Selected Poems and Prose Read Online

Verbovale Esquire’,*

535With a brief note of compliment,

By that night’s Carlisle mail. It went

   And set his soul on fire.

Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,

   Made him beyond the bottom see

540Of truth’s clear well—when I and you, Ma’am,

Go, as we shall do, subter humum,

   We may know more than he.

Now Peter ran to seed in soul,

   Into a walking paradox;—

545For he was neither part nor whole,

Nor good, nor bad—nor knave, nor fool,

   —Among the woods and rocks

Furious he rode, where late he ran,

   Lashing and spurring his lame hobby;

550Turned to a formal Puritan,

A solemn and unsexual man,—

   He half believed White Obi!

This steed in vision he would ride,

   High trotting over nine-inch bridges,

555With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,

Mocking and mowing by his side—

A mad-brained goblin for a guide—

   Over cornfields, gates and hedges.

After these ghastly rides, he came

560   Home to his heart, and found from thence

Much stolen of its accustomed flame;

His thoughts grew weak, drowsy and lame

   Of their intelligence.

To Peter’s view, all seemed one hue;

565   He was no Whig, he was no Tory:

No Deist and no Christian he,—

He got so subtle, that to be

   Nothing, was all his glory.

One single point in his belief

570   From his organization sprung,

The heart-enrooted faith, the chief

Ear in his doctrines’ blighted sheaf,

   That ‘happiness is wrong’.

So thought Calvin and Dominic;

575   So think their fierce successors, who

Even now would neither stint nor stick

Our flesh from off our bones to pick,

   If they might ‘do their do’.

His morals thus were undermined:—

580   The old Peter—the hard, old Potter—

Was born anew within his mind:

He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,

   As when he tramped beside the Otter.*

In the death hues of agony

585   Lambently flashing from a fish,

Now Peter felt amused to see

Shades, like a rainbow’s, rise and flee,

   Mixed with a certain hungry wish.†

So in his Country’s dying face

590   He looked—and lovely as she lay,

Seeking in vain his last embrace,

Wailing her own abandoned case,

   With hardened sneer he turned away:

And coolly to his own Soul said:—

595   ‘Do you not think that we might make

A poem on her when she’s dead?—

Or, no—a thought is in my head—

   Her shroud for a new sheet I’ll take—

‘My wife wants one.—Let who will, bury

600   This mangled corpse!—And I and you,

My dearest Soul, will then make merry,

As the Prince Regent did with Sherry’—

   ‘Aye—and at last desert me too.’

And so his Soul would not be gay,

605   But moaned within him; like a fawn,

Moaning within a cave, it lay

Wounded and wasting, day by day,

   Till all its life of life was gone.

As troubled skies stain waters clear,

610   The storm in Peter’s heart and mind,

Now made his verses dark and queer;

They were the ghosts of what they were,

   Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.

For he now raved enormous folly

615   Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools and Graves;

’Twould make George Colman melancholy

To have heard him, like a male Molly,

   Chaunting those stupid staves.

Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse

620   On Peter, while he wrote for freedom,

So soon as in his song they spy

The folly which soothes Tyranny,

   Praise him, for those who feed ’em.

‘He was a man, too great to scan;—

625   A planet lost in truth’s keen rays:—

His virtue, awful and prodigious;—

He was the most sublime, religious,

   Pure-minded Poet of these days.’

As soon as he read that—cried Peter;—

630   ‘Eureka! I have found the way

To make a better thing of metre

Than e’er was made by living creature

   Up to this blessed day.’

Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;—

635   In one of which he meekly said:—

‘May Carnage and Slaughter,

Thy niece and thy daughter,

May Rapine and Famine,

Thy gorge ever cramming,

640   Glut thee with living and dead!

   ‘May Death and Damnation,

   And Consternation,

Flit up from Hell, with pure intent!

   Slash them at Manchester,

645   Glasgow, Leeds and Chester;

Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent!

   ‘Let thy body-guard yeomen

   Hew down babes and women,

And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!

650   When Moloch in Jewry,

   Munched children with fury

It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent!’*

Part Seventh

Double Damnation

The Devil now knew, his proper cue—

   Soon as he read the ode, he drove

655To his friend Lord McMurderchouse’s,

A man of interest in both houses,

   And said:—‘For money or for love

‘Pray find some cure or sinecure,

   To feed from the superfluous taxes

660A friend of ours—a Poet—fewer

Have fluttered tamer to the lure

   Than he.’—His Lordship stands and racks his

Stupid brains, while one might count

   As many beads as he had boroughs,—

665At length replies;—from his mean front,

Like one who rubs out an account,

   Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:—

‘It happens fortunately, dear Sir,

   I can. I hope I need require

670No pledge from you, that he will stir

In our affairs;—like Oliver,

   That he’ll be worthy of his hire.’

These words exchanged, the news sent off

   To Peter:—home the Devil hied;

675Took to his bed; he had no cough,

No doctor,—meat and drink enough,—

   Yet that same night he died.

The Devil’s corpse was leaded down.—

   His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf:

680Mourning coaches, many a one,

Followed his hearse along the town:—

   Where was the Devil himself?

When Peter heard of his promotion

   His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:

685There was a bow of sleek devotion

Engendering in his back; each motion

   Seemed a Lord’s shoe to kiss.

He hired a house, bought plate, and made

   A genteel drive up to his door,

690With sifted gravel neatly laid,—

As if defying all who said

   Peter was ever poor.

But a disease soon struck into

   The very life and soul of Peter—

695He walked about—slept—had the hue

Of health upon his cheeks—and few

   Dug better—none a heartier eater.

And yet—a strange and horrid curse

   Clung upon Peter, night and day—

700Month after month the thing grew worse,

And deadlier than in this my verse

   I can find strength to say.

Peter was dull—he was at first

   Dull—O, so dull—so very dull!

705Whether he talked—wrote—or rehearsed—

Still with this dullness was he cursed—

   Dull—beyond all conception—dull.—

No one could read his books—no mortal,

   But a few natural friends, would hear him:—

710The parson came not near his portal;—

His state was like that of the immortal

   Described by Swift—no man could bear him.

His sister, wife and children yawned,

   With a long, slow and drear ennui,

715All human patience far beyond;

Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned

   Anywhere else to be.

But in his verse, and in his prose,

   The essence of his dullness was

720Concentred and compressed so close,—

’Twould have made Guatimozin doze

   On his red gridiron of brass.

A printer’s boy, folding those pages,

   Fell slumberously upon one side:

725Like those famed seven who slept three ages.

To wakeful frenzy’s vigil rages

   As opiates were the same applied.

Even the Reviewers who were hired

   To do the work of his reviewing,

730With adamantine nerves, grew tired;—

Gaping and torpid they retired,

   To dream of what they should be doing.

And worse and worse, the drowsy curse

   Yawned in him—till it grew a pest—

735A wide contagious atmosphere,

Creeping like cold through all things near;

   A power to infect, and to infest.

His servant maids and dogs grew dull;

   His kitten, late a sportive elf;

740The woods and lakes, so beautiful,

Of dim stupidity were full;

   All grew dull as Peter’s self.

The earth under his feet—the springs,

   Which lived within it a quick life—

745The Air—the Winds of many wings—

That fan it with new murmurings,

   Were dead to their harmonious strife.

The birds and beasts within the wood;

   The insects—and each creeping thing,

750Were now a silent multitude;

Love’s work was left unwrought:—no brood

   Near Peter’s house took wing.

And every neighbouring Cottager

   Stupidly yawned upon the other;

755No jackass brayed;—no little cur

Cocked up his ears;—no man would stir

   To save a dying mother.

Yet all from that charmed district went,

   But some, half idiot and half knave,

760Who, rather than pay any rent,

Would live, with marvellous content,

   Over his father’s grave.

No bailiff dared within that space,

   For fear of the dull charm, to enter:

765A man would bear upon his face,

For fifteen months, in any case,

   The yawn of such a venture.

Seven miles above—below—around—

   This pest of dullness holds its sway:

770A ghastly life without a sound;

To Peter’s soul the spell is bound—

   How should it ever pass away?

Finis.

Ode to the West Wind*

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

5Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

10Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving every where;

Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

II

15Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

20Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the Zenith’s height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou Dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

25Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

30The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

35All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

40The sapless foliage of the Ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

45A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O Uncontroulable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

50As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

55A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

60Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

65And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

70If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

To S[idmouth] and C[astlereagh]

As from their ancestral oak

   Two empty ravens wind their clarion,

Yell by yell, and croak for croak,

When they scent the noonday smoke

5   Of fresh human carrion:—

As two gibbering night-birds flit

   From their bower of deadly yew

Thro’ the night to frighten it—

When the moon is in a fit,

10   And the stars are none or few:—

As a shark and dogfish wait

   Under an Atlantic isle

For the Negro ship whose freight

Is the theme of their debate,

15   Wrinkling their red gills the while:—

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,

20   Two vipers tangled into one.

Love’s Philosophy

The Fountains mingle with the River

   And the Rivers with the Ocean;

The winds of Heaven mix for ever

   With a sweet emotion;

5Nothing in the world is single;

   All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

   Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high Heaven

10   And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

   If it disdained its brother,

And the sunlight clasps the earth

   And the moonbeams kiss the sea—

15What is all this sweet work worth

   If thou kiss not me?

Goodnight

Goodnight? no love, the night is ill

   Which severs those it should unite;

Let us remain together still,

   Then it will be—‘good night’.

5How were the night without thee, good

   Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?

Be it not said, thought, understood—

   Then it will be—‘good night’.

The hearts that on each other beat

10   From evening close to morning light

Have nights as good as they are sweet

   But never say ‘good night’.

Time Long Past

Like the ghost of a dear friend dead

         Is Time long past.

A tone which is now forever fled,

A hope, which is now forever past,

5A love, so sweet it could not last

         Was Time long past.

There were sweet dreams in the night

         Of Time long past;

And, was it sadness or delight,

10Each day a shadow onward cast

Which made us wish it yet might last—

         That Time long past.

There is regret, almost remorse

         For Time long past.

15’Tis like a child’s beloved corse

A father watches, till at last

Beauty is like remembrance, cast

         From Time long past.

On a Dead Violet

To —–

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.

5A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form

   It lies on my abandoned breast,

And mocks the heart which yet is warm

   With its cold, silent rest.

I weep—my tears revive it not,

10   I sigh—it breathes no more on me;

Its mute and uncomplaining lot

   Is such as mine should be.

