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LONDON : EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. MDGCCXLVI. "P?5^e> •hn LONDON: AND EFANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 48 65 55 JUL Z o 1942 i CONTENTS, PAGE ALASTOR ; OK, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE .... 1 THE WITCH OF ATLAS .21 EPIPSYCHIDION : VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADT EMILIA V . NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF . 41 JULIAN AND MADDALO : A CONVERSATION , . . . 58 LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS . .76 THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY . . , . . . . 86 ADONAIS ; AN ELEGT ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS . 100 THE SENSITIVE PLANT 116 THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 127 EARLY POEMS. IANTHE 146 MUTABILITY 161 ON DEATH 161 A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCHYARD . . -] . . . 162 LINES . . . . '. . . ' . . 163 STANZAS . . . ..... . . . 164 TO * * * * . . . . . ' . . . .165 TO WORDSWORTH 167 FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE 167 vi CONTENTS. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. PAGE THE SUNSET ......... 168 HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY . . . . . 169 MONT BLANC 172 MARIANNE'S DREAM . 176 TO CONSTANTIA. SINGING ...... 181 TO CONSTANTIA 182 ON F. G 182 DEATH 183 SONNET. — OZYMANDIAS 183 LINES TO A CRITIC ........ 184 PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES 184 LINES 185 ON A FADED VIOLET 185 THE PAST 186 TO MARY 186 MISERY. — A FRAGMENT 187 STANZAS, -WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES . 189 SONNET 190 SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND 191 LINES, WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINIS- TRATION 192 ENGLAND IN 1819 193 AN ODE, TO THE ASSERTOR8 OF LIBERTY . . . 193 ODE TO HEAVEN 194 ODE TO THE WEST WIND 196 SIMILES, FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819 . 199 ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, IN THE FLO- RENTINE GALLERY 200 AN EXHORTATION 201 TO WILLIAM SHELLEY 202 TO WILLIAM SHELLEY 203 A VISION OF THE SEA ....... 204 TO 209 the cloud 210 love's philosophy 212 to a skylark 213 CONTENTS. vii MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. PAGE ODE TO LIBERTY 217 HXMN OF APOLLO 226 HYMN OF PAN 227 ARETHUSA 228 THE QUESTION 231 SONG OF PROSERPINE, WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENXA 232 THE TWO SPIBITS 233 THE WANING MOON 234 LETTEB TO MABIA GISBOENE 235 ODE TO NAPLES 244 DEATH 249 SUMMER AND WINTER 250 A DIEGE ... 250 THE TOWEE OF FAMINE 251 THE WOELD'S WANDERERS 251 AUTUMN : A DIEGE 252 LIBEBTY . 253 TO THE MOON 253 AN ALLEGOEY 254 LINES TO A REVIEWER 254 SONNET 255 TO NIGHT 255 TO E * * * V * * * 256 FROM THE ARABIC ........ 257 TIME 257 MUTABILITY 258 TO . 258 the fugitives . 259 to 261 song 262 to 263 LINES 264 A FRAGMENT 265 LINES WRITTEN ON HEARING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON 265 viii CONTENTS. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. PAGE LYRICS FROM THE DRAMA OF HELLAS . , . .267 TO-MORROW 274 A BRIDAL SONG 275 A FRAGMENT . 275 EVENING 276 A LAMENT . 277 THE BOAT, ON THE SERCHIO ...... 278 the aziola 280 song of beatrice cenci 281 to 282 GOOD-NIGHT 282 A LAMENT 283 LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR 283 MUSIC 284 to 285 SONNET 287 DIRGE FOR THE YEAR 287 THE ZUCCA 288 TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR 291 THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER PATIENT . . . . 293 THE INVITATION . . 295 THE RECOLLECTION 297 A SONG . 299 LINES 300 to 301 SONG FOR TASSO 301 THE ISLE .... ..... 302 ALASTOR; THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, qua?rebam quid ama- rem amans amare.— Confess. St. August. Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood ! If our great Mother have imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ; If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, And winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs ; If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me ; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred; — then forgive This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now ! Mother of this unfathomable world ! Favour my solemn song, for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darknessof thy steps, •2 ALASTOR ; OR, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Thy messenger, to render up the tale Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, Like an inspired and desperate alchymist Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love, until strange tears, Uniting with those breathless kisses, made Such magic as compels the charmed night To render up thy charge : and, though ne'er yet Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary ; Enough from incommunicable dream, And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, Has shone within me, that serenely now And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre Suspended in the solitary dome Of some mysterious and deserted fane, I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain May modulate with murmurs of the air, And motions of the forests and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. There was a Poet whose untimely tomb No human hands with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness ; A lovely youth, — no mourning maiden decked With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : Gentle, and brave, and generous, no lorn bard Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. lie lived, he died, lie sang in solitude. Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, And Silence too, enamoured of that voice, Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. By solemn vision and bright silver dream, His infancy was nurtured. Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air, Sent to Ms heart its choicest impulses. The fountains of divine philosophy Fled not his thirsting lips ; and all of great, Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past In truth or fable consecrates, he felt And knew. When early youth had past, he left His cold fireside and alienated home, \ To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. -__ Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought With Ins sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps He, like her shadow, has pursued, where'er The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke : or where bitumen lakes, On black bare pointed islets ever beat With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves, Rugged and dark, winding among the springs, Of fire and poison, inaccessible To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasurable halls, Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. Nor had that scene of ampler majesty Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims 4 ALASTOR; OR, To love and wonder ; he would linger Ion" In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would partake From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, I Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, ^ And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own. _, ,. His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful ruins of the days of old : Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, Dark Ethiopia on her desert hills Conceals. Among the mined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images Of more than man, where marble demons watch The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, He lingered, poring on memorials Of the world's youth, through the long burning day Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades Suspended he that task, but ever gazed And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, Her daily portion, from her father's tent, And spread her matting for his couch, and stole From duties and repose to tend his steps ; — Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. To speak her love : — and watched his nightly sleep, Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath Of innocent dreams arose : then, when red morn Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home, - Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned. The Poet wandering on, through Arabie And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, In joy and exultation held his way ; Till in the vale of Cachmire, far within Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched His languid lhnbs. A vision on his sleep There came, a dream of hopes that never yet Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought ; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, And lofty hopes of divine liberty, Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame A permeating fire : wild numbers then She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs Subdued by its own pathos : her fair hands Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp Strange symphony, and in their brandling veins The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. The beating of her heart was heard to fill The pauses of her music, and her breath Tumultuously accorded with those fits 6 ALASTOR; OR, Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, As if her heart impatiently endured Its bursting burthen : at the sound he turned, And saw by the warm light of their own life Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil Of woven wind ; her outspread arms now bare, Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. His strong heart sank and sickened with excess Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet Her panting bosom : — she drew back awhile, Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, With frantic gesture and short breathless cry Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night Involved and swallowed up the vision ; sleep, Like a dark flood suspended in its course, Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain. Roused by the shock, he started from his trance — The cold white light of morning, the blue moon Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, The distinct valley and the vacant woods, \ Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled The hues of heaven that canopied his bower Of yesternight ? The sounds that soothed his sleep, The mystery and the majesty of Earth, The joy, the exultation ? His wan eyes Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. The spirit of sweet human love has sent A vision to the sleep of him who spurned Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade ; He overleaps the bounds. Alas ! alas ! Were limbs and breath and being intertwined Thus treacherously ? Lost, lost, for ever lost, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 7 In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, That beautiful shape ! Does the dark gate of death Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, O Sleep ? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds, And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake, Lead only to a black and watery depth, While death's blue vault with loathliest vapours hung, Where every shade which the foul grave exhales Hides its dead eye from the detested day, Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms 1 This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart, The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung His brain even like despair. While daylight held The sky, the Poet kept mute conference With his still soul. At night the passion came, Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, And shook him from his rest, and led him forth Into the darkness. — As an eagle grasped In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast Burn with the poison, and precipitates Through night and day, tempest, and calm and cloud, Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight O'er the wide aery wilderness : thus driven By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, Startling with careless step the moon-hght snake, He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, Shedding the mockery of its vital hues Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on, Till vast Aornos, seen from Petra's steep, Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ; Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, Day after day, a weary waste of hours, Bearing within his life the brooding care 8 ALASTOR; OR, That ever fed on its decaying flame. And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair, Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ; Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone As in a f urnace burning secretly From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, Who ministered with human charity His human wants, beheld with wondering awe Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, Encountering on some dizzy precipice That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused In his career : the infant would conceal His troubled visage in his mother's robe In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, To remember their strange light in many a dream Of after times ; but youthful maidens, taught By nature, would interpret half the woe That wasted him, would call him with false names Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path Of his departure from their father's door. At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight : — " Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird ! thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts ?" A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around : There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. A little shallop floating near the shore Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. It had been long abandoned, for its sides Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints Swayed with the undulations of the tide. A restless impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste ; For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns of the populous deep. The day was fair and sunny : sea and sky Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. Following Ms eager soul, the wanderer Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. As one that in a silver vision floats Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly Along the dark and ruffled waters fled The straining boat. — A whirlwind swept it on, b 3 10 ALASTOR ; OR, With fierce gusts and precipitating force, Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. The waves arose. Higher and higher still Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge Like serpents struggling hi a vulture's grasp. Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war Of wave running on wave, and blast on blast Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven With dark obliterating course, he sate : As if their genii were the ministers Appointed to conduct him to the light Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate Holding the steady helm. Evening came on, The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray That canopied his path o'er the waste deep ; Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day ; Night followed, clad with stars. On every side More horribly the multitudinous streams Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock The calm and spangled sky. The little boat Still fled before the storm ; still fled, like foam Down the steep cataract of a wintry river ; Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave ; Now leaving far behind the bursting mass That fell, convulsing ocean. Safely fled — As if that frail and wasted human form Had been an elemental god. At midnight The moon arose : and lo ! the ethereal cliffs Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone Among the stars like sunlight, and around Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves, Bursting and eddying irresistibly, Rage and resound for ever. — Who shall save ? — THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 11 The boat fled on, — the boiling torrent drove, — The crags closed round with black and jagged arms, The shattered mountain overhung the sea, And faster still, beyond all human speed, Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, The little boat was driven. A cavern there Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on With unrelaxing speed. " Vision and Love !" The Poet cried aloud, " I have beheld The path of thy departure. Sleep and death Shall not divide us long." The boat pursued The windings of the cavern. Day -light shone At length upon that gloomy river's flow ; Now, where the fiercest war among the waves Is calm, on the unfathomable stream The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven, Exposed those black depths to the azure sky, Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm ; Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, Circling immeasurably fast, and laved With alternating dash the gnarled roots Of mighty trees, that stretched then.' giant arms In darkness over it. I' the midst was left, Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud, A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm, Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round, Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose, Till on the verge of the extremest curve, Where, through an opening of the rocky bank, The waters overflow, and a smooth spot Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides Is left, the boat paused shuddering. Shall it sink 12 ALASTOR ; OR, Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress Of that resistless gulf embosom it ? Now shall it fall ? A wandering stream of wind, Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail, And, lo ! with gentle motion between banks Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, Beneath a woven grove, it sails, and, hark ! The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar, With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. Where the embowering trees recede, and leave A little space of green expanse, the cove Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes, Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task, Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed To deck with their bright hues his withered hair, But on his heart its solitude returned, And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid Ja those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame, Had yet performed its ministry : it hung Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods Of night close over it. The noonday sun Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, •Scooped in the dark base of those aery rocks Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever. The meeting boughs and implicated leaves Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank, Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark And dark the shades accumulate — the oak, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. IS Expanding its immense and knotty arms, Embraces the light beech. The pyramids Of the tall cedar overarching, frame Most solemn domes within, and far below, Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, The ash and the acacia floating hang Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, Starr'd with ten thousand blossoms, flow around The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes, With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, Fold thefr beams round the hearts of those that love, These twine thefr tendrils with the wedded boughs Uniting their close union ; the woven leaves Make net- work of the dark blue light of day, And the night's noontide clearness, mutable As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns Beneath these canopies extend thefr swells, Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms Minute, yet beautiful. One darkest glen Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine, A soul-dissolving odour, to invite To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell, Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades, Like vaporous shapes half-seen ; beyond, a well, Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, Images all the woven boughs above, And each depending leaf, and every speck Of azure sky, darting between their chasms ; Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves Its portraiture, but some inconstant star Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, Or gorgeous insect, floating motionless, Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings Have spread thefr glories to the gaze of noon. Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld 14 ALASTOR ; OR, Their own wan light through the reflected lines Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth Of that still fountain ; as the human heart, Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel An unaccustomed presence, and the sound Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed To stand beside him — clothed in no bright robes Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, Borrow'd from aught the visible world affords Of grace, or majesty, or mystery ; — But undulating woods, and silent well, And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming- Held commune with him, as if he and it Were all that was, — only — when his regard Was raised by intense pensiveness, — two eyes, Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, And seemed with their serene and azure smiles To beckon him. Obedient to the light That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing The windings of the dell. — The rivulet Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell Among the moss, with hollow harmony Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones It danced ; like childhood laughing as it went : Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, Reflecting every herb and drooping bud That overhung its quietness. — " O stream ! Whose source is inaccessibly profound, Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 15 Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course Have each their type in me : And the wide sky, And measureless ocean may declare as soon What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud Contains thy waters, as the universe Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste I' the passing wind ! " Beside the grassy shore Of the small stream he went ; he did impress On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one Roused by some joyous madness from the couch Of fever, he did move ; yet, not like him, Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame Of his frail exultation shall be spent, He must descend. With rapid steps he went Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow Of the wild babbling rivulet ; and now The forest's solemn canopies were changed For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed The struggling brook : tall spires of windlestrae Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin And white ; and where irradiate dewy eyes Had shone, gleam stony orbs : so from his steps Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued The stream, that with a larger volume now Rolled through the labyrinthine dell ; and there Fretted a path through its descending curves With its wintry speed. On every side now rose 16 ALASTOR; OR, Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, Lifted their black and barren pinnacles In the light of evening, and its precipice Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, . 'Mid toppling stones, black gulfs, and yawning caves, Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues To the loud stream. Lo ! where the pass expands Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, And seems, with its accumulated crags, To overhang the world : for wide expand Beneath the wan stars and descending moon Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, Dim tracks and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge Of the remote horizon. The near scene, In naked and severe simplicity, Made contrast with the universe. A pine, Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response, at each pause, In most familiar cadence, with the howl The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river, Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, Fell into that immeasurable void, Scattering its waters to the passing winds. Yet the grey precipice, and solemn pine And torrent, were not all ; — one silent nook Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, It overlooked in its serenity The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars. It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped The fissured stones with its entwining arms, And did embower with leaves for ever green, And berries dark, the smooth and even space Of its inviolated floor, and here THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore, In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay, Red, yellow, or ethereally pale, Rival the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach The wilds to love tranquillity. One step, One human step alone, has ever broken The stillness of its solitude : — one voice Alone inspired its echoes ; — even that voice Which hither came, floating among the winds, And led the loveliest among human forms To make their wild haunts the depository Of all the grace and beauty that endued Its motions, render up its majesty, Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm, And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould, Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, Commit the colours of that varying cheek, That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes. The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank Wan moonlight even to fulness : not a star Shone, not a sound was heard ; the very winds, Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice Slept, clasped in his embrace. — 0, storm of death ! Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night : And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still Guiding its irresistible career In thy devastating omnipotence, Art king of this frail world, from the red field Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls His brother Death. A rare and regal prey He hath prepared, prowling around the world ; 18 ALASTOR ; OR, Glutted with which thou may'st repose, and men Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. When on the threshold of the green recess The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, Did he resign his high and holy soul To images of the majestic past, That paused within his passive being now, Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink Of that obscurest chasm ; — and thus he lay, Surrendering to their final impulses The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair, The torturers, slept : no mortal pain or fear Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, And his own being unalloyed by pain, Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there At peace, and faintly smiling : — his last sight Was the great moon, which o'er the western line Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills It rests, and still as the divided frame Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, That ever beat in mystic sympathy With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still : And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp Of his faint respiration scarce did stir The stagnate night : — till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. lg It paused — it fluttered. But when heaven remained Utterly black, the iuurky shades involved An image, silent, cold, and motionless, As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. Even as a vapour fed with golden beams That ministered on sunlight, ere the west Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame — No sense, no motion, no divinity — A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings The breath of heaven did wander — a bright stream Once fed with many- voiced waves — a dream Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now. 0, for Medea's wondrous alchymy, Which wheresoe'er it feU made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance ! O, that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man has drained, who now, "Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels No proud exemption in the blighting curse He bears, over the world wanders for ever, Lone as incarnate death ! O, that the dream Of dark magician in his visioned cave, Raking the cinders of a crucible For life and power, even when Ins feeble hand Shakes in its last decay, were the true law Of this so lovely world ! But thou art fled Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn Robes in its golden beams, — ah ! thou hast fled ! The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, The child of grace and genius. Heartless things Are done and said i' the world, and many worms And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, In vesper low or joyous orison, Lifts still its solemn voice : — but thou art fled — Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes 20 ALASTOR ; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes That image sleep in death, upon that form Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear Be shed — not even in thought. Nor, when those hues Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone In the frail pauses of this simple strain, Let not high .verse, mourning the memory Of that which is no more, or painting's woe Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. It is a woe " too deep for tears," when all Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans, The passionate tumult of a clinging hope ; But pale despair and cold tranquillity, Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth All those bright natures which adorned its pinnie, And left us nothing to believe in, worth The pains of putting into learned rhyme, A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain Within a cavern by a secret fountain. ii. Her mother was one of the Atlantides : The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden In the warm shadow of her loveliness ; — He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden The chamber of grey rock in which she lay — She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away. in. 'Tis said, she was first changed into a vapour, And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit, Like splendour-winged moths about a taper, Round the red west when the sun dies in it : And then into a meteor, such as caper On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit ; Then, into one of those mysterious stars Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden With that bright sign the billows to indent The sea-deserted sand : like children chidden, At her command they ever came and went : — Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden, Took shape and motion: with the living form Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm. A lovely lady garmented in light From her own beauty — deep her eyes, as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a tempest's cloven roof ; — her hair Dark — the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, Picturing her form ; — her soft smiles shone afar, And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living tilings towards this wonder new. And first the spotted camelopard came, And then the wise and fearless elephant f \ Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame Of his own volumes intervolved ; : — all gaunt And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame. They drank before her at her sacred fount ; And every beast of beating heart grew bold, Such gentleness and power even to behold. The brinded lioness led forth her young, That she might teach them how they should forego Their inborn thirst of death ; the pard unstrung His sinews at her feet, and sought to know With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue How he might be as gentle as the doe. The magic circle of her voice and eyes All savage natures did imparadise. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. virr. And old Silenus, shaking a green stick Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick Cicadse are, drunk with the noonday dew: And Driope and Faunus followed quick, Teazing the God to sing them something new. Till in this cave they found the lady lone, Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone. And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there, And though none saw him, — through the adamant Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air, And through those living spirits, like a want, He passed out of his everlasting lair Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant, And felt that wondrous lady all alone, — And she felt him upon her emerald throne. And every nymph of stream and spreading tree, And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks, Who drives her white waves over the green sea ; And Ocean, with the brine on his grey locks, And quaint Priapus with his company, All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth ; — Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth. The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came, And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant — Their spirits shook within them, as a flame Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt : Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name, Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt Wet clefts, — and lumps neither alive nor dead, Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed. ^ THE WITCH OF ATLAS. For she was beautiful : her beauty made The bright world dim, and everything beside Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade : No thought of living spirit could abide, Which to her looks had ever been betrayed, On any object in the world so wide, On any hope within the circling skies, But on her form, and in her inmost eyes. XIII. Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle The clouds and waves and mountains with, and she As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle ^ In the belated moon, wound skilfully ; And with these threads a subtle veil she wove — A shadow for the splendour of her love. ■ XIV. The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling Were stored with magic treasures — sounds of air, Which had the power all spirits of compelling, Folded in cells of crystal silence there ; Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling Will never die — yet ere we are aware, The feeling and the sound are fled and gone, And the regret they leave remains alone. And there lay visions swift, and sweet, and quaint, Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis ; Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint With the soft burthen of intensest bliss : It is its work to bear to many a saint Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is, Even Love's — and others white, green, grey, and black, And of all shapes — and each was at her beck. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 25 XVI. And odours in a kind of aviary Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, Clipt in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet As bats at the wired window of a dairy, [slept ; They beat then* vans ; and each was an adept, When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds, To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds. xvir. And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, And change eternal death into a night Of glorious dreams — or if eyes needs must weep Could make their tears all wonder and delight, She in her crystal vials did closely keep : If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said The living were not envied of the dead. XVIII. Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, The works of some Saturnian Archimage, Which taught the expiations at whose price Men from the Gods might win that happy age Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice ; And which might quench the earth-consuming rage Of gold and blood — till men should live and move Harmonious as the sacred stars above. XIX. And how all things that seem untameable, Not to be checked and not to be confined, Obey the spells of wisdom's wizard skill ; Time, Earth, and Fire— the Ocean and the Wind, And all their shapes — and man's imperial will ; And other scrolls whose writings did unbind The inmost lore of Love — let the profane Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. 26 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. xx. And wondrous works of substances unknown, ' To which the enchantment of her father's power Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone, Were heaped in the recesses of her bower ; Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone In their own golden beams — each like a flower, Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light Under a cypress in a starless night. At first she lived alone in this wild home, And her thoughts were each a minister, Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam, Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire, To work whatever purposes might come Into her mind : such power her mighty Sire Had girt them with, whether to fly or run, Through all the regions which he shines upon. xxn. The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades, Oreads and Naiads with long weedy locks, Offered to do her bidding through the seas, Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks, And far beneath the matted roots of trees, And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks, So they might live for ever in the light Of her sweet presence — each a satellite. XXXII. " This may not be," the wizard maid replied ; " The fountains where the Naiades bedew Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried ; The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide ; The boundless ocean, like a drop of dew Will be consumed — the stubborn centre must Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 27 xxrv. " And ye with them will perish one by one : If I must sigh to think that this shall be, If I must weep when the surviving Sun Shall smile on your decay — Oh, ask not me To love you till your little race is run ; I cannot die as ye must — over me Your leaves shall glance — the streams in which ye dwell Shall be my paths henceforth, and so farewell ! " XXV. She spoke and wept : the dark and azure well Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears, And every little circlet where they fell, Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres And intertangled lines of light : — a knell Of sobbing voices came upon her ears From those departing Forms, o'er the serene Of the white streams and of the forest green. XXVI. All day the wizard lady sat aloof, Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity, Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof ; Or broidering the pictured poesy Of some high tale upon her growing woof, Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye In hues outshining heaven — and ever she Added some grace to the wrought poesy. xxvir. While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece Of sandal-wood, rare giuns, and cinnamon ; Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is, Each flame of it is as a precious stone Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this Belongs to each and all who gaze upon. The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand. c 2 28 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. XXVIII. This lady never slept, but lay in trance All night within the fountain — as in sleep. Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance : Through the green splendour of the water deep She saw the constellations reel and dance Like fire-flies — and withal did ever keep The tenour of her contemplations calm, With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm. XXIX. And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended From the white pinnacles of that cold hill, She passed at dewfall to a space extended, Where, in a lawn of flowering asphodel Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended, There yawned an inextinguishable well Of crimson fire, full even to the brim, And overflowing all the margin trim. XXX. Within the which she lay when the fierce war Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor In many a mimic moon and bearded star, O'er woods and lawns — the serpent heard it flicker In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar — And when the windless snow descended thicker Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came Melt on the surface of the level flame. XXXI. She had a Boat which some say Vulcan wrought For Venus, as the chariot of her star ; But it was found too feeble to be fraught With all the ardours in that sphere which are, And so she sold it, and Apollo bought And gave it to this daughter : from a car Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat Which ever upon mortal stream did float. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. xxxrr. And others say, that, when but three hours old, I The first-born Love out of his cradle leapt, And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold, And like a horticultural adept, Stole a strange seed, and wrapt it up in mould, And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept Watering it all the summer with sweet dew, And with his wings fanning it as it grew. The plant grew strong and green — the snowy flower Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began To turn the light and dew by inward power To its own substance : woven tracery ran Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er The solid rind, like a leaf's veined fan, Of which Love scooped this boat, and with soft motion Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean. XXXIV. This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit A living spirit within all its frame, Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. Couched on the fountain like a panther tame, One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit ; Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame, Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought, — ■ In joyous expectation lay the boat. XXXV. Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow Together, tempering the repugnant mass With liquid love — all things together grow Through which the harmony of love can pass ; And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow A living Image, which did far surpass In beauty that bright shape of vital stone Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion. 30 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. XXXVI. A sexless thing it was, and in its growth It seemed to have developed no defect Of either sex, yet all the grace of both, — In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked ; The bosom lightly swelled with its full youth, The countenance was such as might select Some artist that his skill should never die, Imaging forth such perfect purity. XXXVII. From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings, Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere, Tipt with the speed of hquid lightenings, Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere : She led her creature to the boiling springs Where the light boat was moored, and said — "Sit And pointed to the prow, and took her seat [here ! " Beside the rudder with opposing feet. XXXVIII. And down the streams which clove those mountains vast Around their inland islets, and amid The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed ; By many a star-surrounded pyramid Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky, And caverns yawning round unfathomably. XXXIX. The silver noon into that winding dell, With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops, Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell ; A green and glowing light, like that which drops From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell, When earth over her face night's mantle wraps ; Between the severed mountains lay on high Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. And ever as she went, the Image lay With folded wings and unawakened eyes ; And o'er its gentle countenance did play The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies, Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain, They had aroused from that full heart and brain. And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went : Now lingering on the pools, in which abode The calm and darkness of the deep content In which they paused ; now o'er the shallow road Of white and dancing waters, all besprent With sand and polished pebbles : — mortal boat In such a shallow rapid could not float. And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver Their snow-like waters into golden ah', Or under chasms unfathomable ever Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear A subterranean portal for the river, It fled — the circling sunbows did upbear Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray, Lighting it far upon its lampless way. And when the wizard lady would ascend The labyrinths of some many-winding vale, Which to the inmost mountain upward tend — She called " Hermaphroditus ! " and the pale And heavy hue which slumber could extend Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale A rapid shadow from a slope of grass, Into the darkness of the stream did pass. 32 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. XL1V. And it unfurled its heaven -col oured pinions, With stars of fire spotting the stream below ; And from above into the Sun's dominions Flinging a glory, like the golden glow In which spring clothes her emerald- winged minions, All interwoven with fine feathery snow And moonlight splendour of intensest rime, With which frost paints the pines in winter time. XLV. And then it winnowed the Elysian air Which ever hung about that lady bright, With its ethereal vans — and speeding there, Like a star up the torrent of the night, Or a swift eagle in the morning glare Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight ; The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings, Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs. xi/vi. The water flashed like sunlight by the prow Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven ; The still air seemed as if its waves did flow In tempest down the mountains, — loosely driven The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro ; Beneath, the billows having vainly striven Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel The swift and steady motion of the keel. Or, when the weary moon was in the wane, Or in the noon of interlunar night, The lady-witch in visions could not chain Her spirit ; but sailed forth under the light Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain His storm-outspeeding wings, th' Hermaphrodite ; She to the Austral waters took her way, Beyond the fabulous Thamondocona. TIIE WITCH OF ATLAS. 3^ XLVIIX. Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, - Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake, With the Antarctic constellations paven, Canopus and his crew, lay th' Austral lake — There she would build herself a windless haven Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make The bastions of the storm, when through the sky The spirits of the tempest thundered by. XLIX. A haven, beneath whose translucent floor The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably, And around which the solid vapours hoar, Based on the level waters, to the sky Lifted their dreadful crags ; and like a shore Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey, And hanging crags, many a cove and bay. And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash Of the winds' scourge, foamed like a wounded thing; And the incessant hail with stony clash Ploughed up the waters, and the nagging wing Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering Fragment of inky thunder-smoke — this haven Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven. On which that lady played her many pranks, Circling the image of a shooting star, Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks Outspeeds the Antelopes which speediest are, In her light boat ; and many quips and cranks She played upon the water ; till the car Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, To journey from the misty east began. c 3 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. And then she called out of the hollow turrets Of those high clouds, white, golden, and vermilion, The armies of her ministering spirits — In mighty legions million after million They came, each troop emblazoning its merits On meteor flags ; and many a proud pavilion, Of the intertexture of the atmosphere, They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere. Lirr. They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen Of woven exhalations, underlaid With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid With crimson silk — cressets from the serene Hung there, and on the water for her tread, A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn, Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon. And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught Upon those wandering isles of aery dew, Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not, She sate, and heard all that had happened new Between the earth and moon since they had brought The last intelligence — and now she grew Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night — And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. These were tame pleasures. — She would often climb The steepest ladder of the crudded rack Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, And like Arion on the dolphin's back Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft time Following the serpent lightning's winding track, She ran upon the platforms of the wind, And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. And sometimes to those streams of upper air, Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round, She would ascend, and win the spirits there To let her join their chorus. Mortals found That on those days the sky was calm and fair, And mystic snatches of harmonious sound Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed, And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last. But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads Egypt and ^Ethiopia, from the steep Of utmost Axume, until he spreads, Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep, His waters on the plain : and crested heads Of cities and proud temples gleam amid, And many a vapour-belted pyramid. By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes, Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes, Or charioteering ghastly alligators, Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes Of those huge forms : — within the brazen doors Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast, Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast. And where within the surface of the river The shadows of the massy temples he, And never are erased — but tremble ever Like things which every cloud can doom to die, Through lotus-pav'n canals, and wheresoever The works of man pierced that serenest sky With tombs, and towers, and fane, 'twas her delight To wander in the shadow of the night. 