AL AARAAF

Mysterious star!

Thou wert my dream

All a long summer night—

Be now my theme!

By this clear stream,

Of thee will I write;

Meantime from afar

Bathe me in light I

Thy world has not the dross of ours,

Yet all the beauty-all the flowers

That list our love or deck our bowers

In dreamy gardens, where do lie

Dreamy maidens all the day;

While the silver winds of Circassy

On violet couches faint away.

Little—oh “little dwells in thee”

Like unto what on earth we see:

Beauty’s eye is here the bluest

In the falsest and untruest—On the sweetest

air doth float

The most sad and solemn note—

If with thee be broken hearts,

Joy so peacefully departs,

That its echo still doth dwell,

Like the murmur in the shell.

Thou! thy truest type of grief

Is the gently falling leaf!

Thy framing is so holy

Sorrow is not melancholy.

31. The earliest version of “Tamerlane” was included in the suppressed

volume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now

published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and

improvements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and, the

lines being indented, presents a more pleasing appearance, to the eye at

least.

32. “To Helen” first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also “The Valley

of Unrest” (as “The Valley Nis”), “Israfel,” and one or two others of the

youthful pieces. The poem styled “Romance,” constituted the Preface of the

1829 volume, but with the addition of the following lines:

Succeeding years, too wild for song,

Then rolled like tropic storms along,

Where, through the garish lights that fly

Dying along the troubled sky,

Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,

The blackness of the general Heaven,

That very blackness yet doth Ring

Light on the lightning’s silver wing.

For being an idle boy lang syne;

Who read Anacreon and drank wine,

I early found Anacreon rhymes

Were almost passionate sometimes—

And by strange alchemy of brain

His pleasures always turned to pain—

His naiveté to wild desire—

His wit to love-his wine to fire—

And so, being young and dipt in folly,

I fell in love with melancholy,

And used to throw my earthly rest

And quiet all away in jest—

I could not love except where Death

Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath—

Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,

Were stalking between her and me.

But now my soul hath too much room—

Gone are the glory and the gloom—

The black hath mellow’d into gray,

And all the fires are fading away.

My draught of passion hath been deep—

I revell’d, and I now would sleep

And after drunkenness of soul

Succeeds the glories of the bowl

An idle longing night and day

To dream my very life away.

But dreams—of those who dream as I,

Aspiringly, are damned, and die:

Yet should I swear I mean alone,

By notes so very shrilly blown,

To break upon Time’s monotone,

While yet my vapid joy and grief

Are tintless of the yellow leaf—

Why not an imp the graybeard hath,

Will shake his shadow in my path—

And e’en the graybeard will o’erlook

Connivingly my dreaming-book.

DOUBTFUL POEMS

ALONE

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—_I_ lov’d alone—

_Then_—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ‘round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

{This poem is no longer considered doubtful as it was in 1903. Liberty has

been taken to replace the book version with an earlier, perhaps more

original manuscript version—Ed}

TO ISADORE

I

Beneath the vine-clad eaves,

Whose shadows fall before

Thy lowly cottage door

Under the lilac’s tremulous leaves—

Within thy snowy claspeèd hand

The purple flowers it bore..

Last eve in dreams, I saw thee stand,

Like queenly nymphs from Fairy-land—

Enchantress of the flowery wand,

Most beauteous Isadore!

II

And when I bade the dream

Upon thy spirit flee,

Thy violet eyes to me

Upturned, did overflowing seem

With the deep, untold delight

Of Love’s serenity;

Thy classic brow, like lilies white

And pale as the Imperial Night

Upon her throne, with stars bedight,

Enthralled my soul to thee!

III

Ah I ever I behold

Thy dreamy, passionate eyes,

Blue as the languid skies

Hung with the sunset’s fringe of gold;

Now strangely clear thine image grows,

And olden memories

Are startled from their long repose

Like shadows on the silent snows

When suddenly the night-wind blows

Where quiet moonlight ties.

