Upon its leaves and flowers; the star which panted
In evening for the Day, whose car has roll'd
Over the horizon's wave, with looks of light
Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.
IX.
The mitigated influences of air
And light revived the plant, and from it grew
Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
Full as a cup with the vine's burning dew,
O'erflowed with golden colors; an atmosphere
Of vital warmth infolded it anew,
And every impulse sent to every part
The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.
Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong, Even if the sun and air smiled not on it;
For one wept o'er it all the winter long
Tears pure as Heaven's rain, which fell upon it Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song,
Mix'd with the stringed melodies that won it To leave the gentle lips on which it slept, Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.
Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers
On which he wept, the while the savage storm,
By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou Waked by the darkest of December's hours,
Neither to be contain'd, delay'd, or hidden, Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
When for a moment thou art not forbidden To live within the life which thou bestowest; And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden, Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight, Blank as the sun after the birth of night.
In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common, In music, and the sweet unconscious tone
Of animals, and voices which are human,
Meant to express some feelings of their own; In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
In flowers and leaves, and in the fresh grass shown,
Or dying in the autumn, I the most
Adore thee present or lament thee lost.
And thus I went lamenting, when I saw
A plant upon the river's margin lie,
Like one who loved beyond his Nature's law,
And in despair had cast him down to die;
Its leaves which had outlived the frost, the thaw
Had blighted as a heart which hatred's eye
Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.
The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth Had crush'd it on her unmaternal breast.
I bore it to my chamber, and I planted
It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted
Fell through the window panes disrobed of cold,
Was raving round the chamber hush'd and warm; The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers, The fish were frozen in the pools, the form Of every summer plant was dead [ ] Whilst this
OH thou, who plumed with strong desire Would float above the earth, beware! A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire
Bright are the regions of the air, And among the winds and beams It were delight to wander thereNight is coming!
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night
Within my heart the lamp of love,
And that is day!
And the moon will smile with gentle light
On my golden plumes where'er they move;
The meteors will linger round my flight,
And make night day.
But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken Hail and lightning and stormy rain? See, the bounds of the air are shakenNight is coming!
The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken,
The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain-
Night is coming!
I see the light, I hear the sound;
I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark With the calm within and the light around Which makes night day:
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark, Look from the dull earth, slumber-bound, My moon-like flight then thou mayest mark On high, far away.
Some say, there is a precipice
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice
'Mid Alpine mountains;
And that the languid storm, pursuing
That winged shape, for ever flies
Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
Its aery fountains.
Some say, when nights are dry and clear,
And the death-dews sleep on the morass,
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller
Which makes night day:
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass
Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
He finds night day.
THEY were two cousins, almost like to twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins
Nature had razed their love-which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.
And so they grew together, like two flowers
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
Which the same hand will gather-the same clime
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
All those who love,—and who e'er loved like thee,
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
The ardors of a vision which obscure
The very idol of its portraiture;
He faints, dissolved into a sense of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above,
But thou art Love itself-ruling the motion
Of his subjected spirit.-Such emotion
Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May
Had not brought forth this morn-your wedding-day-
A BRIDAL SONG.
THE golden gates of sleep unbar
Where strength and beauty met together, Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather.
Night, with all thy stars look down,-
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,—
Never smiled the inconstant moon
Let eyes not see their own delight;—
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn,-ere it be long.
Oh joy! oh fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!
THERE late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
Genius and youth contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
Fail, like the trances of a summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walk'd along the pathway of the field
Which to the east a hoar wood shadow'd o'er,
But to the west was open to the sky.
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers,
And the old dandelion's hoary beard,
And, mingled with the shades of twilight lay
On the brown massy woods-and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint stars were gathering overhead.-
"Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth,
I never saw the sun? We will walk here
To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me"
That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep-but when the morning came,
Let none believe that God in mercy gave
The lady found her lover dead and cold.
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on-in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
If madness 't is to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;—
Her eye-lashes were worn away with tears,
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead-so pale;
Her hands were thin, and through their wandering
veins
And weak articulations might be seen
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vex'd ghost inhabits, night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!
"Inheritor of more than earth can give, Passionless calm, and silence unreproved, Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
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