While yet the spell is strong upon the rout,
With something of still fear all move about,
As though a breath or motion might displace
The Spirit, which had come of heavenly grace
Among them, for a moment to redeem
Their thoughts and passions from the selfish dream
Of earthly life, and its inglorious race.
If we might keep this awe upon us still,
If we might walk for ever in the power
And in the shadow of the mystery,
Which has been spread around us at this hour,
This might suffice to guard us from much ill,
This might go far to keep us pure and free.
THE SAME CONTINUED.
But the spell fails--and of the many here,
Who have been won to brief forgetfulness
Of all that would degrade them and oppress,
Who have been carried out of their dim sphere
Of being, to realms brighter and more clear,
How few to-morrow will retain a trace,
Which the world’s business shall not soon efface,
Of this high mood, this time of reverent fear.
In these high raptures there is nothing sure,
Nothing that we can rest on, to sustain
The spirit long, or arm it to endure
Against temptation weariness or pain,
And if they promise to preserve it pure
From earthly taint, the promise is in vain.
THE SAME CONTINUED.
Yet proof is here of men’s unquenched desire
That the procession of their life might be
More equable majestic pure and free;
That there are times when all would fain aspire,
And gladly use the helps, to lift them higher,
Which music, poesy, or Nature brings,
And think to mount upon these waxen wings,
Not deeming that their strength shall ever tire.
But who indeed shall his high flights sustain,
Who soar aloft and sink not? He alone
Who has laid hold upon that golden chain
Of love, fast linked to God’s eternal throne,--
The golden chain from heav’n to earth let down,
That we might rise by it, nor fear to sink again.
SONNET.
A counsellor well fitted to advise
In daily life and at whose lips no less
Men may inquire or nations, when distress
Of sudden doubtful danger may arise,
Who, though his head be hidden in the skies,
Plants his firm foot upon our common earth,
Dealing with thoughts which everywhere have birth,--
This is the poet, true of heart and wise:
No dweller in a baseless world of dream,
Which is not earth nor heav’n: his words have past
Into man’s common thought and week-day phrase;
This is the poet, and his verse will last.
Such was our Shakspeare once, and such doth seem
One who redeems our later gloomier days.
SONNET.
Me rather may to tears unbidden move
The meanest print that on a cottage wall
Some ancient deed heroic doth recal,
Or loving act of His, whose life was love,
Than that my heart should be too proud to prove
Emotions and sweet sympathies, until
The magic of some mighty master’s skill
Called hues and shapes of wonder from above:
Since if we do no idle homage pay
To what in art most beautiful is found,
We shall have learned to feel in that same hour
With man’s most rude and most unskilled essay
To win the beauty that is floating round
Into abiding forms of grace and power.
SONNET,
CONNECTED WITH THE FOREGOING.
Yes, and not otherwise, if we in deed
And with pure hearts are seeking what is fair
In Nature, then believe we shall not need
Long anxious quests, exploring earth and air
Ere we shall find wherewith our hearts to feed:
The beauty which is scattered everywhere
Will in our souls such deep contentment breed,
We shall not pine for aught remote or rare;
We shall not ask from some transcendant height
To gaze on such rare scenes, as may surpass
Earth’s common shows, ere we will own delight:
We shall not need in quest of these to roam,
While sunshine lies upon our English grass,
And dewdrops glitter on green fields at home.
DESPONDENCY[8].
I.
It is a weary hill
Of moving sand that still
Shifts, struggle as we will,
Beneath our tread:
Of those who went before,
And tracked the desert o’er,
The footmarks are no more,
But gone and fled.
II.
We stray to either side,
We wander far and wide,
We fall to sleep and slide
Far down again:
As thro’ the sand we wade,
We do not seek to aid
Our fellows, but upbraid
Each others’ pain.
III.
I gaze on that bright band
Who on the summit stand,
To order and command,
Like stars on high:
Yet with despairing pace
My way I could retrace,
Or on this desert place
Sink down and die.
IV.
As we who toil and weep,
And with our weeping steep
The path o’er which we creep,
They had not striven;
They must have taken flight
To that serenest height,
And won it by the might
Of wings from heaven.
V.
Alack! I have no wing,
My spirit lacks that spring,
And Nature will not bring
Her help to me.
From her I have no aid,
But light-enwoven shade,
And stream and star upbraid
Our misery.
ODE TO SLEEP.
I.
I cannot veil mine eyelids from the light;
I cannot turn away
From this insulting and importunate day,
That momently grows fiercer and more bright,
And wakes the hideous hum of monstrous flies
In my vexed ear, and beats
On the broad panes, and like a furnace heats
The chamber of my rest, and bids me rise.
