For they were childish and upright-Pure- as her young example taught: Why did I leave it, and, adrift,
Trust to the fire within, for light?
We grew in age-and love-together, Roaming the forest, and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather-And when the friendly sunshine smil’d, And she would mark the opening skies, I saw no Heaven-but in her eyes.
Young Love’s first lesson is-the heart: For ‘mid that sunshine, and those smiles, When, from our little cares apart, And laughing at her girlish wiles, I’d throw me on her throbbing breast, And pour my spirit out in tears-There was no need to speak the rest-No need to quiet any fears
Of her-who ask’d no reason why,
But turn’d on me her quiet eye!
Yet more than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove, When, on the mountain peak, alone, Ambition lent it a new tone-I had no being-but in thee:
The world, and all it did contain
In the earth-the air-the sea—
Its joy-its little lot of pain
That was new pleasure-the ideal,
Dim vanities of dreams by night-
And dimmer nothings which were real-
(Shadows-and a more shadowy light!) Parted upon their misty wings,
And, so, confusedly, became
Thine image, and-a name-a name!
Two separate-yet most intimate things.
I was ambitious-have you known
The passion, father? You have not: A cottager, I mark’d a throne
Of half the world as all my own,
And murmur’d at such lowly lot—
But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapour of the dew
My own had past, did not the beam
Of beauty which did while it thro’
The minute-the hour-the day-oppress My mind with double loveliness.
We walk’d together on the crown
Of a high mountain which look’d down Afar from its proud natural towers Of rock and forest, on the hills-The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers, And shouting with a thousand rills.
I spoke to her of power and pride, But mystically-in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside The moment’s converse; in her eyes I read, perhaps too carelessly-A mingled feeling with my own—
The flush on her bright cheek, to me Seem’d to become a queenly throne
Too well that I should let it be
Light in the wilderness alone.
I wrapp’d myself in grandeur then, And donn’d a visionary crown-Yet it was not that Fantasy
Had thrown her mantle over me—
But that, among the rabble-men,
Lion ambition is chained down—
And crouches to a keeper’s hand—
Not so in deserts where the grand—
The wild-the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.
Look ‘round thee now on Samarcand!
Is not she queen of Earth? her pride Above all cities? in her hand
Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling-her veriest stepping-stone Shall form the pedestal of a throne-And who her sovereign? Timour-he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o’er empires haughtily
A diadem’d outlaw!
O, human love! thou spirit given
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall’st into the soul like rain Upon the Siroc-wither’d plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless, But leav’st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound,
And beauty of so wild a birth—
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.
When Hope, the eagle that tower’d, could see No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly—
And homeward turn’d his soften’d eye.
‘Twas sunset: when the sun will part There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev’ning mist, So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known To those whose spirits hearken) as one Who, in a dream of night, would fly But cannot from a danger nigh.
What tho’ the moon-the white moon Shed all the splendour of her noon, Her smile is chilly, and her beam, In that time of dreariness, will seem (So like you gather in your breath) A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one—
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown-Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall With the noon-day beauty-which is all.
I reach’d my home-my home no more For all had flown who made it so.
I pass’d from out its mossy door,
And, tho’ my tread was soft and low, A voice came from the threshold stone Of one whom I had earlier known-O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
A humbler heart-a deeper woe.
Father, I firmly do believe—
I know-for Death, who comes for me From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive, Hath left his iron gate ajar,
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro’ Eternity—
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path—
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol, Love,
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven Above with trellis’d rays from Heaven, No mote may shun-no tiniest fly-The lightning of his eagle eye—
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt In the tangles of Love’s very hair?
To F…
Beloved! amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path-
(Drear path, alas! where grows
Not even one lonely rose)-
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee, and therein knows An Eden of bland repose.
And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea—
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms-but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o’er that one bright island smile.
To F—s
S. O—d
Thou wouldst be loved?- then let thy heart From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love-a simple duty.
To Helen
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!
I saw thee once-once only-years ago: I must not say how many-but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, Upon the upturned faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe-Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death-Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.
Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell on the upturn’d faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturn’d-alas, in sorrow!
Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight-Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world an slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!- oh, God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!) Save only thee and me. I paused-I looked-And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses’ odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All-all expired save thee-save less than thou: Save only the divine light in thine eyes-Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them-they were the world to me!
I saw but them-saw only them for hours, Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to he enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe, yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition; yet how deep-How fathomless a capacity for love!