CXII.

Ye spirits, whose soaring vivified your plumes;Whose godlike names swell man’s adoring breath;Whose glory, time, nor space, nor hate consumes;Ministers of love, whose virtue conquers death;Such love of Beauty for its own dear sake,Resident in the soul, the mind, the form,Only could inspire what ye dared undertake,And bear ye, conquerors, through the mist and storm:Great humanisers of the world, fusing your meritThrough the inattentive cycles of the years;Most know not the profusion they inherit,So hath your spirit impregnated men’s tears:Severing what Gordian knots of mysteries,Love echoes Christ, Spinoza, Socrates!

Now all in Heaven is tranquil; peeps one cleftOf silver splendour; mark! an angel stands there,And breathes his bubble, as fresh childhood deft;Blushing into life, the concave pays his care,And purple melts to gold; the scarce white cloudMantles the mines that make such depth of blue,And the delicate ripple tingles to that shroud,Consorting music with its late-found hue,Such is religion:—immanent in the altarsThat the pure heart prostrates at Beauty’s shrine,In ceremonies, pomps, and forms it falters;But rapt at Nature, stands confessed divine:Offspring of Joy and Love, religion wingsThe adoration of the heart’s mute strings.

Hail! holy triumph of time-chastened piles;Your lofty music thrills along the soul;Welcome! the sunbeams, glistening through your aisles,Tinging their gold with history’s coloured roll:Young voices move your melodies, young limbsWhite-robèd, pluck the buds of innocence.Mild silver beckons to the light which swimsEvolved through darkness, fashioning forms for sense.But I love best, when faith moves dreary self,Toppling its pride and pedestal to the ground;Most then in Being lose the world, that elf,Harbouring their errors in a happier sound:What matters whether Heaven exist or no?Their prayers find Heaven, or lose the sense of woe.

I knew a man, whose heart could find no home,Whose very fulness but provoked his dearth;He was too proud to show how he could moan,Most thought him cold, few understood his worth;But closeted feelings bring forth bitter fruit;And solitude preys on love, making it mad;Hearts throb more genial, even to a worthless suit,Than when experience answers, all is sad:He hath grasp’d sometimes at the empty air,Parcelling it out to visions of his mind;Deifying some idea, he’s call’d it fair;Alas! he could not long continue blind:Who’s separate from his fellows may live great;Yet fate decrees he’ll curse his empty state.

And he had doubts, aye, I have heard him cryTo the wild winds, bidding them stay awhile;He sought the substance of the beauty shy,That lurk’d in ocean, kiss’d by summer’s smile;And he hath called unto the ghastly dark,Gasping for breath, and panting for the light:He long’d for life, but phantoms steer’d his bark,Lengthening his voyage with a tedious freight;O he could understand all that seem’d sad,And claim’d a kindred with deserted hope!Life, too indulgent, show’d him all she had,He scorned her earnest, would not trust her scope:He asked nor sympathy, nor aid, nor pity;Where should he seek them? not in field or city.

But had his happy hope chanc’d to alightBy the full river of thy thought’s sweet flow!O then, my love, how couch’d had been his sight!How had his mind been purged from all its woe!Thy hand should only lead him to the hill,That beckons daylight o’er its far blue waves;Thy thought should but subdue his stubborn will;Soon he were master of poor hope’s dim graves!The presence of the God, that weaves the world,Transfusing beauty till it higher grows;The God of love, should still those storms that whirl’dSuch petty streamlets into deadlier flows:But ah! the hand that only knows to mend,How oft it fails unconscious whom to tend.

Child of a day, and changeling of an hour!Man, feeblest tuning of love’s scarce-heard pipe;The abyss, that voids despair, burns to deflowerWith death thy hopes, with time thy thoughts unripe.Yet know, rejoice, ’tis Nature guides the change;Joy, beauty, truth, wing her transparent feet:No toy thou art, nor left to lonely range;Reward grows stronger from its oft defeat:Whate’er thy utmost joy can comprehend;What godlike beauty hath once thrill’d thy soul;What love has ever stamp’d truth as his end:Such joy, beauty, truth, love, are Nature’s goal:Shall Nature gladden only to deceive?Should man the atom more than God conceive?

