Sibylline Leaves Read Online

L.

While He Sang a Song to Purcell's Music

While my young cheek retains its healthful hues,

And I have many friends who hold me dear;

L––! methinks, I would not often hear

Such melodies as thine, lest I should lose

All memory of the wrongs and sore distress,

For which my miserable brethren weep!

But should uncomforted misfortunes steep

My daily bread in tears and bitterness;

And if at death's dread moment I should lie

With no beloved face at my bed-side,

To fix the last glance of my closing eye,

Methinks, such strains, breathed by my angel-guide,

Would make me pass the cup of anguish by,

Mix with the blest, nor know that I had died!

[1797]

Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune

Who Abandoned Himself to an Indolent and Causeless Melancholy

Hence that fantastic wantonness of woe,

O Youth to partial Fortune vainly dear!

To plundered want's half-sheltered hovel go,

Go, and some hunger-bitten infant hear

Moan haply in a dying mother's ear:

Or when the cold and dismal fog-damps brood

O'er the rank church-yard with sear elm-leaves strewed,

Pace round some widow's grave, whose dearer part

Was slaughtered, where o'er his uncoffined limbs

The flocking flesh-birds screamed! Then, while thy heart

Groans, and thine eye a fiercer sorrow dims,

Know (and the truth shall kindle thy young mind)

What nature makes thee mourn, she bids thee heal!

O abject! if, to sickly dreams resigned,

All effortless thou leave life's common-weal

A prey to tyrants, murderers of mankind.

[1796]

Sonnet to the River Otter

Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West!

How many various-fated years have past,

What happy, and what mournful hours, since last

I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,

Numbering its light leaps! yet so deep imprest

Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes

I never shut amid the sunny ray,

But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,

Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,

And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,

Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way,

Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled

Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs:

Ah! that once more I were a careless child!

[1793?]

Sonnet

Composed on a Journey Homeward; the Author Having Received Intelligence of the Birth of a Son, Sept. 20, 1796

Oft o'er my brain does that strange fancy roll

Which makes the present (while the flash doth last)

Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,

Mixed with such feelings, as perplex the soul

Self-questioned in her sleep; and some have said34

We lived, ere yet this robe of flesh we wore.

O my sweet baby! when I reach my door,

If heavy looks should tell me thou art dead,

(As sometimes, through excess of hope, I fear)

I think that I should struggle to believe

Thou wert a spirit, to this nether sphere

Sentenced for some more venial crime to grieve;

Did'st scream, then spring to meet Heaven's quick reprieve,

While we wept idly o'er thy little bier!

Sonnet

To a Friend Who Asked, How I Felt when the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me

Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first

I scanned that face of feeble infancy:

For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst

All I had been, and all my child might be!

But when I saw it on its mother's arm,

And hanging at her bosom (she the while

Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile)

Then I was thrilled and melted, and most warm

Impressed a father's kiss: and all beguiled

Of dark remembrance and presageful fear,

I seemed to see an angel-form appear –

'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!

So for the mother's sake the child was dear,

And dearer was the mother for the child.

[1796]

The Virgin's Cradle-Hymn

Copied from a Print of the Virgin, in a Roman Catholic Village in Germany

Dormi, Jesu! Mater ridet

Quæ tam dulcem somnum videt,

Dormi, Jesu! blandule!

Si non dormis, Mater plorat,

Inter fila cantans orat,

Blande, veni, somnule.

English

Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling:

Mother sits beside thee smiling;

Sleep, my darling, tenderly!

If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,

Singing as her wheel she turneth:

Come, soft slumber, balmily!

[1811]

Epitaph on an Infant

Its balmy lips the infant blest

Relaxing from its mother's breast,

How sweet it heaves the happy sigh

Of innocent satiety!

And such my infant's latest sigh!

O tell, rude stone! the passer by,

That here the pretty babe doth lie,

Death sang to sleep with Lullaby.

[1811]

Melancholy

A Fragment

Stretch'd on a mouldered Abbey's broadest wall,

Where ruining ivies propped the ruins steep –

Her folded arms wrapping her tattered pall,

Had melancholy mus'd herself to sleep.

The fern was press'd beneath her hair,

The dark green adder's tongue was there;

And still as past the flagging sea-gale weak,

The long lank leaf bowed fluttering o'er her cheek.

