Canterbury EDITED BY WILLIAM SHARP. SHELLEY'S POEMS. AND POEMS' OF PERCY BYSSHE S^HELLEY. SELECTED, WITH A PREFATORY NOTICE, BY JOSEPH SKIPSEY. LONDON : WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW. M* CONTENTS. Pagp Prefatory Notice ....... 9 Alastor ; or, The Spirit of Solitude ... 3? To Coleridge 57 Stanzas April 1814 . . . . .53 Mutability 60 On Death 60 A Summer-Evening Churchyard . . . .62 -o Wordsworth 63 ^ Feelings of a Republican on the fall of Bonaparte . 64 Lines (The cold Earth slept below) ... 64 The Sunset 66 J3ymn to Intellectual Beauty . . . 68 ^ Mont Blanc ........ 71 Julian and Maddalo . . . . . .76 395739 CONTENTS. Page Marianne's Dream ...... 97 Death , . . . 10 To Constantia, Singing 103 Sonnet Ozytnandias ...... t/104 To the Lord Chancellor 105 To William Shelley . . . . . .107 Lines (That time is dead for ever, child) . . 109 On Fanny Godwin 110 Lines to a Critic ....... 110 Passage of the Apennines 112 On a Dead Yiolet ...... 113 The Past . 113 Sonnet (Lift not the painted veil) . . . .114 Lines written among the Euganean Hills . , 114 Stanzas (The sun is warm, the sky is clear) . . 126 Misery f 128 The Witch of Atlas 131 The Masque of Anarchy ..... 154 Lines (Corpses are cold in the tomb) . , . 167 SongTo the Men of England . . . .168 -England in 1819 170 Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819 . 170 CONTENTS, vii j God vSave the Queen . . . . . .171 Ode to the Asserters of Liberty 173 One to Heaven ....... 174 6de to the West Wind . . . . 17(? An Exhortation .... The Indian Serenade 180 Lines written for Miss Sophia Stacey . . . 181 Epipsychidion . 182 Love's Philosophy 203 Ode to Liberty ... ... 204 Arethusa ... ... 213 Hymn of Apollo . ...... 216 Hymn of Pan ... ... 218 The Question , 219 The Sensitive Plant . 221 -The Cloud .232 *~To a Skylark . 235 To . (I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden) . 239 The Two Spirits .239 xSong of Proserpine . ' . 241 Letter to Maria Gisborne . ... 242 Ode to Naples 252 Summer and Wintei . 258 viii CONTENTS. Page Lines to a Reviewer ...... 259 Autumn. A Dirge ...... 259 Liberty 260 The Tower of Famine . . . . . 261 Tfcne long past .,.... 262 Good-night 262 Sonnet (Ye hasten to the dead) . . . .263 Adonais 264 Dirge for the year 282 To Night 283 From the Arabic 284 Song (Rarely, rarely comost thou) . . . 285 To Emilia Viviani 287 Lines (ar, far away) 287 Time 288 ASoD S '-..-... 288 Ariel to Miranda 289 s poetical ALASTOR ; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. THE poem entitled Alastor may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uneorrupted feelings and adventurous ~enius, led forth, by an imagination inflamed and purified hrough familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous and tranquil and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened, and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful or wise or beautiful which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover, could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is 34 ALASTOR. represented as uniting these requisitions and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his con- ception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the Furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious, as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with hmfta~ grief ; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the wold, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender- hearted perish, through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. EARTH, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood ! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ; ALASTOR. 35 If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs If Springs voluptuous pantings when she breathes Her first sweet kisses have been dear to me ; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast, I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred then forgive This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now ! Mother of this unfathomable world, Favour my solemn song ! for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black Death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee ; Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine by forcing some lone ghost, Thy messenger, to render up the tale Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, Like an inspired and desperate alchemist Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love ; until strange tears, Uniting with those breathless kisses, made Such magic as compels the charmed night To render up thy charge. And, though ne'er yet Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, Enough from incommunicable dream, And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, 3 6 ALASTOR. Has shone within me, that serenely now And moveless (as a long forgotten lyre Suspended in the solitary dome Of some mysterious and deserted fane) I wait thy breath, Great Parent ; that my strain May modulate with murmurs of the air, And motions of the forests and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. There was a Poet whose untimely tomb No human hand with pious reverence reared. But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness. A lovely youth, no mourning maiden decked With weeping flowers or votive cypress wreath The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : Gentle, and brave, and generous, no lorn bard Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : He lived, he died, he sang, in solitude. Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes ; And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, And silence, too enamoured of that voice, Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. By solemn vision and bright silver dream His infancy was nurtured. Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. The fountains of divine philosophy Fled not his thirsting lips : and all of great ALASTOR. 37 Or good or lovely which the sacred past In truth or fable consecrates he felt And knew. When early youth had passed, he left His cold fireside and alienated home, To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wild waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where'er The red volcano over-canopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke ; or where bitumen lakes On black bare pointed islets ever beat With sluggish surge ; or where the secret caves, Rugged and dark, winding among the springs Of fire and poison inaccessible To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasurable halls, Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. Nor had that scene of ampler majesty Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder. He would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home ; Until the doves and squirrels would partake From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks And the wild antelope, that starts whenever The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own. 38 ALASTOR. His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful ruins of the days of old : Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange, Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, Dark Ethopia in her desert hills Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images Of more than man, where marble daemons watch The zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, He lingered , poring on memorials Of the world's youth ; through the long burning day, Gazed on those speechless shapes ; nor, when the moon Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades, Suspended he that task, but ever gazed And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, Her daily portion, from her father's tent, And spread her matting for his couch, and stole From duties and repose to tend his steps : Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe To speak her love and watched his nightly sleep, Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath Of innocent dreams arose. Then, when red morn Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home, Wildercd, and wan, and panting, she returned. ALASTOR. 39 The Poet, wandering on, through Arable, And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, In joy and exultation held his way ; Till in the vale of Cachmire, far within Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep There came, a dream of hopes that never yet Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought ; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. Knowledge, and truth, and virtue were her theme, And lofty hopes of divine liberty, Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, Himself a poet. Soon the solemn mood Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame A permeating fire. Wild numbers then She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs Subdued by its own pathos : her fair hands Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp Strange symphony, and in their branching veins The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. The beating of her heart was heard to fill The pauses of her music, and her breath Tumultuously accorded with those fits Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, As if her heart impatiently endured 40 ALASTOR. Its bursting burthen. At the sound he turned, And saw, by the warm light of their own life, Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil Of woven wind ; her outspread arms now bare, Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. His strong heart sank and sickened with excess Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet Her panting bosom she drew back awhile ; Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, With frantic gesture and short breathless cry Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night Involved and swallowed up the vision ; sleep, Like a dark flood suspended in its course, Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain Roused by the shock, he started from his trance, The cold white light of morning, Hie blue moon, Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, The distinct valley and the vacant woods, Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled The hues of heaven that canopied his bower Of yesternight ? the sounds that soothed his sleep, The mystery and the majesty of earth, The joy, the exultation ? His wan eyes Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. The Spirit of sweet Human Love has sent A vision to the sleep of him who spurned Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues Beyond the realms of druam that fleeting shade ; ALASTOR. 41 He overleaps the bounds. Alas ! alas ! Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined Thus treacherously ? Lost, lost, for ever lost In the wide pathless desert of dim Sleep, That beautiful shape ! Does the dark gate of Death Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, Sleep ? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds, And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake, Lead only to a black and watery depth While Death's blue vault with loathliest vapours hung, Where every shade which the foul grave exhales Hides its dead eye from the detested day, Conducts, Sleep, to thy delightful realms ? This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart : The insatiate hope which it awakened stung His brain even like despair. While daylight held The sky, the Poet kept mute conference With his still soul. At night the passion came, Like the fierce liend of a distempered dream, And shook him from bis rest, and led him forth Into the darkness, As an eagle, grasped In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast Burn with the poison, and precipitates, Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight O'er the wide aery wilderness : thus, driven By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, Startling with careless step the moonlight snake, He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, Shedding the mockery of its vital hues Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on 42 ALASTOR. Till vast Aornos, seen from Petra's steep, Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ; Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, Day after day, a weary waste of hours, Bearing within his life the brooding care That ever fed on its decaying flame. And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair, Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ; Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone, As in a furnace burning secretly From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, Who ministered with human charity His human wants, beheld with wondering awe Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, Encountering on some dizzy precipice That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind, With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused In his career. The infant would conceal His troubled visage in his mother's robe In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, To remember their strange light in many a dream Of after times. But youthful maidens, taught By nature, would interpret half the woe That wasted him, would call him with false names Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path Of his departure from their father's door. At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore ALASTOR. 43 He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight "Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird ! thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts ? " A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge ; and silent Death exposed, Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around : There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. A little shallop floating near the shore Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. It had been long abandoned, for its sides Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints Swayed with the undulations of the tide. A restless impulse urged him to embark, And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste ; 44 ALASTOR. For well he knew that mighty shadow loves The slimy caverns of the populous deep. The day was fair and sunny : sea and sky Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. Following his eager soul, the wanderer Leapt in the boat ; he spread his cloak aloft On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. As one that in a silver vision floats Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly Along the dark and ruffled waters fled The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on, \\ r ith fierce gusts and precipitating force, Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. The waves arose. Higher and higher still Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge, Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp. Calm, and rejoicing in the fearful war Of wave running on wave, and blast on blast Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven With dark obliterating course, he sate : As if their genii were the ministers Appointed to conduct him to the light Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate Holding the steady helm. Evening came on ; The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray That canopied his path o'er the waste deep ; ALASTOR. 45 Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of Day ; Night followed, clad with stars. On every side More horribly the multitudinous streams Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock The calm and spangled sky. The little boat Still fled before the storm ; still fled, like foam Down the steep cataract of a wintry river ; Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave : Now leaving far behind the bursting mass, That fell, convulsing ocean safely fled As if that frail and wasted human form Had been an elemental god. At midnight The moon arose : and lo ! the ethereal cliffs Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone Among the stars like sunlight, and around Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves, Bursting and eddying irresistibly, Rage and resound for ever. Who shall save? The boat fled on the boiling torrent drove The crags closed round with black and jagged arms, The shattered mountain overhung the sea ; And faster still, beyond all human speed, Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, The little boat was driven. A cavern there Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths Engulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on With unrelaxing speed. " Vision and Love ! " The Poet cried aloud, f< I have beheld The path of thy departure. Sleep and Death Shall not divide us long. " 46 ALASTOR. The boat pursued The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone At length upon that gloomy river's flow. Now, where the fiercest war among the waves Is calm, on the unfathomable stream The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven, Exposed those black depths to the azure sky, Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell Even to the base of Caucasus with sound That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm ; Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, Circling immeasurably fast, and laved With alternating dash the gnarled roots Of mighty trees that stretched their giant arms Tn darkness over it. I' the midst was left, Reflecting yet distorting every cloud, A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm. Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round, Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose ; Till on the verge of the extremest curve, Where through an opening of the rocky bank The waters overflow, and a smooth spot Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides Is left, the boat paused shuddering. Shall it sink Down the abyss ? shall the reverting stress Of that resistless gulf embosom it ? Now shall it fall ? A wandering stream of wind, Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail ; And lo ! with gentle motion, between banks Of mossy slope, and on a placid stivnm, Beneath a woven grove, it sails ; and, hark 1 ALASTOR. 