Chương Chương 20 · THE CONQUEROR WORM（3）
"What is Poetry?--Poetry! that Proteus-like idea, with as many
appellations as the nine-titled Corcyra! 'Give me,' I demanded of a
scholar some time ago, 'give me a definition of poetry.'
'_Tres-volontiers;_' and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr.
Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal
Shakespeare! I imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon
the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear
B----, think of poetry, and then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of
all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and
unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then--and then think
of the 'Tempest'--the 'Midsummer Night's Dream'--Prospero--Oberon--and
Titania!
"A poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having, for
its _immediate_ object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having, for
its object, an _indefinite_ instead of a _definite_ pleasure, being a
poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting
perceptible images with definite, poetry with _in_definite sensations,
to which end music is an _essential_, since the comprehension of sweet
sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a
pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music;
the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.
"What was meant by the invective against him who had no music in his
soul?
"To sum up this long rigmarole, I have, dear B----, what you, no doubt,
perceive, for the metaphysical poets as poets, the most sovereign
contempt. That they have followers proves nothing:
"'No Indian prince has to his palace
More followers than a thief to the gallows.'"
* * * * *
SONNET--TO SCIENCE.
SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing!
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
1829.
* * * * *
Private reasons--some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism,
and others to the date of Tennyson's first poems [1]--have induced me,
after some hesitation, to republish these, the crude compositions of my
earliest boyhood. They are printed 'verbatim'--without alteration from
the original edition--the date of which is too remote to be judiciously
acknowledged.--E. A. P. (1845).
[Footnote 1: This refers to the accusation brought against Edgar Poe
that he was a copyist of Tennyson.--Ed.]
* * * * *
AL AARAAF. [1]
PART I.
O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy--
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill--
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy's voice so peacefully departed
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell--
O! nothing of the dross of ours--
Yet all the beauty--all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers--
Adorn yon world afar, afar--
The wandering star.
'Twas a sweet time for Nesace--for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns--a temporary rest--
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away away--'mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul--
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin'd eminence--
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
And late to ours, the favour'd one of God--
But, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm,
She throws aside the sceptre--leaves the helm,
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.
Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
Whence sprang the "Idea of Beauty" into birth,
(Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star,
Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar,
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),
She look'd into Infinity--and knelt.
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled--
Fit emblems of the model of her world--
Seen but in beauty--not impeding sight--
Of other beauty glittering thro' the light--
A wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opal'd air in color bound.
All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers: of lilies such as rear'd the head
On the fair Capo Deucato [2], and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of--deep pride--
Of her who lov'd a mortal--and so died [3].
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Uprear'd its purple stem around her knees:
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'd [4]--
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd
All other loveliness: its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond--and on a sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie:
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
Disconsolate linger--grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have fled,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chasten'd, and more fair:
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia [5] pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run:
And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth [6]--
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:
And Valisnerian lotus thither flown [7]
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante [8]!
Isola d'oro!--Fior di Levante!
And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever [9]
With Indian Cupid down the holy river--
Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
To bear the Goddess' song, in odors, up to Heaven [10]:
"Spirit! that dwellest where,
In the deep sky,
The terrible and fair,
In beauty vie!
Beyond the line of blue--
The boundary of the star
Which turneth at the view
Of thy barrier and thy bar--
Of the barrier overgone
By the comets who were cast
From their pride, and from their throne
To be drudges till the last--
To be carriers of fire
(The red fire of their heart)
With speed that may not tire
And with pain that shall not part--
Who livest--_that_ we know--
In Eternity--we feel--
But the shadow of whose brow
What spirit shall reveal?
Tho' the beings whom thy Nesace,
Thy messenger hath known
Have dream'd for thy Infinity
A model of their own [11]--
Thy will is done, O God!
The star hath ridden high
Thro' many a tempest, but she rode
Beneath thy burning eye;
And here, in thought, to thee--
In thought that can alone
Ascend thy empire and so be
A partner of thy throne--
By winged Fantasy [12],
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of Heaven."
She ceas'd--and buried then her burning cheek
Abash'd, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervor of His eye;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirr'd not--breath'd not--for a voice was there
How solemnly pervading the calm air!
