UC-NRLF 
 
 SD4 
 
eT\ 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERMTY OF 
 ^CALIFORNIA/ 
 
 M 
 
 ' 
 
 3F 
 
L 
 
NEPENTHE 
 
O BLEST UNFABLED INCENSE TREE 
 THAT BURNS IN GLORIOUS ARABY ! 
 
NEPENTH E 
 
 A Poem in Two Cantos 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE DARLEY 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 R. A. STREATFEILD 
 
 LONDON 
 ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET 
 
 MDCCCXCVII 
 
The frontispiece designed and cut 
 on the wood by L. Binyon. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 GEORGE DARLEY never was a popular poet, 
 even during his lifetime, and perhaps, after 
 half a century of negleft, it is now too late 
 to rekindle the dying embers of his fame. 
 His poetry is unquestionably not of the type 
 which commands general appreciation, but 
 he surely deserves to stand among the " poets' 
 poets," by the side of his friend Beddoes, 
 whose genius he was one of the first to 
 recognise. 
 
 Darley published but little during his life- 
 time, and that little is now rarely to be met 
 with, but within the last few years there 
 have been two valuable reprints of some of 
 his least accessible works. In 1890 Canon 
 Livingstone, a kinsman of the poet, pub- 
 lished a slender collection of Darley's lyrical 
 poems for private circulation, and two 
 years later his pastoral play, "Sylvia; 
 or, The May Queen," was reprinted under 
 the careful editorship of Mr. J. H. Ingram. 
 
 436 
 
VI INTRODUCTION 
 
 But Darley's lyrical poems, though their 
 diftion is often exquisitely felicitous, are 
 little calculated to give a proper idea of his 
 remarkable imaginative power, and " Sylvia," 
 graceful as much of it is, is very far from 
 being his most characteristic work. If he 
 is ever to win the recognition to which 
 such critics as Coleridge have thought him 
 entitled, his passport to the glories of post- 
 humous fame must be u Nepenthe," a poem 
 which, though occasionally marred by wilful 
 eccentricity, exhibits the scope of his 
 poetical faculty in a more striking light than 
 any of his other works. 
 
 Darley's history has been told before, but 
 it may be well to recapitulate its leading 
 incidents. He was born in Ireland in 1795, 
 and was educated at Dublin. For what 
 profession he was originally intended is not 
 known, but a serious and apparently incur- 
 able habit of stammering with which he was 
 afflicted, appeared to present an insurmount- 
 able barrier to success in any of the learned 
 professions, and he therefore determined to 
 devote himself to a literary career. He 
 
INTRODUCTION Vll 
 
 migrated to London, and produced his first 
 poem, "The Errors of Ecstasie," in 1822. 
 Soon afterwards he joined the staff of the 
 " London Magazine," to which he contri- 
 buted both prose and verse. In 1826 came 
 " The Labours of Idleness," a collection of 
 prose tales and essays, which was reprinted 
 a few years later, with some additional 
 matter, as "The New Sketch-Book." In 
 1827 appeared his pastoral play, "Sylvia; or, 
 The May Queen ; " in 1 839, " Nepenthe ; " 
 and in 1840 and 1841, two historical plays, 
 "Thomas A'Becket," and " Ethelstan." 
 Darley died in 1846. His career throughout 
 was a disappointment The unlucky impe- 
 diment in his speech debarred him from 
 intercourse with any but intimate friends, 
 and as time went on, and his habits became 
 more and more those of a recluse, he became 
 estranged from many of these also. In Mr. 
 Edmund Gosse's recently-published edition 
 of the letters of Beddoes there is a striking 
 vignette of Darley as he appeared in 1824. 
 " Darley is a tallish, slender, pale, light- 
 eyebrowed, gentle-looking bald-pate, in a 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION 
 
 brown sourtout [j/V], with a duodecimo 
 under his arm stammering to a most pro- 
 voking degree, so much so as to be almost 
 inconversible." Beddoes and Darley were 
 never intimate, though they seem to have 
 met pretty often about this time, but Bed- 
 does entertained a certain respecSl for Darley's 
 poetry, and even speaks of him as the man 
 upon whom the mantle of Shelley might con- 
 ceivably have fallen. In Darley's " Labours 
 of Idleness " there are not infrequent refe- 
 rences to himself and his career, some of 
 which seem to be worth quoting. I do not 
 know that they have been noticed by any 
 previous biographer. The book appeared 
 under the pseudonym of Guy Penseval, pre- 
 faced by a rather elaborate piece of mystifi- 
 cation, which purports to explain how the 
 supposed editor came by the various tales 
 included in the work. In it occurs this 
 passage : "Of the four remaining articles, 
 this is a straight-forward account. The 
 last is written by an obscure young man, 
 
 one G D , who twinkled in the 
 
 literary hemisphere a. year or two ago, but 
 
INTRODUCTION IX 
 
 has lately disappeared. He was rather an 
 anomaly. Some of his friends were good 
 enough to call him a genius, for which 
 he always (being of a very grateful tem- 
 per) made them a bow. Others of them 
 thought he was mad, and were even con- 
 siderate enough to inform him of his de- 
 plorable situation; to these also he returned 
 every due acknowledgment. I myself, who 
 ought to have known him, could not say 
 exactly which he was. Sometimes I thought 
 him the one, sometimes the other, sometimes 
 neither, sometimes both. Yet we had been 
 inseparable for thirty years ! I loved him as 
 myself ; but he, wayward mortal ! though 
 by inclination I am sure my sincerest well- 
 wisher, oftentimes exhibited himself my 
 greatest enemy. He has frequently, on pre- 
 tence of doing me a service, injured me 
 beyond reparation ; and indeed to him are 
 almost all the misfortunes of my life attri- 
 butable. But I could never prevail on 
 myself to throw him off, although by a 
 most unhandsome trick of his (spirting 
 vinegar through his teeth or out of a quill) 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 he mortally offended several of my best 
 friends, who would never afterwards ap- 
 proach me, but always took off their hats 
 at a respecftful distance. Notwithstanding 
 this foolish propensity, he was naturally of 
 an hypochondriac, melancholy disposition, 
 which was no doubt augmented by the 
 nervous sensibility of his frame, and the 
 delicacy of his constitution. Such a tem- 
 perament is usually coupled with an imagi- 
 native brain, and a romantic turn of thinking; 
 he was indeed a day-dreamer of no ordinary 
 extravagance, and was perpetually creating 
 such labyrinths of thought around him, that 
 no wonder if he was sometimes lost in them. 
 But in the main he was as sound as I am, 
 and could even laugh as I did at the excesses 
 into which his enthusiasm led him. Some 
 of his compositions were less irregular, and 
 indeed as works of fancy their novelty of 
 conception and imagery may perhaps recom- 
 mend them with those who have just as 
 severe a contempt for meteors and just as 
 profound an admiration for paving-stones, 
 as I wish them." 
 
INTRODUCTION XI 
 
 The first tale in the book, " The En- 
 chanted Lyre," is written in the first per- 
 son, the hero being a philosophic youth, 
 dwelling in a romantic retreat upon the 
 banks of a waterfall. Much of it is evi- 
 dently autobiographical ; indeed, Darley's 
 sketch of his own charafter corresponds 
 pretty closely to the description left us by 
 his friends. 
 
 " Solitude is not so much my necessity as 
 my inclination. I have neither love for 
 society, nor those agreeable qualities of 
 mind, manner, and disposition, which would 
 make society love me. To confess a truth, 
 I once made the experiment, more from 
 curiosity than a desire to succeed : but it 
 was like to have cost me my own good 
 opinion, as well as that of my acquaintances, 
 who, whilst I remained in seclusion, voted 
 me a philosopher, but the moment I exhi- 
 bited myself in society, set me down as a 
 fool. I always found myself so embarrassed 
 in the presence of others, and everyone so 
 embarrassed in mine, I was so perpetually 
 infringing the rules of politeness, saying or 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION 
 
 doing awkward things, telling unpalatable 
 truths, or giving heterodox opinions on 
 matters long since established as proper, 
 agreeable, becoming, and the contrary, by 
 the common creed of the world ; there was 
 so much to offend, and so little to conciliate 
 in my manners ; arrogant at one time, puling 
 at another ; dull, when I should have been 
 entertaining ; loquacious when I should 
 have been silent for I could sometimes be 
 very witty out of place, and very instructive 
 upon uninteresting topics. I was, in fine, 
 such an incomprehensible, unsystematized, 
 impersonal compound of opposite qualities, 
 with no overwhelming power of mind to 
 carry off, as I have seen in others, these 
 heterogeneous particles in a flood of intel- 
 lectuality, that I quickly perceived obscurity 
 was the sphere in which Nature had destined 
 me to shine ; and that the very best compli- 
 ment my friends could pay me, when I had 
 left them, was to forget me and my faults 
 for ever. At first, indeed, there were several 
 persons who liked, or seemed to like, me 
 from a certain novelty or freshness in my 
 
INTRODUCTION X11I 
 
 manner ; but as soon as that wore off, they 
 liked me no longer. I was an * odd being,' 
 or a c young man of genius, but very sin- 
 gular ; ' something to fill up the gap of 
 tea-table conversation, when the fineness of 
 the evening and the beauty of the prospeft 
 had been already discussed by the party." 
 
 If we are to believe the records of his 
 contemporaries, the ill-concealed bitterness 
 of this diatribe represents the normal tone of 
 Darley's sentiment towards the world at 
 large. Miss Mitford says bluntly that he 
 withdrew from society in disgust at his 
 failure to win the popular ear, but it is 
 more charitable to suppose that the impedi- 
 ment in his speech, the "mask upon his 
 mind," as Darley himself called it, was at 
 least as much responsible for the misan- 
 thropic seclusion iniwhich his later years were 
 passed as the cold reception of his poems. 
 
 " Nepenthe " was privately printed in or 
 about the year 1839. Darley's friends were 
 few in number, and the impression was pro- 
 bably a very small one. The poem seems to 
 have passed almost unnoticed, and it is rarely 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 mentioned, even in the literary memoirs of 
 the period. Nowadays it is rarissime, indeed 
 the British Museum copy, from which this 
 reprint has been made, is probably unique. 
 Nothing was too small or insignificant for 
 the wide circle of Miss Mitford's literary 
 sympathies, and in her " Recolleftions " she 
 discourses about " Nepenthe " with delight- 
 ful garrulity. 
 
 " It is," she says, "as different in appearance 
 from the common run of books printed for 
 private distribution, which are usually models 
 of typography, of paper, and of binding, as it 
 is in subjeft and composition. Never was 
 so thorough an abnegation of all literary 
 coxcombry as was exhibited in the outward 
 form of " Nepenthe," unless there may be 
 some suspicion of afFe&ation in the remark- 
 able homeliness, not to say squalor, of the 
 strange little pamphlet, as compared with 
 the grace and refinement of the poetry. 
 Printed with the most imperfect and broken 
 types, upon a coarse, discoloured paper, like 
 that in which a country shopkeeper puts up 
 his tea, with two dusky leaves of a still 
 
INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 dingier hue, at least a size too small, for 
 cover, and garnished at top and bottom with 
 a running margin in his own writing, such 
 (resembling nothing but a street ballad or 
 an old ' broadside ') is the singular disguise of 
 this striking poem. There is no reading the 
 whole, for there is an intoxication about it that 
 turns one's brain. Such a poet could never 
 have been popular. But he was a poet." 
 
