly wife!

Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife

Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life!

Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant! and Hell be thy guide

To the bed of the bride!

Song to the Men of England

I

Men of England, wherefore plough

For the lords who lay ye low?

Wherefore weave with toil and care

The rich robes your tyrants wear?

II

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,

From the cradle to the grave,

Those ungrateful drones who would

Drain your sweat – nay, drink your blood?

III

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge

Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,

That these stingless drones may spoil

The forced produce of your toil?

IV

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,

Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?

Or what is it ye buy so dear

With your pain and with your fear?

V

The seed ye sow, another reaps;

The wealth ye find, another keeps;

The robes ye weave, another wears;

The arms ye forge, another bears.

VI

Sow seed, – but let no tyrant reap;

Find wealth, – let no impostor heap;

Weave robes, – let not the idle wear;

Forge arms, – in your defence to bear.

VII

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;

In halls ye deck another dwells.

Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see

The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

VIII

With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,

Trace your grave, and build your tomb,

And weave your winding-sheet, till fair

England be your sepulchre.

Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819

I

As from an ancestral oak

Two empty ravens sound their clarion,

Yell by yell, and croak by croak,

When they scent the noonday smoke

Of fresh human carrion: –

II

As two gibbering night-birds flit

From their bowers of deadly yew

Through the night to frighten it,

When the moon is in a fit,

And the stars are none, or few: –

III

As a shark and dog-fish wait

Under an Atlantic isle,

For the negro-ship, whose freight

Is the theme of their debate,

Wrinkling their red gills the while –

IV

Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,

Two scorpions under one wet stone,

Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,

Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,

Two vipers tangled into one.

Fragment: to the People of England

People of England, ye who toil and groan,

Who reap the harvests which are not your own,

Who weave the clothes which your oppressors wear,

And for your own take the inclement air;

Who build warm houses ...

And are like gods who give them all they have,

And nurse them from the cradle to the grave ...

. . . . . . .

Fragment: »What Men Gain Fairly«

What men gain fairly – that they should possess,

And children may inherit idleness,

From him who earns it – This is understood;

Private injustice may be general good.

But he who gains by base and armed wrong,

Or guilty fraud, or base compliances,

May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress

Is stripped from a convicted thief, and he

Left in the nakedness of infamy.

A New National Anthem

I

God prosper, speed, and save,

God raise from England's grave

Her murdered Queen!

Pave with swift victory

The steps of Liberty,

Whom Britons own to be

Immortal Queen.

II

See, she comes throned on high,

On swift Eternity!

God save the Queen!

Millions on millions wait,

Firm, rapid, and elate,

On her majestic state!

God save the Queen!

III

She is Thine own pure soul

Moulding the mighty whole, –

God save the Queen!

She is Thine own deep love

Rained down from Heaven above, –

Wherever she rest or move,

God save our Queen!

IV

'Wilder her enemies

In their own dark disguise, –

God save our Queen!

All earthly things that dare

Her sacred name to bear,

Strip them, as kings are, bare;

God save the Queen!

V

Be her eternal throne

Built in our hearts alone –

God save the Queen!

Let the oppressor hold

Canopied seats of gold;

She sits enthroned of old

O'er our hearts Queen.

VI

Lips touched by seraphim

Breathe out the choral hymn

»God save the Queen!«

Sweet as if angels sang,

Loud as that trumpet's clang

Wakening the world's dead gang, –

God save the Queen!

Sonnet: England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, –

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn, – mud from a muddy spring, –

Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

But leech-like to their fainting country cling,

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, –

A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, –

An army, which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, –

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;

Religion Christless, Godless – a book sealed;

A Senate, – Time's worst statute unrepealed, –

Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

An Ode

Written October, 1819, Before the Spaniards Had Recovered Their Liberty

Arise, arise, arise!

There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;

Be your wounds like eyes

To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.

What other grief were it just to pay?

Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;

Who said they were slain on the battle day?

Awaken, awaken, awaken!

The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;

Be the cold chains shaken

To the dust where your kindred repose, repose:

Their bones in the grave will start and move,

When they hear the voices of those they love,

Most loud in the holy combat above.

Wave, wave high the banner!

When Freedom is riding to conquest by:

Though the slaves that fan her

Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh.

And ye who attend her imperial car,

Lift not your hands in the banded war,

But in her defence whose children ye are.

Glory, glory, glory,

To those who have greatly suffered and done!

Never name in story

Was greater than that which ye shall have won.

Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,

Whose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown:

Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.

Bind, bind every brow

With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine:

Hide the blood-stains now

With hues which sweet Nature has made divine:

Green strength, azure hope, and eternity

But let not the pansy among them be;

Ye were injured, and that means memory.

Cancelled Stanza

Gather, O gather,

Foeman and friend in love and peace!

Waves sleep together

When the blasts that called them to battle, cease.

For fangless Power grown tame and mild

Is at play with Freedom's fearless child –

The dove and the serpent reconciled!

Ode to Heaven

Chorus of Spirits

First Spirit.

Palace-roof of cloudless nights!

Paradise of golden lights!

Deep, immeasurable, vast,

Which art now, and which wert then

Of the Present and the Past,

Of the eternal Where and When,

Presence-chamber, temple, home,

Ever-canopying dome,

Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,

Earth, and all earth's company;

Living globes which ever throng

Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;

And green worlds that glide along;

And swift stars with flashing tresses;

And icy moons most cold and bright,

And mighty suns beyond the night,

Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,

Heaven! for thou art the abode

Of that Power which is the glass

Wherein man his nature sees.

Generations as they pass

Worship thee with bended knees.

Their unremaining gods and they

Like a river roll away:

Thou remainest such – alway! –

Second Spirit.

Thou art but the mind's first chamber,

Round which its young fancies clamber,

Like weak insects in a cave,

Lighted up by stalactites;

But the portal of the grave,

Where a world of new delights

Will make thy best glories seem

But a dim and noonday gleam

From the shadow of a dream!

Third Spirit.

Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn

At your presumption, atom-born!

What is Heaven? and what are ye

Who its brief expanse inherit?

What are suns and spheres which flee

With the instinct of that Spirit

Of which ye are but a part?

Drops which Nature's mighty heart

Drives through thinnest veins! Depart!

What is Heaven? a globe of dew,

Filling in the morning new

Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken

On an unimagined world:

Constellated suns unshaken,

Orbits measureless, are furled

In that frail and fading sphere,

With ten millions gathered there,

To tremble, gleam, and disappear.

Cancelled Fragments of the Ode to Heaven

The [living frame which sustains my soul]

Is [sinking beneath the fierce control]

Down through the lampless deep of song

I am drawn and driven along –

When a Nation screams aloud

Like an eagle from the cloud

When a ...

. . . . . .

When the night ...

. . . .