47 The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. Where the embowering trees recede, and leave A little space of green expanse, the cove Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task, Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay, Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed To deck with their bright hues his withered hair ; But on his heart its solitude returned, And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame, Had yet performed its ministry : it hung Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods Of night close over it. The noonday sun Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, Scooped in the dark base of those aery rocks, Mocking its moans respond and roar for ever. The meeting boughs and implicated leaves Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as, led By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, He sought in Nature's dearest haunt some bank, Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, Expanding its immense and knotty arms, Embraces the light beech. The pyramids Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame 48 A LAS TOR. Most solemn domes within ; and far below, Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, The ash and the acacia floating hang, Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents clothed In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around The grey trunks ; and, as gamesome infants' eyes, With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles, Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs, Uniting their close union ; the woven leaves Make network of the dark-blue light of day And the night's noontide clearness, mutable As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns Beneath these canopies extend their swells, Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine A soul-dissolving odour, to invite To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell, Silence and Twilght here, twin sisters, keep Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades Like vaporous shapes half-seen. Beyond, a well, Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, Images all the woven boughs above, And each depending leaf, and every speck Of azure sky darting between their chasms ; Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves Its portraiture, but some inconstant star Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, Or painted bird sleeping beneath the moon, Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. A LA STOP. 49 Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld Their own wan light through the reflected lines Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth Of that still fountain ; as the human heart, Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard The motion of the leaves ; the grass that sprung Startled, and glanced, and trembled, even to feel An unaccustomed presence : and the sound Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed To stand beside him clothed in no bright robes Of shadowy silver or enshrining light Borrowed from aught the visible world affords Of grace, or majesty, or mystery ; But undulating woods, and silent well, And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming Held commune with him, as if he and it Were all that was. Only when his regard Was raised by intense pensiveness two eyes, Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought. And seemed with their serene and azure smiles To beckon him. Obedient to the light That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing The windings of the dell. The rivulet, Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell Among the moss, with hollow harmony Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones It danced : like childhood, laughing as it went : Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, Reflecting every herb and drooping bud 50 A LAS TOR. That overhang its quietness. "0 stream, Whose source is inaccessibly profound, Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs, Thy searchless fountain and invisible course, Have each their type in me. And the wide sky And measureless ocean may declare as soon What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud Contains thy waters as the universe Tell where these living thoughts reside, when, stretched Upon thy flowers, my bloodless limbs shall waste F the passing wind ! " Beside the grassy shore Of the small stream he went ; he did impress On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one Roused by some joyous madness from the couch Of fever, he did move ; yet not (like him) Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame Of his frail exultation shall be spent, He must descend. With rapid steps he went Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow Of the wild babbling rivulet ; and now The forest's solemn canopies were changed For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed The struggling brook ; tall spires of windlestrae Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope ; And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines, Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, ALASTOR. 51 The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin And white, and, where irradiate dewy eyes Had shone, gleam stony orbs ; so from his steps Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds And musical motions. Calm he still pursued The stream, that with a larger volume now Rolled through the labyrinthine dell, and there Fretted a path through its descending curves With its wintry speed. On every side now rose Rocks which in unimaginable forms Lifted their black, and barren pinnacles In the light of evening, and its precipice, Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, 'Mid toppling stones, black gulfs, and yawning caves Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues To the loud stream. Lo ! where the pass expands Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, And seems with its accumulated crags To overhang the world : for wide expand, Beneath the wan stars and descending moon, Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, Dim tracks and vast robed in the lustrous gloom Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills Mingling their flames with twilight on the verge Of the remote horizon. The near scene, In naked and severe simplicity, Made contrast with the universe. A pine, Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response at each pause, In most familiar cadence with the howl, The thunder, and the hiss, of homeless streams, Mingling its solemn song ; whilst the broad river, 52 A LAS TOR. Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, Fell into that immeasurable void, Scattering its waters to the passing winds. Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine And torrent were not all one silent nook Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rooks, It overlooked in its serenity The dark earth and the bending vault of stars. It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped The fissured stones with its entwining arms, And did embower, with leaves forever green And berries dark, the smooth and even space Of its inviolated floor ; and here The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore In wanton sport those bright leaves whose decay Red, yellow, or ethereally pale Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt Of every gentle wind whose breath can teacli The wilds to love tranquillity. One step, One human step alone, has ever broken The stillness of its solitude one voice Alone inspired its echoes ; even that voice Which hither came, floating among the winds, And led the loveliest among human forms To make their wild haunts the depository Of all the grace and beauty that endued Its motions, render up its majesty, Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm, And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould, Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, Commit the colours of that varying ALASTOR. 53 That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes. The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank Wan moonlight even to fulness : not a star Shone, riot a sound was heard ; the very Winds, Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice Slept, clasped in his embrace. storm of Death, Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night ! And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still Guiding its irresistible career, In thy devastating omnipotence, Art king of this frail world ! from the red field Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, A mighty voice invokes thee ! Ruin calls His brother Death ! A rare and regal prey He hath prepared, prowling around the world ; Glutted with which, thou mayst repose, and men Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. When on the threshold of the green recess The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, Did he resign his high and holy soul To images of the majestic past, That paused within his passive being now, Like winds that bear sweet music when they breathe Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk 54 ALAS TOR. Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink Of that obscurest chasm and thus he lay, Surrendering to their final impulses The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair, The torturers, slept : no mortal pain or fear Marred his repose ; the influxes of sense, And his own being unalloyed by pain, Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight Was the great moon, which o'er the western line Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills It rests ; and still, as the divided frame Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, That ever beat in mystic sympathy With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still. And, when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp Of his faint respiration scarce did stir The stagnate night till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. It paused it fluttered. But, when heaven remained Utterly black, the murky shades involved An image silent, cold, and motionless, As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. Even as a vapour, fed with golden beams That ministered on sunlight ere the west Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame No sense, no motion, no divinity A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings A LAS TOR. 55 The breath of heaven did wander a bright stream Once led with many- voiced waves (a dream Of youth which night and time have quenched for ever), Still, dark, and dry, and unrernernbered now, Oh for Medea's wondrous alchemy, Which, wheresoe'er it fell, made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance ! Oh that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man has drained, who now, Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels No proud exemption in the blighting curse He bears, over the world wanders for ever, Lone as incarnate death ! Oh that the dream Of dark magician in his visioned cave, Raking the cinders of a crucible For life and power even when his feeble hand Shakes in its last decay, were the true law Of this so lovely world ! But thou art fled, Like some frail exhalation which the dawn Kobes in its golden beams -ah ! thou hast fled ! The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, The child of grace and genius ! Heartless things Are done and said i' the world, and many worms And beasts and men live on, and mighty earth, From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, In vesper low or joyous orison, Lifts still its solemn voice : but thou art fled Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! Now thou art not ! Upon those pallid lips, $6 ALASTOR. So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes That image sleep in death, upon that form Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear Be shed not even.in thought. Nor, when those hues Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone In the frail pauses of this feeble strain, Let not high verse mourning the memory Of that which is no more, or painting's woe, Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. It is a woe " too deep for tears " when all Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, The passionate tumult of a clinging hope But pale despair and cold tranquillity, Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. EARLY POEMS. TO COLERIDGE. 1. OH ! there are spirits in the air, 1 ' ~ -* _ And genii of the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts with eyes as fair As starbeams among twilight trees Such lovely ministers to meet Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet. 2. With mountain winds, and babbling springs, And moonlight seas, that are the voice Of these inexplicable things, Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice When they did answer thee. But they Cast like a worthless boon thy love away. 3. And thou hast sought in starry eyes Beams that were never meant for thine, Another's wealth tame sacrifice To a fond faith ! Still dost thou pine ? Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands ? 58 STANZAS. 4. Ah ! wherefore didst thou build thine hope On the false earth's inconstancy ? Did thine own mind afford no scope Of love or moving thoughts to thee That natural scenes or human smiles Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles ? 5. Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted ; The glory of the moon is dead ; Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed : Thine own soul still is true to thee, But changed to a foul fiend through misery. 6. This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, Dream not to chase the mad endeavour Would scourge thee to severer pangs. Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. STANZAS A PHIL 1814. WAY ! the moor is dark beneath the moon, Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even : Away ! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. STANZAS. 59 Pause not ! the time is past ! Every voices cries "Away ! " Tempt not with one last glance thy friend's ungentle mood : Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay : Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. Away, away ! to thy sad and silent home ; Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth ; Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head, [thy feet : The Mooms of dewy Spring shall gleam beneath But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace, may meet. The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose, For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep ; Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows; Whatever moves or toils or grieves hath its appointed sleep. [toms flee Thou in the grave shalt rest yet, till the phan- Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile, Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are not free From the music of two voices, and the light of one sweet smile. 60 MUTABILITY. MUTABILITY. 1. \jl 7E are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ; V V How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly ! yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever : 2. Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last. 3. We rest a dream has power to poison sleep ; We rise one wandering thought pollutes the day ; We feel, conceive, or reason, laugh or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away. 4. It is the same ! For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free ; Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow ; Nought may endure but Mutability. ON DEATH. " There is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest," ECCLESIASTES. 1. HTVHE pale, the cold, and the moony smile J[ Which the meteor beam of a starless night Sheds on a lonely and se'a-girt isle Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light ON DEATH, 6 1 Is the flame of life so fickle and wan That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. 2. man ! hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way ; And the billows of cloud that around thee roll Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny. 3. This world is the nurse of all we know, This world is the mother of all we feel ; And the coming of death is a fearful blow To a brain unen compassed with nerves of steel, When all that we know or feel or see Shall pass like an unreal mystery. 4. The secret things of the grave are there Where all but this frame must surely be, Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear No longer will live to hear or to see All that is great and all that is strange In the boundless realm of unending change. 5. Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death ? Who lifteth the veil of what is to come ? Who painteth the shadows that are beneath The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb ? Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be With the fears and the love for that which we see ? 62 S UMMER-E VENING CH URCH YA RD. A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCHYARD, LECH- LADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 1. r "'HE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere JL Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray, And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day : Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. 2. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea ; Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. 3. Thou too, aerial pile, whose pinnacles Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obey'st in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night. 4. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres : And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around ; And, mingling with the still night and mute sky, Its awful hush is felt inandibly. TO WORDSWORTH. 63 5. Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild And terrorlcss as the serenest night. Here could I hope, like some inquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. TO WORDSWORTH. POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return ; Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine, Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. Thou \vert as a lone star whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar : Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude : In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and libei ty. Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus, having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. 64 LINES. FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE. I HATED thee, fallen Tyrant ! I did groan To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, should dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it had stood even now : thou didst prefer A frail and bloody pomp, which Time has swept In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre, For this, I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust, And stifled thee their minister. I know Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, That Virtue owns a more eternal foe Then Force or Fraud ; old Custom, Legal Crime, And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time. LINES. ! T""VHE cold earth slept below ; X Above, the cold sky shone ; And all around, With a chilling sound, From caves of ice and fields of snow The breath of night like death did flow Beneath the sinking moon. 2. The wintry hedge was black ; The green grass was not seen ; LINES. 65 The birds did rest On the bare thorn's breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway track, Had bound their folds o'er many a crack Which the frost had made between. 3. Thine eyes glowed in the glare Of the moon's dying light. As a fen-fire's beam On a sluggish stream Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there ; And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair, That shook in the wind of night. 4. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved ; The wind made thy bosom chill ; The night did shed On thy dear head Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie Where the bitter breath of the naked sky Might visit thee at will. November 1815. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816. THE SUNSET. THERE late was one within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, Genius and death contended. None may know The sweetness of the joy which made his breath Fail like the trances of the summer air, When, with the lady of his love, who then First knew the unreserve of mingled being, He walked along the pathway of a field, Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, But to the west was open to the sky. There now the sun had sunk ; but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level grass and nodding flowers, And the old dandelion's hoary beard, And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay On the brown massy woods and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering overhead. " Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth, THE SUNSET. 