LXXV.

Along the desert pathway of my yearsThe untarnished green of an oasis lies,Full many a bliss, watered by love’s since tears,Full many a note, that in the distance dies;And I will pause, and gather fresh those sweets,And bind their buds in chaplets on my brows;I’ll hail what youth soe’er my wandering meets,“See here the guerdon of my childhood’s vows.”So, joy’s unripened blossoms shall forth peepFrom dewy sluices of long-buried grief;And love, though dead, shall through my pulses leap,And pinnacle the Past on rapture’s reef.Memory shall gild with fancy what is gone,And dim indulgence dreamingly live on.

There is one name on which remembrance lingers,Not soon shall Time tear it from my quick breast;There comes a music, touched by fairy fingers,To draw thy features, floats thy spirit’s unrest;Thy voice shall be a passport through life’s harms;I will believe thy fondness mends my slips;When Death shall clasp me in his haggard arms,I think that name shall arm my quivering lips:Young years, that made thee wild, had made thee loving;Nature had crown’d with Beauty what Wit gave;Perchance this verse shall prove not quite unmoving,Calling unto thee, as from out the grave:Yes, well I know, thou’lt sometimes give one sigh,To years that come no more, when once gone by.

There was one more, but, ’tis no matter now,One who’s forgot, I too will learn that lore;Nor others rest, but wistfully, I ploughMemory’s hard furrows, pregnant now no more;For now Love’s turned from my too sullen soul,He will no longer fling the rainbow veil,Nor glance his mirror o’er defects, to enrollMe, midst the captives of his courted jail:I’ll draw fresh sustenance from the past for joy,And scorn love’s gyves, his fears, his jealous frowns;Take up the sweets, and mock the archer boy,Who fools each votary with delusive crowns:Yet could I buy his pleasures with his woes,I’d choose them both, the archer God well knows.

What pride the season takes in his gay flowers!How the dead year mourns for his withered leaves!The lover sadly looks on desolate bowers,No song re-echoes to the verse he weaves:These all are sad, but promise gilds their death;Their notes of woe but swell the spring’s new joy;But, ’tis more pitiful, when the very breath,Which was our life, seems but the summer’s toy:With lifted hands, vain man implores the skies;Curses the sometime joy, the nurse of woe,The bliss whose unfelt want erst caused no sighs;His pilgrimage had, once, less grief, less show:But no; lost love exalts, in saddening, man,While heartless plodding but degrades his span.

’Tis bitter for the spirit that’s lived in Heaven,Quickly to be reft of what composed its bliss;’Tis bitter, that our bliss should wing the levin,And add a torture to the incisor knife;And, after earth was shaped to Paradise,Catching the colour of most loveable eyes,’Tis sad, that all should darken in a trice,And but remind us of the joy that flies;Wants but a motion, and all sights that wooThe bewitched eyesight of the doting world,Shall catch some stain, and shade to black their hue,Their pride exposed to gaze, their void unfurled:Yet who’d exist, and bind nought to his heart?Strong be that soul that dares to live apart.

But what have I to do with prating griefs,That mar the sanctity on Beauty’s brow?I have in thee a thousand full reliefs;Why wound the seeds of joy with torture’s plough?Even now, thy youthful years, in wisdom fledg’d,Wave thousand-coloured plumes o’er elder minds;Whiles thou, to only Love and Beauty pledged,Unsought, uncared for, feel’st the applausive winds:Envy thou dost take captive, and transformTo the good angel of magnanimous praise;And men are only jealous, and grow warm,Matching those wordy altars which they raise:That men adore the wonder of thy worth,But shames my love, whose utmost praise is dearth.

In seeking pleasure, I have tasted woe;And drunk of every cup, to test its worth:Ill sediments must, in such seeking, flowAnd mingle with the thoughts that gave them birth:Who drinks experience, drinks, at once, disdain;From weariness, Excitement gathers force,Then swerves not for slight barriers, nor draws rein,Till all his passion’s wreak’d upon the course:The course is finished; hollow is the cup;Nor may regret point at the looked for dregs:Who sits the banquet out, at last, must supFrom off satiety’s unfurnished pegs.’Tis something known, that there is nought to gain;Each different science prints his proper strain.