II.
I cannot follow thy departing track,
Nor tell in what far meadows, gentle Sleep,
Thou art delaying. I would win thee back,
Were mine some drowsy potion, or dull spell,
Or charmèd girdle, mighty to compel
Thy heavy grace; for I have heard it said,
Thou art no flatterer, that dost only keep
In kingly haunts, leaving unvisited
The poor man’s lowlier shed;
And when the day is joyless, and its task
Unprofitable, I were fain to ask,
Why thou wilt give it such an ample space,
Why thou wilt leave us such a weary scope
For memory, and for that which men call hope,
Nor wind in one embrace
Sad eve and night forlorn
And undelightful morn.
III.
If with the joyous were thine only home,
I would not so far wrong thee, as to ask
This boon, or summon thee from happier task.
But no,--for then thou wouldst too often roam
And find no rest; for me, I cannot tell
What tearless lids there are, where thou mightst dwell.
I know not any, unenthralled of sorrow,
I know not one, to whom this joyous morrow,
So full of living motion new and bright,
Will be a summons to secure delight.
And thus I shall not harm thee, though I claim
Awhile thy presence--O mysterious Sleep.
Some call thee shadow of a mightier Name,
And whisper how that nightly thou dost keep
A roll and count for him.--
Then be thou on my spirit like his presence dim.
IV.
Yet if my limbs were heavy with sweet toil,
I had not needed to have wooed thy might,
But till thy timely flight
Had lain securely in thy peaceful coil.
Or if my heart were lighter, long ago
Had crushed the dewy morn upon the sod,
Darkening where I trod,
As was my pleasure once, but now it is not so.
V.
And therefore am I seeking to entwine
A coronal of poppies for my head,
Or wreathe it with a wreath engarlanded
By Lethe’s slumberous waters. Oh! that mine
Were some dim chamber turning to the north,
With latticed casement, bedded deep in leaves,
That opening with sweet murmur might look forth
On quiet fields from broad o’erhanging eaves,
And ever when the Spring her garland weaves,
Were darkened with encroaching ivy-trail
And jaggèd vine-leaves’ shade;
And all its pavement starred with blossoms pale
Of jasmine, when the wind’s least stir was made;
Where the sun-beam were verdurous-cool, before
It wound into that quiet nook, to paint
With interspace of light and colour faint
That tesselated floor.
How pleasant were it there in dim recess,
In some close-curtained haunt of quietness,
To hear no tones of human pain and care,
Our own or others, little heeding there,
If morn or noon or night
Pursued their weary flight,
But musing what an easy thing it were
To mix our opiates in a larger cup,
And drink, and not perceive
Sleep deepening lead his truer kinsman up,
Like undistinguished Night, darkening the skirts of Eve.
ATLANTIS.
I.
I could loose my boat,
And could bid it float
Where the idlest wind should pilot,
So its glad course lay
From this earth away,
Towards any untrodden islet.
II.
For this earth is old,
And its heart is cold,
And the palsy of age has bound it;
And my spirit frets
For the viewless nets
Which are hourly clinging round it.
III.
And with joyful glee
We have heard of thee,
Thou Isle in mid ocean sleeping;
And thy records old,
Which the Sage has told,
How the Memphian tombs are keeping.
IV.
But we know not where,
’Neath the desert air,
To look for the pleasant places
Of the youth of Time,
Whose austerer prime
The haunts of his childhood effaces.
V.
Like the golden flowers
Of the western bowers,
Have waned their immortal shadows;
And no harp may tell
Where the asphodel
Clad in light those Elysian meadows.
VI.
And thou, fairest Isle
In the daylight’s smile,
Hast thou sunk in the boiling ocean,
While beyond thy strand
Rose a mightier land
From the wave in alternate motion?
VII.
Are the isles that stud
The Atlantic flood,
But the peaks of thy tallest mountains,
While repose below
The great water’s flow
Thy towns and thy towers and fountains?
VIII.
Have the Ocean powers
Made their quiet bowers,
In thy fanes and thy dim recesses?
Or in haunts of thine
Do the sea-maids twine
Coral wreaths for their dewy tresses?
IX.
Or does foot not fall
In deserted hall,
Choked with wrecks that ne’er won their haven,
By the ebb trailed o’er
Thy untrampled floor,
Which their sunken wealth has paven?
X.
Oh, appear! appear!
Not as when thy spear
Ruled as far as the broad Egean,
But in Love’s own might,
And in Freedom’s right,
Till the nations uplift their Pæan,
XI.