That pallid cheek was flushed: her eager look

Beamed eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought,

Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,

And her bent forehead worked with troubled thought.

Strange was the dream –

[1794?]

Tell's Birth-Place

Imitated from Stolberg

I

Mark this holy chapel well!

The birth-place, this, of William Tell.

Here, where stands God's altar dread,

Stood his parents' marriage-bed.

II

Here, first, an infant to her breast,

Him his loving mother prest;

And kissed the babe, and blessed the day,

And prayed as mothers use to pray.

III

»Vouchsafe him health, O God! and give

The child thy servant still to live!«

But God had destined to do more

Through him, than through an armed power.

IV

God gave him reverence of laws,

Yet stirring blood in Freedom's cause –

A spirit to his rocks akin,

The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein!

V

To Nature and to Holy Writ

Alone did God the boy commit:

Where flashed and roared the torrent, oft

His soul found wings, and soared aloft!

VI

The straining oar and chamois chase

Had formed his limbs to strength and grace:

On wave and wind the boy would toss,

Was great, nor knew how great he was!

VII

He knew not that his chosen hand,

Made strong by God, his native land

Would rescue from the shameful yoke

Of Slavery – the which he broke!

[1799?]

A Christmas Carol

I

The shepherds went their hasty way,

And found the lowly stable-shed

Where the Virgin-Mother lay:

And now they checked their eager tread,

For to the Babe, that at her bosom clung,

A mother's song the Virgin-Mother sung.

II

They told her how a glorious light,

Streaming from a heavenly throng,

Around them shone, suspending night!

While sweeter than a mother's song,

Blest Angels heralded the Saviour's birth,

Glory to God on high! and Peace on Earth.

III

She listened to the tale divine,

And closer still the Babe she prest;

And while she cried, the Babe is mine!

The milk rushed faster to her breast:

Joy rose within her, like a summer's morn;

Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born.

IV

Thou Mother of the Prince of Peace,

Poor, simple, and of low estate!

That strife should vanish, battle cease,

O why should this thy soul elate?

Sweet music's loudest note, the poet's story, –

Did'st thou ne'er love to hear of fame and glory?

V

And is not War a youthful king,

A stately hero clad in mail?

Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;

Him Earth's majestic monarchs hail

Their friend, their playmate! and his bold bright eye

Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh.

VI

»Tell this in some more courtly scene,

To maids and youths in robes of state!

I am a woman poor and mean,

And therefore is my soul elate.

War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled,

That from the aged father tears his child!

VII

A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,

He kills the sire and starves the son;

The husband kills, and from her board

Steals all his widow's toil had won;

Plunders God's world of beauty; rends away

All safety from the night, all comfort from the day.

VIII

Then wisely is my soul elate,

That strife should vanish, battle cease:

I'm poor and of a low estate,

The Mother of the Prince of Peace.

Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn:

Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born.«

[1799]

Human Life,

On the Denial of Immortality

If dead, we cease to be; if total gloom

Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare

As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,

Whose sound and motion not alone declare,

But are their whole of being! If the breath

Be life itself, and not its task and tent,

If even a soul like Milton's can know death;

O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,

Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!

Surplus of nature's dread activity,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,

Retreating slow, with meditative pause,

She formed with restless hands unconsciously!

Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,

Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,

The counter-weights! – Thy laughter and thy tears

Mean but themselves, each fittest to create,

And to repay the other! Why rejoices

Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good?

Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood,

Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,

Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?

Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold

These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?

Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!

Thou hast no reason why! Thou can'st have none;

Thy being's being is contradiction.

[1815?]

Moles

– They shrink in, as Moles

(Nature's mute monks, live mandrakes of the ground)

Creep back from Light – then listen for its sound; –

See but to dread, and dread they know not why –

The natural alien of their negative eye.

[1817]

The Visit of the Gods

Imitated from Schiller

Never, believe me,

Appear the Immortals,

Never alone:

Scarce had I welcomed the sorrow-beguiler,

Iacchus! but in came boy Cupid the smiler;

Lo! Phœbus the glorious descends from his throne!

They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!

With divinities fills my

Terrestrial hall!

How shall I yield you

Due entertainment,

Celestial quire?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance

Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance,

That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!

Hah! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my soul!

O give me the nectar!

O fill me the bowl!

Give him the nectar!