A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name "the music of the sphere."
Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call
"Silence"--which is the merest word of all.
All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from the visionary wings--
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky!
"What tho' in worlds which sightless cycles run [13],
Link'd to a little system, and one sun--
Where all my love is folly, and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What tho' in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets thro' the upper Heaven.
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
With all thy train, athwart the moony sky--
Apart--like fire-flies in Sicilian night [14],
And wing to other worlds another light!
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle--and so be
To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!"
Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve!-on earth we plight
Our faith to one love--and one moon adore--
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain
Her way--but left not yet her Therasæan reign [15].
PART II.
High on a mountain of enamell'd head--
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven"
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven--
Of rosy head, that towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve--at noon of night,
While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light--
Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' uuburthen'd air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall [16]
Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall
Of their own dissolution, while they die--
Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown--
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Look'd out above into the purple air
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallow'd all the beauty twice again,
Save when, between th' Empyrean and that ring,
Some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing.
But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world: that grayish green
That Nature loves the best for Beauty's grave
Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave--
And every sculptured cherub thereabout
That from his marble dwelling peered out,
Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche--
Achaian statues in a world so rich?
Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis [17]--
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
Of beautiful Gomorrah! Oh, the wave [18]
Is now upon thee--but too late to save!
Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
Witness the murmur of the gray twilight
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco [19],
Of many a wild star-gazer long ago--
That stealeth ever on the ear of him
Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,
And sees the darkness coming as a cloud--
Is not its form--its voice--most palpable and loud? [20]
But what is this?--it cometh--and it brings
A music with it--'tis the rush of wings--
A pause--and then a sweeping, falling strain,
And Nesace is in her halls again.
From the wild energy of wanton haste
Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;
The zone that clung around her gentle waist
Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.
Within the centre of that hall to breathe
She paus'd and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,
The fairy light that kiss'd her golden hair
And long'd to rest, yet could but sparkle there!
Young flowers were whispering in melody [21]
To happy flowers that night--and tree to tree;
Fountains were gushing music as they fell
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-light dell;
Yet silence came upon material things--
Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings--
And sound alone that from the spirit sprang
Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:
"Neath blue-bell or streamer--
Or tufted wild spray
That keeps, from the dreamer,
The moonbeam away--[22]
Bright beings! that ponder,
With half-closing eyes,
On the stars which your wonder
Hath drawn from the skies,
Till they glance thro' the shade, and
Come down to your brow
Like--eyes of the maiden
Who calls on you now--
Arise! from your dreaming
In violet bowers,
To duty beseeming
These star-litten hours--
And shake from your tresses
Encumber'd with dew
The breath of those kisses
That cumber them too--
(O! how, without you, Love!
Could angels be blest?)
Those kisses of true love
That lull'd ye to rest!
Up! shake from your wing
Each hindering thing:
The dew of the night--
It would weigh down your flight;
And true love caresses--
O! leave them apart!
They are light on the tresses,
But lead on the heart.
Ligeia! Ligeia!
My beautiful one!
Whose harshest idea
Will to melody run,
O! is it thy will
On the breezes to toss?
Or, capriciously still,
Like the lone Albatross, [23]
Incumbent on night
(As she on the air)
To keep watch with delight
On the harmony there?
Ligeia! wherever
Thy image may be,
No magic shall sever
Thy music from thee.
Thou hast bound many eyes
In a dreamy sleep--
But the strains still arise
Which _thy_ vigilance keep--
The sound of the rain
Which leaps down to the flower,
And dances again
In the rhythm of the shower--
The murmur that springs [24]
From the growing of grass
Are the music of things--
But are modell'd, alas!
Away, then, my dearest,
O! hie thee away
To springs that lie clearest
Beneath the moon-ray--
To lone lake that smiles,
In its dream of deep rest,
At the many star-isles
That enjewel its breast--
Where wild flowers, creeping,
Have mingled their shade,
On its margin is sleeping
Full many a maid--
Some have left the cool glade, and
Have slept with the bee--[25]
Arouse them, my maiden,
On moorland and lea--
Go! breathe on their slumber,
All softly in ear,
The musical number
They slumber'd to hear--
For what can awaken
An angel so soon
Whose sleep hath been taken
Beneath the cold moon,
As the spell which no slumber
Of witchery may test,
The rhythmical number
Which lull'd him to rest?"
Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,
A thousand seraphs burst th' Empyrean thro',
Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight--
Seraphs in all but "Knowledge," the keen light
That fell, refracted, thro' thy bounds afar,
O death! from eye of God upon that star;
Sweet was that error--sweeter still that death--
Sweet was that error--ev'n with _us_ the breath
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy--
To them 'twere the Simoom, and would destroy--
For what (to them) availeth it to know
That Truth is Falsehood--or that Bliss is Woe?
Sweet was their death--with them to die was rife
With the last ecstasy of satiate life--
Beyond that death no immortality--
But sleep that pondereth and is not "to be"--
And there--oh! may my weary spirit dwell--
Apart from Heaven's Eternity--and yet how far from Hell! [26]
What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
But two: they fell: for heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover--
O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?
Unguided Love hath fallen--'mid "tears of perfect moan." [27]
He was a goodly spirit--he who fell:
A wanderer by mossy-mantled well--
A gazer on the lights that shine above--
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
What wonder? for each star is eye-like there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair--
And they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of wo)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo--
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sate he with his love--his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament:
Now turn'd it upon her--but ever then
It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.
"Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!
How lovely 'tis to look so far away!
She seemed not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls--nor mourned to leave,
That eve--that eve--I should remember well--
The sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos with a spell
On th' Arabesque carving of a gilded hall
Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall--
And on my eyelids--O, the heavy light!
How drowsily it weighed them into night!
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran
With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:
But O, that light!--I slumbered--Death, the while,
Stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle
So softly that no single silken hair
Awoke that slept--or knew that he was there.
"The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon
Was a proud temple called the Parthenon; [28]
More beauty clung around her columned wall
Then even thy glowing bosom beats withal, [29]
And when old Time my wing did disenthral
Thence sprang I--as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left behind me in an hour.
What time upon her airy bounds I hung,
One half the garden of her globe was flung
Unrolling as a chart unto my view--
Tenantless cities of the desert too!
Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,
And half I wished to be again of men."
"My Angelo! and why of them to be?
A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee--
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And woman's loveliness--and passionate love."
"But list, Ianthe! when the air so soft
Failed, as my pennoned spirit leapt aloft, [30]
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy--but the world
I left so late was into chaos hurled,
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
And rolled a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.
Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar,
And fell--not swiftly as I rose before,
But with a downward, tremulous motion thro'
Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto!
Nor long the measure of my falling hours,
For nearest of all stars was thine to ours--
Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,
A red Daedalion on the timid Earth."
"We came--and to thy Earth--but not to us
Be given our lady's bidding to discuss:
We came, my love; around, above, below,
Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,
Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod
_She_ grants to us as granted by her God--
But, Angelo, than thine gray Time unfurled
Never his fairy wing o'er fairer world!
Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes
Alone could see the phantom in the skies,
When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be
Headlong thitherward o'er the starry sea--
But when its glory swelled upon the sky,
As glowing Beauty's bust beneath man's eye,
We paused before the heritage of men,
And thy star trembled--as doth Beauty then!"
Thus in discourse, the lovers whiled away
The night that waned and waned and brought no day.
They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.
1839.
[Footnote 1: A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared
suddenly in the heavens--attained, in a few days, a brilliancy
surpassing that of Jupiter--then as suddenly disappeared, and has never
been seen since.]
[Footnote 2: On Santa Maura--olim Deucadia.]
[Footnote 3: Sappho.]
[Footnote 4: This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort.
The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated.]
[Footnote: Clytia--the Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a
better-known term, the turnsol--which turns continually towards the sun,
covers itself, like Peru, the country from which it comes, with dewy
clouds which cool and refresh its flowers during the most violent heat
of the day.--'B. de St. Pierre.']
[Footnote 6: There is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris, a
species of serpentine aloe without prickles, whose large and beautiful
flower exhales a strong odor of the vanilla, during the time of its
expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month
of July--you then perceive it gradually open its petals--expand
them--fade and die.--'St. Pierre'.]
