To soften and atone;
And oh! ye scenes of those bless’d years,
They shall make me again your own.”
THE VAUDOIS WIFE.[372]
“Clasp me a little longer, on the brink
Of fate! while I can feel thy dear caress;
And when this heart hath ceased to beat, oh! think--
And let it mitigate thy woe’s excess--
That thou hast been to me all tenderness,
And friend, to more than human friendship just.
Oh! by that retrospect of happiness,
And by the hopes of an immortal trust,
God shall assuage thy pangs, when I am laid in dust.”
Gertrude of Wyoming.
Thy voice is in mine ear, beloved!
Thy look is in my heart,
Thy bosom is my resting-place,
And yet I must depart.
Earth on my soul is strong--too strong--
Too precious is its chain,
All woven of thy love, dear friend,
Yet vain--though mighty--vain!
Thou see’st mine eye grow dim, beloved!
Thou see’st my life-blood flow--
Bow to the Chastener silently,
And calmly let me go!
A little while between our hearts
The shadowy gulf must lie,
Yet have we for their communing
Still, still Eternity!
Alas! thy tears are on my cheek,
My spirit they detain;
I know that from thine agony
Is wrung that burning rain.
Best! kindest! weep not--make the pang,
The bitter conflict less--
Oh! sad it is, and yet a joy,
To feel thy love’s excess!
But calm thee! let the thought of death
A solemn peace restore!
The voice that must be silent soon
Would speak to thee once more,
That thou may’st bear its blessing on
Through years of after life--
A token of consoling love,
Even from this hour of strife.
I bless thee for the noble heart,
The tender and the true,
Where mine hath found the happiest rest
That e’er fond woman’s knew;
I bless thee, faithful friend and guide!
For my own, my treasured share
In the mournful secrets of thy soul,
In thy sorrow, in thy prayer.
I bless thee for kind looks and words
Shower’d on my path like dew,
For all the love in those deep eyes,
A gladness ever new!
For the voice which ne’er to mine replied
But in kindly tones of cheer;
For every spring of happiness
My soul hath tasted here!
I bless thee for the last rich boon
Won from affection tried--
The right to gaze on death with thee,
To perish by thy side!
And yet more for the glorious hope
Even to _these_ moments given--
Did not _thy_ spirit ever lift
The trust of _mine_ to heaven?
Now be _thou_ strong! Oh, knew we not
Our path must lead to this?
A shadow and a trembling still
Were mingled with our bliss!
We plighted our young hearts when storms
Were dark upon the sky,
In full, deep knowledge of their task
To suffer and to die!
Be strong! I leave the living voice
Of this, my martyr’d blood,
With the thousand echoes of the hills,
With the torrent’s foaming flood,--
A spirit midst the caves to dwell,
A token on the air,
To rouse the valiant from repose,
The fainting from despair.
Hear it, and bear thou on, my love!
Ay, joyously endure!
Our mountains must be altars yet,
Inviolate and pure;
There must our God be worshipp’d still
With the worship of the free:
Farewell!--there’s but _one_ pang in death,
One only,--leaving thee!
[372] The wife of a Vaudois leader, in one of the attacks made on the
Protestant hamlets, received a mortal wound, and died in her husband’s
arms, exhorting him to courage and endurance.
THE GUERILLA LEADER’S VOW.
“All my pretty ones!
Did you say all?
...
Let us make medicine of this great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief!” Macbeth.
My battle-vow!--no minster walls
Gave back the burning word,
Nor cross nor shrine the low deep tone
Of smother’d vengeance heard:
But the ashes of a ruin’d home
Thrill’d as it sternly rose,
With the mingling voice of blood that shook
The midnight’s dark repose.
I breathed it not o’er kingly tombs,
But where my children lay,
And the startled vulture at my step
Soar’d from their precious clay.
I stood amidst my dead alone--
I kiss’d their lips--I pour’d,
In the strong silence of that hour,
My spirit on my sword.
The roof-tree fallen, the smouldering floor,
The blacken’d threshold-stone,
The bright hair torn, and soil’d with blood,
Whose fountain was my own--
These, and the everlasting hills,
Bore witness that wild night;
Before them rose th’ avenger’s soul
In crush’d affection’s might.
The stars, the searching stars of heaven,
With keen looks would upbraid
If from my heart the fiery vow,
Sear’d on it then, could fade.
They have no cause! Go, ask the streams
That by my paths have swept,
The red waves that unstain’d were born--
How hath my faith been kept?
And other eyes are on my soul,
That never, never close,
The sad, sweet glances of the lost--
They leave me no repose.
Haunting my night-watch midst the rocks,
And by the torrent’s foam,
Through the dark-rolling mists they shine,
Full, full of love and home!
Alas! the mountain eagle’s heart,
When wrong’d, may yet find rest;
Scorning the place made desolate,
He seeks another nest.
But I--your soft looks wake the thirst
That wins no quenching rain;
Ye drive me back, my beautiful!
To the stormy fight again.
THEKLA AT HER LOVER’S GRAVE.
“Thither where he lies buried!
That single spot is the whole world to me.”
Coleridge’s “Wallenstein.”
Thy voice was in my soul! it call’d me on;
O my lost friend! thy voice was in my soul.
From the cold, faded world whence thou art gone,
To hear no more life’s troubled billows roll,
I come! I come!
Now speak to me again! we loved so well--
We _loved_!--oh! still, I know that still we love!
I have left all things with thy dust to dwell,
Through these dim aisles in dreams of _thee_ to rove:
This is my home!
Speak to me in the thrilling minster’s gloom!
Speak! thou hast died, and sent me no farewell!
I will not shrink--oh! mighty is the tomb,
But one thing mightier, which it cannot quell--
This woman’s heart!
This lone, full, fragile heart!--the strong alone
In love and grief--of both the burning shrine!
Thou, my soul’s friend! with grief hast surely done,
But with the love which made thy spirit mine,
Say, couldst thou part?
I hear the rustling banners; and I hear
The wind’s low singing through the fretted stone.
I hear not _thee_; and yet I feel thee near--
What is this bound that keeps thee from thine own?
Breathe it away.
I wait thee--I adjure thee! Hast thou known
How I have loved thee? couldst thou dream it all?
Am I not here, with night and death alone,
And fearing not? And hath my spirit’s call
O’er thine no sway?
Thou _canst_ not come! or thus I should not weep!
Thy love is deathless--but no longer free!
Soon would its wing triumphantly o’ersweep
The viewless barrier, if such power might be,
Soon, soon, and fast!
But I shall come to thee! our souls’ deep dreams,
Our young affections, have not gush’d in vain;
Soon in one tide shall blend the sever’d streams,
The worn heart break its bonds--and death and pain
Be with the past!
THE SISTERS OF SCIO.
“As are our hearts, our way is one,
And cannot be divided. Strong affection
Contends with all things, and o’ercometh all things.
Will I not live with thee? will I not cheer thee?
Wouldst thou be lonely then? wouldst thou be sad?”
Joanna Baillie.
“Sister, sweet sister! let me weep awhile!
Bear with me--give the sudden passion way!
Thoughts of our own lost home, our sunny isle,
Come as a wind that o’er a reed hath sway;
Till my heart dies with yearnings and sick fears--
Oh! could my life melt from me in these tears!
“Our father’s voice, our mother’s gentle eye,
Our brother’s bounding step--where are they, where?
Desolate, desolate our chambers lie!
--How hast _thou_ won thy spirit from despair?
O’er _mine_ swift shadows, gusts of terror, sweep:
I sink away--bear with me--let me weep!”
“Yes! weep my sister! weep, till from thy heart
The weight flow forth in tears; yet sink thou not.
I bind my sorrow to a lofty part,
For thee, my gentle one! our orphan lot
To meet in quenchless trust. My soul is strong:
Thou, too, wilt rise in holy might ere long.
“A breath of our free heavens and noble sires,
A memory of our old victorious dead--
These mantle me with power; and though their fires
In a frail censer briefly may be shed,
Yet shall they light us onward, side by side--
Have the wild birds, and have not _we_, a guide?
“Cheer, then, beloved! on whose meek brow is set
Our mother’s image--in whose voice a tone,
A faint, sweet sound of hers is lingering yet,
An echo of our childhood’s music gone.
Cheer thee! thy sister’s heart and faith are high:
Our path is one--with thee I live and die!”
[“But who are they that sit, mourning in their loveliness, beneath the
shadow of a rock on the surf-beaten shore? The Sisters of Scio ...
by Felicia Dorothea Hemans sung. Die--rather let them die in famine
amongst sea-sand shells, than ere their virgin charms be polluted in
the harem of the barbarian who has desolated their native isle. Bowed
down and half dead, beneath what a load of anguish hangs the orphan’s
dishevelled head on the knee of a sister, in pensive resignation,
and holy faith triumphant over despair, as Felicia happily
singeth!”--Professor Wilson, _Blackwood’s Magazine_. Dec. 1829.]
BERNARDO DEL CARPIO.
[The celebrated Spanish champion, Bernardo del Carpio, having made
many ineffectual efforts to procure the release of his father, the
Count Saldana, who had been imprisoned by King Alfonso of Asturias,
almost from the time of Bernardo’s birth, at last took up arms in
despair. The war which he maintained proved so destructive, that the
men of the land gathered round the King, and united in demanding
Saldana’s liberty. Alfonso, accordingly, offered Bernardo immediate
possession of his father’s person in exchange for his castle of
Carpio. Bernardo, without hesitation, gave up his stronghold, with all
his captives; and being assured that his father was then on his way
from prison, rode forth with the King to meet him. “And when he saw
his father approaching, he exclaimed,” says the ancient chronicle,
“‘Oh, God! is the Count of Saldana indeed coming?’--‘Look where he
is,’ replied the cruel King; ‘and now go and greet him whom you have
so long desired to see.’” The remainder of the story will be found
related in the ballad. The chronicles and romances leave us nearly in
the dark as to Bernardo’s history after this event.]
The warrior bow’d his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire,
And sued the haughty king to free his long-imprison’d sire:
“I bring thee here my fortress keys, I bring my captive train,
I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord!--oh, break my father’s
chain!”
“Rise, rise! even now thy father comes, a ransom’d man this day:
Mount thy good horse, and thou and I will meet him on his way.”
Then lightly rose that loyal son, and bounded on his steed,
And urged, as if with lance in rest, the charger’s foamy speed.
And lo! from far, as on they press’d, there came a glittering band,
With one that midst them stately rode, as a leader in the land;
“Now haste, Bernardo, haste! for there, in very truth, is he,
The father whom thy faithful heart hath yearn’d so long to see.”
His dark eye flash’d, his proud breast heaved, his cheek’s blood
came and went;
He reach’d that gray-hair’d chieftain’s side, and there,
dismounting, bent;
A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father’s hand he took,--
What was there in its touch that all his fiery spirit shook?
That hand was cold--a frozen thing--it dropp’d from his like lead:
He look’d up to the face above--the face was of the dead!
A plume waved o’er the noble brow--the brow was fix’d and white;
He met at last his father’s eyes--but in them was no sight!
Up from the ground he sprang, and gazed, but who could paint that
gaze?
They hush’d their very hearts, that saw its horror and amaze;
They might have chain’d him, as before that stony form he stood,
For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood.
“Father!” at length he murmur’d low, and wept like childhood then--
Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men!--
He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young renown,--
He flung the falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down.
Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly mournful brow,
“No more, there is no more,” he said, “to lift the sword for now.--
My king is false, my hope betray’d, my father--oh! the worth,
The glory and the loveliness, are pass’d away from earth!
“I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire! beside thee yet--
I would that _there_ our kindred blood on Spain’s free soil had met!
Thou wouldst have known my spirit then--for thee my fields were
won,--
And thou hast perish’d in thy chains, as though thou hadst no son!”
Then, starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch’s
rein,
Amidst the pale and wilder’d looks of all the courtier train;
And with a fierce, o’ermastering grasp, the rearing war-horse led,
And sternly set them face to face--the king before the dead!--
“Came I not forth upon thy pledge, my father’s hand to kiss?--
Be still, and gaze thou on, false king! and tell me what is this!
The voice, the glance, the heart I sought--give answer, where are
they?--
If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold
clay!
“Into these glassy eyes put light----Be still! keep down thine
ire,--
Bid these white lips a blessing speak--this earth is _not_ my sire!
Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed,--
Thou canst not--and a king! His dust be mountains on thy head!”
He loosed the steed; his slack hand fell--upon the silent face
He cast one long, deep, troubled look--then turn’d from that sad
place:
His hope was crush’d, his after-fate untold in martial strain,--
His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills of Spain.
THE TOMB OF MADAME LANGHANS.
“To a mysteriously consorted pair
This place is consecrate; to death and life,
And to the best affections that proceed
From this conjunction.” Wordsworth.
[At Hindlebank, near Berne, she is represented as bursting from the
sepulchre, with her infant in her arms, at the sound of the last
trumpet. An inscription on the tomb concludes thus:--“Here am I, O
God! with the child whom thou hast given me.”]
How many hopes were borne upon thy bier,
O bride of stricken love! in anguish hither!
Like flowers, the first and fairest of the year,
Pluck’d on the bosom of the dead to wither;
Hopes from their source all holy, though of earth,
All brightly gathering round affection’s hearth.
Of mingled prayer they told; of Sabbath hours;
Of morn’s farewell, and evening’s blessed meeting;
Of childhood’s voice, amidst the household bowers;
And bounding step, and smile of joyous greeting;--
But thou, young mother! to thy gentle heart
Did’st take thy babe, and meekly so depart.
How many hopes have sprung in radiance hence!
