The turn at the end is the same with one of Mr Dibdin’s excellent songs, and the air to which it is sung by the Boors is remarkably sweet and lively.
When thou to my true-love com’st
Greet her from me kindly;
When she asks thee how I fare?
Say, folks in Heaven fare finely.
When she asks, ‘What! Is he sick?’
Say, dead! – and when for sorrow
She begins to sob and cry,
Say. I come to-morrow.
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;
10 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,
20 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:
30 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,
40 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,
50 But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.
[Lines from a notebook – September 1803]
Such love as mourning Husbands have.
To her whose spirit has been newly given/
To be his guardian Saint in Heaven/
Whose Beauty lieth in the Grave Unconquered/
as if the Soul could find no purer Tabernacle, nor place of Sojourn,
than the virgin Body it had before dwelt in, & wished to stay there
till the Resurrection – Far liker to a Flower now than when alive
– Cold to the Touch & blooming to the eye –
[Lines from a notebook – February – March 1804]
Sole Maid, associate sole, to me beyond
Compare, above all living Creatures Dear –
Thoughts which how found they harbour in thy Breast,
Sara, misthoughts of him to thee so dear.
I from the influence of thy Looks receive
Access in every Virtue, in thy sight
More wise, more watchful, stronger if need were
Of outward Strength/
[What is Life?]
Resembles life what once was deem’d of light,
Too ample in itself for human sight?
An absolute self – an element ungrounded –
All that we see, all colours of all shade
By encroach of darkness made? –
Is very life by consciousness unbounded?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling life and death?
[Lines from a notebook – April 1805]
O th’ oppressive, irksome weight
Felt in an uncertain State:
Comfort, peace, and rest adieu,
Should I prove at last untrue!
Self-confiding Wretch. I thought
I could love thee as I ought,
Win thee and deserve to feel
All the love, thou can’st reveal,
And still I chuse thee, follow still
10 Every notice […]
[Lines from a notebook – May – June 1805]
O Beauty, in a beauteous Body dight!
Body! that veiling Brightness becom’st bright/
Fair Cloud which less we see, than by thee see the Light!
Phantom
All look and likeness caught from earth,
All accident of kin and birth,
Had pass’d away. There was no trace
Of aught on that illumined face,
Uprais’d beneath the rifted stone
But of one spirit all her own; –
She, she herself, and only she,
Shone thro’ her body visibly.
[An Angel Visitant]
Within these circling Hollies Woodbine-clad –
Beneath this small blue Roof of vernal Sky
How warm, how still! tho’ Tears should dim mine eye,
Yet will my Heart for days continue glad –
For here, my Love! thou art! and here am I!
Reason for Love’s Blindness
I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold –
His eyes are in his mind.
What outward form and feature are
He guesseth but in part;
But that within is good and fair
He seeth with the heart.
[Untitled]
Friend, Lover, Husband, Sister, Brother!
Dear Names! close in upon each other!
Alas! poor Fancy’s Bitter-sweet –
Our names, and but our names, can meet!
Constancy to an Ideal Object
Since all that beat about in Nature’s range,
Or veer or vanish; why shouldst thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning thought! that liv’st but in the brain?
Call to the hours, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day –
Fond thought! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till when, like strangers shelt’ring from a storm,
10 Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
Yet still thou haunt’st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou art she,
Still, still as though some dear embodied good,
Some living love before my eyes there stood
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say – ‘Ah! loveliest friend!
That this the meed of all my toils might be,
To have a home, an English home, and thee!’
Vain repetition! Home and Thou are one.
20 The peacefull’st cot, the moon shall shine upon,
Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark,
Without thee were but a becalmèd bark,
Whose helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.
And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o’er the sheep-track’s maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist’ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
30 An image with a glory round its head;
The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows he makes the shadow he pursues!
[Lines from a notebook – March 1806]
I know ’tis but a Dream, yet feel more anguish
Than if ’twere Truth. It has been often so,
Must I die under it? Is no one near?
Will no one hear these stifled groans, & wake me?
[Lines from a notebook – June 1806]
Come, come, thou bleak December Wind,
And blow the dry Leaves from the Tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro’ me, Death
And take a Life, that wearies me.
Farewell to Love
Farewell, sweet Love! yet blame you not my truth;
More fondly ne’er did mother eye her child
Than I your form: yours were my hopes of youth,
And as you shaped my thoughts I sighed or smiled.
While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving
To pleasure’s secret haunts, and some apart
Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving,
To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart.
