Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes;
Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came;
Depart not, lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead :
I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed:
I was not heard: I saw them not.
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me:
I shriek'd, and clasp'd my hands in ecstasy!
I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatch'd with me the envious night: They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past: there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human-kind.
MARIANNE'S DREAM.
A PALE dream came to a Lady fair,
And said, A boon, a boon, I pray!
I know the secrets of the air,
And things lost in the glare of day,
Which I can make the sleeping see,
If they will put their trust in me.
And thou shalt know of things unknown
If thou wilt let me rest between
The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown
Over thine eyes so dark and sheen:
And half in hope, and half in fright,
The Lady closed her eyes so bright.
31
At first all deadly shapes were driven
Tumultuously across her sleep,
And o'er the vast cope of bending Heaven
All ghastly visaged clouds did sweep;
And the Lady ever look'd to spy
If the gold sun shone forth on high.
And as towards the east she turn'd,
She saw aloft in the morning air,
Which now with hues of sunrise burn'd,
A great black Anchor rising there;
And wherever the Lady turn'd her eyes,
It hung betre her in the skies.
The sky was blue as the summer sea, The depths were cloudless overhead, The air was calm as it could be,
There was no sight or sound of dread, But that black Anchor floating still Over the piny eastern hill.
The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear,
To see that Anchor ever hanging
And veil'd her eyes; she then did hear
The sound as of a dim low clanging,
And look'd abroad if she might know
Was it aught else, or but the flow
Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro.
There was a mist in the sunless air, Which shook as it were with an earthquake's shock,
But the very weeds that blossom'd there
Were moveless, and each mighty rock Stood on its basis stedfastly;
The Anchor was seen no more on high.
But piled around, with summits hid
In lines of cloud at intervals,
Stood many a mountain pyramid,
Among whose everlasting walls
Two mighty cities shone, and ever
Through the red mist their domes did quiver,
On two dread mountains, from whose crest,
Might seem, the eagle, for her brood,
Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest,
Those tower-encircled cities stood.
A vision strange such towers to see,
Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously,
Where human art could never be.
And columns framed of marble white,
And giant fanes, dome over dome
Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright
With workmanship, which could not come
From touch of mortal instrument,
Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent
From its own shapes magnificent.
But still the Lady heard that clang
Filling the wide air far away;
And still the mist whose light did hang
Among the mountains shook alway,
So that the Lady's heart beat fast,
As, half in joy and half aghast,
On those high domes her look she cast.
Sudden, from out that city sprung
A light that made the earth grow red; Two flames that each with quivering tongue Lick'd its high domes, and overhead Among those mighty towers and fanes Dropp'd fire, as a volcano rains Its sulphurous ruin on the plains.
And hark! a rush as if the deep
Had burst its bounds; she look'd behind, And saw over the western steep
A raging flood descend, and wind Through that wide vale; she felt no fear, But said within herself. 't is clear These towers are Nature's own, and she To save them has sent forth the sea.
And now those raging billows came
Where that fair Lady sate, and she Was borne towards the showering flame By the wild waves heap'd tumultuously, And on a little plank, the flow
Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro.
The waves were fiercely vomited
From every tower and every dome,
And dreary light did widely shed
O'er that vast flood's suspended foam, Beneath the smoke which hung its night On the stain'd cope of Heaven's light.
The plank whereon that Lady sate
Of his own mind did there endure After the touch, whose power had braided Such grace, was in some sad change faded.
She look'd, the flames were dim, the flood
Grew tranquil as a woodland river
Winding through hills in solitude;
Those marble shapes then seem'd to quiver
And their fair limbs to float in motion,
Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.
And their lips moved; one seem'd to speak,
When suddenly the mountain crackt,
And through the chasm the flood did break
With an earth-uplifting cataract :
The statues gave a joyous scream,
And on its wings the pale thin dream
Lifted the Lady from the stream.
The dizzy flight of that phantom pale Waked the fair Lady from her sleep, And she arose, while from the veil
Of her dark eyes the dream did creep, And she walk'd about as one who knew That sleep has sights as clear and true As any waking eyes can view.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNL
THE everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Was driven through the chasms, about and about, Now dark-now glittering-now reflecting gloom→→ Between the peaks so desolate
Of the drowning mountain, in and out, As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sailsWhile the flood was filling those hollow vales.
At last her plank an eddy crost,
And bore her to the city's wall,
Which now the flood had reach'd almost :
It might the stoutest heart appal
To hear the fire roar and hiss
Through the domes of those mighty palaces.
The eddy whirl'd her round and round
Before a gorgeous gate, which stood Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound Its aery arch with light like blood; She look'd on that gate of marble clear, With wonder that extinguish'd fear.
For it was fill'd with sculptures rarest, Of forms most beautiful and strange, Like nothing human, but the fairest
Of winged shapes, whose legions range Throughout the sleep of those that are, Like this same Lady, good and fair.
And as she look'd, still lovelier grew Those marble forms;-the sculptor sure
Was a strong spirit, and the hue
Now lending splendor, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters,-with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep Ravine-
Thou many-color'd, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
Fast clouds, shadows, and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains, like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest; thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odors, and their mighty swinging
To hear-an old and solemn harmony:
Thine earthly rainbows stretch'd across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which, when the voices of the desert fail,
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;-
Thy caverns, echoing to the Arve's commotion
A loud lone sound, no other sound can tame :
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound-
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate phantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around;
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by,
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!
Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,-that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.-I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl'd
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far around and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears,-still, snowy, and serene-
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there-how hideously
Its shapes are heap'd around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarr'd, and riven.-Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-demon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?
None can reply-all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be
But for such faith with nature reconciled:
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower;-the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him and all that his may be;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die, revolve, subside and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And this, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains,
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep,
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far
fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled-dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
|A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaim'd. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
Which, from those secret chasms in tumult welling,
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air.
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high-the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them:-Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
SWITZERLAND, June 23, 1816.
ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI,
IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY.
IT lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine ;
Below, far lands are seen but tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shrine,
As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies, I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.
I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,
Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
Flows on, and fills all things with melody.-
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong,
On which, like one in trance upborne,
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.
Now 'tis the breath of summer night, Which, when the starry waters sleep,
Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright, Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.
THE waters are flashing, The white hail is dashing, The lightnings are glancing, The hoar-spray is dancingAway!
The whirlwind is rolling,
The thunder is tolling,
The forest is swinging,
The minster-bells ringing-
Come away!
The Earth is like Ocean, Wreck-strewn and in motion: Bird, beast, man and worm Have crept out of the stormCome away!
"Our boat has one sail,
And the helmsman is pale ;-
A bold pilot I trpw,
Who should follow us now,"-
Shouted He-
And she cried: "Ply the oar!
Put off gaily from shore !"—
As she spoke, bolts of death
Mix'd with hail speck'd their path
O'er the sea.
And from isle, tower and rock, The blue beacon cloud broke, And though dumb in the blast, The red cannon flash'd fast From the lee.
"And fear'st thou, and fear'st thou? And see'st thou, and hear'st thou? And drive we not free
O'er the terrible sea,
I and thou?"
One boat-cloak did cover
The loved and the lover-
Their blood beats one measure
They murmur proud pleasure
Soft and low ;—
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