SONNET—TO SCIENCE

SONNET—TO SCIENCE

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thous not torn the Naiad from her flood,

The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

AL AARAAF (*)

PART I.

O! nothing earthly save the ray

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,

As in those gardens where the day

Springs from the gems of Circassy—

O! nothing earthly save the thrill

Of melody in woodland rill—

Or (music of the passion-hearted)

Joy’s voice so peacefully departed

That like the murmur in the shell,

Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—

Oh, nothing of the dross of ours—

Yet all the beauty—all the flowers

That list our Love, and deck our bowers—

Adorn yon world afar, afar—

The wandering star.

’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there

Her world lay lolling on the golden air,

Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—

An oasis in desert of the blest.

* A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared

suddenly in the heavens—attained, in a few days, a

brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter—then as suddenly

disappeared, and has never been seen since.

Away—away—‘mid seas of rays that roll

Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—

The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)

Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—

To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,

And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—

But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,

She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,

And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,

Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,

Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,

(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,

Like woman’s hair ‘mid pearls, until, afar,

It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)

She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.

Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—

Fit emblems of the model of her world—

Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight

Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—

A wreath that twined each starry form around,

And all the opal’d air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed

Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head

*On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang

So eagerly around about to hang

Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—

**Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.

The Sephalica, budding with young bees,

Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:

* On Santa Maura—olim Deucadia.

**And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—

Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d

All other loveliness: its honied dew

(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)

Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,

And fell on gardens of the unforgiven

In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower

So like its own above that, to this hour,

It still remaineth, torturing the bee

With madness, and unwonted reverie:

In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf

And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief

Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,

Repenting follies that full long have fled,

Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,

Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:

Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light

She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:

**And Clytia pondering between many a sun,

While pettish tears adown her petals run:

***And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—

And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,

Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing

Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:

* This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort.

The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated.

** Clytia—The Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a

better-known term, the turnsol—which continually turns

towards the sun, covers itself, like Peru, the country from

which it comes, with dewy clouds which cool and refresh its

flowers during the most violent heat of the day.—_B. de St.

Pierre_.

*** There is cultivated in the king’s garden at Paris, a

species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large

and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla,

during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It

does not blow till towards the month of July—you then

perceive it gradually open its petals—expand them—fade

and die.—_St. Pierre_.

*And Valisnerian lotus thither flown

From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:

**And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!

Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!

***And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever

With Indian Cupid down the holy river—

Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given

****To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

“Spirit! that dwellest where,

In the deep sky,

The terrible and fair,

In beauty vie!

Beyond the line of blue—

The boundary of the star

Which turneth at the view

Of thy barrier and thy bar—

Of the barrier overgone

By the comets who were cast

From their pride, and from their throne

To be drudges till the last—

To be carriers of fire

(The red fire of their heart)

With speed that may not tire

And with pain that shall not part—

* There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the

Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of

three or four feet—thus preserving its head above water

in the swellings of the river.

** The Hyacinth.

*** It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first

seen floating in one of these down the river Ganges—and

that he still loves the cradle of his childhood.

**** And golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints.

—Rev. St. John.

Who livest—_that_ we know—

In Eternity—we feel—

But the shadow of whose brow

What spirit shall reveal?

Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,

Thy messenger hath known

Have dream’d for thy Infinity

*A model of their own—

Thy will is done, Oh, God!

The star hath ridden high

Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode

Beneath thy burning eye;

And here, in thought, to thee—

In thought that can alone

Ascend thy empire and so be

A partner of thy throne—

* The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as

having a really human form.—_Vide Clarke’s Sermons_, vol.

1, page 26, fol. edit.

The drift of Milton’s argument, leads him to employ language

which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their

doctrine; but it will be seen immediately, that he guards

himself against the charge of having adopted one of the most

ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church.—_Dr.

Sumner’s Notes on Milton’s Christian Doctrine_.

This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary,

could never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of

Mesopotamia, was condemned for the opinion, as heretical. He

lived in the beginning of the fourth century. His disciples

were called Anthropmorphites.—_Vide Du Pin_.

Among Milton’s poems are these lines:—

Dicite sacrorum præsides nemorum Deæ, &c.

Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine

Natura solers finxit humanum genus?

Eternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo,

Unusque et universus exemplar Dei.—And afterwards,

Non cui profundum Cæcitas lumen dedit

Dircæus augur vidit hunc alto sinu, &c.