67 " I never saw the sun ? We will walk here To-morrow ; thou shalt look on it with me." That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep but when the morning came The lady found her lover dead and cold. Let none believe that God in mercy gave That stroke. The lady died not nor grew wild, But year by year lived on in truth I think Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, And that she did not die but lived to tend Her aged father, were a kind of madness, If madness 'tis to be unlike the world. For but to see her were to read the tale Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief Her eyelashes were torn away with tears, Her lips and cheeks were like things dead so pale ; Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins And weak articulations might be seen Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day, Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee ! " Inheritor of more than earth can give, Passionless calm and silence unreproved Whether the dead find oh ! not sleep but rest, And are the uncomplaining things they seem, Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love ; Oh ! that, like thine, mine epitaph were Peace 1 " This was the only moan she ever made. Bishopgate, Spring 1816. 68 INTELLECTUAL BE A UTY. HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 1. r "T*HE awful shadow of some unseen Power jl Floats, though unseen, among us ; visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower. Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance ; Like hues and harmonies of evening, Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Like memory of music fled, Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 2. Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone ? Why dost thou pass away, and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river ; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown ; Why fear, and dream, and death, and birth . Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom ; why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope ! 3. No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given : Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain endeavour : INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 69 Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to From all we hear and all we see, [sever, Doubt, chance, and mutability. Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night- wind sent Through strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 4. Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds depart And come for some uncertain moments lent. Man were immortal and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. Thou messenger of sympathies That wax and wane in lovers' eyes ! Thou that to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying flame ! Depart not as thy shadow came : Depart not, lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality ! 5. While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed. I was not heard, I saw them not ; When musing deeply on the lot Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming, Sudden thy shadow fell on me I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy I 70 INTELLECTUAL BE A UTY. 6. I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow ? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I called the phantoms of a thousands hours Each from his voiceless grave. They have in visioned bowers Of studious zeal or love's delight Out watched with me the envious night : They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery ; That thou, awful Loveliness, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. '. The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past ; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard nor seen. As if it could not be, as if it had not been. Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of Nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all humankind. MONT BLANC. 71 MONT BLANC. LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. 1. TTHE everlasting universe of Things JL Flows through the Mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark now glittering now reflecting gloom New lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. 2. Thus thou, Ravine of Arve dark, deep Ravine Thou many-coloured many-voiced vale, Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail Fast cloud -shadows and sunbeams ; awful scene, Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame Of lightning through the tempest ; thou dost lie Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, Children of elder time, in whose devotion The chainless winds still come and ever came^ To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging To hear, an old and solemn harmony ; Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil 72 MONT BLANC. Robes some uusculptured image ; the strange sleep Which, when the voices of the desert fail, Wraps all in its own deep eternity ; Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, A loud lone sound no other sound can tame. Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, Thou art the path of that unresting sound, Dizzy Ravine ! And, when I gaze on thee, I seem, as in a trance sublime and strange, To muse on my own separate fantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around ; One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings Now float above thy darkness, and now rest Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, In the still cave of the witch Poesy Seeking, among the shadows that pass by, Ghosts of all things that are some shade of thee, Some phantom, some faint image. Till the breast From which they fled recalls them, thou art there ! Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live. I look on high ; Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled The veil of life and death ? Or do I lie In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Spread far around and inaccessibly Its circles ? for the very spirit iaie, Driven like a homeless cloud from step to steep MONT BLANC. 73 That vanishes among the viewless gales ! Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, Mont Blanc appears still, snowy, and serene. Its subject mountains their unearthly forms Pile around it, ice and rock ; broad vales between Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread And wind among the accumulated steeps ; A desert peopled by the storms alone, Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, And the wolf tracks her there. How hideously Its shapes are heaped around rude, bare, and high, Ghastly, and scared, and riven ! Is this the scene Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young Ruin ? were these their toys ? or did a sea Of fire envelop once this silent snow ? None can reply all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that Man may be, But for such faith, with Nature reconciled. Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal Large codes of fraud and woe ; not understood By all, but which the wise, and great, and good Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell Within the daedal earth, lightning and rain, Earthquake and fiery flood and hurricane, The torpor of the year when feeble dreams Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep Holds every future leaf and flower, the bound With which from that detested trance they leap, 74 MONT BLANC. The works and ways of man, their death and birth, And that of him, and all that his may be, All things that move and breathe, with toil and sound Are born and die, revolve, subside, and swell. Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, Eemote, serene, and inaccessible : And this the naked countenance of earth On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains, Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep, Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, Slow rolling on ; there, many a precipice Frost and the sun in scorn of mortal power Have piled dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, A city of death, distinct with many a tower And wall impregnable of beaming ice. Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin, Is there, that from the boundary of the skies Rolls its perpetual stream ; vast pines are strewing Its destined path, or in the mangled soil Branchless and shattered stand ; the rocks, drawn down From yon remotest waste, have overthrown The limits of the dead and living world, Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil ; Their food and their retreat for ever gone, So much of life and joy is lost. The race Of man flies far in dread ; his work and dwelling Vanish like smoke before the tempest's stream, And their place is not known. Below, vast caves Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, MONT BLANC. 75 Which, from those secret chasms in tumult welling, Meet in the Vale ; and one majestic River, The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. . Mont Blanc yet gleams on high : the power is there, The still and solemn power, of many sights And many sounds, and much of life and death. In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, In the lone glare of day, the snows descend Upon that Mountain ; none beholds them there, Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath Rapid and strong, but silently. Its home The voiceless lightning in these solitudes Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods Over the snow. The secret Strength of Things, Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee. And what were thou and earth and stars and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy ? %3rd June 1816. JULIAN AND MADDALO. A CONVERSATION. COUNT MADDALO is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capahle, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud : he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that sur- round him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men ; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentrated and impatient feelings which consume him ; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxi- cation : men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much, and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries. Julian is an Englishman of good family ; passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may yet be susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world, he is for ever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoirer at all things JULIAN- AND MADDALO. 77 reputed holy ; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far this is possible the pious reader will deter- mine. Julian is rather serious. Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account, to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind : the unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart. 'The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring, Are saturated not nor Love with tears." VIRGIL'S GALLUS. I RODE one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice. A bare strand Of hillocks heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this ; an Uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons. And no other object breaks The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes Broken and unrepaired ; and the tide makes A narrow space of level sand thereon, Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down. This ride was my delight. I love all waste And solitary places ; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be : And such was this wide ocean, and this shore More barren than its billows. And, yet more 78 JULIAN AND MADDALO. Than all, with a remembered friend I love To ride as then I rode for the winds drove The living spray along the sunny air Into our faces ; the blue heavens were bare, Stripped to their depths by the awakening north ; And from the waves sound like delight broke forth, Harmonising with solitude, and sent Into our hearts aerial merriment. So, as we rode, we talked ; and the swift thought, Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, But flew from brain to brain. Such glee was ours, Charged with light memories of remembered hours, None slow enough for sadness ; till we came Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. This day had been cheerful, but cold ; and now The sun was sinking, and the wind also. Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be Talk interrupted with such raillery As mocks itself ; because it cannot scorn The thoughts it would extinguish 'twas forlorn, Yet pleasing ; such as once, so poets tell, The devils held within the vales of hell, Concerning God, freewill, and destiny. Of all that Earth has been, or yet may be ; All that vain men imagine or believe, Or hope can paint, or suffering can achieve, We descanted ; and I (for ever still Is it not wise to make the best of ill ?) Argued against despondency ; but pride Made my companion take the darker side. The sense that he was greater than his kind Had struck, methink, his eagle spirit blind By gazing on its own exceeding light. JULIAN AND MADDALO. 79 Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight Over the horizon of the mountains. Oh ! How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou paradise of exiles, Italy, Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers Of cities they encircle ! It was ours To stand on thee, beholding it : and then, Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men Were waiting for us with the gondola. As those who pause on some delightful way, Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood Which lay between the city and the shore, Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar And aery Alps, towards the north, appeared Through mist an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared Between the east and west ; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep west into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent Among the many-folded hills. They were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seen from Lido through the harbour piles, The likeness of a clump of peaked isles. And then, as if the earth and sea had been Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, Around the vaporous sun ; from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade," 8o JULIAN AND MADDALO. Said my companion, " I will show you soon A better station." So, o'er the lagune We glided ; and from that funereal bark I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. I was about to speak, when ' ' We are even Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo And bade the gondolieri cease to row. II Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." I looked, and saw between us and the sun A building on an island, such an one As age to age might add, for uses vile A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile ; And on the top an open tower, where hung A bell which in the radiance swayed and swung We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue : The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled In strong and black relief. "What we behold Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower," Said Maddalo ; "and ever at this hour Those who may cross the water hear that bell, Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, To vespers." "As much skill as need to pray In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they To their stern maker," I replied. " Oho ! JULIAN AND MADDALO. 81 You talk as in years past," said Maddalo. " Tis strange men change not. You were ever still Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel, A wolf for the meek lambs. If you can't swim, Beware of providence ! " I looked on him, But the gay smile had faded from his eye. "And such," he cried, " is our mortality ! And this must be the emblem and the sign Of what should be eternal and divine ; And, like that black and dreary bell, the soul, Hung in an heaven-illumined tower, must toll Our thoughts and our desires to meet below Round the rent heart, and pray as madmen do ; For what ? they know not, till the night of death, As sunset that strange vision, severeth Our memory from itself, and us from all We sought and yet were baffled." I recall The sense of what he said, although I mar The force of his expressions. The broad star Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill ; And the black bell became invisible ; And the red tower looked grey ; and, all between, The churches, ships, and palaces, were seen Huddled in gloom ; into the purple sea The orange hues of heaven sunk silently. We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola Conveyed me to my lodging by the way. The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim. Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him ; And, whilst I waited, with his child I played. A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made ; A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being ; 82 JULIAN AND MADDALO. Graceful without design, and unforeseeing ; With eyes oh speak not of her eyes ! which seem Twin mirrors of Italian heaven, yet gleam With such deep meaning as we never see But in the human countenance. With me She was a special favourite : I had nursed Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first To this bleak world ; and she yet seemed to know On second sight her ancient playfellow, Less changed than she was by six months or so. For, after her first shyness was worn out, We sate there, rolling billiard balls about When the Count entered. Salutations passed : "The words you spoke last night might well have cast A darkness on my spirit. If man be The passive thing you say, I should not see Much harm in the religions and old saws (Though / may never own such leaden laws) Which break a teachless nature to the yoke : Mine is another faith." Thus much I spoke, And, noting he replied not, added "See This lovely child ; blithe, innocent, and free : She spends a happy time, with little care : While we to such sick thoughts subjected are As came on you last night. It is our will Which thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise ; we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the beauty, love, and truth, we seek, But in our minds ? And, if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire ? " "Ay, if wo were not weak and we aspire, JULIAN AND MADDALO. 