And when I met the maid that realised
10 Your fair creations, and had won her kindness,
Say, but for her if aught on earth I prized!
Your dreams alone I dreamt, and caught your blindness.
O grief! – but farewell, Love! I will go play me
With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.
Time, Real and Imaginary
AN ALLEGORY
On the wide level of a mountain’s head,
(I knew not where, but ’twas some faery place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
A sister and a brother!
That far outstripp’d the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind:
For he, alas! is blind!
10 O’er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
And knows not whether he be first or last.
[Lines from a notebook – 1806]
Bright clouds of reverence sufferably bright
That intercept the dazzle not the Light
That veil the finite form, the boundless power reveal
Itself an earthly sun, of pure intensest White…
[Lines from a notebook – October – November 1806]
His own fair countenance, his kingly forehead
His tender smiles, Love’s day-dawn on his Lips
That put on such heavenly spiritual light
At the same moment in his steadfast eyes/
Were virtue’s native crest, the innocent Soul’s
Unconscious meek Self-heraldry – to man
Genial, and pleasant to his guardian angel –
He suffered, nor complain’d; tho’ oft, with tears,
He mourn’d the oppression of his helpless Brethren, –
10 And sometimes with a deeper, holier grief
Mourn’d for the oppressor: but that in Sabbath Hours –
a solemn grief,
That like a Cloud at Sunset,
Was but the veil of inward meditation,
Pierc’d thro’
And saturate with the intellectual rays, it soften’d.
[Lines from a notebook – 1806]
Let Eagle bid the Tortoise sunward soar –
As vainly Strength speaks to a broken Mind.
[Lines from a notebook – November – December 1806]
As the shy Hind, the soft-eyed gentle Brute,
Now moves, now stops, approaching by degrees
At length emerges from the shelt’ring Trees,
Lur’d by her Hunter with the shepherd’s Flute
Whose music travelling on the twilight Breeze,
When all beside was mute,
She oft had heard unharm’d and ever loves to hear,
She, fearful Beast! but that no sound of Fear.
[Lines from a notebook – February 1807]
As some vast tropic Tree, itself a Wood,
That crests its Head with clouds, beneath the flood
Feeds its deep roots, and with the bulging flank
Of its wide Base controlls the fronting bank,
(By the slant current’s pressure scoop’d away
The fronting Bank becomes a foam-piled Bay)
High in its Fork the uncouth Idol knits
His channel’d Brows: low murmurs stir by fits:
And dark below the horrid Faquir sits;
10 An Horror from its broad Head’s branching Wreath
Broods o’er the rude Idolatry beneath. –
[Lines from a notebook – February 1807]
And in Life’s noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart’s Self-solace, and soliloquy.
You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro’ all my being all my pulses beat.
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light
Like the fair Light of Dawn, or summer-Eve
On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you
How oft I bless the Lot, that made me love you.
[Lines from a manuscript – 1807 – 8]
The moon – how definite its orb!
Yet gaze again & with a steady gaze
’Tis there indeed – but where is it not –
It is suffused o’er all the sapphire Heaven,
Trees, herbage, snake-like Stream, unwrinkled Lake,
Whose very murmur does of it partake/
And low & close the broad smooth mountain
Is more a thing of Heaven than when
Distinct by one dim shade
10 yet undivided from the universal cloud
In which it towers, infinite in height/ –
[Lines from a notebook – July 1807]
INCLUDES LINES PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED SEPARATELY AS ‘COELI ENARRANT’
Life wakeful over all knew no gradation
That Bliss in its excess became a Dream;
For every sense, each thought, & each sensation
Lived in my eye, transfigured not supprest.
And Time drew out his subtle threads so quick,
And with such Spirit-speed & silentness,
That only in the web, of space like Time,
On the still spreading web I still diffused
Lay still commensurate –
10 For Memory & all undoubting Hope
Sang the same note & in the selfsame Voice,
with each sweet now of my Felicity,
and blended momently,
Like Milk that coming comes & in its easy stream
Flows ever in, upon the mingling milk
in the Babe’s murmuring Mouth/
or mirrors each reflecting each/ –
What never is but only is to be
This is not Life –
20 O Hopeless Hope, and Death’s Hypocrisy!
And with perpetual Promise, breaks its Promises. –
The Stars that wont to start, as on a chase,
And twinkling insult on Heaven’s darkened Face,
Like a conven’d Conspiracy of Spies
Wink at each other with confiding eyes,
Turn from the portent, all is blank on high,
No constellations alphabet the Sky –
The Heavens one large black Letter only shews,
And as a Child beneath its master’s Blows
30 Shrills out at once its Task and its Affright,
The groaning world now learns to read aright,
And with its Voice of Voices cries out, O!