*By winged Fantasy,

My embassy is given,

Till secrecy shall knowledge be

In the environs of Heaven.”

She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek

Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek

A shelter from the fervour of His eye;

For the stars trembled at the Deity.

She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there

How solemnly pervading the calm air!

A sound of silence on the startled ear

Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”

Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call

“Silence”—which is the merest word of all.

All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things

Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings—

But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high

The eternal voice of God is passing by,

And the red winds are withering in the sky!

** “What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,

Link’d to a little system, and one sun—

Where all my love is folly and the crowd

Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,

The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath—

(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)

What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun

The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,

* Seltsamen Tochter Jovis

Seinem Schosskinde

Der Phantasie.—_Göethe_.

** Sightless—too small to be seen—_Legge_.

Yet thine is my resplendency, so given

To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.

Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,

With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—

*Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,

And wing to other worlds another light!

Divulge the secrets of thy embassy

To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be

To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban

Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,

The single-mooned eve!—on Earth we plight

Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—

The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.

As sprang that yellow star from downy hours

Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,

And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain

**Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign.

* I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fire-flies;

—they will collect in a body and fly off, from a common

centre, into innumerable radii.

** Therasæa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca,

which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of

astonished mariners.

Part II.

HIGH on a mountain of enamell’d head—

Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed

Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,

Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees

With many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven”

What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven—

Of rosy head, that towering far away

Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray

Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,

While the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light—

Uprear’d upon such height arose a pile

Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthen’d air,

Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile

Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,

And nursled the young mountain in its lair.

*Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall

Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall

Of their own dissolution, while they die—

Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.

A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,

Sat gently on these columns as a crown—

A window of one circular diamond, there,

Look’d out above into the purple air,

* Some star which, from the ruin’d roof Of shak’d Olympus,

by mischance, did fall.—_Milton._

And rays from God shot down that meteor chain

And hallow’d all the beauty twice again,

Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,

Some eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing.

But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen

The dimness of this world: that greyish green

That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave

Lurk’d in each cornice, round each architrave—

And every sculptur’d cherub thereabout

That from his marble dwelling peeréd out

Seem’d earthly in the shadow of his niche—

Achaian statues in a world so rich?

*Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis—

From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss

**Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave

Is now upon thee—but too late to save!

Sound loves to revel in a summer night:

Witness the murmur of the grey twilight

* Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says, “Je connois

bien l’admiration qu’inspirent ces ruines—mais un palais

erigé au pied d’une chaine des rochers sterils—peut il

être un chef d’oevure des arts!” [_Voila les arguments de M.

Voltaire_.]

** “Oh! the wave”—Ula Degusi is the Turkish appellation;

but, on its own shores, it is called Bahar Loth, or

Almotanah. There were undoubtedly more than two cities

engluphed in the “dead sea.” In the valley of Siddim were

five—Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah. Stephen of

Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteeen, (engulphed)

—but the last is out of all reason.

It is said, (Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau,

Maundrell, Troilo, D’Arvieux) that after an excessive drought, the

vestiges of columns, walls, &c. are seen above the surface. At _any_

season, such remains may be discovered by looking down into the

transparent lake, and at such distances as would argue the existence of

many settlements in the space now usurped by the ‘Asphaltites.’

*That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,

Of many a wild star-gazer long ago—

That stealeth ever on the ear of him

Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim.

And sees the darkness coming as a cloud—

***Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and loud?

But what is this?—it cometh—and it brings

A music with it—’tis the rush of wings—

A pause—and then a sweeping, falling strain

And Nesace is in her halls again.

From the wild energy of wanton haste

Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;

And zone that clung around her gentle waist

Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.

Within the centre of that hall to breathe

She paus’d and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,

The fairy light that kiss’d her golden hair

And long’d to rest, yet could but sparkle there!

***Young flowers were whispering in melody

To happy flowers that night—and tree to tree;

Fountains were gushing music as they fell

In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell;

Yet silence came upon material things—

Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings—

And sound alone that from the spirit sprang

Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:

* Eyraco—Chaldea.

** I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of

the darkness as it stole over the horizon.

*** Fairies use flowers for their charactery.—_Merry Wives

of Windsor_. [William Shakespeare]

“’Neath blue-bell or streamer—

Or tufted wild spray

That keeps, from the dreamer,

*The moonbeam away—

Bright beings! that ponder,

With half closing eyes,

On the stars which your wonder

Hath drawn from the skies,

Till they glance thro’ the shade, and

Come down to your brow

Like—eyes of the maiden

Who calls on you now—

Arise! from your dreaming

In violet bowers,

To duty beseeming

These star-litten hours—

And shake from your tresses

Encumber’d with dew

The breath of those kisses

That cumber them too—

(O! how, without you, Love!