 " Nepenthe " from the first was misunder- 
 stood. Miss Mitford, although she was polite 
 enough to tell Parley that she preferred it 
 to " Sylvia/' seems never to have got to the 
 end of it. Even so good a Darleian as Mr. 
 Ingram, the latter-day editor of " Sylvia," 
 dismisses it as a bizarre produ&ion. It is 
 not without occasional eccentricities, and 
 much of the second Canto is exceedingly 
 obscure, but it would be difficult to name a 
 poem published between the death of Byron 
 in 1 824 and what Matthew Arnold calls the 
 decisive appearance of Tennyson in 1842 
 a period of admitted poetical aridity more 
 conspicuous for sustained imaginative power 
 and magnificent sonority of diftion. Darley 
 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION 
 
 has occasional obligations to Keats, but on 
 the other hand the careful reader will find 
 in " Nepenthe " not a few passages which 
 curiously anticipate familiar lines in our later 
 poets. 
 
 Miss Mitford's annotated copy of " Ne- 
 penthe " seems unfortunately to have dis- 
 appeared, but a letter is extant from Darley 
 to his friend H. F. Chorley, giving a brief 
 sketch of the argument. " Canto L," he 
 says, "attempts to paint the ill effefts of 
 over-joy ; Canto II. those of excessive 
 melancholy. Part of the latter objeft 
 remains to be worked out in Canto III., 
 which would likewise show that content- 
 ment with the mingled cup of humanity is 
 the true Nepenthe." 
 
 The third Canto unfortunately was never 
 printed, probably never written. The poem 
 remains a fragment, incomplete it is true, 
 yet of so majestic an outline, and so fully 
 instinft with the true spirit of romance, that 
 it seems hardly necessary to apologize for 
 this attempt to rescue it from the dust and 
 ruin of the past. 
 
NEPENTHE 
 
 CANTO I 
 
 OVER a bloomy land untrod 
 
 By heavier foot than bird or bee 
 Lays on the grassy-bosomed sod, 
 
 I passed one day in reverie. 
 High on his unpavilioned throne 
 The heaven's hot tyrant sat alone, 
 And like the fabled king of old 
 Was turning all he touched to gold. 
 The glittering fountains seemed to pour 
 Steep downward rills of molten ore, 
 Glassily tinkling smooth between 
 Broom-shaded banks of golden green, 
 And o'er the yellow pasture straying 
 Dallying still yet undelaying, 
 In hasty trips from side to side 
 Footing adown their steepy slide 
 Headlong, impetuously playing 
 With the flowery border pied, 
 That edged the rocky mountain stair, 
 They pattered down incessant there, 
 
2 NEPENTHE 
 
 To lowlands sweet and calm and wide. 
 With golden lip and glistening bell 
 Burned every bee-cup on the fell, 
 Whate'er its native unsunned hue, 
 Snow-white or crimson or cold blue ; 
 Even the black lustres of the sloe 
 Glanced as they sided to the glow ; 
 And furze in russet frock arrayed 
 With saffron knots, like shepherd maid, 
 Broadly tricked out her rough brocade. 
 The singed mosses curling here, 
 A golden fleece too short to shear ! 
 Crumbled to sparkling dust beneath 
 My light step on that sunny heath. 
 Light, for the ardour of the clime 
 Made rare my spirit, that sublime 
 Bore me as buoyant as young Time 
 Over the green Earth's grassy prime, 
 Ere his slouch'd wing caught up her slime ; 
 And sprang I not from clay and crime, 
 Had from those humming beds of thyme 
 Lifted me near the starry chime 
 To learn an empyrean rhyme. 
 
 No melody beneath the moon 
 Sweeter than this deep runnel tune ! 
 Here on the greensward grown hot gray, 
 Crisp as the unshorn desert hay, 
 Where his moist pipe the dulcet rill 
 For humorous grasshopper doth fill, 
 That spits himself from blade to blade 
 By long o'er-rest uneasy made, 
 
NEPENTHE 3 
 
 Here, ere the stream by fountain pushes 
 Lose himself brightly in the rushes 
 With butterfly path among the bushes, 
 I'll lay me, on these mosses brown, 
 Murmuring beside his murmurs down, 
 And from the liquid tale he tells 
 Glean out some broken syllables, 
 Or close mine eyes in dreamy swoon, 
 As by hoarse-winding deep Gihoon 
 Soothes with the hum his idle pain 
 The melancholy Tartar swain, 
 Sole mark on that huge-meadowed plain ! 
 
 Hie on to great Ocean ! hie on ! hie on ! 
 Fleet as water can gallop, hie on ! 
 
 Hear ye not thro' the ground 
 
 How the sea- trumpets sound 
 Round the sea-monarch's shallop, hie on ! 
 
 Hie on to brave Ocean ! hie on ! hie on ! 
 From the sleek mountain levels, hie on ! 
 
 Hear ye not in the boom 
 
 Of the water-bell's womb 
 Pleasant whoop to sea-revels, hie on ! 
 
 Hie on to bright Ocean ! hie on ! hie on ! 
 'Tis the store of rich waters, hie on ! 
 
 Hear ye not the rough sands 
 
 Rolling gold on the strands 
 For poor Earth's sons and daughters, hie on ! 
 
 B 2 
 
4 NEPENTHE 
 
 Hie on to calm Ocean ! hie on ! hie on ! 
 
 Summer-rest from earth riot, hie on ! 
 Hear ye not the smooth tide 
 With deep murmur and wide 
 
 Call ye down to its quiet, hie on ! 
 
 Thus to the babbling streamlet elves 
 
 To haste them down the slopes and shelves, 
 
 Methought some Naiad of their fall 
 
 In her bright-dropping sparry hall 
 
 Sang to her glassy virginal. 
 
 Perchance to me monition sweet ! 
 I started upright to my feet 
 Attent : 'twas but a fancy dream ! 
 I only heard in measure meet 
 The pulses of the fountain beat, 
 As onward prest the throbbing stream. 
 Fair fall no less my fancy dream ! 
 I have been still led like a child 
 My heedless, wayward path and wild 
 Thro' this rough world by feebler clues, 
 So they were bright, than rainbow dews 
 Spun by the inseft gossamer 
 To climb with thro' the ropy air. 
 Fair fall ye then, my fancy dream ! 
 I'll with this labyrinthian stream, 
 Where'er it flow, where'er it cease, 
 There be my pathway and my peace ! 
 
 Swift as a star falls thro' the night, 
 Swift as a sunshot dart of light, 
 
NEPENTHE 5 
 
 Down from the hill's heaven-touching height 
 The streamlet vanished from my sight ! 
 
 I crept me to a promontory 
 Where it had fallen from earth's top story, 
 And peering over, saw its flow, 
 A cataract white of smoke and snow. 
 Looping in fleecy shawls below ; 
 Frail footing on such shrouds as these ! 
 Elves may descend them if they please ; 
 But here, by help of bushy stem 
 That plumes the hill's huge diadem, 
 By hoar rock, its gigantic gem 
 Far glancing o'er the prostrate seas, 
 Into the vale that spreads to them 
 Lark-like I'll drop by glad degrees. 
 
 Shrill on those lofty-sloping leas 
 The wind-bells sounded in the breeze, 
 Dingling beside me, as I glid, 
 So sweet, I scarce knew what I did ; 
 But shrilly, too, as that lithe shell 
 Blown from old Ocean's world-broad well, 
 When the red hour of morn's begun 
 And Zephyr posts before the Sun. 
 Yet shriller still than rings at morn 
 The wet-mouthed wind-god's broadening horn, 
 Sudden above my head I heard 
 The cliff-scream of the thunder-bird, 
 The rushing of his forest wings, 
 A hurricane when he swoops or springs, 
 And saw upon the darkening glade 
 Cloud-broad his sun-eclipsing shade* 
 
 ; 
 
O NEPENTHE 
 
 With the shrill clang that cleft the skies 
 When he flew Joveward with his prize. 
 The golden-haired Dardanian boy. 
 With such rude burst of robber joy. 
 Rose the sun-scorner ; from earth's shore 
 My boy-weight like a worm he bore 
 Methought to heaven's embowed floor ; 
 My brain turned I could see no more ! 
 
 O blest unfabled Incense Tree, 
 That burns in glorious Araby, 
 With red scent chalicing the air, 
 Till earth-life grow Elysian there ! 
 
 Half buried to her flaming breast 
 In this bright tree, she makes her nest, 
 Hundred-sunned Phcenix ! when she must 
 Crumble at length to hoary dust ! 
 
 Her gorgeous death-bed ! her rich pyre 
 Burnt up with aromatic fire ! 
 Her urn, sight high from spoiler men ! 
 Her birthplace when self-born again ! 
 
 The mountainless green wilds among, 
 Here ends she her unechoing song ! 
 With amber tears and odorous sighs 
 Mourned by the desert where she dies \ 
 
 Laid like the young fawn mossily 
 In sun-green vales of Araby, 
 
NEPENTHE 7 
 
 I woke, hard by the Phoenix tree 
 
 That with shadeless boughs flamed over me, 
 
 And upward called by a dumb cry 
 
 With moonbroad orbs of wonder, I 
 
 Beheld the immortal Bird on high 
 
 Glassing the great sun in her eye. 
 
 Stedfast she gazed upon his fire, 
 
 Still her destroyer and her sire ! 
 
 As if to his her soul of flame 
 
 Had flown already, whence it came ; 
 
 Like those that sit and glare so still, 
 
 Intense with their death struggle, till 
 
 We touch, and curdle at their chill ! 
 
 But breathing yet while she doth burn 
 
 The deathless Daughter of the sun ! 
 Slowly to crimson embers turn 
 
 The beauties of the brightsome one. 
 O'er the broad nest her silver wings 
 Shook down their wasteful glitterings ; 
 Her bririded neck high-arched in air 
 Like a small rainbow faded there ; 
 But brighter glowed her plumy crown 
 Mouldering to golden ashes down ; 
 With fume of sweet woods, to the skies. 
 Pure as a Saint's adoring sighs, 
 Warm as a prayer in Paradise, 
 Her life-breath rose in sacrifice ! 
 The while with shrill triumphant tone 
 Sounding aloud, aloft, alone, 
 Ceaseless her joyful deathwail she 
 Sang to departing Araby I 
 
8 NEPENTHE 
 
 Deep melancholy wonder drew 
 Tears from my heartspring at that view. 
 Like cresset shedding its last flare 
 Upon some wistful mariner, 
 The Bird, fast blending with the sky, 
 Turned on me her dead-gazing eye 
 Once and as surge to shallow spray 
 Sank down to vapoury dust away ! 
 
 O, fast her amber blood doth flow 
 
 From the heart-wounded Incense Tree, 
 
 Fast as earth's deep-embosomed woe 
 In silent rivulets to the sea ! 
 
 Beauty may weep her fair first-born, 
 Perchance in as resplendent tears, 
 
 Such golden dewdrops bow the corn 
 When the stern sickleman appears. 
 
