Romantic and Victorian Final (KSay)

But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own time, accept too his own price, And shut the money into this small hand When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? Oh, I'll content him,—but to-morrow, Love! I often am much wearier than you think, This evening more than usual, and it seems As if—forgive now—should you let me sit Here by the window with your hand in mine And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, Both of one mind, as married people use, Quietly, quietly the evening through, I might get up to-morrow to my work Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! Your soft hand is a woman of itself, And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside. Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve For each of the five pictures we require: It saves a model. So! keep looking so— My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds! —How could you ever prick those perfect ears, Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet— My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, Which everybody looks on and calls his, And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, While she looks—no one's: very dear, no less. You smile? why, there's my picture ready made, There's what we painters call our harmony! A common greyness silvers everything,— All in a twilight, you and I alike —You, at the point of your first pride in me (That's gone you know),—but I, at every point; My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top; That length of convent-wall across the way Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything. Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape As if I saw alike my work and self And all that I was born to be and do, A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand. How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie! This chamber for example—turn your head— All that's behind us! You don't understand Nor care to understand about my art, But you can hear at least when people speak: And that cartoon, the second from the door —It is the thing, Love! so such things should be— Behold Madonna!—I am bold to say. I can do with my pencil what I know, What I see, what at bottom of my heart I wish for, if I ever wish so deep— Do easily, too—when I say, perfectly, I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge, Who listened to the Legate's talk last week, And just as much they used to say in France. At any rate 'tis easy, all of it! No sketches first, no studies, that's long past: I do what many dream of, all their lives, —Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive—you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,— Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter)—so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world. My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. The sudden blood of these men! at a word— Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. I, painting from myself and to myself, Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame Or their praise either. Somebody remarks Morello's outline there is wrongly traced, His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey, Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain, And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, "Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt. Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. ('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, Above and through his art—for it gives way; That arm is wrongly put—and there again— A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, He means right—that, a child may understand. Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: But all the play, the insight and the stretch— (Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out? Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, We might have risen to Rafael, I and you! Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think— More than I merit, yes, by many times. But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow, And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare — Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged "God and the glory! never care for gain. "The present by the future, what is that? "Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! "Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!" I might have done it for you. So it seems: Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules. Beside, incentives come from the soul's self; The rest avail not. Why do I need you? What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo? In this world, who can do a thing, will not; And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: Yet the will's somewhat—somewhat, too, the power— And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict, That I am something underrated here, Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth. I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. The best is when they pass and look aside; But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all. Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time, And that long festal year at Fontainebleau! I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear, In that humane great monarch's golden look,— One finger in his beard or twisted curl Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile, One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, The jingle of his gold chain in my ear, I painting proudly with his breath on me, All his court round him, seeing with his eyes, Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,— And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond, This in the background, waiting on my work, To crown the issue with a last reward! A good time, was it not, my kingly days? And had you not grown restless... but I know— 'Tis done and past: 'twas right, my instinct said: Too live the life grew, golden and not grey, And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. How could it end in any other way? You called me, and I came home to your heart. The triumph was—to reach and stay there; since I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost? Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold, You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine! "Rafael did this, Andrea painted that; "The Roman's is the better when you pray, "But still the other's Virgin was his wife—" Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows My better fortune, I resolve to think. For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, Said one day Agnolo, his very self, To Rafael . . . I have known it all these years . . . (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, Too lifted up in heart because of it) "Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub "Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, "Who, were he set to plan and execute "As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, "Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!" To Rafael's!—And indeed the arm is wrong. I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see, Give the chalk here—quick, thus, the line should go! Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out! Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, (What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo? Do you forget already words like those?) If really there was such a chance, so lost,— Is, whether you're—not grateful—but more pleased. Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed! This hour has been an hour! Another smile? If you would sit thus by me every night I should work better, do you comprehend? I mean that I should earn more, give you more. See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star; Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall, The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. Come from the window, love,—come in, at last, Inside the melancholy little house We built to be so gay with. God is just. King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, The walls become illumined, brick from brick Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, That gold of his I did cement them with! Let us but love each other. Must you go? That Cousin here again? he waits outside? Must see you—you, and not with me? Those loans? More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend? While hand and eye and something of a heart Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth? I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit The grey remainder of the evening out, Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly How I could paint, were I but back in France, One picture, just one more—the Virgin's face, Not yours this time! I want you at my side To hear them—that is, Michel Agnolo— Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. I take the subjects for his corridor, Finish the portrait out of hand—there, there, And throw him in another thing or two If he demurs; the whole should prove enough To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside, What's better and what's all I care about, Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, The Cousin! what does he to please you more? I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. I regret little, I would change still less. Since there my past life lies, why alter it? The very wrong to Francis!—it is true I took his coin, was tempted and complied, And built this house and sinned, and all is said. My father and my mother died of want. Well, had I riches of my own? you see How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot. They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died: And I have laboured somewhat in my time And not been paid profusely. Some good son Paint my two hundred pictures—let him try! No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes, You loved me quite enough. it seems to-night. This must suffice me here. What would one have? In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance— Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel's reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me To cover—the three first without a wife, While I have mine! So—still they overcome Because there's still Lucrezia,—as I choose. Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.

Andrea del Sarto Browning

"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself." (David, Psalms 50.21) ['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin. And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh: And while above his head a pompion-plant, Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye, Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, And now a flower drops with a bee inside, And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch, He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross And recross till they weave a spider-web (Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times) And talks to his own self, howe'er he please, Touching that other, whom his dam called God. Because to talk about Him, vexesha, Could He but know! and time to vex is now, When talk is safer than in winter-time. Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep In confidence he drudges at their task, And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe, Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.] Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! 'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that: Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same. 'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun) Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, And in her old bounds buried her despair, Hating and loving warmth alike: so He. 'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue That pricks deep into oak warts for a worm, And says a plain word when she finds her prize, But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks About their holeHe made all these and more, Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else? He could not, Himself, make a second self To be His mate; as well have made Himself: He would not make what He mislikes or slights, An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains: But did, in envy, listlessness or sport, Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be Weaker in most points, stronger in a few, Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while, Things He admires and mocks too,that is it. Because, so brave, so better though they be, It nothing skills if He begin to plague. Look, now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash, Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived, Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss, Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all, Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain; Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme, And wanton, wishing I were born a bird. Put case, unable to be what I wish, I yet could make a live bird out of clay: Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban Able to fly?for, there, see, he hath wings, And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire, And there, a sting to do his foes offence, There, and I will that he begin to live, Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns Of grigs high up that make the merry din, Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not. In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay, And he lay stupid-like,why, I should laugh; And if he, spying me, should fall to weep, Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong, Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again, Well, as the chance were, this might take or else Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry, And give the mankin three sound legs for one, Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg And lessoned he was mine and merely clay. Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme, Drinking the mash, with brain become alive, Making and marring clay at will? So He. 'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him, Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord. 'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs That march now from the mountain to the sea; 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; 'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, And two worms he whose nippers end in red; As it likes me each time, I do: so He. Well then, 'supposeth He is good i' the main, Placable if His mind and ways were guessed, But rougher than His handiwork, be sure! Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself, And envieth that, so helped, such things do more Than He who made them! What consoles but this? That they, unless through Him, do nought at all, And must submit: what other use in things? 'Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint That, blown through, gives exact the scream o' the jay When from her wing you twitch the feathers blue: Sound this, and little birds that hate the jay Flock within stone's throw, glad their foe is hurt: Put case such pipe could prattle and boast forsooth "I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing, I make the cry my maker cannot make With his great round mouth; he must blow through mine!' Would not I smash it with my foot? So He. But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease? Aha, that is a question! Ask, for that, What knows,the something over Setebos That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought, Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance. There may be something quiet o'er His head, Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief, Since both derive from weakness in some way. I joy because the quails come; would not joy Could I bring quails here when I have a mind: This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth. 'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch, But never spends much thought nor care that way. It may look up, work up,the worse for those It works on! 'Careth but for Setebos The many-handed as a cuttle-fish, Who, making Himself feared through what He does, Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar To what is quiet and hath happy life; Next looks down here, and out of very spite Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real, These good things to match those as hips do grapes. 'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport. Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle: Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped, Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame, And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban; A bitter heart that bides its time and bites. 'Plays thus at being Prosper in a way, Taketh his mirth with make-believes: so He. His dam held that the Quiet made all things Which Setebos vexed only: 'holds not so. Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex. Had He meant other, while His hand was in, Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick, Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow, Or overscale my flesh 'neath joint and joint Like an orc's armour? Ay,so spoil His sport! He is the One now: only He doth all. 'Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits Him. Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why? 'Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose, But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate Or love, just as it liked him: He hath eyes. Also it pleaseth Setebos to work, Use all His hands, and exercise much craft, By no means for the love of what is worked. 'Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world When all goes right, in this safe summer-time, And he wants little, hungers, aches not much, Than trying what to do with wit and strength. 'Falls to make something: 'piled yon pile of turfs, And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk, And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top, Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill. No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake; 'Shall some day knock it down again: so He. 'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof! One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope. He hath a spite against me, that I know, Just as He favours Prosper, who knows why? So it is, all the same, as well I find. 'Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises Crawling to lay their eggs here: well, one wave, Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck, Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large tongue, And licked the whole labour flat: so much for spite. 'Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies) Where, half an hour before, I slept i' the shade: Often they scatter sparkles: there is force! 'Dug up a newt He may have envied once And turned to stone, shut up Inside a stone. Please Him and hinder this?What Prosper does? Aha, if He would tell me how! Not He! There is the sport: discover how or die! All need not die, for of the things o' the isle Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees; Those at His mercy,why, they please Him most When . . . when . . . well, never try the same way twice! Repeat what act has pleased, He may grow wroth. You must not know His ways, and play Him off, Sure of the issue. 'Doth the like himself: 'Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears But steals the nut from underneath my thumb, And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence: 'Spareth an urchin that contrariwise, Curls up into a ball, pretending death For fright at my approach: the two ways please. But what would move my choler more than this, That either creature counted on its life To-morrow and next day and all days to come, Saying, forsooth, in the inmost of its heart, "Because he did so yesterday with me, And otherwise with such another brute, So must he do henceforth and always."Ay? Would teach the reasoning couple what "must" means! 'Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So He. 'Conceiveth all things will continue thus, And we shall have to live in fear of Him So long as He lives, keeps His strength: no change, If He have done His best, make no new world To please Him more, so leave off watching this, If He surprise not even the Quiet's self Some strange day,or, suppose, grow into it As grubs grow butterflies: else, here are we, And there is He, and nowhere help at all. 'Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop. His dam held different, that after death He both plagued enemies and feasted friends: Idly! He doth His worst in this our life, Giving just respite lest we die through pain, Saving last pain for worst,with which, an end. Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire Is, not to seem too happy. 'Sees, himself, Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink, Bask on the pompion-bell above: kills both. 'Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball On head and tail as if to save their lives: Moves them the stick away they strive to clear. Even so, 'would have Him misconceive, suppose This Caliban strives hard and ails no less, And always, above all else, envies Him; Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights, Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh, And never speaks his mind save housed as now: Outside, 'groans, curses. If He caught me here, O'erheard this speech, and asked "What chucklest at?" 'Would, to appease Him, cut a finger off, Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best, Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree, Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste: While myself lit a fire, and made a song And sung it, "What I hate, be consecrate To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate For Thee; what see for envy in poor me?" Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend, Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime, That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch And conquer Setebos, or likelier He Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die. [What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once! Crickets stop hissing: not a birdor, yes, There scuds His raven that has told Him all! It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move, And fast invading fires begin! White blaze A tree's head snapsand there, there, there, there, there, His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him! Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos! 'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip, Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!]