83 How vainly ! to be strong, " said Maddalo ; " You talk Utopia." " It remains to know," I then rejoined ; " and those who try may find How strong the chains are which our spirit bind ; Brittle perchance as straw. We are assured Much may be conquered, much may be endured, Of what degrades and crushes us. "We know That we have power over ourselves to do And suffer what, we know not till we try, But something nobler than to live and die. So taught the kings of old philosophy Who reigned before religion made men blind ; And those who suffer with their suffering kind Yet feel this faith Religion." "My dear friend,' Said Maddalo, " my judgment will not bend To your opinion, though I think you might Make such a system refutation-tight, As far as words go. I knew one like you, Who to this city came some months ago, With whom I argued in this sort and he Is now gone mad and so he answered rne, Poor fellow ! But, if you would like to go, We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show How vain are such aspiring theories." " I hope to prove the induction otherwise, And that a want of that true theory still Which seeks a soul of goodness in things ill, Or in himself or others, has thus bowed His being. There are some by nature proud Who, patient in all else, demand but this To love and be beloved with gentleness : 84 JULIAN AND MADDALO. And, being scorned, what wonder if they die Some living death ? This is not destiny, But man's own wilful ill." As this I spoke, Servants announced the gondola, and we Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea Sailed to the island where the Madhouse stands. We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands, Fierce yells, and bowlings, and lamentings keen, And laughter where complaint had merrier been, Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs Into an old courtyard. I heard on high Then fragments of most touching melody ; But, looking up, saw not the singer there. Through the black bars, in the tempestuous air, I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing, Long tangled locks, flung wildly forth and flowing, Of those who on a sudden were beguiled Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled, Hearing sweet sounds. Then I : " Methinks there were A cure of these with patience and kind care, If music can thus move. But what is he Whom we seek here ? " " Of his sad history I know but this,** said Maddalo. " He came To Venice a dejected man, and fame Said he was wealthy, or he had been so : Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe. But he was ever talking in such sort As you do but more sadly ; he seemed hurt, Even as a man with his peculiar wrong, To hear but of the oppression of the strong, Or those absurd deceits (I think with you JULIAN AND MADDALO. 85 In some respects, you know) which carry through The excellent impostors of this earth, When they outface detection. He had worth, Poor fellow, but a humourist in his way." " Alas ! what drove him mad ? " " I cannot say : A lady came with him from France ; and, when She left him and returned, he wandered then About yon lonely isles of desert sand, Till he grew wild. He had no cash or land Remaining. The police had brought him here : Some fancy took him, and he would not bear Removal. So I fitted up for him Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim ; And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers, Which had adorned his life in happier hours, And instruments of music. You may guess A stranger could do little more, or less, For one so gentle and unfortunate : And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight From madmen's chains, and make this hell appear A heaven of sacred silence hushed to hear." " Nay, this was kind of you he had no claim, As the world says." ' ' None but the very same Which I on all mankind, were I, as he, Fallen to such deep reverse. His melody Is interrupted now : we hear the din Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin, Let us now visit him : after this strain, He ever communes with himself again, And sees and hears not any." Having said 86 JULIAN AND MADDALO. These words, we called the keeper, and he led To an apartment opening on the sea. There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully Near a piano, his pale fingers twined One with the other ; and the ooze and wind Rushed through an open casement, and did sway His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray. His head was leaning on a music-book, And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook. His lips were pressed against a folded leaf, In hue too beautiful for health ; and grief Smiled in their motions as they lay apart, As one who wrought from his own fervid heart The eloquence of passion. Soon he raised His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed, And spoke sometimes as one who wrote, and thought His words might move some heart that heeded not, If sent to distant lauds ; and then as one Reproaching deeds never to be undone, With wondering self-compassion. Then his speech Was lost in grief, and then his words came each Unmodulated and expressionless But that from one jarred accent you might guess It was despair made them so uniform. And all the while the loud and gusty storm Hissed through the window ; and we stood behind, Stealing his accents from the envious wind, Unseen. I yet remember what he said Distinctly, such impression his words made. " Month after month,*' he cried, " to bear this load I And, as a jade urged by the whip and goad, To drag life on which like a heavy chain Lengthens behind with many a link of pain ! JULIAN AND MADDALO. 87 And not to speak my grief Oh not to dare To give a human voice to my despair ! But live, and move, and, wretched thing ! smile on, As if I never went aside to groan And wear this mask of falsehood even to those Who are most dear ; not for my own repose Alas ! no scorn or pain or hate could be So heavy as that falsehood is to me But that I cannot bear more altered faces Than needs must be, more changed and cold em- braces, More misery, disappointment, and mistrust, To own me for their father. Would the dust Were covered in upon my body now That the life ceased to toil within my brow ! And then these thoughts would at the last be fled : Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead. 11 What power delights to torture us ? I know That to myself I do not wholly owe What now I suffer, though in part I may. Alas ! none strewed fresh flowers upon the way Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain, My shadow, which will leave me not again. If I have erred, there was no joy in error, But pain, and insult, and unrest, and terror. I have not, as some do, bought penitence With pleasure and a dark yet sweet offence ; For then, if love and tenderness and truth Had overlived hope's momentary youth, My creed should have redeemed me from repenting. But loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting Met love, excited by far other seeming, Until the end was gained : as one from dreaming 88 JULIAN AND MADDALO. Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found iny state Such as it is ! " thou, my spirit's mate ! Who, for thou art compassionate and wise, Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see, My secret groans must be unheard by thee ; Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood, to know Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe. Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed In friendship, let me not that name degrade By placing on your hearts the secret load Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road To peace and that is truth, which follow ye : Love sometimes leads astray to misery. Yet think not, though subdued (and I may well Say that I am subdued), that the full hell Within me would infect the untainted breast Of sacred nature with its own unrest ; As some perverted beings think to find In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind Which scorn or hate hath wounded oh how vain ! The dagger heals not, but may rend again. Believe that I am ever still the same In creed as in resolve ; and what may tame My heart must leave the understanding free, Or all would sink under this agony. Nor dream that I will join the vulgar lie, Or with my silence sanction tyranny ; Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain In any madness which the world calls gain, Ambition, or revenge, or thoughts as stern As those which make me what I am ; or turn To avarice or misanthropy or lust. JULIAN AND MADDALO. Heap on me soon, grave, thy welcome dust 1 Till then the dungeon may demand its prey ; And Poverty and Shame may meet and say, Halting beside me in the public way, * That love- devoted youth is ours : let's sit Beside him : he may live some six months yet. Or the red scaffold, as our country bends, May ask some willing victim ; or ye, friends, May fall under some sorrow, which this heart Or hand may share, or vanquish, or avert. I am prepared in truth, with no proud joy To do or surfer aught ; as when, a boy, I did devote to justice and to love My nature, worthless now. " I must remove A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn aside ! Oh, pallid as Death's dedicated bride, Thou mockery which art sitting by my side, Am I not wan like thee ? At the grave's call I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball, To meet the ghastly paramour for whom Thou hast deserted me, and made the tomb Thy bridal bed. But I beside thy feet Will lie, and watch ye from my winding-sheet Thus wide awake, though dead. Yet stay, oh, stay ! Go not so soon ! I know not what I say Hear but my reasons ! I am mad, I fear, My fancy is o'erwrought. Thou art not here ; Pale art thou, 'tis most true But thou art gone Thy work is finished ; I am left alone. " Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast, Which like a serpent thou envenomest As in repayment of the warmth it lent ? 90 JULIAN AND MADDALO. Didst thou not seek me for thine own content ? Did not thy love awaken mine ? I thought That thou wert she who said, 'You kiss me not Ever ; I fear you do not love me now.' In truth I loved even to my overthrow Her who would fain forget these words but they Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away. "You say that I am proud ; that, when I speak, My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break The spirit it expresses. Never one Humbled himself before as I have done. Even the instinctive worm on which we tread Turns, though it wound not then with prostrate head Sinks in the dust, and writhes like me and dies : No, wears a living death of agonies. As the slow shadows of the pointed grass Mark the eternal periods, its pangs pass, Slow, ever-moving, making moments be As mine seem each an immortality ! " That you had never seen me ! never heard My voice ! and more than all had ne'er endured The deep pollution of my loathed embiace ! That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face ! That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne'er Our hearts had for a moment mingled there, To disunite in horror ! These were not, With thee, like some suppressed and hideous thought, Which flits athwart our musings, but can find No rest within a pure and gentle mind : Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word, JULIAN AND MADDALO. 91 And scaredst my memory o'er them for I heard, And can forget not they were ministered One after one, those curses. Mix them up Like self-destroying poisons, in one cup ; And they will make one blessing which thou ne'er Didst imprecate, for on me death ! "It were A cruel punishment for one most cruel, If such can love, to make that love the fuel Of the mind's hell hate, scorn, remorse, despair. But me, whose heart a stranger's tear might wear As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone ; Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan For woes which others hear not, and could see The absent with a glass of fantasy, And near the poor and trampled sit and weep, Following the captive to his dungeon deep ; Me, who am as a nerve o'er which do creep The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth, And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth When all beside was cold that thou on me Shouldst rain the plagues of blistering agony ! Such curses are, from lips once eloquent With love's too partial praise. Let none relent Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name, Henceforth, if an example of the same They seek for thou on me lookedst so and so, And didst speak thus and thus ! I live to show How much men bear, and die not. "Thou wilt tell, With the grimace of hate, how horrible It was to meet my love when thine grew less ; Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address Such features to love's work. This taunt, though true, 92 JULIAN AND MADDALO. - rt (For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship) Shall not be thy defence : for, since thy lip Met mine first, years long past since thine eye kindled With soft fire under mine I have not dwindled, Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught, But as love changes what it loveth not After long years and many trials. " How vain Are words. I thought never to speak again, N ot even in secret, not to my own heart But from my lips the unwilling accents start, And from my pen the words flow as I write, Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears. My sight Is dim to see that charactered in vain On this unfeeling leaf which burns the brain And eats into it, blotting all things fair And wise and good which time had written there. Those who inflict must suffer ; for they see The work of their own hearts, and that must be Our chastisement or recompense. child ! I would that thine were like to be more mild, For both our wretched sakes for thine the most, Who feel'st already all that thou hast lost, Without the power to wish it thine again. And, as slow years pass, a funereal train, Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend No thought on my dead memory ? "Alas, love! Fear me not : against thee I'd not move A finger in despite. Do I not live That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve ? JULIAN AND MADDALO. 93 I give tliee tears for scorn, and love for hate ; And, that thy lot may be less desolate Than his on whom thus tramplest, I refrain From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain. Then when thou speakest of me never say ' He could forgive not.' Here I cast away All human passions, all revenge, all pride ; I think, speak, act, no ill ; I do not hide Under these words, like embers, every spark Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark The grave is yawning : as its roof shall cover My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, So let oblivion hide this grief. The air Closes upon my accents, as despair Upon my heart let death upon despair ! " He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile ; Then rising, with a melancholy smile, Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept A heavy sleep ; and in his dreams he wept, And muttered some familiar name, and we Wept without shame in his society. I think I never was impressed so much : The man who were not must have lacked a touch Of human nature. Then we lingered not, Although our argument was quite forgot ; But, calling the attendants, went to dine At Maddalo's. Yet neither cheer nor wine Could give us spirits ; for we talked of him, And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim. And we agreed it was some dreadful ill Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable, By a dear friend ; some deadly change in love 94 JULIAN AND MADDALO. Of one vowed deeply (which he dreamed not of), For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot Of falsehood in his mind, which flourished not But in the light of all-beholding truth ; And, having stamped this canker on his youth, She had abandoned him. And how much more Might be his woe we guessed not. He had store Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess From his nice habits and his gentleness : These now were lost it were a grief indeed If he had changed one unsustaining reed For all that such a man might else adorn. The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn ; For the wild language of his grief was high Such as in measure were called poetry. And I remember one remark which then Maddalo made : he said " Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong : They learn in suffering what they teach in song." If I had been an unconnected man, I, from this moment, should have formed some plan Never to leave sweet Venice. For to me It was delight to ride by the lone sea : And then the town is silent one may write Or read in gondolas, by day or night, Having the little brazen lamp alight, Unseen, uninterrupted. Books are there, Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair Which were twin-born with poetry, and all We see in towns, with little to recall Regret for the green country. I might sit In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit And subtle talk would cheer the winter night, JULIAN AND MADDALO. 95 And make me know myself: and the fire-light Would flash upon our laces, till the day Might dawn, and make me wonder at my stay. But I had friends in London too. The chief Attraction here was that I sought relief From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought Within me. . . . 'Twas perhaps an idle thought, But I imagined that if day by day I watched him, and seldom went away, And studied all the beatings of his heart With zeal (as men study some stubborn art For their own good), and could by patience find An entrance to the caverns of his mind I might reclaim him from his dark estate. In friendship I had been most fortunate ; Yet never saw I one whom I would call More willingly my friend. And this was all Accomplished not. Such dreams of baseless good Oft come and go, in crowds or solitude, And leave no trace : but what I now designed Made, for long years, impression on my mind. The following morning, urged by my affairs, I left bright Venice. After many years And many changes, I returned. The name Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same. But Maddalo was travelling, far away, Among the mountains of Armenia : His dog was dead : his child had now become A woman, such as it has been my doom To meet with few ; a wonder of this earth, Where there is little of transcendent worth Like one of Shakespeare's women. Kindly she, And with a manner beyond courtesy, 96 JULIAN AND MADDALO. Received her father's friend ; and, when I asked Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked, And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale That the poor sufferer's health began to fail Two years from my departure ; but that then The lady who had left him came again. " Her mien had been imperious, but she now Looked meek ; perhaps remorse had brought her low. Her coming made him better ; and they stayed Together at my father's (for I played, As I remember, with the lady's shawl ; I might be six years old). But, after all, She left him." " Why, her heart must have been tough ! How did it end ? " " And was not this enough ? They met, they parted." "Child, is there no more ? " "Something within that interval which bore The stamp of why they parted, how they met. Yet, if thine aged eyes disdain to wet Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears, Ask me no more ; but let the silent years Be closed and cered over their memory As yon mute marble where their corpses lie." I urged and questioned still. She told me how All happened But the cold world shall not know. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. MARIANNE'S DREAM. PALE Dream came to a Lady fair, . And said, "A boon, a boon, I pray ! I know the secrets of the air ; And things are lost in the glare of day, Which I can make the sleeping see If they will put their trust in me. "And thou shalt know of things unknown, If thou wilt let me rest between The veiny lids whose fringe is thrown Over thine eyes so dark and sheen. " And half in hope and half in fright The Lady closed her eyes so bright. At first all deadly shapes were driven Tumultuously across her sleep, And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven All ghastly- visaged clouds did sweep ; And the Lady ever looked to spy If the golden sun shone forth on high. 98 MARIANNE'S DREAM. 