 But oh ! such perfume to a bower 
 Never allured sweet-seeking bee, 
 
 As to sip fast that neftarous shower 
 A thirstier minstrel drew in me ! 
 
 My burning soul one drop did quaff 
 Heaven reeled and gave a thunder-laugh I 
 Earth reeled, as if with pendulous swing 
 She rose each side through half her ring, 
 That I, head downward, twice uphurled^ 
 Saw twice the deep blue underworld, 
 Twice, at one glance, beneath me lie 
 The bottomless, boundless, void sky I 
 
NEPENTHE 9 
 
 Tho' inland far, me seemed around 
 Ocean came on with swallowing sound 
 Like moving mountains serried high ! 
 Methought a thousand daystars burned 
 By their mere fury as they turned, 
 Bewildering heaven with too much bright, 
 Till day looked like a daylight night. 
 Brief chaos, only of the brain ! 
 Heaven settled on its poles again, 
 And all stood still, but dizzily. 
 
 Light-trooping o'er the distant lea 
 A band I saw, where Revelry 
 Seemed on her bacchant foot to be, 
 And heard the dry tambour afar 
 Before her Corybantian car 
 Booming the rout to winy war. 
 Forward I felt my spirit chime 
 Awhoop with this hot-raging rhyme, 
 That, breathed up by the feverish crew 
 While back their Maenad locks they threw, 
 O'er them imbrowned the welkin blue. 
 
 Ambition mad, when most sublime ! 
 Fain had I clomb Heaven's empery, 
 Fain would my Titan spirit climb 
 Mountain-topt mountain arduously, 
 To whoop the far uproar to me ! 
 Such insane power and subtilty 
 The magic drop ethereal gave, 
 Tireless I clomb that palmy tree 
 
IO NEPENTHE 
 
 And saw broad-landed Earth how brave ! 
 Low on the horizontal lee 
 I saw, bedreamed, far ocean dumb 
 Upgathering his white skirts to come 
 Midland ; his arms twixt Araby 
 And Europe, Afric, India, spread 
 I saw ; the Mediterraneans three, 
 Azure, and orient grey, and red, 
 Washing at once the earth and sky ; 
 With the untravelled wastes that lie 
 Of greenest ocean, where the South 
 Swills it with demogorgon drouth, 
 Disgorging amid foam and roar 
 His salt draught back to every shore. 
 
 Mute as I gaze my feet below, 
 By times the silvery ashes glow 
 Under me, where the Bird of Fire 
 In her own flames seemed to expire, 
 Chanting her odorous monody ; 
 Methought in each faint glow, again 
 I saw her last dim glance at me 
 Languid with hope akin to pain. 
 " How, if the juice with ether rife, 
 Elixir of superfluous life, 
 Instinft with spiritual flame 
 Which from yon still of splendour came, 
 Might prove more quick restorative 
 Of her, than Hippocrat could give ! " 
 
 So thought I, and with fancy fired 
 Did what the draught itself inspired : 
 
NEPENTHE II 
 
 I sprinkled on the embers white 
 Few drops ; they curdle close unite. 
 Each with his orb of atomies. 
 Till in firm corporation these 
 Leaguing again by law occult, 
 Shapening and shapening by degrees, 
 Develop fair the full result ; 
 And like the sun in giant mould, 
 Cast of unnumbered stars, behold 
 The Phoenix with her crest of gold, 
 Her silver wings, her starry eyes, 
 The Phoenix from her ashes rise ! 
 
 Now was the wherefore easy scanned. 
 She bore me from my bloomy land, 
 Threw on me her last filmed look ; 
 Smouldering aidless in her nook 
 Years had departed ere she grew 
 By sun and starlight bird anew ; 
 But their full essence poured in flame, 
 Distilment sweet ! Nepenthe true ! 
 (By nature panacee sure, and name !) 
 Poured on her dust-dismembered frame, 
 Phoenix at once to heaven she flew ! 
 
 Over hills and uplands high 
 Hurry me, Nymphs ! O, hurry me ! 
 Where green Earth from azure sky 
 Seems but one blue step to be ; 
 Where the sun his wheel of gold 
 Burnishes deeply in her mould. 
 
12 NEPENTHE 
 
 And her shining walks uneven 
 
 Seem declivities of Heaven. 
 
 Come ! where high Olympus nods. 
 
 Groundsill to the hall of gods ! 
 
 Let us through the breathless air 
 
 Soar insuperable, where 
 
 Audibly in mystic ring 
 
 The angel orbs are heard to sing ; 
 
 And from that bright vantage ground 
 
 Viewing nether heaven profound, 
 
 Mark the eagle near the sun 
 
 Scorching to gold his pinions dun ; 
 
 With fleecy birds of paradise 
 
 Upfloating to their native skies ; 
 
 Or hear the wild swans far below 
 
 Faintly whistle as they row 
 
 Their course on the transparent tide 
 
 That fills the hollow welkin wide ! 
 
 Hurry me, Nymphs ! O, hurry me 
 Far above the grovelling sea, 
 Which, with blind weakness and base roar 
 Casting his white age on the shore, 
 Wallows along that slimy floor ; 
 With his widespread webbed hands 
 Seeking to climb the level sands, 
 But rejected still to rave 
 Alive in his uncovered grave. 
 
 Light-skirt dancers, blithe and boon 
 With high hosen and low shoon, 
 
NEPENTHE 
 
 'Twixt sandal bordure and kirtle rim 
 Showing one pure wave of limb, 
 And frequent to the cestus fine 
 Lavish beauty's undulous line, 
 Till like roses veiled in snow 
 Neath the gauze your blushes glow ; 
 Nymphs, with tresses which the wind 
 Sleekly tosses to its mind, 
 More deliriously dishevelled 
 Than when the Naxian widow revelled 
 With her flush bridegroom on the ooze, 
 Hurry me, Sisters ! where ye choose, 
 Up the meadowy mountains wild, 
 Aye by the broad sun oversmiled, 
 Up the rocky paths of gray 
 Shaded all my hawthorn way, 
 Past the very turban crown 
 Feathered with pine and aspen spray, 
 Darkening like a soldan's down 
 O'er the mute stoopers to his sway, 
 Meek willows, daisies, brambles brown, 
 Grasses and reeds in green array, 
 Sighing what he in storm doth say 
 Hurry me, hurry me, Nymphs, away ! 
 
 Here on the mountain's sunburnt side 
 Trip we round our steepy slide, 
 With tinsel moss, dry-woven pall, 
 Minist'ring many a frolic fall ; 
 Now, sweet Nymphs, with ankle trim 
 Foot we around this fountain brim, 
 Where even the delicate lilies show 
 
14 NEPENTHE 
 
 Trangressing bosoms in bright row 
 
 (More lustrous-sweet than yours, I trow !) 
 
 Above their deep green boddices. 
 
 Shall you be charier stiil than these ? 
 
 Garments are only good to inspire 
 
 Warmer, wantoner desire ; 
 
 For those beauties make more riot 
 
 In our hearts, themselves at quiet 
 
 Under veils and vapoury lawns 
 
 Thro' which their moon-cold lustre dawns. 
 
 And might perchance if full revealed 
 
 Seem less wondrous than concealed, 
 
 Greater defeat of Virtue made 
 
 When Love shoots from an ambuscade, 
 
 Than with naked front and fair. 
 
 Who the loose Grace in flowing hair 
 
 Hath ever sought with so much care, 
 
 As the crape-enshrouded nun 
 
 Scarce warmed by touches of the sun ? 
 
 Nathless, whatsoe'er your tire, 
 
 Hurry me, sweet Nymphs, higher, higher ! 
 
 Till the broad seas shrink to streams, 
 
 Or, beneath my lofty eye, 
 
 Ocean a broken mirror seems, 
 
 Whose fragments 'tween the lands do lie, 
 
 Glancing me from its hollow sky 
 
 Till my cheated vision deems 
 
 My place in heaven twice as high ! 
 
 Ho ! Evoe ! I have found 
 True Nepenthe, balm of pain, 
 Sought by sagest wits profound, 
 
NEPENTHE 15 
 
 Mystic Panacee ! in vain. 
 
 Virtuous Elixir, this 
 
 Sure the supreme sense of bliss ! 
 
 Feeling my impetuous soul 
 
 Ravish me swifter than Earth's roll 
 
 Tow'rds bright day's Eoan goal ; 
 
 Or if West I chose to run, 
 
 Would sweep me thither before the sun, 
 
 Raising me on ethereal wing 
 
 Lighter than the lark can spring 
 
 When drunk with dewlight which the Morn 
 
 Pours from her translucent horn 
 
 To steep his sweet throat in the corn. 
 
 Still, O still my step sublime 
 
 Footless air would higher climb, 
 
 Like the Chaldee Hunter bold, 
 
 Builder of towery Babel old ! 
 
 O what sweeter, finer pleasure 
 
 Than this wild, unruly measure, 
 
 Reeling hither, thither, so 
 
 Higher to the heavens we go ! 
 
 Nymph and swain, with rosy hand, 
 
 Wreathed together in a band, 
 
 Like embracing vines that loop 
 
 Browner elms with tendril hoop, 
 
 Let us, liker still to these 
 
 In rich autumn's purple weather, 
 
 Mix, as the vineyard in the breeze, 
 
 Our wine-dropping brows together ! 
 
 Swinging on our feet around 
 
 Till our tresses touch the ground, 
 
 That mad moment we do stay 
 
l6 NEPENTHE 
 
 To meditate our whirl-away ! 
 
 Winds that, blown off the honied heath, 
 
 Warm the deep reeds with mellowing breath, 
 
 Shall for us, ^Eolian still, 
 
 These green flutes of Nature fill ; 
 
 On bluebell beds like dulcimers 
 
 Tingle us most fantastic airs ; 
 
 And where'er her numerous strings 
 
 Woodbine like a wind-harp swings, 
 
 Play us light fugues with nimble wings, 
 
 Trumpeting thro* each twisted shell 
 
 Till its mossy wrinkles swell. 
 
 Such shall, with sweet voluntaries, 
 
 Blithe accompaniment bear us, 
 
 Not without help of that dim band, 
 
 Minstrels of each woody land, 
 
 Prping unhired on every hand ; 
 
 These shall be our volatile chorus, 
 
 Fleeting the wilderness before us, 
 
 Like their small brethren of the chant, 
 
 Drone-winders itinerant, 
 
 Old-world humming birds, the bees, 
 
 Our sweet whifflers shall be these ! 
 
 While our oval close within 
 
 Capering faun keeps mellow din, 
 
 With pipe and ceaseless cittern thrum, 
 
 Tinkling tabor's shallow drum, 
 
 Cymbal and lengthening cornmuse hum. 
 
 Uproar sweet ! as when he crost, 
 
 Omnipotent Bacchus, with his host, 
 
 To farthest Ind ; and for his van 
 
 Satyrs and other sons of Pan, 
 
NEPENTHE i; 
 
 With swoln eye-burying cheeks of tan, 
 Who trolled him round which way he ran 
 His spotted yoke through Hindostan, 
 And with most victorious scorn 
 The mild foes of wine to warn. 
 Blew his dithyrambic horn ! 
 That each river to his source 
 Trembled and sunk beneath his course, 
 Where, 'tis said of many, they 
 Mourn undiscovered to this day. 
 