How void of meaning seems the barren earth!How dwindles all its pride, to infants’ toys!For me, all life is quickened into birth,Only by the love, that turns my grief to joys:Sullen, I look out upon the bleak dim morn,And curse the cold, the climate, and the cloud:I match those frowns with thy imagined scorn;Sudden, the sun illumes the misty shroud;The thought, that’s full of thee, discerns no grief,But builds a summer palace in the air;It sifts compounded woes, torturing their sheaf,That bitter thoughts may hide, ’mid thoughts more fair;The mind returns from thee, winged with delight;Unsated, it soon meditates new flight.

There are, who count the day by Phœbus’ course,And ask the dial, where the sun should be;Who teach the clock, to give the hours force,To speak the change of their monotony;Who span the earth with measures, and with rules,And prate of chart, of compass, and of mile;Others, more learned, beckon to the schools,Whence time and space flee with mysterious smile:But we, who count by love, care not to pointOur sweet decisions by such knotty laws;Whether one be right, or, all be partners jointIn folly’s mandates, or in wisdom’s saws,Love cares not, knows not, reckons not; its waysSeem shorter to its joy, than winter days.

’Twas here, we met, we spoke; ’twas but a moment,So short the hours seemed; we loved, we parted;Ah! that harsh word of parting, with such woe shent,Dulls all the joy that e’er our meeting darted;Those leagues we linger’d o’er, what steps they seem’d!How could we give to distance his full dues?How short those days, when tricksome fancy’s dream’d,And dress’d the present in rich memory’s hues!This is Eternity, shorn of the dressThat sedate Time winds round his glowing limbs:Soon shall the Eternal rise, and find redressFrom slanderous Time, who sickens what he dims.Time rules but mortals, wavers even for men;Should Truth inhabit such a meteor’s den?

Unsatisfied desires have sway’d my breast;Hope’s Syren voice has lured me to despair;Only Excitement’s charm’d me, with its zest,And strangled thought, e’er it could change to care;But, now, such deep repose hath breathed content,Filling the measure of all hopes with thee;That, all my longings and my fears are spent,Or only live, that thou may’st bid them flee:If, now, Ambition points to ceaseless toil;Gleam through the years, altars of sacrifice;When all is done, I but remain the foil,Marking what measure thou may’st well despise.All that I have, or gain, or love, is thine,And all is little, since thy heart is mine.

O think not I would purchase, measuring out,The priceless merit of the love I’ve sued!Thy love’s the larger, that it will not doubtTo rest its hope on buds whose beauty’s crude:Yet suffer, that my shafts attempt the markWhich thy heart shows to be true virtue’s goal;Suffer, that, by thy conduct, my poor barkMay proudly sail, and scorn the obtrusive shoal:My service slights all guerdons, and all gains,Than but one smile, one word, one thought of thine;Happy, whoe’er approves not, if my painsBe crown’d by thee, and through thy merit shine.What others’ emulous worth labours to gain,O glorious prize! ’tis mine, perchance, to attain.

Love is the larger when it seeks return,Only in the fulness of its treasur’d self;When it can linger by the shattered urn,Its idol gone, it knows not where, nor whence;When what we worship, may not mark the woesWhich wear the frame, but fortify the mind;When all is dark, nor earth, nor Heaven showsAcceptance gleaming, through the midnight, kind:This love’s of purer strain than men can know,Most jar the chords, but toying with the harp,They’d lower to life, and filter through fresh woeThe essence that should illustrate their dark.Grief’s scale shows heights, to which whoe’er attain,Shall haply find the joy outweigh the pain.

But, life compounds the dregs to luscious draughts;And various pleasure mocks monotonous woe;And all the wheels and hinges show their crafts,Leaving no room for the full spirit’s flow;Even love forbids the soul, for human loss,To wear less brightly, its heaven-tinctur’d fire,And shows it lovelier, to exalt the crossInto the pledge of love, still struggling higher:Only the eternal breath of Nature’s beautyDemands the unchanged devotion of our years.Immortal constancy of shifting dutyCrowns the rich harvest of our sometime tears:What’s spent in loving, richly is defrayed,Though nought’s returned, by lending we are paid.

But, man, the fitful birth of Time and Change,Demands the substance of a living love:Nor, ever satisfied, must onward range,And builds for earth the idea, or above:His heart must find a home, where’er it goes;He nestles in the warmth, then dreams ’tis cold;Each imperfection lives, and livelier shows;Love learns despair, and, at the last, is cold:And, but one path, secure, leads ever round,Nor dares attempt the warmth, for which it glows;And who would trifle in this shallow soundEscapes the test, fenced round by summer snows.Whose quiet peace can amble o’er this road,Lives, like what sage? nor fears love’s ardent goad.