Their trace yet lights the dust where thou art sleeping!
A solemn joy comes o’er me, and a sense
Of triumph, blent with nature’s gush of weeping,
As, kindling up the silent stone, I see
The glorious vision, caught by faith, of thee.
Slumberer! love calls thee, for the night is past;
Put on the immortal beauty of thy waking!
Captive! and hear’st thou not the trumpet’s blast,
The long, victorious note, thy bondage breaking?
Thou hear’st, thou answer’st, “God of earth and heaven!
Here am I, with the child whom thou hast given!”
THE EXILE’S DIRGE.
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.” Cymbeline.
[“I attended a funeral where there were a number of the German
settlers present. After I had performed such service as is usual on
similar occasions, a most venerable-looking old man came forward, and
asked me if I were willing that they should perform some of their
peculiar rites. He opened a very ancient version of Luther’s Hymns,
and they all began to sing, in German, so loud that the woods echoed
the strain. There was something affecting in the singing of these
ancient people, carrying one of their brethren to his last home, and
using the language and rites which they had brought with them over
the sea from the _Vaterland_, a word which often occurred in this
hymn. It was a long, slow, and mournful air, which they sung as they
bore the body along: the words ‘_mein Gott_,’ ‘_mein Bruder_,’ and
‘_Vaterland_,’ died away in distant echoes amongst the woods. I shall
long remember that funeral hymn.”--Flint’s _Recollections of the
Valley of the Mississippi_.]
There went a dirge through the forest’s gloom.
--An exile was borne to a lonely tomb.
“Brother!” (so the chant was sung
In the slumberer’s native tongue,)
“Friend and brother! not for thee
Shall the sound of weeping be:
Long the exile’s woe hath lain
On thy life a withering chain;
Music from thine own blue streams
Wander’d through thy fever-dreams;
Voices from thy country’s vines
Met thee midst the alien pines;
And thy time heart died away,
And thy spirit would not stay.”
So swell’d the chant; and the deep wind’s moan,
Seem’d through the cedars to murmur--“_Gone!_”
“Brother! by the rolling Rhine
Stands the home that once was thine;
Brother! now thy dwelling lies
Where the Indian arrow flies!
He that bless’d thine infant head
Fills a distant greensward bed;
She that heard thy lisping prayer
Slumbers low beside him there;
They that earliest with thee play’d
Rest beneath their own oak-shade,
Far, far hence!--yet sea nor shore
Haply, brother! part ye more;
God hath call’d thee to that band
In the immortal Fatherland!”
“The _Fatherland_!”--with that sweet word
A burst of tears midst the strain was heard.
“Brother! were we there with thee
Rich would many a meeting be!
Many a broken garland bound,
Many a mourn’d and lost one found!
But our task is still to bear,
Still to breathe in changeful air;
Loved and bright things to resign,
As even now this dust of thine;
Yet to hope!--to hope in heaven,
Though flowers fall, and ties be riven--
Yet to pray! and wait the hand
Beckoning to the Fatherland!”
And the requiem died in the forest’s gloom;
They had reach’d the exile’s lonely tomb.
THE DREAMING CHILD.
“Alas! what kind of grief should thy years know?
Thy brow and cheek are smooth as waters be
When no breath troubles them.”
Beaumont and Fletcher.
And is there sadness in _thy_ dreams, my boy?
What should the cloud be made of? Blessed child!
Thy spirit, borne upon a breeze of joy,
All day hath ranged through sunshine clear, yet mild:
And now thou tremblest!--wherefore?--in _thy_ soul
There lies no past, no future. Thou hast heard
No sound of presage from the distance roll,
Thy heart bears traces of no arrowy word.
From thee no love hath gone; thy mind’s young eye
Hath look’d not into death’s, and thence become
A questioner of mute eternity,
A weary searcher for a viewless home:
Nor hath thy sense been quicken’d unto pain
By feverish watching for some step beloved:
Free are thy thoughts, an ever-changeful train,
Glancing like dewdrops, and as lightly moved.
Yet now, on billows of strange passion toss’d,
How art thou wilder’d in the cave of sleep!
My gentle child! midst what dim phantoms lost,
Thus in mysterious anguish dost thou weep?
Awake! they sadden me--those early tears,
First gushings of the strong, dark river’s flow,
That must o’ersweep thy soul with coming years,
Th’ unfathomable flood of human woe!
Awful to watch, even rolling through a dream,
Forcing wild spray-drops but from childhood’s eyes!
Wake, wake! as yet _thy_ life’s transparent stream
Should wear the tinge of none but summer skies.
Come from the shadow of those realms unknown,
Where now thy thoughts dismay’d and darkling rove;
Come to the kindly region all thine own,
The home still bright for thee with guardian love.
Happy, fair child! that yet a mother’s voice
Can win thee back from visionary strife!--
Oh, shall _my_ soul, thus waken’d to rejoice,
Start from the dreamlike wilderness of life?
THE CHARMED PICTURE.
“Oh! that those lips had language! Life hath pass’d
With me but roughly since I saw thee last.”
Cowper.
Thine eyes are charm’d--thine earnest eyes--
Thou image of the dead!
A spell within their sweetness lies,
A virtue thence is shed.
Oft in their meek blue light enshrined
A blessing seems to be,
And sometimes there my wayward mind
A still reproach can see:
And sometimes pity--soft and deep,
And quivering through a tear;
Even as if love in heaven could weep
For grief left drooping here.
And oh, my spirit needs that balm!
Needs it midst fitful mirth!
And in the night-hour’s haunted calm,
And by the lonely hearth.
Look on me _thus_, when hollow praise
Hath made the weary pine
For one true tone of other days,
One glance of love like thine!
Look on me _thus_, when sudden glee
Bears my quick heart along,
On wings that struggle to be free,
As bursts of skylark song.
In vain, in vain!--too soon are felt
The wounds they cannot flee:
Better in childlike tears to melt,
Pouring my soul on thee!
Sweet face, that o’er my childhood shone!
Whence is thy power of change,
Thus ever shadowing back my own,
The rapid and the strange?
Whence are they charm’d--those earnest eyes?
--I know the mystery well!
In mine own trembling bosom lies
The spirit of the spell!
Of Memory, Conscience, Love, ’tis born--
Oh! change no longer, thou!
For ever be the blessing worn
On thy pure thoughtful brow!
PARTING WORDS.
“One struggle more, and I am free.”--Byron.
Leave me! oh, leave me! Unto all below
Thy presence binds me with too deep a spell;
Thou makest those mortal regions, whence I go,
Too mighty in their loveliness. Farewell,
That I may part in peace!
Leave me!--thy footstep, with its lightest sound,
The very shadow of thy waving hair,
Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound,
Too strong for aught that loves and dies, to bear--
Oh! bid the conflict cease!
I hear thy whisper--and the warm tears gush
Into mine eyes, the quick pulse thrills my heart;
Thou bid’st the peace, the reverential hush,
The still submission, from my thoughts depart:
Dear one! this must not be.
The past looks on me from thy mournful eye,
The beauty of our free and vernal days;
Our communings with sea, and hill, and sky--
Oh! take that bright world from my spirit’s gaze!
Thou art all earth to me!
Shut out the sunshine from my dying room,
The jasmine’s breath, the murmur of the bee;
Let not the joy of bird-notes pierce the gloom!
They speak of love, of summer, and of thee,
Too much--and death is here!
Doth our own spring make happy music now,
From the old beech-roots flashing into day?
Are the pure lilies imaged in its flow?
Alas! vain thoughts! that fondly thus can stray
From the dread hour so near!
If I could but draw courage from the light
Of thy clear eye, that ever shone to bless!
--Not now! ’twill not be now!--my aching sight,
Drinks from that fount a flood of tenderness,
Bearing all strength away!
Leave me!--thou com’st between my heart and Heaven;
I would be still, in voiceless prayer to die!--
Why must our souls thus love, and then be riven?
Return! thy parting wakes mine agony!
Oh, yet awhile delay!
THE MESSAGE TO THE DEAD.
Thou’rt passing hence, my brother!
O my earliest friend, farewell!
Thou’rt leaving me, without thy voice,
In a lonely home to dwell;
And from the hills, and from the hearth,
And from the household tree,
With thee departs the lingering mirth,
The brightness goes with thee.[373]
But thou, my friend, my brother!
Thou’rt speeding to the shore
Where the dirge-like tone of parting words
Shall smite the soul no more!
And thou wilt see our holy dead,
The lost on earth and main:
Into the sheaf of kindred hearts,
Thou wilt be bound again!
Tell, then, our friend of boyhood
That yet his name is heard
On the blue mountains, whence his youth
Pass’d like a swift, bright bird.
The light of his exulting brow,
The vision of his glee,
Are on me still--oh! still I trust
That smile again to see.
And tell our fair young sister,
The rose cut down in spring,
That yet my gushing soul is fill’d
With lays she loved to sing.
Her soft deep eyes look through my dreams,
Tender and sadly sweet;--
Tell her my heart within me burns
Once more that gaze to meet.
And tell our white-hair’d father,
That in the paths be trode,
The child he loved, the last on earth,
Yet walks and worships God.
Say, that his last fond blessing yet
Rests on my soul like dew,
And by its hallowing might I trust
Once more his face to view.
And tell our gentle mother,
That on her grave I pour
The sorrows of my spirit forth,
As on her breast of yore.
Happy thou art that soon, how soon,
Our good and bright will see!--
O brother, brother! may I dwell,
Ere long, with them and thee!
[373] “Messages from the living to the dead are not uncommon in
the Highlands. The Gaels have such a ceaseless consciousness of
immortality, that their departed friends are considered as merely
absent for a time, and permitted to relieve the hours of separation
by occasional intercourse with the objects of their earliest
affections.”--See the Notes to Mrs Brunton’s Works.
THE TWO HOMES.
“Oh, if the soul immortal be,
Is not its love immortal too?”
See’st thou my home? ’Tis where yon woods are waving,
In their dark richness, to the summer air,
Where yon blue stream, a thousand flower-banks laving,
Leads down the hills a vein of light,--’tis there!
Midst those green wilds how many a fount lies gleaming,
Fringed with the violet, colour’d with the skies!
My boyhood’s haunt, through days of summer dreaming,
Under young leaves that shook with melodies.
My home! The spirit of its love is breathing
In every wind that blows across my track;
From its white walls the very tendrils wreathing,
Seem with soft links to draw the wanderer back.
There am I loved--there pray’d for--there my mother
Sits by the hearth with meekly thoughtful eye;
There my young sisters watch to greet their brother--
Soon their glad footsteps down the path will fly.
There, in sweet strains of kindred music blending,
All the home-voices meet at day’s decline;
One are those tones, as from one heart ascending,
There laughs _my_ home--sad stranger! where is thine?
Ask’st thou of mine? In solemn peace ’tis lying,
Far o’er the deserts and the tombs away;
’Tis where _I_, too, am loved with love undying,
And fond hearts wait my step--But where are they?
Ask where the earth’s departed have their dwelling;
Ask of the clouds, the stars, the trackless air!
I know it not, yet trust the whisper, telling
My lonely heart that love unchanged is there.
And what is home, and where, but with the loving
Happy _thou_ art, that so canst gaze on thine!
My spirit feels but, in its weary roving,
That with the dead, where’er they be, is mine,
Go to thy home, rejoicing son and brother!
Bear in fresh gladness to the household scene!
For me, too, watch the sister and the mother,
I well believe--but dark seas roll between.
THE SOLDIER’S DEATH-BED.
“Wie herrlich die Sonne dort untergeht! da ich noch ein Bube
war--war’s mein Lieblingsgedanke, wie sie zu leben, wie sie zu
sterben!”
Die Rauber.
_Like thee to die, thou sun!_--My boyhood’s dream
Was this; and now my spirit, with thy beam,
Ebbs from a field of victory!--yet the hour
Bears back upon me, with a torrent’s power,
Nature’s deep longings. Oh! for some kind eye
Wherein to meet love’s fervent farewell gaze;
Some breast to pillow life’s last agony,
Some voice, to speak of home and better days,
Beyond the pass of shadows! But I go,
I that have been so loved, go hence alone;
And ye, now gathering round my own hearth’s glow,
Sweet friends! it may be that a softer tone,
Ev’n in this moment, with your laughing glee,
Mingles its cadence while you speak of me--
Of me, your soldier, midst the mountains lying,
On the red banner of his battles dying,
Far, far away! And oh! your parting prayer--
Will not his name be fondly murmur’d there?
It will!--A blessing on that holy hearth!
Though clouds are darkening to o’ercast its mirth.
Mother! I may not hear thy voice again;
Sisters! ye watch to greet my step in vain;
Young brother, fare thee well!--on each dear head
Blessing and love a thousandfold be shed,
My soul’s last earthly breathings! May your home
Smile for you ever!--May no winter come,
No _world_, between your hearts! May ev’n your tears,
For my sake, full of long-remember’d years,
Quicken the true affections that entwine
Your lives in one bright bond! I may not sleep
Amidst our fathers, where those tears might shine
Over my slumbers; yet your love will keep
My memory living in th’ ancestral halls,
Where shame hath never trod. The dark night falls,
And I depart. The brave are gone to rest,
The brothers of my combats, on the breast
Of the red field they reap’d:--their work is done--
_Thou_, too, art set!--farewell, farewell, thou sun!
The last lone watcher of the bloody sod
Offers a trusting spirit up to God.
THE IMAGE IN THE HEART.
TO * * *
“True, indeed, it is,
That they whom death has hidden from our sight,
Are worthiest of the mind’s regard; with them
The future cannot contradict the past--
Mortality’s last exercise and proof
Is undergone.” Wordsworth.