Could angels be blest?)

Those kisses of true love

That lull’d ye to rest!

Up!—shake from your wing

Each hindering thing:

The dew of the night—

It would weigh down your flight;

And true love caresses—

O! leave them apart!

* In Scripture is this passage—“The sun shall not harm

thee by day, nor the moon by night.” It is perhaps not

generally known that the moon, in Egypt, has the effect of

producing blindness to those who sleep with the face exposed

to its rays, to which circumstance the passage evidently

alludes.

They are light on the tresses,

But lead on the heart.

Ligeia! Ligeia!

My beautiful one!

Whose harshest idea

Will to melody run,

O! is it thy will

On the breezes to toss?

Or, capriciously still,

*Like the lone Albatross,

Incumbent on night

(As she on the air)

To keep watch with delight

On the harmony there?

Ligeia! whatever

Thy image may be,

No magic shall sever

Thy music from thee.

Thou hast bound many eyes

In a dreamy sleep—

But the strains still arise

Which _thy_ vigilance keep—

The sound of the rain

Which leaps down to the flower,

And dances again

In the rhythm of the shower—

**The murmur that springs

From the growing of grass

* The Albatross is said to sleep on the wing.

** I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I am

now unable to obtain and quote from memory:—“The verie

essence and, as it were, springe-heade, and origine of all

musiche is the verie pleasaunte sounde which the trees of

the forest do make when they growe.”

Are the music of things—

But are modell’d, alas!—

Away, then my dearest,

O! hie thee away

To springs that lie clearest

Beneath the moon-ray—

To lone lake that smiles,

In its dream of deep rest,

At the many star-isles

That enjewel its breast—

Where wild flowers, creeping,

Have mingled their shade,

On its margin is sleeping

Full many a maid—

Some have left the cool glade, and

* Have slept with the bee—

Arouse them my maiden,

On moorland and lea—

Go! breathe on their slumber,

All softly in ear,

The musical number

They slumber’d to hear—

For what can awaken

An angel so soon

* The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be

moonlight. The rhyme in this verse, as in one about sixty

lines before, has an appearance of affectation. It is,

however, imitated from Sir W. Scott, or rather from Claud

Halcro—in whose mouth I admired its effect:

O! were there an island,

Tho’ ever so wild

Where woman might smile, and

No man be beguil’d, &c.

Whose sleep hath been taken

Beneath the cold moon,

As the spell which no slumber

Of witchery may test,

The rythmical number

Which lull’d him to rest?”

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,

A thousand seraphs burst th’ Empyrean thro’,

Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight—

Seraphs in all but “Knowledge,” the keen light

That fell, refracted, thro’ thy bounds, afar

O Death! from eye of God upon that star:

Sweet was that error—sweeter still that death—

Sweet was that error—ev’n with _us_ the breath

Of science dims the mirror of our joy—

To them ’twere the Simoom, and would destroy—

For what (to them) availeth it to know

That Truth is Falsehood—or that Bliss is Woe?

Sweet was their death—with them to die was rife

With the last ecstacy of satiate life—

Beyond that death no immortality—

But sleep that pondereth and is not “to be”—

And there—oh! may my weary spirit dwell—

*Apart from Heaven’s Eternity—and yet how far from Hell!

* With the Arabians there is a medium between Heaven and

Hell, where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not attain

that tranquil and even happiness which they suppose to be

characteristic of heavenly enjoyment.

Un no rompido sueno—

Un dia puro—allegre—libre

Quiera—

Libre de amor—de zelo—

De odio—de esperanza—de rezelo.—_Luis Ponce de Leon_.

Sorrow is not excluded from “Al Aaraaf,” but it is that

sorrow which the living love to cherish for the dead, and

which, in some minds, resembles the delirium of opium. The

passionate excitement of Love and the buoyancy of spirit

attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures—

the price of which, to those souls who make choice of “Al

Aaraaf” as their residence after life, is final death and

annihilation.

What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,

Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?

But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts

To those who hear not for their beating hearts.

A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover—

O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)

Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?

*Unguided Love hath fallen—‘mid “tears of perfect moan.”