[Lines from a notebook – January 1808]
The singing Kettle & the purring Cat,
The gentle Breathing of the cradled Babe,
The silence of the Mother’s love-bright Eye,
And tender Smile answ’ring its smile of Sleep.
To William Wordsworth
COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND
Friend of the wise! and teacher of the good!
Into my heart have I received that lay
More than historic, that prophetic lay
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind
By vital breathings secret as the soul
10 Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
Thoughts all too deep for words! –
Theme hard as high!
Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears,
(The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth)
Of tides obedient to external force,
And currents self-determined, as might seem,
Or by some inner power; of moments awful,
Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,
When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received
The light reflected, as a light bestowed –
20 Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought
Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens
Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!
Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars
Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams,
The guides and the companions of thy way!
Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense
Distending wide, and man beloved as man,
Where France in all her towns lay vibrating
30 Like some becalmèd bark beneath the burst
Of Heaven’s immediate thunder, when no cloud
Is visible, or shadow on the main.
For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,
Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,
Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
When from the general heart of human kind
Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!
— Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,
So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure
40 From the dread watch-tower of man’s absolute self,
With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
Far on – herself a glory to behold,
The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Action and joy! – An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted!
O great Bard!
Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,
With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir
50 Of ever-enduring men. The truly great
Have all one age, and from one visible space
Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
Are permanent, and Time is not with them,
Save as it worketh for them, they in it.
Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old,
And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame
Among the archives of mankind, thy work
Makes audible a linkèd lay of Truth,
Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
60 Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!
Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,
The pulses of my being beat anew:
And even as life returns upon the drowned,
Life’s joy rekindling roused a throng of pains –
Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope;
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear; Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
70 And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out – but flowers
Strewed on my corse, a Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!
That way no more! and ill beseems it me,
Who came a welcomer in herald’s guise,
Singing of glory, and futurity,
To wander back on such unhealthful road,
80 Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill
Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths
Strewed before thy advancing!
Nor do thou,
Sage Bard! impair the memory of that hour
Of thy communion with my nobler mind
By pity or grief, already felt too long!
Nor let my words import more blame than needs.
The tumult rose and ceased: for peace is nigh
Where wisdom’s voice has found a listening heart.
Amid the howl of more than wintry storms,
90 The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours
Already on the wing.
Eve following eve,
Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed
And more desired, more precious, for thy song,
In silence listening, like a devout child,
My soul lay passive, by thy various strain
Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,
With momentary stars of my own birth,
Fair constellated foam, still darting off
100 Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,
Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.
And when – O Friend! my comforter and guide!
Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength! –
Thy long sustainèd Song finally closed,
And thy deep voice had ceased – yet thou thyself
Wert still before my eyes, and round us both
That happy vision of beloved faces –
Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close
I sate, my being blended in one thought
110 (Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?)
Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound –
And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.
Metrical Feet. Lesson for a Boy
Trōchĕe trīps frŏm lōng tŏ shōrt;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slōw Spōndēe stālks; strōng fōōt! yet ill able
ēvĕr tō cōme ŭp wīth Dāctyl trsyllaāblĕ.
Ĭaāmbĩcs mārch frŏm shōrt tŏ lōng; –
Wĭth ă le̅a̅p ănd ă bo̅u̅nd thĕ swĭft Ānăpæ̆sts thrōng;
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Ă mphībrăchŷs hăstes wĭth ă stătelŷstride; –
Fīrst ănd lāst bēĭng lōng, mĭddleě shōrt, Amĭ phāmācer
10 Strīkes hĩs thūndērĭng hoofs līke Ă proud hīgh-brěd Rācer.
If Derwent be innocent, steady, and wise,
And delight in the things of earth, water, and skies;
Tender warmth at his heart, with these metres to show it,
With sound sense in his brains, may make Derwent a poet, –
May crown him with fame, and must win him the love
Of his father on earth and his Father above.
My dear, dear child!
Could you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from its whole
ridge
See a man who loves you as your fond S. T. COLERIDGE.
Recollections of Love
I
How warm this woodland wild Recess!
Love surely hath been breathing here;
And this sweet bed of heath, my dear!
Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
As if to have you yet more near.
II
Eight springs have flown, since last I lay
On sea ward Quantock’s heathy hills,
Where quiet sounds from hidden rills
Float here and there, like things astray,
10 And high o’er head the sky-lark shrills.
III
No voice as yet had made the air
Be music with your name; yet why
That asking look? that yearning sigh?