Caliban upon Setebos Browning

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Carrion Comfort Hopkins

I. My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. II. What else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, III. If at his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed: neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried, So much as gladness that some end might be. IV. For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope. V. As when a sick man very near to death Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bid the other go, draw breath Freelier outside, (``since all is o'er,'' he saith, ``And the blow falIen no grieving can amend;'') VI. While some discuss if near the other graves Be room enough for this, and when a day Suits best for carrying the corpse away, With care about the banners, scarves and staves: And still the man hears all, and only craves He may not shame such tender love and stay. VII. Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ So many times among ``The Band''---to wit, The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed Their steps---that just to fail as they, seemed best, And all the doubt was now---should I be fit? VIII. So, quiet as despair, I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. IX. For mark! no sooner was I fairly found Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, Than, pausing to throw backward a last view O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round: Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. I might go on; nought else remained to do. X. So, on I went. I think I never saw Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: For flowers---as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind, with none to awe, You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove. XI. No! penury, inertness and grimace, In some strange sort, were the land's portion. ``See ``Or shut your eyes,'' said nature peevishly, ``It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: ``'Tis the Last judgment's fire must cure this place, ``Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.'' XII. If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of greenness?'tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. XIII. As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! XIV. Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. XV. I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart. As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards---the soldier's art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights. XVI. Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine to fix me to the place, That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace! Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. XVII. Giles then, the soul of honour---there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good---but the scene shifts---faugh! what hangman hands Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! XVIII. Better this present than a past like that; Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howlet or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. XIX. A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof---to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. XX. So petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of route despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. XXI. Which, while I forded,---good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! ---It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek. XXII. Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage--- XXIII. The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. XXIV. And more than that---a furlong on---why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel---that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware, Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. XXV. Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood--- Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. XXVI. Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. XXVII. And just as far as ever from the end! Nought in the distance but the evening, nought To point my footstep further! At the thought, great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap---perchance the guide I sought. XXVIII. For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains---with such name to grace Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. How thus they had surprised me,---solve it, you! How to get from them was no clearer case. XXIX. Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when--- In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts---you're inside the den! XXX. Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for the sight! XXXI. What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counter-part In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start. XXXII. Not see? because of night perhaps?---why, day Came back again for that! before it left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,--- ``Now stab and end the creature---to the heft!'' XXXIII. Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--- How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet, each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years. XXXIV. There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew.

