Bab Bab 21 · THE VALLEY OF UNREST

_Once_ it smiled a silent dell

Where the people did not dwell;

They had gone unto the wars,

Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

Nightly, from their azure towers,

To keep watch above the flowers,

In the midst of which all day

The red sun-light lazily lay,

_Now_ each visitor shall confess

The sad valley's restlessness.

Nothing there is motionless--

Nothing save the airs that brood

Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

That palpitate like the chill seas

Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

Unceasingly, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye--

Over the lilies that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!

They wave:--from out their fragrant tops

Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep:--from off their delicate stems

Perennial tears descend in gems.

1831.

* * * * *

ISRAFEL. [1]

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell

"Whose heart-strings are a lute;"

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy Stars (so legends tell),

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

The enamoured Moon

Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin

(With the rapid Pleiads, even,

Which were seven),

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir

And the other listening things)

That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings--

The trembling living wire

Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty--

Where Love's a grow-up God--

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,

Israfeli, who despisest

An unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!

Merrily live and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit--

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

With the fervor of thy lute--

Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this

Is a world of sweets and sours;

Our flowers are merely--flowers,

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss

Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

1836.

[Footnote 1:

And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the

sweetest voice of all God's creatures.

'Koran'.]

* * * * *

TO----

I heed not that my earthly lot

Hath--little of Earth in it--

That years of love have been forgot

In the hatred of a minute:--

I mourn not that the desolate

Are happier, sweet, than I,

But that _you_ sorrow for _my_ fate

Who am a passer-by.

1829.

* * * * *

TO----

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see

The wantonest singing birds,

Are lips--and all thy melody

Of lip-begotten words--

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined

Then desolately fall,

O God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall--

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

And sleep to dream till day

Of the truth that gold can never buy--

Of the baubles that it may.

1829.

* * * * *

TO THE RIVER

Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow

Of crystal, wandering water,

Thou art an emblem of the glow

Of beauty--the unhidden heart--

The playful maziness of art

In old Alberto's daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks--

Which glistens then, and trembles--

Why, then, the prettiest of brooks

Her worshipper resembles;

For in his heart, as in thy stream,

Her image deeply lies--

His heart which trembles at the beam

Of her soul-searching eyes.

1829.

* * * * *

SONG.

I saw thee on thy bridal day--

When a burning blush came o'er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee:

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame--

As such it well may pass--

Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame

In the breast of him, alas!

Who saw thee on that bridal day,

When that deep blush _would_ come o'er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

1827.

* * * * *

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD.

Thy soul shall find itself alone

'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude

Which is not loneliness--for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee--and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.

The night--tho' clear--shall frown--

And the stars shall not look down

From their high thrones in the Heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given--

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee forever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish--

Now are visions ne'er to vanish--

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more--like dew-drops from the grass.

The breeze--the breath of God--is still--

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy--shadowy--yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token--

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!

1837.

* * * * *

A DREAM.

In visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed--

But a waking dream of life and light

Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day

To him whose eyes are cast

On things around him with a ray

Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream--that holy dream,

While all the world were chiding,

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,

A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,

So trembled from afar--

What could there be more purely bright

In Truth's day star?

1837.

* * * * *

ROMANCE.

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,

Among the green leaves as they shake

Far down within some shadowy lake,

To me a painted paroquet

Hath been--a most familiar bird--

Taught me my alphabet to say--

To lisp my very earliest word

While in the wild wood I did lie,

A child--with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

I have no time for idle cares

Though gazing on the unquiet sky.

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my spirit flings--

That little time with lyre and rhyme

To while away--forbidden things!

My heart would feel to be a crime

Unless it trembled with the strings.

1829.

* * * * *

FAIRYLAND.

Dim vales--and shadowy floods--

And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover

For the tears that drip all over

Huge moons there wax and wane--

Again--again--again--

Every moment of the night--

Forever changing places--

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down--still down--and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence,

While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Over hamlets, over halls,

Wherever they may be--

O'er the strange woods--o'er the sea--

Over spirits on the wing--

Over every drowsy thing--

And buries them up quite

In a labyrinth of light--

And then, how deep!--O, deep!

Is the passion of their sleep.

In the morning they arise,

And their moony covering

Is soaring in the skies,

With the tempests as they toss,

Like--almost any thing--

Or a yellow Albatross.

They use that moon no more

For the same end as before--

Videlicet a tent--

Which I think extravagant:

Its atomies, however,

Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies,

Of Earth, who seek the skies,

And so come down again

(Never-contented thing!)

Have brought a specimen

Upon their quivering wings.

1831

* * * * *

Poem 20.