That sense of promise every where?
Beloved! flew your spirit by?
IV
As when a mother doth explore
The rose-mark on her long lost child,
I met, I loved you, maiden mild!
As whom I long had loved before –
20 So deeply, had I been beguiled.
V
You stood before me like a thought,
A dream remembered in a dream.
But when those meek eyes first did seem
To tell me, Love within you wrought –
O Greta, dear domestic stream!
VI
Has not, since then, Love’s prompture deep,
Has not Love’s whisper evermore
Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar?
Sole voice, when other voices sleep,
30 Dear under-song in clamour’s hour.
The Blossoming of the Solitary Date-Tree. A Lament
I seem to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew writers, an apologue or Rabbinical tradition to the following purpose:
While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, and the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam’s ear, the guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: ‘Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so! for the
10 Man was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise.’ And the word of the Most High answered Satan: ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Treacherous Fiend! if with guilt like thine, it had been possible for thee to have the heart of a Man, and to feel the yearning of a human soul for its counterpart, the sentence, which thou now counsellest, should have been inflicted on thyself.’
The title of the following poem was suggested by a fact mentioned by Linnæus, of a date-tree in a nobleman’s garden which year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, but never produced fruit, till a branch
20 from another date-tree had been conveyed from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of the MS. from which the poem has been transcribed, and which contained the two or three introductory stanzas, is wanting: and the author has in vain taxed his memory to repair the loss. But a rude draught of the poem contains the substance of the stanzas, and the reader is requested to receive it as the substitute. It is not impossible, that some congenial spirit, whose years do not exceed those of the author, at the time the poem was written, may find a pleasure in restoring the Lament to its original integrity by a reduction of the thoughts to the requisite metre.
I
30 Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the thrones of frost, through the absence of objects to reflect the rays. ‘What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own.’ The presence of a one,
The best belov’d, who loveth me the best,
is for the heart, what the supporting air from within is for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that would have buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes a burthen and crushes it into flatness.
II
The finer sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer
40 and lovelier the object presented to the sense, the more exquisite the individual’s capacity of joy; and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them?
III
Imagination; honourable aims;
Free commune with the choir that cannot die;
Science and song; delight in little things,
50 The buoyant child surviving in the man;
Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky,
With all their voices – O dare I accuse
My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,
Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no!
It is her largeness, and her overflow,
Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!
IV
For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,
But tim’rously beginning to rejoice
Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start
60 In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice.
Beloved! ’tis not thine; thou art not there!
Then melts the bubble into idle air,
And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.
V
The mother with anticipated glee
Smiles o’er the child, that, standing by her chair
And flatt’ning its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare
To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight
She hears her own voice with a new delight;
70 And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes aright,
VI
Then is she tenfold gladder than before!
But should disease or chance the darling take,
What then avail those songs, which sweet of yore
Were only sweet for their sweet echo’s sake?
Dear maid! no prattler at a mother’s knee
Was e’er so dearly prized as I prize thee:
Why was I made for Love and Love denied to me?
To Two Sisters
A WANDERER’S FAREWELL
To know, to esteem, to love, – and then to part –
Makes up life’s tale to many a feeling heart;
Alas for some abiding-place of love,
O’er which my spirit, like the mother dove,
Might brood with warming wings!
O fair! O kind!
Sisters in blood, yet each with each intwined
More close by sisterhood of heart and mind!
Me disinherited in form and face
By nature, and mishap of outward grace;
10 Who, soul and body, through one guiltless fault
Waste daily with the poison of sad thought,
Me did you soothe, when solace hoped I none!
And as on unthaw’d ice the winter sun,
Though stern the frost, though brief the genial day,
You bless my heart with many a cheerful ray;
For gratitude suspends the heart’s despair,
Reflecting bright though cold your image there.
Nay more! its music by some sweeter strain
Makes us live o’er our happiest hours again,
20 Hope re-appearing dim in memory’s guise –
Even thus did you call up before mine eyes
Two dear, dear Sisters, prized all price above,
Sisters, like you, with more than sisters’ love;
So like you they, and so in you were seen
Their relative statures, tempers, looks, and mien,
That oft, dear ladies! you have been to me
At once a vision and reality.
Sight seem’d a sort of memory, and amaze
Mingled a trouble with affection’s gaze.
30 Oft to my eager soul I whisper blame,
A Stranger bid it feel the Stranger’s shame –
My eager soul, impatient of the name,
No strangeness owns, no Stranger’s form descries:
The chidden heart spreads trembling on the eyes.