Who now watch and weep,
And their vigil keep,
Till they faint for expectation;
Till their dim eyes shape
Temple tower and cape
From the cloud and the exhalation.
SAIS.
An awful statue, by a veil half-hid,
At Sais stands. One came, to whom was known
All lore committed to Etruscan stone,
And all sweet voices, that dull time has chid
To silence now, by antique Pyramid,
Skirting the desert, heard; and what the deep
May in its dimly-lighted chambers keep,
Where Genii groan beneath the seal-bound lid.
He dared to raise that yet unlifted veil
With hands not pure, but never might unfold
What there he saw--madness, the shadow, fell
On his few days, ere yet he went to dwell
With night’s eternal people, and his tale
Has thus remained, and will remain, untold.
SONNET.
I stood beside a pool, from whence ascended,
Mounting the platforms of the cloudy wind,
A stately hern--its soaring I attended,
Till it grew dim, and I with watching blind--
When, lo! a shaft of arrowy light descended
Upon its darkness and its dim attire:
It straightway kindled then, and was afire,
And with the unconsuming radiance blended.
A bird, a cloud, flecking the sunny air,
It had its golden dwelling mid the lightning
Of those empyreal domes, and it might there
Have dwelt for ever, glorified and brightning,
But that its wings were weak--so it became
A dusky speck again, that _was_ a wingèd flame.
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURGOS.
Most like some agèd king it seemed to me,
Who had survived his old regality,
Poor and deposed, but keeping still his state,
In all he had before of truly great;
With no vain wishes and no vain regret,
But his enforcèd leisure soothing yet
With meditation calm and books and prayer;
For all was sober and majestic there--
The old Castilian, with close finger tips
Pressing his folded mantle to his lips;
The dim cathedral’s cross-surmounted pile,
With carved recess, and cool and shadowy aisle,
And had not from dark hoods peered darker eyes,
All fitted well for meditation wise--
The walks of poplar by the river’s side,
That wound by many a straggling channel wide;
And seats of stone, where one might sit and weave
Visions, till well-nigh tempted to believe
That life had few things better to be done,
And many worse, than resting in the sun
To lose the hours, and wilfully to dim
Our half-shut eyes, and veil them till might swim
The pageant by us, smoothly as the stream
And unremembered pageant of a dream.
A castle crowned a neighbouring hillock’s crest,
But now the moat was level with the rest;
And all was fallen of this place of power,
All heaped with formless stone, save one round tower,
And here and there a gateway low and old,
Figured with antique shape of warrior bold.
And then behind this eminence the sun
Would drop serenely, long ere day was done;
And one who climbed that height might see again
A second setting o’er the fertile plain
Beyond the town, and glittering in his beam,
Wind far away that poplar-skirted stream.
TO A FRIEND.
Thou that hast travelled far away,
In lands beyond the sea,
Wilt understand me, when I say
What there has come to me.
In chambers dim thou wilt have wrought,
With no one by, to cheer,
And trod the downward paths of thought,
In solitude and fear;
Nor till the weary day was o’er,
Into the air have fled
From thought which could delight no more,
From books whose power was dead;
What time perchance the drooping day
With burning vapour fills
The deep recesses far away
Of all the golden hills:
Or later, when the twilight blends
All hues, or when the moon
Into the ocean depths descends,
A wavering column, down.
Then hast not thou in spirit leapt,
Emerging from thy gloom,
Like one who unawares o’erstept
The barriers of a tomb.
And in thine exultation cried--
Of gladness having fill,
And in it being glorified--
“The world is beauteous still!”
TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL EXILES OF 1823.
[WRITTEN IN 1829.]
Wise are ye in a wisdom vainly sought
Thro’ all the records of the historic page;
It is not to be learned by lengthened age,
Scarce by deep musings of unaided thought:
By suffering and endurance ye have bought
A knowledge of the thousand links that bind
The highest with the lowest of our kind,
And how the indissoluble chain is wrought.
Ye fell by your own mercy once--beware,
When your lots leap again from fortune’s urn,
An heavier error--to be pardoned less.
Yours be it to the nations to declare
That years of pain and disappointment turn
Weak hearts to gall, but wise to gentleness.
TO THE SAME.
Like nightly watchers from a palace tower,
In hope and faith and patience strong to wait
The beacons on the hills, which should relate
How some fenced city of deceit and power
Had fallen--ye have stood for many an hour,
Till your first hope’s high movements must be dead,
And if with new ye have not cheered and fed
Your bosoms, dim despair may be your dower.