He was a goodly spirit—he who fell:

A wanderer by moss-y-mantled well—

A gazer on the lights that shine above—

A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:

What wonder? For each star is eye-like there,

And looks so sweetly down on Beauty’s hair—

And they, and ev’ry mossy spring were holy

To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.

The night had found (to him a night of wo)

Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo—

Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,

And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.

Here sate he with his love—his dark eye bent

With eagle gaze along the firmament:

Now turn’d it upon her—but ever then

It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.

“Iante, dearest, see! how dim that ray!

How lovely ’tis to look so far away!

* There be tears of perfect moan

Wept for thee in Helicon.—_Milton._

She seem’d not thus upon that autumn eve

I left her gorgeous halls—nor mourn’d to leave.

That eve—that eve—I should remember well—

The sun-ray dropp’d, in Lemnos, with a spell

On th’Arabesque carving of a gilded hall

Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall—

And on my eye-lids—O the heavy light!

How drowsily it weigh’d them into night!

On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran

With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:

But O that light!—I slumber’d—Death, the while,

Stole o’er my senses in that lovely isle

So softly that no single silken hair

Awoke that slept—or knew that it was there.

The last spot of Earth’s orb I trod upon

*Was a proud temple call’d the Parthenon—

More beauty clung around her column’d wall

**Than ev’n thy glowing bosom beats withal,

And when old Time my wing did disenthral

Thence sprang I—as the eagle from his tower,

And years I left behind me in an hour.

What time upon her airy bounds I hung

One half the garden of her globe was flung

Unrolling as a chart unto my view—

Tenantless cities of the desert too!

Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,

And half I wish’d to be again of men.”

“My Angelo! and why of them to be?

A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee—

* It was entire in 1687—the most elevated spot in Athens.

** Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows

Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.—_Marlowe._

And greener fields than in yon world above,

And women’s loveliness—and passionate love.”

“But, list, Ianthe! when the air so soft

*Fail’d, as my pennon’d spirit leapt aloft,

Perhaps my brain grew dizzy—but the world

I left so late was into chaos hurl’d—

Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,

And roll’d, a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.

Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar

And fell—not swiftly as I rose before,

But with a downward, tremulous motion thro’

Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto!

Nor long the measure of my falling hours,

For nearest of all stars was thine to ours—

Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,

A red Dædalion on the timid Earth.

“We came—and to thy Earth—but not to us

Be given our lady’s bidding to discuss:

We came, my love; around, above, below,

Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,

Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod

She grants to us, as granted by her God—

But, Angelo, than thine grey Time unfurl’d

Never his fairy wing o’er fairier world!

Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes

Alone could see the phantom in the skies,

When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be

Headlong thitherward o’er the starry sea—

But when its glory swell’d upon the sky,

As glowing Beauty’s bust beneath man’s eye,

* Pennon—for pinion.—_Milton_.

We paus’d before the heritage of men,

And thy star trembled—as doth Beauty then!”

Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away

The night that waned and waned and brought no day.

They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts

Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.

TAMERLANE

Kind solace in a dying hour!

Such, father, is not (now) my theme—

I will not madly deem that power

Of Earth may shrive me of the sin

Unearthly pride hath revell’d in—

I have no time to dote or dream:

You call it hope—that fire of fire!

It is but agony of desire:

If I _can_ hope—Oh God! I can—

Its fount is holier—more divine—

I would not call thee fool, old man,

But such is not a gift of thine.

Know thou the secret of a spirit

Bow’d from its wild pride into shame.

O! yearning heart! I did inherit

Thy withering portion with the fame,

The searing glory which hath shone

Amid the jewels of my throne,

Halo of Hell! and with a pain

Not Hell shall make me fear again—

O! craving heart, for the lost flowers

And sunshine of my summer hours!

Th’ undying voice of that dead time,

With its interminable chime,

Rings, in the spirit of a spell,

Upon thy emptiness—a knell.

I have not always been as now:

The fever’d diadem on my brow

I claim’d and won usurpingly—

Hath not the same fierce heirdom given

Rome to the Caesar—this to me?

The heritage of a kingly mind,

And a proud spirit which hath striven

Triumphantly with human kind.

On mountain soil I first drew life:

The mists of the Taglay have shed

Nightly their dews upon my head,

And, I believe, the winged strife

And tumult of the headlong air

Have nestled in my very hair.