Child(e) Roland to the Dark Tower Came Browning

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach Arnold

STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove ; Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute j Thou madest Death ; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made ! fc***^ Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die ; And thou hast made him : thou art just. Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou : Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. J A ^Lv^- Our little systems have their day ; * They have their day and cease to be^ ~ They are but broken lights of thee, % And thou, O Lord, art more than they. IN MEMORIAM. We have but faith : we cannot know ; For knowledge is of things we see ; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness : let it grow. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell ; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before, But vaster. We are fools and slight ; We mock thee when we do not fear : But help thy foolish ones to bear ; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. Forgive what seem'd my sin in me, What seem'd my worth since I began ; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee. Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved. Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth ; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise. 1849. IN MEMORIAM. I. I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones" Of their dead selves to higher things^ But who shall so forecast the years And find in loss a gain to match ? Or reach a hand thro' time to catch The far-off interest of tears ? Le.Hl.ove clasp Qj;ief lest both be drown 'd. Let darkness keep her raven gloss : Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with Death, to beat the ground, Than that the victor Hours should scorn The long result of love, and boast, ' Behold the man that loved and lost, / But all he was is overworn. 1 IN MEMORIAM. II. Old Yew, which graspest at the stones ' That naihe the underlying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. The seasons bring the flower again, And bring the firstling to the flock ; And in the dusk of thee the clock Beats out the little lives of men. O not for thee the glow, the bloom, Who changest not in any gale, Nor branding summer suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom ; And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee. IN MEMORIAL III. O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, O priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip ? 'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run; A web is woven across the sky ; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun : ' And all the phantom, Nature, stands With all the music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own, A hollow form with empty hands.' And shall I take a thing so blind, Embrace her as my natural good ; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind ? IN MEMORIAM. IV. To Sleep I give my powers away ; My will is bondsman to the dark ; I sit within a helmless bark, And with my heart I muse and say : O heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou shouldst fail from thy desire, Who scarcely darest to inquire, ' What is it makes me beat so low ? ' Something it is which thou hast lost, Some pleasure from thine early years. K Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, \ That grief hath shaken into frost ! 1 Such clouds of nameless trouble cross All night below the darken'd eyes ; With morning wakes the will, and cries, 4 Thou shalt not be the fool of loss. 1 IN MEMORIAM. V. I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel ; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies ; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I '11 wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold ; But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more. \ IN MEMORIAM. VI. One writes that ' Other friends remafti,' I That ' Loss is common to the race ' And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more : Too common ! Never morning wore To evening but some heart did break. OJather, wheresoe'er thou be, Who pledgest now thy gallant son, A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath still'd the life that beat from thee. O mother, praying God will save Thy sailor, while thy head is bow'd, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave. Ye know no more than I who wrought At that last hour to please him well ; Who mused on all I had to tell, And something written, something thought \ Expecting still his advent home ; And ever met him on his way With wishes, thinking, * here to-day,' Or * here to-morrow will he come.' IN MEMORIAM. O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, That sittest ranging golden hair ; And glad to find thyself so fair, Poor child, that waitest for thy love ! For flow her father's chimney glows In expectation of a guest ; And thinking ' this will please him best/ She takes a riband or a rose ; For he* will see them on to-night ; And with the thought her color burns ; Aud, having left the glass, she turns Once more to set a ringlet right ; And, even when she turn'd, the curse Had fallen, and her future lord Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford, Or kill'd in falling from his horse. O what to her shall be the end ? And what to me remains of good ? To'her perpetual maidenhood, And unto me no second friend. 10 IN MEMORIAM. VII. )ark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be claspt no more Behold roe, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here ; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day. IN ME MORI AM, II VIII. A happy lover who has come To look on her that loves him well, Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell, And learns her gone and far from home, He saddens, all the magic light Dies off at once from bower and hall, ^ And all the place is darK, and all The chambers emptied of delight : So find I every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street. For all is dark where thou art not. Yet as that other, wandering there In those deserted walks, may find A flower beat with rain and wind, Which once she foster'd up with care ; So seems it in my deep regret, my forsaken heart, with thee And this poor flower of poesy Which, little cared for, fades not yet. But since it pleased a vanish'd eye, 1 go to plant it on his tomb, That if it can it there may bloom, Or, dying, there at least may die. 12 IN ME MORI AM. IX. Fair ship, that from the Italian shore Sailest the placid ocean-plains With my lost Arthur's loved remains, Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er. So draw him home to those that mourn In vain ; a favorable speed Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn. All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, thro' early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. Sphere all your lights around, above ; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow ; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love ; My Arthur, whom I shall not see Till all my widow'd race be run ; Dear as the mother to the son, More tfiarTmy brothers are to me. IN MEMORIAM. 13 X. I hear the noise about thy keel ; I hear the bell struck in the night : I see the cabin- window bright ; I see the sailor at the wheel. Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife, And travell'd men from foreign lands ; And letters unto trembling hands ; And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. So bring him : we have idle dreams : This look of quiet flatters thus Our home-bred fancies : O to us, The fools of habit, sweeter seems To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of Godt Than if with thee the roaring wells Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine, And hands so often claspt in mine Should toss with tangle and with shells. 14 IN MEMORIAM. Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only thro' the Jadedjeaf^ The chestnut pattering to the ground ; Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold ; Calm and still light on yon great plain That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, And crowded farms and lessening towers, To mingle with the bounding main ; Calm and deep peace in this wide air, These leaves that redden to the fall ; And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair : Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep. IN ME MORI AM. 15 XII. Lo, as a dove when up she springs To bear thro' heaven a tale of woe, Some dolorous message knit below The wild pulsation of her wings, Like her I go ; I cannot stay ; I leave this mortal ark behind, A weight of nerves without a mind, And leave the cliffs, and haste away O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large, And reach the glow of southern skies. And see the sails at distance rise, And linger weeping on the marge, And saying, ' Comes he thus, my friend ? (Js this the end of all my care ? *) And circle moaning in the air, '/Is this the end ? j Is this the end ? ' And forward dart again, and play About the prow, and back return To where the body sits, and learn That I have been an hour away. 16 IN MEMORIAM. XIII. Tears of the widower, when he sees A late-lost form that sleep reveals, And moves his doubtful arms, and feels Her place is empty, fall like these ; . Which weep a loss for ever new, A void where heart on heart reposed ; And, where warm hands have prest and closed, Silence, till I be silent too ; , Which weep the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a life removed, The human-hearted man^ I loved, A spirit, not a breathing voice. Come, Time, and teach me, many years, I do not suffer in a dream ; For now so strange do these things seem, Mine eyes have leisure for their tears, My fancies time to rise on wing, And glance about the approaching sails, As tho' they brought but merchants' bales, And not the burthen that they bring. IN ME MORI AM. XIV. If one should bring me this report, That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day, And I went down unto the quay, And found thee lying in the port ; And standing, muffled round with woe, Should see thy passengers in rank Come stepping lightly down the plank, And beckoning unto those they know ; And if along with these should come The man I held as rm^^ivine, Should strike a sudden hand in mine, And ask a thousand things of home ; And I should tell him all my pain, And how my life had droop'd of late, And he should sorrow o'er my state And marvel what possess'd my brain ; And I perceived no touch of change, No hint of death in all his frame, But found him all in all the same, I should not feel it to be strange. 1 8 IN ME MORI AM* Tonight the winds begin to rise And roar from yonder dropping day: The last red leaf is whirl'd away, The rooks are blown about the skies ; The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, The cattle huddled on the lea ; And wildly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world : And but for fancies, which aver That all thy motions gently pass Athwart a plane of molten glass, I scarce could brook the strain and stir That makes the barren branches loud And but for fear it is not so, The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire. IN ME MORI AM. 1 9 XVI. What words are these have fallen from me ? Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast, Or Sorrow such a changeling be ? Or doth she only seem to take The touch of change in calm or storm, But knows no more of transient form In her deep self than some dead lake That holds the shadow of a lark Hung in the shadow of a heaven ? Or has the shock, so harshly given, Confused me like the unhappy bark That strikes by night a craggy shelf, And staggers blindly ere she sink ? And stunn'd me from my power to think And all my knowledge of myself ; And made me that delirious man Whose fancy fuses old and new, And flashes into false and true, And mingles all without a plan ? 2O IN MEMORIAM. V XVIL Thou comest, much wept for ; such a breeze Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer Was as the whisper of an air To breathe thee over lonely seas. For I in spirit saw thee move Thro' circles of the bounding sky, Week after week : the days go by : Come quick, thou bringest all I love. Henceforth, wherever thou mayst roam, My blessing, like a line of light, Is on the waters day and night, And like a beacon guards thee home. So may whatever tempest mars Mid-ocean spare thee, sacred bark, And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars, So kind an office hath been done, Such precious relics brought by thee, The dust of him I shall not see Till all my widow'd race be run. IN ME MORI AM, 21 XVIII. i/ T is well \ 't is something ; we may stand Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. 'T is little but it looks in truth As if the quiet bones were blest, Among familiar names to rest And in the places of his youth. Come then, pure hands, and bear the head That sleeps or wear's the mask of sleep, And come, whatever loves to weep, And hear the .ritual of the dead. Ah yet, even yet, if this might be, I, falling on his faithful heart, Would breathing thro' his lips impart The life that almost dies in me ; That dies not, but endures with pain, And slowly forms the firmer mind, Treasuring the look it cannot find, The words that are not heard again. 22 IN MEMORIAM. XIX. The Danube to the Severn gave The darken 'd heart that beat no more; They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills ; The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills. The Wye is hush'd nor moved along, And hush'd my deepest grief of all, When, fill'd with tears that cannot falljy I brim with sorrow drowning song. The tide flows down, the wave again Is vocal in its wooded walls ; My deeper anguish also falls, And I can speak a little then. IN MEMORIAM. 2$ XX. The lesser griefs that may be said, That breathe a thousand tender vows, Are but as servants in a house Where lies the master newly dead ; Who speak their feeling as it is, And weep the fulness from the mind : 1 It will be hard,' they say, ' to find Another service such as this.' My lighter moods are like to these, That out of words a comfort win ; But there are other griefs within, Arid tears that at their fountainjreeze ; For by the hearth the children sit Cold in that atmosphere of death, And scarce endure to draw the breath, Or like to noiseless phantoms flit : But open converse is there none, So much the vital spirits sink To see the vacant chair, and think, * How good ! how kind ! and he is gone/ 24 IN MEMORIAM. I sing to him that rests below, And, since the grasses round me wave, I take the grasses of the grave, And make them pipes whereon to blow. The traveller hears me now and then, And sometimes harshly will he speak : ' This fellow would make weakness weak, And melt the waxen hearts of men.' Another answers, ' Let him be, He loves to make parade of pain, That with his piping he may gain The praise that comes to constancy.' A third is wroth : * Is this an hour For private sorrow's barren song, When more and more the people throng The chairs and thrones of civil power ? ' A time to sicken and to swoon, When Science reaches forth her arms To feel from world to world, and charms Her secret from the latest moon ? ' Behold, ye speak an idle thing ; Ye never knew the sacred dust : I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing : IN MEMORIAM. 2$ And one is glad ; her note is gay, For now her little ones have ranged ; And one is sad ; her note is changed, Because her brood is stolen away. 26 IN MEMORIAM. XXII. The path by which we twain did go, % Which led by tracts that pleased us well, \Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, \ From flower to flower, from snow to snow ; And we with singing cheer'd the way, And, crown'd with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart from May to May : But where the path we walk'd began To slant the fifth autumnal slope, As we descended (following Hopq, There sat the Shadow fear'd of man j Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold, And wrapt thee formless in the fold, And dull'd the murmur on thy lip, And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste, And think that somewhere in the waste The Shadow sits and waits for me. IN MEMORIAM, XXIII. Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut, O^Jai^akingjnto song by fits, Aldne, alone, to where he sits, The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot, Who keepsjthejceys of all the creeds, Twander, often falling lame^ And looking back to whence I came Or on to where the pathway leads ; And crying, How changed from where it ran Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb, But all the lavish hills would hum The murmur of a happy Pan : When each by turns was guide to each, And Fancy light from Fancy caught, And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech ; And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, And all the secret of the Spring^ Moved in the chambers of the blood ; And many an old philosophy On Argive heights divinely sang, And round us all the thicket rang To many a flute of Arcady_, 28 IN MEMORIAM, XXIV. And was the day of my delight As pure and perfect as I say ? The very source and fount of day Is dash'd with wandering isles of night. If all was good and fair we met, This earth had been the Paradise It never look'd to human eyes Since our first sun arose and set. And is it that the haze of grief Makes former gladness loom so great P The lowness of the present state, That sets the past in this relief ? Or that the past will always win A glory from its being far, And orb into the perfect star We saw not when we moved therein? IN MEMORIAM, 29 xxv e I know that this was Life, the track Whereon with equal feet we fared ; And then, as now, the day prepared The daily burden for the back. But this it was that made me move As light as carrier-birds in air ; I loved the weight I had to bear, Because it needed help of Love : Nor could I weary, heart or limb, When mighty Love would cleave in twain The lading of a single pain, And part it, giving half to him. 3O IN MEMORIAM. XXVI. Still onward winds the dreary way ; I with it ; for I long to prove No lapse of moons can canker Love, Whatever fickle tongues may say. And if that eye which watches guilt And goodness, and hath power to see Within the green the moulder'd tree, And towers fallen as soon as built O, if indeed that eye foresee Or see (in Him is no before) In more of life true life no more And Love the indifference to be, Then might I find, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas, That Shadow waiting with the keys, To shroud me from my proper scorn. IN ME MORI AM. 31 XXVII, I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods : I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfetter'd by the sense of crime, To wHom a conscience never wakes ; Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth ; Nor any want-begotten rest. . / I hold it true, whate'er 'befall ; I feel it, when I sorrow most : 'T is better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. 