الفصل الفصل 22 · THE LAKE

In spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide world a spot

The which I could not love the less--

So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,

And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall

Upon the spot, as upon all,

And the mystic wind went by

Murmuring in melody--

Then--ah, then, I would awake

To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,

But a tremulous delight--

A feeling not the jewelled mine

Could teach or bribe me to define--

Nor Love--although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,

And in its gulf a fitting grave

For him who thence could solace bring

To his lone imagining--

Whose solitary soul could make

An Eden of that dim lake.

1827.

* * * * *

EVENING STAR.

'Twas noontide of summer,

And midtime of night,

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, through the light

Of the brighter, cold moon.

'Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

Her beam on the waves.

I gazed awhile

On her cold smile;

Too cold--too cold for me--

There passed, as a shroud,

A fleecy cloud,

And I turned away to thee,

Proud Evening Star,

In thy glory afar

And dearer thy beam shall be;

For joy to my heart

Is the proud part

Thou bearest in Heaven at night,

And more I admire

Thy distant fire,

Than that colder, lowly light.

1827.

* * * * *

IMITATION.

A dark unfathomed tide

Of interminable pride--

A mystery, and a dream,

Should my early life seem;

I say that dream was fraught

With a wild and waking thought

Of beings that have been,

Which my spirit hath not seen,

Had I let them pass me by,

With a dreaming eye!

Let none of earth inherit

That vision on my spirit;

Those thoughts I would control,

As a spell upon his soul:

For that bright hope at last

And that light time have past,

And my wordly rest hath gone

With a sigh as it passed on:

I care not though it perish

With a thought I then did cherish.

1827.

* * * * *

"THE HAPPIEST DAY."

I. The happiest day--the happiest hour

My seared and blighted heart hath known,

The highest hope of pride and power,

I feel hath flown.

II. Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween

But they have vanished long, alas!

The visions of my youth have been--

But let them pass.

III. And pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may ev'n inherit

The venom thou hast poured on me--

Be still my spirit!

IV. The happiest day--the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see--have ever seen

The brightest glance of pride and power

I feel have been:

V. But were that hope of pride and power

Now offered with the pain

Ev'n _then_ I felt--that brightest hour

I would not live again:

VI. For on its wing was dark alloy

And as it fluttered--fell

An essence--powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.

1827.

* * * * *

Translation from the Greek.

HYMN TO ARISTOGEITON AND HARMODIUS.

I. Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal,

Like those champions devoted and brave,

When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,

And to Athens deliverance gave.

II. Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam

In the joy breathing isles of the blest;

Where the mighty of old have their home--

Where Achilles and Diomed rest.

III. In fresh myrtle my blade I'll entwine,

Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,

When he made at the tutelar shrine

A libation of Tyranny's blood.

IV. Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!

Ye avengers of Liberty's wrongs!

Endless ages shall cherish your fame,

Embalmed in their echoing songs!

1827

* * * * *

DREAMS.

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awakening, till the beam

Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.

Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

'Twere better than the cold reality

Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,

And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,

A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.

But should it be--that dream eternally

Continuing--as dreams have been to me

In my young boyhood--should it thus be given,

'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.

For I have revelled when the sun was bright

I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light

And loveliness,--have left my very heart

Inclines of my imaginary apart [1]

From mine own home, with beings that have been

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

'Twas once--and only once--and the wild hour

From my remembrance shall not pass--some power

Or spell had bound me--'twas the chilly wind

Came o'er me in the night, and left behind

Its image on my spirit--or the moon

Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

Too coldly--or the stars--howe'er it was

That dream was that that night-wind--let it pass.

_I have been_ happy, though in a dream.

I have been happy--and I love the theme:

Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings

To the delirious eye, more lovely things

Of Paradise and Love--and all my own!--

Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

[Footnote 1: In climes of mine imagining apart?--Ed.]

* * * * *

"IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE."

_How often we forget all time, when lone

Admiring Nature's universal throne;

Her woods--her wilds--her mountains--the intense

Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!_

I. In youth I have known one with whom the Earth

In secret communing held--as he with it,

In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:

Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit

From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

A passionate light such for his spirit was fit--

And yet that spirit knew--not in the hour

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

II. Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

To a ferver [1] by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,

But I will half believe that wild light fraught

With more of sovereignty than ancient lore

Hath ever told--or is it of a thought

The unembodied essence, and no more

That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass

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

III. Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye

To the loved object--so the tear to the lid

Will start, which lately slept in apathy?

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

From us in life--but common--which doth lie

Each hour before us--but then only bid

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

T' awake us--'Tis a symbol and a token--

IV. Of what in other worlds shall be--and given

In beauty by our God, to those alone

Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven

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

That high tone of the spirit which hath striven

Though not with Faith--with godliness--whose throne

With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;

Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

[Footnote 1: Query "fervor"?--Ed.]

* * * * *

A PÆAN.

I. How shall the burial rite be read?

The solemn song be sung?

The requiem for the loveliest dead,

That ever died so young?

II. Her friends are gazing on her,

And on her gaudy bier,

And weep!--oh! to dishonor

Dead beauty with a tear!

III. They loved her for her wealth--

And they hated her for her pride--

But she grew in feeble health,

And they _love_ her--that she died.

IV. They tell me (while they speak

Of her "costly broider'd pall")

That my voice is growing weak--

That I should not sing at all--

V. Or that my tone should be

Tun'd to such solemn song

So mournfully--so mournfully,

That the dead may feel no wrong.

VI. But she is gone above,

With young Hope at her side,

And I am drunk with love

Of the dead, who is my bride.--

VII. Of the dead--dead who lies

All perfum'd there,

With the death upon her eyes.