So late from Heaven—that dew—it fell

(Mid dreams of an unholy night)

Upon me—with the touch of Hell,

While the red flashing of the light

From clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,

Appeared to my half-closing eye

The pageantry of monarchy,

And the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar

Came hurriedly upon me, telling

Of human battle, where my voice,

My own voice, silly child!—was swelling

(O! how my spirit would rejoice,

And leap within me at the cry)

The battle-cry of Victory!

The rain came down upon my head

Unshelter’d—and the heavy wind

Was giantlike—so thou, my mind!—

It was but man, I thought, who shed

Laurels upon me: and the rush—

The torrent of the chilly air

Gurgled within my ear the crush

Of empires—with the captive’s prayer—

The hum of suiters—and the tone

Of flattery ‘round a sovereign’s throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour,

Usurp’d a tyranny which men

Have deem’d, since I have reach’d to power;

My innate nature—be it so:

But, father, there liv’d one who, then,

Then—in my boyhood—when their fire

Burn’d with a still intenser glow,

(For passion must, with youth, expire)

E’en _then_ who knew this iron heart

In woman’s weakness had a part.

I have no words—alas!—to tell

The loveliness of loving well!

Nor would I now attempt to trace

The more than beauty of a face

Whose lineaments, upon my mind,

Are—shadows on th’ unstable wind:

Thus I remember having dwelt

Some page of early lore upon,

With loitering eye, till I have felt

The letters—with their meaning—melt

To fantasies—with none.

O, she was worthy of all love!

Love—as in infancy was mine—

’Twas such as angel minds above

Might envy; her young heart the shrine

On which my ev’ry hope and thought

Were incense—then a goodly gift,

For they were childish—and upright—

Pure—as her young example taught:

Why did I leave it, and, adrift,

Trust to the fire within, for light?

We grew in age—and love—together,

Roaming the forest, and the wild;

My breast her shield in wintry weather—

And, when the friendly sunshine smil’d,

And she would mark the opening skies,

_I_ saw no Heaven—but in her eyes.

Young Love’s first lesson is—the heart:

For ‘mid that sunshine, and those smiles,

When, from our little cares apart,

And laughing at her girlish wiles,

I’d throw me on her throbbing breast,

And pour my spirit out in tears—

There was no need to speak the rest—

No need to quiet any fears

Of her—who ask’d no reason why,

But turn’d on me her quiet eye!

Yet _more_ than worthy of the love

My spirit struggled with, and strove,

When, on the mountain peak, alone,

Ambition lent it a new tone—

I had no being—but in thee:

The world, and all it did contain

In the earth—the air—the sea—

Its joy—its little lot of pain

That was new pleasure—the ideal,

Dim, vanities of dreams by night—

And dimmer nothings which were real—

(Shadows—and a more shadowy light!)

Parted upon their misty wings,

And, so, confusedly, became

Thine image, and—a name—a name!

Two separate—yet most intimate things.

I was ambitious—have you known

The passion, father? You have not:

A cottager, I mark’d a throne

Of half the world as all my own,

And murmur’d at such lowly lot—

But, just like any other dream,

Upon the vapour of the dew

My own had past, did not the beam

Of beauty which did while it thro’

The minute—the hour—the day—oppress

My mind with double loveliness.

We walk’d together on the crown

Of a high mountain which look’d down

Afar from its proud natural towers

Of rock and forest, on the hills—

The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers

And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,

But mystically—in such guise

That she might deem it nought beside

The moment’s converse; in her eyes

I read, perhaps too carelessly—

A mingled feeling with my own—

The flush on her bright cheek, to me

Seem’d to become a queenly throne

Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapp’d myself in grandeur then,

And donn’d a visionary crown—

Yet it was not that Fantasy

Had thrown her mantle over me—

But that, among the rabble—men,

Lion ambition is chain’d down—

And crouches to a keeper’s hand—

Not so in deserts where the grand

The wild—the terrible conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look ‘round thee now on Samarcand!—

Is not she queen of Earth? her pride

Above all cities? in her hand

Their destinies? in all beside

Of glory which the world hath known

Stands she not nobly and alone?

Falling—her veriest stepping-stone

Shall form the pedestal of a throne—

And who her sovereign? Timour—he

Whom the astonished people saw

Striding o’er empires haughtily

A diadem’d outlaw—

O! human love! thou spirit given,

On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!

Which fall’st into the soul like rain

Upon the Siroc wither’d plain,

And failing in thy power to bless

But leav’st the heart a wilderness!

Idea! which bindest life around

With music of so strange a sound

And beauty of so wild a birth—

Farewell! for I have won the Earth!