“The love where death hath set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow.” Byron.
I call thee bless’d!--though now the voice be fled
Which to thy soul brought dayspring with its tone,
And o’er the gentle eyes though dust be spread,
Eyes that ne’er look’d on thine but light was thrown
Far through thy breast:
And though the music of thy life be broken,
Or changed in every chord since he is gone--
Feeling all this, even yet, by many a token,
O thou, the deeply, but the brightly lone!
I call thee bless’d!
For in thy heart there is a holy spot,
As mid the waste an isle of fount and palm,
For ever green!--the world’s breath enters not,
The passion-tempests may not break its calm:
’Tis thine, all thine!
Thither, in trust unbaffled, may’st thou turn
From bitter words, cold greetings, heartless eyes,
Quenching thy soul’s thirst at the hidden urn
That, fill’d with waters of sweet memory, lies
In its own shrine.
Thou hast thy _home_!--there is no power in change
To reach that temple of the past; no sway,
In all time brings of sudden, dark, or strange,
To sweep the still transparent peace away
From its hush’d air!
And oh! that glorious image of the dead!
Sole thing whereon a deathless love may rest,
And in deep faith and dreamy worship shed
Its high gifts fearlessly! I call thee bless’d,
If only _there_.
Bless’d, for the beautiful within thee dwelling
Never to fade!--a refuge from distrust,
A spring of purer life, still freshly welling,
To clothe the barrenness of earthly dust
With flowers divine.
And thou hast been beloved!--it is no dream,
No false mirage for _thee_, the fervent love,
The rainbow still unreach’d, the ideal gleam,
That ever seems before, beyond, above,
Far off to shine.
But thou, from all the daughters of the earth
Singled and mark’d, hast _known_ its home and place;
And the high memory of its holy worth
To this our life a glory and a grace
For thee hath given.
And art thou not _still_ fondly, truly loved?
Thou art!--the love his spirit bore away
Was not for death!--a treasure but removed,
A bright bird parted for a clearer day,--
Thine still in heaven!
THE LAND OF DREAMS.
“And dreams, in their development, have breath,
And tears and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They make us what we were not--what they will,
And shake us with the vision that’s gone by.”
Byron.
O spirit-land! thou land of dreams!
A world thou art of mysterious gleams,
Of startling voices, and sounds at strife--
A world of the dead in the hues of life.
Like a wizard’s magic glass thou art,
When the wavy shadows float by, and part:
Visions of aspects, now loved, now strange,
Glimmering and mingling in ceaseless change.
Thou art like a city of the past,
With its gorgeous halls into fragments cast,
Amidst whose ruins there glide and play
Familiar forms of the world’s to-day.
Thou art like the depths where the seas have birth,
Rich with the wealth that is lost from earth,--
All the sere flowers of our days gone by,
And the buried gems in thy bosom lie.
Yes! thou art like those dim sea-caves,
A realm of treasures, a realm of graves!
And the shapes through thy mysteries that come and go,
Are of beauty and terror, of power and woe.
But for me, O thou picture-land of sleep!
Thou art all one world of affections deep,--
And wrung from my heart is each flushing dye
That sweeps o’er thy chambers of imagery.
And thy bowers are fair--even as Eden fair:
All the beloved of my soul are there!
The forms my spirit most pines to see,
The eyes whose love hath been life to me:
They are there--and each blessed voice I hear,
Kindly, and joyous, and silvery clear;
But under-tones are in each, that say,--
“It is but a dream; it will melt away!”
I walk with sweet friends in the sunset’s glow;
I listen to music of long ago;
But one thought, like an omen, breathes faint through the lay,--
“It is but a dream; it will melt away!”
I sit by the hearth of my early days;
All the home-faces are met by the blaze,--
And the eyes of the mother shine soft, yet say,
“It is but a dream; it will melt away!”
And away, like a flower’s passing breath, ’tis gone,
And I wake more sadly, more deeply lone!
Oh! a haunted heart is a weight to bear,--
Bright faces, kind voices! where are ye, where?
Shadow not forth, O thou land of dreams,
The past, as it fled by my own blue streams!
Make not my spirit within me burn
For the scenes and the hours that may ne’er return!
Call out from the _future_ thy visions bright,
From the world o’er the grave, take thy solemn light,
And oh! with the loved whom no more I see,
Show me my home, as it yet may be!
As it yet may be in some purer sphere,
No cloud, no parting, no sleepless fear;
So my soul may bear on through the long, long day
Till I go where the beautiful melts not away!
WOMAN ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.
“Where hath not woman stood
Strong in affection’s might? a reed, upborne
By an o’ermastering current!”
Gentle and lovely form!
What didst thou here,
When the fierce battle-storm
Bore down the spear?
Banner and shiver’d crest,
Beside thee strown,
Tell that amidst the best
Thy work was done!
Yet strangely, sadly fair,
O’er the wild scene,
Gleams, through its golden hair,
That brow serene.
Low lies the stately head,--
Earth-bound the free;
How gave those haughty dead
A place to thee?
Slumberer! _thine_ early bier
Friends should have crown’d,
Many a flower and tear
Shedding around;--
Soft voices, clear and young,
Mingling their swell,
Should o’er thy dust have sung
Earth’s last farewell;--
Sisters, above the grave
Of thy repose,
Should have bid violets wave
With the white rose.
Now must the trumpet’s note,
Savage and shrill,
For requiem o’er thee float,
Thou fair and still!
And the swift charger sweep
In full career,
Trampling thy place of sleep--
Why cam’st thou here?
Why? Ask the true heart why
Woman hath been
Ever where brave men die,
Unshrinking seen?
Unto this harvest ground
Proud reapers came,--
Some, for that stirring sound,
A warrior’s name;
Some for the stormy play
And joy of strife;
And some to fling away
A weary life;--
But thou, pale sleeper! thou
With the slight frame,
And the rich locks, whose glow
Death cannot tame;
Only one thought, one power,
_Thee_ could have led,
So, through the tempest’s hour,
To lift thy head!
Only the true, the strong,
The love, whose trust
Woman’s deep soul too long
Pours on the dust!
THE DESERTED HOUSE.
Gloom is upon thy lonely hearth,
O silent house! once fill’d with mirth;
Sorrow is in the breezy sound
Of thy tall poplars whispering round.
The shadow of departed hours
Hangs dim upon thine early flowers;
Ev’n in thy sunshine seems to brood
Something more deep than solitude.
Fair art thou, fair to a stranger’s gaze,
Mine own sweet home of other days!
My children’s birthplace!--yet for me
It is too much to look on thee.
Too much! for all about thee spread,
I feel the memory of the dead,
And almost linger for the feet
That never more my step shall meet.
The looks, the smiles, all vanish’d now,
Follow me where thy roses blow;
The echoes of kind household-words
Are with me midst thy singing-birds.
Till my heart dies, it dies away
In yearnings for what might not stay;
For love which ne’er deceived my trust,
For all which went with “dust to dust!”
What now is left me, but to raise
From thee, lorn spot! my spirit’s gaze,
To lift through tears my straining eye
Up to my Father’s house on high?
Oh! many are the mansions there,[374]
But not in one hath grief a share!
No haunting shade from things gone by
May there o’ersweep th’ unchanging sky.
And _they_ are there, whose long-loved mien
In earthly home no more is seen;
Whose places, where they smiling sate,
Are left unto us desolate.
We miss them when the board is spread;
We miss them when the prayer is said;
Upon our dreams their dying eyes
In still and mournful fondness rise.
But they are where these longings vain
Trouble no more the heart and brain;
The sadness of this aching love
Dims not our Father’s house above.
Ye are at rest, and I in tears,[375]
Ye dwellers of immortal spheres!
Under the poplar boughs I stand,
And mourn the broken household band.
But, by your life of lowly faith,
And by your joyful hope in death,
Guide me, till on some brighter shore
The sever’d wreath is bound once more!
Holy ye were, and good, and true!
No change can cloud my thoughts of you;
Guide me, like you to live and die,
And reach my Father’s house on high!
[374] “In my father’s house there are many mansions.”--_John_, chap.
xiv.
[375] From an ancient Hebrew dirge:
“Mourn for the mourner, and not for the dead. For he is at rest, and we
in tears!”
THE STRANGER’S HEART.
The stranger’s heart! Oh, wound it not!
A yearning anguish is its lot;
In the green shadow of thy tree,
The stranger finds no rest with thee.
Thou think’st the vine’s low rustling leaves
Glad music round thy household eaves;
To him that sound hath sorrow’s tone--
The stranger’s heart is with his own.
Thou think’st thy children’s laughing play
A lovely sight at fall of day;
Then are the stranger’s thoughts oppress’d--
His mother’s voice comes o’er his breast.
Thou think’st it sweet when friend with friend
Beneath one roof in prayer may blend;
Then doth the stranger’s eye grow dim--
Far, far are those who pray’d with him.
Thy hearth, thy home, thy vintage-land,
The voices of thy kindred band--
Oh! midst them all when bless’d thou art,
Deal gently with the stranger’s heart!
TO A REMEMBERED PICTURE.
[She was singularly impressed by the picture at Holyrood House, shown
as that of Rizzio. The authenticity of this designation is more than
doubtful; but hers was not a mind for question or cavil on points of
this nature. The “local habitation and the name” were in themselves
sufficient to awaken her fancy, and to satisfy her faith. As Rizzio’s
portrait, it took its place in her imagination; and the train of deep
and mournful thoughts it suggested, imbued, as was her wont, with the
colouring of her own individual feelings, was embodied in the lines
“To a Remembered Picture.”--_Memoir_, p. 197-8.]
They haunt me still--those calm, pure, holy eyes!
Their piercing sweetness wanders through my dreams;
The soul of music that within them lies
Comes o’er _my_ soul in soft and sudden gleams:
Life--spirit-life--immortal and divine--
Is there; and yet how dark a death was thine!
Could it--oh! _could_ it be--meek child of song?
The might of gentleness on that fair brow--
Was the celestial gift no shield from wrong?
Bore it no talisman to ward the blow?
Ask if a flower, upon the billows cast,
Might brave their strife--a flute-note hush the blast!
Are there not deep, sad oracles to read
In the clear stillness of that radiant face?
Yes! even like thee must gifted spirits bleed,
Thrown on a world, for heavenly things no place!
Bright, exiled birds that visit alien skies,
Pouring on storms their suppliant melodies.
And seeking ever some true, gentle breast,
Whereon their trembling plumage might repose,
And their free song-notes, from that happy nest,
Gush as a fount that forth from sunlight flows:
Vain dream!--the love whose precious balms might save
Still, still denied--they struggle to the grave.
Yet my heart shall not sink!--another doom,
Victim! hath set its promise in thine eye:
A light is there, too quenchless for the tomb,
Bright earnest of a nobler destiny;
Telling of answers, in some far-off sphere,
To the deep souls that find no echo here.
COME HOME!
Come home! There is a sorrowing breath
In music since ye went,
And the early flower-scents wander by
With mournful memories blent.
The tones in every household voice
Are grown more sad and deep;
And the sweet word--_brother_--wakes a wish
To turn aside and weep.
O ye beloved! come home! The hour
Of many a greeting tone,
The time of hearth-light and of song
Returns--and ye are gone!
And darkly, heavily it falls
On the forsaken room,
Burdening the heart with tenderness,
That deepens midst the gloom.
Where finds it _you_, ye wandering ones!
With all your boyhood’s glee
Untamed? Beneath the desert’s palm,
Or on the lone mid-sea?
By stormy hills of battles old?
Or where dark rivers foam?--
Oh! life is dim where ye are not--
Back, ye beloved, come home!
Come with the leaves and winds of spring,
And swift birds, o’er the main!
Our love is grown too sorrowful--
Bring us its youth again!
Bring the glad tones to music back!
Still, still your home is fair,
The spirit of your sunny life
Alone is wanting there!
THE FOUNTAIN OF OBLIVION.
“Implora pace!”[376]
One draught, kind fairy! from that fountain deep,
To lay the phantoms of a haunted breast;
And lone affections, which are griefs, to steep
In the cool honey-dews of dreamless rest;
And from the soul the lightning-marks to lave--
One draught of that sweet wave!
Yet, mortal! pause! Within thy mind is laid
Wealth, gather’d long and slowly; thoughts divine
Heap that full treasure-house; and thou hast made
The gems of many a spirit’s ocean thine;--
Shall the dark waters to oblivion bear
A pyramid so fair?
Pour from the fount! and let the draught efface
All the vain lore by memory’s pride amass’d,
So it but sweep along the torrent’s trace,
And fill the hollow channels of the past;
And from the bosom’s inmost folded leaf,
Rase the one master-grief!
Yet pause once more! All, _all_ thy soul hath known,
Loved, felt, rejoiced in, from its grasp must fade!
Is there no voice whose kind, awakening tone
A sense of spring-time in thy heart hath made?
No eye whose glance thy daydreams would recall?
--Think--wouldst thou part with all?
Fill with forgetfulness! There are, there _are_
Voices whose music I have loved too well--
Eyes of deep gentleness; but they are far--
Never! oh never, in my home to dwell!
Take their soft looks from off my yearning soul--
Fill high th’ oblivious bowl!
Yet pause again! With memory wilt thou cast
The undying hope away, of memory born?
Hope of reunion, heart to heart at last,
No restless doubt between, no rankling thorn?
Wouldst thou erase all records of delight
That make such visions bright?
Fill with forgetfulness, fill high!----Yet stay--
Tis from the past we shadow forth the land
Where smiles, long lost, again shall light our way,
And the soul’s friends be wreath’d in one bright band.