32 IN MEMORIAM. XXVIII. The time draws near the birth of Christ : The moon is hid ; the night is still ; The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round, From far and near, on mead and moor, Swell out and fail, as if a door Were shut between me and the sound : Each voice four changes on the wind, That now dilate, and now decrease, Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, Peace and goodwill, to all mankind. / This year I slept and woke with pain, I almost wish'd no more to wake, And that my hold on life would break Before I heard those bells again : But they my troubled spirit rule, For they controll'd me when a boy ; They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy, The merry, merry bells of Yule. IN MEMORIAM. 33 XXIX. With such compelling cause to grieve As daily vexes household peace, And chains regret to his decease, How dare we keep our Christmas-eve ; Which brings no more a welcome guest To enrich the threshold of the night With shower'd largess of delight In dance and song and game and jest ? Yet go, and while the holly boughs Entwine the cold baptismal font, Make one wreath more for Use and Wont, That guard the portals of the house ; Old sisters of a day gone by, Gray nurses, loving nothing new ; Why should they miss their yearly due Before their time ? They too will die. 34 /Af MEMORIAM. XXX. With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth ; A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, And adly_fell our Christmas-eve. At our old pastimes in the hall We gamboll'd, making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute Shadow watching all. We paused : the winds were in the beech : We heard them sweep the winter land ', And in a circle hand-in-hand Sat silent, looking each at each. Then echo-like our voices rang ; * We sung, tho' every eye was dim, I A merry_song we sang jvith him (j-jast year : impetuously we 'sang. We ceased : a gentler feeling crept Upon us : surely rest is meet : * They rest,' we said, * their sleep is sweet,' And silence follow'd, and we wept. Our voices took a higher range ; Once more we sang : * They do not die Nor lose their mortal sympathy, Nor change to us, although they change ; IN ME MORI AM. 35 1 Rapt from the fickle and the frail With gather'd power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, from veil to veil.' Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, Draw forth the cheerful day from night ; O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born. 36 IN MEMORIAM. XXXI. When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, And home to Mary's house return'd, Was this demanded if he yearn 'd To hear her weeping by his grave ? ' Where wert thou, brother, those four days ? There lives no record of reply, Which telling what it is to die Had surely added praise to praise. From every house the neighbors met, The streets were fill'd with joyful sound, A solemn gladness even crown'd The purple brows of Olivet. Behold a man raised up by Christ ! The rest remaineth unreveaFd ; He told it not, or something seal'd The lips of that Evangelist. IN MEMOJRIAM. 37 XXXII. Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, Nor other thought her mind admits But, he was dead, and there he sits, And he that brought him back is there. Then one deep love doth supersede All other, when her ardent gaze Roves from the living brother's face, And rests upon the Life indeed. Ail subtle thought, all curious fears, Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears. Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure ; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs ? 38 IN MEMORIAM. XXXIII. O thou that after toil and storm Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air, Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form, Leave thbu thy sister when she prays, Her early Heaven, her happy views ; Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse A life that leads melodious days. Her faith thro' form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good : O, sacred be the flesh and blood To which she links a truth divine ! See thou, that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, And even for want of such a type. IN MEMORIAM. 39 XXXIV, My own dim life should teach me this, ,- That life shall live for evermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is ; This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks In some wild poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim. What then were God to such as I ? 'T were hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A. little patience ere I die ; 'T were best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws, To drop head-foremost in the jaws Of vacant darkness and to cease. 40 IN MEMORIAL. XXXV. Yet if some voice that man could trust Should murmur from the narrow house, * The cheeks drop in, the body bows ; Man dies : nor is there hope in dust : ' Might I not say, ' Yet even here, But for one hour, O Love, I strive To keep so sweet a thing alive ' ? But I should turn mine ears and hear The moanings of the homeless sea, The sound of streams that swift or slow Draw down Ionian hills, and sow The dust of continents to be ; And Love would answer with a sigh, r p*e'sound of that forgetful shore 111 change my sweetness more and more, Half-dead to know that I shall die.' O me, what profits it to put An idle case ? If Death were seen At first as Death, Love had not been, Or been in narrowest working shut, Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. IN MEMORIAM. 41 XXXVI. Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, Deep-seated in our mystic frame,. \ We yield all blessing to the name Of Him that made them current coin ; For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, Where truth in closest words shall fail. When truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors. And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought ; Which he may reao! that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that 'watch the wave In roarings round the coral reef. 42 IN MEMORIAM. XXXVII. r\ j IJraniaj speaks with darken'd brow : ' Thou pratest here where thou art least ; This faith has many a purer priest, And many an abler voice than thou. * Go down beside thy native rill, On thy Parnassus set thy feet, And hear thy laurel whisper sweet About the ledges of the hill.' And my Melpomene replies, A touch of shame upon her cheek : ' I am not worthy even to speak Of thy prevailing mysteries ; 4 For I am but an earthly Muse, And owning but a little art To lull witR song an aching heart, And render human love his dues ; * But brooding on the dear one dead, And all he said of things divine (And dear to me as sacred wine To dying lips is all he said), ' I murmur'd, as I came along, Of comfort claspt in truth reveal'd ; And loiter'd in the master's field, And darken'd sanctities with song.' IN MEMORIAM. 4$ XXXVIII. With weary steps I loiter on, Tho' always under alter'd skies The purple from the distance dies, My prospect and horizon gone. No joy the blowing season gives, The herald melodies of spring, But in the songs I love to sing A doubtful gleam of solace lives. If any care for what is here Survive in spirits render'd free, Then are these songs I sing of thee Not all ungrateful to thine ear. 44 IN MEMORIAM. Old warder of these buried bones, And answering now my random stroke With fruitful cloud and living smoke, Dark yew, that graspest at the stones And dippest toward the dreamless head, To thee too comes the golden hour When flower is feeling after flower ; But Sorrow fixt upon the dead, And darkening the dark graves of men, What whisper'd from her lying lips ? Thy gloom is kindled at the tips, And passes into gloom again. IN MEMORIAM. 45 XL. Could we forget the wido^d hour And look on spirits breathed away, As on a maiden in the day When first she wears her orange-flower ! When crown'd with blessing she doth rise To take her latest leave of home, And hopes and light regrets that come Make April of her tender eyes ; And doubtful joys the father move, And tears are on the mother's face, As parting with a long embrace She enters other realms of love j Her office there to rear, to teach, Becoming as is meet and fit A link among the days, to knit s The generations each with each : And, doubtless, unto thee is given A life that bears immortal- fruit In those great offices that suit The full-grown energies of heaven. Ay me, the difference I discern ! How often shall her old fireside Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride, How often she herself return, 46 IN MEMORIAM. And tell them all they would have told, And bring her babe, and make her boast, Till even those that miss'd her most Shall count new things as dear as old : But thou and I have shaken hands, Till growing winters lay melow ; My paths are in the fields I know, And thine in undiscover'd lands. IN MEMORIAM. 47 XLI. Thy spirit ere our fatal loss Did ever rise from high to higher ; As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, As flies the lighter thro' the gross. But thou art turn'd to something strange, And I have lost the links that bound Thy changes ; here upon the ground, No more partaker of thy change. Deep folly ! yet that this could be That I could wing my will with might To leap the grades of life and light, And flash at once, my friend, to thee. For tho' my nature rarely yields To that vague fear implied in death, Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath, The howlings from forgotten fields ; Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor An inner trouble I behold, A spectral doubt which makes me cold, That I shall be thy mate no more, Tho' following with an upward mind The wonders that have come to thee, Thro' all the secular to-be, But evermore a life behind. 4$ IN MEMORIAM. XLII. I vex my heart with fancies dim : He still outstript me in the race ; It was but^unity of place That made me dream I rank'd with him. And so may place retain us still, And he the much-beloved again, A lord of large experience, train To riper growth the mind and will : And what delights can equal those That stir the spirit's inner deeps, When one that loves, but knows not, reaps A. truth from one that loves and knows ? IN MEMORIAM. 49 XLIII. Ifjleep and D/a.th'he truly one. And every spirit's folded bloom Thro' all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on ; Unconscious of the sliding hour, Bare of the body, might it last, And silent traces of the past Be all the color of the flower : So then were nothing lost to man ; So that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began ; And love will last as pure and whole As when he loved me here in Time, And at the spiritual prime Rewaken with the dawning soul. 5O IN MEMORIAM. XLIV. How fares it with the happy dead ? For here the man is more and more ; But he forgets the days before God shut the doorways of his head. The days have vanish'd, tone and tint, And yet perhaps the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic hint ; And in the long harmonious years (If Death so taste Lethean springs) May some dim touch of earthly things Surprise thee ranging with thy peers. If such a dreamy touch should fall, O turn thee round, resolve the doubt ; My guardian angel will speak out In that high place, and tell thee all. IN MEMORIAM. XLV. The baby new to earth* and sky, What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that * this is I : ' But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of * I,' and ' me/ And finds ' I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch.' So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined. This use may lie in blood and breath, Which else were fruitless of their due, Had man to learn himself anew Beyond the second birth of death. 52 IN MEMORIAM. XLVI. We ranging down this lower track, The path we came by, thorn and flower, Is shadow'd by the growing hour, Lest life should fail in looking back. So be it : there no shade can last In that deep dawn behind the tomb, But clear from marge to marge shall bloom The eternal landscape of the past ; A lifelong tract of time reveal'd ; The fruitful hours of still increase ; Days order'd in a wealthy peace, And those five years its richest field. O Love, thy province were not large, A bounded field, nor stretching far ; Look also, Love, a brooding star, A rosy warmth from marge to marge I IN MEMORIAM. XLVII. That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds and, fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul, Is faith as vague as all unsweet : Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from all beside, And I shall know him when we meet ; And we shall sit at endless feast, Enjoying each the other's good : What vaster dream can hit the mood Of Love on earth ? He seeks at least Upon the last and sharpest height, Before the spirits fade away, Some landing-place, to clasp and say, Farewell ! We lose ourselves in light.' 54 IN MEMORIAM. XLVIII. If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, Were taken to be such as closed Grave doubts and answers here proposed, Then these were such as men might scorn. Her care is not to part and prove : She takes, when harsher moods remit, What slender shade of doubt may flit, And makes it vassal unto love ; And hence, indeed, she sports with words, But better serves a wholesome law, And holds it sin and shame to draw The deepest measure from the chords ; Nor dare she trust a larger lay, But rather loosens from the lip Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears and skim away. IN MEMO RI AM. 55 XLIX. From art, from nature, from the schools, Let random influences glance, Like light in many a shiver'd lance That breaks about the dappled pools. The lightest wave of thought shall lisp, The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe, The slightest air of song shall breathe To make the sullen surface crisp. And look thy look, and go thy way, But blame not thou the winds that make The seeming-wanton ripple break, The tender-pencill'd shadow play. Beneath all fancied hopes and fears Ay me, the sorrow deepens down, Whose muffled motions blindly drown The bases of my life in tears. 56 IN MEMOR1AM. Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle ; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust ; And Time a maniac scattering dust, And Life a Fury slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring, That lay their eggs, and sting and sing And weave their petty cells and die. Be near me when I fade away, To point the term of human strife, And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day. IN ME MORI AM. 57 LI. Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side ? Is there no baseness we would hide ? No inner vileness that we dread ? Shall he for whose applause I strove, I had such reverence for his blame, See with clear eye some hidden shame And I be lessen'd in his love ? I wrong the grave with fears untrue : Shall love be blamed for want of faith ? There must be wisdom with great Death The dead shall look me thro' and thro'. Be near us when we climb or fall : Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours With larger other eyes than ours, To make allowance for us all. 58 IN MEMORIAM. LII. I cannot love thee as I ought, For love reflects the thing beloved ; My words are only words, and moved Upon the topmost froth of thought. ' Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,' The Spirit of true love replied ; * Thou canst not move me from thy side, Nor human frailty do me wrong. * What keeps a spirit wholly true To that ideal which he bears ? What record ? not the sinless years That breathed beneath the Syrian blue : ' So fret not, like an idle girl, That life is dash'd with flecks of sin. Abide : thy wealth is gather 'd in, When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl/ IN MEMORIAM. 59 LIII. How many a father have I seen, A sober man, among his boys, Whose youth was full of foolish noise, Who wears his manhood hale and green ; <T* ff f' ix And dare we to this fancy give, That had the wild oat not been sown, The soil, left barren, scarce had grown The grain by which a man may live ? Or, if we held the doctrine sound For life outliving heats of youth, Yet who would preach it as a truth To those that eddy round and round ? Hold thou the good ; define it well : For fear divine Philosophy Should push beyond her mark, and be ^Procuress to the Lords of Hell. 6O IN MEMORIAM. O, yet we trust that somehow ood Will be the final goal of illT" To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; That nothing walks with aimless feet ; That not one life shall be destroy'd, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete; That not a worm is cloven in vain ; *^ That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivelPd in a fruitless fire, , Or but subserves another's gain. Behold, we know not anything ; I can but trust that good shall fall At last far off at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. So runs m^ dream : but what am I ? ""* An inrant crying in the night ; An infant crying for the light ; And with no language but a cry. IN ME MORI AM. 6 1 LV. The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul ? Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams ? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life, That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear, falter where J firmly trod) And falling with my weight of cares r Upon the great world's altar-stairs - That slope thro' darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope. 62 IN MEMORIAM. LVI. * So careful of the type ? ' but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, l A thousand types are gone : I care for nothing, all shall go. * Thou makest thine appeal to me : I bring to life, I bring to death ; The spirit does but mean the breath : I know no more.' And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, r Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, AJ^ Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravin, shriek'd against his creed Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or seal'd within the iron hills ? No more ? A monster then, a dream, o A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match'd with him. v . IN MEMORIAM. 6 3 ^ ^&,c^-* O life as futile, then, as frail ! J O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil. 64 IN MEMORIAM. LVII. Peace ; come away : the song of woe Is after all an earthly song : Peace ; come away : we do him wrong To sing so wildly : let us go. Come, let us go : your cheeks are pale ; But half my life I leave behind : Methinks my friend is richly shrined ; But I shall pass ; my work will fail. Yet in these ears, till hearing dies, One set slow bell will seem to toll The passing of the sweetest soul That ever look'd with human eyes. I hear it now, and o'er and o'er, Eternal greetings to the dead ; And ' Ave, Ave, Ave,' said, * Adieu, adieu,' for evermore. IN MEMORIAM. 65 LVIII. In those sad words I took farewell : Like echoes in sepulchral halls, As drop by drop the water falls In vaults and catacombs, they fell ; And, falling, idly broke the peace Of hearts that beat from day to day, Half-conscious of their dying clay, And those cold crypts where they shall cease. The high Muse answer'd : ' Wherefore grieve Thy brethren with a fruitless tear? Abide a little longer here, And thou shalt take a nobler leave.