Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Whither 't was fled, this soul out of my soul;

And murmur'd names and spells which have control
Over the sightless tyrants of our fate;

But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate
The night which closed on her; nor uncreate
That world within this Chaos, mine and me,
Of which she was the veil'd Divinity,

The world I say of thoughts that worshipp'd 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 bewilder'd by new forms, I past
Seeking among those untaught foresters
If I could find one form resembling hers,

In which she might have mask'd herself from me.
There, One, whose voice was venom'd melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade 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 kindling air, which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime
With ruins of unseasonable time.

In many mortal forms I rashly sought
The shadow of that idol of my thought.
And some were fair-but beauty dies away:
Others were wise-but honey'd words betray:
And One was true-oh! why not true to me?
Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,
I turn'd 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 noonday dawn, there shone again
Deliverance. One stood on my path who seem'd
As like the glorious shape which I had dream'd,
As is the Moon, whose changes ever run
Into themselves, to the eternal Sun;

The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,

Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles.
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame,
Which ever is transform'd, 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 sate beside me, with her downward face
Illumining my slumbers, 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 frown'd 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 accustom'd strife,

Mask'd like twin babes, a sister and a brother,
The wandering hopes of one abandon'd mother,
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 quench'd, what frost
Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast
The moving billows of my being fell
Into a death of ice, immovable;-

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 stanchless 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
Flash'd from her motion splendor like the Morn's,
And from her presence life was radiated
Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead,
So that her way was paved, and roof'd 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 odors 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 call'd my Spirit, and the dreaming clay
Was lifted by the thing that dream❜d below
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night
Was penetrating me with living light:

I knew it was the Vision veil'd from me
So many years-that it was Emily.

Twin 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 splendor, 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 borrow'd 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 wreck'd in that convulsion,
Alternating attraction ani 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 will 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
And Birth is worshipp'd by those sisters wild
Call'd Hope and Fear-upon the heart are piled
Their offerings,-of this sacrifice divine
A World shall be the altar.

[blocks in formation]

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 constrain'd: 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 it can burst his charnel, and make free
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,
The soul in dust and chaos.

Emily,

A ship is floating in the harbor now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever plow'd that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners 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 Storm, 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 harbors are not safe and good,
This land would have remain'd 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 Egean 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 eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss, violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odor through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odor, 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,
Wash'd by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
It is a favor'd 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, chanting their thunder-psalm
To other lauds, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their 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:
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle
An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen,
O'er the gray 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,
Rear'd it, a wonder of that simple time

*

An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
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 in one another's arms, and dream

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 awaken'd 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,
Harmonizing 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

Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that Which boil under our being's inmost cells,

we

Read in their smiles, and call reality.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vow'd
Thee to be lady of the solitude.-

And I have fitted up some chambers there,
Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
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 ringdove, in the embowering ivy, yet
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 wither'd hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the over-hanging 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,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea,
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,—

The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in 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 live when I am there. Then haste
until ye
Over the hearts of men,
meet
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,
And bid them love each other and be blest :
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest,-for I am Love's.

417

Hellas;

A LYRICAL DRAMA.

ΜΑΝΤΣ ΕΙΜ' ΕΣΘΛΩΝ ΑΓΩΝΩΝ.

EDIP. Colon.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO,
LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA,

THE DRAMA OF HELLAS

IS INSCRIBED AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP OF PISA, November 1, 1821.

PREFACE.

THE poem of Hellas, written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) | solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate.

THE AUTHOR.

age have been performed by the Greeks-that they have gained more than one naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalized by circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory. The apathy of the rulers of the civilized world, to the astonishing circumstances of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their civilizationThe subject in its present state is insusceptible of rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is somebeing treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have thing perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of called this poem a drama from the circumstance of the shows of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks its being composed in dialogue, the license is not greater than that which has been assumed by other poets, who have called their productions epics, only because they have been divided into twelve or twentyfour books.

The Perse of schylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended, forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilization and social improvement.

Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece. But for Greece-Rome the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors, would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess.

The human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Greece which has impressed its image on those faultless productions whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction of the race.

The modern Greek is the descendant of those The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses so inartificial that I doubt whether, if recited on the to figure to itself as belonging to our kind; and he Thespian wagon to an Athenian village at the Diony- inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of siaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment greater in many instances he is degraded by moral and politi than the loss of such a reward which the Aristarchical slavery to the practice of the basest vices it enof the hour may think fit to inflict.

genders, and that below the level of ordinary degra

The only goat-song which I have yet attempted dation; let us reflect that the corruption of the best has, I confess, in spite of the unfavorable nature of the subject, received a greater and a more valuable portion of applause than I expected, or than it deserved.

produces the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a peculiar state of social institu tion may be expected to cease, as soon as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the adCommon fame is the only authority which I can mirable novel of "Anastatius" could have been a allege for the details which form the basis of the poem, faithful picture of their manners, have undergone most and I must trespass upon the forgiveness of my read- important changes. The flower of their youth, reers for the display of newspaper erudition to which turning to their country from the universities of Italy, I have been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the con- Germany and France, have communicated to their clusion of the war, it will be impossible to obtain fellow-citizens the latest results of that social per an account of it sufficiently authentic for historical fection of which their ancestors were the original materials; but poets have their privilege, and it is source. The university of Chios contained before unquestionable that actions of the most exalted cour- the breaking out of the revolution eight hundred

students, and among them several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their country with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above all praise.

The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity and civilization.

Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other, until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establishing the independence of Greece and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turk; but when was the oppressor generous or just?

The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural and feeble government is vainly attempting to revive. The seed of blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a revolution of Germany, to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy, when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe; and that enemy well knows the power and cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division, to wrest the bloody sceptres from their grasp.

DRAMATIS PERSONE.

MAHMUD.

HASSAN.

DAOOD.

AHASUERUS, a Jew.

CHORUS of Greek captive Women. Messengers, Slaves, and Attendants.

SCENE, Constantinople. TIME,-Sunset.

HELLAS.

SCENE, a Terrace on the Seraglio.

MAHMUD (sleeping), an Indian Slave sitting beside his

Couch.

CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN.

We strew these opiate flowers

On thy restless pillow,

They were stript from Orient bowers,

By the Indian billow.

Be thy sleep

Calm and deep,

Like theirs who fell-not ours who weep!

[blocks in formation]

In the great morning of the world,
The spirit of God with might unfurl'd
The flag of Freedom over Chaos,

And all its banded anarchs fled,
Like vultures frighted from Imaus,

Before an earthquake's treadSo from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendor burst and shone :— Thermopyla and Marathon Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted, The springing fire.-The winged glory On Philippi half-alighted,

Like an eagle on a promontory.

« AnteriorContinuar »