First-seen I gazed, as I would look you thro’!
My best-beloved regain’d their youth in you, –
And still I ask, though now familiar grown,
Are you for their sakes dear, or for your own?
O doubly dear! may Quiet with you dwell!
40 In Grief I love you, yet I love you well!
Hope long is dead to me! an orphan’s tear
Love wept despairing o’er his nurse’s bier.
Yet she flutters o’er her grave’s green slope:
For Love’s despair is but the ghost of Hope!
Sweet Sisters! were you placed around one hearth
With those, your other selves in shape and worth,
Far rather would I sit in solitude,
Fond recollections all my fond heart’s food,
And dream of you, sweet Sisters! (ah! not mine!)
50 And only dream of you (ah! dream and pine!)
Than boast the presence and partake the pride,
And shine in the eye, of all the world beside.
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,
10 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!
A Child’s Evening Prayer
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
God grant me grace my prayers to say:
O God! preserve my mother dear
In strength and health for many a year;
And, O! preserve my father too,
And may I pay him reverence due;
And may I my best thoughts employ
To be my parents’ hope and joy;
And, O! preserve my brothers both
10 From evil doings and from sloth,
And may we always love each other,
Our friends, our father, and our mother:
And still, O Lord, to me impart
An innocent and grateful heart,
That after my last sleep I may
Awake to thy eternal day!
Amen.
Ad Vilmum Axiologum
This be the meed, that thy Song creates a thousandfold Echo!
Sweet as the warble of woods that awake at the gale of the
Morning!
List! the Hearts of the Pure, like Caves in the ancient
Mountains
Deep, deep in the Bosom, and from the Bosom resound it,
Each with a different Tone, complete or in musical fragments,
All have welcom’d thy Voice, and receive and retain and prolong
it!
This is the word of the Lord! – it is spoken, and Beings Eternal
Live and are born, as an Infant – the Eternal begets the
Immortal!
Love is the Spirit of Life, and Music the Life of the Spirit. –
Psyche
The butterfly the ancient Grecians made
The soul’s fair emblem, and its only name –
But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade
Of mortal life! For in this earthly frame
Ours is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame,
Manifold motions making little speed,
And to deform and kill the things, whereon we feed.
[Sonnet – translated from Marino]
Lady, to Death we’re doom’d, our crime the same!
Thou, that in me thou kindledst such fierce Heat;
I, that my Heart did of a Sun so sweet
The Rays concentre to so hot a flame.
I, fascinated by an Adder’s Eye,
Deaf as an Adder thou to all my Pain;
Thou obstinate in Scorn, in Passion I –
I lov’d too much, too much didst thou disdain.
Hear then our doom in Hell as just as stern,
10 Our sentence equal as our crimes conspire
Who living basked at Beauty’s earthly Fire
In living flames eternal there must burn/ –
Hell for us both fit places too supplies –
In my Heart thou wilt burn, I roast before thine Eyes –
[Fragment: ‘Two wedded Hearts’]
[VERSION I ]
Two wedded Hearts, if e’er were such,
Imprison’d in adjoining cells
Across whose thin partition wall
The Builder left one narrow rent,
And there most content in discontent
A Joy with itself at strife,
Die into an intenser Life/
[VERSION 2]
The Builder left one narrow rent,
Two wedded Hearts, if e’er were such,
Contented most in discontent
There cling, and try in vain to touch!
O Joy with thy own Joy at Strife,
That yearning for the Realm above
Would’st die into intenser Life,
And union absolute of Love.
A Tombless Epitaph
’Tis true, Idoloclastes Satyrane!
(So call him, for so mingling blame with praise,
And smiles with anxious looks, his earliest friends,
Masking his birth-name, wont to character
His wild-wood fancy and impetuous zeal)
’Tis true that, passionate for ancient truths,
And honouring with religious love the great
Of elder times, he hated to excess,
With an unquiet and intolerant scorn,
10 The hollow puppets of a hollow age,
Ever idolatrous, and changing ever
Its worthless idols! learning, power, and time,
(Too much of all) thus wasting in vain war
Of fervid colloquy. Sickness, ’tis true,
Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,
And with a natural gladness, he maintained
The citadel unconquered, and in joy
20 Was strong to follow the delightful Muse.
For not a hidden path, that to the shades
Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads,
Lurked undiscovered by him; not a rill
There issues from the fount of Hippocrene,
But he had traced it upward to its source,
Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell,
Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled
Its med’cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone,
Piercing the long-neglected holy cave,
30 The haunt obscure of old Philosophy,
He bade with lifted torch its starry walls
Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame
Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage.