Pour the sweet waters back on their own rill--
I _must_ remember still.
For their sake, for the dead--whose image naught
May dim within the temple of my breast--
For their love’s sake, which now no earthly thought
May shake or trouble with its own unrest,
Though the past haunt me as a spirit--yet
I ask not to forget.
[376] Quoted from a letter of Lord Byron’s. He describes the impression
produced upon him by some tombs at Bologna, bearing this simple
inscription, and adds, “When I die, I could wish that some friend
would see these words, and no other, placed above my grave,--‘_Implora
pace!_’”
[“The ‘Songs of the Affections’ were published in the summer of
1830. This collection of lyrics has been, perhaps, less popular than
other of Mrs Hemans’s later works. It was hardly, indeed, to be
expected that the principal poem, ‘A Spirit’s Return,’ the origin
and subject of which we have already described, should appeal to the
feelings of so large a circle as had borne witness to the truth of
the tales of actual life and sacrifice and suffering contained in
the ‘Records of Woman.’ But there are parts of the poem solemnly and
impressively powerful. The passages in which the speaker describes her
youth--the disposition born with her to take pleasure in spiritual
contemplations, and to listen to that voice in nature which speaks
of another state of being beyond this visible world--prepare us most
naturally for the agony of her desire--when he, in whom she had
devotedly embarked all her earthly hopes and affections--
‘----till the world held naught
Save the one being to my centred thought,’
was taken away from her for ever--to see him, if but for a moment--to
speak with him only once again!
* * * * *
As the crisis of interest approaches, the variety given by alternate
rhymes to the heroic measure in which the tale was written, is wisely
laid aside, and it proceeds with a resistless energy--
‘Hast thou been told, that from the viewless bourne
The dark way never hath allow’d return?’ etc.
“The conclusion of this fine poem is far from fulfilling the promise
of its commencement; but it was impossible to imagine any events,
or give utterance to any feelings, succeeding those so awful and
exciting, which should not appear feeble, and vague, and exhausted.
Mrs Hemans would sometimes regret that she had not bestowed more
labour upon the close of her work: this, it is true, might have
been more carefully elaborated, but, from the nature of her
subject, I doubt the possibility of its having been substantially
improved.”--Chorley’s _Memorials of Mrs Hemans_, p. 101-5.]
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
THE BRIDAL-DAY.
[On a monument in a Venetian church is an epitaph, recording that the
remains beneath are those of a noble lady, who expired suddenly while
standing as a bride at the altar.]
“We bear her home! we bear her home!
Over the murmuring salt sea’s foam;
One who has fled from the war of life,
From sorrow, pain, and the fever strife.”
Barry Cornwall.
Bride! upon thy marriage-day,
When thy gems in rich array
Made the glistening mirror seem
As a star-reflecting stream;
When the clustering pearls lay fair
Midst thy braids of sunny hair,
And the white veil o’er thee streaming,
Like a silvery halo gleaming,
Mellow’d all that pomp and light
Into something meekly bright;
Did the fluttering of thy breath
Speak of joy or woe beneath?
And the hue that went and came
O’er thy cheek, like wavering flame,
Flow’d that crimson from th’ unrest
Or the gladness of thy breast?
--Who shall tell us? From thy bower,
Brightly didst thou pass that hour;
With the many-glancing oar,
And the cheer along the shore,
And the wealth of summer flowers
On thy fair head cast in showers,
And the breath of song and flute,
And the clarion’s glad salute,
Swiftly o’er the Adrian tide
Wert thou borne in pomp, young bride!
Mirth and music, sun and sky,
Welcomed thee triumphantly!
Yet, perchance, a chastening thought
In some deeper spirit wrought,
Whispering, as untold it blent
With the sounds of merriment--
“From the home of childhood’s glee,
From the days of laughter free,
From the love of many years,
Thou art gone to cares and fears;
To another path and guide,
To a bosom yet untried!
Bright one! oh, there well may be
Trembling midst our joy for thee!”
Bride! when through the stately fane,
Circled with thy nuptial train,
Midst the banners hung on high
By thy warrior-ancestry,
Midst those mighty fathers dead,
In soft beauty thou wast led;
When before the shrine thy form
Quiver’d to some bosom-storm,
When, like harp-strings with a sigh
Breaking in mid-harmony,
On thy lip the murmurs low
Died with love’s unfinish’d vow;
When, like scatter’d rose-leaves, fled
From thy cheek each tint of red,
And the light forsook thine eye,
And thy head sunk heavily;
Was that drooping but th’ excess
Of thy spirit’s blessedness?
Or did some deep feeling’s might,
Folded in thy heart from sight,
With a sudden tempest-shower
Earthward bear thy life’s young flower?
--Who shall tell us? On _thy_ tongue
Silence, and for ever, hung!
Never to thy lip and cheek
Rush’d again the crimson streak;
Never to thine eye return’d
That which there had beam’d and burn’d!
With the secret none might know,
With thy rapture or thy woe,
With thy marriage robe and wreath,
Thou wert fled, young bride of death!
One, one lightning moment there
Struck down triumph to despair;
Beauty, splendour, hope, and trust,
Into darkness--terror--dust!
There were sounds of weeping o’er thee,
Bride! as forth thy kindred bore thee,
Shrouded in thy gleaming veil,
Deaf to that wild funeral wail.
Yet perchance a chastening thought
In some deeper spirit wrought,
Whispering, while the stern, sad knell
On the air’s bright stillness fell--
“From the power of chill and change
Souls to sever and estrange;
From love’s wane--a death in life,
But to watch--a mortal strife;
From the secret fevers known
To the burning heart alone,
Thou art fled--afar, away--
Where these blights no more have sway!
Bright one! oh, there well may be
Comfort midst our tears for thee!”
THE ANCESTRAL SONG.
“A long war disturb’d your mind--
Here your perfect peace is sign’d;
’Tis now full tide ’twixt night and day--
End your moan, and come away!”
Webster, “Duchess of Malfy.”
There were faint sounds of weeping; fear and gloom
And midnight vigil in a stately room
Of Lusignan’s old halls. Rich odours there
Fill’d the proud chamber as with Indian air,
And soft light fell from lamps of silver, thrown
On jewels that with rainbow lustre shone
Over a gorgeous couch: there emeralds gleam’d,
And deeper crimson from the ruby stream’d
Than in the heart-leaf of the rose is set,
Hiding from sunshine. Many a carcanet
Starry with diamonds, many a burning chain
Of the red gold, sent forth a radiance vain,
And sad, and strange, the canopy beneath
Whose shadowy curtains, round a bed of death,
Hung drooping solemnly,--for there one lay.
Passing from all earth’s glories fast away,
Amidst those queenly treasures. They had been
Gifts of her lord, from far-off Paynim lands;
And for _his_ sake, upon their orient sheen
She had gazed fondly, and with faint, cold hands
Had press’d them to her languid heart once more,
Melting in childlike tears. But this was o’er--
Love’s last, vain clinging unto life; and now
A mist of dreams was hovering o’er her brow;
Her eye was fix’d, her spirit seem’d removed,
Though not from earth, from all it knew or loved,
Far, far away! Her handmaids watch’d around,
In awe, that lent to each low midnight sound
A might, a mystery; and the quivering light
Of wind-sway’d lamps made spectral in their sight
The forms of buried beauty, sad, yet fair,
Gleaming along the walls with braided hair,
Long in the dust grown dim; and she, too, saw,
But with the spirit’s eye of raptured awe,
Those pictured shapes!--a bright, yet solemn train
Beckoning, they floated o’er her dreamy brain,
Clothed in diviner hues; while on her ear
Strange voices fell, which none besides might hear,
--Sweet, yet profoundly mournful, as the sigh
Of winds o’er harp-strings through a midnight sky;
And thus it seem’d, in that low, thrilling tone,
Th’ ancestral shadows call’d away their own.
Come, come, come!
Long thy fainting soul hath yearn’d
For the step that ne’er return’d;
Long thine anxious ear hath listen’d,
And thy watchful eye hath glisten’d
With the hope, whose parting strife
Shook the flower-leaves from thy life.
Now the heavy day is done:
Home awaits thee, wearied one!
Come, come, come!
From the quenchless thoughts that burn
In the seal’d heart’s lonely urn;
From the coil of memory’s chain
Wound about the throbbing brain;
From the veins of sorrow deep,
Winding through the world of sleep;
From the haunted halls and bowers,
Throng’d with ghosts of happier hours!
Come, come, come!
On our dim and distant shore
Aching love is felt no more!
_We_ have loved with earth’s excess--
Past is now that weariness!
_We_ have wept, that weep not now--
Calm is each once-beating brow!
We have known the dreamer’s woes--
All is now one bright repose!
Come, come, come!
Weary heart that long hast bled,
Languid spirit, drooping head,
Restless memory, vain regret,
Pining love whose light is set,
Come away!--’tis hush’d, ’tis well,
Where by shadowy founts we dwell,
All the fever-thirst is still’d,
All the air with peace is fill’d,--
Come, come, come!
And with her spirit wrapt in that wild lay.
She pass’d, as twilight melts to night, away!
THE MAGIC GLASS.
“How lived, how loved, how died they?”--Byron.
“The dead! the glorious dead!--and shall they rise?
Shall they look on thee with their proud bright eyes?
Thou ask’st a fearful spell!
Yet say, from shrine or dim sepulchral hall,
What kingly vision shall obey my call?
The deep grave knows it well!
“Wouldst thou behold earth’s conquerors? shall they pass
Before thee, flushing all the Magic Glass
With triumph’s long array?
Speak! and those dwellers of the marble urn,
Robed for the feast of victory, shall return,
As on their proudest day.
“Or wouldst thou look upon the lords of song?
O’er the dark mirror that immortal throng
Shall waft a solemn gleam!
Passing, with lighted eyes and radiant brows,
Under the foliage of green laurel-boughs,
But silent as a dream.”
“Not these, O mighty master!--though their lays
Be unto man’s free heart, and tears, and praise,
Hallow’d for evermore!
And not the buried conquerors--let them sleep,
And let the flowery earth her sabbaths keep
In joy, from shore to shore!
“But, if the narrow house may so be moved,
Call the bright shadows of the most beloved
Back from their couch of rest!
That I may learn if _their_ meek eyes be fill’d
With peace, if human love hath ever still’d
The yearning human breast.”
“Away, fond youth!--an idle quest is thine:
_These_ have no trophy, no memorial shrine;
I know not of their place!
Midst the dim valleys, with a secret flow,
Their lives, like shepherd reed-notes, faint and low,
Have pass’d, and left no trace.
“Haply, begirt with shadowy woods and hills,
And the wild sounds of melancholy rills,
Their covering turf may bloom;
But ne’er hath fame made relics of its flowers--
Never hath pilgrim sought their household bowers,
Or poet hail’d their tomb.”
“Adieu, then, master of the midnight spell!
Some voice, perchance, by those lone graves may tell
That which I pine to know!
I haste to seek, from woods and valleys deep,
Where the beloved are laid in lowly sleep,
Records of joy and woe.”
CORINNE AT THE CAPITOL.
“Les femmes doivent penser qu’il est dans cette carriere bien peu de
sorte qui puissent valoir la plus obscure vie d’une femme aimee et
d’une mere heureuse.” Madame de Stael.
Daughter of th’ Italian heaven!
Thou to whom its fires are given,
Joyously thy car hath roll’d
Where the conqueror’s pass’d of old;
And the festal sun that shone
O’er three hundred triumphs gone,[377]
Makes thy day of glory bright
With a shower of golden light.
Now thou tread’st th’ ascending road
Freedom’s foot so proudly trode;
While, from tombs of heroes borne,
From the dust of empire shorn,
Flowers upon thy graceful head,
Chaplets of all hues, are shed,
In a soft and rosy rain,
Touch’d with many a gem-like stain.
Thou hast gain’d the summit now!
Music hails thee from below;
Music, whose rich notes might stir
Ashes of the sepulchre;
Shaking with victorious notes
All the bright air as it floats.
Well may woman’s heart beat high
Unto that proud harmony!
Now afar it rolls--it dies--
And thy voice is heard to rise
With a low and lovely tone,
In its thrilling power alone;
And thy lyre’s deep silvery string,
Touch’d as by a breeze’s wing,
Murmurs tremblingly at first,
Ere the tide of rapture burst.
All the spirit of thy sky
Now hath lit thy large dark eye,
And thy cheek a flush hath caught
From the joy of kindled thought;
And the burning words of song
From thy lip flow fast and strong,
With a rushing stream’s delight
In the freedom of its might.
Radiant daughter of the sun!
Now thy living wreath is won.
Crown’d of Rome!--oh! art thou not
Happy in that glorious lot?--
Happier, happier far than thou,
With the laurel on thy brow,
She that makes the humblest hearth
Lovely but to one on earth!
[377] “The trebly hundred triumphs.”--Byron.
THE RUIN.
“Oh! ’tis the heart that magnifies this life,
Making a truth and beauty of its own.”
Wordsworth.
“Birth has gladden’d it: death has sanctified it.”
Guesses at Truth.
No dower of storied song is thine,
O desolate abode!
Forth from thy gates no glittering line
Of lance and spear hath flow’d.
Banners of knighthood have not flung
Proud drapery o’er thy walls,
Nor bugle-notes to battle rung
Through thy resounding halls.
Nor have rich bowers of _pleasaunce_ here
By courtly hands been dress’d,
For princes, from the chase of deer,
Under green leaves to rest:
Only some rose, yet lingering bright
Beside thy casements lone,
Tells where the spirit of delight
Hath dwelt, and now is gone.