1 36 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. LX. With motion like the spirit of that wind Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet Past through the peopled haunts of human kind, Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet, Through fane and palace-court and labyrinth mined With many a dark and subterranean street Under the Nile ; through chambers high and deep She past, observing mortals in their sleep. IXI. A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. Here lay two sister-twins in infancy ; There a lone youth who hi his dreams did weep ; Within, two lovers linked innocently In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem ; — and there lay calm, Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm. But other troubled forms of sleep she saw, Not to be mirrored in a holy song, Distortions foul of supernatural awe, And pale imaginings of visioned wrong, And all the code of custom's lawless law Written upon the brows of old and young : " This," said the wizard maiden, " is the strife Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life." And little did the sight disturb her soul — We, the weak mariners of that wide lake, Where'er its shores extend or billows roll, Our course unpiloted and starless make O'er its wide surface to an unknown goal, — But she in the calm depths her way could take, Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide, Beneath the weltering of the restless tide. TEE WITCH OF ATLAS. LXIV. And she saw princes couched under the glow Of sunlike gems ; and round each temple-court In dormitories ranged, row after row, She saw the priests asleep, — all of one sort, For all were educated to he so. The peasants in their huts, and in the port The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. LXV. And all the forms in which those spirits lay, Were to her sight like the diaphanous Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array Their delicate limhs, who would conceal from us Only their scorn of all concealment : they Move in the light of their own beauty thus. But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, And little thought a Witch was looking on them. lxvl She all those human figures breathing there Beheld as living spirits — to her eyes The naked beauty of the soul lay bare, And often through a rude and worn disguise She saw the inner form most bright and fair — And then,— she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, Could make that spirit mingle with her own. lxvii. Alas, Aurora ! what wouldst thou have given For such a charm, when Tithon became grey ? Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina Had half (oh ! why not all ?) the debt forgiven Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay, To any witch who would have taught you it ? The Heliad doth not know its value yet. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 'Tis said in after times her spirit free Knew what love was, and felt itself alone But holy Dian could not chaster be Before she stooped to kiss Endymion, Than now this lady — like a sexless bee Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none — Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen. To those she saw most beautiful, she gave Strange panacea in a crystal bowl. They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, And lived thenceforth as if some control, Mightier than life, were in them ; and the grave Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul, Was a green and over-arching bower Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. LXX. For on the night that they were buried, she Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook The light out of the funeral lamps, to be A mimic day within that deathy nook ; And she unwound the woven imagery Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche, And threw it with contempt into a ditch. lxxi. And there the body lay, age after age, Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage, With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing, And living in its dreams beyond the rage Of death or life ; while they were still arraying In liveries ever new the rapid, blind, And fleeting generations of mankind. THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 3! LXXII. And she would write strange dreams upon the brain Of those who were less beautiful, and make All harsh and crooked purposes more vain Than in the desert is the serpent's wake Which the sand covers, — all his evil gain The miser in such dreams would rise and shake Into a beggar's lap ; — the lying scribe Would his own lies betray without a bribe. Lxxiir. The priests would write an explanation full, Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, How the god Apis really was a bull, And nothing more ; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull The old cant down ; they licensed all to speak Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters to each diocese. LXXIV. The king would dress an ape up in his crown And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, And on the right hand of the sunlike throne Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat The chatteriugs of the monkey. — Every one Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet Of their great Emperor when the morning came ; And kissed — alas, how many kiss the same ! The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and Walked out of quarters in somnambuhsm, Round the red anvils you might see them stand Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm, Beating their swords to ploughshares ; — in a band The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism Free through the streets of Memphis ; much, I wis, To the annoyance of king Amasis. 40 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. LXXVI. And timid lovers who had been so coy, They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought ; And when next day the maiden and the boy Met one another, both, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done Only in fancy — till the tenth moon shone ; Lxxvn. And then the Witch would let them take no ill : Of many thousand schemes which lovers find The Witch found one, — and so they took their fill Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from mind ! She did unite again with visions clear Of deep affection and of truth sincere. LXXVI 1 1. These were the pranks she played among the cities Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties, To do her will, and show their subtle slights, I will declare another time ; for it is A tale more fit for the weird winter nights — Than for these garish summer days, when we Scarcelv believe much more than we can see. EPIPSYCHIDION : VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY EMILIA V . NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF . "L'anima amante si slancia furio del creato, e si crea nel infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro." — Her own words. My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, Of such hard matter dost thou entertain ; Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring Thee to base company (as chance may do), Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, I prithee comfort thy sweet self again, My last delight ! tell them that they are dull, And bid them own that thou art beautiful. Sweet Spirit ! Sister of that orphan one, Whose empire is the name thou weepest on, In my heart's temple I suspend to thee These votive wreaths of withered memory. Poor captive bird ! who, from thy narrow cage, Pourest such music, that it might assuage The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody ; 42 EPIPSYCHIDION. This song shall be thy rose : its petals pale Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale ! But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, ' And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom. High, spirit- winged Heart ! who dost for ever Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed It over-soared this low and worldly shade, Lie shattered ; and thy panting wounded breast Stains with dear blood its umnaternal nest ! I weep vain tears : blood would less bitter be, Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. Seraph of Heaven ! too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman All that is insupportable in thee Of light, and love, and immortality ! Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse ! Veiled glory of this lampless Universe ! Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! Thou living Form Among the Dead ! Thou Star above the Storm ! Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror ! Thou Harmony of Nature's art ! Thou Mirror In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun, All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on ! Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow ; I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song All of its much mortality and wrong, With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through, Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstacy : Then smile on it, so that it may not die. I never thought before my death to see Youth's vision thus made perfect : Emily, I love thee ; though the world by no thin name Will hide that love, from its unvalued shame. EPIPSYCHIDION. 43 Would we two had been twins of the same mother ! Or, that the name my heart lent to another Could be a sister's bond for her and thee, Blending two beams of one eternity ! Yet were one lawful and the other true, These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due, How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me ! I am not thine : I am a part of thee. Sweet Lamp ! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings, Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style, All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile, A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless ? A well of sealed and secret happiness, Whose waters like blithe light and music are, Vanquishing dissonance and gloom ? A Star Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone % A smile amid dark frowns ? a gentle tone Amid rude voices ? a beloved light ? A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight % A lute, which those whom love has taught to play Make music on, to soothe the roughest day And lull fond grief asleep % a buried treasure ? A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure ? A violet-shrouded grave of Woe % — I measure The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, And find — alas ! mine own infirmity. She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way, And lured me towards sweet Death ; as Night by Day, Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope, Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, In the suspended impulse of its lightness, Were less ethereally light : the brightness Of her divinest presence trembles through Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew Embodied in the windless heaven of June, Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon 44 EPIPSYCHIDION. Burns inextinguishably beautiful : And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, Killing the sense with passion : sweet as stops Of planetary music heard in trance. In her mild lights the starry spirits dance, The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap Under the lightnings of the soul — too deep For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. The glory of her being, issuing thence, Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade Of unentangled intermixture, made By Love, of light and motion ; one intense Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing With the imintermitted blood, which there Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,) Continuously prolonged, and ending never, Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world ; Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress, And her loose hair ; and where some heavy tress The air of her own speed has disentwined, The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind ; And in the soul a wild odour is felt, Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt ijnto the bosom of a frozen bud. Bee where she stands ! a mortal shape indued With love and life and light and deity, And motion which may change but cannot die ; An image of some bright Eternity ; A shadow of some golden dream ; a Splendour Leaving the third sphere pilotless ; a tender Reflection on the eternal Moon of Love, Under whose motions life's dull billows move ; A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning ; EPIPSYCHIDION. A vision like incarnate April, warning, With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy Into his summer grave. Ah ! woe is me ! What have I dared ? where am I lifted ? how Shall I descend, and perish not ? I know That Love makes all things ecmal : I have heard By mine own heart this joyous truth averred : The spirit of the worm beneath the sod, In love and worship, blends itself with God. Spouse ! Sister ! Angel ! Pilot of the Fate Whose course has been so starless ! O too late Beloved ! too soon adored, by me ! For in the fields of immortality My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, A divine presence in a place divine ; Or should have moved beside it on this earth, A shadow of that substance, from its birth ; But not as now : — I love thee ; yes, I feel That on the fountain of my heart a seal Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight. We — are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar ; Such difference without discord, as can make Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake, As trembling leaves in a continuous air ? Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wreckt. I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, 46 EPIPSYCHIDION. Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go. True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths ; 'tis like thy light, Imagination ! which, from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow The heai*t that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. Mind from its object differs most in this : Evil from good ; misery from happiness ; The baser from the nobler ; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away ; - If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole ; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared : This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope ; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth. There was a Being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, EPIPSYCHIDION. 