O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts!
O studious Poet, eloquent for truth!
Philosopher! contemning wealth and death,
Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love!
Here, rather than on monumental stone,
This record of thy worth thy Friend inscribes,
40 Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek.
On a Clock in a Market-Place
What now thou dost or art about to do
Will help to give thee peace or make thee rue,
When wav’ring o’er the dot this Hand shall tell
The Moment, that secures thee Heaven or Hell.
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
10 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
20 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!
The Visionary Hope
Sad lot, to have no hope! Though lowly kneeling
He fain would frame a prayer within his breast,
Would fain entreat for some sweet breath of healing,
That his sick body might have ease and rest;
He strove in vain! the dull sighs from his chest
Against his will the stifling load revealing,
Though Nature forced; though like some captive guest,
Some royal prisoner at his conqueror’s feast,
An alien’s restless mood but half concealing,
10 The sternness on his gentle brow confessed,
Sickness within and miserable feeling:
Though obscure pangs made curses of his dreams,
And dreaded sleep, each night repelled in vain,
Each night was scattered by its own loud screams:
Yet never could his heart command, though fain,
One deep full wish to be no more in pain.
That Hope, which was his inward bliss and boast
Which waned and died, yet ever near him stood,
Though changed in nature, wander where he would –
20 For Love’s despair is but Hope’s pining ghost!
For this one hope he makes his hourly moan,
He wishes and can wish for this alone!
Pierced, as with light from Heaven, before its gleams
(So the love-stricken visionary deems)
Disease would vanish, like a summer shower,
Whose dews fling sunshine from the noon-tide bower!
Or let it stay! yet this one Hope should give
Such strength that he would bless his pains and live.
[Lines from a notebook – March 1810]
When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt –
A Flight of Hopes for ever on the wing
But made Tranquillity a conscious Thing –
And wheeling round and round in sportive Coil,
Fann’d the calm Air upon the brow of Toil –
[Lines from a notebook – April – June 1810]
The body
Eternal Shadow of the finite Soul/
The Soul’s self-symbol/its image of itself,
Its own yet not itself –
[Lines from a notebook – May 1810]
I have experienc’d
The worst, the World can wreak on me; the worst
That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb
With whisper’d Discontents the dying prayer.
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My Heart had any interest in this Life,
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes
That nothing now is left. Why then live on?
That Hostage, which the world had in it’s keeping
10 Given by me as a Pledge that I would live,
That Hope of Her, say rather, that pure Faith
In her fix’d Love, which held me to keep truce
With the Tyranny of Life – is gone ah whither?
What boots it to reply? – ’tis gone! and now
Well may I break this Pact, this League of Blood
That ties me to myself – and break I shall! –
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.
[Lines from a notebook – 1811]
As when the new or full moon urges
The high, long, large, unbreaking surges
Of the pacific Main.
[Fragment of an ode on Napoleon]
O’erhung with yew, midway the Muses mount
From thy sweet murmurs far, O Hippocrene!
Turbid and black upboils an angry fount
Tossing its shatter’d foam in vengeful spleen –
Phlegethon’s rage Cocytus’ wailings hoarse
Alternate now, now mixt, made known its headlong course:
Thither with terror stricken and surprise,
(For sure such haunts were ne’er to Muse’s choice)
Euterpe led me. Mute with asking eyes
10 I stood expectant of her heavenly voice.
Her voice entranc’d my terror and made flow
In a rude understrain the maniac fount below.
‘Whene’er (the Goddess said) abhorr’d of Jove
Usurping Power his hands in blood imbrues –’
[Lines inscribed on the fly-leaf of Benedetto
Menzini’s ‘Poesie’ (1782)]
I stand alone, nor tho’ my Heart should break
Have I, to whom I may complain or speak.
Here I stand, a hopeless man and sad
Who hoped to have seen my Love, my Life.
And strange it were indeed, could I be glad
Remembring her, my Soul’s betrothed Wife/
For in this World no creature, that has life,
Was e’er to me so gracious & so good/
Her Love was to my Heart, like the Heart-blood.
[Lines from a notebook – May – June 1811]
O mercy, O me miserable man!
Slowly my wisdom, & how slowly comes
My Virtue! and how rapidly pass off
My Joys, my Hopes, my Friendships, & my Love!