Yet not for all--tho’ yet no fire may crest
The mountains, or light up their beacons sere--
Your eminent commission so far wrong,
Or so much flatter the oppressors’ rest,
As to give o’er your watching, for so long
As ye shall hope, ’tis reason they must fear.
SONNET.
The moments that we rescue and redeem
From the bare desert and the waste of years,
To fertilize, it may be with our tears,
Yet so that for time after they shall teem
With better than rank weeds, and wear a gleam
Of visionary light, and on the wind
Fling odours from the fields long left behind,
These and their fruit to us can never seem
Indifferent things, and therefore do I look
Not without gentle sadness upon thee,
And liken thy outgoing, O my book,
To the impatience of a little brook,
Which might with flowers have lingered pleasantly,
Yet toils to perish in the mighty sea.
ON AN EARLY DEATH.
I.
Ah me! of them from whom the good have hope,
Of them whom virtue for her liegemen claims,
How many the world tames,
That with its evil they quite cease to cope,
And their first fealty sworn to beauty and truth
Break early; and amid their sinful youth
Make shipwreck of all high and glorious aims.
How few the fierce and fiery trial stand,
To be as weapons tempered and approved
For an almighty hand.
How few of all the streamlets that were moved,
Do ever unto clearness run again,
And therefore is it marvellous to us,
When of these weapons one is broken thus,
When of these fountains one would seem in vain
Renewed in clearness, and is staunched before
It has had leave to spread fresh streams the desert o’er.
II.
Ah me! that by so frail and feeble thread
Our life is holden--that not life alone,
But all that life has won
May in an hour be gathered to the dead;
The slow additions that build up the mind,
The skill that by temptation we have bought
And suffering, and whatever has been taught
By lengthened years and converse with our kind,
That all may cease together--and the tree
Reared to its height by many a slow degree,
And by the dews the sunshine and the showers
Of many springs, an instant may lay low,
With all its living towers,
And all the fruit mature of growth and slow,
Which on the trees of wisdom leisurely must grow.
III.
Alas! it is another thing to wail,
That when the foremost runners sink and fail,
They cannot pass their torch or forward place
To them that are behind them in their race,
But their extinguished torches must be laid
Together with them in the dust of death:
That when the wise and the true-hearted fade,
So little of themselves they can bequeath
To us, who yet are in the race of life,
For labour and for toil, for weariness and strife.
IV.
But from behind the veil,
Where they are entered who have gone before,
A solemn voice arrests my feeble wail--
“And has thy life such worthier aims, O man,
That thou shouldst grudge to give its little span
To truth and knowledge, and faith’s holy lore,
Because the places for the exercise
Of these may be withdrawn from mortal eyes.
Win truth, win goodness--for which man was made,
And fear not thou of these to be bereft,
Fear not that these shall in the dust be laid,
Or in corruption left,
Or be the grave-worm’s food.
Nothing is left or lost--nothing of good,
Or lovely; but whatever its first springs
Has drawn from God, returns to him again;
That only which ’twere misery to retain
Is taken from you, which to keep were loss;
Only the scum the refuse and the dross
Are borne away unto the grave of things,
Meanwhile whatever gifts from heav’n descend
Thither again have flowed,
To the receptacle of all things good,
From whom they come and unto whom they tend,
Who is the First and Last, the Author and the End.
V.
And fear to sorrow with increase of grief,
When they who go before
Go furnished--or because their span was brief,
When in the acquist of what is life’s true gage,
Truth, knowledge, and that other worthiest lore,
They had fulfilled already a long age.
For doubt not but that in the worlds above
There must be other offices of love,
That other tasks and ministries there are,
Since it is promised that His servants, there
Shall serve him still. Therefore be strong, be strong,
Ye that remain, nor fruitlessly revolve,
Darkling, the riddles which ye cannot solve,
But do the works that unto you belong,
Believing that for every mystery,
For all the death the darkness and the curse
Of this dim universe,
Needs a solution full of love must be:
And that the way whereby ye may attain
Nearest to this, is not thro’ broodings vain
And half-rebellious--questionings of God,
But by a patient seeking to fulfil
The purpose of his everlasting will,
Treading the way which lowly men have trod.
Since it is ever they who are too proud
For this, that are the foremost and most loud
To judge his hidden judgments, these are still
The most perplexed and mazed at his mysterious will.”
SONNET.
When I have sometimes read of precious things,
The precious things of earth, which yet are vile,
Together heaped into the graves of kings,
Or wasted with them on their funeral pile,
Steeds arms and costly vestments and the dross
Which men call gold, feeding one ravenous pyre,
I have been little moved at all the loss
Of all the treasure which fond men admire.