[Footnote 7: There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the
Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of three or four
feet--thus preserving its head above water in the swellings of the
river.]
[Footnote 8: The Hyacinth.]
[Footnote 9: It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first seen
floating in one of these down the river Ganges, and that he still loves
the cradle of his childhood.]
[Footnote 10: And golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of
the saints.--'Rev. St. John.']
[Footnote 11: The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as
having really a human form.--'Vide Clarke's Sermons', vol. I, page 26,
fol. edit.
The drift of Milton's argument leads him to employ language which would
appear, at first sight, to verge upon their doctrine; but it will be
seen immediately, that he guards himself against the charge of having
adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the
Church.--'Dr. Sumner's Notes on Milton's Christian Doctrine'.
This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary, could never
have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of Mesopotamia, was condemned
for the opinion, as heretical. He lived in the beginning of the fourth
century. His disciples were called Anthropomorphites.--'Vide du Pin'.
Among Milton's minor poems are these lines:
Dicite sacrorum præesides nemorum Dese, etc.,
Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
Natura solers finxit humanum genus?
Eternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo,
Unusque et universus exemplar Dei.
--And afterwards,
Non cui profundum Cæcitas lumen dedit
Dircæus augur vidit hunc alto sinu, etc.]
[Footnote 12:
Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
Seinem Schosskinde
Der Phantasie.
'Goethe'.]
[Footnote 13: Sightless--too small to be seen.--'Legge'.]
[Footnote 14: I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the
fire-flies; they will collect in a body and fly off, from a common
centre, into innumerable radii.]
[Footnote 15: Therasæa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca,
which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished
mariners.]
[Footnote 16:
Some star which, from the ruin'd roof
Of shak'd Olympus, by mischance did fall.
'Milton'.]
[Footnote 17: Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says,
"Je connais bien l'admiration qu'inspirent ces ruines--mais un palais
érigé au pied d'une chaîne de rochers steriles--peut-il être un chef
d'oeuvre des arts!"]
[Footnote 18: "Oh, the wave"--Ula Deguisi is the Turkish appellation;
but, on its own shores, it is called Baliar Loth, or Al-motanah. There
were undoubtedly more than two cities engulphed in the "dead sea." In
the valley of Siddim were five--Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah.
Stephen of Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteen (engulphed)
--but the last is out of all reason. It is said (Tacitus, Strabo,
Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau, Maundrell, Troilo, D'Arvieux), that
after an excessive drought, the vestiges of columns, walls, etc., are
seen above the surface. At 'any' season, such remains may be discovered
by looking down into the transparent lake, and at such distance as would
argue the existence of many settlements in the space now usurped by the
"Asphaltites."]
[Footnote 19: Eyraco-Chaldea.]
[Footnote 20: I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of
the darkness as it stole over the horizon.]
[Footnote 21:
Fairies use flowers for their charactery.
'Merry Wives of Windsor'.]
[Footnote 22: In Scripture is this passage:
"The sun shall not harm thee by day, nor the moon by night."
It is, perhaps, not generally known that the moon, in Egypt, has the
effect of producing blindness to those who sleep with the face exposed
to its rays, to which circumstances the passage evidently
alludes.]
[Footnote 23: The Albatross is said to sleep on the wing.]
[Footnote 24: I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I am
now unable to obtain and quote from memory:
"The verie essence and, as it were, springe heade and origine of all
musiche is the verie pleasaunte sounde which the trees of the forest
do make when they growe."]
[Footnote 25: The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be
moonlight. The rhyme in the verse, as in one about sixty lines before,
has an appearance of affectation. It is, however, imitated from Sir W.
Scott, or rather from Claud Halcro--in whose mouth I admired its effect:
O! were there an island,
Tho' ever so wild,
Where woman might smile, and
No man be beguil'd, etc. ]
[Footnote 26: With the Arabians there is a medium between Heaven and
Hell, where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not attain that
tranquil and even happiness which they suppose to be characteristic of
heavenly enjoyment.
Un no rompido sueno--
Un dia puro--allegre--libre
Quiera--
Libre de amor--de zelo--
De odio--de esperanza--de rezelo.