Yet minstrel-tale of harp and sword,
And sovereign beauty’s lot,
House of quench’d light and silent board!
For me thou needest not.
It is enough to know that _here_,
Where thoughtfully I stand,
Sorrow and love, and hope and fear,
Have link’d one kindred band.
Thou bindest me with mighty spells!
--A solemnising breath,
A presence all around thee dwells
Of human life and death.
I need but pluck yon garden flower
From where the wild weeds rise,
To wake, with strange and sudden power,
A thousand sympathies.
Thou hast heard many sounds, thou hearth!
Deserted now by all!
Voices at eve here met in mirth
Which eve may ne’er recall.
Youth’s buoyant step, and woman’s tone,
And childhood’s laughing glee,
And song and prayer, have all been known,
Hearth of the dead! to thee.
Thou hast heard blessings fondly pour’d
Upon the infant head,
As if in every fervent word
The living soul were shed;
Thou hast seen partings, such as bear
The bloom from life away--
Alas! for love in changeful air,
Where naught beloved can stay!
Here, by the restless bed of pain,
The vigil hath been kept,
Till sunrise, bright with hope in vain,
Burst forth on eyes that wept;
Here hath been felt the hush, the gloom,
The breathless influence, shed
Through the dim dwelling, from the room
Wherein reposed the dead.
The seat left void, the missing face,
Have here been mark’d and mourn’d,
And time hath fill’d the vacant place,
And gladness hath return’d;
Till from the narrowing household chain
The links dropp’d one by one!
And homewards hither, o’er the main,
Came the spring-birds alone.
Is there not cause, then--cause for thought,
Fix’d eye and lingering tread,
Where, with their thousand mysteries fraught,
Even lowliest hearts have bled?
Where, in its ever-haunting thirst
For draughts of purer day,
Man’s soul, with fitful strength, hath burst
The clouds that wrapt its way?
Holy to human nature seems
The long-forsaken spot--
To deep affections, tender dreams,
Hopes of a brighter lot!
Therefore in silent reverence here,
Hearth of the dead! I stand,
Where joy and sorrow, smile and tear,
Have link’d one household band.
THE MINSTER.
Speak low! The place is holy to the breath
Of awful harmonies, of whisper’d prayer:
Tread lightly!--for the sanctity of death
Broods with a voiceless influence on the air,
Stern, yet serene!--a reconciling spell,
Each troubled billow of the soul to quell.
Leave me to linger silently awhile!
--Not for the light that pours its fervid streams
Of rainbow glory down through arch and aisle,
Kindling old banners into haughty gleams,
Flushing proud shrines, or by some warrior’s tomb
Dying away in clouds of gorgeous gloom:
Not for rich music, though in triumph pealing,
Mighty as forest-sounds when winds are high;
Nor yet for torch, and cross, and stole, revealing
Through incense-mists their sainted pageantry,--
Though o’er the spirit each hath charm and power,
Yet not for _these_ I ask one lingering hour.
But by strong sympathies, whose silver cord
Links me to mortal weal, my soul is bound;
Thoughts of the human hearts, that here have pour’d
Their anguish forth, are with me and around;
I look back on the pangs, the burning tears,
Known to these altars of a thousand years.
Send up a murmur from the dust, Remorse!
That here hast bow’d with ashes on thy head;
And thou, still battling with the tempest’s force--
Thou, whose bright spirit through all time has bled--
Speak, wounded Love! if penance here, or prayer,
Hath laid one haunting shadow of despair?
No voice, no breath!--of conflicts past, no trace!
--Doth not this hush give answer to my quest?
Surely the dread religion of the place
By every grief hath made its might confest!--
Oh! that within my heart I could but keep
Holy to heaven, a spot thus pure, and still, and deep!
THE SONG OF NIGHT.[378]
“O night,
And storm, and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength!” Byron.
I come to thee, O Earth!
With all my gifts!--for every flower sweet dew
In bell, and urn, and chalice, to renew
The glory of its birth.
Not one which glimmering lies
Far amidst folding hills, or forest leaves,
But, through its veins of beauty, so receives
A spirit of fresh dyes.
I come with every star;
Making thy streams, that on their noon-day track,
Give but the moss, the reed, the lily back,
Mirrors of worlds afar.
I come with peace,--I shed
Sleep through thy wood-walks, o’er the honey-bee,
The lark’s triumphant voice, the fawn’s young glee,
The hyacinth’s meek head.
On my own heart I lay
The weary babe; and sealing with a breath
Its eyes of love, send fairy dreams, beneath
The shadowing lids to play.
I come with mightier things!
Who calls me silent? I have many tones--
The dark skies thrill with low mysterious moans,
Borne on my sweeping wings.
I waft them not alone
From the deep organ of the forest shades,
Or buried streams, unheard amidst their glades
Till the bright day is done;
But in the human breast
A thousand still small voices I awake,
Strong, in their sweetness, from the soul to shake
The mantle of its rest.
I bring them from the past:
From true hearts broken, gentle spirits torn,
From crush’d affections, which, though long o’erborne,
Make their tones heard at last.
I bring them from the tomb:
O’er the sad couch of late repentant love
They pass--though low as murmurs of a dove--
Like trumpets through the gloom.
I come with all my train:
Who calls me lonely? Hosts around me tread,
The intensely bright, the beautiful, the dead--
Phantoms of heart and brain!
Looks from departed eyes,
These are my lightnings!--fill’d with anguish vain,
Or tenderness too piercing to sustain,
They smite with agonies.
I, that with soft control,
Shut the dim violet, hush the woodland song,
I am the avenging one!--the arm’d, the strong--
The searcher of the soul!
I, that shower dewy light
Through slumbering leaves, bring storms--the tempest birth
Of memory, thought, remorse! Be holy, Earth!
I am the solemn Night![379]
[The howling of the wind at night had a very peculiar effect on her
nerves--nothing in the least approaching to the sensation of fear,
as few were more exempt from that class of alarms usually called
nervous; but working upon her imagination to a degree which was
always succeeded by a reaction of fatigue and exhaustion. The solemn
influences thus mysteriously exercised are alluded to in many of her
poems, particularly “The Song of the Night,” and “The Voice of the
Wind.”--_Memoir_, p. 84.]
[378] Suggested by Thorwaldsen’s bas-relief of Night, represented under
the form of a winged female figure, with two infants asleep in her arms.
[379] Pietro Mulier, called Il Tempesta, from his surprising pictures
of storms. “His compositions,” says Lanzi, “inspire a real horror,
presenting to our eyes death-devoted ships overtaken by tempests and
darkness--fired by lightning--now rising on the mountain-wave, and
again submerged in the abyss of ocean.” During an imprisonment of
five years in Genoa, the pictures which he painted in his dungeon
were marked by additional power and gloom.--See Lanzi’s _History of
Painting_, translated by Roscoe.
THE STORM-PAINTER IN HIS DUNGEON.
“Where of ye, O tempests, is the goal?
Are ye like those that shake the human breast?
Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?”
Childe Harold.
Midnight, and silence deep!
--The air is fill’d with sleep,
With the stream’s whisper, and the citron’s breath;
The fix’d and solemn stars
Gleam through my dungeon-bars--
Wake, rushing winds! this breezeless calm is death!
Ye watch-fires of the skies!
The stillness of your eyes
Looks too intensely through my troubled soul;
I feel this weight of rest
An earth-load on my breast--
Wake, rushing winds, awake! and, dark clouds, roll!
I am your own, _your_ child,
O ye, the fierce, and wild,
And kingly tempests!--will ye not arise?
Hear the bold spirit’s voice,
That knows not to rejoice
But in the peal of your strong harmonies.
By sounding ocean-waves,
And dim Calabrian caves,
And flashing torrents, I have been your mate;
And with the rocking pines
Of the olden Apennines,
In your dark path stood fearless and elate.
Your lightnings were as rods,
That smote the deep abodes
Of thought and vision--and the stream gush’d free;
Come! that my soul again
May swell to burst its chain--
Bring me the music of the sweeping sea!
Within me dwells a flame,
An eagle caged and tame,
Till call’d forth by the harping of the blast;
_Then_ is its triumph’s hour,
It springs to sudden power,
As mounts the billow o’er the quivering mast.
Then, then, the canvass o’er,
With hurried hand I pour
The lava-waves and gusts of my own soul!
Kindling to fiery life
Dreams, worlds, of pictured strife--
Wake, rushing winds, awake! and, dark clouds, roll!
Wake, rise! the reed may bend,
The shivering leaf descend,
The forest branch give way before your might;
But I, your strong compeer,
Call, summon, wait you here--
Answer, my spirit!--answer, storm and night!
THE TWO VOICES.
Two solemn Voices, in a funeral strain,
Met as rich sunbeams and dark bursts of rain
Meet in the sky:
“Thou art gone hence!” one sang; “our light is flown,
Our beautiful, that seem’d too much our own
Ever to die!
“Thou art gone hence!--our joyous hills among
Never again to pour thy soul in song,
When spring-flowers rise!
Never the friend’s familiar step to meet
With loving laughter, and the welcome sweet
Of thy glad eyes.”
“Thou art gone home, gone _home_!” then, high and clear,
Warbled that other Voice. “Thou hast no tear
Again to shed;
Never to fold the robe o’er secret pain;
Never, weigh’d down by memory’s clouds, again
To bow thy head.
“Thou art gone home! O early crown’d and blest!
Where could the love of that deep heart find rest
With aught below?
Thou must have seen rich dream by dream decay,
All the bright rose-leaves drop from life away--
Thrice bless’d to go!”
Yet sigh’d again that breeze-like Voice of grief--
“Thou art gone hence! Alas, that aught so brief
So loved should be!
Thou takest our summer hence!--the flower, the tone,
The music of our being, all in one,
Depart with thee!
“Fair form, young spirit, morning vision fled!
Canst _thou_ be of the dead, the awful dead--
The dark unknown?
Yes! to the dwelling where no footsteps fall,
Never again to light up hearth or hall,
Thy smile is gone!”
“Home, _home_!” once more the exulting Voice arose:
“Thou art gone home!--from that divine repose
Never to roam!
Never to say farewell, to weep in vain,
To read of change, in eyes beloved, again--
Thou art gone home!
“By the bright waters now thy lot is cast--
Joy for thee, happy friend! thy bark hath past
The rough sea’s foam!
Now the long yearnings of thy soul are still’d,
Home! home!--thy peace is won, thy heart is fill’d:
Thou art gone home!”
THE PARTING SHIP.
“A glittering ship, that hath the plain
Of ocean for her own domain.” Wordsworth.
Go, in thy glory, o’er the ancient sea,
Take with thee gentle winds thy sails to swell;
Sunshine and joy upon thy streamers be,
Fare thee well, bark! farewell!
Proudly the flashing billow thou hast cleft,
The breeze yet follows thee with cheer and song;
Who now of storms hath dream or memory left?
And yet the deep is strong!
But go thou triumphing, while still the smiles
Of summer tremble on the water’s breast!
Thou shalt be greeted by a thousand isles,
In lone, wild beauty drest.
To thee a welcome breathing o’er the tide,
The genii groves of Araby shall pour;
Waves that enfold the pearl shall bathe thy side,
On the old Indian shore.
Oft shall the shadow of the palm-tree lie
O’er glassy bays wherein thy sails are furl’d,
And its leaves whisper, as the winds sweep by,
Tales of the elder world.
Oft shall the burning stars of southern skies,
On the mid-ocean see thee chain’d in sleep,
A lonely home for human thoughts and ties,
Between the heavens and deep.
Blue seas that roll on gorgeous coasts renown’d,
By night shall sparkle where thy prow makes way;
Strange creatures of the abyss that none may sound,
In thy broad wake shall play.
From hills unknown, in mingled joy and fear,
Free dusky tribes shall pour, thy flag to mark;--
Blessings go with thee on thy lone career!
Hail, and farewell, thou bark!
A long farewell! Thou wilt not bring us back
All whom thou bearest far from home and hearth:
Many are thine, whose steps no more shall track
Their own sweet native earth!
Some wilt thou leave beneath the plantain’s shade,
Where through the foliage Indian suns look bright;
Some in the snows of wintry regions laid,
By the cold northern light.
And some, far down below the sounding wave.
Still shall they lie, though tempests o’er them sweep;
Never may flower be strewn above their grave,
Never may sister weep!
And thou, the billow’s queen--even thy proud form
On our glad sight no more perchance may swell;
Yet God alike is in the calm and storm--
Fare thee well, bark! farewell!
THE LAST TREE OF THE FOREST.
Whisper, thou Tree, thou lonely Tree,
One, where a thousand stood!
Well might proud tales be told by thee,
Last of the solemn wood!
Dwells there no voice amidst thy boughs,
With leaves yet darkly green?
Stillness is round, and noontide glows--
Tell us what thou hast seen.
“I have seen the forest-shadows lie
Where men now reap the corn;
I have seen the kingly chase rush by
Through the deep glades at morn.
“With the glance of many a gallant spear,
And the wave of many a plume,
And the bounding of a hundred deer,
It has lit the woodland’s gloom.
“I have seen the knight and his train ride past,
With his banner borne on high;
O’er all my leaves there was brightness cast
From his gleaming panoply.
“The pilgrim at my feet hath laid
His palm-branch midst the flowers,
And told his beads, and meekly pray’d,
Kneeling, at vesper hours.
“And the merry men of wild and glen,
In the green array they wore,
Have feasted here, with the red wine’s cheer,
And the hunter’s song of yore.
“And the minstrel, resting in my shade,
Hath made the forest ring
With the lordly tales of the high Crusade,
Once loved by chief and king.