Pour out for the poet,

Hebe! pour free!

Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

That Styx the detested no more he may view,

And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be!

Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Pæan, I cry!

The wine of the Immortals

Forbids me to die!

[1799?]

Elegy,

Imitated from One of Akenside's Blank-Verse Inscriptions

Near the lone pile with ivy overspread,

Fast by the rivulet's sleep-persuading sound,

Where ›sleeps the moonlight‹ on yon verdant bed –

O humbly press that consecrated ground!

For there does Edmund rest, the learned swain!

And there his spirit most delights to rove:

Young Edmund! famed for each harmonious strain,

And the sore wounds of ill-requited love.

Like some tall tree that spreads its branches wide,

And loads the west-wind with its soft perfume,

His manhood blossomed: till the faithless pride

Of fair Matilda sank him to the tomb.

But soon did righteous Heaven her guilt pursue!

Where'er with wildered step she wandered pale,

Still Edmund's image rose to blast her view,

Still Edmund's voice accused her in each gale.

With keen regret, and conscious guilt's alarms,

Amid the pomp of affluence she pined;

Nor all that lured her faith from Edmund's arms

Could lull the wakeful horror of her mind.

Go, Traveller! tell the tale with sorrow fraught:

Some tearful maid perchance, or blooming youth,

May hold it in remembrance; and be taught

That riches cannot pay for Love or Truth.

[1794?]

Separation

A sworded man whose trade is blood,

In grief, in anger, and in fear,

Thro' jungle, swamp, and torrent flood,

I seek the wealth you hold so dear!

The dazzling charm of outward form,

The power of gold, the pride of birth,

Have taken Woman's heart by storm –

Usurp'd the place of inward worth.

Is not true Love of higher price

Than outward Form, tho' fair to see,

Wealth's glittering fairy-dome of ice,

Or echo of proud ancestry? –

O! Asra, Asra! couldst thou see

Into the bottom of my heart,

There's such a mine of Love for thee,

As almost might supply desert!

(This separation is, alas!

Too great a punishment to bear;

O! take my life, or let me pass

That life, that happy life, with her!)

The perils, erst with steadfast eye

Encounter'd, now I shrink to see –

Oh! I have heart enough to die –

Not half enough to part from Thee!

[1805?]

On Taking Leave of ––, 1817

To know, to esteem, to love – and then to part,

Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!

O for some dear abiding-place of Love,

O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove,

Might brood with warming wings! – O fair as kind,

Were but one sisterhood with you combined,

(Your very image they in shape and mind)

Far rather would I sit in solitude,

The forms of memory all my mental food,

And dream of you, sweet sisters, (ah, not mine!)

And only dream of you (ah dream and pine!)

Than have the presence, and partake the pride,

And shine in the eye of all the world beside!

The Pang More Sharp Than All

An Allegory

I

He too has flitted from his secret nest,

Hope's last and dearest Child without a name! –

Has flitted from me, like the warmthless flame,

That makes false promise of a place of rest

To the tir'd Pilgrim's still believing mind; –

Or like some Elfin Knight in kingly court,

Who having won all guerdons in his sport,

Glides out of view, and whither none can find!

II

Yes! He hath flitted from me – with what aim,

Or why, I know not! 'Twas a home of bliss,

And He was innocent, as the pretty shame

Of babe, that tempts and shuns the menaced kiss,

From its twy-cluster'd hiding place of snow!

Pure as the babe, I ween, and all aglow

As the dear hopes, that swell the mother's breast –

Her eyes down gazing o'er her clasped charge; –

Yet gay as that twice happy father's kiss,

That well might glance aside, yet never miss,

Where the sweet mark emboss'd so sweet a targe –

Twice wretched he who hath been doubly blest!

III

Like a loose blossom on a gusty night

He flitted from me – and has left behind

(As if to them his faith he ne'er did plight)

Of either sex and answerable mind

Two playmates, twin-births of his foster-dame: –

The one a steady lad (Esteem he hight)

And Kindness is the gentler sister's name.

Dim likeness now, tho' fair she be and good

Of that bright Boy who hath us all forsook; –

But in his full-eyed aspect when she stood,

And while her face reflected every look,

And in reflection kindled – she became

So like Him, that almost she seem'd the same!