[Lines from a notebook – May – July 1811]
A low dead Thunder muttered thro’ the Night,
As ’twere a Giant angry in his Sleep –
Nature! sweet Nurse! O take me in thy Lap –
And tell me of my Father yet unseen
Sweet Tales & True, that lull me into Sleep,
& leave me dreaming. –
[Lines from a notebook – May 1814?]
Seaward, white-gleaming thro’ the busy Scud
With arching Wings the Sea-mew o’er my head
Posts on, as bent on speed; now passaging
Edges the stiffer Breeze, now yielding drifts,
Now floats upon the Air, and sends from far
A wildly-wailing Note.
[Lines from a notebook – 1815 – 16]
O! Superstition is the Giant Shadow
Which the Solicitude of weak Mortality
Its Back toward Religion’s rising Sun,
Casts on the thin mist of the uncertain Future.
[Lines from a notebook – 1815 – 16]
Let klumps of Earth however glorified
Roll round & round & still renew their cycle/
Man rushes like a wingèd Cherub thro’
The infinite Space, and that which has been
Can therefore never be again –
On Donne’s First Poem
Be proud, as Spaniards! and Leap for Pride, ye Fleas
Henceforth in Nature’s Minim World Grandees,
In Phœbus’ Archives registered are ye –
And this your Patent of Nobility.
No Skip-Jacks now, nor civiller Skip-Johns,
Dread Anthropophagi! Specks of living Bronze,
I hail you one & all, sans Pros or Cons,
Descendants from a noble Race of Dons.
What tho’ that great ancestral Flea be gone
10 Immortal with immortalizing Donne –
His earthly Spots bleach’d off as Papists gloze,
In purgatory fire on Bardolph’s Nose,
Or else starved out, his aery tread defied
By the dry Potticary’s bladdery Hide,
Which cross’d unchang’d and still keeps in ghost-Light
Of lank Half-nothings his, the thinnest Sprite
The sole true Something this in Limbo Den
It frightens Ghosts as Ghosts here frighten men –
For skimming in the wake, it mock’d the care
20 Of the Old Boat-God for his Farthing Fare,
Tho’ Irus’ Ghost itself he neer frown’d blacker on,
The skin and skin-pent Druggist crost the Acheron,
Styx and with Puriphlegethon Cocytus:
The very names, methinks, might thither fright us –
Unchang’d it cross’d & shall, some fated Hour,
Be pulverized by Demogorgon’s Power
And given as poison, to anni’late Souls –
Even now it shrinks them! they shrink in, as Moles
(Nature’s mute Monks, live Mandrakes of the ground)
30 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.
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, –
10 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 –
20 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!
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.
Ne plus ultra
Sole Positive of Night!
Antipathist of Light!
Fate’s only essence! primal scorpion rod –
The one permitted opposite of God! –
Condensèd blackness and abysmal storm
Compacted to one sceptre
Arms the Grasp enorm –
The Intercepter –
The Substance that still casts the shadow Death! –
10 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,
20 Save to the Lampads Seven,
That watch the throne of Heaven!
The Suicide’s Argument
Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no,
No question was asked me – it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try,
And to live on be Yes; what can No be? to die.
NATURE’S ANSWER
Is’t returned, as ’twas sent? Is’t no worse for the wear?
Think first, what you are! Call to mind what you were!
I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,
Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope.
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
10 Make out the invent’ry; inspect, compare!
Then die – if die you dare!
[An Invocation:
FROM ‘REMORSE’]
Hear, sweet Spirit, hear the spell,
Lest a blacker charm compel!
So shall the midnight breezes swell
With thy deep long-lingering knell.
And at evening evermore,
In a chapel on the shore,
Shall the chaunter, sad and saintly,
Yellow tapers burning faintly,
Doleful masses chaunt for thee,
10 Miserere Domine!
Hush! the cadence dies away
On the quiet moonlight sea:
The boatmen rest their oars and say,
Miserere Domine!
God’s Omnipresence,
A HYMN
My Maker! of thy power the trace
In every creature’s form and face
The wond’ring soul surveys:
Thy wisdom, infinite above
Seraphic thought, a Father’s love
As infinite displays!
From all that meets or eye or ear,
There falls a genial holy fear
Which, like the heavy dew of morn,
10 Refreshes while it bows the heart forlorn!
Great God! thy works how wondrous fair!
Yet sinful man didst thou declare
The whole Earth’s voice and mind!
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Lord, ev’n as Thou all-present art,
O may we still with heedful heart
Thy presence know and find!