4. And, as towards the east she turned, She saw, aloft in the morning air Which now with hues of sunrise burned, A great black anchor rising there ; And wherever the Lady turned her eyes It hung before her in the skies. 5. The sky was blue as the summer sea ; The depths were cloudless overhead ; The air was calm as it could be ; There was no sight or sound of dread. But that black anchor floating still Over the piny eastern hill. 6. The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear To see that anchor ever hanging, And veiled her eyes. She then did hear The sound as of a dim low clanging ; And looked abroad if she might know Was it aught else, or but the flow Of the blood in her own veins to and fro. 7. There was a mist in the sunless air, Which shook as it were with an earthquake shock ; But the very weeds that blossomed there Were moveless, and each mighty rock Stood on its basis steadfastly ; The anchor was seen no more on high. 8. But piled around, with summits hid In lines of cloud at intervals, Stood many a mountain pyramid, Among whose everlasting walls MARIANNES DREAM. 99 Two mighty cities shone, and ever Through the red mist their domes did quiver. 9. On two dread mountains, from whose crest Might seem the eagle for her brood Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest, Those tower-encircled cities stood. A vision strange such towers to see, Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously, Where human art could never be. 10. And columns framed of marble white, And giant fanes, dome over dome Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright With workmanship which could not come From touch of mortal instrument, Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent From their own shapes magnificent. 11. But still the Lady heard that clang Filling the wide air far away, And still the mist whose light did hang Among the mountains shook alway ; So that the Lady's heart beat fast, As half in joy and half aghast On those high domes her look she cast. 12. Sudden from out that city sprung A light that made the earth grow red ; Two flames that each with quivering tongue Licked its high domes, and overhead Among those mighty towers and fanes Dropped fire, as a volcano rains It sulphurous ruin on the plains. TOO MARIANNE'S DREAM. 13. And hark ! a rush, as if the deep Had burst its bonds ! She looked behind, And saw over the western steep A raging flood descend, and wind Through that wide vale. She felt no fear, But said within herself, " 'Tis clear These towers are Nature's own, and she To save them has sent forth the sea," 14. And now those raging billows came Where that fair Lady sate ; and she Was borne towards the showering flame By the wild waves heaped tumultuously, And, on a little plank, the flow Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro. 15. The flames were fiercely vomited From every tower and every dome, And dreary light did wildly shed O'er that vast flood's suspended foam Beneath the smoke which hung its night On the stained cope of heaven's light. 16. The plank whereon that Lady sate [about, Was driven through the chasms, about and Between the peaks so desolate Of the drowning mountains, in and out, As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails While the flood was filling those hollow vales. 17. At last her plank an eddy crossed, And bore her to the city's wall, Which now the flood had reached almost ; It might the stoutest heart appal MARIANNE'% D&EAM. - To hear the fire roar and hiss Through the domes of those mighty palaces. 18. The eddy whirled her round and round Before a gorgeous gate which stood Piercing the cloud of smoke which bound Its aery arch with light like blood. . She looked on that gate of marble clear With wonder that extinguished fear 19. For it was filled with sculptures rarest Of forms most beautiful and strange, Like nothing human, but the fairest, Of winged shapes whose legions range Throughout the sleep of those that are, Like this same Lady, good and fair. 20. And, as she looked, still lovelier grew Those marble forms ; the sculptor sure Was a strong spirit, and the hue Of his own mind did there endure After the touch whose power had braided Such grace was in some sad change faded. 21. She looked. The flames were dim, the flood Grew tranquil as a woodland river Winding through hills in solitude ; Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver, And their fair limbs to float in motion Like weeds unfolding in the ocean. 22. And their lips moved one seemed to speak- When suddenly the mountain cracked, tc? -DEATH. And though the chasm the flood did break With an earth-uplifting cataract. The statues gave a joyous scream And on its wings the pale thin Dream Lifted the Lady from the stream. 23. The dizzy flight of that phantom pale Waked the fair Lady from her sleep ; And she arose, while from the veil Of her dark eyes the Dream did creep, And she walked about as one who knew That sleep has sights as clear and true As any waking eyes can view. Marlow. DEATH. THEY die the dead return not. Misery Sits near an open grave, and calls them over, A youth with hoary hair and haggard eye. They are the names of kindred, friend, and lover, Which he so feebly calls. They all are gone, Fond wretch, all dead ! Those vacant names alone, This most familiar scene, my pain, These tombs alone remain. Misery, my sweetest friend, oh, weep no more 1 Thou wilt not be consoled ? I wonder not : For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING. 103 Was even as bright and calm but transitory And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary. This most familiar scene, my pain, These tombs alone remain. TO CONSTANTLY, SINGING. 1. ^T^HUS to be lost and thus to sink and die A Perchance were death indeed ! Constantia, turn ! In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie, Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn Between thy lips, are laid to sleep ; Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet, And from thy touch like fire doth leap. Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet ; Alas, that the torn heart can bleed but not forget ! 2. A breathless awe, like the swift change Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers, Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange, Thou breathest now in fast-ascending numbers. The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven By the enchantment of thy strain, And on my shoulders wings are woven, To follow its sublime career Beyond the mighty moons that wane Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere, Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear. 104 SONNET. OZYMANDIAS. 3. Her voice is hovering o'er my soul it lingers O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings : The blood and life within those snowy fingers Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. My brain is wild, my breath comes quick The blood is listening in my frame, And thronging shadows, fast and thick, Fall on my overflowing eyes ; My heart is quivering like a flame ; As morning dew that in the sunbeam dies, I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies. 4. I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee, Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song Flows on, and fills all things with melody. Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, On which, like one in trance upborne, Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep, Rejoicing like a cloud of morn : Now 'tis the breath of summer night, Which, when the starry waters sleep, Round western isles with incense-blossoms bright Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight. SONNET.- OZYMANDIAS. I MET a traveller from an antique land Who said : " Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 105 Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked tnem and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear : * My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair ! ' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away." TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 1. 'T^HY country's curse is on thee, darkest crest JL Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm "Which rends our Mother's bosom priestly pest ! Masked resurrection of a buried form ! 2. Thy country's curse is on thee ! Justice sold, Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown, And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold, Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne. 3. And, whilst that slow sure Angel which aye stands Watching the beck of Mutability Delays to execute her high commands, And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee ; 4. Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul, And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb, And both on thy grey head a leaden cowl To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom ! io6 TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 5. I curse thee by a parent's outiaged love ; By hopes long cherished and too lately lost ; By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove ; By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed ; 6. By those infantine smiles of happy light Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth, Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night Hiding the promise of a lovely birth ; 7. By those unpractised accents of young speech, Which he who is a father thought to frame To gentlest lore such as the wisest teach, [shame ! Thou strike the lyre of mind ! Oh grief and 8. By all the happy see in children's growth, That undeveloped flower of budding years, Sweetness and sadness interwoven both, Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears : 9. By all the days, under a hireling's care, Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness Oh wretched ye if ever any were, Sadder than orphans yet not fatherless 10. By the false cant which on their innocent lips Must hang like poison on an opening bloom ; By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb ; 11. By thy most impious hell, and all its terrors ; By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt Of thine impostures, which must be their errors, That sand on which thy crumbling power is built ; TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 107 12. By thy complicity with lust and hate, Thy thirst for tears, thy hunger after gold, The ready frauds which ever on thee wait, The servile arts in which thou hast grown old ; . By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile, By all the acts and snares of thy black den, And for thou canst outweep the crocodile By thy false tears, those millstones braining men ; . By all the hate which checks a father's love ; By all the scorn which kills a father's care ; By those most impious hands that dared remove Nature's high bounds ; by thee ; and by despair 15. Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, And cry, "My children are no longer mine ; The blood within those veins may be mine own. But, tyrant, their polluted souls are thine ! " 16. I curse thee, though I hate thee not. slave ! If thou couldst quench the earth-consuming hell Of which thou art a demon, on thy grave This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well ! TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 1. '"T^HE billows on the beach are leaping around it ; JL The bark is weak and frail ; The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it Darkly strew the gale. io8 TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. Come with me, thou delightful child, Come with me ! Though the wave is wild, And the winds are loose, we must not stay, Or the slaves of law may rend thee away. 2. They have taken thy brother and sister dear, They have made them unfit for thee ; They have withered the smile and dried the tear Which should have been sacred to me. To a blighting faith and a cause of crime They have bound them slaves in youthly time ; And they will curse my name and thee Because we fearless are and free. 3 . Come thou, beloved as thou art ! Another sleepeth still Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart, Which thou with joy wilt fill, With fairest smiles of wonder thrown On that which is indeed our own, And which in distant lands will be The dearest playmate unto thee. 4. Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever, Or the priests of the evil faith ; They stand on the brink of that raging river Whose waves they have tainted with death. It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells, Around them it foams, and rages, and swells ; And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, Like wrecks, on the surge of eternity, 5. Rest, rest, shriek not, thou gentle child ! The rocking of the boat thou fearest, LINES. 109 And the cold spray and the clamour wild 1 There ! sit between us two, thou dearest Me and thy mother. Well we know The storm at which thou tremblest so, With all its dark and hungry graves, Less cruel than the savage slaves Who hunt thee o'er these sheltering waves. This hour will in thy memory Be a dream of days forgotten ; We soon shall dwell by the azure sea Of serene and golden Italy, Or Greece the mother of the free. And I will teach thine infant tongue To call upon their heroes old In their own language, and will mould Thy growing spirit in the flame Of Grecian lore ; that by such name A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim. LINES. THAT time is dead for ever, child, Drowned, frozen, dead for ever ! We look on the past ; And stare aghast At the spectres, wailing, pale, and ghast, Of hopes which thou and I beguiled To death on life's dark river. 1 10 ON FANNY GOD WIN. The stream we gazed on then rolled by Its waves are unreturning ; But we yet stand In a lone land, Like tombs to mark the memory Of hopes and fears which fade and fly In the light of life's dim morning. 5th November 1817. ON FANNY GODWIN. HER voice did quiver as we parted ; Yet knew I not that heart was broken From which it came, and I departed Heeding not the words then spoken. Misery Misery, This world is all too wide for thee ! LINES TO A CRITIC. ONEY from silkworms who can gather Or silk from the yellow bee ? The grass may grow in winter weather As soon as hate in me. 2. Hate men who cant, and men who pray, And men who rail, like thee ; An equal passion to repay They are not coy like me. LINES TO A CRITIC. in 3. Or seek some slave of power and gold To be thy dear heart's mate ; Thy love will move that bigot cold Sooner than me thy hate. 4. A passion like the one I prove Cannot divided be ; I hate thy want of truth and love How should I then hate thee ? December 1817. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennino. It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar ; Or like the sea on a northern shore, Heard in its raging ebb and flow By the captives pent in the cave below, The Apennine in the light of day Is a mighty mountain dim and grey "Which between the earth and sky doth lay : But, when night comes, a chaos dread On the dim starlight then is spread, And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. tth May 1818. ON A DEAD VIOLET. 113 ON A DEAD VIOLET. To Miss . THE odour from the flower is gone Which like thy kisses breathed on me ; The colour from the flower is flown Which glowed of thee and only thee ! A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, It lies on my abandoned breast ; And mocks the heart, which yet is warm With cold and silent rest. I weep my tears revive it not ; I sigh it breathes no more on me : Its mute and uncomplaining lot Is such as mine should be. THE PAST. WILT thou forget the happy hours Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, Heaping over their corpses cold Blossoms and leaves instead of mould ? Blossoms which were the joys that fell, And leaves, the hopes that yet remain. Forget the dead, the past ? Oh yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it ! 114 SONNET. Memories that make the heart a tomb, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, And with ghastly whispers tell That joy, once lost, is pain. SONNET. LIFT not the painted veil which those who live Call Life ; though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread. Behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin Destinies, who ever weave Their shadows o'er the chasm sightless and drear. I knew one who had lifted it he sought, For his lost heart was tender, things to love, But found them not, alas ! nor was there aught The world contains in which he could approve. Through the unheeding many he did move, A splendour among shadows, a bright blot Upon this gloomy scene, a spirit that strove For truth, and, like the Preacher, found it not, LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. MANY a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery ; Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on THE E UGANEAN HILLS. 1 1 5 Day and night, and night and day. Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel's track ; Whilst, above, the sunless sky, Big with clouds, hangs heavily And, behind, the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, Riving sail and cord and plank, Till the ship has almost drank Death from the o'er-brimming deep, And sinks down, down, like that sleep When the dreamer seems to be Weltering through eternity, And the dim low line before Of a dark and distant shore Still recedes, as ever still Longing with divided will, But no power to seek or shun He is ever drifted on O'er the unreposing wave To the haven of the grave. What if there no friends will greet ? What if there no heart will meet His with love's impatient beat ? Wander wheresoe'er he may, Can he dream before that day To find refuge from distress In friendship's smile, in love's caress ? Then 'twill wreak him little woe Whether such there be or no. Senseless is the breast, and cold, Which relenting love would fold ; Bloodless are the veins, and chill, 1 16 THE EUGANEAN HILLS. Which the pulse of pain did fill ; Every little living nerve That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow Is like a sapless leaflet now Frozen upon December's bough. On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap, One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, Where a few grey rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land. Nor is heard one voice of wail But the sea-mews' as they sail O'er the billows of the gale, Or the whirlwind up and down Howling like a slaughtered town, Where a king in glory rides Through the pomp of fratricides. Those unburied bones'afound There is many a mournful sound ; There is no lament for him, Like a sunless vapour, dim, Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves nor murmurs not. Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony To such a one this morn was led My bark, by soft winds piloted. 'Mid the mountains Euganean, THE E UGANEAN HILLS. 1 1 7 I stood listening to the paean With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical. Gathering round with wings all hoar, Through the dewy mist they soar Like grey shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts ; and then, as clouds of even Flecked with fire and azure lie In the unfathomable sky, So their plumes of purple grain. Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent multitudes On the morning's fitful gale Through the broken mist they sail, And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow, down the dark steep streaming Till all is bright, and clear, and still Round the solitary hill. Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair. Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half- reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline ; Ii8 THE EUGANEAN HILLS. And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies ; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old, Sun -girt City ! thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen. Now is come a darker day ; And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier. A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne, among the waves Wilt thou be when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state ; Save where many a palace-gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way Wandering at the close of day Will spread his sail and seize his oar THE E UGANEAN HILLS. 1 1 9 Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death O'er the waters of his path. Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aerial gold, As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were Sepulchres where human forms, Like pollution-nourished worms, To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered and now mouldering. But, if Freedom should awake In her omnipotence, and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime. If not, perish thou and they Clouds which stain truth's rising day, By her sun consumed away ! Earth can spare ye ; while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours, From your dust new nations spring 'With more kindly blossoming. Perish ! Let there only be, Floating o'er thy hearthless sea 120 THE EUGANEAN HILLS. As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of time Which scarce hides thy visage wan : That a tempest-cleaving swan Of the songs of Albion, Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee ; and ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung From his lips like music flung O'er a mighty thunder-fit, Chastening terror. What though yet Poesy's unfailing river, Which through Albion winds for ever, Lashing with melodious wave Many a sacred poet's grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled ? What though thou with all thy dead Scarce canst for this fame repay Aught thine own oh ! rather say, Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sunlike soul ? As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander's wasting springs ; As divinest Shakespeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light, Like Omniscient Power, which he Imaged 'mid mortality ; As the love from Petrarch's urn Yet amid yon hills doth burn, A quenchless lamp by which the heart THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 121 Sees things unearthly ; so thou art, Mighty spirit ! so shall be The city that did refuge thee ! Lo, the sun floats up the sky, Like thought-winged Liberty, Till the universal light Seems to level plain and height. From the sea a mist has spread, And the beams of morn lie dead On the towers of Venice now, Like its glory long ago. By the skirts of that grey cloud Many-domed Eidua proud Stands, a peopled solitude 'Mid the harvest-shining plain ; Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe, And the milk-white oxen slow With the purple vintage strain Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage will. And the sickle to the sword Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region's foison, Sheaves of whom are ripeTo dome To destruction's harvest-home. Men must reap the things they sow ; Force from force must ever flow, Or worse : but 'tis a bitter woe That love or reason cannot change The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. 122 THE EUGANEAN HILLS. Padua ! (thou within whose walls Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin, Till Death cried, " I win, I win ! " And Sin cursed to lose the wager ; But Death promised, to assuage her, That he would petition for Her to be made Vice-Emperor, "When the destined years were o'er, Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian : Sin smiled so as Sin only can ; And, since that time, ay long before Both have ruled from shore to shore, That incestuous pair who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As repentance follows crime, And as changes follow time) In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, now no more is burning. Like a meteor whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray. Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, "When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth ; Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might - But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by Tyranny. THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 123 As the Norway woodman quells, In the depth of piny dells, One light flame among the brakes, While the boundless forest shakes, And its mighty trunks are torn By the fire thus lowly born The spark beneath his feet is dead ; He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky "With myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear so thou, Tyranny ! beholdest now Light around thee, and thou nearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest. Grovel on the earth ! ay, hide In the dust thy purple pride ! Noon descends around me now. 'Tis the noon of autumn's glow ; When a soft and purple mist, Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star Mingling light and fragrance, far From the curved horizon's bound To the point of heaven's profound Fills the overflowing sky. And the plains that silent lie Underneath ; the leaves unsodden Where the infant Frost has trodden With his morning-winged feet Whose bright print is gleaming yet ; And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellised lines The rough dark-skirted wilderness ; 124 THE EUGANEAN HILLS. The dun and bladed grass no less, Pointing from this hoary tower In the windless air ; the flower Glimmering at my feet ; the line Of the olive-sandalled Apennine In the south dimly islanded ; And the Alps, whose snows are spread High between the clouds and sun ; And of living things each one ; And my spirit, which so long Darkened this swift stream of song Interpenetrated lie By the glory of the sky : Be it love, light, harmony, Odour, or the soul of all Which from heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe. Noon descends ; and after noon Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon, And that one star which to her Almost seems to minister Half the crimson light she brings From the sunset's radiant springs. And the soft dreams of the morn (Which like winged winds had borne, To that silent isle which lies 'Mid remembered agonies, The frail bark of this lone being) Pass, to other sufferers fleeing ; And its ancient pilot, Pain, Sits beside the helm again. THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 125 Other flowering isles must be In the sea of Life and Agony : Other spirits float and flee O'er that gulf. Even now perhaps On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folded wings, they waiting sit For my bark, to pilot it To some calm and blooming cove ; Where for me and those I love May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain, and guilt, In a dell 'mid lawny hills Which the wild sea-murmur fills, And soft sunshine, and the sound Of old forests echoing round, And the light and smell divine Of all flowers that breathe and shine. We may live so happy there That the Spirits of the Air, Envying us, may even entice To our healing paradise The polluting multitude. But their rage would be subdued By that clime divine and calm, And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves Under which the bright sea heaves ; While each breathless interval In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies With its own deep melodies, And the love which heals all strife, Circling, like the breath of life, All things in that sweet abode 126 STANZAS. With its own mild brotherhood. They, not it, would change ; and sooii Every sprite beneath the inoon Would repent its envy vain, And the earth grow young again. October 1818. STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES. 1. *TT*HE sun is warm, the sky is clear A The waves are dancing fast and bright ; Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent might ; The breath of the moist earth is light Around its unexpanded buds ; Like many a voice of one delight, The winds', the birds', the ocean floods', The city's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's. 2. I see the deep's untrampled floor With green and purple sea-weed strown ; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved, in star-showers thrown. I sit upon the sands alone. The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion ! STANZAS. 127 3. Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around ; Nor that content, surpassing wealth, The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned ; Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ; To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 4. Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are ; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 5. Some might lament that I were cold, As I when this sweet day is gone, "Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, Insults with this untimely moan. They might lament for I am one Whom men love not, and yet regret ; Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. December 1818. 128 MISERY. MISERY. * OME, be happy sit near me, Shadow- vested Misery : Coy, unwilling, silent bride, Mourning in thy robe of pride, Desolation deified ! 2. Come, be happy sit near me : Sad as I may seem to thee, I am happier far than thou, Lady whose imperial brow Is endiademed with woe. 3. Misery ! we have known each other, Like a sister and a brother Living in the same lone home, Many years : we must live some Hours or ages yet to come. 4. Tis an evil lot, and yet Let us make the best of it ; If love can live when pleasure dies, We two will love, till in our eyes This heart's hell seem paradise. 5. Come, be happy lie thee down On the fresh grass newly mown, Where the grasshopper doth sing Merrily one joyous thing In a world of sorrowing. MISERY. 129 6. There our tent shall be the willow, And mine arm shall be thy pillow : Sounds and odours, sorrowful Because they once were sweet, shall lull Us to slumber deep and dull. 7. Ha ! thy frozen pulses flutter With a love thou dar'st not utter. Thou art murmuring thou art weeping- Is thine icy bosom leaping, While my burning heart lies sleeping ? 8. Kiss me oh ! thy lips are cold ! Round my neck thine arms enfold- They are soft, but chill and dead ; And thy tears upon my head Burn like points of frozen lead. 9. Hasten to the bridal bed Underneath the grave 'tis spread : In darkness may our love be hid, Oblivion be our coverlid May we rest, and none forbid, 10. Clasp me, till our hearts be grown Like two lovers into one ; Till this dreadful transport may Like a vapour fade away In the sleep that lasts alway, 11. We may dream in that long sleep That we are not those who weep j i 3 o MISERY. Even as Pleasure dreams of thee, ' Life-deserting Misery, Thou inayst dream of her with me. 12. Let us laugh and make our mirth At the shadows of the earth ; As dogs bay the moonlight clouds Which, like spectres wrapped in shrouds, Pass o'er night in multitudes. 13. All the wide world, beside us, Show like multitudinous Puppets passing from a scene ; But what mockery can they mean Where I am where thou hast been ? THE WITCH OF ATLAS. TO MARY. (On her objecting to the following poem, upon the score of its containing no human interest.) 1. T T OW, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten ll (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review That you condemn these verses I have written, Because they tell no story, false or true ? What though no mice are caught by a young kitten ? May it not leap and play as grown cats do, Till its claws come ? Prithee, for this one time, Content thee with a visionary rhyme. 2. What hand would crush the silken-winged fly, The youngest of inconstant April's minions, Because it cannot climb the purest sky, Where the swan sings amid the sun's dominions ? Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions The lucent eyes and the eternal smile, Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile. 3. To thy fair feet a winged Yision came, Whose date should have been longer than a day, 1 32 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame, And in thy sight its fading plumes display ; The watery bow burned in the evening flame ; But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way And that is dead. Oh let me not believe That anything of mine is fit to live ! Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years Considering and retouching Peter Bell ; Watering his laurels with the killing tears Of slow dull care, so that their roots to hell Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres Of heaven with dewy leaves and flowers : this well May be, for heaven and earth conspire to foil The over-busy gardener's blundering toil. My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise Clothes for our grandsons but she matches Peter, Though he took nineteen years, and she three days, In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre She wears : he, proud as dandy with his stays, Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress Like King Lear's looped and windowed raggedness. If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow Scorched by hell's hyperequatorial climate Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow ; A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at ; In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello. If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primato Can shrive you of that sin if sin there be In love when it becomes idolatry. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 133 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. EFORE those cruel twins whom at one birth Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth All those bright natures which adorned its prime, And left us nothing to believe in, worth The pains of putting into learned rhyme, A Lady Witch there lived on Atlas mountain Within a cavern by a secret fountain. 2. Her mother was one of the Atlantides. The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden In the warm shadow of her loveliness ; He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden The chamber of grey rock in which she lay. She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away. 3. 'Tis said she was first changed into a vapour ; And then into a cloud such clouds as flit (Like splendour-winged moths about a taper) Round the red west when the Sun dies in it ; And then into a meteor, such as caper On hill-tops when the Moon is in a fit ; Then into one of those mysterious stars [Mars. Which hide themselves between the Earth and 4. Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden With that bright sign the billows to indent The sea-deserted sand (like children chidden, 134 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. At her command they ever came and went) Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden Took shape and motion. With the living form Of this embodied Power the cave grew warm. 5. A lovely Lady garmented in light From her own beauty : deep her eyes as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a tempest's cloven roof ; her hair Dark ; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar : And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new. 6. And first the spotted camelopard came ; And then the wise and fearless elephant ; Tli en the sly serpent, in the golden flame Of his own volumes intervolved. All gaunt And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame They drank before her at her sacred fount ; And every beast of beating heart grew bold, Such gentleness and power even to behold. 7. The brinded lioness led forth her young, That she might teach them how they should forego Their inborn thirst of death ; the pard unstrung His sinews at her feet, and sought to know, With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue, How he might be as gentle as the doe. The magic circle of her voice and eyes All savage natures did imparadise. 8. And old Silenus, shaking a green stick Of lilies, and the Wood-gods in a crew, THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 135 Came blithe as in the olive copses thick Cicadse are, drunk with the noonday dew ; And Dryope and Faunus followed quick, Teasing the god to sing them something new ; Till in this cave they found the Lady lone, Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone. 9. And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there, And, though none saw him through the adamant Of the deep mountains, througli the trackless air, And through those living spirits, like a want He passed out of his everlasting lair [pant, Where the quick heart of the great world doth And felt that wondrous Lady all alone And she felt him upon her emerald throne. 10. And every Nymph of stream and spreading tree, And every Shepherdess of Ocean's flocks Who drives her white waves over the green sea, And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks, And quaint Priapus with his company [rocks All came, much wondering how the enwombed Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth : Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth. 11. The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came, And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant Their spirits shook within them, as a flame Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt : Pygmies and Polyphemes, by many a name, Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt Wet clefts and lumps neither alive nor dead Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed. 136 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 12. For she was beautiful. Her beauty made The bright world dim, and everything beside Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade. No thought of living spirit could abide (Which to her looks had ever been betrayed) On any object in the world so wide, On any hope within the circling skies But on her form, and in her inmost eyes. 13. Which when the Lady knew, she took her spindle, And twined three threads of fleecy mist and three Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle The clouds, and waves, and mountains with, and she As many starbeams, ere their lamps could dwindle In the belated moon, wound skilfully ; And with these threads a subtle veil she wove A shadow for the splendour of her love. 14. The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling Were stored with magic treasures sounds of air Which had the power all spirits of compelling, Folded in cells of crystal silence there ; Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling Will never die yet, ere we are aware, The feeling and the sound are fled and gone, And the regret they leave remains alone. 