I lately dreamt of an ideal form;I thought to shape the mould after my mind;I bore it through the crowd, and thought it warm;I saw the shape, that struck my fancy blind:Fool! whose presumption struggles to createA beauty other than high nature uses;Reckon thy function at a lowlier rate,Raise thy poor pride to what herself infuses:Then, if the glow of Nature’s life-blood thrill thee,Then, draw the vision to a finer strain;Then, purify, exalt, let beauty fill thee;Imagination works not, then, in vain.If here is aught, ’tis fashioned all from thee,Lord of my love and of my minstrelsy.

How large a margin yawns ’twixt thought and fact!Rich Expectation robs the beggar Deed,An unwise spendthrift, all his fortune’s sacktTo build the storehouse whence he ne’er can feed:For, Hope devours her progeny in the womb;Glutted with meat, she thinks she shall not starve;She lies, she chews the cud, sleeps by the tomb,Accustomed to past gorging, wakes to carve;Poor idiot, all her rapture’s drunk away,The sediment’s tasteless, save of craving thirst;Her hydra debts seem lost in what they pay,She cannot feed, till they’re discharged first.I only know one hope, that ne’er deceives,What’s stay’d on thee buoys less than it relieves.

The proud long hours amble at tedious rate,For that they know they bear the weight of thee,Even the tripping minutes borrow state,And, oft return, playing bo-peep with me;Their cunning thinks to lengthen out my pain,Or, woo weak prescience, with some fearful mine;They ne’er suspect how joy shall, in this strain,Usurp a minute’s woe, in every line:To draw thy lineaments, the painter’s pride,The marble’s glory, thy limbs’ mobile grace,’Tis mine, to celebrate thy virtuous side,How firm consistent, in such temple’s space.To express its all would tire, though charm the time,Some part befits the occasion, and my rhyme.

I care not to mark out where Beauty lies,What nice distinction claims it for her own;Some intuition says it never dies,Born of young joy, by feeling larger grown:’Twere easy, to cull out fine tints, deep shades,To trick comparisons into the vain verse;Digging the ground, with intellect’s keen spades,To touch more nearly something which is worse:O too close strainers of the priceless wine,The essence flies with what ye deem the dregs!The jewel’s blaze, less lustrous in the mine,Commands, there, praise, which, capp’d on age, it begs:One stroke of Nature, and of Truth outweighsAll similes and suits, bedizening lays.

But who knows Nature, Truth, Beauty divine,(Three varying names of one unswerving Love),Speechless will worship, and attend the trine:The critic hawk shall own the stronger dove;For, admiration glows with brighter flame,Than but to light the judgment to his prey;And it was ever Love’s most glorious shame,He could not analyze, nor mutter nay:Enough, that beauty lives in clouds of colour,In forest, ocean, mountain, forms and faces;Why wrest these proofs, to hints and motes of dolour,To impose some sense that shrouds what it defaces?How vain is man, who deems his weak conceitsOf better worth than Nature’s utmost heats.

There are, whose life, perch’d on a ledge of grief,Scarcely can draw some comfort from its tears;That thought probes not sensation, their relief,Else how could Nature pant through such long years?These may drink in the smile which Nature weavesO’er all her sons alike, the proud, the poor;They, oft, shall catch a solace from the sheavesOf golden light, that pave heaven’s evening floor;Nature has own’d her children, as they have smil’d,Rapt in the glancing fields, where ocean ripples,And hush’d them, as some mother, to her childGently discloses her just budded nipples!I think, long years, long woes, hard times, forgot,They stand inspired, nor dream of their sad lot.

O ye, who furnish’d with hearts form’d of fire,Can clasp no longer love within your arms;Who, lost in a poor world of brick and mire,Can find no breast to give the love which charms;Who live to dream, what waking quite confounds;Who, forced on self, loathe your own lives the while;Who cannot hear your names, ’mid many sounds,Or teach one heart to feel, one face to smile;Mechanical action, which use steers, not thought,And lifeless purpose, robb’d of seeming gains,This is your lot: with how much rapture fraught,Too well, I know, were Nature’s slightest strains;With what sweet voice Nature can soothe such woe,And smile away such tears with evening’s glow.