Then, come what will, of weal or woe,
Joy’s bosom-spring shall steady flow;
For though ’tis Heaven THYSELF to see,
20 Where but thy Shadow falls, Grief cannot be!
To a Lady.
WITH FALCONER’S ‘SHIPWRECK’
Ah! not by Cam, or Isis, famous streams,
In archèd groves, the youthful poet’s choice;
Nor while half-listening, mid delicious dreams,
To harp and song from lady’s hand and voice;
Nor yet while gazing in sublimer mood
On cliff, or cataract, in Alpine dell;
Nor in dim cave with bladdery sea-weed strewed,
Framing wild fancies to the ocean’s swell;
Our sea-bard sang this song! which still he sings,
10 And sings for thee, sweet friend! Hark, Pity, hark!
Now mounts, now totters on the tempest’s wings,
Now groans, and shivers, the replunging bark!
‘Cling to the shrouds!’ In vain! The breakers roar –
Death shrieks! With two alone of all his clan
Forlorn the poet paced the Grecian shore,
No classic roamer, but a ship-wrecked man!
Say then, what muse inspired these genial strains,
And lit his spirit to so bright a flame?
The elevating thought of suffered pains,
20 Which gentle hearts shall mourn; but chief, the name
Of gratitude! remembrances of friend,
Or absent or no more! shades of the Past,
Which Love makes substance! Hence to thee I send,
O dear as long as life and memory last!
I send with deep regards of heart and head,
Sweet maid, for friendship formed! this work to thee:
And thou, the while thou canst not choose but shed
A tear for Falconer, wilt remember me.
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!
10 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
20 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 canst have none;
Thy being’s being is contradiction.
[Song
FROM ‘ZAPOLYA’]
A sunny shaft did I behold,
From sky to earth it slanted:
And poised therein a bird so bold –
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted!
He sank, he rose, he twinkled, he trolled
Within that shaft of sunny mist;
His eyes of fire, his beak of gold,
All else of amethyst!
And thus he sang: ‘Adieu! adieu!
10 Love’s dreams prove seldom true.
The blossoms they make no delay:
The sparkling dew-drops will not stay.
Sweet month of May,
We must away;
Far, far away!
To-day! to-day!’
[Hunting Song
FROM ‘ZAPOLYA’]
Up, up! ye dames, and lasses gay!
To the meadows trip away.
’Tis you must tend the flocks this morn,
And scare the small birds from the corn.
Not a soul at home may stay:
For the shepherds must go
With lance and bow
To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day.
Leave the hearth and leave the house
10 To the cricket and the mouse:
Find grannam out a sunny seat,
With babe and lambkin at her feet.
Not a soul at home may stay:
For the shepherds must go
With lance and bow
To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day.
[Faith, Hope, and Charity
FROM THE ITALIAN OF GUARINI]
Faith
Let those whose low delights to Earth are given
Chaunt forth their earthly Loves! but we
Must make an holier minstrelsy,
And, heavenly-born, will sing the Things of Heaven.
Charity
But who for us the listening Heart shall gain?
Inaudible as of the sphere
Our music dies upon the ear,
Enchanted with the mortal Syren’s strain.
Hope
Yet let our choral songs abound!
10 Th’ inspiring Power, its living Source,
May flow with them and give them force,
If, elsewhere all unheard, in Heaven they sound.
All
Aid thou our voice, Great Spirit! thou whose flame
Kindled the Songster sweet of Israel,
Who made so high to swell
Beyond a mortal strain thy glorious Name.
Charity and Faith
Though rapt to Heaven, our mission and our care
Is still to sojourn on the Earth,
To shape, to soothe, Man’s second Birth,
20 And re-ascend to Heaven, Heaven’s prodigal Heir!
Charity
What is Man’s soul of Love deprived?
Hope, Faith
It like a Harp untunèd is,
That sounds, indeed, but sounds amiss.
Charity, Hope
From holy Love all good gifts are derived.
Faith
But ’tis time that every nation
Should hear how loftily we sing.
Faith. Hope. Charity
See, O World, see thy salvation!
Let the Heavens with praises ring.
Who would have a Throne above,
30 Let him hope, believe and love;
And whoso loves no earthly song,
But does for heavenly music long.
Faith, Hope, and Charity for him,
Shall sing like wingèd Cherubim.
Fancy in Nubibus
OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS
O! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend’s fancy; or with head bent low
And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold
’Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
10 Or list’ning to the tide, with closèd sight,
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.
Israel’s Lament
A Hebrew Dirge, chaunted in the Great Synagogue, St James’s Place, Aldgate, on the day of the Funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte.
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