“But now the noble forms are gone
That walk’d the earth of old;
The soft wind has a mournful tone,
The sunny light looks cold.
“There is no glory left us now
Like the glory with the dead;
I would that, where they slumber low,
My latest leaves were shed!”
O thou dark tree, thou lonely tree,
That mournest for the past!
A peasant’s home in thy shades I see,
Embower’d from ever blast.
A lovely and a mirthful sound
Of laughter meets mine ear;
For the poor man’s children sport around
On the turf, with naught to fear.
And roses lend that cabin’s wall
A happy summer-glow:
And the open door stands free to all,
For it recks not of a foe.
And the village bells are on the breeze
That stirs thy leaf, dark tree!
How can I mourn, midst things like these,
For the stormy past, with thee?
THE STREAMS.
“The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths; all those have vanish’d!
They live no longer in the faith of heaven,
But still the heart doth need a language!”
Coleridge’s “Wallenstein.”
Ye have been holy, O founts and floods!
Ye of the ancient and solemn woods,
Ye that are born of the valleys deep,
With the water-flowers on your breast asleep,
And ye that gush from the sounding caves--
Hallow’d have been your waves.
Hallow’d by man, in his dreams of old,
Unto beings not of this mortal mould--
Viewless and deathless, and wondrous powers,
Whose voice he heard in his lonely hours,
And sought with its fancied sound to still
The heart earth could not fill.
Therefore the flowers of bright summers gone,
O’er your sweet waters, ye streams! were thrown
Thousands of gifts to the sunny sea
Have ye swept along, in your wanderings free,
And thrill’d to the murmur of many a vow--
Where all is silent now!
Nor seems it strange that the heart hath been
So link’d in love to your margins green;
That still, though ruin’d, your early shrines
In beauty gleam through the southern vines,
And the ivied chapels of colder skies
On your wild banks arise.
For the loveliest scenes of the glowing earth
Are those, bright streams! where your springs have birth;
Whether their cavern’d murmur fills,
With a tone of plaint, the hollow hills,
Or the glad sweet laugh of their healthful flow
Is heard midst the hamlets low.
Or whether ye gladden the desert sands
With a joyous music to pilgrim bands,
And a flash from under some ancient rock,
Where a shepherd king might have watch’d his flock,
Where a few lone palm-trees lift their heads,
And a green acacia spreads.
Or whether, in bright old lands renown’d,
The laurels thrill to your first-born sound,
And the shadow, flung from the Grecian pine,
Sweeps with the breeze o’er your gleaming line,
And the tall reeds whisper to your waves,
Beside heroic graves.
Voices and lights of the lonely place!
By the freshest fern your path we trace;
By the brightest cups on the emerald moss,
Whose fairy goblets the turf emboss;
By the rainbow-glancing of insect wings,
In a thousand mazy rings.
There sucks the bee, for the richest flowers
Are all your own through the summer hours;
There the proud stag his fair image knows,
Traced on your glass beneath alder-boughs;
And the halcyon’s breast, like the skies array’d,
Gleams through the willow shade.
But the wild sweet tales that with elves and fays
Peopled your banks in the olden days,
And the memory left by departed love
To your antique founts in glen and grove,
And the glory born of the poet’s dreams--
_These_ are your charms, bright streams!
Now is the time of your flowery rites
Gone by with its dances and young delights:
From your marble urns ye have burst away,
From your chapel-cells to the laughing day;
Low lie your altars with moss o’ergrown,
And the woods again are lone.
Yet holy still be your living springs,
Haunts of all gentle and gladsome things!
Holy, to converse with nature’s lore,
That gives the worn spirit its youth once more,
And to silent thoughts of the love divine,
Making the heart a shrine!
THE VOICE OF THE WIND.
“There is nothing in the wide world so like the voice of a spirit.”
Gray’s “Letters.”
Oh! many a voice is thine, thou Wind! full many a voice is thine!
From every scene thy wing o’ersweeps thou bear’st a sound and sign;
A minstrel wild and strong thou art, with a mastery all thine own,
And the spirit is thy harp, O Wind! that gives the answering tone.
Thou hast been across red fields of war, where shiver’d helmets lie,
And thou bringest thence the thrilling note of a clarion in the sky;
A rustling of proud banner-folds, a peal of stormy drums,--
All these are in thy music met, as when a leader comes.
Thou hast been o’er solitary seas, and from their wastes brought
back
Each noise of waters that awoke in the mystery of thy track--
The chime of low, soft, southern waves on some green palmy shore,
The hollow roll of distant surge, the gather’d billows’ roar.
Thou art come from forests dark and deep, thou mighty rushing Wind!
And thou bearest all their unisons in one full swell combined;
The restless pines, the moaning stream, all hidden things and free,
Of the dim, old, sounding wilderness, have lent their soul to thee.
Thou art come from cities lighted up for the conqueror passing by,
Thou art wafting from their streets a sound of haughty revelry;
The rolling of triumphant wheels, the harpings in the hall,
The far-off shout of multitudes, are in thy rise and fall.
Thou art come from kingly tombs and shrines, from ancient minsters
vast,
Through the dark aisles of a thousand years thy lonely wing hath
pass’d;
Thou hast caught the anthem’s billowy swell, the stately dirge’s
tone,
For a chief, with sword, and shield, and helm, to his place of
slumber gone.
Thou art come from long-forsaken homes, wherein our young days flew,
Thou hast found sweet voices lingering there, the loved, the kind,
the true;
Thou callest back those melodies, though now all changed and fled--
Be still, be still, and haunt us not with music from the dead!
Are all these notes in _thee_, wild wind? these many notes in
_thee_?
Far in our own unfathom’d souls their fount must surely be;
Yes! buried, but unsleeping, _there_ thought watches, memory lies,
From whose deep urn the tones are pour’d through all earth’s
harmonies.
THE VIGIL OF ARMS.[380]
A sounding step was heard by night
In a church where the mighty slept,
As a mail-clad youth, till morning’s light,
Midst the tombs his vigil kept.
He walk’d in dreams of power and fame,
He lifted a proud bright eye,
For the hours were few that withheld his name
From the roll of chivalry.
Down the moonlit aisles he paced alone,
With a free and stately tread;
And the floor gave back a muffled tone
From the couches of the dead:
The silent many that round him lay,
The crown’d and helm’d that were,
The haughty chiefs of the war array--
Each in his sepulchre!
But no dim warning of time or fate
That youth’s flush’d hopes could chill;
He moved through the trophies of buried state
With each proud pulse throbbing still.
He heard, as the wind through the chancel sung,
A swell of the trumpet’s breath;
He look’d to the banners on high that hung,
And not to the dust beneath.
And a royal masque of splendour seem’d
Before him to unfold;
Through the solemn arches on it stream’d,
With many a gleam of gold:
There were crested knight, and gorgeous dame,
Glittering athwart the gloom;
And he follow’d, till his bold step came
To his warrior-father’s tomb.
But there the still and shadowy might
Of the monumental stone,
And the holy sleep of the soft lamp’s light
That over its quiet shone,
And the image of that sire, who died
In his noonday of renown--
_These_ had a power unto which the pride
Of fiery life bow’d down.
And a spirit from his early years
Came back o’er his thoughts to move,
Till his eye was fill’d with memory’s tears,
And his heart with childhood’s love!
And he look’d, with a change in his softening glance,
To the armour o’er the grave--
For there they hung, the shield and lance,
And the gauntlet of the brave.
And the sword of many a field was there,
With its cross for the hour of need,
When the knight’s bold war-cry hath sunk in prayer,
And the spear is a broken reed!
--Hush! did a breeze through the armour sigh?
Did the folds of the banner shake?
Not so!--from the tomb’s dark mystery
There seem’d a voice to break!
He had heard that voice bid clarions blow,
He had caught its last blessing’s breath--
’Twas the same--but its awful sweetness now
Had an under-tone of death!
And it said--“The sword hath conquer’d kings,
And the spear through realms hath pass’d;
But the cross, alone, of all these things,
Might aid me at the last.”
[380] The candidate for knighthood was under the necessity of keeping
watch, the night before his inauguration, in a church, and completely
armed. This was called “the Vigil of Arms.”
THE HEART OF BRUCE IN MELROSE ABBEY.
Heart! that didst press forward still,[381]
Where the trumpet’s note rang shrill,
Where the knightly swords were crossing,
And the plumes like sea-foam tossing,
Leader of the charging spear,
Fiery heart!--and liest thou _here_?
May this narrow spot inurn
Aught that so could beat and burn?
Heart! that lovedst the clarion’s blast,
Silent is thy place at last;
Silent--save when early bird
Sings where once the mass was heard;
Silent--save when breeze’s moan
Comes through flowers or fretted stone;
And the wild-rose waves around thee,
And the long dark grass hath bound thee,
--Sleep’st thou, as the swain might sleep,
In his nameless valley deep?
No! brave heart! though cold and lone,
Kingly power is yet thine own!
Feel I not thy spirit brood
O’er the whispering solitude?
Lo! at one high thought of thee,
Fast they rise, the bold, the free,
Sweeping past thy lowly bed,
With a mute, yet stately tread.
Shedding their pale armour’s light
Forth upon the breathless night,
Bending every warlike plume
In the prayer o’er saintly tomb.
Is the noble Douglas nigh,
Arm’d to follow thee, or die?
Now, true heart! as thou wert wont
Pass thou to the peril’s front!
Where the banner-spear is gleaming,
And the battle’s red wine streaming,
Till the Paynim quail before thee,
Till the cross wave proudly o’er thee.
--Dreams! the falling of a leaf
Wins me from their splendours brief;
Dreams, yet bright ones! scorn them not,
Thou that seek’st the holy spot;
Nor, amidst its lone domain,
Call the faith in relics vain!
[381] “Now pass thou forward, as thou wert wont, and Douglas will
follow thee or die!”--with these words Douglas threw from him the heart
of Bruce into mid-battle against the Moors of Spain.
NATURE’S FAREWELL.
“The beautiful is vanish’d, and returns not.”
Coleridge’s “Wallenstein.”
A youth rode forth from his childhood’s home,
Through the crowded paths of the world to roam;
And the green leaves whisper’d, as he pass’d,
“Wherefore, thou dreamer! away so fast?
“Knew’st thou with what thou art parting here,
Long wouldst thou linger in doubt and fear;
Thy heart’s light laughter, thy sunny hours,
Thou hast left in our shades with the spring’s wild flowers.
“Under the arch by our mingling made,
Thou and thy brother have gaily play’d;
Ye may meet again where ye roved of yore,
But as ye _have_ met there--oh! never more!”
On rode the youth--and the boughs among,
Thus the free birds o’er his pathway sung:
“Wherefore so fast unto life away?
Thou art leaving for ever thy joy in our lay!
“Thou may’st come to the summer woods again,
And thy heart have no echo to greet their strain;
Afar from the foliage its love will dwell--
A change must pass o’er thee. Farewell, farewell!”
On rode the youth--and the founts and streams
Thus mingled a voice with his joyous dreams:
“We have been thy playmates through many a day,
Wherefore thus leave us?--oh! yet delay!
“Listen but once to the sound of our mirth!
For thee ’tis a melody passing from earth;
Never again wilt thou find in its flow
The peace it could once on thy heart bestow.
“Thou wilt visit the scenes of thy childhood’s glee,
With the breath of the world on thy spirit free;
Passion and sorrow its depths will have stirr’d,
And the singing of waters be vainly heard.
“Thou wilt bear in our gladsome laugh no part--
What should it do for a burning heart?
Thou wilt bring to the banks of our freshest rill,
Thirst which no fountain on earth may still.
“Farewell!--when thou comest again to thine own,
Thou wilt miss from our music its loveliest tone;
Mournfully true is the tale we tell--
Yet on, fiery dreamer! farewell, farewell!”
And a something of gloom on his spirit weigh’d
As he caught the last sounds of his native shade;
But he knew not, till may a bright spell broke,
How deep were the oracles Nature spoke!
THE BEINGS OF THE MIND.
“The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray,
And more beloved existence; that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal bondage.”
Byron.
Come to me with your triumphs and your woes,
Ye forms, to life by glorious poets brought!
I sit alone with flowers, and vernal boughs,
In the deep shadow of a voiceless thought;
Midst the glad music of the spring alone,
And sorrowful for visions that are gone!
Come to me! make your thrilling whispers heard,
Ye, by those masters of the soul endow’d
With life, and love, and many a burning word,
That bursts from grief like lightning from a cloud,
And smites the heart, till all its chords reply,
As leaves make answer when the wind sweeps by.
Come to me! visit my dim haunt!--the sound
Of hidden springs is in the grass beneath;
The stock-dove’s note above; and all around,
The poesy that with the violet’s breath
Floats through the air, in rich and sudden streams,
Mingling, like music, with the soul’s deep dreams.
Friends, friends!--for such to my lone heart ye are--
Unchanging ones! from whose immortal eyes
The glory melts not as a waning star,
And the sweet kindness never, never dies;
Bright children of the bard! o’er this green dell
Pass once again, and light it with your spell!
Imogen! fair Fidele! meekly blending,
In patient grief, “a smiling with a sigh;”[382]
And thou, Cordelia! faithful daughter, tending
That sire, an outcast to the bitter sky;
Thou of the soft low voice!--thou art not gone!
Still breathes for me its faint and flute-like tone.
And come to me!--sing me thy willow-strain,
Sweet Desdemona! with the sad surprise
In thy beseeching glance, where still, though vain,
Undimm’d, unquenchable affection lies;
Come, bowing thy young head to wrong and scorn,
As a frail hyacinth by showers o’erborne.
