O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
5Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
10Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving every where;
15Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
20Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the Zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou Dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
25Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
30The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
35All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
40The sapless foliage of the Ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
45A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontroulable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
50As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
55A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
60Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
65And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
70If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
As from their ancestral oak
Two empty ravens wind their clarion,
Yell by yell, and croak for croak,
When they scent the noonday smoke
5 Of fresh human carrion:—
As two gibbering night-birds flit
From their bower of deadly yew
Thro’ the night to frighten it—
When the moon is in a fit,
10 And the stars are none or few:—
Under an Atlantic isle
For the Negro ship whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,
15 Wrinkling their red gills the while:—
Are ye—two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
20 Two vipers tangled into one.
The Fountains mingle with the River
And the Rivers with the Ocean;
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
5Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
10 And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother,
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
15What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Goodnight? no love, the night is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be—‘good night’.
5How were the night without thee, good
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood—
Then it will be—‘good night’.
The hearts that on each other beat
10 From evening close to morning light
Have nights as good as they are sweet
But never say ‘good night’.
Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.
A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope, which is now forever past,
5A love, so sweet it could not last
Was Time long past.
There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past;
And, was it sadness or delight,
10Each day a shadow onward cast
Which made us wish it yet might last—
That Time long past.
There is regret, almost remorse
For Time long past.
15’Tis like a child’s beloved corse
A father watches, till at last
Beauty is like remembrance, cast
From Time long past.
The odour from the flower is gone
Which like thy kisses breathed on me;
The colour from the flower is flown
Which glowed of thee and only thee.
5A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form
It lies on my abandoned breast,
And mocks the heart which yet is warm
With its cold, silent rest.
I weep—my tears revive it not,
10 I sigh—it breathes no more on me;
Its mute and uncomplaining lot
Is such as mine should be.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
5Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
10 Which turns the gazer’s spirit into stone
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
’Tis the melodious hues of beauty thrown
15Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
And from its head as from one body grow,
As [ ] grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow,
20 And their long tangles in each other lock,
And with unending involutions shew
Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
25 And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft
Peeps idly into these Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light hath cleft,
30 And he comes hastening like a moth that hies
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
’Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
35Kindled by that inextricable error
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become a [ ] and ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there—
A woman’s countenance, with serpent locks,
40Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks.
Swiftly walk o’er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where, all the long and lone daylight
5Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,—
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought!
10Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o’er city and sea and land
Touching all with thine opiate wand—
Come, long-sought!
15When I arose and saw the dawn
I sighed for thee;
When Light rode high, and the dew was gone
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest
20Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
25Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me? And I replied,
No, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,
30 Soon, too soon—
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night—
Swift be thine approaching flight,
35 Come soon, soon!
An old, mad, blind, despised and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
5But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed on th’ untilled field;
An army which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
10Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed,
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
5Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
10Many a weapon, chain and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
15Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
20The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap:
Find wealth—let no impostor heap:
Weave robes—let not the idle wear:
Forge arms—in your defence to bear.
25Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells—
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
With plough and spade and hoe and loom
30Trace your grave and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet—till fair
England be your Sepulchre.
Corpses are cold in the tomb—
Stones on the pavement are dumb—
Abortions are dead in the womb
And their mothers look pale, like the death-white shore
5 Of Albion, free no more.
Her sons are as stones in the way—
They are masses of senseless clay—
They are trodden and move not away—
The abortion with which she travaileth
10 Is Liberty, smitten to death.
Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!
For thy Victim is no redressor;
Thou art sole lord and possessor
Of her corpses and clods and abortions—they pave
15 Thy path to the grave.
Hearest thou the festival din
Of Death and Destruction and Sin,
And Wealth crying ‘havoc!’ within?
’Tis the Bacchanal triumph that makes truth dumb—
20 Thine Epithalamium—
Aye, marry thy ghastly wife!
Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife
Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life:
Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant, and Hell be thy guide
25 To the bed of the bride.
A Sensitive-plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
5And the Spring arose on the garden fair
Like the Spirit of love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
10In the garden, the field or the wilderness,
Like a doe in the noon-tide with love’s sweet want
As the companionless Sensitive-plant.