When Hope, the eagle that tower’d, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,

His pinions were bent droopingly—

And homeward turn’d his soften’d eye.

’Twas sunset: when the sun will part

There comes a sullenness of heart

To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the ev’ning mist,

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, _would_ fly

But _cannot_ from a danger nigh.

What tho’ the moon—the white moon

Shed all the splendour of her noon,

Her smile is chilly—and her beam,

In that time of dreariness, will seem

(So like you gather in your breath)

A portrait taken after death.

And boyhood is a summer sun

Whose waning is the dreariest one—

For all we live to know is known,

And all we seek to keep hath flown—

Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall

With the noon-day beauty—which is all.

I reach’d my home—my home no more—

For all had flown who made it so—

I pass’d from out its mossy door,

And, tho’ my tread was soft and low,

A voice came from the threshold stone

Of one whom I had earlier known—

O! I defy thee, Hell, to show

On beds of fire that burn below,

A humbler heart—a deeper wo—

Father, I firmly do believe—

I _know_—for Death, who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,

Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar,

And rays of truth you cannot see

Are flashing thro’ Eternity—

I do believe that Eblis hath

A snare in ev’ry human path—

Else how, when in the holy grove

I wandered of the idol, Love,

Who daily scents his snowy wings

With incense of burnt offerings

From the most unpolluted things,

Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven

Above with trelliced rays from Heaven

No mote may shun—no tiniest fly

The light’ning of his eagle eye—

How was it that Ambition crept,

Unseen, amid the revels there,

Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

In the tangles of Love’s very hair?

1829.

TO HELEN

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

The weary way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

To the glory that was Greece,

And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I me thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand!

Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

Are Holy-land!

1831.

THE VALLEY OF UNREST

_Once_ it smiled a silent dell

Where the people did not dwell;

They had gone unto the wars,

Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

Nightly, from their azure towers,

To keep watch above the flowers,

In the midst of which all day

The red sun-light lazily lay.

_Now_ each visitor shall confess

The sad valley’s restlessness.

Nothing there is motionless—

Nothing save the airs that brood

Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

That palpitate like the chill seas

Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

Uneasily, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye—

Over the lilies there that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!

They wave:—from out their fragrant tops

Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep:—from off their delicate stems

Perennial tears descend in gems.

1831.

ISRAFEL*

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell

“Whose heart-strings are a lute;”

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell)

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon

The enamoured moon

Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin

(With the rapid Pleiads, even,

Which were seven,)

Pauses in Heaven

And they say (the starry choir

And all the listening things)

That Israfeli’s fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings—

The trembling living wire

Of those unusual strings.

* And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lut, and

who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.—KORAN.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty—

Where Love’s a grown up God—

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,

Israfeli, who despisest

An unimpassion’d song:

To thee the laurels belong

Best bard, because the wisest!

Merrily live, and long!

The extacies above

With thy burning measures suit—

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

With the fervor of thy lute—

Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this

Is a world of sweets and sours;

Our flowers are merely—flowers,

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss

Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

1836.

TO ——

1

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see

The wantonest singing birds

Are lips—and all thy melody

Of lip-begotten words—

2

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin’d

Then desolately fall,

O! God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall—

3

Thy heart—_thy_ heart!—I wake and sigh,

And sleep to dream till day

Of truth that gold can never buy—

Of the trifles that it may.

1829.

TO ——

I heed not that my earthly lot

Hath-little of Earth in it—

That years of love have been forgot

In the hatred of a minute:—

I mourn not that the desolate

Are happier, sweet, than I,

But that you sorrow for my fate

Who am a passer-by.

1829.

TO THE RIVER——

Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow

Of crystal, wandering water,

Thou art an emblem of the glow

Of beauty—the unhidden heart—

The playful maziness of art

In old Alberto’s daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks—

Which glistens then, and trembles—

Why, then, the prettiest of brooks

Her worshipper resembles;

For in my heart, as in thy stream,

Her image deeply lies—

His heart which trembles at the beam

Of her soul-searching eyes.

1829.

SONG

I saw thee on thy bridal day—

When a burning blush came o’er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee:

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame—

As such it well may pass—

Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame

In the breast of him, alas!

Who saw thee on that bridal day,

When that deep blush _would_ come o’er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

1827.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

1

Thy soul shall find itself alone

‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone—

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy:

2

Be silent in that solitude

Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall then overshadow thee: be still.