 Still my thoughts, mine eyes aspire ! 
 Hurry me, sweet Nymphs, higher and higher ! 
 Smooth green hills my soul do tire ; 
 Let us leave this lowly shire, 
 Tho' it be the Happy Clime, 
 'Tis for spirits less sublime ! 
 Fleet we sheer as lightning-blast 
 Pinnacled Petrea past, 
 Burning rocks bestrown with sands ! 
 O'er the bleak Deserta lands 
 Pass we, as o'er dead Nature's tomb, 
 Where Sirocco and Simoom 
 Battle with hot breath for room, 
 Tho' not even a flower or cress 
 Make war-worth that wilderness ; 
 From this wavering blown arene 
 To where the Rome-repelling queen, 
 High-stomach'd, star-bound Emperess ! 
 Long beruled broad Palmyrene, 
 Let's begone ; and farther still, 
 
 c 
 
1 8 NEPENTHE 
 
 Here, too, naught but sandblown hill, 
 Only another ocean bed 
 Tossed by billowy winds instead 
 Of the old legitimate breakers, 
 Dust-disturbers, not earth-shakers ! 
 From these deep abysses dry, 
 Filled with sunlight to the sky, 
 Let us, O let us swift begone 
 To the cedared Lebanon ; 
 Over CarmePs flowery sides 
 Where the wild-bee ever bides, 
 Round each beauty of the glade 
 Singing his noontide serenade, 
 Till the ear-enchanted fair, 
 Opening her leafy stomacher, 
 Lets in the little ravisher. .- 
 On to shadowy Taurus, on ! 
 Looming o'er the Syrian wave, 
 Scarce a flower his sides upon, 
 Swoln with many an antique grave 
 Of slaughtered Persepolitan, 
 Rare Greek and Macedonian. 
 Lowly shelter for the slain 
 Still his rueful heaths remain, 
 That purpler tinged with buried blood 
 Darken deeper the green flood, 
 And, a blushing chronicle, 
 The tale of fallen glory tell, 
 Persia's dumb echoes know so well ! 
 
 Thou whose thrilling hand in mine 
 Makes it tremble as unbid, 
 
NEPENTHE ig 
 
 Whose dove-drooping eyes divine 
 Curtain Love beneath their lid ; 
 
 Fairest Anthea ! thou whose grace 
 Leads me enchantedly along 
 
 Till the sweet windings that we trace 
 Seem like the image of a song ! 
 
 Blithest Anthea ! thou I ween 
 
 Of this jocund choir the queen, 
 
 From thy beauty still more rare, 
 
 And a more earth-spurning air, 
 
 If forsooth my reeling vision 
 
 Hold thee steadily, and this 
 
 Be not my mind's insane misprision, 
 
 Drunk with the essence-drop of bliss ! 
 
 Small matter ! -while the dream be bright ! 
 
 Surely thou with form so light 
 
 Must be some creature born for winging 
 
 Where the chimes of Heaven are ringing, 
 
 And sweet cherub faces singing 
 
 Requiems to ascending souls 
 
 Where each orb of glory rolls ! 
 
 Bind me, oh bind me next thy heart, 
 
 So shall we to the skies depart, 
 
 And like a twin-star fixt in ether, 
 
 Burn with immortal flame together ! 
 
 That be our emprised rest, 
 Eyry where birds of Eden nest, 
 Warbling hymns in Wonder's ear ! 
 We still walk this lowly sphere, 
 Lost in the heaven's crystalline mere 
 More than in ocean one small tear. 
 
 C 2 
 
2O NEPENTHE 
 
 Wherefore, without vain delay, 
 
 Haste, Anthea ! haste away 
 
 To those highest peaks the sun 
 
 Steps with glittering sandal on, 
 
 That this bosom-fire as fast 
 
 As his, breathe forth in the clear vast ! 
 
 Bright-haired Spirit ! Golden Brow F 
 Onward to far Ida now ! 
 Leaving these garden lands below 
 In sea-born dews to steep their glow : 
 Caria and Lycia, dulcet climes ! 
 Beds of flowers whose odour limes 
 The overflying fast far bird, their thrall 
 Hovering entranced till he fall ; 
 Broad Maeonia's streamy vales 
 Winding beneath us, white with swans 
 Bgrne by their downy-swelling sails ; 
 Each her lucid beauty scans, 
 Bending her slow beak round, and sees 
 Her grandeur as she floats along 
 Gracefully ruffled by the breeze, 
 And troats for joy, too proud for song. 
 Leave we the downjands, tho' be there 
 Joy a lifelong sojourner ; 
 There for ever wildwood numbers 
 Poured in Doric strains dilute 
 
 hro' the unlaborious flute, 
 ^ othe Disquiet to his slumbers ; 
 S his rosebed sleeps the bee, 
 *- n ed by Lydian melody, 
 Lull t h e honied morn in vain ! 
 Half 
 
NEPENTHE 21 
 
 Idler still the Doric swain, 
 
 Steeped in double sweetness he 
 
 Hums, as he dreams, his wildwood strain. 
 
 The Mysian vineplucker sings i' the tree, 
 
 And Ionia's echoing train 
 
 Of reapers, bending down the lea, 
 
 Make rich the winds with minstrelsy. 
 
 Here, no less, if any linger, 
 Pointing us down with abject finger, 
 Or stop with but a sigh to praise 
 The slothful fields on which we gaze 
 More time than serves him to renew 
 His buoyant draughts of ether blue, 
 Or (if the wine-sweat pouring through 
 With beaded reek his brows embrue) 
 Shake from his curls the shining dew 
 Down with the grovelling caitiff, down ! 
 Scourge him with your green thyrses down ! 
 \Vhile as a thundercloud on high 
 Bursting its blackness o'er him, I 
 Envelop him in my blazing scorn 
 Of dread pride and bright anger born ! 
 Here is meet repose for none 
 That climb Earth's mountain-studded zone ! 
 Here the Great Mother smoothes again 
 Her broad skirts to the broader main ! 
 Even folia's lofty steep 
 Shelves to the tributary deep. 
 And her level winds do play 
 His watery organ far away 
 To the hoarse Thermaic strand ; 
 
22 NEPENTHE 
 
 Sleek as the tremulous lady moon 
 
 From her bright horizon chair, 
 
 Tipping his silver keys in tune 
 
 With long low arm and beamy hand 
 
 She stretches all enjewelled there. 
 
 Ida! illoo! behold! behold 
 
 Ida, the Queen of the Hills of old, 
 
 Rising with sundropt crown of gold ! 
 
 Alone great Ida from the shore 
 
 Lifts high above its silent roar 
 
 Her caverns, and with those rude ears 
 
 Only the haughty thunder hears ! 
 
 All hail, green-mantled Ida ! 
 
 Floodgate of heaven-fall'n streams ! 
 
 Replenisher of wasteful ocean's store ! 
 
 Sweetener of his salt effluence ! Ever-pure ! 
 
 Battener of meagre Earth ! Bestower 
 
 Of their moist breath to vegetable things 
 
 That suck their life from thee ! 
 
 All hail ! - 
 
 All hail, green Ida! 
 
 Woody-belted Ida ! 
 
 Nurse of the bounding lion ! his green lair, 
 
 Whence he doth shake afar 
 
 The shepherdry with his roar ! All hail, 
 
 Peaks where the wild ass flings 
 
 His Pegasean heels against mankind, 
 
 And the more riotous mares, 
 
 Pawing at heaven, snuff the womb-swelling 
 
 wind ! 
 
 Ida, all hail ! all hail ! 
 Nature's green ^ evqr-during pyramid 
 
NEPENTHE 23 
 
 Heaped o'er the behemoth brute-royal bones 
 
 Of monstrous Anakim ! 
 
 All hail, great Ida ! throne 
 
 Of that old Jove the olden poet sung 
 
 Where, from the Gods alone, 
 
 He listened to the moan 
 
 Of his divine Sarpedon, thousand moans 
 
 among ! 
 
 Ida, all hail ! all hail J 
 Thus on thy pinnacle, 
 With springy foot like the wild swan that 
 
 soars 
 
 Off to invisible shores, 
 
 I stand ! with blind Ambition's waxen wings 
 High o'er my head 
 Outspread, 
 Plucking me off the Earth to wheel aerial 
 
 rings I 
 
 Lo ! as my vision glides 
 Adown these perilous flowery sides. 
 Green hanging-gardens only trod 
 By Nymph or Sylvan God, 
 And sees o'er what a gulf their eminent glory 
 
 swells, 
 
 I tremble with delight, 
 Proud of my terrible plight, 
 And turn me to the hollow caves 
 Where the hoarse spirit of the Euxine 
 
 raves. 
 The melancholy tale of that drown'd Youth 
 
 he tells 
 To the fast fleeting waves, 
 
24 NEPENTHE 
 
 For ever in vast murmurs, as he laves 
 With foam his sedgy locks loose-floating 
 down the Dardanelles ! 
 
 Down the Dardanelles f 
 What Echo in musical sound repels 
 My words, like thunder tolled 
 From the high-toppling rocks 
 In loud redoublous shocks 
 Behold, great Sun, behold ? 
 
 Down the Dardanelles ! 
 Behold the Thunderer where she rides I 
 
 Behold her how she swells 
 Like floating clouds her canvas sides ! 
 Raising with ponderous breast the tides 
 On both the shores, as down she rides, 
 
 Down the Dardanelles I 
 
 Down the Dardanelles ! 
 Each Continent like a caitiff stands, 
 
 As every broadside knells ! 
 While with a voice that shakes the strands 
 She spreads her hundred-mouth'd commands, 
 Albion's loud law to both the lands, 
 
 Down the Dardanelles ! 
 
 Down the Dardanelles ! 
 Ye billowy hills before her bowne ! 
 
 Wind caverns ! your deep shells 
 Ring Ocean and Earth her old renown 
 
NEPENTHE 25 
 
 Long as that sun from Ida's crown 
 Smoothes her broad road with splendour 
 
 down, 
 Down the Dardanelles ! 
 
 Anthea, ever dear, 
 I feel, I feel the sharp satyric ear 
 Thy draught Circean gave me, echoing clear 
 
 With that far chime ! 
 Capacious grown enough to hear 
 The music of the lower sphere, 
 Tho' fainter than the passing tread of stealthy- 
 footed Time ! 
 
 Be mute, ye summer airs around ! 
 Let not a sigh disturb the sound 
 That like a shadow climbs the steepy ground 
 Up from blue Helle's dim profound ! 
 Listen ! the roar 
 
 Creeps on the ear as on a little shore, 
 And by degrees 
 
 Swells like the rushing sound of many seas, 
 And now as loud upon the brain doth beat 
 As Helle's tide in thunderbursts broke foam- 
 ing at my feet ! 
 
 Hist ! ho ! the Spirit sings 
 
 While in the cradle of the surge he swings, 
 
 Or falling down its sheeted laps, 
 
 Speaks to it in thunder-claps 
 
 Terrifical, half-suffocated things ! 
 
 For ever with his furious breath 
 
 
26 NEPENTHE 
 
 Keeping a watery storm beneath 
 
 Where'er he sinks, that o'er him seethe 
 
 The frothy salt-sea surfaces 
 
 Dissolving with an icy hiss, 
 
 As if the marvellous flood did flow 
 
 Over a quenchless fire below ! 
 