The snow-drop and then the violet
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
15And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess
20Till they die of their own dear loveliness;
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;
25And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
30Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare;
And the wand-like lily which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup
35Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
40Grew in that garden in perfect prime.
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their Heaven of many a tangled hue,
45Broad water lilies lay tremulously,
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss
50Which led through the garden along and across,
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,
Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells
As fair as the fabulous asphodels,
55And flow’rets which drooping as day drooped too
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.
And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes
60Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),
When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them,
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
65Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;
For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.
70But the Sensitive-plant which could give small fruit
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all—it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver.
For the Sensitive-plant has no bright flower;
75Radiance and odour are not its dower;
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,
It desires what it has not—the beautiful!
The light winds which from unsustaining wings
Shed the music of many murmurings;
80The beams which dart from many a star
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;
The plumed insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odour, which pass
85Over the gleam of the living grass;
The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the Sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;
90The quivering vapours of dim noontide,
Which like a sea o’er the warm earth glide,
In which every sound, and odour, and beam
Move, as reeds in a single stream;
Each, and all, like ministering angels were
95For the Sensitive-plant sweet joy to bear
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by
Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky.
And when evening descended from Heaven above,
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,
100And delight, tho’ less bright, was far more deep,
And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep,
And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound
Whose waves never mark, tho’ they ever impress
105The light sand which paves it—Consciousness;
(Only over head the sweet nightingale
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
And snatches of its Elysian chant
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive-plant).
110The Sensitive-plant was the earliest
Up-gathered into the bosom of rest;
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favourite—
Cradled within the embrace of night.
There was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace
Which to the flowers did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.
5A Lady, the wonder of her kind,
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,
Tended the garden from morn to even:
10And the meteors of that sublunar Heaven,
Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!
She had no companion of mortal race,
But her tremulous breath and her flushing face
15Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:
As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake,
As if yet around her he lingering were,
20Tho’ the veil of daylight concealed him from her.
Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest;
You might hear by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and going of the wind
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.
25And wherever her airy footstep trod,
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,
Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.
I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
30Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers thro’ all their frame.
She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam;
35And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.
She lifted their heads with her tender hands
And sustained them with rods and ozier bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants she
40Could never have nursed them more tenderly.
And all killing insects and gnawing worms
And things of obscene and unlovely forms
She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof,
45In a basket of grasses and wild flowers full,
The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.
But the bee and the beam-like ephemeris
50Whose path is the lightning’s, and soft moths that kiss
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she
Make her attendant angels be.
And many an antenatal tomb
Where butterflies dream of the life to come
55She left, clinging round the smooth and dark
Edge of the odorous Cedar bark.
This fairest creature from earliest spring
Thus moved through the garden ministering
All the sweet season of summer tide,
60And ere the first leaf looked brown—she died!
Three days the flowers of the garden fair,
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were;
Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.
5And on the fourth, the Sensitive-plant
Felt the sound of the funeral chaunt
And the steps of the bearers heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners deep and low;
The weary sound and the heavy breath
10And the silent motions of passing death
And the smell, cold, oppressive and dank,
Sent through the pores of the coffin plank;
The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;
15From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone
And sate in the pines and gave groan for groan.
The garden once fair became cold and foul
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
20Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep.
Swift summer into the autumn flowed,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,
25Mocking the spoil of the secret night.
The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Paved the turf and the moss below:
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
Like the head and the skin of a dying man.
30And Indian plants, of scent and hue
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
Leaf after leaf, day after day,
Were massed into the common clay.
And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, and red,
35And white with the whiteness of what is dead,
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past;
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.
And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,
40Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem
Which rotted into the earth with them.
The water-blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set;
And the eddies drove them here and there
45As the winds did those of the upper air.
Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
Were bent and tangled across the walks;
And the leafless net-work of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.
50Between the time of the wind and the snow
All loathliest weeds began to grow,
Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck
Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.
And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
55And the dock, and henbane; and hemlock dank
Stretched out its long and hollow shank
And stifled the air, till the dead wind stank.
And plants at whose names the verse feels loath
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
60Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.
And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould
Started like mist from the wet ground cold;
Pale, fleshy,—as if the decaying dead
65With a spirit of growth had been animated!
Their mass rotted off them, flake by flake,
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high
Infecting the winds that wander by.
70Spawn, weeds and filth, a leprous scum,
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,
And at its outlet flags huge as stakes
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.
And hour by hour, when the air was still,
75The vapours arose which have strength to kill:
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
At night they were darkness no star could melt.
And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noon-day
80Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit.
The Sensitive-plant like one forbid
Wept, and the tears, within each lid
Of its folded leaves which together grew,
85Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.
For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore
As blood to a heart that will beat no more.
90For Winter came—the wind was his whip—
One choppy finger was on his lip:
He had torn the cataracts from the hills
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;
His breath was a chain which without a sound
95The earth and the air and the water bound;
He came, fiercely driven in his Chariot-throne
By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone.
Then the weeds which were forms of living death
Fled from the frost to the Earth beneath.
100Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!
And under the roots of the Sensitive-plant
The moles and the dormice died for want.
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air
105And were caught in the branches naked and bare.
First there came down a thawing rain
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;
Then there steamed up a freezing dew
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;
110And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,
Shook the boughs thus laden and heavy and stiff
And snapped them off with his rigid griff.
When winter had gone and spring came back
115The Sensitive-plant was a leafless wreck;
But the mandrakes and toadstools and docks and darnels
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.
Whether the Sensitive-plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change,—I cannot say.
5Whether that Lady’s gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness, where it left delight,
I dare not guess; but in this life
10Of error, ignorance and strife—
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we, the shadows of the dream,
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
15To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest,—a mockery.
That Garden sweet, that Lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never pass’d away—
20’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed—not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight
There is no death nor change: their might
Exceeds our organs—which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
Camelions feed on light and air:
Poets’ food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
5With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light camelions do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a-day?
10Poets are on this cold earth
As camelions might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, camelions change:
15 Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.
Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
20 A poet’s free and heavenly mind:
If bright camelions should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
25 Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
O, refuse the boon!
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie
Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the open sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,
5Waken me when their mother, the grey Dawn,
Tells them that Dreams and that the moon is gone.
Then I arise; and climbing Heaven’s blue dome
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the Ocean foam.
10 My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.
The sunbeams are my shafts with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day.
15All men who do, or even imagine ill
Fly me; and from the glory of my ray
Good minds, and open actions, take new might
Until diminished by the reign of night.
I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers
20 With their aetherial colours; the moon’s globe
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine
Are portions of one spirit; which is mine.
25I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven;
Then with unwilling steps, I linger down
To the clouds of the Atlantic even.
For grief that I depart they weep and frown—
What look is more delightful, than the smile
30With which I soothe them from the Western isle?
I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows it is divine.
All harmony of instrument and verse,
All prophecy and medicine are mine;
35All light of art or nature—to my song
Victory and praise, in its own right, belong.
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands
Where loud waves were dumb
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees in the bells of thyme,
The birds in the myrtle bushes,
The cicadae above in the lime,
10 And the lizards below in the grass,
Were silent as even old Tmolus was,
Listening my sweet pipings.
Liquid Peneus was flowing—
And all dark Tempe lay
15In [ ? ] shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded with my sweet pipings.
The sileni and sylvans and fauns
And the nymphs of the woods and the waves
20 To the edge of the moist river-lawns
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were as silent for love, as you now, Apollo,
For envy of my sweet pipings.
25I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the daedal Earth,
And of Heaven, and the giant wars,
And Love and Death and Birth;
And then I changed my pipings,
30 Singing how, down the vales of Maenalus
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!—
It breaks on our bosom and then we bleed;
They wept as I think both ye now would,
35If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.
5From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
10 And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
15And all the night ’tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
20 It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
25Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,
30 Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead,
35As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath,
40 Its ardours of rest and love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
45That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
50 Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her, and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
55When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,
60 And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
65Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof;
The mountains its columns be!
The triumphal arch, through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the Air are chained to my chair,
70 Is the million-coloured Bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the sky;
75I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die—
For after the rain, when with never a stain,
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
80 Build up the blue Dome of Air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise, and unbuild it again.
God! prosper, speed and save,
God! raise from England’s grave
Her murdered Queen.
Pave with swift victory
5The steps of Liberty
Whom Britons own to be
Immortal Queen!
See, she comes throned on high,
On swift Eternity,
10 God save the Queen!
Millions on millions wait
Firm, rapid, [ ], elate,
On her [?approaching] state,
God save the Queen!
15She is thine own pure soul
[?Moulding] the mighty whole,
God save our Queen!
She is thine own deep love,
Rained down from Heaven above,
20Wherever she rest or move,
God save our Queen!
Wilder her enemies
In their own dark disguise,
God save our Queen!
25All earthly things that dare
Her sacred name to wear,
Strip them, as Kings [ ] bare;
God save our Queen!
Be her eternal throne
30Built in our hearts alone,
God save our Queen!
Let the Oppressor hold
Canopied seats of gold,
She sits enthroned of old
35 O’er our hearts, Queen.
Breathe out the choral hymn,
God save the Queen!
Sweet as if Angels sang,
40Loud as that [ ] clang
Wakening the world’s dead gang,
God save the Queen!
Earnest to explore within and all around
The divine wood, whose thick green living woof
Tempered the young day to the sight, I wound
Up the [green] slope, beneath the [forest’s] roof,
5With slow [soft] steps, leaving the abrupt shelf
And the [ ] aloof—
A gentle air which had within itself
No motion struck upon my forehead bare
Like the soft stroke of a continuous wind
10In which the passive leaves tremblingly were
All bent towards that [part] where earliest
That sacred hill obscures the morning air,
Yet were they not so shaken from their rest
But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray
15[Incessantly] renewing their blithe quest,
With perfect joy received the early day
Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound
Kept one low burthen to their roundelay
Such as from bough to bough gathers around
20The pine forest on bleak Chiassi’s shore
When Aeolus Sirocco has unbound.
My slow steps had already borne me o’er
Such space within the antique wood, that I
Perceived not where I entered any more,
25When lo, a stream whose little waves went by,
Bending towards the left the grass that grew
Upon its bank, impeded suddenly
My going on—waters of purest hue
On Earth, would appear turbid and impure
30Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew,
Dark, dark, [yet] clear, moved under the obscure
Eternal shades, whose [?intense] [ ] [glooms]
No rays of moon or sunlight e’er endure.
I moved not with my feet, but amid the glooms
35I pierced with my charmed sight, contemplating
The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms,
And then appeared to me—even like a thing
Which suddenly for blank astonishment
Dissolves all other thought, [ ]
40A solitary woman, and she went
Singing and gathering flower after flower
With which her way was painted and besprent.
‘Bright lady, who if looks had ever power
To bear firm witness of the heart within,
45Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower
‘[Towards] this bank; I prithee let me win
Thus much of thee that thou shouldst come anear
So I may hear thy song—like Proserpine
‘Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here
50And gathering flowers, at that [sweet] time when
She lost the spring and Ceres her … more dear.’
The sun is set, the swallows are asleep,
The bats are flitting fast in the grey air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,
And evening’s breath, wandering here and there
5Over the gleaming surface of the stream,
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.
There is no dew on the dry grass tonight,
Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;
The wind is intermitting, dry and light,
10 And in the inconstant motion of the breeze
The dust and straws are driven up and down
And whirled about the pavement of the Town.
Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay
15Immoveably unquiet—and forever
It trembles but it never fades away;
Go to the Indies [ ]
You, being changed, will find it then as now.
The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
20 By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud
Like mountain over mountain huddled but
Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,
And over it a space of watery blue
Which the keen evening star is shining through.
25And overhead hangs many a flaccid fold
Of lurid thundersmoke most heavily,
A streak of dun and sulphureous gold
Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying,
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.
Byron
A glorious people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations: Liberty
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o’er Spain,
Scattering contagious fire into the sky,
5Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,
And, in the rapid plumes of song
Clothed itself, sublime and strong;
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering in verse o’er its accustomed prey;
10 Till from its station in the heaven of fame
The Spirit’s whirlwind rapt it, and the ray
Of the remotest sphere of living flame
Which paves the void was from behind it flung,
As foam from a ship’s swiftness, when there came
15 A voice out of the deep: I will record the same.
The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:
The burning stars of the abyss were hurled
Into the depths of heaven. The daedal earth,
That island in the ocean of the world,
20Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air:
But this divinest universe
Was yet a chaos and a curse,
For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse,
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,
25 And of the birds, and of the watery forms,
And there was war among them, and despair
Within them, raging without truce or terms:
The bosom of their violated nurse
Groan’d, for beasts warr’d on beasts, and worms on worms,
30 And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms.
Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
His generations under the pavilion
Of the Sun’s throne: palace and pyramid,
Temple and prison, to many a swarming million,
35Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.
This human living multitude
Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,
For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude,
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves
40 Hung tyranny; beneath, sate deified
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;
Into the shadow of her pinions wide,
Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood,
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,
45 Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.
The nodding promontories, and blue isles,
And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves
Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles
Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted caves
50Prophetic echoes flung dim melody
On the unapprehensive wild.
The vine, the corn, the olive mild,
Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;
And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,
55 Like the man’s thought dark in the infant’s brain,
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,
Art’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein
Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child,
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain
60 Her lidless eyes for thee; when o’er the Aegean main
Athens arose: a city such as vision
Builds from the purple crags and silver towers
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision
Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors
65Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it;
Its portals are inhabited
By thunder-zoned winds, each head
Within its cloudy wings with sunfire garlanded,
A divine work! Athens diviner yet
70 Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will
Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;
For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill
Peopled with forms that mock the eternal dead
In marble immortality, that hill
75 Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.
Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immoveably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
80The voices of its bards and sages thunder
With an earth-awakening blast
Through the caverns of the past;
Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:
A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,
85 Which soars where Expectation never flew,
Rending the veil of space and time asunder!
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;
One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new,
90 As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew.
Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,*
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest
From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;
95And many a deed of terrible uprightness
By thy sweet love was sanctified;
And in thy smile, and by thy side,
Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.
But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness,
100 And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne,
Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,
The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone
Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed
Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone
105 Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.
From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,
Or utmost islet inaccessible,
Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,
110Teaching the woods and waves, and desart rocks,
And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn,
To talk in echoes sad and stern,
Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?
For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks
115 Of the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep.
What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks
Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,
When from its sea of death to kill and burn,
The Galilean serpent forth did creep,
120 And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.
A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou?
And then the shadow of thy coming fell
On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow:
And many a warrior-peopled citadel,
125Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,
Arose in sacred Italy,
Frowning o’er the tempestuous sea
Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep
130 And burst around their walls, like idle foam,
Whilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep
Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb
Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,
With divine wand traced on our earthly home
135 Fit imagery to pave heaven’s everlasting dome.
Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror
Of the world’s wolves! thou bearer of the quiver
Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,
As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever
140In the calm regions of the orient day!
Luther caught thy wakening glance,
Like lightning, from his leaden lance
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;
145 And England’s prophets hailed thee as their queen,
In songs whose music cannot pass away,
Though it must flow for ever: not unseen
Before the spirit-sighted countenance
Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene
150 Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.
The eager hours and unreluctant years
As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood,
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,
Darkening each other with their multitude,
155And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation
Answered Pity from her cave;
Death grew pale within the grave,
And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!
When like heaven’s sun girt by the exhalation
160 Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise,
Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation
Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies
At dreaming midnight o’er the western wave,
Men started, staggering with a glad surprise,
165 Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.
Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then,
In ominous eclipse? a thousand years
Bred from the slime of deep oppression’s den,
Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears,
170Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away;
How like Bacchanals of blood
Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood
Destruction’s sceptred slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood!
When one, like them, but mightier far than they,
175 The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers
Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,
Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers
Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued,
Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,
180 Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.
England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?
Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder
Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold
Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:
185O’er the lit waves every Aeolian isle
From Pithecusa to Pelorus
Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:
They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o’er us.
Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile
190 And they dissolve; but Spain’s were links of steel,
Till bit to dust by virtue’s keenest file.
Twins of a single destiny! appeal
To the eternal years enthroned before us,
In the dim West; impress as from a seal
195 All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal.
Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead,
Till, like a standard from a watch-tower’s staff,
His soul may stream over the tyrant’s head;
Thy victory shall be his epitaph,
200Wild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine,
King-deluded Germany,
His dead spirit lives in thee.
Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!
And thou, lost Paradise of this divine
205 And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness!
Thou island of eternity! thou shrine
Where desolation clothed with loveliness
Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,
Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress
210 The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.
O, that the free would stamp the impious name
Of KING into the dust! or write it there,
So that this blot upon the page of fame
Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air
215Erases, and the flat sands close behind!
Ye the oracle have heard:
Lift the victory-flashing sword,
And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,
Which weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
220 Into a mass, irrefragably firm,
The axes and the rods which awe mankind;
The sound has poison in it, ’tis the sperm
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,
225 To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.
O, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,
That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle
Into the hell from which it first was hurled,
230A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;
Till human thoughts might kneel alone
Each before the judgement-throne
Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown!
O, that the words which make the thoughts obscure
235 From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew
From a white lake blot heaven’s blue portraiture,
Were stript of their thin masks and various hue
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
Till in the nakedness of false and true
240 They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due.
He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever
Can be between the cradle and the grave
Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour!
If on his own high will a willing slave,
245He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor.
What if earth can clothe and feed
Amplest millions at their need,
And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,
250 Diving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne,
Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,
And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion
Over all height and depth? if Life can breed
New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan
255 Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one.
Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
260Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,
To judge, with solemn truth, life’s ill-apportioned lot?
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame
265 Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?
O, Liberty! if such could be thy name
Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
270 Wept tears, and blood like tears? The solemn harmony
Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
275Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light
On the heavy sounding plain,
When the bolt has pierced its brain;
As summer clouds dissolve, unburdened of their rain;
As a far taper fades with fading night,
280 As a brief insect dies with dying day,
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,
Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way
285 Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
Pourest thy full heart
5In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
10And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken Sun,
O’er which clouds are brightning,
Thou dost float and run;
15Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven
In the broad daylight
20Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
25Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As when Night is bare
From one lonely cloud
30The moon rains out her beams—and Heaven is overflowed.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
35As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Till the world is wrought
40To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour,
45With music sweet as love—which overflows her bower:
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
50Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered—
Till the scent it gives
55Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
60Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass:
Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine;
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
65That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine:
Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt,
70A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields or waves or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
75What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
80Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
85Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
90Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
95I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
100Thy skill to poet were, thou Scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
105The world should listen then—as I am listening now.
The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet’s tower, cellar or barn or tree;
The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
5So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,
Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
From the fine threads of verse and subtle thought—
No net of words in garish colours wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day—
10But a soft cell, where when that fades away,
Memory may clothe in wings my living name
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which most remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.
15Whoever should behold me now, I wist,
Would think I were a mighty mechanist,
Bent with sublime Archimedean art
To breathe a soul into the iron heart
Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
20Which, by the force of figured spells might win
Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
For round the walls are hung dread engines, such
As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
Ixion or the Titans:—or the quick
25Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic,
To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,
Or those in philanthropic council met,
Who thought to pay some interest for the debt
They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,
30By giving a faint foretaste of damnation
To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser and the rest
Who made our land an island of the blest,
When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire
On Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Empire—
35With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,
Which fishers found under the utmost crag
Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,
Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles
Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn
40When the exulting elements in scorn
Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep;— and other strange and dread
Magical forms the brick floor overspread—
45Proteus transformed to metal did not make
More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass
Of tin and iron not to be understood;
50And forms of unimaginable wood
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
Great screws and cones, and wheels and grooved blocks,
The elements of what will stand the shocks
Of wave, and wind and time.—Upon the table
55More knacks and quips there be than I am able
To catalogize in this verse of mine:—
A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,
But quicksilver, that dew which the gnomes drink
When at their subterranean toil they swink,
60Pledging the daemons of the earthquake, who
Reply to them in lava—cry halloo!
And call out to the cities o’er their head,—
Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,
Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff
65Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
70The inmost shower of its white fire—the breeze
Is still—blue heaven smiles over the pale seas.
And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I
Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood—I have made to float
75A rude idealism of a paper boat:
A hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know
The thing I mean and laugh at me—if so
He fears not I should do more mischief.—Next
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,
80With steamboats, frigates and machinery quaint
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
Then comes a range of mathematical
Instruments, for plans nautical and statical;
A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass
85With ink in it, a china cup that was
What it will never be again, I think,
A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
The liquor doctors rail at—and which I
Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die
90We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea,
And cry out heads or tails? where’er we be.
Near that a dusty paint box, some odd hooks,
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
95To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
Of figures—disentangle them who may.
Baron de Tott’s memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
100Near those a most inexplicable thing,
With lead in the middle—I’m conjecturing
How to make Henry understand—but no,
I’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
105Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.
And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
110The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content—
I sit, and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them—Libeccio rushes round
115With an inconstant and an idle sound,
I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
120Undulates like an ocean—and the vines
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines—
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast—the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain—
125And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
On the unquiet world—while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
130Of worms? the shriek of the world’s carrion jays,
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
You are not here … the quaint witch Memory sees
In vacant chairs your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be
135But are not—I demand if ever we
Shall meet as then we met—and she replies,
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
‘I know the past alone—but summon home
My sister Hope,— she speaks of all to come.’
140But I, an old diviner, who know well
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o’er and o’er
145Of our communion—how on the sea-shore
We watched the ocean and the sky together
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year’s thunderstorm
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
150Upon my cheek—and how we often made
Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be;—and how we spun
155A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not,—or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe; or sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
160Of this wrong world;—and then anatomize
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years—or widely guess
The issue of the earth’s great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are—
165Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not—or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme, in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
170With little skill perhaps—or how we sought
Those deepest wells of passion and of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears,
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
175Or how I, wisest lady! then indued
The language of a land which now is free,
And winged with thoughts of truth and majesty
Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
180‘My name is Legion!’—that majestic tongue
Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled Oblivion—thou wert then to me
185As is a nurse, when inarticulately
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the etherial way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
190Why should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast
Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?
You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
195Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see
That which was Godwin,—greater none than he
Though fallen—and fallen on evil times—to stand
Among the spirits of our age and land,
200Before the dread tribunal of to come
The foremost—while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.
You will see Coleridge—he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre, and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind,
205Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
Flags wearily through darkness and despair—
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls.—
You will see Hunt—one of those happy souls
210Who are the salt of the earth, and without whom
This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;
Who is, what others seem—his room no doubt
Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout,
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about,
215And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung,
The gifts of the most learn’d among some dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.
And there is he with his eternal puns,
220Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns
Thundering for money at a poet’s door;
Alas! it is no use to say, ‘I’m poor!’
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever read in book,
225Except in Shakespeare’s wisest tenderness.
You will see Hogg—and I cannot express
His virtues, though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades the gate
Within which they inhabit;—of his wit
230And wisdom, you’ll cry out when you are bit.
He is a pearl within an oyster shell,
One of the richest of the deep. And there
Is English Peacock with his mountain fair,
Turned into a Flamingo, that shy bird
235That gleams i’ the Indian air—have you not heard
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him?—but you
Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian antelope
240Matched with this cameleopard.—His fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
A strain too learned for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots;—let his page
Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
245Fold itself up for the serener clime
Of years to come, and find its recompense
In that just expectation.—Wit and sense,
Virtue and human knowledge, all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
250Are all combined in Horace Smith—and these,
With some exceptions which I need not tease
Your patience by descanting on,—are all
You and I know in London.
I recall
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
255As water does a sponge, so the moonlight
Fills the void, hollow, universal air—
What see you?—unpavilioned heaven is fair
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
260Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep,
Or whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep,
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,
And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:—
All this is beautiful in every land.—
265But what see you beside?—a shabby stand
Of hackney-coaches—a brick house or wall
Fencing some lordly court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics; or worse—
A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
270Mixed with the watchman’s, partner of her trade,
You must accept in place of serenade—
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring
To Henry some unutterable thing.
I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
275Built round dark caverns, even to the root
Of the living stems that feed them—in whose bowers
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
280In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance,
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed, a fixed star gone astray
285From the silver regions of the Milky Way;—
Afar the contadino’s song is heard,
Rude, but made sweet by distance—and a bird
Which cannot be the nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
290At this late hour—and then all is still—
Now Italy or London, which you will!
Next winter you must pass with me; I’ll have
My house by that time turned into a grave
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
295And all the dreams which our tormentors are.
Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock and Smith were there,
With everything belonging to them fair!—
We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;
And ask one week to make another week
300As like his father as I’m unlike mine,
Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let’s be merry: we’ll have tea and toast,
Custards for supper, and an endless host
305Of syllabubs and jellies and mince pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries—
Feasting on which we will philosophize!
And we’ll have fires out of the Grand Duke’s wood
To thaw the six weeks’ winter in our blood.
310And then we’ll talk—what shall we talk about?
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant;—as to nerves,
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I’ve sworn to strangle them if once they dare
315To bother me—when you are with me there,
And they shall never more sip laudanum
From Helicon or Himeros;*—well, come,
And in despite of God and of the devil,
We’ll make our friendly philosophic revel
320Outlast the leafless time—till buds and flowers
Warn the obscure inevitable hours
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew—
‘Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.’
Thy country’s curse is on thee, darkest Crest
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
Which rends our mother’s bosom!—Priestly Pest!
Masked Resurrection of a buried form!
5Thy country’s curse is on thee—Justice sold,
Truth trampled, Nature’s landmarks overthrown,
And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold
Plead, loud as thunder, at destruction’s throne.
And whilst that sure, slow Fate which ever stands
10 Watching the beck of Mutability
Delays to execute her high commands
And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee—
O let a father’s curse be on thy soul
And let a daughter’s hope be on thy tomb;
15Be both, on thy grey head, a leaden cowl
To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom.
I curse thee! By a parent’s outraged love,—
By hopes long cherished and too lately lost,—
By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove,
20 By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed;
By those infantine smiles of happy light
Which were a fire within a stranger’s hearth
Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night
Hiding the promise of a lovely birth—
25By those unpractised accents of young speech
Which he who is a father thought to frame
To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach—
Thou strike the lyre of mind!—oh grief and shame!
By all the happy see in children’s growth,
30 That undeveloped flower of budding years—
Sweetness and sadness interwoven both,
Source of the sweetest hopes, the saddest fears—
By all the days under a hireling’s care
Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness—
35Oh wretched ye, if any ever were—
Sadder than orphans—why not fatherless?
By the false cant which on their innocent lips
Must hang like poison on an opening bloom,
By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse
40 Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb—
By thy complicity with lust and hate:
Thy thirst for tears—thy hunger after gold—
The ready frauds which ever on thee wait—
The servile arts in which thou hast grown old.—
45By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile—
By all the snares and nets of thy black den;
And—(for thou canst outweep the crocodile)—
By thy false tears—those millstones braining men—
By all the hate which checks a father’s love,
50 By all the scorn which kills a father’s care,
By those most impious hands which dared remove
Nature’s high bounds—by thee—and by despair—
Yes—the despair which bids a father groan
And cry—‘My children are no longer mine—
55The blood within their veins may be mine own
But, Tyrant, their polluted souls are thine’;—
I curse thee, though I hate thee not.— O, slave!
If thou couldst quench that earth-consuming Hell
Of which thou art a daemon, on thy grave
60 This curse should be a blessing—Fare thee well!