But when I hear of some too early doom,
Snatching wit wisdom valour grace away,
Or our own loss has taught me what the tomb
May cover from us, then I feel and say
That earth has things whereon the grave may feed,
And feeding may make poor the world indeed.
SONNET.
What is the greatness of a fallen king?
This--that his fall avails not to abate
His spirit to a level with his fate,
Or inward fall along with it to bring;
That he disdains to stoop his former wing,
But keeps in exile and in want the law
Of kingship yet, and counts it scorn to draw
Comfort indign from any meaner thing.
Soul, that art fallen from thine ancient place,
Mayest thou in this mean world find nothing great,
Nor aught that shall the memories efface
Of that true greatness which was once thine own,
As knowing thou must keep thy kingly state,
If thou wouldst reascend thy kingly throne.
NEW YEAR’S EVE.
The strong in spiritual action need not look
Upon the new-found year as on a scroll,
The which their hands lack cunning to unroll,
But in it read, as in an open book,
All they are seeking--high resolve unshook
By circumstance’s unforeseen control,
Successful striving, and whate’er the soul
Has recognised for duty, not forsook.
But they whom many failures have made tame,
Question the future with that reverent fear,
Which best their need of heav’nly aid may shew.
Will it have purer thought, and loftier aim
Pursued more loftily? That a man might know
What thou wilt bring him, thou advancing year!
TO MY CHILD.
Thy gladness makes me thankful every way,
To look upon thy gladness makes me glad;
While yet in part it well might render sad
Us thinking that we too might sport and play,
And keep like thee continual holiday,
If we retained the things which once we had,
If we like happy Neophytes were clad
Still in baptismal stoles of white array.
And yet the gladness of the innocent child
Has not more matter for our thankful glee
Than the dim sorrows of the man defiled;
Since both in sealing one blest truth agree--
Joy is of God, but heaviness and care
Of our own hearts and what has harboured there.
SONNET.
An open wound that has been healed anew;
A stream dried up, that once again is fed
With waters making green its grassy bed;
A tree that withered was, but to the dew
Puts forth young leaves and blossoms fresh of hue,
Even from the branches which had seemed most dead;
A sea which having been disquieted,
Now stretches like a mirror calm and blue,--
Our hearts to each of these were likened well.
But Thou wert the physician and the balm;
Thou, Lord, the fountain, whence anew was filled
Their parchèd channel; Thou the dew that fell
On their dead branches; ’twas thy voice that stilled
The storm within--Thou didst command the calm.
SONNET.
IN A PASS OF BAVARIA BETWEEN THE WALCHEN AND THE WALDENSEE.
“His voice was as the sound of many waters.”
A sound of many waters--now I know
To what was likened the large utterance sent
By Him who ’mid the golden lampads went:
Innumerable streams, above, below,
Some seen, some heard alone, with headlong flow
Come rushing; some with smooth and sheer descent,
Some dashed to foam and whiteness, but all blent
Into one mighty music. As I go,
The tumult of a boundless gladness fills
My bosom, and my spirit leaps and sings:
Sounds and sights are there of the ancient hills,
The eagle’s cry, or when the mountain flings
Mists from its brow, but none of all these things
Like the one voice of multitudinous rills.
SONNET.
What is thy worship but a vain pretence,
Spirit of Beauty, and a servile trade,
A poor and an unworthy traffic made
With the most sacred gifts of soul and sense;
If they who tend thine altars, gathering thence
No strength, no purity, may still remain
Selfish and dark, and from Life’s sordid stain
Find in their ministrations no defence?
Thus many times I ask, when aught of mean
Or sensual has been brought unto mine ear,
Of them whose calling high is to insphere
Eternal Beauty in forms of human art--
Vexed that my soul should ever moved have been
By that which has such feigning at the heart.
SONNET.
Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And shouldst thou there small scope for action see,
Do not for this give room to discontent;
Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent
In idly dreaming how thou mightest be,
In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free
From outward hindrance or impediment.
For presently this hindrance thou shalt find
That without which all goodness were a task
So slight, that Virtue never could grow strong:
And wouldst thou do one duty to His mind,
The Imposer’s--over-burdened thou shalt ask,
And own thy need of grace to help, ere long.
TO MY GOD-CHILD,
ON THE DAY OF HIS BAPTISM.
No harsh transitions Nature knows,
No dreary spaces intervene;
Her work in silence forward goes,
And rather felt than seen.
For where the watcher, that with eye
Turned eastward, yet could ever say
When the faint glooming in the sky
First lightened into day?