And thou, too, fair Ophelia! flowers are here,
That well might win thy footstep to the spot--
Pale cowslips, meet for maiden’s early bier,
And pansies for sad thoughts,[383]--but needed not!
Come with thy wreaths, and all the love and light
In that wild eye still tremulously bright.
And Juliet, vision of the south! enshrining
All gifts that unto its rich heaven belong;
The glow, the sweetness, in its rose combining,
The soul its nightingales pour forth in song,
Thou, making death deep joy!--but _could’st_ thou die?
No!--thy young love hath immortality!
From earth’s bright faces fades the light of morn,
From earth’s glad voices drops the joyous tone;
But ye, the children of the soul, were born
Deathless, and for undying love alone;
And, O ye beautiful! ’tis well, how well,
In the soul’s world, with you, where change is not, to dwell!
[382]
“Nobly he yokes
A smiling with a sigh.”--Cymbeline.
[383]
“Here’s pansies for you--that’s for thoughts.” Hamlet.
THE LYRE’S LAMENT.
“A large lyre hung in an opening of the rock, and gave forth its
melancholy music to the wind--but no human being was to be seen.”
Salathiel.
A deep-toned lyre hung murmuring
To the wild wind of the sea;
“O melancholy wind,” it sigh’d,
“What would thy breath with me?
“Thou canst not wake the spirit
That in me slumbering lies,
Thou strikest not forth th’ electric fire
Of buried melodies.
“Wind of the dark sea-waters!
Thou dost but sweep my strings
Into wild gusts of mournfulness,
With the rushing of thy wings.
“But the spell--the gift--the lightning--
Within my frame conceal’d,
Must I moulder on the rock away
With their triumphs unreveal’d?
“I have power, high power, for freedom
To wake the burning soul!
I have sounds that through the ancient hills
Like a torrent’s voice might roll.
“I have pealing notes of victory
That might welcome kings from war;
I have rich, deep tones to send the wail
For a hero’s death afar.
“I have chords to lift the pæan
From the temple to the sky,
Full as the forest-unisons
When sweeping winds are high.
“And love--for love’s lone sorrow
I have accents that might swell
Through the summer air with the rose’s breath,
Or the violet’s faint farewell:
“Soft--spiritual--mournful--
Sighs in each note enshrined--
But who shall call that sweetness forth?
_Thou_ can’st not, ocean-wind!
“I pass without my glory,
Forgotten I decay--
Where is the touch to give me life?
--Wild, fitful wind, away!”
So sigh’d the broken music
That in gladness had no part--
How like art thou, neglected Lyre!
To many a human heart!
TASSO’S CORONATION.[384]
A crown of victory! a triumphal song!
Oh! call some friend, upon whose pitying heart
The weary one may calmly sink to rest;
Let some kind voice, beside his lowly couch,
Pour the last prayer for mortal agony!
A trumpet’s note is in the sky, in the glorious Roman sky,
Whose dome hath rung, so many an age, to the voice of victory;
There is crowding to the Capitol, the imperial streets along,
For again a conqueror must be crown’d--a kingly child of song:
Yet his chariot lingers,
Yet around his home
Broods a shadow silently,
Midst the joy of Rome.
A thousand, thousand laurel boughs are waving wide and far,
To shed out their triumphal gleams around his rolling car;
A thousand haunts of olden gods have given their wealth of flowers,
To scatter o’er his path of fame bright hues in gem-like showers.
Peace! Within his chamber
Low the mighty lies--
With a cloud of dreams on his noble brow,
And a wandering in his eyes.
Sing, sing for him, the lord of song--for him, whose rushing strain
In mastery o’er the spirit sweeps, like a strong wind o’er the main!
Whose voice lives deep in burning hearts, for ever there to dwell,
As full-toned oracles are shrined in a temple’s holiest cell.
Yes! for him, the victor,
Sing--but low, sing low!
A soft, sad _miserere_ chant
For a soul about to go!
The sun, the sun of Italy is pouring o’er his way,
Where the old three hundred triumphs moved, a flood of golden day;
Streaming through every haughty arch of the Cæsars’ past renown--
Bring forth, in that exulting light, the conqueror for his crown!
Shut the proud, bright sunshine
From the fading sight!
There needs no ray by the bed of death,
Save the holy taper’s light.
The wreath is twined--the way is strewn--the lordly train are met--
The streets are hung with coronals--why stays the minstrel yet?
Shout! as an army shouts in joy around a royal chief--
Bring forth the bard of chivalry, the bard of love and grief!
Silence! forth we bring him,
In his last array;
From love and grief the freed, the flown--
Way for the bier!--make way!
[384] Tasso died at Rome on the day before that appointed for his
coronation in the Capitol.
THE BETTER LAND.
“I hear thee speak of the better land,
Thou call’st its children a happy band;
Mother! oh, where is that radiant shore?
Shall we not seek it, and weep no more?
Is it where the flower of the orange blows,
And the fire-flies glance through the myrtle boughs?”
--“Not there, not there, my child!”
“Is it where the feathery palm-trees rise,
And the date grows ripe under sunny skies?
Or midst the green islands of glittering seas,
Where fragrant forests perfume the breeze,
And strange, bright birds on their starry wings
Bear the rich hues of all glorious things?”
--“Not there, not there, my child!”
“Is it far away, in some region old,
Where the rivers wander o’er sands of gold?--
Where the burning rays of the ruby shine,
And the diamond lights up the secret mine,
And the pearl gleams forth from the coral strand?--
Is it there, sweet mother! that better land?”
--“Not there, not there, my child!
“Eye hath not seen it, my gentle boy!
Ear hath not heard its deep songs of joy;
Dreams cannot picture a world so fair--
Sorrow and death may not enter there:
Time doth not breathe on its fadeless bloom,
For beyond the clouds, and beyond the tomb,
It is there, it is there, my child!”
THE WOUNDED EAGLE.
Eagle! this is not thy sphere!
Warrior-bird! what seek’st thou here?
Wherefore by the fountain’s brink
Doth thy royal pinion sink?
Wherefore on the violet’s bed
Lay’st thou thus thy drooping head?
Thou, that hold’st the blast in scorn,
Thou, that wear’st the wings of morn!
Eagle! wilt thou not arise?
Look upon thine own bright skies!
Lift thy glance! the fiery sun
There his pride of place hath won!
And the mountain lark is there,
And sweet sound hath fill’d the air;
Hast thou left that realm on high?
--Oh! it can be but to die!
Eagle! eagle! thou hast bow’d
From thine empire o’er the cloud!
Thou, that hadst etherial birth,
Thou hast stoop’d too near the earth,
And the hunter’s shaft hath found thee,
And the toils of death have bound thee!
--Wherefore didst thou leave thy place,
Creature of a kingly race?
Wert thou weary of thy throne?
Was thy sky’s dominion lone?
Chill and lone it well might be,
Yet that mighty wing was free!
Now the chain is o’er it cast,
From thy heart the blood flows fast,
--Woe for gifted souls and high!
Is not such _their_ destiny?
SADNESS AND MIRTH.
“Nay, these wild fits of uncurb’d laughter
Athwart the gloomy tenor of your mind,
As it has lower’d of late, so keenly cast,
Unsuited seem, and strange.
Oh, nothing strange!
Did’st thou ne’er see the swallow’s veering breast,
Winging the air beneath some murky cloud,
In the sunn’d glimpses of a troubled day,
Shiver in silvery brightness?
Or boatman’s oar, as vivid lightning, flash
In the faint gleam, that, like a spirit’s path,
Tracks the still waters of some sullen lake?
O gentle friend!
Chide not her mirth, who yesterday was sad,
And may be so to-morrow!” Joanna Baillie.
Ye met at the stately feasts of old,
Where the bright wine foam’d over sculptured gold;
Sadness and Mirth! ye were mingled there
With the sound of the lyre in the scented air;
As the cloud and the lightning are blent on high,
Ye mix’d in the gorgeous revelry.
For there hung o’er those banquets of yore a gloom,
A thought and a shadow of the tomb;
It gave to the flute-notes an under-tone,
To the rose a colouring not its own,
To the breath of the myrtle a mournful power--
Sadness and Mirth! ye had each your dower!
Ye met when the triumph swept proudly by,
With the Roman eagles through the sky!
I know that even then, in his hour of pride,
The soul of the mighty within him died;
That a void in his bosom lay darkly still,
Which the music of victory might never fill!
Thou wert there, O Mirth! swelling on the shout,
Till the temples, like echo-caves, rang out;
Thine were the garlands, the songs, the wine--
All the rich voices in air were thine,
The incense, the sunshine--but, Sadness, _thy_ part,
Deepest of all, was the victor’s heart!
Ye meet at the bridal with flower and tear;
Strangely and wildly ye meet by the bier!
As the gleam from a sea-bird’s white wing shed
Crosses the storm in its path of dread;
As a dirge meets the breeze of a summer sky--
Sadness and Mirth! so ye come and fly!
Ye meet in the poet’s haunted breast,
Darkness and rainbow, alike its guest!
When the breath of the violet is out in spring,
When the woods with the wakening of music ring,
O’er his dreamy spirit your currents pass,
Like shadow and sunlight o’er mountain grass.
When will your parting be, Sadness and Mirth?
Bright stream and dark one! Oh, never on earth!
Never while triumphs and tombs are so near,
While death and love walk the same dim sphere,
While flowers unfold where the storm may sweep,
While the heart of man is a soundless deep!
But there smiles a land, O ye troubled pair!
Where ye have no part in the summer air:
Far from the breathings of changeful skies,
Over the seas and the graves it lies;
Where the day of the lightning and cloud is done,
And joy reigns alone, as the lonely sun!
THE NIGHTINGALE’S DEATH-SONG.
“Willst du nach den Nachtigallen fragen,
Die mit seelenvollen melodie
Dich entzuckten in des Lenzes Tagen?
--Nur so lang sie liebten, waren sie.” Schiller.
Mournfully, sing mournfully,
And die away, my heart!
The rose, the glorious rose is gone,
And I, too, will depart.
The skies have lost their splendour,
The waters changed their tone,
And, wherefore, in the faded world,
Should music linger on?
Where is the golden sunshine,
And where the flower-cup’s glow?
And where the joy of the dancing leaves,
And the fountain’s laughing flow?
A voice, in every whisper
Of the wave, the bough, the air,
Comes asking for the beautiful,
And moaning, “Where, oh! where?”
Tell of the brightness parted,
Thou bee, thou lamb at play!
Thou lark, in thy victorious mirth!
--Are ye, too, pass’d away?
Mournfully, sing mournfully!
The royal rose is gone:
Melt from the woods, my spirit! melt
In one deep farewell tone!
Not so!--swell forth triumphantly
The full, rich, fervent strain!
Hence with young love and life I go,
In the summer’s joyous train.
With sunshine, with sweet odour,
With every precious thing,
Upon the last warm southern breeze
My soul its flight shall wing.
Alone I shall not linger,
When the days of hope are past,
To watch the fall of leaf by leaf,
To wait the rushing blast.
Triumphantly, triumphantly!
Sing to the woods, I go!
For me, perchance, in other lands,
The glorious rose may blow.
The sky’s transparent azure,
And the greensward’s violet breath,
And the dance of light leaves in the wind,
May there know naught of death.
No more, no more sing mournfully!
Swell high, then break, my heart!
With love, the spirit of the woods,
With summer I depart!
THE DIVER.
“They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”--Shelley.
Thou hast been where the rocks of coral grow,
Thou hast fought with eddying waves;--
Thy cheek is pale, and thy heart beats low,
Thou searcher of ocean’s caves!
Thou hast look’d on the gleaming wealth of old,
And wrecks where the brave have striven:
The deep is a strong and a fearful hold,
But thou its bar hast riven!
A wild and weary life is thine--
A wasting task and lone,
Though treasure-grots for thee may shine,
To all besides unknown!
A weary life! but a swift decay
Soon, soon shall set thee free;
Thou’rt passing fast from thy toils away,
Thou wrestler with the sea!
In thy dim eye, on thy hollow cheek,
Well are the death-signs read--
Go! for the pearl in its cavern seek,
Ere hope and power be fled!
And bright in beauty’s coronal
That glistening gem shall be;
A star to all in the festive hall--
But who will think on _thee_?
None!--as it gleams from the queen-like head,
Not one midst throngs will say,
“A life hath been, like a raindrop, shed
For that pale, quivering ray!”
Woe for the wealth thus dearly bought!
--And are not those like thee,
Who win for earth the gems of thought?
O wrestler with the sea!
Down to the gulfs of the soul they go,
Where the passion-fountains burn,
Gathering the jewels far below
From many a buried urn:
Wringing from lava-veins the fire,
That o’er bright words is pour’d;
Learning deep sounds, to make the lyre
A spirit in each chord.
But, oh! the price of bitter tears
Paid for the lonely power
That throws at last, o’er desert years,
A darkly glorious dower!
Like flower-seeds, by the wild wind spread,
So radiant thoughts are strew’d;
--The soul whence those high gifts are shed
May faint in solitude!
And who will think, when the strain is sung
Till a thousand hearts are stirr’d,
What life-drops, from the minstrel wrung,
Have gush’d with every word?
None, none!--his treasures live like thine,
_He_ strives and dies like thee;
--Thou, that hast been to the pearl’s dark shrine,
O wrestler with the sea!
THE REQUIEM OF GENIUS.
“Les poetes, dont l’imagination tient la puissance d’aimer et de
souffrir, ne sont-ils pas les bannis d’une autre region?”
Madame de Stael--“De L’Allemagne.”
No tears for thee!--though light be from us gone
With thy soul’s radiance, bright, yet restless one!