And the life upon her hair.

VIII. Thus on the coffin loud and long

I strike--the murmur sent

Through the gray chambers to my song,

Shall be the accompaniment.

IX. Thou diedst in thy life's June--

But thou didst not die too fair:

Thou didst not die too soon,

Nor with too calm an air.

X. From more than friends on earth,

Thy life and love are riven,

To join the untainted mirth

Of more than thrones in heaven.--

XI. Therefore, to thee this night

I will no requiem raise,

But waft thee on thy flight,

With a Pæan of old days.

* * * * *

NOTES.

30. On the "Poems written in Youth" little comment is needed. This

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

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

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

their revised versions, and a few others collected from various sources.

"Al Aaraaf" first appeared, with the sonnet "To Silence" prefixed to it,

in 1829, and is, substantially, as originally issued. In the edition for

1831, however, this poem, its author's longest, was introduced by the

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

collections:

AL AARAAF.

Mysterious star!

Thou wert my dream

All a long summer night--

Be now my theme!

By this clear stream,

Of thee will I write;

Meantime from afar

Bathe me in light!

Thy world has not the dross of ours,

Yet all the beauty--all the flowers

That list our love or deck our bowers

In dreamy gardens, where do lie

Dreamy maidens all the day;

While the silver winds of Circassy

On violet couches faint away.

Little--oh! little dwells in thee

Like unto what on earth we see:

Beauty's eye is here the bluest

In the falsest and untruest--

On the sweetest air doth float

The most sad and solemn note--

If with thee be broken hearts,

Joy so peacefully departs,

That its echo still doth dwell,

Like the murmur in the shell.

Thou! thy truest type of grief

Is the gently falling leaf--

Thou! thy framing is so holy

Sorrow is not melancholy.

* * * * *

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

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

published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and

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

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

least.

* * * * *

32. "To Helen" first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also "The

Valley of Unrest" (as "The Valley Nis"), "Israfel," and one or two

others of the youthful pieces.

The poem styled "Romance" constituted the Preface of the 1829 volume,

but with the addition of the following lines:

Succeeding years, too wild for song,

Then rolled like tropic storms along,

Where, though the garish lights that fly

Dying along the troubled sky,

Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,

The blackness of the general Heaven,

That very blackness yet doth fling

Light on the lightning's silver wing.

For being an idle boy lang syne,

Who read Anacreon and drank wine,

I early found Anacreon rhymes

Were almost passionate sometimes--

And by strange alchemy of brain

His pleasures always turned to pain--

His naïveté to wild desire--

His wit to love--his wine to fire--

And so, being young and dipt in folly,

I fell in love with melancholy.

And used to throw my earthly rest

And quiet all away in jest--

I could not love except where Death

Was mingling his with Beauty's breath--

Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,

Were stalking between her and me.

* * * * *

But _now_ my soul hath too much room--

Gone are the glory and the gloom--

The black hath mellow'd into gray,

And all the fires are fading away.

My draught of passion hath been deep--

I revell'd, and I now would sleep--

And after drunkenness of soul

Succeeds the glories of the bowl--

An idle longing night and day

To dream my very life away.

But dreams--of those who dream as I,

Aspiringly, are damned, and die:

Yet should I swear I mean alone,

By notes so very shrilly blown,

To break upon Time's monotone,

While yet my vapid joy and grief

Are tintless of the yellow leaf--

Why not an imp the greybeard hath,

Will shake his shadow in my path--

And e'en the greybeard will o'erlook

Connivingly my dreaming-book.

* * * * *

DOUBTFUL POEMS.

* * * * *

ALONE.

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were--I have not seen

As others saw--I could not bring

My passions from a common spring--

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow--I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone--

And all I loved--_I_ loved alone--

_Thou_--in my childhood--in the dawn

Of a most stormy life--was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still--

From the torrent, or the fountain--

From the red cliff of the mountain--

From the sun that round me roll'd

In its autumn tint of gold--

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by--

From the thunder and the storm--

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

March 17, 1829.

* * * * *

TO ISADORE.

I. Beneath the vine-clad eaves,

Whose shadows fall before

Thy lowly cottage door--

Under the lilac's tremulous leaves--

Within thy snowy clasped hand

The purple flowers it bore.

Last eve in dreams, I saw thee stand,

Like queenly nymph from Fairy-land--

Enchantress of the flowery wand,

Most beauteous Isadore!

II. And when I bade the dream

Upon thy spirit flee,

Thy violet eyes to me

Upturned, did overflowing seem

With the deep, untold delight

Of Love's serenity;

Thy classic brow, like lilies white

And pale as the Imperial Night

Upon her throne, with stars bedight,

Enthralled my soul to thee!

III. Ah! ever I behold

Thy dreamy, passionate eyes,

Blue as the languid skies

Hung with the sunset's fringe of gold;

Now strangely clear thine image grows,

And olden memories

Are startled from their long repose

Like shadows on the silent snows

When suddenly the night-wind blows

Where quiet moonlight lies.

IV. Like music heard in dreams,

Like strains of harps unknown,

Of birds for ever flown,--

Audible as the voice of streams

That murmur in some leafy dell,

I hear thy gentlest tone,

And Silence cometh with her spell

Like that which on my tongue doth dwell,

When tremulous in dreams I tell

My love to thee alone!

V. In every valley heard,

Floating from tree to tree,

Less beautiful to me,

The music of the radiant bird,

Than artless accents such as thine

Whose echoes never flee!

Ah! how for thy sweet voice I pine:--

For uttered in thy tones benign

(Enchantress!) this rude name of mine

Doth seem a melody!

* * * * *

Poem 21.