The echoes, from the ruins of the Past,Steal o’er our ears, sphering a heavenly isle;Haply deceptive, yet we’ll there make fast,Wreathing the skeleton world in childhood’s smile:For who can build, when woods and quarries fail?Or who can fathom the dark monster deep?How shall the bud be rear’d from storm and hail?Which drug and stun the Present, till it sleep:Yet sift the grains, dissevering hope from fear,For one least seed shall shame whole worlds of drought;Brightens the prospect, when beheld more near;Love trims the flights, that scorn knows but to flout:The search may fail, yet seeking bears its crown,And joy’s least treasure smooths the world’s worst frown.

O Eden of our childhood, Innocence!How did thy ardour paint the ugly world;Making it amiable, void of all pretence;With roses garlanded with dew be-pearl’dThe world’s not chang’d, ’tis only thou, art gone;The music’s wanting to the quick-breathing shell;The aroma fails where it hath dwelt so long;The flash divine is dead, or fades to Hell;But, thou wast gentle, calm, silent, and strong;A truth, too real, to be here conceiv’d:And we are parted,—be it not for long,That thou art somewhere, may be well believed.O let me find thee; if frail life forbid,In the universe of thee, let life be hid.

To see great minds baffling an evil fate,Delights, and urges on to emulous deeds;Yet, seems it only Nature’s tricksome state,Defeating self, by livelier-quickening seeds;The mind conquers base thoughts by its own power,Then thinks it much, that its true self prevails;Yet Nature tempers all things, even the flowerThat stoops to winter, or that scorns his flails;But, when young, godlike innocence arises,He will not flinch, nor shudder, nor conspire;His perfect purpose shatters faint surmises,And brightly burns, ascending ever higher:Conquered, at length, by his too great devotion,He learns he lives in nought, and kills emotion.

There seem’d to burst upon my flooded sightA globe of lustre, an enormous sun;It swallow’d, in the majesty of its might,The whole vast concave, where the eye can run:I stood, I know not where, marking it glideWith stealthy swiftness on its axle, round;And there were forms, frown’d lurid on its side,Their names were on their brows, there was no sound:The orb had blazon’d, Change, on each proud flank,And pass’d its order’d puppets in review;First, Death rose ghastly, then as sudden sank,Conquered by Woe, of sullen haggard hue:Despair and Hope, Love, Youth, Fear, Friendship, Hate,Tears, Laughter, Beauty, Age grew link’d in fate.

Vision unwelcome, of familiar things,Why force, I cried, your fantasies on my mind?Your aspect shadows gloom with fouler wings;Could I some refuge from your varying find!I look’d, and, eminent, o’er that ghastly round,And, quite diffusive, through its sad precincts,Uncertain shapings based on steadfast ground,The light of myriad suns made dark those tints:Transfixed, I stand, inhaling joy and wonder;Then nearer gaze, that effluence divineStream’d ever on, and burst the pores asunder,Whose ignorance scorn’d such treasure for their mine:When uncongenial homes rebuked that power,Its lightning flight bless’d some more grateful bower.

Such visions, poised upon entrancing notes,May waft some waif toward congenial ports;Poised on the wind, ineffable music floats,In the enchantress face holding her courts;In the harmonious pants of drunken joy;In the traitorous interchange of random vows;In the commutual wave of forest boughs;In thought, whose arbitrary response wakes,Fashioning the melody to peculiar laws;In passion, surging, by its own quick shakes,Wresting aside the unapprehensive cause;Swift-winged ideas waft her from her throne;Music scarce knows the offspring for her own.

Thou starting-place to a goal yet undefined;Thou limit clasp’d in no circumference;Thou tell-tale, in a castle undermined;Strange tongue, of an uncertain prescience;Foundation-stone supporting piles of thought;Thou, Proteus, differing in a self-same soul;Discoverer of joy, with sorrow fraught;Thou lively fire, flung from the sullen coal;The sacred marble shows but one indentOf penitential kisses, thousandfold,Yet towers memorial, of sad pilgrims spent,Of pomps, of pride, of broken hearts and gold:Like frescoes, born in marble, from one sound,Lo! multitudinous living shapes abound.