IV

Ah! He is gone, and yet will not depart! –

Is with me still, yet I from Him exil'd!

For still there lives within my secret heart

The magic image of the magic Child,

Which there He made up-grow by his strong art,

As in that crystal35 orb – wise Merlin's feat, –

The wondrous »World of Glass,« wherein inisl'd

All long'd for things their beings did repeat; –

And there He left it, like a Sylph beguiled,

To live and yearn and languish incomplete!

V

Can wit of man a heavier grief reveal?

Can sharper pang from hate or scorn arise? –

Yes! one more sharp there is that deeper lies,

Which fond Esteem but mocks when he would heal.

Yet neither scorn nor hate did it devise,

But sad compassion and atoning zeal!

One pang more blighting-keen than hope betray'd!

And this it is my woful hap to feel,

When at her Brother's hest, the twin-born Maid

With face averted and unsteady eyes,

Her truant playmate's faded robe puts on;

And inly shrinking from her own disguise

Enacts the faery Boy that's lost and gone.

O worse than all! O pang all pangs above

Is Kindness counterfeiting absent Love!

[1825-6?]

Kubla Khan: or, a Vision in a Dream

A Fragment

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effect of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in »Purchas's Pilgrimage:« »Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.« The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter:

Then all the charm

Is broken – all that phantom-world so fair

Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,

And each mis-shape the other. Stay awhile,

Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes –

The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon

The visions will return! And lo! he stays,

And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms

Come trembling back, unite, and now once more

The pool becomes a mirror.

Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. Ayrion adion aso: but the to-morrow is yet to come.

As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease. – 1816.

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

[1798]

The Pains of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,

It hath not been my use to pray

With moving lips or bended knees;

But silently, by slow degrees,

My spirit I to Love compose,

In humble trust mine eye-lids close,

With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought exprest,

Only a sense of supplication;

A sense o'er all my soul imprest

That I am weak, yet not unblest,

Since in me, round me, every where

Eternal strength and wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud

In anguish and in agony,

Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:

A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorned, those only strong!

Thirst of revenge, the powerless will

Still baffled, and yet burning still!

Desire with loathing strangely mixed

On wild or hateful objects fixed.

Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!

And shame and terror over all!

Deeds to be hid which were not hid,

Which all confused I could not know,

Whether I suffered, or I did:

For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,

My own or others still the same

Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night's dismay

Saddened and stunned the coming day.

Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me

Distemper's worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream

Had waked me from the fiendish dream,

O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,

I wept as I had been a child;

And having thus by tears subdued

My anguish to a milder mood,

Such punishments, I said, were due

To natures deepliest stained with sin, –

For aye entempesting anew

The unfathomable hell within

The horror of their deeds to view,

To know and loathe, yet wish and do!

Such griefs with such men well agree,

But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?

To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed.

[1803]

Limbo

'Tis a strange place, this Limbo! – not a Place,

Yet name it so; – where Time and weary Space

Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing,

Strive for their last crepuscular half-being; –

Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands

Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,

Not mark'd by flit of Shades, – unmeaning they

As moonlight on the dial of the day!

But that is lovely – looks like human Time, –

An old man with a steady look sublime,

That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;

But he is blind – a statue hath such eyes; –

Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance,

Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,

With scant white hairs, with foretop bald and high,

He gazes still, – his eyeless face all eye; –

As 'twere an organ full of silent sight,

His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light! –

Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb –

He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!

No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,

Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure,

By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all,

Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral.

A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation,

Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;

Hell knows a fear far worse,

A fear – a future state; – 'tis positive Negation!

[1817]

Ne Plus Ultra

Sole Positive of Night!

Antipathist of Light!

Fate's only essence! primal scorpion rod –

The one permitted opposite of God! –

Condensed blackness and abysmal storm

Compacted to one sceptre

Arms the Grasp enorm –

The Intercepter –

The Substance that still casts the shadow Death! –

The Dragon foul and fell –

The unrevealable,

And hidden one, whose breath

Gives wind and fuel to the fires of Hell! –

Ah! sole despair

Of both th' eternities in Heaven!

Sole interdict of all-bedewing prayer,

The all-compassionate!

Save to the Lampads Seven

Reveal'd to none of all th' Angelic State,

Save to the Lampads Seven,

That watch the throne of Heaven!

[1826?]