 Hist ! ho ! the Spirit sings ! 
 
 In the caves of the deep lost Youth ! lost 
 
 Youth ! 
 
 O'er and o'er, fleeting billows ! fleeting bil- 
 lows ! 
 
 Rung to his restless everlasting sleep 
 By the heavy death-bells of the deep, 
 Under the slimy-dropping sea-green willows, 
 
 Poor Youth ! lost Youth ! 
 Laying his dolorous head, forsooth, 
 On Carian reefs uncouth 
 
 Poor Youth ! 
 On the wild sand's ever-shifting pillows ! 
 
 In the foam's cold shroud lost 'Youth ! lost 
 
 Youth ! 
 And the lithe waterweed swathing round 
 
 him ! 
 Mocked by the surges roaring o'er him 
 
 loud, 
 
 " Will the sun-seeker freeze in his shroud, 
 Aye, where the deep-wheeling eddy has 
 
 wound him ? " 
 Lost Youth ! poor Youth ! 
 Vail him his Daedalian wings, in truth ? 
 
NEPENTHE 27 
 
 Stretched there without all ruth 
 
 Poor Youth ! 
 
 Weeping fresh torrents into those that 
 drowned him ! 
 
 List no more the ominous din, 
 Let us plunge deep Helle in ! 
 Thracia hollos ! what to us 
 Sky-dejected Icarus ? 
 Shall we less than those wild kine 
 That swam this shallow salt confine, 
 Venture to shew how mere a span 
 Keeps continental man from man ? 
 Welcome, gray Europe, native clime 
 Of clouds, and cliffs yet more sublime ! 
 Gray Europe, on whose Alpine head 
 The Northwind makes his snowy bed, 
 And fostered in that savage form 
 Lies down a blast and wakes a storm ! 
 Up ! up ! to shrouded Rhodope 
 That seems in the white waste to be 
 An icerock in a foaming sea ! 
 
 This inward rage, this eating flame, 
 Turns into fiery dust my frame ; 
 Thro' my red nostril and my teeth 
 In sulphury fumes I seem to breathe 
 My dragon soul, and fain would quench 
 This drouth in some o'erwhelming drench ! 
 Up ! to the frostbound waterfalls, 
 That hang in waves the mountain walls, 
 Pown tumbling ever and anon 
 
28 NEPENTHE 
 
 With long-pent thunders loosed in one, 
 
 Thro' the deep valleys where of yore 
 
 The Deluge his wide channels wore. 
 
 Hark ! thro' each green and gateless door, 
 
 Valley to echoing valley calls 
 
 Me, steep up, higher to the sun ! 
 
 Hark ! while we stand in mute astound, 
 
 Cloud-battled high Pangaeus hoar 
 
 With earthquake voice and ocean roar 
 
 Keeps the pale region trembling round ! 
 
 Upward ! each loftier height we gain, 
 
 I spurn it like the basest plain 
 
 Trod by the fallen in hell's profound ! 
 
 Illoo, great Haemus ! Hasmus old, 
 
 Half earth into his girdle rolled, 
 
 Swells against heaven ! Up ! up ! the stars 
 
 Wheel near his goal their glittering cars ; 
 
 Ambition's mounting-step sublime 
 
 To vault beyond the sphere of Time 
 
 Into Eternity's bright clime ! 
 
 Where this fierce joy 
 
 I feel, shall aye subside, 
 
 Like a swoln bubble on the ocean tide, 
 
 Into the River of Bliss, Elysium-wide ; 
 
 And all annoy 
 
 Lie drowned with it for ever there, 
 
 And never-ebbing Life's soft stream with 
 
 confluent wave 
 My floating spirit bear 
 Among those calm Beatitudes and fair, 
 That lave 
 Their angel forms, with pure luxuriance free, 
 
NEPENTHE 29 
 
 In thy rich ooze and amber-molten sea, 
 Slow-flooding to the one deep choral stave 
 Eterne Tranquillity ! 
 All-blessing, blest, eterne Tranquillity ! 
 
 Strymon, heaven-descended stream ! 
 Valley along, thy silver sand 
 Broader and broader yet doth gleam, 
 Spreading into ocean's strand, 
 Over whose white verge the storm 
 With his wide-swaying loomy arm 
 Weaves his mournful tapestry, 
 Slowly let down from sky to sea. 
 Strymon ! up thy craggy banks 
 Mid the pinewood's wavering ranks, 
 What terrible howl ascends ? What blaze 
 Of torches blackening the coil'd haze 
 With grim contrast of smoky rays ? 
 What hideous features mid the flare, 
 Lit with yellow laughter ? Where, 
 Ah ! where my boon Circean band 
 Quiring round me hand in hand ? 
 Furies, avaunt ! that dismal joy 
 Breeds me horrible annoy ! 
 Avaunt, she-wolves ! with rabid yell 
 Riving the very seams of hell 
 To swallow me and your rout as well ! 
 Flee, flee, my wretched soul, from these 
 Erinnys and Eumenides, 
 Bacchants no more, but raging brood 
 Of fiends to feast them on hot blood ! 
 Down ! down ! and shelter me in the flood ! 
 
30 NEPENTHE 
 
 " Hollo after ! to living shreds tear him ! 
 hollo after ! 
 
 To the ravenous wild winds share him ! 
 
 hollo after ! 
 Our rite he spurns, 
 From our love he turns, 
 
 Hurl him the glassy crags down ! hollo after ! 
 With your torches blast him, 
 To the broken waves cast him, 
 Head and trunk far asunder ! 
 With a bellow like thunder, 
 
 Hollo after ! hollo after ! hollo after !" 
 
 Dull in the Drowner's ear 
 
 Bubbled amid far ocean these sad echoes drear. 
 
 In the caves of the deep Hollo ! hollo ! 
 Lost Youth ! o'er and o'er fleeting billows ! 
 Hollo ! hollo ! without all ruth ! 
 In the foam's cold shroud ! Hollo ! hollo ! 
 To his everlasting sleep ! Lost Youth ! 
 
NEPENTHE 31 
 
 CANTO II 
 
 ANTIQUITY, thou Titan-born ! 
 That rear'st thee, in stupendous scorn 
 At all succession, from thy bed 
 On prime earth's firm foundations spread, 
 And look'st with dim but settled eye 
 O'er thy deep lap, within whose span 
 Layer upon layer sepulchred lie 
 Whole generations of frail man ! 
 That steady glare not fierce Simoom, 
 Blasting with his hot pinion blinds, 
 Nor floods of dust thy corse entomb, 
 Heaped o'er thee by the sexton winds ! 
 Nor temple, tower, nor ponderous town 
 Built on thy grave can keep thee down, 
 But still thou rear'st thee in thy scorn, 
 Antiquity, thou Titan-born, 
 To crush our souls with that dim frown ! 
 Strong Son of Chaos ! who didst seem 
 Only a fairer form of him, 
 Moulding his mountainous profounds 
 To fanes and monumental grounds ; 
 His rocky coigns, with giant ease, 
 In pyramids and palaces 
 Piling aslope, as we with pain 
 His ruinous rubbish raised in vain ! 
 
32 NEPENTHE 
 
 Thou that with Tubal old compeer, 
 In living cliffs didst statue man 
 And carve, for toys, leviathan 
 Or mammoth, yet found bedded here 
 His stony limbs, where once he stood 
 Scarce moved a footpace by the Flood ! 
 Still at thy works in mute amaze, 
 Sorrow and envy and awe we gaze ! 
 Enlarge our little eyeballs still 
 To grasp in these degenerate days 
 Marvels that shewed a mighty will, 
 Huge power and hundred-handed skill, 
 That seek prostration and not praise 
 Too faint such lofty ears to fill ! 
 From Ind to Egypt thou art one, 
 Pyramidal Memphis to Tanjore, 
 From Ipsambul to Babylon 
 Reddening the waste suburban o'er ; 
 From sand-locked Thebes to old Ellore, 
 Her caverned roof on columns high 
 Pitched, like a Giant brood that bore 
 Headstrong the mountain to the sky : 
 That one same Power, enorm, sublime 
 Thou art, from antique clime to clime,- 
 Eternal Stumbling-block of Time ! 
 Whose fragmentary limbs do stay. 
 Stones of offence, his difficult way, 
 And turn it o'er our works of clay. 
 Lo ! where thy strength colossal lay 
 Dormant, within the deep-sunk halls 
 Of cities labyrinthian 
 Mid sandy Afric and the walls 
 
NEPENTHE 33 
 
 Of sunburnt Syria or Deccan, 
 
 Up from the bilging globe he calls 
 
 Seas to surprise thee, or enthralls 
 
 Earth to deluginous ocean, 
 
 So far he may ; with foamy van 
 
 Whelming her shores where thou bedreamed 
 
 Heard'st not the tide that o'er thee teemed 
 
 Mountains of water ! Aye in vain ! 
 
 O'ersaiiing vessels see below 
 
 Clear, thro' the glass-green undulous plain, 
 
 Like emerald cliffs unmoved glow 
 
 Thy towering forms stretched far a-main 
 
 By Coromandel, or that side 
 
 Neptunian Ganges rolls the tide 
 
 Of his swoln sire ; by Moab's lake 
 
 Whose purulent flood dry land doth slake 
 
 With bittern ooze, where that salt wife 
 
 Drinks her own tears she weeps as rife, 
 
 Empillared there, as when she turned 
 
 Back tow'rds her liquorish late-spent life 
 
 Where Shame's sulphureous cities burned : 
 
 By Dorian Sicily and Misene, 
 
 Upon whose strand thou oft didst lean 
 
 Thy temple-crowned head ; and where 
 
 Antium with opposite Carthage were ; 
 
 By green Juvernia's giant road 
 
 Paved from her headland slope and broad 
 
 Sands down to Rachlin's columned isle, 
 
 And dim Finn Gael's huge-antred pile 
 
 Where his vast orgue, high fluted, stands 
 
 Basaltic, swept with billowy hands 
 
 Oft, till the mystic chancel mourn 
 
 D 
 
34 NEPENTHE 
 
 To weltering biers around it borne 
 Hoarse ritual o'er the wrecked forlorn ; 
 There did the scythed Demon hew 
 Sheer the Cyclopian causeway through, 
 Letting the steep Icelandic sea 
 In on the Ibernian and on Thee ! 
 So from their icy moorings he, 
 Lopt cable, loosed the Arctic isles 
 Full sail, with mountainous weigh and prore 
 To force that boom of seadriven piles, 
 Bulwark against the Northern bore 
 Of Ocean, laid by thee, and now 
 Chaining the Strait, as long before, 
 Tho' scattered on the Southern bow 
 Kamchatka's sparry waters o'er 
 What need for thy great relics plough 
 Tartaria sands, or seek that scroll 
 Which the rapt Bonze can scarce unroll, 
 Thy chronicle, in pagodas dim, 
 Lengthening it wave and wave a-flow 
 Incessant, as from darkness' brim 
 Wells forth Cathaian Hoan-ho ? 
 What need thy famous works be told 
 I' the New World, older than the Old, 
 If sooth the Mexique annals say 
 With Eve's first born, Tradition gray, 
 And monuments more fixed than they 
 Pyramids baked in Noah's sun, 
 Dials and monstrous Gods, far back 
 Out-dating Denderah's Zodiac, 
 Crocodilopolis and Karnak ; 
 With scrolls of pictured speech begun 
 
NEPENTHE 35 
 
 Ere smoother hieroglyph could run, 
 
 Slight copy of that primeval one ? 
 