On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci,
In the Florentine Gallery

It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,

   Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;

Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;

   Its horror and its beauty are divine.

5Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie

   Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,

Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,

The agonies of anguish and of death.

Yet it is less the horror than the grace

10   Which turns the gazer’s spirit into stone

Whereon the lineaments of that dead face

   Are graven, till the characters be grown

Into itself, and thought no more can trace;

   ’Tis the melodious hues of beauty thrown

15Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,

Which humanize and harmonize the strain.

And from its head as from one body grow,

   As [ ] grass out of a watery rock,

Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow,

20   And their long tangles in each other lock,

And with unending involutions shew

   Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock

The torture and the death within, and saw

The solid air with many a ragged jaw.

25 And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft

   Peeps idly into these Gorgonian eyes;

Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft

   Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise

Out of the cave this hideous light hath cleft,

30   And he comes hastening like a moth that hies

After a taper; and the midnight sky

Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.

’Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;

   For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare

35Kindled by that inextricable error

   Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air

Become a [ ] and ever-shifting mirror

   Of all the beauty and the terror there—

A woman’s countenance, with serpent locks,

40Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks.

To Night

Swiftly walk o’er the western wave,

         Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave

Where, all the long and lone daylight

5Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,

Which make thee terrible and dear,—

         Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,

         Star-inwrought!

10Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,

Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o’er city and sea and land

Touching all with thine opiate wand—

         Come, long-sought!

15When I arose and saw the dawn

         I sighed for thee;

When Light rode high, and the dew was gone

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,

And the weary Day turned to his rest

20Lingering like an unloved guest,

         I sighed for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried,

         Wouldst thou me?

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,

25Murmured like a noontide bee,

Shall I nestle near thy side?

Wouldst thou me? And I replied,

         No, not thee!

Death will come when thou art dead,

30         Soon, too soon—

Sleep will come when thou art fled;

Of neither would I ask the boon

I ask of thee, beloved Night—

Swift be thine approaching flight,

35         Come soon, soon!

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,

5But leechlike to their fainting country cling

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

A people starved and stabbed on th’ untilled field;

An army which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

10Golden 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.

Song

To the Men of England

Men of England, wherefore plough

For the lords who lay ye low?

Wherefore weave with toil and care

The rich robes your tyrants wear?

5Wherefore feed and clothe and save

From the cradle to the grave

Those ungrateful drones who would

Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge

10Many a weapon, chain and scourge,

That these stingless drones may spoil

The forced produce of your toil?

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,

Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?

15Or what is it ye buy so dear

With your pain and with your fear?

The seed ye sow, another reaps;

The wealth ye find, another keeps;

The robes ye weave, another wears;

20The arms ye forge, another bears.

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.

25Shrink 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.

With plough and spade and hoe and loom

30Trace your grave and build your tomb,

And weave your winding-sheet—till fair

England be your Sepulchre.

To —– (‘Corpses are cold in the tomb’)

   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

5   Of Albion, free no more.

   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

10   Is Liberty, smitten to death.

   Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!

   For thy Victim is no redressor;

   Thou art sole lord and possessor

Of her corpses and clods and abortions—they pave

15   Thy path to the grave.

   Hearest thou the festival din

   Of Death and Destruction and Sin,

   And Wealth crying ‘havoc!’ within?

’Tis the Bacchanal triumph that makes truth dumb—

20   Thine Epithalamium—

   Aye, 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

25   To the bed of the bride.

The Sensitive-Plant

PART FIRST

A Sensitive-plant in a garden grew,

And the young winds fed it with silver dew,

And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light

And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

5And the Spring arose on the garden fair

Like the Spirit of love felt everywhere;

And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast

Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss

10In the garden, the field or the wilderness,

Like a doe in the noon-tide with love’s sweet want

As the companionless Sensitive-plant.

The snow-drop and then the violet

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,

15And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent

From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,

And narcissi, the fairest among them all,

Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess

20Till they die of their own dear loveliness;

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale

Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,

That the light of its tremulous bells is seen

Through their pavilions of tender green;

25And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue

Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew

Of music so delicate, soft and intense,

It was felt like an odour within the sense;

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,

30Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,

Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air

The soul of her beauty and love lay bare;

And the wand-like lily which lifted up,

As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup

35Till the fiery star, which is its eye,

Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,

The sweetest flower for scent that blows;

And all rare blossoms from every clime

40Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom

Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom

With golden and green light, slanting through

Their Heaven of many a tangled hue,

45Broad water lilies lay tremulously,

And starry river-buds glimmered by,

And around them the soft stream did glide and dance

With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss

50Which led through the garden along and across,

Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,

Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells

As fair as the fabulous asphodels,

55And flow’rets which drooping as day drooped too

Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,

To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.

And from this undefiled Paradise

The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes

60Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet

Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),

When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them,

As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,

Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one

65Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;

For each one was interpenetrated

With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,

Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear

Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.

70But the Sensitive-plant which could give small fruit

Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,

Received more than all—it loved more than ever,

Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver.

For the Sensitive-plant has no bright flower;

75Radiance and odour are not its dower;

It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,

It desires what it has not—the beautiful!

The light winds which from unsustaining wings

Shed the music of many murmurings;

80The beams which dart from many a star

Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;

The plumed insects swift and free,

Like golden boats on a sunny sea,

Laden with light and odour, which pass

85Over the gleam of the living grass;

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie

Like fire in the flowers till the Sun rides high,

Then wander like spirits among the spheres,

Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;

90The quivering vapours of dim noontide,

Which like a sea o’er the warm earth glide,

In which every sound, and odour, and beam

Move, as reeds in a single stream;

Each, and all, like ministering angels were

95For the Sensitive-plant sweet joy to bear

Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by

Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky.

And when evening descended from Heaven above,

And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,

100And delight, tho’ less bright, was far more deep,

And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep,

And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned

In an ocean of dreams without a sound

Whose waves never mark, tho’ they ever impress

105The light sand which paves it—Consciousness;

(Only over head the sweet nightingale

Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,

And snatches of its Elysian chant

Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive-plant).

110The Sensitive-plant was the earliest

Up-gathered into the bosom of rest;

A sweet child weary of its delight,

The feeblest and yet the favourite—

Cradled within the embrace of night.

PART SECOND

There was a Power in this sweet place,

An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace

Which to the flowers did they waken or dream,

Was as God is to the starry scheme.

5A Lady, the wonder of her kind,

Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind

Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion

Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,

Tended the garden from morn to even:

10And the meteors of that sublunar Heaven,

Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth,

Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!

She had no companion of mortal race,

But her tremulous breath and her flushing face

15Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes

That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:

As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake

Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake,

As if yet around her he lingering were,

20Tho’ the veil of daylight concealed him from her.

Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest;

You might hear by the heaving of her breast,

That the coming and going of the wind

Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.

25And wherever her airy footstep trod,

Her trailing hair from the grassy sod

Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,

Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet

30Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;

I doubt not they felt the spirit that came

From her glowing fingers thro’ all their frame.

She sprinkled bright water from the stream

On those that were faint with the sunny beam;

35And out of the cups of the heavy flowers

She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.

She lifted their heads with her tender hands

And sustained them with rods and ozier bands;

If the flowers had been her own infants she

40Could never have nursed them more tenderly.

And all killing insects and gnawing worms

And things of obscene and unlovely forms

She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,

Into the rough woods far aloof,

45In a basket of grasses and wild flowers full,

The freshest her gentle hands could pull

For the poor banished insects, whose intent,

Although they did ill, was innocent.

But the bee and the beam-like ephemeris

50Whose path is the lightning’s, and soft moths that kiss

The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she

Make her attendant angels be.

And many an antenatal tomb

Where butterflies dream of the life to come

55She left, clinging round the smooth and dark

Edge of the odorous Cedar bark.

This fairest creature from earliest spring

Thus moved through the garden ministering

All the sweet season of summer tide,

60And ere the first leaf looked brown—she died!

PART THIRD

Three days the flowers of the garden fair,

Like stars when the moon is awakened, were;

Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous

She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.

5And on the fourth, the Sensitive-plant

Felt the sound of the funeral chaunt

And the steps of the bearers heavy and slow,

And the sobs of the mourners deep and low;

The weary sound and the heavy breath

10And the silent motions of passing death

And the smell, cold, oppressive and dank,

Sent through the pores of the coffin plank;

The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,

Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;

15From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone

And sate in the pines and gave groan for groan.

The garden once fair became cold and foul

Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,

Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,

20Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap

To make men tremble who never weep.

Swift summer into the autumn flowed,

And frost in the mist of the morning rode

Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,

25Mocking the spoil of the secret night.

The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,

Paved the turf and the moss below:

The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,

Like the head and the skin of a dying man.

30And Indian plants, of scent and hue

The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,

Leaf after leaf, day after day,

Were massed into the common clay.

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, and red,

35And white with the whiteness of what is dead,

Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past;

Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.

And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds

Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,

40Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem

Which rotted into the earth with them.

The water-blooms under the rivulet

Fell from the stalks on which they were set;

And the eddies drove them here and there

45As the winds did those of the upper air.

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks

Were bent and tangled across the walks;

And the leafless net-work of parasite bowers

Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.

50Between the time of the wind and the snow

All loathliest weeds began to grow,

Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck

Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,

55And the dock, and henbane; and hemlock dank

Stretched out its long and hollow shank

And stifled the air, till the dead wind stank.

And plants at whose names the verse feels loath

Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,

60Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,

Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.

And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould

Started like mist from the wet ground cold;

Pale, fleshy,—as if the decaying dead

65With a spirit of growth had been animated!

Their mass rotted off them, flake by flake,

Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake,

Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high

Infecting the winds that wander by.

70Spawn, weeds and filth, a leprous scum,

Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,

And at its outlet flags huge as stakes

Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.

And hour by hour, when the air was still,

75The vapours arose which have strength to kill:

At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,

At night they were darkness no star could melt.

And unctuous meteors from spray to spray

Crept and flitted in broad noon-day

80Unseen; every branch on which they alit

By a venomous blight was burned and bit.

The Sensitive-plant like one forbid

Wept, and the tears, within each lid

Of its folded leaves which together grew,

85Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.

For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon

By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;

The sap shrank to the root through every pore

As blood to a heart that will beat no more.

90For Winter came—the wind was his whip—

One choppy finger was on his lip:

He had torn the cataracts from the hills

And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;

His breath was a chain which without a sound

95The earth and the air and the water bound;

He came, fiercely driven in his Chariot-throne

By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone.