* 66 IN ME MORI AM. LIX. O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me No casual mistress, but a wife, My bosom-friend and half of life ; As I confess it needs must be ? O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood, Be sometimes lovely like a bride, And put thy harsher moods aside, If thou wilt have me wise and good ? My centred passion cannot move, Nor will it lessen from to-day ; But I '11 have leave at times to play As with the creature of my love ; And set thee forth, for thou art mine, With so much hope for years to come, That, howsoe'er I know thee, some Could hardly tell what name were thine. IN MEMORIAM. LX. He past j a soul of noblerjone : My spirit loved and loves him yet, Like some poor girl whose heart is set On one whose rank exceeds her own. He mixing with his proper sphere, She finds the baseness of her lot, Half jealous of she knows not what, And envying all that meet him there. The little village looks forlorn ; She sighs amid her narrow days, Moving about the household ways, In that dark house where she was born. The foolish neighbors come and go, And tease her till the day draws by : At night she weeps, * How vain am I ! \ (^How should he love a thing so low ? ' 68 M MEMORIAM. LXI. If, in thy second state sublime, Thy ransom'd reason change replies With all the circle of the wise, The perfect flower of human time ; And it thou cast thine eyes below, How dimly character'd and slight, \ How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night, \ How blanch'd with darkness must I grow 1 Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, Where thy first form was made a man} I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can / The soul of Shakspeare love thee more. IN MEMORIAM. 69 LXII. Tho' if* an eye that 's downward cast Could make thee somewhat blench or fail, Then be my love an idle tale, And fading legend of the past ; And thou, as one that once declined, When he was little more than boy, (. On some unworthy heart with joy,J) But lives to wed an equal mind ; And breathes a novel world, the while His other passion wholly dies, Or in the light of deeper eyes Is matter for a flying smile. 7O IN MEMORIAM. LXIII. Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven, And love in which my hound has part, Can hang no weight upon my heart In its assumptions up to heaven ; And I am so much more than these As thou, perchance, art more than I, And yet I spare them sympathy, And I would set their pains at ease. So mayst thou watch me where I weep, As, unto vaster motions bound, The circuits of \thine orbit round A higher height, a deeper deep. IN MEMORIAM. Jl LXIV. Dost thou look back on what hath been, As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began And on a simple village green ; Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And grapples with his evil star ; Who makes by force his merit known And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne ; And, moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope, The centre of a world's desire ; Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, When all his active powers are still, A distant dearness in the hill, A secret sweetness in the stream, The limit of his narrower fate, While yet beside its vocal springs He play'd at counsellors and kings, With one that was his earliest mate ; IN MEMORIAM. Who ploughs with pain his native lea And reaps the labor of his hands, Or in the furrow musing stands : ' Does my old friend remember ie ? ' IN MEMORIAM. 73 LXV. Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt j I lull a fancy trouble-tost With ' Love's too precious to be lost, A little grain shall not be spilt.' And in that solace can I sing, Till out of painful phases wrought There flutters up a happy thought, Self-balanced on a lightsome wing : Since we deserved the name of friends, And thine effect so lives in me, A part of mine may live in thee And move thee on to noble ends. 74 IN MEMORIAM. LXVI. You thought my heart too far diseased ; You wonder when my fancies play To find me gay among the gay, Like one with any trifle pleased. I The shade by which my life was crost, Which makes a desert in the mind, Has made me kindly with my kind, And like to him whose sight is lost ; Whose feet are guided thro' the land, Whose jest among his friends is free, Who takes the children on. his knee, And winds their curls about his hand : He plays with threads, he beats his chair For pastime, dreaming of the sky ; His inner day can never die, His night of loss is always there. IN ME MORI AM. LXVIL When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest By that broad water of the west, There comes a glory on the walls : Thy marble bright in dark appears, As slowly steals a silver flame Along the letters of thy name, And o'er the number of thy years. The mystic glory swims away ; From off my bed the moonlight dies ; And closing eaves of wearied eyes I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray : And then I know the mist is drawn A lucid veil from coast to coast, And in the dark church like a ghost Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn. 76 IN MEMORIAM. LXVIII. When in the down I sink my head, Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath *, Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death, Nor can I dream of thee as dead. I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn, When all our path was fresh with dew, And all the bugle breezes blew Reveillee to the breaking morn. But what is this ? I turn about, I find a trouble in thine eye, Which makes me sad I know not why, Nor can my dream resolve the doubt : But ere the lark hath left the lea I wake, and I discern the truth ; It is the trouble of my youth That foolish sleep transfers to thee. IN MEMORIAM. LXIX. ' V _- I dream'd there would be Spring no more, That Nature's ancient power was lost : The streets were black with smoke and frost, They chatter'd trifles at the door. I wander'd from the noisy town, I found a wood with thorny boughs : I took the thorns to bind my brows, I wore them like a civic crown. I met with scoffs, I met with scorns From youth and babe and hoary hairs ; They call'd me in the public squares The fool that wears a crown of thorns. They call'd me fool, they call'd me child : I found an angel of the night ; The voice was low, the look was bright ; He look'd upon my crown and smiled. He reach'd the glory of a hand, That seem'd to touch it into leaf: The voice was not the voice of grief, The words were hard to understand. 78 IN MEMORIAM. LXX. I cannot see the features right, When on the gloom I strive to paint The face I know ; the hues are faint And mix with hollow masks of night ; Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought, A gulf that ever shuts and gapes, A hand that points, and palled shapes In shadowy thoroughfares of thought ; And crowds that stream from yawning doors, And shoals of pucker'd faces drive ; Dark bulks that tumble half alive, And lazy lengths on boundless shores ; Till all at once beyond the will I hear a wizard music roll, And thro' a lattice on the soul Looks thy fair face and makes it still. IN MEMORIAM. 79 LXXI. Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance And madness, thou hast forged at last , A night-long present of the past In which we went thro' summer France. Hadst thou such credit with the soul ? Then bring an opiate trebly strong, Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong, That so my pleasure may be whole ; While now we talk as once we talk'd Of men and minds, the dust of change, The days that grow to something strange, In walking as of old we walk'd Beside the river's wooded reach, The fortress, and the mountain ridge, The cataract flashing from the bridge, The breaker breaking on the beach. 8O IN MEMORIAM. LXXII. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, C And howlest, issuing out of night, (^With blasts that blow the poplar white/) And lash with storm the streaming pane ? Day. when my crown'd estate begun "* To pine in that reverse of doom, Which sicken'd every living bloom, And blurr'd the splendor of the sun ; Who usherest in the dolorous hour With thy quick tears that make the rose Pull sideways, and the daisy close Her crimson fringes to the shower ; Who mightst have heaved a windless flame Up the deep east, or, whispering, play'd A Qhejauer-w,pj;k of beam and shade Along the hills, yet look'd the same, As wan, as chill, as wild as now ; JDajj mark'd as with some hideous crime, When the dark hand struck down thro' time, And cancell'd nature's best : but thou, Lift as thou mayst thy Thro' clouds that drench the morning star, And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar, And s^w the sky with flying boughs, IN ME MORI AM. 8 1 And up thy vault with roaring sound Climb thy thick noon, disastrous clay; Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray, And hide thy shame beneath the ground. 82 IN MEMORIAM. LXXIII. So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be, How know I what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true ? The fame is quench'd that I foresaw, The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath I curse not Nature, no, nor Death ; For nbtniog is tftat errs from l^w. We pass ; the path that each man trod Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds. What fame is left for human deeds In endless age ? It rests wiUjJlod. O hollow wraith of dying fame, Fade wholly, while the soul exults, And self-infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name. IN MEMORIAM. 83 LXXIV, As sometimes in a dead man's face, To those that watch it more and more, A likeness, hardly seen before, Comes out to some one of his race ; So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, I see thee what thou art, and know Thy likeness to the wise below, ^ IThy kindred with the great of old. J But there is more than I can see, And what I see I leave unsaid, Nor speak it, knowing Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee? 84 /^ MEMORIAM. LXXV. I leave thy praises unexpress'd ( In verse that brings myself relief, ) And by the measure of my grief v I leave thy greatness to be guess'd. \ What practice howsoe'er expert In fitting aptest words to things, Or voice the richest-toned that sings, Hath power to give thee as thou wert ? I care not in these fading days To raise a cry that lasts not long, And round thee with the breeze of song To stir a little dust of praise. Thy leaf has perish'd in the green, And, while we breathe beneath the sun, The world which credits what is done Is cold to all that might have been. So here shall silence guard thy fame ; But somewhere, out of human view, Whate'er thy hands are set to do Is wrought with tumult of acclaim. IN MEMO RI AM. 8$ LXXVI. Take wings of fancy, and ascend, And in a moment set thy face L> Where all the starry heavens of space "" \ Are sharpen 'd to a needle's end ; v Take wings of foresight ; lighten thro' The secular abyss to come, And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb Before the mouldering of a yew ; And if the matin songs, that woke The darkness of our planet, last, Thine own shall wither in the vast Ere half the lifetime of an oak. 'Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain ; And what are they when these remain The ruin'd shells of hollow towers ? 86 IN MEMORIAM. LXXVII. What hope is here for modern rhyme To him who turns a musing eye On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie Foreshorten'd in the tract of time ? These mortal lullabies of pain May bind a book, may line a box, May serve to curl a maiden's locks ; Or when a thousand moons shall wane A man upon a stall may find, And, passing, turn the page that tells A grief, then changed to something else, Sung by a long-forgotten mind. But what of that ? My darken 'd ways Shall ring with music all the same ; To breathe my loss is more than farhe, To utter love more sweet than praise. IN MEMORIAM. 87 LXXVIII. Again at Christmas did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth ; The silent snow possess'd the earth, And calmly fell our Christmas-eve. The yule-log sparkled keen with frost, No wing of wind the^region swept, But oveTalTtnTngs brooding slept The quiet sense of something lost. As in the winters left behind, Again our ancient games had place, The mimic picture's breathing grace, And dance and song and hoodman-blind. Who show'd a token of distress ? ~" No single tear, no mark of pain : O sorrow, then can sorrow wane? O grief, can grief be changed to less ? O last regret, regret can die ! No mixt with all this mystic frame, Her deep relations are the same, But with long use her tears are dry. 88 IN MEMOKIAM. LXXIX. ' More than my brothers are to me, 1 -~ Let this not vex thee, noble heart ! I know thee of what force thou art To hold the costliest love in fee. But thou and I are one in kind, As moulded like in Nature's mint ; And hill and wood and field did print The same sweet forms in either mind. For us the same cold streamlet curl'd Thro' all his eddying coves ; the same All winds that roam the twilight came In whispers of the beauteous world. At one dear knee we proffer'd vows, One lesson from one book we learn'd, Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd To black and brown on kindred brows. And so my wealth resembles thine, But he was rich where I was poor, And he supplied my want the more As his unlikeness fitted mine. IN MEMORIAM. 89 LXXX. If any vague desire should rise, That holy Death ere Arthur died Had moved me kindly from his side, And dropt the dust on tearless eyes ; Then fancy shapes, as fancy can, The grief my loss in him had wrought, A grief as deep as life or thought, But stay'd in peace with God and man. I make a picture in the brain ; I hear the sentence that he speaks ; He bears the burthen of the weeks, But turns his burthen into gain. His credit thus shall set me free ; And, influence-rich to soothe and save, Unused example from the grave Reach out dead hands to comfort me. 90 IN MEMORIAM. LXXXI. Could I have said while he was here, * My love shall now no further range ; There cannot come a mellower change, For now is love mature in ear.' Love, then, had hope of richer store : What end is here to my complaint ? This haunting whisper makes me faint, * More years had made me love thee more.' But Death returns an answer sweet : * My sudden frost was sudden gain, And gave all ripeness to the grain It might have drawn from after-heat.' IN ME MORI AM. 9! LXXXII. I wage not any feud with Death For changes wrought on form and face No lower life that earth's embrace May breed with him can fright my faith. Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks ; And these are but the shatter'd stalks Or ruin'd chrysalis of one. Nor blame I Death, because he bare The use of virtue out of earth : I know transplanted human worth Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart; Hput our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speaks 92 IN MEMORIAM. LXXXIII. Dip down upon the northern shore, O sweet new-year delaying long ; Thou doest expectant nature wrong ; Delaying long, delay no more. What stays thee from the clouded noons, Thy sweetness from its proper place ? Can trouble live with April days, Or sadness in the summer moons ? Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, The little speedwell's darling blue, Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. O thou, new-year, delaying long, Delayest the sorrow in my blood, That longs to burst a frozen bud And flood a fresher throat with song IN MEMORIAM. LXXXIV. When I contemplate all alone The life that had been thine below, And fix my thoughts on all the glow To which thy crescent would have grown, I see thee sitting crown 'dwith_good, A central warmth diffusing bliss In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss, On all the branches of thy blood ; Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine ; For now the day was drawing on, When thou shouldst link thy life with one Of mine own house, and boys of thine 93 Had babbled ' Uncle ' on my knee ; But that remorseless iron hour _Made cypress of her orange flower, Despair of hope, and earth of thee. P u I seem to meet their least desire, To clap their cheeks, to call them mine. I see their unborn faces shine Beside the never-lighted fire. I see myself an honor'd guest, Thy partner in the flowery walk Of letters, genial table-talk, Or deep dispute, and graceful jest ; 94 W ' ME MORI AM. While now thy prosperous labor fills The lips of men with honest praise, And sun by sun the happy days Descend below the golden hills With promise of a morn as fair ; And all the train of bounteous hours Conduct, by paths of growing powers, To reverence and the silver hair ; Till slowly worn her earthly robe, Her lavish mission richly wrought, Leaving great legacies of thought, Thy spirit should fail from off the globe ; What time mine own might also flee, As link'd with thine in love and fate, And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait To the other shore, involved in thee, Arrive at last the blessed goal, And He that died in Holy Land Would reach us out the shining hand, And take us as a single soul. What reed was that on which I leant ? Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake The old bitterness again, and break The low beginnings of content ? IN MEMORIAM. 95 LXXXV. This truth came borne with bier and pall, I felt it, when I sorrowed most, 'T is better to have loved and lost,\ (Than never to have loved at all O true in word, and tried in deed, Demanding, so to bring relief To this which is our common grief, What kind of life is that I lead ; And whether trust in things above Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd ; And whether love for him have drain'd My capabilities of love ; Your words have virtue such as draws A faithful answer from the breast, Thro' light reproaches, half exprest, And loyal unto kindly laws. My blood an even tenor kept, Till on mine ear this message falls, .- That in Vienna's fatal walls ( God's finger touch'd him, and he slept v The great Intelligences fair That range above our mortal state, In circle round the blessed gate, Received and gave him welcome there ; 96 IN MEMORIAM. And led him thro' the blissful climes, And show'd him in the fountain fresh All knowledge that the sons of flesh Shall gather in the cycled times. But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim, Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth, To wander on a darken'd earth, Where all things round me breathed of him. O friendship, equal-poised control, O heart, with kindliest motion warm, sacred essence, other form, O solemn ghost, O crowned soul ! Yet none could better know than I, How much of act at human hands The sense of human will demands By which we dare to live or die. Whatever way my days decline, 1 felt and feel, tho' left alone, His being working in mine own, The footsteps of his life in mine ; A life that all the Muses deck'd With gifts of grace, that might express All-comprehensive tenderness, All-subtilizing intellect : And so my passion hath not swerved To works of weakness, but I find An image comforting the mind, /And in my grief a strength reserved. V I IN MEMORIAM. 97 Likewise the imaginative woe, That loved to handle spiritual strife, Diffused the shock thro' all my life, But in the present broke the blow. My pulses therefore beat again For other friends that once I met; Nor can it suit me to forget The mighty hopes that make us men. I woo your love :