 What need the wondrous town untomb, 
 
 Palenque, aye too old for Fame 
 
 To tell her antediluvian name 
 
 Or fate ; perchance, at her own door, 
 
 Crept back into Creation's womb, 
 
 Tired of endurance, thro' the chasm 
 
 Oped in Earth's side with mighty spasm 
 
 When Orinook burst forth, and down 
 
 From Chimborazo's streamy crown 
 
 Rolled oceanic Maranon, 
 
 Contributing fresh seas to seas ; 
 
 Huge chasm ! with Andes' ponderous chain 
 
 Locked to Eternity again, 
 
 The gulf of All as well as these. 
 
 Passing thy pierless bridges swung 
 
 Gorge over, darkening every dell, 
 
 With keystone rocks colossal hung 
 
 Like Sin's broad way from heaven to hell, 
 
 Sloping aloft with cliffy sides, 
 
 Thro' the burnt air the porchway rides ; 
 
 Demoniac shapes, devices grim, 
 
 Trenching the storied panels dim, 
 
 And mystic signs, dark oracles 
 
 Of Destiny, and Hell's decrees !- 
 
 Alas ! what scalding sand-wind rolls 
 
 Me to the sulphury rack of souls 
 
 Fierce on, and scarfs my victim eyes 
 
 With careless wreaths for sacriiice ? 
 
 Thus weep I, whirlwind-rapt amain : 
 
 Save me ! O save, ye mighty Twain, 
 
 D 2 
 
36 NEPENTHE 
 
 Arbiters here twixt Sin and Pain ! 
 Tho' Angels still of Judgment, be 
 Angels of Mercy now to me ! 
 Bend down your level looks, or raise 
 One iron finger from the knee, 
 So Cherubin Pities sing your praise ! 
 Thus to a Twain that reared their forms 
 Like promontories o'er the storms, 
 Methought, dread Umpires of my doom, 
 Sitting impalled within the gloom 
 As ebon Seraphim by Night's throne, 
 Low at their feet I made my moan. 
 They stirred not at my prayer ; but dumb, 
 Sate like the symbols of the world to come, 
 Immutable, inscrutable ! 
 
 I lay 
 
 Drowned in my heart-blood, wept away 
 Fruitlessly at those feet, long time, 
 Like the dust-clung, outcast corse of Crime. 
 
 A sigh that seemed to come from heaven 
 By some aerial Sorrow given, 
 Weeping his sublunar state a sigh 
 One faint far sound, like a swan's cry 
 Heard thro' the daffodils ere it die, 
 O'ercame my senses ; a sweet wail 
 Soothing me with its violet gale 
 To gentlest mood. I looked and lo ! 
 Sweet as Love's star a crest did glow 
 On that now visible head I deemed 
 One of my Arbiter's. Fair it beamed 
 With soft dilation, mellowing still 
 
NEPENTHE 37 
 
 The heav'n-falPn gem its saffron fire, 
 
 Crowning the radiant front until 
 
 Godlike and glorified entire : 
 
 The while, as there essayed his skill 
 
 Light-handed Zephyr o'er a lyre 
 
 With the bright hair strung like golden 
 
 wire, 
 
 Dulcetly did the sunbeams thrill 
 Within that coronal attire, 
 Hailing the dawn ! And at such hail 
 Behold a-peak the Orient dale, 
 Morning, with light-blown silver veil, 
 Stands dewy-eyed, and matron-pale ; 
 Breathing in smiles and tears upon 
 This sacred head her blessings dear, 
 As erst she did, each daylight peer, 
 Sad for her monumental Son. 
 O unchanged world ! 'Twas Memnon here 
 Sat gazing with a mournful cheer 
 Still at his mother ! Still with smile 
 Fond as her own would fain beguile 
 Her sorrow ! Still each matin rise 
 Welcomed her bright tears with his sighs I 
 Most strange ! most true ! for I anon 
 Heard the famed chant heard long agone 
 By storiers sage, ascend the skies 
 From his ^Eolian barbiton ; 
 Soft parleying like the voice of rills 
 With Echo in the distant hills, 
 But versing words more liquid clear 
 Than those could, to a thirstier ear. 
 
38 NEPENTHE 
 
 Thus, with a breezy rise and fall, rang the 
 
 Memnonian rhyme, 
 Like the sweet- mouthed bells of heaven, wild 
 
 but in one same chime. 
 
 Winds of the West, arise ! 
 Hesperian balmiest airs, O waft back those 
 
 sweet sighs 
 To her that breathes them from her own 
 
 pure skies, 
 
 Dew-dropping, mixt with dawn's engold- 
 ened dyes, 
 
 O'er my unhappy eyes ! 
 From primrose bed and willow bank, where 
 
 your moss cradle lies, 
 
 O from your rushy bowers, to waft back her 
 sweet sighs, 
 
 Winds of the West, arise ! 
 
 Over the ocean blown, 
 Far-winnowing, let my soul be mingled with 
 
 her own, 
 
 By sighs responsive to each other known ! 
 Bird unto bird's loved breast has often flown 
 
 From distant zone to zone ; 
 Why must the Darling of the Morn lament 
 
 him here alone ? 
 
 Shall not his fleeting spirit be mingled 
 her own, 
 
 Over the ocean blown ? 
 
NEPENTHE 39 
 
 From your aerial bourne 
 Look down, O Mother, and hear your hap- 
 less Memnon mourn ! 
 Speftre of my gone self, by sorrow worn, 
 Leave me not, Mother beloved ! from your 
 embraces torn, 
 
 For ever here forlorn ! 
 For ever, ever lonely here ! of all life's glory 
 
 shorn ! 
 
 Look down, O Mother ! behold your hapless 
 Memnon mourn, 
 
 From your aerial bourne 1 
 
 The sweet Voice swooned, deep-thrilling ; 
 
 then 
 
 Raised its wild monody once more 
 As the far murmuring of the main 
 Heard in a sea-shell's fairy shore, 
 Scarce sensible, made one with pain, 
 Wind-lost and fitfuller than before ; 
 Yet still methought the mystic strain 
 Burden like this bewildered bore. 
 
 O could my Spirit wing 
 Hills over, where salt Ocean hath his fresh 
 
 headspring 
 And snowy curls bedeck the Blue-haired 
 
 King, 
 Up where sweet oral birds articulate sing 
 
 Within the desert ring 
 Their mighty shadows o'er broad Earth the 
 Lunar Mountains fling, 
 
4O NEPENTHE 
 
 Where the Sun's chariot bathes in Ocean's 
 fresh headspring 
 
 O could my Spirit wing ! 
 
 O could this Spirit, prisoned here 
 
 Like thine, Immortal Murmurer ! 
 
 In hatefullest bounds and bonds of clay, 
 
 O could this Spirit of mine away 
 
 To those strange lands " Away ! away ! " 
 
 Methought the breeze with soft command 
 
 Raised itself in a sigh to say 
 
 After me, whispering still "Away S" 
 
 Still by my side re-echoing bland 
 
 In fervorous secrecy " Away ! " 
 
 The desert breeze with pinion gray 
 
 Rustled along the leafless sand, 
 
 Warning me still " Away ! away ! " 
 
 Nat less than magic breath had blown 
 Ashy ambition now to flame, 
 Within me ; but like veins in stone 
 Red grew the blood in my cold frame : 
 Tho' drained this life-spring to the lees 
 On lancing rocks this body worn, 
 Weed-wrung, and saturate with seas 
 Gulped thro' by their wild mercy borne 
 Half jellied hither, and well nigh 
 Piecemeal by those white coursers torn 
 That shook their manes of me, foam 
 Cast on their saviour backs forlorn 
 Tho' thus my flesh, my spirit still 
 Is unsubdued ! aspiring will 
 
NEPENTHE 4! 
 
 Buoys up my sinking power. 'Tis thine, 
 
 This quenchless spark ! To thee this glow, 
 
 This rise from my sea-grave I owe, 
 
 Nepenthe ! vital fire divine ! 
 
 Yet ah ! what boots, if cup of bliss 
 
 Have such a bitter dreg as this ? 
 
 Fragile and faint must I still on 
 
 The arduous path that I have gone, 
 
 Or burn in my own sighs ! Like thee, 
 
 A winged cap, O Mercury ! 
 
 I wear, that lifts me still to heaven, 
 
 Tho' down to herd with mortals driven. 
 
 Now as swift as Sadness may 
 Let me to those hills away, 
 Where the shadows of the Moon 
 Reach broad earth at brightest noon, 
 Where the Sun's car glittering 
 Waits at Ocean's fresh headspring, 
 And sweet oral birds do sing 
 Wild catches in the desert ring, 
 Mocking the changeful-crested King ! 
 That must be where Cybele rears 
 Her tow'red head above the spheres, 
 Awful to Gods ! where Eden high, 
 With terraced stairs that climb the sky, 
 Long lost to mortal ken doth lie. 
 E'en let me thither sad and slow 
 As wayworn he from thence doth go, 
 
42 NEPENTHE 
 
 Reptilous Nile ! As shades that pass 
 Silent and soft o'er fields of grass, 
 So let my trackless spedlre glide 
 His solitary wave beside. 
 
 Hundred-gated City ! thou 
 With gryphoned arch and avenue 
 For denizen giants, serve they now 
 But to let one poor mortal thro' ? 
 Wide those streaming gates of war 
 Ran once with many a conqueror, 
 Horseman and chariot, to the sound 
 Of the dry serpent blazoning round 
 Theban Sesostris' dreaded name. 
 Where is now the loud acclaim ? 
 Where the trample and the roll, 
 Shaking staid Earth like a mole ? 
 Sunk to a rushes sigh ! Farewell, 
 Thou bleached wilderness o'erblown 
 By treeless winds, unscythable 
 Sandbanks, with peeping rocks bestrown, 
 That for thy barrenness seem'st to be 
 The bed of some retreated sea ! 
 City of Apis, shrine and throne, 
 Fare thee well ! dispeopled sheer 
 Of thy mighty millions, here 
 Giant thing inhabits none, 
 But vast Desolation ! 
 
 Fare well thee ! and lowly too, 
 Ye rev'rend sites, colossal names, 
 
NEPENTHE 43 
 
 Esne and Ombos and Edfou, 
 Echoing still your bygone fames 
 In such ponderous syllables, 
 Howsoe'er forgotten else. 
 Over white-cliffed Elephantine, 
 Thro' thy quarries red and gray, 
 Womb of sublimity, Syene 
 Onward still I take my way : 
 Where broad Nile with deafening hymn 
 Enters the land of Mizraim, 
 O'er sounding cliffs made musical 
 By his wave-choral waterfall ; 
 Athwart high Nubia's tawny shelves, 
 Down which ploughing deep he delves. 
 Long strider of the level sands, 
 Three cataraft steps to lower lands. 
 Scarce my fiery breath I cool 
 In thee, hill-hollowed Ipsambul, 
 Where primeval Troglodyte 
 Turned the torrid day to night. 
 Helmed high within the gloom, 
 Thy pillaring statues sit sublime. 
 Taking, each side, colossal room 
 On granite thrones no king might climb, 
 And keeping hailed state till Doom, 
 Co-templar Deities with Time. 
 Or before thy porch profound 
 By the choked river's antique roll, 
 From their seats, dry fathoms drowned, 
 Peering mildly over ground, 
 Head-free, along the desert shoal, 
 If not with form discumbered whole. 
 