No tears for thee!
They that have loved an exile, must not mourn
To see him parting for his native bourne
O’er the dark sea.
All the high music of thy spirit here
Breathed but the language of another sphere,
Unecho’d round;
And strange, though sweet, as midst our weeping skies
Some half-remember’d strain of Paradise
Might sadly sound.
Hast thou been answer’d?--thou, that from the night,
And from the voices of the tempest’s might,
And from the past,
Wert seeking still some oracle’s reply,
To pour the secrets of man’s destiny
Forth on the blast!
Hast thou been answer’d?--thou, that through the gloom,
And shadow, and stern silence of the tomb,
A cry didst send,
So passionate and deep?--to pierce, to move,
To win back token of unburied love
From buried friend!
And hast thou found where living waters burst?
Thou that didst pine amidst us in the thirst
Of fever-dreams!
Are the true fountains thine for evermore?
O lured so long by shining mists that wore
The light of streams!
Speak! is it well with thee? We call, as _thou_,
With thy lit eye, deep voice, and kindled brow,
Wert wont to call
On the departed! Art thou bless’d and free?
--Alas! the lips earth covers, even to _thee_
Were silent all!
Yet shall our hope rise fann’d by quenchless faith,
As a flame, foster’d by some warm wind’s breath,
In light upsprings:
Freed soul of song! yes, thou hast found the sought;
Borne to thy home of beauty and of thought,
On morning’s wings.
And we will dream it is _thy_ joy we hear,
When life’s young music, ringing far and clear,
O’erflows the sky.
No tears for _thee_! the lingering gloom is ours--
Thou art for converse with all glorious powers,
Never to die!
TRIUMPHANT MUSIC.
“Tacete, tacete, O suoni trionfanti
Risvegliate in vano ’l cor che non puo liberarsi.”
Wherefore and whither bear’st thou up my spirit,
On eagle wings, through every plume that thrill?
It hath no crown of victory to inherit--
Be still, triumphant harmony! be still!
Thine are no sounds for earth, thus proudly swelling
Into rich floods of joy. It is but pain
To mount so high, yet find on high no dwelling,
To sink so fast, so heavily again!
No sounds for earth? Yes, to young chieftain dying
On his own battle-field, at set of sun,
With his freed country’s banner o’er him flying,
Well mightst thou speak of fame’s high guerdon won.
No sounds for earth? Yes, for the martyr, leading
Unto victorious death serenely on;
For patriot by his rescued altars bleeding,
Thou hast a voice in each majestic tone.
But speak not thus to one whose heart is beating
Against life’s narrow bound, in conflict vain!
For power, for joy, high hope, and rapturous greeting,
Thou wakest lone thirst--be hush’d, exulting strain!
Be hush’d, or breathe of grief!--of exile yearnings
Under the willows of the stranger-shore;
Breathe of the soul’s untold and restless burnings
For looks, tones, footsteps, that return no more.
Breathe of deep love--a lonely vigil keeping
Through the night-hours, o’er wasted wealth to pine;
Rich thoughts and sad, like faded rose-leaves, heaping
In the shut heart, at once a tomb and shrine.
Or pass as if thy spirit-notes came sighing
From worlds beneath some blue Elysian sky;
Breathe of repose, the pure, the bright, th’ undying--
Of joy no more--bewildering harmony!
SECOND-SIGHT.
“Ne’er err’d the prophet-heart that grief inspired,
Though joy’s illusions mock their votarist.”--Maturin.
A mournful gift is mine, O friends!
A mournful gift is mine!
A murmur of the soul which blends
With the flow of song and wine.
An eye that through the triumph’s hour
Beholds the coming woe,
And dwells upon the faded flower
Midst the rich summer’s glow.
Ye smile to view fair faces bloom
Where the father’s board is spread;
I see the stillness and the gloom
Of a home whence all are fled.
I see the wither’d garlands lie
Forsaken on the earth,
While the lamps yet burn, and the dancers fly
Through the ringing hall of mirth.
I see the blood-red future stain
On the warrior’s gorgeous crest;
And the bier amidst the bridal train
When they come with roses drest.
I hear the still small moan of time
Through the ivy branches made,
Where the palace, in its glory’s prime,
With the sunshine stands array’d.
The thunder of the seas I hear,
The shriek along the wave,
When the bark sweeps forth, and song and cheer
Salute the parting brave.
With every breeze a spirit sends
To me some warning sign,--
A mournful gift is mine, O friends!
A mournful gift is mine!
O prophet-heart! thy grief, thy power,
To all deep souls belong--
The shadow in the sunny hour,
The wail in the mirthful song.
Their sight is all too sadly clear--
For them a veil is riven;
Their piercing thoughts repose not here,
Their home is but in heaven.
THE SEA-BIRD FLYING INLAND.
“Thy path is not as mine;--where thou art blest
My spirit would but wither; mine own grief
Is in mine eyes a richer, holier thing,
Than all thy happiness.”
Hath the summer’s breath on the south-wind borne,
Met the dark seas in their sweeping scorn?
Hath it lured thee, bird! from their sounding caves
To the river shores where the osier waves?
Or art thou come on the hills to dwell,
Where the sweet-voiced echoes have many a cell?
Where the moss bears print of the wild-deer’s tread,
And the heath like a royal robe is spread?
Thou hast done well, O thou bright sea-bird!
There is joy where the song of the lark is heard,
With the dancing of waters through copse and dell,
And the bee’s low tune in the fox-glove’s bell.
Thou hast done well: oh! the seas are lone,
And the voice they send up hath a mournful tone;
A mingling of dirges and wild farewells,
Fitfully breathed through its anthem swells.
The proud bird rose as the words were said--
The rush of his pinion swept o’er my head,
And the glance of his eye, in its bright disdain,
Spoke him a child of the haughty main.
He hath flown from the woods to the ocean’s breast,
To his throne of pride on the billow’s crest.
Oh! who shall say to a spirit free--
“_There_ lies the pathway of bliss for thee?”
THE SLEEPER.
Oh! lightly, lightly tread!
A holy thing is sleep,
On the worn spirit shed,
And eyes that wake to weep.
A holy thing from heaven,
A gracious dewy cloud,
A covering mantle given
The weary to enshroud.
Oh! lightly, lightly tread!
Revere the pale still brow,
The meekly drooping head,
The long hair’s willowy flow.
Ye know not what ye do,
That call the slumberer back
From the world unseen by you
Unto life’s dim, faded track.
Her soul is far away,
In her childhood’s land perchance,
Where her young sisters play,
Where shines her mother’s glance.
Some old sweet native sound
Her spirit haply weaves;
A harmony profound
Of woods with all their leaves;
A murmur of the sea,
A laughing tone of streams:--
Long may her sojourn be
In the music-land of dreams!
Each voice of love is there,
Each gleam of beauty fled,
Each lost one still more fair--
Oh! lightly, lightly tread!
THE MIRROR IN THE DESERTED HALL.
O dim, forsaken mirror!
How many a stately throng
Hath o’er thee gleam’d, in vanish’d hours
Of the wine-cup and the song!
The song hath left no echo;
The bright wine hath been quaff’d;
And hush’d is every silvery voice
That lightly here hath laugh’d.
O mirror--lonely mirror!
Thou of the silent hall!
Thou hast been flush’d with beauty’s bloom--
Is this, too, vanish’d all?
It is, with the scatter’d garlands
Of triumphs long ago,
With the melodies of buried lyres,
With the faded rainbow’s glow.
And for all the gorgeous pageants--
For the glance of gem and plume,
For lamp, and harp, and rosy wreath,
And vase of rich perfume--
Now, dim, forsaken mirror!
Thou givest but faintly back
The quiet stars, and the sailing moon,
On her solitary track.
And thus with man’s proud spirit
Thou tellest me ’twill be,
When the forms and hues of this world fade
From his memory, as from thee:
And his heart’s long-troubled waters
At last in stillness lie,
Reflecting but the images
Of the solemn world on high.
TO THE DAUGHTER OF BERNARD BARTON, THE QUAKER POET.
Happy thou art, the child of one
Who in each lowly flower,
Each leaf that glances to the sun,
Or trembles with the shower;
In each soft shadow of the sky,
Or sparkle of the stream,
Will guide thy kindling spirit’s eye
To trace the Love Supreme.
So shall deep quiet fill thy breast,
A joy in wood and wild;
And e’en for this I call thee blest,
The gentle poet’s child!
THE STAR OF THE MINE.
From the deep chambers of a mine,
With heavy gloom o’erspread,
I saw a star at noontide shine
Serenely o’er my head.
I had not seen it midst the glow
Of the rich upper day;
But in that shadowy world below,
How my heart bless’d its ray!
And still, the farther from my sight
Torches and lamps were borne,
The purer, lovelier, seem’d the light
That wore its beams unshorn.
Oh! what is like that heavenly spark?
--A friend’s kind, steadfast eye;
Where, brightest when the world grows dark,
Hope, cheer, and comfort lie!
WASHINGTON’S STATUE.
SENT FROM ENGLAND TO AMERICA.
Yes! rear thy guardian hero’s form
On thy proud soil, thou western world!
A watcher through each sign of storm,
O’er freedom’s flag unfurl’d.
There, as before a shrine, to bow,
Bid thy true sons their children lead:
The language of that noble brow
For all things good shall plead.
The spirit rear’d in patriot fight,
The virtue born of home and hearth,
There calmly throned, a holy light
Shall pour o’er chainless earth.
And let that work of England’s hand,
Sent through the blast and surge’s roar,
So girt with tranquil glory stand
For ages on thy shore!
Such, through all time, the greetings be,
That with the Atlantic billow sweep!
Telling the mighty and the free
Of brothers o’er the deep.
A THOUGHT OF HOME AT SEA.
WRITTEN FOR MUSIC.
’Tis lone on the waters
When eve’s mournful bell
Sends forth to the sunset
A note of farewell;
When, borne with the shadows
And winds as they sweep,
There comes a fond memory
Of home o’er the deep;
When the wing of the sea-bird
Is turn’d to her nest,
And the thought of the sailor
To all he loves best!
’Tis lone on the waters--
That hour hath a spell
To bring back sweet voices,
With words of farewell!
TO THE MEMORY OF A SISTER-IN-LAW.
We miss thy voice while early flowers are blowing,
And the first flush of blossom clothes each bough,
And the spring sunshine round our home is glowing
Soft as thy smile: thou shouldst be with us now.
With _us_? We wrong thee by the earthly thought:
Could our fond gaze but follow where thou art,
Well might the glories of this world seem naught
To the one promise given the pure in heart.
Yet wert thou blest e’en here--oh! ever blest
In thine own sunny thoughts and tranquil faith!
The silent joy that still o’erflow’d thy breast
Needed but guarding from all change, by death.
So is it seal’d to peace! On thy clear brow
Never was care one fleeting shade to cast;
And thy calm days in brightness were to flow
A holy stream, untroubled to the last.
Farewell! thy life hath left surviving love
A wealth of records, and sweet “feelings given,”
From sorrow’s heart the faintness to remove
By whispers breathing “less of earth than heaven.”[385]
Thus rests thy spirit still on those with whom
Thy step the path of joyous duty trode,
Bidding them make an altar of thy tomb,
Where chasten’d thought may offer praise to God.
[385] Alluding to the lines she herself quoted but an hour before her
death:--
“Some feelings are to mortals given
With less of earth in them than heaven.”
TO AN ORPHAN.
Thou hast been rear’d too tenderly,
Beloved too well and long,
Watch’d by too many a gentle eye:
Now look on life--be strong!
Too quiet seem’d thy joys for change,
Too holy and too deep;
Bright clouds, through summer skies that range
Seem ofttimes thus to sleep,--
To sleep in silvery stillness bound,
As things that ne’er may melt;
Yet gaze again--no trace is found
To show thee where they dwelt.
This world hath no more love to give
Like that which thou hast known;
Yet the heart breaks not--we survive
Our treasures--and bear on.
But oh! too beautiful and blest
Thy home of youth hath been!
Where shall thy wing, poor bird! find rest,
Shut out from that sweet scene?
Kind voices from departed years
Must haunt thee many a day;
Looks that will smite the source of tears
Across thy soul must play.
Friends--now the alter’d or the dead,
And music that is gone,
A gladness o’er thy dreams will shed,
And thou shalt wake--alone.
Alone! it is in that deep word
That all thy sorrow lies;
How is the heart to courage stirr’d
By smiles from kindred eyes!
And are these lost?--and have I said
To aught like _thee_--be strong?
--So bid the willow lift its head,
And brave the tempest’s wrong!
Thou reed! o’er which the storm hath pass’d--
Thou shaken with the wind!
On one, _one_ friend thy weakness cast--
There is but One to bind!
HYMN BY THE SICKBED OF A MOTHER.
Father! that in the olive-shade,
When the dark hour came on,
Didst, with a breath of heavenly aid,
Strengthen thy Son;
Oh! by the anguish of that night,
Send us down bless’d relief;
Or to the chasten’d, let thy might
Hallow this grief!
And Thou, that when the starry sky
Saw the dread strife begun,
Didst teach adoring faith to cry,
“Thy will be done;”
By thy meek spirit, Thou, of all
That e’er have mourn’d, the chief--
Thou Saviour! if the stroke _must_ fall,
Hallow this grief!
WHERE IS THE SEA?
SONG OF THE GREEK ISLANDER IN EXILE.
[A Greek Islander, being taken to the Vale of Tempe, and called upon
to admire its beauty, only replied--“_The sea--where is it?_”]
Where is the sea?--I languish here--
Where is my own blue sea?
With all its barks in fleet career,
And flags, and breezes free?