In Memoriam Tennyson

We were apart; yet, day by day, I bade my heart more constant be. I bade it keep the world away, And grow a home for only thee; Nor fear'd but thy love likewise grew, Like mine, each day, more tried, more true. The fault was grave! I might have known, What far too soon, alas! I learn'd The heart can bind itself alone, And faith may oft be unreturn'd. Self-sway'd our feelings ebb and swell Thou lov'st no more;Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!and thou, thou lonely heart, Which never yet without remorse Even for a moment didst depart From thy remote and spher{e}d course To haunt the place where passions reign Back to thy solitude again! Back! with the conscious thrill of shame Which Luna felt, that summer-night, Flash through her pure immortal frame, When she forsook the starry height To hang over Endymion's sleep Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep. Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved How vain a thing is mortal love, Wandering in Heaven, far removed. But thou hast long had place to prove This truthto prove, and make thine own: "Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone." Or, if not quite alone, yet they Which touch thee are unmating things Ocean and clouds and night and day; Lorn autumns and triumphant springs; And life, and others' joy and pain, And love, if love, of happier men. Of happier menfor they, at least, Have dream'd two human hearts might blend In one, and were through faith released From isolation without end Prolong'd; nor knew, although not less Alone than thou, their loneliness.

Isolation: To Marguerite Arnold

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel's granary is full, And the harvest's done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful—a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery's song. She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said— 'I love thee true'. She took me to her Elfin grot, And there she wept and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes With kisses four. And there she lullèd me asleep, And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!— The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side. I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—'La Belle Dame sans Merci Thee hath in thrall!' I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gapèd wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill's side. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not Her husband's presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess' cheek; perhaps Fra Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat." Such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace—all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech—which I have not—to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark"—and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse— E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

My Last Duchess Browning

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing — Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling- ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."' O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

No worst, there is none Hopkins

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, And pardon that thy secrets should be sung Even into thine own soft-conched ear: Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes? I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly, And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran A brooklet, scarce espied: Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass; Their arms embraced, and their pinions too; Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu, As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, And ready still past kisses to outnumber At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love: The winged boy I knew; But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? His Psyche true! O latest born and loveliest vision far Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy! Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star, Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. O brightest! though too late for antique vows, Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, When holy were the haunted forest boughs, Holy the air, the water, and the fire; Yet even in these days so far retir'd From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, Fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same: And there shall be for thee all soft delight That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!

Ode to Psyche John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Ode to a Nightingale John Keats

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer John Keats

The rain set early in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, Murmuring how she loved me — she Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, And give herself to me for ever. But passion sometimes would prevail, Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her, and all in vain: So, she was come through wind and rain. Be sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That all it scorned at once is fled, And I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria's love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word!