44 NEPENTHE 
 
 Looking blank on, as they did see 
 Far o'er this little earthy knoll 
 Into thy depths. Infinity. 
 
 Narrowing now my path begins 
 Toward the lofty Abyssins ; 
 Now in silk-soft fleece below, 
 Shrunk to miniature sound and show, 
 Tumbos' cataraft seems to flow 
 A visual roar, and that high steep 
 Jebel Arambo, a step deep. 
 Now while this keen air renews, 
 On my strength its aim pursues, 
 From that old sand-swallowed Isle 
 Meroe, doubled by the Nile, 
 Balking before whose watery bar 
 Vainly Simoom his dragon cheers, 
 That sandward home from Senaar 
 Back on his stormy rider rears ; 
 Fierce recusant to daggle still 
 His dusty wings at that blind will ! 
 So I too, in dragon scorn, 
 With red breath like the desert-born, 
 Bicker against the winds that press 
 Me from that broad wilderness, 
 Westward then, where Nile divides 
 In two varicolour tides, 
 Milky and sable, I shall rise 
 By that soft galaxy to the skies. 
 
NEPENTHE 45 
 
 Thanks, Nepenthe fine, for this 
 Living apotheosis ! 
 Hark ! above me I do hear 
 Heavenly joybells ringing clear, 
 And see their golden mouths, ding-dong, 
 Vibrate with a starry tongue. 
 Welcome ! welcome ! still they toll 
 Syllabled sweetly in knell-knoll, 
 While more deep, with undulous swell, 
 Chimes unseen the burden-bell, 
 Mellowing, in the mighty boom 
 Of his huge sonorous womb, 
 Their sweet clangour, like the din 
 Of streams lost in a roaring lynn. 
 Twilight now o'er lawn and dale 
 Draws her dew-enwoven veil, 
 Tender-bosomed flowers to keep 
 Unruffled in their balmy sleep ; 
 Her's from planet fair and star 
 Day's last blushing Hour doth steal, 
 Those bright rivals to reveal, 
 And the Queen Moon, their non-pareil, 
 Rolling between her noiseless car, 
 Where in heaven-wide race they reel 
 Light splintering from each glassy wheel. 
 Small birds now thro' leafy shed 
 Rustling haste to bower and bed, 
 And the Roc, slow winnowing, sails 
 Heavily homeward thro' the vales 
 Clanging betimes, while they do cheep, 
 The tremblers, and more inwood creep. 
 Then shall not I, in some thick sward 
 
46 NEPENTHE 
 
 Rest me, like gazelle or pard, 
 Brinded hyaena or zebir barred ; 
 Now that even these supple rovers 
 Hie to caves and healthy covers, 
 There to sleep till huntress Morn 
 Rouse them again with her far horn ! 
 
 Solitary wayfarer ! 
 Minstrel winged of the green wild ! 
 What dost thou delaying here, 
 Like a wood-bewildered child 
 Weeping to his far-flown troop, 
 Whoop ! and plaintive whoop ! and whoop ? 
 Now from rock and now from tree, 
 Bird ! methinks thou whoop'st to me, 
 Flitting before me upward still 
 With clear warble, as I've heard 
 Oft on my native Northern hill 
 No less wild and lone a bird, 
 Luring me with his sweet chee-chee 
 Up the mountain crags which he 
 Tript as lightly as a bee, 
 O'er steep pastures, far among 
 Thickets and briary lanes along, 
 Following still a fleeting song ! 
 If such my errant nature, I 
 Vainly to curb or coop it try 
 Now that the sundrop thro' my frame 
 Kindles another soul of flame ! 
 Whoop on, whoop on, thou canst not wing 
 Too fast or far, thou well-named thing, 
 
 -\ 
 
NEPENTHE 47 
 
 Hoopoe, if of that tribe which sing 
 Articulate in the desert ring ! 
 
 Striding the rough mountain mane 
 Of Earth, her forelock now I gain, 
 Whence I behold the lucid spheres 
 As thick as ocean dropt in tears 
 On the sapphire-paven del, 
 That close now to my head doth wheel. 
 Brighter the Moon, and brighter glows ! 
 Broader and broader still she grows ! 
 On that steepling pinnacle 
 With glance rocks silver-slated down, 
 Her radiant ball sits tangible, 
 Huge pearl of Afric's mountain crown ! 
 Ponderous jewel of Earth's crest ! 
 There, star-studded she doth rest, 
 Filling every vale and lea 
 From her lucid fountain free, 
 Bank high, as with a crystal sea. 
 Flooded bright each woodland moves 
 Crisp as the sounding coral groves. 
 And each emerald lane doth seem 
 Bed of a diamond-watered stream. 
 But lo ! what mighty shadows cast 
 Their lengths upon the glittering vast 
 Portentous, as with giant reach 
 Eclipse thro' fields of air did stretch 
 Printing the lunar hills upon 
 Earth's disk in darkest colours dun ? 
 Ha ! more true shall Fantasy, 
 Twin-brother profane to Prophecy, 
 
48 NEPENTHE 
 
 Interpret yon bright written sign, 
 
 Blazoning the dome with sense divine. 
 
 Yon far luminary stands 
 
 Apparent on these peaked lands, 
 
 Meanful device and monogram 
 
 Of their veritable name 
 
 The Mountains of the Moon ! long known 
 
 On Afric's groin enormous zone, 
 
 But trod by mortal me alone ! 
 
 'Less Gomer here did set his shoon, 
 
 Crossing to southern Zanguebar, 
 
 And call'd them Jebel-el-Gomar, 
 
 Arabiqued, Mountains of the Moon : 
 
 Since that double word implies 
 
 This sense, and toward the Star they rise 
 
 Her semblable footstool in the skies. 
 
 Now that she sinks amid the hills 
 And vaporous gloom her region fills, 
 Tearful light each orb distils, 
 Faintly closing his small eye ! 
 Wrapt in stole of sablest dye, 
 Death-heavy Darkness on his throne 
 Nods like a corse ! What Anguish draws 
 That sigh, to make Existence pause, 
 And the deep slumberers under stone 
 Turn in their wormy beds and groan ? 
 Yet, a more terrible moan ! 
 Like the buried Titan's sob 
 Bursting Etna's rocky chains 
 It shakes huge Afric with a throb, 
 Her stout girdle scarce sustains. 
 
NEPENTHE 49 
 
 Hark, another ! but like the sound 
 
 Of hell's breath bubbling up thro' pools pro- 
 
 found, 
 
 Sent forth in cloudy wise ! 
 And now that Dawn, with flickering plumage 
 
 Brushes the thick-spun web of Night away, 
 Two pools in mist and murmur bubble before 
 
 mine eyes ! 
 
 Black-watered that : right o'er 
 Its cave, a bust of Mauri tanian mood, 
 Thick-lipt and carved in negro curls, as rude 
 As the grim lake itself in wavy tresses wore : 
 This ripples in soft ringlets, and sleek folds 
 Of milky undulance, eastward oozing 
 The hill's green shoulders down, diffusing 
 His wealth of waters o'er the humble wolds: 
 Not like his dark Brother making 
 His chasmy way, by choice, nor taking 
 Precipitous steps into the Atlantic holds. 
 Over the smooth well-front was seen 
 Cut in a stony table of Syene, 
 A head, of that colossal leaven, 
 But with mild looks, and patient eyeballs 
 
 graven, 
 Waiting for day ! 
 
 She rose, maternal Morn ! 
 With her first golden smile greeting the 
 
 brow 
 
 Memnonian, and with balmiest sighs 
 Breathing her soul of love into those sanguine 
 
 eyes 
 
 B 
 
5O NEPENTHE 
 
 That gazed with large affedtion on the skies ! 
 And like the joy of a faint-swelling horn 
 Heard far aloof, notes of glad welcome now 
 Rose from the steep front of the Goddess- 
 born. 
 
 Charactered underneath upon the stone 
 I read these mystic words alone : 
 Memnon the God of the Blue River the 
 
 King 
 
 Of the Endless Valley whoever his spirit 
 Will free from earthly fetters, let him mingle 
 A cup of darkness here with one of light, 
 Fit opiate for Life's fever, 
 And so be blest, pouring it on his brain. 
 
 Two cups I mingled, dark and light, 
 From that black fountain and this white, 
 Pouring the opiate deftly down 
 The Nile-God's cleft and hollow crown, 
 As I divined his will. The air 
 Grew vocal for a moment there, 
 With out-flown shriek of joy; and where 
 Welkin aloft the sunbird sings, 
 I heard a clap and rush of wings, 
 As if some earth-pent spirit freed 
 Rose to the realms of bliss indeed ! 
 Memnon from that day, by the shore 
 Of Nile, sits murmurless evermore ! 
 
 Thy claybound spirit is free, and mine 
 Still in this barry skeleton pine ? 
 
NEPENTHE 5! 
 
 No ! and I quaffed from either well 
 The mingled cup of heaven and hell ! 
 
 Darkness began to hood the sky, 
 Methought, once more, the day to die 
 On this bleak death-bed, but not I ! 
 From the sharp East a blackening wind 
 Came with broad vans the hills behind, 
 In her cloud-hung pavilion 
 Rolling Death's sable sister on, 
 Portentous Night ! Within the fold 
 Of its dark valance I was rolled 
 Whirling, steep down, as in a pall 
 Down the great gulf's eternal fall. 
 
 No sun came forth again ; but gray 
 As the still rocks on which I lay 
 Bleaching at last, endured the day. 
 O'er me the hard sky, massy-paven, 
 Seemed to be dropping crags from heaven 
 To make Earth dust, and hurricanes 
 Let scatter on her their whistling manes. 
 So, with his ensigns wet, Monsoon 
 Swept o'er the Mountains of the Moon, 
 Dreadfully calling cloud on cloud 
 From the deep South, that in thick crowd, 
 Swoln with the summons, bellying ran 
 To burst their rude strength in the van, 
 Till mass o'er mass enormous hurled 
 Heavily toppling stood the world ! 
 
 Such terror vain Ambition waits 
 Still on the high tops he would tread : 
 
 E 2 
 
 
52 NEPENTHE 
 
 Stand fast, ye thunder-shaken gates, 
 
 Against the rain-flood, o'er my head 
 
 Beating like ocean on his bed ! 
 
 O let me wing unshent again 
 
 To sweet Earth's lowest, lowliest plain ; 
 
 Then let the rushing deluge sweep 
 
 Her proudest pinnacles to the deep ! 
 