Then the weeds which were forms of living death

Fled from the frost to the Earth beneath.

100Their decay and sudden flight from frost

Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!

And under the roots of the Sensitive-plant

The moles and the dormice died for want.

The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air

105And were caught in the branches naked and bare.

First there came down a thawing rain

And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;

Then there steamed up a freezing dew

Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;

110And a northern whirlwind, wandering about

Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,

Shook the boughs thus laden and heavy and stiff

And snapped them off with his rigid griff.

When winter had gone and spring came back

115The Sensitive-plant was a leafless wreck;

But the mandrakes and toadstools and docks and darnels

Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

CONCLUSION

Whether the Sensitive-plant, or that

Which within its boughs like a spirit sat

Ere its outward form had known decay,

Now felt this change,—I cannot say.

5Whether that Lady’s gentle mind,

No longer with the form combined

Which scattered love, as stars do light,

Found sadness, where it left delight,

I dare not guess; but in this life

10Of error, ignorance and strife—

Where nothing is, but all things seem,

And we, the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet

Pleasant if one considers it,

15To own that death itself must be,

Like all the rest,—a mockery.

That Garden sweet, that Lady fair,

And all sweet shapes and odours there,

In truth have never pass’d away—

20’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed—not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight

There is no death nor change: their might

Exceeds our organs—which endure

No light, being themselves obscure.

An Exhortation

Camelions feed on light and air:

   Poets’ food is love and fame:

If in this wide world of care

   Poets could but find the same

5With as little toil as they,

   Would they ever change their hue

   As the light camelions do,

Suiting it to every ray

Twenty times a-day?

10Poets are on this cold earth

   As camelions might be,

Hidden from their early birth

   In a cave beneath the sea;

Where light is, camelions change:

15   Where love is not, poets do:

   Fame is love disguised: if few

Find either, never think it strange

That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power

20   A poet’s free and heavenly mind:

If bright camelions should devour

   Any food but beams and wind,

They would grow as earthly soon

   As their brother lizards are.

25   Children of a sunnier star,

Spirits from beyond the moon,

O, refuse the boon!

Song of Apollo

The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie

   Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries

From the broad moonlight of the open sky,

   Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,

5Waken me when their mother, the grey Dawn,

Tells them that Dreams and that the moon is gone.

Then I arise; and climbing Heaven’s blue dome

   I walk over the mountains and the waves,

Leaving my robe upon the Ocean foam.

10   My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves

Are filled with my bright presence, and the air

Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

The sunbeams are my shafts with which I kill

   Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day.

15All men who do, or even imagine ill

   Fly me; and from the glory of my ray

Good minds, and open actions, take new might

Until diminished by the reign of night.

I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers

20   With their aetherial colours; the moon’s globe

And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

   Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;

Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine

Are portions of one spirit; which is mine.

25I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven;

   Then with unwilling steps, I linger down

To the clouds of the Atlantic even.

   For grief that I depart they weep and frown—

What look is more delightful, than the smile

30With which I soothe them from the Western isle?

I am the eye with which the Universe

   Beholds itself, and knows it is divine.

All harmony of instrument and verse,

   All prophecy and medicine are mine;

35All light of art or nature—to my song

Victory and praise, in its own right, belong.

Song of Pan

From the forests and highlands

   We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands

   Where loud waves were dumb

5Listening my sweet pipings.

      The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

      The bees in the bells of thyme,

      The birds in the myrtle bushes,

      The cicadae above in the lime,

10         And the lizards below in the grass,

Were silent as even old Tmolus was,

         Listening my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing—

   And all dark Tempe lay

15In [ ? ] shadow, outgrowing

   The light of the dying day,

Speeded with my sweet pipings.

      The sileni and sylvans and fauns

      And the nymphs of the woods and the waves

20      To the edge of the moist river-lawns

      And the brink of the dewy caves,

         And all that did then attend and follow,

Were as silent for love, as you now, Apollo,

         For envy of my sweet pipings.

25I sang of the dancing stars,

   I sang of the daedal Earth,

And of Heaven, and the giant wars,

   And Love and Death and Birth;

And then I changed my pipings,

30      Singing how, down the vales of Maenalus

      I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:

      Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!—

      It breaks on our bosom and then we bleed;

         They wept as I think both ye now would,

35If envy or age had not frozen your blood,

         At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

The Cloud

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

   From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

   In their noon-day dreams.

5From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

   The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,

   As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

10   And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

   And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

   And their great pines groan aghast;

15And all the night ’tis my pillow white,

   While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

   Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

20   It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

   This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

   In the depths of the purple sea;

25Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

   Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream

   The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,

30   Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

   And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

   When the morning star shines dead,

35As on the jag of a mountain crag,

   Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

   In the light of its golden wings.

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath,

40   Its ardours of rest and love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

   From the depth of Heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,

   As still as a brooding dove.

45That orbed maiden with white fire laden,

   Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,

   By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

50   Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,

   The stars peep behind her, and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

   Like a swarm of golden bees,

55When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

   Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

   Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,

60   And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

   When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

   Over a torrent sea,

65Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof;

   The mountains its columns be!

The triumphal arch, through which I march

   With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the Air are chained to my chair,

70   Is the million-coloured Bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

   While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

   And the nursling of the sky;

75I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

   I change, but I cannot die—

For after the rain, when with never a stain,

   The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

80   Build up the blue Dome of Air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

   And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

   I arise, and unbuild it again.

‘God save the Queen!’

[A New National Anthem]

God! prosper, speed and save,

God! raise from England’s grave

   Her murdered Queen.

Pave with swift victory

5The steps of Liberty

Whom Britons own to be

   Immortal Queen!

See, she comes throned on high,

On swift Eternity,

10   God save the Queen!

Millions on millions wait

Firm, rapid, [ ], elate,

On her [?approaching] state,

   God save the Queen!

15She is thine own pure soul

[?Moulding] the mighty whole,

   God save our Queen!

She is thine own deep love,

Rained down from Heaven above,

20Wherever she rest or move,

   God save our Queen!

Wilder her enemies

In their own dark disguise,

   God save our Queen!

25All earthly things that dare

Her sacred name to wear,

Strip them, as Kings [ ] bare;

   God save our Queen!

Be her eternal throne

30Built in our hearts alone,

   God save our Queen!

Let the Oppressor hold

Canopied seats of gold,

She sits enthroned of old

35   O’er our hearts, Queen.

Lips, touched by seraphim,

Breathe out the choral hymn,

   God save the Queen!

Sweet as if Angels sang,

40Loud as that [ ] clang

Wakening the world’s dead gang,

   God save the Queen!

Translation of Dante’s Purgatorio, Canto XXVIII, lines 1–51

[Matilda Gathering Flowers]

Earnest to explore within and all around

The divine wood, whose thick green living woof

Tempered the young day to the sight, I wound

Up the [green] slope, beneath the [forest’s] roof,

5With slow [soft] steps, leaving the abrupt shelf

And the [     ] aloof—

A gentle air which had within itself

No motion struck upon my forehead bare

Like the soft stroke of a continuous wind

10In which the passive leaves tremblingly were

All bent towards that [part] where earliest

That sacred hill obscures the morning air,

Yet were they not so shaken from their rest

But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray

15[Incessantly] renewing their blithe quest,

With perfect joy received the early day

Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound

Kept one low burthen to their roundelay

Such as from bough to bough gathers around

20The pine forest on bleak Chiassi’s shore

When Aeolus Sirocco has unbound.

My slow steps had already borne me o’er

Such space within the antique wood, that I

Perceived not where I entered any more,

25When lo, a stream whose little waves went by,

Bending towards the left the grass that grew

Upon its bank, impeded suddenly

My going on—waters of purest hue

On Earth, would appear turbid and impure

30Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew,

Dark, dark, [yet] clear, moved under the obscure

Eternal shades, whose [?intense] [ ] [glooms]

No rays of moon or sunlight e’er endure.

I moved not with my feet, but amid the glooms

35I pierced with my charmed sight, contemplating

The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms,

And then appeared to me—even like a thing

Which suddenly for blank astonishment

Dissolves all other thought, [   ]

40A solitary woman, and she went

Singing and gathering flower after flower

With which her way was painted and besprent.

‘Bright lady, who if looks had ever power

To bear firm witness of the heart within,

45Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower

‘[Towards] this bank; I prithee let me win

Thus much of thee that thou shouldst come anear

So I may hear thy song—like Proserpine

‘Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here

50And gathering flowers, at that [sweet] time when

She lost the spring and Ceres her … more dear.’

Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa

The sun is set, the swallows are asleep,

   The bats are flitting fast in the grey air;

The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,

   And evening’s breath, wandering here and there

5Over the gleaming surface of the stream,

Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.

There is no dew on the dry grass tonight,

   Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;

The wind is intermitting, dry and light,

10   And in the inconstant motion of the breeze

The dust and straws are driven up and down

And whirled about the pavement of the Town.

Within the surface of the fleeting river

   The wrinkled image of the city lay

15Immoveably unquiet—and forever

   It trembles but it never fades away;

Go to the Indies [         ]

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut

20   By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud

Like mountain over mountain huddled but

   Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,

And over it a space of watery blue

Which the keen evening star is shining through.

25And overhead hangs many a flaccid fold

   Of lurid thundersmoke most heavily,

A streak of dun and sulphureous gold

Ode to Liberty

Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying,

Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.

  Byron

I

A glorious people vibrated again

   The lightning of the nations: Liberty

From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o’er Spain,

   Scattering contagious fire into the sky,

5Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,

         And, in the rapid plumes of song

         Clothed itself, sublime and strong;

As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,

   Hovering in verse o’er its accustomed prey;

10      Till from its station in the heaven of fame

   The Spirit’s whirlwind rapt it, and the ray

      Of the remotest sphere of living flame

Which paves the void was from behind it flung,

   As foam from a ship’s swiftness, when there came

15   A voice out of the deep: I will record the same.

II

The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:

   The burning stars of the abyss were hurled

Into the depths of heaven. The daedal earth,

   That island in the ocean of the world,

20Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air:

         But this divinest universe

         Was yet a chaos and a curse,

For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse,

   The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,

25      And of the birds, and of the watery forms,

   And there was war among them, and despair

      Within them, raging without truce or terms:

The bosom of their violated nurse

   Groan’d, for beasts warr’d on beasts, and worms on worms,

30   And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms.

III

Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied

   His generations under the pavilion

Of the Sun’s throne: palace and pyramid,

   Temple and prison, to many a swarming million,

35Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.