15. And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint, Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis ; Some eager to burst forth ; some weak and faint With the soft burthen of intensest bliss It is their work to bear to many a saint Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is, THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 137 Even Love's ; and others, white, green, grey, and black, And of all shapes and each was at her beck. 16. And odours in a kind of aviary Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, Clipped in a floating net a love-sick Fairy Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept. As bats at the wired window of a dairy, They beat their vans ; and each was an adept When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds. 17. And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, And change eternal death into a night Of glorious dreams or, if eyes needs must weep, Could make their tears all wonder and delight She in her crystal phials did closely keep : If men could drink of those clear phials, 'tis said The living were not envied of the dead. 18. Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, The works of some Saturnian Archimage, Which taught the expiations at whose price Men from the gods might win that happy age Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice And which might quench the earth-consuming rage Of gold and blood, till men should live and move Harmonious as the sacred stars above 138 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 19. And how all things that seem untameable, Not to be checked and not to be confined, Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill ; Time, earth, and fire, the ocean, and the wind, And all their shapes, and man's imperial will And other scrolls whose writings did unbind The inmost lore of love let the profane Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. 20. And wondrous works of substances unknown, To which the enchantment of her Father's power Had changed those rugged blocks of savage stone, Were heaped in the recesses of her bower ; Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone In their own golden beams each like a flower Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light Under a cypress in a starless night. 21. At first she lived alone in this wild home, And her own thoughts were each a minister, Clothing themselves or with the ocean foam, Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire, To work whatever purposes might come Into her mind : such power her mighty Sire Had girt them with, whether to fly or run Through all the regions which he shines upon. 22. The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades, Oreads and Naiads with long weedy locks, Offered to do her bidding through the seas, Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks, And far beneath the matted roots of trees, And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks ; THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 139 So they might live for ever in the light Of her sweet presence each a satellite. 23. " This may not be," the Wizard Maid replied. " The fountains where the Naiades bedew Their shining hair at length are drained and dried : The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide ; The boundless ocean like a drop of dew Will be consumed ; the stubborn centre must Be scattered like a cloud of summer dust. 24. " And ye, with them, will perish one by one. If I must sigh to think that this shall be, If I must weep when the surviving Sun Shall smile on your decay oh, ask not me To love you till your little race is run ; I cannot die as ye must Over me [dwell Your leaves shall glance the streams in which ye Shall be my paths henceforth ; and so farewell ! " 25. She spoke and wept. The dark and azure well Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears, And every little circlet where they fell Flung to the cavern roof inconstant spheres And intertangled lines of light. A knell Of sobbing voices came upon her ears From those departing forms, o'er the serene Of the white streams and of the forest green. 26 All day the Wizard Lady sat aloof ; Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof; Or broidering the pictured poesy 140 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. Of some high tale upon her growing woof, [dye "Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could In hues outshining heaven and ever she Added some grace to the wrought poesy 27. While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon. Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is ; Each flame of it is as a precious stone Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this Belongs to each and all who gaze thereon. The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand. 28. This Lady never slept, but lay in trance All night within the fountain as in sleep. Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance : Through the green splendour of the water deep She saw the constellations reel and dance Like fire -flies and withal did ever keep The tenor of her contemplations calm, With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm. 29. And, when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended From the white pinnacles of that cold hill, She passed at dewfall to a space extended, Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended, There yawned an inextinguishable well Of crimson fire, full even to the brim, And overflowing all the margin trim 30. Within the which she lay when the fierce war Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor, THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 141 In many a mimic moon and bearded star, [flicker O'er woods and lawns. The serpent heard it In sleep, and, dreaming still, he crept afar. And, when the windless snow descended thicker Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came Melt on the surface of the level flame. She had a hoat which some say Vulcan wrought For Venus, as the chariot of her star ; But it was found too feeble to be fraught "With all the ardours in that sphere which are, And so she sold it, and Apollo bought And gave it to this daughter : from a car, Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat Which ever upon mortal stream did float. And others say that, when but three hours old, The firstborn Love out of his cradle leapt, And clove dun chaos with his wings of gold, And, like a horticultural adept, Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould, And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept Watering it all the summer with sweet dew, And with his wings fanning it as it grew. The plant grew strong and green the snowy flower Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began To turn the light and dew by inward power To its own substance : woven tracery ran Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er The solid rind, like a leafs veined fan Of which Love scooped this boat, and with soft motion Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean. 142 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 34. This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit A living spirit within all its frame, Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. Couched on the fountain like a panther tame (One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit), Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame, Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought In joyous expectation lay the boat. 35. Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow Together, tempering the repugnant mass With liquid love all things together grow Through which the harmony of love can pass ; And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow A living image which did far surpass In beauty that bright shape of vital stone Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion. 36. A sexless thing it was, and in its growth It seemed to have developed no defect Of either sex, yet all the grace of both. In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked ; The bosom lightly swelled with its full youth ; The countenance was such as might select Some artist that his skill should never die, Imaging forth such perfect purity. 37. From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere, Tipped with the speed of liquid lightnings, Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere. She led her creature to the boiling springs Where the light boat was moored, and said "Sit here," THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 143 And pointed to the prow, and took her seat Beside the rudder with opposing feet. 3. And down the streams which clove those mountains vast, Around their inland islets, and amid The panther-peopled forests (whose shade cast Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid In melancholy gloom) the pinnace passed ; By many a star-surrounded pyramid Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky, And caverns yawning round unfathomably. 39. The silver noon into that winding dell, With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops, Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell ; A green and glowing light, like that which drops From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell, When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps ; Between the severed mountains lay on high, Over the stream, a narrow rife of sky. 40. And, ever as she went, the Image lay With folded wings and unawakened eyes ; And o'er its gentle countenance did play The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies, Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs Inhaling, which with busy murmur vain They had aroused from that full heart and brain. 41. And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went : 144 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. Now lingering on the pools, in which abode The cairn and darkness of the deep content In which they paused ; now o'er the shallow road Of white and dancing waters, all besprent With sand and polished pebbles mortal boat In such a shallow rapid could not float. 42. And down the earthquaking cataracts, which shiver Their snow-like waters into golden air, Or under chasms unfathomable ever Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear A subterranean portal for the river, It fled. The circling sunbows did upbear Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray, Lighting it far upon its lampless way. 43. And, when the Wizard Lady would ascend The labyrinths of some many- winding vale Which to the inmost mountain upward tend, She called " Hermaphroditus ! " and the pale And heavy hue which slumber could extend Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale A rapid shadow from a slope of grass, Into the darkness of the stream did pass. 44. And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions ; With stars of fire spotting the stream below, And from above into the Sun's dominions Flinging a glory like the golden glow In which Spring clothes her emerald- winged minions. All interwoven with fine feathery snow, And moonlight splendour of intensest rime With which frost paints the pines in winter time. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 145 45. And then it winnowed the elysian air Which ever hung about that Lady bright, With its ethereal vans : and, speeding there, Like a star up the torrent of the night, Or a swift eagle in the morning glare Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight, The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings, Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs. 46. The water flashed like sunlight, by the prow Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to heaven ; The still air seemed as if its waves did flow In tempest down the mountains ; loosely driven, The Lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro ; Beneath, the billows, having vainly striven Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel The swift and steady motion of the keel. 47. Or, when the weary moon was in the wane, Or in the noon of interlunar night, The Lady Witch in visions could not chain Her spirit ; but sailed forth under the light Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain His storm-outspeeding wings the Hermaphrodite ; She to the austral waters took her way. Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana. 48. Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, Which rain could never bend or whirlblast shake, With the antarctic constellations paven, Canopus and his crew, lay the austral lake There she would build herself a windless haven, Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make * K 146 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. The bastions of the storm, when through the sky The spirits of the tempest thundered by 49. A haven beneath whose translucent floor The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably And around which the solid vapours hoar, Based on the level waters, to the sky Lifted their dreadful crags, and, like a shore Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey, And hanging crags, many a cove and bay, 50. And, whilst the outer lake beneath the lash Of the wind's scourge foamed like a wounded thing, And the incessant hail with stony clash Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering Fragment of inky thunder-smoke this haven Was as a gem to copy heaven engraven. 51. On which that Lady played her many pranks, Circling the image of a shooting star (Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are) In her light boat ; and many quips and cranks She played upon the water ; till the car Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, To journey from the misty east began. 52. And then she called out of the hollow turrets Of those high clouds, white, golden, and ver- jnilion, THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 147 The armies of her ministering spirits. In mighty legions million after million They came, each troop emblazoning its merits On meteor flags ; and many a proud pavilion Of the intertexture of the atmosphere They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere. 53. They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen Of woven exhalations, underlaid With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid With crimson silk. Cressets from the serene Hung there, and on the water for her tread A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn, Dyed in the beams of the ascending nioou. 54. And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught Upon those wandering isles of aery dew Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not, She sate, and heard all that had happened new Between the earth and moon since they had brought The last intelligence ; and now she grew Pale as that moon lost in the watery night, And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. 55. These were tame pleasures. She would often climb The steepest ladder of the crudded rack Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, I And like Arion on the dolphin's back Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft-time, Following the serpent lightning's winding track, She ran upon the platforms of the wind, And laughed to hear the fireballs roar behind. 148 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 56. And sometimes to those streams of upper air Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round She would ascend, and win the Spirits there To let her join their chorus. Mortals found That on those days the sky was calm and fair, And mystic snatches of harmonious sound Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed, And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last. 57. But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads Egypt and Ethiopia from the steep Of utmost Axume until he spreads, Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep, His waters on the plain and crested heads Of cities and proud temples gleam amid, And many a vapour-belted pyramid 58. By Mceris and the Mareotid lakes, Strewn with faint blooms like bridal-chambei floors, Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes, Or charioteering ghastly alligators, Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes Of those huge forms ; within the brazen doors Of the Great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast, Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast. 59. And where within the surface of the rivei The shadows of the massy temples lie, And never are erased, but tremble ever Like things which every cloud can doom to din- Through lotus-pa ven canals, and wheresoever The works of man pierced that serenest sky THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 149 With tombs, and towers, and fanes 'twas her To wander in the shadow of the night. [delight 60. With motion like the spirit of that wind Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind, Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet Through fane and palace-court and labyrinth mined With many a dark and subterranean street Under the Nile ; through chambers high and deep She passed, observing mortals in their sleep. 61. A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep, Here lay two sister-twins in infancy ; There a lone youth who in his dreams did weep ; Within, two lovers linked innocently In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem ; and there lay calm Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm. 62. But other troubled forms of sleep she saw, Not to be mirrored in a holy song Distortions foul of supernatural awe, And pale imaginings of visioned wrong, And all the code of Custom's lawless law Written upon the brows of old and young* " This," said the Wizard Maiden, "is the strife Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life." 63* And little did the light disturb her souL We, the weak mariners of that wild lake, Where'er its shores extend or billows roll, Our course unpiloted and starless make ISO THE WITCH OF ATLAS. O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal ; But she iii the calm depths her way could take, Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide Beneath the weltering of the restless tide. 64. And she saw princes couched under the glow Of sunlike gems ; and round each temple-court In dormitories ranged, row after row, She saw the priests asleep all of one sort, For all were educated to be so. The peasants in their huts, and in the port The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. 65. And all the forms in which those spirits lay Were to her sight like the diaphanous Veils in which those sweet ladies oft array Their delicate limbs who would conceal from us Only their scorn of all concealment : they Move in the light of their own beauty thus. But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, And little thought a Witch was looking on them 66. She all those human figures breathing there Beheld as living spirits. To her eyes The naked beauty of the soul lay bare, And often through a rude and worn disguise She saw the inner form most bright and fair : And then she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, Could make that spirit mingle with her own. (57. Alas ! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given For such a charm, when Tithon became grey^ THE WITCH OF A TLAS, 1 5 1 Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina Had half (oh ! why not all ?) the debt forgiven Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay To any witch who would have taught you it ? The Heliad doth not know its value yet. 68. 