 Desert paths of the dry streams ! 
 Swifter than the torrent teems 
 Scourged by South winds, as I flee 
 Spread your gray sands firm for me ! 
 Pendant cliffs with sheltering brow 
 Shade me from destruction now ! 
 Rocky steps of giant stride 
 Descending Afric, down your side, 
 Your unhewn smoothness let me slide ! 
 Air ! O air, with thickening breath 
 Stay me not in the gripe of Death ! 
 Back by the blown locks who doth still 
 Pull me to his cruel will ; 
 Let me into thy sightless sea 
 Like the poor minnow from the shark, 
 From those fell jaws that gape for me, 
 Plunge into deepest abysses dark ! 
 
 Welcome dusky, unsunned dells, 
 Roofed with savage trees o'erblown. 
 Caverns in whose dripping cells 
 Hermit Sadness sits alone ! 
 
NEPENTHE 53 
 
 Eldern forests, whispering dim 
 Secrets in your dread Sanhedrim, 
 And nodding fate on those below ; 
 Fearless thro' such inquest grim. 
 Rustling your mossy beards I go, 
 Fathomless falls for wild Despair ! 
 Gulfs intransible of deep air ! 
 Gladly from yon tempest I 
 To your terrible shelter fly. 
 Welcome, rocky vaults and rude 
 Cave-continued for the flood 
 That rolls his serpent-strength between. 
 Hissing beside me tho' unseen, 
 Thro' his vast ambush subterrene; 
 Chasms with cragged teeth beset, 
 Swallow me deeper, deeper yet ! 
 Lowliest path is least unsure, 
 Most sublime, most insecure ! 
 Fond Earth, within her parent breast 
 Finds us, weak little ones, safe room, 
 And thither pain or care opprest, 
 Sooner or later as their doom 
 All creep for refuge and for rest. 
 
 Shadowy aisles of pillared trees 
 Now my errant fancy please, 
 Dim cathedral walks like these ; 
 Nave by numerous transepts crost, 
 Each in his own long darkness lost, 
 Cloister and chancel, thick embossed 
 Their roofs with pendant foliage, thro' 
 Whose fretted branchwork richly pours 
 
54 NEPENTHE 
 
 The sun, in golden order due, 
 His bright mosaic on the floors. 
 
 Spreading now the darksome bourne, 
 Into warm twilight I return, 
 Still by these umbrageous eaves 
 Sheltered ; and where the thinner leaves, 
 With verdant panes, too bright illume, 
 Glance and pass forward into gloom 
 Thro' the dim-green air I hear 
 Only the rush of waters near, 
 Or see their spray a moment gleam, 
 Watermotes in the passing beam. 
 
 By that visionary shore 
 Steep channel of continual roar, 
 Billowy duel of flowing thunder, 
 That wallows the rooted woodland under, 
 Wandering I, in dizzy wonder, 
 Tread the hollow crust that caves 
 The rueful Erebus of waves 
 Beneath me surging. Blind I roam 
 The wilderness. O gentle Eve ! 
 Pale daughter of the Day, receive 
 My greeting glad 1 All hail, thou dome 
 Of God's great Temple, lit so bright 
 With lamps of ever-living light, 
 Kept trim within those censers rare 
 By Virgins quiring to their care, 
 Voice-joined, tho' separate in far air. 
 Awful Night ! thy sombre plumes, 
 &had,owe(} athwart the, moonlight 
 
NEPENTHE 55 
 
 Make this rock-bestudded vale 
 
 Gleam like an antique place of tombs. 
 
 With lustre cold that chills the gale. 
 
 Grateful now to fallen me 
 
 This deep tranquillity ! 
 
 Here in folded silence fast 
 
 Shall I fix myself at last, 
 
 Till I grow by age as grey 
 
 As the rocks, and stiff as they, 
 
 Making ever here my own 
 
 Statue and monumental stone ! 
 
 Cliff, of smoothest front sublime, 
 Tablet for that old storier Time ! 
 What huge aboriginal sons 
 Of Earth, beat down by vengeful waves, 
 Sleep beneath these obliterate stones 
 In unmeasurable graves ? 
 What mystic word inscribed can show 
 His terrible might who sleeps below ? 
 Sinews resolved to wreaths of sand ! 
 Seams of white dust his bony frame! 
 His place on Glory's scroll doth stand 
 Blank or filled up with others' fame 1 
 Yet was he one that Pelion-high 
 Clomb perchance the difficult sky 
 Pelion on Oeta and Ossa heaved 
 Till of sight and sense bereaved, 
 Storm or sun stricken as I ! 
 Ay, and shall Adam's pigmy sperm 
 Think to reach that sacred sphere 
 Whichj from high-battled hills infirm, 
 
56 NEPENTHE 
 
 No Briarean arms came near ; 
 
 Or think that his small memory dear, 
 
 Writ in the sands, shall aye survive. 
 
 While the eternal headstones here 
 
 Keep no giant name alive ? 
 
 The sands of thy own life, Renown, 
 
 Run between two creations down, 
 
 Few centuries apart ! What need 
 
 Glorious thought, or word, or deed, 
 
 When all mortal grandeur must 
 
 Lie with oblivion in the dust ? 
 
 Then hie on to humble lands ! 
 On, still onward let me roam, 
 O'er sea-broad Sahara sands, 
 By the cataract's grizzled foam, 
 Where live-bounding he doth come, 
 Headlong Niger ! down the rocks, 
 Swept with his dishevelled locks. 
 Sable turned to silver flocks, 
 Like dark rain to driven snow, 
 When the blasts hibernal blow \ 
 Now my steps as mute proceed 
 By his solitary roll 
 Winding round each desert knoll 
 As a gay enamelled mead, 
 With its yellow-blossom reed 
 Single bright thing that doth breed 
 There ; and rushy tufts of grass 
 Only sighing as we pass : 
 This wide waste of air unstirred 
 By the voice of bee or bird. 
 
NEPENTHE 57 
 
 Even the soaring eagle's scream 
 
 Far off, like music in a dream 
 
 Imaged to the ear, is heard. 
 
 Strange pleasure in such wild to wander 
 
 Following murmurless Meander, 
 
 That loses his own serpent folds 
 
 Oft within the sabulous wolds. 
 
 May not I, ere these be crost, 
 
 Grave of all things living, be lost, 
 
 Now that in this inky lake, 
 
 Dry Afric's mediterranean, 
 
 Unsailed sea, the Mountain Snake 
 
 Buries his sightless head again ? 
 
 Yet whate'er my soul inspire, 
 
 Purple sweet instinft with fire, 
 
 Or that late delirious draught, 
 
 Which from lunar wells I quaffed, 
 
 Still I turn where sand and sky 
 
 Spread in blank boundlessness to mine eye. 
 
 Thou, night-shaded Fountain ! pure 
 Essence of darkness, deep distilled, 
 'Tis thou that hast my soul, most sure, 
 With thy sad infusion filled ! 
 Else wherefore love I thus to tread 
 O'er the dust of Nature dead, 
 Buried in her own ashes gray, 
 Without one offspring of her womb 
 To strew her even a leafy tomb ? 
 Wherefore love I thus to stray, 
 Finding joy in the lone wild, 
 Like Desertion's only child, 
 
58 NEPENTHE 
 
 That in the sunburnt, silent air 
 Builds his crumbling castles there 
 And builds and plays with his despair ? 
 
 Solitude as deep and wide, 
 Treeless and herbless, never trod 
 Gray Triton underneath the tide, 
 Wandering the tawny barrens broad. 
 All is dumb, and the dead sands 
 Lie in long warps on both hands, 
 Furrows incult or barely sown, 
 Like desecrate lands, with salt alone, 
 Seed of sterility ! O more fleet 
 Must be my Arimaspian feet 
 To 'scape this dragon of the air, 
 Winding me round with sulphury flare, 
 Than the wild ostrich as she glides 
 Sheer onward with unpanting sides ! 
 
 Lo ! in the mute mid wilderness, 
 What wondrous creature, of no kind, 
 His burning lair doth largely press, 
 Gaze fixt, and feeding on the wind ? 
 His fell is of the desert dye, 
 And tissue adust, dun-yellow and dry, 
 Compaft of living sands ; his eye 
 Black luminary, soft and mild, 
 With its dark lustre cools the wild. 
 From his stately forehead springs, 
 Piercing to heaven, a radiant horn ! 
 Lo, the compeer of lion-kings, 
 The steed self-armed, the Unicorn ! 
 
NEPENTHE 59 
 
 Ever heard of, never seen. 
 
 With a main of sands between 
 
 Him and approach ; his lonely pride 
 
 To course his arid arena wide, 
 
 Free as the hurricane, or lie here, 
 
 Lord of his couch as his career ! 
 
 Wherefore should this foot profane 
 
 His sancluary, still domain ? 
 
 Let me turn, ere eye so bland 
 
 Perchance be fire-shot, like heaven's brand, 
 
 To wither my boldness ! Northward now, 
 
 Behind the white star on his brow 
 
 Glittering straight against the Sun, 
 
 Far athwart his lair I run. 
 
 What marvellous things I saw besides, 
 Wandering heaven's wide furnace thro'. 
 With floor of burning sands, and sides 
 And glowing cope of glassy blue, 
 Ne'er could mortal tongue nor ear 
 Intelligibly tell or hear ! 
 Enow to have seen and sung of those 
 Beauteous chimeras, called in scorn, 
 Single of species both, and born 
 Mid among mankind, that but knows 
 The Phoenix and the Unicorn 
 Ev'n now, as dim-seen thro' a horn ! 
 Both symbols of proud solitude, 
 One of melancholy gladness, 
 One of most majestic sadness, 
 And therefore to such neighbourhood 
 
6o 
 
 NEPENTHE 
 
 I won, by sympathetic madness, 
 Where let no other steps intrude ! 
 
 Across the desert's shrivelled scroll 
 I past, myself almost to sands 
 Crumbling, to make another knoll 
 Amidst the numberless of those lands. 
 Welcome ! Before my bloodshot eyes, 
 Steed of the East, a camel stands, 
 Mourning his fallen lord that dies. 
 Now, as forth his spirit flies, 
 Ship of the Desert ! bear me on, 
 O'er this wavy-bosomed lea, 
 That solid seemed and staid anon, 
 But now looks surging like a sea. 
 On she bore me, as the blast 
 Whirling a leaf, to where in calm 
 A little fount poured dropping-fast 
 On dying Nature's heart its balm. 
 Deep we sucked the spongy moss, 
 And cropt for dates the sheltering palm, 
 Then with fleetest amble cross 
 Like desert, fed upon like aim. 
 That most vital beverage still, 
 Tho' near exhaust, preserved me till 
 Now the broad Barbaric shore 
 Spread its havens to my view, 
 And mine ear rung with ocean's roar, 
 And mine eye glistened with its blue ! 
 Till I found me once again 
 By the ever-murmuring main, 
 Listening across the distant foam 
 
NEPENTHE 6 1 
 
 My native church bells ring me home. 
 
 Alas ! why leave I not this toil 
 
 Thro' stranger lands, for mine own soil ? 
 
 Far from ambition's worthless coil, 
 
 From all this wide world's wearying moil, 
 
 Why leave I not this busy broil, 
 
 For mine own clime, for mine own soil, 
 
 My calm, dear, humble, native soil ! 
 
 There to lay me down at peace 
 
 In my own first nothingness ? 
 
PRINTED BY R. FOLKARD AND SON, 
 22, DEVONSHIRE STREET, BLOOMSBURY, LONDON, W.C. 
 
YC16C693