47 In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor Paved her light steps ; — on an imagined shore, Under the grey beak of some promontory She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, That I beheld her not. In solitudes Her voice came to me through the whispering woods, And from the fountains, and the odours deep Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring hi their sleep Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, Breathed but of her to the enamoured ah' ; And from the breezes whether low or loud, And from the rain of every passing cloud, And from the singing of the summer-birds, And from all sounds, all silence. In the words Of antique verse and high romance, — in form, Sound, colour — in whatever checks that Storm Which with the shattered present chokes the past ; And in that best philosophy, whose taste Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom As glorious as a fiery martyrdom ; Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. — Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, And towards the loadstar of my one desire, I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light, When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. — But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, Past, like a God throned on a winged planet, Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, Into the dreary cone of our life's shade ; And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, 43 EPIPSYCHIDION. I would have followed, though the grave between Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen : When a voice said : — " O Thou of hearts the weakest, The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest." Then I — " Where % " the world's echo answered " where ! " And in that silence, and in my despair, I questioned every tongueless wind that flew Over my tower of mourning, if it knew Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul ; And murmured names and spells which have con- troul Over the sightless tyrants of our fate ; But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate The night which closed on her; nor un create That world within this chaos, mine and me, Of which she was the veiled Divinity, The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her : And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear. And every gentle passion sick to death, Feeding my course with expectation's breath, Into the wintry forest of our life ; And struggling through its error with vain strife, And stumbling in my weakness and my haste, And half bewildered by new forms, I past Seeking among those untaught foresters If I could find one form resembling hers, In which she might have masked herself from me. There, — One, whose voice was venomed melody Sate by a well, under blue night-shade bowers ; The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers, Her touch was as electric poison, — flame Out of her looks into my vitals came, And from her living cheeks and bosom flew A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew Into the core of my green heart, and lay Upon its leaves : until, as hair grown grey O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime With ruins of unseasonable time. EPIPSYCHLDIOX. Ill many mortal forms I rashly sought The shadow of that idol of my thought. And some were fair — hut beauty dies away : Others were wise — hut honeyed words betray : And One was true — oh ! why not time to me ? Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, 1 turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, Wounded, and weak, and panting ; the cold day Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain, When, like a noon-day dawn, there shone again Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed. As is the Moon, whose changes ever run . Into themselves, to the eternal Sun ; The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bri isles, Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles. That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, And warms not but illumines. Young and fair As the descended Spirit of that sphere, She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night From its own darkness, until all was bright Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind, And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, She led me to a cave in that wild place, And sat beside me, with her downward face Illumining my siunibers, like the Moon Waxing and waning o'er Endymion. And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, And all my being became bright or dim As the Moon's image in a summer sea, According as she smiled or frowned on me ; And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed : Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead : — For at her silver voice came Death and Life, Unmindful each of their accustomed strife, Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother, 5 EPIPSYCHIDION. And through the cavern without wings they flew, And cried, " Away ! he is not of our crew." I wept, and, though it be a dream, I weep. What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse ; — And how my soul was as a lampless sea, And who was then its Tempest ; and when She, The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast The moving billows of my being fell Into a death of ice, immoveable ; — And then — what earthquakes made it gape and split, The white Moon smiling all the while on it, These words conceal : — If not, each word would be The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me ! At length, into the obscure forest came The vision I had sought through grief and shame. Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's, And from her presence life was radiated Through the grey earth and branches bare and dead ; So that her way was paved, and roofed above With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love ; And music from her respiration spread Like light, — all other sounds were penetrated By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound, So that the savage winds hung mute around ; And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair Dissolving the dull cold in the froze air : Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, When light is changed to love, this glorious One Floated into the cavern where I lay, And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay Was lifted by the thing that dreamed beloAv As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night EPIPSYCHIDION. i Was penetrating me with living light : I knew it was the Vision veiled from me So many years — that it was Emily. Thin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, This world of love, this me ; and into birth Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart Magnetic might into its central heart ; And lift its billows and its mists, and guide By everlasting laws each wind and tide To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave ; And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers The armies of the rainbow- winged showers ; And, as those married lights, which from the towers Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe ; And all their many-mingled influence blend, If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end ; — So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway, Govern my sphere of being, night and day ! Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might ; Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light ; And, through the shadow of the seasons three, From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, Light it into the Winter of the tomb, Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom. Thou too, O Comet, beautiful and fierce, Who drew the heart of this frail Universe Towards thine own ; till, wreckt in that convulsion, Alternating attraction and repulsion, Thine went astray, and that was rent in twain ; Oh, float into our azure heaven again ! Be there love's folding-star at thy return ; The living sun will feed thee from its urn Of golden fire ; the Moon Avill veil her horn In thy last smiles ; adoring Even and Morn Will worship thee with incense of calm breath And lights and shadows ; as the star of Death d 2 52 EPIPSYCHIDION. And Birth is worshipp'd by those sisters wild Called Hope and Fear — upon the heart are piled Their offerings, — of this sacrifice divine A World shall be the altar. Lady mine, Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth, Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes, Will be as of the trees of Paradise. The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. To whatsoe'er of dull mortality Is mine, remain a vestal sister still ; To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, Not mine, but me, henceforth be thou united Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. The hour is come : — the destined Star has risen Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set The sentinels — but true love never yet Was thus constrained : it overleaps all fence : Like lightning, with invisible violence Piercing its continents : like Heaven's free breath, Which he who grasps can hold not ; liker Death, Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array Of arms : more strength has Love than he or they ; For he can burst his eharnel, and make free The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, The soul in dust and chaos. Emily, A ship is floating in the harbour now, A wiud is hovering o'er the mountain's brow ; There is a path on the sea's azure floor, No keel has ever ploughed that path before ; The halcyons brood around the foamless isles ; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles ; EPIPSYCHIDION. The merry marinei's are bold and free : Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me ? Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple East ; And we between her wings will sit, while Night, And Day, and Storai, and Calm, pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, Treading each other's heels, unheededly. It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, And, for the harbours are not safe and good, Tins land would have remained a solitude But for some pastoral people native there, Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, Simple and spirited ; innocent and bold. The blue yEgean girds this chosen home, With ever-changing sound and light and foam, Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar ; And all the winds wandering along the shore Undulate with the undulating tide : There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide ; And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, As clear as elemental diamond, Or serene morning air ; and far beyond, The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,) Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls Illumining, with sound that never fails, Accompany the noonday nightingales ; And all the place is peopled with sweet airs ; The light clear element which the isle wears Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, And falls upon the eye-lids like faint sleep ; And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, And dart their arrowy odour through the brain Till you might faint with that delicious pain. 54 EPIPSYCHIDIOX. And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, With that deep music is in unison : Which is a soul within the soul — they seem Like echoes of an antenatal dream. — It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity ; Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light Upon its mountain-peaks ; blind vultures, they Sail onward far upon their fatal way : The winged storms, chaunting then' thunder-psalm To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, From which its fields and woods ever renew Then' green and golden immortality. And from the sea there rise, and from the sky There fall clear exhalations, soft and bright, Veil after veil, each hiding some delight. Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside, Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride Glowing at once with love and loveliness, Blushes and trembles at its own excess : Vet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, Filling their bare and void interstices. — But the chief marvel of the wilderness Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how None of the rustic island-people know ; 'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height It overtops the woods ; but, for delight, Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime Had been invented, in the world's young prime, Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house EPIPSYCHIDIOX. 5f. Made sacred to his sister and his spouse. It scarce seems now a wreck of human art, But, as it were, Titanic ; in the heart Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown Out of the mountains, from the living stone, Lifting itself in caverns light and high : For all the antique and learned imagery Has been erased, and in the place of it The ivy and the wild vine interknit The volumes of their many-twining stems ; Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky Peeps through their winter- woof of tracery With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, Or fragments of the day's intense serene ; Working mosaic on their Parian floors. And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem To sleep ha one another's arms, and dream Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we Read in their smiles, and call reality. This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed Thee to be lady of the solitude. And I have fitted up some chambers there Looking towards the golden Eastern ah', And level with the living winds, which flow Like waves above the living waves below. I have sent books and music there, and all Those instruments with which high spirits call The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave, and make the present last In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, Folded within their own eternity. Our simple life wants little, and true taste Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste The scene it would adorn, and therefore still, Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill. The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet 55 EPIPSYCHIDION. Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance Between the quick bats in their twilight dance ; The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight Before our gate, and the slow silent night Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. Be this our home in life, and when years heap Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay, Let us become the overhanging day, The living soul of this Elysian isle, Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, And wander in the meadows, or ascend The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend With lightest winds, to touch their paramour ; Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, the quick faint kisses of the sea Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy, — Possessing and possest by all that is Within that calm circumference of bliss, And by each other, till to love and live Be one : — or, at the noontide hour, arrive Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep The moonlight of the expired night asleep, Through which the awakened day can never peep ; A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's, Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights ; Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again And we will talk, until thought's melody Become too sweet for utterance, and it die In words, to live again in looks, which dart With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, Harmonising silence without a sound. Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound. And our veins beat together ; and our lips, With other eloquence than words, eclipse The soul that burns between them ; and the wells EPIPSYCIIIDION. Which boil under our being's inmost cells, The fountains of our deepest life, shall be Confused hi passion's golden purity, As mountain-springs under the morning Sun. We shall become the same, we shall be one Spirit within two frames, oh ! wherefore two ? One passion in twin- hearts, which grows and grew Till like two meteors of expanding flame, Those spheres instinct with it become the same, Touch, mingle, are transfigured ; ever still Burning, yet ever inconsumable : In one another's substance finding food, Like flames too pure and light and unimbued To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away : One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, And one annihilation. Woe is me ! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of love's rare Universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire. — I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! Weak verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, And say : — " We are the masters of thy slave ; What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine ?" Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, All singing loud : " Love's very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine, Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave." So shall ye five when I am there. Then haste Over the hearts of men, until ye meet Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest, And bid them love each other, and be blest : And leave the troop which errs, and which reprove And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's. d 3 JULIAN AND MADDALO: A CONVERSATION. The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme. The gouts with the green leaves of budding spring, Are saturated not— nor Love with tears. Virgil's Gallus. I rode one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice : a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this, an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons ; and no other object breaks The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes A narrow space of level sand thereon, Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down. This ride was my delight. I love all waste And solitary places ; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be : And such was this wide ocean, and this shore More barren than its billows : and yet more Than all, with a remembered friend I love To ride as then I rode ; — for the winds drove The firing spray along the sunny air Into our faces ; the blue heavens were bare, JULIAN AXD MADDALO. 5 Stripped to their depths by the awakening north ; And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth Harmonizing with solitude, and sent Into our hearts aerial merriment. So, as we rode, we talked ; and the swift thought, Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, But flew from brain to brain, — such glee was ours, Charged with light memories of remembered hours, None slow enough for sadness : till we came Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. This day had been cheerful but cold, and now The sun was sinking, and the wind also. Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be Talk interrupted with such raillery As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn The thoughts it would extinguish : — 'twas forlorn. Yet pleasing ; such as once, so poets tell, The devils held within the dales of hell, Concerning God, freewill, and destiny. Of all that Earth has been, or yet may be ; All that vain men imagine or believe, Or hope can paint, or suffering can achieve, We descanted ; and I (for ever still Is it not wise to make the best of ill ?) Argued against despondency ; but pride Made my companion take the darker side. The sense that he was greater than his kind Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind By gazing on its own exceeding light. Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight Over the horizon of the mountains — Oh ! How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou paradise of exiles, Italy ! Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers, Of cities they encircle ! — It was ours To stand on thee, beholding it : and then, Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men 60 JULIAN AND MADDALO. Were waiting for us with a gondola. As those who pause on some delightful way, Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening and the flood, Which lay between the city and the shore, Paved with the image of the sky : the hoar And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared Between the east and west ; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep west into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent Among the many-folded hills — they were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seen from Lido through the harbour piles, The likeness of a clump of peaked isles — And then, as if the earth and sea had been Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent. " Ere it fade," Said my companion, " 1 will show you soon A better station." So, o'er the lagune We glided ; and from that funereal bark I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. 1 was about to speak, when — " We are even Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, And bade the gondolieri cease to row. " Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." I looked, and saw between us and the sun A building on an island, such a one As age to age might add, for uses vile, — JULIAN AND MADDALO. fi A windowlesSj deformed, and dreary pile ; And on the top an open tower, where hung A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung, We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue : The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled In strong and black relief — " What we behold Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower," — Said Maddalo ; " and even at this hour, Those who may cross the water hear that bell, Which caUs the maniacs, each one from his cell, To vespers." — " As much skill as need to pray, In thanks or hope for then- dark lot have they, To their stem maker," I replied. — a O, ho ! You talk as in years past," said Maddalo. " 'Tis strange men change not. You were ever still Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel, A wolf for the meek lambs : if you can't swim, Beware of Providence." I looked on him, But the gay smile had faded from his eye. " And such," he cried, " is our mortality ; And this must be the emblem and the sign Of what should be eternal and divine ; And like that black and dreary bell, the soul, Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll Our thoughts and our desires to meet below Round the rent heart, and pray — as madmen do ;•■ For what ? they know not, till the night of death, As sunset that strange vision, severeth Our memory from itself, and us from all We sought, and yet were baffled." I recall The sense of what he said, although I mar The force of his expressions. The broad star Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill ; And the black bell became invisible ; And the red tower looked grey ; and all between, The churches, ships, and palaces, were seen Huddled in gloom ; into the purple sea The orange hues of heaven sunk silently. We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola Conveyed me to my lodging by the way. 62 JULIAN AND MADDALO. The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim : Ere Maddalo arose T called on him, And whilst I waited with his child I played ; A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made ; A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being ; Graceful without design, and unforeseeing ; With eyes — Oh ! speak not of her eyes ! which seem Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam With such deep meaning as we never see But in the human countenance. With me She was a special favourite : I had nursed Her fine and feeble limbs, when she came first To this bleak world ; and yet she seemed to know On second sight her ancient playfellow, Less changed than she was by six months or so. For, after her first shyness was worn out, We sate there, rolling billiard balls about, When the Count entered. Salutations passed : " The words you spoke last night might well have cast A darkness on my spirit : — if man be The passive thing you say, I should not see Much harm in the religions and old saws, (Tho' / may never own such leaden laws) Which break a teachless nature to the yoke : Mine is another faith." — Thus much I spoke, And, noting he replied not, added — u See This lovely child ; blithe, innocent, and free ; She spends a happy time, with little care ; While we to such sick thoughts subjected are, As came on you last night. It is our will Which thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise ; we might be all We dream of, happy, high, majestical. Where is the beauty, love, and truth, we seek, But in our minds I And, if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire \ " — " Ay, if we were not weak, — and we aspire, How vainly ! to be strong," said Maddalo ; " You talk Utopian " — JULIAN AND 3IADDAL0. "It remains to know," I then rejoined, " and those who try, may find How strong the chains are which our spirit hind : Brittle perchance as straw. We are assured Much may he conquered, much may he endured, Of what degrades and crushes us. We know That we have power over ourselves to do And suffer — what, we know not till we try ; But something nobler than to five and die : So taught the kings of old philosophy, Who reigned before religion made men blind ; And those who suffer with their suffering kind, Yet feel this faith, religion." " My dear friend." Said Maddalo, " my judgment will not bend To your opinion, though I think you might Make such a system refutation-tight, As far as words go. I knew one like you, Who to this city came some months ago, With whom I argued in this sort, — and he Is now gone mad — and so he answered me, Poor fellow ! — But if you would like to go, We '11 visit him, and his wild talk will show How vain are such aspiring theories." — u I hope to prove the induction otherwise, And that a want of that true theory still, Which seeks a soul of goodness in things ill, Or in himself or others, has thus bowed His being : — there are some by nature proud, Who, patient in all else, demand but this — To love and be beloved with gentleness : — And being scorned, what wonder if they die Some living death ? This is not destiny, But man's own wilful ill." As thus I spoke, Servants announced the gondola, and we Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea 64 JULIAN AND MADDALO. Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands. We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands, Fierce yells and bowlings, and lamentings keen, And laughter where complaint had merrier been, Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs Into an old court-yard. I heard on high, Then, fragments of most touching melody, But looking up saw not the singer there. — Thro' the black bars in the tempestuous air I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing, Long tangled locks flung wildly forth and flowing, Of those on a sudden who were beguiled Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled, Hearing sweet sounds. Then I : " Methinks there were A cure of these with patience and kind care, If music can thus move. But what is he, Whom we seek In ; " Of his sad history 1 know but this," said Maddalo : "he came To Venice a dejected man, and fame Said he was wealthy, or he had been so. Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe ; But he was ever talking in such sort I >, — but more sadly ;— he seemed hurt, Even as a man with his peculiar wrong, To hear but of the oppression of the strong, Or those absurd deceits (I think with you J n some respects, you know) which carry through The excellent impostors of this earth When they outface detection. He had worth, Poor fellow ! but a humourist in his way. 1 ' — — " Alas, what drove him mad I " u I cannot say : A lady came with him from France, and when She left Mm and returned, he wandered then JULIAN AND MADDALO. 65 About yon lonely isles of desert sand, Till he grew wild. He had no cash nor land Remaining : — the police had brought him here — Some fancy took him, and he would not bear Removal, so I fitted up for him Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim ; And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers, Which had adorned his fife in happier hours, And instruments of music. You may guess A stranger could do little more or less For one so gentle and unfortunate — And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight From madmen's chains, and make this hell appear A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear." " Nay, this was kind of you, — he had no claim. As the world says." u None but the very same Which I on all mankind, were I, as he, Fallen to such deep reverse. His melody Is interrupted now : we hear the din Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin : Let us now visit him : after this strain, He ever communes with himself again, And sees and hears not any." Having said These words, we called the keeper, and he led To an apartment opening on the sea — There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully Near a piano, his pale fingers twined One with the other ; and the ooze and wind Rushed through an open casement, and did sway His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray : His head was leaning on a music-book, And he was muttering : and his lean limbs shook, His lips were pressed against a folded leaf, In hue too beautiful for health, and grief 65 JULIAN AND 3IADDAL0. Smiled in their motions as they lay apart, As one who wrought from his own fervid heart The eloquence of passion : soon he raised His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed, And spoke, — sometimes as one who wrote, and thought His words might move some heart that heeded not, If sent to distant lands ; — and then as one Reproaching deeds never to be undone, ' With wondering self-compassion ;— then his speech Was lost in grief, and then his words came each Unmodulated and expressionless, — But that from one jarred accent you might guess It was despair made them so uniform : And all the while the loud and gusty storm Hissed through the window, and we stood behind, Stealing his accents from the envious wind, Unseen. I yet remember what he said Distinctly, such impression his words made. " Month after month," he cried, " to bear this load, And, as a jade urged by the whip and goad, To drag life on — which like a heavy chain Lengthens behind with many a link of pain, And not to speak my grief — 0, not to dare To give a human voice to my despair ; But live, and move, and, wretched thing ! smile on, As if I never went aside to groan, And wear this mask of falsehood even to those Who are most dear — not for my own repose. Alas ! no scorn, nor pain, nor hate, could be So heavy as that falsehood is to me — But that I cannot bear more altered faces Than needs must be, more changed and cold embraces, More misery, disappointment, and mistrust, To own me for their father. Would the dust Were covered in upon my body now ! That the life ceased to toil within my brow ! And then these thoughts would at the last be fled : Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead, JULIAN AND MADDALO. " What Power delights to torture us I I know That to myself I do not wholly owe What now I suffer, though hi part I may. "Alas ! none strewed fresh flowers upon the way Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain, My shadow, which will leave me not again. If I have erred, there was no joy in error, But pain, and insult, and unrest, and terror ; I have not, as some do, bought penitence With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence : For then if love, and tenderness, and truth, Had overlived Hope's momentaxy youth, My creed should have redeemed me from repenting But loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting Met love excited by far other seeming Until the end was gained : — as one from dreaming Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state Such as it is — " thou, my spirit's mate ! Who, for thou art compassionate and wise, Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see ; My secret groans must be unheard by thee ; Thou wouldst weep tears, bitter as blood, to know Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe. Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed In friendship, let me not that name degrade, By placing on your hearts the secret load Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road To peace, and that is truth, which follow ye ! Love sometimes leads astray to misery. Yet think not, though subdued (and I may well Say that I am subdued) — that the full hell Within me would infect the untainted breast Of sacred nature with its own unrest ; As some perverted beings think to find In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind Which scorn or hate hath wounded. — 0, how vain ! 