Tangle some notes beneath the prisoner’s bars,Some simple music he may recognise;He is not querulous, that it haply jars,Nor twists its turns to meanings shrewdly-wise;His heart shall leap aloft, and shout “ ’tis mine;”Sorrow and hope, repentance, love, joy, tears,Shall hail that melody’s unforgotten chime:What matter that the crowd without the wallsAre jocund to the music of its mirth?That the voluptuous dance, through lordly halls,Sweeps by the eyes that sparkle to its birth?One dreams to it, while one dances, one is sad.Omnipotent music thou mak’st all men mad.

But thou, whose breath, the music of my life,Murmurs its sweetness, never uninhaled;Now, the last time, glance o’er my spirit’s strife,The bliss, whose close must be so soon bewailed.I must depart, and think those hours were bless’d,Long since, so pregnant of departing joy,And wonder at the earth, I lightly press’d,Nor knew what reverence it should once enjoy:The crescent of thy spring shall flower as brightlyAs though mine eyes stood sentinels o’er its growth;And thou shall carol on thy pathway lightly,Transplanting summer into winter wroth.I’ll ponder still, where’er adversely hurled,Thy words, which marr’d the change which makes the world.

The voice that charm’d my sorrows knows me not,The smile that made my life wakes not for me,Haply such musings shall disown the spot,That once looked lovely but through light of thee;Shall anguish curse the unremembering stones,For that they build no ruinous epitaph?Or weave still living voices to new groans,And match with sighs the people’s hollow laugh?No; rather consecrate thy once abode,The birth-place, and the altar of love’s prime;Aye, steal my spirit from beneath its load,Revisiting the haunts of fairy time:The shadows of thy steps must leave the impress,Shall drink the dew, token of bitterness.

I seem’d so rich, with promise of the Future,I stand so desolate, calling to the Past,The Present mocks the yet unfashion’d suture;A gloom there is o’er all the landskip cast:Why should brief joy shadow such length of woes?Why should the sweet taste sourly to the sense?The diamond yet within the casket glows,Why should its brilliance fright my fancy hence?I would all pain and pleasure were forgot:My ineffectual thought giddies with hope;Relief with blotted joys were dearly got;Bliss, vacillating, sails in such strait scope:My mind knows not its thoughts; they storm and veer;Time, draw some comfort from the Present’s fear.

And, shall it be, that who have stol’n ambrosia,From the aerial palaces of the gods,Or, like faint flowers, flush’d to the morning rosier,Touch’d by the mesmerism of the sunbeams’ rods—Shall such commend their spring to dungeon walls,Catching no comfort from the dull reflex,Responsive, breathe to no melodious calls?But feed on hope, insidious to perplex.How doubly dark frowns the removed cold spot,Lumber’d with shadows from the journeying sun;How trebly cursed, that unpropitious lot,Whose scale descends from whence its joys begun:And such is mine, whose starting-point was bliss;Yet all life’s rounds but lead me more amiss.

I must depart, and others shall crowd upThe empty room it was my pride to fill;And other votaries shall attempt the cup,Whose crystal lends a flavour, sparkling still;But, sometimes, thus my heart with transport speaksSometimes, my name shall flash along thy thought;Thy heart shall own the spell and pale thy cheeks,And give one sigh, from joy, or sorrow bought:I ask not grief; nay, rather joyous weaveA dear recess, luminous with fancy’s rays;There, let my captured heart delight, not grieveThy attentive sequence, through dim memory’s maze:Joy leads remembrance wistfully through the years;Give me but love, I ask no weed of tears.

Let me not grieve, though blasting blight my days;Let me not, with harsh cadence, crash the sound;Let me not smear this fond record of praise,Nor pause on sorrow’s inharmonious round;Nay, let me capture joy, and, rashly-glad,Bend bliss reluctant to my craving sense;But, softening, soon, I’ll grow more lonely-sad,Beckoning Content to chase those phantoms hence:With velvet tread, lynx eye, he steals along,Dreading the indent of some half-healed mishap;Then, gathering courage, treads with step more strong,And probes the withered trunk’s neglected sap:He threads the weeded Past, without annoy;And boasts, at length, from pain a new-found joy.