IV

Like music heard in dreams,

Like strains of harps unknown,

Of birds forever flown

Audible as the voice of streams

That murmur in some leafy dell,

I hear thy gentlest tone,

And Silence cometh with her spell

Like that which on my tongue doth dwell,

When tremulous in dreams I tell

My love to thee alone!

V

In every valley heard,

Floating from tree to tree,

Less beautiful to, me,

The music of the radiant bird,

Than artless accents such as thine

Whose echoes never flee!

Ah! how for thy sweet voice I pine:—

For uttered in thy tones benign

(Enchantress!) this rude name of mine

Doth seem a melody!

THE VILLAGE STREET

In these rapid, restless shadows,

Once I walked at eventide,

When a gentle, silent maiden,

Wal ked in beauty at my side

She alone there walked beside me

All in beauty, like a bride.

Pallidly the moon was shining

On the dewy meadows nigh;

On the silvery, silent rivers,

On the mountains far and high

On the ocean’s star-lit waters,

Where the winds a-weary die.

Slowly, silently we wandered

From the open cottage door,

Underneath the elm’s long branches

To the pavement bending o’er;

Underneath the mossy willow

And the dying sycamore.

With the myriad stars in beauty

All bedight, the heavens were seen,

Radiant hopes were bright around me,

Like the light of stars serene;

Like the mellow midnight splendor

Of the Night’s irradiate queen.

Audibly the elm-leaves whispered

Peaceful, pleasant melodies,

Like the distant murmured music

Of unquiet, lovely seas:

While the winds were hushed in slumber

In the fragrant flowers and trees.

Wondrous and unwonted beauty

Still adorning all did seem,

While I told my love in fables

‘Neath the willows by the stream;

Would the heart have kept unspoken

Love that was its rarest dream!

Instantly away we wandered

In the shadowy twilight tide,

She, the silent, scornful maiden,

Walking calmly at my side,

With a step serene and stately,

All in beauty, all in pride.

Vacantly I walked beside her.

On the earth mine eyes were cast;

Swift and keen there came unto me

Ritter memories of the past

On me, like the rain in Autumn

On the dead leaves, cold and fast.

Underneath the elms we parted,

By the lowly cottage door;

One brief word alone was uttered

Never on our lips before;

And away I walked forlornly,

Broken-hearted evermore.

Slowly, silently I loitered,

Homeward, in the night, alone;

Sudden anguish bound my spirit,

That my youth had never known;

Wild unrest, like that which cometh

When the Night’s first dream hath flown.

Now, to me the elm-leaves whisper

Mad, discordant melodies,

And keen melodies like shadows

Haunt the moaning willow trees,

And the sycamores with laughter

Mock me in the nightly breeze.

Sad and pale the Autumn moonlight

Through the sighing foliage streams;

And each morning, midnight shadow,

Shadow of my sorrow seems;

Strive, 0 heart, forget thine idol!

And, 0 soul, forget thy dreams!

THE FOREST REVERIE

’Tis said that when

The hands of men

Tamed this primeval wood,

And hoary trees with groans of woe,

Like warriors by an unknown foe,

Were in their strength subdued,

The virgin Earth Gave instant birth

To springs that ne’er did flow

That in the sun Did rivulets run,

And all around rare flowers did blow

The wild rose pale Perfumed the gale

And the queenly lily adown the dale

(Whom the sun and the dew

And the winds did woo),

With the gourd and the grape luxuriant grew.

So when in tears

The love of years

Is wasted like the snow,

And the fine fibrils of its life

By the rude wrong of instant strife

Are broken at a blow

Within the heart

Do springs upstart

Of which it doth now know,

And strange, sweet dreams,

Like silent streams

That from new fountains overflow,

With the earlier tide

Of rivers glide

Deep in the heart whose hope has died—

Quenching the fires its ashes hide,—

Its ashes, whence will spring and grow

Sweet flowers, ere long,

The rare and radiant flowers of song!