63 JULIAN AND MADDALO. The dagger heals not, but may rend again. Believe that I am ever still the same In creed as in resolve ; and what may tame My heart, must leave the understanding free, Or all would sink under this agony. — Nor dream that I will join the vulgar eye, Or with my silence sanction tyranny, Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain In any madness which the world calls gain ; Ambition, or revenge, or thoughts as stern As those which make me what I am, or turn To avarice, or misanthropy, or lust : Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust ! Till then the dungeon may demand its prey ; And Poverty and Shame may meet and say, Halting beside me in the public way, — ' That love-devoted youth is ours : let 's sit Beside him : he may live some six months yet.' — Or the red scaffold, as our country bends, May ask some willing victim ; or ye, friends, May fall under some sorrow, which this heart Or hand may share, or vanquish, or avert ; I am prepared, in truth, with no proud joy, To do or suffer aught, as when a boy I did devote to justice, and to love, My nature, worthless now. " I must remove A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn aside ! ! pallid as death's dedicated bride, Thou mockery which art sitting by my side, Am I not wan like thee X At the grave's call 1 haste, invited to thy wedding-ball, To meet the ghastly paramour, for whom Thou hast deserted me, — and made the tomb Thy bridal bed. But I beside thy feet Will lie, and watch ye from my winding-sheet Thus— wide awake though dead — Yet stay, 0, stay ! Go not so soon — I know not what I say — JULIAN AND MADDALO. Hear but my reasons — I am mad, I fear, My fancy is o'erwrought — thou art not here, Pale art thou 'tis most true but thou art gone— Thy work is finished ; I am left alone. u Nay was it I who woo'd thee to this breast Which like a serpent thou envenomest As in repayment of the warmth it lent ? Didst thou not seek me for thine own content ? Did not thy love awaken mine ? I thought That thou wert she who said ' You kiss me not Ever ; I fear you do not love me now.' In truth I loved even to my overthrow Her who would fain forget these words, but they Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away. " You say that I am proud ; that when I speak, My lip is tortured with the wrongs, which break The spirit it expresses. — Never one Humbled himself before, as I have done ; Even the instinctive worm on which we tread Turns, though it wound not — then, with prostrate head, Sinks in the dust, and writhes like me — and dies : No : — wears a living death of agonies ; As the slow shadows of the pointed grass Mark the eternal periods, its pangs pass, Slow, ever-moving, making moments be As mine seem, — each an immortality ; ******* " That you had never seen me ! never heard My voice ! and more than all had ne'er endured The deep pollution of my loathed embrace ; That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face ! That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root With mine own quivering fingers ! so that ne'er Our hearts had for a moment mingled there, 70 JULIAN AND MADDALO. To disunite in horror ! These were not With thee like some suppressed and hideous thought, Which flits athwart our musings, but can find No rest within a pure and gentle mind — Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word, And sear'dst my memory o'er them, — for I heard And can forget not — they were ministered, One after one, those curses. Mix them up Like self-destroying poisons in one cup ; And they will make one blessing, which thou ne'er Didst imprecate for on me death ! " It were A cruel punishment for one most cruel, If such can love, to make that love the fuel Of the mind's hell — hate, scorn, remorse, despair : But me, whose heart a stranger's tear might wear As water-drops the sandy fountain stone ; Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan For woes which others hear not, and could see The absent with the glass of phantasy, And near the poor and trampled sit and weep, Following the captive to his dungeon deep ; 3fe, who am as a nerve o'er which do creep The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth, And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth, When all beside was cold : — that thou on me Should rain these plagues of blistering agony — Such curses are from lips once eloquent With love's too partial praise ! Let none relent Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name Henceforth, if an example for the same They seek : — for thou on me lookedst so and so, And didst speak thus and thus. I live to show How much men bear and die not. " Thou wilt tell, With the grimace of hate, how horrible JULIAN AND MADDALO. 71 It was to meet my love when thine grew less ; Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address Such features to love's work .... This taunt, though true, (For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship) Shall not be thy defence : for since thy life Met mine first, years long past, — since thine eye kindled With soft fire under mine, — I have not dwindled, Nor changed hi mind, or body, or hi aught But as love changes what it loveth not After long years and many trials. " How vain Are words ; I thought never to speak again, Not even in secret, not to my own heart — But from my lips the unwilling accents start, And from my pen the words flow as I write, Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears — my sight Is dim to see that charactered in vain, On this unfeeling leaf, which burns the brain And eats into it, blotting all tilings fair, And wise and good, which time had written there. Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and that must be Our chastisement or recompense. — O child ! I would that thine were like to be more mild For both our wretched sakes, — for thine the most, Who feel'st already all that thou hast lost, Without the power to wish it thine again. And, as slow years pass, a funereal train, Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend No thought on my dead memory % " Alas, love ! Fear me not : against thee I'd not move 72 JULIAN AND MADDALO. A finger in despite. Do I not live That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve ? I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate ; And, that thy lot may he less desolate Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain. Then — when thou speakest of me — never say, i He could forgive not.' — Here I cast away All human passions, all revenge, all pride ; I think, speak, act no ill ; I do but hide Under these words, like embers, every spark Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark The grave is yawning : — as its roof shall cover My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, So let oblivion hide this grief. — The air Closes upon my accents as despair Upon my heart — let death upon my care !" He ceased, and overcome, leant back awhile ; Then rising, with a melancholy smile, Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept \ v sleep, and in his dreams he wept, And muttered some familiar name, and we Wept without shame in his society. I think I never was impressed so much ! The man, who was not, must have lacked a touch Of human nature. — Then we lingered not, Although our argument was cmite forgot ; But, calling the attendants, went to dine At Maddalo's ; — yet neither cheer nor wine Could give us spirits, for we talked of him, And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim. And we agreed it was some dreadful ill Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable, By a dear friend ; some deadly change in love Of one vowed deeply which he dreamed not of ; For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot, Of falsehood in his mind, which flourished not But in the light of all-beholding truth ; JULIAN AND MADDALO. And having stamped this canker on his youth, She had abandoned him : — and how much more Might be his woe, we guessed not ; — he had store Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess From his nice habits and his gentleness : These now were lost — it were a grief indeed If he had changed one unsustaining reed For all that such a man might else adorn. The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn ; For the wild language of his grief was high — Such as in measure were called poetry. And I remember one remark, which then Maddalo made : he said — " Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong : They learn in suffering what they teach in song." If I had been an unconnected man, I, from the moment, should have formed some plan Never to leave sweet Venice : for to me It was delight to ride by the lone sea : And then the town is silent — one may write Or read in gondolas, by day or night, Having the little brazen lamp alight, Unseen, uninterrupted : — books are there, Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair Which were twin-born with poetry ! — and all We seek in towns, with little to recall Regret for the green country : — I might sit In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit And subtle talk would cheer the winter night, And make me know myself : — and the fire light Would flash upon our faces, till the day Might dawn, and make me wonder at my stay. But I had friends in London too. The chief Attraction here was that I sought relief From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought Within me — 'twas perhaps an idle thought, But I imagined that if, day by day, I watched him, and seldom went away, 74 JULIAN AND MADDALO. And studied all the beatings of his heart With zeal, as men study some stubborn art For their own good, and could by patience find An entrance to the caverns of his mind, I might reclaim him from his dark estate. In friendships I had been most fortunate, Yet never saw I one whom I would call More willingly my friend : — and tins was all Accomplished not ; — such dreams of baseless good Oft come and go, in crowds or solitude, And leave no trace ! — but what I now designed Made, for long years, impression on my mind. The following morning urged by my affairs, I left bright Venice. After many years, And many changes, I returned : the name Of Venice, and its aspect was the same ; But Maddalo was travelling, far away, Among the mountains of Armenia. His dog was dead : his child had now become A woman, such as it has been my doom To meet with few ; a wonder of this earth, Where there is little of transcendent worth, — Like one of Shakspeare's women. Kindly she, And with a manner beyond courtesy, Received her father's friend ; and, when I asked, Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked, And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale : " That the poor sufferer's health began to fail Two years from my departure : but that then The lady, who had left him, came again, Her mien had been imperious, but she now Looked meek ; perhaps remorse had brought her low. Her coming made him better ; and they stayed Together at my father's, — for I played, As I remember, with the lady's shawl ; I might be six years old : — But, after all, She left him." — JULIAN AND MADDALO. 75 " Why hex* heart must have been tough ; How did it eud ? " " And was not this enough ? They met, they parted." " Child, is there no more ? " "Something within that interval which bore The stamp of why they parted, how they met ; — Yet, if thine aged eyes disdain to wet Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears, Ask me no more ; but let the silent years Be closed and cered over their memory, As yon mute marble where their corpses lie." I urged and questioned still : she told me how All happened — but the cold world shall not know. LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. f Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on Day and night, and night and day, Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel's track ; Whilst above, the sunless sky, Big with clouds, hangs heavily, And behind the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, Riving sail, and cord, and plank, Till the ship has almost drank Death from the o'er-brimming deep ; And sinks down, down, like that sleep When the dreamer seems to be Weltering through eternity ; And the dim low line before Of a dark and distant shore Still recedes, as ever still Longing with divided will ; But no power to seek or shun, He is ever drifted on O'er the unreposing wave, To the haven of the grave. What, if there no friends will greet ; What, if there no heart will meet His with love's impatient beat ; WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. Wander wheresoe'er he may, Can he dream before that day To find refuge from distress In friendship's smile, in love's caress ? Then 'twill wreak him little woe Whether such there be or no : Senseless is the breast, and cold, Which relenting love would fold ; Bloodless are the veins and chill Which the pulse of pain did fill ; Every little living nerve That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow, Are like sapless leaflets now Frozen upon December's bough. On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally, As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap, One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, Where a few grey rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land : Nor is heard one voice of wail But the sea-mews, as they sail O'er the billows of the gale ; Or the whirlwind up and down Howling, like a slaughtered town, When a king in glory rides Through the pomp of fratricides : Those unburied bones around There is many a mournful sound ; There is no lament for him, Like a sunless vapour, dim, Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves nor murmurs not. Ay, many flowering islands he In the waters of wide Agony : 7« WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. To such a one this morn was led My bark, by soft winds piloted. 'Mid the mountains Euganean, I stood listening to the psean With which the legioned. rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical ; Gathering round with wings all hoar, Through the dewy mist they soar Like grey shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, he In the unfathomable sky, So their plumes of purple grain, Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent multitudes On the morning's fitful gale Through the broken mist they sail ; And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still, Round the solitary hill. Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair ; Underneath day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice hes, — A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline ; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Written among the etjganean hills. Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies ; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old, Sun-girt City ! thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen ; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier. A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow- Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne among the waves, Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace-gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandon'd sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar, Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death O'er the waters of his path. Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aerial gold, WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were Sepulchres, where hum«.n forms, Like pollution-nourish'd worms, To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered and now mouldering : But if Freedom should awake In her omnipotence, and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities he Chained like thee, ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime : If not, perish thou and they ; Clouds which stain truth's rising day By her sun consumed away, Earth can spare ye ; while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours, From your dust new nations spring With more kindly blossoming. Perish ! let there only be Floating o'er thy hearthless sea, As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of Time, Which scarce hides thy visage wan : That a tempest-cleaving swan Of the songs of Albion, Driven from his ancestral streams, By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee ; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung From his hps like music flung WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN UILL> O'er a mighty thunder-fit, ChasteniBg terror : what though yet Poesy's unfailing river. Which through Albion winds for ever, Lashing with melodious wave Many a sacred poet's grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled ! What though thou with all thy dead Scarce can for this fame repay Aught thine own, — oh, rather say, Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sunlike soul ! As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander's wasting springs ; As divinest Shakspeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light, Like omniscient power, which he Imaged 'mid mortality; As the love from Petrarch's urn, Yet amid yon hills doth burn, A quenchless lamp, by which the heart Sees things unearthly ; so thou art, Mighty spirit : so shall be The city that did refuge thee, Lo, the sun floats up the sky, Like thought-winged Liberty, Till the universal light Seems to level plain and height ; From the sea a mist has spread, And the beams of morn he dead On the towers of Venice now, Like its glory long ago. By the skirts of that grey cloud Many-domed Padua proud Stands, a peopled solitude, 'Mid the harvest shining plain, Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe, E 3 WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. And the milk-white oxen slow With the purple vintage strain, Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage will ; And the sickle to the sword Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region's foison, Sheaves of whom are ripe to come To destruction's harvest-home : Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow, Or worse ; but 'tis a bitter woe That love or reason cannot change