Where solitude makes music unto silence,By forests arching over deep slow streams;Or, where huge rocks guard oceans, giving high senseOf gods in-dwelling through immortal dreams;There stands a shadow, beckoning to the insight,Of a world, far vaster, fuller, more intense,It sweeps away the cobwebs of our dim sight;The pigmy world dwindles near shapes immense:’Tis then, that voice, passion, shape, action, thought,Lose all the colours caught from phantom life;And all is given, that even presumption sought;And there is peace, without the bubble strife:’Tis but a moment we may blissful be;Soon grate the irons that mind us we’re not free.

Who that has felt such joy would dare intrudeHis heart’s best love into such quiet scene?Who would not rather stifle thought’s sick brood,And gag the monitor of existence lean?For this is the well-spring, whence love must drawThe food to stuff those shapes, on which it doats;And henceforth, kindlier, pity Nature’s flaw,Dazzling with lustre all her gloom of motes:’Tis here the bosom of Existence heaves;Man feels its swell, which lifts him to more bliss;He feels the heaven of its warm breath, which leavesThe rapture of young Love’s ideal kiss:And he is calm, in depth of sweet repose,In Nature lives, to Nature’s bosom grows.

And this is life, and here existence beatsWith too swift cadence for the mind, poor sloth;And here, the inquisitive soul all dumbly seeksThe quick transplantings of an earlier growth;And the vision of the world fades from before him,And hopes, and fears grow blind, looking on light;Man reaps the only harvest that can store himFor each emergence of the monstrous night:O heaven! that this too dies, leaves us o’erweighedBy the gathered volume of defeated woe;That grief should still be furthered, not delayed,By joy that makes it heavier, though more slow:Dark swells the wave, big with his comrade’s might,Barks stemm’d the first, all own the latter’s right.

O paltry jingle to a coinèd note!Words that ape thought, and thought that soils the soul;With what a tide of emptiness ye float,On the heart’s music, ye can ne’er control!The sieve of words holds not the element’s sense;The thought is the poor highway to the heart;How should man’s tongue hold heaven in its pretence?How should one road contain the city’s mart?The pipings of a mind, vex’d, half distraught,Are but as signs, of what their speech should be;They can but show what happier moments sought;What gilds the Future’s blank satiety;’Tis the one only tone that echo gives;The music dying, death in music lives.

But, these are flowers of spring, grafted on winter;Sounds, gently opening, that grow sudden harsh;In darkness, light’s most momentary splinter;The sometime flicker, dancing o’er the marsh.Such visions deaden life, or else exalt:They will not rest, they lead to Heaven or Hell,Now charm to happiness’ more stern assault,Now bid man sink, and more despairing dwell:Pure vistas open, in long lanes of light,Building reflections, mirror-like, from their forms,And lovely angels beckon the entranc’d sight;Too oft, alas! they’re lost in life’s strange storms:Let those buds nestle amid memory’s weeds,They’ll dart their purpose, quickening life’s faint seeds.

The world was young, when some Prometheus cameAnd snatch’d the kernel action from repose;His flaming ministrations crown’d his name,Earth throbb’d his glory in her godlike throes;And immortal words have rounded, since, the soulWith love, whose sufferance is keen to act;But some seek suffering, scorning action’s goal,Disjoining love, from what lifts love to fact.Far other, taught love’s founder, and love’s lord;Far other, mighty shades have since decreed;They would not linger by the deep’ning ford,They plunged, they fought, and victors now proceed:Two notes of music blended in one tone;Rich various colours form’d their pure white zone.

For Love, without her son, is a weak fool,The faltering treble of a school-girl’s thought;She whimpers, daunted, for ’tis hot or cool,Or that’s there less, or more, than what she sought;Commutual bliss lives only when they join,And, hand in hand, pace o’er the conquered lands;One bides the occasion, stamps the current coin;The other’s power sows blessings o’er the strands:She is more weak, more lovely, and more mild;And he more beautiful, more strong, more calm;Earth almost blossomed, when just now she smiled;But earth cried out for joy, feeling his balm:Divorced, one’s weakness lends the other fuel;The more love yields, the more is action cruel.

But, borrowing aid of Nature, to upsoar,And steer thy purpose, resolution-winged;This, is to leave these suburbs for the shore,Where Nature’s movements slide, noiselessly hinged;The passive puppet, cooped in his poor self,Foregoes the scope of his divinity;Thinking he wields a little power or pelf,And knows not, sees not, power’s sublimity:Even, while living, such shall tamely die,And, uncomplaining, reap their perished seeds:But, holier, thou, stifle another’s sigh,And steal whose sorrow disappoints his deeds:Then shall the dark confirm the intenser light;And the world’s woe but make the world more bright.