Porphyria's Lover Browning

St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man; Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees: The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze, Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails: Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries, He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails. Northward he turneth through a little door, And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor; But no—already had his deathbell rung; The joys of all his life were said and sung: His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve: Another way he went, and soon among Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve, And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve. That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft; And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide, From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide: The level chambers, ready with their pride, Were glowing to receive a thousand guests: The carved angels, ever eager-eyed, Star'd, where upon their heads the cornice rests, With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts. At length burst in the argent revelry, With plume, tiara, and all rich array, Numerous as shadows haunting faerily The brain, new stuff'd, in youth, with triumphs gay Of old romance. These let us wish away, And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there, Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day, On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care, As she had heard old dames full many times declare. They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve, Young virgins might have visions of delight, And soft adorings from their loves receive Upon the honey'd middle of the night, If ceremonies due they did aright; As, supperless to bed they must retire, And couch supine their beauties, lily white; Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire. Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline: The music, yearning like a God in pain, She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine, Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train Pass by—she heeded not at all: in vain Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier, And back retir'd; not cool'd by high disdain, But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere: She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year. She danc'd along with vague, regardless eyes, Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short: The hallow'd hour was near at hand: she sighs Amid the timbrels, and the throng'd resort Of whisperers in anger, or in sport; 'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn, Hoodwink'd with faery fancy; all amort, Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn, And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn. So, purposing each moment to retire, She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors, Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire For Madeline. Beside the portal doors, Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores All saints to give him sight of Madeline, But for one moment in the tedious hours, That he might gaze and worship all unseen; Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss—in sooth such things have been. He ventures in: let no buzz'd whisper tell: All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords Will storm his heart, Love's fev'rous citadel: For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes, Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords, Whose very dogs would execrations howl Against his lineage: not one breast affords Him any mercy, in that mansion foul, Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul. Ah, happy chance! the aged creature came, Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand, To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame, Behind a broad half-pillar, far beyond The sound of merriment and chorus bland: He startled her; but soon she knew his face, And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand, Saying, "Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place; They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race! "Get hence! get hence! there's dwarfish Hildebrand; He had a fever late, and in the fit He cursed thee and thine, both house and land: Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit More tame for his gray hairs—Alas me! flit! Flit like a ghost away."—"Ah, Gossip dear, We're safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit, And tell me how"—"Good Saints! not here, not here; Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier." He follow'd through a lowly arched way, Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume, And as she mutter'd "Well-a—well-a-day!" He found him in a little moonlight room, Pale, lattic'd, chill, and silent as a tomb. "Now tell me where is Madeline," said he, "O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom Which none but secret sisterhood may see, When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously." "St. Agnes! Ah! it is St. Agnes' Eve— Yet men will murder upon holy days: Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve, And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays, To venture so: it fills me with amaze To see thee, Porphyro!—St. Agnes' Eve! God's help! my lady fair the conjuror plays This very night: good angels her deceive! But let me laugh awhile, I've mickle time to grieve." Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon, While Porphyro upon her face doth look, Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone Who keepeth clos'd a wond'rous riddle-book, As spectacled she sits in chimney nook. But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told His lady's purpose; and he scarce could brook Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold, And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old. Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart Made purple riot: then doth he propose A stratagem, that makes the beldame start: "A cruel man and impious thou art: Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream Alone with her good angels, far apart From wicked men like thee. Go, go!—I deem Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem." "I will not harm her, by all saints I swear," Quoth Porphyro: "O may I ne'er find grace When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer, If one of her soft ringlets I displace, Or look with ruffian passion in her face: Good Angela, believe me by these tears; Or I will, even in a moment's space, Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen's ears, And beard them, though they be more fang'd than wolves and bears." "Ah! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul? A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing, Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll; Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening, Were never miss'd."—Thus plaining, doth she bring A gentler speech from burning Porphyro; So woful, and of such deep sorrowing, That Angela gives promise she will do Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe. Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy, Even to Madeline's chamber, and there hide Him in a closet, of such privacy That he might see her beauty unespy'd, And win perhaps that night a peerless bride, While legion'd faeries pac'd the coverlet, And pale enchantment held her sleepy-ey'd. Never on such a night have lovers met, Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt. "It shall be as thou wishest," said the Dame: "All cates and dainties shall be stored there Quickly on this feast-night: by the tambour frame Her own lute thou wilt see: no time to spare, For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare On such a catering trust my dizzy head. Wait here, my child, with patience; kneel in prayer The while: Ah! thou must needs the lady wed, Or may I never leave my grave among the dead." So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear. The lover's endless minutes slowly pass'd; The dame return'd, and whisper'd in his ear To follow her; with aged eyes aghast From fright of dim espial. Safe at last, Through many a dusky gallery, they gain The maiden's chamber, silken, hush'd, and chaste; Where Porphyro took covert, pleas'd amain. His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain. Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade, Old Angela was feeling for the stair, When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid, Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware: With silver taper's light, and pious care, She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led To a safe level matting. Now prepare, Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed; She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled. Out went the taper as she hurried in; Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died: She clos'd the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air, and visions wide: No uttered syllable, or, woe betide! But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though a tongueless nightingale should swell Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell. A casement high and triple-arch'd there was, All garlanded with carven imag'ries Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, And diamonded with panes of quaint device, Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings. Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon; Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. Anon his heart revives: her vespers done, Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees; Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees: Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed, Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest, In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay, Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away; Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day; Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain; Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray; Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. Stol'n to this paradise, and so entranced, Porphyro gaz'd upon her empty dress, And listen'd to her breathing, if it chanced To wake into a slumberous tenderness; Which when he heard, that minute did he bless, And breath'd himself: then from the closet crept, Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness, And over the hush'd carpet, silent, stept, And 'tween the curtains peep'd, where, lo!—how fast she slept. Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set A table, and, half anguish'd, threw thereon A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:— O for some drowsy Morphean amulet! The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion, The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarinet, Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:— The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone. And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender'd, While he forth from the closet brought a heap Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; With jellies soother than the creamy curd, And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon; Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one, From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon. These delicates he heap'd with glowing hand On golden dishes and in baskets bright Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand In the retired quiet of the night, Filling the chilly room with perfume light.— "And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake! Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite: Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake, Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache." Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream By the dusk curtains:—'twas a midnight charm Impossible to melt as iced stream: The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam; Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies: It seem'd he never, never could redeem From such a stedfast spell his lady's eyes; So mus'd awhile, entoil'd in woofed phantasies. Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,— Tumultuous,—and, in chords that tenderest be, He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, In Provence call'd, "La belle dame sans mercy": Close to her ear touching the melody;— Wherewith disturb'd, she utter'd a soft moan: He ceas'd—she panted quick—and suddenly Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone: Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone. Her eyes were open, but she still beheld, Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep: There was a painful change, that nigh expell'd The blisses of her dream so pure and deep At which fair Madeline began to weep, And moan forth witless words with many a sigh; While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep; Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye, Fearing to move or speak, she look'd so dreamingly. "Ah, Porphyro!" said she, "but even now Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear, Made tuneable with every sweetest vow; And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear: How chang'd thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear! Give me that voice again, my Porphyro, Those looks immortal, those complainings dear! Oh leave me not in this eternal woe, For if thy diest, my Love, I know not where to go." Beyond a mortal man impassion'd far At these voluptuous accents, he arose Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose; Into her dream he melted, as the rose Blendeth its odour with the violet,— Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet Against the window-panes; St. Agnes' moon hath set. 'Tis dark: quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet: "This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!" 'Tis dark: the iced gusts still rave and beat: "No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine! Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.— Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring? I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine, Though thou forsakest a deceived thing;— A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing." "My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride! Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest? Thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dyed? Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest After so many hours of toil and quest, A famish'd pilgrim,—sav'd by miracle. Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel. "Hark! 'tis an elfin-storm from faery land, Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed: Arise—arise! the morning is at hand;— The bloated wassaillers will never heed:— Let us away, my love, with happy speed; There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,— Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead: Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be, For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee." She hurried at his words, beset with fears, For there were sleeping dragons all around, At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears— Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.— In all the house was heard no human sound. A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door; The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar; And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall; Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide; Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl, With a huge empty flaggon by his side: The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, But his sagacious eye an inmate owns: By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:— The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;— The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans. And they are gone: ay, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm. That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.