The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. Padua, thou within whose Avails Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin, Till Death cried, " I Win, I win !" And Sin cursed to lose the wager, But Death promised, to assuage her, That he would petition for Her to be made Vice-Emperor, When the destined years were o'er, Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian. Sin smiled so as Sin only can, And since that time, ay, long before, Both have ruled from shore to shore, That incestuous pair, who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As Repentance follows Crime, And as changes follow Time. In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, now no more is burning ; WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS Like a meteor, whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray : Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth ; Now new fires from Antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might ; But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by tyranny. As the Norway woodman quells, In the depth of piny dells, One light flame among the brakes, While the boundless forest shakes, And its mighty trunks are torn By the fire thus lowly born ; The spark beneath his feet is dead, He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With a myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear : so thou, O tyranny ! beholdest now Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest : Grovel on the earth ; ay, hide In the dust thy purple pride ! Noon descends around me now : 5 Tis the noon of autumn's glow, When a soft and purple mist Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star Mingling light and fragrance, far From the curved horizon's bound To the point of heaven's profound, Fills the overflowing sky ; And the plains that silent lie Underneath ; the leaves unsodden WRITTEN AMONG THE ETTGANEAN HILLS. Where the infant frost has trodden With his morning-winged feet, Whose bright print is gleaming yet ; And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellised lines The rough, dark-skirted wilderness ; The dun and bladed grass no less, Pointing from this hoary tower In the windless air ; the flower Glimmering at my feet ; the line Of the olive-sandalled Apennine In the south dimly islanded ; And the Alps, whose snows are spread High between the clouds and sun ; And of living things each one ;; And my spirit, which so long Darkened this swift stream of song, Interpenetrated lie 3y the glory of the sky ; Be it love, hght, harmony, Odour, or the soul of all Which from heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe. Noon descends, and after noon Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon, And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister Half the crimson hght she brings From the sunset's radiant springs : And the soft dreams of the morn (Which hke winged winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies 'Mid remember'd agonies, The frail bark of this lone being), Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, And its ancient pilot, Pain, Sits beside the helm again. WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGAXEAN HILLS. 8.5 Other flowering isles must be ■ In the sea of life and agony : Other spirits float and flee O'er that gulf : even now, perhaps, On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folding wings they waiting sit For my bark, to pilot it To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain, and guilt, In a dell mid lawny hills, Which the wild sea-murmur fills, And soft sunshine, and the sound Of old forests echoing round, And the light and smell divine Of all flowers that breathe and shine. We may five so happy there, That the spirits of the air, Envying us, may even entice To our healing paradise The polluting multitude ; But their rage would be subdued By that clime divine and calm, And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves Under which the bright sea heaves ; While each breathless interval In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies With its own deep melodies ; And the love which heals all strife Circling, like the breath of life, All things in that sweet abode With its own mild brotherhood. They, not it, would change ; and soon Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain, And the earth grow young again, THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. As I lay asleep in Italy, There came a voice from over the sea, And with great power it forth led me To walk in the visions of Poesy. ii. I met Murder on the way — He had a mask like Castlereagh — Very smooth he looked, yet grim ; Seven bloodhounds followed him : All were fat ; and well they might Be in admirable plight, For one by one, and two by two, He tossed them human hearts to chew, Which from his wide cloak he drew. Next came Fraud, and he had on, Like Lord E , an ermine gown ; His big tears, for he wept well, Turned to mill-stones as they fell ; v. And the little children, who Round his feet played to and fro, Thinking every tear a gem, Had their brains knocked out by them. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. Clothed with the bible as with light, And the shadow of the night, Like S * * * next, Hypocrisy, On a crocodile came by. VII. And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies. vm. Last came Anarchy ; he rode On a white horse splashed with blood ; He was pale even to the lips, Like Death in the Apocalypse. IX. And he wore a kingly crown ; In his hand a sceptre shone ; On his brow this mark I saw — " I am God, and King, and Law !" X. With a pace stately and fast, Over English land he past, Trampling to a mire of blood The adoring multitude. XI. And a mighty troop around, With their trampling shook the ground, Waving each a bloody sword, For the service of their Lord. And, with glorious triumph, they Rode through England, proud and gay, Drunk as with intoxication Of the wine of desolation. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. XIII. O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea. Passed the pageant swift and free, Tearing up, and trampling down, Till they came to London town. XIV. And each dweller, panic-stricken, Felt his heart with terror sicken, Hearing the tremendous cry Of the triumph of Anarchy. For with pomp to meet him came, Clothed in arms like blood and flame, The hired murderers who did sing, " Thou art God, and Law, and King. XVI. " We have waited, weak and lone, For thy coming, Mighty One ! Our purses are empty, our swords are cold, Give us glory, and blood, and gold." XVII. Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd, To the earth their pale brows bowed, Like a bad prayer not over loud, Whispering — " Thou art Law and God ! " xvm. Then all cried with one accord, " Thou art King, and Law, and Lord ; Anarchy, to thee we bow, Be thy name made holy now !" XIX. And Anarchy, the skeleton, Bowed and grinned to every one, As well as if his education Had cost ten millions to the nation. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. For lie knew the palaces Of our kings were nightly his ; His the sceptre, crown, and globe, And the gold-inwoven robe. XXI. So he sent his slaves before To seize upon the Bank and Tower, And was proceeding with intent To meet his pensioned parliament, xxn. When one fled past, a maniac maid, And her name was Hope, she said : But she looked more like Despair ; And she cried out in the air : xxnr. " My father, Time is weak and grey With waiting for a better day ; See how idiot-like he stands, Trembling with his palsied hands ! XXIV. " He has had child after child, And the dust of death is piled Over every one but me — Misery ! oh, Misery ! " XXV. Then she lay down in the street, Right before the horses' feet, Expecting with a patient eye, Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy. XXVI. When between her and her foes A mist, a light, an image rose, Small at first, and weak and frail Like the vapour of the vale : THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. Till as clouds grow on the blast, Like tower-crowned giants striding fast, And glare with lightnings as they fly, And speak in thunder to the sky, XXVIII. It grew — a shape arrayed in mail Brighter than the viper's scale, And upborne on wings whose grain Was like the light of sunny rain. XXIX. On its helm, seen far away, A planet, like the morning's, lay ; And those plumes it light rained through, Like a shower of crimson dew. XXX. With step as soft as wind it passed O'er the heads of men — so fast That they knew the presence there, And looked — and all was empty air. XXXI. As flowers beneath May's footsteps waken, As stars from night's loose hair are shaken, As waves arise when loud winds call, Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall. XXXII. And the prostrate multitude Looked — and ankle-deep in blood, Hope, that maiden most serene, Was walking with a quiet mien : XXXIII. And Anarchy, the ghastly birth, Lay dead earth upon the earth ; The Horse of Death, tameless as wind, Fled, and with his hoofs did grind To dust the murderers thronged behind. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. A rushing light of clouds and splendour, A sense, awakening and yet tender, Was heard and felt — and at its close These words of joy and fear arose : XXXV. As if then.- own indignant earth, Which gave the sons of England birth, Had felt their blood upon her brow, And shuddering with a mother's throe, xxxvr. Had turned every drop of blood, By which her face had been bedewed, To an accent unwithstood, As if her heart had cried aloud : XXXVII. " Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Nurslings of one mighty mother, Hopes of her, and one another ! xxxvin. " Rise, like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fall'n on you. Ye are many, they are few. XXXIX. " What is Freedom ? Ye can tell That which Slavery is too well, For its very name has grown To an echo of your own. XL. " 'Tis to work, and have such pay As just keeps life from day to day In your limbs as in a cell For the tyrants' use to dwell : 2 THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. XLI. " So that ye for them are made, Loom, and plough, and sword, and sp* With or without your own will, bent To their defence and nourishment. xLir. " 'Tis to see your children weak With their mothers pine and peak, When the winter winds are bleak : — They are dying whilst I speak. xun. " 'Tis to hunger for such diet, As the rich man in his riot Casts to the fat dogs that lie Surfeiting beneath his eye. XLIV. " 'Tis to let the Ghost of Gold Take from toil a thousand-fold More than e'er its substance could In the tyrannies of old : XLV. " Paper coin — that forgery Of the title deeds, which ye Hold to something of the worth Of the inheritance of Earth. XLVI. " 'Tis to be a slave in soul, And to hold no strong controul Over your own wills, but be All that others make of ye. XLVII. " And at length when ye complain, With a niurmur weak and vain, 'Tis to see the tyrant's crew Ride over your wives and you : — Blood is on the grass like dew ! THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. XXVIII. " Then it is to feel revenge, Fiercely thirsting to exchange Blood for blood — and wrong for wrong : Do not thus when ye are strong ! XXIX. " Birds find rest in narrow nest, When weary of their winged quest ; Beasts find fare in woody lair, When storm and snow are in the air. " Horses, oxen, have a home, When from daily toil they come ; Household dogs, when the wind roars, Find a home within warm doors. LI, " Asses, swine, have fitter spread, And with fitting food are fed ; All things have a home hut one : Thou, O Englishman, hast none ! LII. " This is slavery — savage men, Or" wild beasts within a den,^ Would endure not as ye do : But such ills they never knew. Lift. " What art thou, Freedom ? Oh ! could slave Answer from their living graves This demand, tyrants would flee Like a dream's dim imagery, LIV. " Thou art not, as impostors say, A shadow soon to pass away, A superstition, and a name Echoing from the cave of Fame. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. " For the labourer thou art bread And a comely table spread, From his daily labour come, In a neat and happy home. LVI. " Thou art clothes, and fire, and food For the trampled multitude : No — in countries that are free Such starvation cannot be, As in England now we see. I. VII. " To the rich thou art a check ; When his foot is on the neck Of his victim, thou dost make That he treads upon a snake. I/VIII. " Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold, As laws are in England : — thou Shieldest alike the high and low. LIX. " Thou art Wisdom — freemen never Dream that God will doom for ever All who think those things untrue, Of which priests make such ado. LX. " Thou art Peace — never by thee Would blood and treasure wasted be, As tyrants wasted them, when all Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul. LXI. " What if English toil and blood Was poured forth, even as a flood \ It availed, — O Liberty ! To dim — but not extinguish thee. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. " Thou art Love — the rich have kist Thy feet ; and like him following Christ, Given their substance to the free, And through the rough world followed thee. LXIII. " Oh turn their wealth to arms, and make War for thy beloved sake, On wealth and war and fraud ; whence they Drew the power which is their prey. lxtv. " Science, and Poetry, and Thought, Are thy lamps ; they make the lot Of the dwellers in a cot Such, they curse their maker not, LXV. " Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless, Art thou : let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness. LXVI. " Let a great assembly be Of the fearless and the free, On some spot of English ground, Where the plains stretch wide around. LXVII. " Let the blue sky overhead, The green earth on which ye tread, All that must eternal be, Witness the solemnity. lxviii. " From the corners uttermost Of the bounds of English coast ; From every hut, village, and town, Where those who live and suffer, moan For others' misery, or their own : THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. " From the workhouse and the prison, Where pale as corpses newly risen, Women, children, young, and old, Groan for pain, and weep for cold ; LXX. " From the haunts of daily life, Where is waged the daily strife With common wants and common cares, Which sow the human heart with tares. lxxi. " Lastly, from the palaces, Where the murmur of distress Echoes, like the distant sound Of a wind, alive around ; LXXII. " Those prison-halls of wealth and fashion, Where some few feel such compassion For those who groan, and toil, and wail, As must make their brethren pale ; LXXIII. " Ye who suffer woes untold, Or to feel, or to behold Your lost country bought and sold With a price of blood and gold. LXXIV. " Let a vast assembly be, And with great solemnity Declare with ne'er said words, that ye Are, as God has made ye, free . LXXV. " Be your strong and simple words Keen to wound as sharpened swords, And wide as targes let them be, With their shade to cover ye. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. Lxxvr. " Let the tyrants pour around With a quick and startling sound, Like the loosening of a sea, Troops of armed emblazonry. LXXVII. " Let the charged artillery drive, Till the dead air seems alive With the clash of clanging wheels, And the tramp of horses' heels. ixxvni. " Let the fixed bayonet Gleam with sharp desire to wet Its bright point in English blood, Looking keen as one for food. LXXIX. " Let the horsemen's scimitars Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars, Thirsting to eclipse their burning In a sea of death and mourning. LXXX. " Stand ye calm and resolute, Like a forest close and mute, With folded arms, and looks which are Weapons of an unvanquished war. LXXXI. " And let Panic, who outspeeds The career of armed steeds, Pass, a disregarded shade, Through your phalanx undismayed. LXXXII. " Let the laws of your own land, Good or ill, between ye stand, Hand to hand, and foot to foot, Arbiters of the dispute. THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. LXXXIII. " The old laws of England — they Whose reverend heads with age are grey, Children of a wiser day ; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo — Liberty ! LXXXIV. " On those who first should violate Such sacred heralds in their state, Rest the blood that must ensue ; And it will not rest on you. JLXXXV. " And if then the tyrants dare, Let them ride among you there ; Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew ; What they like, that let them do. LXXXVI. " With folded arms and steady eyes, And little fear, and less surprise, Look upon them as they slay, Till their rage has died away : lxxxvji.