'Tis said in after times her spirit free Knew what love was, and felt itself alone : But holy Dian could not chaster be Before she stooped to kiss Endymion Than now this Lady. Like a sexless bee, Tasting all blossoms and confined to none, Among those mortal forms the Wizard Maiden Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen. 69. To those she saw most beautiful she gave Strange panacea in a crystal bowl. They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, And lived thenceforward as if some control, Mightier than life, were in them ; and the grave Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul, Was as a green and overarching bower Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. 70. For, on the night that they were buried, she Restored the embalmer's ruining, and shook The light out of the funeral lamps, to be A mimic day within that deathy nook ; And she unwound the woven imagery Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche, And threw it with contempt into a ditch, I 5 2 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 71. And there the body lay, age after age, Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing, And living in its dreams beyond the rage Of death or life ; while they were still arraying In liveries ever new the rapid, blind, And fleeting generations of mankind. 72. And she would write strange dreams upon the brain Of those who were less beautiful, and make All harsh and crooked purposes more vain Than in the desert is the serpent's wake Which the sand covers. All his evil gain The miser, in such dreams, would rise and shake Into a beggar's lap ; the lying scribe Would his own lies betray without a bribe. 73. The priests would write an explanation full, Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, How the god Apis really was a bull, And nothing more ; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull The old cant down : they licensed all to speak Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters to each diocese. 74. The king would dress an ape up in his crown And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, And on the right hand of the sunlike throne Would place a gaudy mockbird to repeat The chatterings of the monkey. Every one Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet Of their great emperor when the morning came ; And kissed alas, how many kiss the same 1 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 153 75. The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and Walked out of quarters in somnambulism ; Round the red anvils you might see them stand Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm, Beating their swords to ploughshares : in a band The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism Free through the streets of Memphis much, I wis, To the annoyance of king Amasis. 76. And timid lovers, who had been so coy They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought ; And, when next day the maiden and the boy Met one another, both, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done Only in fancy till the tenth moon shone ; 77. And then the Witch would let them take no ill : Of many thousand schemes which lovers find, The Witch found one and so they took their fill Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, Were torn apart (a wide wound, mind from mind) She did unite again with visions clear Of deep affection and of truth sincere. 78. These were the pranks she played among the cities Of mortal men. And what she did to sprites And gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties, To do her will, and show their subtle sleights, I will declare another time ; for it is A tale more fit for the weird winter nights Than for these garish summer days, when we Scarcely believe much more than we can see. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. S I lay asleep in Italy, ,L There caine a voice from over the sea, And with great power it forth led me To walk in the visions of Poesy. 2. I met Murder on the way He had a mask like Castlereagh. Very smooth he looked, yet grim ; Seven bloodhounds followed him. 3. All were fat ; and well they might Be in admirable plight, For one by one, and two by two, He tossed them human hearts to chew, Which from his wide cloak ho drew. 4. Next came Fraud, and he had on, Like Lord Eldori, an ermine gown. His big tears, for he wept well, Turned into millstones as they fell ; MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 155 5. And the little children who Round his feet played to and fro, Thinking every tear a gem, Had their brains knocked out by them. 6. Clothed with the Bible, as with light And the shadows of the night, Like Sidmouth next, Hypocrisy On a crocodile came by. 7. And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade All disguised, even to the eyes, Like bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies. 8. Last came Anarchy ; he rode On a white horse splashed with blood ; He was pale even to the lips, Like Death in the Apocalypse. 9. And he wore a kingly crown ; In his hand a sceptre shone ; On his brow this mark I saw "I am God, and King, and Law ! " 10. With a pace stately and fast Over English land he passed, Trampling to a mire of blood The adoring multitude. 11. And a mighty troop around With their trampling shook the ground, Waving each a bloody sword For the service^of their lord. 156 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 12. And with glorious triumph they Rode through England, proud and gay, Drunk as with intoxication Of the wine of desolation. 13. O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea, Passed the pageant swift and free, Tearing up and trampling down, Till they came to London town. 14. And each dweller panic-stricken, Felt his heart with terror sicken, Hearing the tempestuous cry Of the triumph of Anarchy. 15. For with pomp to meet him came, Clothed in arms like blood and flame, The hired murderers who did sins:, " Thou art God, and Law, and King ! 16. " We have waited, weak and lone, For thy coming, Mighty One ! Our purses are empty, our swords are cold Give us glory, and blood, and gold." 17. Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd, To the earth their pale brows bowed Like a bad prayer not over loud, Whispering "Thou art Law and God ! " 18. Then all cried with one accord, " Thou art King, and Law, and Lord ; Anarchy, to thee we bow, Be thy name made holy now ! " MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 157 19. And Anarchy the skeleton Bowed and grinned to every one As well as if his education Had cost ten millions to the nation . 20. For he knew the palaces Of our kings were nightly his ; His the sceptre, crown, and globe, And the gold-inwoven robe. 21. So he sent his slaves before To seize upon the Bank and Tower, And was proceeding with intent To meet his pensioned parliament, 22. When one fled past, a maniac maid, And her name was Hope, she said, But she looked more like Despair ; And she cried out in the air : 23. " My father Time is weak and grey With waiting for a better day ; See how idiot-like he' stands, Fumbling with his palsied hands ! 24. " He has had child after child, And the dust of death is piled Over every one but me Misery ! oh Misery ! " 25. Then she lay down in the street Right before the horses' feet, Expecting with a patient eye Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy 158 MASQUE OF ANARCHY 26. When between her and her foes A mist, a light, an image rose, Small at first, and weak and frail, Like the vapour of the gale : 27. Till, as clouds grow on the blast, Like tower-crowned giants striding fast, And glare with lightnings as they fly, And speak in thunder to the sky, 28. It grew a shape arrayed in mail Brighter than the viper's scale, And upborne on wings whose grain Was like the light of sunny rain. 29. On its helm seen far away A planet like the morning's lay ; And those plumes its light rained through, Like a shower of crimson dew. 30. With step as soft as wind it passed O'er the heads of men : so fast That they knew the presence there, And looked and all was empty air. 31. As flowers beneath May's footsteps waken, As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken, As waves arise when loud winds call, Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall. 32 And the prostrate multitude Looked and, ankle-deep in blood, Hope, that maiden most serene, Was walking with a quiet mien ; MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 159 33. And Anarchy, the ghastly birth, Lay dead earth upon the earth ; The horse of Death, tameless as wind, Fled, and with his hoofs did grind To dust the murderers thronged behind. 34. A rushing light of clouds and splendour, A sense awakening and yet tender, Was heard and felt and at its close These words of joy and fear arose ; 35. As if their own indignant Earth, "Which gave the sons of England birth, Had felt their blood upon her brow, And, shuddering with a mother's throe, 36. Had turned every drop of blood By which her face had been bedewed To an accent un withstood, As if her heart had cried aloud. 37. " Men of England, heirs of glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Nurslings of one mighty mother, Hopes of her and one another ! 38. " Rise, like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number ! Shake your chains to earth, like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you 1 39. " What is freedom ? Ye can tell That which Slavery is too well, For its very name has grown To an echo of you own. 160 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 40. " "Tis to work, and have such pay As just keeps life from day to day In your limbs as in a cell For the tyrants' use to dwell : 41. " So that ye for them are made Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade ; With or without your own will, bent To their defence and nourishment. 42. " 'Tis to see your children weak With their mothers pine and peak When the winter winds are bleak They are dying whilst I speak. 43. " 'Tis to hunger for such diet As the rich man in his riot Casts to the fat dogs that lie Surfeiting beneath his eye. 44. "'Tis to let the ghost of Gold Take from toil a thousandfold More than e'er his substance could In the tyrannies of old : 45. " Paper coin that forgery Of the title-deeds which ye Hold to something of the worth Of the inheritance of Earth. 46. " 'Tis to be a slave in soul, And to hold no strong control Over your own wills, but be All that others make of ye. MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 161 47. " And, at length, when ye complain With a murmur weak and vain, 'Tis to see the tyrant's crew Ride over your wives and you Blood in on the grass like dew ! 48. "Then it is to feel revenge, Fiercely thirsting to exchange Blood for blood, and wrong for wrong : Do not thus when ye are strong ! 49. " Birds find rest in narrow nest, When weary of their winged quest ; Beasts find fare in woody lair, When storm and snow are in the air ; 50. " Horses, oxen, have a home When from daily toil they come ; Household dogs, when the wind roars, Find a home within warm doors ; 51. "Asses, swine, have litter spread, And with fitting food are fed ; All things have a home but one - Thou, Englishman, hast none ! 52. "This is Slavery ! Savage men, Or wild beasts within a den, Would endure not as ye do : But such ills they never knew. 53. "What art thou. Freedom ? Oh ! could slaves Answer from their living graves This demand, tyrants would flee Jjike a dream's dim imagery. *L 1 62 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 54. "Thou art not, as impostors say, A shadow soon to pass away, A superstition, and a name Echoing from the cave of Fame. 55. " For the labourer, thou art bread And a comely table spread, From his daily labour come, In a neat and happy home. 56. " Thou art clothes and fire and food For the trampled multitude. No in countries that are free Such starvation cannot be As in England now we see ! 57. ' ' To the rich thou art a check ; When his foot is on the neck Of his victim, thou dost make That he treads upon a snake. 58. " Thou art justice : ne'er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold As laws are in England ; thou Shield'st alike the high and low. 59. "Thou art wisdom: freemen never Dream that God will damn for ever All who think those things untrue Of which priests make such ado. 60. " Thou art peace : never by thee Would blood and treasure wasted be As tyrants wasted them when all leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul. MASQUE OF ANARCHY 163 61. " What if English toil and blood Was poured forth even as a flood ? It availed, Liberty, To dim but not extinguish thee. 62. "Thou art love : the rich have kissed Thy feet, and, like him following Christ, Given their substance to the free, And through the rough world followed thee. 63. " Oh ! turn their wealth to arms, and make War, for thy beloved sake, On wealth and war and fraud ; whence they Drew the power which is their prey. 64. ''Science, and poetry, and thought, Are thy lamps ; they make the lot Of the dwellers in a cot Snch they curse their Maker not. 65. ' ' Spirit, patience, gentleness, All that can adorn and bless, Art thou. Let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness. 66. ' ' Let a great assembly be Of the fearless and the free On some spot of English ground Where the plains stretch wide around. 67. " Let the blue sky overhead, The green earth on which ye tread, All that must eternal be Witness the solemnity. 1 64 MASQUE OF ANARCHY, 68. " From the corners uttermost Of the bounds of English coast ; From every hut, village, and town Where those who live and suffer moan For others' misery or their own ; 69. "From the workhouse and the prison, "Where, pale as corpses newly risen, Women, children, young and old, Groan for pain, and weep for cold ; 70. " From the haunts of daily life Where is waged the daily strife With common wants and common cares Which sow the human heart with tares ; 71. "Lastly, from the palaces Where the murmur of distress Echoes like the distant sound Of a wind alive around 72. " Those prison -halls of wealth and fashion, Where some few feel such compassion, For those who groan, and toil, and wail. As must make their brethren pale 73. " Ye who suffer woes untold Or to feel or to behold Your lost country bought and sold With a price of blood and gold 1 74. " Let a vast assembly be, And with great solemnity Declare with ne'er-said words that ye Are, as God has made ye, free ! MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 165 75. " Be your strong and simple words Keen to wound as sharpened swords, And wide as targes let them be, With their shade to cover ye. 76. "Let the tyrants pour around With a quick and startling sound, Like the loosening of a sea, Troops of armed emblazonry. 77. " Let the charged artillery drive, Till the dead air seems alive With the clash of clanging wheels, And the tramp of horses' heels. 78. "Let the fixed bayonet Gleam with sharp desire to wet Its bright point in English blood, Looking keen as one for food. 79. " Let the horsemen's scimitars Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars Thirsting to eclipse their burning In a sea of death and mourning. 80. "Stand ye calm and resolute, Like a forest close and mute, With folded arms, and looks which are Weapons of an unvanquished war. 81. " And let Panic, who outspeeds The career of armed steeds, Pass, a disregarded shade, Through your phalanx undismayed. 166 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 82. " Let the laws of your own land, Good or ill, between ye stand, Hand to hand, and foot to foot, Arbiters of the dispute 83. "The old laws of England they "Whose reverend heads with age are grey, Children of a wiser day ; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo Liberty ! 84. " On those who first should violate Such sacred heralds in their state Rest the blood that must ensue ; And it will not rest on you. 85. " And, if then the tyrants dare, Let them ride among you there, Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew : What they like, that let them do. 86. " With folded arms and steady eyes, And little fear and less surprise, Look upon them as they slay, Till their rage has died away. 87. "Then they will return with shame, To the place from which they came, And the blood thus shed will speak In hot blushes on their cheek. 88. " Every woman in the land Will point at them as they stand-- They will hardly dare to greet Their acquaintance in the street ; LINES. 167 89. " And the bold true warriors Who have hugged danger in the wars Will turn to those who would be free, Ashamed of such base company : 90. "And that slaughter to the nation Shall steam up like inspiration, Eloquent, oracular, A volcano heard afar : 91. " And these words shall then become Like Oppression's thundered doom, Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again again again ! 92. " Rise, like lions after slumber. In unvanquishable number ! Shake your chains to earth, like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you ! Ye are many they are few ! " LINES, WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION* 1. /CORPSES are cold in the tomb; \^ Stones on the pavement are dumb ; Abortions are dead in the womb, And their mothers look pale like the white shore Of Albion, free no more. 1 68 TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND. 2. Her sons are as stones in the way They are masses of senseless clay They are trodden, and move not away ; The abortion with which she travaileth Is Liberty, smitten to death. 3. Than 'trample and dance, thou oppressor, For thy victim is no redressor ! Thou art sole lord and possessor Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions they pave Thy path to the grave. 4. Hear'st thou the festival din Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin, And Wealth crying " Havoc ! " within ? 'Tis the bacchanal triumph which makes Truth dumb, Thine epithalamium. 5. Ay, marry thy ghastly Wife ! Let Fear, and Disquiet, and Strife Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life ! Marry Ruin, thou tyrant ! and God be thy guide To the bed of the bride ! SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND, 1 . IV /T EN of England, wherefore plough 1VJL For the lords who lay you low ? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear ? TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND. 169 2. Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, From the cradle to the grave, Those ungrateful drones who would Drain your sweat nay, drink your blood ? v 3. Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, That these stingless drones may spoil The forced produce of your toil ? 4. Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, Shelter, food, love's gentle balm ? Or what is it ye buy so dear With your pain and with your fear ? 5. The seed ye sow another reaps ; The wealth ye find another keeps ; The robes ye weave another wears ; The arms ye forge another bears. 6. Sow seed but let no tyrant reap ; Find wealth let no impostor heap ; Weave robes let not the idle wear ; Forge arms, in your defence to bear. 7. Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells ; In halls ye deck another dwells. Why shake the chains ye wrought ? Ye see The steel ye tempered glance on ye. 8. With plough, and spade, and hoe, and loom, Trace your grave, and build your tornb, And weave your winding-sheet, tiH fair England be your sepulchre ! i;o ENGLAND IN 1819. ENGLAND IN 1819. A N old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king ^ 2- JE\^ Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow^ "!> Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,