A thousand dumb-voiced stars beseech our eyesAnd lend a magic to the lonely night;True world-historians of all hopes and sighs,Might we but spell their story from your light.Loves, hopes, philosophies, religions, powers,Feed on themselves, quickened by their own fall:And years but mock at years, and hours at hours,Processions furnish soon their grandeur’s pall:Even now ye gaze on hopes, that live in death,On many a various god of wealth or pride,On schemes, fated to fail, on learning’s breath,Soon choked by dust, or blown by truth aside:Ambition, strong to live, must feel decay;What shall not fade? can priests or sages say?

Hark! what a voice comes crying through the night,How does it thrill my too obsequious ears!“O God, that knowledge should be wisdom hight,And men should broadcast sow big-bellied years:”Should a strong spirit descend, and wave his wand,And gaze, and breathe inventions into life;And fit all systems, with his dexterous hand,Into a social perfectness from strife,—’Twere much; and goodly heaven-descended PeaceShould sprout her blossoms, beautiful, o’er the land:I question yet, if jars should wholly cease,Or hatreds yield their once-accomplished stand:An automaton world may merchandise, weave, spin;Riches shall swell, not harmonise, its din.

Nay let your flight, Dædalean, touch far shores,The utmost horizon where discovery tends!Let Riches lavish their luxuriant stores,Till Poverty gapes, wanting her wonted friends;Let Rule, accomplished by adjustment’s mean,Tune his mild precepts to benevolence;Let knowledge thirst, and universal seem,Say what, say wherefore, whither, and say whence;Let ignorance crown with pride presumption’s vaunt,And fruitless pages garner stores of praise;Let social systems, smoothly-gliding, hauntThe wheels of state, whose barter smooths their ways:Yet riches are life’s condiment, not life;Peace is not love, but absence from the strife.

The earth is hoar with many a thousand years,And many a nation’s mute observance hungOn brighter ministers than woman’s tears,Immutable still, as when their course begun;Once large luxuriance fostered giant forms,Huge sepulchres contain their trampled pride;Nature, or glutted, or transposed by storms,Invites man sail o’er Being’s former tide:Without one tear those calm, clear worlds looked down,And haply smile at mortals’ eagerness;They seem to murmur, grasp your bauble crown,Scan not too near your treasure’s meagreness:All changes; but one essence guides the change,Involved, immortal, it must onward range.

Types of the volume where all secrets lie,Who hath not made ye confidants of woe?Whom have ye cheer’d not, beckoning from on high,Watched at their birth, and flash’d on death your glow?Witnesses to my woes, my thoughts, my sins,Attest, that sometimes I have conquered grief;If I have known what loss fulfilment wins,And yet striven on, then yield me some relief:Thou, blue escutcheon, on which worlds have paintedThe symbol, truth, hard for poor man to read;If I have lonely storm’d content, nor fainted,Nourish some flower from this uncertain seed:Though great my sins, not less my griefs have been,Bear witness, Truth, high arbitress and queen.

When man sinks awed, watching a myriad globes,How shrunk his purpose and his works appear!All his achievement ne’er can weave such robes;He can but gaze, despair confounds his fear:Yet there’s a link that binds weak man to God,And earth hath heavens as bright as all those stars;Beauty, ever-living, need but inspire the sod,And, lo! the substance of those golden cars.Spirit of Beauty, quicken, purge my soul;Raise it more near the substance of thy form;Then, mounting gradual, I shall reach the goal,Where individual life’s no longer warm;Where Beauty in itself transpicuous shines,And, universal, dazzles life’s dim mines.

I cease, and bid farewell to who hath swayed,This tribute’s mite of unmelodious verse;With many a billow my bark’s idly play’d,My thoughts enamoured but of thee, their hearse;And think not, though life drags a tedious chain,And all it offers, shows on trial nought,Believe not, I will sorrow, or complain;Hast thou not stored all summer in my thought?And, watching the bright heavens, or the glad ocean,I’ll think thou look’st, and they repeat thy smile;Nor shall life’s utmost favour of commotionBid homage spurn my Sovereign from love’s isle:To live in mortal’s mouths, be others’ aim;To dwell within thy heart, my only claim.

HERTFORD:PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN.

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