3

For the night—tho’ clear—shall frown—

And the stars shall look not down,

From their high thrones in the Heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given—

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever:

4

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—

Now are visions ne’er to vanish—

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drop from the grass:

5

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token—

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!—

1827.

A DREAM

In visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed—

But a waking dreams of life and light

Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day

To him whose eyes are cast

On things around him with a ray

Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream—that holy dream,

While all the world were chiding,

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam

A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro’ storm and night,

So trembled from afar-

What could there be more purely bright

In Truths day-star?

1827.

ROMANCE

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,

Among the green leaves as they shake

Far down within some shadowy lake,

To me a painted paroquet

Hath been—a most familiar bird—

Taught me my alphabet to say—

To lisp my very earliest word

While in the wild wood I did lie,

A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

I have no time for idle cares

Through gazing on the unquiet sky.

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon thy spirit flings—

That little time with lyre and rhyme

To while away—forbidden things!

My heart would feel to be a crime

Unless it trembled with the strings.

1829.

FAIRY-LAND

Dim vales—and shadowy floods—

And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can’t discover

For the tears that drip all over

Huge moons there wax and wane—

Again—again—again—

Every moment of the night—

Forever changing places—

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial

One, more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down—still down—and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain’s eminence,

While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Over hamlets, over halls,

Wherever they may be—

O’er the strange woods—o’er the sea—

Over spirits on the wing—

Over every drowsy thing—

And buries them up quite

In a labyrinth of light—

And then, how deep!—O, deep!

Is the passion of their sleep.

In the morning they arise,

And their moony covering

Is soaring in the skies,

With the tempests as they toss,

Like—almost any thing—

Or a yellow Albatross.

They use that moon no more

For the same end as before—

Videlicet a tent—

Which I think extravagant:

Its atomies, however,

Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies,

Of Earth, who seek the skies,

And so come down again

(Never-contented things!)

Have brought a specimen

Upon their quivering wings.

1831.

THE LAKE —— TO——

In spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide earth a spot

The which I could not love the less—

So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,

And the tall pines that tower’d around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall

Upon that spot, as upon all,

And the mystic wind went by

Murmuring in melody—

Then—ah then I would awake

To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,

But a tremulous delight—

A feeling not the jewelled mine

Could teach or bribe me to define—

Nor Love—although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,

And in its gulf a fitting grave

For him who thence could solace bring

To his lone imagining—

Whose solitary soul could make

An Eden of that dim lake.

1827.

EVENING STAR

’Twas noontide of summer,

And midtime of night,

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, through the light

Of the brighter, cold moon.

‘Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

Her beam on the waves.

I gazed awhile

On her cold smile;

Too cold-too cold for me—

There passed, as a shroud,

A fleecy cloud,

And I turned away to thee,

Proud Evening Star,

In thy glory afar

And dearer thy beam shall be;

For joy to my heart

Is the proud part

Thou bearest in Heaven at night.,

And more I admire

Thy distant fire,

Than that colder, lowly light.

1827.

“THE HAPPIEST DAY.”

I

The happiest day-the happiest hour

My seared and blighted heart hath known,

The highest hope of pride and power,

I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween

But they have vanished long, alas!

The visions of my youth have been

But let them pass.

III

And pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may ev’n inherit

The venom thou hast poured on me

Be still my spirit!

IV

The happiest day-the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see-have ever seen

The brightest glance of pride and power

I feet have been:

V

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offered with the pain

Ev’n _then I _felt-that brightest hour

I would not live again:

VI

For on its wing was dark alloy

And as it fluttered-fell

An essence-powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.

1827.

IMITATION

A dark unfathom’d tide

Of interminable pride—

A mystery, and a dream,

Should my early life seem;

I say that dream was fraught

With a wild, and waking thought

Of beings that have been,

Which my spirit hath not seen,

Had I let them pass me by,

With a dreaming eye!

Let none of earth inherit

That vision on my spirit;

Those thoughts I would control

As a spell upon his soul:

For that bright hope at last

And that light time have past,

And my worldly rest hath gone

With a sigh as it pass’d on

I care not tho’ it perish

With a thought I then did cherish.

1827.

HYMN TO ARISTOGEITON AND HARMODIUS

Translation from the Greek

I

Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal

Like those champions devoted and brave,

When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,

And to Athens deliverance gave.