The Eve of St. Agnes John Keats

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave A paradise for a sect; the savage too From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep Guesses at Heaven; pity these have not Trac'd upon vellum or wild Indian leaf The shadows of melodious utterance. But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die; For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, 'Thou art no Poet may'st not tell thy dreams?' Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos'd to rehearse Be poet's or fanatic's will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave. Methought I stood where trees of every clime, Palm, myrtle, oak, and sycamore, and beech, With plantain, and spice blossoms, made a screen; In neighbourhood of fountains, by the noise Soft showering in my ears, and, by the touch Of scent, not far from roses. Turning round I saw an arbour with a drooping roof Of trellis vines, and bells, and larger blooms, Like floral censers swinging light in air; Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits, Which, nearer seen, seem'd refuse of a meal By angel tasted or our Mother Eve; For empty shells were scattered on the grass, And grape stalks but half bare, and remnants more, Sweet smelling, whose pure kinds I could not know. Still was more plenty than the fabled horn Thrice emptied could pour forth, at banqueting For Proserpine return'd to her own fields, Where the white heifers low. And appetite More yearning than on earth I ever felt Growing within, I ate deliciously; And, after not long, thirsted, for thereby Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice Sipp'd by the wander'd bee, the which I took, And, pledging all the mortals of the world, And all the dead whose names are in our lips, Drank. That full draught is parent of my theme. No Asian poppy nor elixir fine Of the soon fading jealous Caliphat, No poison gender'd in close monkish cell To thin the scarlet conclave of old men, Could so have rapt unwilling life away. Among the fragrant husks and berries crush'd, Upon the grass I struggled hard against The domineering potion; but in vain: The cloudy swoon came on, and down I sunk Like a Silenus on an antique vase. How long I slumber'd 'tis a chance to guess. When sense of life return'd, I started up As if with wings; but the fair trees were gone, The mossy mound and arbour were no more: I look'd around upon the carved sides Of an old sanctuary with roof august, Builded so high, it seem'd that filmed clouds Might spread beneath, as o'er the stars of heaven; So old the place was, I remember'd none The like upon the earth: what I had seen Of grey cathedrals, buttress'd walls, rent towers, The superannuations of sunk realms, Or Nature's rocks toil'd hard in waves and winds, Seem'd but the faulture of decrepit things To that eternal domed monument. Upon the marble at my feet there lay Store of strange vessels and large draperies, Which needs had been of dyed asbestos wove, Or in that place the moth could not corrupt, So white the linen, so, in some, distinct Ran imageries from a sombre loom. All in a mingled heap confus'd there lay Robes, golden tongs, censer and chafing dish, Girdles, and chains, and holy jewelries. Turning from these with awe, once more I rais'd My eyes to fathom the space every way; The embossed roof, the silent massy range Of columns north and south, ending in mist Of nothing, then to eastward, where black gates Were shut against the sunrise evermore. Then to the west I look'd, and saw far off An image, huge of feature as a cloud, At level of whose feet an altar slept, To be approach'd on either side by steps, And marble balustrade, and patient travail To count with toil the innumerable degrees. Towards the altar sober paced I went, Repressing haste, as too unholy there; And, coming nearer, saw beside the shrine One minist'ring; and there arose a flame. When in mid May the sickening East wind Shifts sudden to the south, the small warm rain Melts out the frozen incense from all flowers, And fills the air with so much pleasant health That even the dying man forgets his shroud; Even so that lofty sacrificial fire, Sending forth Maian incense, spread around Forgetfulness of everything but bliss, And clouded all the altar with soft smoke, From whose white fragrant curtains thus I heard Language pronounc'd: 'If thou canst not ascend 'These steps, die on that marble where thou art. 'Thy flesh, near cousin to the common dust, 'Will parch for lack of nutriment thy bones 'Will wither in few years, and vanish so 'That not the quickest eye could find a grain 'Of what thou now art on that pavement cold. 'The sands of thy short life are spent this hour, 'And no hand in the universe can turn 'Thy hourglass, if these gummed leaves be burnt 'Ere thou canst mount up these immortal steps.' I heard, I look'd: two senses both at once, So fine, so subtle, felt the tyranny Of that fierce threat and the hard task proposed. Prodigious seem'd the toil, the leaves were yet Burning when suddenly a palsied chill Struck from the paved level up my limbs, And was ascending quick to put cold grasp Upon those streams that pulse beside the throat: I shriek'd; and the sharp anguish of my shriek Stung my own ears I strove hard to escape The numbness; strove to gain the lowest step. Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace: the cold Grew stifling, suffocating, at the heart; And when I clasp'd my hands I felt them not. One minute before death, my iced foot touch'd The lowest stair; and as it touch'd, life seem'd To pour in at the toes: I mounted up, As once fair angels on a ladder flew From the green turf to Heaven. 'Holy Power,' Cried I, approaching near the horned shrine, 'What am I that should so be saved from death? 'What am I that another death come not 'To choke my utterance sacrilegious here?' Then said the veiled shadow 'Thou hast felt 'What 'tis to die and live again before 'Thy fated hour. That thou hadst power to do so 'Is thy own safety; thou hast dated on 'Thy doom.' 'High Prophetess,' said I, 'purge off, 'Benign, if so it please thee, my mind's film.' 'None can usurp this height,' return'd that shade, 'But those to whom the miseries of the world 'Are misery, and will not let them rest. 'All else who find a haven in the world, 'Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days, 'If by a chance into this fane they come, 'Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half.' 'Are there not thousands in the world,' said I, Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade, 'Who love their fellows even to the death; 'Who feel the giant agony of the world; 'And more, like slaves to poor humanity, 'Labour for mortal good? I sure should see 'Other men here; but I am here alone.' 'Those whom thou spak'st of are no vision'ries,' Rejoin'd that voice; 'they are no dreamers weak; 'They seek no wonder but the human face, 'No music but a happy noted voice; 'They come not here, they have no thought to come; 'And thou art here, for thou art less than they: 'What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe, 'To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing, 'A fever of thyself think of the Earth; 'What bliss even in hope is there for thee? 'What haven? every creature hath its home; 'Every sole man hath days of joy and pain, 'Whether his labours be sublime or low 'The pain alone; the joy alone; distinct: 'Only the dreamer venoms all his days, 'Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve. 'Therefore, that happiness be somewhat shar'd, 'Such things as thou art are admitted oft 'Into like gardens thou didst pass erewhile, 'And suffer'd in these temples: for that cause 'Thou standest safe beneath this statue's knees.' 'That I am favour'd for unworthiness, 'By such propitious parley medicin'd 'In sickness not ignoble, I rejoice, 'Aye, and could weep for love of such award.' So answer'd I, continuing, 'If it please, 'Majestic shadow, tell me: sure not all 'Those melodies sung into the world's ear 'Are useless: sure a poet is a sage; 'A humanist, physician to all men. 'That I am none I feel, as vultures feel 'They are no birds when eagles are abroad. 'What am I then? Thou spakest of my tribe: 'What tribe?' The tall shade veil'd in drooping white Then spake, so much more earnest, that the breath Moved the thin linen folds that drooping hung About a golden censer from the hand Pendent. 'Art thou not of the dreamer tribe? 'The poet and the dreamer are distinct, 'Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes. 'The one pours out a balm upon the world, 'The other vexes it.' Then shouted I Spite of myself, and with a Pythia's spleen, 'Apollo! faded! O far flown Apollo! 'Where is thy misty pestilence to creep 'Into the dwellings, through the door crannies 'Of all mock lyrists, large self worshipers, 'And careless Hectorers in proud bad verse. 'Though I breathe death with them it will be life 'To see them sprawl before me into graves. 'Majestic shadow, tell me where I am, 'Whose altar this; for whom this incense curls; 'What image this whose face I cannot see, 'For the broad marble knees; and who thou art, 'Of accent feminine so courteous?' Then the tall shade, in drooping linens veil'd, Spoke out, so much more earnest, that her breath Stirr'd the thin folds of gauze that drooping hung About a golden censer from her hand Pendent; and by her voice I knew she shed Long treasured tears. 'This temple, sad and lone, 'Is all spar'd from the thunder of a war 'Foughten long since by giant hierarchy 'Against rebellion: this old image here, 'Whose carved features wrinkled as he fell, 'Is Saturn's; I Moneta, left supreme 'Sole priestess of this desolation.' I had no words to answer, for my tongue, Useless, could find about its roofed home No syllable of a fit majesty To make rejoinder to Moneta's mourn. There was a silence, while the altar's blaze Was fainting for sweet food: I look'd thereon, And on the paved floor, where nigh were piled ******s of cinnamon, and many heaps Of other crisped spice wood then again I look'd upon the altar, and its horns Whiten'd with ashes, and its lang'rous flame, And then upon the offerings again; And so by turns till sad Moneta cried, 'The sacrifice is done, but not the less 'Will I be kind to thee for thy good will. 'My power, which to me is still a curse, 'Shall be to thee a wonder; for the scenes 'Still swooning vivid through my globed brain 'With an electral changing misery 'Thou shalt with those dull mortal eyes behold, 'Free from all pain, if wonder pain thee not.' As near as an immortal's sphered words Could to a mother's soften, were these last: And yet I had a terror of her robes, And chiefly of the veils, that from her brow Hung pale, and curtain'd her in mysteries That made my heart too small to hold its blood. This saw that Goddess, and with sacred hand Parted the veils. Then saw I a wan face, Not pin'd by human sorrows, but bright blanch'd By an immortal sickness which kills not; It works a constant change, which happy death Can put no end to; deathwards progressing To no death was that visage; it had pass'd The lily and the snow; and beyond these I must not think now, though I saw that face But for her eyes I should have fled away. They held me back, with a benignant light Soft mitigated by divinest lids Half closed, and visionless entire they seem'd Of all external things; they saw me not, But in blank splendour beam'd like the mild moon, Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not What eyes are upward cast. As I had found A grain of gold upon a mountain side, And twing'd with avarice strain'd out my eyes To search its sullen entrails rich with ore, So at the view of sad Moneta's brow I ach'd to see what things the hollow brain Behind enwombed: what high tragedy In the dark secret chambers of her skull Was acting, that could give so dread a stress To her cold lips, and fill with such a light Her planetary eyes, and touch her voice With such a sorrow 'Shade of Memory!' Cried I, with act adorant at her feet, 'By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house, 'By this last temple, by the golden age, 'By great Apollo, thy dear Foster Child, 'And by thyself, forlorn divinity, 'The pale Omega of a withered race, 'Let me behold, according as thou saidst, 'What in thy brain so ferments to and fro!' No sooner had this conjuration pass'd My devout lips, than side by side we stood (Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine) Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star. Onward I look'd beneath the gloomy boughs, And saw, what first I thought an image huge, Like to the image pedestal'd so high In Saturn's temple. Then Moneta's voice Came brief upon mine ear 'So Saturn sat When he had lost his realms ' whereon there grew A power within me of enormous ken To see as a god sees, and take the depth Of things as nimbly as the outward eye Can size and shape pervade. The lofty theme At those few words hung vast before my mind, With half unravel'd web. I set myself Upon an eagle's watch, that I might see, And seeing ne'er forget. No stir of life Was in this shrouded vale, not so much air As in the zoning of a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest. A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more By reason of the fallen divinity Spreading more shade; the Naiad 'mid her reeds Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips. Along the margin sand large footmarks went No farther than to where old Saturn's feet Had rested, and there slept, how long a sleep! Degraded, cold, upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were clos'd, While his bow'd head seem'd listening to the Earth, His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. It seem'd no force could wake him from his place; But there came one who with a kindred hand Touch'd his wide shoulders after bending low With reverence, though to one who knew it not. Then came the griev'd voice of Mnemosyne, And griev'd I hearken'd. 'That divinity 'Whom thou saw'st step from yon forlornest wood, 'And with slow pace approach our fallen King, 'Is Thea, softest natur'd of our brood.' I mark'd the Goddess in fair statuary Surpassing wan Moneta by the head, And in her sorrow nearer woman's tears. There was a listening fear in her regard, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear Was with its stored thunder labouring up. One hand she press'd upon that aching spot Where beats the human heart, as if just there, Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain; The other upon Saturn's bended neck She laid, and to the level of his hollow ear Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake In solemn tenor and deep organ tune; Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue Would come in this like accenting; how frail To that large utterance of the early Gods! 'Saturn! look up and for what, poor lost King? 'I have no comfort for thee; no not one; 'I cannot cry, Wherefore thus sleepest thou? 'For Heaven is parted from thee, and the Earth 'Knows thee not, so afflicted, for a God; 'And Ocean too, with all its solemn noise, 'Has from thy sceptre pass'd, and all the air 'Is emptied of thine hoary majesty: 'Thy thunder, captious at the new command, 'Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house; 'And thy sharp lightning, in unpracticed hands, 'Scorches and burns our once serene domain. 'With such remorseless speed still come new woes, 'That unbelief has not a space to breathe. 'Saturn! sleep on: Me thoughtless, why should I 'Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude? 'Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes? 'Saturn, sleep on, while at thy feet I weep.' As when upon a tranced summer night Forests, branch charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a noise, Save from one gradual solitary gust, Swelling upon the silence; dying off; As if the ebbing air had but one wave; So came these words, and went; the while in tears She press'd her fair large forehead to the earth, Just where her fallen hair might spread in curls A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet. Long, long those two were postured motionless, Like sculpture builded up upon the grave Of their own power. A long awful time I look'd upon them: still they were the same; The frozen God still bending to the earth, And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet, Moneta silent. Without stay or prop But my own weak mortality, I bore The load of this eternal quietude, The unchanging gloom, and the three fixed shapes Ponderous upon my senses, a whole moon. For by my burning brain I measured sure Her silver seasons shedded on the night, And ever day by day methought I grew More gaunt and ghostly. Oftentimes I pray'd Intense, that Death would take me from the vale And all its burthens gasping with despair Of change, hour after hour I curs'd myself; Until old Saturn rais'd his faded eyes, And look'd around and saw his kingdom gone, And all the gloom and sorrow of the place, And that fair kneeling Goddess at his feet. As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves Fills forest dells with a pervading air, Known to the woodland nostril, so the words Of Saturn fill'd the mossy glooms around, Even to the hollows of time eaten oaks And to the windings of the foxes' hole, With sad low tones, while thus he spake, and sent Strange musings to the solitary Pan. 'Moan, brethren, moan; for we are swallow'd up 'And buried from all Godlike exercise 'Of influence benign on planets pale, 'And peaceful sway above man's harvesting, 'And all those acts which Deity supreme 'Doth ease its heart of love in. Moan and wail, 'Moan, brethren, moan; for lo, the rebel spheres 'Spin round, the stars their ancient courses keep, 'Clouds still with shadowy moisture haunt the earth, 'Still suck their fill of light from sun and moon, 'Still buds the tree, and still the sea shores murmur; 'There is no death in all the Universe, 'No smell of death there shall be death Moan, moan, 'Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious babes 'Have changed a God into a shaking Palsy. 'Moan, brethren, moan, for I have no strength left, 'Weak as the reed weak feeble as my voice 'O, O, the pain, the pain of feebleness. 'Moan, moan, for still I thaw or give me help; 'Throw down those imps, and give me victory. 'Let me hear other groans, and trumpets blown 'Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival 'From the gold peaks of Heaven's high piled clouds; 'Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir 'Of strings in hollow shells; and let there be 'Beautiful things made new, for the surprise 'Of the sky children.' So he feebly ceas'd, With such a poor and sickly sounding pause, Methought I heard some old man of the earth Bewailing earthly loss; nor could my eyes And ears act with that pleasant unison of sense Which marries sweet sound with the grace of form, And dolorous accent from a tragic harp With large limb'd visions. More I scrutinized: Still fix'd he sat beneath the sable trees, Whose arms spread straggling in wild serpent forms, With leaves all hush'd; his awful presence there (Now all was silent) gave a deadly lie To what I erewhile heard only his lips Trembled amid the white curls of his beard. They told the truth, though, round, the snowy locks Hung nobly, as upon the face of heaven A mid day fleece of clouds. Thea arose, And stretched her white arm through the hollow dark, Pointing some whither: whereat he too rose Like a vast giant, seen by men at sea To grow pale from the waves at dull midnight. They melted from my sight into the woods; Ere I could turn, Moneta cried, 'These twain 'Are speeding to the families of grief, 'Where roof'd in by black rocks they waste, in pain 'And darkness, for no hope.' And she spake on, As ye may read who can unwearied pass Onward from the antechamber of this dream, Where even at the open doors awhile I must delay, and glean my memory Of her high phrase: perhaps no further dare.

The Fall of Hyperion - A Dream (Canto I) John Keats

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmed sunset linger'd low adown In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale; A land where all things always seem'd the same! And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, "We will return no more"; And all at once they sang, "Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam." CHORIC SONG I There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep." II Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm; Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, "There is no joy but calm!" Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? III Lo! in the middle of the wood, The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. IV Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labour be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence; ripen, fall and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease. V How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whisper'd speech; Eating the Lotos day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; To muse and brood and live again in memory, With those old faces of our infancy Heap'd over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! VI Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change: For surely now our household hearths are cold, Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange: And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile: 'Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Long labour unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. VII But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly) With half-dropt eyelid still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill— To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine— To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine. VIII The Lotos blooms below the barren peak: The Lotos blows by every winding creek: All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone: Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer—some, 'tis whisper'd—down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

The Lotos-Eaters Tennyson

To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

The Windhover Hopkins

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

To Autumn John Keats

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses Tennyson