         This human living multitude

         Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,

For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude,

   Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves

40      Hung tyranny; beneath, sate deified

   The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;

      Into the shadow of her pinions wide,

Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood,

   Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,

45   Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.

IV

The nodding promontories, and blue isles,

   And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves

Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles

   Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted caves

50Prophetic echoes flung dim melody

         On the unapprehensive wild.

         The vine, the corn, the olive mild,

Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;

   And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,

55      Like the man’s thought dark in the infant’s brain,

   Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,

      Art’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein

Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child,

   Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain

60   Her lidless eyes for thee; when o’er the Aegean main

V

Athens arose: a city such as vision

   Builds from the purple crags and silver towers

Of battlemented cloud, as in derision

   Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors

65Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it;

         Its portals are inhabited

         By thunder-zoned winds, each head

Within its cloudy wings with sunfire garlanded,

   A divine work! Athens diviner yet

70      Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will

   Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;

      For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill

Peopled with forms that mock the eternal dead

   In marble immortality, that hill

75   Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.

VI

Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river

   Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay

Immoveably unquiet, and for ever

   It trembles, but it cannot pass away!

80The voices of its bards and sages thunder

         With an earth-awakening blast

         Through the caverns of the past;

Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:

   A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,

85      Which soars where Expectation never flew,

   Rending the veil of space and time asunder!

      One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;

One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast

   With life and love makes chaos ever new,

90   As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew.

VII

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,

   Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,*

She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest

   From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;

95And many a deed of terrible uprightness

         By thy sweet love was sanctified;

         And in thy smile, and by thy side,

Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.

   But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness,

100      And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne,

   Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,

      The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone

Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed

   Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone

105   Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.

VIII

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,

   Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,

Or utmost islet inaccessible,

   Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,

110Teaching the woods and waves, and desart rocks,

         And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn,

         To talk in echoes sad and stern,

Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?

   For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks

115      Of the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep.

   What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks

      Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,

When from its sea of death to kill and burn,

   The Galilean serpent forth did creep,

120   And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.

IX

A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou?

   And then the shadow of thy coming fell

On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow:

   And many a warrior-peopled citadel,

125Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,

         Arose in sacred Italy,

         Frowning o’er the tempestuous sea

Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;

   That multitudinous anarchy did sweep

130      And burst around their walls, like idle foam,

   Whilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep

      Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb

Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,

   With divine wand traced on our earthly home

135   Fit imagery to pave heaven’s everlasting dome.

X

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror

   Of the world’s wolves! thou bearer of the quiver

Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,

   As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever

140In the calm regions of the orient day!

         Luther caught thy wakening glance,

         Like lightning, from his leaden lance

Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance

   In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;

145         And England’s prophets hailed thee as their queen,

   In songs whose music cannot pass away,

      Though it must flow for ever: not unseen

Before the spirit-sighted countenance

   Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene

150   Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.

XI

The eager hours and unreluctant years

   As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood,

Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,

   Darkening each other with their multitude,

155And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation

         Answered Pity from her cave;

         Death grew pale within the grave,

And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!

   When like heaven’s sun girt by the exhalation

160      Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise,

   Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation

      Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies

At dreaming midnight o’er the western wave,

   Men started, staggering with a glad surprise,

165   Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.

XII

Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then,

   In ominous eclipse? a thousand years

Bred from the slime of deep oppression’s den,

   Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears,

170Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away;

         How like Bacchanals of blood

         Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood

Destruction’s sceptred slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood!

   When one, like them, but mightier far than they,

175      The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers

   Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,

      Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers

Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued,

   Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,

180   Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.

XIII

England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?

   Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder

Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold

   Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:

185O’er the lit waves every Aeolian isle

         From Pithecusa to Pelorus

         Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:

They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o’er us.

   Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile

190      And they dissolve; but Spain’s were links of steel,

   Till bit to dust by virtue’s keenest file.

      Twins of a single destiny! appeal

To the eternal years enthroned before us,

   In the dim West; impress as from a seal

195   All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal.

XIV

Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead,

   Till, like a standard from a watch-tower’s staff,

His soul may stream over the tyrant’s head;

   Thy victory shall be his epitaph,

200Wild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine,

         King-deluded Germany,

         His dead spirit lives in thee.

Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!

   And thou, lost Paradise of this divine

205      And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness!

   Thou island of eternity! thou shrine

      Where desolation clothed with loveliness

Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,

   Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress

210   The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.

XV

O, that the free would stamp the impious name

   Of KING into the dust! or write it there,

So that this blot upon the page of fame

   Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air

215Erases, and the flat sands close behind!

         Ye the oracle have heard:

         Lift the victory-flashing sword,

And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,

   Which weak itself as stubble, yet can bind

220      Into a mass, irrefragably firm,

   The axes and the rods which awe mankind;

      The sound has poison in it, ’tis the sperm

Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;

   Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,

225   To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.

XVI

O, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle

   Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,

That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle

   Into the hell from which it first was hurled,

230A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;

         Till human thoughts might kneel alone

         Each before the judgement-throne

Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown!

   O, that the words which make the thoughts obscure

235      From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew

   From a white lake blot heaven’s blue portraiture,

      Were stript of their thin masks and various hue

And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,

   Till in the nakedness of false and true

240   They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due.

XVII

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever

   Can be between the cradle and the grave

Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour!

   If on his own high will a willing slave,

245He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor.

         What if earth can clothe and feed

         Amplest millions at their need,

And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?

   Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

250      Diving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne,

   Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,

      And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion

Over all height and depth? if Life can breed

      New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan

255      Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one.

XVIII

Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave

   Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star

Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,

   Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car

260Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;

         Comes she not, and come ye not,

         Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life’s ill-apportioned lot?

   Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

265      Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?

   O, Liberty! if such could be thy name

      Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:

If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought

   By blood or tears, have not the wise and free

270   Wept tears, and blood like tears? The solemn harmony

XIX

Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing

   To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;

Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging

   Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,

275Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light

         On the heavy sounding plain,

         When the bolt has pierced its brain;

As summer clouds dissolve, unburdened of their rain;

   As a far taper fades with fading night,

280      As a brief insect dies with dying day,

   My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,

      Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away

Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,

   As waves which lately paved his watery way

285   Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.

To a Sky-Lark

   Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

         Bird thou never wert,

   That from Heaven, or near it,

         Pourest thy full heart

5In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

   Higher still and higher

         From the earth thou springest

   Like a cloud of fire;

         The blue deep thou wingest,

10And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

   In the golden lightning

         Of the sunken Sun,

   O’er which clouds are brightning,

         Thou dost float and run;

15Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

   The pale purple even

         Melts around thy flight;

   Like a star of Heaven

         In the broad daylight

20Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

   Keen as are the arrows

         Of that silver sphere,

   Whose intense lamp narrows

         In the white dawn clear,

25Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there.

   All the earth and air

         With thy voice is loud,

   As when Night is bare

         From one lonely cloud

30The moon rains out her beams—and Heaven is overflowed.

   What thou art we know not;

         What is most like thee?

   From rainbow clouds there flow not

         Drops so bright to see

35As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

   Like a Poet hidden

         In the light of thought,

   Singing hymns unbidden

         Till the world is wrought

40To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

   Like a high-born maiden

         In a palace-tower,

   Soothing her love-laden

         Soul in secret hour,

45With music sweet as love—which overflows her bower:

   Like a glow-worm golden

         In a dell of dew,

   Scattering unbeholden

         Its aerial hue

50Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

   Like a rose embowered

         In its own green leaves,

   By warm winds deflowered—

         Till the scent it gives

55Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

   Sound of vernal showers

         On the twinkling grass,

   Rain-awakened flowers,

         All that ever was

60Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass:

   Teach us, Sprite or Bird,

         What sweet thoughts are thine;

   I have never heard

         Praise of love or wine

65That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine:

   Chorus Hymeneal

         Or triumphal chaunt

   Matched with thine, would be all

         But an empty vaunt,

70A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

   What objects are the fountains

         Of thy happy strain?

   What fields or waves or mountains?

         What shapes of sky or plain?

75What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

   With thy clear keen joyance

         Languor cannot be:

   Shadow of annoyance

         Never came near thee:

80Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

   Waking or asleep,

         Thou of death must deem

   Things more true and deep

         Than we mortals dream,

85Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

   We look before and after

         And pine for what is not:

   Our sincerest laughter

         With some pain is fraught;

90Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

   Yet if we could scorn

         Hate and pride and fear;

   If we were things born

         Not to shed a tear,

95I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

   Better than all measures

         Of delightful sound,

   Better than all treasures

         That in books are found,

100Thy skill to poet were, thou Scorner of the ground!

   Teach me half the gladness

         That thy brain must know,

   Such harmonious madness

         From my lips would flow,

105The world should listen then—as I am listening now.

Letter to Maria Gisborne

The spider spreads her webs, whether she be

In poet’s tower, cellar or barn or tree;

The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves

His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;

5So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,

Sit spinning still round this decaying form,

From the fine threads of verse and subtle thought—

No net of words in garish colours wrought

To catch the idle buzzers of the day—

10But a soft cell, where when that fades away,

Memory may clothe in wings my living name

And feed it with the asphodels of fame,

Which in those hearts which most remember me

Grow, making love an immortality.

15Whoever should behold me now, I wist,

Would think I were a mighty mechanist,

Bent with sublime Archimedean art

To breathe a soul into the iron heart

Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,

20Which, by the force of figured spells might win

Its way over the sea, and sport therein;

For round the walls are hung dread engines, such

As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch

Ixion or the Titans:—or the quick

25Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic,

To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,

Or those in philanthropic council met,

Who thought to pay some interest for the debt

They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,

30By giving a faint foretaste of damnation

To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser and the rest

Who made our land an island of the blest,

When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire

On Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Empire—

35With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,

Which fishers found under the utmost crag

Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,

Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles

Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn

40When the exulting elements in scorn

Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay

Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,

As panthers sleep;— and other strange and dread

Magical forms the brick floor overspread—

45Proteus transformed to metal did not make

More figures, or more strange; nor did he take

Such shapes of unintelligible brass,

Or heap himself in such a horrid mass

Of tin and iron not to be understood;

50And forms of unimaginable wood

To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:

Great screws and cones, and wheels and grooved blocks,

The elements of what will stand the shocks

Of wave, and wind and time.—Upon the table

55More knacks and quips there be than I am able

To catalogize in this verse of mine:—

A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,

But quicksilver, that dew which the gnomes drink

When at their subterranean toil they swink,

60Pledging the daemons of the earthquake, who

Reply to them in lava—cry halloo!

And call out to the cities o’er their head,—

Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,

Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff

65Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.

This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within

The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,

In colour like the wake of light that stains

The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains

70The inmost shower of its white fire—the breeze

Is still—blue heaven smiles over the pale seas.

And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I

Yield to the impulse of an infancy

Outlasting manhood—I have made to float

75A rude idealism of a paper boat:

A hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know

The thing I mean and laugh at me—if so

He fears not I should do more mischief.—Next

Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,

80With steamboats, frigates and machinery quaint

Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.

Then comes a range of mathematical

Instruments, for plans nautical and statical;

A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass

85With ink in it, a china cup that was

What it will never be again, I think,

A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink

The liquor doctors rail at—and which I

Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die

90We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea,

And cry out heads or tails? where’er we be.

Near that a dusty paint box, some odd hooks,

A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books

Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,

95To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,

Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray

Of figures—disentangle them who may.

Baron de Tott’s memoirs beside them lie,

And some odd volumes of old chemistry.

100Near those a most inexplicable thing,

With lead in the middle—I’m conjecturing

How to make Henry understand—but no,

I’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,

This secret in the pregnant womb of time,

105Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.

And here like some weird Archimage sit I,

Plotting dark spells and devilish enginery,

The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind

Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind

110The gentle spirit of our meek reviews

Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,

Ruffling the ocean of their self-content—

I sit, and smile or sigh as is my bent,

But not for them—Libeccio rushes round

115With an inconstant and an idle sound,

I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke

Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak

Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;

The ripe corn under the undulating air

120Undulates like an ocean—and the vines

Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines—

The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill

The empty pauses of the blast—the hill

Looks hoary through the white electric rain—

125And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain

The interrupted thunder howls; above

One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of Love

On the unquiet world—while such things are,

How could one worth your friendship heed the war

130Of worms? the shriek of the world’s carrion jays,

Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?

You are not here … the quaint witch Memory sees

In vacant chairs your absent images,

And points where once you sat, and now should be

135But are not—I demand if ever we

Shall meet as then we met—and she replies,

Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;

‘I know the past alone—but summon home

My sister Hope,— she speaks of all to come.’

140But I, an old diviner, who know well

Every false verse of that sweet oracle,

Turned to the sad enchantress once again,

And sought a respite from my gentle pain,

In citing every passage o’er and o’er

145Of our communion—how on the sea-shore

We watched the ocean and the sky together

Under the roof of blue Italian weather;

How I ran home through last year’s thunderstorm

And felt the transverse lightning linger warm

150Upon my cheek—and how we often made

Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed

The frugal luxury of our country cheer,

As well it might, were it less firm and clear

Than ours must ever be;—and how we spun

155A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun

Of this familiar life, which seems to be

But is not,—or is but quaint mockery

Of all we would believe; or sadly blame

The jarring and inexplicable frame

160Of this wrong world;—and then anatomize

The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes

Were closed in distant years—or widely guess

The issue of the earth’s great business,

When we shall be as we no longer are—

165Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war

Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not—or how

You listened to some interrupted flow

Of visionary rhyme, in joy and pain

Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,

170With little skill perhaps—or how we sought

Those deepest wells of passion and of thought

Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,

Staining their sacred waters with our tears,

Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!

175Or how I, wisest lady! then indued

The language of a land which now is free,

And winged with thoughts of truth and majesty

Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,

And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,

180‘My name is Legion!’—that majestic tongue

Which Calderon over the desert flung

Of ages and of nations; and which found

An echo in our hearts, and with the sound

Startled Oblivion—thou wert then to me

185As is a nurse, when inarticulately

A child would talk as its grown parents do.

If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,

If hawks chase doves through the etherial way,

Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,

190Why should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast

Out of the forest of the pathless past

These recollected pleasures?

                                    You are now

In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow

At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore

195Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.

Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see

That which was Godwin,—greater none than he

Though fallen—and fallen on evil times—to stand

Among the spirits of our age and land,

200Before the dread tribunal of to come

The foremost—while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.

You will see Coleridge—he who sits obscure

In the exceeding lustre, and the pure

Intense irradiation of a mind,

205Which, with its own internal lightning blind,

Flags wearily through darkness and despair—

A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,

A hooded eagle among blinking owls.—

You will see Hunt—one of those happy souls

210Who are the salt of the earth, and without whom

This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;

Who is, what others seem—his room no doubt

Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout,

With graceful flowers tastefully placed about,

215And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,

And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung,

The gifts of the most learn’d among some dozens

Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.

And there is he with his eternal puns,

220Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns

Thundering for money at a poet’s door;

Alas! it is no use to say, ‘I’m poor!’

Or oft in graver mood, when he will look

Things wiser than were ever read in book,

225Except in Shakespeare’s wisest tenderness.

You will see Hogg—and I cannot express

His virtues, though I know that they are great,

Because he locks, then barricades the gate

Within which they inhabit;—of his wit

230And wisdom, you’ll cry out when you are bit.

He is a pearl within an oyster shell,

One of the richest of the deep. And there

Is English Peacock with his mountain fair,

Turned into a Flamingo, that shy bird

235That gleams i’ the Indian air—have you not heard

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,

His best friends hear no more of him?—but you

Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,

With the milk-white Snowdonian antelope

240Matched with this cameleopard.—His fine wit

Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;

A strain too learned for a shallow age,

Too wise for selfish bigots;—let his page

Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,

245Fold itself up for the serener clime

Of years to come, and find its recompense

In that just expectation.—Wit and sense,

Virtue and human knowledge, all that might

Make this dull world a business of delight,

250Are all combined in Horace Smith—and these,

With some exceptions which I need not tease

Your patience by descanting on,—are all

You and I know in London.

                                    I recall

My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.

255As water does a sponge, so the moonlight

Fills the void, hollow, universal air—

What see you?—unpavilioned heaven is fair

Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,

Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan

260Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep,

Or whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep,

Piloted by the many-wandering blast,

And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:—

All this is beautiful in every land.—

265But what see you beside?—a shabby stand

Of hackney-coaches—a brick house or wall

Fencing some lordly court, white with the scrawl

Of our unhappy politics; or worse—

A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse

270Mixed with the watchman’s, partner of her trade,

You must accept in place of serenade—

Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring

To Henry some unutterable thing.

I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit

275Built round dark caverns, even to the root

Of the living stems that feed them—in whose bowers

There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;

Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn

Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne

280In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance,

Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance

Pale in the open moonshine, but each one

Under the dark trees seems a little sun,

A meteor tamed, a fixed star gone astray

285From the silver regions of the Milky Way;—

Afar the contadino’s song is heard,

Rude, but made sweet by distance—and a bird

Which cannot be the nightingale, and yet

I know none else that sings so sweet as it

290At this late hour—and then all is still—

Now Italy or London, which you will!

Next winter you must pass with me; I’ll have

My house by that time turned into a grave

Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,

295And all the dreams which our tormentors are.

Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock and Smith were there,

With everything belonging to them fair!—

We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;

And ask one week to make another week

300As like his father as I’m unlike mine,

Which is not his fault, as you may divine.

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,

Yet let’s be merry: we’ll have tea and toast,

Custards for supper, and an endless host

305Of syllabubs and jellies and mince pies,

And other such lady-like luxuries—

Feasting on which we will philosophize!

And we’ll have fires out of the Grand Duke’s wood

To thaw the six weeks’ winter in our blood.

310And then we’ll talk—what shall we talk about?

Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout

Of thought-entangled descant;—as to nerves,

With cones and parallelograms and curves

I’ve sworn to strangle them if once they dare

315To bother me—when you are with me there,

And they shall never more sip laudanum

From Helicon or Himeros;*—well, come,

And in despite of God and of the devil,

We’ll make our friendly philosophic revel

320Outlast the leafless time—till buds and flowers

Warn the obscure inevitable hours

Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew—

‘Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.’

To —– [the Lord Chancellor]

Thy country’s curse is on thee, darkest Crest

   Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm

Which rends our mother’s bosom!—Priestly Pest!

   Masked Resurrection of a buried form!

5Thy country’s curse is on thee—Justice sold,

   Truth trampled, Nature’s landmarks overthrown,

And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold

   Plead, loud as thunder, at destruction’s throne.

And whilst that sure, slow Fate which ever stands

10   Watching the beck of Mutability

Delays to execute her high commands

   And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee—

O let a father’s curse be on thy soul

   And let a daughter’s hope be on thy tomb;

15Be both, on thy grey head, a leaden cowl

   To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom.

I curse thee! By a parent’s outraged love,—

   By hopes long cherished and too lately lost,—

By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove,

20   By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed;

By those infantine smiles of happy light

   Which were a fire within a stranger’s hearth

Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night

   Hiding the promise of a lovely birth—

25By those unpractised accents of young speech

   Which he who is a father thought to frame

To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach—

   Thou strike the lyre of mind!—oh grief and shame!

By all the happy see in children’s growth,

30   That undeveloped flower of budding years—

Sweetness and sadness interwoven both,

   Source of the sweetest hopes, the saddest fears—

By all the days under a hireling’s care

   Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness—

35Oh wretched ye, if any ever were—

   Sadder than orphans—why not fatherless?

By the false cant which on their innocent lips

   Must hang like poison on an opening bloom,

By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse

40   Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb—

By thy complicity with lust and hate:

   Thy thirst for tears—thy hunger after gold—

The ready frauds which ever on thee wait—

   The servile arts in which thou hast grown old.—

45By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile—

   By all the snares and nets of thy black den;

And—(for thou canst outweep the crocodile)—

   By thy false tears—those millstones braining men—

By all the hate which checks a father’s love,

50   By all the scorn which kills a father’s care,

By those most impious hands which dared remove

   Nature’s high bounds—by thee—and by despair—

Yes—the despair which bids a father groan

   And cry—‘My children are no longer mine—

55The blood within their veins may be mine own

   But, Tyrant, their polluted souls are thine’;—

I curse thee, though I hate thee not.— O, slave!

   If thou couldst quench that earth-consuming Hell

Of which thou art a daemon, on thy grave

60   This curse should be a blessing—Fare thee well!

THE WITCH OF ATLAS

To Mary

(on her objecting to the following poem, upon the score of its containing no human interest)

1

How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten

   (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,

That you condemn these verses I have written

   Because they tell no story, false or true?

5What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,

   May it not leap and play as grown cats do,

Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,

Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

2

What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,

10   The youngest of inconstant April’s minions,

Because it cannot climb the purest sky

   Where the swan sings amid the sun’s dominions?

Not thine. Thou knowest ’tis its doom to die

   When day shall hide within her twilight pinions,

15The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,

Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

3

To thy fair feet a winged Vision came

   Whose date should have been longer than a day,

And o’er thy head did beat its wings for fame,

20   And in thy sight its fading plumes display;

The watery bow burned in the evening flame,

   But the shower fell, the swift sun went his way—

And that is dead.—O, let me not believe

That any thing of mine is fit to live!

4

25Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years

   Considering and retouching Peter Bell;

Watering his laurels with the killing tears

   Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to hell

Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres

30   Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well

May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil

The over-busy gardener’s blundering toil.

5

My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature

   As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise

35Clothes for our grandsons—but she matches Peter,

   Though he took nineteen years, and she three days

In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre

   She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,

Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress

40Like King Lear’s ‘looped and windowed raggedness’.

6

If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow

   Scorched by Hell’s hyperequatorial climate

Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow,

   A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;

45In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.

   If you unveil my Witch, no Priest or Primate

Can shrive you of that sin,—if sin there be

In love, when it becomes idolatry.

The Witch of Atlas

1

Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth

50   Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,

Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth

   All those bright natures which adorned its prime,

And left us nothing to believe in, worth

   The pains of putting into learned rhyme,

55A lady-witch there lived on Atlas’ mountain

Within a cavern by a secret fountain.

2

Her mother was one of the Atlantides:

   The all-beholding Sun had ne’er beholden

In his wide voyage o’er continents and seas

60   So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden

In the warm shadow of her loveliness;—

   He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden

The chamber of grey rock in which she lay—

She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

3

65’Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,

   And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,

Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,

   Round the red west when the sun dies in it:

And then into a meteor, such as caper

70   On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:

Then into one of those mysterious stars

Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.

4

Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent

   Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden

75With that bright sign the billows to indent

   The sea-deserted sand—like children chidden,

At her command they ever came and went—

   Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden

Took shape and motion: with the living form

80Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.

5

A lovely lady garmented in light

   From her own beauty—deep her eyes, as are

Two openings of unfathomable night

   Seen through a temple’s cloven roof—her hair

85Dark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight

   Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,

And her low voice was heard like love, and drew

All living things towards this wonder new.

6

And first the spotted cameleopard came,

90   And then the wise and fearless elephant;

Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame

   Of his own volumes intervolved;—all gaunt

And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.

   They drank before her at her sacred fount;

95And every beast of beating heart grew bold,

Such gentleness and power even to behold.

7

The brinded lioness led forth her young,

   That she might teach them how they should forego

Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung

100   His sinews at her feet, and sought to know

With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue

   How he might be as gentle as the doe.

The magic circle of her voice and eyes

All savage natures did imparadise.

8

105And old Silenus, shaking a green stick

   Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew

Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick

   Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:

And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,

110   Teazing the God to sing them something new

Till in this cave they found the lady lone,

Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.

9

And Universal Pan, ’tis said, was there,

   And though none saw him,—through the adamant

115Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,

   And through those living spirits, like a want

He past out of his everlasting lair

   Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,

And felt that wondrous lady all alone,—

120And she felt him upon her emerald throne.

10

And every nymph of stream and spreading tree

   And every shepherdess of Ocean’s flocks

Who drives her white waves over the green sea;

   And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks,

125And quaint Priapus with his company

   All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks

Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;—

Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.

11

The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came

130   And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—

Their spirits shook within them, as a flame

   Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:

Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,

   Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt

135Wet clefts,—and lumps neither alive nor dead,

Dog-headed, bosom-eyed and bird-footed.

12

For she was beautiful—her beauty made

   The bright world dim, and every thing beside

Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:

140   No thought of living spirit could abide—

Which to her looks had ever been betrayed—

   On any object in the world so wide,

On any hope within the circling skies,

But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.

13

145Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle

   And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three

Long lines of light such as the dawn may kindle

   The clouds and waves and mountains with, and she

As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle

150   In the belated moon, wound skilfully;

And with these threads a subtle veil she wove—

A shadow for the splendour of her love.

14

The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling

   Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,

155Which had the power all spirits of compelling,

   Folded in cells of chrystal silence there;

Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling

   Will never die—yet ere we are aware,

The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,

160And the regret they leave remains alone.

15

And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,

   Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis;

Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint

   With the soft burthen of intensest bliss

165It was its work to bear to many a saint

   Whose heart adores that shrine which holiest is,

Even Love’s—and others white, green, grey and black,

And of all shapes—and each was at her beck.

16

And odours in a kind of aviary

170   Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,

Clipt in a floating net a love-sick Fairy

   Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept—

As bats at the wired window of a dairy,

   They beat their vans; and each was an adept,

175When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,

To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.

17

And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might

   Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,

And change eternal death into a night

180   Of glorious dreams—or if eyes needs must weep,

Could make their tears all wonder and delight,

   She in her chrystal vials did closely keep:

If men could drink of those clear vials, ’tis said

The living were not envied of the dead.

18

185Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,

   The works of some Saturnian Archimage,

Which taught the expiations at whose price

   Men from the Gods might win that happy age

Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;

190   And which might quench the earth-consuming rage

Of gold and blood—till men should live and move

Harmonious as the sacred stars above.

19

And how all things that seem untameable,

   Not to be checked and not to be confined,

195Obey the spells of wisdom’s wizard skill;

   Time, Earth and Fire—the Ocean and the Wind

And all their shapes—and man’s imperial will;

   And other scrolls whose writings did unbind

The inmost lore of Love—let the prophane

200Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.

20

And wondrous works of substances unknown,

   To which the enchantment of her father’s power

Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,

   Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;

205Carved lamps and chalices and phials which shone

   In their own golden beams—each like a flower

Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light

Under a cypress in a starless night.

21

At first she lived alone in this wild home,

210   And her own thoughts were each a minister,

Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam,

   Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,

To work whatever purposes might come

   Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire

215Had girt them with, whether to fly or run,

Through all the regions which he shines upon.

22

The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,

   Oreads and Naiads with long weedy locks,

Offered to do her bidding through the seas,

220   Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks,

And far beneath the matted roots of trees

   And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks,

So they might live forever in the light

Of her sweet presence—each a satellite.

23

225‘This may not be,’ the wizard maid replied;

   ‘The fountains where the Naiades bedew

Their shining hair at length are drained and dried;

   The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew

Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;

230   The boundless ocean, like a drop of dew

Will be consumed—the stubborn centre must

Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust—

24

‘And ye with them will perish one by one:

   If I must sigh to think that this shall be,

235If I must weep when the surviving Sun

   Shall smile on your decay—Oh, ask not me

To love you till your little race is run;

   I cannot die as ye must—over me

Your leaves shall glance—the streams in which ye dwell

240Shall be my paths henceforth, and so, farewell!’

25

She spoke and wept—the dark and azure well

   Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,

And every little circlet where they fell

   Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres

245And intertangled lines of light—a knell

   Of sobbing voices came upon her ears

From those departing Forms, o’er the serene

Of the white streams and of the forest green.

26

All day the wizard lady sate aloof

250   Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity

Under the cavern’s fountain-lighted roof;

   Or broidering the pictured poesy

Of some high tale upon her growing woof,

   Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye

255In hues outshining heaven—and ever she

Added some grace to the wrought poesy.

27

While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece

   Of sandal wood, rare gums and cinnamon;

Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is—

260   Each flame of it is as a precious stone

Dissolved in ever moving light, and this

   Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.

The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand

She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.

28

265This lady never slept, but lay in trance

   All night within the fountain—as in sleep.

Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty’s glance:

   Through the green splendour of the water deep

She saw the constellations reel and dance

270   Like fire-flies—and withal did ever keep

The tenour of her contemplations calm,

With open eyes, closed feet and folded palm.

29

And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended

   From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,

275She passed at dewfall to a space extended,

   Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel

Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended

   There yawned an inextinguishable well

Of crimson fire, full even to the brim

280And overflowing all the margin trim.

30

Within the which she lay when the fierce war

   Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor

In many a mimic moon and bearded star,

   O’er woods and lawns—the serpent heard it flicker

285In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar—

   And when the windless snow descended thicker

Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came

Melt on the surface of the level flame.

31

She had a Boat which some say Vulcan wrought

290   For Venus, as the chariot of her star;

But it was found too feeble to be fraught

   With all the ardours in that sphere which are,

And so she sold it, and Apollo bought

   And gave it to this daughter: from a car

295Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat

Which ever upon mortal stream did float.

32

And others say, that when but three hours old

   The first-born Love out of his cradle leapt

And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,

300   And like an horticultural adept,

Stole a strange seed, and wrapt it up in mould

   And sowed it in his mother’s star, and kept

Watering it all the summer with sweet dew,

And with his wings fanning it as it grew.

33

305The plant grew strong and green—the snowy flower

   Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began

To turn the light and dew by inward power

   To its own substance; woven tracery ran

Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o’er

310   The solid rind, like a leaf’s veined fan—

Of which Love scooped this boat—and with soft motion

Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.

34

This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit

   A living spirit within all its frame,

315Breathing the soul of swiftness into it.

   Couched on the fountain like a panther tame,

One of the twain at Evan’s feet that sit—

   Or as on Vesta’s sceptre a swift flame—

Or on blind Homer’s heart a winged thought—

320In joyous expectation lay the boat.

35

Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow

   Together, tempering the repugnant mass

With liquid love—all things together grow

   Through which the harmony of love can pass;

325And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow—

   A living Image, which did far surpass

In beauty that bright shape of vital stone

Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.

36

A sexless thing it was, and in its growth

330      It seemed to have developed no defect

Of either sex, yet all the grace of both—

   In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;

The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,

   The countenance was such as might select

335Some artist that his skill should never die,

Imaging forth such perfect purity.

37

From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,

   Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,

Tipt with the speed of liquid lightenings—

340      Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere.

She led her creature to the boiling springs

   Where the light boat was moored, and said: ‘Sit here!’

And pointed to the prow, and took her seat

Beside the rudder with opposing feet.

38

345And down the streams which clove those mountains vast,

   Around their inland islets, and amid

The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast

   Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid

In melancholy gloom, the pinnace past;

350      By many a star-surrounded pyramid

Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,

And caverns yawning round unfathomably.

39

The silver noon into that winding dell

   With slanted gleam athwart the forest-tops

355Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;

   A green and glowing light, like that which drops

From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell

   When earth over her face night’s mantle wraps;

Between the severed mountains lay on high

360Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.

40

And ever as she went, the Image lay

   With folded wings and unawakened eyes;

And o’er its gentle countenance did play

   The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,

365Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,

   And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs

Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,

They had aroused from that full heart and brain.

41

And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud

370   Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:

Now lingering on the pools, in which abode

   The calm and darkness of the deep content

In which they paused; now o’er the shallow road

   Of white and dancing waters all besprent

375With sand and polished pebbles—mortal boat

In such a shallow rapid could not float.

42

And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver

   Their snow-like waters into golden air,

Or under chasms unfathomable ever

380   Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear

A subterranean portal for the river,

   It fled—the circling sunbows did upbear

Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,

Lighting it far upon its lampless way.

43

385And when the wizard lady would ascend

   The labyrinths of some many winding vale

Which to the inmost mountain upward tend—

   She called ‘Hermaphroditus!’ and the pale

And heavy hue which slumber could extend

390   Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale

A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,

Into the darkness of the stream did pass.

44

And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,

   With stars of fire spotting the stream below;

395And from above into the Sun’s dominions

   Flinging a glory, like the golden glow

In which Spring clothes her emerald-winged minions,

   All interwoven with fine feathery snow

And moonlight splendour of intensest rime

400With which frost paints the pines in winter-time.

45

And then it winnowed the Elysian air

   Which ever hung about that lady bright,

With its aetherial vans—and speeding there

   Like a star up the torrent of the night

405Or a swift eagle in the morning glare

   Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,

The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,

Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.

46

The water flashed like sunlight by the prow

410   Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;

The still air seemed as if its waves did flow

   In tempest down the mountains—loosely driven

The lady’s radiant hair streamed to and fro:

   Beneath, the billows having vainly striven

415Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel

The swift and steady motion of the keel.

47

Or, when the weary moon was in the wane

   Or in the noon of interlunar night,

The lady-witch in visions could not chain

420   Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light

Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain

   Its storm-outspeeding wings, th’ Hermaphrodite;

She to the Austral waters took her way

Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana,—

48

425Where like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,

   Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake,

With the Antarctic constellations paven,

   Canopus and his crew, lay th’ Austral lake—

There she would build herself a windless haven

430   Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make

The bastions of the storm, when through the sky

The spirits of the tempest thundered by.

49

A haven beneath whose translucent floor

   The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,

435And around which, the solid vapours hoar,

   Based on the level waters, to the sky

Lifted their dreadful crags; and like a shore

   Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly

Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey

440And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.

50

And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash

   Of the wind’s scourge, foamed like a wounded thing,

And the incessant hail with stony clash

   Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing

445Of the roused cormorant in the lightning-flash

   Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering

Fragment of inky thunder-smoke—this haven

Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,—

51

On which that lady played her many pranks,

450   Circling the image of a shooting star,

Even as a tyger on Hydaspes’ banks

   Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,

In her light boat; and many quips and cranks

   She played upon the water, till the car

455Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,

To journey from the misty east began.

52

And then she called out of the hollow turrets

   Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,

The armies of her ministering Spirits—

460   In mighty legions million after million

They came, each troop emblazoning its merits

   On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion

Of the intertexture of the atmosphere

They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.

53

465They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen

   Of woven exhalations, underlaid

With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen

   A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid

With crimson silk—cressets from the serene

470   Hung there, and on the water for her tread

A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,

Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.

54

And on a throne o’erlaid with starlight, caught

   Upon those wandering isles of aëry dew,

475Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,

   She sate, and heard all that had happened new

Between the earth and moon since they had brought

   The last intelligence—and now she grew

Pale as that moon lost in the watery night—

480And now she wept and now she laughed outright.

55

These were tame pleasures.—She would often climb

   The steepest ladder of the crudded rack

Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,

   And like Arion on the dolphin’s back

485Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft time

   Following the serpent lightning’s winding track,

She ran upon the platforms of the wind

And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.

56

And sometimes to those streams of upper air

490   Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round

She would ascend, and win the spirits there

   To let her join their chorus. Mortals found

That on those days the sky was calm and fair,

   And mystic snatches of harmonious sound

495Wandered upon the earth where’er she past,

And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.

57

But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep

   To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads

Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep

500   Of utmost Axumè, until he spreads,

Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,

   His waters on the plain: and crested heads

Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,

And many a vapour-belted pyramid.

58

505By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes,

   Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors,

Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes

   Or charioteering ghastly alligators

Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes

510   Of those huge forms—within the brazen doors

Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,

Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.

59

And where within the surface of the river

   The shadows of the massy temples lie

515And never are erased—but tremble ever

   Like things which every cloud can doom to die,

Through lotus-pav’n canals, and wheresoever

   The works of man pierced that serenest sky

With tombs, and towers, and fanes, ’twas her delight

520To wander in the shadow of the night.

60

With motion like the spirit of that wind

   Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet

Past through the peopled haunts of human kind,

   Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,

525Through fane and palace-court and labyrinth mined

   With many a dark and subterranean street

Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep

She past, observing mortals in their sleep.

61

A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see

530   Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.

Here lay two sister-twins in infancy;

   There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;

Within, two lovers linked innocently

   In their loose locks which over both did creep

535Like ivy from one stem;—and there lay calm

Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.

62

But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,

   Not to be mirrored in a holy song—

Distortions foul of supernatural awe,

540   And pale imaginings of visioned wrong,

And all the code of custom’s lawless law

   Written upon the brows of old and young:

‘This,’ said the wizard maiden, ‘is the strife

Which stirs the liquid surface of man’s life.’

63

545And little did the sight disturb her soul—

   We, the weak mariners of that wide lake

Where’er its shores extend or billows roll,

   Our course unpiloted and starless make

O’er its wild surface to an unknown goal—

550   But she in the calm depths her way could take

Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide

Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.

64

And she saw princes couched under the glow

   Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court

555In dormitories ranged, row after row,

   She saw the priests asleep—all of one sort,

For all were educated to be so.—

   The peasants in their huts, and in the port

The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,

560And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.

65

And all the forms in which those spirits lay

   Were to her sight like the diaphanous

Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array

   Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us

565Only their scorn of all concealment: they

   Move in the light of their own beauty thus.

But these and all now lay with sleep upon them

And little thought a Witch was looking on them.

66

She all those human figures breathing there

570   Beheld as living spirits—to her eyes

The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,

   And often through a rude and worn disguise

She saw the inner form most bright and fair—

   And then, she had a charm of strange device,

575Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone,

Could make that spirit mingle with her own.

67

Alas, Aurora! what wouldst thou have given

   For such a charm, when Tithon became grey?

Or how much, Venus, of thy silver Heaven

580   Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina

Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven

   Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,

To any witch who would have taught you it?

The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

68

585’Tis said in after times her spirit free

   Knew what love was, and felt itself alone—

But holy Dian could not chaster be

   Before she stooped to kiss Endymion

Than now this lady—like a sexless bee

590   Tasting all blossoms and confined to none—

Among those mortal forms the wizard-maiden

Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.

69

To those she saw most beautiful, she gave

   Strange panacea in a chrystal bowl.

595They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,

   And lived thenceforward as if some controul

Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave

   Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,

Was as a green and overarching bower

600Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

70

For on the night that they were buried, she

   Restored the embalmer’s ruining, and shook

The light out of the funeral lamps, to be

   A mimic day within that deathy nook;

605And she unwound the woven imagery

   Of second childhood’s swaddling bands and took

The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche

And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

71

And there the body lay, age after age,

610   Mute, breathing, beating, warm and undecaying

Like one asleep in a green hermitage

   With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing

And living in its dreams beyond the rage

   Of death or life; while they were still arraying

615In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind

And fleeting generations of mankind.

72

And she would write strange dreams upon the brain

   Of those who were less beautiful, and make

All harsh and crooked purposes more vain

620   Than in the desart is the serpent’s wake

Which the sand covers—all his evil gain

   The miser in such dreams would rise and shake

Into a beggar’s lap;—the lying scribe

Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

73

625The priests would write an explanation full,

   Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,

How the god Apis really was a bull

   And nothing more; and bid the herald stick

The same against the temple doors, and pull

630   The old cant down; they licensed all to speak

Whate’er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,

By pastoral letters to each diocese.

74

The king would dress an ape up in his crown

   And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,

635And on the right hand of the sunlike throne

   Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat

The chatterings of the monkey.—Every one

   Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet

Of their great Emperor when the morning came,

640And kissed—alas, how many kiss the same!

75

The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and

   Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;

Round the red anvils you might see them stand

   Like Cyclopses in Vulcan’s sooty abysm,

645Beating their swords to ploughshares;—in a band

   The jailors sent those of the liberal schism

Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,

To the annoyance of king Amasis.

76

And timid lovers who had been so coy

650   They hardly knew whether they loved or not,

Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy

   To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;

And when next day the maiden and the boy

   Met one another, both, like sinners caught,

655Blushed at the thing which each believed was done

Only in fancy—till the tenth moon shone;

77

And then the Witch would let them take no ill:

   Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,

The Witch found one,—and so they took their fill

660   Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.

Friends who by practice of some envious skill,

   Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from mind!

She did unite again with visions clear

Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

78

665These were the pranks she played among the cities

   Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites

And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties

   To do her will, and shew their subtle slights,

I will declare another time; for it is

670   A tale more fit for the weird winter nights

Than for these garish summer days, when we

Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

Sonnet: Political Greatness

Nor happiness, nor majesty nor fame,

Nor peace nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts

Shepherd those herds whom Tyranny makes tame:

Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts;

5History is but the shadow of their shame;

Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts

As to oblivion their blind millions fleet

Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery

Of their own likeness. What are numbers, knit

10By force or custom? Man, who man would be,

Must rule the empire of himself; in it

Must be supreme, establishing his throne

On vanquished will; quelling the anarchy

Of hopes and fears; being himself alone.

Sonnet (‘Ye hasten to the grave!’)

Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,

Ye restless thoughts, and busy purposes

Of the idle brain, which the world’s livery wear?

O thou quick Heart which pantest to possess

5All that pale Expectation feigneth fair!

Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess

Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,

And all, that never yet was known, wouldst know;

O whither hasten ye, that thus ye press

10With such swift feet life’s green and pleasant path

Seeking alike from happiness and woe

A refuge in the cavern of grey death?

O Heart and Mind and Thoughts, what thing do you

Hope to inherit in the grave below?

The Fugitives

1

The waters are flashing—

The white hail is dashing—

The lightnings are glancing—

The hoar spray is dancing—

5         Away!—

The whirlwind is rolling—

The thunder is tolling—

The forest is swinging—

The minster bells ringing—

10         Come away!

The Earth is like Ocean

Wreck-strewn and in motion:

Bird, beast, man and worm

Have crept out of the storm—

15         Come away!

2

‘Our boat has one sail—

And the helmsman is pale—

A bold pilot I trow

Who should follow us now,’—

20         Shouted he.—

And she cried ‘Ply the oar!

Put off gaily from shore’—

As she spoke, bolts of death

Mixed with hail, specked their path

25         O’er the sea.

And from isle, tower and rock

The blue beacon-cloud broke

And though dumb in the blast,

The red cannon flashed fast

30         From the lee.

3

And, fear’st thou, and fear’st thou?

And, see’st thou, and hear’st thou?

And, drive we not free

O’er the terrible Sea,

35         I and thou?

One boat-cloak doth cover

The loved and the lover—

Their blood beats one measure,

They murmur proud pleasure

40         Soft and low;

While around, the lashed Ocean,

Like mountains in motion,

Is withdrawn and uplifted,

Sunk, shattered and shifted

45         To and fro.

4

In the court of the fortress

Beside the pale portress,

Like a bloodhound well beaten,

The bridegroom stands, eaten

50         By shame.

On the topmost watch-turret,

As a death-boding spirit,

Stands the grey tyrant Father—

To his voice the mad weather

55         Seems tame;

And with Curses as wild

As e’re clung to a child

He devotes to the blast

The best, loveliest and last

60         Of his name.

Memory (‘Rose leaves, when the rose is dead’)

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved’s bed—

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on …

5Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory.—

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Dirge for the Year

Orphan hours, the year is dead,

   Come and sigh, come and weep!

Merry hours smile instead,

   For the year is but asleep;

5See it smiles as it is sleeping,

Mocking your untimely weeping.

As an Earthquake rocks a corse

   In its coffin in the clay,

So white Winter, that rough Nurse,

10   Rocks the death-cold year today!

Solemn hours, wail aloud

For your mother in her shroud.

As the wild air stirs and sways

   The tree-swung cradle of a child,

15So the breath of these rude days

   Rocks the year—be calm and mild,

Trembling hours, she will arise

With new love within her eyes …

January grey is here

20   Like a sexton by her grave—

February bears the bier—

   March with grief doth howl and rave—

And April weeps—

EPIPSYCHIDION

Verses Addressed to the Noble and Unfortunate Lady Emilia V——, Now Imprisoned in the Convent of —–

L’anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nel infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.

HER OWN WORDS.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Writer of the following Lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that, gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.

The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page is almost a literal translation from Dante’s famous Canzone

Voi, ch’intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, &c.

The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity.

S.

My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few

Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,

Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;

Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring

Thee to base company, (as chance may do),

Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,

I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,

My last delight! tell them that they are dull,

And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

Epipsychidion

Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,

Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,

In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee

These votive wreaths of withered memory.

5   Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,

Pourest such music, that it might assuage

The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,

Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;

This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale

10Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!

But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,

And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.

   High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever

Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,

15’Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed

It over-soared this low and worldly shade,

Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast

Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!

I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,

20Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.

   Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,

Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman

All that is insupportable in thee

Of light, and love, and immortality!

25Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!

Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!

Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form

Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!

Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!

30Thou Harmony of Nature’s art! Thou Mirror

In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,

All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!

Aye, even the dim words which obscure thee now

Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;

35I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song

All of its much mortality and wrong,

With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew

From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,

Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:

40Then smile on it, so that it may not die.

   I never thought before my death to see

Youth’s vision thus made perfect. Emily,

I love thee; though the world by no thin name

Will hide that love, from its unvalued shame.

45Would we two had been twins of the same mother!

Or, that the name my heart lent to another

Could be a sister’s bond for her and thee,

Blending two beams of one eternity!

Yet were one lawful and the other true,

50These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due,

How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!

I am not thine: I am a part of thee.

   Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings;

Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,

55Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style,

All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,

A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless?

A well of sealed and secret happiness,

Whose waters like blithe light and music are,

60Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star

Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone?

A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone

Amid rude voices? a beloved light?

A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?

65A lute, which those whom love has taught to play

Make music on, to soothe the roughest day

And lull fond grief asleep? a buried treasure?

A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?

A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?—I measure

70The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,

And find—alas! mine own infirmity.

   She met me, Stranger, upon life’s rough way,

And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,

Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,

75Led into light, life, peace. An antelope,

In the suspended impulse of its lightness,

Were less ethereally light: the brightness

Of her divinest presence trembles through

Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew

80Embodied in the windless Heaven of June

Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon

Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:

And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full

Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,

85Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops

Of planetary music heard in trance.

In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,

The sun-beams of those wells which ever leap

Under the lightnings of the soul—too deep

90For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.

The glory of her being, issuing thence,

Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade

Of unentangled intermixture, made

By Love, of light and motion: one intense

95Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence,

Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,

Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing

With the unintermitted blood, which there

Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air

100The crimson pulse of living morning quiver),

Continuously prolonged, and ending never,

Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled

Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world;

Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.

105Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress,

And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress

The air of her own speed has disentwined,

The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;

And in the soul a wild odour is felt,

110Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt

Into the bosom of a frozen bud.—

See where she stands! a mortal shape indued

With love and life and light and deity,

And motion which may change but cannot die;

115An image of some bright Eternity;

A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour

Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender

Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love

Under whose motions life’s dull billows move;

120A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning;

A Vision like incarnate April, warning,

With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy

Into his summer grave.

                              Ah, woe is me!

What have I dared? where am I lifted? how

125Shall I descend, and perish not? I know

That Love makes all things equal: I have heard

By mine own heart this joyous truth averred:

The spirit of the worm beneath the sod

In love and worship, blends itself with God.

130   Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate

Whose course has been so starless! O too late

Beloved! O too soon adored, by me!

For in the fields of immortality

My spirit should at first have worshipped thine,

135A divine presence in a place divine;

Or should have moved beside it on this earth,

A shadow of that substance, from its birth;

But not as now:—I love thee; yes, I feel

That on the fountain of my heart a seal

140Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright

For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight.

We—are we not formed, as notes of music are,

For one another, though dissimilar;

Such difference without discord, as can make

145Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake

As trembling leaves in a continuous air?

   Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare

Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wreckt.

I never was attached to that great sect,

150Whose doctrine is, that each one should select

Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,

And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend

To cold oblivion, though it is in the code

Of modern morals, and the beaten road

155Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,

Who travel to their home among the dead

By the broad highway of the world, and so

With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,

The dreariest and the longest journey go.

160   True Love in this differs from gold and clay,

That to divide is not to take away.

Love is like understanding, that grows bright,

Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light,

Imagination! which from earth and sky,

165And from the depths of human phantasy,

As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills

The Universe with glorious beams, and kills

Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow

Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow

170The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,

The life that wears, the spirit that creates

One object, and one form, and builds thereby

A sepulchre for its eternity.

   Mind from its object differs most in this:

175Evil from good; misery from happiness;

The baser from the nobler; the impure

And frail, from what is clear and must endure.

If you divide suffering and dross, you may

Diminish till it is consumed away;

180If you divide pleasure and love and thought,

Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not

How much, while any yet remains unshared,

Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:

This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw

185The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law

By which those live, to whom this world of life

Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife

Tills for the promise of a later birth

The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

190   There was a Being whom my spirit oft

Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,

In the clear golden prime of my youth’s dawn,

Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,

Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves

195Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves

Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor

Paved her light steps;—on an imagined shore,

Under the grey beak of some promontory

She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,

200That I beheld her not. In solitudes

Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,

And from the fountains, and the odours deep

Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep

Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,

205Breathed but of her to the enamoured air;

And from the breezes whether low or loud,

And from the rain of every passing cloud,

And from the singing of the summer-birds,

And from all sounds, all silence. In the words

210Of antique verse and high romance,—in form,

Sound, colour—in whatever checks that Storm

Which with the shattered present chokes the past;

And in that best philosophy, whose taste

Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom

215As glorious as a fiery martyrdom;

Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.—

   Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth

I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,

And towards the loadstar of my one desire,

220I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight

Is as a dead leaf’s in the owlet light,

When it would seek in Hesper’s setting sphere

A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,

As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.—

225But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame,

Past, like a God throned on a winged planet,

Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,

Into the dreary cone of our life’s shade;

And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,

230I would have followed, though the grave between

Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:

When a voice said:—‘O Thou of hearts the weakest,

The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.’

Then I—‘where?’—the world’s echo answered ‘where!’

235And in that silence, and in my despair,

I questioned every tongueless wind that flew

Over my tower of mourning, if it knew

Whither ’twas fled, this soul out of my soul;

And murmured names and spells which have controul

240Over the sightless tyrants of our fate;

But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate

The night which closed on her; nor uncreate

That world within this Chaos, mine and me,

Of which she was the veiled Divinity,

245The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:

And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear

And every gentle passion sick to death,

Feeding my course with expectation’s breath,

Into the wintry forest of our life;

250And struggling through its error with vain strife,

And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,

And half bewildered by new forms, I past,

Seeking among those untaught foresters

If I could find one form resembling hers,

255In which she might have masked herself from me.

There,—One, whose voice was venomed melody

Sate by a well, under blue night-shade bowers;

The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,

Her touch was as electric poison,—flame

260Out of her looks into my vitals came,

And from her living cheeks and bosom flew

A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew

Into the core of my green heart, and lay

Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown grey

265O’er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime

With ruins of unseasonable time.

   In many mortal forms I rashly sought

The shadow of that idol of my thought.

And some were fair—but beauty dies away:

270Others were wise—but honeyed words betray:

And One was true—oh! why not true to me?

Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,

I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,

Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day

275Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain.

When, like a noon-day dawn, there shone again

Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed

As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed,

As is the Moon, whose changes ever run

280Into themselves, to the eternal Sun;

The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven’s bright isles,

Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,

That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame

Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,

285And warms not but illumines.