II

Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam

In the joy breathing isles of the blest;

Where the mighty of old have their home

Where Achilles and Diomed rest

III

In fresh myrtle my blade I’ll entwine,

Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,

When he made at the tutelar shrine

A libation of Tyranny’s blood.

IV

Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!

Ye avengers of Liberty’s wrongs!

Endless ages shall cherish your fame,

Embalmed in their echoing songs!

1827.

DREAMS

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awak’ning, till the beam

Of an Eternity should bring the morrow:

Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

’Twere better than the dull reality

Of waking life to him whose heart shall be,

And hath been ever, on the chilly earth,

A chaos of deep passion from his birth!

But should it be—that dream eternally

Continuing—as dreams have been to me

In my young boyhood—should it thus be given,

’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven!

For I have revell’d, when the sun was bright

In the summer sky; in dreamy fields of light,

And left unheedingly my very heart

In climes of mine imagining—apart

From mine own home, with beings that have been

Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?

’Twas once & _only_ once & the wild hour

From my rememberance shall not pass—some power

Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind

Came o’er me in the night & left behind

Its image on my spirit, or the moon

Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was

That dream was as that night wind—let it pass.

I have been happy—tho’ but in a dream

I have been happy—& I love the theme—

Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life—

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings

To the delirious eye more lovely things

Of Paradise & Love—& all our own!

Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

{From an earlier MS. Than in the book—ED.}

“IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE”

_How often we forget all time, when lone

Admiring Nature’s universal throne;

Her woods—her wilds—her mountains-the intense

Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!_

I

IN youth I have known one with whom the Earth

In secret communing held-as he with it,

In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:

Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit

From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

A passionate light such for his spirit was fit

And yet that spirit knew-not in the hour

Of its own fervor-what had o’er it power.

II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

To a fever* by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,

But I will half believe that wild light fraught

With more of sovereignty than ancient lore

Hath ever told-or is it of a thought

The unembodied essence, and no more

That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass

As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass?

III

Doth o’er us pass, when, as th’ expanding eye

To the loved object-so the tear to the lid

Will start, which lately slept in apathy?

And yet it need not be—(that object) hid

From us in life-but common-which doth lie

Each hour before us—but then only bid

With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken

T’ awake us—’Tis a symbol and a token

IV

Of what in other worlds shall be—and given

In beauty by our God, to those alone

Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven

Drawn by their heart’s passion, and that tone,

That high tone of the spirit which hath striven

Though not with Faith-with godliness—whose throne

With desperate energy ‘t hath beaten down;

Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

* Query “fervor”?—ED.

A PÆAN.

I.

How shall the burial rite be read?

The solemn song be sung?

The requiem for the loveliest dead,

That ever died so young?

II.

Her friends are gazing on her,

And on her gaudy bier,

And weep!—oh! to dishonor

Dead beauty with a tear!

III.

They loved her for her wealth—

And they hated her for her pride—

But she grew in feeble health,

And they _love_ her—that she died.

IV.

They tell me (while they speak

Of her “costly broider’d pall”)

That my voice is growing weak—

That I should not sing at all—

V.

Or that my tone should be

Tun’d to such solemn song

So mournfully—so mournfully,

That the dead may feel no wrong.

VI.

But she is gone above,

With young Hope at her side,

And I am drunk with love

Of the dead, who is my bride.—

VII.

Of the dead—dead who lies

All perfum’d there,

With the death upon her eyes,

And the life upon her hair.

VIII.

Thus on the coffin loud and long

I strike—the murmur sent

Through the grey chambers to my song,

Shall be the accompaniment.

IX.

Thou died’st in thy life’s June—

But thou did’st not die too fair:

Thou did’st not die too soon,

Nor with too calm an air.

X.

From more than fiends on earth,

Thy life and love are riven,

To join the untainted mirth

Of more than thrones in heaven—

XII.

Therefore, to thee this night

I will no requiem raise,

But waft thee on thy flight,

With a Pæan of old days.

NOTES

30. On the “Poems written in Youth” little comment is needed. This section

includes the pieces printed for first volume of 1827 (which was

subsequently suppressed), such poems from the first and second published

volumes of 1829 and 1831 as have not already been given in their revised

versions, and a few others collected from various sources. “Al Aaraaf”

first appeared, with the sonnet “To Silence” prefixed to it, in 1829, and

is, substantially, as originally issued. In the edition for 1831, however,

this poem, its author’s longest, was introduced by the following

twenty-nine lines, which have been omitted in—all subsequent

collections: