For on the night that they were buried, she
Restored the embalmer’s ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
605And she unwound the woven imagery
Of second childhood’s swaddling bands and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.
71
And there the body lay, age after age,
610 Mute, breathing, beating, warm and undecaying
Like one asleep in a green hermitage
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
615In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind
And fleeting generations of mankind.
72
And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
620 Than in the desart is the serpent’s wake
Which the sand covers—all his evil gain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar’s lap;—the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.
73
625The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the god Apis really was a bull
And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
630 The old cant down; they licensed all to speak
Whate’er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.
74
The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
635And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey.—Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor when the morning came,
640And kissed—alas, how many kiss the same!
75
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan’s sooty abysm,
645Beating their swords to ploughshares;—in a band
The jailors sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.
76
And timid lovers who had been so coy
650 They hardly knew whether they loved or not,
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
655Blushed at the thing which each believed was done
Only in fancy—till the tenth moon shone;
77
And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,—and so they took their fill
660 Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.
Friends who by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from mind!
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
78
665These were the pranks she played among the cities
Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
To do her will, and shew their subtle slights,
I will declare another time; for it is
670 A tale more fit for the weird winter nights
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.
Sonnet: Political Greatness
Nor happiness, nor majesty nor fame,
Nor peace nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts
Shepherd those herds whom Tyranny makes tame:
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts;
5History is but the shadow of their shame;
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers, knit
10By force or custom? Man, who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will; quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears; being himself alone.
Sonnet (‘Ye hasten to the grave!’)
Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,
Ye restless thoughts, and busy purposes
Of the idle brain, which the world’s livery wear?
O thou quick Heart which pantest to possess
5All that pale Expectation feigneth fair!
Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,
And all, that never yet was known, wouldst know;
O whither hasten ye, that thus ye press
10With such swift feet life’s green and pleasant path
Seeking alike from happiness and woe
A refuge in the cavern of grey death?
O Heart and Mind and Thoughts, what thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below?
The Fugitives
1
The waters are flashing—
The white hail is dashing—
The lightnings are glancing—
The hoar spray is dancing—
5 Away!—
The whirlwind is rolling—
The thunder is tolling—
The forest is swinging—
The minster bells ringing—
10 Come away!
The Earth is like Ocean
Wreck-strewn and in motion:
Bird, beast, man and worm
Have crept out of the storm—
15 Come away!
2
‘Our boat has one sail—
And the helmsman is pale—
A bold pilot I trow
Who should follow us now,’—
20 Shouted he.—
And she cried ‘Ply the oar!
Put off gaily from shore’—
As she spoke, bolts of death
Mixed with hail, specked their path
25 O’er the sea.
And from isle, tower and rock
The blue beacon-cloud broke
And though dumb in the blast,
The red cannon flashed fast
30 From the lee.
3
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,
35 I and thou?
One boat-cloak doth cover
The loved and the lover—
Their blood beats one measure,
They murmur proud pleasure
40 Soft and low;
While around, the lashed Ocean,
Like mountains in motion,
Is withdrawn and uplifted,
Sunk, shattered and shifted
45 To and fro.
4
In the court of the fortress
Beside the pale portress,
Like a bloodhound well beaten,
The bridegroom stands, eaten
50 By shame.
On the topm
ost watch-turret,
As a death-boding spirit,
Stands the grey tyrant Father—
To his voice the mad weather
55 Seems tame;
And with Curses as wild
As e’re clung to a child
He devotes to the blast
The best, loveliest and last
60 Of his name.
Memory (‘Rose leaves, when the rose is dead’)
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved’s bed—
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on …
5Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory.—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Dirge for the Year
Orphan hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours smile instead,
For the year is but asleep;
5See it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.
As an Earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So white Winter, that rough Nurse,
10 Rocks the death-cold year today!
Solemn hours, wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.
As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child,
15So the breath of these rude days
Rocks the year—be calm and mild,
Trembling hours, she will arise
With new love within her eyes …
January grey is here
20 Like a sexton by her grave—
February bears the bier—
March with grief doth howl and rave—
And April weeps—
EPIPSYCHIDION
Verses Addressed to the Noble and Unfortunate Lady Emilia V——, Now Imprisoned in the Convent of —–
L’anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nel infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.
HER OWN WORDS.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Writer of the following Lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that, gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.
The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page is almost a literal translation from Dante’s famous Canzone
Voi, ch’intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, &c.
The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity.
S.
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company, (as chance may do),
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.
Epipsychidion
Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.
5 Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
10Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
15’Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed
It over-soared this low and worldly shade,
Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!
I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,
20Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.
Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
25Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
30Thou Harmony of Nature’s art! Thou Mirror
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
Aye, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
35I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song
All of its much mortality and wrong,
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
40Then smile on it, so that it may not die.
I never thought before my death to see
Youth’s vision thus made perfect. Emily,
I love thee; though the world by no thin name
Will hide that love, from its unvalued shame.
45Would we two had been twins of the same mother!
Or, that the name my heart lent to another
Could be a sister’s bond for her and thee,
Blending two beams of one eternity!
Yet were one lawful and the other true,
50These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due,
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!
I am not thine: I am a part of thee.
Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings;
Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
55Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style,
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,
A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
60Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star
Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone?
A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? a beloved light?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
65A lute, which those whom love has taught to play
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
And lull fond grief asleep? a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shr
ouded grave of Woe?—I measure
70The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,
And find—alas! mine own infirmity.
She met me, Stranger, upon life’s rough way,
And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,
75Led into light, life, peace. An antelope,
In the suspended impulse of its lightness,
Were less ethereally light: the brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
80Embodied in the windless Heaven of June
Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon
Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:
And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
85Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops
Of planetary music heard in trance.
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,
The sun-beams of those wells which ever leap
Under the lightnings of the soul—too deep
90For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.
The glory of her being, issuing thence,
Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade
Of unentangled intermixture, made
By Love, of light and motion: one intense
95Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence,
Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,
Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing
With the unintermitted blood, which there
Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air
100The crimson pulse of living morning quiver),
Continuously prolonged, and ending never,
Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled
Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world;
Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.
105Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress,
And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress
The air of her own speed has disentwined,