'Luis Ponce de Leon.'
Sorrow is not excluded from "Al Aaraaf," but it is that sorrow which the
living love to cherish for the dead, and which, in some minds, resembles
the delirium of opium.
The passionate excitement of Love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant
upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures--the price of which, to
those souls who make choice of "Al Aaraaf" as their residence after
life, is final death and annihilation.]
[Footnote 27:
There be tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon.
'Milton'.]
[Footnote 28: It was entire in 1687--the most elevated spot in Athens.]
[Footnote 29:
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the queen of love.
'Marlowe.']
[Footnote 30: Pennon, for pinion.--'Milton'.]
* * * * *
TAMERLANE.
Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme--
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revelled in--
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope--that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I _can_ hope--O God! I can--
Its fount is holier--more divine--
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But such is not a gift of thine.
Know thou the secret of a spirit
Bowed from its wild pride into shame
O yearning heart! I did inherit
Thy withering portion with the fame,
The searing glory which hath shone
Amid the Jewels of my throne,
Halo of Hell! and with a pain
Not Hell shall make me fear again--
O craving heart, for the lost flowers
And sunshine of my summer hours!
The undying voice of that dead time,
With its interminable chime,
Rings, in the spirit of a spell,
Upon thy emptiness--a knell.
I have not always been as now:
The fevered diadem on my brow
I claimed and won usurpingly--
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
Rome to the Cæsar--this to me?
The heritage of a kingly mind,
And a proud spirit which hath striven
Triumphantly with human kind.
On mountain soil I first drew life:
The mists of the Taglay have shed
Nightly their dews upon my head,
And, I believe, the winged strife
And tumult of the headlong air
Have nestled in my very hair.
So late from Heaven--that dew--it fell
('Mid dreams of an unholy night)
Upon me with the touch of Hell,
While the red flashing of the light
From clouds that hung, like banners, o'er,
Appeared to my half-closing eye
The pageantry of monarchy;
And the deep trumpet-thunder's roar
Came hurriedly upon me, telling
Of human battle, where my voice,
My own voice, silly child!--was swelling
(O! how my spirit would rejoice,
And leap within me at the cry)
The battle-cry of Victory!
The rain came down upon my head
Unsheltered--and the heavy wind
Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
It was but man, I thought, who shed
Laurels upon me: and the rush--
The torrent of the chilly air
Gurgled within my ear the crush
Of empires--with the captive's prayer--
The hum of suitors--and the tone
Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne.
My passions, from that hapless hour,
Usurped a tyranny which men
Have deemed since I have reached to power,
My innate nature--be it so:
But, father, there lived one who, then,
Then--in my boyhood--when their fire
Burned with a still intenser glow
(For passion must, with youth, expire)
E'en _then_ who knew this iron heart
In woman's weakness had a part.
I have no words--alas!--to tell
The loveliness of loving well!
Nor would I now attempt to trace
The more than beauty of a face
Whose lineaments, upon my mind,
Are--shadows on th' unstable wind:
Thus I remember having dwelt
Some page of early lore upon,
With loitering eye, till I have felt
The letters--with their meaning--melt
To fantasies--with none.
O, she was worthy of all love!
Love as in infancy was mine--
'Twas such as angel minds above
Might envy; her young heart the shrine
On which my every hope and thought
Were incense--then a goodly gift,
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 smiled.
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 asked no reason why,
But turned 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 marked a throne
Of half the world as all my own,
And murmured at such lowly lot--
But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapor 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 walked together on the crown
Of a high mountain which looked 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
Seemed to become a queenly throne
Too well that I should let it be
Light in the wilderness alone.
I wrapped myself in grandeur then,
And donned 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 she not 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 diademed 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-withered 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 towered, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly--
And homeward turned his softened 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--tho' the white moon
Shed all the splendor 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 reached my home--my home no more--
For all had flown who made it so.
I passed 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,
An 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 trellised rays from Heaven
No mote may shun--no tiniest fly--
The light'ning 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!
1829.
* * * * *
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,
To 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!
1831.
* * * * *
Poem 19.