Who hath not bless’d the woods, that gave the breeze,Freshening the city from his summer cheek?Who hath not trembled to the quivering leaves,Wondering such music thus was left to seek?And thus, the hubbub left of wandering words,My steed returns along the well-known road;He knows his home by music of no birds,Though by instinct of as harmonious load;For, there, thy voice laughs fantasies away,Showing the earnest of my fancy’s dream;And, there, thy love has traced the lively way,Whose signs, but thought on, indistinctly gleam:I turn to thee, and soon forget all fears;Swerves not my skiff, when such strong pilot steers.

Ye pleasant days, companions to young joy,E’er self and sorrow had born agony;When grief, wreathed in romance, looked slily coy,And wedded bliss, nor thought it felony;My only sorrow, we for hours might part;My often solace, we for years must meet;Sweet expectation filled up yearning’s smart;While memory thought not stale the oft-tasted treat:I’ve learned those brooks were sparkling all with sunshine,Though they seem’d stern, dividing life from life;Could I these mazes thread so swift, and untwine,How keen an edge were given to Time’s dull knife.Joy steals from abhorred evil his enhancement,His proud foot spurns the neck, that aids advancement.

There are, who build great domes sparkling with wealth,Whose wretched pride mounts with palatial walls;Some, yet more mean, hold riches for their health,And tire their laded ships and creaking stalls;Some bend their foolish steps to lofty place,Cringe, fawn, and hope—to be despised, forgot;These wisely think, by flattery of the base,To help their high-placed frames, e’er low they rot:And, others scorn the world, and serve for hireA self-erected Heaven, whither they’d soar;They feed on such vile thoughts, nor know the mire,—Heaven their sole aim, and Hell sin’s only flaw:More noble, some live by ambition’s shrine;To ponder on thy worth, is only mine.

’Tis a great aim, this will to wander lonely,This high ambition, gnawing its heart’s core,To scorn this life, and live thy dying only,Along the years that hear thy words no more:’Tis great, to burst the web that stays thy hand,Stern to rush on, nor pause, nor look, nor hear;To escape mute love’s imploring glance and band;To feel intensely, yet to shed no tear;As one who swims, fights with wave-baffling arms,Wrestling with the roaring, wracking, whistling waters,So, too, resistless urge thy way through harms,Nor swerve for earth, her sons, or charming daughters:All this seems great, yet I would rather restMy troubled fancies in thy loving breast.

For, even there translucent thought’s deep roll,There the slight foam but beautifies the blue,O let me write my name along that scroll,That mirror, varying to a lovelier hue!Thou, like the cold world, will not e’er forget;When thou must die, my fame shall wither too;For what were laurels when with weeping wet?Though fame be lost, yet love shall fly with you;Yet nought shall perish; for one thought of thineHath breath’d eternity through these slight lays;And I can dare the world’s poor scornful whineTo spoil the smoothness of thy perfect praise:I know these strains are weak, yet love them still,Their blind obedience only owns thy will.

Fame, slowly staggering, toils up hard ascents,The summit reached, she beckons, proudly poised;Life struggles out through inapparent vents;Fame’s former glory is less loudly noised:Death calls, and fame revives, then sudden dies,Or, smouldering, stinks along the restless years;Life’s various hoard, fed by such quick supplies,Heeds not the fanes of bygone mirth or tears;The years, that build the shadows, make them dim;The busy world’s scarce conscious of itself;Already toying on oblivion’s brim,It prays for heirs to waste much useless pelf.Who have not time to assure their own weak ways,How should they pause o’er their ancestors’ praise?

But, the spirit, enamoured of immortal Beauty,He will not serve on fame’s light grudging meed;His grateful labour, merg’d in sublime duty,Seeks, in creation, harvest of its seed;Beauty is his dear Lord, he loves to owe,And grows more rich by payment; he will toil,And watch his offspring, as they grander grow,Outdoing Nature in their beauteous coil.And all alone he feels, yet is not sad,For She, the inspirer of all hearts, is near;And Nature’s fondness makes her son look glad,And will not, wholly, let his heart grow sear.The artificer of the Changeless grows not tired,He is well paid, nor cares to be admired.

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